Written by Marie Page on Tuesday 17th August 2010 at 11:55 am
So you want to data capture the email addresses of as many visitors to your website as possible. How do you achieve this?
The interruption marketing way is to have a nasty pop-up appear as soon as someone clicks through to the site. Not a good idea – will instantly cause people to bounce away and cause immediate suspicion of your brand.
The permission way is to woo the customer with a nice reward. A white paper, a freebie, a competition. You give them something useful and in return they give you their email address. Permission equates to win:win.
So having persuaded the customer to click through for the reward, what hoops do you then demand before they claim their prize? The temptation is to capture all vital statistics possible – full demographics, source of referral plus at least the name of the family cat, their insurance renewal date, child’s middle name and more beside. Research, however, shows that the more complex the sign-up form, the less likely someone is to complete it. What is the real “need to know” data at this stage? Probably just their name and email address. Once you’ve begun to build a relationship later you can begin to learn more about them as they reward your wonderful communications with increased permission.
So keep it simple. Capture the need to know, reward the customer with something worthwhile and then begin the business of building a relationship. Don’t reward with spammy eblasts. Dance with them, woo them and show them you care.
Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog
Written by Gill Kelley on Tuesday 27th April 2010 at 1:26 pm
Facebook has over 300 million active users! This doesn’t make it useful to your business automatically, but many brands are now setting up pages within Facebook and attracting and engaging with ‘fans’ on this basis. Have a look at http://tinyurl.com/c82zq7 for an example (you don’t need a Facebook account to look at this but you will if you want to ‘connect’ with Innocent.)
Facebook also allows advertising (it didn’t at the start) and this can be paid for on a pay per click basis. Look at http://tinyurl.com/d8s4h6 to read about where ads can be displayed on Facebook pages and how social ads tie in to actions that Facebook users take.
Have any of you had experience of using Have any of you had experience of using Facebook within your digital marketing campaign? Share a comment with other readers so we know your views.
Actually derived from “Blog early, Blog often”, Bebo was launched in 2005 and offers music, quizzes, videos, photo uploading and pop polls/ Built around school networks, Bebo is typically used by younger users.
Boasting some 400 million users, Facebook is one of the few web applications that has grown and adapted successfully since its formation in 2004. Used to maintain friendships, its highly targeted demographic profiling makes it a great medium for niche advertisers too.
The best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Widely used by bloggers, Flickr hosts more than 4 billion images. Picasa works in a similar way.
Want to know what’s being said about your brand on the web? Sign up to Google Alerts to be emailed every time someone blogs or writes about your brand (or indeed any other search term you specify). Particularly helpful for crisis management as well as keeping tabs on your competitors.
Superb free Google tool that allows you to create and share documents, spreadsheets and more with others. Hosted by Google, your collaborators can make changes to the documents in real time – much easier than using “track changes” and then emailing a document around.
I’ve even used the software to create rotas without the usual trauma. Click through for a how-to guide.
With email having been created 40 years ago (and messages needing to be passed to and fro, remembering to Reply All to keep everyone in the loop), Google asked the question “What would email look like if it was made today?” The result is an online collaboration tools that enables groups of people to edit and discuss documents simultaneously on the web.
A business networking site sharing some similarities with Facebook but focussed on professional relationships. Upload your CV, link to other social networks, blogs and Slideshare.
Before Facebook MySpace was the biggest social networking site. Now returning to its original roots, MySpace is a place for musicians to showcase their material and has provided a grassroots launch pad for bands such as the Arctic Monkeys.
Create your own social network in minutes. Here’s one I created for a class of CIM eMarketing students. Ning is great at hosting info, news and events for people with a common interest.
Voip application that uses the web to make and receive voice calls, send instant messages, transfer files and video conference. You can even “buy” a telephone number in another country and have calls transferred to your PC or a UK landline. Really useful for online businesses with a virtual international presence but with a UK head office.
Twitter is the micro blogging site that has exploded in recent years. Limited to 140 characters, twitterers update their thoughts in 140 characters or less. Great for making contacts, also arguably quicker than Facebook and SMS for instant contact with people.
Buzz is Google’s recently launched response. Synchronised with plenty of other micro blogs and social networks, unlike Twitter there is no 140 character limit. Without Twitter’s first mover advantage, the jury is still out on Buzz’s long term appeal.
Wiki
A collaborative website, the most famous of which is Wikipedia which now boasts over 13 million articles (and in one survey proved as statistically reliable as the Encyclopaedia Britannica). Wikis involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation, updating and collaboration.
Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has become one of the most popular hosted blog services and is the first to make the leap to a fully fledged CMS widely used outside the blogosphere.
Easy to use, the magazine style Bloggers Handbook is an excellent users guide to Wordpress and all the major blogging platforms.
Now owned by Google, YouTube is a site for uploading and sharing videos. There are also various niche alternatives focussing on special interest fields. Great for hosting videoclips which you can then embed into your own website, YouTube also offers opportunities for viral marketing. Also checkout Vimeo, an alternative offering higher resolution video and without the 10 minute time limit to clips.
Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog
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