In today’s fast changing world, customers look first to the Internet when choosing a particular product or service. A well designed, professional website is your first chance to attract these new customers. Your website provides the opportunity to strengthen your relationship with existing customers by providing them with professional looking, updated information they can use 24/7.

Remember that old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a great first impression”?

The number one online mistake we see businesses making today, is not keeping the content and design of their websites updated.

If you are like many businesses you spend lots of time and money building your website. You announce the availability of your site to your customers with lots of fanfare, and then… you return to the day to day challenges of running your businesses.

All too often the website is forgotten or at best made a secondary priority. Unfortunately, the Internet changes on a daily basis and websites that aren’t kept up-to-date quickly become stagnant and unprofessional by today’s standards.

Suddenly you find yourself with an outdated website which potential customers are using to determine whether or not to do business with you. Search engines, including Google, rank sites with stagnant content lower than equivalent sites with updated information. Lower rankings mean less website traffic and less traffic means fewer sales for your business.

If you haven’t updated the “look & feel” of your website in the past couple of years or if the content hasn’t changed recently… you’re probably missing that chance to make a great first impression.

If it’s been a while since you’ve updated your website give us a call. Tempest can help you make that great first impression with cost-effective solutions that can increase traffic, enhance customer relationships and improve your bottom line.

If you don’t currently have a website or an effective email marketing strategy we can help with that too! Drop us an email or give us a call today. We would love the chance to earn your business.

Above everything your email newsletters/mass mailings must be CAN-SPAM Act compliant. Not only is it the law, but following the spirit of CAN-SPAM can result in a more successful email campaign.

The Subject field should be specific and appropriate. Do not try to use misleading subject lines. It will only result in unhappy customers. Don’t Have the “From” field be listed as an email address, but rather your Name or business name. If you are offering a special deal or discount, include that information in the subject. Everyone gets a lot of email messages and a large percent of them are SPAM messages. Tell your customers why your message is not spam and why they should read further.

Get right to the point of your message – don’t make everyone dig through you message to find the purpose of the email. They won’t do it. If you don’t grab their attention in the first glance and give them the basic information on your message, they will hit the delete key and move on. If you provide them with the critical information with a clear and concise message, they are more likely to continue to read.

One of the most necessary items in an email marketing campaign is often the most overlooked. It is the “Call to Action”. You must specifically ask the customer to do something – Click here to read more, Sign up here, Order here. If you don’t ask for some positive action, the customer won’t know what you want them to do and will move on.

Using an Email Service (ESP) Provider like Constant Contact can ensure that your email messages are CAN-SPAM compliant. The wizards and templates can also assist you in following some of the basic “best practices” to ensure your customers take full advantage of your email marketing. They also provide wonderful reporting tools to evaluate the success of your email marketing campaign.

Of course, the best measure of your campaign is sales or conversions, but the Constant Contact reporting tools can even assist in determining the click-through to purchase results.

Using common sense marketing, technology and a few basic steps will make your next email marketing campaign a rousing success and take your business ahead of your competitors.

Legally this is what you need to do to comply:

• Unsubscribe. All your email distributions must provide a simple and easy method to unsubscribe to your list. You must comply with any unsubscribe request within 10 days.
• Not Sharing: You cannot share any email address that has requested to be unsubscribed.
• Harvesting: You cannot harvest email addresses from external sources and you cannot randomly generate email addresses.
• Disclosure: If you are sending an email message of a commercial nature that is unsolicited, you must clearly state in the message that it is an advertisement. An Opt-in list is exempted from this requirement.
• Lying: Your email subject cannot give mislead or misrepresent messages to entice the recipient to open the message. You also may not misrepresent the sender of the message.
• Physical Address: All email messages must contain the physical address of your company. Addresses using PO boxes are not acceptable.

These are the legal requirement. What do these tell you about the spirit of the law? No one likes to get SPAM. This includes your customers and clients. Your customers and clients do like to receive information about your services and products as long as you are honest and up front about why you are contacting them. Irritating existing or potential clients is not going to result in business for your company.

Make your newsletters pleasant to look at. Provide useful information. Provide a simple way for clients to remove themselves from the list, but also a simple way to share the information with others. Special offers, deals or newsletter discounts can help encourage people to view your newsletter distributions. Tell them who you are and what you are offering. Keep your message brief and to the point. Make sure you ask the recipient to do something specific. In marketing terms that is referred to as the “Call to Action”.

Many Email Service Providers have systems in place to ensure your email distributions are compliant with the CAN-SPAM act. By properly designing your email campaign you can follow the spirit of the act to a successful and profitable conclusion.