Recently Generate UK were tasked with helping deliver a series of email marketing campaigns on behalf of Speed Networking Berkshire to help promote a number of their recent events. In particular an event  which was held at Donnington Grove Country Club in Newbury during March and one of their upcoming events to be held on 16th June in Maidenhead.

Interestingly the Speed Networking Group has recently adopted a new approach to email marketing and analytics play a big part. John Halladay, Director of Speed Networking Events Ltd ‘We are getting smarter and faster in the way we are sending our email communications and we are in the process of investing into a new intuitive email marketing system with an analytics suite to help us measure response, allowing us to be more targeted in the way we deliver our future communications’.

Ultimately the overall aim of the communication was to ‘get bums on seats’ and email marketing is a fantastic tool to enable this process. People are becoming far more wary of email communications, so standing out from the crowd through flashy graphics often rings alarm bells for most people. Strong, relevant titles and quality content is massively important to achieving a successful campaign. One of the hardest tasks is to make people open the communication and we often find short, sharp titles works well and often using shorten acronyms i.e. RE: Event 16th June often work well.

If you’re lucky enough that people do open your email, asking them to read and digest your content is the next task. You probably have a 4-5 second window of opportunity so make it count. The first few sentences are vitally important to grab the attention to make the reader read more.

Helping Speed Networking Berkshire deliver a series of email marketing campaigns through the Berkshire region has been an interesting project, learning what works well and what doesn’t. The up side of email marketing is the fact that you can test your campaigns before sending them. Being able to judge the success of an open rate or a click through has a massive advantage. If you’re happy with the results then fantastic, if not you revise your message until you are happy.

When sending the email campaigns on behalf of Speed Networking Berkshire we tested a series of subject lines until we experienced a good open rate, it seemed to do the job as we achieved a massive 22% open rate. This had a positive effect on making their most recent event in Newbury a great success with over 40 business professionals attending which was one of their most successful events in West Berkshire.
If you’re struggling to achieve successful results from your email marketing campaigns take a step back, look at the campaign through the eyes of the receiver, send the message to yourself and ask the questions:

•    Does the subject line capture your attention or does it put you off?
•    Does the opening few sentences within the message make you want to read more?
•    Does the email encourage you to take action?

If you answer no to any of those questions then revise your email and the message within. Remember to test, test and test again until you feel that you’ve got it right….then test it on a friend to see what their response is? Often people can get wrapped up in their own campaigns and understanding a neutrals perspective will certainly help the overall success.

If you want advice about email marketing solutions please call us on 01635 550431 and we’ll be happy to discuss.

Sometimes it pays to take a break from conventional e-mail marketing wisdom. In a business environment where fancy HTML ‘one-to-many’ e-mails is the norm, there are a few people out there trying a range of clever, different and sometimes downright unorthodox approaches to get their e-mails noticed above everybody else. In this post I shall include and discuss a few interesting notions I’ve come across recently.

“You’ve got lower open rates? Well… It could be a good thing!”

As those e-mail savvy among you already know, many of the most popular e-mail hosts block images by default. Many of those businesses that go to the trouble of creating fantastic, artistic e-mail pieces may not be getting the message across.

As a result there are a number of e-mail marketers out there that have instead decided to optimise their e-mails for image blocking, making sure that all their Calls to Action and key selling points are still clear despite the lack of imagery by using plain text and image ‘alt’ tags. The advantage of this of course is that the recipient is more likely to have read and digested the e-mail despite the images being blocked. The fancy e-mails on the other hand, may well be displaying as tables full of the dreaded little red crosses and will likely be ignored.

So how does this relate to open rates? Well, if your image blocking optimised e-mail was able to get the message across with text alone… The recipient will have had no need to click the ‘unblock images’  button thus failing to trigger an e-mail ‘open’, the result being lower open rates.
So if you are one of those e-mail savvy marketers that have gone to the trouble of optimising your e-mails and you are experiencing low open rates; it could be because of irrelevant subject lines and weak content. Or it could just be that you are incredibly good at avoiding the image blocking problem! Remember, there are external factors that affect e-mail metrics so open rates aren’t everything! To truly understand the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns you need to weigh up the metrics against the end results of the campaigns in question.

This can be quite difficult when you’re not used to dealing with complicated metrics. This however is something we at Generate UK are brilliant at.  Our e-mail marketing system provides in depth metrics that you can use in conjunction with our help to convert those stealthy e-mail ‘opens’ into tangible results… results like extra sales for example!

“HTML e-mails out-perform against text based emails e-mails. So use them”

It sounds odd doesn’t it? The use of HTML e-mails and the fancy imagery therein has been proven in some cases to increase clicks by up to 50%. So why would anyone want to use plain text e-mail?

The world and his dog are familiar with HTML marketing e-mails, be it a newsletter, printable voucher or a list of the latest and greatest offers. As a result people are becoming increasingly familiar to HTML e-mails as a ‘one-to-many’ marketing medium.
This is precisely the reason why a text-only e-mail could do the trick. Something that doesn’t look like a fancy HTML e-mail may just stand out.

Not only this, but many people who receive personal e-mails receive them in plain text, be it from work colleagues, friends or even as proof of an important online transaction. Therefore a great deal of importance is attached to these. This makes text only e-mail a great medium for those of you wishing to deliver a sincerely personal message or when trying to tackle a charitable or emotional topic.

Making a move like this is worth some thought however. If you are known for your fantastic e-mail aesthetics, you don’t want to put subscribers off by making it seem like you aren’t trying. Inconsistency and disruption, despite raising some eyebrows and breaking the norm in a good way, can also be damaging. If you are still confused however, talk to us. We can deliver an equally punchy impact without damaging your credibility.

“Getting users to use a scroll bar in an e-mail? Pull the other one!”

As an e-mail reader, would you go to the effort of using tiny scroll bars to access content? Probably not. Many e-mail marketers would hark back to the notion that “the harder the recipient has to work, the less like they are to do it”. Fair play to them, this is typically true. You and I don’t want to spend our evenings scrolling for miles to find the content we want in an e-mail. We want it easy, but if a company were to inject a bit of fun into scrolling… it may be worth an extra five minutes of our time. This requires a hint of creativity however,  LocalsKnow.ca, have just that.

Click here to see the email used by Canada Travel.

Loads of scrolling involved, but it wasn’t so bad was it? Sometimes thinking ‘outside the box’ as cliché as it sounds, can be just the ticket to those extra click-throughs and sign-ups. In addition to that, it wasn’t graphic heavy either which allows it to fit in with the points above.

Personally, I thought this was a particularly novel idea. You on the other hand might think differently, so although such an approach may generally awe your audience, you risk cutting out segments of your contacts list that aren’t so appreciative. Before you hit the drawing board to cook up something equally interesting, be sure you understand your audience and segment your contact lists beforehand. This way you avoid the risk of aggravating your more serious prospects with your creativity. We’re masters of segmentation and we’re great ideas people here at Generate UK so if you have a pressing need to shock and awe your contacts list, give us a call on 01635 550431.

Marketing your products or services by email is one of the easiest ways you can let people know about your company. It is an affordable and effective way of making your products known and sold. Email marketing is one of the most common online marketing tactics producing the intended result. It lets you build a relationship with your customers, members, and your prospects through personalised and relevant email communication.

Well drafted personalised emails, which are relevant to your products or services, increase your sales. You can improve on your investment much more when you grow your opt-in email list. Email marketing is affordable, and it is the best way to attract the attention of the people, build desire, which helps to generate sales to a great extent.

The technology today provides you to combine the best industry practices in email marketing, allowing you to personalise your emails and include relevant information on the body of the email or as an attachment and send the right type of message to the right person, at the right time. Email marketing develops business between real people encouraged by relationships based on value, trust and faith.

You can start to market your products or services by sending off emails anytime you want. All you need to know is that, your email has to convey the right type of message to the right person, and should be able to convey the right intention which would help in building loyalty and trust with your prospective customers. This way you can have a database with the names of your customers and your prospects, create and automate email campaigns and send them to the relevant persons, there-by improving on email delivery timings, boosting your response ratio and drive your sales.

As your customer database grows, you would be looking to broadcast your email to hundreds and thousands of your customers. Emails for broadcasting should be written with the thought that the email is from one person to the other. It should not be of the type of an advertisement, and rather be like a letter from one individual to another. Email broadcasts need to be different from the ones usually sent out individually for marketing campaigns. Ideally your email should -

• Get your customers to open the email.
• Introduce the email well enough to make the recipient take interest in what you are offering.
• There should be motivation in what you present.
• The contents of your email should be able to drive your customer to click on your link.
• The subject line should be effective so that the recipient takes interest to open your email.

Email is used at all times in present days. It is also a very powerful marketing tool which is especially used as a form of online direct marketing, promotion of your products and services, e-Newsletters, online surveys, and many more. Email marketing is affordable and effective, and it is one of the very few marketing tool that has wide market reach, being cost-effective and not to mention the speed at which it reaches your customers.

WELCOME to Generate UK’s Festive Online Marketing Workshop.

Date: 9^th December 2009

Time: 9am-12.30pm

Venue: Donnington Grove Country Club - click here for directions

A workshop designed to help participants understand and embrace a number of key online marketing activities.

The workshop will be dynamic and focused on sharing experiences with clients, partners and each other providing the dos and don’ts when it come to implementing a proactive marketing strategy!

The workshop will discuss:

• The principles of SEO – what are they?
• Business Blogging – to blog or not to blog?
• An effective website – do you have one?
• Email marketing –does it work?

The workshop aims to be delivered in an informative yet relaxed atmosphere helping Marketers and business owners become more knowledgeable when looking to contribute to their online marketing strategy for 2010.

On top of this you’ll have a chance to network with industry professionals through an hour of speed networking! Plus you’ll be entered into a special draw to win a round of golf or dinner for two!

The workshop is limited in numbers so please register here to avoid disappointment or call 01635 550431 to book your space.

www.generateuk.co.uk

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

There are a number of reasons which are contributing to this continued rise:

• The economic climate is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for.
• There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway).
• We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign, however it’s fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces.
• Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake and as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers.
• Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity to send highly targeted and very relevant email correspondence.
• Businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the benefits of autoresponders and trigger emails.

Understanding how to send correct and effective communications is critical if this channel is going to work for you, so we would seriously advise anybody to understand this market thoroughly and carry out your research first. Seek advice from the professionals as delivering bad communications can seriously damage you brand.  Data, message, timing, creative, response, analytics….they all count!

If you’d like help with your next email marketing campaign, let us know. We’d be very happy to show you our system.

The Fish Brothers Group is a multi franchise, family owned car dealer group based in Swindon. They offer new and used cars as well as contract hire, servicing and parts. In a competitive market, Fish Brothers were keen to identify new ways to promote their annual sale and at the same time improve their communications with customers and prospects.

Fish Brothers Group were looking to promote their inaugural sale, entitled The Big Sale, this is a large scale event aimed at increasing car sales in the run up to the new registration plates. Via previous marketing activities, Fish Brothers already had a well qualified email marketing list, so they decided to embark on an email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is a fast and effective way to communicate with your customers. Segmenting your data based upon previous interests means that your emails can be highly targeted, which will increase your click through and conversion rates.

Fish Brothers’ list was split into different interest groups based on car manufacturer; it was then split down further based on Fish Brother’s own criteria which determined what type of communication the recipient would receive.  In addition, each email included a unique code and voucher which ensured that each email was unique.

The major benefit of email marketing is that it provides the ability to look at the campaign statistics, which enables the marketing department to make more informed decisions and to continuously improve their email communications.

Sara Hodkin, Fish Bros Group Marketing Manager stated “We chose Generate UK to help deliver a number of complex and tailored email campaigns to form part of a wider sales strategy. The service and execution was excellent and results were brilliant helping us drive footfall into our 12 main dealerships. Since those campaigns we have continued to work with Generate UK where they have helped us set up our own branded email marketing system, provided infrastructure and on-going support through web and email consultancy.”

Click to view the Fish Brothers Group website

A few reasons why you might like to consider our Email Marketing System

• Your own easy to use, flexible email marketing system which is continuously supported and enhanced, meaning your system adapts to your changing requirements.
• No more costs per email; once the system is installed it is branded as part of your business.
• Instant access to analytics to help your reporting and your decision making.
• Supports multi-users across different departments, so you can provide different levels of access to different people based entirely on their needs.
• Still not convinced? Give us a call on 01635 550431 and ask for a demo.

Business is tough at the moment and small businesses have to think beyond their next piece of work. It’s interesting to hear directly from businesses about their challenges in terms of creating new business opportunities; which is why we’re pleased to hand over this blog post over to Christopher Eades, director of AA Eades and Son.

“We’re a small local building firm based in Newbury and for us having that steady flow of business coming in is vitally important. Over the years we have built a fantastic reputation locally for quality workmanship at competitive pricing.  Whilst business is still okay, with the downturn in economy I felt it was important to look at new ways to seek out new business rather than just rely on word of mouth.

I was discussing my situation with a friend who in the past has used email marketing and suggested that I tried it.  I was sceptical at first; could it really help me and directly bring me business?  I thought I would seek out a company to talk to and was recommended by another friend to speak to Generate UK. As you can tell I often go on recommendation!

I contacted Generate UK and sat down with them to look at the possible options available. We haven’t got a website, this is something that we are thinking about, and so I thought the online activity was limited in terms of where I could send people to so we opted for a direct response.

We decided to trial an email marketing campaign and as I mentioned after being pretty cynical I have to say I’ve been very pleased with the results. We invested in two thousand local contacts and Generate UK designed and sent out a personalised email campaign promoting our company and the services we offer with a promotion attached.

As a result we received 137 responses and 18 of these have turned into positive enquiries which we have quoted business for.  The great thing about the campaign is that Generate initially tested a batch of 50 to analyse how the message was received and the response it had. The initial message was tweaked only slightly and the main message was sent. It was a text based communication that was personalised with the recipients’ first name and signed off by me with my personal email address.

The campaign has more than paid for itself and I am teeing up another one in the near future.”

Christopher Eades – Director, AA Eades and Son

Thank you Generate UK!

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

For more information on email marketing click here or to speak with one of Generate UK’s internet specialists about building a direct response campaign please call 01635 550431

qchzkefr7b

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

There are a number of reasons contributing to this continued rise:

• The economic doom and gloom is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for.
• There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway).
• We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign; however it is fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces.
• Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake; as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers.
• Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity to send highly targeted and very relevant email correspondence.
• Businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the benefits of autoresponders and trigger emails.

In general this is good news; companies recognise the benefit of email marketing and are using it for sales purposes as well as retention purposes. However there is a cautionary element of this blog; the more businesses that adopt email marketing, the more email competition there is out there. This means there will be an impact on your open rates and click throughs as people start to screen their mails more. A recent survey from MarketingSherpa highlighted the following 5 reasons for email recipients to hit the spam button:

• 52% hit their spam button after receiving emails they had not signed up to
• 41% said they hit the spam or junk option because the email was not of interest
• 25% said they went spam crazy because they receive too much email from the sender
• 20% of recipients hit their spam button because they receive too much email in general
• A final 15% of respondents to the survey hit their spam or junk button because they found the email offensive

This was quite an interesting survey and one that most marketers would find beneficial. Consider the case of over 50% of recipients who hit the spam because they had not signed up to receive an email. This is a huge figure and the more people who spam block your emails, the greater chance of a flag being raised about your email sending habits. In my opinion, this adds weight to the arguement that you should be doing everything possible to grow your marketing lists and encouraging people to sign up.

Once you have people signed up, it is all about sending them the right information. Think about your list, what their interests might be and send them emails that will appeal to them. These figures show that if you don’t take the relevancy factor into consideration, then as many as 41% will hit the spam button.  This is a huge waste as we all know how difficult it is to grow our lists.

Another thing to think about is how often you send emails to the same contacts; a daily email with a tip is very different to a daily email trying to sell something. It is important to get the balance with your list right, otherwise you could lose up to 20% of your subscribers.

So in summary, the marketing trend for email marketing is positive. The industry is continuing to grow, UK businesses are starting to realise the benefit from a cost and ROI perspective. However, like all forms of marketing, you have to enter it with your eyes open and be prepared to test and tweak your campaigns. Have a look at our 9 Steps to Enterprise Email Marketing for some ideas.

Also, don’t forget traditional postal mail campaigns. Going against the norm can often be an effective marketing strategy, and besides, when was the last time someone sent you a nice letter or flyer at your office?

This blog post was created with the help of E-consultancy.com and based on a roundtable discussion with some of the leading names in the industry. If you would like to talk about email marketing and what it could do for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. Please feel free to post your comments.

The Donnington Grove Estate is set in a delightful and secluded position on the outskirts of Newbury and is overlooked by the historic Donnington Castle. Donnington Grove is famous for its championship grade golf course, which was designed by Dave Thomas, designer of The Belfry.

Donnington Grove was keen to showcase their recently refurbished conference facilities and major investments into their restaurant areas and new menu. They were confident that once visitors had experienced these facilities for themselves, they very likely to return and share their experience.

The brief was to deliver an email marketing campaign; the objective was to raise the profile of Donnington Grove and encourage new visitors to come and experience their services. It was agreed that four emails would be sent over a period of four months and be used to support different catering experiences.

Generate UK worked closely with Donnington Grove in order to come up with a desired customer profile, this criteria was used to select the email recipients most likely to respond to Donnington Grove’s offer. This resulted in a more targeted email campaign, which increases the return on investment.

Using the 9 steps of Enterprise Email Marketing; Donnington Grove was confident of the project plan presented by Generate UK. And because there were 4 emails being sent, there was a lot of data to analyse, this ensured that informed decisions were being made to improve the response rate for each campaign.

The results of the campaign were well received by Donnington Grove, each email recipient was asked to print of a copy of the email they received in return for a free glass of wine. The results were very favourable compared to other local advertising methods. There was also an increase in the number of “conversations” about Donnington Grove, which bodes well for the future.

Christopher Strong, General Manager of Donnington Grove stated “We were thrilled with the response and will certainly repeat this initiative for other areas of the business” 

Click to view the Donnington Grove Golf & Country Club web site

If you would like to discuss what an email marketing campaign could do for your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’re already doing email marketing, ask us about how our analytics system can increase your open rates.

Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox

We’ve been involved in a number of projects recently talking about email marketing with our clients. As a form of marketing, email can be very effective as it is quick, cheap and completely measurable. However, the often not spoken reality is that many companies do not possess good enough email data and lists. As a result, the campaigns are no way near as successful as they could have been. Today’s blog post is by Menno Spijkstra; and explores the process of how to build your email list for great results.

Do List Building Now to Produce Results

For your online business to grow, you need to do list building and create a database of all your target customers. List building will enable you to further expand your market by sending special offers or promotions to your clients. It is considered to be important in making your online business easier. You have to be creative and resourceful enough to make it work for you. The foremost thing that you must have in mind is your subscribers. Identify who are your target customers who may have a direct interest at your niche market. Their interest to your products or services is very important so that you will get results in the end.

Otherwise, they will just be ignoring your emails if what you offer is not something that they are interested in or not in need of. List building should neither be stagnant nor slow moving; you have to keep on working on it by taking good care of your existing subscribers while adding more people to your list. You have to send emails regularly to your subscribers and make sure that you are giving them valuable services all the time. Experts believe that the bigger your list, the more sales you can generate.

Every email address of people visiting your site is very important and it is quite important that these visitors leave their email addresses with you. List building is very important for every serious online marketer because it is a big contributory factor to ones’ success. It is suggested that you do not use a general opt in form on all your pages. Instead, the opt in form must be on a different list based on where the opt in originated. This can be quite tasking. You need a special list-building manager to split and manage your list according to different projects for different sales pages.

Furthermore, this list manager will help you to identify the appropriate list for your product. In which case, you will avoid sending email offers to the wrong market. Many experts would recommend that you automate your online business so that you can cope with competition and trend. If you are automated, then it is easier for you to work less but get paid more. As the famous saying goes ‘no man is an island’, it also is true in online business. To improve your list, you need to exchange offers with your fellow marketers, too. This way, you will get more people to your list.

By using a simple method in list building, you can make a follow up to the visitor who visited your site. Make sure that your emails will be able to answer possible questions your prospective customer has in his mind. This system is easy to use and employs proven tactics in promoting your projects. Apart from it will be consistent in building your list; your follow-up campaigns can also guarantee an increase in sales. Therefore, having a new page manager, you can be assured that your list will continue to grow with quality subscribers listed in it.

The author of this article Menno Spijkstra is an Internet Marketing specialist who has been successful with several affiliate programs for many years. Menno finally decided to share his knowledge and experience through his website http://www.AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free newsletter and join his coaching program.

What do you think? Was this blog post useful? Please comment below or add to the debate. Please do not hesitate to contact Generate UK for more information and ideas about how to grow your opt-in email marketing lists.