Is there anything more disappointing than putting in a ton of effort into your email marketing campaign only for it to receive a poor open rate?

Don’t let that happen again! We have developed our top tips to increase your email response rate.

Tip #1 – An effective database

Building an email list represents the foundation of a successful email marketing campaign. Having a robust database or CRM system to manage your mailing list is key to getting the most out of your mailing campaigns. Using an automated system such as Mailchimp, Klayvio or Hubspot allows email databases to be updated and segmented, in addition to providing attractive layouts for your email campaigns.

Tip #2 – An attractive title

Your subject line is your first impression on users. With that in mind, your email subject line is more important than the content of your email. No matter how great the rest of your email is, this might be worthless if it never sees the light of day.

Tip #3 – Stunning hero image

A hero image is the first, main photo or graphic that you see at the top of an email. Your hero image should immediately draw your visitors in and promote what the email or communication is about.

It is important to design your content and images in a way that draws attention step-by-step from the most important feature in the email – enabling your information to be scanned and understood easily.

Tip #4 – Call to Action

When you create an email marketing campaign, one of the most important components is the call to action or CTA. A call to action email button grabs a subscriber’s attention and encourages him or her to act. Once you have caught your audience’s attention and held their interest—now it’s time to point everything toward clicking.

Tip #5 – Urgency

When you express urgency in an email, subscribers are more likely to open your emails and click through to your site. By creating urgency in your emails, subscribers are more likely to convert, meaning more engagement and revenue for your business.

Tip #6 – Link + Link + Link

Your ultimate goal in email marketing is to get people to click through to a web page. One way to increase the clickthrough rate is to hyperlink the images in your email to the webpage that corresponds with the content of the image.

Tip #7 – Personalisation

Personalization, in the context of email marketing, is the act of targeting an email campaign to a specific subscriber by leveraging the data and information you have about them. Basic email personalization includes tactics like using a subscriber’s name in the subject line, while more advanced tactics can include changing the content of the email based on a subscriber’s gender, location, or other things you know about them.

By now you should have a good idea of what it takes to create a successful email. However, you must also understand how to measure the results of your efforts. Let’s take a look at the metrics you should be paying attention to in your email marketing efforts.

1. Open Rate

Once your email has reached your clients’ inbox, the next challenge is to get the email read. The amount of emails sent compared to the emails opened is known as the open rate.

• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who open a given email.

2. Click-Through Rate

Clickthrough rate is a very important metric for all email marketers to be tracking, as it gives you direct insight into how many people on your list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand or your offer.

• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email.
• How to Calculate It: (Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) * 100

3. Conversion Rate

Because your definition of a conversion is directly tied to the call-to-action in your email, and your call-to-action should be directly tied to the overall goal of your email marketing, conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for determining the extent to which you’re achieving your goals.

• What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product.
• How to Calculate It: (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

It wasn’t too long ago that smart home speakers were considered a luxury. The rising demand and interest in smart home technology has grown so quickly that it’s now become a basic expectation for home buyers. This has led to home buyers actively looking for property developments that allow them to control their entire home from a single device.

More consumers are realizing the benefits of smart home automation including easy monitoring of their home security and making tasks like turning on lights or controlling the thermostat so much easier. The prevalence and demand for smart home automation are leading to more developers to actively build residences with in-built technology.

According to Telsyte’s 2019 Home Market Study, it was revealed that the Australian IoT (Internet of Things) at home market grew 57 percent during the past 12 months to $1.1 billion in 2018 and is forecast to reach $5.3 Billion by 2023.

Telsyte’s Home Market Study 2019 also revealed that more than five million Australian households have started the smart home journey with at least one IoT@Home product installed. This figure represents more than 50 percent of total households in Australia.

It’s clear the growth of smart home technology is also showing no signs of slowing down. The surge in adoption for smart home technology is mainly due to the interest and purchase of smart speakers like Google Home and Alexa.

Amongst the 5 million adopters of smart tech, the study revealed that a quarter has at least five different smart home devices installed from cameras, smart plugs, smart lighting, and smart appliances. The study also revealed that the rate of adoption to set grow even further, with a projection that households in 2023 will have 37 devices.

It’s important for developers to understand these new needs and expectations from home buyers and to make swift changes to include necessary infrastructure upgrades that allow for buyers to seamlessly connect.

As smart devices become more affordable and accessible to home buyers, the importance of smart devices in the home will no doubt become just as important as fast broadband or a designer kitchen in a development.

Security, in particular, has become one of the most important and increasingly popular aspects for consumers looking at new developments. New developments that include smart cameras particularly with doorbell cameras are especially popular as home buyers are able to monitor and see in real-time who approaches their home when they are not at home.

Another exciting smart home prediction that will excite home buyers includes smart home modifications in the kitchen. Kitchens will likely be operated through technology and linked to smartphones or from a singular device and be able to monitor cooking times and adjust temperatures remotely.

The trend to smart home connectivity compounded by the popularity of connected devices such as Google Home is a trend that residential developers can no longer ignore.

Fast internet connectivity plays a vital role for smart home devices. It’s no surprise the critical importance of NBN and black internet fibre for home buyers and how that is impacting their decision alongside other decision making elements including location, lifestyle benefits, schools, property amenities, and local transport infrastructure.

It won’t be long until we see an entire home driven by smart home devices. Simple everyday activities, like turning on lights and playing music from a single voice command are already becoming standard household activities. Futuristic technology will play an increasingly important role in households and will inevitably affect the value of future properties.

One of the recent key issues for home buyers and developers in the smart home sector has been with compatibility issues between the different devices and with competing companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and even IKEA.

For small and large developments delivering smart home compatible projects is important to adding value and selling market-ready homes and offering to prospective residents a lifestyle that is driven by the benefits of smart home automation. Smart home connectivity is already observed as an excellent selling point for developments attracting purchasers in the market interested who see home connectivity as an additional benefit or critical element in their decision-making process.

Smart home compatibility can be easily overcome for both developers and homeowners through careful planning and collaborating with smart home businesses that specialises in smart home devices for property developers.

Home with AI offers smart home automation for property developers in conjunction with a property marketing plan to help brand and market their development effectively. With the rising popularity of smart home technology, developers have the opportunity now to leverage the trend of improving their sales margin for their development.

Homeowners are already seeing the enormous benefits of security, energy cost savings, light control and entertainment control from a single device and it’s up to property developers to implement these tech changes now into their marketing and development plans before it’s too late.

Loved this Article?

Sign up to get sent regular news articles from Desketing.

It’s safe to say that Google is still the most dominant search engine with over 70% of the search market share. However its popularity has evidently meant that it has become more difficult to rank highly.

Not sure if your website is ticking all the boxes, then read on to get an understanding and some useful tips in understanding SEO and what you can do now to rank better on Google.

Step 1. Improve your On-Site SEO

What is On-Site SEO?
On-site SEO refers to the practice of optimising elements on your website in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from your search. Proper on-site SEO helps search engines understand what the page is about and ensure that the information is relevant to the user’s search.

On-site SEO is more than just about Keywords.

As search engines become more sophisticated, it’s becoming much more difficult to rank higher on Google just based on keyword repetition or keyword placement. Here are some tips on how to optimise your on-site SEO for 2020. On Page SEO changes often, so It’s important to keep up with the latest practices.

1. Make sure your content in In-depth. This is where long-form articles can help and explain and provide more information to your audience and also improve your ranking.
2. Do not duplicate content. Try to make sure that your content is unique and avoid copying text in your website as it may impact your site’s Google ranking.
3. Optimise the site for mobile. Google recognises that users are spending more time on their mobiles to search for information. Always check on your mobile that information is easy to read and the website navigable.
4. Update your Title Tags. Meta title tags are a factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about, they appear at the top of your web browser and also as the display title in the Google Search Engine Pages.
5. Include the keyword in the image alt tag. Including the subject in image alt text is simply SEO best practice, however a closer look and you’ll find images without their alt text. There are handy SEO plugins that will automatically include the image alt text, however this does mean that the file name needs to be correct.
6. Internal Links. Another SEO best practice is including internal links on each landing page. They’re useful as they help users navigate your website and also improves website usability which is an important element to improving your Google ranking.
7. Include the subject in the URL. Reflect the category of what your page is about in your URLs.

The following is a good URL example: https://www.desketing.com.au/masign-marketing-packages/

The following is a bad URL example: http://www.example.com/title/tt4531321

Step 2. Add quality LSI related keyword terms

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) is just a technical term but it basically means that terms or keywords that are related to your keyword.

Put simply, Google will index a page and look and pick up keywords and terms that often are associated with those keywords. For example, say you’re running a Brisbane hotel business, Google will also identify other keywords they found on the page such as hotel reception, guest rooms and or hotel in Brisbane City.

Google is so much smarter than it was before, as it learns what the page’s overall topic is about and relies on LSI related keyword terms to understand the content deeper.

Step 3. Optimise Your Technical SEO

Technical SEO relates to the setup of your website and is about making your website more secure, faster, mobile friendly and easy to read for search engines. When building a website, it’s important that you have a web developer or team that understands the technical SEO aspects of building a website. Otherwise you could find yourself with a pretty website, generating very little leads for your business. Let’s make sure your next website’s Technical follows the Best SEO practises by following this checklist.

1. Ensure you have a Good URL structure includes simple short URL descriptions – this helps Google crawl and understand information easy.
2. Add Breadcrumb Menus. A breadcrumb menu is a set of link at the top or bottom of the page and helps users navigate to the previous page and hints to Google and other search engines about your website structure.
3. Add SSL. In the past SSL was only important for ecommerce website, however changes with Google, has meant that every website on the Internet should have SSL installed.
4. Optimise your website speed. Check your website speed by visiting PageSpeed Insights. This is a great tool to analyse and also let you know how you could improve your website speed. A faster website will reduce your bounce rate and also improves the usability of your website.
5. Does it make sense on mobile. We’ve said it before, but it’s so important which is why we’ve mentioned it twice. Make sure that it reads well on mobile, and the Google Ranking Gods will thank you.

Step 4.  Pillar Pages & Consistently Publishing High-Quality Content

In 2020, content will still be king. Publishing content regularly on your website, regularly tells Google and other Search Engines that they need to crawl your website. That being said, Google is certainly getting smarter and is much more demanding when it comes to the quality of content. If you haven’t heard of Pillar Pages, then today is a brand new day for you. Pillar Pages are topic pages that cover all aspects of the topic on a single page with links to other content on your website. The Pillar Page will broadly cover a topic and the articles linked to the page will address certain keywords or terms.

So why is it important?

The content benefits your Google Ranking by making it feel that the page is an authority on the topic. Pillar pages are longer than a blog and offer hyperlinked chapters to other areas of your website. As we already know, making your website easier to navigate, providing useful links and reducing your bounce rate are all elements to ranking higher on Google.

Continue to keep on top of trending topics and find the time to write quality content on the subject and then share your published content with others to boost your organic search ranking.

Interested in Digital Marketing for your business?

Get the latest digital marketing trends to boost your business.

Affiliate and Influencer Marketing

If you are working to promote your brand, influencer marketing, and affiliate marketing are both effective strategies that can be implemented as part of your overall marketing plan and budget. They may sound similar, but they serve different purposes. Most affiliates are influencers, but not all influencers are involved in affiliate marketing. What most companies will do is merge both strategies into their marketing plan as a hybrid marketing strategy to achieve your brand online goals. Read on and gain some important insights on both influencer and affiliate marketing and how you could apply them to your business.

What are Influencers and Influencer Marketing?

Influencers are socially savvy individuals that are experts in social media platforms and creating blogs. They earn from creating niche-based content within specific areas such as fashion clothing, food hunting, digital gadget etc. The concept of collaborating with these individuals and asked them to create engaging content with your customers is called influencer marketing. 

What are Affiliates and Affiliate Marketing?

An affiliate gets paid a commission from the merchant after each successful sale or leads they made for the business. The sales can be tracked by the affiliate network using a unique link. The concept of affiliate marketing is collaborating with these affiliates and converting the followers into sales. For example, Amazon Affiliate Associates is one of the well-developed affiliate marketing programs that provide opportunities to website owners and bloggers to earn commission by advertising products from Amazon.com on their sites with unique links.

What are the Differences?

The main difference between affiliate and influencer marketing is simply the channel they use and the way they get paid. Affiliate marketing focuses on direct website traffic or direct sales, while influencer marketing focuses on building a social media relationship and content creation. An affiliate gets paid based on objective performance while an influencer is often paid upfront on per project basis. 

Which one should you use for your marketing campaign?

It could be challenging to figure out which one should you choose for your marketing campaign. The two key issues that should be considered is defining your main objective as well as your marketing budget. 

#1 Define your marketing objective

Affiliates are experts in targeting specific demographics who fit your brand because they provide a link to people who will potentially click in and complete the purchase. If you looking for sales generation, this could be a better choice. Elsewise,  if you are targeting a broader audience and looking to raise brand awareness and creating engagement with your customers, then influencer marketing could be effective.  

#2 Understanding your budget

It is important to look into your planned marketing budget for your campaign. Affiliate marketing could be more expensive as they are paid per sale referred, but it could also be more profitable for the company. The costs of your influencer are dependent on the size of their followers and also the frequency of posts required by them. With influencers, you are required to pay for them upfront without any commission or guarantee on sales or offer them free services or products in exchange for social media posts.

#3 Combine affiliate-influencer into your next campaign

If your budget allows it, it is more effective to having both influencer marketing and affiliate marketing as part of an integrated marketing campaign. Some campaigns would be more effective for one section of your target audience, while an influencer might work with another section. The most important thing is to make sure that both sides are happy with the arrangement so that both online goals could be achieved and create more sales for the company. 

How do combine them?

#1 Understand your influencer

Treat your influencers as your business partner for affiliate marketing. Map out the relevant characteristics and elements of your brand and choose someone who comes from the like-minded group as your customers which they know and trust. For example, if you are in a health food business, you would probably be looking for someone that shares the fitness and health values. You will also need to research deeper about the social media platforms that the influencer used, any brands that they collaborated before, tone-of-voice they use in their social media posts and so on.

#2 Ask your influencer to share affiliate links

Because influencers receive an upfront payment the advertiser, the difficult lies in tracking the return on investment and there’s no guarantee that the business will achieve their desired campaign goals. By combining influencers into affiliate marketing, you can now manage your influencers based on their performance. In other words, you only pay them when a sale or purchase is achieved rather than just paying for plain sponsored posts. By partnering with an influencer, you are increasing the chance of conversion as people will be more interested in recommendations from them. A custom affiliate link is a commonly-used online tool that helps you to track the conversion rates from the influencers. You can ask them to share the custom links in their social media posts about your brand. You can also use a discount coupon code as an affiliate link to provide your customers a certain discount when they make a purchase with the code. 

Want to learn more about how to create an affiliate link in your campaign? Talk to a marketing specialist at Desketing to maximize your affiliate marketing strategy!

Embrace the evolution

Affiliate and influencer marketing are both beneficial tools by themselves, but they are definitely more powerful if they are implemented together. This affiliate-influencer marketing hybrid has been the recent trend as companies nowadays are more customer-centered, therefore they are looking for advocates and storytellers to engage with their customers, and strengthen a long term relationship, rather than just creating a one-off lead. In this case, having social leaders that able to inspire their followers would be an integral component of a successful affiliate campaign. 

Want to learn more about how to utilize affiliate and influencer marketing for your business? Talk to a digital marketing agency like Desketing to safeguard your competitive edge!

Interested in Influencer Marketing for your business?

Get the latest marketing trends to boost your business.

Why Should You Care About Email Automation?

Email automation is a marketer’s dream. Email automation allows you to engage with your audience and increase repeat patronage, without having to do much at all. Let’s take a look at the benefits up email automation for your business and how to make it effective for your business.

What is email automation?

Email Automation is simply put, a very easy system of setting up emails to be sent off automatically when they are triggered by certain behaviour. Triggers include when a customer signs up to your email newsletter, when they purchase a product, their birthday and or when they haven’t been to your store in a few weeks. Email automation can also include a flow of emails that occur when they are triggered for example, after signing up to a newsletter.

What are the different types of email automation to increase customer engagement?
While the list does feel endless, if there’s a customer behaviour and you can track it, then there’s email automation for it. Here’s a list of our most popular examples:

• Welcome Emails
• Cart Abandonment
• Surveys
• Re-engagement emails after a period of non-activity
• Birthday emails
• Registering for an event
• Reminders

What are the benefits of email automation?

#1 Less time consuming

Once you have email automation set up you’ll notice how easy and also how much time it will save you. It’s less time consuming than manually creating and sending an email.

#2 You can personalise the emails

Personalisation is a current marketing buzzword and in this case, it’s about personally tailoring the email so that its relevant to the reader. Personalisation is easy as long as you have all the data there. Capture the information you need such as name, and even birthday when they sign up. Personalisation also helps to make it feel less like spam.

#3 The emails are timed

As we mentioned before. Email automation works when they are triggered by certain behaviour. Timed email is advantageous in the case for abandoned carts. For example, you might want to set up an email that reminds the customer of the abandoned products maybe 6 hours after they left your website.

#4 Nurture your customers through to sales

Email automation is an easy way to nurture your customers through sales and support cycles. While you don’t want to bombard anyone with spam, as long as your content is thoughtful, considered and relevant, then email nurturing could be a great way to upsell, introduce a new product or advise of a service or product they might not be aware of.

#5 Email automation drives sales for your business

Did you know that emails are opened more frequently from automated emails? It’s true! It’s most likely because of the high level of personalisation and hyper relevancy of emails that gets customers excited. A high open rate will drive more visits to your store and online business and will, in turn, generate revenue.

#6 It keeps your customers engaged

Have you heard of the old business saying of 80/20, where 20% of your customers produce 80% of sales? Mine your customers and have a look at your sales data. Email automation can help to engage with your top 20% and help you introduce new products or services to them. It can also help you to re-engage with customers that have been MIA.

#7 Create high levels of brand recognition

Let’s think about all the top brands in the world, Google, Apple, Facebook, while they all have amazing products, what they all do really well is, brand their products. If there is a branding opportunity, take it! Use email automation to create higher levels of brand recognition and to help customers understand the value of your product. Spent a week at a conference? Spent a couple of weeks researching linen fabric in Bali? Tell your audience about it, because it holds value.

Interested in Digital Marketing for your business?

Get the latest digital marketing trends to boost your business.

Did you ever notice how voice search has become a part of our everyday life? It is predicted by 2020, that half of all online searches will be made through voice search. Of those searches, 30% will be made using a device without a screen. This means that people have changed their behavior on how they used to type a search query. So, the question is will there be any changes to your current SEO strategy? The answer is yes. Read on as we will tell you the reason why and give you some useful tips on how to optimize your website using voice search.

What is Voice Search?

Voice search allows users to speak into a mobile or computer or device (smart speakers) to search for information. If you’ve ever said, “hey Siri, hey Google or hey Alexa”, then chances are, you were actively using voice search to find information, for example, to find a restaurant, to find out if it’s raining on the weekend or directions to a friend’s house. Recent stats show that 41% of adults use voice search daily, 20% of Google mobile queries are voice searches and voice search has grown 35x since 2008.

Voice Search and Smart Speakers Marketing

So, what is driving the popularity of Voice Search? Simply put it’s easier to speak than to type. An average person can type around 40 words per minute but can speak around 150 words per minute. This is the reason why companies like Amazon and Google focused on developing smart speakers so that they could improve user experiences for search.

The other driver behind voice search is that it’s both convenient and perfect for mobile searches. It’s a fact that nearly 60% of mobile searchers use voice search at some point. The popularity of smart speakers will no doubt lead to both and homes and offices having smart speakers to control other devices such as lights, televisions and even the temperature.

Eventually, with the rise of demand and availability of a wider selection of smart speakers will lead to the products becoming more affordable. Woolworths recently began surprising their online customers with a free Google Home Mini when they purchased their groceries online. But there is a marketing trick unbeknownst to their customers. It’s designed to encourage Woolworths’ customers to add items to their Woolworths shopping list via voice through Google Home.

How does it work?

Well, Google has introduced Actions on Google which allows brands to create their own software to extend the functionality of the Google Assistant. Actions are equivalent to apps for mobile devices in the voice-assistant world. When a user gives a voice request, speech recognition would connect the request with the most relevant Action and activate it.

To capitalize on voice search, smart speakers’ companies have been working hard on refining the accuracy of their voice recognition. Google has an accuracy of 95% and China’s iFlytek has a speech recognition system with an accuracy rate of 98%. Their system has translation function that not only able to translate English to Mandarin, but also Mandarin to other different languages such as Korean, Japanese and other Chinese dialects. They are working on achieving 99% accuracy in the next three years.

This global trend to perfect voice technology shows that marketers or business owners should regularly fine-tune their SEO strategy to optimize for voice search. Here are some of our best tips to optimize your website for voice search:

#1 Consider User Intent

Most people who used voice search are most likely were looking for a very specific piece of information, for example, the address or opening hours of a store, the price of a specific product or whether a business is offering a specific type of service. Therefore, it is substantial to answer those questions pre-emptively in your website content.

User intent includes How-to guides, for example, someone could ask, how do I change a light bulb? And this may be linked to an article provided by a lighting company.

Don’t stop there, consider optimizing your FAQ page or add an FAQ page to your website, so that Google can present your content when people do a search.

#2 Target and Bid on Long-Tail Keywords

As the voice queries are getting more specific, long-tail keywords may work better for your website optimization. By utilizing conversational keywords and phrases, you will stand a higher chance of ranking for these enquires and appearing prominently in search results.

For owners who invest in Google Ads, long-tail keywords are often significantly cheaper and boost much better click-through rates than shorter queries.

#3 Update your Google My Business Listing

22% of voice search queries are looking for location-based content. Therefore, it is important to concentrate on local searches while investing in voice search marketing.

Firstly, you need to make sure your business is updated on Google My Business. The more current the information in your Google My Business listing is, the more useful it will be for your business. You can even update information such as whether parking is available at your business location.

#4 Optimize Ad Campaigns for ‘Near Me’ Searches

AdWords’ location extension and Local Search Ads in Google Maps are the powerful techniques that you should consider, and they ensure your ads are being displayed to those high-motivated on-the-go shoppers.

This is crucially important if you want to stand out in those strongly commercial ‘near me’ searches and it can help drive more foot traffic to your store or location.

As we can see, smart speakers are quickly becoming integrated into our everyday lifestyle and will no doubt become a significant mainstream of advertising in the future. Therefore, it is important to start now in formalizing a good SEO and marketing strategy for voice-based search in order to ensure your business is discoverable in the next five years.

Want to learn more about utilizing voice search as your competitive advantage? Join us in our upcoming event on 4th July 2019 as we are going to discuss the future of Voice Search and Smart Speakers. Book your ticket now

Want to learn more about utilizing voice search for your business? Get in contact with Desketing for a free consultation.

Interested in Digital Marketing for your business?

Get the latest digital marketing trends to boost your business.

Let’s be honest there are some emails you dread to read, such as your bank statement telling you that you’ve spent too much on Ubereats this month. Then there are emails that we get excited about, like an email from your favourite store, telling you that you’ve worked too hard and it’s time to treat yourself on a new golf club or new pair of shoes.

An email database essentially is a direct lifeline to your customer database. So why not leverage the power of email marketing to communicate with them regularly on your products and services. Keep them updated with information that will engage with them, keep your business top of mind and also increase revenue for your business.

Get started on growing your customer database and in no time soon, you’ll have hundreds of customers waiting to receive your email. Check out our tips below on how to grow your email database.

Offer something free but of value

We all love getting something free and so will your customers. Encourage them to sign up to your email newsletter by providing their email address in order to download it. It could be a discount on their first order, or it could be access to an online resource or tool.

For example, Bugden Legal created a series of Tool Kits regarding the legal challenges for body corporate issues on their website. To gain access to this resource, visitors would need to enter their email address to receive an access code, which is then displayed on the screen and also sent to them via email.

Create a competition

I enter online competitions almost every week. Anything from a free holiday to the Greek Islands to a free meal at a really good restaurant. Online competitions are a brilliant way to increase your email database by creating a campaign to host a free giveaway in exchange for contact information.

Take the example of Let’s Indulge that created a Spring Sweepstakes competition encouraging their website and store visitors to sign up online and in exchange be in the running to win free massages. Through this campaign, they were able to increase their email database and successfully reach new customers.

Spread the word through social media

Create traction for your campaign by promoting the competition through all your online media channels. Furthermore, if you have a storefront, put together in-store print materials to promote traffic to your store and to your website.

Use an Ipad/tablet for easy email subscription

Keep it easy for your customers by implementing an email form on your Ipad/tablet. This is perfect for storefronts and allows customers to fill in their details while you process their order at the register. Make sure that you offer an incentive, like a 5% discount or bonus to get them to fill their details.

Email signup on an Ipad/tablet is genius because their details will automatically be sent to your email database and also there’s a less chance that the email address will be input incorrectly into the system. Because what’s the point of growing your email database if the email address is incorrect.

Offer email subscription on your website

Don’t make it difficult for your website visitors to find out where they can subscribe to your email newsletter. Create offers linked to your email subscription and display it across your website on your most visited website pages. These pages include the contact us page, about us and your home landing page.

Write blogs that readers can subscribe to

If you haven’t started writing blogs, then you really should start. Blogs are the easiest and most authentic way to help increase your ranking on search engines (Google) and to collect email subscribers.

Collect emails from events and trade shows

Create worthwhile events, meetups, seminars and even conferences to keep your brand front and centre. Events are a great way to demonstrate your skills, show off your products, provide demonstrations and generate sales. The best part is that you can collect their emails at registration.

Want to learn more about growing your email marketing list? Get in contact with Desketing for a free consultation.

Interested in Digital Marketing for your business?

Get the latest digital marketing trends to boost your business.

7 Things to Include Before Building a New Website

If you’re sitting in front of your website and thinking that it’s probably about time to give your website a much needed redesign, then you’re not alone. There are plenty of businesses that designed their website initially without putting too much thought into the customer experience and the design. Just like updating your brand, you should also consider updating your online presence as it will benefit your business by providing trust, improving your credibility and strengthening your online brand awareness.

Here are our top tips to consider before building a New Website.

1. Newsletter Signup

Adding a sign-up form to your website is a great way to increase your customer database. Customers that love your brand and your products and services will want to be in the know for the special promotions, new releases and special events. Also developing your customer database, means that you have direct access to your target audience to advertise promotions to.

2. Clear & Beautiful Images

Always use high quality and professional images for your website to show off your products. It’s a fine line where you want make sure that your website images will download quickly and won’t impact your website speed, but you also don’t want images that are pixelated. Using photoshop, you can easily set the pixel size for your website and also amend the resolution of the image. Still not sure, then get in contact with a graphic designer to help you.

3. Testimonials

Get in contact with your customers to find out if they will provide a testimonial from you. The best time to grab their testimonial is straight after they have used your product or service. It doesn’t need to be long, but try to get them to mention the name of the product and service they purchased and their experience. You can also use testimonials from Facebook or from Google Reviews for your website. Testimonials are an extremely powerful way to add credibility and build trust for your brand, products and or services and will often be a driving force to converting customers when they’re sitting on the fence about a product or service.

4. Your business’s contact details

If you have business, that involves a fair amount of customer contact, for example a medical clinic, restaurant or hotel then it’s fairly important that your contact details particularly email and phone number are easy to find and clear to read. For example you may want to consider placing the contact number of your business in the navigation header design of your website. Adding a Google map plugin with a location marker on your contact us page, will help customers in finding your business. Along with this, if you’re business is located in a shopping centre, make sure that you give clear instructions on where they can find you. You can also upload images of your storefront to Google My Business, so they know what your business looks like from the outside.

5. Blogs and News to Improve Website SEO

Take your SEO up a notch by regularly writing a news article or blog about one of your products or services. Blogs are a form of inbound marketing, which means it’s content that draws people to your website. Writing more on products or services add credibility and trust to your brand and also positions your business or yourself as an authority on that topic which leads to more people trusting your products and more likely to purchase your products and or services. In terms of SEO, make sure that your articles are long form articles and also include keywords or terms that your customers would be searching for.

6. Check mobile friendliness on your website

Mobile optimisation is about ensuring that visitors that access your website have an optimised experience while using that device. Every year, an increasing amount of people are using their mobile devices more often to access information. So it’s no surprise here that mobile optimisation is a the top of the list when it comes to designing and building a new website.

Site design for a mobile is important, particularly for websites that have page banners, customers need to be able to clearly read the information no matter what device they are using. Our top tips for mobile site design, include not using flash, no pop ups and design for a fat finger for a better touch screen experience.

7. Use Colour Psychology

Using the colour red on your website is a powerful way to draw the eyes attention to a price or a sale. Red is synonymous for being associated with a sale, which in turn to most consumers means value. So why not create attention to products by changing the price to red or increasing the font size so that its clear to the site visitor. Some websites use green for their add to cart buttons, as green is associated as being safe and ready to go. Depending on your site design, colour can play a special part in the customer experience.

Keep up to date with our latest news

The advance of the internet has strongly impacted the way how property developers reach potential home buyers. Home buyers nowadays use the internet as the medium to research and compare for their home or investment. Therefore, it is vital for property developers to integrate digital marketing strategies into their property marketing campaigns to effectively capture home buyers attention and trigger their most inspired emotions to engage with you.

Here are 4 digital marketing tips for your property marketing strategies.

#1 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Make your property website stand out

The property industry is an extremely competitive market, your property website must be attractive and easy to find. Just like a display house with the best design and layout. Showing beneath competitors in a search result is a huge disadvantage for advertising your property development project. Identify the most commonly searched keywords to integrate into your property website. With a few tweaks to your property website, you could skyrocket your website traffic and substantially improve lead generation. The higher you rank on the search result, the more credibility you communicate to your home buyers.

We can also generate quality content to attract potential home buyers to your property website. For example, posting intriguing blog topics such as “Promising Investment Areas in Brisbane” or “What are the Invisible Traps of Purchasing Property” regularly can grab home buyers’ attention and keep them engaged. Search engines will acknowledge the traffic and grant your property website a higher rank on their search results.

Want to learn more about how to utilize SEO for your property website? Talk to a property marketing agency like Desketing to safeguard your competitive edge!

#2 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Expand the visibility of your property website

Besides SEO, Search Engine Marketing is put simply paid advertising on search engines and it is also a way to reach more potential home buyers.

Utilize your property website as the landing page, and you can create search or display Google AdWords campaign to promote certain property projects. The advantage of SEM is that it is highly flexible. You can decide the budget you wish to spend, you can decide when to start or pause the campaign, you can even allocate your budget strategically on different platforms to maximize your click-through-rate and conversion rate. SEM reports also provides insights into customer behaviour, giving you almost anything you wish to know about home buyers. The beauty of this is that it allows you to adjust your campaign according to the information you gathered. For example, if you identify that most of the clicks came from mobile devices, you might want to increase the bet on mobile so that your ad has a higher chance of standing out.

With years of experiences in helping property developers, we have a specific set of skills in identifying some popular keywords for property AdWords campaigns, as well as the technique to efficiently develop an AdWords campaign that produces significant results and conversion.

#3 Smart property website design – capture customer data

Say you did a good job at SEO / SEM and you appeared at the top of the search result, what is the next step to get your customers to engage with your brand and leave their information? The answer is simple, you need an engaging property website design. Besides providing information about your property projects, your property website design should also focus on another important element – Encourage home buyers to leave their contact details.

Provide information in a smart way
Home buyers who enter your property webpage desire for information about your projects. Make sure you give it to them in a smart way. Create a section in your property website design that requires viewers to enter their contact details for the exchange of information. The information can be a brochure for your new property project.

Besides offering information about your new project, you can also add value to your property website by giving home buyers something they are interested in. This can be an e-book regarding property trends, or even a beautifully designed brochure that highlights your project portfolio.

Check out the property website design for Ormi Terrace.

Avoid text heavy property website design
Property website design is all about capturing home buyers’ eyes with attractive images. Make sure the copy is succinct and relevant to the home buyers. The headline should grab the home buyers’ attention the moment they enter your property website. The body should be simple and to the point. If you are promoting a sale, make sure the copy communicates a sense of urgency. Also, remember to put a Call-to-Action (CTA) in your property website design to encourage conversion.

Simple, but attracting across different platforms
Amazing property photos are eye-catching to home buyers. However, make sure the images are not oversized, as it will slow down the loading speed of your property website. Also, as 89 percent of new home buyers are using mobile devices during the home buying process, remember to develop a mobile-friendly property landing page so you won’t lose these leads.

#4 Email marketing – Engage your potential home buyers

What is the first thing your potential home buyers do when they go to work every morning? The answer is simple, open their emails. Electronic direct mail (EDM) is vital in property marketing, as the average open rate for real-estate based emails is more than 20%. The high conversion rate comes with only a minor cost compared to other property marketing channels. Also, it allows you to send out EDM to the customer database that you acquired from the property website.

EDM is also an ideal way to promote your content, such as blogs or your new property projects. However, avoid making your EDMs too much about sales. You have to ask yourself how do the emails benefit your home buyers. Make it engaging and personal, use subject lines that are less spammy and address home buyers personally.

Once you build a sizeable email database, you can start several automated email campaigns regarding different information about your new project development. The trick of sending out automated EDM is to send out multiple emails featuring different topics at different times. As people nowadays spend only limited time on one email, this avoids cramming your EDM with too much information in one single email. In addition, this reminds home buyers about your project from time to time and further keeps them engaged.

The first EDM could include the design and layout of the project. Once home buyers have a bit of picture about the project, you can then send out your second EDM that features lifestyle and shops around your project, let them imagine what it will be like to live in the area and enjoy all the benefits around their new dream home. You can make your project more desirable by sending out your third EDM, which emphasises the convenient transportation around the area, such as the nearby train/bus stations or the accessibility to Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast highways. Finally, send out EDM that talks about investment numbers such as annual growth or rental yield to further convince home buyers that purchasing your project is one of the smartest decisions they ever made.

Never underestimate these emails, as they have high open and click-through rates because home buyers are interested in your project and want to learn more about it.

Want to build your customer database and send out results-driven EDMs? Engage with an experienced digital property marketing agency like Desketing to help you with property marketing! Contact us today.

Keep up to date with our latest news

A solid marketing strategy is critical when attracting new customers, loyalty, and branding for any industry. The hospitality industry is no exception. Desketing knows it is important to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends to help drive results by using clever design and strategic marketing tactics so we’ve decided to give you some trends in hospitality marketing.

Trend 1 – Social Media

A top trend that you can find in hospitality marketing is the effective use of social media. When used efficiently social media can be a great tool to gain insight from consumers whilst also allowing you to target specific people. In recent research, it has been shown that 97% of millennials share travel pictures and videos on social media and that 89% plan travel activities based on the content shared (The Drum, 2018).  It has been suggested that people are inspired by the opinions of others, with 70% of Americans say they look at reviews before making a purchase (The Drum, 2018). It is important that the hospitality industry uses this to their advantage. An example would be by sharing user-generated content, monitoring comments and hashtags and pinpointing locations through user check-ins. The information gathered can help gain insights on what customers want to see and the experience they want. This also creates brand awareness as well as connects the consumer to the content.

Trend 2 – Videos

If you haven’t already guessed, content is key. Content must be relevant, interesting and relatable. In recent times, it has become apparent that photo content is decreasing and short video interactions are increasing, it has been estimated that 80% of internet traffic will be video content in 2019 (thatagency.com, 2018). This, however, is an amazing opportunity as videos can be an effective way to interact with customers whilst. 52% of marketers say video develop and push brand awareness (Campaignmonitor.com, 2018).

Trend 3 – SEO Driven

As technology is changing, so is the way that consumers are searching for things. It is important to have an appropriate approach to the content that is being released. A current trend is to include long tail keywords or phrases (3 or more words) in your SEO strategy (Net Affinity, 2018). This is a cost-effective way to direct quality traffic to your website. SEO should also have voice search capabilities where possible. Voice search is becoming popular with 40% of adults now using this feature at least once a day (Net Affinity, 2018).

Trend 4 – Mobile Is A Must

Having a mobile-friendly website is a must for any industry, not just the hospitality industry. With society always on the run, it is important to have information at your disposal whenever you need it. Research shows that mobiles contributed 94% of year on year growth in e-commerce traffic in 2017(thatagency.com, 2018). The hospitality industry has such a potential when it comes to mobile-friendly use. Some of these include booking online, check in and itinerary updates which could also be developed into a loyalty app.

Trend 5 – Websites

When in the Hospitality Industry, it is vital to have a strong website and booking systems available. Ideally, a website with a booking agent that is easy to navigate contains correct information and is regularly updated is essential. Direct traffic is a result of a working system, however, correct hospitality marketing and promotions must be completed to drive direct traffic to your website.

Trend 6 – Personalisation

Personalisation is a key trend found in hospitality marketing. Simple things such as Personalising emails or geo-targeting allowing the business to send relevant offers based on location can make a huge impact.  Personalisation does not need to be obvious and can remain valuable even when the consumer is unaware of its presence (Econsultancy, 2018). It is important to remain true to your brand. There’s nothing worse than blending in with the competition. Guests appreciate when a company is authentic and often this reels the guests in by the experiences you offer.

We hope you have enjoyed our insights on trends that are happening in the hospitality marketing.  If you would know to know more, Desketing offers a range of Hospitality marketing. We can help you combat online booking agencies and discover how to attract more visitors and increase direct bookings for your hotel or restaurant through clever design and strategic marketing tactics. Contact us now!

You can speak to a Desketing design and marketing specialist by
calling 07 3220 3962 or request a callback.

Keep up to date with our latest news

References
Blog.thatagency.com. (2018). 8 Hotel Marketing Trends for 2018. [online] Available at: https://blog.thatagency.com/hotel-marketing-trends-2018 [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].

Campaignmonitor.com. (2018). 7 Travel & Hospitality Marketing Trends You Need to Know. [online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2017/07/7-travel-hospitality-marketing-trends-you-need-to-know/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].

Econsultancy. (2018). How six travel & hospitality brands use personalisation to enhance the customer experience. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/69207-how-six-travel-hospitality-brands-use-personalisation-to-enhance-the-customer-experience [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].

Net Affinity Blog. (2018). 18 Hotel Marketing Trends For 2018 – Net Affinity Blog. [online] Available at: https://blog.netaffinity.com/infographic-18-hotel-marketing-trends-2018/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].

The Drum. (2018). Why social media matters more than ever to hospitality marketing. [online] Available at: http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/08/04/why-social-media-matters-more-ever-hospitality-marketing [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].