I'm always fascinated by the book list that clients and business associates recommend (there is a great widget on LinkedIn that enables you to do this) and after meeting our Newbury Dentist, Richard Charon at the local Oxford Tweetup he spent a little time browsing my website to explore further what we do...

Well we have a recommended reading list that Richard found  (check it out here ) and Richards contribution to our reading list is from the mighty Seth Godden. (Seth holds an MBA from Stanford University, and has been called 'the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age' by Business Week magazine.)

So Richards recommendations are

1. Seth Godin. Purple Cow,
2. The Big Moo & 
3. Tribes

This month’s OxTweetup, held at Fallow Fields Country House Hotel Oxford was extremely well attended once more. The main Speaker was yours truly, Karen Chapple, where the pr esentation was on setting business objectives for your social media activities – not just Twitter.

What was presented was that Twitter as a vehicle, was very effective in getting messages out, but the true power of social media was in the content you provided and the audience you attracted to you. By setting your objectives at the start of your campaign, you can clearly see if your goals are being met, if not adjust your approach to achieve your goals.

It was shown that combining your activities into a clear plan, you can use all the tools available to maximise your activity, whilst not spending your day on the PC Tweeting. Getting a routine and being consistent is the key to mastering social media as a cost effective and highly rewarding marketing method.

The presentation was fairly fast-paced and lasted about 40mins, and then the discussion was opened up for questions. A fast and furious stream of questions came from the floor on everything from “Am I doing it right?” to “How do I get more from Social Media?” – all of which were answered as far as time allowed.

Then the group headed for the award winning oxfordshire restaurant to sample one of Anthony’s famous Fallow Field pies – all made on site with home produced faire – and of course a chance to get to know the Oxford Tweeters in person!

The next tweetup is scheduled so come and join us at 6:00pm on the 13th May – you can sign up for it here

Last week I sat in on a presentation delivered by a Google representative, during the hour long session there were some interesting facts delivered that I thought I would share with you, for example,

 

• did you know that at the moment there are 5 million terrabytes of information stored in the Google Index, this equates to just 5% of the information that is currently in the world today.
• 41million people are now online in the UK
• 17p in the £ is spent online
• 80% of Internet users will compare prices online
• 1-3 consumers post comments every week
• 15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

 

Twitter, I just don't understand it!

Imagine that you’re stood at the bar in your favourite pub and you’ve got groups of people to the left and right of you. The crowd on your left are talking about last nights football scores, mmm you think I’m not overly interested in that conversation, but the crowd on your right are chatting about the Rugby which definately holds your attention.

You’d probably want to get involved in that conversation, share your opinions and share your knowledge of the game with helpful website addresses that the others might find useful. Well fundamentally thats what Twitter is – a place where people ‘meet’ share ideas, post great articles and generally help each other out and ‘follow’ what everyone is doing. But you only get involved with the people that are like minded to you and with conversations that are of interest, that you think you can contribute to and vice versa. It really is that simple!

So how do you get started?

Well to sign up for Twitter will basically take you approximately 30 seconds, you simply hit the join the conversation button and put in your username and password. Do fill out your Bio and put in a picture of yourself, after all this is a social site, we want to see who we’re talking to!

Once you’ve done this you need to ‘find people to follow’ – this is just like your selection of the Rugby crowd over the Football crowd. To get you started let me give you a few great people that you can immediately follow and who I know will help you out

1) Nigel_Morgan (our very own Berkshire PR expert)

2) Adrian_Scott (specialised online business software, intranets and Extranets)

3) grahamjones (what this man doesn’t know about blogging simply isn’t worth knowing)

4) Markshaw ( a specialist in Twitter – he will answer any questions you’ve got)

and of course you can follow me, IrunNewbury.

Twitter, I just don't understand it!

Imagine that you’re stood at the bar in your favourite pub and you’ve got groups of people to the left and right of you. The crowd on your left are talking about last nights football scores, mmm you think I’m not overly interested in that conversation, but the crowd on your right are chatting about the Rugby which definately holds your attention.

You’d probably want to get involved in that conversation, share your opinions and share your knowledge of the game with helpful website addresses that the others might find useful. Well fundamentally thats what Twitter is – a place where people ‘meet’ share ideas, post great articles and generally help each other out and ‘follow’ what everyone is doing. But you only get involved with the people that are like minded to you and with conversations that are of interest, that you think you can contribute to and vice versa. It really is that simple!

What happens next?

Well you will be presented with a box which states ‘What are you doing?’ – this is where you type your text but its only a short message at 140 characters. You can if you want, type in quite literally what you are doing, but ‘making tea and eating biscuits’ simply won’t cut it for most people and you’ll find you won’t get into a good conversation. Instead try and be informative, link to some great articles or blogs that you like, or perhaps ask a question. (by the way as you’ve only got a limited space you might like to try bit.ly to shorten your link) In doing this you will find that people will be interested in what you have to say and will follow you.

As well as being presented with this text box your home page will start filling up with ‘tweets’ from the users you are following (a tweet is simply the 140 character message) – soon you will start to see quite a thread growing and you will soon find that you want to reply to someones post, with comment or useful information.

I want to Post a reply to someone – how do I do that?

You still use your ‘what are you doing?’ text box but at the start of your message you type in the username of the person you want to reply to with the prefix @. So for example if you wanted to reply to me it would be @IrunNewbury. That way everyone can follow the conversation thread.

So you’ve got a twitter account, you can post a ‘tweet’ and reply to a tweet. Here endith lesson 1 in the world of Twitter. Next month I will talk about re-tweets and other peices of software that might help you keep ontop of all the conversations you’ll be having.

However you intend to communicate to your customers, the format of that ecommunication is critical to the success of the message. This can be eshots, enewsletters or even transactional business emails, the principles are the same.

So what is the best format?

This is a constantly moving target, however through our experience and by constant testing we have developed a methodology that works. For the purpose of explaining this, I will start at the top of the ecommunication and work down, pointing out the areas of focus as we go.

1. Give the recipient a reason to open your ecommunication As explained in a previous article, the subject line is the most important line of the document – its the one that either gets your recipients attention and action or commits you to the junk mail box. Unless this interests your reader they will often just pass you by, even if they know you. This subject line must answer the question “What’s in it for me?” and how will it benefit them. Personalisation of the subject line is also recommended as this catches the eye and increases the open rates dramatically.

2. Create a trusted identity Studies have shown that when recipients are sorting emails, the two things that make them open emails are the subject line and the “From” field.

It is important that you use a person or organisation that the reader recognises. You are attempting to build a relationship with that reader and so having a consistent identity will help build that relationship, and make them eager to read what you are sending them.

For an individual it is good to choose a recognisable name of somebody (this needs to be a real person too just in case the reader wants to phone you!). This can be the CEO or MD or Marketing Manager, but it has to be a real person. Once you start using this name, don’t switch it about – be consistent.

The one warning is that if your content is not of value to the recipient, you will become a reason to delete the communication.

3. Use HTML formats instead of Text (mostly) In general terms, HTML would be the format of choice, but here are a few exceptions to the rule. HTML offers several distinct advantages over text format:

Click through rates (CTR) is generally double that of text communications

Tracking codes can be embedded easily in HTML enabling you to follow the behaviour of the reader and the effectiveness of your offers

Readability and design is enhanced using colour, graphics and fonts not available in text formats

Product pictures make a visual impact on the reader, increasing conversion rates in sales campaigns

Text format does have its part to play, especially with the use of Mobile devices and PDA’s that are used to read emails. Not all of these devices accept HTML so a text format will get through. Some government or corporate organisations strip HTML from emails to protect against viruses making the emails unpredictable in what will be viewed by the user.

Ecommunication best practice dictates that you should let your reader decide what format they want to receive the email in, either HTML or Text, so ask them and deliver what they want. This can easily be done at the subscribe stage via a check box in the form (I suggest you pre-check the HTML box for them).

Now you have decided to use Internet Marketing and in particular e-mail marketing, how do you make sure your email gets opened and read?

The aim is not a quick hit and run, what you are trying to do is build a long lasting relationship with your customer, build rapport and ensure they look forw ard to receiving your email and the content of it.

The easiest starting point is your existing customers. They already know you; have experience of using your products or services, and are probably ready to spend money right now. The fact is many companies rarely or even never communicate with their customers in any way – but you can guarantee that your competitors are looking to talk to them (as you probably are try to talk to their customers too!).

This relationship must have more than the latest offers you are making, you need to build the rapport over a number of communications and not bombard them with unwanted “specials”. What you do need to do is reward your customers for their loyalty, add value to what you are sending them and make this regular so they expect it and make a habit of reading your content and using you more frequently.

Here are a few suggestions of things you can do to make sure your customers open your email and not add you to blocked senders:

Ensure your audience is addressed correctly and keep these records upto date

If somebody “opt out” make sure you remove them from future mailings – it’s about credibility

Make sure you have a privacy policy on your website so people know you will not be selling their information on to another party.

Make sure you show your company address and details on your website.

Make sure you use a real person address to send and get return emails from – not a marketing @fred.com type thing – you are trying to build a relationship after all.

Make sure the unsubscribe instructions are clear and simple.

Use an authentic subject line which is not misleading – if it says “we can save you a million pounds” you need to be sure you can! Nobody likes to be tricked do they!!

So how do you get your emails opened?

Without doubt, if you get the subject line right, your open rates will raise. You are competing with hundreds of other emails in your targets inbox, so you need to stand out in the crowd. Here are a few of our top tips:

Tip 1: Keep your subject lines short. It has been proven that subject lines with less than 35 characters are more likely to be opened than those with longer subject lines. Keep it short and sweet, making sure your benefit or offer is at the beginning of the line.

Tip 2: Keep the formatting simple. Don’t capitalise the title completely, or even each word, just right it normally and avoid exclamation marks etc.

Tip 3: Get your customer interested. Use and angle to make them curious and grab their attention, or create a sense of urgency in opening your email like adding a time limit or similar.

Tip 4: Make sure your subject line is not misleading and relates to the content contained in the body of the email. Your credibility is at stake so you need to make sure you do not go to the spam folder or unsubscribe.

The key to this all is testing. Try a few, say 10% of your email list and see what the open rate is. If you are not happy, then change the subject line and try a further 10%. This does take time to perfect and it also changes with each offer you make so be patient. Getting it wrong will lead to poor results and frustration, however get it right and you generate more opportunities and business for very little cost. Over time, you will develop a “style” and writing subject lines will become easier.

IRUN Solutions (Newbury) are based in Newbury, Berkshire. We specialise in delivering Web and Internet marketing strategy solutions to our customers in and around the Newbury Area. Our services are designed to offer a complete Internet solution, from Web design and build, through CRM and Emarketing tools, right the way to online accounting tools – making us ideal for small business and start-ups as well as our corporate clients. You could say we offer a “business without the box”, allowing you to instantly start a business without upfront capital costs and delays or complex computer software set up and backup, just a simple monthly fee. Rather than just build a website then walk away, we develop a strategy that includes emarketing, adwords, keyword research, Search engine optimisation and ongoing monitoring and innovation to ensure you are always hitting your goals with your web investment.