eMail Marketing gives businesses of any size access to the mass market at an affordable price and, unlike TV or print advertising, it allows truly personalised marketing. Specific benefits of e-marketing include:

• Global reach – a website can reach anyone in the world who has internet access. This allows you to find new markets and compete globally for only a small investment.
• Lower cost – a properly planned and effectively targeted e-marketing campaign can reach the right customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods.
• Trackable, measurable results – marketing by email or banner advertising makes it easier to establish how effective your campaign has been. You can obtain detailed information about customers’ responses to your advertising.
• 24-hour marketing – with a website your customers can find out about your products even if your office is closed.
• Personalisation – if your customer database is linked to your website, then whenever someone visits the site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy from you, the more you can refine your customer profile and market effectively to them.
• One-to-one marketing – eMail Marketing lets you reach people who want to know about your products and services instantly. For example, many people take mobile phones and PDAs wherever they go. Combine this with the personalised aspect of e-marketing, and you can create very powerful, targeted campaigns.
• More interesting campaigns – e-marketing lets you create interactive campaigns using music, graphics and videos. You could send your customers a game or a quiz – whatever you think will interest them.
• Better conversion rate – if you have a website, then your customers are only ever a few clicks away from completing a purchase. Unlike other media which require people to get up and make a phone call, post a letter or go to a shop, e-marketing is seamless.

If you would like to find out more or have a free 10 day trial of our email marketing system, please give us a call on 0845 467 1074 or contact us via the contact page.

Electronic direct mail has time, technology and trends on its side so why is it that consumers are increasingly rejecting the channel?

A study by email marketing consultants Return Path found that deliverability rates fell to 83% in the second-half of 2011. e-Mail delivered to a user’s SPAM folder increased to 7%, the study found, while missing or blocked email reached 10% of all mail sent.

So, to put in another way, almost 20% of all emails being sent are never received, while one in ten went missing.

The inefficiencies are not confined to the UK either. Global deliverability rates fell to 76.5% in the period, falling below 80% for the first time in several years.

Return Path of course, as deliverability consultants, have some vested interest in presenting statistics as difficulties. Cynicism aside and accepting the robustness of the study’s methodology (1.1 million campaigns were studied worldwide over the six months to 31 December), it does demonstrate the growing problems and the challenge for acceptance email marketers face.

One problem, Return Path argues, stems from internet service providers (ISPs) employing what it terms “reputation metrics” – engagement level and trusted subscriber data, for example – that are unavailable to many marketers and mean that emails are being rejected before seen by consumers.

It is not such technological minutiae, all of which can be overcome, which could derail the plans of marketers, however. The biggest threat comes from overloading previously receptive customers.

Too many companies are sending too many emails.

A customer agreeing to receive further information does not offer brands an excuse to overload consumers with an avalanche of messages. At best, messages will be deleted without being read, at worst the sender will be labeled as a spammer, marked as one and have zero opportunity to get their message across by email.

In turn, an email labeled as SPAM will further reduce delivery rates and offer companies a reason to look at other marketing channels for communications after concluding email is inefficient and rubs consumers up the wrong way.

Email is an efficient, cost effective way of sending marketing messages. Companies should be wary of allowing the opportunities it presents become a threat.

Reported in Marketing Week | By Russell Parsons

The direct mail industry has not been blessed with the best of news of late. Advertising Association commissioned data from market intelligence service Warc found 2011 growth notably below the rest of the advertising industry and a like-for-like forecast of declines in 2012.

Amid the relief that the advertising industry’s growth, at 2.7%, outperformed economic growth and, at 3.8%, will continue to do so in 2012 was news that Direct Marketing spend increased by just 1% in 2011 and, on a like-for-like basis, is tipped to fall by the same amount this year.

That last figure should be particularly worrying in an a year when, inspired by the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee, the overall advert market is expected to grow by 3.8% and all channels but press are forecast to rise.

It could be argued that the opportunities London 2012 and the Jubilee present above the line media such as television, outdoor and press are not available to direct mailers. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s et al are not historically major users of the channel.

This, however, does betray some of the more fundamental issues that Direct Marketing in its oldest form, advertising mail, is faced with. Rising prices, borne from the recent decision to allow one of Direct Marketing’s biggest stakeholders Royal Mail to set its own prices for bulk mail services, is one of the biggest issues that direct marketers face in a world that is often hostile to “junk”.

As much as Royal Mail has sought to offset the impact of already planned Direct Marketing price increases with its Advertising Mail initiative offering discounts on some services, companies still face increased costs.

And with licence for Royal Mail to increase prices further, there are diminishing incentives to turn to or turn back to physical Direct Marketing.

One development, however, that could offer a shard of light to the possibly gloomy sector, comes this very day.

TNT Post has launched a trial in West London today (16 April) that will allow it to cover the “last mile” of delivery, previously the exclusive domain of the Royal Mail.

It is thought that the postal operator is planning to roll out similar services for business customers across the country. Until now, TNT has only delivered bulk mail for big brands such as Barclays and Tesco but a nationwide “final mile” service would open the door for it to compete across the board on advertising mail.

It is not that it would necessarily offer a better or more comprehensive service but the prospect of a break to the Royal Mail’s monopoly offers the prospect that prices could be dragged down.

Direct Marketing needs a kick-start, increased competition might offer it just that.

Reported in Marketing Week | By Russell Parsons

If you want to learm more about some of the techniques for improving your sales skills then please email / call  Dan Wilcox (dwilcox99@hotmail.co.uk / 07957 398586) to reserve a place. He is deliberately limiting the number of places to a maximum of 10 as this will allow him to address some of the issues that are important to you and your business.

To that end he has created a brief questionnnaire that he asks all attendees to complete and email back to him so he can gear the workshop to your challenges. (Click here to Download)

When is it?

Tuesday 3rd April, from 10.00am until 1.00pm. (please arrive between 9.30 and 9.55 so we can start promptly)

Where is it being held?

The Plough and Harrow Hotel, 135 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B16 8LS
(there is plenty of free parking at the venue)

What is the investment required?

3 hours of your time and £35.

How do I pay?

Once you email me your intention to attend I will email you an invoice for pre payment to reserve your place.
If you chose to pay on the day that is fine but please note that I will have to charge you for non attendance if you fail to attend having reserved a place for you. You can of course then attend a future workshop.

What do I do next?

Please email asking to reserve a place and return the questionnaire prior to the event.

Dan Wilcox
Sales Growth Solutions
07957 398586

Mobile World Congress: Orange is piloting a new advertising format that will see customers’ dial tones replaced with advertising messages.

The format, which will first be beta tested by 10,000 customers in Egypt, is designed to spark conversations about brands between peers.

The audio messages can also be downloaded by the recipient by pressing the * button, meaning campaigns are accessible on any device or platform.

Customers will be able to choose from a catalogue of brands’ audio to download, that can vary from TV and radio ads to specifically-created content for the new format.

They will also be rewarded depending on how many people were exposed to their chosen adverts with credits worth up to €2 on their monthly bills.

Orange’s director of mobile advertising Ludovic Levy told Marketing Week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: “This is a unique value proposition for customers and for advertisers we are proposing a pure social marketing product: what better than placing your brand in the middle of a conversation between two peers on a mobile phone where there is no multi-tasking and your audience is completely captivated.”

The format has a “huge scalability”, Levy said, with the potential to reach its 167.4 million global customers and their peers an average of four to five times a day.

Orange has chosen to roll out the pilot scheme is rolling out in Egypt and developing markets first because the rewards are equivalent to around 20% of their average monthly bills, compared to developed territories where it would only represent a small token.

Levy says the company would look to roll the scheme out to developed markets such as the UK if the trial is successful, but only to select influencer groups.

Reported in Marketing Week

Pinterest is the latest social network craze sweeping the land. It’s small-fry compared to Facebook and Twitter, but impressive growth figures mean retail marketers should be thinking about how to use it so they are already there when their customers discover the social network.

Pinterest was not on my radar until two weeks ago, but ever since I’ve barely gone a day without it cropping up in both professional, and social circles.

The site is essentially an online pinboard, that users can use to collect together images and content and share it with friends, families, and likeminded people.

Its audience has grown 76% since last May, according to ComScore. Unique users reached 250,000 in January. The total minutes spent on the site have increased by more than 3140% in the UK.

It’s being lauded as the fastest growing social platform ever, until the next one emerges of course, but that means that while it may remain on the fringes of consumer conscious at the moment, if the rate of growth continues, it will become mainstream very quickly as it captures people’s imaginations.

The key for retail brands thinking about adding pins to the board, is that now is the time to do it before Pinterest explodes.

The issue that brands have had with Facebook is that the social network was already massive before brands got in on the action.

This meant that when brands and businesses did start to dabble, it felt like a corporate intrusion into personal space.

To avoid this being the case on Pinterest, retail brands need to establish a role early on so that by the time it has user numbers to rival Facebook, brands being there feels natural, rather than intrusive.

Pinterest offers a way to visually associate your brand with things that fit with your values in a way no other platform can do. Therefore it is perfect to develop closer relationships with consumers that share those values.

For retailers, there is an obvious opportunity to not only showcase products, but also lifestyles, values and trends associated with the brand and use it as a platform for the brand’s personality.

Two fashion retailers using Pinterest in the UK are Asos.com and Missguided.co.uk. Both target young women with fast changing fashion which makes Pinterest a perfect playground for them.

Perhaps surprisingly, I think Missguided is doing a better job in using the online pinboards to tell a story about its brand than Asos, which is very active on other social channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

Missguided has boards dedicated to pretty cupcakes, inspirational quotes, celebrity fashion it likes, make up and fashion style inspiration as well as backstage photos from its style shoots and events.

It is colourful, cute, fresh, and vibrant – exactly how the brand wants to present itself. It does not seem to feature its own product ranges, but from its pins, other Pinterest users can get to know the brand’s personality and what it stands for. It is from this that consumers, and potential customers, can develop an affinity with the brand.

Conversely, the Asos boards feel cold, and do not seem to reveal anything about the brand’s personality. Its products are pinned to boards, alongside fashion blogs and photoshoots, but there is nothing else there to relate to.

I would expect to see boards around youth culture, festivals, music, film, and celebrities alongside its fashion and accessories to get a more rounded picture of the brand’s personality.

While I fully believe there is a place for brands on Pinterest, it would be a crying shame if it went the way of other social networks and became about monetising the ‘boards’ individuals and brands create, or yet another route to a sale.

Reported in Marketing Week | by Rosie barker

High number of micro-businesses expect to fail

Why should I not send e-Mail Marketing out from my e-Mail address?

There are several reasons why you should not send your e-Mail Marketing via Outlook. The obvious ones include saving time, detailed delivery reporting, personalisation etc.. But the most important reason is often overlooked, every time you send out groups (15 or more) of e-mails from your personal / business e-Mail address, you stand a strong chance of being flagged up as a SPAMMER on your hosting companies email servers. This means that in time your day to day e-Mails will end up going straight in the Junk folder.  When you use a professional e-Mail Marketing company they manage the servers and protect your e-Mail address from being flagged as a SPAMMER!

 How can I improve my e-Mail Marketing response rates?

Increasing the response rate is simple for most businesses that are in the early stages of e-Mail Marketing , all you have to do is personalise your e-Shots, by adding ‘Hi Steve’ instead of just ‘Hi’, or put details of where you last met them, this should increase your response rate by 64% (Direct Marketing Association).

“Around three quarters of companies surveyed rate email marketing (72%) as an excellent or good return on investment!”- Econsultancy

How can I generate more sales leads from my e-Mail Marketing campaign?

Firstly ensure that you have a strong Call to Action on your e-Mail, that way your readers will know what you want them to do with it. A good e-Mail Marketing system will also provide you with post delivery reports, so that you can see exactly who has opened and clicked though to specific links. By using this information, you can target future campaigns and do focused follow up activities to increase success rates.

Send your campaigns out at the optimum frequency – by sending them out on a regular basis you will increase confidence and stand more chance of being at the forefront of the readers mind when they need your services.

 When is the best time to send an e-Mail campaign out?

Timing is everything, try to avoid sending your e-mail out first or last thing in the day, on Mondays and Fridays or during holiday periods, as there is less chance of getting a positive response.  You should also be consistent when you send it out, it can be once a day, once a week, or once a month but make sure you stick to it. The more consistent you are, the more your clients will become familiar at receiving your e-mails and this will help build your brand.

How can I build my e-Mail Marketing lists?

There are several ways of gathering good qualified data for your e-Mail Marketing , these range from adding a sign up form to your website, asking customers for their email addresses, setting up competitions or doing some cross Marketing – or if you need to grow your database quickly, you can purchase a data list, but be careful to ensure it is the latest data and that it has been cleansed.

How can I ensure I do not break Data Protection Laws?

In principle only Market to individuals and businesses that have consented to receive the mail or meet the ‘Soft opt-in’ laws

• Provide clear details for the individual to contact you – address, phone, email etc…
• Have a clear opt-out process that you always follow and respect
• Tell people what you are going to do with their data
• For more details, please see the IOC good practice guidelines by clicking HERE

 What should I put in my Subject line?

Your Subject Line should be compelling, descriptive and to the point. More and more companies are using e-Mail Marketing, which is why your message should stand out in the inbox. Try doing a split test with different Subject Lines and compare the open/read rates for each one. Whatever you do, do not be deceptive as this will only annoy the reader, get your email added to the junk pile and damage your Brand.

 Why am I not getting enquiries from my e-Mail Marketing?

There are several reasons why e-Mail campaigns often fall flat, it could be that your ‘Call To Action’ is not strong enough, which means that your reader does not know what you want them to do with the e-Mail. Or perhaps you are not tracking the responses properly or following them up. Try looking at your reports to understand what your readers are doing when they get your e-Mail.

Why is my e-Mail Marketing getting a high unsubscribe rate?

Assuming you are not spamming, there are typically 3 main reasons why you might be getting high unsubscribe rates:

• You are sending the e-Mails to the wrong people, try updating or cleansing your data
• Your message is not appropriate to the reader, try putting yourself in your readers shoes and ask, would I value this?
• You are being flagged as SPAM, by using the wrong words (i.e. Herbal Viagra, confidential, Sale, etc…) your readers junk mail filters will often put ‘SPAM’ in front of your e-Mail. Try running a keyword check on your email before sending it out, as this can highlight some surprising words that are not liked

Why are all my e-Mail Marketing Campaigns not being received?

Putting SPAM filters aside, the most common problem is old or general data, if it has not been used for a while (this can include some recently purchased data) a good proportion of the email addresses will not exist any more, so will bounce. There are several ways to get qualified data which include Networking events, adding a subscribe field on your website, old customers or buying in a list from a good supplier (choose your supplier carefully or you may be wasting your money).

These are some of the most common questions asked about e-Mail Marketing, if you would like to find out more about how Simon can help you get more from campaigns, or if you would like a demo of his online e-Mail Marketing system, please call 0845 467 1074 or CLICK HERE

The upside of starting a business during a downturn is that things can only get better as the economic climate improves, and you will have learnt an awful lot in the difficult times that you can use in the easier ones.

Steve Barnes of the start-up internet fast food delivery service Appetise.com says he has only known economic gloom, but that has not stopped him.

“I don’t know what a boom feels like, to be honest. I don’t really know what to expect.

“When you’ve got such a small start-up business I don’t think it is really going to be affected at all. There’s plenty of opportunities in a recession.”

But what should your business actually do?

LESSON 2: FOCUS ON THE IDEAS STARING YOU IN THE FACE

Lots of people go about finding their niche by using business school tools such as market analysis or sector research. Clever, but remote.

Why not start a business based on a need you yourself have, that is not properly addressed by existing suppliers?

‘Silicon Roundabout’ in east London is the capital of the UK’s tech start-up boom

You experience the gap in the marketplace, and you fill it: easy-peasy.

University campuses are full of ideas for businesses. For example, David Langer was at Oxford University when he co-founded Group Spaces.

It started as a service for Oxford University clubs, and is designed to make life easy for secretaries and treasurers trying to do admin for clubs, societies, and hobby groups.

Group Spaces now has two million users worldwide, helping club administrators in more than 100 countries.

The fast-food delivery service Appetise.com was an idea borne by students from Warwick University which has now gone UK-wide.

“It was purely to solve a problem that we had as students,” says co-founder Steve Barnes.

“Trying to order a take-away, we used to order in groups of 10 or 20 people and trying to organise that over the telephone is a bit of a nightmare.

“Whereas now everyone can sit down individually at the computer, place their order and then submit it all in one order and it’s very easy to see an itemised bill to see who owes what.”

Keep it simple, and answer an in-your-face need.

If you have got the need, and the idea, then come the operational problems – but even they are less daunting than they used to be.

LESSON 3: YOU ALREADY HAVE THE TOOLS YOU NEED

Most homes and most students are already equipped with quite a lot of the tools any business needs to reach a worldwide audience from day one.

A laptop and a mobile phone is all the infrastructure a new business needs to get up and running

Computer power is so cheap that many school or university leavers have their own machines, with processing power unimaginable a few years ago.

Laptops can edit sound or movies, design software, and keep track of all the details of a start-up business at minimal cost.

Internet connectivity allows a start-up entrepreneur to collaborate with video conferencing at almost no cost, an extraordinary breakthrough.

The internet also enables a new business to reach a specific, even worldwide marketplace with a minimal outlay.

Clever viral marketing can pull in curious customers seduced by ingenuity alone.

And very young people are often instinctively able to use the new technology that makes all this happen.

They already know things that great big companies have to pay specialists huge sums to get done.

LESSON 4: CASH IS KING

Now, what about funding?

Starting any kind of business always used to need money: from savings, relatives, angel investors, a bank loan. The latter is reputedly horribly difficult at the moment.

Warren Bennett of A Suit That Fits funded it through credit-card loans and cash from upfront orders

For several reasons, including the technology mentioned above, not having pots of cash is now much less of a problem than it used to be.

Several of the start-up entrepreneurs I have met needed only credit-card loans to get their businesses up and running – a potentially costly route, mind.

Warren Bennett, 30, is co-founder of the bespoke tailoring service A Suit That Fits – now 6 years old, the company sells around 10,000 suits a year.

Back home in the UK, Warren and a friend started what he says was the world’s first online bespoke suit-making business.

The company now has studios across the UK for people to drop into to have measurements taken for a suit that is made thousands of miles away in Nepal.

A Suit That Fits was funded solely through credit cards and by asking customers to pay in advance. It is a business that lives off cash-flow, not bank borrowings.

Not having to depend on outside investors also means the founders get to keep a full stake in the business they founded.

And there are many businesses devised around generating a cash flow that finances the rest of the company’s operations – asking for up-front money from customers that can be used to pay suppliers and manufacturers later on.

Positive cash-flow is a business wonder: funding your business expansion out of cash flow is even more wonderful.

But not always.

One Internet start-up founder told me what they say in Silicon Valley, USA: if you are making a profit you are not growing fast enough.

You should be gobbling up investors’ money to fund your hell-for-leather growth.

LESSON 5: TELL YOUR STORY

Whether you are pitching to a potential sponsor, mentor or customer, it helps to tell a good story.

Arnold Sebutinde shows off one of his portraits, which he created by drawing with both hands

In my experience, young entrepreneurs know how to tell a story, both their own and that of the business they have set up and the needs it is trying to address – plus the adventures they have had on the way.

Arnold Sebutinde, aged 27, from Birmingham runs Spontaneous Portraits.

His story, which helped him get funding and a mentor from the Prince’s Trust, is compelling. Arnold got into trouble, and spent two and a half years in prison.

While serving his sentence, he made use of his talent for drawing and started to sell portraits of inmates and their visitors, for £2.50 a time.

After being released, he continued to build his business, and posted internet videos to highlight his special talent:

“I got a commission to draw the England cricket team, and posted a video of me drawing, but I’m drawing with both hands.

“I did this to get the word out, so people would talk about me as this artist who draws with both hands.”

Story-telling is a vital part of running any kind of business, but it gets neglected as companies get bigger and bigger and more and more arrogant.

Start-ups have great stories to tell.

LESSON 6: DON’T TAKE TOO MUCH NOTICE OF THESE LESSONS

Just get on with it!

Reported in BBC.co.uk

Hopes have been raised that European lawmakers will rethink amendments to data protection regulation that has been described as the “end of direct mail” after it emerged that a number of influential bodies within the European Commission are believed to have rejected proposals.

Hopes raised that the “end of DM” is not yet nigh

A leaked document detailing amendments to the European Commission’s data protection directive was circulated in December.

It contained several revisions that have angered direct marketing and internet advertising bodies, such as an opt in system that means that the processing of personal data would only be possible if a consumer offers prior consent.

At present, the UK has an opt-out service that leaves it in the hands of consumers to choose to have their personal details removed from data lists , such as the Mail Preference Service.

Industry bodies the Direct Marketing Association, the Federation of European Direct and Interactive Agencies, backed by the Internet Advertising Bureau, argue that this would have a devastating impact on marketing because it would significantly reduce the volume of data available.

It is thought, however, that many of key proposals have been rethought after at least five Commission departments that the document was sent for review to, known as directorates general, have rejected the proposals.

European Commission vice president Viviane Reding is due to outline the reforms in a speech in Munich on 23 January. Legislative text is expected to be published by the end of March.

A spokesman for the European Commission declined to comment on the content of the text.

Crucially, the main part of the directive will become a regulation in a bid to ensure uniform application in all 27 member states.

Member states will then be consulted about draft proposals before work begins to enact changes into national law. It is likely, however, that no legislative changes to the UK will happen in 2012.

At an IPA event in London last week, minister for culture, communications and creative industries Ed Vaizey, promised that the government would work with the advertising industry to lessen the impact of the changes.

Other proposed amendments in the leaked draft included a change to the definition of consent that will remove the right for a brand to assume consent if a consumer is silent or inactive.

Reported in Marketing week | By Russell Parsons