Toward that end, listed below are 10 top tips for boosting your email open rates.

1. Write something you would read - Creating terrific content is undoubtedly the simplest way to get your email opened and read.
2. Length & timing – We’re all busy, and lengthy emails that ramble and fail to get to the point are rarely looked forward to. Likewise, not using optimum sending times doesn’t help.
3. Use your subject line wisely - Here is the single biggest element that influences whether or not your email gets opened. Make time to craft great, non-spammy subject lines.
4. Use your first line effectively - Closely related is the first line, part of which is visible in their inbox. This too is valuable real estate, and don’t permit yours to be filled with stuff like “If you don’t see any images in this message click here”.
5. Address their needs and concerns – Solve problems and offer solutions.
6. Offer great deals and savings - Everyone likes to save a little and your email is an excellent platform to pass on any deals or specials your company is offering.
7. Be the authority - We always have things to learn, and if you can position yourself as somebody who offers something worthwhile for your readers, your open rates will flourish.
8. Be entertaining - Don’t be StatMan. Don’t be scared to inject humor, wit, and a little debate on occasion.
9. Is your From line recognizable? - Make certain this is the person or company you want to brand, as this builds trust over time.
10. Be sure and resend your unopened email - Very easy to do, resending your unopened email is a simple way to boost your open rates.

The post How to Get Your Customers to Open your Emails! appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

So why all of the hate?

One reason may be the financial struggles Groupon and LivingSocial are experiencing. Although they very likely will come out fine at the end of the day, financial writers wanting to seize upon the harmful aspects of some daily deal sites. They frequently point to stuff like spam complaints, a glut of deals to pick from, deal hoppers (customers who hop from deal to deal with no intention of becoming a regular customer) and in fact deal fatigue.

3 Ways you can help make Daily Deals work for your business

• Understand the financials! – Make sure you clearly know the numbers as far as your deal is concerned. Know your average sales volume and don’t exceed it with a daily deal. Negotiate credit card processing fees: most major daily deal sites will pay these!
• Follow up with your new customers! – As many as 60-75 percent of these daily deal customers are trying you out for the first time, so it’s vital that you have a plan to coax them back for a return engagement! Offer another coupon, and other incentives to ensure you see them again!
• Don’t go too big, too fast – Start conservatively, so that you can learn the ropes and not be overloaded by the deals, and leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.

Daily deal sites aren’t dead, you simply need to know how to best utilize them for your business.

The post How to Use Daily Deal Sites Like Living Social To Market Your Business appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Why SMS marketing deserves a serious look

Without a doubt, the primary reason marketers are giving SMS a chance is because of how folks are responding to texts. Reported by CallFire SMS text messages boast a 98 percent open rate not to mention an eye-popping 83 percent are opened in the first three minutes of receiving them! What’s more, marketing promotions using text messages are being redeemed at 20 percent or higher, compared to traditional media such as coupons, newspaper ads, radio, or direct mail, that average redemption rates of a paltry two percent. CallFire also says that your ROI (return on investment) could be far greater than in traditional media. For example, a campaign with a monthly cost of less than $30 to send 1000 text messages, and redemption rates of 20 percent or more, works out to be less than .30 cents per customer acquisition. Not bad.

4 Guidelines for successful SMS marketing campaigns

1. Deliver value – Whatever you’re texting them about, make it worth their time! Deliver value, monetary or otherwise, with your message.
2. Keep it short, sweet and personal – Personalizing your texts and keeping them friendly and brief is a great recipe for success with SMS. Something along the lines of, “Hi Mandy, thanks again for shopping with us! We look forward to seeing you again soon. Show this msg to receive 20% off your next purchase at [STORE NAME & PHONE NUMBER].”
3. Use a call to action – Lest you forget to do this, here’s your reminder: ask for the desired action! For example, ask them to “Text SaveNow to 123456 to get a 10% off coupon today.”
4. Track your results – SMS is awesome on the subject of measuring metrics. There are a variety of factors you can monitor on your campaigns, from click tracking to who opened what. So be sure to track and measure your results, to correctly plan the next campaign!

The post Going Mobile – Why Should You Give SMS Marketing a Try? appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Click the Play Button Below to watch this video:

I hope that it helps boost your Fan Page effectiveness!

To your success,

The post Facebook Fan Page Marketing 102 appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Take a look at this story below and get a glimpse of the possible Future of Marketing.

So what do you think? Is this the future of marketing?

The post The Future of On Demand Marketing? appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed—and how high—on the News Feed.

Click the play button on the video below to understand how to best market your business on Facebook:

Here is the Infographic referenced in the Video:

I hope that this video and Infographic help to demystify marketing your business on Facebook.

To your success,

The post Social Media Marketing on Facebook appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

In its early years mobile faced many challenges, such as people not trusting their provider to provide a safe, secure transaction, to the prevailing practice of using mobile only for location.

Mobile has now overcome much of this and is poised to offer so much more to companies willing to go all in.

• According to Frank N. Magid Associates, over three-quarters of Americans age 43 and under now use a smartphone; in other words, the people doing most of the buying.
• Nearly all Generation Y consumers owned a mobile phone of some kind and 72 percent owned smartphones. Source: Forrester, 2013
• Time spent with mobile apps is starting to challenge television: consumers are spending 127 minutes per day using mobile apps—up 35 percent from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year—and spend 168 minutes watching television per day. Source: Flurry, 2012

However, you still may have questions as to whether or not taking the time and expense to develop a mobile app is right for your business. Let’s look at some pros and cons.

Some of the Pros of Mobile Apps

• Repeat business and instant feedback – We crave convenience, and by having your app available makes it easy to get repeat business. You also will get instant feedback, which even if negative can be good to know!
• Far better presence – Instead of having the user search for your business on their phone browser, your app is front and center, ready for duty!
• Helps you to brand and develop loyalty – By having your app on screens everywhere, your brand is always on their mind, making them far more likely to return to you.

The post Would Your NH Business Benefit from Having Its Own Mobile App? appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to keep loyal customers coming back for more, and increasing the lifetime value of that guest. The good news here is that with few exceptions, a customer loyalty program could be an easy and painless way to do just that for your business. Let’s look at how.

How does an online customer loyalty program work?

An online customer loyalty program replaces all the cards customers would otherwise have to carry around with them in their wallets, purses or keychains, and instead allows customers to give their mobile numbers or email address at checkout who enters it right into the register.

This enters them on to a customer database (totally permission based) and enables the business to send offers and news about their membership. This rewards loyal customers with prizes and discounts for both purchases and interactions.

Why should you do this, and what would be some of the applications?

Beyond the obvious benefit of being able to sign up existing customers to your list, there are a number of ways business owners can benefit with this type of program.

• Announce sales, offer discounts and new products and services.
• Target your customers using the geo-location capabilities of their smartphone, for spur-of-the-moment promotions.
• Consider “gamification” of your loyalty program, as this increases engagement many-fold.
• Accept mobile payments from the same platform.
• And most of all, improve customer retention. According to study by Bain and Co., a mere 5 percent increase in customer retention can result in up to 75 percent more profitability. Is that worth it?!

An example of how well a mobile loyalty program can work!

Jersey Mike’s Subs launched a mobile loyalty program in April 2012 and within one month had signed up more than 200,000 members nationwide! Their loyalty program was allows customers to earn free food and benefit from frequent special offers.

All that is needed from their customers is a mobile number, and Jersey Mike’s can communicate with its customers directly both locally and nationally, thereby targeting campaigns accurately. Mobile loyalty has helped this 56-year-old company find ways to expand their revenue using their current base.

So what about your business?

Implementing an online customer loyalty program can be the deciding factor in whether or not your business finds profitability in these tough economic times. This can be done with a relatively small investment, and utilizing your best existing resource: your current customers!

The post Is a Customer Loyalty Program Right for Your New Hampshire Business? appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

How to Crank Up the Volume on Social Media

Way back in the day (as in last year) it was a somewhat simple undertaking to rank your pages in Google’s search engine results. Optimize the pages, have decent, unique content and create a slew of backlinks to them.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case!

Google, in their quest to create a more relevant, social selection of search results, has made the game somewhat more intricate. Along with making sure we are still performing most if not all of the above tasks, social signals now are playing a vital part in the Google search results algorithm, the formula used to determine where our pages rank in the search stratosphere.

So just how do we create these “social signals”?

Here are three simple ways you can enhance the level of engagement with your brand, expand your prospective audience, and favorably increase word of mouth about your business.

1. Use images and videos – Like it or not, we are now a society that thrives on visuals. If you’ve been watching the Facebook Newsfeed evolve over time you likely have noticed its become incredibly visual. Most would, whether by time necessity or purely visual stimulation, prefer to watch and see instead of read. According to Facebook photos and videos attract 53% more “likes” than text alone.
2. Make sure to post later on in the day – Engagement in the form of liking, sharing and following, is far more likely to occur later in the day or early evening, based on research from social media expert Dan Zarrella. If you post in the morning, as you’re getting going, make sure you check back later. It will pay off! With that said, I would recommend posting at different times throughout the day too!
3. Be quick to respond – Getting visitors to respond to you is difficult enough: don’t leave them hanging! Make sure you develop the practice of responding to comments, tweets and status updates as quickly as possible. You’re trying to engage, not find a way avoid this! Be social my friend. Facebook is a “party” and you want to get to know your guests. What’s important to them, what do they like, why do they like it? Be interested in them and they will find you interesting!
4. Don’t be like Freddie!

   Professional golfer Freddie Couples was asked once why he never answers the phone. His reply was, “there might be someone on the other end.” Don’t be like Freddie! Engage with your readers!

Work these four tips into your daily posting and you will turn up the volume on your Social Media Marketing “Like a Boss!”

To your success!

Kyle Battis

The post 4 Tips To Use Social Media Like a Boss appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Next, let’s discuss the purpose of your online efforts.

Ok, this is really simple. You need to have a clear purpose – a single most important goal. And that’s not to say there can’t be many goals with your online presence – but you need to pick the most important one to start – so you know where to focus your time, energy and money during ‘launch’ phase.

I always suggest that the primary function of any online business is lead generation. Building a list of prospects that you’ll convert into paying customers (we’ll discuss that more in a bit).

Making sales is important – but nearly all businesses are better off making the sale through proper followup – not by going for the cash first.

With most brick and mortar businesses you’re able to meet with your prospects face to face – to engage with them and to build immediate rapport.

Online is different… it’s, well… colder.

You need to give new prospects some time to learn more about you and your company – to interact with you through a couple of different channels and to bond with you – before they make a buying decision.

By the way, we have proprietary technology here at NH Strategic Marketing that allows you to use ‘direct to voicemail’ voice messaging, SMS Text Messaging and Email followup to communicate with your new leads – completely automated and hands free– all allowing you to meet your new prospects where and when they prefer to be met. This technology will change your business.

If you’d like to learn more about that, simply reach out to us through whatever method is most useful for you. You can get our contact details here.

Ok, back on track…

So the primary purpose of everything you do online should be to build your contact list. This means that your website, landing pages, social media actions, content and press releases, articles and blog posts etc. all need to do one thing: drive people to register for your ‘offer’. We call the offer a ‘lead magnet’ and we’ll cover that in great detail very soon.

Alright, so today’s primary point: start building your list and following up with people who have raised their hand to hear form you. And start building trust and rapport. It’s a little harder to do online, but using the right systems and tools it can be every bit as effective as a face to face interaction (or darn close ;) And if you are building your prospect list, and regularly engaging with your prospects – that’s great! Now… start building it faster!

Next week we’ll discuss the first steps to establishing an online ‘Presence’ for your NH Small Business – you won’t want to miss it!

And if you haven’t yet had us complete a ‘Business Breakthrough Blueprint’ for your business – you should do that today.

See ya’ next week!

Mike Purvis
NH Strategic Marketing, Founding Partner

The post Taking Your NH Small Business Online (Part 2) – Your Single Most Important Goal appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.