Great news – according to Adotas and Emarketer – email & interactive marketing is increasing in popularity and getting more of the spend than other channels.

EMarketer notes that budgets were more likely to be cut than increased for traditional media such as TV, radio and direct mail, but more respondents said they would up their investments in e-mail marketing, search and interactive than said spending would be reduced

With confidence running high and spending up for email and interactive marketing – I’d like to introduce you to our new ‘Interactive” marketing channel – BusinessBlogs. We have created this NEW marketing channel for you!

“Click to read our Story” and learn more about the progressive move from Outbound to Inbound Marketing.

While currently print media still has the largest slice of the pie, email marketing is increasing in popularity and will continue to erode the large segments of the pie held by print, and the other traditional media channel for advertising.

Check out our new Interactive Marketing Solution for you – “Reach more quality NZ Eyeballs” click here

It is important that you put some effort into creating a clear and effective email marketing strategy as it can make the difference between a rapidly growing mailing list (that helps increase your sales and build stronger relationship with your subscribers) or result in the potential of losing your subscribers and getting your messages blocked before they reach your subscribers inbox.

When you send an email from your business to your subscribers you are in fact presenting your business officially to each subscriber. How the subscriber views your email will decide how the subscriber also views your business. An email that contains sloppy formatting, poor or irrelevant content could set a negative perception in the subscribers mind about your business.

Subscribers now expect a well designed email message with informative content that adds value to them. Competition is fierce these days especially with globalization. The subscriber knows they are in control of the relationship. So it is vital to your business to only send well formatted and informative emails.

In this series we will cover the basics of good ethical email marketing.

Step 1: The Reason

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

“What do I want to achieve from emailing my clients and prospects?”

This may sound very Zen but in order to build a solid house one must first have a solid plan.

We asked some of our clients this very question and here are some of their replies:

“I want to be able to alert my customers to new products and services as soon as they come online.”

“I want to provide fantastic educational content to my subscribers so they have a great feeling about my business and end up wanting to buy my products!”

“We see email as providing a quick and efficient way of staying in touch with our seminar attendees after the event. By creating a mailing list of attendees we will not lose touch with them but in fact continue our relationship with them through email. This will enable our company to alert people to new events without having to do too much cold calling!”

“I want to be able to create autoresponders that automatically email them each month so I stay in touch with my subscribers without much effort.”

If you define a reason or two as to why you are emailing your clients and prospects then the rest of the work in creating your email marketing strategy becomes far easier and more enjoyable.

Another point to remember is subscribers are very smart and it won’t take them long to ignore your emails and your business if they learn you have a motive similar to:

“I want to bombard my subscribers with endless emails about how fantastic and vital my business is to their lives. I also want to sell my list to my mates so they can send information about their businesses as well!”

The next step in our series will focus on the frequency of sending emails to your subscribers.

Tags: Email Message Design, HTML emails, objectives

We have recently applied the following enhancements to the auto-responder feature available in your account:

1. An auto-responder message can now be delivered to a subscriber instantaneously after that person joins the mailing list associated with the auto responder rule and,
2. A group of auto-responder messages can be pre-scheduled to activate on selected mailing list(s). For example you could schedule the delivery of a series of messages to release extracts of an e-book. Each time a new subscriber is added to the mailing list the schedule of auto responder messages would commence.

We are continuing to enhance our system with more user-friendly features. Watch this space for an update on our built-in survey feature.

We have ranted on about treating your subscribers with respect a few times now.

One of our recommendations is to always send your subscribers content that they subscribed to receive and nothing else. If you subscribed to receive information on the latest wine specials from New Zealand wineries you would not expect to receive special deals on trips to Fiji.

Well, one company did send their subscribers content that a subscriber thought was not relevant and found out that sometimes this can massively backfire especially if one of the subscribers is a very influential blogger.

David Meerman Scott was so incensed at receiving what he believed to be unrelated content that he wrote about the experience in a blog post titled “Sleazy opt-in email tactics from otherwise reputable organizations”.

The word spread so fast that the company in question removed the entire email campaign for review and attempted to clean things up by commenting in David’s post.

Don’t let this happen to you. The fact that we are now commenting and linking to the post has increased the readership of the mentioned company even more and we are just one blog of over 100+ million blogs around the world.

As a refresh we recommend you read our “How being a bit smarter with your email marketing can bring great returns” here.

David’s post can be read here.

I have exciting news – we have added a Social Media Tag Library in your Mobilize Mail Account.

You can now reap the rewards by gaining more visibility for your business through email marketing.

Each time you mail out to your database (mailing lists) you can gain more views of your email content with the Social Media links in your email template – or in the message.

Image of links in a message.

You may be thinking right now…but what is Social Media?

The short answer is Social Media is a term coined for websites that provide platforms for interacting and networking. Some well known examples of social media sites are Twitter; Facebook; LinkedIn. You may have accounts with these sites, and your mailing list/database of clients, prospects will more than likely have one or many accounts.

With these accounts your email recipients can click a Social Media link (in your email message) to share your email message content with the people they are networked to through their social media account.

For example we have a twitter account called www.twitter.com/businesstalk. When we receive an email message that provides a social media link to Twitter (Twit This) we can click the link and share the email message with our 6000 followers.

You can see why this is big news!

You send a message to one person and they can share it with lots of people by clicking a link in your message and you can find out who shared your message by viewing your email campaign statistics. You may even wish to reward these people for sharing your emails with their networks.

Contact us ( support@mobilizemail.com ) to add the Social Media Links to your Template – a 15 min job.

Further Reading on Social Media

A Business Owner’s Perspective on Social Media – read article

Adding a signup form to your web site is an easy task which can be done in a few steps:

1) Copy the HTML signup code from your Mobilize Mail account and

2) Add the HTML code to the web pages you want the form to appear in.

Done!

Now you can add a signup form to your Facebook fan pages which only involves a few easy steps as well.

Follow the steps below to add a signup form to your Facebook fan page:

1) First copy the HTML signup form code from your Mobilize Mail account to notepad or textedit so its easy to locate.

2) Go to the Static FBML application and choose to add it. You prompted to select the fan page you would like application added to.

3) Edit the FBML application. Click on ‘edit page’ from your pages profile, and find the FBML box. Click the pencil edit icon in the header.

4) Paste the HTML signup code into the “FBML” box and add a name for the application such as “Newsletter”. Click the Save Changes button to save the changes.

5) Now add the signup form to your fan page by adding it as a tab. You can do this by clicking on the “+” sign on the tab row.

6) Now you have a signup form on your fan page!

A frequent question I get asked is “what can I do to increase the success of my email marketing campaigns?”.

To help I have provided some tips below:

Get to know your subscribers.

The most important tip I can give you is to apply common sense to your email marketing strategy.

For example before you hit the “send” button ask yourself this question: “if I was to receive this email from a business would I find the content of benefit to me?”. If you answered “hmm…” or “no” then imagine what your subscribers would think!

Don’t send your subscribers pure sales content. In order to gain a foothold in the minds of people you need to make them feel like they are getting value from reading your emails.

Respect your subscribers.

If your subscribers signed up to your mailing list because you told them they would receive interesting information about your products, services or a topic they are interested in then I suggest you do not send them content that is different from what they are expecting.

Ask yourself this: “would you be happy if you signed up to receive information on camera’s only to receive emails on their business partners new car yard?” What would you do in response? This will be the action that most subscribers will take as well.

Set a frequency of emailing your subscribers and stick to it.

One of the worst things you can do is promise to send out a monthly email and then change to send out fortnightly or weekly. This again comes down to respecting your subscribers. They signed up in good faith to what you initially stated so it would not be a great idea to break that promise. If you want to increase the frequency then create a new email campaign stream and invite the subscriber to join in your next regular email campaign.

Help your subscribers spread the word about your emails.

Your email service provider should allow you to add in links such as “Forward to a Friend” and “Web Version” to your email templates. This enables your subscribers to send your emails in a controlled and professional way to other people who they think might be interested in your content.

Segment your subscribers to provide more targeted content.

In today’s world people want targeted content sent to them because most don’t have the time to read through the irrelevant stuff to get to what they want.

I recommend you look at the click statistics of your email campaigns to see what subscribers are interested in then create new mailing lists based on the statistics. Then create targeted email content.

For example if your business provides legal services to the business community and you had the following 3 topics:

1) Legal advice for unfair dismissal submissions,

2) How a business can protect themselves from defamation cases,

3) How to reduce your legal costs.

The click statistics should tell you which subscribers are interested in which topics. You should then be able to create a new mailing list for each topic and add all the subscribers that clicked the relevant link into the new mailing lists in one click of the mouse button.

You now can really target your content to the right subscribers!

Partner with an email service provider.

There are many other smart ways to increase the success of your email campaigns. The most important consideration is partnering with an email service provider that not only has the advanced tools but the knowledge to customize an email marketing strategy that suits your requirements.

Online News Websites and Blogs reported chaos on the Internet in the first few hours following the death of Michael Jackson.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said: ‘We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke” where 5000 tweats per minute were Michael Jackson related.

The number of Facebook posts tripled during the hour of Michael’s death.

Such was the surge in online traffic that Google returned an ‘error message’ for searches of the singer’s name as it assumed it was under attack. Wikipedia also crashed.

The Internet at its peak on Thursday night had 4.2 million global visitors per minute – where normal traffic is around 2 million. 84% (over 2 million) of the increased traffic was from from USA .

The race was on to secure domain names relating to Michael Jackson and his songs – Go Daddy registered over 3,700 by 1pm on Thursday – just hours after Michael’s death.

And finally downloading of Michaels songs on sites like iTunes and memorabalia sites like Ebay were flooded. We have witnessed the power of and maybe the limitations of the Cyberspace to communicate big News.

Sources: – DailyMail.co.uk; 411mania.com

Wow! Technically we are in a recession however you would be forgiven for not realising it if your business is online. According to Neilsen Online Marketing Intelligence 2009 – the average time spent online is now 13 hours a week!

More time online has also translated into more money is being spent online. Businesses are dedicating more budget to email marketing – source and working out how to tie in their email marketing with social media.

The Internet Bureau’s latest email newsletter said “75% of the global online population is now engaged in online social behaviours and social media is growing in NZ. 200,000 newly active social networking accounts were recorded between October 2008 (1.7 million) and February 2009 (1.9 million), according to MSN’s PR agency, Talkies Group.”

What social media tools are you using for your business? A Facebook and Twitter account are now considered the norm for business. Participation in discussion forums is also increasing in popularity with PropertyTalk.com experiencing a 30 percent increase in visitor traffic and a higher volume of discussion threads in 2009.

Twitter works perfectly for directing visitors to discussion forums and blogs and this approach is being integrated with email. Facebook is now being used by non-online businesses and email is being utilised as the channel.

To get more out of your email marketing with social media watch out for our new Business Blogs website – due for release in July 09. There will be at least a couple of dedicated blogs on Social Media and how you can use it effectively with your email marketing.

One of the compliance requirements of the Financial Advisors Act 2008 (The Act) is the delivery of a Disclosure Statement (DS) prior to providing your services.

From The Act:

22. Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

The process of recording the delivery of the DS can be a cost and time burden on your business. You may also find yourself often asking the question: “Did I send that person my DS?”

The Act states that delivery of the DS can include electronic delivery and this provides you with an opportunity to deliver, track and record the event automatically and by doing so reduce the time and cost to your business in complying with this requirement.

Clause from the Financial Advisors Act 2008:

24. How disclosure must be made by authorised financial adviser

(1) Disclosure by an authorised financial adviser must be made in a disclosure statement.

(2) The disclosure statement must—

(a) be in writing; and

(b) state when it was prepared; and

(c) state the name, address, and business telephone number of the financial adviser; and

(d) be either received by the client, or delivered or sent to the client, at the client’s last known address or an address (including an electronic address)

Mobilize Mail has an automated solution for you. Our solution will enable you to deliver, track, and record the delivery of your Disclosure Statement. Every Mobilize Mail account has a document library facility where you can store your documents e.g. pdf. There is no fee for uploading and storing your documents in the document library in your account. For compliance with The Act we currently have clients that are using their document library facility to store their Disclosure Statement and delivering it automatically via an auto responder message.

To deliver the DS to a client a standard auto responder (auto email message) is created. The email message can be plain text or HTML utilizing your email template to show your business brand, links to your website etc. The email message can also be personalized e.g. Hello [first name].

Within the email message content is a clickable link to the DS. The link is tracked so a click on the link produces a measurement of the event and you now have a historical record of delivering the DS email message and your client’s click on the document itself.

Do You Need to Deliver a Disclosure Statement?

Here are the clauses from The Act that identify what services and products require the delivery of the
DS:

What is financial adviser service

A person (A) performs a financial adviser service if, in the course of business, A—

(a) gives financial advice; or

(b) makes an investment transaction; or

(c) provides a financial planning service.

category 1 product means—

(a) a security (other than a security that is a category 2 product); or
(b) any estate or interest in land; or
(c) a futures contract; or
(d) any other product specified by the regulations

category 2 product means—

(a) a call debt security; or
(b) a bank term deposit; or
(c) an insurance product excluding a life insurance policy issued after 31 December 2008; or
(d) a consumer credit contract as defined in section 11 of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003; or
(e) any other product specified by the regulations

22 Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

* Subject to section 26, a financial adviser who performs a financial adviser service must make disclosure, in accordance with this Act and the regulations, to the person for whom the financial adviser service is performed before (or, if not practicable before, as soon as practicable after) performing the financial adviser service.

Remove the stress, added time and cost to your business for compliance by setting up this automated solution for your business. Complete our Quote Form – or contact Donna directly.

Source: Go to Financial Advisors Act 2008