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Marketing trends come and go, but there’s one marketing tactic that has proven itself time and time again to be a winner. It’s suitable for your entire client base, it’s been tried and tested for over a decade and still delivers the biggest impact for your buck when it comes to digital marketing.

Studies conducted by Marketing Sherpa revealed over 90 per cent of adults enjoy receiving promotional emails from businesses they’ve subscribed too. Three quarters of those surveyed like receiving special promos monthly, while over half said they would be happy to receive them even more frequently.

So why does email marketing remain so effective?

Email is a great way to back up social media advertising

Paying for Facebook advertising has proved to be more efficient when the ads are reinforced by sending an accompanying email campaign.

Email is perfect for split testing

Email marketing software allows you to try several different concepts for the same campaign and analyse the results so you can perfect your approach.

Email marketing helps you build relationships with your clients

Regular correspondence with your client base will help them feel a connection with your company.

Email marketing is the fastest way of contacting your clients

The second you press the send button, delivery to your client’s inbox is instant, no need to wait for Australia Post to deliver it and since 91 per cent of people check their emails daily you should start to see results within 48 hours.

Emails are mobile

With the invention of smartphones, most users have access to their email wherever they are. It doesn’t matter if you clients are overseas or out of town, they will still receive your email.

If you would like to learn more about refining your email campaigns, want professionally designed templates or need to know what email marketing programs will meet your needs, contact the team at XDesigns Advertising today.

If you don’t have a clear, succinct message when you advertise, you’d be better off using your money to start a fire. How are you going to convince anyone to purchase your product or service, if you’re not even sure what you’re trying to communicate?

There is a proven way to make people pay attention and get your message across clearly. It’s the same formula best-selling novelist and blockbuster movie screenwriters have been using for decades.

Think about the last book you stayed up reading until the ungodly hours of the morning because you had to know what happened, or the last TV series you binge watched on Netflix. What was it about the plot that kept you turning pages or glued to the screen?

All movies and books start with a main character – someone you relate to (or you’ll stop watching or won’t keep reading). This character has a problem that needs solving – a murder case to solve, to find love, to save the world. In the case of branding the main character is your target customer who has a problem that needs a resolution.

In every book or a movie there is a guide, someone to help the main character solve their problem. In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker looks to Yoda to teach him how to use the force. In the hit TV show Prison Break, Michael Schofield looks to Dr. Sarah Tancredi to help him escape Fox Worth Prison. Applying this to branding, your company is the guide and will provide a solution to the customer’s problem. But will the solution be successful or fail? This is what keeps people page turning or watching the next episode of a show.

TV commercials use cliff hangers a lot. Take for instance Napisan. The main character is a busy mother with active children, who get messy, making getting rid of stains on clothing tough. Vanish stains is the guide, it provides Napisan as solution for getting rid of stains. Then there’s a cliff hanger as you wait to see whether the product really worked.

The message is clear and succinct – if you are a busy mum with kids who are rough on clothing, using Napisan will ease the frustration and save time doing laundry.

Customers are looking for two things – Firstly they want to know that you understand their dilemmas. Secondly, they are looking for authority, someone that can say ‘Hey, I have exactly what you’re looking for and this is how it will fix your problems’.

This type of marketing needs to culminate with urging the customer to take action. Many people are quite happy to be bystanders and even though they might think your products sounds good, they won’t do anything unless you include a specific call to action. Customers need to be motivated to pick up the phone or head to their local supermarket to seek out your product. Money-back guarantees or two for one offers for a strictly limited time are great ways to inspire motivation.

Why not change up your marketing strategy today? If you need help in finding your clear, succinct message, talk to the team at XDesigns Advertising. Our clients are located throughout Australia, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth.

Marketing research has revealed that 98 per cent of first-time visitors to your website won’t engage your services or buy your products. You may be shocked by these statistics, but there is a marketing strategy you can try called retargeting.

Without getting too technical, think of a Hollywood blockbuster – usually an action or thriller – where the main character has had a tracking device inserted into their body without them even knowing. The tracking device in the case of retargeting is a code, often referred to as a pixel. So when a person visits your website, they automatically end up having their website movements traced and are exposed to advertisements for your business when triggered through selected searches and keywords, without them even knowing.

A good example of this is Facebook. You might have posted about eating too many donuts and needing to go on a diet, or visited a website on weight loss products and next minute, it’s like Facebook is a mind reader, and you’re seeing Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig ads pop up in your feed. This is called retargeting.

Visitors who are retargeted have already seen your name and are likely to be familiar with your products or services. It’s almost like brand exposure through subliminal messages. The idea is, the more times they see your brand, the more likely they are to remember it and associate it with your products, even if they have been trawling through your competitors websites.

While retargeting may get visitors returning to your website, it won’t necessarily convert those visitors to commit to a sale. You will need to use this strategy in conjunction with compelling content, an easy to navigate, mobile responsive website and some of the other innovative marketing strategies we’ve discussed in earlier blog posts.

To learn how retargeting could work for your company or to start the ball rolling, talk to the team at XDesigns Advertising. Our clients are located throughout Australia, Sydney, Castle Hill, Norwest, Parramatta, Ryde and Seven Hills.

A lead magnet is a freebie or special deal on your website, which captures your website visitors’ email addresses. It turns browsers into subscribers with a better success rate than most other email gleaning alternatives.

Think of a lead magnet as a fishing lure. It has to be an attractive offer to reel in the big fish.

In other words, what you’re offering has to entice visitors to your page and make the effort of actually entering their email address worthwhile.

It can be a tough ask in a digital world where sometimes just clicking like or share seems to be like a big effort and spamming and scamming can be a concern.

Simply using a newsletter or offer subscription box isn’t going to bait customers into divulging their details. Location, design, relevance, simplicity and compelling copy are all important components to creating a persuasive lead magnet.

A lead magnet needs to be concise about what the customer will receive in turn for giving you their email details. Use bribery, something a customer would normally expect to pay for, but will get free by simply providing their email address. For example: A weight loss companies might offer a week’s long menu plan or an eBook on the 10 Foods You Should Never Eat.

Ensure you follow-up and each lead receives their free offer or deal in a timely manner, otherwise you’re likely to end up with customers who feel like they’ve been duped into joining your email list. Generally, website visitors who are duped into parting with their contact details will end up feeling discontent with your company,

and unsubscribed next time they see an email from you. Captured email addresses can be added to your contact database (sometimes referred to as a sales funnel). However most visitors to your website won’t buy anything on their first visit and an eye-catching lead magnet will only get you so far.

You need to put in place a great follow-up strategy to foster your leads and transform them into sales. For more information on setting up lead magnets for your website or blog, contact the team at XDesigns Advertising. Our clients are located throughout Australia, Sydney, Castle Hill, Norwest, Parramatta, Ryde and Seven Hills.

In previous blogs, we’ve used the metaphor of a brand being like a person. The logo is like your outer appearance and your brand is like your personality. Think about your logo in terms of a visit to a hair salon. You can change the colour and style of your hair, but that doesn’t mean you emerge reinvented. Everything beneath the surface is still the same.

When building your brand you need to consider the whole picture. You don’t just need to change the exterior; your values, your aims and goals, they are all important, too.

If you are building or refreshing your brand you need to ask yourself some important questions:

How do your customers perceive your brand?

Sometimes the most surprising things can go viral. It’s hard to predict and you’re likely to need a crystal ball to foresee the future to be able to tell, but there are a few elements that make up a good share-worthy post.

Promotions

It’s another hot sticky day today-but rather than whinging about it, we have some practical #KeepCool ideas for you pic.twitter.com/IIszOUN7jv

— Waikato CivilDefence (@CivilDefenceWKT) January 19, 2016

First impressions are everything, so once a customer opts in ticks the box saying they are interested in receiving correspondence from you, your marketing material better be out-of-this-world amazing. A generic thanks for your subscription won’t cut the mustard in this competitive world. You need to pull out all the stops, even if it means hiring a professional graphic designer and a copywriter.

There’s more than just making sure your email correspondence looks the part, you need to ensure it’s well-written taking care to avoid words that will activate the spam filter. It also has to have influential copy, which will motivate the customer to take immediate action.

Here are some tips to make sure your first email to your email subscribers hits the mark.

Subject line

It needs to motivate the customer to open the email. For example you could use something along the lines of: “Thanks for subscribing – Here’s a special thank you” Or “Thanks for opting in. July savings for email subscribers” Avoid using capitals and exclamations, as it is likely to miss your customer’s inbox and end up in the junk folder without them even seeing it.

Email content

Include special codes that offer a special discount for email subscribers on their first purchase. A good example of this is Diamond Photos, who produce coffee table photo books. Some of their offers are for discounts up to 77% off the recommended retail price if you have their special code.

Avoid words, caps and symbols that will activate the spam filter

Excessive use of capital letters (like you are shouting), overuse of exclamation marks and words like FREE, BONUS, BUY NOW, SPECIAL OFFER, PRIZE will see your email being tagged as spam.

Personalise the copy

You need to make your recipient feel special. This is achieved by calling them by name; instead of ‘Dear customer’. The use of the word ‘you’ is a way of personalizing the copy. This is particularly important if you are a non-profit company. For example “XYZ happened was able to help because of your donations”.

For more help with making sure your email marketing is achieving the goals you intend, contact XDesigns Advertising. Whether it’s graphic design, marketing strategy or copywriting, they have the know-how.

From April 21st, there will be a major Google update taking place that will affect traffic to your website if it’s not already mobile-friendly.

The objective of Google’s latest change is designed to enhance mobile users experience when browsing the Internet.

Using technically advanced algorithms, Google’s search engine will take into account whether or not a website is mobile friendly to determine where it ranks in mobile device search results.

This means if you do not have a responsive website, you can expect to see a decrease in visitors to your website that use smartphones or tablets to access this Internet. Given that 80% of mobile users access the web via a smartphone this could mean a dramatic drop in users locating your homepage.

Google’s new algorithm ranks webpages separately, which means if all your pages aren’t mobile-responsive your entire website won’t be penalised. This is great news for those of you on a tight budget. You can choose the pages which are the most important for an immediate makeover and upgrade the rest of your website when money allows.

If you are not sure whether your website is mobile-friendly or not, the team at XDesigns Advertising are on stand-by right now. They will be able to inform you if your website meets Google’s new criteria and advise you on the necessary steps you need to take to make sure you are ready for the changeover on April 21, 2015.

Time is of the essence and April 21 is just a couple of weeks away. Book your website review now before XDesigns Advertising are booked out.

With Christmas season just around corner, you should be well underway with planning your email marketing strategies. To make it a much jollier Christmas, we’re sharing eight tried and tested techniques you can utilise.

Get into the festive spirit

Make your emails feel Christmassy. Whether you are marketing goods or services, festive headers and footers, special Christmas bonuses for purchases before December 25 or gift-wrapping services can act as calls to action the customer who usually leaves Christmas shopping until the last minute.

Be prepared for the worst case scenario

Make sure you have pre-made templates in the case of an emergency which explains what’s happening at your end and what you are endeavoring to do about it. For example if your website server goes down or is running slow or goods are delayed due to problems with suppliers, you won’t have to scratch around trying to draft an apology and explanation because you will have already done it. All you have to do is schedule it to be sent out.

Thoughtfully use preview text

Preview text is the quick summary, which appears alongside the subject line with a majority of most main email providers. Think of it like a subheading and target it at last-minute Christmas deals.

Pin it on pinterest

Dedicated Pinterest fans will start collating their want-list for Christmas early in on the year. Using Pinterest is a great way to highlight products or services you have for sale, determine what products are most sought after by people who like your products and use this information to relay it to potential customers. For example: A beauty company might discover a skin care range as the most desired item by women in Australia for Christmas.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

If Christmas 2014 you ran a very successful email marketing strategy, you don’t have to do something completely different. Stick with it and incorporate some of these handy techniques.

Make sure your emails are mobile-responsive

Every year the stats on smartphone use continue to grow, yet many retailers and service providers still haven’t wholly embraced mobile responsiveness as part of their marketing strategy. X Designs can provide you with a complete rundown on what it takes to go mobile-friendly. Your website might be responsive but you need to ensure your email templates are too.

Give your email urgency

No one wants to be working Christmas Eve, so make sure you put in a cut-off deadline for Christmas sales as this will not only make sure you’re not running around like a headless chook trying to get orders out, but it will motivate your buyers to act so they don’t miss out.

Contacts over Christmas

Do you shut down completely over the Christmas/New Year holiday period or is there an emergency number customers contact if they need to speak to you? What constitutes an emergency? Make it clear in your email what happens if someone needs to contact you when you’re out of the office. And if you are taking a break, when you will be available to deal with their queries. Be sure to have your automated email marketing software set up to deal with queries while you are enjoying the seasonal holiday with your family.

If you need any help with email marketing strategies, getting automated software which handles your emails or festive email templates, contact the graphic design professionals XDesigns today.