DC Interactive Group’s SmartMarketing Blog

See the “share” button at the bottom of this post? It’s thanks to AddThis, the “#1 Bookmarking & Sharing Service.” You might already be aware of the button and may in fact use it on your blog posts, but you may not know that it can be placed into the HTML code of your email as well.

Whether you’re sending an email to one or thousands of people, utilizing an AddThis share button makes it easy for the recipients of your email to pass your information along. It’s just up to you to have captivating content!

Here’s a screen capture of what you’ll see. Click to enlarge.

To add the button to your email, you’ll want to click on the ‘more options’ link at the bottom, then specify you’d like to use the button in an email newsletter. From that point you just choose the design of the button and the link of the article you’re sharing, and you’re good to go!

Setting up an account is free and anayltics are provided by AddThis, so you’ll easily see if taking advantage of their share buttons is worth your time. If your content is interesting, chances are it’ll be well worth the couple extra minutes.

You likely are well aware of my company’s Social Media Marketing Program that we named “Sparking”.  You can learn about it by clicking here.  While this program successfully and cost effectively increases our clients’ followers, friends and fans through a wide mixture of social media and Web 2.0 tools, our biggest goal through Sparking is to grow our clients’ e-lists.

At a recent conference, I sat on a panel with three social media “experts” who said that our focus was a waste because people didn’t use email anymore.  I was stunned — not because these “experts” had a different opinion, but because they were so anti-email.

When I pointed out to that everyone on the panel communicated with each other before the conference via email, and that eblasts were the number one way people at the conference linked to the registration page, they were silent.

It seems to me that social media experts like their tools so much that it has had a negative effect on their abilities to generate sales and exposure for their clients.  Each one of the panelists was an expert on one social media tool (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), which is likely why each one professed that their tool of choice was all that was needed.

Well, what’s needed is results.  And short of online sales, the best way to measure results is to track the response from those who follow you by analyzing eblast clickthroughs and reads.  Email works in tandem with other tactics to increase engagement, deliver relevant content and build contact databases.

And don’t believe these people when they say email is dead.  While Twitter and Facebook certainly offer other ways for people to communicate, the simple truth is that most adults (young and old) have an email account and check it often.  Heck, some have more than one.

Here’s a chart just released from MarketingSherpa that dispels the myth that email is dead.  Note that this chart is about how consumers share information about a product or service they find interesting:

According to MarketingSherpa, the chart views “how email is used to share information, because this activity is so central to social media sites. Email is dominant, even in this regard.  When we look at media use over the last 15 years, we see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.  For example, we may find that Twitter and Facebook gradually reduce our use of email to convey quick messages and content to social groups, but it’s far less likely that social media will replace email for commercial transactions, receipts and the like.”

In conclusion, email is not dying.  It’s not even sick.  It’s still the number one way that people share important information.  And, to boot, it’s the only clear way you can monitor what your friends, fans and followers do with the information you give them.

Social Media provides some really great benefits to marketers. So do Web 2.0 strategies and PPC buys. But these tools represent just a small part of a good online marketing program. The key is to bring these all together in a nice, synergistic package that’s easy to create, easy to manage and easy to analyze

Welcome to “Sparking”, the web marketing program we created almost two years ago that provides an incredible ROI by building relationships with customers through online networks, blogs, eblasts and more.

To find out more, click here and learn about Sparking and how you can benefit by romancing your customers online.

Just a few short years ago, advertisers would spend thousands on ads placed in traditional media to drive people to websites in order to sell a product or service.  Flash forward to today and we all know what happened:  traditional advertising is declining, web advertising is increasing, and people are still buying (albeit at a lower rate) — all at an incredibly low cost to advertisers (as compared to past years).

Blame it on the economy, but most advertisers still demand even better results from even lower budgets.  How can that be accomplished?

The debate often centers on search engine optimization (SEO) versus pay per click advertising (PPC).  Both cost money — SEO being upfront and through keyword buys related to the content optimized on the site, whereas PPC is purely by clicks on ads that appear on seemingly unrelated sites.  Both get results, depending on the industry/product/services offered.  So which is better?

I’ve always liked PPC.  It costs you nothing except the service, until someone clicks on your ad.  Then the price is anywhere from ten cents to ten bucks per person and even higher based on auctions.  PPC can be targeted geographically and behaviorally, and also directed toward those viewers who have shown an interest in products or services similar to the clients’ offerings.  The key is getting the person to fulfill your goal before you lose them.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the results of a new study by Engine Ready who analyzed the goal conversions of 26 e-retail sites over one year ending this past June.  According to the results, visitors who arrive at a retailer’s site from paid search ads (PPC) are 50% more likely to buy at that time than those who arrive at the site from clicking on an organic search link (due to SEO). The conversion rate from PPC is 2.03% versus 1.26%.

Those who are most likely to buy are consumers who arrive at a retailer’s site by typing in the web address or clicking on a saved bookmark, as their conversion rate registered at 7.38%.  These are people who learn about advertisers through other methods, like word of mouth, traditional advertising, and general searches.  Consumers who linked from a different e-commerce site or from an e-mail were buyers 6.58% of the time, per the study. The overall conversion rate for all traffic was 3.6%.

The study found that:

Paid search visitors spent the most with an average order value of $117.06 compared to the $109.27 in sales that were derived from links from other sites.  $106.64 was spent on average from visitors who originated from organic search. Last, an average of $95.29 in purchases came from direct referrals, such as from a bookmark or from directly linking to a web address.
This Engine Ready study is based on an analysis of 20.8 million visits and 108 million page views to 26 e-commerce sites from July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2009. 21 of the 27 companies in this study also provided data for an earlier Engine Ready study.

By the way, this study is analyzes purchases made after the viewer clicked on links.  It does not take into account those people who visit a site one day (via any method) but do not buy, only to return at a later date to finalize the purchase.  Many sales are made after the viewer compares sites and prices, so I’m interested to find out more information related to viewers who return to sites.

Almost three years ago, the stock market was raging forward, consumers were buying their second and third homes, waiters were being tipped 25-35%, and people were thinking their next raise was on the horizon. People were fearless.

Then the market tanked. Jobs were lost. Goods went unsold. And businesses clamped down. Heck, even major media companies began to collapse like an opera singer at a Cardinals baseball game in late August.

What changed to create such a pother in the markets? I think it was caused by consumers coming face-to-face with their fears.

Everyone heard stories about business struggling, neighbors losing their jobs and even their homes, and retirees running out of their investments, causing just about everyone to analyze their own situations to determine what they would do, “just in case”. So just about everyone tightened their belts to wait it out, watching every report they could find and researching every bit of gossip they heard that could help them determine the future.

This isn’t right, is it?

The stock market to me isn’t a barometer of a company’s or industry’s worth. Rather, it’s a barometer of the country’s overall fear level. In good times, we buy into almost anything, regardless of whether it’s worth it. And in bad times, we flee. For proof, look at what happened to the stock market over the past three years. Did those companies really lose half their value because they no longer provided a good product or service? Hardly. They lost because people sold their stock in droves, plain and simple. And the more people sold, the more others became worried to the point that they sold their shares as well. And the spiral downward continued.

Funny, but that’s not how anyone is taught to play the stocks. You buy low and sell high. Mr. Potter, in the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”, made this really clear way back in the late 1940’s movie when he chastised those in Bedford Falls for “losing their heads” and selling things for pennies on the dollar out of fear, while only George Bailey and Mr. Potter himself were smart enough to stay calm and buy things knowing that the time was right. Years later, Potter owned most of the city while everyone else tried to figure out why they had so much less.

The thing is, none of this will change while people have fear. You can reduce your prices by 50% and still not sell. That’s because fear causes paralysis.

But this is nothing new to a good salesperson. Fear is the number one reason people do not buy (of those who can). What’s more, fear is the number one reason people cancel an order after making it. This behavior is so well known that there’s a name for it — “buyer’s remorse”.

So what’s an advertiser to do?

First, deal with it and stop trying to provide solutions that don’t alleviate the market’s fears (50% off sales enforce our fears). Understand that some people do not want to buy your homes, or products or services simply because they fear it will be the wrong decision and will cause them some major discomfort. After all, most people simply don’t want to be afraid. So regardless of how good your product is or how much the price has been reduced, or how “safe” purchasing it is, you won’t sell a thing to a market that fears making the wrong decision.

So get rid of their fear by making a purchase from you the “right” decision.

Since times have changed dramatically, so must your advertising. Fear is eliminated by knowledge, so you need to help people understand why they should not fear purchasing from you. But since this cannot be accomplished in ads alone, look for your advertising to build relationships with people so you can communicate more often with them. Get them to sign up for eblasts, tweets, etc. And then educate them, over and over again.

For example, potential new home buyers lament that they cannot buy now because they won’t get enough out of their current home if they sell it now. While that fear might be real in terms of their ability to get a jumbo mortgage, most people simply believe their current home is worth more and don’t want to “foolishly” sell it for less than they believe they would have received a year or more ago. But that’s foolish, right? The home they are looking to buy is likely much lower in price as well. So the two kind of cancel each other out, right? Plus, with mortgage rates still very low, a new home buyer might only see an increase of $500 or so in their mortgage now if they’re buying a bigger home. That’s likely less of an increase than it would have been a year or two ago. And an increase of $6,000 per year is little when weighed against the advantages of having a bigger, nicer home for the family.

But how do you get these fearful people off the couch?

Play to their fears, of course.

Homeowners now know they must pay their mortgage, and what troubles them is the fear that they won’t be able to in the future. Some should be worried, but not all (a simply pre-qualification form can separate the groups). For those who can buy, can their misguided fear of not being able to afford the home be overwhelmed by the fear of living their lives in less than desirable surroundings? Don’t people still want to chase their dreams? Don’t people still want to “keep up with the Jones’”?

I say yes, but remember consumers are sissies. I believe these consumers have to know that others like them have taken the plunge too. They have to see that the Joneses are alive and well and that their real fear is that they’re not living up to their own potential. And they must have more fear of their current condition than they do of moving to a new home.

So scare them, in a good way.

When your advertising generates relationship building email address, use them often. Pepper these potential customers with testimonials from your current customers frequently. Let your customers tell others why they should “take the plunge”. Let your customers tell others that they should have no fear. And let them tell others in eblasts, on blogs and in the “comments” section of news stories.

After all, we’re all sissies looking for someone to tell us everything is okay before we make a decision. So tell us all is well, over and over again. And then over and over again.

Next thing you know, everyone will be fearless and, with any luck, we can return back to a more manageable version of 2006.