We just finished today's email marketing webinar, presented by our Key Account Manager, Penny Greening. The presentation was all about email best practices and optimizing your current email strategy. Here are some of the highlights from the webinar:

Marqui's Approach to Email Marketing

1. Each email campaign delivered should support your overall business goals
2. Email analytics can help you improve on future campaigns only if you choose to accept what isn’t working, then do something about it 
3. The rules of email are always evolving , you need to stay on top of your game to get ahead of the competition

Protecting yourself against spam flagging

Understand Canada's FISA Bill, Bill C-28

FISA | Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act

By September 2011 Bill C-28 is expected to be passed into Legislature. It requires senders of email within or into Canada to have, or to obtain, explicit permission from their intended recipients. Protect your business with proper opt-in and unsubscribe procedures.

The 7 Characteristics of an Effective Email

1. Understand & respect target audience needs
2. Respect the list 
3. Subject line has a clear call-to-action
4. Compelling content | design best practices
5. Test on multiple email ‘clients’
6. Enhance tracking with landing & goal pages
7. Measure and improve when needed

If you want to know more about email marketing best practices, you can listen to a recording of the webinar here.

At the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) conference which wrapped up last Saturday many new and emerging technologies were discussed, not the least of which was QR codes. We’ve talked about what these codes are in the past and what they can do for your mobile marketing, but SXSW really highlighted the popularity of this technology, especially through the marketing at the event itself.

QR codes really caught SXSW by storm this year with lots of demonstrations of the technology and integrations like a scavenger hunt as well as some creative, “No Parking,” signs.

We’ve also seen some interesting new (and very mainstream) uses of the codes where some big brands are concerned. For instance, those of you who own Nintendos’s new handheld device may have noticed that it has a camera and that it exports user profile data and little cartoon avatars in a QR code that other consoles can then download. It’s a fun and social way to tie users together. The entire corporation is now using QR codes in their signatures so that anyone who corresponds with them can add their data and avatar to their 3DS (take a look at the video below for a good example of the way Nintendo implemented the codes).



With the next generation of mobile devices featuring everything from pre-installed QR reader software and QR readers already included in apps like Blackberry Messenger, this technology is only continuing to grow in popularity. Are you making the most out of it? Try the image for this blog post to see how a QR code works if you've never used one before.

This week’s web marketing digest post has a humorous take on the influence of Facebook on our lives, an infographic on envisioning the future of technology and a video on how Twitter helps people discover what’s going on in the world.

This video from The Onion News Network shows a different way to look at Facebook and the influence that it has on our lives.


CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

This infographic from Michell Zappa shows the "near" future of technology and highlights many of technology's uses and main industries including warfare, energy and the internet.

We all know that Twitter can help us get a better idea of what's going on in the world and what people are thinking and doing. This video uploaded to YouTube by Twitter describes how some Twitter uses utilize the platform to "discover their world."



Have a great weekend everyone!

I’m sure that you’ve all heard the term “brand ambassador” at some point in time. A brand ambassador is someone who helps drive demand for a product, service or company by directly interacting with your target audience. In the past, brand ambassadors have been employees that are hired to go out and promote a product often at tradeshows and events, but, now that social media exists and is seen as a mainstream marketing tactic, your employees can directly interact with your potential customers using those platforms, allowing every person you employ to act as a brand ambassador, if you let them.

There’s a lot of fear among organizations that giving their employees free reign to promote their brand is a risky initiative. I mean, your brand is your most valuable commodity and, if you let them just go and say what they want, then there’s the chance they’ll actually say whatever they want, and what if it’s not what you want them to say, right? I’m not here to tell you that there isn’t the risk for some of your employees to go and say things that you don’t want them saying about your brand, but, in my opinion, the benefits strongly outweigh the potential negatives and the risks can certainly be mitigated through proper communication and support within your organization.

Why should you let your employees become brand ambassadors?

1. It puts a personal and real face on your brand. People like to hear about a brand from other people. They don’t want a faceless corporate social media manager telling them what to think, they want to hear from real people!
2. It creates buzz and helps expand your reach. The more people you have talking about your brand, the more people that will hear about it. 
3. They represent your brand anyways.  Your employees are out there representing your brand every day, with your consent or without it.

So now you know why you should, but that doesn’t mean I’ve convinced you. You’re still concerned about the possible implications of just letting your employees go out on their own and promote your brand. So—how can you mitigate the risks? Well for one thing, you can ensure that you’re communicating your company’s brand message to your employees all the time. You want your employees to live your brand, to believe in it and to understand exactly  what your brand is and what that means. This is something that every organization should be doing anyways, but, if you’re doing it successfully, you’re helping to significantly reduce the likelihood that one of your employees will go out and completely misrepresent your brand’s message. You want your employees to understand your corporate brand and you can help them to become brand ambassadors through this process by doing several things including: leading by example to show them how you talk about your brand and give them a model to work towards and supporting their use of social media. The fact is that people are going to talk about their jobs through social media whether you endorse it or not, and by supporting their actions you can help to ensure that the things that they’re saying about their jobs helps to spread and support your brand’s identity.

So—what’s the bottom line?

Don’t be afraid of what people will say. Help your employees become brand ambassadors and you may be surprised by the great benefits! 

Image by Uncleweed on Flickr.

Does your content capture your readers’ attention immediately? Does it engage them and not only play on their interest but encourage them to interact with your website further? If your website’s content, whether it’s a resource, a piece of page copy or a blog post doesn’t snag your readers’ interest immediately and then turn it into a conversion, you may as well be using Lorem Ipsum.

For those of you who don’t know what Lorem Ipsum is, it’s a common placeholder text that’s used in graphic design and publishing to demonstrate text elements and it is completely nonsensical. Basically, it’s a bunch of Latin gibberish that’s used to indicate where proper copy should go at some point. When it comes to content if it’s not interesting enough to convert a reader, to a prospect or a lead, then it’s not really doing much and it may as well be gibberish, after all, most B2B website’s exist to help convert traffic to leads.

So how can you make sure that your content is engaging enough to convert?

1. Know who you’re writing for. If you don’t have a good idea of who’s going to be reading your content, then how can you possibly ensure that it will be interesting to them? You wouldn’t write the same content for a child as you would for an adult, so why would you try and write the same content for every audience?
2. Be catchy. If your title and initial sentences don’t grab a visitor’s interest immediately, then they’re not going to stick around to convert. 
3. Make sure you’re right. One of the biggest things that discourages a reader’s interaction is reading something that’s riddled with grammatical errors. Not only does this ruin your credibility but it’s also difficult to read and takes more effort to engage with. 
4. Be easily digestible.  Simple is the key idea here. Your content needs to take as little of a commitment as possible to digest. If it’s too much work, your audience won’t commit. 
5. Help them learn more. Using internal links to different areas of your website where your readers can get more information on individual topics is a great way to drive them towards conversion. 
6. Give them a way to convert. If your readers don’t know how to convert, then they won’t. Do you have calls-to-action readily accessible from your content? Do you tell readers that you want them to convert? Do you give them a good reason to?

These tips can help you to increase your conversion rates with your content, and we suggest to try them out to see if they work for you, because honestly, if you’re content isn’t helping you reach your website’s goals, then it may as well just be filler text.

This week's web marketing digest post has an infographic on the top social media trends for 2011, another infographic on the key characteristics of modern media agencies and a how to guide for watching March Madness online.

This infographic shows several of the biggest trends for social media in 2011 including QR codes, group buying, facebook advertising and the major social media sites. If your company is using social media, this infographic will give you a good idea of some of the big trends that you will face in the upcoming year.


For those basketball fans out there, this post from Mashable highlights the many ways that fans can watch and engage with March Madness through social media.

This infographic also from Mashable, shows the characteristics of a modern media agency. Does the agency you use fit these parameters?



Have a great weekend everyone!

Today's webinar on lead scoring just concluded, for those of you who were unable to make it, here's the recap!

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is a method of quantifying the value of a lead based on its expected value. By quantifying the value of a lead, you can optimize your conversion process making sales and marketing teams more efficient.

What are the benefits of lead scoring?

1. An increased prospect-to-lead and lead-to-sales conversion rate.
2. More leads in your nurturing programs.
3. Allows for a better allocation of sales and marketing resources.
4. Helps improve communication between sales and marketing teams. 

Some best practices for optimize your lead scoring process include:

• Evaluate current lead scoring process and assess areas for improvement.
• Determine how the process can be improved and develop plan for implementation
• Determine what can be automated and research automated lead scoring solutions.
• Determine how implicit data will be included in your lead scoring process.
• Determine metrics that drive optimization. If you don’t know what indicates success then it’s difficult to work towards improvement.
• Monitor and measure for improvement. Using the metrics you’ve determined, measure and optimize your process.

Check the webinar out in our resource section for a full description of how to score your leads using positive and negative scores and lead quality thresholds!

Image by Stephen Poff on Flickr.

This is a guest blog post by Marqui's newest Marketing Consultant, Dan Biggs.

Facebook recently patented “Curated Search”  , which is expected to use algorithmic search results similar to Google or Bing, then weight those results by what users in or near your Facebook network have shown interest in. Your network’s level of interest would be tracked by the frequency of clicks associated with the search result. Considering Facebook’s bigger plans, Curated Search may provide the foundation to build a more powerful search tool, using even more of the information they collect about users to help deliver relevant search results.

Facebook’s plans for taking on Google in the search arena has been quite public and centred primarily around Facebook’s  not-so-secret weapon – “the social graph” - a mapped network of all their registered users and the relationships between them. Among the many dimensions that connect people is their interests, reflected by the types of content they share, groups they join or interests that they list in their profiles.  With the Curated Search platform, Facebook could be ready to move into this space and roll out their ambitious plan to challenge one of Google’s biggest selling points – the ability to deliver more relevant search results than their competitors. If Facebook intends to develop a platform where they can deliver search results that are weighted on the rich amount of data that they have on users, the relevancy of their results could increase with every activity that users  take on the site. For example, uploading a photo of your holiday in Italy might add “Italy” and “holiday” as topics you’re interested in, and when you use Facebook’s to search for “Italy” the results may have more of a focus on holidays in Italy rather than facts about the country itself.

In addition to Facebook gearing up to take them on at their own game, Google has been battling decreasing relevancy as a result of the proliferation of “content farms” flooding their search results, and increasingly sophisticated and aggressive SEO.

Discussion:  Facebook Killed the Google Star

One of the most exciting and fun aspects of the web and having inconceivable amounts of data at our fingertips is undoubtedly the occasional surprise discovery of new stuff, whatever it is…  A result of sometimes seemingly random connections, a miscategorized search result or random article on Wikipedia can lead to finding all sorts of interesting things.

What do you think? Is recommendation-driven search going to limit discovery of new things?  Will having search engine results weighted to what people’s friends  are into lead to Chronic Internet Groupthink?

Image from M.I.C. Gadget

In the wake of social media’s influence on the political events in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, social media has now stepped up again to help inform the public about the situation in Japan since the tsunami hit last week.

Social media sites, especially YouTube and Twitter have been buzzing over the last few days with pictures, videos and tweets from the citizens of Japan. Personal videos of homes and businesses being devastated by the quake have been making their rounds for the last few days and hashtags such as #prayforjapan have risen to the top of Twitter’s trending topics index as people rush to spread news about the earthquake and its horrific repercussions for Japan’s citizens.



However, social media isn’t just acting as a platform for the sharing of information at this critical time. It’s also helping those who would like to help, offer aid to the people suffering in Japan. Aid organizations are turning to social media to try and reach a wider audience of potential supporters. A good example of this is the Red Cross who have initiated a texting donation campaign (similar to ones they’ve done in the past). “Text REDCROSS” was also a trending topic on Twitter as people rushed to donate to helping victims of the quake and the ensuing tsunami sufferers.

While many of Japan’s major resources like electricity and nuclear power have been knocked out by the quake, their internet remains relatively untouched and this has significantly helped people stay in touch with loved ones affected by the earthquake. Tools like Google’s people finder are helping victims and their family and friends attempt to locate those that are still missing, or whose whereabouts are unknown.

We’ve spoken before about social media’s ability to help in times of crisis and this is no exception. Social media’s ability to connect people is helping many people stay in contact despite the difficulties facing Japan, and that is invaluable in difficult times like these.

This week's Web Marketing Digest post has an innovative ad from Volkswagon, a must-watch TED talks video and a presentation on mobile marketing trends.

This ad from Volkswagon is an interesting and informative way to engage audiences using both mobile and print marketing channels. The ad, which encourages users to download an app which lets them interact with the print ad is entertaining, but it doesn't lose sight of the it's original message: to educate Volkswagon fans and car buyers about some of their cars' features.

I am a big fan of TED talks. These talks highlight "ideas worth spreading" and often help me look at common ideas and topics in new and interesting ways. This video presented by Malcolm Gladwell discusses spaghetti sauce, but also why it's so important to have a strong understanding of the needs and wants of your target audience.




This presentation from Vision Mobile highlights some of 2011's biggest trends in mobile marketing.
Have a great weekend everyone!

This recent TED talks video, featuring Wadah Khanfar, the Director General of Al Jazeera, entitled, “A Historic Moment in the Arab World,” discusses the ways in which a young tech-empowered generation have inspired a democratic revolution and offers and optimistic view on the way that media, especially social media, has helped this group create a new reality where they can walk out their fronts doors and affect change. The video analyzes the way that events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have been influenced by social media and how these channels connect and globally engage an entire generation.



In the past this type of change often hinged upon foreign interventions which lead to a feel of inferiority among the people who felt that they were unable to affect change on their own. This foreign intervention often lead other leaders in different countries to threaten their people with increased foreign influence, and encouraged them to ask the question, is it better to have your country over-run with foreigners or continue to submit to the current regime?

Now, with the connectivity that social media allows, people who may have felt powerless in the past are more educated and connected to a spirit of global understanding allowing them to create a new reality in which they have the power to affect change from their own doorsteps.

Even after Al Jazeera was banished from these countries, they were able to keep up their broadcasts which informed the world about the events in these countries thanks to the people living there who shared the information on the web. As Khanfar says, this was the first resolution where rather than relying solely on his journalists and reporters they were able to keep the rest of the world up to date on events based on the enormous amount of information supplied by regular people.

I think in this case it's obvious that social media can play a role in helping change, but the real importance that it has is its ability to connect a global generation and inspire them to work towards change themselves. The way that social media spreads information and allows people to interact with each other all over the world in real-time can help to ensure that people are empowered to use technology to help improve their lives and create a brighter future.

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, a community is defined as, “an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location.”

When I read that description I think it is a fairly accurate description of Marqui’s online community that we’ve built on Twitter, but I’ve seen many examples that don’t quite live up to that definition. The key part of the definition that I think should exemplify everything about an organization’s Twitter following is, “an interacting population.” Is your group of followers on Twitter actually interacting with you? Are you interacting with them? If not, then you’re not living up to what a community can or should be.

Having said that, there are many things you can do to encourage an authentic community to grow up around your company’s online presence. Here are our tips on how to do so:

1. Provide value. Just showing up and tweeting about any-old-garbage to get some tweets up on your profile page on a regular basis isn’t going to encourage interaction (at least not positive interaction). The communities that have the strongest and most relevant interactions are the ones that are built on a company that takes the time to tweet information, resources and thoughts that their followers find valuable, relevant and worth responding to.
2. Take part. One of the biggest benefits that Twitter can have for your organization is that it allows you to have essentially instantaneous two-way conversations with your audience, but, that only works if you’re actively monitoring and checking your Twitter account for updates and comments from your followers. If you’re not interacting with your audience, then you’re not building much of a community are you? 
3. Maintain momentum. One of the biggest mistakes that causes a community to fall apart is when an organization stops tweeting or interacting consistently. It’s crucial that once you create an online presence you maintain it. Make sure that you’re tweeting regularly to keep your audience engaged. 
4. Remember your brand. You’re corporate Twitter account isn’t the same as your personal one, and don’t you ever forget it! Twitter tends to be a more casual form of communication but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to responsibly represent your brand ideals there. Your audience is following your brand because they want to see a more “personal” side to it, but they still want to interact with someone who is a good indicator of brand values.

By taking these tips to heart you can help to establish a solid brand community based on interaction and engagement (and who doesn’t want that?). Let us know if these tips work for you! We’d love to hear about your B2B Twitter successes.

Image by xotoko on Flickr.

This week's post is all about social media and shopping. It has a video on the popularity of Facebook, a report on e-commerce and an infographic on the rise of mobile shopping.

This video from Alex Trimpe shows the degree to which the world is "obsessed with Facebook." Thought you knew how much people use Facebook on a daily basis? This video may surprise you.

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

Forrester has released a new report showing that online shopping will keep on taking over in-store shopping, by providing loyal customers with brand knowledge (sizes, fits etc) with a more convenient way to purchase. You can read a full description of the report on Mashable here.

This infographic from Daily Infographic shows some interesting statistics on the popularity of mobile shopping. Is it more popular than you thought it was? Don't discount mobile as an important part of your online marketing strategy.

 
Also, for anyone who didn't hear, WikiLeaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. What do you all think of that? Do you think they deserve to win? Or do you think they even deserve to be nominated along with the likes of Afghan rights activist Sima Samar and the European Union? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Have a great weekend everyone!

We just finished our most recent web marketing webinar and as a follow up for everyone who did (and didn’t) attend, here is a basic recap of the main points we covered in the content.

What are the most common funnel blockage issues?

1. Not enough visitors coming through the top of the funnel
2. Lots of traffic but not enough visitors converting to leads
3. Too many leads being passed to sales that aren’t qualified
4. Lots of leads but not enough conversions to sales

What are the solutions to those problems?

1. Optimizing demand generation tactics for products and services.
2. Improve your website’s conversion rates
3. Use lead nurturing best practices to engage leads not ready to talk to sales 
4. Align sales and marketing teams  to ensure no leads are lost or forgotten. 

We hope you all enjoyed the webinar. You can view all of our on-demand webinars anytime in our web marketing resource section.

In the past web content management and website updates were solely in the power of IT. Any changes to websites had to be run past a strict IT department with a focus on content updates and ownership, content back-up and security, update scheduling consistency and audit trails. While that model may have worked in the past, web content management has come a long way and websites now tend to be (and in our opinion should be) in the realm of marketing departments rather than IT. Marketers need a web content management system that allows them to incorporate all the integrated aspects and channels of their marketing plans which include things like blogging, social media, subscribers, email marketing, RSS feeds and more.

So—what do marketing teams really want in a web content management system?

1. Flexibility and ease-of-use for non-technical users without HTML knowledge.
2. Easy page creation and editing tools including a WYSIWYG with image scaling/editing abilities.
3. Business blogging functionality that’s integrated and uses the same WYSIWYG module. 
4. Easy content syndication and social media integration (automatically generated RSS feeds). 
5. Quick and comprehensive analytics integration to allow for easy tracking and testing of campaigns. 
6. Simple form creation and management tools complete with auto responders. 
7. A built in lead-database with complete lead profile and activity history. 
8. Email campaigns with lead nurturing capabilities. 
9. Workflow and approvals for easy content collaboration (as well as versioning). 
10. Roles and permissions for accountability and secure content updates. 
11. Easy digital asset management.

So there you have it, those are the things that marketers really want out of a WCM platform. Is yours providing your marketing team with those characteristics? Or are you still relying on IT?

Image by Karen Eliot on Flickr.

You spend a lot of time on your content, most marketers do, and if you’re anything like the rest of us, then you get frustrated when, after taking so much time to make content that you think is compelling, you realize that no one is reading it.

Sorry, folks. It’s the ugly truth.

While there are many reasons why people will gravitate towards (or away from) your content, there are some quick copy tips you can implement to help make your writing appear instantly more interesting to your readers.

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Trust me.

1. Keep it short and sweet. Your readers are looking for a quick fix for their content needs. They’re most likely searching for the same reasons that you normally search: they want a quick answer to a query.
2. Keep hierarchy clear with headings. Headings make your content easier to read and interact with. Period. 
3. Use lists! Bulleted and numbered lists are quick and easy to read and help you get a lot of content into a small space. There’s really no downside. 
4. Include relevant links. Linking to other pages (internal and external) that supplement what you’re saying allows you to keep your content short and to the point but still valuable and relevant. 
5. Add EMPHASIS.  By bolding important sections of text, and making it clear which parts of your content are the most important you give your readers the ability to both read all your content (if they are inclined to) or skim to the important bits (if they want to). 
6. Use words that elicit emotions. One of the best ways to grab attention and encourage readers to interact with you content is to choose words that cause an emotional reaction in the reader. Power words like love, death and money are used a lot because they work.  
7. Make it strange, interesting, compelling or unlikely. Looking at things in a new way helps to capture readers’ attention because of the incongruity. People love things that are odd, controversial or interesting, so give it to them!

Today’s marketers tend to wear many hats. I don’t know very many marketers who aren’t also writers, analyzers, content developers, artists and a whole bunch of other things as well, and the reality is that it’s impossible for marketers to be the better at all of these than industry specialists in those areas. A marketer is most likely never going to be as strong a copywriter as someone who does nothing but write copy for a living. So—how do we combat that? We develop tricks (we’re crafty like that) which help us overcome the imbalances and appeal to our audience’s baser instincts for instant gratification through content. Sound good? I’ll take ingenious plotting over hours spent perfecting my writing skills any day.