Category Archives: eBusiness

Email Segmentation = Higher Conversion Rates

Posted on April 20, 2012 by
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If your not segmenting your email marketing list, you could be loosing conversions. We all know how annoying email marketing can be when its not valuable to us, so make sure that your subscribers are getting relevant value based on their stage in the buying cycle. You can segment your customers by following their web movements, and updating their segment as they move through the buying cycle.

If your selling cars, for example, you don’t want to send information about discounts and promotions to someone who just bought a car. Those customers will be much more interested in information about their new car, or maintenance and service promotions.

Give it try, and watch your open rates and conversion rates go up!

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Categories: eMail Marketing, Marketing | Tags: , ,

Get Ready To Lose More Marketing Data…

Posted on March 31, 2012 by
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Photo By Flickr User RambergMediaImages

A couple months back I wrote a post about how Google was starting to implement secure search (also called encrypted search) and because of this, website owners were beginning to lose the valuable data of what keywords people are using to come to your site.  Up until now it was just a segment of the users, mainly gmail users when they were signed in.  But website owners have now been dealt another blow.

Firefox Joins The Secure Search Party

Firefox has now announced that it will be making secure search the default method of their popular browser.  It hasn’t happened yet as it is still in testing but it is coming soon.  Google currently pays Firefox $300 million per year to make Google the default search engine.  That accounts for 80% of Firefox’s total revenue.  When Google first started developing secure search apparently it was technically impossible for Firefox to use it.  That has changed however, and apparently $300 million is the magic number that allows you to start making some mandates.

What Will Digital Marketing Agencies Do?

In the end, there isn’t much we can do as website owners.  We can continue to use Google Analytics and get the data that we can but we will be losing more data than we have before.  I believe it will also begin to transition digital marketing agencies from looking at specific keyword traffic to looking at organic traffic as a whole and optimizing for a broader range of phrases.  This could also be the beginning of another monetization plan for Google Analytics and they could start charging for this, because we know they are still storing it.   After all, they are going to have to pay for those floating data centers somehow!

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Categories: Analytics, Search Marketing, Web Strategy

The Google Analytics Problem With Secure Search

Posted on January 15, 2012 by
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One of the main items that marketers use to track where traffic is coming from is the keywords report within their Google Analytics account.  This tells a website owner what keywords visitors to their site are using to get to their site.

If you are using Google Analytics, over the past few months you have probably begun to see (not provided) appear more and more in your keyword list as the keyword a visitor used.  What does this mean???

In the past it would be a minimal number and generally meant that the keyword simply wasn’t able to be determined but again this was minimal.  Now it is most likely one of the top listings.  So the question is why?

It all comes down to security.  SSL is the technology used to encrypt data that people enter on websites.  Google has begun making this the default for many people who are performing searches and are logged into a gmail account.  So where before a simple web search was not being encrypted, many times it now is, if a user is logged into their gmail account.

Now as with most of Google’s new features, they are simply doing this to some of the users, not all.  But the amount is clearly growing.    It started back in October. (See the Google Analytics blog post about it here)

So what can be done.  Unfortunately, not a lot right now.  With the data being encrypted, there isn’t much that can be done.  These visitors still show up as having come from an organic search but beyond that, you won’t know.  As of right now it is only for users who have signed in to their Gmail account.  It may in the future begin to expand to all users however.  We’ll have to wait and see what Google decides.  It is clearly a delicate balance between the security of the end user and getting anonymous data for marketing needs.

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Categories: Analytics, Marketing, Online Analytics/Testing, Search Marketing

Email & Social Marketing Together

Posted on October 11, 2011 by
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Social media may be the new flashy kid on the block but email marketing is the work horse. In a recent survey of marketers 77% said that email marketing is their primary vehicle for online marketing. The reason that these marketers are still focusing so much energy email…it just works!

The problem with email marketing, however is that most marketers have failed to integrate their email marketing into their other campaign channels. Email grew up in a silo mainly because in the beginning email was so vastly different than direct mail marketers planned and executed email campaigns independently from every other marketing effort. They just couldn’t figure out how to blend the channels. Now the same thing is starting to happen with the social media channel.

Social can provide a tremendous amount of support for your email marketing efforts and email can support your social marketing efforts. Think about what happens if you were to use social media marketing to announce an upcoming email campaign that offers a special promotion, information on an upcoming event, or even promotes a new service. Then imagine that the social campaign that you run promoting this upcoming email has a link to the email signup form on your website. All of a sudden your email will see increases in open rates and you’ll probably see even greater increases in new email subscribers.

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Categories: eMail Marketing, Social Media

Email Marketing is the New Telemarketing

Posted on May 3, 2011 by
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Last week, I noticed this tweet from a friend of mine that really struck a cord with me.

With the rise of mobile internet users and the vast number of people who receive email on their phones, Robb is right: when executed incorrectly, email is the new telemarketing.

As marketers or business owners, we must be mindful of our users in all of our marketing efforts. Sure, it might sound like a good idea to send out your email newsletter at 1:00 a.m. so the recipient reads it first thing in the morning, but that was shallow thinking on Borders’ part. Borders failed to take their users into account; grave error.

When email marketing is done correctly and with users in mind, it can be powerful and influential. On the flip side, if done incorrectly, it can be obnoxious and even at times illegal.

So, Borders, give us a call if you want some hints to avoid angering your customers (especially customers like Robb who has 1,337 followers on Twitter who potentially saw this complaint).

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Categories: eMail Marketing

Building Customer Retention

Posted on October 18, 2010 by
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Keeping long-term customers can be a tricky thing to do.  It really boils down to your company’s relationship to them and how they perceive you.  Maintaining that relationship is absolutely vital to developing a lifelong customer or simply having a one-time buyer.

So how do you keep a customer coming back?  The most important part of the process is to understand what motivates your customers:  is it service, price, or experience.  Not every customers are alike; they don’t all come to you for the same reason.  So developing ideas to keep various types of customers is also important.

Think about sites that you have bought from online and consider what made you do so.  Then try to incorporate similar ideas into your own site.  Try changing a few small things to see how it impacts your conversions.

Keeping your customers up to date with new products or services you are offering that maybe weren’t available when they made their first purchase from you is also a great way to keep them coming back.  But beware of inundating them with too much information.

3Sixty Interactive understands what it takes to build customer retention, so contact us today.

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Categories: eMail Marketing, Marketing

What Are Your Competitors Up to?

Posted on August 12, 2010 by
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In the internet arena, staying at the top of your industry takes a lot of effort and involves a great deal of strategy and techniques.  A big part of keeping your website working for you, creating sales and leads, means keeping an eye on your competitors and what they are doing.  What strategies are they utilizing?  What’s working for them and what isn’t?  Do they have the same problems as you?

This is where the talents of an interactive agency come into play.  Not only can we help find what is working for your site through analytics and testing, but we can design and implement a strategy that will help your customers find you, not your competitors.

Want more information on how we can help build a successful online strategy for you?  Contact us today!

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Categories: Analytics, Web Strategy

Selecting Your Domain Name

Posted on June 24, 2010 by
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If you are starting the process of setting up a website for your business for the first time, or possibly not getting the results you desire from your current site, chances are that one of your obstacles will be selecting a proper domain name.

Here’s what to look for in a good domain name:

1. Keep it short.
This will help in a number of ways: it will make it easy to fit into logos, makes a better brand, is more easily recognizable, and is harder to misspell.  Long domain names don’t fit in forms, on billboards, or in Google PPC ads. Do your best to keep it as short as possible.

2. Make it memorable.
You want something that is easy to remember, so that your customers don’t have to stop and try to remember what it is. But whatever domain name you choose, it should stick in the mind.

3. Make it unique.
If there is a company with a similar name, try not to use “The” as part of the name and don’t use hyphens either. But you also need to
find a name that can’t be confused with your competitor. You certainly don’t want to help increase their traffic instead of yours!

4. Keep it simple.
If people can misspell something, they will. The longer and more complex your domain name, the harder it is for your customers to type it in correctly. This goes with not using hyphens.

5. Make it relatable.
Do your best to use a domain name as close to your company name as possible.  If this proves difficult, try finding one that exemplifies what your business is all about.

6. .com is the way to go.
If at all possible, get a .com domain. It is still widely considered the most respected. If you can, it’s worth the small investment to purchase your domain with .net and possible even .org extensions as well, just in case someone enters that by mistake, they will still end up at your website and not someone else’s site.

Need help selecting your business domain name?  Not only can we help with that problem, but we will help with all your interactive needs.  So contact us today.

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Categories: Web Strategy, Website Usability

Its Not Sexy, But It’s Still Working

Posted on June 20, 2010 by
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All too often we’re in search of the latest thing to catapult our online performance.  Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook are all the rage, but do you remember blogs?  There was a time when it was predicted that blogs would deliver faster than anything out there.  When these new tools don’t deliver in hyper-speed, we’re off to the next trend!  There is one old-school tool that continues to deliver, time and time again, and that tool is eMail.  Yup, thats right, I said it, eMail.

eMail marketing continues to dominate the digital marketing arena.  Now granted the strategy has changed, dramatically, however those businesses that have kept up with the changes in the customer’s desires when it comes to eMail marketing are seeing great increases in lead generation, subscriptions, and sales.  In a recent B-to-B Magazine article Tom Cintorino, exec VP-digital media with Northstar Travel Media stated “bottom line e-newsletters are still doing great” Tom went on to say that the trend at Northstar is going away from broad-based general interest content and going toward more specific and targeted content.

Improving, or establishing your eMail marketing strategy is vital to success.  No longer can you simply type out content on a whim and expect to gain the payoff you are hoping for.  Your email marketing effort has to have a strategic plan and then it is critical to have the plan implemented.  If you pay attention to your eMail marketing strategy, it will work!

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Categories: eMail Marketing

What’s In Your Footer?

Posted on June 15, 2010 by
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Do you know what’s actually in your website page footer? You know, at the bottom of your pages. Usually it’s where the copyright information and who designed the site and stuff like that goes. But what else really belongs there?

Some would undoubtedly say that no one looks down there anyway, so why bother putting anything else? While that may be true for some site visitors, it’s certainly not true for all of them. Many people will take the time to look at every detail. Think of it like this, your page is like a piece of property with certain parts being prime real estate, so why not take advantage of each piece?

The footer is a good place to put links for the entire site, unless you have a huge site with tons of pages, but even then it’s still a good idea to place links for the main top level pages.

You may have even seen some websites where they have a contact us form or other information in their footer. While this can be a good idea for some sites, it doesn’t work for every one. Too much information in the footer can be distracting and cause the potential customer to miss other more important details at the top of the page. So be careful what you put down there.

Should you have any questions, please contact us for more information.

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Categories: Web Strategy, Website Usability
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