You use this communication channel almost every day. Email.

When was the last time you emailed a marketing message to your customers? You have a full database of addresses from current customers; do not be afraid to reach them via email. How long did it take for you to acquire your current customers? It does not happen overnight. Keep in mind, it is more timely and expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep a returning one.

If you are not striving to either get started with or improve your current email marketing strategies you are missing out on a huge opportunity to not only increase sales but most importantly increase customer satisfaction.
Success does not happen overnight, but if you take the initiative to continuously improve your current marketing practices you are well on your way to being a successful business owner. Here are a few tips on how you can improve your email marketing strategies. Take notes!

Bad Subject Lines
Before your customer sees your email design they need to actually open the email itself. Your customer needs to be enticed by an effective email subject line. Keep the subject line short and concise. These critical words should summarize the content of the message while enticing the recipients to WANT to read further.

Poor email design
As your design evolves, remember to keep your email aesthetic similar to your website. Consistent branding is critical across all communications. If you need inspiration with your email design, look at messages you receive from your favorite brands.

Inconsistency
Before committing to email marketing you must decide on how often you want to target your customers. How often do you have promotions or sales? These are important factors to take into consideration before sending out your first email. The worst thing you can do is send out 5 emails this month and then come April you send zero. To help balance and organize your email frequency build a schedule that gives you sufficient time to design, create, and organize the content you will include in the email itself. Once you send out your first email check your response metrics. You want to know what is working/not working.

Unimpressive site design.
Plain and simple – if your site design does not impress, you are already in trouble. Experience is everything when it comes to online shopping. Make the investment in your site design. First impressions are everything. If you establish a lasting impression your customers will return. Trust me.

Your product photos are…blah.
How you present your products is your only chance to show customers what they are purchasing, so make it count. If your product photos vary in size, lack dimension, and are super pixilated you are missing out on a BIG opportunity to wow your potential customers.

Product descriptions that only describe.
Like your product images, your product descriptions are your best opportunity to make a sale. A successful salesperson can describe a product in a way where customers can’t say no. You want to focus on highlighting the benefits of the product versus the boring details. Sell the dream!

Keyword stuffing.
This one coincides nicely with product descriptions. Making your website pages appealing to search engines is important. However, over stuffing keywords into your content will destroy your website ranking. Be creative when it comes to your website content. Remember, your customer’s first impression is what counts.

 
Outdated information.
If your content or images are from 2009 you are guilty of not updating your content. Shame on you! Displaying outdated information turns away customers. Who wants to buy a product that is outdated? It demonstrates a lack of attention to detail. Remember, search engines want new content. Updating your pages regularly and adding a blog to your site is a great way to keep your site fresh.

If you found yourself saying “Oh crap” at all while reading this post do not panic. The first step is pointing out the flaw, which is what you did by taking notes and writing down what needs to be corrected on your website. The second step is taking the initiative and following through with your corrections.

Besides the appearance of the website being an obvious deciding factor,  things like simplicity and reward play a crucial role in the relationship. How? Simplicity and rewards are complementary to each other. If the website is very simple, after several visits the visitor may feel bored and then stop visiting at all. This implies that being too simple can affect the performance of the website.

Simplicity.
A Web designer wants their design to be unique and effective. Sometimes things get a little too complex and it becomes difficult for the user to navigate around the website. When this happens you are losing repeat visitors and the quality of your website is declining. Finding a happy medium with simplicity is key to the success of your website.

Reward.
A relationship depends on rewards that the visitor gets for buying and or using the services offered through the website. The reward can either be virtual or physical. When you think of physical rewards think gift vouchers being sent to the user. A virtual reward could be something like social networking. These types of websites reward the individual with friendship and acquaintance with likeminded people. For example: Gaming websites offer medals/badges to the players after successfully completing levels. The rewards do not have any physical entity, but of great importance to the players of the community that visit these sites regularly.

A website that offers rewards and is designed around simplicity builds a relationship with its visitors that is strong and long lasting.  How do you think your website rates? Have you recently conducted usability testing to see if your website meets your user’s needs? If you answered “No” it may be time for you to conduct a usability workshop to see how you can enhance your website’s uniqueness and meet your user’s expectations.

We are proud to present you with some new features! They are outlined below. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Advanced Email Template Functionality
We’ve upgraded our email template management to allow you to set an email template to be triggered for a specific product purchase. So for instance, if you had a product that you wanted to send rebate information with, you could now set this from the product add/edit view in WordPress.  Simply create your template and then set the dropdown values accordingly

Coupon Code Generation and Reporting
We’ve had requests to allow for coupon code generation for a product. At the moment, these coupons do not work with your FoxyCart coupons, but what it would allow you to do is generate a list of coupons per product and then input them into FoxyCart admin or provide to another merchant if you were offering a deal for them.  We’ve found a few uses for it, but hopefully you all find more! Let us know how you implement this new feature.

 
If the above features didn’t fancy your taste check out what else FoxyPress has to offer! FoxyPress Demo
Still not quite satisfied? Tell Us what you want! Nicely of course :)

Not having a mobile site. This one is obvious. Not having your website optimized for mobile devices is hurting your business/company. You are failing to connect with at least 80 million users that regularly access the mobile web from their Smartphone devices.

Goals? What are goals?

Not having goals is another mistake. Deciding what you want users to do with your mobile site is critical to any mobile marketing strategy.

Producing a negative mobile experience

Brands can engage mobile users much more successfully by providing a positive mobile experience that makes it easy for mobile users to navigate the site and access information or data. Mobile sites that consist of one page (home page) are frustrating to users driving them away from the site. By including 2-3 pages on your mobile site you allow users to explore content and learn more about services/products.

Overwhelming mobile users

Your mobile website should not include all the content that your website contains. By trying to jam everything into just a few pages on your mobile site, you are putting way too much information into too tiny of a space. Keep things simple, clean, and presentable.

We hope these tips are helpful whether you are working on your first mobile site, or are working to perfect your mobile marketing strategy!

1. Re-use content

Whenever you’re re-using content on the web you want to make sure you’re not creating duplicate content. So, the question is how do you take the same content and use it on multiple sites? A blog is the answer. Each blog article can also feed social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, which in turn increases your reach. (Blog content also makes great website content – just add links throughout your site to the blog articles) Readers love this because it allows them to go even deeper into a subject they want to know more about.

2. Re-Purpose Content

Allowing users to have access to printable materials on our website is easy to do. Add a link to a PDF, or require users to fill out a form.

 These are just two quick and efficent ways you can get the most out of your work. Do you have any techniques you use to make the most of your site or blog’s content? We would love to hear your thoughts!

1. Avoid writers block

2. Be prepared for holidays and promotional events

3. Tie your blog and newsletter together for better impact and reach

Having a strategy planned out ahead of time will keep you on track and make the whole process of writing content easier.

Step 1: Create a goal

Blogs and newsletters are vital marketing tools, but without a goal attached to them they take a lot of time and don’t seem to do much. Create a goal for your newsletter and/or blog. What kind of results do you want to see from your efforts? Do you want to build a database of customers and prospects? Whatever your goal is, be sure to attach a number and date to it.

Step 2: Commit to a publishing schedule for the year

How often are you going to send out a newsletter or publish a new blog post? Once you have your number set, stick with it. Things to keep in mind when determining your frequency: Realistically, how much time do you have to commit? Once you set a schedule, your readers will set their expectation too, so you’ll have to be able to stick to it. How often do you publish compared to your competition? Use your goals as a gauge. If you want a set amount of leads every month, then a quarterly newsletter is not going to cut it.

Step 3: Decide what you will write

Once you have a goal set, developing content topics becomes much easier. Blog and email content work together and generally fit into four categories: instructional, promotional, editorial, and newsworthy. Some of the most effective blogs are a mix of all these categories. Once you have a publishing schedule, you know how many blogs or newsletters you need to write. Start brainstorming what kinds of topics fit into each one of these categories. Ask your readers for feedback.

Additional tips to creating content quicker:

Create a series that builds on kep concepts
Split long posts into several posts
Take old content and revisit it – is there anything you can add, is there anything that has changed?

Twas the post before Christmas, and all through WebMovement, a cheer was heard as the last invoice sent.

Eggnog was poured and cookies were baked, as the rewards of a job well done were raked.

Clients were happy as was the boss, because on the dawn of Christmas there was no loss.

Websites completed, no job left undone.

And now it is time for some holiday fun!

Happy Holidays and a Blessed New Year,

WebMovement Staff

Here is the deal. These factors are important for SEO, don’t get me wrong. They will however, produce small results if you do not combine them with consistency.

Yes, consistency is necessary for success.

Let’s say you recently launched a new website overflowing with unique content and tons of backlinks, but unless you keep adding new content and getting new links consistently over time, your website will not rank high for any competitive keyword. As long as you are consistently adding content and backlinks you can still get your website ranking high for competitive keywords.

Whenever you are planning a SEO campaign for your site or future sites, remember slow and steady can win the race.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you will have a better understanding of what they do/don’t want. The truth about consumers is that they buy for emotional reasons. Many people buy what they want, not what they need and then find rational reasons to justify the purchase (we are all guilty of this at one point or other.) When people talk about a new purchase they will run off an entire list of features their new purchase has. Make sure your headlines and content are packed with benefits!

It takes less than 30 seconds for site visitors to form a judgment about your website or product.  You want to make sure the opinion they form is a positive one because it will last throughout their entire experience with your company. Branding should be solid, and your site professional looking. Testimonials, association logos, and number of years in business earn visitor’s trust. You want to send the right message to your customer’s subconscious.

When it comes to customer’s budget, don’t focus on cost. Focus on value and benefits. In your own experience, you buy a brand name product because you trusted it would out-perform the generic brand. Same applies to your product/company. Your customer’s emotions, beliefs, and subconscious are going to drive their purchase more than their budget will.  

In the end, quality over quantity is more important. Make sure you are focusing on providing quality service/products and you will have repeat customers before you know it!