So, instead of focusing solely on traditional online marketing practices, progressive small businesses are branching out by adopting new mobile marketing practices. There are numerous new ways to access consumers throughout the day as they use their mobile devices.

Create a Mobile App

Mobile Applications are a dime a dozen these days, and smartphone users love them. There are numerous types of apps you can adopt in order to market your company.

• Content-based apps which provide the customer with written information about your product. By downloading the app they will able to review information about your service and products in greater detail – this can be good if you curate a “resources” section of your website or a blog.
• Entertainment- based apps consist of games or video apps that will keep the customer entertained. If you are able to create a relatively simple and addictive game that will still promote your brand and product, then this could be a very effective marketing method.

Send Customers Messages

Sending out messages directly to your customers’ phones is a strategic and personalized way to keep them connected and updated on what is going on with your company. According to EZTexting.com, “95 – 98% of text messages are read within minutes of receipt.” Numbers like that are encouraging, so consider the two types of messages you can send.

• SMS stands for Short Message Service, but is also known as a normal “text messaging”. This can be a key tool for reaching out to your customers using relatively simple language and basic phrases. You can use SMS to update them on upcoming sales or new features of your business.
• MMS stands for Multi-media Message Service, which is similar to SMS except you can include pictures, video and audio elements to your message. This is a great feature to use when you are looking to show your customers new products or share video news with them.

Use Mobile Banner Ads

Mobile banner ads are similar to the standard online advertising banners, only they fit onto smaller phone screens. If you are going to use banner ads, it is important to plan accordingly, or risk your customer missing it all together; be sure your branding is easily recognizable.

According to Mobile Marketer, consumers on mobile devices, “expect their experiences to be tailored and personalized.” Because of this, it is important to make sure the context of your banners is relevant to your business. And, because of your confined space, it’s also important to make sure the banner looks impressive and focuses on a single strong statement.

By adopting these methods of mobile marketing, your business is sure to reach many more customers over their mobile devices. The pool of consumers glued to their phones is far too big to miss out on, so consider the ways you can tap into this massive mobile market.

Kate Webster writes for lead generation resource, ResourceNation.com. She focuses on a variety of topics including mobile marketing. Follow Resource Nation on Facebook and Twitter, too!

The daily deal phenomenon has created an industry that’s projected to grow 35% per year over the next five years, hitting $3.9 billion by 2015. If you haven’t taken advantage of this growing trend, you could be missing out on a significant chunk of change.

SnapRetail’s Exclusive Offers program was developed with the needs of independent retailers like you in mind. It is unique because it’s designed to add appeal to your store and products, not devalue them. Our program allows you to provide your customers with romanced offers, such as a gift with purchase or an exclusive bundled set, instead of deep-discount deals. According to Internet Retailer, on average, only half of retailers who have participated in daily deals from other sites turn an actual profit. Unlike other sites that can end up costing retailers money, our Exclusive Offers program is 100% risk free, meaning that there’s no cost to participate and no need to buy inventory.

Best of all, you earn a commission for every offer you sell. And because your customers buy online, but pick up in-store, it’s the best way to drive traffic to your store. Retailers who have participated in our offers program have reported that about 76% of customers who have purchased an offer spent an additional $35-$75 when they came to pick up their offer items. Other research shows that 44% of customers who purchase a daily offer become repeat buyers, and another 47% plan on purchasing from the retailer again in the future.

Participating in Exclusive Offers is a no-brainer and a must-have for your store. Earn some extra cash. Get people through your door. And do it all risk free.

If our last set of retail success stories wasn’t enough to light your online marketing flame, we have some more that are sure to get you burning! Whether you’re getting started with email and social marketing or are looking for some fresh ideas to shake up your social community, our retailers have a success story for you.

Use meaningful subject lines

A meaningful subject line can really stick out amongst the many messages consumers receive daily. It’s also your first chance to grab your customer’s attention. Craft something that would make your customer feel good when reading.

Ta Da tugged on some heart strings by sending out “A Special Thanks to All the Teachers!” Their subject line resonated with teachers, students, and parents alike and rewarded them a 41% open rate! They also combined this tactic with a special coupon to gain even more interaction.

J’s Hallmark took a different approach when creating a subject line to help gain interest in their one-of-a-kind Nepal Bracelets by simply stating “We Have A Bracelet Just For You.” This approach enticed customers to open by generating curiosity while displaying a characteristic of their bracelets right in the subject line. Not to mention the open rate they received was 8% above their average.

Ask Questions

Don’t be afraid to ask your fans and followers to interact with you. Posts that ask questions receive the greatest interaction. Take a look at this post by The Pink Azalea that received phenomenal interaction. All they did was ask their Likes if they loved their new wooden monograms and the comments came rolling in!

Here’s another example from the Picket Fence that does a great job at asking fans to interact while at the same time developing further on an already provided social media idea as suggested in our earlier success story post. 

A little inspiration goes a long way. We’re confident that if you begin adopting some of these tactics for your own social community, you’ll start seeing similar results.

Stay tuned for more retailer success stories like these. If you’d like to share how SnapRetail helped with your online marketing success, send your story to Christian.kratsas@snapretail.com.

What if there was a way to capture customer email addresses just by talking to your Facebook community? Don’t ponder that question, silly, there is a way! It all starts with your SnapRetail account and ends with a little you. We’ll show you a few tricks to grow your list while sparking social interaction at the same time.

The Challenge

There wouldn’t be a need to gain more subscribers if there wasn’t a challenge. More customer email addresses can lead to more sales, more likes, more store traffic, more impressions for your brand and a whole lot… well, more! There’s no reason you shouldn’t be collecting email addresses from your customers, especially when you can add more value to their shopping experience by communicating effectively online.

You realize the benefit and start pulling email addresses from your POS to use for marketing your store, but your list has been flat lining for months. The good news is that there’s an easy way to combat this dilemma.

Facebook Email Sign Up Form

Like we said earlier, it all starts with your SnapRetail account. Or one of those other bland, time-consuming eMarketing systems, but let’s not get into that. First, you’ll have to add our Email Sign Up App to your Facebook page. Then you can start collecting emails from your fans.

The app will appear in your Facebook Tabs section under your cover photo. You can name the application by clicking on the arrow to the right of the tabs then clicking on the right-hand corner of the tab you’d like to name. Give it a simple name, like “Join Our Mailing List,” and keep it short so that all the text is visible.

Any customers entering their name and email address into your Facebook sign up form will be automatically added to your SnapRetail account. It’s up to you to add these customers to a List. We’d suggest creating a “Facebook Sign Up” list to add all new subscribers so that you can keep track of your efforts.

Now that you’re using your Facebook page to collect email addresses, how will you get people to fork them over?

Driving Customers to Your Email Sign Up Tab

The simplest thing you can do is post the link from your email tab to your Timeline with a message that prompts customers to enter their information. Be sure to be explicit when explaining what their address will be used for. Keep in mind that customers are looking for an incentive when they join a mailing list, be sure to promote that incentive and deliver upon it! Take a look at the example below from J’s Hallmark.

Another strategy is to talk about a special email-only coupon on your Facebook page or Twitter stream. Customers who are not on your mailing list become jealous and usually ask how they, too, can receive special discounts, store news and upcoming product information. You can say something like, “Thanks for helping us grow our email presence, we hope you enjoy your special savings.” When customers inquire about joining, you can post a link to your email sign up tab for the rest of your community to see.

You can also go the traditional way and place an email sign up sheet at your register. You can train your staff to ask if customers would like to “receive product news, exclusive coupons and more.” If they accept, you can have them write down their name, email address and any other information you’d like to capture.

Now that you know all it takes is a little conversation and a little more application to grow your email list, get out there and start the conversation. Stay tuned to our weekly Festive Freebies for more in depth tips that will rock your holiday marketing around the clock!

There’s no reason to be upset, because a few businesses are outperforming you on Facebook and through email. Use these retailers as inspiration to help you find exactly what your customers react to. Soon, they’ll be the ones jealous of your open rates and Facebook engagement.

Generate curiosity with interesting facts, humorous images and fun posts

The most prominent way to get your fans to interact with your Facebook posts is to tap into their interests. It’s hard to determine the interests of individual customers, but by posting a combination of light-hearted images, trivial facts and entertaining posts, you’ll be sure to pique the interests of the majority.

Laurie’s Hallmark in Cranberry, PA does a superb job harnessing the power of images and entertainment to get their customers to take action. They take advantage of our Idea Bar social media posts and add their own spin through the use of fun and eye-catching images. Browse more posts from their page, like the one below, for inspiration. 

Your community is scrolling through their News Feed for entertainment and conversation. By creating both, you have a greater opportunity to cut through the clutter and increase your reach among your fans. Learn more about the power of images from last week’s post.

Launch special offers through email & social media

We would never suggest constant discounts, but subscriber and fan promotions do a great job keeping your email list and social community interested and involved with what you have to say. Providing meaningful offers will set high expectations that you can deliver on to ensure a valuable customer relationship and high open rates.

Take a look at this email campaign from Downtown Charm of Glenn Falls, NY.

Their exclusive fan offer was hosted on Facebook and tied in all of the right components. They developed upon a fun holiday (you can find plenty of these in our Idea Bar), included an offer, launched through email and provoked higher store traffic two-fold by requiring a customer to bring a friend. Not to mention they received a 33% Open Rate!

Add your spin to our ideas

Whoever came up with the saying “two heads are better than one” knew exactly what they were talking about. First thing’s first. If you haven’t heard about our Idea Bar- educate yourself.

Now that you know what the Idea Bar has to offer, you don’t have to use exactly what we say. Put your own personal spin on our ready-to-post ideas. Here’s an example of how Downtown Charm added a check-in special to our social media post.

Our ideas are designed to create conversation within your social community, so we encourage you to create similar ones of your own. Here’s a post from Kitchen Corner & Sisters that is similar to our slew of fun national holidays.

A little inspiration goes a long way. We’re confident that if you begin adopting some of these tactics for your own social community, you’ll start seeing similar results.

Stay tuned for more retailer success stories and if you’d like to share how SnapRetail helped with your online marketing success, send your story to Christian.kratsas@snapretail.com.

Start Collecting

Don’t just search for images when it’s time to schedule your social marketing for the week. Create a folder and collect any images you think will resonate well with your audience.

Here are some resources:

• Pinterest: You don’t have to use Pinterest for business to utilize its large array of images. You can log in to your personal account and search and save images to post and/or tweet later as your business. Posters, visual quotes, ecards (appropriate ones of course), and memes, receive the best interaction across all mediums. Begin by saving some of these for later and, when you do, always be sure to think like your customer. Just because you think something is funny or cute does not mean your customers do.
• Google Images: This one is a no-brainer, but you should be careful what you use the image for. There are a lot of grey areas when it comes to sharing someone else’s images within social media. In most cases, you won’t be punished for social sharing, but be sure to quickly scan the footer of the image you’d like to use, in case it includes an explicit copyright notice. Google images are great when finding a visual to include with a text post due to the ease of search.
• SnapRetail Vendor Images: If you’re a SnapRetail subscriber, be sure to partner with any vendors you carry in our system to gain access to all of their product images and marketing materials. You can save any of these images to your computer to pin, post and tweet later.
• Take your own: You don’t need to be a professional photographer to take good enough pictures to share with your social community. Like we said before, they’d much rather see your own photos than boring text. Snap some photos of a fun display, a staff member, new arrivals, customer interaction (be sure to ask their permission), community events and even your dog!

The bottom line is that photos receive the best engagement on social platforms. Make a habit to add to your “Social Sharing” images folder regularly in order to ensure rich content for every day of the week. Step back from that wall and enjoy engaging with customers in a new and imaginative way. In the case of social media, a picture can be worth a thousand customers.

Win an iPod Touch!

If you sign up for our mailing list and complete the survey following the sign up form, you’ll be entered for a chance to win an iPod Touch. Both must be completed in order to qualify!

Remember, great ideas can turn into great products with a little data, passionate people, and a team of Snappers.

When your storefront door opens and the bells start to chime, your initial reaction is to let out a warm welcome and greet your new or returning visitor. The personal interaction between customer and employee is sometimes the deciding factor between online vs. brick and mortar shopping. Welcoming someone new or thanking a loyal customer for visiting sets the stage for an exceptional shopping experience while laying the foundation for a meaningful relationship.

“Tell us something we don’t know!”

Certainly you’ve already mastered building customer relationships at a personal level or else you wouldn’t be where you are. But the question is have you been practicing the same when acquiring new customers online? The first step in developing the same physical customer relationship into an online relationship is to humanize your business. And you should start the same way you do in your store – with a warm welcome.

Greet All New Subscribers

Think of each new email subscriber as a new customer walking through your door. You wouldn’t let someone step into your business without being addressed, so why wouldn’t you do the same with your subscribers? Most small business owners have no plan for addressing new subscribers. They simply upload them to a distribution list and act as if they’ve been there all along. Just because you have their email address doesn’t mean you’ll be able to communicate with them forever. There always is the frightening case of unsubscribes and although they can be due to many things, a welcome campaign can help reduce them.  Setting your customers’ expectations from the beginning increases their retention and keeps them engaged.

The Welcome Mat

Uploading new contacts and placing them in their correct distribution list can be a very timely task. We’d suggest updating your email database once every month or even every quarter. Upon uploading your new subscribers, keep track of them by placing the group into a distribution list with an easily recallable name such as “New Subscribers.” Now that you have these subscribers segmented, you can begin crafting your welcome message.

Your “welcome campaign” should be designed to greet a bulk group of new subscribers and educate them on the nature of your communications. Continuously work on growing your email list and once a week, send out a group email to those new subscribers like the one shown below.

This subscriber introduction campaign can be reformatted and edited as your list grows and your business matures. If you’re using SnapRetail to send email campaigns, you’ll be able to re-use your campaign for the next batch of new subscribers. Something as simple as this has the power to make your customers feel important to your business while encouraging them to take action and open your emails.

Now where do you put them?

Once you’ve reached out to your “New Subscribers,” they aren’t new anymore and can be placed with the rest of your subscribers. Simply remove them from your “New Subscriber” list and add them to your bulk distribution list.

Of course it takes an additional step to welcome new subscribers but the extra time taken will really show in the performance of your email marketing. Developing the right campaign for new subscribers can increase your open rates, reduce your unsubscribes, and continue to make your customers happy.

What’s your welcome mat to your businesses online presence? Share with us in the comments below.

We realize that we work with a diverse group of retailers, from gift shops and pharmacies to hospital gift stores and boutiques! You all have different types of products you plan to market this season, so we want to hear from you. Tell us which categories you’d like to see featured in this year’s Gift Bliss campaign from the Facebook poll right here. Stay tuned for two more Facebook Polls on price points and vendors in the next few days. In the upcoming weeks, we will be working with our vendor partners to confirm holiday offers, and we want you to let us know what you would like to promote this season!

For those of you not yet familiar with SnapRetail’s Exclusive Offers, here are just a few of the benefits:

• You’re able to experiment with new products and vendors without any inventory risk
• Offers are purchased by your customers online and shipped to your store for pick up
• You gain access to offers not available anywhere else
• You earn a commission on each offer sold
• It’s easy to participate and free for SnapRetail subscribers

Sign up by October 31st to participate in all Gift Bliss Offers!

It’s possible because Facebook considers hiding a post or reporting a story as spam to be negative feedback. You can check the negative feedback your page is receiving through the “Overview” tab in your Insights dashboard. Negative feedback data is only available by “Post Level” and can be determined by simply clicking on the “Engaged Users” of a post.

The number of negatively engaged users will be located in the bottom of the pop-up box, which contains the number of Engaged Users broken down by Other Clicks, Photo Views and Stories Generated. If you don’t see anything in the bottom of that box, then you’re in luck! Your post did not receive any negative feedback and you can move on to evaluate the next post.

We suggest keeping an eye on the behaviors of engaged users for each post in order to determine which content resonates best with your customers.

But I thought they “liked” us!

So you did find some negative feedback within your insights? You shouldn’t be discouraged, because most, if not all, Facebook business pages will receive negative feedback. It’s ok if you see two or three people give negative feedback within one week – we receive the same kind of results.

Evaluate each post that receives negative feedback in order to determine trends in what your customers want to see. If your post was highly engaging but one person gave you negative feedback, then you should not conclude that the post was ineffective. However, if you are receiving three or four people giving negative feedback on a post that received hardly any attention, then you should document that post. Continue doing this until you have a nice list of “bad” posts in which you can effectively determine which type of posts you should stay away from for good.

We’ve seen a trend in business pages that wish to be very promotional, receive the highest amount of negative feedback. If you’re one of these pages, refer to our 70/20/10 rule and constantly test new content from our Idea Bar to help reduce this number while increasing engagement metrics.

Other possible reasons for negative feedback:

• Too much promotional messaging
• Too much text and not enough images
• VERY long posts
• Political topics
• Vulgarity
• Personal views
• Bad grammar

So get out there and stop the evil negative feedback at once!