I’ve used a number of email marking services over the years – most notably GetResponse.com and AWeber but MailChimp is my favourite.

Just as every business needs a decent website, every business should have an list of people happy to receive their emails. How you go about generating this list is a wider topic but MailChimp is by far the easiest to use in my experience. If you’re on my mailing list, you’ll be experiencing MailChimp first hand. You might have noticed how tightly it’s integrated into my website but, for me, its key advantage is the speed with which I can set up new email campaigns, autoresponders (emails sent in a set sequence) and lists.

Mailchimp has a sophisticated dashboard, and nicely designed too

MailChimp operates in very strict adherence to SPAM regulations which means that your messages are all the more likely to get delivered. This also encourages you to prune your list on a regular basis to remove old or poorly responding subscribers.

They have a very generous free plan which allows you to store 2,000 email address and send 12,000 emails per month – plenty to allow you to get used to the system and make sure it’s right for you. Across my accounts I have well over 4,000 active subscribers and gaining and managing has been (almost) a joy with MailChimp. In fact, the only major criticism I have of them is that it’s impossible to move an email address from one list to another (for example from “prospects” to “customers”) although they do encourage segmenting within a list so it’s not a major problem.

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Picture the scene. You work for a corporate marketing department with, of course, a limited budget. You’re launching a new product and considering how to market it.

Traditionally, you’d buy print advertising space in newspapers and magazines. To run a small colour ad in the Guardian costs around £4,000 per day for a circulation of around 250,000. If 5% read your body copy that’s 12,500 reads at a cost of 32p per read.

Alternatively, you could spend your £4,000 on creating a Facebook game. A good game will get at least 100,000 plays at a cost of 4p each. Not only is the cost a fraction of a single day’s print advertising in a single newspaper but the quality of the interaction is massively higher. A user might spend, say, 10 minutes playing a game related to your product. Imagine that, 10 minutes fully engaged with your product for 4p – including a direct link for ordering that product.

As far as I am concerned, this is a complete no-brainer. And if you’re wondering where I got my Facebook figures from, they’re actual figures from a real game.

So why don’t corporate marketing departments commission more of these games? Two reasons. Firstly, ignorance of online media. This is, of course, unforgivable in so-called “professionals”. The second is even more unforgivable and can be summed up in the sentence “no-one ever got sacked for running a print advert”. In other words, keep doing what you’ve always done and no-one can criticise you. And that, my friends, is why working in a corporate department is a mug’s game. I know, I’ve been there.

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Any marketer worth their salt will tell you that “the money’s in the list”. What they mean is that, over a period, you can convert many more visitors to buyers by having a mailing list. Sometimes this means broadcasting to all subscribers when you have news or information to relate but usually these lists also use an autoresponder that sends out emails in a set sequence.

I recently set up a membership site which offers free membership with paid upgrades. At the end of the process, the member was automatically added to my Mailchimp mailing list – they would then, of course, have to confirm that they wanted to be on the list because “double opt-in” is a requirement of all respectable lists. The problem is that even with a freebie thrown in as an incentive to complete the process, only 1 in 4 of the people who became free members signed up to the list.

Now, you might ask why I did it this way around and the truth is that it was simply because this was the way Wishlist Member (the WordPress membership plugin I use) did it.

Why was it important to get people on the list? Because I know that I will get a much higher conversion rate for the paid memberships if I remind and prompt people to upgrade over the following days. It’s also worth building up a list because a targeted mailing list has a value.

So, on Monday, I reversed the process. I set things up so that when the user visited the site they were invited (using the Popup Domination plugin) to sign up for a free membership via the mailing list. They then get the double optin confirmation at which point they are directed to the page containing the registration box for getting their free membership of the site. This way, I guarantee that they’ve signed up to the list before they get access to the site. Sure, they could easily unsubscribe but then those sorts of people would be unlikely to buy in any case.

The results so far has been impressive. A slight drop in the number of free members but the percentage of daily mailing list signups has quadrupled. Next week, I should see this improvement in mailing list conversion translate into paid upgrades.

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BusinessInsider.com produces a series of “charts of the day” based around different topics. This morning’s chart shows the Most Successful Facebook Ads and it makes for very interesting reading.

Take a look at the bottom of the chart for the best performing ads. Clickthrough rate is in red and cost per click on the right. There’s a typo in “tabloids and blogs” because I think it should read 0.165%. So, the best performing Facebook ads have a clickthrough rate of around 0.15% and a cost per click of around 20c. Of course, we don’t have conversion rate information so we don’t know how many of those clicks resulted in sales – my experience has been that, at best, Facebook ads perform somewhat below the conversion rate of Google’s Display Network (Adsense).

A clickthrough rate of 0.15% for the BEST performing ads is woeful. This means (if my maths is correct) that over 600 people see the ad before a single one clicks. For the worst performing ads, this is nearer to one in every 9,000 views. Even though Facebook is a huge network, you’re going to struggle to get any meaningful traffic with those numbers.

How does this compare with other forms of advertising? Well, the closest Google analogy is the Display Network (formerly the Content Network) which, like Facebook Ads, is interruption marketing. If I were to run a Display Network campaign with 0.15% CTR, I’d shut it down – it would simply not be worth the time. I’m looking for CTRs of at least 10x that figure to make a campaign worth running.

Google Adwords is a different kettle of fish. Because the ad is only displayed when the searcher types specific keywords in, then as long as you choose the right keywords you should get much higher CTR. I look for a minimum of 5%. In other words, I can expect roughly 450 times more effective marketing using Adwords than Facebook- where do you think I concentrate my efforts?

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I am becoming progressively more fed up with internet marketing gurus. The hyperbole has become utterly ridiculous, to the extent where I now believe nothing. The most common line I hear now is “I’m sure you’re confused about all the different get rich quick schemes, not sure what to believe. Well, I’m telling you – you can believe me: this really is a get rich scheme!”

Oh for heaven’s sake. There was a time, not long ago, where an internet marketer would sign you up to an autoresponder, provide loads of good value advice and then, after a reasonable period building up the emotional bank account, would offer you something to buy.
No more. Now, you get onto a list, any list, and you’ll be getting “joint venture” emails on an almost daily basis – “here’s this guy, his product is brilliant, you should buy it! [Oh and by the way, I get 50% commission if you do].” If you’re subscribed to a number of “experts” then you’ll get the same product pitched by all of them.

This culture of affiliate marketing and joint ventures makes the extravagant endorsements and testimonials of gurus for the products of other gurus completely valueless.

Is it coincidence that this has happened during the economic downturn? Probably not, but it seems to me that these gurus know the game is nearly up and are pushing their products for all they’re worth before the market collapses up its own arse.

In my view, internet marketing is exactly the same as all marketing and, indeed, all business. Find a market, build the right product for that market, market it effectively and build a community around it. There is no magic in doing business on the internet, it’s just direct mail on steroids. Once the perception of instant internet riches finally fades into the past, the hyperbole of internet marketers will cease to have an effect and we’ll get back to doing business the right way.

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One of the challenges of any business is to find ways of increasing the conversion rate whether that’s the percentage of website visitors who go on to buy or the percentage of people who come into a shop who then buy. The problem is that different businesses will find that different approaches work for their customers.

Here are three possibilities for increasing conversion:

Offer A Discount

Sometimes a simple discount is the most effective way of increasing conversion. It’s essential that you know how much your product/service costs you before you can eat into your profit margin with a discount. The obvious question is then “how much discount?”. This depends on the market: some will respond to a 5-10% reduction whereas in other markets nothing less than 50% will provoke a reaction.

Offer Free Delivery

Some markets will respond well to free delivery – particularly if delivery would normally be expensive (eg laptop delivery). However, my experience to date has been that this is the least effective approach.

Offer A Free Extra

In some cases, giving extra above and beyond the standard product is effective. For example, “buy this and get something else in addition” or “buy one get one free”.

There are two key things you must do:

1. Work out how much the cost of the promotion will eat into the profit per unit
2. Test, test, test, test

The only way you can find out which form of promotion works for your customers is to test. As an example, with our web shop MakingYourOwnCandles.co.uk we have tested all three.

We found that Free Delivery was ineffective, even though our product is quite heavy. Offering a percentage reduction is effective (20% in our case) and increased sales, gross and net profit significantly. However, for our customers, giving away something free was the most attractive promotion. In our case, we offered a free Refill kit which effectively doubled the number of candles our customers could make. This increased sales by 35% in a month during which we’d normally expect a decline for seasonal reasons. The conversion rate increased by nearly 50%.

The point is that we only found out by testing. One of the biggest challenges in online business- especially a new business, is in establishing what it is that turns your customers on. Remember that customers buy based on value rather than price: your job is to increase value until it reaches a tipping point that improves your conversion rate whilst retaining a healthy profit margin.

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Ask most estate agents about marketing and they’ll talk about RightMove.co.uk, advertising in papers and putting up a board outside your house. Of course, they’re talking about the marketing of your house – at least that’s what they’d have you believe. The fact is that a newspaper advert is practically useless when it comes to selling a house but what it does do is market the estate agency. The same is true of the board outside your house – this increases the agent’s brand awareness in the neighbourhood as well as having the minor spin-off of alerting anyone randomly driving around a neighbourhood (rather than using RightMove) that you’re for sale.

An estate agent’s job is, first and foremost, to sell himself/herself to house sellers rather than buyers. They are in a competitive marketplace and if they don’t secure new commissions, they go out of business. In most cases they secure these jobs based on factors that include their percentage fee (excluding VAT of course) and the impression they create when they turn up to talk to the seller. It’s next to impossible to get figures from an estate agent that will tell you how effective they are at selling.

We’re in the process of buying a house in Waterlooville on the South Coast. Given that we currently live in Milton Keynes, we’ve been forced to cram lots of viewings into each visit. One of the estate agents impressed us with her knowledge of the area but neither of the houses she had to show us was suitable. Even once this was apparent, she was happy to give us lots of local knowledge about good areas, schools etc. Now, most estate agents, once they realise they’re not going to get a sale, will instantly lose interest and usher you out of the house. This is what made this particular estate agent a “purple cow” in her field (excuse the pun) – by spending time with her an unusual level of trust was created, something I’m not used to with estate agents at all.

As it happened, another house came on the market and it turned out to be one of ours. This is the house we’re going to move into (hopefully) shortly. Did we choose it because it was one of hers? Nope -we chose it because it was the right house. Who will we choose to market the house when, in a couple of years, we move again? If we choose to sell through an estate agent, it’ll be her – more or less irrespective of the commission.

Trust is an incredibly valuable resource in processes that are notoriously stressful. In many cases, indeed, the market is stressful because trust is so rare.

How much would you pay for:

• an estate agent
• a car mechanic
• a plumber
• a builder
• a solicitor
• a web developer/designer

…you could trust? Making trust part of your business by showing integrity, honesty and transparency at all times might be the single most important aspect of your marketing strategy. Of course it must be real and that can sometimes be painful (eg admitting that you’re not the right person for a specific job) but, particularly in processes where people feel vulnerable, being the one they can trust can pay off time and time again.

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Chris Cardell is a marketing consultant. Four years or so ago I paid a considerable sum to be part of a series of teleseminars aimed at helping improve my business’s profits largely through better marketing. I’m not a massive fan of his particular style which I find somewhat arrogant and a little too smooooth for my taste but I do think the training I received was worthwhile and useful.

I distinctly remember one phone call in which he said something like “who do you think decided that Paul McKenna was the UK’s ‘leading’ hypnotist? He did!” and much of what Cardell says has to be seen against that background. However, having said all that, when you strip it all down his training is useful and worthwhile.

I was less than surprised when I read on Duncan Bannatyne’s Twitter feed about action that had been taken by a third party regarding a mailing Cardell had sent out. You can see a full account on the SEOCreative blog.

This was certainly clever in that it succeeded in fooling a number of people into thinking it was a personal recommendation. So it satisfied the first requirement of good direct mail in that it got the “prospect’s” attention. However, the ultimate purpose of marketing is to secure sales and I can’t believe that many people would have gone through the entire process of buying whatever he was selling without realising that it was a fake letter. And as soon as they realise this, they’re going to have one of two reactions:

1. He’s a fraud and I won’t trust him with my money
2. That’s clever, I want to learn how to fool people too!

I can’t imagine that either of these responses is the desired one surely? The net result is that any faith I have in Cardell has now been destroyed: if his company is prepared to resort to such misleading tactics (indeed, the Advertising Standards Authority agree it was misleading) then I don’t feel I can trust him at all to be straight with me. I still get benefit out of the materials I purchased from him a few years back but nothing would persuade me to buy from him again. Another customer lost.

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Internet Marketing analysts AdGooroo have released their Search Advertising Report for the first quarter of 2010. Interestingly, it shows that advertising across all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) has increased in these three months which is a good indicator that advertisers, at least, are more confident about the future.

It’s an interesting, brief, report and I recommend downloading it.

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Toyota has had a rough time of it lately – entirely its own fault. The business world is replete with examples of companies founded on exceptional quality losing sight of this over the years and compromising the quality in the name of cost cutting. Anyone who’s read or listened to Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” will be familiar with the “clam chowder” story. Having watched the TV series going behind the scenes at John Lewis, I found myself wondering whether they, too, are running the risk of losing their distinctiveness in the name of cost reduction (eg “just in time” stock management is risky).

Anyway, I bought a second hand Toyota Corolla Verso in November last year from Steven Eagell in Milton Keynes. The experience of buying it was not exceptional, to be honest – salespeople are, it seems, salespeople whichever cars they’re selling. The car has been fine since then, until it developed an issue with the clutch. I took the car in to be investigated and was blown away by the quality of service. I’ve previously tended to buy Vauxhall cars and my experience with their franchised garages is that they would disbelieve that there was a fault unless it was bleeding obvious from a drive around the car park.

In this case, the service team put the car on a testing platform, yielding no obvious problems and it took the service manager to drive the car extensively to reproduce the problem. They said that they would need to remove the clutch/gearbox to be able to investigate further and my car was booked in for 10 days later. They even offered, unprompted, a courtesy car (something that never happened in my dealings with Vauxhall).

The car was with them for two days. They had replaced the entire clutch assembly – something that would have cost me £600 but which was done entirely under warranty (save £30 to replace wear and tear affected parts). The problem appears to have been heat damage caused by the previous owner’s driving habits.

The car was returned to me valeted inside and out. Throughout the entire process, the service was excellent. My more usually experience has been that claiming under warranty is, at best, a nuisance for the dealer and worst impossible.

As a Vauxhall owner, I don’t know whether this level of service is typical of Toyota dealers, whether it’s only typical of this dealer or whether it’s part of a charm offensive following the recent bad press. Frankly, I don’t care. I will be buying a number of cars over the coming years so, from a pure financial point of view, my potential long term value to Toyota is considerable. Given this good experience and how pleased I am with the car in general, guess who’s going to be my first port of call.

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