Opt For An E-mail Marketing System

Promotion via e-mail is the status quo for most organizations. However, effective e-marketing is not always the norm.

The first step is to find an e-mail marketing service that suits the size and needs of your business. Examples of e-mail systems include Constant Contact, Marketvolt or IContact. The benefits vary but can include:
- tracking actions of database group
- storing and managing e-mails
- easy Web sign-up
- maintaining integrity of database
- targeting clients
- making one e-mail for html and text versions

Translation. Different e-mail readers, such as Yahoo!, Outlook, Thunderbird or Gmail, allow various degrees of html-formatted or text e-mails. This is a bit of a hassle. If you are sending messages with images and graphics from your Outlook, the e-mail may or may not open in certain e-mail readers. Or, others have restrictions on attachments.

So, you, the sender, either need to keep a list of each users preferred format, maintain two databases and send two e-mails... unless you are benefitting from an e-mail service that automatically determines the end-users e-mail reader needs. And since first impressions are key, an e-mail system will usually provide text versions of an e-mail with a link to the html-formatted newsletter or coupon that you've created.

Relevance is key. An e-mail service allows you to see what e-mails are bouncing so that you can maintain the integrity of your database list. Further, it also tracks who is opening your e-mail and what links are of most interest to your readers. This allows you to better cater your information or promotion in the future or to target customers with particular interests.

Database integrity. Nobody wants spam. Thankfully, most e-mail services take the legal hassels off your agenda and automotically create links that allow people to opt-out of their subscription.

Each e-mail service has its own functionalities and costs and should be carefully assessed based on a company's needs.

Check back for tips on how to build and maintain your database of contacts.

Using Facebook As Your Newsroom

Your company is now streaming on multiple social media applications, and you don't know how to effectively integrate the myriad of platforms to work to your business' best advantage. One option is to turn your Facebook page into a newsroom.

In his article "How To: Make Facebook Your Company Newsroom," Mashable.com contributor Josh Peters provides a step-by-step approach for integrating multiple social networking applications into your Facebook fan page. This integrated approach strengthens the power and appeal of a fan page since it is more effective method to finding a number of items related to your business. Here are the highlights:

1. Integrate your Web site blog, Twitter account or other RSS feeds so that Facebook fans can quickly access this information from one portal.

2. Connect to news stories about your company by bookmarking them on Delicious and integrating a Delicious box onto your Facebook Fan page. Again the motivation is to aggregate the information for clients or customers of your business. Make it simple for people to learn about you and what you do.

3. Import access to your FlickR and YouTube accounts.

4. Reset your Facebook URL to include your company name. For instance, facebook.com/marketicity - check it out and become our fan!

If you are interested in transforming your Facebook fan page into your company newsroom, call Marketicity 314.266.4450 or 618.281.6648 and propel your business forward.

Garden Place Adult Day Club Featured

The Messenger featured Garden Place Senior Living's Adult Day Club services in an article titled, "Adult Day Club Offers Alternatives to Caregivers." Editor and author Liz Quirin dedicated a full page to this emerging service for seniors in our communities. Read the article.

Marketicity is happy to assist in promoting Columbia, Illinois' first "A Day To Play" event from 1-4 pm on Sept. 19th starting in Bolm-Schuhkraft Park. Our Graphic Design Specialist, Casara Heaton, created the fun logo that is being sported throughout the City of Columbia, Ill. on promotional items for the event.

The event is in recognition of the city's "Playful City" status in 2009 by KABOOM! With a limited budget in its first year, the Columbia Play Commission, headed by John Traube of Traube Tent, is relying heavily on volunteers and donations to promote the event. Social Media along with old-fashioned word of mouth are expected to be the biggest advertising avenues.

Heading up the social media effort is Paul Ellis, Columbia's director of community & economic development. With so many municipality and state budgets in dissarray, Ellis brings a wealth of experience in using social media as a marketing advantage in promoting a community. Previously, he served more than 20 years with a regional chamber of commerce in Tacoma, Washington, where he administered a business improvement area, pioneered use of social media and helped start one of the most successful angel networks in that state. He speaks nationally about how to deploy blogs to draw customers to downtown centers. Several of his blogs in Tacoma, including the highly-regarded BIA Blog and Tacoma Tech Connect are still serving that community.

Learn more about Columbia's A Day To Play.

Marketicity: Evolving in a Tough Economy

Business news is littered with stories about the need for companies to evolve during this recession. In the world of marketing, this is even more critical as the dramatic changes in technology are rapidly redefining and splitting the agency world. In general, marketing companies are becoming more specialized, concentrating on search engine optimization, mobile marketing, video or branding and design. In fact, in the St. Louis metro region, there are more firms collaborating on client accounts instead of expanding their reach.

For Marketicity, the recession has prompted a shift as well. However, it is in the arena of expanded services. As demand for print materials has declined, the company has made a dramatic shift in the summer of 2009 to expand our services in the arenas of social media, online marketing and search engine optimization. This expansion was prompted by a simple need to respond to clients' expanding needs. Frequently working as an integrated member of a company's marketing team, Marketicity needed not only to deliver traditional advertising and branding options for clients but also those that maximized Web opportunities and kept our clients in front of a range of targeted clientele.

As a result, Marketicity increased its client base this summer and expanded services to existing clients. It was a strategic business choice to make these changes. And, the goal of these changes is to better position clients for success. Here is to the innovation that recessions encourage.