Tag Archives: number

Email Marketing

The reasons why customers are not reading your emails…

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by IdeaGuy

Emailing your past customers and potential clients is a very important tool you can use to bring in more people to your physical business. Your emails can also keep your company name front and center so people don’t forget about you and what you offer.

But with the number of emails people get these days and knowing they don’t read half of what lands in their in-bins, it becomes more important than ever for your emails to stand out.

That doesn’t mean using spammy subject lines or misleading titles to lure people in. It means using subject lines that have certain trigger words in them. This is crucial because if they don’t even open your email, there’s zero chance they’ll act on what’s inside.

The emails need to be formatted in such a way as to make them easier and quicker to read. There are simple things you can do to make the layout of your emails more inviting to read.

Did you know there are certain words you should not use in your emails or it will cause them to land in your subscribers’ spam folders? It’s pretty easy to avoid these words if you know what they are.

Your emails must have a purpose. Before you send one, make sure it has a call to action. This can be anything such as purchasing during your sale, contacting you for more info, visiting your website to do xyz, or coming in to your store in person for the abc event.

Writing emails is not that hard but crafting them so they stand out and get opened because the subscriber likes your emails is something else.

 

Social Media

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Facebook Posts

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By Charlie Scala

If you’re a small business owner and you’re a) taking the time to update your company’s Facebook Page, or b) paying an employee or marketing company to update your company’s Facebook Page, it is equally important to compare your posts to see what type of content your fans value.

In order to see how many impressions and how much feedback each post receives, use Facebook Analytics. All you have to do is go to the “insights” section of your Facebook Fan Page and click “See All”. This brings you to the Facebook Analytics dashboard, where you can view user statistics and interaction statistics.

In order to measure the quality of your posts over time, start by clicking on the interactions tab. This section recaps your most recent posts, the dates and times they were posted, how many impressions each received, and the amount of feedback per impression. (I recommend exporting these statistics to excel once a month, which you do right from Facebook Analytics dashboard. This will allow you to archive results to see more than just recent posts.)

On the Facebook Analytics dashboard, posts are sorted chronologically, which allows administrators to compare impressions and feedback among posts. This shows us how many times each post was viewed and the percentage of reactions per impression. You can also click on “impressions” to sort the posts from highest to lowest number of impressions, or you can click on “feedback” to sort posts from the highest to lowest percentage of feedback.

(Keep in mind that feedback is a percentage based on the number of impressions. Let’s say you have 1000 impressions on a post, and 5 people click the like button, and 5 people comment. That gives you a feedback rating of 10/1000, or 1%. If another post receives 100 impressions and two people click the like button, that post will receive a feedback percentage of 2%. Even though this is a higher percentage, the overall amount of feedback was much lower, two reactions compared to ten reactions.)

Unfortunately at this time, Facebook only measures the overall number of times that posts have been seen on Facebook (on your wall or other walls), not the number of unique users that saw the post. Still, measuring impressions and feedback over time can give you a better indication of what engages your audience. These post statistics are also available to fan page administrators when viewing your Facebook Fan Page wall.

Measuring impressions over time is a good way to judge your page’s activity. If impressions are rising, that means you’re probably adding new fans on a regular basis and offering compelling posts to keep fans interested. If the number of impressions drops over time, that probably means that your fans are not coming back to your page on a regular basis.

Monitoring feedback between posts is a good way to track what type of content engages your audience. When comparing feedback between posts, think about what content you’re offering. Is it a price discount, news, tips, photos, announcement, or something else? Once you’ve categorized your posts by what you’re offering, compare the feedback on each to see what engages your audience.

For example, if you own a running shoe company and you post sneaker discounts, marathon stories, running tips, and pictures of new shoes, compare the feedback you’re getting between each type of post. If 15 people click the like button when you post a picture of a new sneaker and only two or three people click the like button when you post a price discount, it could mean your fans value new running technology and innovation, not cheap prices.

Tracking the effectiveness of the type of content you offer in each post will give you a better indication of what the people that “like” your page value from your product or service. The key is to categorize and monitor your posts over time. Then, use that information to post content that your fans will view, “like,” comment on.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charlie_Scala

Everything Else

Remembering People’s Names

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by Alexander Rorty

Remembering people’s names is one of the most important parts of social etiquette. Even if we don’t admit it, we dislike when people can’t remember who we are. One remembers the scene in American Beauty when Kevin Spacey’s character says, “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t remember me either”. Having one’s name forgotten makes them feel unimportant.

Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to remember the names of lots of people. However, there are some fairly straightforward tricks you can do to help you jog your memory. Most of them come from the tricks of medieval poets who had to remember long lines of verse. The trick is that, while sounds (especially arbitrary sounds, like names) are difficult to remember, patterns and images are very easy to remember.

Some of these tricks will work better or worse for you, depending on how your mind works. Pick and choose from the following list:

Make a rhyme: Take the person’s first name and rhyme it with something starting with another word starting with the first letter of the person’s last name. So, for example, if the person’s name is “Jane Smith”, think of the name as “Jane Smane”. The rhyme will stick more easily in your mind than the actual name, and you’ll be reminded of the name when you hear it.

Turn it into a number: If you’re one of those people who is very good at remembering numbers, but not names, just turn the initials into a number. Every letter of the alphabet can be mapped onto a number from 1 to 26. So, when you meet Jane Smith, you can turn her name into 1019. With a little practice, you can easily remember everyone’s initials, which can be used to remember the names. Don’t forget to use zeros, so that you’ll always have a four-digit number. For example, Andrew Barnes should be 0102.

Use an image: If you don’t remember rhymes or numbers very well, try using an image instead. In these cases, what you should do is to think of something that sounds similar to the person, and then imagine that thing right on the person’s face. So, for example, Jane sounds a little like “chain”, so when you meet Jane smith, imagine a chain going from her nose to her ear, for example. It takes a little imagination, but once you’re good at it, you’ll be able to recall anyone’s name with ease.

Different people remember differently. However, for most people, rhymes, numbers and images are easier to remember than the arbitrary strings of sounds in which names normally consist. The above three tricks can help you remember others’ names.

About the Author

Alexander Rorty, M.A. has been writing articles on the internet since 1997. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Janet, and their two children. Their latest site is called Island Hood, and features articles such as the one on under-cabinet range hoods.