VAT raised to result in 'More Focused' Marketing Campaigns

A new study has found that the forthcoming rise in VAT will have an affect on marketing campaigns. Email marketing and other types of campaigns will need to become more effective in order to win business once the VAT rise comes into effect, a new study suggests.

According to affiliate network LinkShare, a number of marketers believe that mass marketing techniques will give way to individualised campaigns next year when VAT rises to 20 per cent.


More than one in three consumers said they would be curbing their spending habits once the increase is introduced, while 18 per cent expect to see an increased emphasis on measurement and return on investment.

Liane Dietrich, managing director of LinkShare UK, said the VAT increase could have some benefits for retailers and brands which provide value for money.

"Consumers are savvy and dedicated to the quest for the best value; they won’t go back to pre-recession habits when the economy starts to recover," the industry expert said.

"They will continue to base their decisions on the research and value-driven factors that they have become accustomed to over the last eighteen months."

The research comes just days after a study by Acxiom found that retailers who used creative marketing tactics, such as digital channels, in the run up to Christmas could enjoy more success.

By Sarah Wright

Source: THE DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION (UK) LTD


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Begin an Email Campaign

E-mail marketing has evolved, moving from simple one-way messages and autoresponders to a much more sophisticated way of communicating with your customers. There are a few basic things you need to know about e-mail marketing to build deeper relationships with your customers to generate revenues, grow your business and get ahead of your competition. They are,

Efficient & Effective Communication

Build a List

Even if you only have 10 e-mail addresses, you need to start somewhere. Add those to your database. Once you have your list started, make sure that you launch a campaign to keep in touch and in front of your contacts without overwhelming their inbox. I suggest two e-mails per month maximum. It's not about e-mail quantity; it's about quality.

Set up Contact Information Capture Forms

It's easy to add forms to your website or blog to allow visitors to give you their contact information, such as e-mail address, name and phone number.

Decide What You Want to Accomplish

Before you launch your first campaign, you need to decide what it is that you want to accomplish. Do you want to deepen the quality of relationships, take your list through the sales cycle, educate them? Why are you sending your e-mails? Set clear goals before you send your first e-mail, and build your messages and campaign around those goals.

Set up Auto-respond E-mails

Set up at least six e-mails that will automatically release on the dates and times you choose to send out to your list. Keep them short, simple and to the point. Do not make them "sales pitchy"; use autorespond e-mails to educate and build relationships, and the rest will follow.

 

Add Triggers to E-mails
Triggers are used to send clients into a new sales cycle based on topic. If your client clicks on a link in one of the e-mails you sent her about your product or service. As soon as she clicks on that link, it automatically triggers the release of a message sending her information about a similar product or service based on the original link.

Monitor Results
Once per month, look at reporting to see which e-mails are more effective and have a higher rate of opening as well as click-through. Use the lessons learned to build your next campaign. It's important to know how your list is responding to the e-mails that you send. If you aren't getting a good click-through response, the problem is either the quality of your message or the topic.

E-mail Marketing is an effective way to increase relationships, response rates and conversions through smart, targeted communication.

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Maximize your Online Marketing Campaigns

Different ways to Develop your Online Marketing Campaigns

There are several different ways to make best use of your online marketing campaigns; I would share few with you folks.

E-mail Marketing:

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of writing business messages to addressees. In other words, every e-mail sent to a potential prospects or present customer could be considered e-mail marketing.

Why should we send an E-Mail?

• Improve the relationship level of your customers.

• Replicate Business Opportunity

• Obtain new customers

Social Media Optimization:

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the method of social media activity with the intent of being a magnet for unique visitors to website content.

Social media optimization is related to SEM, but differs in several ways; mostly the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, however improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a method to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites.

In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Web Analytics:

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website traffic but can be used as a tool for business research and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign.

Web analytics provides data on the number of visitors, page views, etc to gauge the traffic and popularity trends which help doing the market research.

Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and display advertising.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers.

Pay Per Click Advertising:

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. 

Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Among PPC providers, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators.

Search Engine Optimization:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

Happy Surfing!!!