Netconcepts

Integrated Email Marketing and Online Communications

Jacqui Jones — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:00:24 +0000

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

Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:48:36 +0000

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.

Panelists:
Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development Content Acquisition, Google
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
George Aspland, Founder & President, eVision

SEO Through Blogs & Feeds

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:00:22 +0000

Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you’re missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to search engine optimization.

Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development, Google
Doug Hay, Principal & CEO, Expansion Plus Inc.

RSS, Blogs & Podcasts: Successful Syndication Tips

Stephan Spencer — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:00:46 +0000

Syndication technology (RSS) makes it easier to build an audience for your content, because your readers or listeners become subscribers using non-intrusive “feed readers.” An overview of the growth of RSS plus a special focus on podcasting. This session will also include tips on blogging and podcasting for (a) profit; (b) credibility and reach.

Moderator:
Ian McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin Networks Inc.

Speakers:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Mitch Joel, President , Twist Image
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, Searching for Profit

Making Blogging and RSS Pay Off

Stephan Spencer — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:01:19 +0000

Hear it right from the horses’ mouths, i.e. those who have actually made their blogs and RSS feeds pay in real dollars. Steve Spangler Science, for example, attributes 13% of all online sales to their blog. Hear the secrets of how they garner qualified traffic from the search engines, uncover the pitfalls and hazards, and learn what resources are required to do it properly.

Moderator:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts

Panelists:
Steve Spangler, CEO, Steve Spangler Science Inc.
Pinny Gniwisch, Founder & EVP Marketing, Ice.com

The Need for Feeds: Understanding RSS & Blog Marketing

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:55:47 +0000

This session will cover how to use blogs and RSS feeds as user-driven marketing platforms to enhance and improve content publishing and syndication. Panelists will discuss how blogs and RSS marketing can be used to enable access to any web site, device, content platform, or application; and enable users to consume content in whatever form they desire and whenever they want. Learn the best tips, tools, and techniques to optimize content delivery via blogs and RSS for maximum reach and effectiveness. Find out how RSS marketing can be used to increase organic search opportunities, and how blogs and feed metrics are collected and analyzed.

Moderator:
Niall Kennedy, Principal, Hat Trick Media

Panelists:
Bill Flitter, Founder and VP of Marketing, Pheedo
Don Loeb, FeedBurner
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts

SEO Through Blogs & Feeds - Advanced Organic Track

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:00:21 +0000

Speakers:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts
Rick Klau, Vice President of Publisher Services, Feedburner
Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR

Blog & Feed Search SEO

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:32:48 +0000

This session explores how specialized blog and feed (RSS/Atom) search engines gather content and provides tips on tapping into these growing forms of traffic.

Moderator:
Detlev Johnson, VP, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies

Speakers:
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, Searching for Profit
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Rick Klau, FeedBurner

Link Building Your Way to the Top of the Rankings

Stephan Spencer — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:55:16 +0000

Links are the currency of the search engines. Without good inbound links to your web site, your SEO efforts will be in vain. Link building is arguably the most difficult, most misunderstood, and most poorly executed aspect to SEO. Join SEO and link-building experts Stephan Spencer and Eric Ward as they guide us through the quagmire and show us the way to great search engine rankings.

You will learn:

Google’s PageRank scores: red herring or useful metric?
What makes a link valuable or not
Creative strategies for building link-worthy content
What works when approaching webmasters with link requests
Pitfalls to avoid if buying or bartering links

Co-presenters:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts
Eric Ward, Founder, EricWard.com

Blogs, Podcasts and RSS: New Tools for Customer Acquisition and CRM

Stephan Spencer — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:01:03 +0000

This dynamic, multi-faceted session will focus on how to effectively use the new technologies of blogs, podcasting, and RSS to reach and retain customers. You will learn proven strategies and sure-fire tactics for how to leverage your blog’s ability to reach and influence your customers, prospects, and the media. In this session, we’ll show you how other marketers are already successfully integrating blogs, RSS, and podcasting into their online marketing communications mix, and achieving deeper more personalized relationships with their customers.

Learning Points:

Successfully use blogs and podcasts as direct marketing tools for getting your selling messages in front of prospective customers
Discover proven strategies for using your blog to reach the media and gain competitive advantage
Master top tips for optimizing your blog so that it improves your search engine marketing

Panelists:

Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts
Dr. Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching For Profit