As you might imagine, most organizations are reluctant to share publicly the strategies and tactics that have given them an edge over their competitors online. So it is a testament to our clients’ generosity and commitment to partnership that they have graciously granted us permission to publish this inside view of their SEO, e-marketing and web development initiatives.

Below you will find a selection of case studies from some of these valued clients.

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

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

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

Traffic down? Conversions starting to wane? It could be any number of SEO issues. Finding free online tools to hone search optimization for an ecommerce site can be tough. There are a lot of them out there, often promotional in nature, and they offer varying degrees of features and reliability. Some spit out data that is simply erroneous and applying this sort of information to website design can be useless at best and deadly, in Internet terms, of course, at worst.

In this article originally published on Practical eCommerce Jeff Muendel, Search Analyst for Netconcepts, writes about Aaron Wall’s Website Health Check tool, a beneficial “free” SEO tool that offers easy-to-read, uncomplicated reports on a number of issues that includes missing title tags and meta descriptions to checking for duplicate content and verifying your error pages are returning the correct code.

Jeff also recommends some of Stephan Spencer’s previous articles for more SEO tool information and suggestions “on developing an SEO toolkit, Google Webmaster Tools, and SEO: Tools For Link Building.”

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.

With a selection of more than 200,000 distinct skus, Cabela’s was searching for a way to get more of their Web pages competing for unbranded “long tail” search terms. They first partnered with a SEO firm that optimized a handful of static category and product pages, but soon found that that was not enough. Their vast product selection and constraints of their dynamically-driven Web site called for a solution that was scaleable across their entire website and went far deeper into implementing best SEO practices.

In collaboration with Cabela’s, Netconcepts launched a search optimization solution in September of 2006 to gain greater visibility in the natural search results of major search engines.

Goals

• Free SEO efforts from IT dependencies
• Maximize natural search brand visibility
• Increase search traffic and revenue

Solution

GravityStream provides a simple to implement search engine optimization solution that delivers measurable results without requiring extensive IT resources.

Netconcepts initiated such a program for Cabela’s. They created a real time, crawler friendly version of Cabela’s ecommerce site, giving them the flexibility to optimize the existing pages of their website without having to rebuild their current site. With the addition of page optimization, Google’s PageRank is allowed to flow through the site and boost Google rankings on a wide range of relevant non-brand search queries.

Results

• GravityStream empowers Cabela’s marketing team with control over the natural search channel.
• GravityStream shattered indexation goals by 45%. This lead to 200% more traffic and 50% more sales.
• Cabela’s brand is well positioned in over 200,000 long-tail search markets, with over 40,000 pages driving traffic.

”We have seen an impressive 50% increase in year over year organic search sales using a powerful new approach to SEO. Best of all, we didn’t have to change our core website. GravityStream gives me the flexibility we need to systematically manage our organic search business.”

- Derek Fortna,
Marketing Programs Manager, Cabela’s, Inc.

TV shopping network HSN, a global leader of multichannel retail, and the online arm of TV’s 4th largest cable network, offers tens of thousands of compelling and innovative beauty, home, fashion and jewelry products online, including highly respected brands like, Gateway, Paula Dorf, Kodak and Cuisinart, as well as many proprietary brands.

Situation:

Although HSN offers tens of thousands of products online, only a small amount of unique pages were indexed in Google in early 2005. This level of visibility was primarily only generating search traffic for HSN-related brand keywords (such as “HSN,” “Home Shopping Network” etc). Unbranded “long tail” search terms however accounted for a very small percent of HSN’s natural search traffic. Upon investigation, it was discovered that many of the indexed pages consisted mainly of duplicates of similar pages, as well as article-related content, rather than unique product-related pages capable of attracting unbranded search terms and sales.

Challenge:

HSN’s strategy was to take steps to capture more unbranded search traffic by getting more product pages indexed. However the prospect of re-architecting the HSN.com website to accomplish this would require many hours of development time and would impact many website stakeholders. According to Rob Caiello, OVP of Online Marketing, “We knew we needed to take action quickly and that we did not have the internal resources to restructure the HSN.com website at the time. We needed to find a powerful and immediate solution to achieve greater visibility in the major search engines for unbranded keywords.”

Solution:

HSN decided to implement a faster, more robust, proven approach to capturing natural search potential, using a hosted, natural search proxy optimization technology developed by Netconcepts, known as GravityStream™. This patent-pending optimization technology provided HSN with a real-time proxy of the retail website for search engines and search engine users, with very little effort required upfront. Around 40 hours were required by HSN’s internal IT department to set up, test and launch the GravityStream proxy site.

The solution has also been resource-friendly after the initial launch. As a real-time proxy of the website, new pages and links are emulated and made crawlable automatically, requiring only a few hours of ongoing maintenance from the marketing team on a regular basis.

Results:

The results achieved speak for themselves. Within 12 weeks of launching the GravityStream solution, HSN’s indexation in Google had increased 1200% from previous levels, and included all tens of thousands of product-related pages. This newfound level of visibility instantly began delivering on the “long tail” promises with over 25% of unique pages yielding increases in unbranded natural search visitors. In fact, during the critical 2005 holiday season, this visibility led to an increase in nonbranded search sales of 150% over Q4 levels from 2004.

Kristina Stern, Online Marketing Manager of HSN.com stated, “When compared to other options, Netconcepts GravityStream proxy solution is a quick and effective way to get many, deeper level pages indexed on Google that can deliver incremental, unbranded traffic and sales.”

According to a recent study by Netconcepts, and documented in the whitepaper titled “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search,” the average multichannel retail website has only a small percentage (usually under 5%) of its E-Commerce pages yielding traffic. For merchants utilizing Netconcepts’ GravityStream proxy technology, including HSN, over 20% of all unique pages are yielding unbranded natural search traffic. To get a copy of our “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search” white paper, click here or call a Netconcepts at 608-285-6600.

Problem:

Northern Tool recognized that very few of their products could be found via search engines. The company’s website was not compatible with search engine spiders and the site’s dynamic pages weren’t indexed by Google. “This basic inability to reach one of the largest online buckets of customers at Google, had frustrated us for years,” says Nathan Miller, eCommerce Manager at Northern.

Though the website offered over 14,000 products, potential customers could only find a few of them in search engines - a big problem, given consumers’ increasing reliance on search engines to find products they need. The company believed their site’s lack of search engine visibility was costing $100,000 - $250,000 per month in missed sales.

Northern Tool.com’s goal was to increase non-branded keyword sales, brand awareness, and acquire new customers by optimizing their website for Google. They wanted to expose their product catalog to the thousands of people using Google to find tools and equipment every day.

They wanted to act quickly and leverage end-of-year search traffic increases. However, their imminent holiday “code freeze” limited our options. Within a few short weeks we would be unable to affect changes to their website. Furthermore Northern Tool’s IT staff were extremely busy and unable to devote any significant time towards an URL rewriting project or other server-side solutions.

Solution:

Northern Tool.com turned to Netconcepts to optimize the website architecture for natural Google listings.

Given the timing issues of an imminent holiday code lockdown at Northern Tool, Netconcepts’ proxy-serving solution, gravityStream, was selected as the path forward, rather than implementing changes onto Northern Tool’s main web server.

GravityStream’s data-matching scripts enabled Googlebot and other search engine spiders to retrieve the site’s product content without significant changes to the website. Search engine users access the exact same page that they would if they clicked into the page from within the Northern Tool site and the page was generated for them - the pages are dynamic, remember. But gravityStream offers the page in a search-engine-friendly static form. You could call it re-presenting all product pages as landing pages.

So gravityStream turns Northern Tool’s dynamic product pages into search engine friendly landing pages and customer acquisition engines. Millions of search engine users are now exposed to the Northern Tool brand and product range every day.

And gaining this level of visibility was easy. Implementing gravityStream required only a few hours of Northern Tool’s time. “We just set up a sub-domain, added a link to our home page, and then waited for Google,” says Nathan.

Results:

Within eight weeks of launching gravityStream, 100% of NorthernTool.com’s product catalog had been spidered and included in Google’s index - over 14,000 products, many with great rankings. When searching Google for Northern Tool’s 600 category and sub-category pages:

• 32% are ranked at #1.
• 71% are listed on the first page.
• 77% are listed within the first two pages.

More importantly, NorthernTool.com has experienced tremendous gains in traffic and sales. GravityStream is now delivering 15% - 20% of total site-wide traffic. The first month of sales was in the 6 figures. GravityStream accounts for greater than 5% of total online sales. Approximately 80% of these orders generated were “new-to-file” - a critical metric to catalogers, as it is a measure of the degree of cannibalization there was of their other channels, most notably the print catalog.

Nathan Miller and his management team can see the bottom line value of the natural search visibility gravityStream offers: “With Netconcepts’ help we will continue to optimize our site to make the most of this giant opportunity for new customer acquisition in 2005.”

Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) is a leading retailer of specialty outdoor equipment and clothing, with revenues reaching close to $1 billion a year. REI is also seen as a leader in multi-channel strategies, offering a consistent sales and brand experience to their members and customers — whether through the 70+ retail stores, REI.com, or their catalog business.

Problem

While REI.com had developed a successful online store, they knew their limited search engine visibility represented a key missed opportunity to drive additional traffic and sales. REI.com didn’t rank well in search engines for many of its top products and the majority of its web pages and products weren’t getting indexed, resulting in greatly reduced visibility. UJ Cha of REI Online said: “it was a problem we wanted to address right away”.
While REI has a great range of products, its website suffered from several problems that were causing many of these products to never appear in search engine indices. The dynamic URLs that were used across REI’s online catalog were a big part of the problem, resulting in the site never being fully spidered. Their natural search visibility problem was compounded by small but significant issues with page titles, site structure, page content and link text, for example.
Understanding they had a problem, REI chose to work with Netconcepts to address its natural search challenges.

Solution

Netconcepts produced an audit report on REI’s website listing the problems and making recommendations on how to optimize the site. Realizing that this task involved a significant amount of work, REI engaged Netconcepts to help make the changes. We began by simplifying the URLs to make them more accessible to search bots and then worked on refining the REI site. As UJ Cha states, “The site in general needed optimizing for search engines” and work was undertaken to ease navigation, focus on keywords and make the site more search engine friendly.
Along the way Netconcepts took the time to help REI’s staff learn more about SEO best practices. As REI changes and updates their website, this training will help them keep REI.com search engine optimal. Netconcepts continues to work with REI to assist with seasonal keyword targeting and further SEO refinement.

Results

UJ Cha comments: “Netconcepts’ work has been very helpful, so far we have been very happy with all the work we have done together in 2004. We have been able to achieve full indexing in Google and we have had a measurable natural search traffic and sales increase.”
UJ Cha continues; “We received more than a 200% gain from overall natural search sales and more than a 250% gain in “non-branded” natural search sales since the start of the engagement with Netconcepts. Having a successful natural search strategy nicely complements our already successful paid search campaigns”.
In fact, the full indexing by Google means thousands of REI’s products are now visible to web consumers that were never visible before. REI’s site visibility has increased by 1000%, increasing overall natural search sales.
“We have decided to renew our contract with Netconcepts for 2005. Netconcepts has opened our eyes, not just on the importance of many of these elements but on specifically how to implement best practices.”

Download

Download the PDF version