But when 63% of 1,092 B2B marketers declare that e-newsletters are an important part of their marketing mix, that’s saying something! Articles and social media continue to be the most popular content marketing tactics, they report.

So says a B2B content marketing survey by both the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs that recently got lots of ink in various business publications.

And that 63% grew from 61% in their year-earlier survey.

Some additional impressive stats:

• While last year, 55% of marketers found e-newsletters to be an effective content marketing vehicle, this year that number jumped to 60%.
• Last year, B2B marketers, on average, spent 26% of their budgets on content marketing activities. This year, 60% indicated that they will increase their spending on content marketing in 2012.
• That’s true not just of the big-budget corporations but also the small- and medium-sized companies. For example, while 79% of the largest companies use articles in their marketing mix, a whopping 85% of medium-sized companies use this tactic.
• And this year, 62% of respondents reported outsourcing at least a portion of their content marketing activities, a significant boost over last year’s 52%.

So what does all that tell us?

It tells us that, in order to grow business at a time when hurdles exist, marketers will be spending more this year – not less – on strategies in which they have increasing confidence – namely, e-newsletters.

It tells us that marketers are turning more and more to professionals – like OpenMoves – who know the business and who can create e-newsletters that work.

And, as we’ve said over and over and over, it tells us that, if your company’s strength is something other than writing and delivering e-newsletters, you really ought to think about signing up folks whose strength js writing and delivering e-newsletters.

Apparently, lots of B2B marketers out there agree with us.

Posted as Are You In The Majority? Well, You Ought To Be! on The OpenMoves Blog

Take a quick listen to a recent interview with OpenMoves Partner, Ronen Yaari as he discusses how much you should invest in email marketing. Grab your coffee, hit play, lean back and enjoy a quick 5 minutes of e-mail marketing talk.

Notes to Keep Your Eyes Amused

Staring out: How much should I pay for email marketing?

You love the idea of using email to drive business. But now you need to know how much is it going to cost, or — more importantly — how much to invest in your email marketing budget. Email has the aroma of being inexpensive, so you’re thinking that a minimal monthly fee that you can deduct from your expense account should do it. I suggest you take a step back and look at the bigger picture and on an annual basis, before you take out your credit card.

Split up your email marketing budget into three parts:

• Setup and template design
• Account management fees
• Email volume fees

A Realistic Scenario

You have a list of 5K subscribers and you are sending a monthly email and doing re-mail to those who did not open the first time. Your annual volume is around 100K emails, which will cost about $1,200 annually.

Next… If you are going to show off your brand 100,000 times this year, it had better look good. So investing in a custom template, database setup and training will cost you another $1,000.

Finally, why not get a pro to help you put your emails together and send them out for you each month – so you know this puppy is actually going to walk. Account management for 12 mailings costs about $3,000 a year. So in total you are investing $5,200 for the first year or $.05/email.

Bottom Line

For $5K all you have to do is provide the content and imagery and the rest will get done. But is it worth it?

ROI acid test:

1. How many of your products or services do you need to sell to make $5K in profit?
2. Do you sell directly from your site or do you have a lead gen form and then follow up? How much is a lead worth?
3. What is the value of having everyone in your database hear from you several times a year – just to know you exist? Is it good for retention, x-selling and referrals?

From our experience, and we are sooooo biased, if you use best practices and keep your eye on the big picture, your ROI is almost guaranteed.

Posted as Moo Radio: Staring Out: How Much Should I Pay for Email Marketing? on The OpenMoves Blog

Duplicate content is a particularly difficult problem for many ecommerce web sites,

For example, say you run a large online store selling a commodity like bicycle equipment. And let’s also say you carry a few thousand products, including all kinds of bikes, bike parts, bike maintenance kits and tools, clothing for bicycle enthusiasts, water bottles, lighting, and more. The first thing you do when uploading the products to your shopping cart, is to get pictures and descriptions from the manufacturers. That right there is the problem: Your competitors are uploading the very same pictures and descriptions to their sites. And, since it’s a commodity, you have numerous competitors, often including the manufacturers themselves. You all have the same content. So, how do you stand out from the herd?

Too Many Products to Write Your Own Content

Obviously, the single best way to avoid duplicate content is to publish only unique content! The biggest challenge to that, though, is how do you tackle writing new descriptions for so many products? If you were to hire someone, the cost could be overwhelming. What would be the ROI for that? You could test it, with a small subset of products. And that might suggest part of the solution.

Prioritize Your Products

The key is to prioritize your products. Don’t try to rewrite everything. Take a measured, careful, and targeted approach. Choose a subset of your products to start with. How would you put your products on a store shelf? Would they all get equal placement? Which get eye-level display and which get end caps? Which are offered at checkout? Think in those terms for your web site store as well.

Which products sell best? Which have the highest profit margin? Which do you need to move because of seasonal factors or stock changes? Which are searched for most frequently by customers and visitors to the store? Which are on promotion now? Write new content for those first. Feature these on separate pages or separate sections and link to them from your home page or other important landing pages.

Offer Something Special and Different

At the same time, you should always take a look at what your competitors are doing and then — do it better. What can you present about a product you want to move, that your customers really need to know? How can you present it better or differently than the competition or even than the manufacturer?

Use More than one Type of Content

Can you use YouTube video for specific, big-ticket items? (Even an inexpensive 2-minute video made with a Flip camera, sells product!) Do you have customer reviews or comments? (There are inexpensive 3rd party options from services like PowerReviews and BazarrVoice.) Run a contest to get customer photos and stories with your products and post the winners on the product page.

Add Great Content on non-Product Pages

Are you blogging? You should be. Feature seasonal buying guides that you can add to the site and link to from related products. Add links to useful resources, with your own brief analysis as to what makes these useful. If you write one of these a season or even one a year, it will be less expensive than tackling all your product descriptions and it will generate highly valuable and actionable analytics for the future. Partner with a content producer – a blogger for example — who can link to your site and offer discounts to his/her readers.

The key is to add value. What are your prospects looking for? What makes your site and your firm, the best in your niche? What value do you add that no one else does? Focus on that, publish videos, show your own well-optimized images, and write about it in every way you can. Start with a meaningful subset of products and tweak until you see the effects! Then, rinse and repeat.

And watch your site rise in the rankings as it becomes increasingly relevant!

Contact us to review your site today!

Posted as How to Avoid Duplicate Content on Ecommerce Web Sites on The OpenMoves Blog

Take a quick listen to a recent interview with OpenMoves Partner, Ronen Yaari as he discusses how small business can level the playing field using technology and common sense. This week he’ll be looking at the first two items on the equalizer checklist:

Moo Radio: Part I

1. Why bother with an email marketing plan
2. How to make a lasting impression

Grab your coffee, hit play, lean back and enjoy a quick 5 minutes of e-mail marketing talk.

Posted as Moo Radio: How Can Small Biz Level the Playing Field on The OpenMoves Blog

Case Study

A national gourmet foods distributor needed to remind their customers about winter holiday specials and offer incentives to valued customers. As the company’s regional distributors not only sell fantastic feasts but also deliver them directly to the customer’s door, an email from a friendly distributor would be well received.

Recipe for a Festive Campaign Reception

• Subject line: Complimentary – 5 lbs of Shrimp from [Distributor]
• Salutation: Dear [First Name],
• Signature: Sincerely, [Distributor, Distributor Phone Number]
• Address book fields: Email address, first name, distributor, distributor phone number

Take Away

Sure, there is some effort in expanding your address book to include criteria based upon your industry and sales pipeline, but emails with personalization within the body of a message will get more clicks than those that don’t include personalization. Collect good data on your base and use technology to leverage for better results.

If you’re interested in personalization or adding content to your email dynamically, give us a holler!

Posted as The Personalized Email Experience on The OpenMoves Blog

One key reason is that iPhones have their images turned on as a default while Android phones have images turned off by default. Email marketing vendors track opens by using a hidden pixel placed in an HTML email. Once the images are downloaded for the email, an open is registered and reported. This clearly skews the opens data as for an email where the images were not downloaded or if the email was a text version.

If you compare iPhone and Android click-through rates (ie., after the email has been opened) the data is more consistent, as click-throughs are registered the same way in either format, in both operating systems.

Screen Shot from OpenMoves OM3 Platform:

So keep this in mind as you review your stats and take this into consideration before you jump to the wrong conclusions.

This is a good reminder to design your emails with a good text to image ratio and make sure you have a readable and succinct text version of the email for those readers that do not download images. If you need some help understanding your statistics or need help with your new campaign give us a holler.

Posted as iPhone vs. Android Email Open Rates on The OpenMoves Blog

Today’s online lifestyle extends our reach further than ever before. And we, who dabble in social media, professionally or otherwise, should see this ability to influence others as a serious responsibility.

We can communicate with people across the world, past borders, right through cultures and in different languages. Social media has transformed every aspect of our personal interactions and daily life – from ecommerce to photo sharing and news finding.

As an online marketing professional, I find that the avenues and methods to reach consumers and an audience are easier than ever imagined in the traditional offline world. And I’ve been here for a while.

But, there’s a greater advantage and use of these abilities than just to promote a new product (yes, just), reach clients via emails or Facebook ads, landing pages and catered websites. And I think it’s important that we, as professionals, dedicate time to doing that. Being able to reach this great audience, we can send a message and use it not just for the financial success of our clients, but to better our world. It’s our responsibility to take advantage of these new avenues of communication and leverage them for good. In our own spare time. And I’m glad to say, it’s happening.

Look past the unfortunate incident of Jason Russell’s breakdown and see what he managed to achieve with Kony 2012. Global domination on YouTube! Then there was the recent Israel loves Iran campaign that was launched by two Israeli graphic designers that blew down doors in Iran and the world.

Here’s a story of a recent project I undertook, working with an international team to brand and build an online identity for a non-profit peace organization, and how we used the new media of YouTube, Facebook, and viral marketing, to get the message out. When Leonard Cohen, the singer, performed here in Israel a few years ago, he gave all the proceeds to help form The Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace. They’re an organization committed to breaking through the deep psychological barriers that have stood between Palestinians and Israelis for decades.

I was approached by a friend who asked me to help deliver an aspirational and inspirational presentation that they could use to help them get across what the Fund stood for. But they didn’t yet have an identity. So along with developing their brand identity for them, I pitched a viscerally engaging animated video that asks viewers to imagine a future in which the region basks in peace.

Watch the video

I wanted to boil down the spirit of the Fund to one core message. A message that’s true to what they stand for – true to their identity. Along with Shelley and our teams, I wanted to show what peace SHOULD be and to help people visualize it. Because that’s what the Fund believes is possible – and they can see it.

It’s a simple animation but one that wasn’t simple to make. Over 150 people were involved transatlantically, from Brazil to NYC to Tel Aviv. Lobo, Birdo Studio, Firefly Productions, the Ebeling Group, Wicked Music and countless volunteers – all of us worked practically pro bono over the course of 2 years to deliver a message of hope that’s intended to touch people and make them wonder, if only for a moment: ‘Peace. What if?’

You can watch it here in any of 4 languages.

Watch the Behind the Scenes video.

In the first week we managed to attract around 10,000 views to the YouTube channel with the help of friends, peers, and families. We asked everyone to simply share it via email, Twitter, and Facebook. Slowly, it’s making its way onto the screens of people everywhere — by the people, for the people.

These days, you can do that — as in, YOU. We can cross boundaries and communicate with people we don’t know in a way we’ve never been able to before. It’s simply the wonder of the world we live in today. If we can use it to propel forward a solemn wish for people, in the intimacy of their own homes, to help them believe again that peace is ahead of us – then let’s keep crossing boundaries. And let’s do it for all good causes.

Put your heart into social. Into communications. Into doing.

We’ve got nothing to lose.

We’ve got everything to gain.

Posted as Spreading Peace with Social Media on The OpenMoves Blog

The Problem: Do You Chase the Algorithm?

Are you tracking every pronouncement from Google and then hurriedly trying to make critical adjustments to your site? Did you stuff your site with Meta keywords a few years ago, and then stop using them all together more recently? Have you had SEO consultants tell you that you MUST have a specific percentage of your text made up of keywords? Have you been told, NOTHING MATTERS EXCEPT BACKLINKS? Have you tried “link sculpting” or managing the flow of PageRank(™) from one page to those below it by adding nofollow tags to some links? Were you concerned when the NY Times reported that Google was in effect punishing JC Penny for buying backlinks on link farms?

During a recent SXSW panel with Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief of the Search Engine Land blog, and Duane Forrester, Microsoft’s Senior Product Marketing Manager for Bing, Matt Cutts of Google announced that Google will soon introduce a penalty for sites that are over-optimized or over-SEOd. That DOES sound frightening doesn’t it? What is over-optimization, anyway?

So? What Does the Talmud Say About Google’s Scary Pronouncements?

There is a famous story in the Talmud about two rabbis. One day a man comes to Rabbi Shamai and asks that he teach him everything the Torah has to say, while standing on one foot. Shamai dismisses him as not serious about Judaism. The man then goes to Rabbi Hillel, and asks the same of him – the whole Torah, while standing on one foot. So, while standing on one foot, Rabbi Hillel responded: “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t have them do to you. That is all the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

SEO is NOT Complicated

Look, there are a lot of people reading every Google patent filing, and a lot of people spending their time trying to figure out shortcuts to ranking. But even if shortcuts work, they are short lived. There are Black Hat SEOs who don’t listen to the simple truth of what Google really wants. And there are Rabbi Shammai-style SEOs who think you have to become immersed in the finer details of SEO magic and spend months and years studying the effects of keyword placement here or there, and clearly this can only be done well if you hire them!

But SEO is just not that complicated.

There is Only One Rule of SEO

Rabbi Hillel’s lesson is simple. Do the right thing. And the same is true with SEO and Web sites. Make your site the best it can be for your users. That is the only rule of SEO. Do the right thing. Add content that’s better and more current than your competitors. Add video that’s fun, compelling, and educational. Add blogs that are interactive and challenging. Be fresh and be relevant in any way you can. Look at what your online competitors are doing and do it better. Design your web site to serve your users, not Google. Craft it around their needs. Engage your users. Provide useful information. That IS what Google wants! In that same panel discussion mentioned above, Matt Cutts explained (again thanks to searchengineland.com), “We are trying to level the playing field a bit” between those who practice over optimization or overly SEO – “versus those making great content” and great sites. Cutts makes this point whenever he can. Don’t be in the business of trying to fool or sweet-talk Google. Make good Web sites.

I recommend this video post as well, on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, by Maile Ohye, Google Developers Program Tech Lead. She discusses common mistakes and gives good tips, like “Do Something Cool” and “Stay fresh and relevant.”

Google says these things over and over again, perhaps not while standing on one foot but if you listen, they are yelling it from the rooftops. Stop chasing the algorithm. Don’t shape your site for the search engines. Create a great site for your users, the best site it can be.

All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.

Posted as Talmudic SEO on The OpenMoves Blog

Yesterday I attended the Email Live conference in NYC and listened to lots of email experts and wanted to share with you a few pearls.

• Email is alive and well
  To me it’s obvious that email marketing is very much alive, but many had to provide facts and figures on how more people use email than any other communication method and that there is no age gap on email usage. Also, Facebook sends more email than anyone else. No surprise: email marketing still provides the best ROI.
• Wake up your inactives
  When was the last time you segmented and cleaned out those that did not engage in the last 6 months or a year? Do it. Sending emails to those that did not open will impact your inbox deliverability (some ISPs penalize you for sending lots of emails to people that do not engage) and cost you more money. So separate them and start a re-activation campaign.
• Pull the trigger
  Lots and lots of discussion on how important triggered emails are and whether you are B2B or B2C you should move in that direction and don’t just “thrust and blast”: cart abandonment, form abandonment, welcome series, re-engagement, back in stock…automation that will significantly impact your return.
• Cart abandonment
  Case study by Birkenstock Central (yep, shoes) raised online revenue from email from 5% to 18% using cart abandonment, back in stock, and welcome email series. Key to cart abandonment is the timing for the first email (3 hours in their case) and a subsequent email drip. Birkenstock had 17% conversion-to-sale on 3 triggered emails and when they added 2 more the conversion did not drop! This approach requires strategic thinking and a bit of hand holding with your email service provider to manage, but if you are an e-commerce site and you are not doing this, you are leaving money on the table.
• Mobile ready
  More and more readers are viewing your email on their mobile device (almost 50% of every hour on PDA is spent on reading email). Be aware of subject lines and titles (shorter is better), test your design for mobile rendering, and most importantly make sure the destination page (whether your home page or a landing page) is well designed for email, meaning short and succinct with large buttons (so we don’t need to “pinch” the screen) or send to a mobile page.
• Grow your list in mobile apps
  Mobile is huge, and if you believe your prospects are active on mobile apps (on iphones, androids, ipads, etc…) there are services that will allow you to advertise on these apps to subscribe to your email campaign. The beauty is that you only pay for the signup, so you get free impressions. Sort of like Google Adwords but for mobile apps. One company that presented this was Pontiflex.
• Subject lines
  An old “subject” to bring up but I heard a cute acronym to remind yourself before you send: CURVE ( Curiosity, Urgency, Value, Emotion). Also keep in mind shorter subject lines if you are focusing on mobile.
• Single or double opt-in
  Many asked about the need for double opt-in vs single opt-in. Double opt-in means that you need to click on the email verification you receive after signing up to a list. The majority of experts said no need today for double opt-in as long as you respect your reader with meaningful, relevant emails that are easy to unsubscribe from. If you want to be super conservative then take into account that you may see a 20-40% drop in subscribers with double opt-in.
• Appending services
  Should you use appending services or not. The majority were against it as results are generally poor in terms of opens, clicks, and conversion. However, if you are going to use an appended list (whether you rent or purchase) see if you can pay by CPA (cost per action) and to be safe use a different email “from address” and maybe even a different domain. The landing page is key to conversion on appended lists, so make sure you design one specifically for this purpose. Keep in mind that inbox deliverability on an appended list can be as low as 15-50%.
• Video in email
  Is it time yet? I don’t think so based on what I heard. Playing actual video within your email is possible, but very dependent on what your reader is using as an email client. If they’re using an iPhone, android or iPad or other devices that run HTML5 then it’s possible. But if you are using Outlook and other email clients forget it. Video is great to increase click through and engagement, but for now I would recommend to stick to a static image of the video in your email with a click to play and redirect to where the video is hosted.

Bottom line is that email marketing is still one of the best vehicles to stay in touch with your base for generating leads and revenue. If you need a hand figuring this out, give us a holler.

Posted as 10 Things I Learned at the Email Live Conference on The OpenMoves Blog

LabEscape is a technology company that needed help improving the conversion of their lead generation PPC campaign. We utilized the advanced LiveBall landing page platform together with creative design and strategy and were able to increase their conversion to more than 4% within a few months (a 280% increase!). Read more about this in the recently published landing page case study on LiveBall website.

Posted as B2B Lead-Gen Campaign Results in 280% Conversion Rate Lift on The OpenMoves Blog