the client services blog
Sometimes, you don’t want to talk about your whole internet marketing strategy- you just want advice on a small piece.
We are now offering Google Analytics Consulting to meet this need. Follow the link above to see just what we offer, or email us to find out more.
This morning, Facebook invited me to invite all of my AIM contacts to join Facebook.
I don’t feel like spamming 29 people to join Facebook, but they will doubtless add thousands more users today through this tactic.
They asked me to give them my AIM info so they could tell me who wasn’t connected yet on Facebook, then gave me the opportunity to invite them all at once, via IM. Smart move!
My Facebook profile now has a link to my LinkedIn profile, and vice versa.
More and more, I am making business contacts through Facebook. I haven’t started arranging social events through LinkedIn yet…
LinkedIn vs Facebook?
LinkedIn is better at showing me details of a person’s work history, and how I am connected to them. Facebook is better at showing me how someone is connected to various groups or people I don’t know but would like to.
How they work together
Case in point- on Facebook I joined the Web Strategy group, because I read about it on Jeremiah’s blog. On the discussion board for that group, I left a few comments, and then browsed some of the other people in that group. I saw one firm that looks like a potential business partner, so I looked at the guy’s Facebook profile and clicked over to his LinkedIn profile to see who he was. Convinced that talking to him was worthwhile, I facebooked him (sent him a message via facebook) which he returned within a few minutes. After a few messages back and forth, he recommended that I talk to his CEO, who is also on facebook.
Play by play
Catch all that? Here it is again:
1. Jeremiah’s Blog
2. Jeremiah’s Web Strategy Facebook group
3. Web Strategy Facebook group discussion forums
4. Interesting person’s facebook profile
5. Same person’s LinkedIn profile
6. (scope out company website)
7. back to facebook to message them
8. messages back and forth
9. facebook message to CEO of that company
The only trouble is that my Facebook profile is built for my friends and college networking, not business networking, so I need to spruce it up a bit. As Ian says, this is what transparency really means…
This case study will cover
1. how to ask for email addresses on your site
2. the principles of an effective email
3. how email fits in to your overall marketing strategy
I’ll be using momAgenda.com because they are one of our clients and I know how and why they do what they do.
overview of momAgenda
So you know that an email list is critically important to your web campaign. Whether you are selling stuff, campaigning, lobbying, whatever- staying connected with people and getting them to take action is always important.
momAgenda.com sells high-end day planners. They have a fair amount of brand recognition, do some PPC, get mentions on blogs as well as traditional PR such as the NYTimes, and they do emails.
The emails don’t attract many new people to the site. Mostly, they go to people who have come to the site through one of the other means, and chosen to stay connected.
role of email signup forms
So of all the people who come to the site, we want as many as possible to sign up for the newsletter so we can stay in touch. We offer discounts and inside information in return.
So how do we get as many signups as possible? We have our signup boxes in three places:
ubiquitous navigation signup box
On the left navigation bar we have a signup box that appears on almost every page on the site.
On the plus side, no one has to do anything special to see this form, so we get signups from people who may only stay on the site for a minute or two before they dash off to do something else.
On the flip side, because it is ‘just there,’ it does not attract attention to itself.
shipping form
After people have already chosen to buy and checked out of the shopping cart, they go to a page to enter their shipping address. After someone has decided to give you $42 for a day planner, why not also sign up for the newsletter?
The box is also right above the Next Step button, so is hard to miss.
Printables page
Nina offers the Printables for free- a try-before-you-buy PDF download. A week ago we added a page between the link on the homepage and the Printables page, asking for newsletter signups.
We are about to give you something free, so why not sign up for our newsletter? This page also shows a sample newsletter so you know what you are getting in to.
saying thank you
After someone signs up, you should also thank them. Here is some prime real estate to add whitelisting instructions, which Ian describes in #1 here.
So when someone takes an action, whether it is buying a product or downloading a printable, they are presented with the option to sign up for the newsletter. In both cases it is very easy to not sign up if visitors so choose.
As a result, we have seen a steady and accelerating growth curve in email subscriptions over the last year.
coming up
Now that you have email addresses, what kind of emails are you sending out? What email program should you use to send emails? Stay tuned…
I was going to do a post about organic chocolate landing pages, but one page is so easy to improve that I will just show what the page should be like.
The page in question, which you can reach through an ad for ‘organic chocolate’, which is also their homepage:
Problems with this page:
1. I typed in ‘organic chocolate- but I don’t see any organic chocolate.
2. Way too much data- if I can’t make an easy decision, I’ll leave- I don’t like feeling dumb.
3. I don’t see how to buy.
The solution:
1. Find an organic chocolate product.
2. Make a page with just that product, a description, and a Buy Now.
3. Point the ads at that page.
For example:
Make it obvious what you are selling, tell people why they should buy, and make it easy to buy.
