Successful Customer Database Management for Winning e-Marketing

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved. Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

So you are generating good responses from your e-Mail campaigns, online advertising, search engine marketing and etc...The next most important thing you need to do is to manage your customer database successfully. Without this, your e-Marketing strategy will always have a missing link. You can grow to certain level with success but if you want to grow from good to great, Customer Database Management is the area you need to plan in the beginning of your e-Marketing effort.

What can you do if you are running on lean budget and do not want to spend a lot to buy Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software at the start. Here are some good practical suggestions you may consider:

1. Spreadsheets

2. Mail Client Software

3. Accounting Software

1. Spreadsheets

Obviously, MS Excel is the most commonly used spreadsheet software in the market. However, you can use any kind as we are just keeping a simple list. The trick is that you create multiple files of e-Mail/Contact Lists by segregating your Suppliers, Partners, Customers, Prospects and other categories in different files for ease of management. In future, whenever you have new e-Mail addresses/Contact information, you just need to append to the relevant lists/files to keep them up-to-date.

2. e-Mail Client Software

Most of people would use MS Outlook Express or whatever free e-Mail Client provided by the Operating System in your computer when downloading e-Mails from server. It is relatively simple to keep your master e-Mail/Contact Lists within the same e-Mail system or your e-Mail Client Software you are using. The idea behind is the same as you would do using spreadsheets. You just need to create different "Distribution Lists" or "Groups"...etc to maintain your e-Mail campaign lists. One good function with some e-Mail Client Software is that when you add duplicate e-Mail addresses to the same list, the software will automatically add only one entry to the list rather multiple. This would minimize the unpleasant experience of the receivers when they are receiving multiple copy of your e-Mails just because it was not properly managed.

3. Accounting Software

As I proposed often, your e-Mail campaign should always sending to your closest relationship groups first. e.g. Suppliers, Partners, Customers, Prospects...etc. These closest groups are typically already captured by your accounting software for invoicing or billing purposes. Therefore, you may make just a little bit of effort to keep up your contact database in your accounting software to make sure e-Mails are properly input and up-to-date. Preferrably, you may ensure your accounting software could give you some options or remark fields to sort out the lists with additional criterias to facilitate better management.

Other than the above 3 suggestions, the next best option I can think of is using the e-Mail Marketing software. The price of these kind of software can range as low as US$100 to very high prices depending on the kind of functionalities they can provide.

Converting Clicks to Sales Leads

By Matthew Kwan

2008 © Copyright. All rights reserved.

Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited http://www.adamshk.com/

The biggest challenge of e-Marketing is to convert clicks to Sales Leads. Generating clicks is not difficult but how to lead your potential customers to take actions including calling you by phone, sending you e-Mails, filling up enquiry forms...etc is an art.

Obviously, website design is the very first consideration and effort you have to make in order to invite your potential customers to take actions. First of all, you really have to encourage people to call you and send email to you by putting these invitations & your contact information all over your website. Though it may not look odd in terms of design and layout when you show these information so often, it is a mandatory thing you have to do for the sake of converting clicks to actions. Here are some suggestions on areas you may consider:

1. Enquiry Hotline Phone Number

2. Enquiry e-Mail Address

3. e-Form for enquiry or quotation request with predefined fields

4. Button function for forwarding the page or information friends

5. Button function for signing up e-Newsletters

6. Button function to respond to the content

All of the above are very basic and powerful items to include in a web page in order to capture information from your customers and increase the chances that you can get in touch with them. In addition, you may also include "Live Chat" function on your web page. Live Chat is another very powerful tool you may want to deploy as it will let you proactively monitor your website visitors and invite them to chat and start the selling process instantly. No matter your customers are leaving you contact information or connected through Live Chat, once you are connected with your customers, it is really an exercise of your conventional selling process from then on.

On the other hand, your marketing strategy behind your marketing campaign is the real critical success factor. Your potential customers would not take actions unless your content and messaging on your website or landing page is really compelling. How to make your contents compelling is a communications skill, you need to ensure that values of your products/services are being highlighted rather than just listing functionalities and specifications. Again, communications or copying writing skill is not a simple thing; it is always good to get someone acting from customer perspectives to review the contents for you.

Designing Powerful & Effective Search Keywords of Your Business

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved. Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Keywords or tags or labels are very important by e-Marketing term as they can help you to be searched by search engine easier or to do contextual marketing more effective and etc. You may use them for Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization & etc.

It may sound difficult but in effect it is just a matter of using the right method when designing powerful & effective search keywords of your business for e-Marketing. You may refer to my previous written article on "The 5C's of Business Planning" for detailed description on how to identify your Customers, Competitors, Complementors, Channels and Costs. The answers to the designated questions will help you to list out the top-most important keywords of your business.

After having done the analysis of 5C’s, it will be only a mechanical process to expand the list of keywords with some specific verbs or nouns adding in front or after your keywords making it like phrases to be specific enough that one would use them to search your company’s products/services as discussed in the article of “Search Engine Keywords Must Be Cost Effective”

The final result of the keywords list generated from this process can be very long but you can always to shorten the list when you have captured enough data from your search engines. It is relatively easy to remove those under-performed keywords of few impressions or clicks.

6 Simple Steps to Start e-Marketing with a Success

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved. Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Starting e-Marketing is easy but walking on the right path is not so easy. There are just too may options you can consider! However, typically I would recommend my clients to follow 6 simple steps to plan and start doing e-Marketing and they are:

1. Building Effective Website
2. Designing Compelling Messaging
3. Sending Strategic Newsletters
4. Online Advertising
5. Managing Customer Databases
6. Building Alliances

1. Building Effective Website - I have shared in other articles how important it is a website for e-Marketing to be successful. It is not only design and layout but also the real business strategy behind. You have to consciously to make your website effective for your business and engaging your customers interactively. A website will only perform well when it is being revised and updated according to the environmental changes with Compelling Messaging.

2. Designing Compelling Messaging - It is really back to marketing basics about communications. You have to high play your products/services' benefits rather than functionality in order to distinguish your differential advantages over your competition. A lot of time, customers' buying decisions are based on trusts that built on the success references you are giving of other cases. Before you get this right, e-Marketing will never be a success.

3. Sending Strategic Newsletters - e-Newsletters are so easy to send out if you have any emails of our suppliers, partners, customers and prospects. However, your compelling messaging must be ready before your e-Newsletters can be successful. In additional, you need to send out useful information or knowledge occasionally other than sales promotions in order to attract your target audience to keep subscribing your newsletter

4. Online Advertising - The most basic Online Advertising option I recommend is Search Engine Marketing. It is becoming mandatory for any companies nowadays to make sure their company information/advertisements are showing on the first page of search results. Without doing this, your website will just never be found in a very long while!! Other Online Advertising options can be Web Banner Ad on your target customers populated websites or contextual advertising...etc

5. Managing Customer Databases - When you start doing e-Marketing, the next important thing is to keep up with your customer database(s). This is very crucial because your customer database will grow throughout your e-Marketing activities. The most basic way to do this is to use Excel or Outlook or any other mail clients but as you grow your customer database, it is better to adopt a Customer Relationship Management software or a e-Marketing campaign software.


6. Building Alliances - No one can be successful by doing e-Marketing alone and this is the fact! Hence, building alliances and letting your alliances to promote your products/services in their websites and other channels are the very key to success with e-Marketing. You potential return on investment (ROI) will grow even better than you can imagine.


Summary
After all, e-Marketing is just Marketing, companies need to be applying the basic marketing techniques in order to be successful. However, this internet age is making the situation so interesting that you can exercise your marketing creativities with a lot of opportunities and alternatives!

Making your e-Marketing Campaign a Success

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

Obviously, when you ask any marketing professionals, they will tell you Return On Investment (ROI) is the way to measure success of any marketing activity. However, what are the returns should we expect from e-Marketing campaigns that would make them really successful? I have shared these many times in public and would like to reiterate here with the following 3 most important indicators.

• Sales Oriented - Any marketing activities fundamentally are tools for generating sales. Somebody may argue on this point but it is the reality we have to face that the reason of any business organization is to make money through sales. Hence, if your e-Marketing campaign is not helping you to generate sales, there must be something you should change to make sales happened.

• Community Building - Many times, sales volume is a function of your customer reach/base. The larger the set of your target customers, the greater chance you may get higher sales. If your e-Marketing campaign is not expanding your customer base and they are not coming back to visit your website frequently, your e-Marketing budget will never be effectively used.

• Affiliated Websites - The more business partners are willing to put up your website link to their websites, the higher chance to get "free" marketing opportunities and let search engines to search your website easier. At the same time you may be able to reach broader customer based through your business partner network. Eventually, your expanded network will help you to grow your customer community and sales.

These 3 indicators are very much inter-related and they are influencing each other in a lot of sense. If you can master your e-Marketing campaign with good results of these 3 indicators, I can guarantee you your e-Marketing campaign will differently a successful one!

Starting Your e-Mail Campaign with Your Allies

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

It is too easy to get bounced back or blocked by Spam Analyzer of any email system whenever you send out anything to anyone these days. First of all, you should try your best to convince the receiver on your distribution list to add your email address to their address book to decrease the chance of classifying your email as junk email sender. Even your e-Mail is safely landed in their In-Box, there are four categories of people are likely to have better interest to read through your message and they are your:

1. Suppliers: Suppliers are the group of people who want to keep up with your relationship and continue to sell you products & services. They are very likely to read through everything you send in order to know you better. We have so many experiences that our Suppliers became our customers along the way! Nice!

2. Business Partners: Business Partners are the group of people who want to leverage your network and business opportunities to grow business together. Since your business direction may impact their business direction, they are typically paying close attention to your e-Mail campaign messages to make sure they are keeping up the pace with you. The power of word of mouth and referral is exponential and greater than you can imagine. However, it takes time to build up a good and solid Business Partner Network!

3. Existing Customers: Existing Customers are the group of people who want to make sure they are getting the value for money from your products and services. As they have already lowered their barrier to your products/services, they have high interests to continue business with you provided the quality of your products/services are fine. Same again, word of mouth will eventually become a power tool of marketing to grow your business when your existing customer base grows larger.

4. Prospects: Prospects are the ones who already took action to call you up for enquiries and explore the opportunities for building up business relationships. Any new promotion and new products/services may trigger their buying desires. We have seen many cases that prospects may not purchase our products/services at the first instance but over time, they come back to purchase other products and services or refer other people to do business with us. So never give up of selling!

E-Marketing Strategy: Generate Sales or Build a Brand?

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

When you define your objectives of e-Marketing it is not any different from traditional marketing. The simpliest way is to make sure whether you want to Generate Sales or Build a Brand. However, a lot of time, you may not be able to segregate the two. Depending on your markeing budget, but I am too sales oriented to always recommend my clients to start with generating sales as your primary objective in any e-Marketing activity since the more exposure you have through e-Marketing activities, the stronger the brand may become.

So, what are the better channels to Generate Sales? It is really related to the services and products you are promoting but here are some general tips:
1. e-Mail Campaign:

• e-coupons: design e-coupons for people to print out and redeem discounted products/services or even encourage receivers to forward to their friends to create an exponential reach of your target customers. This is especially effective for resturants promotions and retail shops or similar industries.


• online purchase and lucky draw: e-Marketing is very much impulse (buying) base behaviour. Hence, you have to encourage your target customers to make the decision of purchase at the spot when they receive your e-Mail with HUGE Discount and Extremely Attractive Prize of lucky draw.

2. Web Banner Ad & Search Engine Marketing:

• Beautiful Web Page: Whether you are doing e-coupons or online purchase & etc...you need to have a beautiful web page before you can do Web Banner Ad & Search Engine Marketing.


• Popular High Traffic Websites/Portals: You do not neccessarily need to own a website to set up your web beautiful web page as there are many popular (high traffic) websites/portals can provide such services at a cost. Nevertheless, you really have to choose the better (and relevant) websites/portals. Web Banners will only be effective if you are exposing to the right target audience in volume. You have to make sure your choice of search engines are including the Local Kings.

Ahead of the e-Marketing Game with Right Search Engine Marketing Strategy

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

As it is so dynamic the (internet) world getting to be, Search Engine Marketing is something you cannot ignore in order to win the e-Marketing game. So, how to make sure our strategy is the right one? Here are some tips I would recommend anyone who want to be ahead of the game:

1. Identify Local King: Each market/country may have the Local King you must aware of that most people (80%?) may have preference to use that search engine. e.g. Yahoo in Hong Kong, BaiDu in China and Google in a lot of other countries...etc. However, you still should advertise on other search engines even they are not the Local King to make sure you have a presence.
2. Smaller Budget with Specific Keywords: If you are not sure what budget to use at the start, try always with smaller amount with the more specific keywords (i.e. phrases instead of single words) first.
3. Register on Web Business Directories: Other than paid advertising, you should also go aggressively to register as many web business directories as possible. This is very strategic as typically these directories are easier to be searched by search engines.
4. Exchange Banners/Links: Your business partners including suppliers and customers are very valuable to you and you should always ask them to exchange banner or links with you to cross promote each other. The more links are referring your website the higher chance search engines can show you with higher position.
5. Grow Your Website Hit Rate: Grow your website hit rate to let your website listed higher by search engine. However, it is easier said than done to grow your website hit rate. One important thing to bear in mind is to encourage your visitor to use your website rather than viewing only!
   

Good e-Mail Campaign Begins with Subject Line

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

We receive too many e-Mail advertising messages nowadays. A lot of them will automatically drop into our junk e-Mail box instantly and some of them may not. Nonetheless, the chances of us opening an e-Mail message depends largely on the sender and the subject line. Hence, writing a good subject line is the key success factor for a good e-Mail Campaign.

So, what is a good subject line? I attended a training course conducted by Bill Jenson, the author of Simiplicity Survival Handbook, a few years ago. He taught us a very simple way of communication which is based on 3 things: Know, Feel, Do. I think this is very useful for use to bear in mind whenever we write anything and especially for writing e-Mail Campaign subject line. Here is the simple explanations:

• Know: Write what is the real subject to let the readers know what it is about instantly.


• Feel: Write what is related to the readers especially some emotional facts to get them echoed the facts or to feel the importance of the matter


• Do: Write clearly the desired actions you what the readers to take after reading the message

It is not easy to do the above when you only have limited space for the subject line. However, the shorter you can write more, the better chance you will get higher response! In fact, not only the subject line should be written in Know-Feel-Do format, the mail body content should be written in the same way!

Search Engine Keywords Must Be Cost Effective

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

A lot of companies now are advertising on the popular search engines to promote their products and services. However, how many keywords should you advertise to get the best results? Some servicing companies are suggesting clients to publish only a few "top most important" keywords but in my opinion you got to advertise with the Most Cost Effective keywords.

So how do we quantify cost effective, it is a matter of getting the maximum exposure with the best prices. For example, you may get maximum exposure when you are bidding for the first 5 positions but your prices must be high. However, you may get 70% of the same exposure of the top 5 positions on the first page of search results with just a fraction of the costs of the first 5 positions. There is not formula to help you to do this but you need to experiment your bid prices in order to achieve a optimal point. The bad news is as it is a dynamic business, that means you have to do this constantly!

The other point to make is that you have to look out for other Cost Effective keywords by evolving your keywords with variations like in plural forms, adding verb before nouns, specifying your targeted locations to make your search keywords list more specific and like a sentence/questions you would type when you try to search for something. This takes a lot of creativity in order to perfect your keywords list but over time you will certainly get the pay back, I can guaranteed!

Building up Affiliated Links to Grow Your Web Presence!

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.
Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

In order to let people find you on internet with higher chance, one trick is your website must be linked by many other affiliated websites. The more affiliated partners or websites you are linked, the better chance more people may find you easier as well as your search engine(s) results/appearance will be higher.

One thing I do very often myself is whenever I do new business with new partners or suppliers, I would ask if they are willing to exchange banner/link to increase our mutual exposures on the internet.

Other than getting your partners to link your website, you can go and register on a lot of internet (business, B2B, B2C...etc) directories. A lot of these directories are location specific, so if your target customers are located in multiple countries, you may have to go to multiple web directories for different countries to register your company information.

However, affliations take time to build and there are many more other considerations than just technical concerns!

Websites are so important to make e-Marketing campaigns successful!

By Matthew Kwan © Copyright. All rights reserved.

Principal Consultant

Adams Company Limited www.adamshk.com

2008 July 17

Most e-Marketing campaigns will redirect potential customers to the target landing (web) page you want people to view the specific promotional contents. If you don't have a good look and feel of your web page, the chances of your potential customers would take any action are very slim.

4 ground rules I often use and coach my clients are:

• Customer Oriented: Your website should be laid out according to your target customers. Your target customers, especially those new to your website, can find relevant content of their interest very easy and fast.


• Context Driven Content: Generally, you may only 10 seconds to capture the interest of new visitors of your website. So the contents must be of best interest and most relevant to them.


• Call to Action: In order to generate business, you really have to make extra effort to encourage your visitors to call you, to e-mail to you or fill in enquiry forms to give you contact persons. Basically, no enquiry no business!


• Community Building: You would have to spend a lot in advertisement if you are only getting new visitors to your website all the time. However, you could never imagine the power of word of mouth when your website is being referred and invited by your existing customers to their friends. Your website hit rate and visit rate will significantly increase when a communinity of your website supporters is built up.

Messaging on your web page is the next most import thing you have to deal with. It is an art to do good copywriting. By internet term, SHORT IS Beautiful!

e-Marketing 賺錢秘訣

中小企IT『錢­』談

作者: 關廣智 Matthew Kwan

(白武士有限公司首席顧問 http://www.adamshk.com)/

2008年5月14日

現今的e-Marketing 渠道實在太多了，我們若盲目地投資在一些低回報的項目上，我們只得花了錢而不能帶動業務上升。可是，這些事情不斷地在大大小小的企業中重覆地發生！有些網上廣告公司盲目地推銷他們的服務，以每年能產生對客戶的網站點擊為服務的成果，強行將客戶的廣告放於與他們業務亳不相關的群組網站或討論區中，結果導致有大部分的點擊都不能帶動客戶的業務增長呢！

企業如果要量度e-Marketing 的成本效益，就必需要以三個互動的因素來作出考慮，這三個因素就是「生意效益」（Sales Oriented ）、「群體擴建效益」（Community Building）、 「合作伙伴協同效益」（Affiliated Websites）。 意思說我們投放在e-Marketing 的資源若不能達到以上三個任何的效益時，我們就不應該繼續做下去了。

「生意效益」固然是指藉著e-Marketing 是否可以帶來新的客戶或商機，而「群體擴建效益」就是指對那些關注和支持你們公司的人士是否累積地增加，他們除了不介意接收你們的通訊外，還會主動地到訪你們的網站取得你們最新的資訊，或是介紹別人到訪。當「群體擴建效益」發揮得好，「生意效益」就自然能相輔相成了。最後，「合作伙伴協同效益」是指除了在你們自己的網站外，其他的合作伙伴也在他們的網站上宣傳你們的業務，當你們的合作伙伴網絡越來越大，協同效益就自然能帶動「生意效益」了。

其實e-Marketing 若要成功，網站的設計和架構就一定要好好地策劃，可惜實在太多企業都未能把它們的網站優化到可以達致最高效益的境況。如果要達至最高效益，我建議企業要以4C 為藍圖來製作他們的網站。以下就是4C的解說：

Customer Oriented (客戶為本質的分類) ：網站內的主要分類應以目標客戶的分類為本，讓目標客戶亳不猶疑地可於最快的速度找到自己有興趣而相關的內容。

Context Driven Content (以客分類之內容) ：現今的客戶，於任何的網站，一般只是10秒的時間，若不能找到自己感興趣的內容就會馬上離開，所以內容就必定要以目標客戶的興趣來編輯。

Call to Action (詢問導向的標題) ：若要網站帶來生意，網站的版面必須重複地刊登鼓勵電話或電郵查詢的標題來增加銷售的機會。客戶始終不來電或電郵，生意就始終不會發生。雖然這些標題可能會有損版面設計的美觀性，但若是對生意有幫助又何妨呢！

Community Building (建立群體的架構) ：新客戶若只到訪一次就不再回頭，就算花更多的錢宣傳你們的網站，流量始終都不會顯著地增加，唯有刻意地建立支持你們公司的 (網上) 群體，你們網站的宣傳效力才能盡量發揮。
最後，我希望以另外一篇發表過的文章內容為總結，企業若要好好把握和發揮e-Marketing的效能，基本上可以”IDEAL” 的 理念作為基礎：

I – Identify Your Customers 對準目標
D – Decide Your Budget 確立預算
E – Experiment Your Options 勇於嘗試
A – Assess Your Results 評核結果
L – Leverage Others 以力打力