The great benefit business owners have today is that they have more power over their marketing than ever before. They can control and tweak their marketing activities very easily with the multitude of options available.

Marketing is not something you can simply afford to set and forget, think about the current marketing activities you are doing and start measuring them. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy just a spread sheet will do and start compiling relevant reporting data you have access to that allows you to track each activity you currently do. It might be website visits, facebook likes, email enquiries received – start tracking this month in month out. As you experiment with a new activity you should then be able to see its direct impact on your business.

Consider using Google Analytics if you’re not already. It is a free tool that helps you understand how people find your site, how they navigate through it and how they become customers…for more info… http://www.google.com/analytics/tour.html. You can also set it up to receive regular reports via email which helps ensure you don’t just forget about your marketing.

I know we are all busy but building this into your regular monthly activities will get you thinking about your marketing more and help you to identify areas needing improvement.

Much like cleaning a suit, setting up an email address for a business is surprisingly easy and fast. Once you’ve registered a domain name for your website, setting up a business email is as simple as contacting a professional email hosting service. Don’t worry about cost. Packages are scaled to meet your needs whether you’re operating out of a garage or calling down orders to a staff of several hundred. Once you’ve registered a principal business email address, it’s easy to add a few other professional addresses, like “newsletter@mysite” or even “hotofthepress@mysite.” Don’t be afraid to be creative. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t alienate your customers with a sloppy looking email address. Email marketing is about engaging with your readers.

According to statistics compiled in 2010, over 70.1 million mobile users accessed email on their mobile device at least once a month, while 43.5 million users accessed email on their mobile device on a daily basis. Sales of tablet computers are outpacing sales of traditional desktop computers around the globe. Smart phone sales, meanwhile, continue to be strong. In general, people between the ages of 18-34 eschew traditional desktop computers in favour of their mobile device. In any case, the total number of people accessing email primarily through their mobile devices increased by an astonishing 36 percent in only one year. According to Gartner Research, mobile devices will be the number one way consumers access the Internet globally by 2013.

The trend is obvious. Email must be designed to be viewed on a mobile platform in order to stay relevant and accessible. Luckily, email designed for mobile devices offers online marketers a variety of additional features that help drive sales and increase customer engagement. Email also is not limited to a simple line of text. It can convey videos, images or other forms of media effortlessly and instantly. Creating email that links directly to a particular app is a wonderful way to take immediate advantage of a customer’s interest.

These types of marketing opportunities exist thanks to the greater synergy between a smart phone owner’s purchasing habits and his tendency to check his email while on the go. Instead of waiting for a potential consumer to get home and log-on, companies can target consumers the moment they are exposed to a particular product or service. This ability to instantly seize on an opportunity is perhaps the greatest asset of mobile email.

Mobile devices are effectively moving email from the private sphere into the public sphere. People use their mobile devices to navigate through the world. They also welcome information that appears to be tailored to them. As an example, travellers who use online services to schedule their trips can expect to receive custom emails about their destination spots on their smart phones. They may very well be more likely to take advantage of a particular discount or event when they are in their destination spot than they would be if they received the email in advance of their trip.

This kind of paradigm shift in terms of how email is read and perceived is a welcome one for marketers. Mobile devices provide the incentive; all marketers have to do is provide captivating content in email form. Embracing sleek email designs that are both targeted and attention grabbing is the best way to engage with consumers on a daily basis. The technical requirements of formatting are not particularly difficult. What is new is the idea that advertisers and marketers can communicate directly with interested parties through their mobile devices. Those companies that opt-out of mobile emails essentially opt-out of business altogether.

Off the Page is there ready to rock’n roll, please +1 our page!

We’re very excited about the new Direct Connect function – available for a limited number of  pages today (like +Google, +Pepsi, and +Toyota), but many more are coming. To learn more about Direct Connect, visit the Google+ Help Centre. To be elegible for Direct Connect, your website and Google+ page must be linked.

For more info on this new feature, check out the video below:

Resources:

• Looking to include Google+ on printed or on-line material? Visit Bold Perspective to download some excellent (and free) Google+1 vector images.
• Create your very own business page – visit plus.google.com/pages/create.

Cyber hacking plagues the online community constantly – Sony PlayStation know this well, between 17 and 19 April this year 77 million PlayStation customer accounts worldwide were hacked. This included almost 1.6 million Australian accounts.

Information included stolen included names, addresses, user names , passwords and possibly credit card details.

The Australian Privacy Commissioner has today concluded their investigation into whether Sony complied with the National Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act.

According to Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, ”I found no evidence that Sony intentionally disclosed any personal information to a third party.  Rather, its Network Platform was hacked into. I also found that Sony took reasonable steps to protect its customers’ personal information, including encrypting credit card information and ensuring that appropriate physical, network and communication security measures were in place”.

The investigation looked at whether Sony complied with the National Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act. The Principles require organisations to take reasonable steps to protect personal information, and limit the circumstances in which organisations can use and disclose personal information.

“I found no evidence that Sony intentionally disclosed any personal information to a third party.  Rather, its Network Platform was hacked into. I also found that Sony took reasonable steps to protect its customers’ personal information, including encrypting credit card information and ensuring that appropriate physical, network and communication security measures were in place,” Mr Pilgrim said.

While the Privacy Commissioner found no breach of the Privacy Act by SCE Australia, he was concerned about the time that elapsed between Sony becoming aware of the incident and notifying customers and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

“I would have liked to have seen Sony act more swiftly to let its customers know about this incident. Immediate or early notification of a data breach can allow individuals to take steps to mitigate the risks that arise from their information being compromised,” Mr Pilgrim said.

“However, I am pleased that in response to this incident, Sony has now implemented extra security measures to strengthen protections around the Network Platform.”

During the investigation, the Privacy Commissioner examined information pertaining to relationships between the various Sony entities involved in this matter.

“The international nature of these relationships raises challenges for regulators monitoring personal information flows in these kinds of situations where large global companies are collecting personal information while operating in a number of different jurisdictions.”

In recognition of this, the Privacy Commissioner will provide a copy of his investigation report to privacy regulators in APEC member economies for their consideration.

The full investigation report can be found here: www.oaic.gov.au/publications/reports/own_motion_sony_sep_2011.html

See the full media release here: http://www.oaic.gov.au/news/media_release_sony_report.html

Stephen brings with him experience from a varied range of industries. After studying commerce and insurance at uni, he kicked off his career as an Insurance Underwriter specialising in Executive Protection insurance. Stephen traded in the suit and tie for hard yakka when he bought a document destruction business which he ran successfully for three years before selling the business. Enjoying the business selling process so much he tried his hand at doing just that working as business broker (back to the suit and tie!) and for the past two years he has been managing a medium sized Builders Hire company.

Now Stephen is at Off the Page and is looking forward to getting to know all of the Off the Page clients and understanding your business needs better so that we can assist you with your online marketing needs and to help grow your business.

1. Get their attention.
   People are inundated with information on a daily basis. In order to prompt them to voluntarily pass on your email message, you need to hone and polish your content. Don’t be afraid to include humor and eye-catching graphics. Whatever you do, make it concise. A long email will undoubtedly bore your target audience and make them hit “delete.”
2. Limit the number of social media options.
   Once you’ve crafted the message, limiting the number of sharing options to no more than 3 will result in higher participation rates. Don’t slam your readers with a multitude of choices. People tend to react negatively when they see too many options; it makes them feel as if it’s easier to make a “wrong choice.” Incorporate only those social media sites that are both well known and respected. Chalking up hundreds of recommends on an obscure site will not help your campaign reach a wider audience, and the goal of every marketing campaign should be to “go viral.”
3. Location, location, location.
   As in real estate, social media icon placement is key. If you bury your icons at the very bottom of your message, many people will elect to skip over them. If you place them at the top, people may forget to click on them once they’ve reached the end of the message. Creative placement, such as on the side of the email or even in the middle, can lead to a better response rate.
4. Solicit them personally.
   If you ask each of your email readers to comment, click, or otherwise visit one of the social media sites on your behalf, they are more likely to do it. A psychological study once revealed that the best way to get into someone’s good graces is to ask them to do a favor for you. Don’t be afraid to be direct; people may think more highly of your message, provided you ask them nicely.

Open rates are supposed to be the measure of how many people open a particular email. A 40% open rate, for example, would mean that every 4 out of 10 emails (successfully) sent  by a marketer were opened.

However, this measurement is not as scientific as it may seem. Open rates are tabulated whenever an image file is received from the web server. This image is created when the person receiving the email has an email client that has been equipped to display messages in HTML with images. Some email clients have a preview pane that displays the message whether it’s actually being “opened” or not. Microsoft’s Outlook 2007, which accounts for some 14.64% of email clients, has an automatic preview pane. In this case, it is possible to get a few opens that are never actually read.

Additionally, if the person has disabled the image display option, the email will not register as having been opened. Similarly, text-only emails don’t register as having been opened unless the reader clicks a link within the text.

Bounce rates should also be factored in. On average, 6% of all sent emails will bounce back. Therefore, the open rate is always approximate, and should be taken as an informed estimate.

What is a Good Open Rate?

Open rates vary by industry. It’s rare for any email to have more than a 50% open rate, regardless of its topic, and 100% is a statistical impossibility.

Studies show that 58.8% of all opened email is opened within 8 hours of receipt, while 87% of email is opened within 2 days of receipt.

Some slow adopters take up to 2 weeks to open their email, so campaigns should always keep their associated materials active for at least a month after the initial launch.

An open rate between 20% to 40% is considered “good.”

Why the Quality of Your List Will Affect Your Open Rate

The simple fact is that people who are interested in what you have to say are more likely to open your email. Sending out an announcement about a gallery opening to several thousand random names will likely result in a very low open rate (and possibly qualify you as a spammer in the eyes of the email servers).

Studies have shown that the smaller the list, the higher the open rate. Lists of between 5 and 499 people have the best open rates, with an average rate of 34%, while lists of between 500 and 999 people have an average open rate of 30%. Lists of over 1,000 people show steep declines in average open rates. Companies that have relationships with their clients tend to have the highest open rates, as do churches, non-profit organizations, and other institutions that actively reach out to supporters.

By taking the time to carefully assemble your mailing list with the addresses of people who have genuinely expressed an interest in your product or service, you will generate much higher open rates.

So who thought it was a great idea to send it from a no-reply address?

No-reply addresses were initially used as a way to avoid spam and unnecessary clutter in the inbox. Increasingly, however, no-reply addresses are a signal flare to recipients that their replies are either unwanted or unimportant. After all that work that goes into drafting an email message, having a no-reply address seems to completely defeat the purpose.

Studies put together by Google show that emails that have no-reply addresses do not generate a great deal of traffic. Instead, they become virtual dead-ends. Marketing emails should be a source of revenue, not another victim of the junk folder.

Above all, marketing emails should make it easy for consumers to purchase goods or services. Having a usable email address is step one. Companies that wish to avoid spam can create a reply address through Gmail or another free service that helps screen out spam. Although some of these newsletters may generate unwanted traffic, a few interested replies will more than make up for any spammers. More importantly, the email accounts can be activated and deactivated depending on the lifespan of the campaign. Nobody has to live with a particular address forever; it’s a temporary solution.

No-reply addresses don’t just hurt your relationship with customers. They can also affect your standing with major email carriers. If an email carrier notes that the majority of your messages engender no reply, they’ll likely mark YOU as a spammer. Now that’s a waste of time.

Surprisingly, the double opt-in system has better rates of overall participation for email databases than the single opt-in system. Those subscribers who are motivated enough to reply to the confirmation email tend to be more engaged with the content they receive than single opt-in users. Having genuinely enthusiastic participants boosts the overall quality of the database. Additionally, subscribers who respond to the confirmation email can automatically add the list provider to their safe contact list, thus reducing the number of rejected emails on the server. This reduction in rejected emails helps list providers avoid being labelled as spammers.

Increasingly, email marketers are realizing that quality of subscribers, not the quantity, should be the criteria by which email lists are assembled.

The technical difficulty involved in setting up a single opt-in system versus a double opt-in system is negligible. Many email marketing platforms and programs can be set up to automatically send confirmation emails. Increasingly, email marketers are realizing that quality of subscribers, not the quantity, should be the criteria by which email lists are assembled. By attracting motivated subscribers, double opt-in systems ultimately create higher quality databases.