You've Got Mail!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am really big on email campaigns. Build a big database, build a relationship with your readers and then add value to their lives. This “Serve First” principle has helped me build a very successful online business.

This morning I had a very interesting call from a client who is struggling with their email campaign. They have a HUGE database of well over 1 million readers, but last month they received NOT ONE positive response. It seemed incredibly dodgy to me – the Rule of Big Numbers means that someone, somewhere must have opened up the email and made contact with them.

My first port of call was to check the server reliability. Since they host with Kwikkermail, I know the servers are running, and a quick check online showed me that their server was not blacklisted or anything. So what was it?

I quickly asked for a copy of their email, and I knew immediately why things went wrong: they chose a terrible Subject Line. It was basic: “Company A Events Calendar“. Even though people know who Company A is, why on earth would they open up the email? It seems like it’s not even for them!

So, here are a few simple rules I use to increase my maximum deliverability:

1. Keep in mind that the receiver actually may not know you.
2. Give them a REASON to open the email.
3. Something that starts with “How to…” performs the best.
4. Also “Save …”
5. Adding a time limit works!
6. Next, I use the Google Keyword Tool to research a little on how many people actually search for a keyword. Obviously the more searches conducted the more people would read it.

Here are a couple of great examples that have worked well for me in the past:

1. How to reduce your debt.
2. How to earn R1million in 12 months (seriously!)
3. Save 38% every month right now! (details inside)
4. Change the way you think about Cold Calling
5. Increase your Home Security today.

The next test is to split test. This can be a bit tricky, but what I would do is split my mailing list up into 4 parts:

10%, 10%, 80%

I then send out an email to the first 2 groups, each with a different subject line. After 24 hours, I’ll monitor the responses. The subject line with the highest open rate, gets the go-ahead for the other 80%.

Chanels latest fragrance ad ( Bleu De Chanel – The Film) was directed by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese. very cool.

Let me give you a case study to show you what I mean:

A few months ago, I was approached by an agency that manages MWEB’s online advertising. This agency wanted me to blog about MWEB’s new uncapped ADSL offerings – To be more specific, they wanted me to do one blog post per week for 8 weeks. Now if you do the math, that’s quite an expensive venture, but is it worth it? You’ll find out shortly..

Here’s the kicker: Their money did not only cover 8 weeks worth of clicks, it covers the life time of the posts being on my blog. So although we’re months past the 8 week agreement, they still reap the benefits, take a look at this graph, where the red outlines the 8 week period (paid for) and the green outlines all the days after the campaign was complete (free):

As you can see, despite the campaign finishing towards the end of May, it’s still clocked up hundreds of clicks through to their website, and will continue to do so for as long as iMod is around.

I hate to say it, but that’s not all.

As this information (the posts) moves around the Internet, it gains trust and momentum from/with various search engines and social networks. For example, the information has been liked on Facebook 35 times and shared on Facebook 203 times – imagine how many more clicks are going through to their website, and imagine the brand impact.

It doesn’t take rocket science to see how investing some decent money upfront will give you an eternity of clicks through to your website.

Each day that goes by will reduce your Cost per acquisition (CPA) or Conversion Rate (CR) :)

Interested in a similiar campaign? Click here for my rate card.

Classic!

• You come up with a cool idea and now you need people to see it.
• You’re looking for a new job, you need to market yourself.
• You work as a marketer and need to prove your skills.

For me, their are two essential items when it comes to marketing something:

1. Knowing your product/service
2. Knowing your target audience/s

You might laugh at how obvious these are, but believe you me, I know a ton of marketers who fall short in either of these or even both. When I say “Knowing your product/service”, I don’t mean that you understand that a mobile device can make a call or send a text, I mean that you understand that it works on 3G, that it is WiFi enabled, that it can plug into an AUX jack in a car, that it requires software upgrades and so forth, I mean really know your product/service. Now you might start to see that my two statements were obvious at first, but not so much once you look deeper. If you know your product/service, you will be able to market it, unless it’s a complete fail, well, then I’d suggest you find a new product/service/job ;)

Can you really establish your target audience if you don’t know your product in and out? The answer could be yes, you might have someone who can tell you who the target audience is, this is often the case in many companies, but the problem with this might be:

1. Does the person who told you really know the product or service?
2. How similiar is that person to you? We all interpret things differently, the target audience defined by that person might end up being similiar to yours, but not exact. What this means is that by the time you understand your product/service, you might have a different marketing approach in your mind, which might suite a different audience. Don’t let your audience define the way you market your product/service, that’s seriously backwards.

At the end of the day, the product/service you are given is not the make or break (sure, some products/services are better than others), it’s how you understand the product/service and how you break it down into different uses and how you associate it with different audiences. If you can really understand your product, and define a few smaller audiences (I’m a fan of creating multiple smaller audiences than one big audience), you’ll be able to sell the product/service.

Before I dash off, let me give you an example of smaller audiences, I’ll use my iPhone for explanation purposes:

1. Mac Fans – The iPhone is made by Apple, which is the creator of the Macintosh computers. Apple fans like to stick to their brand (many reasons, ease of compatibility being a big one), so one great target audience would be Mac users.
2. Stylists – The iPhone is a sexy device, it’s user interface is gorgeous, interacting with it is awesome and it’s just an all round great looking device. People who are conscious about how they look and what people think of them, are inclined to go for a great looking device. In this case, that’s the iPhone and this is another small audience.
3. Application maniacs – These days, mobile devices are bought for so much more than just making calls and receiving texts, they’re bought for the myriad of amazing applications/games available on them. Again, this is another audience.

What I am getting at here, is that I’ve defined 3 audiences (very obvious ones for ease of explanation), some may over lap, but in general they are different and therefore different campaigns should be used to target each audience. The only way I could come up with these is by really knowing the device, if I only knew about the making of calls and sending of text messages, I would not have known about the compatibility of the device with Mac computers or the fact that amazing applications are available for it.

Know your product, split up your target audience and channel your marketing efforts accordingly.

Here’s my latest collection:

(Sorry about the small size. I caught 2 people trying to perform illegal operations with details on a cheque from a previous post)

Not shabby!

I <3 Online Marketing.

If you’re interested in making money online and search engine stuff, join my forum and come chat!

They’ve taken a stab at Joost and a stab at Amore, as well as a number of other people/companies, but this time Paris is in the spotlight for her recent episode with some local mary jane. Between Nando’s and Kulula, advertising couldn’t get better!

Although kulula are not an Official Sponsor of the Soccer World Cup, this has not stopped them from getting in on the act, and has generated some fantastic publicity for them. The publicity is mainly due to Fifa’s over reaction to their adverts. Here are some of their adverts that have got under Fifa’s skin:

These adverts really got Fifa steaming and they came down pretty hard on kulula. As a result kulula decided to poke some fun and Fifa and said that they had registered the sky as a trademark. Not all of the sky, just the sky between 10 thousand and 33 thousand feet. So if anyone, including Fifa showed a picture that had some sky in it, they were in contravention of the trademark.

kulula then came out with this beauty below:

Apparently they have been inundated with requests from people pretending to be Mr Blatter.

Finally, after yesterday’s poor outcome for Bafana Bafana kulula are giving all passengers flying today free tissues that look like this: