Digital Marketing Consulting

“Why are Emailers sent at all?” Is it to drive traction to the website, build a brand, and generate leads???  Whatever is the objective, the bottom line is that Email Marketing is one of the efficient ways of connecting with your prospects/customers on a one-to-one basis and it’s cost effective too. Email marketing like other online marketing tools has gone through an evolutionary process. Just take a look at your own inbox and you would find thousands of marketing, promotional mails lying in your folders (spam, inbox etc) with the only intent of getting a share of your eyeballs. But some reach your inbox whereas others are lying in the spam folder only to get thrown away in trash folder.

Let us look at certain factors that lead to an unsuccessful email campaign:

Improper Planning – An unplanned email campaign can mostly land up in spam. This means that every time you do a campaign you should have a proper checklist that you can refer and do a thorough check before clicking the “SEND” button.

Wrong Format – The trend suggests that HTMLised mails reach larger numbers, are light hence download fast and save space. Whereas mailers in JPEG/PNG format are heavy, non compatible with multiple devices and takes time to get delivered.

Email ID as SENDERS NAME tag – The most legible elements of an email before its opened are Senders Name & Subject Line and hence it is imperative to have a personalised “FROM” or “SENDERS NAME” instead of just an email ID.

Non Personalised Email – Sending generic mails have lesser open rate than the mails that are personalised and targeted to an individual.

Un-optimised Subject Lines – Having long subject line loaded with negative keywords like – Free, XX% Off etc will more often than not find their way to Spam folders, thanks to the smart spam filters. So it is important to ensure you keep the subject line short yet effective to provoke the user to open the mail.

Unscrubbed Database – Are your scrubbing your email databases regularly? This is important as sending emails to the subscribers who have opted-out/ Unsubscribed can lead to your sever getting blacklisting by email clients. It also results in less open rates & CTRs.

Incompatibility with devices – We are living in an on-the-move era. So next time you design your Emailers or newsletters you should ask yourself whether the same is compatible and can be read on all the devices(mobile, tablets, desktops, laptops etc)because your target group is on-the-move.

Irrelevant Landing Page – Lot of times there is no relevance between the context of the email and the clicked-thru landing pages. This leads to a sense of disconnect amongst the recipients resulting in higher bounce rates.

Non Follow ups  – At most an effective email marketing campaign can do is to bring a horse to the water. But to make the horse drink you need to follow up post the campaign.

Timing – When you send the Emailers is as important as what & how you send it. Avoid sending mails during holidays (public) as the chances of recipient missing it very high resulting in low open rate. Also in case of a periodic Emailers or newsletter ensure that there is a consistency with regards to the time and day you send them.

  “Time to Send” -I stumbled upon an interesting formula to assess the time taken to send Emailers

DOT – (IF + SD +QF) = ST

Where,

DOT = Desired Open Time – The time period in which you want your readers to receive and open your mail

IF = ISP Factor – the duration it takes ISPs to actually deliver the mail

SD = Send Duration – the time it takes the software to send a give volume of emails

QF = Queue Factor – the period of time the email are in queue

ST = Schedule Time – the time emails are scheduled for distribution

  Now knowing what doesn't works let us look at certain things that helps in achieving higher CTR (click-thru-rates)

Quality of Database – It is obvious that the better the quality of the database enhances the possibility of a higher open rate resulting in higher CTR. As discussed above ensure that the database goes through a scrubbing process regularly.  Segmentation of the database for different campaigns also hold good for a higher CTR.

Compelling Offer – After achieving a higher open rate, the context of the mail is critical to drive in higher CTR.

Strong Creative – A great creative is the life line of prospecting. Most of the times a creative is subjective to who perceives it. Yet a balanced text to picture ratio does contributes to achieving higher CTR.

Timing – “refer Above”

In the end let me suggest simple steps in order to eliminate mistakes the are quite common with the email marketing managers

Send test mails and get someone from outside your email marketing team to proofread the mailer as well as check the links functionality.

Send test mails to different accounts like hotmail, MSN, Gmail to ensure its legibility across mailboxes and devices.

Have a check list in place that helps you do thorough checks during the campaign process. I came across a check list on the net from a company called “Open Moves” and I feel this is quite apt to be used.

You can download the same from http://e.openmoves.com/accounts/om/downloads/2013email_checklist.pdf

Happy Independence Day INDIA!

On this day, 15th August, when our nation and we, its countrymen, celebrate freedom it is only fair to give its due credit to digital/social media that has been a catalyst in making us freer every day.  Social media allows you to be what you are and helps you to express yourself to millions of like minded people out there wanting to express themselves.  Being social is an inherent nature of human beings. The degree might change but the basic will to be expressive is there in each one of us. And that’s what this medium does that it gives you a platform to be yourself. This is the real democratic India where everyone has the right to express at one’s own will.

With over 122 million internet users (the third largest digital population worldwide) and millions of others joining the digital space daily, we are living in a completely different yet young India.  The social channel gives our youth the power to disseminate visual, textual and oral content with their counterparts in real time. And its consumption is increasing day by day as the awareness and adoption of the media is growing. This makes us ‘The Young INDIA’ a powerful, aggressive community making its mark on the global platform. We are ambassadors of the brand INDIA.

Certain factors that have led this change in our country are higher & growing literacy rate Technological Advancement Enhanced purchasing power. The young India knows that some that government muzzling this freedom won’t work. Instead a sense of righteousness should be inculcated where everyone understand to use the medium responsibly ensuring that nothing is expressed in a way that leads to someone’s getting offended.

As we go along our celebrating our freedom in the years to come let us all emerge as freer citizens who can express without a doubt of fear in their minds, who can stand up for their rights and who cannot stand being exploited. Social media has given us an opportunity to let others know that we are with them in the times of distress and in the times of joys.

May there be POSTS on the wall, May there be TWEETS on the handle….

There are certain aspects every digital marketer should know. One of them is certainly Web Hosting  (Wikipedia – A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web.) According to me this should be one of the many items in your quarterly website audit checklist i.e. to assess how much bandwidth is actually required based on your actual usage trend during the last quarter with optimum level of buffer. This would ensure that your hosting plan has enough bandwidth buffer to manage any sudden traffic spike.

There are many hosting providers out there some big and some small, some paid & some free. One of the important factors in choosing a web hosting providers is to check on their service capabilities and the data security layers. As far as my experience goes I have noticed that it’s not how big or small they are that matters what really matters is how quick their support turnaround time is when it comes to trouble shooting.

You should probably have answers to these questions:

How good is their reputation?

What kind of clientele they have?

Where are the servers hosted?

What are the security measures to ensure that the data is protected?

How easy or difficult is to raise a service ticket over the phone, email or on their website?

How quick is their turnaround time?

Now let us look at the different type of hosting plans:

Shared Hosting – it’s a non-exclusive sharing of space on a common server primarily done if the bandwidth requirements are not high and also it’s less expensive than dedicated server”.

Dedicated Server – as the name suggests it’s a server that is exclusive for you i.e only your website is hosted here giving your larger control on managing your websites. It is expensive as compared to the shared hosting but is ideal if your website traffic is huge and you main concern is the security. (it does not mean that a shared hosting is not secured)

Virtual Private Servers – they are low cost version of the dedicated servers and are equally effective and still gives you mostly all the features of dedicated servers

Managed Hosting- here you can actually authorize the web hosting company to manage your servers on your behalf yet you have full control on your websites. The service provider would be responsible for the security, operating systems, hardware etc. It is a lot more expensive option as compared to the others.

Ideally a good web hosting provider should be able to provide the following services:

1.    Robust Database Management 2.    24/7 FTP Access 3.    Anytime- Anywhere support 4.    Online Control Panel Access 5.    Traffic Analysis/Statistics

Social Media is not a Campaign

Social media undoubtedly is an awesome platform that any marketer would love to be on. Nevertheless it’s challenging to device the right strategy given the vastness of the platform. The intent of any marketer to adapt a specific channel is to get the right message to the right audience and social media is no different. Unlike other digital marketing tools social media cannot work silos within any organisation. Today the audience-prospects- customers have moved from just being passive consumers to active participants and hence it is very important for brands today to consider their customers as their virtual brand ambassadors. Treating social media as a campaign cannot work as it’s an engagement tool which need to used continuously and not looked at as a onetime information disseminator.  Most companies feel that hiring agencies to manage their social media profile would help. Unfortunately that does not work. Social platforms can be managed by someone who knows the brand better than anyone else and preferable is a part of the in-house team. Agencies/outsiders would have their limitations as being outside the system they might not be fully aware of things and hence cannot manage effectively.  The conversation has to be honest, real, transparent & relevant. Start small, grow gradually, measure its impact and results, and adapt the social media channels over time.

According to Gaurav Mishra who co-founded Social 2020 and heads the social media practice for MSL group, there are six stages of social media every brand goes through. He says “The framework is rooted in one important insight: when asked what their social media strategy is, less mature marketers tend to talk about tools and tactics, whereas more mature marketers talk about integrating platforms, programs and processes.”

  Stage 1:  Creating a Campaign Microsite

  Typically these microsites have experiential UI where the content is very graphic heavy and text less and have a shelf life of eight to twelve weeks

  Stage 2: Creating Social Media Pages

  In this stage the companies create facebook pages and twitter handles in order to set up their social media profiles. At this stage its only about product/profile creation and seldom involves brand building activities

  Stage 3: Engaging Customers

  In this stage the brands start populating the pages/handles with content and run contests to garner participation of the fans/followers. Gaurav says “While these tactical programmes are successful in engaging fans and followers in the short-term, they fail to exploit the full potential of social media. Most marketers are still in this stage, but some are ready to move beyond’’

  Stage 4: Integrating Social Media with Web Platforms

  At this stage companies start integrating their social media with various web platforms like blogs, wiki, photo/video sharing, content curation features like commenting, voting, reviews & ratings etc. Also marketers are integrating their websites with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin by allowing users to sign-in using social sign-on, activity widgets etc.

  Stage 5:  Becoming Community Centric

  This is when marketers start to believe that being present on social media won’t take them much ahead and hence they start building communities and becoming social. This way they participate in discussions and start engaging with the prospects/customers.

  Stage 6: Integrating Social into Business Processes

Most of the laggards or the late adopters of the social media have set wrong expectations from social media marketing. Unlike the early adopters of this tool who are more realistic in assessing a good or bad social media strategy, the laggards feel that the number of followers that they garner on their profile is directly proportional to effectiveness of the campaign or ROI. Social Media is digital yet it’s different than the SEO & SEM. And it would only be just to treat it as different. Social is about conversations well that too qualitative. A sensible brand would always assess a campaign success by the quality of engagements that happen on their page and not get swayed by the number of people talking. Well to an extent a good engagement ratio does reflects a right strategy yet it’s incomplete in giving a true picture. According to me the most important metric to be considered is the virality of the posts/tweets or in simple terms the number of time a posts or a tweet is shared or retweeted respectively. That’s actual and it tells that the post or the story is worth sharing. Also it would have direct impact on increasing the affinity score of the page as sharing something thru a page and further shows a high affinity score, one of the most important algorithm that channel like Facebook considers important.  Here are some digital stalwarts that have similar sensible opinions of what to expect from your social campaigns:

  Yashraj Vakil, Chief Operating Officer, Red Digital says, “Marketers believe results will start showing up from the day we start and in two months time social media will change the brand perception with over 50,000 fans on the page. For something like this to happen organically is highly unlikely. In our opinion the gestation period for brand to show significant organic growth is 27 months. Marketers also believe that having thousands of fans is a significant achievement and they own that audience. The fact remains that it is only a number with no significant value, unless constant engagement in various forms is initiated.”

  “Most of the wrong expectations that we hear from marketers, when they approach us, is about social media being the quick, cheap and easy way to getting a lot of sales,” says Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength. The reality is that community building is more like brand building and takes a longer duration to become effective.

  Simeran Bhasin, Marketing Head, Fastrack says, “Although there is no set method to measure success on social media, a brand page, at the end of the day, is created for consumers to interact one-on-one with the brand and if these interactions are high, most of the objectives of a brand page are met.”

  Anindya Datta, President & Chief Marketing Officer, Yes Bank says, “Currently we measure

(Source: http://www.icmis.net/)

The world has become more interconnected since the 16th century, with trading lines now crisscrossing every territory on the Earth. Information and Communications Technology has been the key in the trade that now takes place between all nations. The latest revolution in business communications comes from the use of the Internet. In Exports, the whole world is a Market Place for the Exporter. The Target Audience of the exporter is present everywhere. Any person having the desire and purchasing power to purchase the product, which the exporter is ready to sell is a Prospective Client of the Exporter. As the world becomes more of a “global village,” the company that exports and markets its products through the Internet takes advantage of a medium that reaches across culture and across region.

 The Advantages of Information Technology in Export Marketing

 Internet marketing is inexpensive when examining the ratio of cost to the reach of the target audience.

Exporters can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets.

The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and to purchase products and services conveniently. Therefore, exporters have the advantage of appealing to the clients in a medium that can bring results quickly.

Exporters using internet marketing also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively; almost all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested, in many cases through the use of an ad server.

The advertisers can use a variety of methods, such as pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, and pay per action. Therefore, exporters can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience. The results of the campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, to visit a website, and to perform a targeted action.

 Internet marketing provides the exporters, a chance to showcase its products through Images and videos, which helps the clients to understand what they are going to get even before the payment is made. This helps in the process of Confidence Building which gradually establishes the customer satisfaction.

Online Payment mechanisms such as Paypal, Credit Cards, EBS etc are a good option for the Buyer worldwide to make Payments for the desired products sitting anywhere in the world. This removes the compulsion of going to one’s local Banker to make the Payment.

Step1: Open Chrome

  Step2: Open  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blocksi-web-filtering-and/pgmjaihnmedpcdkjcgigocogcbffgkbn?hl=en

Step3: Click on 

  Step4: On the browser right hand side you will see

  Step5: In the dropdown click on “Tools” and then click on extensions

     Step6: Click on options of BLOCKSI

    Step7: Click on options tab on the right hand corner

    Step8: Check on the “Enable Password Protection”

    Step9: Use the password for protection

    Step10: After you have saved the password click on “Advanced Setup”

  Information Architecture (IA) is the first step to start your website design process. Without a thought through IA your website might be incomplete now matter how attractive it looks. And believe me any website that looks attractive may not stay attractive if it doesn’t functions well. The user interface is of utmost important to engage your site visitors the right way and it also helps in retaining them for their repeat visits. The basis of good information architecture is need analysis, of understanding really as to what your website user are seeking and how quickly you can disseminate that info. The better you understand your customers the better the site’s IA should be. So primarily a good information architecture should focus on the right target audience, the technology related to the website, the data that would go on the website and the results of the first A/B testing. There are lot of tools available in the market to build an Information Architecture but according to me the best tools to use would be:

A Pen & A Paper

Need Assessment questionnaire for your customers (internal & external)

Mind Mapping sheet

Microsoft Excel

                                     The Entroduce logo didn't happen by chance. It is a thought through logo befitting the concept of Entroduce. The curves intersecting each other are based on the concept of getting two people introduced. The colour combinations have yellow & orange shades denoting the high constructive energy levels. If you notice the tip of the curve is the shape of palms representing the hands which helps embrace.  The break in between is definitive of two arms crossing each other to hold something or someone together.

Hello Friends! Let me entroduce myself. I am digital marketing strategist having over 11 years of work experience. After having worked with so many brands across different verticals like financial services, real estate, media, hospitality, event management, NGOs etc I thought of coming up with a venture that not only caters to your digital business needs but also validates the resources that goes behind fulfilling those objectives. I couldn't come up with a better name than - ENTRODUCE and I truly believe that with the right intent and great execution capabilities we can help businesses to be on the right curve at the right time.