e-Marketing Campaign Insights

Would you dare to share!

2011-08-13T12:20:00.002+08:00

Today, we are bombarded by promotional e-Mails, overflowing advertisement web banners, unknown Facebook invitations and wall posts… Personal Touch is one of the most important success factors for any e-Marketing and social media campaigns. In our own experience, by addressing the recipients’ individual names in an e-Mail, the eDM open rate can actually be increased considerably. However, in order to do this, one needs to diligently collect and update the distribution list on a better eDM platform. The eDM platform should be good enough to cater multiple languages including Traditional Chinese & Simplified Chinese as well as SMS Text Messaging with programmable follow up actions to create a tailor-made user experience.

In order to win over the e-Marketing & Social Media game, you need to dare to share as a person. We have seen many e-Campaigns running in the past couple of years, though Think Virally will always be the best way to win, the traditional Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing is the basis for Viral Marketing. WOM is based on personal relationship and trust, if you cannot build up this personal trust, you will never get very far!

Personal Touch is also about the language you use, in a lot of cases of Social Media Marketing, you really have to use colloquial language to get resonance or echoes from your target audiences. We often have arguments and clashes with our clients about using colloquial language versus formal written language, for example, on wall posts of Facebook. Corporate Communication Managers and PR Managers do not like us as they have very restricted guidelines on the tone of communication. However, they really have to tune their mindsets and maybe have a new job position open as Social Media Communications Manager to be more socialable!

Responsiveness & interactive conversation is another area of the challenge if you dare to share on Social Media. The question is do you have dedicated staff to respond to the “happy” problem when your target audiences/customers are really responding to your invitation and comments and how quick can you respond? A typical answer I give out often is 24 hours at maximum you shall respond to the comments. Well, you have the choice to do it yourself or to hire some consultants like Adams to do for you.

Think Virally!

2011-07-22T12:23:00.000+08:00

Dear Friend,

Hope you are enjoying the hot summer despite the unstable weather in Hong Kong in the last 2 weeks!

It has been a great honor for me to have the chance to present at The Entrepreneurs’ Network last week in Hong Kong on the topic of “Think Virally to Expand Your Business!”. We have an overwhelming crowd of over 50 successful entrepreneurs from different businesses gathered at the event. It is my belief now that if you want to be winning in this Internet Age, you have to Think Virally!!

Think Virally is not natural to many of us even if we have many years of experience in Sales & Marketing. However, if we are back to basic, it is only about building a mass network of Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing. The question is HOW to build this network. Facebook is definitely the easiest to access network on the face of the earth with over 500 million users but we are not talking about single way of communication! So we need to think of ways that you can leverage what existing community you have on it (or any other social network) and try to come up with sales/marketing programs that will attract people to spread the news for you through their own networks of communities. You really have to think of (marketing) messages that is asking the audience to take action for other people/friends’ sake! It always has to be Win-Win, nobody is going to take your message to their friends if they are not winning themselves!

We have seen many different successful and famous brands are putting a lot of efforts on social media these days but they are not really thinking virally. A lot of the campaigns we see today are still at the pre-social media stage of just using social media as merely another advertising channel but nothing else! In the last 2 years, Adams has collaborated with different clients to build Facebook campaigns to reach favorable results based only on one single idea, Viral Effectiveness. If it is Viral Effective, it will help you to grow Brand Awareness, Sales and Customer Database at an exponential rate! For example, we helped a sportswear chain during FIFA World Cup period to create a game for people to tag friends on Facebook to form football team to get prize/gift/discount at their chain stores. Imagine the Multiplying Effect of forming just a team of 7 people and the 7 people to form another 7 teams…! I think, by now, you should have got my point if you want to be successful in your sales & marketing campaigns, then you have to Think Virally to Expand Your Business!

Three weeks ago, we launched a training course called “Strategy of e-Marketing & Social Media Marketing” which to be held at the beautiful and modern hotel The Mira Hotel Hong Kong. The response was overwhelming and the class was full within the first few days of registration and we had to arrange a bigger room to accommodate all the attendees. Hence, we decided to arrange one more additional class on September 8, 2011 at The Mira Hotel Hong Kong again. If you or your friends are interested, please feel free to register on http://www.adamshk.com/events/course20110908.htm.

I am not sure how many of you are having problem in managing the post 80’s employees, CAPITAL is collaborating with McDonald’s, Sony Computer…to come up with a wonderful 2-day course to cover how to motivate and manage post 80’s employees on July 29-30. In the last few days of registration, you may enjoy 5% discount by registering through Adams on http://adamshk.com/events/capital20110729.htm

Finally, I have written another article on “Giving up is a way to gain!” for a professional institution in Hong Kong which you can find it on our slideshare page http://www.slideshare.net/adamshk. A number of the prioritization and planning skills covered in the article are the essence of what I have learnt throughout my career! Hope you will enjoy it.

Thank you for your continued support and I look forward to connecting with you soon!

Best regards,

Matthew

Matthew Kwan

Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited

China Online Purchase reached RMB498B in 2010. Seize the OPPORTUNITIES NOW!

2011-05-01T16:53:00.000+08:00

According CNNIC (www.cnnic.cn 中國互聯網路訊息中心) report released in January 2011, China’s Internet users reached to 457M users (of 1.8B in the world) by end of 2010. In addition,www.news.cn (新華網) on May 4, 2011 is reporting that the total purchase online in China in 2010 is RMB498B and 70% of the deals are done onwww.taoboa.com (淘寶網).

Did these figures impress you?? There is a very huge market in China and you can actually reach target customers with very targeted approach which traditional media cannot provide you. You can select by age, sex, education background, job titles, interests, living standards…etc according to the demographics available from different websites and organizations databases. You can use multi-levels communications available online including emails, text messages, display advertisements, social media and etc to reach your most wanted customers.

At the same time, there are just so many opportunities with the ever rising number of tourists from China that you can really attract them to come to your shops in Hong Kong through many innovative channels including shopping tours and coupons mailing.

The ecosystems and players in China is very different from Hong Kong and rest of the world. Hence, you really need to pick the right tools and channels extremely carefully. Otherwise, you may end up spending a lot of money without any result by the scale of this big country. Adams has been working extremely to line up many excellent channels for companies to develop their China market, here are a few options you may consider:

Baidu Search Engine

Adams is helping customers to publicize their company, products, brands, services using the No.1 search engine in China, Baidu. Other than advertising, we are also help our customers to create an online presence on Baidu related products including Baike (Wiki), ZhiDao (Knowledge), TieBa (Forum), KongJian (Blog) and etc which are proofed to be very effective. The daily budget for advertising is as low as RMB 50 per day.

D&B Direct Marketing for China

Adams is partnering of D&B Hong Kong, one of the largest customer database companies in the world over 100 years history, to provide very detailed and comprehensive both consumer and business database service that you can reach your customers in China by direct mailing, e-mails, SMS, MMS.

China Post Direct Mailing

Adams is helping customers to sort out most relevant target audience as specific as province, city, area, street, estate by the characteristics of the posting behavior to uniquely identify your customers.

China Online/Internet Payment

Adams is engaging the most popular internet payment gateways in China and methods that customers collect money and payment at ease and to receive payments over the Internet from China directly to banks in Hong Kong with peace of mind. The one time setup charge is as low as HK$3000.

China Toll Free Direct Call Number

Adams is a partner of the ONLY official distributor of the China Toll Free Direct Call number company in Hong Kong that can provide a PRC telephone number that can be routed to Hong Kong and anywhere in the world. This can certainly increase your accessibility and customer service level to your customers in China.

If you are interested of any of the above services that help you to grow and develop your market in China, please feel free to contact us anytime on +852 2723 9977 or admin@adamshk.com. Alternatively, please visit: www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/china.htm or more information.

Mobile Marketing is the way to GO!

2011-04-01T16:56:00.001+08:00

We see exciting trend in mobile marketingand there are many opportunities in promoting your services and products through this new channel and media. We now partner with various mobile coupon websites to let you upload your promotional items for as less as $1500 per item for mobile phones (iPhone, Android, Nokia…etc) to download.

On the same trend, we also offer customers to advertise on Google network to show their promotional messages and advertisements onmobile ready websites. The coverage is huge and very targeted which you may choose nature of websites, gender and age of the audience and etc.

In the last few months, we have actively working with major telecom carriers in Hong Kong to help our customers to do targeted & location based SMS text messages to selected customer segment. For example, sending text messages to people with mobile phone bill over HK$500 with International Roaming record who uses Blackberries Phones and office location is in Central.

Adams - Matthew Talks About Baidu Search Marketing

2010-11-02T13:58:00.001+08:00

Baidu, Google and Yahoo is definitely the biggest and most powerful search engines in the world. However, companies and marketing professionals must be careful enough to choose the right search engine for the right market for their specific industry as well as their specific target potential customers and audiences. Baidu in China which is the default choice for many people both commercially and personally for searching Chinese websites that are hosted and targeting the mass population of Internet users in China.

Adams - Matthew Talks About e-Marketing

2010-11-02T13:55:00.001+08:00

Pricipal Consultant of Adams (www.adamshk.com) - Matthew Kwan Talks About e-Marketing and the best know methods.

Adams - Matthew Talks About e-Mail Marketing

2010-09-30T16:19:00.000+08:00

E-Mail Marketing is an very effective tool, yet very difficult to master in today's environment with so many junk or spam mails bombarding our e-Mail inbox everyday. It is relatively "cheap" to cover a broad base of customers directly. The key success factor to e-Mail Marketing is to send the targeted e-Mail message to the right target audience. Subject line is the very first barrier for any e-Mail to be opened by your potential customers though the design of the message also plays a very important role.

Adams - Matthew Talks About Social Network Marketing

2010-08-30T16:15:00.000+08:00

Internet has become the most prominent media for communications in this age. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Blogs, ...etc are the best channels in reaching out to people both socially and in business. The success of President Obama's campaign showed us how social media network can be used to disseminate information as well as creating mass awareness at a great speed of time. This is especially true for people of the age between 15 to 50 years old. We are all connected by just "Six Degree of Separation" and this is the key to success for Sales & Marketing professionals to learn and master.

Adams - Matthew Talks About Search Marketing

2010-07-26T00:32:00.000+08:00

「網民8秒找不到資料，即走！」

2010-06-03T13:07:00.001+08:00

2010-06-02 香港經濟日報

以下內容擇碌自 ETNet 經濟通, 參閱全文

營銷顧問公司 Adams 首席顧問關廣智坦言，不少網站的設計過於繁複，消費者在找到產品資料前，可能被迫觀看長達數十秒的宣傳片，嚇怕客戶。網民耐性有限，關坦言︰「網民8秒找不到資料，即走！」他建議網站設計以user friendly為主導。

關廣智以護膚品牌 Olay為例，消費者登入內地網站後，可先看到不同性別及年齡層的明星，如周迅及黃曉明，點擊後輕易找到符合自己的產品系列。

他又建議，港商可在公司網站設立不同社交網平台的連結，並成立會員制，提高顧客對品牌的忠誠度。

D&B Seminar: Expanding Business Through Social Network Marketing 20100318

2010-05-18T19:14:00.001+08:00

Matthew Kwan, Principal Consultant of Adams (www.adamshk.com) presentation at D&B (Dun & Bradstreet) event on the topic of Social Network Marketing

D&B Social Network Marketing Seminar 20100318

View more presentations from Adams Company Limited.

Social Media Marketing Basics

2010-03-15T14:28:00.005+08:00

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. All rights reserved.

Internet has become the most prominent media for communications in this age. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Blogs, ...etc are the best channels in reaching out to people both socially and in business. The success of President Obama's campaign showed us how social media network can be used to disseminate information as well as creating mass awareness at a great speed of time. This is especially true for people of the age between 15 to 50 years old. We are all connected by just "Six Degree of Separation" and this is the key to success for Sales & Marketing professionals to learn and master.

The future is "Go Social" even in business. Never before advertising can be interactive and social media is making it possible that Word of Mouth (WOM) is having a new meaning through using the powerful applications and tools provided by the social networks. It is evolving at a great speed and the potential exponential growth of business is out of imagination for any business.

Find out more on www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/social_media.htm

SEO Vs SEM

2010-02-07T09:13:00.008+08:00

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. All rights reserved.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a paid advertising whereas Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way of optimizing your natural search results to be shown in higher positions of the non-paid area of the results in a page for specific keyword search.

Traditionally, SEO may help companies to get more exposure over their competitions to reach more potential customers when SEM was not so popular. However, for some very competitive industry segments, SEM is playing an important role to help companies to get their marketing message to their target customers faster and easier.

There actually has no strict rule in choosing to use SEM or SEO or both across the board but it is always a matter of budget Vs return!

Find out more on http://www.blogger.com/www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/sem_seo.htm

Proactive building your company's web presence

2010-01-07T23:35:00.001+08:00

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. All rights reserved

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.comThe Internet is too huge to cover but we still need to make big effort to get as much exposure as possible to let our potential customers to have easier time to find us in this Internet AGE. You need to have a formulated strategy to increase your web presence by proactively explore and register company products and services in most relevant & popular websites which may have high traffic from your target customers. This not only helps search engines like Google, Yahoo and Baidu to be able to find our customers' websites, also the list of search results from assorted websites can actually increase the credibility of their company. This is particularly helpful for companies just started their Internet campaign and strategy to raise their general ranking at a faster pace.　

Trading Portals
There are many trading portals or online directories for business and many of them are free of charge for registration. It is just a matter of time and effort in filling in the forms and designing the right marketing messages on these portals or directories. Though in certain case fee maybe required for some very niche industries, it is a relative simple and relevant way to get your company exposed to the right potential customers.

Search Engines Directories
Companies can do quite much by just registering themselves on the famous search engines directories. In general, it is free of charge but just need to wait for the process to complete. However, it is helping so much for their natural or organic search results when it is done.

Find out more on www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/web_presence.htm

Mastering Search Engine Marketing Basics

2010-01-04T21:00:00.004+08:00

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. All rights reserved.

Baidu, Google and Yahoo is definitely the biggest and most powerful search engines in the world. However, companies and marketing professionals must be careful enough to choose the right search engine for the right market for their specific industry as well as their specific target potential customers and audiences.

In general, Google is the No. 1 leader of search engine in the world. It has a very sophisticated interface and system (AdWords) that would allow you to uniquely and accurately define your marketing campaigns to reach your target customers across countries and regions. It would also allow you to advertise your text ad or image (banners) and video/animated ads on their extensive partner network of those which already join through AdSense.

However, there are always local kings like Baidu in China which is the default choice for many people both commercially and personally for searching Chinese websites that are hosted and targeting the mass population of Internet users in China. On the other hand, Yahoo is especially more prominent than other search engines in certain countries/regions like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan...etc.

Find out more on www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/seo_sem.htm

e-Mail Marketing as an effective tool!

2009-10-07T21:23:00.001+08:00

By Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant, Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. All rights reserved.

E-Mail Marketing is an very effective tool, yet very difficult to master in today's environment with so many junk or spam mails bombarding our e-Mail inbox everyday. It is relatively "cheap" to cover a broad base of customers directly. The key success factor to e-Mail Marketing is to send the targeted e-Mail message to the right target audience. Subject line is the very first barrier for any e-Mail to be opened by your potential customers though the design of the message also plays a very important role.

The technical requirement of sending e-Mails to your customers systematically and periodically as well as observing the legal issues involved is mandatory to any company which considers employ e-Mail Marketing seriously.

Not only Subject line is the very important barrier to the email readers, the content of e-Mail promotion is also extremely important. There are actually many little tactics to apply in order to perfect an attractive e-Mail message driving the target audience to respond as well as taking action according to your design.

Find out more on www.adamshk.com/e-Marketing/edm.htm

Scaling Your Online Presence with Powerful Tools

2009-04-17T00:31:00.005+08:00

By Matthew KwanPrincipal Consultant,
Adams Company Limited (www.adamshk.com)
© Copyright. April 17, 2009

There actually many ways that you can scale your company's online presence by using powerful tools or community website like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare...etc

A simple example is that you can create a blog entry, then the entry can be automatically copied to Twitter and from Twitter to Facebook. Your effort is not so much but your online presence is increase by 3 folds at least. Once you work out how to connect them with minimum effort, it is just a matter of submitting meaningful contents to your registered sites.

e-Marketing或是Online Marketing 可達到的成本效益已經越來越被大小企業所重視

2009-04-11T11:46:00.001+08:00

雖然經濟不景氣，企業不能不宣傳！e-Marketing或是Online Marketing 可達到的成本效益已經越來越被大小企業所重視，具多項研究報告顯示互聯網於香港已經成為第三大宣傳媒體，而且有持續增長趨勢。按香港電訊管理局2008年12月統計，香港約有八成家庭有寬頻線上網。

Successful Customer Database Management for Winning e-Marketing

2008-09-09T10:53:00.004+08:00

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

So you are generating good responses from your e-Mail campaigns, online advertising, search engine marketing and etc...The next most important thing you need to do is to manage your customer database successfully. Without this, your e-Marketing strategy will always have a missing link. You can grow to certain level with success but if you want to grow from good to great, Customer Database Management is the area you need to plan in the beginning of your e-Marketing effort.

What can you do if you are running on lean budget and do not want to spend a lot to buy Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software at the start. Here are some good practical suggestions you may consider:

1. Spreadsheets

2. Mail Client Software

3. Accounting Software

1. Spreadsheets

Obviously, MS Excel is the most commonly used spreadsheet software in the market. However, you can use any kind as we are just keeping a simple list. The trick is that you create multiple files of e-Mail/Contact Lists by segregating your Suppliers, Partners, Customers, Prospects and other categories in different files for ease of management. In future, whenever you have new e-Mail addresses/Contact information, you just need to append to the relevant lists/files to keep them up-to-date.

2. e-Mail Client Software

Most of people would use MS Outlook Express or whatever free e-Mail Client provided by the Operating System in your computer when downloading e-Mails from server. It is relatively simple to keep your master e-Mail/Contact Lists within the same e-Mail system or your e-Mail Client Software you are using. The idea behind is the same as you would do using spreadsheets. You just need to create different "Distribution Lists" or "Groups"...etc to maintain your e-Mail campaign lists. One good function with some e-Mail Client Software is that when you add duplicate e-Mail addresses to the same list, the software will automatically add only one entry to the list rather multiple. This would minimize the unpleasant experience of the receivers when they are receiving multiple copy of your e-Mails just because it was not properly managed.

3. Accounting Software

As I proposed often, your e-Mail campaign should always sending to your closest relationship groups first. e.g. Suppliers, Partners, Customers, Prospects...etc. These closest groups are typically already captured by your accounting software for invoicing or billing purposes. Therefore, you may make just a little bit of effort to keep up your contact database in your accounting software to make sure e-Mails are properly input and up-to-date. Preferrably, you may ensure your accounting software could give you some options or remark fields to sort out the lists with additional criterias to facilitate better management.

Other than the above 3 suggestions, the next best option I can think of is using the e-Mail Marketing software. The price of these kind of software can range as low as US$100 to very high prices depending on the kind of functionalities they can provide.

Converting Clicks to Sales Leads

2008-08-28T09:38:00.004+08:00

By Matthew Kwan

Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited http://www.adamshk.com/

The biggest challenge of e-Marketing is to convert clicks to Sales Leads. Generating clicks is not difficult but how to lead your potential customers to take actions including calling you by phone, sending you e-Mails, filling up enquiry forms...etc is an art.

Obviously, website design is the very first consideration and effort you have to make in order to invite your potential customers to take actions. First of all, you really have to encourage people to call you and send email to you by putting these invitations & your contact information all over your website. Though it may not look odd in terms of design and layout when you show these information so often, it is a mandatory thing you have to do for the sake of converting clicks to actions. Here are some suggestions on areas you may consider:

1. Enquiry Hotline Phone Number

2. Enquiry e-Mail Address

3. e-Form for enquiry or quotation request with predefined fields

4. Button function for forwarding the page or information friends

5. Button function for signing up e-Newsletters

6. Button function to respond to the content

All of the above are very basic and powerful items to include in a web page in order to capture information from your customers and increase the chances that you can get in touch with them. In addition, you may also include "Live Chat" function on your web page. Live Chat is another very powerful tool you may want to deploy as it will let you proactively monitor your website visitors and invite them to chat and start the selling process instantly. No matter your customers are leaving you contact information or connected through Live Chat, once you are connected with your customers, it is really an exercise of your conventional selling process from then on.

On the other hand, your marketing strategy behind your marketing campaign is the real critical success factor. Your potential customers would not take actions unless your content and messaging on your website or landing page is really compelling. How to make your contents compelling is a communications skill, you need to ensure that values of your products/services are being highlighted rather than just listing functionalities and specifications. Again, communications or copying writing skill is not a simple thing; it is always good to get someone acting from customer perspectives to review the contents for you.

Designing Powerful & Effective Search Keywords of Your Business

2008-08-07T16:17:00.003+08:00

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved. Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Keywords or tags or labels are very important by e-Marketing term as they can help you to be searched by search engine easier or to do contextual marketing more effective and etc. You may use them for Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization & etc.

It may sound difficult but in effect it is just a matter of using the right method when designing powerful & effective search keywords of your business for e-Marketing. You may refer to my previous written article on "The 5C's of Business Planning" for detailed description on how to identify your Customers, Competitors, Complementors, Channels and Costs. The answers to the designated questions will help you to list out the top-most important keywords of your business.

After having done the analysis of 5C’s, it will be only a mechanical process to expand the list of keywords with some specific verbs or nouns adding in front or after your keywords making it like phrases to be specific enough that one would use them to search your company’s products/services as discussed in the article of “Search Engine Keywords Must Be Cost Effective”

The final result of the keywords list generated from this process can be very long but you can always to shorten the list when you have captured enough data from your search engines. It is relatively easy to remove those under-performed keywords of few impressions or clicks.

6 Simple Steps to Start e-Marketing with a Success

2008-07-30T13:52:00.002+08:00

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Starting e-Marketing is easy but walking on the right path is not so easy. There are just too may options you can consider! However, typically I would recommend my clients to follow 6 simple steps to plan and start doing e-Marketing and they are:

1. Building Effective Website
2. Designing Compelling Messaging
3. Sending Strategic Newsletters
4. Online Advertising
5. Managing Customer Databases
6. Building Alliances

1. Building Effective Website - I have shared in other articles how important it is a website for e-Marketing to be successful. It is not only design and layout but also the real business strategy behind. You have to consciously to make your website effective for your business and engaging your customers interactively. A website will only perform well when it is being revised and updated according to the environmental changes with Compelling Messaging.

2. Designing Compelling Messaging - It is really back to marketing basics about communications. You have to high play your products/services' benefits rather than functionality in order to distinguish your differential advantages over your competition. A lot of time, customers' buying decisions are based on trusts that built on the success references you are giving of other cases. Before you get this right, e-Marketing will never be a success.

3. Sending Strategic Newsletters - e-Newsletters are so easy to send out if you have any emails of our suppliers, partners, customers and prospects. However, your compelling messaging must be ready before your e-Newsletters can be successful. In additional, you need to send out useful information or knowledge occasionally other than sales promotions in order to attract your target audience to keep subscribing your newsletter

4. Online Advertising - The most basic Online Advertising option I recommend is Search Engine Marketing. It is becoming mandatory for any companies nowadays to make sure their company information/advertisements are showing on the first page of search results. Without doing this, your website will just never be found in a very long while!! Other Online Advertising options can be Web Banner Ad on your target customers populated websites or contextual advertising...etc

5. Managing Customer Databases - When you start doing e-Marketing, the next important thing is to keep up with your customer database(s). This is very crucial because your customer database will grow throughout your e-Marketing activities. The most basic way to do this is to use Excel or Outlook or any other mail clients but as you grow your customer database, it is better to adopt a Customer Relationship Management software or a e-Marketing campaign software.

6. Building Alliances - No one can be successful by doing e-Marketing alone and this is the fact! Hence, building alliances and letting your alliances to promote your products/services in their websites and other channels are the very key to success with e-Marketing. You potential return on investment (ROI) will grow even better than you can imagine.

Summary
After all, e-Marketing is just Marketing, companies need to be applying the basic marketing techniques in order to be successful. However, this internet age is making the situation so interesting that you can exercise your marketing creativities with a lot of opportunities and alternatives!

Making your e-Marketing Campaign a Success

2008-07-25T14:41:00.005+08:00

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Obviously, when you ask any marketing professionals, they will tell you Return On Investment (ROI) is the way to measure success of any marketing activity. However, what are the returns should we expect from e-Marketing campaigns that would make them really successful? I have shared these many times in public and would like to reiterate here with the following 3 most important indicators.

Sales Oriented - Any marketing activities fundamentally are tools for generating sales. Somebody may argue on this point but it is the reality we have to face that the reason of any business organization is to make money through sales. Hence, if your e-Marketing campaign is not helping you to generate sales, there must be something you should change to make sales happened.

Community Building - Many times, sales volume is a function of your customer reach/base. The larger the set of your target customers, the greater chance you may get higher sales. If your e-Marketing campaign is not expanding your customer base and they are not coming back to visit your website frequently, your e-Marketing budget will never be effectively used.

Affiliated Websites - The more business partners are willing to put up your website link to their websites, the higher chance to get "free" marketing opportunities and let search engines to search your website easier. At the same time you may be able to reach broader customer based through your business partner network. Eventually, your expanded network will help you to grow your customer community and sales.

These 3 indicators are very much inter-related and they are influencing each other in a lot of sense. If you can master your e-Marketing campaign with good results of these 3 indicators, I can guarantee you your e-Marketing campaign will differently a successful one!

Starting Your e-Mail Campaign with Your Allies

2008-07-24T09:47:00.003+08:00

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

It is too easy to get bounced back or blocked by Spam Analyzer of any email system whenever you send out anything to anyone these days. First of all, you should try your best to convince the receiver on your distribution list to add your email address to their address book to decrease the chance of classifying your email as junk email sender. Even your e-Mail is safely landed in their In-Box, there are four categories of people are likely to have better interest to read through your message and they are your:

1. Suppliers: Suppliers are the group of people who want to keep up with your relationship and continue to sell you products & services. They are very likely to read through everything you send in order to know you better. We have so many experiences that our Suppliers became our customers along the way! Nice!

2. Business Partners: Business Partners are the group of people who want to leverage your network and business opportunities to grow business together. Since your business direction may impact their business direction, they are typically paying close attention to your e-Mail campaign messages to make sure they are keeping up the pace with you. The power of word of mouth and referral is exponential and greater than you can imagine. However, it takes time to build up a good and solid Business Partner Network!

3. Existing Customers: Existing Customers are the group of people who want to make sure they are getting the value for money from your products and services. As they have already lowered their barrier to your products/services, they have high interests to continue business with you provided the quality of your products/services are fine. Same again, word of mouth will eventually become a power tool of marketing to grow your business when your existing customer base grows larger.

4. Prospects: Prospects are the ones who already took action to call you up for enquiries and explore the opportunities for building up business relationships. Any new promotion and new products/services may trigger their buying desires. We have seen many cases that prospects may not purchase our products/services at the first instance but over time, they come back to purchase other products and services or refer other people to do business with us. So never give up of selling!

E-Marketing Strategy: Generate Sales or Build a Brand?

2008-07-23T11:41:00.007+08:00

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

When you define your objectives of e-Marketing it is not any different from traditional marketing. The simpliest way is to make sure whether you want to Generate Sales or Build a Brand. However, a lot of time, you may not be able to segregate the two. Depending on your markeing budget, but I am too sales oriented to always recommend my clients to start with generating sales as your primary objective in any e-Marketing activity since the more exposure you have through e-Marketing activities, the stronger the brand may become.

So, what are the better channels to Generate Sales? It is really related to the services and products you are promoting but here are some general tips:
1. e-Mail Campaign:

e-coupons: design e-coupons for people to print out and redeem discounted products/services or even encourage receivers to forward to their friends to create an exponential reach of your target customers. This is especially effective for resturants promotions and retail shops or similar industries.

online purchase and lucky draw: e-Marketing is very much impulse (buying) base behaviour. Hence, you have to encourage your target customers to make the decision of purchase at the spot when they receive your e-Mail with HUGE Discount and Extremely Attractive Prize of lucky draw.

2. Web Banner Ad & Search Engine Marketing:

Beautiful Web Page: Whether you are doing e-coupons or online purchase & etc...you need to have a beautiful web page before you can do Web Banner Ad & Search Engine Marketing.

Popular High Traffic Websites/Portals: You do not neccessarily need to own a website to set up your web beautiful web page as there are many popular (high traffic) websites/portals can provide such services at a cost. Nevertheless, you really have to choose the better (and relevant) websites/portals. Web Banners will only be effective if you are exposing to the right target audience in volume. You have to make sure your choice of search engines are including the Local Kings.