Email Marketing…Used and Abused.

Email marketing has been a great tool to reinforce company and product awareness and effectively drive traffic to your web site. Email campaigns help create an interactive connection and nurture quality relationships with your customers.

More and more businesses are increasing their time and budgets towards email marketing. Why? Because it’s cheap, and it works. No two things go together better. (Ok, maybe beer and football). So, send a bunch of people, a bunch of emails, save a bunch of money, and sell a bunch of stuff. Seem too good to be true? Well it is, unless it’s done correctly.

People’s inbox’s are swamped more than ever and consumers are becoming more selective in which email gets attention. What does that mean for email marketers? To get results, we have to get smarter and work harder.

In my opinion, email marketing is meant to increase awareness and encourage repeat customers, not necessarily to attract new ones. Never copy a list from some book or scratch emails from some list. Hmmm, I shall call it… SPAM. This type of email marketing is not only unethical, but a waste of time, energy, and can have a negative impact on your brand. The best way is to incorporate an email collection program into your everyday business.

It’s no coincidence that the number one reason that people unsubscribe or stop reading emails from companies is because that the emails weren’t relevant to them. Guess what many companies say is the hardest part about email marketing? Making the email content relevant.

Always remember, people are giving you there name, email, and time. They want something in return like special deals or insight or they will quickly move elsewhere…errr…unsubscribe.

Hey my dad was right. The more you put into something, the more you get out.

Your Wife Is Hot!

Better get the A/C fixed!

ZING!!!

This is what is on a couple of Billboards around Raleigh, NC. Brought to you by Airmakers, a heating and air conditioning company in the Triangle.

No colors, no fancy designs, no pictures, just text. And this might be one of the best ad's I have seen in a long while. It's not in bad taste, not offensive, not complicated, but grabs your attention better than something that is.

This is a great example of how to perfectly accomplish the two most important goals in any advertisement.- grabbing the consumers attention and getting the message across.

Google is Great

Google has tons of great tools for webmasters and web designers. One that I am having fun with now is the way you can use special searches to see sample results that indicate how your site is indexed. As SEO, or search engine optimization becomes a household name, the information from this tool can be helpful in understanding your site and the power of the World Wide Web.

An example...type in these in Google and check out the results.

info:yourdomain.com
You will see how Google displays your site to users in its search.

links:yourdomain.com
This is a good one…it will list the pages on the web that link back to your home page.

links:yourdomain.com/oneofyourpages
This way you can show links that point to any specific page in your site.

What does this really mean, you ask? Well for starters, if your site doesn’t show up, you have problems. And I have answers…call me. www.brascomarketing.com

Aside from gaining knowledge about your SEO efforts, what you should be thinking is that you need to always consider back-links before you edit or re-design your site. If you remove or rename one of these pages, you render all the back-links and gained SEO useless.

Image is everything.

OK short set up to get the idea…so the other day I signed up for a life insurance policy. After going through the gambit of questions, the insurance agent says that this company, who shall remain nameless, will come to my house and perform a routine physical.  No big deal until he hands me their brochure. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. You could have done better with crayons and cardboard paper. I had visions of some guy pulling up in a beat up truck, chewing gum, and smoking a cigarette ready to stick me with a needle. Did I really want these guys coming to my house?

We all have been told to not judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, in many situations we all do. It’s human nature. Call me shallow, but many times I have received a business card and immediately thought good or bad things about that company by the look and feel of said card. It’s human nature.  It’s why you don't show up for a job interview in shorts and tee shirt.   

Not everyone has the creative eye or budget to have that perfectly designed brochure, but remember, if it looks like a dog, and feels like a dog, I'm going to think it's a dog.

OK iphone, we understand!

There is an app for everything!  Give it a rest!!

Social Networking. Some get it. Some don’t.

On my usual beach trip from Raleigh, NC to Morehead City, NC, I couldn’t help but notice a series of billboards promoting the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium. It wasn’t the billboard design itself that intrigued me (which is great by the way), but the campaign it was promoting.

ShowUsYourFishFace.com was the message, and obviously by the name, encouraged people to submit their “wackiest and weirdest fish impressions” to be posted on their web site. Much like what we’ve done with a client of ours, Undertoad Company’s Toad Tour (shameless plug), they have utilized a form of social networking and created a personal element to their promotion. When you give people an avenue to join up and be a part of something, it can only add brand value and increase customer loyalty.

The bottom line is this....The Aquarium people get it. There is more to social networking than sites like Facebook. Don’t rush to Twitter because it’s “what the kids are doing these days”. Most companies come off looking silly for trying too hard to fit in and not really having anything to say (You may have seen a few). Social Marketing should always be considered a two way street and is a powerful tool if managed correctly. Be original and find something that works for your business and then work it into an avenue that can get results.

Do what everybody else is doing and you will be just like everybody else. Where is the fun in that?

That's "G" for not Good, Gatorade.

You saw them, the weird shadowy commercials that featured our beloved sports heroes with no real purpose except to get people asking what is ”G”?

Well, in case you haven’t heard, the man behind the curtain is Gatorade. And while I admire the way they creatively generated a buzz surrounding the re-branding, I think they missed the mark on the re-branding itself. In early 2009, Gatorade began a massive rebranding, resulting in new names for most of their products. With hip hop stars in commercials and new names like “Shine on” and “Bring it “ there is no question they are targeting America’s youth.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem using hip hop themed advertising as long as thats your niche. I have my “ears on the street” as much as any 30 year old white boy can. I grew up on hip hop. However, I do feel that Gatorade has made a mistake in its overall strategy to change its entire product line to focus on one demographic. When your as big as gatorade and focus solely on one target, you lose sight of the big picture and maybe turn off the rest.

Where Gatorade failed, its rival, Coca Cola’s Vitamin Water succeeded. With Vitamin Water, they seem to have captured the essence of marketing to a huge demographic while still capitalizing on people’s personal interests. It is almost as if each demographic has its own flavor. From Carrie Underwood to 50 Cent and David Wright to Lebron James.

To each his own…and mine is Power-C.