Email marketing continues to be one of the most cost-effective tools for marketers.  A good email marketing program keeps you connected with your customers and prospects.  It also provides a great source of incremental revenue, assuming prospects can purchase your products or services online.

One of the key questions we get asked at the 60 Second Marketer is “What metrics should I measure in my email marketing campaign?”

With that in mind, here are the top 18 things you should measure in your next email marketing campaign.  These are pulled from an excellent white paper put out by Lyris|HQ called “Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success”:

1. Open rate
2. Click-through rate
3. Click to open rate (number of unique clicks/number of unique opens)
4. Bounce rate
5. Delivery rate (emails sent – bounces)
6. Unsubscribe rate
7. Referral rate
8. Number of or percent spam complaints
9.  Net subscribers
10. Subscriber retention
11. Web site actions (number of visits to a specific web page or pages)
12. Percent unique clicks on a specific recurring link(s)
13. Number of orders, transactions, downloads or actions
14. Percent orders, transactions, downloads or actions of emails sent or delivered
15. Total revenue
16. Average order size
17. Conversion rate
18. Average dollars per email sent or delivered

For the full report, be sure to download the “Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success.” It’s an excellent white paper with tons of great information.

Interested in learning how Google works? Here’s a video from our YouTube channel called “How Search Engine Spiders Work.”

It covers all the key questions many marketers have about Google and other search engines.

Enjoy!

Earlier this year, Erik Wolf provided us with a guest post about making money with your blog. It was such a good article that we’ve decided to re-post it here in case you missed it the first time.

Enjoy!

The question of “what’s in it for me?” is a big one for business people thinking about starting blogs. How does regular blogging lead to income? I’m going to ignore the remote possibility here that your blog will become so popular that you will earn significant advertising revenues, lucrative book deals and/or a nationwide motivational speaking tour. Instead I’m going to focus on how a blog can profitably support your core business and (although there are probably more) I usually like to talk about these four:

What are some of the best ways to make your blog stand out from the rest? Read these four tips from Erik Wolfe.

1. Use your blog in your sales process

A blog is a great place to document the answers to questions you hear a lot in client meetings and a great place to establish yourself as the sort of person that speaks openly, honestly and with authority on issues critical to your clients’ success. When a prospect asks you questions or demonstrates an interest in learning more about the pros and cons of a particular type of solution, link an appropriate blog post in your follow-up email after the meeting. It demonstrates expertise and a willingness to share information and will be more effective than any brochure you could have left behind. I actually believe that good blogging can actually replace traditional collateral for many businesses.

2. Socialize your best content

Not every post you write will be gold. But when you write something really good, share it with your friends, colleagues and anyone in your contact list that you consider influential or well-connected. These types of messages can not only help drive traffic to your post but also create wonderful excuses to stay in touch with people who could potentially refer business (and provide them the ammunition to do so). It goes without saying that you should also leverage your posts in email newsletters and social media.

3. Use your blog to make connections

Ever heard of “guilt by association?” There’s also status by association. If you can rub elbows with the thought leaders in your industry, your reputation will benefit and others will seek to do business with you because of your valuable connections. Blogging can help you achieve this. Visit the blogs and sites of luminaries in your industry and leave poignant comments, linking to related content on your own blog. Send personal emails to these individuals and share your best writing with them. Invite them to guest blog on your site. Your blog can become a very valuable networking tool if you’re willing to leverage it.

4. Aggregate content

If you write two blog posts a week at about 300 words a piece, that’s over 30,000 words a year! That volume of content can be easily aggregated into a series of white papers or a short eBook or provide the foundation for a full-length printed book. And I’m speaking from experience here — my book, Marketing: Unmasked (Amazon Affiliate Link) was based very significantly on my blog. Remember what I said earlier about a blog’s ability to replace other marketing content? Case and point. The ability to put a printed book with your byline on it (self published or not) in the hands of a prospect puts you at a significant advantage over your competition. As I said, there are a number of other ways to benefit from blogging, but these methods are all simple and useful to just about anyone who runs a blog. It’s also worthwhile to point out that leveraging your blog in this manner is very easy compared to the discipline it takes to properly maintain a blog in the first place. Keep at it though, the effort will definitely pay off.

Erik Wolf is a small business marketer with Zero-G Creative and co-author of Marketing: Unmasked

Recently I visited a major office products retailer to purchase a new color printer for our office.  I had spoken to some of my colleagues about printers, so I came to the store armed with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of questions.

Even though there were few customers in the store, no salesperson approached me. After looking for about 10 minutes, I finally found a young salesperson in his twenties.  He was well dressed and well spoken and seemed pleasant. Here’s what happened.

Instead of greeting me, I had to open the conversation by greeting the salesperson and asking him if he could help me.

Instead of smiling and looking me in the eye, he was staring down at the floor. When I asked him several basic questions about one of the printers I was considering, he said he did not know, and walked over to his computer where he pulled up information about the printer I was considering.

While I was asking him questions, he kept looking at the computer screen, so there was precious little eye contact.

When I told him I was concerned about whether one of the printers I was considering would fit into the designated space in my office, he simply read off its dimensions from his computer.  When I asked him if he could open the box so I could actually see the printer and get a feel for its size, he said he would rather not.

When several other customers came over to ask questions, he interrupted his conversation with me to respond to them.

Baby Boomers are a growing segment with significant financial clout. Are you doing everything you can to cater to them?

While some of his sales behavior–or lack thereof– might be attributed to a lack of sales training (and better sales skills would help him sell customers in all generations), much of the underlying problem was that this Gen X salesperson did not recognize that he was dealing with a customer who is a Baby Boomer with values and expectations that are different from his own.

Why cater to Baby Boomers?
Baby Boomers number approximately 80 million in the US, are now living longer, and have the highest disposable income of any generation. So whether you sell in a retail or business-to-business environment, or manage those who do, in order to up your sales in a down market, you need to know more about how to sell to us (the generation born between approximately 1946-1964).

While there are more similarities than differences in how a salesperson should sell to customers regardless of their generation, and we Baby Boomers are not a homogeneous group, there are subtle but important differences in our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors; and selling to us requires a different approach.

Unlike those in say Gen X (those born between approximately 1965 and 1980) and Gen Y (those born between approximately 1981 and 2000), we Baby Boomers did not grow up with computers and many of us are not totally comfortable with them.  So when the salesperson at the office products store turned on his computer I felt an invisible barrier go up between us. Besides that, I thought I could have stayed in my office and gone online myself.

Build rapport with boomers
Baby Boomers like to be in someone’s physical presence and usually prefer face-to-face communication, so we can look someone in the eye and judge what they are saying.   When the salesperson failed to smile, or shake my hand, or look me in the eye, I felt a lack of rapport with him. More than other generations, we baby boomers have to feel comfortable with the salesperson, before we can feel comfortable with the product.

Use high touch over high tech
The salesperson I dealt with showed me a virtual product, a picture of the product on his computer, but, as a Baby Boomer, I wanted to touch it. Moreover, I did not know the actual dimensions of the space where the printer would go, but I had a picture of that space in my mind. Had the salesperson been willing to go to the trouble to open the box holding the printer (instead of showing me the online picture of it and telling me its dimensions), I would have been able to determine whether it was the right size.

Listen for our needs
And while he did not mean to be unkind, his unwillingness to cut open the box signaled poor customer service to me. In fact, when I asked him to take the printer out of the box he responded by showing me the online ratings from customers who had purchased it. This was not what I wanted; as a Baby Boomer I am less influenced by online ratings from people I’ve never met and more influenced by what my friends and colleagues tell me.

Avoid multi-tasking
As a Babv Boomer, I was brought up to do one thing at a time and give people my undivided attention. When the salesperson allowed random customers to interrupt our conversation and also exchanged text messages with someone, I lost my train of thought, and lost confidence in him.

Win with the right words
As a former salesperson and head of sales at a Fortune 500 company, I know that how we say things to customers is as important as what we say. So I was not impressed -and I don’t think my Baby Boomer peers would be either‹ when this young salesperson kept inserting the word “like” into many of his sentences: as in “this printer is like the fastest we have.”

Empathize with the customer
As a baby boomer, I grew up at a time when “made in America” meant a lot to me and others. I have reconciled myself to the fact that we are now in a global economy and the US has become a service economy, but I still silently groan when I see a product with the made in China label on it. When I mentioned this, the salesperson responded by saying; “they make the best printers.”  While I don’t know if that’s true or not, and it’s not something easily changed, I wanted this Gen Y salesperson to simply acknowledge my feelings.

Vintage selling is not telling
What was most surprising, however, is that instead of questioning me about how I would be using the printer (e.g., how often and for what purposes; or asking me about how I liked the printer I was replacing), he kept telling me about its great features. At a time when leading companies (and Apple is a great example) are designing wiz-bang products, it’s understandable that many people and especially those in the “younger generations” fall in love with the features of many products, but for us Baby Boomers it’s as much about the person selling the product as the product itself.

So for all the reasons mentioned above, and despite his good intentions, the salesperson I spoke to did not become the person who sold me the color laser printer that I purchased…at another store.

Ron Volper, Ph.D., is a leading authority on business development. He has been interviewed on Bloomberg Television, MSNBC, and CNBC, and featured in Fortune, INC, Nation’s Business, Success, Accounting Today, and others.  He has advised 90 Fortune 500 Companies and many mid-sized companies on how to increase sales in tough times and good times. Learn more at www.ronvolpergroup.com.

As the New Year approaches, most marketers evaluate the previous year to determine changes and improvements to their company’s marketing efforts and ultimately improve ROI. Just in time for your New Year’s resolutions, marketing automation platform provider, Act-On Software has compiled a list of 8 tips to improve marketing’s ROI in 2012.

1. Define the “qualified” lead.

Marketing and sales must discuss what constitutes a qualified lead and define its characteristics together. This becomes the foundation for a lead scoring system through which marketing can winnow more-qualified sales ready leads from all those captured. Once lead characteristics are established, lead scoring also allows marketing to determine the key triggers that identify the ready buyer, so those prospects can be delivered to the right sales people in real time, decreasing the time to conversion through rapid response.

2. Formulate an integrated marketing plan.

Here are some tips on ways you can improve your marketing ROI in 2013

It’s easier said than done. Keeping track of email campaigns, drip campaigns, traditional media outreach and coverage, content to bloggers, tradeshows, SEO marketing, social media campaigns, and more, calls for a lot of juggling – not to mention funneling, segmenting and filtering the leads you’ll generate through all these activities. A good automated marketing platform is the best way to manage and track an interrelated set of campaigns and programs and the resulting leads.

The usual process is to begin with email and lead scoring, and then scale to additional capabilities, as your programs get more sophisticated.  As you scale, make sure that the leads and data you get from each program are not silo’d. Ideally, every interaction with a prospect should be tracked in a single location, usually a profile in a sales or marketing database. On the content side, aim for consistency in messaging and offers. Create, manage and coordinate your messages across all channels for a consistent customer experience, and update all channels when messaging changes.

3. Segment your lists

By segmenting your lists, you can deliver more focused campaigns by targeting promotions to specific audiences, providing the right content, and making the right offer at the right time. The concept of message matching is based on the idea that people pay attention only to what matches their own needs, which in turn helps build more targeted lists and boosts overall response rates. List segmentation comes in infinite forms – by demographic factors, title, industry, offer, behavior, interactivity, preferences, company size, to name just a few. Start simply, and let testing and sales results guide you to more sophisticated list parsing.

4. Create compelling landing pages

When your prospect clicks on a search result or an online ad, the resulting landing page should be exactly what the prospect was looking for and should provide a compelling offer (webinar, trial, whitepaper, demo, etc.). The value of the offer increases with an accurate, concise description of what the prospect will receive. A relevant landing page delivering content that addresses the visitor’s problem induces the reader to not only consider the offer, but often to pursue it. And a strong call to action that clearly shows how they can “act now” provides the incentive for lead capture, in turn allowing your company to continue the dialogue and nurture that new lead toward conversion.

5. Refine your surveys and registration forms.

Develop and implement productive online surveys that capture relevant prospect data and furnish quality leads. Review each of your lead generation forms, and make sure they work together to gain more information as the prospect continues to engage. Keep the initial form short and sweet; aim for capturing simple, basic information. You can ask for more information as the dialogue progresses.

6. Measure, measure, measure

“Metrics” has to do with measurements, such as tracking numbers of web visitors. “Analytics” has to do with teasing those numbers apart so you can distinguish categories (e.g., how many visitors visited your pricing page). To gather precise information about campaign effectiveness, you need to tap into the full spectrum of metrics available from all your programs. Analysis will guide you in determining which leads are ready to go to sales, which leads need more nurturing, and which offers are or are not working. All such information helps you focus on where you are most likely going to generate qualified leads that are likely to convert.

7. Test, test, test

Testing tells you what works and what doesn’t, so you can focus your budget and efforts on what does. Remember, less is more! What you choose to test depends on your industry, your target audience, and your campaigns. You can test lists, ads, landing pages, keywords, email campaign content, sending strategy and more. Commonly tested list elements include titles, actions, and industries. Commonly tested content and campaign elements include headlines, body copy, calls to action, offers, contact forms, days of the week, time of the day, page design, graphics, and so on. Begin with a simple plan and let your results and changing conditions guide you to continuing, expanding or redirecting your testing efforts. Continued testing will allow you to understand how to optimize and improve your communication with your target audience, which leads to better leads, more conversions, and closed sales.

8. Automate, automate, automate

Automate as much of the process as you can. You will save time and labor; you’ll also increase consistency, efficiency, awareness, actionable intelligence, and measurability. A good marketing automation platform reduces complexity, makes workflow more efficient, and enables and enhances well-timed communications as contacts, leads, prospects and sales professionals interact. It also gives you real-time visibility into every aspect of the sales cycle, from lead generation to close, documenting the data and circumstances that make success repeatable. And finally, automation delivers the sales and marketing reports that provide data for analysis and planning, proves marketing’s contribution to sales, and illustrates return on investment.

Author: Shawn Naggiar, Chief Revenue Officer of Act-On Software. Act-On Software is the provider of the fastest growing, cloud-based marketing automation platform for the Fortune 5,000,000, enabling marketers to realize their creative expression to the fullest.

The online advertising market is expected to reach $31.3 billion this year confirming the gradual move away from traditional advertising into the digital platform.

In the end, what does online marketing have over traditional? We’ve done some homework on that and have come up with the top 5 benefits online marketing offers over traditional marketing:

(1) The potential to reach a global audience. The internet does not have national or geographical borders. You can watch a video on YouTube posted by someone in Japan, read a Twitter feed from a teenager in Brazil or view a website from a company in Europe. The opportunity for a global reach means a greater opportunity for return on investment.

Online marketing provides you the opportunity to interact with prospects around the globe. With traditional marketing, that approach would be cost-prohibitive.

(2) Affordable range of prices for any budget. Some online advertising methods such as viral marketing and social networking come at little to no cost to marketers. Additionally, methods like Pay-Per-Click allow you to only be charged when the consumer clicks to visit your site. And with email marketing campaigns, small businesses can save money by running the campaign themselves, a luxury not offered by other media like TV and radio.

(3) The most effective measurement tools available. Analytics software readily exists to measure impressions, click-through-rates and conversion rates of your campaign. Using platforms like Google Analytics can help you determine which ads get more viewer response, allowing you the opportunity to test your way into success.

(4) The ability to personally advertise to each individual. The internet offers technologies, such as targeted online ads, that can target a particular consumer by tracking their online behavior. The internet provides the opportunity to form relationships with consumers beyond just advertising products to them. It offers a space to communicate with customers on a personal basis discussing likes and dislikes, answering questions, and even mending broken fences.

(5) The convenience of flexibility. Unlike print and TV where ad buys are locked in months in advance, internet marketing allows for an easier adjustment in spending. The internet also allows you to make swift tweaks to ads based on analytics data displaying where changes need to be made. Online is a platform where mistakes can be quickly fixed and successes instantly duplicated with one simple click.

Traditional advertising plays a major role in how businesses allocate their advertising budgets, but many brands have been turning to the web in order to stay in touch with their potential customers. Today more and more businesses are starting to realize the value of having a strong online presence and the branding value that goes along with it.

The Take Away: Online marketing is a simple and effective tool with a spectrum of possibilities that can outweigh the benefits of traditional media. Depending on your business, online marketing can play a small or major role in your advertising endeavors.

Brittney Leigh Smith is a marketing analyst and contributing writer for the 60 Second Marketer.

Not long ago, Dan Smigrod wrote a blog post called 101 Uses for Quick Response Codes. You’re familiar with Quick Response codes. They’re the little square boxes (like the one on this page) that can be scanned by a smart phone to drive a user to a website, an MP3 download, a contact card or any other number of uses.

Dan’s post is really terrific. Seriously, I’d encourage you to visit the blog, print it out, then ponder all the different ways QR codes can be used to engage prospects and customers.

Interested in giving a QR code a try? Scan this QR code and see where it takes you.

Dan has agreed to let me share my favorite ideas from his post with you. Here are some of my favorite ideas from his list:

1. Business cards — The recipient scans the code to import your contact information.
2. Website — Add a QR code to the contact page on your website so users can instantly download your contact information.
3. Product packaging — If you sell a product that requires installation, include a QR code on the box to drive users to online instructional videos.
4. Outdoor board — Great for a teaser campaign for a new movie or TV show. Scan the code to watch the trailer, sneak preview or teaser episode from your mobile phone.
5. Name tags — Create and add your scan code to your name badge to make it easy for conference attendees to get your contact information.
6. Home for sale signs — Add a scan code that launches a video or photo tour of the house.
7. Historical site markers — Ditto. A scan code can enhance the experience of the people visiting the site.
8. Restaurant menu — Scan the code for recipes to your favorite dishes.
9. Press release — Include scan codes in press releases to provide recipients with additional information.
10. Grocery shopping cart — Users can scan the code in to get special discounts at the grocery store. The scan code doesn’t change, but the offer rolls over with a new one every week.
11. Link to iTunes App store — The Wall Street Journal included a scan code in one of their ads that instantly drove the visitor to the iTunes App store, where they could download the iPhone App for that product.
12. In the Mens’ Urinals — Dan’s company Great! proposed and implemented the first interactive urinal communicator for CMT Outlaws. “Don’t miss Outlaws on CMT. You seem to miss everything else!”
13. YouTube video — Scan the code at the end of the video to take you to a related video, thereby keeping the user engaged.

Those are just some of the ideas in Dan’s list, so be sure to read the full post.

In the meantime, don’t leave the 60 Second Marketer blog without using your smart phone to scan our QR code on this blog post.

If you don’t already have a QR code reader installed on your smart phone, here are the steps to make it all happen:

1. From your mobile phone, type one of these URLs into your web browser: http://get.beetagg.com/ or http://www.getscanlife.com/ or http://tinyurl.com/292s5go.
2. Download the QR code reader to your smart phone.
3. Then, snap a photo of the QR code on this page and enjoy the ride!

That’s all for now, folks. We’ll be doing many more mobile media stories in the near future.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

It’s not sexy; it’s not fun. But, oh, so necessary. We’re talking key message development. With repeated use, such statements serve as the foundation of your branding/marketing efforts and should be reflected in all written and spoken communications.

Research indicates that companies with formalized key messages are more successful than those without.

Not a believer? Consider what business guru Tom Peters says: “In a competitive environment, only those who have a strong unified message, who create and sell quality and value, will survive.”

So what are key messages? You can describe them as:

• The takeaway, master narrative, elevator pitch; essence of what you want to communicate.
• What’s needed to engage people.
• Bite-sized summations that articulate: what you do, what you stand for, how you are different and what value you bring to stakeholders.

Is developing key messages really worth the effort? You bet! Communications cannot always be controlled; key messages can. They help you:

• Prioritize and crystallize information.
• Ensure consistency, continuity and accuracy.
• Measure and track success.
• Stay focused when speaking with media or stakeholders.

Plus, organizations using key messages are quoted more, misquoted less and develop better relationships with reporters.

However, there are three steps I suggest before you gather the troops to brainstorm:

1. Start by revisiting company goals and objectives to ensure key messages align with overall business strategy.
2. Identify brand vocabulary, considering words and phrases you want associated with your brand and their SEO implications.
3. Conduct a competitive analysis to avoid creating key messages in a vacuum or too close to competitors. You can review competitive websites, collateral, ads and publicity placements to chart others’ key messages, value propositions, proof points and brand vocabulary.

Wondering what are the attributes of key messages? They should be:

• Concise: Optimally three key messages on one page; each statement only one to three sentences in length or under 30 seconds when spoken.
• Strategic: Define, differentiate and address benefits/value proposition.
• Relevant: Balance what you need to communicate with what your audience needs to know.
• Compelling: Meaningful information designed to stimulate action.
• Simple: Easy-to-understand language; avoid jargon and acronyms.
• Memorable: Easy to recall and repeat; avoid run-on sentences.
• Real: Active rather than passive voice; no advertising slogans.
• Tailored: Effectively communicates with different target audiences, adapting language and depth of information.

Bearing all this in mind, it’s time to engage internal stakeholders and marcom experts in a facilitated discussion that answers probing questions. On a flip chart, collect explanations, words and phrases to fashion into sentences and, ultimately, package into key messages.

I recommend following a five-step process:

1. Identify your messaging needs, considering if they are evergreen or need to support a specific offering, issue, situation or combination of topics.
2. Verify your target audiences.
3. Determine if one-size communication fits all.
4. Prepare key messages that are more strategic than “three most important things” and:
5. Prove your points with supporting information to substantiate, distinguish and add credibility. Facts, figures and statistics, quoting authorities, stories and visuals can be effective.

Think you nailed them. Think again and put key messages through a litmus test, asking:

• Do they complement your business plans and brand strategy?
• Can you “own” them or can they be applied to competitors?
• When read out loud, do they sound conversational? Ring true?
• Can you simplify the language or make statements more concise?
• Do they motivate stakeholders to act?

And, then test them to ensure they resonate with internal and external audiences.

Now you think you’re done. Well, maybe not. While key messages tied to your mission, values and brand may be long-lasting, you’ll want to routinely revisit statements to ensure they still meet your and audience needs, as well as reflect current marketplace dynamics. A PR pro’s work is never done!

Debbie Wetherhead is president of Atlanta-based Wetherhead Communications. Her firm is best known for its ability to generate positive publicity and finesse business communications. Backed by 25+ years of experience, Wetherhead has conducted nearly 500 media, presentation, crisis communication and key message development trainings, and has presented at two PRSA International Conferences and to numerous Chapters nationwide.