Building eCommerce

By Kenneth Edwards

Email marketing can be extremely effective - not only in strengthening a brand image, but also in making sales.

Businesses use email marketing both internally and externally to generate new customer leads, create brand recognition and awareness, improve customer relationships, cross and up-sell to existing customers, improve website traffic, educate and support customers, promote events and generate product sales.

When compared to traditional direct mail, the cost benefit alone offers the greatest advantage. Consider the cost of print, postage and other production factors to realize the value gained. To make email marketing even more attractive, email marketing improves the speed of delivery, offers stronger controls over message delivery and measurably converts to sales.

Peter A. Johnson, Ph.D., director and senior economist, Strategic Information Unit in white paper “Preserving The Promise of The E-mail Marketplace: An Economic Assessment of The Proposed Federal DO-NOT-E-Mail Registry” states, “Based on US Census Bureau data for total e-commerce from 2003, DMA research estimates that already some 14% of the $138 billion Internet commerce marketplace for 2003 was driven by commercial e-mail. This translates into an excess of $19 billion spent in response to commercial e-mails in 2003.

Again however, it is important to bear in mind that the Census Bureau E-Stats program has not yet released its first measurements on the value of e-commerce in the vitally important services sector.

Since these purchases include many airline tickets and other forms of travel, hotel accommodation and car rentals, etc., that although initiated by an e-mail advertisement, may have been purchased via 800 number and thus not be categorized as e-commerce by the Census Bureau, it is likely this figure significantly understates the true impact of e-mail marketing.”

The numbers, combined with the total cost to run a successful email marketing campaign, is unmatched.

In each relationship nurtured with email marketing, there are two sides - the sender and the receiver. The sender wants to reach the audience and promote the most positive image they can. They also want to reinforce their services or products in a way to increase sales and visibility.

How can they accomplish this? They need to draw up a clear portrait of their consumer. Answer the following questions:

What are the audience demographics - age, education, sex, geography and income?

What are the audience’s interests and pastimes?

How busy is the audience and how frequently would they appreciate emails?

What would appeal to the audience - discounts, information, news or product updates?

What value can the business offer the consumer or target audience?

With an understanding of the person behind the email address, marketers may devise a program that appeals to their needs. Then it’s recommended companies reevaluate and review success and results of the email marketing program on a regular basis to fine-tune the tactics.

In spite of government regulation, email marketing is growing. According to DoubleClick’s Q4 2003 email survey, deliverability and open rates grew one percent, while click-through rates grew five percent year-over-year.

Eric Kirby, vice president and general manager of strategic services at DoubleClick, expects the industry to survive emerging obstacles: “There are two fundamental drivers behind this: 1) Consumers understand and value permission based e-mail relationships and differentiate these from spam and 2) leading companies are evolving their e-mail programs faster than the environment is becoming more difficult. In other words, they are keeping ahead of the challenges in many respects.”

To your immediate and lasting small business marketing success!

About The Author

Even The Greatest Business Owners Will Be Broke Without A Constant Stream of New Customers. Kenneth Jr. is the director of The Small Business Marketing Blog. Get The Unknown Secrets To Advertising That Actually Works here: http://www.TheSmallBusinessMarketingBlog.com

By Dionisio Gomez

If you know how to take advantage of the right opportunity, there’s still money waiting to be made on the Internet. You don’t need to be a dot-com expert or a computer programmer to open up a whole new world of business opportunities on the World Wide Web. Free public data is the key to a successful low-cost Internet startup.

Customers are out there waiting for you, all you need to do is tap into the power of the free information available everywhere on the Web.

Does it sound too good to be true? I promise it’s not, you won’t regret becoming a web entrepreneur! You get to be your own boos and earn great money while leaving more time for the things that matter most to you.

You don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup costs, just a great idea and the will to see it through. If you’re reading this, you’re interested in the potential of your own Internet business. You already have all of the tools you need to succeed!

: Be A Designer At Heart

How your site looks is important in attracting visitors and repeat visitors. And if you plan to charge a membership fee, you can,t expect people to pay for access to a site that is rough on the eyes. In order to ensure that your visitors have a visually appealing experience, you can hire a graphic artist or read up on some ways to enhance the look of your website.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

- Don’t overload it: A website with too much information on each page is no fun for anyone. Who wants to scroll for a mile to get to the information they want?

- Don’t blind people: Brilliant colors may attract people, but on a website, a neon yellow background is just going to make people hit the Back button. There’s nothing that turns visitors off more than an unappealing color scheme. It sounds very minor, but it’s true! If they can’t read your red text on a pink background, you need to rethink your design.

- Don’t be cluttered: Sure, you may need to cram a lot of information onto the website, but that doesn,t mean you can or should throw everything on there. Choose only what is most relevant for the home page. Make sure search queries produce a reasonable amount of results.

A page of 200 results may not be the best choice. Again, people don,t like to have to scroll very far to find the answers to their questions. Plus, scanning a page that,s cluttered can be discouraging and make visitors go elsewhere to find the information they need.

- Use a readable font: Don,t use anything that has curly-cues or looks like Old English script. Rather, use a standard font that is easy to read such as Times New Roman, Arial, Courier or Helvetica. You want to use a font that is both easy on the eyes and compatible with all web browsers. Using a fancy font may look nice on your computer, but it can be thrown all out of whack when viewed on a different computer. Don,t alienate your visitors.

- Keep it simple: There,s nothing that turns a visitor off more than a website that takes too long to load or requires a bunch of additional software or plug-ins to run. If your fancy site intro won,t load or your visitor needs to download a plug-in to view it, most visitors won,t take the time to wait. Make sure your design, layout and navigation are all simple and easy to use and don,t require any special functions.

Of course, there is much more to designing a competent website that these tips, but they should point you in the right direction when it comes to building your site. And remember: when in doubt, there are many websites and books out there that detail how to build a website for consumers.

About The Author

Dionisio Gomez is an accomplished Internet Marketer. He has been successfully selling and promoting products for more than 5 years. Dionisio has an amazing site set up where you can find more of his products on Public Data at http://www.lowcostinternetstartups.com