For those of you who love to wade through the plethora of standard reports offered by Google Analytics and spend hours mulling over reams of data trying to find that elusive key metric please feel free to skip this article.

However, if like most of us you want quick access to key web analytics custom reporting data and your boss (and his boss!) are breathing down your neck then look no further than the superb blog post written by the outstanding Avinash Kaushik over at Google. Read More

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Content is the basis for all marketing online. Content creates credibility.  Credibility leads to conversion. And conversion leads to new customers. Read the 4Cs formula

The 4Cs Formula

Create Content

Good content will address your customer's needs. You need to continually create, recreate, and build content. Search engines love good content and will reward you with sending visitors to your site.
Traffic coming to your site for your content is your traffic. You own the traffic and can decide what and how to greet the visitors.
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Fifty characters could be all that stands between you and the success of your next email campaign. Why? Because 50 characters is all the space you have in a typical subject line – to catch the attention of your reader, entice them to open your email and take action. With so much at stake, marketers need a quick and proven reference tool for developing subject lines that get the desired
result: opened emails.

Let these rules be your guide.

Rule 1: Read the Newspaper

If you want to develop subject lines that result in higher open rates, pick up your local paper. Headlines usually highlight a story’s most important point with brevity, while taking the audience into consideration. Use that approach to make your subject lines short and intriguing enough to compel your subscribers toread your emails.

Subject lines should clearly state what your readers can expect from your email, what’s in it for them and what you want them to do as a result of the email. And your subject line must stand out from others in your customers’ crowded inbox in the most relevant way. Emulating the headlines from newspapers can be a good starting point in the development of subject lines.

Rule 2: Focus on the Objective

What is the objective, or end goal, of your email marketing program? In most cases your end goal is not necessarily high open rates, but rather to have subscribers take a specific and measurable
action. Determine what that one action is, and make sure your subject line will achieve your objective. For instance, if your goal is for recipients to purchase from your online store, don’t use a subject line that is informational in nature. Instead, use a clear call-to-action that emphasizes their opportunity to make a “must have” purchase.

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Have you noticed that it's deeply ingrained in North American society to define ourselves and others by what we do and who we work for?

 Conversations with strangers are sure to almost always follow these 3 steps:

1. "Hi, I'm Charles. What's your name?"

2. "John.  Nice to meet you.  How do you know the host?"

... Uncomfortable Pause ...

3. "So, what do you do for a living?"

and that's the Bus-stop / 1st-date / Distant-relative / Networking variety of conversation. Mind you, when you go to 'networking' events you can often dispense with step 2 altogether!

True Story..
The other night I'm talking to an older gentleman, a distant relative, at a family gathering and the inevitable question popped up.  What are you doing now, Charles?

"I'm the Director of Online Marketing at Keel & Rudder, an online sailing store" I unashamedly respond but at the same time secretly wishing I was a respectable banker with Goldman Saks. (not)

"Keel and What?!?! And what exactly does a 'Director of Online Marketing' do??" the old Uncle interrogates me suspiciously like Colonel Klink would...

Here's the answer in blog post format for easier digestion:

Basic Marketing For Your Online Store

The first image that comes to peoples minds when they hear the word 'Marketing' is flashy prime-time TV ads for some large Corp made by people who take extra long lunches with international ad agencies and never seem to do much that's actually useful.

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Starting an eCommerce business is becoming easier by the day. More business owners are looking to expand their online efforts to include eCommerce and build a true online business. Unfortunately, this presents a large set of challenges, not least of which is the threat of larger, better funded competitors online.

Thankfully, the key to successful eCommerce isn’t complicated. By planning ahead and considering your goals and your audience you will greatly increase your chances of success. Here’s three simple ways to make your online shop stand out from the crowd.

Step 1) Focus on Your Best Products

Selling your entire inventory online is unnecessary and often a mistake. Instead, sell a small sub-set of your products that you think may sell well online. For each product, provide a high level of detail describing the product. Follow up with some solid advice on how to choose the correct product for you, or provide expertise and background on the origins of the product.

This way, instead of building an impersonal warehouse-style shop online, you’re providing more of a boutique, - a personal experience that actually engages the customer and answers more of their questions than other shops do. Think of a supermarket versus a boutique fashion store - one simply fulfills their function, the other assists you to make the right buying choice with passion, knowledge and a personal connection.

Make a conscious decision to be the boutique; supermarket-style online stores are everywhere. Most products can already be found online, but there’s often a lack of detail and advice regarding the product. This can become an important and trust-building point of differentiation between you and your competitors.

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Ever wonder if the basics from grade school would come in handy in your business life?

Getting your website ranked best in internet search results uses all of that knowledge. Search engine results are based on those science, math and English courses. Internet technology is the science that allows "spiders" to comb the "web" for data applicable to a search inquiry. Search engines have unique mathematical algorithms that formulate your website's relevance to that inquiry. Finally, your English lesson is where writing the copy on your website can help tie all of that together for best results. In the following, you will get valuable tips on creating titles, copywriting advice, using graphics, and keywords to better place your website in search rankings.

1. Do Some Research

Do you know where your website ranks in search results for different key words or phrases compared to your competition? Check various search engines such as google.com, ask.com, msn.com, and yahoo.com. Take a look at your website to check how the homepage relates to a consumers search. Look at your competition and how they write their website content. Are they being found? Search for products or services that you're interested in and click those who rank high in the search results. Can you tell why?
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Step One: Make full use of your permission-based email software package. BigTurns has a ton of advanced features for handling your campaigns. It makes it easy to create and send your newsletters. It will manage subscriptions and bounced messages for you. It automates a lot of the grunt work involved in an email marketing campaign.

Step Two: You'll have to decide what type of campaign you want to run and how frequently you want to send your messages. I recommend sending at least a monthly newsletter. Of course, if you sell more than one product, it might be a good idea to send multiple messages. Just be sure to keep your broadcast times consistent. You may consider sending promotional messages offering a discount or coupon for your product.

Step Three: Add a sign-up form to your website. The sign-up form lets you collect a group of addresses for your sending lists. We've found that it's generally safe to import anyone who did business with you in the last year or so. Just make sure to send content relevant to what they purchased. (Always provide value!)

Step Four: Create an effective email template. A lot of email software programs include HTML templates. BigTurns actually comes with over 300 professionally designed templates. You can also create one in-house or use a graphic-design service.
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How to decide between blogging and a newsletter

Last night I was sorting all of my important paperwork: Car insurance, health insurance, credit card information, work stuff, tax information, and you get the idea. Then I put them into folders to organize. Let's do the same with your content and then decide where to include this content (Blog, Newsletter, or Both). 

1. Education - BOTH
2. Business ideas for feedback - NEWSLETTER
3. Showcase before and after photos - NEWSLETTER
4. FAQS - NEWSLETTER
5. Common Concerns - BOTH
6. Tips - BOTH
7. Coupons and Discounts and Specials - NEWSLETTER
8. Products - BOTH

There are a few caveats, so lets take a look at them.

Education:

You should never pass up an opportunity to educate. Customers like being in the know and they appreciate you keeping them up to date.
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This is the first Post for The eCommerce Blog from Sales and Marketing Automation. 

Our mission with this blog is to promote eCommerce Best Practices to Small business owners. We will be including topics that relate to building eCommerce Sites, marketing eCommerce Sites and managing eCommerce Sites.

We are not sure where this journey will take us but the general direction we are going to set out on is to expose the tricks that make successful sites sell.

We will discuss topics like eCommerce Technology, SAAS, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Blogging, Content, Conversion, Customer Automation, and more.

I will be the main contributor to the blog postings, and all of our contributors will some how be related to BigTurns Business Systems, an eCommerce Consulting Company with an eCommerce Platform for sale and a team of eCommerce Consultants.

I Hope you like it.  Read More

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