5 Tips for Successful Email List Maintenance

Email list marketing is a great way to interact with current clients, attract new ones, and share good information about your company and solutions they can provide. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of any email campaign is strongly tied to the validity of the list to which it is sent. Keeping an email list up to date can be overwhelming or downright tedious, but by not doing it, there is a direct negative effect to the ROI of any campaign that uses that list.

1. Give the recipients the power

If you give your recipients the power to enter their information, it is more likely to be correct. It also means that they have taken the initiative to ask for the communication, so they are more likely to open it and click within once it is received.

2. Vigilant updates

As your email list marketing campaign progresses, capture the data and take action. When you receive bounce backs, delete those entries, or mark them for follow up and correction. Remember to be careful with requests to unsubscribe. There are laws protecting consumers from receiving communications that they opted out of.

3. Be strategic about leads

While it is true that any lead could be the next customer, staff time and company resources are limited. Not every lead is a strong one and deserving of the resources it takes to develop them. Have a targeted approach to where the leads come from and the kinds of leads you seek for email list marketing.

4. Utilize a service that can grade

Some agencies are equipped with the software and know-how to go through large email lists and grad and score them. The entries are checked for their fit to your company and graded for future use. They can also be sorted for appropriateness to certain sub lists within the master.

5. Use the list often

It should already be part of your marketing plan to send regular communications. This does more than simply keep your brand at the forefront of your customer’s mind. It also helps you keep your list up to date, by gradually revealing inactive accounts and mistakes every time it is used. With a sparkling clean list, you have a better ROI and chance of increasing business through clicks.

If you would like to learn more about email list marketing in Dallas, click here.

How Does Mobile Fit Into My Marketing Strategy

The use of mobile devices is here to stay. While a marketing plan should include a varied blend of channels, a mobile marketing agency can help you create an effective strategy for attracting, reaching, and helping customers through mobile devices. Every day, more people utilize mobile devices, from their laptops, to smartphones, to tablets. If you aren’t tapping into this new and powerful marketing area, then your company is missing out.

Because of the huge technology component of mobile marketing, it isn’t possible to simply transfer traditional marketing techniques over to the mobile channel. While some things are universal, like adherence to brand guidelines, encouraging sales through promotions, and striving to improve customer loyalty, the way it is used is very different. A mobile marketing agency can help show you the power of tracking content that customers view on their devices, as well as optional tools that could help drive business.

Email blasts formatted for phones and social media posts are still important. Of course, websites should still be optimized for easy use on smaller mobile screens. But the latest

and greatest change change that a mobile marketing agency can help you with is interacting with your client in real time. There is now the capability to tap those walking outside of your store with coupons and sale information, to entice them to enter. You can create a mobile-friendly environment, where people snap images on tags in the store for more information or help. No matter how you choose to implement it, mobile marketing should be part of your overall plan.

If you would like to learn more about a mobile marketing agency in Dallas, visit Comark Direct.

5 Reasons to Start Working With A Marketing Portal

1. Streamline communications

A marketing portal can be used to streamline communications. One of the biggest investments any company makes is in their staff. Time spent drafting emails, developing marketing pieces, and creating general marketing collateral could be better spent on strategy, rather than on basic tactical activities. Creating brand compliant templates that can be easily accessed by all office staff and locations creates an instant time-saver.

2. Maintain brand control

A line of competitors in the market make it more important than ever to protect a company's brand. The most successful brands have sustained a unified message for years or even decades to achieve saturation. Companies spend a lot of money and time developing a brand. It only works with a unified message. A marketing portal can provide an overall view of individual initiatives, as well as everything as a whole, so they can be compared to the brand message and guidelines.

3. Multi-Channel management

Marketing these days relies on a complicated plan, involving many types of channels. In most cases, there is significant usable data that can be collected and then applied to real-time current and future decisions. A marketing portal creates a place for a wide variety of channels to be managed and monitored. This control over information is invaluable to any business.

4. Centralize ordering and tracking processes

A marketing portal can also help with ordering and tracking. This area of business can be complicated to handle, especially for medium to large companies with multiple office locations. Knowing who has ordered how many of what can create a mess quickly, without the proper organizational tools. To keep from unnecessary stockpiles or inadequate supplies, it is good to have a tool to track and provide ordering and shipping activity.

5. Improve marketing performance

The end focus of all business efforts is to improve profitability. Marketing can help achieve that goal, through the creation and implementation of strong marketing plans. However, a marketing portal can help improve that process, by providing a single place for all marketing activity to be easily kept and monitored. Easy reports help inform staff and guide tough decisions.

If you would like to learn more about a marketing portal, click here.

Are You Ready to Launch an Email Direct Marketing Campaign?

Email direct marketing is a tried and true method of distributing information about your company to a wide range of prospects. Most people use email as a main method of communication in both business and private dealings, so it is a convenient package for receiving content about your company. However, there are best practices to make sure that the campaign has a solid return on investment.

The first step to any email direct marketing campaign is to develop a good contact list. While it is sometime appropriate to cast a wide and indiscriminate net, the most effective marketing campaigns tailor the list for accuracy. Perhaps the list is past customers that received similar services, people within a certain geographic area, or business contacts in a certain industry. There is no wrong answer, but sit down and consider the target audience of the email and pair down the email list accordingly.

The next step is to craft the email. Many things go into a successful email direct marketing message. A strong subject line, your branding image, a focus on the needs of your customer, attractive and easy-to-load images, and brief, but engaging content are all necessary components. It is also imperative that you include a clear and compelling call to action. The reader needs to know what step to take next. Links to your website and text bubbles with key phrases are great options to help the reader. Also remember to include opt out links, to stay in accordance with the law.

The last component of email direct marketing is the logistics. It is generally best to utilize the service of a bulk email provider. They can not only handle the volume, but often provide the last step, which is the tracking and analytics. No marketing venture is worth doing, unless it is profitable. The only way to know if an email campaign has been successful is to track the opens, clicks, leads, and orders generated. This information can also be used to create guidelines for creating future emails.

If you would like to learn more about email direct marketing in Dallas, visit Comark Direct.

5 Elements of Successful Integrated Marketing Plans

An integrated marketing agency can do many things for your company. The most important is creating an integrated marketing plan for you. Marketing efforts are made stronger when they are created to coordinate and compliment across various channels. Such plans are complicated and require experience to properly design. A successful one will have certain characteristics that make it work hard for you.

1. Automated Communication

In order to improve work flow and efficiently and effectively reach customers, an automated communication process must be implemented. By harnessing the strength of your database, all communications can be customized and sent across a variety of marketing channels, integrating your communications into your marketing plan.

2. Multi-channel marketing

The power of today's marketing is the array of marketing channels and the different ways they can appeal to customers and work for companies. By harnessing a number of channels in one plan, not only can different marketing methods be used, but different types of customers can be reached.

3. Metrics analyzation

While it is good to have a well designed plan, without a way to analyze it as it is put into practice, you can't tell what is working and what is not. An integrated marketing agency will be able to build the metrics to compare your channels. It will also provide the tools to easily read the data, so you can make necessary changes as time passes and things change.

4. Amplified message

An integrated plan offers a business more bang for their marketing buck, because all marketing arms are built to support each other. This unified front through various channels creates an amplified message for your company. It resonates with more people over a larger area, because all efforts works together.

5. Market strategy

Strategy is a key component to any plan that an integrated marketing agency can provide. Even with an experienced and dedicated marketing staff, the skills and tools it takes to develop a strategy are typically strongest with an outsourced agency. Their knowledge of various industries and creative vision allow them to create a great plan, based on your needs.

If you are interested in learning more about an integrated marketing agency, click here!

3 Custom Lead Generation Ideas That Get Results

Custom lead generation, or the process of getting new customer leads and developing new business out of the customers you already have, is at the heart of any company's focus. Seeking new and innovative ways to generate interest in your company's services and products is essential. With a myriad of ways to generate leads with modern marketing techniques, there are a few workhorses on the scene. By investing time and effort into your virtual presence, you can drive new business.

1. Optimize your website

Your website needs to work hard for you. It should acquire prospects and convert as many of them as possible to leads. In order to do that, the information that your customer wants should be front and center. The site should be easy to navigate and read, with an adequate amount of good quality images. Provide various levels of calls to action, so they can choose how involved they would like to get, from simply joining an email list, to having a representative contact them directly.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Bring qualified traffic to your website with Search engine optimization, or SEO. Another form of modern custom lead generation, you let the search engines work for you. By matching your content to search terms, customer request language, and target keywords, you can drastically improve the amount of traffic your site will receive. By seeing what people are looking for and giving it to them on your site, you give your domain authority.

3. Smart email marketing

You need a targeted approach. Craft campaigns with your ideal customer in mind. Don't simply show the benefits of your services or goods over another company's. It is smart to take things a step further and show the customer all of the stages and aspects of the things that they want and how you can provide them. Emails should allow the reader to engage the information, find the content that is relevant to them, and then take action to learn more or become a customer, which is the basis of custom lead generation.

If you are looking for a company in the Dallas area to help you with custom lead generation, click here!

What Are Your Website Analytics Telling You?

In a nutshell, your website analytics are telling you how well, or poorly, your site is driving business for you. That information can often signal clues about the overall health of your business. Whether your site is for a commerce or non-commerce organization, the point is to raise interest in something (product, service, information). Analytics can tell you not only how your site is doing at that job, but where you can make it stronger.

Sometimes what website analytics reveals is simply that you need to invest more time into your website. How clear is the content? Are there good pictures? How easily can visitors navigate to find what they need? Was the site organized around what you wanted to push, or what your customers want to find? Often, those questions can be answered by simply taking time to visit the site and click through links.

 

Other than the ease and look of your site, another area to learn from analytics is how people get to your site. What percentage is through web searches, referrals from other sites, return customers, or advertising and social media? The pie chart with those answers can tell you a lot...how good your customer service is...the kind of reputation you have...if you have properly mastered SEO. If any of those areas are lacking, it is an immediate red flag to improve that area in your company.

Through website analytics, you can also find how often people return to your site, how long they stay, and what they look at while they are there. This can tell you exactly what is and isn't keeping the attention of your customers (or potential customers). If you have poor clicks, perhaps your marketing efforts are targeting the wrong demographic. It could be time to readjust your focus.

Website analytics can get deeper and more involved, but the general information you need is the same. How well is your website working for you?