According to research (and statistics!), regularly posting articles to a blog allows you to attract new customers, build brand awareness, and inspire more prospects to buy from you. Not to mention the SEO benefits, the average blog attracts 55% more visitors and gets indexed 434% more by search engines than a traditional website, giving you exposure like never before.

Ok, so it’s clearly a good idea to ‘blog’ but what exactly does that mean and how can you do it without upsetting your bank manager?

A blog – blend of the term ‘web log’ – is a type of website or part of a website that contains regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video on a given subject or subjects.

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs, as is the ability to include links to other blogs, web pages and other online content, all of which adds to the attractiveness for search engines.

Blogging for free?
There are several blogging sites such as Blogger.com (part of planet Google) and WordPress.com where you can blog for free, and several million people do, although there are restrictions on the type of content that can be published as well a certain inflexibility on the look and feel (known as a theme) and what plugins (additional functionality modules) that can be added.

For this reason, the free sites are generally used by new, amateur and non-commercial bloggers.

Blogging almost for free?
Some hosting packages (including all hosting supplied by Kennetiq) include the ability to add specialist blogging software to an existing site for nothing more than a setup fee, or for free if you are technically minded enough to do the setup yourself.

The main advantage of running your own blog as part of your own site is that you are free to publish whatever content you wish (as long as it’s legal!), you can design the blog to look the way you want and you can add as many plugins as you see fit. This site (The Kennetiq blog) is an example of a simple blog running as an ‘add-on’ to an existing site – although we do have plans for a complete site redevelopment.

(Re)Building your site with blogging software.
Software used to manage your blog such as WordPress (the same software used to run WordPress.com but without the restrictions) can also be used to manage complete sites with it’s  comprehensive content management system (CMS).

The end result is a web site that looks exactly how you want it to, with content, navigation and ‘widgets’ that can be easily maintained and updated and seamlessly includes a fully integrated blog with all the functionality that comes with it. An example of a reasonably complex but fully integrated blogging site can be seen at: www.fixme.org.uk

Clearly this is the more expensive option (more expensive than free or nearly free anyway…), but it should also be the most effective and efficient solution and if you were already looking at a having a new site built or redesigning an old one, then why not include a blog from the outset so the whole site can benefit from the latest in blogging software developments and built in CMS.

Blogging and social media
Another key question I am now regularly asked is how to integrate social media into web sites and the answer relates back to having your own blog.

So what’s stopping you? For more information, help or advice about setting up a blog for your business, simply get in touch.

Anyone unfortunate enough to fall for one of these schemes will at best find themselves a few pounds worse off and the owner of a domain or domains that they don’t need, don’t want or are no use to them, but at worse could find that they have inadvertently transferred their genuine domain to a new domain registrar who can now charge what they want to maintain or renew it, or worse still, could have lost their domain completely only to find it is now being used for less respectable purposes with no way to get it back.

The following are some tips that will help you avoid falling for any of these scams and keeping your well earned cash and your domains exactly where they belong.

1. NEVER agree to pay a company that you have never heard of before, no matter what they suggest might happen.
2. Only the company that originally registered a domain for you can action the renewal – unless you have agreed to it being transferred.
3. .com domains can be registered or renewed for 1-10 years at a time, .co.uk domains can ONLY be registered or renewed for 2 years at a time.
4. Searches for available domains cannot be tracked, new domains are registered instantly, no other company is informed of the registration and no-one can intervene with the registration process.
5. Companies that sell domain names by telesales are almost always scammers.
6. A registration company is not obliged to check trademarks and company names before agreeing to register any domain – this is the registrant’s responsibility
7. It is not possible to “earmark” or reserve a domain name.
8. No genuine company would take an order from a prospective customer for some domain names and then ring around the competition to see if they want to buy them first.
9. Look at the domain name being offered for renewal very carefully, scanners often use similar looking domain names with very slight differences in spelling or extensions (.com .co.uk etc)
10. If in doubt, check them out! Ask someone you know and who knows about domains, or simply contact the person or organisation who deals with your domains, web site or email. Failing that, contact Kennetiq, we’re happy to help!

On a related subject but not specific to domains, the volume of spoof and phishing emails appears to be steadily increasing and several of the tips listed above are equally as valid when dealing with these.

The most important thing to remember is that NO bank or building society will ever ask you to “confirm you account details” via email. If in doubt simply call your bank to check.

Another tip is to look very carefully at the links included in the email. A giveaway that it is SPAM is if the links don’t match with the company who allegedly sent the email. Also, most email software will display the actual web address when a user moves their mouse over the link (without actually clicking), so compare this ‘actual’ address with the one included in the email and if they don’t match then be suspicious.

Conventional Christmas cards are great, but with second class postage now at 32p (25p with a RM franking account), email can be a much more cost effective solution.

For a similar or less cost to printing your normal cards you could have your own Christmas e-card customised with your company logo and festive message then sent to all of your contacts by email for as little as 2p each – a tiny fraction of the cost of sending a  conventional card by post.

Alternatively, you could go a step further and send a humorously animated e-card, e-game, e-song, or thanks to our friends at Ichthus Video, your very own Christmas video and still save money.

For more details on all of our Christmas e-mail offers and promotions drop us a line or go to: www.kennetiq.com/christmas

Here we go then, the most important factors to consider when contemplating an email marketing campaign (or newsletter) are as follows:

Content and relevance
Do you have some information or news that you can write about AND that will be useful or interesting to your subscribers?

If you don’t, then you might be better off not sending anything, as the likely result will be a queue of unsubscribers meaning that all future newsletters will have a lower readership whether they contain useful information or not. To combat this the answer is simply to plan ahead – something that I failed to do effectively this time, but will definitely do going forward. Map out the next 3, 6 or even 12 months with ideas for content to give yourself plenty of time to write it. If you know what you want to write about but don’t have the time, maybe you could ask someone else to write it for you, or hire a copywriter to help you. If you don’t know what you want to write about you can’t do anything. Some of my clients cherry pick relevant news articles from various news sites and add their own comments – as long as the content is relevant to the audience, it doesn’t really matter where it comes from (providing the appropriate bibliography is included where necessary). The most important thing in all this is RELEVANCE, the more relevant the content is then the higher the open and click through rates will be.

Mailing lists and the law
Do you have a list of email addresses (and other contact info) for clients, prospects and/or contacts that you have permission to send emails to?

This might sound like a rather strange or obvious question, but just because you have someone’s email address it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have their permission to send them an email. In a B2B environment the permission is generally inferred when someone hands you their business card or contact info in any way, however B2C email marketing has tougher and more defined rules governing who (and how) you are allowed to email as outlined in the The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC) Directive 2003. That said, as a B2B organisation, while you are within the rules legally, you still don’t want your clients, prospects or contacts to consider you a ‘spammer’ as your reputation will suffer not just your unsubscribe rate.

Therefore to ensure that you always stay within the law with email marketing, start off by following these few simple rules:

1. Always identify yourself (as the sender) and include your company contact and address information in your emails. For Ltd companies you should also include your company registration number and registered address and it is actually a legal requirement to include these things on ALL communications that you send out including regular day to day emails and your web site.
2. Always give clear instructions for how recipients can be removed from your mailing lists. An ‘unsubscribe’ link is the most effective, failing that replying to an email with “remove” (or similar) as a subject is also fine, providing that you also have a defined process to deal with all responses and unsubscribe requests.
3. Maintain a list of unsubscribers (also known as a blocklist) so that you ensure that anyone who unsubscribes doesn’t get added back into your mailing lists at a future date when you update you mailing lists with new contacts.

Tracking & Return On Investment (ROI)
What use is an email marketing campaign if you don’t know how many were delivered, how many have been opened and how many clicks or how much revenue has been produced?

Hopefully everyone will agree that every piece of email marketing that you send needs to include a call to action. This can take many forms, but when all is said and done you need to know how effective your campaign/newsletter has been and the only way to work this out effectively is to count the number of responses and/or sales that have resulted. If your call to action is to place an order or contact you by telephone then the person answering the telephone needs to ask the right questions and count the number of calls (and sales values) for the campaign. If your call to action is to click on a link then most email marketing solutions will track this for you. If you know the amount of revenue a campaign has produced and the total cost of the campaign then you can easily calculate the ROI and can instantly see if the campaign was worthwhile. ROI is clearly less relevant for email newsletters so you should replace revenue with ‘leads’ or ‘visits to your website’ and calculate the cost per lead/visit in the same way. If you also know your conversion rates from leads to sales or visits to sales then you can also calculate ROI this way.

How do I send it?
The simple answer to this is YOU don’t, or at least don’t send it yourself using conventional email tools (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird etc etc.), instead have a professional take care of it for you to ensure that it complies with the latest regulations and you benefit from the expertise available to get the most from your campaign. At the very least you should use a professional email marketing solution (there are literally hundreds to choose from) to do the sending remotely.

The reasons for this are straight forward, if you send it yourself using Outlook (or similar):

1. You won’t benefit from ANY of the automated tracking provided by most (if not all) professional solutions. You will therefore not only be unable to calculate your ROI, but you will not even know how many of your emails have been delivered, let alone opened, read or how many clicks have resulted.
2. You won’t be able to personalise individual emails (unless you use the Outlook email merge tool)
   a) A common trick is to include all recipient addresses in the bcc field; however this simply increases the chances of your emails being blocked by recipients spam filters.
   b) Using Outlook Email Merge (similar to ‘mail merge’ but for email) will lock up the users computer for the time it takes to create the individual emails and send them. This could be several hours that they are unable to use their computer depending on the size of the mailing list.
3. You risk your address, domain or mailserver IP address being added to a blacklist of spammers (RBL) resulting in ALL of your email (ie not just your campaign emails but ALL emails that you send) potentially being blocked by spam filters, you will also ‘annoy’ your broadband provider as it could affect their other customers.
4. All responses and unsubscribe requests will need to be handled manually which takes time, where most professional solutions deal with them automatically and maintain your blocklist.

The main difference between using a professional and using a DIY professional solution is one of cost versus time, as well as a bit of additional knowledge or training. As often the case, if you put a value on your time then the actual cost of a DIY solution will likely be more than hiring a professional to do it for you.

And now for the sales pitch… Kennetiq provides email marketing services to clients at any level. A flat rate fee for one-off mailings based on list size, a DIY solution for clients to manage campaigns themselves, a fully managed ‘pro’ solution for clients who want someone else to do it for them and anything in-between, all at competitive prices.
More: www.kennetiq.com/webservices/emailings.htm

While most of these devices are incredibly easy to setup and connect to existing email solutions, a question I am increasingly asked is “How do I synchronise my phone/device with my computer?” – connecting with a cable will synchronise email settings but not email itself.

The issue in this case is not how to use the device, but how to get the best from a combined phone/computer setup. In most cases, simply connecting your new device to your existing setup only creates a duplicate copy of your emails on another device meaning that you now have to spend more time reading through, deleting and filing emails on multiple devices.

The answer is surprisingly simple and although there will be a monthly or annual cost involved, this is more than outweighed by benefits gained over and above having a fully synchronised email setup.

The solution is to use a ‘hosted’ email service that maintains a copy of ALL of your email on a remote server so that you can connect and view the latest version of everything on whatever device you choose. Any changes made on any of your devices get relayed back to the server and ultimately pushed to all other device when you later connect with that.

Aside from everything being updated remotely and kept fully synchronised, you will also benefit from:

• Increased data security: all of your data will be fully backed up on the server in case any of your devices get lost, stolen or simply go wrong.
• Increased access: the server is part of a large data centre and your data can be accesses at any time, from any where using any internet enabled device.
• Increased productivity: not only are all of your devices synchronised saving you time, you can also access shared email, calendar and contact info with colleagues.

And the cost? Well it depends on your specific requirements as some devices cost more to connect, but the cost will likely be between £5 and £20 per user per month.

In my opinion, worth it for the constant backup of all email data alone, how much would you pay to guarantee you never lose your email…

Kennetiq offers a number of email solutions including a fully ‘hosted’ solution, contact us for more information.

We will periodically post news, articles and information on this site that is of relevance to Kennetiq’s clients and customers, or in relation to the products and services that Kennetiq provides.

Thank you for visiting!