Forrester recommends that technology marketers concentrate on the sources that yield the most influence and use social media to expand their reach, with the understanding that time spent on social media efforts probably will not yield great value in the short term.

Our client’s challenge:

Genesis Creative Group’s client, Network General, needed to put together materials to promote a corporate awards program where high-performers won a trip to Costa Rica. Imagery would need to be repurposed for use in a variety of online and printed materials.

The Scott Design solution:

Scott Design created colorful Network General President’s Club event materials featuring the natural beauty and adventure sports of Costa Rica. Deliverables for this high-profile incentive program include the concept and artwork, e-mail templates, banner ads, stationery, an animated screensaver, and a full-color printed brochure to introduce the campaign.

Awards:

Silver Award, Silicon Valley ADDYs — Special Event
Silver Award, Summit International Awards — B2B Print Campaign
Silver Award of Distinction, The Communicator Awards — Internal Communications

Our client’s challenge:

Adobe wanted to raise the profile of a new product line, display cutting-edge features in action, and generate sales by creating a “must-have” buzz. Adobe needed to promote a series of traveling seminars.

The Scott Design solution:

Adobe turned to Scott Design to quickly design and produce e-mail (HTML and text-only) announcements, enticements, and reminders to drive attendance for three distinct traveling seminars. As part of each campaign, Scott Design created marketing communications pieces that promoted the value of the seminars while also stirring excitement for the actual products. The imagery and written content of the communications were carefully crafted to speak to each target audience. In each instance, Scott Design then followed through by designing PowerPoint templates, event signs, reminder e-mails, and other support materials.

Awards:

• Bronze Award, Silicon Valley ADDYs—B2B Campaign
• Bronze Award, Silicon Valley ADDYs—B2B Campaign

I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Stu Carty at Constant Contact last week and he did a great job of laying out the best practices in e-mail marketing. Stu first defined the basic goal of e-mail marketing: Deliver professional e-mail communications, to an interested audience, containing information they find relevant, timely, and valuable, and that conform to best practices and anti-spam laws.

Following is a summary of all the great information Stu shared, which you can read all about in his full presentation.

1. Connect: Build good, permission-based e-mail lists

In order for you to legally use an e-mail list, it must be filled with customers with whom you already have a relationship. There are some great ways to build your contact list:

• collect e-mail addresses at events, meetings, trade shows
• get sign ups on your website and social networks
• ask for e-mail addresses in person or on the phone
• ask customers to sign up at a retail location
• add e-mail addresses of your colleagues and business associates
• include all of your past and current customers

Although you can legally buy or sell a list of e-mail addresses, it is illegal to use it to send e-mails! If you want to reach out to new customers that you’ve never met, you can use direct mail, advertising, web marketing, telemarketing, and event marketing—not e-mail marketing.

2. Inform: Create and send targeted e-mail campaigns

You should create a master calendar with all the e-mails you plan on sending. There are three main types of e-mails you should consider adding to your e-mail marketing calendar:

• Newsletters—monthly or quarterly e-mails featuring educational content
• Promotions—bi-weekly or monthly e-mails featuring promotional content, offers, coupons
• Announcements—periodical e-mails, depending on content, which usually includes targeted messages about invitations, new products, or special events

When building your e-mails, consider everything that will help your e-mail get past spam filters, get opened by the recipient, and cause them to click on your links:

• Design or select a clean, well-designed template that represents your company and brand
• Use a real person’s name in the “from” line
• Write an honest, straightforward, simple “subject” line
• Catch the reader’s attention in the first lines of the body of the message
• Keep it short and simple—include 2 to 3 newsworthy topics only

For more information on creating e-mails that work, read Getting your HTML e-mails delivered, Getting your HTML e-mails opened, and Getting your HTML e-mails read, Two little words: Subject Lines, and Watch your language in your e-mails!

3. Grow: Evaluate results and refine the process

Creating a robust e-mail marketing program is an ongoing process. You should be sure to analyze every e-mail you send out to find out what works with your audience, and what doesn’t.

Most e-mail service providers offer analytics on each of your campaigns, including information on who did and didn’t receive your e-mail, who opened the e-mail, which links they clicked, and more. You should use this information to find out which types of information are most interesting to your readers.

If your readers are divided on what they like, consider splitting your list into two or more lists, each with e-mails targeted to that list. Remember, your goal is to deliver information your recipients find relevant, timely, and valuable.

A few e-mail stats (be sure to test for your particular situation):

• Average open rates = 15-20% (For large companies, this number falls to 10%)
• Expect 1 person to click on “spam” for every 1,000 e-mails you send
• Include 3 or fewer links in one e-mail
• Use 5 or fewer graphics in one e-mail
• Best days to send e-mails: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
• Best time to send e-mails: 10 am to 3 pm

Do you have any best practices you’d add to this list? Let me know in the comments section.

The keynote by Aaron Kahlow was a great introduction to the building blocks of an online marketing strategy. He advises that a company begin by building a foundation of a robust website; add the three pillars of search marketing, e-mail marketing, and web analytics; and cap it off with a social media strategy.

Your website is the foundation of your online marketing strategy. More than 60% of people go to a company’s website before contacting the company. Your site should be the epicenter of your marketing, with valuable content, and it should be allocated the largest part of your marketing budget. You can think of the website as your company’s lobby and budget for developing the website like you would a capital expenditure.

The first pillar to build is a search strategy. More than 90% of all purchasing decisions today start with online searches. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) provides the greatest impact on where you appear in search results, so you should start with creating keyword-rich content for your site. Adding pay-per-click advertising multiplies the business you’ll get from search, so it should be the next part of your strategy that you implement.

E-mail marketing is the second pillar, and it should be part of every marketing campaign you launch. Users overwhelmingly prefer e-mail to other means of contact, and well-designed e-mail can be the best way to keep customers informed about new products and solutions, or industry news.

The third pillar of your marketing strategy is analysis of what is working and what is not working with your strategies. You should test and refine every part of your website, search strategy, and e-mail marketing to determine the best way to convert your target audiences into customers.

Social media is the final building block of your marketing strategy. Use social media to enhance all of your other efforts. Users who engage with your company online are more likely to buy, so you should provide them a means to do so through participation in social networks, blogs, and video.

A well-built marketing strategy with a balance of all these elements will stand the test of time.

Scott Design received a Silver Award for the Camp Adobe NECC Tradeshow Event Materials in the B2B Media Campaign category and a Bronze Award in the B2B Media Campaign category for the Adobe Digital School Collection Online Campaign.

The Summit Creative Award was created to recognize and celebrate the creative accomplishments of small and medium sized advertising agencies and other creative companies throughout the world with annual billings of under $30 million. Over the last decade, the competition has established itself as the premier arbiter of creative excellence for firms of this size.Using rigorous evaluative criteria, it is the only competition rewarding those firms truly deserving of top recognition for creativity. Submissions are evaluated based on the strength of their big idea, the quality of execution and their ability to communicate and persuade.

The Camp Adobe campaign also won a Silver ADDY Award and a Silver Davey Award.

The Adobe Digital School Collection online campaign also won a Bronze ADDY Award.

For the latest information on recent awards, visit the Design Awards page.

You know that you have some real treasures to offer your customers: your superb services, your excellent products, your unequaled solutions. But how do you make sure that someone looking for your treasure actually finds it?

You must make sure the route is clearly marked and that those wandering the oceans of information on the Internet actually land on your website and find their way to your buried treasure.

Here are the best ways to make sure no one gets lost on their way to find you:

1. Create mountains of valuable, compelling content on your site. These mountains should be visible from faraway search engines, as long as you’ve done a good job of search engine optimization, keyword use, and link building.

2. Lead customers to you by sending out messages through your blog, keep the Twitter fires burning, and broadcast your webinars and podcasts.

3. Reach out to customers through e-mails, direct mail, advertising, telemarketing, and events.

4. Create multiple places to land through optimized landing pages, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages, a blog, and search-engine-optimized pages throughout your site.

5. Clearly mark the path to the treasure using clear navigation and clean design.

6. Give the keys to customers through an online form, giving them access to the riches you offer.

Other Resources:

• Animated Marketing Treasure Map:

• PDF of the Marketing Treasure Map. Just be sure to give us credit if you use it elsewhere.

P.S. Check out “Getting started with Twitter,” “Getting Started with Facebook,” and “Getting started with LinkedIn” if you need help opening and personalizing your accounts.

Evolution happens when organisms adapt in order to survive successfully in new environments. These adaptations increase an organism’s ability to attract mates, avoid predators, and find food. Animals or plants that don’t adapt must either move out of the habitat or die out.

Adapt or perish

The business climate has gone through some rapid changes over the previous year and, just like animals, organizations must adapt to the new environment or face extinction. Just as organisms must attract mates, avoid predators, and find food, companies must build relationships with customers, beat the competition, and make sales.

Attracting Mates

No matter how assiduously a male bird chases a female, if he doesn’t have the feathers, he doesn’t get the mate. If he has traits that make him attractive to females of his species (color, size, behaviors), he’ll get all the attention he wants.

Similarly, pursuing your customers with letters, phone calls, generic e-mails, and sales calls, won’t get you any closer to building a relationship. Instead, you should attract your customers with online content that pulls them to you. Make sure your website is well-designed, optimized for online searches, and presents your company as you would like your customers to see you. Develop compelling content for your blog and e-newsletters that customers will want to forward to others. When they’re looking for the products or services you offer, you’ll be irresistible.

In the deep ocean where meals are rare and unpredictable, the deep sea anglerfish remains almost motionless and just waits for its prey to be drawn by its irresistible luminous lure. Your job is to create the content that will make your company just as irresistible.

Avoiding predators

Before the web, researching your competition was time-consuming, expensive, and often incomplete. Businesses needed to hire a research team, pay for expensive industry reports, and you still couldn’t get a full picture of your competitors.

You can now find out almost everything you need to know about your competitors on the web: Visit their websites, check out the online profiles of people who work for the companies, and read what their customers say about them online. Get to know all you can about their offers, prices, and services and make sure yours are more attractive and more effectively targeted to your desired audience.

You can also use what their customers say to adapt your offerings and capture new markets you hadn’t previously considered.

What you should not do is watch the wolves begin to circle without knowing what you’re up against.

Finding Food

Back in the day, standard sales tools, such as print advertising, direct mail, sales calls, and tradeshows were developed to get a company’s message across to a wide audience. All of these techniques come with high price tags and have little focus. They’re like a spider’s web that’s spread wide to catch whatever flies by. OK when there are swarms of bugs around, but not so good when they’re few and far between.

Today’s technologies provide ways for businesses to reach directly and cost-effectively tailor their messages directly to the audience. Send personalized e-mail newsletters to a well-honed list, to help you get your message to exactly the customers most likely to buy. Network online to get in touch with contacts around the world that you could never reach through a sales call. And, produce webinars and podcasts to speak to your customers directly without the costs of a tradeshow.

Natural Selection

Making some adaptations might not be easy, and there may be some who want to keep doing things the old way. But, often making a few big changes followed by a series of small mutations over time can evolve your company to a new level. Track the results that each of your adaptations gets. If the change doesn’t bring success, scrap it. And, if something is working, don’t change it.

The key to evolution is the willingness to adapt, survive, and flourish when the environment changes. And,  those that do survive and embrace these adaptations as a permanent part of their company’s framework will be poised to become the dominant species in the new business environment.

In order for your organization to be successful, the 4 most important priorities should be the following:

1. Increase your revenue: Your strategy should include marketing tactics that contribute directly to sales, including direct mail, advertising, e-commerce applications, tools for your sales force, animated demos, and other marketing pieces that can be used to get your message out to potential and existing customers.

2. Reduce your costs: Make a move to less-expensive forms of marketing, for example, relying more on e-mail than direct mail, buying online banner advertising instead of print advertising, developing online sales demos instead of sending salespeople to make pitches, improving your website content instead of relying on customer support call centers, and working on SEO instead of using pay-per-click advertising to get found by online searchers.

3. Increase your market share: A well-implemented marketing strategy includes ways to make it easier for customers to find your solutions and be converted into customers. Loyalty, referral, and recommendation programs, along with awareness marketing tactics can bring more people into contact with your solutions, and help existing customers find more solutions of value to them. Additionally, making the sales process easier for the customer by storing information and pre-filling online forms and landing pages removes the barriers to repeat purchases.

4. Increase shareholder value: Knowing your target market, what their “pain points” are, and what solutions they are seeking can help you with product development. Keep an eye on user forums, make sure your marketing and development teams get up-to-date feedback from customer support and sales teams, and look for opportunities to capture new markets within your industry. There may be another problem that you can help your customers solve with a new product or solution that you can develop.

Although there are countless pressures during difficult economic times, marketers who keep their eye on their priorities will emerge even stronger from the downturn than their competition.

So, what kinds of subject lines work best?

Marketing Sherpa did an audit of their own e-newsletters and compared open rates and came to the following four conclusions:

1. A subject line where the first 2 words express value to the reader gets opened more. The 10 top-performing subject lines included those that started with the phrases such as Top 12, Best Time, 6 Actions, and How To. Make sure the first two words let your user know there’s something of value inside.

2. Use trigger words. Include names, numbers, unusual words in your subject line. Magazine headline writers have used these tricks for years to get their publications opened.

3. Don’t ask users to do something. Marketing Sherpas worst-performing subject lines all asked users to take a survey, watch a podcast, nominate someone, or register for something. Your e-newsletter should be a gift for the reader, not a request for work.

4. Including a hot brand name can increase open rates. Some of the best performers in Marketing Sherpa’s list included the words Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook.

Once you think you’ve got your subject line done, be sure to pare it down to the minimum. Remember to keep your subject line under 39 characters (see more in our post “Getting your HTML e-mails opened” — don’t forget your mobile users), make sure they’re the best 39 characters you can come up with, and the most important two words are at the front!