In our previous article on creating a strong email campaign, we went over some strategies to craft enticing subject lines and engaging email content. While these pieces of content are the core elements of an email campaign, they can go much further if you supplement them with a few additional techniques. From email tracking to calls to action and brand consistency, below we’ll discuss how you can fine-tune your email campaign to maximize its engagement and conversion.

Email Tracking

You should be tracking as much information about your campaign as you can, and a great place to start is pixel tracking. Pixel tracking allows you to see if someone has opened an email or not, and if they have, it lets you know how long they were on the page. This is done by using a small pixel hidden in the email that tracks if it is viewed. You can use this tool to track how many people are using a discount code or to determine which of your email headers and content has the best results when it comes to opening and read through.

Calls to Action

Crafting the Call

One important part of great email marketing campaigns is having a call to action—a place where you ask your customers to take a specific step as the result of your email campaign. This might be as simple as having them visit your online store, buy a ticket for an event, take a survey, or anything that you hold as a goal. Ask yourself, “What do I want the readers to do?” and use this to craft a response. Keep it simple and brief with actions like “Shop Now”, “Purchase Here”, “Donate Here”, or “Please Take Our Survey”.

Building a Landing Page

If you are looking to do something unique, consider crafting a landing page that takes your customers directly to a unique page on a website. There, you can have unique content crafted specifically for the purpose of your email campaign. For example, you can create a survey landing page that directs anyone with positive results to a link where they can leave a review. On the other hand, if you do not want to use a landing page, you can use something like a specific discount code that can be tracked. The more the sense of urgency you create, the more effective your campaign can be.

Brand Consistency

Keeping it Simple

Your emails should also have brand consistency, which is where graphic design can play a huge role. Make sure that your email templates make use of your brand’s colors, fonts, and overall visual style. If you want to include infographics, make sure they adhere to your brand’s design aesthetic as well. You want to make sure that you do not have differing colors or bizarre logos that do not fit the spirit of your company.

Using the Fundamentals

Don’t forget to consider fundamental design principles as well. You want to make sure that your emails present information efficiently and in a pleasing manner, visually guiding your customers from the header to the content and finally to the call to action. You can also use stock images in the email as long as you make sure they also fit your brand guidelines for maximum effectiveness.

There is a long list of things to consider when it comes to effectively creating an email campaign that elicits the response you want. An effective email campaign should grab the attention of customers right away, inspire them to take action, and retain their interest throughout the duration of the campaign.

In this two-part series of articles, we will go over a few key strategies that will help ensure you have the most effective campaign and the highest conversion rate possible. Below, we’ll begin with the email content and subject line.

The Subject Line & Pre-Header

Crafting the Subject

One very important thing you will want to focus on is the subject line and the pre-header. The subject line is used by every email provider, so you will want to make sure that you find an effective way to condense the essence of your email into just a few words. Generally, people will decide if they want to open the email or not based on the subject line. So the goal is to catch their attention and keep it without seeming spammy or unprofessional (i.e., avoid using all caps, punctuation, and other over-the-top tactics).

Tracking the Subject

You should also be keeping a list of all your email subject lines used so you can track which ones have the largest impact and what times are most effective to send them out. Many experts find the early morning to be the most effective, because that will allow your message to be the first thing your customers read in the morning when they get to work and check their email.

Considering the Pre-Header

Another item related to the subject line is the pre-header. Many email providers such as Gmail place this element next to the subject line to provide customers with more information (this is the little grey text next to the subject). The pre-header can be especially effective on mobile devices, where notification bars can also provide a little more information on the content through the pre-header. It should let readers know exactly what to expect.

The Content

Creating Customer Engagement

The content of the email itself should also be tracked, as it is one of the most important components for anyone that has clicked into the email and is deciding what their next step will be. Create content that you would want to read yourself, and consider the specific interests and sensibilities of your customer base. You will want to make sure that you decide exactly what your content will be ahead of time, whether it’s a deal of some sort, a special availability, an event that is ongoing, or a new product or service.

Retaining Customer Engagement

If you can regularly create quality content, email services like Gmail will push your emails to the top of your customers’ inboxes. Your customers will make it a habit to click the email blasts you send if they know that they can always expect something unique. If you can provide a way to track the effectiveness of this content, even better.

The Template

You will also want to use a consistent template for your email campaigns that includes links to your social media accounts. This will provide further connectivity and increase the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns. This template should provide contact info as well as a call to action for your customers to take advantage of whatever you are using your email campaign to promote. This will ensure that you don’t waste any conversion opportunities.

Templates are also an excellent way to create consistent branding in your email campaigns. We will be taking a closer look into this in our next article, which will cover brand consistency, email tracking and calls to action.

Looking for a better way to promote your business? Consider contacting tekRESCUE today to see how we can help!

Ads are made to generate business, at the end of the day. It can be hard to know which one will work best. That is why you use A/B testing. In this series we’ve covered a few ways to track ad performance, but another thing to consider is overall conversion.

Traffic Analyzers

We went over using unique domains to track ad effectiveness in the last article, but for those using mainly online ads, there is also the option to use a traffic analyzer on your site. This is something often done for those using SEO, online ad campaigns, or marketing in general. When using this method, you can actually see the URL of where people came from when they clicked on your website. So if they came from a friend’s site, you will see that. If it comes from a specific ad, there are ways to check that. And many ad networks also provide analytics, which can be utilized to get exact information. This is helpful because, while together you are selecting the best content for your ad, on the back-end it still must be decided where the best place to put those ads will be. But there is more to an ad campaign than just seeing how many visitors you get. That is why it is also important to go over cost-per-click, and ultimately cost-per-conversion.

Tracking Conversions

Ads that generate customers is the ultimate goal. One way to do this is when someone visits one of your “advertisement domains,” track what they do on your site with a cookie. This will tell you if they ended up contacting you or buying a product. Data analytic software can tell you where they came from, but this will tell you what they did when they arrived. If you are using unique URLs and numbers that are only advertised on that one ad, there is an easier way using simple arithmetic, though it is not for tracking precise customers. So if you have 20,000 people viewing your ad, 500 people clicking on your site, 50 contacting you, and 10 of those buy products or services, then you will have actual numbers to compare with other ads.

Weighing the Best Ads

From there, you need to decide how that ad network charges you. Some do cost-per-view, and they charge a set amount for every thousand clicks. Other sites charge for every click you get. So one may charge you $5 for every thousand views, meaning that 20k views is $200. And cost-per-click may be 15 cents per click, so you pay $75 for those 500 clicks. Potential customers, the 50 that contacted you, can be hard to quantify. But the 10 who did buy something are much easier to quantify. If half of them bought a $100 product you have, and the other half bought a year of your lawn mowing service for $100 a month, you are looking at $6500. This data tells you several things. One, that cost-per-click will be cheaper in this instance. Second, that the services you should be advertising are the lawn mowing, not the lawn mower itself that you sell. So now you will know this ad works, and what you should focus on next time. If another ad had twice the views and clicks, but half of the results, that tells you to stop focusing on that ad. A/B testing is truly a process of elimination.

If you would like more information about how to use conversion rates and analytics in your marketing campaign, contact tekRESCUE in San Marcos, TX.

Do you remember the ad for Head-On? “Head-On–Apply directly to the forehead.” It likely qualifies among the top of the list for most annoying ads. But guess what? People remember it. And it is guaranteed that the process to choose that specific ad was a meticulously researched decision. A/B testing is creating several different ads, so that you can compare them. This first article will go over ways to test the results.

Tracking Sources

An old trick, when TV ads dominated the center of any marketing campaign, was to have several different phone lines, and for each type of ad or channel being used to have unique contact information for each ad. Originally it was numbers and P.O. boxes for each one. And eventually, starting in the mid 1990’s, having unique website names along with phone numbers became a tracking source.

Using One Website to Track Ads

Using a Subdomain to Track Unique Ad Interactions

Examples: ad1.tekrescue.com, ad2.tekrescue.com, ad3.tekrescue.com

Using subdomains makes people more likely to enter in the entire domain name as it is, compared to entering entire domain folders (tekrescue.com/example), so you can use one website for all of them. But instead of “ad1”, name it something related to what the advertisement is showcasing. For example, seo.tekrescue.com, search.tekrescue.com, or google.tekrescue.com. This way it isn’t implied that you have a huge amount of different ads because you’ve used “ad41” and avoided giving away how many ads there are.

Using Domain Folders To Track Analytics and Conversion

Examples: tekrescue.com/service1, tekrescue.com/service2 or tekrescue.com/searchcoupon, tekrescue.com/seocoupon

The reason that coupons are used here as one of the examples was that many readers will often ignore anything after the slash. So instead of example.com/free they will just remember “example.com” if they visit the site. But a coupon gives them a reason to go to the specific page you wanted them to visit.

Using Different Websites

Using different websites can be a great option to make sure you know the true source of web traffic. You can either have identical sites and just change the branding, or have each different domain redirect to your main business domain.

Using Identical Sites

The first method would be using “techdoctor.com, PCfix.com, and ComputerRescue.com,” having one for each ad, and each website is pretty much the same except for the title and branding. The customers would stay on that URL.

Using Redirects

The other option is having “codingking.com, webdev.com, and appbuilders.com,” but they all go to the same website. Either it redirects and they end up at tekrescue.com instead of what they typed, or they end up at tekrescue.com, but the browser reads “webdev.com” as the URL they entered.

What These Methods Achieve

The reason you use these different domains is so that each ad has a unique domain. That way you can take the guessing out of which ads work best. If one of your ads is proven as 200% more effective than the second most effective then you know to focus on that ad and similar ones. And it doesn’t just have to be online ads you track with this. You can also have domains and numbers for newspaper, radio, TV, and local ads with unique domains.

If you would like more information about tracking your marketing campaign results, contact tekRESCUE in San Marcos, TX.

Starting your own online business can be daunting. The possibility of having zero customers or leads on your website can be crippling when you want everything to work perfectly. While search engine optimization and inbound marketing are highly beneficial to your website’s traffic, those forms of traffic are not instantaneous. The best way to get immediate traffic that is highly targeted to your specific niche is through paid traffic.

Here we will look at 5 tips to drive paid traffic to your business website:

Run with Google AdWords

You can’t talk about paid traffic without bringing up Google Adwords. Google Adwords is easily one of the most effective and versatile paid traffic solutions available, and for good reason. Google has an extremely effective way of targeting the ideal customers for your website, and they touch over a trillion searches annually.

Just make sure to focus your efforts on new leads through search advertising, not display. Display advertising is very ineffective right now. Their only effective use is in re-targeting advertisements, which appears to people who have already visited a particular page on your site but didn’t convert.

Create Facebook Ads

Facebook advertising is on the verge of becoming the most useful paid advertising tool available. Their platform can introduce your brand to over 1 billion users that are using Facebook. With over half of all active Facebook users visiting the social media giant daily, you have a huge audience base to fish from. Facebook is the largest and most active social media community in the world, so having the ability to engage in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads can be a huge boon when driving paid traffic to your website.

Facebook advertising also allows you to target specific factors about your audience, such as their geographical region, their demographics, or their user interests. Sculpt and customize the perfect audience you want to market to, and Facebook will handle the rest for you.

LinkedIn Ads for B2B Business

If you’re in the B2B (Business to Business) market, LinkedIn Ads is probably your best bet. The paid traffic source from this social media platform is great as they come with three advertising options: sponsored updates, display and text ads, and InMail.

LinkedIn was built as a way for professionals to network and connect. Having a PPC advertising tool built-in to a professional network is an amazing chance for a B2B business to target other professionals in their industry. With an ability to target your audience based on job title, job functions, location, gender, age, skills, company, company size, and industry, LinkedIn’s network is a treasure trove for B2B marketers. Just beware of their hefty cost because they often price their PPC ads on a cost-per-click rule.

Paid Traffic is Good Traffic

Paid traffic is an excellent way of converting potential leads into sales. However, don’t forget that a balanced marketing plan that consists of both pay-per-click advertising and organic traffic is the best way to draw in potential customers down the funnel.

The main thing is that you build trust and provide value without asking for anything in return. That will garner you the best results from your paid traffic sources.

If you’d like to learn more about bringing traffic to your business website, contact tekRESCUE in San Marcos, TX.

Your marketing strategy as a whole does not exist in a vacuum. When you put out ads in newspapers, put out branded items, hand out flyers, there are several ways to have your physical marketing symbiotically exist with your online marketing. This starts with branding, consistency of message and services, and using physical marketing to drive traffic and search engine ratings.

Use Consistent Branding

Branding is important, and adds to the professionalism of your brand. This means using the same logo for print ads and online ads. For example, if you are a restaurant advertising your Tuesday Happy Hour in newspapers, you also need advertise it with your online marketing. Do not have conflicting pricing or coupons either. These coupons get shared, and having different times or prices reflects poorly in your customer’s opinion of your value.

Have Your Platforms Reference Each Other

There is also a huge opportunity to drive traffic. This starts with the obvious, including links to your social media and website on all of your ads. If you have an overly complicated website link, you can use a URL shortener like bit.ly to use a shortened URL people can type in to link directly to a page about your product or offerings.

This also means on Facebook, using a named link. Facebook pages start with using random combinations of letters and numbers if you do not name the link yourself. So your page may be “Facebook.com/aEx5wP9zL3…” etc. But you can link to Facebook page’s by naming your URL. So for example Facebook.com/Apple leads directly to Apple’s corporate page. But remember, you can only name the URL once. So decide on what you want it to be, and keep it short and sweet.

QR codes are another marketing strategy that has become common. QR codes are essentially barcodes for websites. Almost every smartphone can read them using a QR scanner. You can include the QR image on your ad, which allows people to quickly access your site.

Target Repeat Customers

Driving traffic can also be done by rewarding repeat customers who share your Facebook page or share a post about a special deal on their social media for some kind of discount. You can ask them to share it or like your page without being punished by Google’s ranking services. A cornerstone of effective search engine ranking is also having good Google and Yelp reviews. This does NOT mean that you should pay people to give you rankings or give them a discount for a good review. This does however mean that you should target your repeat customers to ask for reviews. If you have a mailing list, and you can keep track of who uses your coupons or reads your letters, because these people are more likely to have a favorable opinion of your organization or business. These are the people you email them to ask for a review.

You don’t have to choose between online and physical marketing. They can exist symbiotically to make both better.

Imagine this scenario: A potential customer just finished a long day of work and is looking for a place to go out to eat with his friends, and maybe a place to grab some dessert afterwards. With the general population becoming increasingly more tech-savvy, how do you think they would find a place to eat? The answer is most likely a Google search, browsing through online directories, or an online advertisement they may have seen recently. Although there are obviously other forms of advertisement, they are rapidly declining in favor of internet-based ways of finding the goods and services we need. We’ll be taking a look at these new online forms of advertisement as well as the declining forms of traditional advertisement below.

The Decline of Traditional Advertisement

Traditional advertising includes the following:

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Radio Stations
• TV Programs

Traditional marketing is on the decline. The way people are consuming news, shows and movies, and music now is completely different from how they were doing so even a few years ago. What this means is that ways that advertisers have traditionally reached consumers are on the decline. Radio ads are increasingly being replaced by people using their own smartphone radio apps. TV ads are being replaced by online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

And news stations are increasingly focusing on their websites to ensure future profitability. Washington Post was widely known solely as a newspaper, and their future was widely expected to be grim. But they increased their focus on their blog and online news articles and are now doing great as a respected online media outlet. The New York Times have a similar story, but focused on online far sooner. Newspapers and print media that have stuck to physical publications, on the other hand, are in general steadily declining. The way in which businesses reach out to consumers, likewise, has changed rapidly.

The Rise of Online Marketing

This includes the following:

• Online ads—Usage of Facebook, Twitter or Google depending on return on investment
• Social media page and content management
• Getting your business posted in all online directories
• Maintaining a website
• Maintaining a blog and submitting guest articles
• Ranking well in online searches(SEO)
• Craigslist, e-Commerce and Auction Sites
• Posting job positions online

The difference? All of these things are on the rise. More consumers will use internet radio, online streaming services, and social media with each passing year. There will be more people looking online to find employment opportunities, using e-Commerce to purchase goods, and searching Google in general. The entire list includes marketing strategies that will only become more effective as time goes on. Year by year, while traditional marketing will be less effective, online marketing will only become more prolific.

Just a few years ago when people thought of directories, they thought of local publications and general listing companies like the Yellow Pages. But nowadays that means having your business represented on websites like Yelp, Google Plus, and many many more.

More than 80% of consumers use Google to find local businesses now, meaning when we want something we go straight to the search bar. The best way for a business to utilize these trends, then, is search engine optimization. You can use SEO to find blogs and articles, online directories, websites, e-Commerce postings, job positions and obviously more. With the right plan all of these things can exist symbiotically. Whether you learn it yourself or are self-taught, SEO can help. It’s a topic we’ve covered in this blog before; check out our article “Search Engine Optimization Demystified” for a primer if you’re new to the subject.

Integration, Not Replacement

Don’t view this article as a reason to completely stop using traditional marketing and switch to only using online marketing. Face-to-face interactions will always be necessary, and the best marketing strategy will utilize both to maximize effectiveness. But you can use this article as a basis to start your online marketing campaign and stay in the game going into the future.

We are big fans of SEO, but sometimes the desired results can take a while to achieve (especially in competitive markets and industries where you’re up against a lot of competitors with well-established web presences), so sometimes it’s a good idea to run some paid traffic campaigns for more instantaneous results.

The first paid traffic source most people think of is usually Google AdWords. While this is a great source of traffic, it’s often expensive. It’s crucial to choose the right keywords so you don’t wind up paying $10-20+ per click (though you can make those keywords profitable too with some work).

We’ve compiled a list of several high-quality paid traffic sources where you can quickly set up targeted campaigns, along with a few pros and cons for each. We hope you enjoy! If you find it useful, please feel free to share it on your social media platform(s) of choice!

Of course, when you drive paid traffic, it’s wise to properly track your campaigns to ensure you’re getting leads/phone calls/sales. It’s also a good idea to drive visitors to a landing page instead of directly to your site so you can quickly ask for action, instead of letting them wander around and leave without leaving contact info, making a purchase, or calling you for more information.

If you need help setting up a paid traffic campaign, give tekRESCUE a call to discuss your needs! We can discuss keyword targeting, geolocation targeting, budgeting, and more. We can also help craft landing pages for your campaigns, set up funnels, and more.

It’s more important than ever to ensure your business has a powerful digital presence. The odds of someone researching your business online before calling or walking through your doors are pretty high, so establishing a strong, positive presence is crucial. In the infographic below, we’ve outlined powerful ways to strengthen your brand’s presence, including: website audits, website design, content creation, backlink & market research, pay-per-click advertising, social media, and more.

If your business needs help managing any of these aspects of your online presence, give us a call today to discuss your needs and we’ll help come up with the perfect custom plan for your budget. We can help with content creation, brand reinforcement, pay-per-click campaigns, website redesigns, competitor analysis, SEO, and more.