Inbound marketing

HTML vs JPEG Email experiment

I recently redesigned our newsletter template in light of the Inbound Marketing University class on email marketing by the great Eric Groves of Constant Contact. It really highlighted for me just how effective this method of inbound marketing can be when it’s done properly.

Here are a few tips from Eric’s lecture

Emails not in line with your customers’ interests will most likely be deleted
Write great content that will help your customers solve their problems
Share your expertise – it will really help build a relationship with every individual

The main focus of the redesign for me was to ensure that anyone receiving this email knew instantly what it was about, why they had received it and what the value was of opening it. To acheive this, I tested several email programmes and found that the majority will automatically turn off images received in an email from an unknown address. The implications of this could be devastating for us – the first element in the email is our company logo in a banner! If someone received this email and images are off in their email viewer – all they will get is a red cross and an option to download images if they choose, and what they will probably do is delete it there and then.

In order to try and increase the number of views I swapped out the image for a simple html table in which the top row had a blue background and white text with the same content as the banner. This should improve the number of opens if people can see what the email is about when the preview it.

I’ve also simplified and reduced the amount of content. It’s a newsletter format email, so I’ve reduced the content down to one shortened article that anyone can view in full by clicking a link, and the featured employers of the month. The primary function of the newsletter is to help our subscribers send off good applications, so both the above elements are important.

I’ll post the results in a couple of weeks when the full impact of the email can be compared against the original newsletter email.

Add comment July 2, 2009

IMU Finals done and dusted!

Just taken the inbound maretking university final exam! It was really great to have such an in-depth test of the skills I and my classmates have learned over the last week. I hope I’ve passed, and if I have , that fact that it was tough and took some thinking about should add to the sense of achievement!

Big thanks need to go to everyone at Hubspot for organising it, especially Rebecca who has guided us through the entire process, and everyone who took the time to put together great lectures and information resources for us.

Onwards and upwards from here, and I really hope the programme will continue in the future. I definitely look forward to renewing my skills in the future and hopefully it will be with the inbound marketing university.

I have a massive to do list as a result of the classes from this week, so I’ll keep you posted on all those changes.

Add comment June 24, 2009

Revision for IMU exam

Just looking through the slides from this week’s intense IMU course, and I’ve still got two classes to catch up on not to mention revision for the exam next week.

It’s been such a great week for getting into all aspects of inbound marketing, and it’s really helped me work out what areas can be optimised better. I’ve also learnt the value in lead nurturing – after all, it’s all pointless if your conversion rate is zero!

There are so many aspects of your site that can be addressed to improve conversion rate, traffic or sign ups – you can optimise for whatever goal you’re trying to acheive. A good piece of advice about landing pages is to make sure potential leads know what value they are getting and how to proceed, otherwise you might as well not bother with any inbound marketing. Make sure people don’t have to self-direct when they get to a landing page.

The other key element is to keep your content fresh and regularly updated. There is very little point in re-marketing the same material time and again, people just get bored. You need to know who your customers are and how to engage each and every one of them by writing content that is valuable and useful to them.

Add comment June 21, 2009

SEO Crash Course

Just reviewing the notes from the Inbound Marketing University crash course in SEO. There are some great tips in there, not least of which are the detailed notes on how searches work, how Google sees your website and how to come up with the best keywords.

SEO is so important to maintaining your presence in the online world. Not only will it increase your visibility but eventually will increase sales. Often some relatively simple changes can make all the difference to your ranking in searches. By using simple text links in between pages, adding new content on a regular basis and using selection of keywords that make sense to your customers you can increase you traffic several times over.

There are so many elements to consider, I could go on all day – but you can watch the presentation for yourself by signing up to IMU.

Add comment June 18, 2009

First class was a home run!

The first class on blogging for business from the Inbound Marketing University was excellent. There were some great points about engaging with the readers in a personal way and responding to negative feedback in a repsectful way to to turn it into a positive!

I definitely have a large to-do list for my company blog. I need to start measuring how effective it is, and looking into what posts are popular so I can write more content that my readers will engage with.

The key is making it valuable to the reader.

2 comments June 15, 2009