Do you use email marketing as part of your marketing communications? So many companies are now using it to communicate with existing customers and prospects. There are so many benefits to email marketing, the main ones being:.
- Super low cost
- Super fast
- Super flexible
- Super instant reporting and analysis
So email marketing really is super. But do you know what isn’t so super? Being given a £1000 fine for not complying with the Companies Act 1985. Now I bet you’re thinking “1985?! Email wasn’t even around in 1985, how can there be legislation made up about something that didn’t even (commercially) exist!?”. Well the Companies Act 1985 has been updated on a regular basis I’m afraid, and was last updated in June 2010.
Companies Act 1985 and Email Marketing:
If your business is a private or public limited company or a Limited Liability Partnership, the Companies Act 1985 requires all of your business emails to include the following details in legible characters:
- Your company’s registered name (e.g. XYZ Ltd)
- Your company registration number;
- Your place of registration (e.g. Scotland or England & Wales); and
- Your registered office address
This information should also appear on letterheads, forms and your website.
It is not enough to just have this as a link in your email, pointing to the relevant page on your website. You must include something like:
Super Organisation Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 1234567. Registered office: Super House, 21 Super Street, London, SE1 1AA.
The fine is enforced by Trading Standards and can also come with a £300 a day fine for each day you do not rectify the situation.
If you aren’t email marketing at the moment, but want to find out more about it, get in touch with us – call 023 8083 7271 or email info@SMEketing.com. We have a fully comprehensive email marketing tool – read this blog post for more details, or visit our Email Marketing services page.
July 20, 2010
You can’t miss the doom and gloom of the current economic climate. All businesses, large and small, must carefully spend their marketing budget. Gone are the days of frivolous spending. So I wanted to outline five cost effective ways of spending your small business marketing budget. With online marketing become more and more vital as part of a small business marketing plan, there are many ways which small businesses can promote their business and help drive leads.
1. Blogging: Setting up a blog can be completely free! Yes, we love anything free. But like most freebies, in order for it to be effective you need to plan it well and invest your time into it. Using free blog providers like Wordpress and Google Blogger are great ways of getting involved in the blogging world, without costing you a penny. There are so many different benefits of blogging, one of the biggest benefits is to your websites ranking in the search engines (aka Search Engine Optimisation - SEO): Google loves new and unique content. Blogging is a great way to constantly add new content to your site. Plus your posts will be tagged and full of relevant keyword. Blog well and others in your industry may link to you, increasing the number of valuable inbound links. For more on the benefits of blogging, read this post: Blogging – just for teenagers, or good for your small business?
2. Twitter: Again, another freebie! Twitter is great for promoting what you do and learning about latest industry trends. By joining the conversation and providing useful information, you will soon generate a loyal base of followers. Use Twitter to answer questions relevant to your industry, learn about new goings on, promote your product, events and news (but don’t be pushy). For more information on using Twitter to promote your small business, read these blog posts: Twitter: Small Business Success Stories – Will yours be one of them? and Guide to Getting Your Small Business Started on Twitter
3. Email Marketing: Email marketing can cost as little as 1p per recipient and £5 per mailshot (well, those are the rates for using a self managed SMEketing Email Marketing solution, but we like to think these are pretty competitive!). If you don’t have time to maintain a close working relationship with your customer base, email marketing is a great, cost effective way of keeping them updated with your latest news, products and offers. Email marketing can also be used as a lead generation tool. Send out well targeted mailshots to relevant recipients and you will find visits to your web site go up, and conversion rates increase. For more information on the benefits of email marketing read this blog post: Email Marketing for Small Businesses
4. Google AdWords: These unfortunately are not free (we wish!), but you completely control your budget. If you only have £10 a day to spend, that’s fine! Make sure you get the most from your budget by using relevant keywords, focused adverts with a strong call to action, and a well thought-through landing page. Google AdWords can be a great way of driving relevant traffic to your site, and the results are completely measurable. If something isn’t working, you know straight away. This is why AdWords are one of the most cost effective advertising mediums out there. Add Conversion Tracking to your adverts and you’ll be able to see exactly what ad’s are providing the highest conversion rate once visitors are on your site. Once you know that, you can direct your budget to keywords and adverts that are giving you the highest Return on Investment (ROI).
5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): You know I said Google AdWords weren’t free, well there is a way that you can get Google to promote your site FOR FREE! How? Improve your website’s ranking for relevant keywords, and Google will display your site in their search results – free of charge! But again, this is something that will take an investment in your time. Make sure your website is well designed – good navigation, lots of keyword rich content, no broken links, good use of anchor text in your links, etc… Once that is done, you need to boost the number of high quality inbound links. Go to Yahoo and type “linkdomain:yourcompany.com -site:yourcompany.com” to see the number of your inbound links. Do the same for your competitors and see how you compare. Next create a plan to increase the number of incoming links – sign up to relevant directories, promote your blog, create great content on your site that people want to link to. Links should be from high quality sites – link farms are NOT GOOD! The page giving you a link should have few other outgoing links on the same page, and the anchor text should be optimised to promote what you do, not necessarily your business name. An example of a good link to SMEketing would be: “SMEketing is a fantastic source for small business marketing advice and services.” The anchor text here tells Google that the link (www.SMEketing.com) is relevant to “small business marketing”. If the anchor text fell on the business name, it would just tell Google that “SMEketing” is relevant to www.SMEketing.com – which to be fair, it probably had figured out anyway!
Read here for more SEO tips: Top 10 SEO Mistakes Your Small Business Should Avoid
If you want to learn more about any of the above marketing strategies, please get in touch. At SMEketing we’re experienced in all these marketing mediums and have seen first hand the benefits when small businesses employ such tactics.
July 1, 2009
Email marketing is one of the most cost effective tools out there for small businesses.
Why use Email Marketing?
Well, it works. Actually, works is an understatement. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible £25 for every pound spent in 2007. To put this in perspective, that’s more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing and more than 6 times the return from print catalogs.
Why does email marketing work?
- It’s cost effective – While the cost of actually designing your email creative can be comparable to direct mail, the big savings start when you consider there are no printing costs and you can get your message delivered for around 2p per recipient.
- It’s immediate – Email generates an immediate response, instead of waiting for a subscriber to visit your site you can get your message to them when it counts. The majority of your recipients will see your message in the first 24-48 hours.
- It’s relevant – Email makes it easy to segment your subscribers using a variety of criteria like demographics and past campaign behaviour (such as clicking a certain link). This way you can ensure your message goes to the individuals most likely to be interested in your offer.
- It’s completely measureable – More than any other form of marketing, email can provide actionable data on the results it generates. Keep track of who opened your email and when, what topics they were interested in, who forwarded it on to a friend, how many sales were generated and much more.
With the SMEketing Email Marketing Tool, we make the process of email marketing very simple while giving you the most advanced features available from any email marketing system.
The SMEketing Email Marketing tool has these features and benefits:
- Personalization: Make it personal by inserting your subscribers name or the last product they purchased.
- Forward to a friend: Let your recipients spread the word virally and track the results.
- Only pay when you send: Simple pricing that means you only pay when you send, no monthly or hidden fees.
- Send at any time: Full control over when your recipients will receive your campaigns.
- Free campaign archive: Add a line of code to your website for a full archive that automatically updates.
- Powerful reports: Track the opens, clicks, forwards, unsubscribes, bounces and more.
- No ugly logos or links: We never insert our own logo or links.
- Top notch deliverability: Authentication, relationships with ISP’s and more ensure your emails are delivered.
Get in touch if you want your business to start reaping the benefits of high quality email marketing campaigns!
June 26, 2009
