KPS Technologies (The KPS Group Company)

Do These 5 Things To Your Website & Attract More Clients

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Once someone has arrived at your website, what are you doing to get them to stay and become your customer? Here are five changes you can make to your website that will help you turn more visitors into buyers.

Is your website bringing you new clients? When is the last time you took a long hard look at exactly how your website helps you attract clients?

Now is the time to implement five tips that will make your website actually bring your new clients.

Of course, you need people to visit your website in the first place. You’ve probably heard about getting ‘traffic’ to your website. That’s a topic for an entire article of its own. For now, let’s focus on making sure that you’re making the most of your website for the people who do visit.

Implementing the following five tips will transform your website into a client attraction tool. If you do all of them the likelihood of converting people who visit your website to clients will increase greatly.

1) Very Visible and Clear Invitation to Take Action

Your call to action, the one action you want prospective clients to take, should be very visible on your home page. It needs to appear ‘above the fold’ meaning that it can be seen without having to scroll down. Why not include it on every page of your website.

The one action that you want people to take needs to be very specific.

You need just one action with simple instructions. Don’t be confusing.

For example, do you want them to: sign up for your ezine, call you, or send you an e-mail? Choose one and make is easy to do.

2) Give Away Something Valuable

Hopefully you offer a free valuable giveaway (a report, audio, or a consultation). It’s easiest if this process is automated so that you save your precious time. There are several options for this; two popular services are aweber.com and constantcontact.com (both offer free trials.)

3) Ability to Stay in Touch

Most people who visit your website will not come back. Not because they don’t like you or what you do, they’re just busy. So you need to invite them to give you permission to be in touch.

This can be linked to your free offer. When the process is automated people who are interested simply need to provide their e-mail address in order to receive your free offer.

If you plan to send additional messages (like a regular ezine) be sure to communicate that clearly so they are aware of that when they sign up.

4) Let Them See You

People want to know who the person behind the business is so please include a photo. We humans like to feel a connection and that can be achieved to a certain degree with a photo.

You can use various photos of yourself (and your team if you have one) on different pages of your website. Make sure the pictures are high quality and fit with your personality and brand.

5) Know Who is Visiting

Analysis may not seem glamorous but it can be really exciting when you understand who is visiting your website.

Google Analytics is free and really amazing way to know who is visiting your website. To sign up just visit google.com/analytics/. It tells you how many people have visited, where people found out about your website, where they are located (with a really cool map), and so much more!

When your website has a clear call to action, allows you to give away something valuable, creates a way for you to stay in touch, makes you visible, and allows you to analyze who is visiting, you will be able to attract more clients.

Don’t delay. Make the decision today to change your website and start growing your business.

Why Email Marketing? Five Great Reasons.

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:07:00 +0000

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes. Here are five great reasons to give email marketing a try.

Why Email Marketing?

Experts and small businesses agree:

“54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts.”

1) It’s Inexpensive
Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget - and whose isn’t these days? Unlike direct mail, there is virtually no production, materials or postage expense. In addition, there are self-service solutions available that let you eliminate agency creative costs as well. Email marketing is 20 times more cost effective than direct mail, and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.

2) It’s Effective
Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront. You can easily target your emails by source, interest, or list.

Overall, email communications sent to your prospect and customer lists, can single-handedly improve the ROI of all of your lead generation and customer retention programs.

3) It’s Immediate
Email marketing has two great advantages over other marketing vehicles. First, with the self-service tools available, anyone can create and send compelling email newsletters, promotions, announcements or more in hours or days. No agency or production time is required to create and send professional communications. Second, email marketing generates an immediate response. The call to action is clear: “Click here to take advantage of this offer”, or “to learn more about this service”, or to “attend this event”. Initial campaign response generally occurs within 48 hours of the time the email campaign is sent.

4) It’s Measurable
Unlike other marketing vehicles, results from email campaigns are easily measured. Results are reported in terms of “opens”, which report how many people saw your offer or newsletters, Click Through Rates (CTRs), which measure how many people actually clicked on the links in your email, and in a many cases, who actually clicked on those links.

5) It’s Easy
There are Web-based email marketing products for small and medium businesses. Most include professional HTML templates, list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as, automatic tracking and reporting. So, you are free to concentrate on your unique message while the rest is done for you.

It is time to put email marketing to work for your business!

6 reasons why B2B marketing can succeed on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 05:29:00 +0000

There is a growing premise in business marketing that whilst your website is your shop window to the world, you increasingly need to promote yourself and engage with your audience where your audience congregates. AKA “Swim with the Fishes“. So, with well over 600 million users, where better than Facebook?

The case for using Facebook for B2B marketing

1. You just can’t argue with the numbers. Whether it’s 600 or 700 million, Facebook is the perfect place to cast the net wide. It is reasonable to assume that some of your target customers will be using the site in some way, shape or form. Mostly, though, for real time information and recommendations – which proves the continued importance of good relationships and word of mouth.

2. Facebook is viral by design. You want your content to spread, get it on Facebook. If it is any or all of the following – engaging, relevant, believable, accurate, amusing – it will be liked and shared. Having a page on Facebook is increasingly useful as it acts as a community creator and facilitator. This assumes, of course, that your target demographic act in this way.

3. Facebook offers lots of ways of engaging audiences and sending traffic to your website and other destinations. The debate rages about how to convert fans to customers but Chris Voss provided an interesting collection of Facebook marketing strategies to set you off down the right path.

4. Facebook offers highly targeted, low cost PPC advertising. Think about it; you probably see the same ads every time you log in. That’s because they are attuned to your hobbies, interests and behaviour on the site. Though it has been reported the costs are rising sharply, and the argument continues as to the overall effectiveness, Facebook advertising delivers in terms of reach, cost per impression and cost per click, putting your brand in front of people who may be interested in it.

5. Facebook has affected all other social media platforms and delineated professional-personal networking. A rising number of users are fusing their Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ activity blurring the traditional private vs. professional lines. As engagement with brands, campaigns, viral and video takes off, we’ll inevitably see more B2C, B2B, public sector and media brands make the cross over to Facebook.

6. Early mover advantage. 5 means, there is still time to beat the b2b crowd as few companies in traditional B2B sectors are embracing the business services available, the opportunity to build a brand, develop a hub for all online content, drive the creation of an engaged, opted in community and drive transactional traffic.

The drawbacks of Facebook for business

Of course, Facebook is not without it’s drawbacks. It was never designed for business in the first place. Interrupting people with business messages when they are conversing with family and friends can have an incredibly negative impact on brand reputation.

Many businesses still outlaw the use of Facebook during working hours and few senior managers (especially B2B sales directors) are convinced of its power to create a trust asset on which people are likely to transact given time. Advertising clickthrough rate can be low, and brands can achieve poor follow, fan and like scores – unless they are a hyperlocal and large international business.

Consequently, some of the most cited reasons for not using Facebook include

The reality

Talk last year of some companies abandoning websites in favour of Facebook pages was premature. In business marketing, websites remain the dominant form of information throughout the research, shortlist and selection of new suppliers, partners agents and distributors.

Whilst in most in technical and professional business sectors there might be a strong argument for Facebook marketing, areas like manufacturing, engineering, construction, packaging and science and laboratory have naturally been slow to adopt. And, arguably, for good reason. It is about your customers, where they are, where they go for information, and how they engage with people and companies they come to value and respect.

Despite it’s size, it’s important to remember that Facebook is just another tool. Use it as well as, not instead of. Don’t dip your toe. Formulate a plan. Research to see if any competitors, or more importantly, any customers are using it.

5 Things Google Gives Away for Free

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:20:00 +0000

I've developed a slightly mystical belief: there is no free lunch. Or call it instead the Free Stuff Karma Syndrome. Better yet: Maybe You'll Do Me a Favor Sometime.

To sum it up, if you're an end user, and you cherry-pick all the best online content and services without ever paying a penny for them, and do your best to avoid engaging with the ads…well, you might be OK. There are slightly less than even odds of you being hit by a bus on your way to work at the local hospital.

If you're a marketer, though - if you take and take and take, and then try to get out of all the paid services and whine at Google whenever it makes a tweak to its (free) organic search algorithm that slightly disadvantages your for-profit company - well, let's just say that a "wrong turn at Albuquerque" via Google Maps' driving directions will be the least of your worries. Unless your idea of a wrong turn is off a cliff. It's just bad karma, man.

The interesting thing about all the free products and services Google develops for consumers - and some for the benefit of small and large businesses - is that they aren't all tied efficiently to revenues. Google just invests heavily in products. Sometimes it does a good job of monetizing them. But generally speaking, Google derives the lion's share of its revenues from the same old things all the time (search ads and display ads). Not all of them tie well to the investments Google has made. It's almost like Google's bad at monetizing (or doesn't care enough to monetize everything, since free stuff keeps you happy and keeps engineers engaged in worthwhile projects).

Here are five free Google things we're pretty much all using.

1. Cool features in Google Maps. A co-worker was moving closer to downtown Toronto from the suburbs. Excited about his new address, he checked out the driving directions feature to find out how close he would be to the airport. Turns out that two totally different routes gave him about the same travel time in light traffic: 27 minutes and 28 minutes. And in "current" traffic, they were 34 minutes and 46 minutes. (Needless to say, both routes were mapped out flawlessly.) What? Google has integrated local real-time traffic databases seamlessly into Maps, in an actionable way? Then, my friend was further gratified by finding the fastest walking route to the subway station - seven minutes. A walking route to an old haunt - 25 minutes - was accurate because it took a diagonal route through a large park.

It's pretty clear that Google has invested heavily in Maps, Earth, Street View, and all these related functions. Sure, it eventually hopes to recoup that investment through local advertising (Google Places, if you want to use the cute name), and why shouldn't it? Please don't jump up and down and hoot and holler when Google suggests your clients buy the local ads instead of hoping to get everything for free.

You know who you are. You know you're using the services. You've run 52,358 driving directions on Maps and your version of Second Life is Google Street View. Karma…

2. Google Search. Uh oh. Lest we forget that one…it's free. No one else can hold a candle to it. Google has invested billions in it. It seems Microsoft has lost billions trying to figure out how this "web division" should make money. Not as easy as it looks, eh? Expensive to run a search engine, eh?

So next time you're in a casual conversation about what you do for a living, and someone blithely says, "Oh…I had nooo idea…I mean, I never even look at the ads" (an assertion that is now proven to be 100 percent impossible, BTW), as a marketer, it's not acceptable for you to smile and nod to maintain the peace - even if they're your dog walker. It's your job to punch them in the face.

3. YouTube. Free. Extremely costly to build. Every day you share a video, or 20. Would it kill you to buy an ad or two on there?

4. Google Analytics. Comparable SMB enterprise class software will run you $20,000 to $50,000, yet for some reason, this is free. (The pro version of Google Analytics is also well-priced, and since so many advertisers and webmasters use the free version, let's not be under any illusions that Google is covering its costs on this product.) That's mainly because Google figures if advertisers have the very best data, then they'll understand how to best allocate their online marketing dollars. It would be nearly impossible to go about the business of allocating a decent-sized online ad budget without spending some of it through Google. That would take some real contortions.

So if you're one of these wankers who uses free GA only to watch over your organic search referral traffic and the occasional Facebook "like," you didn't hear it from me, but a large flowerpot is falling toward you from that eighth-story window. As we speak.

5. Gmail. Yep, there's a corporate version of Google Mail you might want to look into, but most of you are rampantly using Gmail for free. So save the rant about the "intrusive" ads…especially if you're in marketing. Consider figuring out how to buy the ads in Gmail if you haven't already. You might even have clients who could class up the place. Is Google currently making money hand over fist on this free service? You have to wonder. After years and years of running "lucrative" Hotmail, Microsoft appears to be shutting it down. Yahoo Mail is a leading service, and that company isn't exactly pumping out Apple-esque profits either.

There is one free Google thing that went away a few years ago, and that's the annual Google Dance event held in connection with the Bay Area stop of the SES conference every summer. Hey Google, most of the attendees pay to attend the conferences; and they'll wear the dickens out of the t-shirts as they smile at the camera and post the results on Google+ so they can enhance their Klout scores, or on Pinterest (for reasons unknown). Bring back the Google Dance! Karma…

The 12 Pillars of Reader-Friendly Email Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:14:00 +0000

Ah, your first email message from the latest list you opted into. Cool! Let's check it out and see wha ...

... AAAH!

Eyes burning? Yeah, you just got burned by some really unpleasant email marketing design.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little hyperbolic, but you must know what I'm talking about. What's with the flashing GIFs? Color overload? Excessive font experimentation? If you're guilty of any of those (or what we're about to talk about in this blog post), you might be rocking your email recipients' worlds, and not in a good way. Ugly email design can distract from your email message, confuse recipients, hinder click-throughs, harm your brand's image, and even result in unsubscribes for the seriously offended.

So to ensure every email you send looks pleasant, use this list as a reference point for the qualities of reader-friendly email layout and design -- and never send out a frightful email again!

How to Design an Email for Superior User Experience

1) Use a Clear "From:" Field

A great email experience begins before your recipient even opens the message -- it all starts with the "From:" field. People are extremely protective of their email inboxes; they're personal spaces that, when violated by spammers and bad segmenters, prompt recipients to unsubscribe. So it's critical you establish some level of familiarity right away by making it easy for your recipient to recognize who you are, and why you're in their inbox. Some marketers have found they have better open and click-through rates when they use their company name as the sender. Others, however, have found more success using the name of an employee -- like the recipient's account manager, for example. Some companies actually see the best results when they combine the two, using both a personal name and a company name -- we conducted our own test to confirm this suspicion:

Whichever method works best for you, make sure to also include an actual email address to which the recipient can reply to reaffirm that you are, in fact, a real person.

2) Make Sure Your Subject Line Displays Fully

The other part of your email that can make or break a reader's experience before even opening the message is the subject line. We've written about how to write excellent subject line copy, but you also have to consider how long that subject line looks in an inbox. Think about it -- if your subject line is "GoDaddy.com's domain names are going on sale tomorrow," but your recipient's inbox cuts off even the last few words, the meaning of the email is totally lost -- and probably your instances of email opens, too. So try to keep your subject lines brief and to the point, frontloading any words that are critical to the meaning of the email. While every email client displays a different number of characters, trying to keep the subject line under 50 characters is a good rule of thumb. If you have a large mobile audience, shoot for 20 characters or fewer.

3) Keep Images to a Minimum, and Properly Optimized

Most email clients accept some level of HTML formatting. The problem is, richer text elements like images aren't supported across all clients, nor do all of your recipients allow images to display in their inboxes. So when your entire email hinges on images displaying, the meaning will be hindered for those who don't end up seeing the images in the message. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use images in your email -- they should simply be accompanied with text that alsotells your story! That means more than just the copy in the email body itself, too; it also means optimizing your email's imageswith alt text so, if your images don't render properly, there's descriptive text that explains what your image was. Take a look at this email from Groupon, for example:

What's good about this email is that there's sufficient explanatory copy to make up for the fact that the image didn't render. What's bad about this email is that there's no alt text that describes what was supposed to appear there. Uh oh! What should appear there is something to the effect of, "Brookline Hair Removal Center" (not, "Image 1" or something equally non-descript) so the recipient isn't in the dark on half of your entire email message.

4) Use a Background Color That's Compatible With Your Font Color

Now we're getting into the fun stuff! Sometimes marketers get so carried away designing their emails, they forget to reign themselves in. Your brand's colors are red, white, and black? That's cool ... but think about the best way those colors can work with each other. And it's probably not like this (names censored to protect the well-meaning marketer):

These colors are rather jarring together, and would work together in a calmer manner with a simple white background, black text, and red accents throughout. Be sure whatever combination of font and background color you use, they stand out (no dark gray on light gray, people!), but do so without assaulting the recipient's eye.

5) Limit Font Sizes and Types

If you're interested in fonts, you may have also noticed the email above uses the oft-bemoaned Comic Sans. However you feel about the use of Comic Sans (it's okay to feel no way, by the way), just be sure to find the font you like and stick with it throughout your email message. That means if you want to use Comic Sans 'til the cows come home, you can, but it shouldn't be supplemented by his buddies Bookman Old Style and Wing Dings (but seriously, just don't use Wing Dings in your email marketing). Too many fonts in your email -- or the same font that jumps from small, to big, to medium, to medium-big, to smallish-medium -- is hard for your reader to visually take in. And that means the message you're trying to convey will be equally compromised in the process.

6) K.I.S.S., Also Known As, 'Keep It Short and Scrollable'

I know it's tempting to tell your entire story in an email message, but that's what web pages are for. Your reader has other messages to attend to, so it's unlikely he or she will spend several minutes scrolling through your email, reading all the details of your latest ebook. Nope. If they want your ebook, they'll click through to a landing page on your website to learn more about it, and redeem your offer. So make sure when you craft your next email message, you find just a few short nuggets of information to highlight, limit the amount of scrolling necessary to get to your call-to-action, and then drive readers to a page on your website to get the more in-depth information they might need.

7) Use Short Chunks of Text

To help make your emails even more scannable and reader-friendly, try to use short chunks of text instead of long, dense paragraphs. In addition to the brief paragraphs you see below, you can use other visual tricks to keep the reader's eye engaged in your content like we've done with the blue, hyperlinked text. Between the short paragraphs and hyperlinks, our busy recipients can scan this content quickly to find out exactly what they need to do without feeling visually overwhelmed.

8) Make Your Call-to-Action Easy to Find

Speaking of finding out what you need to do in an email, there are things you can do when laying out your email message to make your call-to-action more identifiable to your reader. And the less your recipients have to think, the easier your recipients' lives will be, and the more they'll love you. Oh, and also, you'll have a better click-through rate.

First, include more than one CTA in your message -- you should give your reader multiple opportunities to click through to your landing page, not just one! Start by finding opportunities to hyperlink text that leads to your landing page, just like we did in the email example above. Notice how the hyperlinked text is extremely clear? If you click it, you'll get either access to your ebook, or if you choose the second chunk of hyperlinked text, you'll get a custom demo of our marketing software. There's absolutely no mystery there -- save that for your love life, folks.

Next, supplement your text-based CTAs with visual ones. Really, really bright ones. People are used to pressing a button to redeem an offer in their emails, so you'll find that your recipients that aren't reading the copy of your email will gravitate toward a visual button they can press -- that is, if they can find it. Use a color for your button that stands out from the rest of your email so your reader's eye is drawn there, and alleviate any potential confusion with exceptionally clear button copy that tells them what they'll get by clicking the button -- "Access Your Free Ebook," for example.

9) Eliminate Distractions

To ensure your recipient can actually get to your call-to-action, you need to let them focus. Just like when you're creating a landing page, it's critical to eliminate any distractions that might drive your recipients away from performing the action you want. This means two things for you as you lay out your email. First, it means you should leave the animation and dancing GIFs at home -- if they're there for entertainment value, and not to help clarify your message, they're a distraction that will make your email marketing metrics look pretty sad. Second, you need to eliminate distractions by ensuring you don't provide competing calls-to-action. Take a look at this email, for example:

There's more than one call-to-action, but they don't compete with our ultimate goal from sending this email -- moving prospects further down the sales funnel. For example, the first two links you see above both lead to the same landing page. And the third link, while leading to a different landing page, helps us reconvert this lead on a more middle-of-the-funnel offer. So sure, while some might convert on the first offer and some might convert on the second offer, they're also both giving us the lead intelligence we need to determine whether the email recipient is actually interested in our software, or simply still learning about inbound marketing.

10) Optimize for Mobile

Did you check your email on a mobile device yet today? I sure did. Actually, it's the first thing I did when my alarm went off. If you think it's generally kind of hard to read emails on a mobile device, just think about how much more difficult it is to read them before you've had your first cup of coffee and your eyes are still adjusting to the morning light. All the more reason to optimize your email marketing for mobile! That means you limit the amount of scrolling and pinching necessary to read your emails on that tiny screen, you stay away from tiny fonts, your subject lines are brief (remember, shoot for under 20 characters!), and your links and buttons are easy to see.

11) Test Your Email in All Clients

What email client do you use? Gmail? Hotmail? Yahoo? Outlook? AOL? Other? What about your leads and customers? Your emails should be easy to read in all email clients, especially the ones your email recipients use to read your emails! Do some testing of your own -- or use an ESP whose templates have already been tested to look good in major email clients -- to ensure the user experience is flawless no matter where your emails are read.

12) Offer a Browser Version of Your Email

You know that link I'm talking about ...

Including this link in your email helps those who are reading your email and suffering some rendering issues, but still want to read your content. Every ESP should make it easy for you to include this link, and it's a lifesaver for those on your email list struggling with inbox problems that are hampering their ability to consume your email content.

Like most marketing content, clarity and simplicity are good rules of thumb to guide you in your email marketing layout and design. So if you don't have this nitty-gritty cheat sheet to walk you through your next campaign, just ask yourself whether your recipient can easily figure out what to do in your email. You can even test it out on an unsuspecting coworker to see if they can easily parse the message! If they could identify your email in their inbox, open it, read it, and click-through without skipping a beat, you've probably nailed the fantastic email user experience!

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How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 08:59:00 +0000

How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging" or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts. In fact, since Twitter was designed to be very compatible with mobile phones through text messages, each update is limited to 140 characters. Truly, a micro-blog. Another way to think of Twitter is like a cross between instant messaging (IM) and a chat room, because it is an open forum, but you restrict it to the people with which you connect.

I have to admit I have not always been sold on Twitter. At first I did not get it at all. Then I thought I understood it, but thought it was stupid and useless. Then I used it a bit more and got some more followers and followed a few more people. Now I think it has some value, especially as a marketing and PR tool.

Ideas for How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

Engage your CEO in social media. Social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers. But for a CEO, the typical routes to social media can be hard. Especially if you are a larger or global company. A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook. I cannot tell you how many CEO blogs I have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries. But, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per update, so it is all about short thoughts and comments. If your CEO can send a text message, they can use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool. Twitter is actually perfect for CEO or founder who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some interesting opinions on your market.
Keep in touch with bloggers / media. It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter (see below). And you'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well. In fact, I have lots of people I consider "famous" in the marketing and PR worlds following me. In my opinion, this is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.
Monitor your company / brand on Twitter. A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter. Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it? The result was this blog article on Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads. (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)
Announce specials, deals or sales. If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience. You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that "Ding" application you could download and would then alert you about specials on flights? Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of free version of that. Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
Live updates on events or conferences. If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening ("Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am") and more. It is a great last minute marketing tool.
Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more. Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter, and I often post links to blog articles on this blog, or other news articles relevant to HubSpot. A good idea is to post articles on other websites that are relevant to your business, like a customer success story or other PR coverage. If you have other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar, post links to those too.

Using Twitter for Marketing & PR - A Step-by-Step Guide

Sign-up and post a profile. Visit Twitter and click on the "Get Started - Join" button in the middle. The rest is simple enough that I think you can figure it out without my help.
Write some updates. The beauty of Twitter is that the 140 character limit is the great equalizer - I am about as good of a writer as Shakespeare on Twitter. Post a link to a news article you liked with a one line comment, mention an interesting thought you had, or tell everyone what you are cooking for dinner. Just write something.
Make friends. Making friends on Twitter is pretty easy. Just surf around the web on your favorite blogs, people's Facebook profiles etc, and when you see a Twitter box that tells you what they are doing click on it. That will bring you to their profile and then you just click on the "Follow" button on the top left and you are now following them. Most of the time they will then follow you back, and the audience for your 140 character insights will have grown by one person. You can get started by following me: Mike Volpe on Twitter. You can also click on the people that other people are following to find more people to follow.
How to post URLs. Twitter is based on 140 character updates. If you have a really long URL, that doesn't leave much room for Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short. Give it a shot if you have a long URL that you want to market on Twitter.
Monitor conversations about your company. Even if you don't join Twitter yourself you can monitor what people are saying about any person, company or brand. This is quite useful from a marketing and PR standpoint. Twitter has a search engine that lets you do just this. For instance, here is a list of everyone who is talking about HubSpot on Twitter. You can subscribe to these searches by RSS to keep yourself updated. Another tip is that you can "follow" all the people you find talking about your company (just click on their username to go to their profile). If they are talking about your company, they would probably be pretty happy that someone from the company wants to follow them.
How to "chat". Using the @ symbol before someone's Twitter username is how people have "conversations" in Twitter. This makes their username a link to their profile so other people can follow the conversation (sort of). For example if you wrote "@mvolpe thanks for the cool blog article about Twitter today" that would be a way of telling me you liked this article. Try it out. It's not IM (instant messaging), but it is sort of like a publicly broadcast IM service.

Free Advertising on Google

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 08:53:00 +0000

Many small businesses do not know that you can get some free advertising on Google, using Google Local or Google Maps. Google is looking to increase the value of their local search and their mapping application, so they have a simple way for you to tell them some information about your business, and now they are infusing those results into their main search engine. It is basically a way to advertise your business on Google for free, and everyone loves a free advertisement. This will help your advertisement show up in searches and can help you get more traffic, leads and customers. For example, a Boston volunteer organization I work with called the Boston Scholars Program is currently listed at the TOP of the Google search results for searches like "volunteer in boston", "volunteer boston ma", and "volunteer boston, ma". See the image below.

How to Get Free Advertising on Google

Things You Need Before Starting Your Free Advertisement

A description of your business
Your phone number, address, and any other contact info you want to advertise
A logo or image that represents your business (some people use a picture of their office, store, or restaurant)
A coupon or special offer you want to advertise (Google also lets you add a coupon for FREE if you want)

Step-by-Step Guide to Free Google Advertisement

Go to www.google.com/local and search for your business to verify it is not yet listed with an advertisement.
Go back to www.google.com/local and click on Add/Edit Your Business at the bottom left part of the page. (See image below.)

3. Follow the steps provided by Google. They are pretty simple and straightforward. As part of the process you will need to verify your business either by phone or mail. Check back in a few weeks with Google and verify your listing. If you want to update it, you can use the same process outlined here to update your listing. See image below of the advertisement for the Boston Scholars Program including details and logo.

YOU DESIGN IT, THEY DO IT

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:45:00 +0000

What if someone came to you and said, “I’ve designed this great website, but people don’t stay on it. Why?” How would you respond? Would you ask them whether they have done extensive A/B testing? Would you recommend testing the usability of the website?

People like to test a number of metrics to see why people are not staying on a website. I think sometimes we spend so much time focusing on analytics that we throw common sense out the window. Don’t get me wrong—analytics are a powerful tool for improving a website. But often the problem is right in front of your face.

What if you simply told them that the reason people are leaving is because of the way they designed the website? How mind-blowing an idea is that? Doesn’t that change your entire perspective on the design? It could be the greatest thing in the world, but what if you really designed something to chase people away or looking at it another way: What if you have designed it so there is no incentive to stay?

Feedback… Om Nom Nom

I love getting feedback on the stuff that I write; yet my website has no comments section. Is it reasonable for me to wonder why people don’t leave feedback? I could tell people that there is a forum on the website where they can leave feedback, but that means they would have to register get approved and then remember what they wanted to write. The website isn’t designed for instant feedback.

When I didn’t have any social media widgets at the end of a post, sharing of articles dropped over 80%. It wasn’t fair for me to assume that people would remember to share something they liked or that if they were on the fence they would make an effort to do so. If I really wanted people to retweet what I write, I would have to guide them to doing so by putting a retweet widget at the end of everything. Maybe I could even add some text asking them to retweet if they like what they read.

The point is that, if I expect a person to take an action, I would have to design the process for taking that action right into the website itself. I should never assume that a person who is interacting with my website will automatically take that action. Would a driver stop at an intersection that had no stop sign?

As designers we have to understand that the interface we create dictates the action of the people using it.

If you run a website and hope to get a lot of comments, then the best way to go about that is to make posting a comment as easy as possible. Of course, doing so could lead to people leaving all types of comments, both useful and not. A great example of designing how you want users to interact with a product is Pinterest.

The Pinterest Way

Most comment blocks on Pinterest are filled with simple comments. The content doesn’t lend itself to much discussion, but Pinterest obviously wants users to engage in other social interactions, and it has designed the product to make that easy to do. You can easily like, comment, repin and share any image that you come across, and all of this makes the content spread quickly throughout the network. This network effect is one of the main reasons for Pinterest’s explosive growth over the past couple of months.

Pinterest made an interesting decision in requiring all users to connect to the website through either Facebook or Twitter. This means that real names (usually) are tied to users; because of this, the quality of stuff that people share is generally high. Allowing everyone to hide behind fake identities would have resulted in a much different experience.

But the system wasn’t designed that way; it was designed so that people who post quality content (or at least content those others in their circle like) would become popular. Thus, rather than turning into a website full of animated GIFs and Web comics, the website has become a valuable resource to its community—mainly because it was designed to function that way.

Maybe It’s Not That Simple

I realize that simply saying that a product was designed to do what it is meant to do makes fixing problems seem like the easiest thing in the world. Of course, as you dig deeper into how to improve a design, you will have more variables to keep in mind; but always be aware of the simple fact that people will do what the design of a website lets them do.

Why did Twitter evolve beyond being a place where people just leave status updates? Part of it has to do with the tiny microcopy that was above the status update field. Originally it said “What are you doing?” and this of course led to people talking about their breakfast. After some time they changed it to “What’s happening?” which helped guide the people using the service to post about what is happening around them.

Why was Digg being gamed for so long? Because the design encouraged it. Simple. Executives at Yahoo might sit around a table asking why users aren’t using its search engine. Does the design of the website look like it is meant for search or even encourage it? Do you think Google execs sit around a table asking why people don’t use its search engine when they hit its main page? The design of Pinterest encourages users to continually scroll down the page looking at more and more pins; it is designed to keep you on the website.

Do you want your users to do something specific? Then design your website so that they do it.

It could be the greatest thing in the world, but what if you really designed something to chase people away or looking at it another way: What if you have designed it so there is no incentive to stay?

How to Pick the Right Hosted VoIP Provider

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:36:00 +0000

The VoIP industry is continuing to make strides forward, especially in the form of hosted VoIP technology. The technology is being further refined every day, and this is really getting people excited.

With a barrage of fly-by-night VoIP service providers popping up daily, business owners are having an increasingly difficult time sifting through the mess to find a legit service. With this in mind, I’ve decided to create a quick and easy checklist so when it comes time for you to choose the right hosted VoIP provider you know what to look for.

1. Make Sure Voice Quality, Is “Business Voice Quality.”

Many companies out there, ourselves included, have put serious time and money into developing and refining call-handling architecture in-house to cut out jitter, echoes, and the other disruptions. Today, a hosted VoIP provider can easily deliver the same type of call quality as a premise based system or the public telephone network. Before committing to a hosted service, make sure you confirm that the call quality is up to your standard. The best ways to do this are to take a test call using their service or to ask a current customer about their experience with the product.

2. Double Check the Feature Offering

One of hosted VoIP’s big draws is the range of features offered. Here are some features that should come standard with your system:

3-Way Calling
Call Transfer
Hold Music
Do Not Disturb
Speed Dial
Speakerphone
Off-Hook Call Placement
Call Mute
Distinctive Rings

3. What Additional Perks are Offered By the Service?

Many hosted VoIP services have additional perks. These usually come in the form of added features and services, which, depending on the service, can come at no extra cost to you. Here are some perks to keep an eye out for.

Unified Voice & Fax Messaging: Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a single phone number for both voice and fax. How about if you could send all voicemails and fax messages as email attachments to the addresses of your choice and access everything through email or an online control panel? There are services out there that provide these unified communications capabilities at no extra charge.

Outlook Integration: Make sure your hosted VoIP service integrates with Outlook. This will save you time and you’ll love the easy to use click to dial feature.

Recorded Calls: Can your hosted service record some or all of the calls you receive? With this feature you can cut down on taking notes, improve quality control, and review disputes..

Advanced ACD & Call Queue: Advanced automatic call distribution allows you to choose how your calls are forwarded, including round-robin, simultaneous, least-time, and skills-based distributions, while advanced call queue lets you better control calls during peak hours. Some services offer these capabilities, allowing you to better manage call volume and get calls in the appropriate peoples’ hands.

Internet Control Panel: Hosted VoIP phone service runs over the internet, so why wouldn’t you have the benefit of an Internet control panel to manage things like call routing features, voice and fax messages, call reports, account information, and more. Make sure your hosted provider gives you this level of access, you and your employees will enjoy being able to easily manage voicemail and change personal settings online.

Visual Call Reports: These reports allow you to clearly see everything taking place on your business phone system at anytime. With this feature you’ll be able to generate, filter, and export detailed call reports online with easy-to-read spreadsheets and graphs. You’ll also be able to view a display of which employees are logged into their phones and be able to listen in on live calls. A select group of providers offer these features, make sure it’s part of your service.

Voicemail Transcription: This technology is coming onto the scene fast! Imagine being able to convert your voicemail messages to text and deliver them to your email or mobile phone. This is a great feature, but not every provider offers it, make sure to ask!

4. Is the Service Compatible with the Right Phone?

There are a variety of phones that work with hosted VoIP service, some are obviously better than others. We’ve always found JustVoIP to be a top notch VoIP phone. Make sure that the phone you want to use works with the service you are interested in purchasing.

5. How is their Customer Service?

When you’re using a hosted provider customer service is key. Remember, you’re not going to have someone onsite to help you troubleshoot issues, so you’re going to want to have access to a qualified representative over the phone. Make sure your hosted VoIP provider prides themselves on customer service, because if something does go wrong, you want to make sure there is someone available to get you back on track.

6. Finally, How Much Does it Cost?

You can’t shop a hosted VoIP provider on just price alone, the saying that, “you get what you pay for” definitely applies here. At the same time, you need something that fits within your budget. Make sure you pick a product that is not too cheap, and at the same time does not seem overly expensive after you have evaluated the complete product offering. The good news is that you will undoubtedly be saving money once you switch to VoIP. Remember, a professional phone system tells customers they are dealing with a professional business. You’re going to want a hosted VoIP service that makes your company shine. When picking a hosted provider, make sure the provider fits your company.

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Use your Computer To Make Cheap Long-Distance Telephone Calls

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:30:00 +0000

What is VoIP?

Simply put, VoIP refers to the carriage of voice signals over the Internet. PC to Phone VoIP refers to using your ‘Internet-connected’ computer to make calls to conventional telephones around the world. Whereas traditional telephone calls take place over fixed line circuit switched networks, VoIP calls are routed through the Internet using a far more efficient method known as packet switching. Whilst carrying voice data more efficiently via the Internet is a benefit, the main advantage that VoIP has is one of cost. For example, a typical PC to Phone VoIP call to a telephone in the United States from anywhere in the world generally runs at just a few cents per minute. Keep in mind, the clarity/quality of PC to Phone calls is usually as good and in many cases better than that of a comparable Phone to Phone call.

How can it be so cheap?

Herein lies the beauty of PC to Phone calls. By using the Internet to route your calls, long-distance charges imposed upon you by the major telecommunications companies (Bell, Sprint, AT&T, etc) are all but eliminated. Furthermore, many of the governmental levies and fees associated with using the highly regulated traditional telephone networks are also avoided. The result? Extremely cheap, long distance calling to conventional telephones around the world with little or no loss of call quality.

So how does it work?

In a typical PC to Phone call, your computer receives your voice input via a microphone and then translates your voice into a data packet. This packet of data is then transmitted via the Internet to as close as possible to the physical destination of the telephone you are calling. Your voice data packet is then switched to the conventional telephone network and routed to the phone that you are calling. All of this data transmission, translation and switching takes place transparently and extremely quickly. Chances are that the person whom you are calling would have no idea that you are talking to them using your computer.

So what do you need?

In order to start making long-distance telephone calls using your computer, you’ll need a computer that’s connected to the Internet, a microphone and speakers (a headset with a boom microphone is ideal). It’s worth mentioning that although there are several companies that support both the Linux and Macintosh platforms (e.g., www.skype.com), the vast majority of PC to Phone software is designed for use on Windows compatible PCs. As far as your Internet connection goes, the faster the better (e.g., high speed Cable or ADSL). However, PC to Phone does also work on dial-up Internet connections (the way I access the Internet).

The next thing to do is choose a PC to Phone Service Provider. These are the companies that provide the software and infrastructure necessary for you to make calls to conventional telephones via the Internet. There are many Service Providers and each have their own benefits and rates so its a good idea to shop around. Almost all of them allow for pay-as-you-go usage (i.e., on a per minute basis) however some also offer unlimited calling plans to certain destinations for a low monthly fee. Some of the better known Providers include

www.justvoip.in

Once you’ve chosen a Service Provider, you’ll need to open an account and deposit funds into that account. If you’re reluctant to use your credit card online, many of the PC to Phone companies offer alternative forms of payment (e.g., PayPal, direct deposit, wire transfer, etc.). Next, you’ll need to download the softphone application from your service provider. A softphone is merely the interface program through which you dial the number of the person you’re calling and usually only takes a few minutes to download on even the slowest dial-up Internet connections. Softphones generally resemble the keypad on conventional telephones and work in much the same way. Depending on your service provider, the manner in which you dial out will vary. Typically, the softphone will take into account where you are in the world and adjust the dialing settings accordingly. In other words, you’d dial the exact same series of numbers into the softphone that you would if you were using a conventional telephone.

Once you’ve made a few calls to friends and family around the world using your computer, you’ll quickly realize the fantastic cost advantages of making PC to Phone calls versus Phone to Phone calls.

So whats the catch?

Whilst PC to Phone is terrific, it isn’t perfect. There are some disadvantages that you should be aware of and these include:

a) Quality: If you access the Internet via a dial-up connection (i.e., through a normal telephone line), you may experience call quality degradation if you are surfing the web and talking to someone via PC to Phone at the same time. In other words, the bandwidth or capacity of your Internet connection may be limited and this could affect your calling ability.

b) Echo: If you’re using computer speakers to hear the person you’re talking to, that person may hear an echo of their own voice. This happens for reasons similar to that encountered with the speakerphone function on conventional telephones. At the same time as you hear that person’s voice coming through your computer speakers, your microphone will also detect the voice and re-transmit the signal back to the person you’re talking to. This echo can easily be avoided by using either a computer headset or by turning your speaker volume down so as to minimize the chance of your microphone picking up and retransmitting the incoming voice signals.

c) Cost: If you’re calling relatively small and/or remote countries, you should check the rates of the PC to Phone Service Providers to those countries before signing up for their PC to Phone service. For example, calling a country like Fiji in the Pacific Ocean is almost as expensive using PC to Phone as it is using a conventional telephone. The reason for these high rates to certain countries is usually due to the PC to Phone Service Provider not having the necessary switching equipment (required for switching your call back to the traditional telephone network from the Internet) physically located in that country. In these scenarios, your calls are routed through the traditional telephone network for a good proportion of the distance they travel and as such they attract many of the long-distance charges that the traditional networks impose. If youd like to call one country in particular, it’s definitely worth shopping around to find out whether prospective PC to Phone companies have the necessary switching equipment located in that country (and hence, can pass on the savings to you in the form of cheaper rates).

So give PC to Phone a try. You’ve really nothing to lose and have the potential to save yourself a lot of money.

The End of SMS in Mobile Marketing? Doubtful.

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:11:00 +0000

Many tech and mobile marketing blogs are citing the level of use and interaction with QR codes, Microsoft Tags and the likes as marking the end of SMS as the king of mobile marketing. However, we have seen nothing but an increase in use and effectiveness of SMS marketing to connect consumers and brands. For example:

In 2011 Harley-Davidson held a 12 Days of Christmas mobile campaign, offering customers different in store discounts via SMS message for each day of the 12 days of Christmas. The dealership saw a significant increase in sales of the specific items discounted during the campaign – for example, T-shirts were offered at a discounted price during one of the days, and the dealership saw a 250% increase in sales of T-shirts. In addition, high-dollar items such as Helmets and Leather Jacket sales saw increases up to 16% when they were offered at a discounted cost via text.
Also, during this year’s NBA All-Star game Sprite, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, is utilizing SMS to interact with fans leading up to the game. Users will be able to participate in real-time polls and quizzes to vote for who they think should win the game. Sports fans will also have the opportunity to enter to win prizes from interacting with SMS. Coca-Cola clearly sees SMS as a viable opportunity to create fun and effective marketing strategies. Tom Daly, the director of mobile, search, and global connections at Coca-Cola, Atlanta, recently stated that brands need to bank 70 percent of their mobile strategy on channels that are proven to be effective, with SMS at the top of the list due to its reach. “Mobile builds brand awareness and love. The mindset is mobile enables things that money cannot buy, and create a bind that consumers have with a brand.”

It is clear that SMS is not loosing it’s place as king of the mobile hill. However, in the coming months and years we may see the kingdom being distributed evenly amongst mobile connection giants.

An executive form Rock the Vote at the Nonprofit Mobile Day said that by using a combination of SMS, mobile bar codes, web, and social media applications, the organization has been successful in getting young voters to the poll. “Our approach as an organization is to go to where young people are and digital and mobile is a huge part of it,” said Chrissy Faesen, VP of marketing and communications at Rock the Vote Washington.

Rock the Vote is perhaps one of the largest marketing champions in the mobile industry currently, employing a multi-channel approach. For instance, Rock the Vote promotes its SMS program by combining it with social media and email efforts as a way to get users engaged. Mobile bar codes also play a role in the company’s efforts. At a recent concert, Rock the Vote volunteers wore t-shirts with a QR code on the back that users can scan.

Ms. Faesen offered possibly one of the most relevant and pertinent pieces of advice the mobile marketing world will read in the near future:

“Over the course of the last four years, the biggest lesson we have learned is to know your audience and what makes sense to message them about.”

This insight makes it clear to businesses that, with the entry and dominance of the third-screen, a single-channel marketing approach is no longer the most intelligent or effective way to get your message into your customers hands. A multi-faceted and cross-platform approach is introducing itself as the best way to not only increase communication between consumers and brands, but also to keep your business ahead of the mobile marketing curve, and to keep yourself relevant in your customers’ minds..

If you are interested in opening your business up to the mobile conversation give us a call today.

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Tips and Tricks to Monetize Your SMS Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:08:00 +0000

Text Message campaigns have long served many purposes to businesses and brands – from becoming one of the best ways to build customer loyalty to allowing an instant-gratification marketing approach, SMS has always been the preferred channel for connecting with customers on the mobile channel. However, often times businesses and brands lose the opportunity to monetize this approach, and instead inundate their customers with messages that benefit neither the business nor the consumer. Below we’ve listed some of the key ways to create and monetize a successful and results driven SMS campaign.

Text talks, and it talks now.

Like any other marketing strategy, an SMS campaign must align with the brand image and the rest of the brand’s marketing efforts. The key difference however is time. Jeff Hasen points out two of the key components of a successful SMS campaign:

“Brands should use SMS for time-sensitive offers and information. They should also consider location to boost relevance.”

The main purposes of SMS campaigns are not only customer retention, but also to increase profit and revenue generated from marketing expenses. In order to conceive a successful mobile campaign, all of these things must be kept in mind.

Putting the right message in the palm of your customers hands.

Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of a successful SMS campaign is that you are putting your message directly into your customers’ pockets, immediately. However, there are some timely pitfalls that we have seen over the years. The key issue that must be addressed to achieve a successful mobile campaign is creating a call to action.

You don’t want to simply give your customers information, that’s what billboards and yellow pages are for. You want to create a call to action, create a sense of urgency within your customers. Not only do you want to send them pertinent information, but also give them something to act on, and make it time-sensitive. This is key to bringing these customers who you’re communicating to into your location.

For example, Dominoes has used the controversially successful QR codes on their pizza boxes around the country, but when an end-user scans the displayed QR code they are simply taken to a mobile friendly version of the Dominoes site. No call to action, no conversation, just information. This is what must be avoided to maintain a successful mobile campaign.

Successful mobile campaigns do much much more than simply convey information, they generate excitement, and initiate conversation between brand and customer. To speak with a Mobivity Account Manager about how to best convey your brand’s message to your customers, give us a call today .

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Mobile Voting

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:04:00 +0000

Mobile voting is a superb method for any small or medium-sized business to obtain word across regarding their items as well as their contests. In the end, lots of people wish to election for several things but they don’t always obtain the chance or time. For instance, many smaller businesses or medium-sized companies which have voting contests could have a link online. However, not everybody has immediate internet access. For instance, someone who would like to election within the contest may have the ability to get on the web the following day, however at that time she or he might have completely ignored the voting. That’s where mobile voting makes the image.

With mobile voting, a election could be sent over instantly and you will immediately obtain a reaction to see exactly what the voting is much like. It’s also much simpler for individuals to election, as they possibly can just type a couple of numbers to their phone and send a text. This can be a era where almost everybody texts constantly, so delivering a text to election is a fantastic way to do this. This voting procedure is definitely an amazing method to drum up curiosity about small , medium-sized companies.

For instance, a medium-sized business in New You are able to City may want to perform some self promotion. They might want to possess a contest that provides free gift cards, and you will see an issue connected to the contest. This can be simply clarified using the voting on the mobile system. By voting on the mobile, people can choose the choice they believe is appropriate, and also the telephone numbers that got the best answer will go right into a draw for that prize. It’s also simple to inform the champion, as all you want do is send a text back for them saying they’ve won a prize. It’s as simple as that make it possible for voting on mobiles.

It’s also a really economical method to election, for individuals as well as for companies. You don’t need to possess the hassle to setup an internet site, everything can be achieved through SMS services. This is actually the great thing about the mobile age, as even something as essential as voting can be achieved via a mobile phone. This could allow smaller businesses that don’t possess the assets of bigger companies to actually step-up their game.

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Text Message Marketing Tips That Grow Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:05:00 +0000

11% to 30% response / conversion rates? It’s certainly not mailers, auto-responders or newsletters. It is text message marketing. Texting is bigger amongst cell users than talking and this form of marketing is targeted, concise and highly effective.

How can you best use text message marketing to grow your business? Here are five tips that will get you on the right track in utilizing this amazing tool as fully as you possibly can.

Actively Collect Numbers

Use your website, email list and if you have a land-based enterprise, your business to get people to sign up for text message marketing. You might offer them a small premium to do so. Getting them on your list is as simple as having them text a keyword (PHOTON, for example) to your assigned numerical short-code.

Be sure you outline the benefits, including special offers that they will have access to immediately. Text message marketing is not just a great tool for businesses; it can be an amazing money- and time-saving option for your clients, customers or patients.

Create a Campaign

Don’t just use text message marketing randomly. Create a campaign that is planned out where text messages that are thematically linked are delivered according to a specific plan. This does not mean that you cannot send out a message at will, but, as an example, it’s a great idea to create a “Wednesday Special” text or another such targeted advertisement that goes out every week at the same time.

Target Those on Your List

In developing your text message marketing list, it is important to ask specific questions related to your business and customer interests that will allow you to target specific numbers when you want to do so. Depending on your business, questions may revolve around age, specific products, lifestyle choices and other such subjects. Keep your questions brief and to the point offering multiple-choice answers.

Offer Time Limited Deals

Time limited deals can really help to generate business. Depending on what you do and sell, the limit could be a few hours, days, a week or more. But putting limits on deals will help push people to you while ensuring that it is clear that it really is a deal of which people must take advantage before they lose the opportunity.

Effective Copy

You’ve got 160 characters to say who, what, where and how much and long with a strong call to action. The thing is text message marketing, because the copy is so short, is amazingly powerful and effective. Once you find the right words and get your copy focused people will know within seconds what you’re offering and will often make a very quick decision regarding what they will do.

Cells Are Everywhere

The cell phone is one of the few things that people always have on them. When at home, when commuting or when traveling far from home, people keep connected via their cell. Thus, it makes sense for you to use text message marketing to link with them. You’ve already got someone on the other end of the text who has said that they want to hear from your business or practice. Use that connection effectively and you’ll see great results.

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10 Hot Tips for Mobile Text Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:55:00 +0000

Mobile text marketing has taken off as a major way to attract, keep and expand your client base. Marketing via text is extremely effective as 90% of the messages are read and the response rate ranges from 10% up to 30%.

In order to get the most from your mobile text marketing efforts, you want to be sure to use this medium as effectively and efficiently as possible. Here are 10 top tips that you can utilize to get the most from your text marketing.

Clear, Concise, Clever

There are a few basic elements that define texting that all businesses need to be aware of and use. The fact is people use text messaging to communicate because it is fast and effective. You have a total of 160 characters (including spaces) when you text. Thus, you must adhere to some basic marketing practices and standards when texting.

·   Use a short, effective, attention getting headline (about 10-30 characters).
·   Keep the body of the text clear, concise and clever (about 80-120 characters).
·   End with a strong call to action (10-30 characters).
·   Make sure they know who you are.
·   Offer a method of response for people to contact you.

You don’t want your text marketing message to be out there unanchored on someone’s phone. Be sure that this effort to connect with potential buyers and clients links you to them and them to you.

Target Receivers

To get subscribers, you can simply have people sign up for text messaging offers. However, this is ineffective. To create effective text marketing campaigns, you’ll want to outline the benefits of signing up for texting and also ask those who do sign up some questions regarding their interests. This will help you develop campaigns that target certain groups. Here are five basics related to this process.

·    When people sign up, ask questions regarding the types of deals they’d like to hear about and categorize them.
·    When someone signs up for text marketing welcome them and offer them a deal, such as 10% off a service.
·    Create effective, targeted campaigns that offer real value to your customers.
·    Make sure any offers you send are time sensitive, including discounts for a specific day or entire week.
·    Use a text messaging marketing service to help you with your campaigns. They can make your labor light.

Expected Growth

Text message marketing is fairly new but it is rapidly growing in popularity. If you want to expand your client base, get a great rate of return and differentiate your business from the competition then this method of advertising is the way to go. Focus your message, offer value-based discounts and specials and be concise and clever. You’ll see an instant return if you do.

The Unlimited Power of Text Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:52:00 +0000

We live in a world where less is more. TV commercials, which used to be one-minute, are now 15 seconds long. Movies that used to average two hours now average about 90 minutes. Writing bullets are more popular than paragraphs, sports highlight reels more popular than the actual games and text messaging more popular than talking on the phone.

It makes you think that with text message marketing, where you’re limited to a total of 160 characters, that maybe there’s very little room with which to play. In a way, there is very little and in another way, there’s a whole lot.

Expansive Text Message Marketing

When you think about it, the use of text message marketing is expansive. By utilizing this relatively new marketing tool, you’re connecting with people you may never otherwise reach. Here’s who you’re reaching.

·   People who never read mailers.
·   Those who commute long distances.
·   Anyone who texts.
·   People who rarely talk on the phone.
·   People who read less and watch more.
·   Those who can’t live without their phone.

That’s a lot of people.

More and Less

With text message marketing, it’s really about directly connecting with many more people than you would through any other medium. The operative word is “directly.” Messages go right to people who have said they want to receive them. That’s why text message marketing has a 90% read rate and a success rate of anywhere from 10% to 30%. You’re getting “more” in this way than you ever can with any other form of marketing, including advertising via email.

The “less” in text marketing is twofold. One point is that there are very few words used in this kind of marketing and the other is that it takes far less effort than other types of advertising. No images, quick words and instant sales!

Quick Message Equals Quick Reaction

Text messages tend to get read right away and demand an instant reaction. Because they are short, people often follow through quickly, making up their minds immediately. Thus, you get an instant response from this type of advertising. There’s nothing else like it.

Use it Now!

Text message marketing is happening now. Businesses that are using it are getting great response rates. This is not a thing that’s destine to take off in the future. It is one of the newest and most effective advertising platforms to ever exist. Tap into the fastest advertising in the world and utilize its limits in an unlimited fashion.

You really do get more for less when marketing via text messaging.

Mobile Text Marketing Allows Businesses to Flourish Quickly

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Although commercial text message marketing is a relatively new marketing tool it is proving to be an amazingly powerful one. With text message marketing, businesses are finding that they can grow quickly, attaining an excellent return on investment (ROI) and strong profits.

There are various key components involved in establishing a potent text message marketing platform. Once these elements are in place, your business will be in position to fully utilize this amazing advertising tools full power.

Member/Opt In List

The first thing that you need is a list of people who want to receive text messages from you. Text message marketing can only work if have a member list and/or a list of people who have opted in to receive your company’s texts. There are a few ways to get people to become a part of this list.

1.   Offer information at your place of business and ask that they sign up
2.   Place an opt in form prominently situated on your website
3.   Send a newsletter announcing your text marketing service with a mobile short code (58627) and keyword (KPS).
4.   Utilize all social media platforms and include a link
5.   Write a blog or a few blogs about the service

Basically, you want to give people as many chances as possible to sign on to your text marketing member list.

Specifically Targeted Prospects

In signing people up, you’ll need their basic information such as their name and cell phone number. But don’t stop there. It’s best if you can get some additional demographic information on each person such as age, where they live and likes and interests in relationship to your products. Birth dates are great because then you can send them a special offer on that special day.

You don’t want to make this process of collecting information too long or complicated but it is best to get enough information that so that you can specifically target your prospects.

The easiest way to get targeted prospects to sign-up is to have a mobile short-code and keyword so you can create advertisements that say something like “Text KPS to 58627 for best sms deals.”

Give it a Good Spin

When you ask people to become part of your text message marketing list be sure to put a good spin on it. Let them know if you are going to offer special deals, information on new products or alerts for quick sales.

What makes text message marketing attractive to the consumer is the fact that they can read an offer quickly and then make a decision. They can easily delete the message and just as easily take advantage of a bargain.

Full Utilization of Text

When you send out your targeted text messages make sure that you fully utilize your text. That is all you have.

There are no vivid graphics involved or video. Plus, you only have 160 characters. What you need are:

1.   A gripping headline (20- 40 characters)
2.   Fantastic sales pitch, including any important details such as “deadline” (115- 100 characters)
3.   Strong call to action (25 characters)

Use all three elements thoroughly and efficiently.

Real Deals

Text message marketing is the real deal. Text messages are opened at over a 95% rate and the conversion rate for this type of advertising ranges from 10% to 30%! Because this is the real deal, you must make sure that you are providing real deals. Your pitches and offers need to be truthful, interesting and clearly stated.

Use this great tool as soon as possible and you’ll see a quick return.

See what so many businesses are raving about.

How to Profitably Use SMS Marketing to Get New Customers

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:45:00 +0000

SMS (Short Message Service) marketing is a relatively new method of connecting with customers. Also known as text message marketing, this type of service has a high open and return rate. With about 90% of SMS marketing texts being opened and anywhere from 10% to 30% generating a positive response, it is a highly effective tool for encouraging sales amongst new customers.

SMS is Fast and Effective

With text messaging it’s all in the words and you have very few words with which to work. A total of 160 characters are allowed in a text and that includes all spaces and punctuation. Thus, marketing messages have to be to the point, catchy and clever.

Soliciting List Members

One of the wonderful things about SMS marketing is that you can often convert new customers or clients using this service. The first thing you have to do is capture their information. Cell phones are privately listed and the only way to garner these numbers is through direct marketing. Plus, it’s best if people opt in to receive your messages as everything is permission based. Try to use as many different information streams as possible to do this.

These include:
·    Getting people to opt-in to your text list through your website.
·   Having signup forms at your office.
·   Publishing articles in free article directories about your topic and having anchor links that connect to an online form.
·   Offering a newsletter signup at your office and online and then soliciting subscribers to SMS through that newsletter.
·   Asking those on your mailing list to recommend friends to your SMS service.
·   Using QR codes on your literature, such as brochures, menus and mailings that will connect people to your SMS sign up list.

When asking people to sign up or recommend a friend, it’s a good idea to offer them a premium. It may be a discount on a service or item, a free consultation or a free report / item. This will help encourage people to act.

Various Campaigns

Be sure to design a questionnaire that you can use to tailor your text messages to specific groups. People can fill out the questionnaire when they sign up for the service or you can leave them the option of filling it out later.

The primary thing you want to do is capture their essential information.

Then you can direct specific SMS campaigns to people who are new to your business. You may include special first time discounts, a two-for-one offer or a premium for purchasing a product or service.

Use the Messagewala Service for Optimum Results

Messagewala can coordinate your SMS campaigns. Services include the creation of the SMS offers, keyword / shortcode integration, appointment reminders, Facebook mobile, or advertisements tailoring your text messaging to specific groups and automated mailing of the messages. This service is extremely efficient and cost effective.

SMS marketing is a relatively new tool that has proven to be especially effective. Utilize this type of service to expand your customer base. It is value-based marketing with a high return rate.

See what so many businesses are raving about.

Email Marketing: Easy Email Checklist-before Hitting Send

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 13:10:00 +0000

Online email marketing invariably involves a step-by-step process of crafting html email design, working on email newsletter content and a lot of other aspects before the email gets ready for sending.

An important email marketing best practice involves checking the email for various things and conducting simple tests on one’s own email id before sending it out to the clients at large.

A lot of marketers have an email checklist handy to examine all details of an email.

Email Marketing – Email Checklist

Before you hit send on that email, make sure to answer these very important questions regarding your email.

EMAIL CONTENT

1. Typos: Is your email copy free from grammatical errors? Getting your email newsletter content proofread from a different pairs of eyes often helps.

2. Broken links: Are all the links in the email working? It is important to see whether the links in the email are going to the right webpages.

3. Subject line: Does your subject line content words that will trigger spam filters? Make sure you avoid any such words.

4. Above the fold content: Do you have the most important information in the first half of the email body? Consider including a call to action in above the fold area of your email.

5. Preheader text: Do you have a simple line at the top of your email that prompts the reader to open your email? Preheader text shows up with the subject of your email in the inbox and helps increase email open rate.

EMAIL IMAGES

6. Alt tags: Are the images in email accompanied with self-explanatory names? Descriptive alt tags tell the reader what the image is about when the “image display” is turned off in their email clients. Know more about use of images in html email design here.

7. Titles: Do you have hover text for your images? Image titles show on mouse-hover and can again help you describe your images better.

8. Border: Do the images in email have a border? Simply placing a 1px border around the images using ‘block= “1” ‘ code helps your images stand out when image display is turned off.

EMAIL DELIVERABLITY

9. Mailer size: Is your mailer too heavy? Emails weighing more than 150kb often land up in the junk folder. Consider reducing the weight by reducing the size of image files in your email.

10. Form ID, sender id, reply id: Is the from name and sender id familiar to your customers receiving the email? Using consistent and definite sender name establishes credibility in the eyes of the readers. As they can come to know for sure by whom is the mail sent.

11. Inbox delivery: Is your email going to the mail inbox? Conduct a simple test by sending a test mail to major email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc. to check for inbox delivery.

12. Sending time: Is your email getting shot out at the right time? People are often online during 9AM-6PM and are more likely to check their emails during these hours. Emails can be sent at different times of the day to test for the most suitable time to send emails.

SPAM compliance

13. Disclaimer: Do all your emails have a disclaimer stating why you are sending the emails? Disclaimers help your readers inform about why they are receiving emails from your company.

14. Physical address: Do all your emails have the physical address of your company stated? As per the CAN-Spam act, it is mandatory to put the postal address of your business in all your emails.

15. Unsubscribe link: Do all your emails allow the recipient to easily opt-out of receiving any future emails from you? The CAN-Spam act makes it binding on all marketers to include an option for recipients to sign out and stop receiving emails from a company.

So, with the email marketing checklist ready you are all set to send your emails bang on in the inbox!

Like the email checklist? Print it and use it before sending out emails to your customers.

6 Steps to Getting the Most Bang For Your PPC Bucks

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Pop quiz: who can tell me what the difference is between SEO and PPC? Anyone? Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engines via unpaid search results, otherwise known as "natural" or "organic" results. Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click usually refer to a form of online advertising that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. As its name indicates, unlike other types of advertising, with PPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. In some instances, SEM is used as the umbrella term for both PPC and SEO. Paid results can be found at either the top or right hand-side of search result pages.

As I mentioned before, search isn't an exact science, but just like SEO there are techniques to optimize your SEM/PPC efforts. Here are just a few of them to get you started.

1. Setting Your Goals

It may seem like a no-brainer, but as with any marketing campaign it's very important to set objectives before embarking on your PPC adventure. Whether you're trying to generate traffic, sales or leads, you need to determine that right off the bat. Without a clear purpose and understanding of the data you'll be getting, it's very easy to get caught up in PPC since it's so darn cheap to begin with. But those small amounts of money add up in a hurry, and before you know it, you may dig yourself into a hole.

The big advantage with PPC is that it's super flexible. You can make changes to your campaign on the fly or shut it down entirely if need be, so it's pretty easy to adjust if the results don't exactly live up to your expectations.

2. Determining Your Keyword Universe

- List creation: This is the step that'll make or break your campaign, so take the time to sit down and think it through. Again, thanks to PPC's flexibility you'll be able to change your keyword settings instantly, so any faux pas can be easily rectified.

Keywords are typically divided into 2 categories:

Brand: these are directly "connected" to your company, (i.e., your company name, product/service names, trademarks, etc.) In our case, "eMailBlast" or "KPS Technologies" would top the list of brand terms.
Category/non-brand: these are more generic terms that can be used to describe what you do. They are also the ones you and your competitors will be battling for (even though it IS common practice and fair game to try to "leverage" others' brand keywords as well). In eMailBlast's case, they include "email marketing" or "social media".

For PPC though, you'll also want to list entire phrases that match as closely as possible to whatever users will be typing in their search queries, such as: "best email marketing tool for small businesses" or "top free social media management software." I know, the possibilities are endless (searchers can be very creative), so fret not; neither you nor your competitors will be able to cover all of them. Also, keep in mind the different typos that users are susceptible to commit when searching, so make sure to add those in as well (ex: "eMail Blast" or "email marketing").

- Matching options: once you have your nice big bucket of keywords and key phrases, you can choose to add them to your account in four different ways:

Exact match: as the name suggests, it will only display ads if the exact keyword is entered in the search field. To manually enter a keyword as an exact match, just add brackets around it, like this: [keyword]
Phrase match: ads will appear as long as the query contains the keywords in the order in which you've listed them, for example an ad will be shown if the user types in "what is the best email marketing software" and one of your phrase match keywords was "email marketing." To mark a keyword as phrase match type, just add quotation marks around it, like this: "keyword"
Broad match: ads will be triggered if the search engine deems the search query relevant to these keywords. Using them will generate a lot of traffic but at the expense of control, and the leads generated won't necessarily be qualified even though search engines are getting better at identifying rubbish. Keywords will be added as broad match by default if you don't add any symbols around them.
Negative match: these will allow you to cut down on the search results and bring back some degree of control, especially if you're rolling with a lot of broad keywords. For example, if you're in the cloud computing industry, you'll want to exclude "weather channel" or "rain" from your search results so ads won't show for people just looking for today's weather forecast. Negative keywords just need to be preceded by a minus sign, like this: -keyword

Reading this last paragraph, I'm sure you're tempted to disregard broad match entirely, but not so fast. One strategy I've seen work well is to use it on phrases with more than 2 keywords, and save phrase match for ones with just 1 or 2. That gives the search engine less leeway to return irrelevant suggestions while capturing the closely related traffic.

3. Setting up Your SEM/PPC Account(s)

- Picking a provider (or all of them): you'll probably want to start off with one of the 3 main search engines, which all offer their own solution (Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Network Plus). Keep in mind, the 3 networks use different algorithms (even if Yahoo!'s is now based off of Bing's), so whatever strategy works for one might not for the others.

- Campaigns and ad groups: once you've created your account you'll be asked to separate your keywords into various buckets that will eventually become your campaigns and ad groups, which will form its basic structure.

Campaigns: I'd recommend you stick to one campaign per goal you set, for example if you're a winery, you should have one campaign for "Sell red wines", another for "Sell white wines", etc.
Ad groups: these should be organized by common theme or product/service, with ideally 3 ad groups per campaign. So if your goal was to sell red wines, you could have the following:

Ad Groups	Syrah	Merlot	Pinot noir
Keywords	•Syrah •shiraz •dureza •mondeuse blanche •dry red wine •petite syrah	•Bordeaux •merlot grapes •merlot •fruity red wine	•Pinot noir •Black grape •Bourgogne •Burgundy •Light red wine

- Networks, devices and extensions: these settings will allow you to keep a close eye on your budget and where your ads will be served. Regarding the networks, my suggestion would be to have one campaign run on one unique network (content OR search), not both.

- Delivery: here you'll have the option between letting the search engine do the work for you based on clickthrough rate (the "optimize" option) or running your split testing yourself, based on the metrics that best suit your goals ("rotate").

- Scheduling: this is your on/off switch, allowing you to run and pause your campaign as you please. There is some additional granularity as you can also adjust the amount of your keyword bids should any opportunities arise, based on seasonality or market mood swings.

- Audience: last but not least, you need to choose who should see your ads. You can target users based on language, country, city or even define specific areas (ex: all within a 30-mile radius of San Francisco but exclude 10-mile radius around Napa).

4. Writing Your Ads

This might actually be the hardest part to master, all while being the backbone of your PPC campaign. Just keep an eye on your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and make sure you're doing some split-testing, that way you can pull your underperforming ads on the fly and run with the better ones.

Ads usually consist of 5 lines, even though only 4 are visible to searchers:

Ad title (25 characters maximum): include keywords in your headline, since it's what people are looking for and you'll want to grab their attention right away.
Description (2 lines, with 35 characters each maximum): relate what you say in this paragraph to whatever landing page you'll be directing the searcher to, to stay consistent. Get straight to the point, deliver the most relevant information about your business/products/services (depending on the search query) and always, always include a strong, enticing call-to-action.
Display URL (35 characters maximum): as its name indicates, this is the visible web address that will show below the description. You can either type in your homepage or most relevant product/service page, just make sure it is short enough and clean (all your website URLs are clean anyway, right?).
Destination URL (1,024 characters maximum): this is the invisible line I mentioned, and where the ad title will actually link to. It doesn't have to be identical to the display URL, as you can choose to have it point instead to an entirely different landing page you may have created for the purpose of your PPC campaign, or your display URL but tagged with any referred-by codes you might have assigned to this particular campaign.

5. Bidding

Finally, the good stuff. An old coworker used to say "PPC is like playing chess against a supercomputer," and it's not difficult to understand why. Not only do you have to pick which keywords to focus on, you must also try to anticipate which ones your competitors will be bidding on. Throw in the different types of matches, account settings, ad versions, and you've got quite a lot of levers to pull and moving parts to keep in mind. Thankfully, here are some tried and true strategies for you to use:

- Choose your weapon: there are 3 different ways to place a bid available:

Manual bidding: you get to set the highest price you are willing to pay. This is the method that leaves you with the most control, so if you have a clear understanding of your goals and typical conversion values, you should be able to determine what a good bid is fairly easily.
Conversion Optimizer: based on historical results, the search engine will calculate the bids based on conversion data.
Budget Optimizer: the search engine does thy bidding, to get the most clicks possible for your budget.

- Winners don't necessarily finish first: the biggest mistake PPC users can make is to obsessively go after the number one spot. The spots below it will cost you less per click, and by extension, a lot less per conversion.

- It's all about tweaking: PPC requires constant attention as yesterday's truth is rarely today's, given your competitors' activities and constant traffic fluctuations. Also be prepared to pause your campaign if, despite all your efforts, bidding proves too expensive with too little return on investment, and give yourself some time to assess what is going wrong.

6. Tracking

Once your ads are out in the World Wide Web for all to see, it's time to see how they actually perform. Here are the main metrics to keep an eye on:

Impressions: the number of times your ad has been served.
CTR (clickthrough rate): the number of times your ad was actually clicked on divided by the number of impressions.
Bounce rate: the number of visitors viewing one page only divided by total page entries.
Conversion rate: the number of goal achievements divided by the number of visits.
CPC (Cost Per Click): the amount you earn every time a user clicks on your ad.
Quality Score: this is the other major factor in deciding where your ad appears in the rankings, besides bidding. It is the search engines' way of rewarding relevance and they calculate it based on clickthrough rate, ad content and quality of the landing page. In the end, this is how your rankings are determined:

Max bid x quality score = ad rank

Head and long tail: these aren't metrics per se, but they are pretty crucial to keep track of. Head is the few keywords that account for most of your visits, while long tail are the ones that individually account for little traffic by themselves, but collectively often could account for a huge amount of traffic. Typically, brand keywords are included in your head, while category keywords are part of your long tail. My recommendation would be for you to focus your PPC efforts on your long tail, and leave your head to SEO. Why? Well, category terms are typically used in queries by people who are unfamiliar with your company itself, so you'll be able to capture prospects and introduce yourself to them early in the sales cycle. On the other hand, optimizing your website for brand terms suddenly becomes easier as you just have a few keywords left to concentrate on, and you won't have to pay too much anymore for people who already know you.

And now you should be set for SEM, in all its shapes and forms. Let us know if any of these tips work out for you, or have any of your own to share!

Email Marketers: How The World Sees Us vs How We See Ourselves

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:02:00 +0000

All credits go to the creator of this infograph: Ryan Phelan

Outlook 2007 & HTML eMail Design: A Summary

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:02:00 +0000

As the dust settles on the big bust up over Outlook 2007 and how it displays emails, I thought I'd sum up the arguments, issues and implications. Here goes...

The story so far

Microsoft's new version of Outlook, the email client included within their forthcoming Office 2007 software, features an important change in how it displays emails.

Previously, Outlook relied on the technology behind its sibling web browser (Internet Explorer) to interpret the underlying code and instructions that HTML emails use to tell Outlook where and how to display all those images, colors etc.

The new Outlook 2007 now uses Word to do that job instead.

The big deal is that Word is not nearly as good as Internet Explorer at understanding HTML elements and style properties (CSS). Microsoft themselves published an article describing the various things that Outlook 2007 will not be able to cope with. These include:

Forms
Background images
Animated GIFs
Flash
Float or position commands
Alt tags in images

In a nutshell, this places a lot of restrictions on email design. Needless to say, email designers are not happy.

The fires of protest first sparked into flame via an article in Sitepoint's newsletter. This led to a now-famous blog post by David Greiner, with the memorable title "Microsoft takes email design back 5 years."

David's post in turn led to a slew of similar posts from outraged designers, who like him were upset at the limitations imposed on their work by Outlook. The story even made it to the front page of ClickZ and Digg.

Is this bad for email marketing?

The general consensus is that the implications for email marketing are not huge. This is because Outlook is predominately used by the business community.

Other email clients typically used by business folk aren't particular good with HTML and CSS either. So most B2B email marketers are already sending out Outlook 2007-friendly HTML emails.

For example, the folk at MailChimp point out that much of the "lost" functionality was never standard in HTML email design anyway. In other words, we're losing a lot of functionality that wasn't particularly valuable in the first place.

That opinion is echoed by Bill Nussey of Silverpop, who notes, "Bottom line, Outlook 2007's rendering engine is not a game-changing event for email marketers."

The counterargument is that these other email clients never had enough market shares to make it compulsory to send out "watered down" HTML emails.

So some people will inevitably have to go back to their email template and redesign them again, on the assumption that Outlook 2007 will likely become the most popular email software among business people.

Even then, say experts, there's no reason why simpler HTML has to mean poorer response rates.

Some suggest that the negative reaction is more to do with the creative restrictions it imposes on designers rather than any likely marketing problems.

In other words, yes, design needs to take account of Outlook 2007's relatively poor rendering capabilities, but you can still send decent looking, effective email to people using it.

That argument is exemplified by Greg Cangialosi, who writes on the Blue Sky Factory blog, "This is a small blow to email marketers, but certainly not the biggest deal. What this really does is make all of that great creative talent we have out there revert back to nascent HTML email design"

So why the fuss?

To some extent the uproar comes from a reopening of two traditional divisions in email marketing.

The first is between the creative folk and the marketing folk.

Some marketers have made relatively offhand comments along the lines, of "tough, get over it," which is a touch disrespectful to the trade and art of email design.

If you took away the color green from an artist's palette, she could still paint great works of art. But you wouldn't expect her to be happy about it.

The second division is between the email marketing community and a section of the anti-spam community...those who believe marketing email in general and HTML marketing email in particular is an abomination.

The anti-HTML-in-email brigade have welcomed the move, though it's a pyrrhic victory: it won't change the number of HTML emails around, it will just make them less creative.

So are there any practical implications?

Yes. If you are tackling a business audience with your list and never bothered to consider problems with how your emails display, then this is a necessary wake-up call. Various versions of Outlook have a market share among business users of over 50%. So expect Outlook 2007 to be widely used.

The change should be seen as a further reminder that how your emails display is a critical part of email marketing.

The more complex the email and the more fancy the coding within it, the less likely it is to be seen as you intended. It doesn't mean the end of email design creativity, but it certainly means you need to take a more circumspect approach to the whole topic.

People view your emails using different software. Some use a desktop email client, others use webmail. There are different webmail services. Some people read emails on their mobile device. This diversity needs accommodating in your email design.

Equally, the less creative flexibility you have in terms of layout, images and colors, the more thought needs to go into other aspects of the email, such as the words you use and the offer you present.

So while Outlook 2007 may not prove to be the disaster some have called it, it's certainly another good reason to take a longer deeper look at the email we send.

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Six approaches for future-proof email marketing

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:56:00 +0000

So in a terrifying moment of weakness I found myself saying:

“It would be nice to get 3000 Twitter followers by the end of the year”

Oh dear.

Why 3000? Why by the end of the year? Why focus on THAT metric? Why, Kumar, why?

I’m only human. The seductive appeal of using a random number of followers, likes, +1’s or subscribers as your measure of success is a tricky one to resist.

But the mistake led me to ask whether I’ve learned anything over the past 3+ years of online and email marketing.

Cue a brief period of panic…followed by a longer period of reflection.

Here’s what popped out: six approaches and principles that have stood the test of time.

1. Understand the true meaning of value

Well, it didn’t take me long to come up with the principle of “delivering value” as an email must.

You have to give to get: give value and it comes back in return…as opens, clicks, conversions, loyalty, word of mouth etc.

But there are three traps we commonly fall into.

Avoid one-way value

It’s important to ask how different email approaches, content and offers might address business needs.

But the result depends on the recipients reacting the right way.

And their reaction depends on how these different email approaches, content and offers contribute to their needs.

So the real question to ask is how email can help our subscribers, and in doing so help us.

Don’t over-estimate value

We’re all (probably) passionate about our products and services. Readers usually aren’t quite so excited.

Our enthusiasm can blind us to the true value of what we offer through email, leading to unrealistic expectations of response and sending email to people who maybe shouldn’t be getting it.

Don’t misunderstand value

So what is “value” anyway?

Yep, for a lot of people it’s discounts, coupons, savings, free shipping, or a bonus lollipop if you register by Friday.

But it’s also helpful information; feeling appreciated, feeling understood, a story, entertainment, humor, a sense of community or just a simple reminder that the sender is still open for business…

I’m not a psychologist, but the potential value you might deliver via an email message covers a lot more than “20% off your next purchase”.

2. Be willing to tweak and change

Once something works at least reasonably well, we’re reluctant to change anything.

The fear of making things worse often overwhelms the prospect of making things better.

This inertia is combated by testing: you can make changes without “exposing yourself” to the whole email list.

If it makes things better, great. If it doesn’t, no harm done.

Equally, it helps to understand that most readers aren’t evaluating your emails with the intensity of a marketing blogger. When you change the color of the “shop now” button to blue, readers are unlikely to storm your headquarters in protest.

Each new email is an opportunity to test a tweak, and each tweak can have surprisingly positive impacts:

Subject line tests that double open rates over time
Changes in link wording that produce over 50% more clicks
From line tests that pull over 20% more clicks
Link format tests (button vs text) that increase clicks 67%

The flipside is that sustainable, long-term improvement needs more fundamental or innovative change to email design, tactics and strategy. Morgan Stewart once wrote:

“If the best idea your creative and/or testing team can come up with for improving your creative is to test the color of your links, then fire them.”

3. Respect the basics

Much of the media and event talk around email marketing focuses on the new and cool: tactics that can be difficult (or expensive) to implement for many (most) marketers.

We don’t all have customer databases that can easily integrate with 87 different types of trigger email. We can’t all serve thousands of list segments with on-the-fly customization.

Nor do we have to.

Fact is, professional basic email marketing is still a winner. If you set expectations correctly at sign-up, then your subscribers should have enough in common so that “one size” of email can still “fit all”.

Of course advanced tactics will improve results. But don’t focus on what’s next before ensuring you have the basics covered.

Forget the thought leaders and experts for a moment and dig into the FAQs and introductory articles that lay out some of the email marketing basics. For example:

A recent survey found that 60% of top UK retailers don’t send welcome messages to new subscribers. There’s an easy win for a start.
When you ask people to sign-up for emails, do you give them a compelling reason to do so? If not, why should they?
Are you using the cheap, but effective, design preview tools to make sure what you send is what people actually see in their inboxes?

4. Be unique

Valuable content and offers, permission, creative design, relevancy, timing, personalization, customization etc. are important factors that can take your email marketing amplifier all the way up to 10.

What takes it up to 11?

What makes your emails irreplaceable?

What makes them immune to the vagaries of delivery demands, soporific subscribers and the claws of the competition?

What do people get from your emails that they can’t get from anyone else’s?

Uniqueness can come through what you send: the unique nature of your content or offers. Or you can achieve it through how you say and present it (voice, style, creativity and personality).

Personality, in particular, turns words and pictures into communication. It helps avoid the natural drift to mediocrity. And it compensates for offers or content that can’t compete so well in their own right.

5. Use common sense

There’s a lot of great information out there on email marketing, but a moment’s thought tells us it can’t all be true all the time. For example:

Those producing information are all “biased by their biases”…by overt and subconscious agendas, by beliefs, by personal experience.
There are many issues in email marketing that are by no means clear cut.

Much advice also needs adapting in the light of personal and organizational circumstances: business goals, target market, industry sector, etc.

Making sense of information can be a challenge, but you can go a long way with common sense and a healthy dose of critical thinking.

For example, everyone preaches that you should avoid sending emails that are essentially one big image.

How’s your work-of-art going to look when the image is blocked (the default setting for many email software clients and webmail services)? And spam filters don’t like them much, too.

That’s the official line, anyway. So why are they used by, for example, large multinational fashion retailers with decades of email marketing experience behind them?

Because it works for them: some offers work better with the visual impact of a large image. Learn to distinguish between best practices and safe practices that can be broken in the right circumstances.

6. Dig deeper into the numbers

Perhaps the most tedious and underestimated marketing skill is analytical.

The online marketing world is drowning in data and driven by data. But data without wisdom is just stamp collecting.

Don’t take things at face value and don’t assume your preferred explanation is the right one.

Some examples:

The last campaign got the highest open rate ever. Hey, our subject line was a winner! (Or maybe you just solved a deliverability problem that was seeing half your emails dumped in spam folders. Or one of a dozen other factors.)

Most people who open email on a mobile device are using iPhones. Hey, our audience is full of Apple fans! (Or maybe it’s because the iPhone displays images by default – including the tracking image that records an open – while Android devices block them. Android smart phones actually have three times the global market share of the iPhone.)

For more inspiration on intelligent analysis, look at Kevin Hillstrom, the Ad Contrarian and others who avoid bandwagon explanations and approaches.

How to Ensure Your SMS is Read, Not Deleted

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:56:00 +0000

The single fastest growing and most successful form of marketing today is SMS (or text message marketing). SMS snatched up the most opens, views and forwards from veteran marketing strategies including emails and faxes.

But, sadly, like emails and faxes, SMS marketing isn’t immune to deletions or other errant customer behavior. Though the numbers are extremely promising for the success of SMS, text messaging isn’t without faults.

Consider this your “booster” shot!

1. Avoid sending huge picture files and graphically dense messages.

If it takes too long for your message to download or if your customer is required to open up their picture reader program (like iPhoto) to see your images, then you’re just wasting their time and cell phone memory.

2. Include promotional codes and digital coupons in your messages.

Give your subscribers a quick and easy “take-away” from your promotion. Especially for SMS marketing, if you’re not giving something to your customers, then you’re just plain wasting their time.

3. Keep your message less than 140-characters to encourage forwarding.

The maximum character length for SMS messages is 160, and anything above that gets broken up into several different messages.

Further, if you keep your message small and tidy, subscribers are more likely to send your message along to their friends.

4. Send your text at the right time of day and day of the week.

Do a little digging through your SMS marketing data and figure out what time and day results in the most conversions, forwards and overall actions.

5. Keep your SMS immaculately clean.

Even accidentally sending a routine text to a customer who’s already unsubscribed is poor form, unprofessional and may lead other customers to abandon you.

Sure, it’s a pain to clean out your lists daily, but it must be done. Take the time to also delete bad numbers along with the unsubscribed.

6. Don’t let the informal nature of texting swallow up your campaign.

There’s a tendency among marketers that because texting is “everyday” and universal that they can get away with being a little less professional.

No! For example, write real words instead of made-up text lingo and always, always, include quick links to your customer service team.

How to Improve Your SMS Marketing Conversion Rate

noreply@blogger.com (KPS Technologies) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:09:00 +0000

In today’s world, SMS marketing is king. Not only is it the fastest growing method of marketing, it also boasts a surprisingly high success rate. As a marketer, that should be something that makes you sit up and pay attention.

However, with anything that appears to be a sure thing, there’s always something darker lurking underneath. SMS marketing isn’t perfect, and those who think it so, are fools.

Everything needs constant improvement and careful watching. Everything can afford to be better.

So, with that in mind, here are some tips to help you turn your fantastic SMS messages into more action, and above all, sales.

1. Know Where You Are, Before You Set Off Improving

With any improvement project, you must first need to figure out what needs to be improved. Get a clear picture of how your conversion rate has been acting over a couple of months. Look to the peaks and valleys. Look to the average.

From this data, you’ll be able to set a reasonable and achievable goal.

Further still, with a clear picture of where you’re starting from, you’ll be able to track how well you’ve been doing.

2. Time Your SMS Correctly

The beauty with text message marketing is that there isn’t much of a delay from when your message is sent and it’s opened by your subscriber. As a rule, text messages are opened faster than emails. Perhaps it’s due to the incredibly personal way of communicating: you’re message is in their pocket or purse.

Look to the time and day that your customers are most active with your SMS.

Though each business is different, in general, most people are more inclined to act on marketing messages later in the afternoon towards evening and often on the weekends.

So, send your messages at the top three days and times and watch your conversions soar.

3. Make it Easy for Customers to Purchase

It’s important that with any marketing strategy – especially, SMS – that cashing in on your promotions is quick and painless.

If you make your customers jump through hoops to get their 20% discount, they’ll just as soon turn it down instead of using it.

A note about promotional codes: ensure that they’re easy to remember. For example, SHOE20 is far easier to remember than SHOE4892034, especially if the discount is 20% off their next purchase of shoes.

4. Link to Your Other Promotions

As long as your message remains shorter than the 160-character maximum, you’ll be able to link to your online life. But, don’t overdo it because you’ll waste valuable space on the other end.

So, the best thing to do is offer links that are relevant to your promotional message. Further, set up a directed landing page that offers more information regarding your deal as well as additional links to your main website and social media pages.