19 Aug

3 Essential Email Marketing Strategies

Posted in Small Business Advertising on 19.08.16 by John Meloche

We’ve looked at the increased usage of email marketing throughout the business world. We’ve analyzed its fit amongst the various types of businesses. We’ve looked at how you should structure your emails. And now to end it off, we’re going to look at simple things you can do to increase the response rate to your emails and boost your ROI. Here are a couple of additional strategies you can implement to help strengthen your email marketing efforts.

  1. Nothing’s better than Free. A great way to start an email marketing campaign is to give something for free. It doesn’t have to be something great but a small little gift is a good way to start a relationship with someone. People love free things, so if you provide them with that, then you can help build relationships with thousands of your email recipients.
  2. Timing is Everything. You have to be meticulous with your campaign. Every little detail has to be perfect. Being precise with your promotional efforts is what enables you to fully display your creativity. This doesn’t change with the timing of your emails. There are certain time frames that produce greater results than others. For emails, prime time is 8 p.m. to midnight. You would think that 9-5 would be better, but people are always working and are unable to check their emails. Better results have been apparent over the night hours. Experian Marketing Services conducted a study in 2012 and found that the time of day that received the best open rate was 8 p.m. to midnight (22% open rate). In addition to a greater opening rate, this time frame also received more clickthroughs and sales.
  3. Mobile Oriented Emails. People are always on their phones nowadays. That means that people are doing more and more things over their phones. That includes checking emails. Litmus, a notable email marketing firm, found that mobile opens accounted for 47% of all email opens in June of 2013. This trend has only continued going into 2016. Lots of people are checking their emails from their phones, you have to make sure your emails are compatible with the various mobile platforms. In fact, you could design your emails for smartphones specifically. Mobile phones are computers themselves, you have to make sure they’re accounted for in your email marketing efforts.

 

These are all just little things you can do to make sure your emails are actually opened. These little things all contribute to increasing the effectiveness of your promotional efforts. When it comes down to it, it’s all about precision. You have to be methodical with your emails as ultimate care with your promotional efforts is essential for success. Precision is just one of many ingredients for marketing success, but if you follow the guidelines listed over the past couple of blogs, you could see a good return on your investment.

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18 Aug

4 Tips on Writing Marketing Emails

Posted in Small Business Advertising on 18.08.16 by John Meloche

Lately we’ve talked about email marketing and how it can benefit your business. But we’ve yet to discuss the actual structure of these emails. What makes them so compelling for customers? How should your business write these emails? Here are a couple tips on how your business can send out persuasive and effective emails:

  1. Compelling Subjects. The subject acts as a hook. It’s the first thing consumers will see from your email; you want to make sure it catches their attention. Now depending on the nature of the email, the subject will vary. But usually something that conveys some sense of urgency tends to help. For example, a subject titled “Huge Sale, you don’t want to miss out!!” would probably work at catching the eyes of your readers. It doesn’t necessarily need to display urgency; comedic and witty subjects tend to work just as well.
  2. Personalize when you can. This might be very hard to achieve but if it’s feasible then go for it. The truth of the matter is everyone is different. We have different wants, needs, and desires. While you might be emailing a similar segment of people, they all could want different things. So it would be greatly beneficial to use whatever information you have on these people to your advantage. Personalization obviously caters more to an individual’s demands and thus increases the chances of them opening and acting on your emails.
  3. Incorporate Trendy Topics. If there are certain popular events going on, then mention them. Structure your email around these events. Use these events as a theme for your email. This enables you to improve you would be incorporating the Rio Olympics into your emails. Something as little as “Huge Olympic Sale!” as a subject would be a good way of using a trendy event to create interest. Essentially these kind of events are a great way of transferring external interest to your emails.
  4. Make Your Call To Action Noticeable. Your call to action is what incites the consumer to go to your website and buy your product. You want this feature to be extremely noticeable so that consumers know where to go when they want to finalize the transaction. A big button like “Buy Now!” would be good. The goal here is just to make sure the call to action is present and hard to miss.

 

When it comes down to it, these kind of emails thrive off creativity. If your company can move its creativity and innovation to the email forums, then you can have success. The best part about these emails is that you can design them; they’re like your blank canvas, you can do anything with it. So let your creativity soar and see those emails turn into sales!

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16 Aug

The Rise of Email Marketing

Posted in Small Business Advertising on 16.08.16 by John Meloche

Yesterday we talked about newsletters and why businesses need them. Newsletters feed directly into an otherwise new and unique marketing medium. Online newsletter have incited the commencement of email marketing. This form of marketing entails businesses sending promotional emails to thousands of recipients.

Businesses generate leads and discover people who would most likely be interested in purchasing their products. This in turn has fueled another industry in lead generation, but we’ll get to that another time. Email marketing has skyrocketed in popularity over the past couple of years. According to a recent survey from Ascend2, 82% of B2B and B2C companies that took part in the study used email marketing technology. Every type of business is now finding use for email marketing and is fully utilizing it to reach new clientele.

There are a lot of reasons why email marketing is becoming so popular in today’s business world. For one thing, it’s inexpensive and it reaches thousands, or even millions, of people. The mass reach is crucial for the success of email marketing. A small percentage of people actually open the email; a 2% response rate is usually good. But since you’re emailing thousands of people, that 2% turns into a decently large number. Email marketing gives you the potential to achieve such a large return from little response numbers; getting more with less. Email marketing provides an inexpensive means to reach an immense number of potential clientele and thus has surged into the modern day business world.

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27 Jun

What Social Commerce Means For Your Business

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 27.06.16 by John Meloche

When thinking about the online component of a business, people typically focus more on E-commerce and online transaction processing. In this process we tend to understate the importance of social media. There is a new subset of E-commerce that’s becoming more and more relevant these days: Social Commerce. Social Commerce can be defined as “a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions. to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.” (Cohen, 2011)

What does social commerce mean for your business? Social media can drastically impact your businesses’ sales and operations. Advanced advertising campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram now allow you to zoom in completely on your target audience, no matter how specific that may be. Not only that, but most social media advertising campaigns (including Facebook and Instagram) charge on a “per click” basis. Meaning that your advertising is truly charged on its effectiveness. This in turn allows you to optimize your spending and permits you to be more efficient with your advertising.

Social Media is a huge forum for businesses to attract potential clientele. Social Commerce is a big trend and is continued to grow. Brian Hughes from Small Business Trends noted that the top 500 retailers earned $3.3 billion from social shopping in 2014, a 26% increase over 2013, and well ahead of the average 16% growth rate for E-commerce. Its clear Social Commerce is an up and coming trend and will continue to grow rapidly so long as social media remains a mecca for communication. So do yourself a favor and make sure your business isn’t a #throwbackthursday and get on social media now!

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07 Jun

What Are The Best Ways To Interact With Your Customers Online?

Posted in Customer Service, Small Business Advertising on 07.06.16 by John Meloche

dp6pfFWPiVNN+fTY9gAFKSFCaOeCoLyOXPcZa5v6bAz086jRgHYKVRQMNsVn8WzMB1U3PKEqE7Th7siZWbCox9cT9lnjdNfMNIRWI8vShtJvmb8d8dZds6mwu10jHZJVriMb3tfDbyAlTJoxzEVYGanNgjVjYBN39a6K2Ghv7q2W29lkIebb9PAZr8vJ8nqO/rJGes//oD8IC2/qxtfBAkZRZ40lOExCh/ZtticrSoy116dyhTSAUVe0WVYVQi/nZH2Dl+Tr2uA=It’s no secret that using the internet to connect with customers is a must in today’s business world. But because so many people utilize the internet for personal social interactions, it’s important to not get your brand name tied into matters of a personal nature. For example, the way you would interact with your friends is different than the way you would interact with your customers. So, it’s really no different online.

The problem is that some business owners get a bit too friendly with their audience through their social media accounts. Now, let it be clear that there’s nothing wrong with being friendly. We highly advocate friendliness when it comes to interacting with customers. But starting conversations with “yo, what’s up?” using your company’s social media accounts may not necessarily be good for business.

Why is it important to maintain a professional attitude online? You never want your brand to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. No matter how friendly you decide to be, never lose your sense of professionalism. “Be pleasant, but not overly friendly with online customer interactions,” says Stephanie Walden on Mashable.com, “If there’s one thing social-savvy commenters will call a brand out on faster than a poorly placed typo, it’s getting too chummy online in an awkward, insincere manner.”

She goes on to point out that it’s a bad idea to use emojis and other symbols that are in keeping with informal text messaging and internet-speech. Using overly casual language, cheesy puns or banter and improper grammar and punctuation can hurt your company’s brand image. Keep in mind that there are many other members of your target audience out there who may be looking to your social media accounts for information. You don’t want to turn them off.

How important is responding to customer questions in a timely manner? The probably-too-obvious answer is that it is extremely important! In fact, social media are commonly used as modern day help desks. If customers ask you questions or make requests for help using their Facebook or Twitter accounts and you don’t respond within a day, most of them will consider themselves ignored.

“Millennials in particular can be averse to speaking on the phone, and reaching out via social may come as second nature,” informs Walden, “Having a dedicated person paying attention to online inquiries is key. Be sure this employee knows to check not only Twitter mentions or Facebook post comments, but also the comment sections on any company-produced blog posts, as well as direct messages on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram — and yes, even the dreaded YouTube comments.”

Should social media be used to handle disputes? We would definitely advise against it. If a customer has become disgruntled and has used social media to air his/her grievances, it’s best to contact that customer directly. Not only should you be treating the matter in a serious enough way that you put in a phone call to the customer, you definitely don’t want an argument of any kind to be made public.

“Every now and then, you’re going to have to deal with a customer on social media voicing complaints, sometimes in an obnoxious manner,” admits Walden, “It’s key to get these heated conversations offline, as quickly as possible and in a way that not only placates the upset customer, but also communicates to online observers that the issue is being handled.”

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31 Jul

6 Ways To Get Your Social Media Campaign Off The Ground

Posted in Social Media on 31.07.15 by John Meloche

Social media button conceptAre you on social media? While it’s never too late to start, you’re certainly behind the times if you haven’t yet established a Facebook or Twitter account. Don’t worry though. Today’s blog will certainly steer you in the right direction as it relates to growing your social media following. All week long, we have devoted our blogs to the concept of using social media to grow your business. And why not? It’s worked for us!

Growing your business has a lot more to do than gaining likes and followers on your social media accounts, of course. The point of starting up your profiles is to bring greater attention to your business without blatantly advertising it. Social media platforms are all about starting up conversations and getting people interested in what you have to say. As mentioned, if you need a little help getting started, this blog is the right place!

Here are six ways to get your social media campaign off the ground:

1. Don’t go account crazy. As we’ve pointed out in many of our blogs, Synergy Marketing is active on Facebook and Twitter. For now, that’s it. To be successful in the social media world, you don’t necessarily have to be on every single platform out there. According to Jayson Demers on Inc.com, “being active and engaged on a few social networks will net you more followers over the long haul than sporadically posting on many networks.”

2. Don’t go post crazy. It’s important to post regularly. But “regularly” doesn’t mean every five minutes. Who has time for that anyway? Inundating your followers with posts may get annoying. And over-posting will diminish the strength of each post, as you’ll be disallowing them from getting proper traction. “Test out different posting frequencies and see which ones result in the most engagement and shares,” suggests Demers.

3. Make your posts relevant. Posts can be funny. Posts can be thought-provoking. Posts can be whatever you want them to be! But never forget who your target audience is made up of. Refrain from meaningless posts that don’t add to the overall image of your brand. “Social media growth is more likely to happen when you’re focusing on sharing amazing, quality content that you know your audience loves,” believes Demers.

4. Posts links to your accounts everywhere. In yesterday’s blog, we mentioned that we have Facebook and Twitter icons on the right hand side of our website linking visitors to their respective accounts. It’s important, however, to include links in as many places as possible. Demers recommends that you include links to your accounts in your newsletters, your email signatures and your blog posts.

5. Discuss social media conversations on your blog. Here’s a tip that we’re literally taking right now. Sort of. As you know, this week, the Synergy Marketing Blog has been dedicated to the topic of social media. It helps! “Entice your blog readers to follow you on social media by crossing the blog/social network divide,” recommends Demers, “Blog about heated or interesting conversations taking place on your social media accounts.”

6. Promote your social accounts in-store. Not to be lost in all of this is the fact that you’ll still be meeting new people the old tried-and-true, face-to-face way. Remember that one of the best ways to keep in touch with your loyal customers is to follow them on social media and have them do the same to you. “Offer your in-store guests an incentive to like or follow you on social media,” Demers suggests.

Good luck!

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30 Jul

6 Ways To Grow Your Social Media Following

Posted in Social Media on 30.07.15 by John Meloche

Twitter bird chattingThis week, the Synergy Marketing Blog has been dedicated to discussing the use of social media in order to grow your small business. As we pointed out in yesterday’s blog, it has certainly helped for our company to grow its online interest in recent weeks. Our Twitter followers are growing slowly, but surely. And we’re happy to know that with each blog we post, we are generating more interest in our brand.

Naturally, you can do the same for your company. Yesterday, we mentioned that including hashtags in our Facebook and Twitter posts have helped for us to gain more attention. There are, of course, a number of other tactics that you can use. And while we’ve been enjoying greater social media success as of late, we don’t claim to be social media experts. So we figured we’d get some help from Jayson Demers of Inc.com.

Here are six ways to grow your social media following:

1. Share original content. What makes you unique? What makes you stand out from your competitors? The answers to these questions should be found in your social media posts. Offering interesting, one-of-a-kind points of view will help to garner greater interest in your accounts. “Sharing other people’s content should be a valuable part of your strategy, but make sure to share your knowledge and insights as well,” says Demers.

2. Place social media links on your website. On the right hand side of the Synergy Marketing website, you will find icons for our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Every visitor to your website should be given easy access to your profiles too. “Link to your social media accounts on your Contact and About Us pages,” insists Demers, “These visitors are already reaching out to you; give them another way to connect with you.”

3. Get in on conversations. Don’t just post your own content, but comment upon the posts of others. You’ll also want to be sure to be interactive with those who take the time to comment on your posts. That way, you’ll be engaging in conversations with people that you can turn into new fans of your brand. “Posting engaging content is just one piece of the puzzle,” writes Demers, “Respond to questions, comments, and complaints in a timely manner.”

4. Hold contests. Is there anyone who doesn’t like getting something for free? It’s pretty much the Synergy Marketing philosophy! Why else would we offer Canadian business owners the best promo products in the business? Demers suggests that you hold contests via your social media accounts to build more buzz: “Hold contests and make liking your Page or following your Twitter account a requirement for entry.”

5. Follow others. Don’t be so bold as to think that you’re deserving of followers that you don’t have to follow back. Return the gesture. At Synergy Marketing, we make it a point to follow back each and every one of our followers. Perhaps, this is what has helped us gain so many new ones in recent weeks. “Don’t just count on others to find you,” advises Demers, “go out and actively find others in your niche whom you can follow and engage with.”

6. Tell stories. Demers also warns against being “overtly promotional”. Again, it’s important to remember the social aspect of social media. Instead of blatantly advertising your company, “use stories to connect with and engage your fans,” he encourages, “Stories are far more likely to be shared than promotional content.” Your story could always be about something your company did to brighten someone’s day. See, it still works out as promotion!

Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s blog as we round out this week’s series of social media related blogs. And don’t hesitate to call us at 1-877-748-9884 to order promo gifts to advertise your company!

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29 Jul

Remarking On Our Recent Social Media Success

Posted in Social Media on 29.07.15 by John Meloche

Young businessman drawing social media communication concept. Isolated on white.As of this writing, the Synergy Marketing Facebook account boasts 116 likes while the Synergy Marketing Twitter account is edging it out at 119 followers. This is a new and interesting occurrence in our company’s social media world. For quite some time, our Facebook account seemed to be more popular than our Twitter account. It seemed like we were never going to crack 100 followers!

In the past couple of weeks, however, our Twitter account has stormed back with a vengeance. Now, don’t get us wrong. We know that numbers in the low 100s don’t exactly make for brag-worthy statistics. However, our rise in popularity via our social media accounts in recent weeks speaks to a very important point about doing business in this day and age. It’s important to stay active online in order to gain more notice.

We’ve certainly blogged about this before. In fact, over the past two couple of days, the Synergy Marketing Blog has been taking a look at the ways in which social media can help your business promote its next summer event. The truth is that social media have the ability to promote just about anything you like. It’s all how you decide to use your profiles. As we’ve mentioned in blogs past, it’s important to actually be social on social media.

They’re not called social media for nothing! Engaging and participating in conversations online is what truly helps for accounts to take off. If you’re under the impression that you should only be using your Facebook and Twitter accounts to blatantly advertise your products and services, you’ve got it all wrong. At least, that has been the experience of many a business owner. Instead, it’s important to post content that is both thought-provoking and conversation-worthy.

Now, we’re not trying to claim ourselves as social media experts or anything. But our recent growth in social media success has proven that we’ve learned a thing or two. In fact, it was just earlier this month that we celebrated our 100th Twitter follower. That took quite some time. So evidently, we’re picking up the pace. Many of our blogs have listed ways to grow social media followers. But, in today’s blog, we’ll reveal one major thing we’ve done to grow our following.

Hashtags. Every time we post a blog to our website, we post a link to it on Facebook and Twitter. We also include a question along with the link in order to provoke some thought. The blog is meant to answer that question. The intent is to get our audience curious about what we’re asking in the hopes that they click the link. And while this has seemingly helped, it wasn’t until we started incorporating hashtags in our posts that we noticed a significant spike in followers.

By adding hashtags, our posts get picked up in a number of conversations about similar topics. Admittedly, we weren’t even sure how hashtags worked this time last year. But we’re thankful that our understanding has helped us to pick up some steam in the social media world. Here’s how we posted yesterday’s blog on both of our accounts: “What other ways can #socialmedia help you to plug your next #summer #event? Check out our latest #blog to find out!”

By posting this way, we injected our blog alongside other posts that involve social media, summer, events and blogs. And, as a matter of fact, we welcomed two new followers shortly after posting it! Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s blog as we continue to unveil tips on how you can grow your company’s social media following. And be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter while you’re at it!

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14 Jul

4 Steps To Growing Your Company’s Online Reach

Posted in Small Business Advertising, Social Media on 14.07.15 by John Meloche

Business man hand reaching out from screen to shake with white  backgroundIn yesterday’s blog, we discussed the importance of blogging and just how much it can help to grow your company’s online presence. As we mentioned, it has certainly worked for us. Not only do we post a new blog to our website each business day of the week, but we also add links to those blog posts to our Facebook and Twitter profiles. This has helped us to grow our likes and followers respectively. But what else can help you to grow your company’s reach online?

Here are four steps to growing your company’s online reach:

1. Keep active on your social media accounts. Hopefully, this tip isn’t completely necessary. Having social media profiles allows you to interact with members of your customer base so that they can gain a greater understanding about what you have to offer. The key, as always, is to be social as opposed to being a blatant advertiser. On Chron.com, Gemma Craig describes the importance of being active on social media.

“Social media networks allow individuals to follow your company or event and make it easy for you to keep your followers updated,” she writes, “You can integrate your social media accounts into your website or blog via widgets and links, increasing its exposure, and can use social media to post specials just for your followers, encouraging new visitors to join your pages.” As mentioned, this has significantly helped us to grow our reach online.

2. Write blogs for other websites. Blogging for your own website is a great idea. As we pointed out yesterday, it helps for search engines to better pick up your website. Thus, you increase website traffic. However, it’s also a good idea to spread your expertise by becoming a guest author on other websites. Even if you’re not writing blogs yourself, get your blog writers to contribute blogs to sites that will add links to your own.

If it’s one thing that all blogs want, it is more content, insists Neil Patel on QuickSprout.com. “If you write guest blog posts on other blogs, not only will you get traffic and more branding, but you’ll also get links, which will help your SEO efforts,” he writes, “If you are looking to find places to guest blog, you can check out My Blog Guest, or you can approach popular blogs in your field one by one.”

3. Partner up with other businesses. This is certainly a tip that we’ve doled out before. But, in this case, we mean to say that you should try to swap advertising space on your website for space on other company websites. That way, you’ll be able to generate a lot more traffic from people who may otherwise never have heard of your business. Create a “links” page on your website to offer this service to would-be partners.

“Some advertisement companies offer special promotions that allow you to advertise your company or event online for a certain duration free of charge, at which point you can pay to continue advertising if it has proved useful to your campaign,” reveals Craig, “Alternatively, you can find websites that have a readership relevant to your company or event and pay for advertisement space.”

4. Be a trusted source of information. Part of engaging an audience online is being able to provide information that is relevant to your business. “From forums to question and answer sites, people need help,” informs Patel, “If you can answer questions related to the products and services your company provides, you can get new customers. You can find these potential customers on forums and on question and answer sites like Yahoo Answers.”

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04 May

2 Big Ways To Build A Buzz For Your Blog

Posted in Synergy Suggestions on 04.05.15 by John Meloche

Depositphotos_6501329_xsAt Synergy Marketing, we have been maintaining a daily blog for quite some time now. In fact, it’s been nearly six years since we posted our first blog and we’ve been keeping up with our commitment to add a new blog each and every business day of the week since then. Considering that, we’d argue that our company website contains the most informative content of any promotional products business out there!

And we’re quite proud of that feat. The Synergy Marketing Blog is chock-full of incredibly useful information for business owners of all types. Our blogs have ranged from championing the use of promotional products to finding creative ways to utilize the internet. It’s never short on helpful advice, but we even throw some current event pieces in there now and again. However, there is one thing about our blog that has truly helped us to grow our online reach.

And that would be the way that we promote it. To be honest, we learned this the hard way. For the first couple of years, we didn’t utilize our social media profiles as much as we do now and our blog wasn’t so popular. You see, posting content to your website is a great idea. But it’s important to get the word out about it. After all, who’s going to read your blog if no one knows that it exists? As a result, we make sure to stay on top of promoting each and every blog post.

“Writing your latest blog post and hitting publish is just the beginning when it comes to growing your subscription base,” writes social media strategist, Rebekah Radice, “If you truly want to gain the attention of your target audience (and Google), then you will need to spend time promoting your content in multiple locations.” On her website, she lists a number of tips to help business owners to promote their latest blog posts.

Here are two big ways to build a buzz for your blog:

1. Take to tweeting. Every blog post on the Synergy Marketing Blog receives no less than two tweets on our official Twitter account. Firstly, we have it set up so that there is always an automatic notification on Twitter that our new blog post has been made live. Secondly, our Twitter account administrator will then go about engaging our audience via a question that our blog post answers. Of course, a link to the blog is always in each tweet.

Interestingly, it seems as if we were taking Radice’s advice without even realizing it. “Post your article to Twitter and then schedule several additional tweets to go out over the course of the week,” she recommends, “To make the most of this strategy, put a new spin on these tweets by changing up your original article title. This allows you to A/B test which verbiage performs and which falls flat.”

2. Follow through on Facebook. What we do on Twitter, we also do on Facebook. This popilar social media site generally encourages discussion by allowing friends and fans to post comments of their own underneath your posts. As well, the posts also encourage “likes”, which help you to determine how much people are interested in what you’ve posted. Each day, we post a link to our blog on our Facebook page along with an audience-engaging question that the blog answers.

It looks like we follow yet another tip that Radice provides! “Make it a habit of posting your article to Facebook with a newly created graphic and a quick and simple status update relevant to your blog on your Facebook page,” she advises, “Don’t forget to provide a link to discussed articles. At the same time, place eye-catching advertisements on Facebook to further promote your new articles.”

Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s blog as we unveil a few more great ways to build buzz for your blog. And don’t forget to call us directly at 1-877-748-9884 to order your promotional products!

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