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Learn the best tips, tools, and techniques for non-traditional optimization for both indexing as well as ranking support. This includes files such as PDFs, docs, podcasts and RSS feeds.

Speakers:
Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development, Google
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
George Aspland, Founder & President, eVision, LLC
Lee Odden, President, TopRank Online Marketing

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Get the nuts-and-bolts of how to turn a blog into a “profit center” - generating wildly positive ROI by making sales, attracting leads, and generating ad and affiliate revenue. Our panel of expert money-making bloggers will share step-by-step advice, most profitable tricks of the trade, pitfalls, hazards, resources required.

Learn…

• Learn how to diversify and supercharge your blog’s revenue streams
• Leverage others’ blogs for your own gain
• Maximize your blog’s search visibility and traffic

Moderator:
Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts

Panelists:
Jeremy Schoemaker, Founder, ShoeMoney Media
Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager (SEO), Microsoft, and author of How to Make Money with Your Blog
Steve Spangler, CEO, Steve Spangler Science
Chloe Spencer, Blogger, Neopets Fanatic.com

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Panelists:
Brian Clark, Copyblogger
Michael Gray, Atlas Web Service
Lee Odden, TopRank
Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts

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A team of long time e-commerce experts will provide live reviews and makeovers for sites from the audience members. Retailers in the audience will be asked to bring search marketing, user experience, e-commerce strategy and other design questions to this session where experts will view the sites in question and provide answers to fix what ails their web sites. Audience members who volunteer their sites for critique will receive a $25 Starbucks gift card.

Panelists:
Lauren Freedman, President, the e-tailing group
Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts
Amy Africa, President, Eight by Eight

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Is your email marketing right on target?
Do you want to improve open rates and conversion rates?
Do your customers view your email communications as spam?
Do you know how to use RSS and blogging to complement your email marketing and online communication efforts?

The value of email marketing in New Zealand has been growing steadily over the years. Not surprisingly email marketing and online communications are the most popular media of choice now, particularly email marketing.

Email is a powerful marketing tool and it integrates well with traditional media. It spurs immediate action, thus generating direct sales, registrations, growth of database and more. It is also more cost effective than paper-based direct mail and achieves greater ROI. However, it is wrought with challenges. And with the passing of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act, it’s important for organisations to ensure compliance whilst developing their marketing plans.

Integrated Email Marketing and Online Communications takes a practical approach to ensure continued acquisition, growth and retention of customers through targeted, robust, tried and tested strategies to help lift your email marketing strategies. To help you gain the upper hand over your competition, the course also covers some popular online communications tools that you could implement to supplement your email marketing strategy.

DAY ONE
Digital Communications — Email Marketing, Online and Offline Media
Customers today have more choice available than ever before of how they are communicated with. Customers ultimately want to control the frequency, the content and how they receive their communications. This session covers how email fits within the full marketing mix and how it integrates with other online and offline media.

• What are digital communications?
• How do digital communications fit within the full marketing mix?
• Marketing through email, RSS, blogging, txt, websites
• Platforms – desktop computers, mobile devices
• Integration with other online media
• Integration with offline direct marketing

Developing an Email Strategy
Many companies spend a lot of time, effort and budget acquiring email addresses, but neglect to develop an effective communication strategy once they have them. You’ll learn to develop strategic communication plans to maximise the potential for robust marketing strategies through this session.

• Developing the digital communication strategic plan
• Objectives, strategies and tactical elements
• Understanding the email marketing and digital communications
  process
• How to integrate email marketing into other online and offline media

The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act: Your Legal Obligations
Understand and ensure that your organisation meets the requirements of the Electronic Messages Act 2007.

• Definition of spam
• Definition of permission levels
• Permission vs. memorable permission
• Industry guidelines and best practices
• How will the Act affect your marketing plans?
• What are the penalties and costs associated with breaches?
• How tight is the current legislation – what are the ways around it?
• How to ensure compliance
• International spam laws – do they apply to companies in NZ?

Data Management: Building and Maintaining a List
Data is at the heart of any form of direct marketing including “email”. It pays to identify the data that you need to collect in order to personalise communications and provide effective reporting.

• Structuring your database – what type of data do you need?
• What are the reporting data requirements?
• “Quantity” vs. “Quality” – retaining the active subscriber
• Cleaning and maintaining data – changes, adds, deletes, fixing misspellings
• What is “provable permission” – recording and time stamping of permission received
• “Offline permission” – how to record permission granted through the call centre, trade shows, network meeting and face-to-face sales activity
• Managing permission across an organisation

In-House or Outsource – Assessing Email Service Providers
Finding the right email service provider is a critical choice for any company. You will explore and learn ways to find the right vendor and technology to manage your campaigns now and into the future through this session.

• How to assess your needs
• Questions you should be asking
• Assessing email service providers in NZ and overseas
• Liaising with your email service provider

DAY TWO
Winning Creative Strategies & Execution for Email
Create email messages that stand out, get read and get the response you plan for.

• “Memorable permission” – planning content your subscribers actually want to read
• Exploring the 19 creative elements (the from line – email brand value, the subject line, the preview pane, position of logo, ratio of text to images, design layout, number and type of links, navigation bar, inclusion of photography, feature offers, location of call-to-action, the words you use and personalisation etc.)
• Email mandatories
• What are the technical specifications?
• Designing effective landing pages and forms
• Use of rich media – video and audio
• Eyetracking and multivariate testing

Increasing Conversion Rates
This session covers how to use data to improve conversions such as open rates, click rates, inquiries and sales.

• Reporting data
• Behavioural targeting
• Event triggered campaigns

Deliverability, Filters and Rendering
Learn techniques to avoid the dreaded “spam” folder and “report spam” button.

• Data collection and tracking
• Filters and list management
• Deliverability reporting codes – messages sent back from ISPs
• About false positives
• Whitelisting – how to get your message delivered every single time
• Image suppression – what’s getting delivered?
• Authentication and reputation
• Rendering your message in email readers

RSS – Spam Free Communications
Is RSS the holy grail of online communications? Lean how to send communications that are completely spam free.

• What is RSS and why use it?
• What are some of the popular RSS readers available?
• iRSS – individualized RSS, sending personalised communications just like email
• Content distribution and syndication

Blogging – Participating in the Ongoing Conversation

• The New Zealand and international blogospheres
• Starting a blog - how to choose a theme
• Posting content – what, how, when
• Dealing with comments
• Making friends – increase your presence in the blogosphere
• Integrating your blog with email and RSS
• Use of video (vlogging) and audio (podcasting)
• Reporting on performance

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If you’ve even remotely considered adding a blog for your eCommerce site, then this article is for you. In this article originally featured on Practical eCommerce, Jeff Muendel helps eCommerce business owners design a strategy behind blogging.

A focused, well-written blog can get readers hooked on the blog and promote repeat visits to the website or garner subscriptions via RSS feeds and email newsletters. These recurring communications will help to tie potential customers to your site, encourage natural link building and increase repeat visits. Journalists are also more likely to follow a blog or subscribe via RSS than to visit the corporate site repeatedly. So, several avenues of search optimization and online marketing can be addressed with a single blog entity.

From the SEO benefits of business blogging to how it can help your customers, Jeff covers the basics of “who, what and when” of blogging. Read the full article at Practical eCommerce here.

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Search engines also love fresh content, and blogs, by definition, are constant sources of new content. If written correctly – or more specifically interestingly – blogs can also provide wider link bait and garner links from outside the blogosphere. Search engines, of course, reward for good, inbound links regardless of whether they’re from other blogs.

Jeff Muendel, Natural Search Analyst for Netconcepts, recommends that eCommerce sites take full advantage of WordPress, a blogging platform that offers a host of SEO-friendly options to allow for excellent search engine optimization. To read more about Jeff’s expert advice about WordPress and plug-ins, like the Yahoo! Shortcuts for WordPress plugin, visit the full article on Practical eCommerce.

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Do you want add a blog for your business but have no idea how to get started? In this article written by PJ Fusco, lead strategist for Netconcepts, she covers the common questions online retailers have as they think about the benefits and drawbacks of joining the blogosphere and offers her expertise.

One of the questions she covers is: Will blogging really help?

If the blog is optimally created and maintained, with a transparent, sincere voice and a commitment to using it to build relationships as well as links, then, yes, it will help. How much? That depends on how much the company is willing to invest in developing relationships with customers and prospects in the blogosphere. The only time blogging can really hurt is if the bloggers are insincere and dishonest and ignore their audience, or if your company has a god-awful online reputation in the first place. If you’re in a war of attrition over your company’s online reputation, it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a simple blog to fix the mess you’re in.

For more about this topic, visit the full article about getting started in blogging at ClickZ.

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