Monday, January 23rd, 2012
And in the same time check out a first draft chapter and section from my upcoming eBook? then watch no further then the space below:
Don’t forget to sign-up and receive updates with more digital marketing tips and hints, and access to further sample sections as they become available at: www.easy-digital-marketing.com
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
There is a pretty big possibility that your brand is already talked about on twitter or “checked in to” through Facebook. Take control of your company presence and use the medium to your advantage.
Below you will find 9 key things to consider, when creating your Facebook strategy for your brand:
1. Purpose
2. How you will achieve your goal
3. Content
4. Define who you want to talk to
5. Tell customers you are on Facebook
6. Your resources
7. Why should someone like your brand and engage with it on Facebook?
8. Then what? aka Whats in it for me?
9. Evaluation and development!
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
There are plenty of basic improvements you can do yourself when it comes to search engine optimizing your website. A lot of the work is (or should be if not!)simple “best practice” when it comes to website management.
Good organization and planning is half the job done. So therefore I’ve created a checklist for you to use as a guide to your SEO empowerment and improvements!
Before you start, you may want to use WebsiteGrader to give you a heads start on what needs to be improved on your website.
1. Get your keywords right:
I advice that you put on your thinking cap and start evaluating the keywords and/or phrases you want your website to rank higher for. To achieve this, this is your online tools:
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Insight for Search
Thesaurus.com
Your competitors source code
2. Finding out if your website is indexed:
- Go to Google.com (or whatever suffix is relevant for you)-
- Type in “site:yourdomainname.com”
- In my case: site:veronicastenberg.se
gave me on the 14/08/2011
663 results
or use your Google Webmaster Tools, if you have this for your domain to get an indication if and what pages of your website is indexed.
3. Your pages
For each page make sure vital keywords are present in:
4. Code
5. Content
Make sure to use your keywords in and for the following:
6. Copy
7. URLs
8. Various
9. Links
That’s it, some basic hints on what you can improve yourself. I will continue to update this, but this should not be to complicated to start out with.
Saturday, August 13th, 2011
I’ve worked with and tested a quite a few email marketing software’s through the years. Everything from home built programs to specialist software. I’ve written about and recommended MailChimp before as a brilliant email marketing tool to help you get started with your email marketing activities. (However if you are for say a larger online retailer, I would suggest looking at solutions such as dotMailer or similar).
I’ve worked quite a bit in MailChimp, and here is my checklist, prior to campaign send out – that I always tick off. The key is - you can never test a campaign to much!
I hope you find this useful.
1. Have you previewed your newsletter in the most relevant email clients and web-based email clients? (or even better if you run a inbox inspection)
2. Have you sent yourself a test?
3. Have you tested that all the links are working?
4. Have you inserted your personalization code from your distribution list? (and tested this?)
5. Have you used the Google URL builder to create your links?
(http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578)
6. Have you set-up a plain text version?
7. Does your plain text version include the personalization codes?
8. Does your plain text version include links?
9. Have you imported your distribution list?
10. have you made sure all the unsubscribes from the last campaign are removed from this distribution list?
11. Have you entered a subject line, from to name and reply-to email address?
12. Have you run a delivery doctor on your email? (you can also notice that something is WRONG if your email does not get through any of the web based email clients such as BT/Yahoo Mail for example)
Sunday, July 17th, 2011
No matter if you have a big or small shop, you should record you sales activities merged with your website 
performance data. This way you can predict patterns in sales, work on improving your website and customer experience and get valuable insight to work on developing everything from marketing, to sales.
If you are unsure about how to start to put together reports for your ecommerce activities, then download my reporting template. It consists of all the common data to record on a day to day and weekly basis in regards to sales, such as amongst other things:
The template also includes data you should gather from you Google Analytics account:
If you work with link building for keywords either in-house or buy buying this service from a supplier, I have included how a ranking report could look, so you can get an overview over the changes/per month.
Download my ecommerce reporting template now.
I hope you will find this useful!
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Before you embark on your social media adventure, there are a few things to consider, apart from the obvious (what is it that you want to achieve?).
The internet and social network platforms in particular is a free space, with millions of different views and opinions. Are you perhaps a retailer of some sort, it can be a good idea to have a think about how you will deal with any negative feedback about your products, services and brand.
Secondly, do you have the time and manpower to dedicate to this project so that your company can achieve quality results instead of supplying yet another poorly updated Facebook fanpage?
The first step is to establish the main objectives. Ask yourself, what is it exactly that you want to get out from a social media/network presence?
Do you want to:
Put your thinking cap on and be well aware of why you are doing this and what it is you want to achieve with your chosen channels.
(part 2-7 to follow)
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
FROM: Wed, February 18, 2009 20:48:36
I had the brilliant opportunity to attend my first conference held by Drapers today which was focused purely on ecommerce for the fashion industry.
It was an interesting mix of speakers from ASOS, IMRG, Figleaves, YOOX and Cocosa to name a few at the adorable Millennium Gloucester Hotel in South Kensington, London.
I must say that I am absolutely delighted to see more female speakers then on my previous attended conferences. Working in a male dominated industry I appreciate to discover strong, clever, females. I find that very inspirational.
However – I did not leave the conference with my notepad bursting of notes as per usual, not that much was new under the sun for me at this event. Though it’s always interesting to see how other companies work with the web as well as getting thoughts, ideas and working processes confirmed. Not to forget meeting new likeminded people which also shares a passion or interest for all things web.
The speaker from Google did not disappoint, he delivered a witty and interesting insight in to some baffling research about online customer behaviour in regards to traffic driven from search engines. Such as the average number of searches conducted by possible online customers is a whooping 6, and it can take up to 60 days from the initial first search to lead to conversion from an interested website visitor.
I will definitely check out the Google Insight tool which I believe can prove most useful to find new possibilities for the website I work with as well as deepen my own knowledge when it comes to search.
It was an great day out of the office, to get to see the world beyond my computer screen and after hearing some of the speakers today; I believe even more in that despite this horrible economical downturn which England currently resides in – there are so many possibilities out there. All we have to do is to keep positive, and don’t be afraid to pursue those possibilities despite what we read in the Metro this morning. The future is online.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Content is king – make your newsletter inspiring, relevant and something to look forward to for your subscribers. This is the key element which will keep your subscribers from unsubscribing.
Then, consider the following points;
1. ONLINE SAMPLE – make sure you have an online version of your latest newsletter which the visitor of your website can view anytime and update this accordingly as soon as you send out a newsletter. Have a link to the online version somewhere relevant and nearby to your sign up page or box, since enabling the visitor to view a copy online – can be the reason they decide to subscribe at all.
2. QUICK & EASY – make the registration for your newsletter as quick and easy as possible – don’t ask for too much information or scare away potential subscribers half-way by complicated forms and mandatory fields which asks for information your website visitors just don’t want to give away to you. If requesting more information, make sure it’s easy and swift to supply this on your particular page or step, perhaps by ticking any relevant options from a range of tick-boxes.
3. SIGN-UP FORM or BUTTON -the sign up button or box for your newsletter should preferably be a static element in the same position, clearly visible – throughout your website.
4. INCENTIVES – arrange competitions on your website or with other companies. In the registration-form have the option to subscribe to your newsletter available as a tick-box in your form. The competition can either be for your own products or why not contact other non-competitive brands with the same target audience and set up a collaboration with them? Other options could be with magazines your target audience reads or other websites they would visit. Do your research.
5. WORK WITH OTHER WEBSITES – engage in competitions with your products in online forums, blogs and magazines where your target audience is active. Most forums offers to sell the details on to you of the participants which announced their interest to receive more infromation from you (if unsure – ask for this option).
To investigate if a forum, website, blog or magazine is suitable for your company; ask to receive their media pack which contains all the infomation you need about their visitor statistics and demographics.
6. SPREAD THE WORD – if you do host competitions on your website for products, add them to sites such as loquax to spread the word, your facebook group/page, your blog, newsletter or twitter. Never forget to insert a forward to a friend option within your competition sign-up form (and your newsletter should contain this option as well you know!).
There are pleanty of active e-zines, blogs and other exiting websites which your target audince may be active on, try to be one step a head of your competitiors is a fulltime job in itself. So search the web, look in to your Google Analytics account – where does the traffic to your website come from? visit the sites. Investigate, be curious and dare to be different and try new things outside the famous box.
Not having a great budget does not have to be a hindrance, instead this can prompt you to be more creative and find new possibilities which does not have to cost the earth:
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Is that the lady who keeps on sending you emails about “intimate” positions? how to enlarge some of your more private body parts (or lack thereof in my case!) to a incredibly “satisfying” size? or the online-dating emails which
sometimes slips through in to your inbox?
Nowdays, not only, it’s also you, you and you. And me. Until my start at the current
company which I now work for, I was blissfully unaware of the fact that the
newsletters that I was sending out could possibly, even the slightest be counted as
SPAM by various providers. Are you kidding me?
Now I know better, much better.
Which makes me think that there are still more like previous me out there, sending
out newsletters with in-house tools, laughing in the face of SPAM filters, at least
once a month and then getting annoyed with open rates and statistics not being as
good as they actually should and could be be.
Here is a few tips for you:
1. Set up some test accounts on various email providers such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail
and so forth and test your newsletters to external emails, not just your inbox at
the office or the personal email address you happen to have.make sure your newsletters are delivered to a at least the majority of the email accounts on your list.
Also make sure to test this in-house if you have access to various versions of email clients and check the message headers, if you have the option to do so.
2. Include a plain text version, with the URLs for you links inserted in full, this
gets your SPAM rating down. And make sure your plain text version is just that, a plain text version and not a text version including HTML and CSS code, flying all over the window.
3. Ask to be added to the recipients address book – to ensure deliverability.
4. Consider the text and image balance, sometimes large images and less text areas can
set the SPAM filters singing.
5. It’s good praxis to include a link to an online version in the very top of a
newsletter – this is not only great for recipients having issues viewing your
newsletter for different reasons, it also gets your SPAM rating down.
6. Don’t forget a link to your privacy policy – if not including this in full or part of in the bottom of your newsletter.
7. The option to unsubscribe should always be included, no ifs, no butts and remember -
do not force people to login to an account on your site to be able to unsubscribe. Make it as easy to subscribe as unsubscribe to your newsletters. You don’t want to email people that don’t want to hear from you anyway.
(bad Play.com!)
8. Be careful which words you use in the subjectline, also stay away from characters
such as ! % spaces etc
If you still have issues with the SPAM score your newsletter is generating or emails not
getting through as intended, then look in to the structure of your newsletter.
Perhaps there is something in the code or your copy which increases your SPAM score.