Web Marketing Ecommerce Business Blogging RSS Marketing

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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Forget the grand strategy talks; ignore the expensive, time-consuming software implementations; discard the hard-to-measure long-term plans - this session is about specific, actionable tactics you can use to make money NOW. Our panel of experts are going to give you killer tips to improve your Paid Search, Natural Search, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Web 2.0, Shopping Feeds, Technology Issues, and Site Optimization. We’re going to be moving fast so we will have a handout for session attendees with all of the gory details. This is the session you want to attend if you want to get your hands dirty and improve the bottom line. It will also help you convince your boss that you came to the Summit to make money — not just party in Vegas.

Moderator:
Allan Dick, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Plumbing Evangelist, Vintage Tub and Bath

Panelists:
Sam Decker, CMO, Bazaarvoice
Todd Friesen, SEO Ninja, Todd Friesen Associates
Sheldon Gilbert, Founder and CEO, Proclivity
Pinny Gniwisch, Founder and VP, Marketing, ice.com
Brian Klais, Vice President of Search, Netconcepts
Jeff Molander, Principal, Molander & Associates
Brian Platter, General Manager, Home Delivery, Peet’s Coffee & Tea
Brian Smith, Co-founder, SingleFeed

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A SEO review of this site and the Best Practices in use, as well as opportunities for new optimization. Analyst Jeff Muendel of Netconcepts goes through the site with a fine tooth comb. Learn from his findings on how to analyze your ecommerce website and tweak it in time for holiday traffic.

If Little Pixie Gifts has an SEO weak point, it is in the URLs. As search engines spider the URL addresses along with title tags and page content, each URL should reflect the keyword theme of the page. Instead, Little Pixie Gifts has URLs like http://www.littlepixiegifts.com.au/cart.php?target=category&category_id=62. While such a URL doesn’t necessarily hurt things from a search engine perspective, it certainly doesn’t help.

To read the full article, visit Practical Ecommerce.

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Do you know your website’s conversion rate? Do you know if it is above or below average for a typical merchant? The average conversion rate is only about 2.4%. How can you increase your site’s conversion rate? Learn from Netconcepts Founder & President, Stephan Spencer about how to improve your organization’s website to become a better converter. In this article for MultiChannel Merchant, Stephan discusses the use of Persuasion Architecture, how to design for different personality types, analyze your audience’s needs and to adjust your tone.

Technology is not a means to higher conversion rates; it is just a tool that must be properly managed, configured, and implemented in order to reach your goals. Just having a great CMS with an advanced shopping cart system is not enough — there are no “set it and forget it” solutions for improving your conversion rate.

For more on this topic, read the full article here.

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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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In this edition of the SEO report card, Jeff Muendel reviews eCommerce site pinkorpunk.com. This niche eCommerce site sells accessories that (you guessed it) are either pink or punk. This website audit is especially helpful for other new eCommerce sites, since pinkorpunk.com launched quite recently. Here’s a little bit about what Jeff has to say about this unique boutique.

Pinkorpunk.com is a fairly new website, which may partially explain its PageRank of 0. But, the other factor in the ranking is the site’s small number of inbound links. Yahoo! sees 45 links from outside sites while Google doesn’t list any at all. Inbound links translate to PageRank, and higher PageRank translates to better search engine results. This site, with its vibrant content, should have no problem garnering links! A linking campaign is in order here. Research online directories and get listed in those that still have decent PageRank (many have been recently demoted by Google in that regard). A blog is also in order, especially with such hip content. Online press should be a target as well, as should social media avenues like MySpace, Flickr and Facebook.

For more about this niche eCommerce store, visit the Practical eCommerce website audit here.

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Ok, perhaps I’m being a bit provocative here, but sometimes it’s the off-topic, off-message, or off-brand content that earns you the most valuable links—links that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. Those links can really pay the bills, in terms of the extra search traffic and resulting sales. The brand police within your company may pitch a fit, but heck, it’ll be worth it! Here’s how it’s done:

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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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