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5 tips to support email marketing

Published 25 March, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you use email marketing for your business? Let’s face it, it can be highly effective and relatively cheap so is always worth considering.

No matter how great your email is, though, you need to support it on your website – and this is something many people forget so here are some tips for you:

  1. use the same branding and style in the email and the web page the email leads to. Sounds obvious but the obvious is often missed when we’re busy and caught in the middle of a project.
  2. match the message in the email and your website. For example, if your email is about a sale but links to your homepage which doesn’t mention a sale you will find a lot of people will just leave and those remaining will be annoyed at having to search for the information. If you have specific graphics in the email, they should be visible on the site too – or versions of them – so the connection is immediate  
  3. Remember to link to relevant pages, not just your homepage – again, this saves people having to search your site and it can also help your search engine results (especially if a copy of your email is online)
  4. it is part of your branding, but to be crystal clear on this opint – keep the same tone in the email as on your website. If the friendly, young sounding email attracts someone, a formal, old-fashioned webpage will alienate and confuse them.
  5. ensure the contact details given in the email are correct and that someone is available to respond to them. An ad in a magazine may result in calls over a period of days or weeks, but the majority of responses to an email will come within hours of sending it out – it’s not a good look if you send out an email inviting calls and no one answers the phone or emails for a few days!

If you looked at your latest email campaign and the related web pages, would you see the connection or would they clash? Try the above tips as a testing process and see if you can’t improve the campaign for next time.

Posted in business info & tools, marketing, writing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Another poor marketing email

Published 29 October, 2010 | By TashWord

I receive many poor emails, but sometimes I am amazed at them and have to share them in the hope of reducing the number of bad emails being sent.

In this case, the email was from someone who can apparently improve my email marketing – how can I trust that claim when their email is so poor itself? Continue reading →

Posted in bad writing examples | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Writing useful tips

Published 7 January, 2009 | By TashWord

Yesterday, I wrote about the value of giving clients some tipsto develop a relationship with them as a form of marketing. Of course, the tips need to be useful for your clients and presented well to be an effective marketing tool for you.

Try the following tips to make your tips effective:

  • keep each tip simple and preferably short
  • only give each tip once– repetition is pointless and boring
  • make sure the tip is clear – give an example if you think it will help
  • brand the page – add your logo and URL as a minimum, but consider coloured paper or a professionally designed template
  • make the tips genuine – giving general statements everyone knows is pointless and won’t show your customers your generosity or your knowledge/skills base
  • avoid jargon so it’s easy to understand
  • check for correct spelling and grammar– although full sentences aren’t necessary in a bulleted list of points
  • be consistent in your presentation and writing

Taking some effort to get your tips good is worthwhile as you can use the list over and over. It can be given to clients as a printed page or emailed as a pdf.

Do you already have a tips sheet? Have you checked it recently for the above points and to make sure it is still current and accurate?

Posted in writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Use real advantages…

Published 3 December, 2008 | By TashWord

When marketing, it is important to point out how your business (or product or service) is superior or different to others – in other words, why should people come to you?

This difference is often known as a unique selling point (USP) or a point of difference, and there are many ways to make use of it.

However, it is also important to show you are different by avoiding being the same. What do I mean by that? Well, if everyone in your industry talks about their compact products, don’t use the word compact – try space saving, small, minimalist or mini for instance.

Additionally, it’s not a good idea to use over-used words such as quality, value, fast and safe (see what Drew McLellan and others say on this in Drew’s recent blog post – he gives some good alternatives and the discussion is interesting.)

In writing as in business, being original and providing interesting content is likely to make more of an impact than being the same as everyone else. And making an impact may be just what you need to get customers to you rather than your competitors.

But when you are stating those great differences and reasons to use you, remember to be honest and only state real advantages rather than making up something your customers want to read.

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Links in emails

Published 20 July, 2008 | By TashWord

Email marketing is a valuable tool for any modern business, but it can backfire if you don’t use it carefully.

I recently saw an email that was very short, started with my name and included unsubscribe details – all of which are good points in an email. But it also included three links to a web page they were promoting – not three pages, but three links to one page!

In a short email, I am quite capable of finding the link even if I have read further on – it will stand out!

Over do something like providing links, and I begin to wonder why you are pushing it so hard and  I get suspicious. Finish with “This isn’t hype” to convince me this is hype and not substance.

Add in a comment like “Seriously, this puppy is sick” and the email has no credibility – I deleted it without clicking on any of the three links!

So the lessons from this email are:

  • treat your readers with respect – they can find links in short emails
  • avoid unnecessary repetition – it is boring and raises questions as to why you need to repeat it
  • avoid statements that are cool or trendy – not everyone will agree with you and they age your message quickly. What is cool today is sick tomorrow and wicked the day after, and so on
  • if your content isn’t something (e.g. hype, spam,viral) then you don’t need to write that fact – it is more likely to raise suspicions than allay them

Use your words (and links!) wisely!

Posted in writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Promoting a blog

Published 22 May, 2008 | By TashWord

Most people who start a blog would like to have some people read it 🙂 And many would like more people to read their blog – whether it is to promote their business, share their passion or express their opinions and experiences, they want someone to read what they have written.

So how can you promote your blog, getting more readers?

I have found a few blog posts recently that cover parts of this topic so I thought I would share them before I gave any tips of my own…

How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Through Word of Mouth Marketing

Powering Up Your Blog With These 26 Power Lists/Rankings (the list is handy, but the site isn’t impressive with many faulty images, etc)

101 Internet Traffic Generation Strategies – Part 1 Not all the tips will be relevant to your blog, but you may get some ideas.

How Top Submit Your Website To The Leading Russian Search Engines – Yandex And Ramble – only for a specialised set of blogs!
 
6 Steps to Building Diversity In Traffic – remember the old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? It applies just as much to customer and traffic sources.
 
Big Bang explains a new way to get links to your blog from many other blogs  and it’s actually quite similar to the Million blog list
Are there some other blog promotion ideas you have used successfully?

Posted in blogging | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Media release stories

Published 5 February, 2008 | By TashWord

Writing a media release for your own business is quite possible, or you may want to get a professional writer/PR or marketing person to do it for you.news for newspapers

The key part to any release, however, is the story in the release. It must be newsworthy if it is to gain any interest or publicity. And it must be newsworthy for the media outlet you are sending it to – an article about an innovative tractor part would be newsworthy in an agricultural magazine but not so much in a women’s fashion magazine.

With a bit of spin or a changed perspective, many stories can be made more interesting than they first appear, but a journalist still has to get an article out of the story for them to follow up the release.

I have seen instances where the interest of the story, its newsworthiness, is listed as the be all and end all of a media release. But there is one other important factor in a successful media release.

The story in your release must be relevant to your business if it is to benefit your business. So you could write a release about that great tractor part, grab the attention of a journalist and see the part get some publicity. How does that help you if you sell shoes or books? Of course, if you sell food and can add “This new tractor part means we harvest sooner so your food is fresher” or if you are a web designer and can add “Since we redesigned their site, this tractor part has sold millions” it has relevance.

So before starting a media release, you need to ask yourself:

Will this story interest a number of people?

Is there a media outlet that will reach those interested people?

Is this story relevant to my business?

If they are all ‘yes’, get writing!

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Website marketing

Published 18 October, 2007 | By TashWord

I went to a Business Mums Network morning tea this morning – in fact I hosted it!

The speaker, Lucie Battaini of MultiMediART, spoke to us about using simple and mostly free techniques to get more people to your website. Although I knew a lot of what Lucie spoke about, it was great to hear it all put together and I learnt some new things, too.

For instance, Lucie spoke about keywords – apparently, keyword metadata isn’t used by most search engines now but the use of keywords in your content is crucial. That means you should include a couple of important words as many times as possible in your web content for search engines to find and correctly categorise you.

However, it is really important to not overuse your keywords – imagine if I used ‘business writing’ at least once in every sentence – boring and confusing to read. I find it better to write the information normally so it flows properly, and then go back and see if there’s a way to add a few more keywords without loosing the flow.

And of course, Lucie pointed out that content is King, so I’d better get writing!

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Posted in web content | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments
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