Why are you not utilizing the most cost effective marketing tool; Email Marketing?

Tips to get more out of your email campaigns:

• Short and personal: Get to the point in your emails and acknowledge the person you are sending it to. Knowing your customers by name is a great way to get their attention.

• Call to action: Tell them to do something in your email and provide a link directly to the location where they can do it. Providing an option for them to gain more information or to shop your online store allows you to determine your active customers from your passive customers.

• Make your subject line POP: Keep your subject line relevant to the message and valuable to the recipient. If you are offering a sale, indicate the discount in the subject line. Or if you are providing insightful information, tell them what it is and give them the option to read more by opening the email.

• IMPORTANT: Avoid becoming SPAM: Don’t use terms that will get your messages classified as junk. “FREE FREE FREE”, “Limited Time Offer”, “Amazing Opportunity”, or “$$$” are all flagged by SPAM blockers and can block your message from ever reaching your recipient. Choose your words wisely.



Email marketing is one of the most inexpensive, yet effective, marketing tools anyone could use. Start taking advantage of your email communications and start building relationships with your customers today!



Blue Symphony LLC is an Information Technology consulting and website development company. We work with you to identify gaps in your business and then deliver software and Internet solutions that fill those gaps. Your website not only looks good - it does something! Contact us today for a free consultation, info@bluesymphony.com or visit us at http://www.bluesymphony.com/ Member of Better Business Bureau-Kansas City.

Design a plan before you design your site.

We all get excited when we come across an idea that has the potential to make us money or help us reach our goals. Sometimes, we want to act before we plan, but as the old axiom goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. The same applies to creating a website for your organization. Before you make a decision to create a website you must plan, plan, and plan.

When making a decision to create a website for your business the first thing you should ask yourself is:

What is my business objective?

What do you want to accomplish? What is your purpose for creating your website? To build awareness? To reach more people? To provide information? To increase revenue? To sell online? Defining a clear objective will help you determine the features your website needs and will help you decide whether a do-it-yourself website will suffice or whether you should hire a professional. A more complex site will require a professional who can design, build and maintain the site you need to accomplish your business objectives.

The next question to ask yourself is:

What do I want people to do or feel when they visit my site?

What is your call to action? What do you want people to think when they visit your site? If your website’s primary purpose is sell products, then highlight your products because you want people to know and like your products enough to want to buy them. Feature your top selling product or your most attractive product and list the benefits, not just the features.
However, if you are a not-for-profit or an organization focused on building awareness, you want people to feel a connection to your brand and cause when they visit your site. Focus on content and supporting imagery that appeal to the human connection. Pictures of human interaction, socializing and writing in a conversational tone help you connect to your audience.

What is your web hosting plan?

In order for your website to be available online it must be hosted on a web server. Not just that, but your server must offer enough space to handle all of your website files such as pictures, flash, audio and video, along with enough bandwidth to be able to handle 1000s of visitors each month. Choose an adequate hosting plan that will offer services that benefit your website needs. Also ensure that your host’s uptime guarantee has at least 3 9’s, meaning that they guarantee that your site will be available without interruption 99.9% of the time.

Lastly, what is my marketing plan?

Now that you’ve planned an effective website, it’s time to find ways to drive traffic to your site. The more visitors you have to your site the higher your return on investment. Here are several great online marketing tools you can use to drive traffic:

• Search Engine Optimization: the basis of SEO is keywords. When you search for something through Google, you use certain words or phrases. For example, if you are looking for a more nutritional diet for your dog, you might search with phrases such as “nutritional dog food”. Include phrases within your website content that people might use to search for the products or services you offer.
  


• Pay-Per-Click: PPC is an advertising method in which you don’t pay a fee for your ad to be displayed. Instead, you pay a fee when someone clicks on your ad. PPC plans often use an auction pricing model in which you bid on keywords to determine ad placement and frequency. Based on the amount you bid on particular keywords, your ads are featured when your chosen keywords are used. Facebook Advertising and Google Adsense offer good PPC campaigns.



• Social Media: Networking sites such as Facebook, Twiiter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs have made it easier to direct people back to your website. You establish a network and feature information from your site enticing them to visit your site to make a purchase.
  


• Banner Ads: Placing banner ads on high traffic sites related to your industry can help you build brand awareness and draw your targeted audience to your site.
  


• Press Releases: Press releases distributed to online newswires allow news services to stay updated about newsworthy developments from your organization. They publish releases deemed interesting to their readers, which, in turn, draw readers to your site.

Gain more for your business by utilizing your site to provide access to information, products and services. Let your website be your voice to attract new customers and build brand awareness. However, before jumping the gun, develop an effective website plan that will produce the results you desire. Ask yourself the above questions to determine what you want your website to do for your organization.

Common Mistakes in Email Marketing

Email marketing has become one of the most effective and resourceful marketing tools for several reasons:

A- It's inexpensive
B- It's easy and fast while reaching numerous of people
C- It yields the highest Return On Investment mostly due to the cost of sending emails.

However, ineffectively using email communications can cause you to lose out on hundreds of customers and several thousand on revenue. Many business owners have tapped into email marketing and now consumers' inboxes are being flooded with unsolicited, irrelevant, redundant messages. Separating yourself from the masses involves more than just coming up with a great subject line and fancy email design. You standout by being relevant, targeted, responsive, and consistent in your messaging toward your customers.

There are several mistakes business owners make in email marketing that cause them to lose out on customer acquisition and retention. Some of the common mistakes are:

• A customer signs up for the email list, but doesn't hear from the company for several months.


• A man receives a special email communication targeted toward women.
  
• A customer receives a promotional email on an item he/she just paid full price for.


• A company only sends an email to convenience them or their business. As in, only contacts its customers to entice them to spend money on their products.

The number one priority in all marketing initiatives is targeting and segmentation. Not all customers or clients are the same and they should not be treated as such. Get to know your clients and potential customers and start segmenting your mailing list to formulate email messages that will get higher open and click through rates. In addition, build relationships by sending feedback requests, birthday, anniversary, or holiday email messages to your customers.

Lastly, although email marketing is an excellent marketing tool, don't limit your marketing initiatives to email communications. With strategic segmentation and tracking of your mailing list, you can invest in other marketing tools such as, direct mail and get a higher ROI, increased revenue, and a customer for life.

Should You Do-it-yourself or Hire a Professional?

In a downward spiraling economy it is not uncommon for people to tap into their creative ideas or skills and begin exploring entrepreneurial opportunities.

Congratulations! There are benefits to being a business owner such as, being your own boss and attaining financial and creative freedom. More importantly, as an entrepreneur, it’s your world! You can choose how far and how wide you want to take your dreams. The fastest and simplest way to expand is through the web.

We all know that a website is a staple and can be great for business, but when should you create it yourself versus hiring a professional?


Your business mechanics is a determinant of your website’s functionality

Website hosting companies such as, Intuit and GoDaddy have services that allows anyone to create their own site. This approach is fine for a site with minimal functionality, such as an information-only, or brochure, site. However, if you want more functionality, custom flash animation or you have custom needs, building your own website can become time consuming and frustrating.

A site with more features, such as customer login, online shopping cart, and multiple web pages can be difficult to handle on your own and requires more expertise and skills. In this case, hiring an IT professional is the most effective approach for helping you create a more functional, user friendly – and, therefore, more valuable – site that positively reflects your business. Your IT professional can also offer advice to help you streamline your business processes, reducing paperwork and lowering expenses.

There is more to just building a website than publishing pages to the internet. There is presentation management, search engine optimization, lead generation, information collection and management, email system management, automatic site backups and more. Your IT professional will consider all of these aspects when crafting your web presence. In addition, in choosing a do-it-yourself website host you don’t get the individualized attention and support needed for your unique business needs.

Lastly, as an entrepreneur, time is money. Taking advantage of all of the benefits a website can offer will become time-consuming. When weighing whether to do it yourself or to hire a professional, consider how much time you can afford to carve out of your week for managing your web presence.

In summary: The do-it-yourself website approach is the option for a website with generic, basic features and if you have the time to spend. If you want to take advantage of extended and more advanced features and expect your website to grow with your business, invest in a quality web development IT professional that has the expertise and to elevate your organization and help your website produce revenue.

Sherry Lumpkins
Software and Website Development Specialist
Blue Symphony, LLC
www.bluesymphony.com

The Mobile Era

If you didn't know already, the simple cellphone is out! If you don't have a smartphone then you are being left behind. The creation of Blackberry, iPhone, Android and more has turned our everyday cellphone into a handheld computer, literally. The smartphone has changed the way we access information and organize our life and business, With my HTC, I can Google information, create a full page document using Word, access my business database, and take important notes during a business meeting using Microsoft OneNote.

The mobile era is growing and growing quickly! Android is shipping nearly 65,000 smartphones daily and approximately 65% of smartphone users access the mobile web often.

The challenge of the mobile era is now many companies have to rethink their website design and functionally. The fancy flash and high tech graphics are not universally supported by many smartphones. Websites must become mobile friendly with simple graphics that fit on the smaller screens. Making your site easy to view on a handheld will help increase website traffic.

In addition, major brands are becoming more creative and creating apps (applications) that make accessing their site easier. For example, Mazuma's account holders can now download the Mazuma app to quickly find the nearest ATM in their area.

Get connected to your customers and clients faster by making your business mobile friendly. Keep your brand at their hip by creating applications and m0bile friendly websites that are accessible through a phone.

Get Engaged to Social Media

Have you ever read a great article online or needed a second opinion on the item you wanted to purchase online and needed to send it to a friend? In order to share the article with your friends you had to email it to get them to check it out. However, with the new era of social media you can share your online findings with hundreds of friends at once with just one click.

Online communities are forming and sharing information faster than ever thanks to social media networks such as, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Share buttons, RSS feeds, blog postings, and more are allowing millions to send and share information and their opinions with millions of other people about companies, experiences, and other interesting topics. Word of mouth marketing has gone online and mobile allowing for faster transfer of information to larger masses of people at one time. For example, a person with over 500 friends on Facebook just posted a status indicating she found this local clothing store that takes old rags and turns them into new apparel items and provides a link to the website and a photo of a skirt she just bought online. Over 500 people just viewed this post and have the potential to be future visitors of the site.

Get your company and website engaged to social media and marry your business operations to mobile technologies.

Top methods to help you get engaged:

• Share buttons: adding share buttons to your website allows visitors to share your website and its content with all of their online friends. Whether it's to tell others about your services or about your company, it's free advertising and promotion to hundreds even thousands of potential clients and customers. Allow your current customers to help you get your name out there.
  
• Join a Social Network: depending on your business, there is a social network group for your business. Facebook is more of a social, informal network of people sharing entertaining information such as videos, pictures, and more. Twitter is a combination of professional and social networks. It emphasizes having a personality and building brand awareness. You should tweet regularly to be noticed and generate more followers. LinkedIn is designed for the professionals looking to build relationships, explore opportunities, and share ideas to help other professionals expand upon their knowledge and skills. Check out this article to compare the three social networks to see which one is right for your business.
  
• Take advantage of the Business goodies: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all offer special widgets, icons, or easy connections to help you link your website to your business profile page. Although you have the social profile, the main goal is to attract more people to your website to increase your traffic rates and generate leads. The same works vice versa, you want to have a link to your Facebook or Twitter profiles on your website to increase your followers. Facebook also offers a feature that allows your website visitors to log-in to your site using their Facebook accounts. Click here to find out all the business tools Facebook offers. Click here to see the tools Twitter offers.

Integrate your business with technology today and get engaged with Social Networking.

Questions? Contact us at info@bluesymphony.com

Sherry Lumpkins
Software and Web Development Specialist
Blue Symphony
http://www.bluesymphony.com/

Leveraging the Internet to Grow Your Business

With more than 20 years of experience in the Information Technology industry, I am still amazed by the growing trends and advances in online communications. Thanks to the information superhighway; I can buy a nice pair of heels, download the Thriller album, seek legal advice, buy & trade stock, and chat with old friends I haven't seen sine high school, all within an hour! It's CRAZY, but GREAT!!! Anything that makes my life simpler is good in my book!

But more importantly, as a business owner, I can use the internet to attract new clients, improve relationships with current clients, form partnerships with other business owners and watch my business grow. And no matter where I am... I can stay connected to my businee operations by simply using my Blackberry.

The Internet is Vital for Business Survival.
It is nearly impossible for a business to survive or flourish without a website or some online presence that will allow people to find information about your business. Even the telephone book has migrated online (www.yellowpages.com). But just like your business, your website must stand out from the crowd.

To get noticed and boost credibility, your site must offer:

• Top-quality website design: clean graphics, attention grabbing designs, visually stimulating, and more!
• User-Friendly Organization: make it easier for people to find the information they want to know. Minimize the clutter and make your site more appeasing to the eye.
• Call to Action: lead generation, don't let visitors leave your site without entering their information or interacting with your services. Entice vistors to interact with your business.
• Social Media Intergation: Link your website to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and more. Millions of people utilize these sites daily. Allow them to share your site with their friends.
• Search Engine Optimization: Get your site noticed by Google, Yahoo, Bing and more. Update your website content frequently using keywords to be at the top of these search engines.

Approximately two-thirds of the U.S. population uses the internet daily. During the Christmas season, approx. $27 billion was spent in online sales. Did your business get a piece of that?
Not just that, more than 60 million people are on Twitter and over 400 million are actively using Facebook.

As a business owner or professional, you have to be asking yourself, "Am I taking full advantage of the worldwide web to leverage my business and help it grow?" I can guarantee you more than 95% of you are not!

I highly encourage you to make the investment and get connected to your customers today! Don't miss out on new business opportunites because of the quality of you website or lack thereof. Stop giving your competition the lead advantage. Stand up and Stand out online and watch your business grow!!

Sherry Lumpkins
Software and Website Development
Blue Symphony
www.bluesymphony.com