Alex Rodger

Advanced Email Marketing for Beginners: Part One – Segmentation

Alex Rodger — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:17:45 +0000

One of the biggest areas people tend to fall down on when it comes to email marketing is not segmenting their recipient lists. If you have a database of 20,000 customers, candidates or clients, surely they can’t all be grouped into one list?

The key to email marketing, in my opinion, can be summarised by one word – ‘relevance‘. If the content you email to someone is relevant, they will open it and likely read it too. If it’s irrelevant, you don’t get an open – more likely a delete and in some cases a block.

How Do Amazon Segment Emails?

Here’s an example from one on the online marketing dons – Amazon. I recently purchased a laptop for my brother, a small Acer netbook. I now get periodic emails, about once a week or so, from Amazon highlighting computer related offers. This is good, as it shows a number of accessories like speakers, external hardrives, wireless keyboard and mouse sets… the sort of thing I might be interested in buying.

Where many businesses fall down can be illustrated using the Amazon example in a different scenario. Most small businesses, if they segment their market at all, will do it at a base level. So, if they had someone who was interested in buying a laptop, they would send periodic emails advertising laptops.

Once a customer has bought a laptop, they’d still send emails to that customer telling them about great laptop offers. That makes no sense, does it? The customer has already bought the laptop – so what they really want is an email about a case for it, with a strong call to action like ‘buy a case now, before you drop it!‘

Segmenting Emails in Recruitment

The equivalent of the recruitment world is sending a mail shot to a group of candidates about a Marketing Manager vacancy, then when one of those candidates has secured a job as a Marketing Manager, continuing to email them about roles as a Marketing Manager. Here’s the faults in that strategy:

that person has a new job as a Marketing Manager, so is unlikely to want to move for a duration of time
if and when that person decides to move on, it’s unlikely to be for a Marketing Manager job.

What should really happen is that person should be removed from that list for an internally agreed period of time, then they should be added to a list for Senior Marketing Manager or Marketing Director positions. People want to progress in their careers and move up the ladder – if you give them time and present them with a relevant step up, that’s when your email marketing becomes properly relevant – you’re predicting what they are going to want.

So the key and a brief conclusion?

Relevance… make sure every email you send is relevant to the audience. And how do you do that? By segmenting your email list.

3 Basic Factors for Analysing Your Website

Alex Rodger — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:17:18 +0000

Analysing the traffic you get on your website can give you a great insight into where your customer base hear about your business, how engaged they are with your brand, as well as demographic data like location.

Tools like Google Analytics offer a plethora of data completely free, so for those new to analyzing the traffic coming through to your website, here’s a few basic starting points to look at;

Traffic sources

This shows where your visitors have come from to get to your website. If your referral traffic is high, this means you’ve got good links coming into your site. You can break this down by site, so for example you can see if you have an active social presence by how many visits you get from Facebook and Twitter

Organic Search Keywords

This shows you the keywords that visitors are typing in to search engines – like Google – to get to your website. Is there a common phrase that visitors are using? Are a lot of people searching for variations of your brand name?

Desktop vs. Mobile

In a world where mobiles and tablets are rapidly replacing desktop computers, it’s worth looking at the split between visitors from mobiles and desktops. This can help you decide if you need to look at introducing a mobile version of your website, but at the very least it will show you if your visitor-base are actively searching on their mobiles

The data you can get from analytics tools like Google Analytics is enormous, but the above should give you a starting point to really start understanding your visitors.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or would like any advice!

What Does Your Website Audience Want to See?

Alex Rodger — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:00:34 +0000

When you’re building a website for your business, it’s beneficial to conduct research into what your audience expects to see. You may have a pretty good idea of this already – you should know your customers inside out, and if you’re a recruiter, you should know your candidates inside out.

With a recruitment website, or a careers website, your main goal will almost always be to generate relevant candidates for the roles you are recruiting for. Therefore, your website needs to reflect this, and the architecture and terminology should be obvious to candidates where they need to go to apply for jobs. The process should be seamless, almost second nature, and candidates should not need to second guess when applying for a job. Otherwise, you not only risk losing candidates due to a confusing application process, but also the data you gather can become inaccurate.

For example, if we look at the location drop down box that is evident on most recruitment websites and job boards. What does a candidate expect to see in a location drop down box? What degree of granularity do they expect, or want?

Continents
Countries
Regions
Cities
Towns
Villages
Street Names
All of the above?

Clearly if you only recruit for roles in London you don’t need all of the above. But how granular should you go?

What if you recruit both in the UK and Internationally? Will UK and Outside UK suffice? Unlikely – people like to be specific. There’s a fine line between giving candidates the search options they want and returning a search that has no results – incidentally a search with no results is probably one of the worst messages a candidate can come across on a website. Too finer search options mean more opportunities for a ‘no results matching’ message to appear.

When looking at some recruitment websites and the structure of their location option lists, it almost reminds me of Jimmy Carr joke from a few years ago.

Jimmy, addressing a crowd from Birmingham, asked a member of the audience “Hello Sir, where are you from?” to which the audience member replied “Well I’m not from Birmingham”. Jimmy’s reply was “Oh really, which part of Birmingham aren’t you from?”

What examples have you come across of good or bad option lists on recruitment websites, job boards, or any website with a search box for that matter?

Personalise Your Social Profile… Add a Picture!

Alex Rodger — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +0000

At the risk of sounding like Peter Griffin off Family Guy (which could never really be a good thing…), do you know what really grinds my gears? Twitter profiles with the egg profile picture and the standard cloud background. It’s nothing personal, I just feel if that you’re going to have an online identity, you should at the very least personalise it.

The video below contains a small amount of bad language… be warned!

What is worse is when the above happens, but the person is a big Twitter user – thousands of Tweets, thousands of followers – but no personalisation.

Would you trust or connect with someone who had no Facebook profile picture?

Would you trust someone with a business idea or with finding you a job who had no profile picture on their LinkedIn profile? If you’re using it for its intended purpose – networking, making contacts, finding a new job, finding new employees – why would you avoid having a profile picture?

Some people suggest that you should have an avatar that is universal across the web, meaning the profile photo you use on Twitter should be the same that you use for Facebook, LinkedIn, blog commenting and so on. Personally, I don’t think this applies – you should tailor your posts to each audience and you should also therefore tailor your profile design to each audience too.

Do you always have a photo on your social network profiles? Would love to know your thoughts on this topic.

Vine: What Does It Mean for Small Businesses?

Alex Rodger — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:04:33 +0000

Earlier in January this year, Twitter released their new app – Vine. Vine is “a mobile service that lets you capture and share short looping videos”. This post talks about where Vine can add value to small businesses, as well as the larger brands. Here’s an example Vine video;

4MAT – Brilliant Recruitment Marketing vine.co/v/bvthjtQlX3a

— Alex Rodger (@theartfulrodger) February 12, 2013

Vine’s beauty lies in its simplicity and what could be considered limitations. Where tweets are limited to 140 characters, Vine videos are limited to six seconds. The new app has launched on iOS first but is expected on Windows and Android over the next few months.

There have already been a number of creative uses for Vine videos, where brands have managed to get a message across effectively in just six seconds of footage.

This is fine for big brands like Puma, Malibu and schuh, but what about smaller brands and small businesses? How can the average high street clothes shop use Vine? What about the Indian takeaway on the corner? Or any socially-savvy recruitment agencies?

Vine poses an opportunity for these small businesses to capture their brand, their values, their product or service offering, in a very simple, amateurish fashion. There’s no need for professional lighting or high quality microphones, simply use the touch record feature to capture footage in photo and video style. Vine knits this together, including the audio, for you to succinctly inform your users about whatever you wish. Businesses can get away without the professionalism that is so often required for full length web videos.

Here’s some ideas you might want to consider:

Record videos of individual products
Record videos of an entire product range
Record your shop or office layout/design – give viewers a quick tour of your store/office
Record staff videos, groups or individuals – strengthen your employer brand and give viewers and idea of what it’s like to work for your company

What do you think of Vine? What ideas do you have for Vine for your business?

Age Demographics on Social Networks

Alex Rodger — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:22:02 +0000

When looking to market your business on a social network, you’ll need to determine which network your audience lie on. One common way to segment your customers is by age demographic.

The below graphs, courtesy of a Pingdom blog post, show each network and its age demographics from 2012.

Were you surprised at the percentage of 45-54 year old’s on Facebook? The graphs below, if nothing else, highlight that social networks are definitely not just for the young. The number of people on Facebook at 45+ is already hugely significant and not to be ignored, and is likely to increase further over time.

Compare the contrast between news and voting site, Reddit, and business network LinkedIn, and how the age demographics change between network. It’s likely that you would be targeting these sites in your marketing campaign for different reasons, but couple that with the differing age groups, you can see how important it is to research your network and construct your marketing campaign according to your findings.

The Easy Way to Make Money on Facebook

Alex Rodger — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 17:07:50 +0000

In this post you’ll find a case study illustrating the easy way to make money on Facebook. You don’t need Google Analytics or metrics software, you don’t need to spend money on Facebook Ads/Pay Per Click, all you need is some photos and willing customers.

I came across this by sheer accident. It’s a fascinating use of social media, and probably one of the best examples or turning something free like Facebook into direct commercial return. There has been lots of talk about how to use Facebook for businesses and many of these ideas have been tried and tested, some providing ROI and others not. Some are difficult to track or assign value to, others can be tracked using tools like Google Analytics and can have revenue directly attributed to them.

This example takes this one step further, and perhaps one step backwards in it’s innovative simplicity. To introduce this case study, the business concerned is Ben Siegel Reptiles (BSR) – a repitle shop in the USA. They use their Facebook page to auction reptiles – mainly snakes and lizards.

The concept is simple, BSR will post a photo of a reptile they are looking to auction. They start the bidding at a certain time, and end it at a certain time. Bidders simply write their bid as a comment. You can see an example here.

What do you think of holding online auctions on Facebook? Maybe we’ll call it…

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

A Twist in the Career Path…

Alex Rodger — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 22:22:51 +0000

For those who know me either personally or professionally, here’s a brief update on my current situation.

I have recently moved away from the North West of the UK and am now based in London. After almost two and a half years working as the in-house marketer at leading food and drink industry recruitment consultancy, Focus Management Consultants, I am now working agency side at the leaders in recruitment marketing, 4MAT.

4MAT have been in business since 1999 and in the early days were established as a technology business that provided a recruitment website solution. Fast forward to the present day and the business has grown substantially, now offering not only the best recruitment website tool on the market, but also a range of online and digital marketing services, such as email marketing and search engine optimisation, all executed with an unparalleled knowledge of the recruitment industry. This makes 4MAT the leaders in their field, and with a team of 30 under one roof in Liverpool Street in London, the business really is the only sensible solution for any recruitment agency or corporate looking to improve their employer brand, increase awareness and drive candidates to their jobs.

My role sits in the Project Management team, where I will work closely with all departments in the business and support our clients – both recruitment agencies and corporate employers. 4MAT have a wide customer base and have successfully worked with a number of reputable agencies and corporates across the UK and internationally, including Capita, SThree, Salt, Montash, RWE npower and Next.

Social Media: When and How Often Should You Post?

Alex Rodger — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:10:58 +0000

This question has various answers. It largely depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s a few examples that might enlighten you as to when and how often you should post on social networks.

When should you post to a social network?

I recently developed an online marketing strategy for an online estate agents. Part of the strategy involved social networking, of which one network was Twitter. Peak tweet times were mentioned, recommending that tweets are sent between 10am and 3pm.

This was to be used as a ‘rough guide’ – whilst tweets can and should be posed at any time, this is the peak time to post tweets to Twitter and get maximum response or click-thru. If you’re using Twitter, it might be worth taking note of this timeframe, but remember that this is an average and won’t necessarily be applicable to you or your business.

One of the key points to remember is to test and monitor. It’s very well saying that the peak times are 10am to 3pm, but if your fans or followers aren’t on the network at that point, there’s little point posting then. Trial and error is the best way to do this – log responses, determine what works well and note down key findings. There are various tools available that allow you to see your most popular tweets and when they were posted – use these posts as a benchmark. Finally, look at what your competitors are doing – which of them are ‘successful’ on social networks?

How often should you post to a social network?

This again depends on your network and followers. If we look at Twitter again, my recommendation would be at least once a day. Twitter is a real-time, micro blogging site. In the digital world, it’s painful to look out of date. Make sure you @reply anyone who tweets you with questions or feedback.

If you’re starting out on Twitter, try tweeting once in the morning, midday and afternoon – again log responses and see what works best. If you are able to continue monitoring your social presence out of work hours, try posting in the evenings to see what sort of response you gain.

If we switch networks and look at Facebook, it’s important to realise that it is a very different network to Twitter. One thing to note is that fans can directly see the response you’re getting on your posts (something that is more obscure in Twitter). If you have several posts with no responses, your Facebook fans may be less-inclined to engage, so you may need to be more selective when posting on Facebook. You may wish to post less but higher value content – in other words, always make sure what you’re sharing adds real and relevant value to your fans.

Don’t over-tweet or over-post to social networks, or you may risk loosing fans and followers. Take Pinterest for example, I recently followed a Photography board as it contained stunning photos from around the globe. The next time I logged on to Pinterest my feed was filled with images pinned to this board. Whilst the images were indeed interesting, I unfollowed, as I couldn’t see any pins from the other users I followed. This user, in my opinion, is posting (or in this case ‘pinning’) way too often to develop a solid following, and is risking losing followers.

They key things to consider are:

Think about you users – how often and when would they like to hear from you?
Test and monitor – run various tests to see what times work best, if you post 10 tweets a day do you lose or gain followers?
What are your competitors doing? When and how often are they posting?

If you’re looking for advice about developing your social presence, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Bad Press? Use SEO

Alex Rodger — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 13:32:32 +0000

In the digital world that we live in, bad press travels pretty quickly. Link velocity means that websites (or pages) that gross a lot of links very quickly can rank highly in search engines. So whilst bad press on popular news sites such as the BBC can rank highly, don’t rule out smaller sites that can gain traction very quickly.

When you’ve got bad press ranking in search engines, especially for your brand name, you can use SEO to move it down the search results pages. A slightly different concept to the one you might be used to if you’ve been involved in SEO, as you’re probably used to pushing pages up the search rankings.

Here’s a great example of how you can use SEO to eliminate bad press.

Noble Foods, the food manufacturer behind popular brands Gü and The Happy Egg Co, has in the past been subject to some criticism for the way they treat the hens in their egg farms. So much so, that there was an undercover video published on the Sky News website showing cruelty to hens in one of their factories. Back in October 2011, the page with this video ranked number 3 for ‘Noble Foods’ in Google – not good news for Noble. Anyone who searches for ‘Noble Foods’ is likely to see the video first (see example 3 on this SEOmoz article that shows how eyes are often drawn to videos first in the Google SERPs), this could be customers, suppliers, shareholders – anyone. Here’s a link to the video, but beware that it contains some disturbing footage.

Run a search in Google for ‘Noble Foods’ now and you’ll notice more sitelinks appearing under their website at number one and nine other records on a directory site – the Sky News video is nowhere to be seen. Noble Foods has been filed under several categories on 192.com including Food Manufacturer in Kirkaldy, Food Manufacturer in Chesterfield and Egg Merchant in Lincoln, and it’s likely that links have been built into these pages, giving them more authority and pushing the Sky video down the rankings.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. Smart move by Noble. They have (and quite rightly so) hired an SEO to ‘remove’ the video from the search results by optimising other directory pages. It’s a great example of how you can use SEO to move bad press about your business out of the rankings.

Have you come across any businesses that have had bad press associated with their brand name in the search engines?

PS. There’s also a good point to note here. Videos can rank very highly in search results, as the example above shows, so it’s worth making sure you include video is in your SEO strategy.