Seminar delivered to Australian Bookseller Association delegates in Sydney and Melbourne in October 2012

1. Taking it to Amazon and the ‘Big Boys’
How your bookstore can compete in the digital world
Clayton Wehner - Blue Train Enterprises
M: 0438 925 613 E: contact@bluetrainenterprises.com.au

2. Scope
7 sections:
Context – the here and now
Websites
Search
Social media
Email
Analytics
eBooks – Jon Page

3. The Vibe
 Relaxed, chilled out
 Lots of video and stuff
 Ask questions at anytime
 Don’t need to take copious notes…you can find this
presentation at:
 http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/takingittoamazon
 Recommend you print it off and use it as a guide

4. The context in which we’re operating…

5. Aussies going online…
28% of users are spending > 3
hours online a day
A further 23% spend > 1 hour
online a day

6. Aussies going social…
10 million Australians use
Facebook each month (Mar 2012)
Nearly two-thirds of Australians
have a Facebook account

7. Aussies going mobile…
There are more than six million
more mobile subscribers
than there are people in
Australia.

8. Aussies using apps…

9. Aussies using tablets
In January 2011, Amazon sold
& readers…
115
Kindle eBook Downloads for every
100
Paperback Book sales

10. Aussie organisations lag behind
 75% of Australian small-to-medium enterprises DON’T
do social media
 30% of Australian SMEs rarely update the content of their
business website
 78% of Australian SMEs don’t use their websites for e-
commerce (ie. selling stuff)
 Only 14% of SMEs use email marketing

11. And book retailers under pressure…
 Aussie dollar still very high
 Interest rates still biting
 A slew of overseas buying options with cheap shipping
arrangements
 Big retailers up in arms about overseas operators avoiding
GST
 Universal access to fast internet connections
 Growing trust in the security of online shopping
 Emergence of mobile shopping
 Greater complexity in life means that people seek
convenience
 Copyright protectionism on Australian books makes pricing
uncompetitive

15. ‘Amazonification’ of books
 The ‘long tail’ = ‘make everything available and help me find it’
(Chris Anderson)
 Early Amazon innovations:
 1-click ordering (patented)
 You might also like…
 Customers who bought this, also bought…
 Recommendations for you
 Frequently bought together
 And more recently:
 The Kindle

16. The Big Boys – Redefining the landscape
Google eBookstore
Google Play Store iPad
Google Preview / digitisation iPhone
Google Adwords iTunes Store
Google Shopping
Android / Nexus / Chromebook
Keep your eye on…

17. CHAINS
And the rest…
ONLINE ONLY
OTHER RETAIL

18. $24.70 AUD
Free Shipping to Australia
Dispatched within 24 hours

20. How do we compete?
 Differentiate!
 Offer a different value proposition to customers
 Specialise in a niche
 Offer unparalleled customer service
 Broaden income streams beyond just books
 Be more than just a store with shelves
 Multi-channel retailing – bricks & mortar, online, mobile
 …and that’s what we’re going to talk about today…

21. Case Study: Dollar Shave Club

22. Case Study: Dollar Shave Club
 Person in the video is the CEO, not an actor
 7 million + views on YouTube
 Dollar Shave Club sells razors by subscription
 ‘Big Shave’ companies manufacture razors for a very low
cost and then mark them up 4000%
 From the About Us page: Like most good ideas,The Dollar
Shave Club started with two guys who were pissed off about
something and decided to do something about it…
 Could you apply that same logic to your business?

24. Websites

25. Websites – tell us about yours…
 How many of your businesses have a website?
 How many of your businesses sell products via the site?
 How many of you are happy with your website?

26. Get your website right first…
 Your website is the core element of your web presence
and your principal digital asset
 If you are serious about multi-channel retailing, then you
MUST have a website
 Why?
 You own it (unlike other online properties, eg. Facebook Page)
 You control it
 You can change it
 It is discoverable in search engines
 It has a unique, memorable address and is the place to direct
visitors to from your off-site advertising

28. Considerations for new websites
 I have a ‘methodology’ that I use for website project
management – acronym BPADCOSM
 Business Requirements
 Platform
 Architecture
 Design
 Content
 Optimisation for Search Engines
 Social Media and ongoing content production
 Marketing and Measurement

29. Business Requirements
 Frequently overlooked!
 The mindset is ‘I’ve gotta get a website’, without
considering the needs of the business
 Typically a web designer is engaged and produces
something pretty, but often ineffective
 Doing some detailed thinking first and articulating your
requirements will ensure that you get a better result

30. Business Requirements
P is for PEOPLE
 O is for OBJECTIVES
 S is for STRATEGIES
 T is for TECHNOLOGIES
Forrester Research

31. Business Requirements – POST method
 People
 Who are you targeting?
 Certain demographic, multiple demographics?
 Objectives
 What do you want to achieve?
 Sales? Subscriptions? Engagement? Awareness?
 Strategies
 How do your propose to achieve your objectives?
 Content, discounts, competitions, special deals, viral marketing
 Technologies
 Which technologies will you use to implement the strategies?
 E-commerce, Content Management System, Email, Facebook,Twitter, blogs, video, etc.
Forrester Research

32. Platform – the foundation stone
 Like building a house, it’s necessary to build a strong
foundation for your web presence.
 If you get the foundation wrong, then it’s mighty hard to
dig it all up and start again
 Things to consider here:
 Domain name – important to consider up front because it’s
hard to change it later on. The domain also has implications
for search engine optimisation.
 Hosting – fast and reliable? Can it cater for the software
required?
 Software – eg. A content management system, email marketing
software, dynamic scripts, contact forms, etc

33. Architecture – how it fits together
 Time to consider the components, assets and functions
that our website will contain, and where they will all go.
 Information architecture – how information is ordered and
‘discovered’ on the website; what goes where
 Pages and page hierarchy – what content do you want to display
and how will the pages be arranged
 Navigation structure – top level navigation, subordinate level
navigation, other navigation
 Page elements and included content (content that appears across
the site) – eg. News feeds, buttons, widgets, graphics, banners,
columns, textual content, etc.

34. Design – what it looks like
 This is where most web designers start – without
thinking too deeply about the business requirements,
platform or architecture - FAIL
 Design is extremely important, but no more important
than the three preceding steps.
 Corporate logo, colours, fonts and styles
 HTML/CSS templates – the ‘look and feel’ of the pages
 Fixed graphical elements – banners, page graphics
 Rich and dynamic media – video, marquees, rotating banners, etc

35. Content – what users consume
 Another thing that designers aren’t very good at – copy
writing.
 Compelling copy is critically important for your website.
And not just for human visitors, but also to ensure that
your website figures prominently in the search engines.
 Content is the reason why people visit – it must be good!

36. Optimisation for search engines
 You can have the most attractive website in the world –
but looks won’t guarantee visitors to your site.
 Websites need to be optimised for search engines so that
your site can be found by prospective visitors.
 Keyword analysis – working out which keyword combinations
people should use to find your site
 On-page optimisation – tweaking the textual content, metadata
to ensure keyword relevancy
 Inbound link building – obtaining links from other sites
 Directory submission – submitting your site to directories
 Technical optimisation – geekery!

37. Social Media & Ongoing Content Dev
 Not enough to simply publish a site on the web and just
let it sit there.
 Need to constantly add and update content
 Article production – regular contributions via a content
management system
 Blogs – a simple way to contribute and syndicate content
 Facebook – consider a Facebook Page
 Twitter – consider a Twitter stream
 Online video – consider regular uploading of online video
using YouTube or similar
 And others… Slideshare, Flickr, Pinterest, Google+, etc.

38. Marketing & Measurement
 Once your web presence is ready, then it’s time to start
actively marketing the site.
 Search engine marketing (SEM) – pay-per-click advertising on
Google or Facebook
 Email marketing – an often neglected; it’s free and targeted
 Offline marketing – traditional marketing if you have $$$
 Website & all marketing initiatives must be measured
 Use insights to make incremental improvements over
time

39. If you were a corporate…

40. Outsourcing your website development
 Use BPADCOSM to frame your requirements on paper
 Provide a verbal brief to 2-3 designer/developers,
preferably referred by trusted colleagues
 Ask the designer/developers to respond in writing,
providing information about their ‘approach’ to your
project, a detailed project schedule, and their
methodology (should be similar to BPADCOSM)
 Choose the best designer/developer from the response
provided
 Insist upon weekly telephone/in-person reports and hold
them to the project schedule!

41. Tips for dealing with geeks
 Always opt for web systems that you can maintain
yourself – eg. A content management system, rather than
a ‘static’ website
 Geeks often have no sense of time or deadlines – keep
on their back, but be gentle
 Geeks often don’t document things – make them write
everything down
 When you find a good geek, stick with them
 The best ones will move mountains for you – but reward
them appropriately

42. Search – Paid and Organic

43. What is a search engine?
 A web search engine is a tool designed to search for
information on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia)
 Search engines exist to deliver the best possible search
results to the user, for any given keyword combination.
 Search engines use complex algorithms to index and rank
web pages programmatically.

44. The big three search engines in Australia
are…

45. About Google
 Brainchild of two college friends, Sergey Brin and Larry Page
 Their search engine was originally called BackRub
 In 1997 it became Google, a play on the word "googol," a
mathematical term for the number represented by the
numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros
 Google became the world’s biggest search index in June 2000
 Google’s ascent as a ‘second mover’ was remarkable – it
eclipsed the likes of AltaVista, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos
 Today Google is a frontrunner in mapping and satellite
technology, operating system software, office applications,
mobile computing and much, much more…

46. Why is it important to optimise for Google?
 ‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t apply on the web
 There are many fancy websites on the web that never get
seen!
 Launching a website is the easy part…
 The hard part is getting qualified traffic to the site
 Need to satisfy two ‘audiences’:
 People or ‘real’ visitors
 Search engine ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’

47. Don’t settle for second best…
 The first result in Google gets as many visitors as
position 2-4 combined
 The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as
much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than
the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."
 Result number 10 gets 143% more clicks than
result number 11
 The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the
bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143%
jump in traffic.
Chitika Report - http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

48. Organic vs Paid
 Google displays two types of results:
 Organic results: these are unpaid listings that are ranked by
importance/keyword relevance
 Paid results: these are pay-per-click listings that appear on the
right hand margin and above the organic listings – anybody can
bid to display their ad at the top of these listings
 Google users generally accord greater worth to the
organic results
 Google employs over 200 algorithmic factors to
determine where web pages rank in organic results

49. Paid
Results
Organic
Results

50. Are you in Google?
 site:www.yoursite.com
 Displays a list of pages from your site that have been indexed by Google
 link:www.yoursite.com
 Displays a sample of external pages that link to your site
 cache:www.yoursite.com
 Displays the cached image of the website that is currently on file at
Google.
 info:www.yoursite.com
 Displays information that Google currently holds about the website.
 related:www.yoursite.com
 Displays pages that are similar to your website.
 If you are not in Google, submit your site here:
http://www.google.com.au/addurl

51. Choosing the Right Keywords
 A keyword combination is used to obtain search results
from a search engine
 Web pages can be optimised for particular keyword
combinations
 Before optimising a website, it is necessary to identify the
best keywords to optimise for

52. Choosing the Right Keywords
 What is the volume of traffic for different keyword
combination?
 Have other websites optimised for those keywords?
Would it be hard to get a high ranking?
 Who sits in the No. 1 spot for those keywords?
 What keywords are my competitors targeting?
 What do the keywords say about the searcher’s
intent/mindset?
 Surfers
 Researchers
 Buyers

53. Example
 Consider these search terms for an online
accommodation website
 Hotels
 Cheap hotels
 Hotels in Sydney
 Last minute Sydney hotel deals
 Sydney serviced apartment deals
 Bed and breakfast on george street Sydney
 Grand Mercure hotel Darling Harbour Sydney

54. On Site Optimisation
 On-site factors play a big role in determining your search
engine rankings
 These are the things that you can do yourself or that you
can task your web developer to do on your behalf

55. The TITLE tag
 Include your chosen keywords within the TITLE tag –
preferably near the start of the tag
 Try to keep it to 70 characters
 Must be relevant to the page content
 Very important - each page should have a different TITLE
tag

56. The DESCRIPTION tag
 A textual description of what the page is about
 Regularly used in Google search results Try to keep it to
150 characters; must be relevant to the page content
 Each page should have a different DESCRIPTION tag

57. Body Text
 Google loves original, high quality textual content
 Body text is extremely important for search engine
rankings because this is what human users come to see
 Keywords, synonyms and variations of the primary
keyword combination should be included in the body
text, but not so that it reads ‘artificially’. It should read
naturally.

58. Keywords in URLs
 URLs that contain keywords are better than those that
don’t
 Quite easy to do if your website is static, a little more
difficult for database-driven sites
 Don’t make the URLs too long because this will be seen
as an attempt to manipulate the search results
 Good and bad:
 www.mysite.com/hotels/sydney/hilton.html
 www.mysite.com/search.asp?hotelID=435&locID=32

59. Heading Tags
 Heading tags – eg. <h1>, <h2> - within the HTML identify
headings within the page copy and break up the text
 They are used by search engines to determine page
content
 Use keywords in these tags, but don’t overdo it.

60. Link Anchor Text
 The ‘anchor’ text contained within hyperlinks provides
Google with an understanding of what the linked content
is about
 Every hyperlink on your site should have descriptive
anchor text, rather than ‘click here…’
 Inline links or contextual links are best
 eg.
 Blue Train Enterprises offers a free white paper on how to
optimise your website for the search engines

61. Image ALT Text
 There is the opportunity to specify ‘alternate’ text for
every image on your website
 The ALT text is displayed if the image doesn’t load in the
user’s browser
 It also can have a positive effect on your website rankings
 The ALT tag should describe the image
 Keep it short and to the point
 Don’t use ALT tags as a place to stuff keywords

62. Inbound Links
 These are links on other websites that link to your site
 Good quality inbound links serve as a ‘vote of confidence’
for your site – if a good site links to your site, then by
association, your site must be good, too
 Try and get links from ‘authority’ websites to your site
 Thematically-linked sites
 High ranking and well-known sites
 Government (.gov.au) sites
 Educational institution (.edu.au) sites
 It’s not the volume of inbound links that is important –
it’s the quality

63. Outbound Links
 There is evidence to suggest that your outbound links
contribute to your rankings
 Only link to good quality, thematically-aligned content on
third party websites
 Only link to sites that would be of interest to your
audience
 Be aware that outbound links take visitors away from
your site – and that is not necessarily what you want to
do.

64. Getting listed in Directories
 Being listed in major directory-based websites can boost
your rankings considerably
 http://www.dmoz.org – aka The Open Directory Project - a
difficult one to get into
 http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
 http://www.google.com/places - a very important one that will
see your business plotted on Google Local/Google Maps
 http://www.yellowpages.com.au/awu_freeListing.do
 http://www.hotfrog.com.au
 http://www.aussieweb.com.au
 http://www.truelocal.com.au
 http://www.bigroo.com.au
 http://www.webwombat.com.au/submit/index.htm

65. Other ways to get Inbound Links
 Articles / interviews published on other websites
 Press releases
 Forum posts
 Blog comments
 ‘Link bait’ – controversial is best!

66. The real key is …. great content
 Search engines are simply a means to locate great content
 Does your site have great content?
 Add content that people want to read and will pass on to
others
 Text should be in short sentences, compact paragraphs,
be well punctuated, and contain headings to break up the
text – time-poor people don’t read, they scan
 Pages should not scroll and scroll and scroll…
 One page per topic (optimised for that topic) and cross-
link; granularity

67. The real key is …. great content
 Add content that people want to read and will pass on –
top ten tips, ‘how to’ guides, free white papers
 Text should be in short sentences, compact paragraphs,
be well punctuated, and contain headings to break up the
text – time-poor people don’t read, they scan
 Pages should not scroll and scroll and scroll…
 One page per topic (optimised for that topic) and cross-
link; granularity
 If your site remains static, then it will lose its prominence
in the search engines (and visitors won’t want to come
back)

68. Add content regularly
 Some ideas for new content for your website:
 Author interviews
 Book reviews
 Surveys and Polls
 Top Ten Lists
 Book Award Lists
 Reading Challenges / Book Clubs
 Giveaways and Competitions
 Guest posts from authors
 New release information
 Bestseller Lists

69. Other technical things to do…zzzzz
 Remove multiple ‘instances’ of your site with a Permanent
301 redirect to elminate dilution of your website standing
 Implement a robots.txt file
 Implement an XML sitemap
 Ensure that your pages load quickly by streamlining your
code and optimising your images
 Ensure that your site’s server has close to 100% uptime –
if it isn’t live when the spider arrives, your rankings may
be affected
 Make your site W3C compliant – http://validator.w3.org

70. What you should NEVER DO
 Hidden text (eg white text on a white background)
 Keyword stuffing
 Display duplicate content
 Cloaking – displaying different content to visitors and
spiders
 Use Flash alone
 Use Frames

71. A final thought about organic search
 If you employ one of the strategies mentioned in this
presentation, you will get some benefit in the search
engine results pages
 If you employ a couple, you will get much greater benefit
 If you employ all of them properly, then you will most
likely go to the top of the results
 The little things count and, when you employ them
together, they can make a big difference to your site
performance
 Remember Google uses over 200 different factors to rank
websites

72. Paid Search
 You might like to try:
 Google Adwords
 Facebook advertising
 Bing!/Yahoo advertising

73. Pros of Paid Search
 You can get customers instantly
 Pay per click – you only pay if a person clicks through
 Motivated visitors – matched to keywords they have
entered
 Highly targeted – by interest, location, time (Facebook, by
sexuality!)
 Trackable and measureable
 Small budget OK
 Stop/start/edit at any time

74. Cons of Paid Search
 ‘Landing pages’ must be good and have a compelling offer
– otherwise don’t bother
 Needs regular oversight, management & maintenance
 Can be a money pit, particularly if you target generic
keywords and ‘fire and forget’
 Google et al get richer and more powerful 

76. Social Media

77. How social media switched on are you?
 Who is on Facebook?
 More than 200 friends?
 Who maintains a Facebook Page for their business?
 Who is on Twitter?
 Anybody got a blog?

78. Evolution of the web
 Web 1.0 = ‘one way web’; reading
static web pages; ‘brochureware’
 Web 2.0 = ‘two way web’;
interaction, community,
collaboration
 Web 3.0 = The ‘semantic’ web; artificial intelligence; high
levels of personalisation, individually-tailored web
experience

79. What is Social Media?
 Social media is ‘media designed to be disseminated
through social interaction, created using highly accessible
and scalable publishing techniques’
 Blogs, micro-blogging, social networking, video/file sharing,
wikis, social bookmarking, community sites and more

80. These are all ‘social media’ too…
 Location-based social networking sites – eg. Foursquare
 Other social networking sites – eg. MySpace, Google+
 Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
 Social bookmarking sites – eg. Digg, Delicious, Technorati
 Wikis – eg. Wikipedia, Google Sites
 Content sharing sites – eg. Flickr, Slideshare, Pinterest, Instagram
 Blogs
 Discussion boards / forums – eg. Yahoo! Answers
 Crowdsourcing / outsourcing – eg. Elance, 99designs
 Virtual communities – eg. Second Life
 Voice over IP – eg. Skype
 Instant Messaging – eg. ICQ
 Podcasting
 The mobile web – iPhones, Blackberry, Android, iPads, Kindles

81. Become a consumer first…
 Join the online book community – learn, discuss and
share info with like-minded people
 Get a Facebook account and become a ‘fan’ of book
industry pages
 Get a Twitter account and ‘follow’ book industry
people
 Get a LinkedIn account and ‘connect’ with your
business associates, suppliers, clients etc
 Get a feed reader (Google Reader) and subscribe to
industry blogs and RSS feeds

82. Blogs in plain English…
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

83. Get blogging
 Anybody can be a content publisher – not just the media
companies
 Establish yourself as an ‘authority’; build credibility
 Write interesting, provocative posts to engage with readers
 Write short articles; write regularly – maybe twice a week
 Start at http://www.wordpress.com for free
 Transition to a domain-hosted blog later – ie.
http://www.yourdomain.com/blog

84. No. 1 blog in Australia
“I earn a six figure income
each year from my blogs…
it’s probably creeping more
towards seven figures per
year now…”

90. An exercise for you…
 Pair up
 Take 2 minutes to come up with one idea for a blog post
that relates to books
 Share it with everybody…

91. Facebook it up for your biz
 Over 1 billion active users!
 Has overtaken Google in US as most viewed website
 ‘Facebook Pages’ are for businesses (not standard profiles or
Groups)
 Set it up in seconds at www.facebook.com/pages

96. Twitter in plain English…
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

97. Start Tweet, Tweet, Tweetin’
 Micro-blogging; 140 character limit – basically ‘SMS on the
web’ (but best done via a mobile device)
 You follow people, they follow you; your ‘tweets’ are seen by
your followers, you see the ‘tweets’ of people you follow
 Many people write off Twitter: who would be interested in this
seemingly banal, nebulous information?

99. What are those weird characters, man?
 Hash tag # - designates a topic (eg. #abaconf12)
 @ symbol – designates a Twitter user (eg.
@boomerangbooks
 Allows Twitter users to search for tags and to isolate
tweets that contain that tag

101. I’m entering
@Crust_Pizza #CrustFreePizzaFriday

102. Ocea Beauty Bar, Adelaide

103. Insurance salesman – 52K followers!

105. Automate & centralise posting
 Posts on a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc can be
‘ported’ between one another using a variety of tools,
removing the requirement to post manually on multiple
sites.
 Twitterfeed (www.twitterfeed.com) sends blog posts to
Facebook and Twitter
 Desktop tools (and mobile phone apps) like Tweetdeck
and Seesmic can be used as a central hub for posting to
multiple social networks at once

108. Integrate & enable sharing
 To grow your social media community, make it easy to
connect/follow by integrating social media elements into
your pages and enabling sharing options
 Social bookmarking buttons
 FB Like buttons
 Google+1 buttons
 FB Boxes
 Twitter widgets
 To implement, it’s normally just a small piece of code that
is added to your page HTML – ask your geek!

109. Online video
 Video is the biggest growth area on the web as bandwidth and
online storage increases
 Over 72 hours of video every minute is uploaded to YouTube
 YouTube is now the world’s second largest search engine
 Video can be done cheaply with a handheld camcorder
 Copy the file to your computer and then upload to YouTube
within minutes
 Embed the video in your website or blog using the special
code…

112. Principles for social media success
 1.You have a mandate from the boss
 2.You have organisational commitment at all levels
 3.Your strategy integrates with your business plan and
wider marketing strategy
 4.Your strategy fits with the organisation’s website
 5.You understand your target audience
 6.You understand what your objectives are
 7.You are using the correct social media technologies
 8.You have a written usage policy in place

113. Principles for social media success
 9.You have a staff training regimen in place
 10.You have an appropriate allocation of resources –
people, time, money, equipment
 11. There is central coordination and accountability
 12. There is devolved responsibility
 13. There are regular coordination meetings (but also
spontaneity)
 14. There is a focus on sustainability and long-term results
 15. There is compelling content
 16. Content is well-written, error free and keyword-rich

114. Principles for social media success
 17. There is an appropriate frequency of content
 18. There is an appropriate tone and persona
 19. There is two-way conversation and engagement
 20. There is ‘authentic’ communication
 21. KPIs are monitored
 22. There are contingency plans in place if something goes
wrong
 23. There is constant learning about social media in the
organisation – because it is constantly changing!

115. Email

116. Why does email marketing make sense?
 It’s very cost effective – the only cost is the time it takes
to put the email together
 It’s one-to-many, so it’s time-effective
 Most Australians use email every day so they can be
reached easily via this means
 It’s easier to do more business with existing customers
than to acquire new ones

117. Ad-hoc Email Marketing
 Using your existing email client for email marketing
purposes
 Use of groups or lists to segment your contacts
 Use of the BCC: field to cloak recipients’ details from one
another
 It’s OK for very small mailing lists…but soon becomes
unviable

118. ‘Pros’ of using your email client
 It’s cheap
 It’s quick
 You don’t need to learn how to use another application
 You don’t have to duplicate your contact database
elsewhere because your mailings are done from your
email client

119. ‘Cons’ of using your email client
 Spam filters catch a lot of email sent this way – because it
looks like spam
 There’s a chance that you will accidentally use CC:
instead of BCC: – a privacy no-no
 Malformed email addresses will result in SMTP blockages
 There’s no way to automate unsubscription for the
recipients
 There’s no way to automatically manage redundant email
addresses on your lists
 You can’t track number of email opens, clicks

120. A more robust option
 Use of a dedicated email marketing software package
 Database driven applications that enable you to manage
mailing lists and email campaigns
 Two types of email marketing packages that you can use:
 Software as a service – web-based with ongoing fee
 Download / install – single fee upfront

121. Campaign Monitor

122. Vertical Response

123. Constant Contact

124. iContact

125. GetResponse

126. MailChimp – quick video

127. Subscription forms
 Email marketing software packages provide you with
online forms that can be implemented on your website
 These enable you to gather ‘opt in’ subscribers – you
should only send email to opt in subscribers
 Place subscription forms on every page of your website

128. A word on Privacy
 You must secure all personal data supplied to you and not
provide it to third parties without consent
 Abide by the Privacy Act and the National Privacy
Principles (NPPs)
 http://www.privacy.gov.au/law/act
 http://www.privacy.gov.au/materials/types/infosheets/view/6583
 Make sure that you have a clear privacy policy and it is
accessible to your subscribers

129. Double opt-in v single opt-in
 Single opt-in adds an email address to a mailing list
immediately after the subscriber submits their details via
an online form
 Double opt-in requires the subscriber to click a link in a
confirmatory email before they will be added to a mailing
list
 Why double opt-in?
 Ensures that the subscriber is ‘bona fide’
 Stops automated responses
 Don’t be accused of spamming – double opt-in is the way
to go

130. CAPTCHA codes

131. Spam Act
 Under the Spam Act 2003 it is illegal to send, or cause
to be sent, unsolicited commercial electronic messages.
The Act covers email, instant messaging, SMS and MMS
(text and image-based mobile phone messaging) of a
commercial nature. It does not cover faxes, internet pop-
ups or voice telemarketing.
 See:
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_31029
4

132. Key Elements of the Act
 Consent - the message must be sent with the recipient's
consent. The recipient may give express consent, or under
certain circumstances consent may be inferred from their
conduct or an existing business or other relationships
 Identify – the message must contain accurate information
about the person or organisation that authorised the sending
of the message and how to contact them
 Unsubscribe - the message must contain a functional
'unsubscribe' facility to allow the recipient to opt out from
receiving messages from that source in the future.
Unsubscribe requests must be honoured within five working
days.

133. Format: HTML or Text
 Many subscription forms allow you to specify whether
you wish to receive the HTML version or text version of
emails
 Most email clients support HTML these days, but some
people still prefer text
 Email marketing packages allow you to send both HTML
and text versions using Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) – the email client determines which
format to display

134. Customer segmentation
 Create multiple lists for different stakeholder groups – eg.
 One list for consumers
 One list for business-to-business clients
 Further segmentation
 Age
 Location
 Education
 Gender
 Hobbies
 Buying preferences, past purchases
 Best customers (eg. biggest lifetime spend)

135. Personalisation
 Which is going to be more effective?
 Dear Book Enthusiast,…
 Dear Steven,…
 Personalised emails can improve your reading and
clickthrough rates up to 650%
 Subscribers feel like they have a relationship with you if
you address them by their first name (even though this is
automated when you send your email)

136. Unsubscribe links
 Email marketing software enables you to add an link that
automates unsubscription if the recipient chooses
 One-click unsubscription will ensure make recipients feel
more comfortable with your marketing – how do you feel
towards a business when you cannot unsubscribe from their
messages?
 Unsubscribes are not a bad thing – they help to clean up
and improve the quality of your database over time

137. Bounce management
 A bounce is the email equivalent of ‘return to sender’
 Many email marketing packages have automated ‘bounce’
management
 The software detects when there is a hard bounce (email
address doesn’t exist) or a soft bounce (mail box is full)
 Hard bounces are removed automatically from the
mailing list
 Helps you to keep your email lists ‘clean’

138. Statistics
 Email marketing packages embed tracking links in your
emails so that the following metrics can be measured:
 Unique opens
 Opens
 Clickthroughs
 Unsubscribes

139. Steps to success
 Define your target audience
 Determine your objectives
 Produce your offer and message
 Test and measure
 Eg. Split tests - a split test allows you to send different versions of
the same email campaign to your list and see which gets the better
open and click-thru rates.
 Repeat
 Just like building websites, blogs, social media campaigns etc

140. Periodicity
 Maintain consistent frequency – every day, every week,
every fortnight, every month
 Too frequently will annoy people
 Monthly or once every month is probably best for B2C
email marketing – but depends on your business!
 Fortnightly or monthly is probably best for B2C email
marketing – but depends on the business!
 Try and maintain consistency so that your readership
knows when to ‘expect’ your communications – ie. Email
newsletter is sent every Thursday at 10am sharp

141. Best time to send
 It has been proven that recipients are more receptive to
email communications on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
 Monday is generally too hectic (and depressing) for most
people at work
 There’s a case for sending your emails on Friday, as
people are less guarded just prior to the weekend
(they’re more likely to be in a good mood).

142. WIIFM – What’s in it for me?
 All content, whether it is sent via email or published on a
website, needs to be written from the visitor’s
perspective – what’s in it for me?
 With email it is even more important because you are
intruding upon the recipient’s email box – they need to
‘do’ something with the email (read it, delete it,
unsubscribe)

143. Design
 Clean, uncluttered, simple is best – the email will render
differently in different email clients
 Lots of white space
 Don’t overuse images or colour
 Consistency – keep the design the same each time to
strengthen your brand

144. Subject Line
 Perhaps the most important component of an email
marketing campaign – you have half a second to
convince people to open your email
 Get this right and you will dramatically improve the
number of ‘opens’
 Get it wrong and nobody will open your email
 49 characters is best, as many email clients will truncate
subject lines

145. Consider these subject lines…
 Newsletter 3, October 2010
 October promotion
 New diet program available
 How to feel younger, have more energy and look fantastic

146. Body content
 Deliver good content – relevant, unique, valuable, educational,
timely
 Catchy stuff needs to be ‘above the fold’
 Use headings that delineate the content clearly
 Don’t just use images – many email clients will not display
images by default (the user typically needs to ‘allow’ images)
 Small chunks of ‘teaser’ text - not big swathes of text
 Link through to content on your website – contextual links,
‘read more…’
 One of the principal aims of your email marketing should be to
direct qualified traffic to appropriate landing pages on your website

147. Images off by default

148. With images turned on…

149. Another example

150. Avoiding spam filters
 Minimise use of words that may trigger spam filters
 Free, save, discount, sex, click here, viagra, etc
 Check your IP address isn’t blacklisted on major black
lists databases – eg Spamcop, Spamhaus
 Don’t send attachments with your emails

151. More tips…
 Don’t SHOUT or use lots of exclamation marks
 Have your business name in the From: field for credibility
 Use a personal signature within the text for credibility
 Try and stir up curiosity and sense of urgency with a
personalised salutation
 Fred, looking for discount books?
 Fred, a quick question for you
 Discount Day – details inside
 Today only – 20% discount
 Use standard blue hyperlinks
 Opt for editorial over blatant selling

152. Analytics

153. Analytics
 Measure, measure, measure – particularly paid activity
 Implement Google Analytics tracking code on all pages
 Visitors, page views, location of users, device used, operating
system used, browser used, time on site, entry/exit pages,
referral source, search terms used, conversions, click stream,
real-time stats, etc

155. And that’s it…
 This presentation can be found at:
http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/takingittoamazon
 My email:
 contact@bluetrainenterprises.com.au