Successful Email Marketing

Email Marketing is a Internet marketing tool that can produce amazing results if done right. The overall goal in marketing in general is to get what your company offers in front of your target audience on a consistent basis with the goal of converting them into ongoing customers.

Email marketing achieves this goal as it consistently reaches clients in a personal place where they spend a lot of time, their email inbox. Think of just how many times the average person checks their email a day. AOL reports, "most of their email users check their mail about five times a day." Also there is a growing popularity of people who never lose contact with their inbox due to mobile phones and wireless Internet cards. You can see why it is of great benefit for your company to develop a successful email marketing strategy!

What do I need to launch a email marketing campaign?

1. A list of relevant permission based E-mail subscribers - This is one of the largest challenges when trying to create a successful email marketing campaign. To get your list started you can use any email address you have gained from people you have made contact with or have done business with. Overall, the best way to grow your email marketing list is add an opt-in form(s) on your website where your web visitors can enter their name and email and sign up for your list.
   
2. An interesting and strategic email to send - The goal is to send an email that has a subject line and content that will make those on your list open your email as often as you send them. At the same time you want to have strategic content that will promote your product or services in a way that is not too sales heavy, yet produces great conversion results. The overall goal is to get the people on your list to open your email and once they open it you want to move them towards a conversion goal such as buying a specific service, product etc...
   
3. A Website - With email marketing you will want to have a website so you can lead your audience to a place where they can get their questions answered or where they can buy your product or service. Also, if you want to be a pro email marketer you can add analytics software to your website which will allow you to track the behavior that the people from your email campaign had while visiting your website. Website stats can reveal if you are meeting your sales/conversion goals or not and can let you know how effective your email campaigns are.
   
4. Email Marketing Tracking System - You can greatly increase your results by analyzing the results from your launched email campaigns with email marketing tracking software. With such software you can tack if the email bounced, was opened, was forwarded and you can see if viewers clicked any links that were in the email. You may ask, "what is the point of tracking emails?" Good question, here is the answer: If you notice that you only have a 50% open rate on an email campaign, this means that your subject line must not have been interesting to your audience. There is nothing more frustrating than launching an email campaign and noticing that the people on your list are not even opening your email! All you would have to do in a situation like this is add something intriguing to your subject line such as: "LIMITED TIME SALE!" Using creativity can change your open rate drastically which will enlarge the success of your campaigns.

What are the results?
If done right, email marketing can yield results that far surpasses traditional advertising and marketing such as direct mail and the costs per lead is substantially lower in comparison. However your success in launching an email marketing strategy will rely heavily on the quality of the list you are mailing to and the marketing content of your emails.

Should I Partner with Internet marketing experts?Having the courage to launch you own email marketing campaign can save you money up-front. However in the long run, if you are not expert in Internet marketing or email marketing you will end up loosing money that you could have easily made if you would have worked with an email marketing expert.

Consider yourself as a high school basketball player and an Internet marketing firm as Michael Jordan. Come game day, the results that you will get with Michael are far better than the results you will get by yourself being a beginner. An email marketing expert can help you grow a good list of subscribers and help you attain the best results possible by creating strategic marketing content for your emails.

Quist Designs is a Internet marketing company that specialises in building marketing systems that get amazing results for their clients. Please visit our site to learn more www.QuistDesigns.com

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A Professional Website is Your #1 Marketing Tool

By Josh Lindquist

Many of our clients ask us where should they focus their attention in the area of marketing. Our response and the response of any knowledgeable marking company is to invest in a professionally designed sales website.

Why a Website?
Because the modern sales model for where to direct potential customers is "Contact Us or go to Our Website." I am sure you have herd this on tv or on the radio or in some kind of sales collateral such as a brochure. This direction makes your website the base for all your marketing efforts. In fact, customers now expect to be able to visit a web site before they make a decision on where they will spend their $. If you do not have a professional sales website, you will lose their business and of you do not have a website at all..... I won't even mention how much respect and business you will lose in your market.

Why a professionally designed website?
Because a regular web site will get you one place with potential and current clients - NoWhere! Many companies try to cut the budget low and get a website whipped up as quick and as cheap as they can. Here is the question to ask yourself. When is the last time you knew you were going to have contact with a potential customer or client and you showed up with messy hair and an outfit that was all wrinkly and stinky? You would never do that! Then why do it with your web site? Fact, 80% or more of all customers visit a website before doing a business transaction. Needless to say, it is important to have a website that reflects the best possible image of your company, this is achieved by professional graphic design that reinforces your brand or corporate image.

Why a Sales website?
A sales website works like the "Slick Willy" who can sell anyone anything......You know the ketchup Popsicle to a lady with white gloves, a refrigerator to village of Alaskan Eskimos... Ok, we all know I am kidding because honest business rooted in integrity is a must for any company that desires to grow. But, have you ever been to a store and you were just browsing and did not plan to buy anything, but you talked to that one sales person and before you knew it, you bought the whole store? This is what a professionally designed sales web site can do for you, they convert the visitors of your site into customers.

Important evaluation for business of all sizes?
What is the point of getting all the traffic in the world to your website if you are not converting and winning the business of your visitors? (This is another thing that do-it-yourself or budget websites will never be able to do). Think about the difference a professionally designed sales website can make for your company. Think of all the sales you are losing by not having the best site possible on the web...... You make the choice with your company's website, give business away to your competitors who have a great site, or get your act together on the web.

Josh Lindquist is the CEO of Quist Designs a professional graphic, web and marketing firm. Visit: www.QuistDesigns.com

10 Tips How to Optimize Your Online Store to Increase Ecommerce Sales

Everyone with any kind of intelligence knows that online sales continue to skyrocket every year. This is because the Internet continues to grow rapidly. In fact, the number of people online is expected to double in 10 years from 1 billion to 2 billion. To make things even better, people are loosening up and trusting online merchants to make purchases online more than ever.

The question for entrepreneurs, local store front owners and e-commerce veterans alike is:

"WHAT CAN I DO TO MAXIMIZE SALES ONLINE SO I CAN CLAIM A BIGGER SLICE OF THE GROWING E-COMMERCE FINANCIAL PIE?"

Below are some tips that have been collected by internet marketing and ecommerce consulting experts and are proven to drastically increase sales for any online store. The tips in this article will yield great results for both "one person" small online store owners, all the way up to online companies that have hundreds of employees and do millions of dollars in revenue each year.

1. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize - Revise, Revise, Revise
You can not have success online without continually changing your website to adapt to the needs and expectations of your customers. The companies online that continue to drastically increase sales are continually making changes to their online store so they very are confident that their customers are getting exactly the e-shopping experience that they demand. It is amazing to see how if just one element is missing from your customers expectations and needs, then your sales will drop astronomically.

The next points in this article will help teach you to find and remove these "road blocks".

2. Professional and Fresh Graphics & Photography
Remember, online sales is a whole different game than store front sales. At the store front people are able to use their senses to make a decision on which products to buy. When buying online they are limited to sound and sight. Therefore it is very important to display the highest quality graphics and photography to showcase the superior quality of your product (or service).

This is also important for the graphic template or layout of your web site. If you do not interest your viewers within 5 seconds they will leave your store. it doesn't matter if you have the best product for the best price. If your site looks cheap, most people will leave immediately. Also remember that it is important to appeal to your target market. For an example, if your store sells snowboard gear then it would be very important for the graphics on your site to have some kind of crazy youthful style and appeal and capture the younger audience.

3. SSL and Other Certificates
Everyone who has been in the e-commerce business game for any amount of time knows that customers expect a SSL Secure Socket Layer certificate to feel secure when sharing financial information.

What most online e-commerce entrepreneurs do not know is that the brand of SSL certificate that you display on your store can greatly influence your store's sales. It is important to get a SSL certificate that is well known by people who buy online such as Verisign. Another helpful SSL tip is to position your SSL graphic on your check out page and also on the bottom of every page of your website so customers see it and know that your site is secure.

On another note, the more name brand certificates you have such as BBB, Hacker Safe etc.., the more your customers will trust that your e-store is secure.

It is simple math: More trust from your customers = More Sales!

4. Analytics Software
Analytics Software is a must! Analytics software allows you to track: what search engine, web page, banner ad, email campaign, direct mail campaign or even keywords did your site visitors use to find your website. How long did visitors stay, what did they click on when they were on your site? What are the most common pages that visitors viewed, entered or exited on your website. What city, state, or country are your visitors from etc.....

This is important in learning what marketing campaigns that you have launched are leading to the most sales. Analytics software will help discover what marketing approaches to cut off and which ones you should pour more money into because they are yielding the greatest return.

Also analytics software can help find where customers are being disturbed and leaving your online-store. This is simple to find out, all you do is track the sequence of pages in your check out process and take note of where visitors are exiting your site in the process. If there are trends that 40 % visitors are leaving, lets say "step 2" in the checkout process, chances are that there is something lacking that the customer is expecting in that step or something offended your customer at "step 2". From here, it is important to figure out what is disturbing your customers at "step 2" and then fix it asap.

There are numerous stories of businesses that have changed just the simple text of a button and have increase sales 20% or more. Needless to say, some times it is the little changes that produce enormous results.

5. SEO for Keywords and Phrases Related to Your Industry......
This is huge! What is the point of even having a perfectly designed and developed ecommerce store if you do not have a plan to get a flow traffic to your site. Overall, there are 300-500,000 searches done on the Internet each day. By far, the best way to get traffic to your site is to have keywords and phrases that are related to your business to be optimized in the layout and coding of your site so that your website shows up on the top of the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engine's results. (Note: These three companies hold 95% of the market and with Google holding more than Yahoo and Msn combined.)

For example, if you are selling snowboards and you hire a search engine optimization company that is able to make your site appear #1 in Google for the phrase "buy snowboards online" YOU CAN EXPECT BOAT LOADS OF SALES TO COME YOUR WAY! (granted you practice the other tips in this article).

6. Easy Navigation and Product Searching
If Customers can not find what they are shopping for on your site, you will loose their business! This is why it is very important to have easy navigation set up for your online store. Drop-down menus, search boxes and site maps are some web development technologies that you can add to your store to make sure your e-customers are finding what they are looking for.

The most important of all of these would be the search box option. The majority of sales made on the leading e commerce sites such as Ebay.com, Amazon.com and Bestbuy.com are made by online customers using the websites search option to find the item they are looking for. You can see why it is very important to have a search option on your online store, just make sure it gives accurate results and it easy for customers to find and use.

7. Email Marketing
This is another promising Internet marketing technique, if done right, email marketing can send your sales through the roof. The object with email marketing is to get your customers to opt in to receive information about your product offerings. The tricky thing with this form of marketing is growing a list that is completely organic, you heard right NO SPAM!. Spam lists are a pain in the butt to work with to say the least! Must people who receive spam email from companies end up hating them as opposed to doing business with them. The best way to get people on your list is to grow them organically by advertising your newsletter in a graphic on every page of your site or just adding a check box asking them to join as they are checking out of your store.

Once your list is large and healthy, now the battle is learning how often you should send out emails to those on your list and what sales content to send them. If you send out emails to often.... They will opt out of your list..... If you send the the wrong content.... They will opt out of your list. It is wise to study email marketing or to consult email marketing experts if you wish to have great success with this marketing strategy.

8. Offer more than 1 Payment Option
Think of it this way. What do you do if you are going out to shop at the local mall and a store that you are interested in only accepts cash and all you have is a credit card? You simply do not shop at their store. If all that you offer your customers is Pay Pal then you can expect to loose a lot of sales.

If you look at those websites that are dominating the marketing in e-commerce sales you will notice that they offer 5 or more kinds of payment. There are many payment methods such as: Bill me Later, Paying by check, Money Order, Pay Pal, Google checkout etc... Go ahead and try it, offer some more payment methods and we guarantee your sales will jump.

9. Do Every Thing you Can to Avoid Looking Like a Scam Site
With the local store front this issue, typically, does not exist for customers, actually it is the vendor (store owner) that has to worry if they have just been ripped off by the customer if the customer paid with a bad check or fake cash, etc.... To further this point, it is very rare that a local place where you did business will completely up-root it's location and leave no trace behind as to where it went. Sadly, this happens all the time online and every online customer fears getting ripped off or dealing with the head aches of having their card numbers stolen.

The goal for the online merchant is to make their site look as professional and secure as possible and do everything in your power to avoid doing (or not doing) anything that will make your site look like a fly-by-night scam shop. There are some practicle things you can do to avoid looking like a scam site such as: posting a real email address on the site for customer service, also a real 1-800 # and a physical address of where the operations of your company is located. Try to avoid using P.O boxes if possible. Also, including client testimonials and public press releases from your business. These tips can help you to look like the innocent sheep instead of the big bad scammer wolf.

There is nothing that will affect your sales worse than if new customers assume that your store is a scammer shop or that it is insecure - because you failed to take the extra steps to win their trust.

10. Rss Feeds for Sales Specials
Rss stand for Real Simple Syndication. The way it is used is people who visit your website see a Rss button or or link where they are able to subscribe to your Rss feed. In order to subscribe they need a Rss reader. It is not hard to find a reader as there are thousands of free Rss readers available on the web and all of the new internet browsers come equip with what is called "Live bookmarks" which is a built in Rss reader. Once a visitor is subscribed to the Rss feed, then they are able to view your Rss articles or posts.

Why is this relevant to e-commerce sales? Good Question! Just have a web developer create a "RSS SALES Feed" on your site where people can subscribe to it and see the special of the day, week, month, etc... And watch the new stream of sales come flowing in.

It is important to have a plan implemented to not only get customers to your store, but to keep them connected to what you have to offer as much as you can without annoying them.

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Please let us know if you had any success from the tips in this article. Also, Quist Designs has the ability to execute every tip that is listed in this article. If we can be of service to you in the area of ecommerce website development, please contact us or visit our website - www.quistdesigns.com

15 Reasons Why You Must Have a Powerful Website

1. It Is Expected In Every Industry.

2. To Sell Products and Offer Services.

3. To Generate a New Stream of Business Leads.

4. To Affordability Communicate to Your Target Audience.

5. To Increase the Operating Efficiency of Your Company.

6. A Website Can Sell and Service People 24 Hours a Day 365 Days a Year... It Never Closes!

7. Your Competitors All Ready Have One.

8. 70-80% of People Who Are Searching for a Business Go Online...

9. It Portrays Excellence and Helps Gain the Trust of Current and New Customers.

10. It is Affordable Compared to Other Advertising Methods.

11. Once Developed, it Can Bring in Revenue for Many Years With Very Little Cost.

12. To Gain Respect in Your Industry.

13. It is the Easiest Way to Reach the Entire Nation / World.

14. The Internet is Still Growing at An Incredible Rate - One Billion People are Now Online!

15. If you Have a Cheap Website or No Website at All, You are Loosing Money that Could be Made!

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If you would like to learn more about how the powerful websites that Quist Designs develops can produce any of the above, please Contact Us Or visit www.QuistDesigns.com

If you would like a Quote on a website or other marketing project that you need to have developed please Click here

To View a dynamic Portfolio of our work please Click Here

4 Marketing tools that are proven to get results

1. Website Development + Creative Marketing
The core piece of all your marketing efforts is your website. However getting a website slapped together and posting it on the Internet alone will not win you more business. In order to get real results with a website, the site must be equipped with creative marketing strategy. This means that there needs to be a strategic plan within the site to appeal to your target audience and get them to respond to your sales "calls to action". It is kinda like fishing, certain lures will attract different kinds of fish to bite your hook! If you are investing in web development make sure you find a company that will take the time to learn your industry and will research your target market to find out what makes people respond to and bite your sales hook. If your website is developed with creative marketing it is possible that you will find yourself with more business than your boat can handle. Learn More

2. Email Marketing
The goal in marketing is to present business offerings in front of your target audience in as many avenues and mediums as possible. One of the best places to reach your target audience is their email in-boxes. This is because people check them very frequently. In fact, AOL reports, "most of their members check their mail about five times a day." On another note, there is a growing popularity of people who never lose contact with their inbox due to Internet phones and wireless cards. This growing connectivity to the Internet is why all the corporations ask for your email address at the check-out line. They know statistically that if they can get your email, then they will get your money.

One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is the ability to track when your clients open the emails you send them, what links they click on, if they sent the message to a friend etc... This allows a marketing expert to adjust components of email campaigns to get your audience to better respond to your sales offerings or call(s) to action. Learn More

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The percentage of consumers that go on the Internet to find a new product or service is increasing every year. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Msn is where the majority of people go to search for what they need. All together there are about 500 million searches done on the Internet each day, that is lot of searches! So if you are in business, you ask yourself the question, "How do I get my business in front of my target market on these search engines?" The answer is by having your website professionally optimised so that keywords or phrases related to your business show up in the search results hence the title, "Search Engine Optimisation or (SEO)."

Search Engine Optimisation is rapidly replacing phone book advertising, this is why the phone books are getting thinner and thinner ever year. Many of our clients have contacted us with frustrations about their Return on Investment (ROI) with phone book / yellow page advertising as they are not producing as many solid leads anymore. There is a reason why this method of marketing is no longer as effective as it used to be, it is because consumers find it much more convenient to do Internet searches on places like Google to find what they are looking for than it is to flip though the large book.

If you have a business and want to keep it growing, it will be very important for you to develop a SEO plan and execute it. Don't let your competition beat you on this one, get ahead of the game and invest in this profitable marketing strategy. Learn More

4. Direct mail
Direct mail is a marketing tool that can provide great results if done right. The general goal is to determine your target market and then send them a mail piece(s) that grabs their attention and gets them to respond to your offerings. There are two common obstacles when it comes to launching a successful direct mail campaign: 1. Gathering quality addresses of people or businesses that will be most interested in your product or services 2. Creating a message / graphical content that gets them to respond and do business with you. If you fail at #1 or #2 you can be sure that what you send will find itself in the circular file cabinet (trash can). Quist Designs knows the tricks that it takes to help your direct mail pieces skip being sent to the trash-can, and instead, make it on the front of your audience's desk ready to do business with you. Learn More

Conclusion
We recommend that you find a marketing partner that can keep you up to date on the ever changing marketing world. We at Quist Designs work with our clients to develop marketing tools that help meet their business goals. If you have need of any of the above services or have other needs, please feel free to contact us or visit our website to learn more about us.

What makes a website effective?

By: Josh Lindquist

The center of all your marketing material should be your website. There are countless benefits of having a powerfully developed website. Here are some attributes that we at Quist Designs have found that makes for an effective website:

Eye-catching graphic design
Visitors that come to your website must have their attention grasped within 5 seconds or they will abandon your website for another (probably your competitors). It is very important for your website to have professional graphic design that catches the attention of your audience and makes them want to click though your site to learn more about who you are and what you have to offer. Most people can tell a cheap website when they click onto one, often times this is the difference between professional website design and cheap web design - the quality of graphics.

Your website is a big reflection to the world of your company. If your website looks cheap, old, stale, and boring, chances are the people visiting your site will think that your company or product is too. How many times have you skipped doing business with a company because their website looked cheap and their competitors looks better? I know I have many times. This is why it is important to have a website_developed for your company that reinforces a positive image of your brand / company.

Positive reinforcement of your brand / company
Branding is a very important part of web development as visitors should be able to recognise the look and feel of your company's image as they visit your web page. It is important that the interaction they have with your company is in seamless-excellence. This means that every place they make contact with your business they gain a reoccurring confidence though the image your business portrays that your offerings (services/products) are excellent and the best and only choice for their needs. Potential clients, in general, will be impressed by businesses that have a smooth website presence. This helps them feel secure that if they choose to work with you they are doing business with a company that is professional, well established and in order.

Websites that have room for a respectful budget
We all know that old saying, "You get what you pay for!" Think about it, what if you only paid $30, 000 for your house, what kind of house would you get? The same is true with web development, you can not expect to get a powerful solution for a measly $500 bucks. Truth be told, there are so many cheap website shops or template suppliers out there on the Internet, which are all a complete waist of your money. What good is a website if it does not drive revenue and leads in? Although many cheap solutions may appear to be saving you money, in the long run they cost you money that you could have been making in proper web marketing. The fact of the mater is: not having a well developed website can put a "kink in the hose" for quality business leads that should be coming in on a continual basis though your website. Think of professional web development as an investment as opposed to an expense.

MAKE SURE! On Your next website build that you are not trying to pinch the penny too hard by finding a super cheap solution that will in the end loose thousands of dollars in business you could have won. Make sure you are working with a company that knows website marketing and can develop a solution for your that produces great business leads. We at Quist designs offer our clients extremely effective web solutions for reasonable prices. Please view our portfolio or contact us with any questions or needs you may have.

Quist Designs Releases New Website!

Previously our old website was Quistdesign.org. But now we have released a new powerful website www.quistdesigns.com. The site was designed to be very pleasing to the eye and to provide our audience with helpful marketing expertise. We hope you enjoy our new site!