5 Tips for Boosting Christmas Sales With Email

With the Christmas season well under way, finding ways to effectively market to existing and new customers is essential. Whilst some have dismissed email marketing as a cheap and ineffective marketing strategy, the reality is that an email marketing campaign can serve as a very productive strategy when implemented correctly.

After all, every person on your mailing list has expressed an interest in receiving information from your company, so it makes perfect sense to take advantage of the opportunity to build and maintain relationships with new and existing customers. By keeping the following 5 tips in mind, you can effectively boost your Christmas sales with the help of a well executed email campaign.

1. Create Relevant Content
The quickest way to get customers to opt-out of your email list is to spam their inboxes with irrelevant information or poorly thought out offers. By sending out informative emails and by offering special deals that are only available to email subscribers, you give your email value. When customers value your emails, they are more likely to read them and to trust you with their business.

2. Send Codes Through Email
One way to increase the value of your emails is to include special discount codes. According to some reports, 44 percent of online shoppers get their discount codes through email. If you make it a habit to add discount codes to your email, your subscribers will be more likely to read them. Additionally, by creating unique codes for your emails, you can more effectively monitor the success of your email campaign.

3. Spend Money in the Right Places
Since email campaigns are far cheaper than other forms of online marketing, such as PPC advertising for instance, you can use the money you save in other ways to help boost your Christmas sales. For example, you may hire a professional writer to create content for your email campaigns, or a graphic artist to make your emails more visually appealing.

4. Remember It's Christmas
Incorporate some festive spirit in to your email campaign messages. Incorporating some Christmas graphics into your email design for example can make a huge difference in how your message is received. Additionally, you might want to consider making a donation to charity from each purchase, or simply going the extra mile to make your email offers that little bit more special and appealing to customers.

5. Put Some Measures In Place
Email, as with most online marketing activities, is very measurable. Use your email and website analytics to help identify what is working well, and then do more of it. Monitoring your web stats in real time can not only help you learn lessons for next year, it can also arm you with data to make subsequent Christmas mailings a success this year.

Email is still a strong marketing medium which shouldn't be ignored – especially at Christmas. If you would like help planning a successful email marketing campaign, call 01454 261111.

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Social Media Spotlight: Google+ Pages

The Google+ social networking platform has now become available to businesses in the form of Google+ Pages, bringing with it many new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. Whilst the benefits of social networking are self-evident, some of the features you will find with Google+ Pages can be particularly beneficial to businesses.

As you might expect, Google+ Pages incorporates much of the functionality as Google+, such as being able to add people to circles (with permission), edit profile information, share content in a number of different formats and create Hang Outs. Here's a look at how Google+ Pages can benefit your business.

Avoiding the Clutter
Facebook received early accolades for being more visually appealing than MySpace, but has since become filled with advertisements and other clutter which can all too easily become unwelcome distractions.

Google+ Pages, on the other hand, still offers plenty of white space without competing ads. In fact, Google has already announced that it does not have any plans to place ads on its social network.

Interact with Customers on a Whole New Level
Facebook groups and pages have made it possible to interact with customers, but Google+ Pages takes it to a whole new level with its Hang Outs feature. Here, you can conduct meetings, make presentations, conduct a webinar and even provide customer service in real time.

Improve 'Findability'
With the introduction of Google +1, Google has made it clear that those websites with more +1's will receive a higher search engine ranking. Therefore, using your Google+ Pages presence to interact with customers can ultimately have a direct benefit for your search engine ranking as well.

The Direct Connect feature will also help you to reach your cutomers more effectively. With this feature, users can simply place the "+" sign in front of the name of your business when doing a search to be instantly brought to your Google+ Page (once Google has verified and confirmed ownership of the business).

Customer Segmentation
Once a Google+ user has added your business to their circles, you then have the facility to organise your audience into circles of your own. This provides an ideal opportunity to segment your followers, which then enables you to send more targeted posts and messages when publishing to your content stream.

Google+ and now Google+ Pages are in direct competition to Facebook and Facebook Pages for business. While Google may have many millions of users to make up before it can threaten Facebook's dominance, the speed of the growth for Google+ will no doubt make Facebook sit and take note. If you would like help to incorporate a Google+ Page into your social media marketing plan, call 01454 261111.

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5 Tips for Marketing With QR Codes

Whilst some marketers may think QR codes are nothing more than a passing fad, the truth is that a properly used and displayed QR code can help a business gather important data while also increasing sales and customer engagement.

The trick to enjoying these benefits involves putting together a good marketing campaign that uses QR codes effectively and keeps the customer coming back time and time again. To get the most out of a marketing campaign using QR codes, be sure to keep these five tips in mind.

1. Have a Purpose
As with any marketing campaign, the key to success with QR codes is to have clearly-defined objectives. Whether you want to collect email addresses, provide information or distribute coupons, having a clear purpose will help you determine how and where you will use the QR codes.

2. Give a Reason to Scan
Although scanning QR codes is a quick and easy process, you will still have to give the customer a reason to scan. Therefore, it is essential to print a simple instruction next to the code, such as "Scan this code and receive an exclusive gift" for example.

Obviously, the bigger the incentive, the more likely the customer will be to scan the code. At the same time, make sure you are being truthful with your statement. Otherwise, you will quickly lose customer trust.

3. Choose a Good Location
Often, where you choose to place your QR code is just as important as what the code has to offer. If your code is located in a location which is difficult to access, or is competing for consumer's full attention, you are not likely to get many scans.

4. Create a Designer Code
While the standard black-and-white checker box QR code will get the job done, you will attract more customers with a designer code. Not only can a designer code be created to compliment your brand, but it also provides the user with a certain sense of security when the QR code is clearly tied-in to the brand.

5. Send the User to a Mobile-Friendly Site
If your plan is to send the user to a website after scanning the code, be sure the site is mobile-friendly. One of the worst things you can do is to send the customer to your desktop website, which is likely to look terrible on a mobile phone.

Making the necessary preparations to engage with mobile users via QR codes is well worth the effort, to both reward returning customers and attract new consumers. If you would like help putting a successful mobile marketing campaign together using QR codes, call us on 01454 261111.

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