Here are two examples of Five Technology clients using custom email designs in their email marketing efforts:

1. Mental Health Association of Minnesota

This non-profit utilizes our email platform for their organizations newsletter as well as special communications to their clients. Our tool allows for multiple custom designs and layouts in one account, you just pick the one you want to use.

2. Rosen Properties

This real estate services firm utilizes custom email delivery to market their properties and communicate with real estate investors.  Rosen switched from Constant Contact to Five’s email offering to gain a custom design and stronger reporting features of their campaign’s performance.

Step Up Your Email Efforts
You can join the ranks of these two, just ask us how.  Our email marketing services are truly a level above many others with a  feature rich offering, backed by our customer service.

View your email marketing reports on your iPhone, Android or newer BlackBerry mobile phone.

A Feature Rich Email Marketing Service
This latest addition of mobile reports is just one more reason clients are often blown away by what Five can offer with our email services. While baseline services like Constant Contact are better than blasting email out of your Outlook, our tool is a complete and robust offering.

Here are just some aspects of our email marketing offering:

• Custom e-letter or e-offer designs
• Web based management tools to give you control
• List building, management & segmentation features
• Pay as you send, no monthly fees
• Service & support from Five, you have a partner!
• Full reporting, Google Analytics integration
• And now, mobile phone report access

Email marketing is a great customer relationship tool and if you are looking for a better service, stronger reporting tools or just want to finally get started, we can help.  Give Five a shout and let’s discuss email marketing.

Email Marketing Done Right
Email marketing, when correctly designed, structured and launched is an incredible communication tool.  Monthly or quarterly newsletters, announcements, service features, event invitations, sales, promotions and more are all great messages to utilize email marketing.

You get the benefits of:

• Custom email designs
• List building & segmentation tools
• Best delivery practices
• Performance analytics on opens, clicks and conversions
• Consulting & support from our email marketing experts

If you’re organization is interested in the benefits of email marketing, give us a holler, we can help. You can also sign-up for the Five monthly e-letter on our home page.

Number One: Who’s The Crazy One?
The first was reading a great Internet marketing article from Andrew Eklund on MinnesotaBusiness.com.  The article easily outlined why Internet marketing is a dream (and reality) for any marketing team/person.  Eklund had some great points that anyone could understand and my biggest takeaways were:

1.  Reworking old and tired traditional marketing is not the answer.

2.  Ignoring the medium (Internet) where prospects are, customers are and that allows for complete tracking of your marketing to sale process is plain crazy.

3.  Internet marketing is not risky, not marketing online is risky.

Give the article a read and you’ll hopefully find a spark to push yourself into investing more time and strategy into leveraging the great benefits of Internet marketing. You’re crazy not too.

Number Two: Ignorance Is Bliss? No.
The second thing that happened was a scenario that unfolded in my email inbox.  I received an email from a business development person I know that contained their newsletter in a PDF attachment.  I froze.  They had a great email subject headline on a topic that I wanted information on but … they would never know that.

I couldn’t believe that the company would ignore the fantastic benefits of email marketing after all that hard work.  They put together a well designed PDF, it had compelling and educating content … yet it was only doing half of its job.  It wasn’t going to clue the business in on its relevance, performance and its outcome.

If they had sent this information via an email marketing program they would have gained these valuable marketing benefits:

1.  Who opened their email newsletter

1b.  Better yet, they would have reduced effort (clicks & time) to get to the goods

2.  What links users clicked on to get more info or take action

3.  The ability to fully track users from email to website to conversion

4.  They can still include the PDF version AND see who downloaded that

This marketing campaign could have been so much more.  Don’t just go half way, take advantage of the simple opportunity to get everything you want from your marketing efforts.

So to get to my title question, what is holding your company back from Internet marketing?  As Ecklund’s article pointed out, it offers accountability, sustained progress, sales, leads, return-on-investment, and deep business intelligence.  Let’s add to that affordability too.  Email marketing is an extremely low cost.  Consider though, at any price, the ability to track and measure makes any number realistic when you know what it produced.

So get rid of your fear (or ignorance), make the move, take the right steps, ask questions, get answers and find the ways Internet marketing can improve your business.  There are many.

The Blackwater web project included the following:

• Custom design elements over an existing CSS layout
• Full CMS back-end for updating of all website content
• Easy to use menu admin that allows for creating unlimited menus, categories, sub-categories, item name, description, pricing and pricing options. We’ll be adding a photo element per item in the near future as well.
• SEO Friendly URLs, on-page optimization, local search optimization
• Email marketing set-up, e-letter design and support
• Interactive calendar that Blackwater will start using next month

Here is a screenshot of their food menu.

The Big Future of Restaurant Web Design

Last year we decided to start building an industry web and marketing solution for the restaurant, bar, cafe, coffee shop, bakery …. any type of food or beverage service business. That solution is called Taste Trend and Blackwater is the first client. We are just shoring up the Taste Trend website that will allow food service businesses to buy a web and Internet marketing package online and get started. Stay tuned for more on that launch next week.

Taste Trend will provide an affordable web solution for the small food service business. The set-up fees are as low as $450 and monthly fees starting at $75, anyone can use this service. We feel we’ve created an easy to use, great looking, value stuffed, SEO friendly web and marketing tool.

Here is just some of what a Taste Trend website package offers:

• Initial consulting and recommendations
• Semi custom design with desired elements over CSS layouts
• Full web management of content and pages
• Robust menu administration
• SEO friendly design & local search help
• Email marketing set-up, service and support
• Detailed web analytics on traffic and sources
• Ongoing support and education
• Many add-ons for photos, video, calendars, gift certificates and more.

All of these great features will be accessible through the Taste Trend account dashboard, called The Kitchen.

So as you can see, we have a lot going on here and we’re super excited about it. Stay tuned for next weeks roll-out of the website. If you are interested in being a BETA client of Taste Trend, let us know. We have a few spots left!

For the project we took up the creative task of a new web design and flash element to the home page.  Corporate’s old website was all in Flash and while they liked some of the effect, they disliked the lack of search engine traffic and the inability to update the site.  In building out the new web design on the SMC, they now have full control of their website.

The redesign also gave them a chance to add and strengthen their content on HVAC services, Equipment leasing program and take online service requests.

Some of the web design project highlights:

• Custom web design
• Flash design element
• Built on our CMS, the SMC
• Drop down navigation
• On-page search engine optimization (SEO)
• Email marketing design & set-up

We’re proud to have Corporate Mechanical as one of our clients.  If your not exactly comfortable in your office as you read this, you might want to give the Corporate Mechanical crew a call!

View the new website: http://www.corporatemechanical.com

Internet Marketing Seminar – Five Technology from Five Technology on Vimeo.

The majority of the seminar was focused on the basics of SEO and the concept of building trust within your website and it’s content/pages. We covered a lot of ground, answered many questions and even reviewed some of the attendee’s websites to offer up suggestions.

I personally had a blast with everyone and learned a lot in preparing a 3 hour seminar and presenting it. I think that everyone there walked away with some great takeaways and tips no matter their level of understanding coming in. I met a lot of really cool people too. Thanks everyone!

Why Are We Doing A Seminar?
Our philosophy is and has been to share what we know. It’s not about secret recipes, but about the partnership and experience our firm brings when serving our clients. A seminar on Internet marketing is a great way for us to teach, share and help where we can with helping business owners and marketers understand what they can accomplish online.

While many small businesses have a website, very few understand the increased need to utilize the rest of the Internet and it’s tools to drive traffic to their own website.

Our seminar is open to anyone, not just Five clients, to learn the basics and understand how to market online.

What Will You Learn?
Attendees of this seminar will have a solid grasp of how today’s search engines work and what they can do to improve their trust and rank with Google, Yahoo and MSN. We’ll do this with very little “tech talk” and a lot of common sense elements and strategies within search engine optimization (SEO). We’ll also outline the features and benefits to email marketing, addressing the why, the how and the little tips that can make it a big factor in your business.

What Are You Waiting For?
Head over and register online for this 3 hour seminar for just $45.00 per person. We know you’ll be amazed at the amount of information and action items you walk away with. You’ll see search engine optimization and email marketing as a key to driving your businesses success.

We look forward to seeing you on the 20th of January!

If your business is getting ready to send out your holiday targeted email marketing campaign, consider these 3 tips for a successful email campaign. They are basic, but often overlooked.

1. Keep It Simple. If you feature specific products, make sure you do a small amount. Blasting out and email with 20 products will cause them all to loose focus with your recipient. Make sure your product feature links right to the page to buy it, not just your home page!

2. Give Ideas. Most people struggle to figure out the perfect gifts for the people on their list. If you can point out how an item is perfect for a mom who likes to travel, or a friend who is into sports, you have made their shopping easier. The power of suggestion!

3. Outline The Deadlines. Make sure that your email states when visitors/shoppers can order and still receive their items on time. Seems simple, but it’s often over looked.

Make sure these 3 easy tips are covered for your email marketing campaign this holiday season and you’ll find success converting recipients into buyers. The feedback from some of our clients on their holiday email campaigns this past week has been very favorable.

Five Technology’s Email Marketing Facts:

• With Five Technology as a new brand/company to start 2008 we inherited a small list from our parent company Intrcomm.
• Our first e-letter went out to 149 contacts, over 80% we’re existing clients that had received an announcement letter of Five’s launch about a month earlier.
• We have increased our email list to 195 contacts in just by verbally asking or telling potential / new clients we will add them as a way to keep in touch with them.
• We are experimenting with content, value and calls to action. The whole point is to research, refine, report and review.
• We send out a monthly e-letter on a Tuesday morning (10am or so), mid month.

I’ve talked before about the value of email marketing. The ability to get “inbox time” with a client or prospect is the top benefit. The secondary benefit of email marketing for me is the tracking and reporting. You can actually see what your audience does with your message and apply measurement to it.

+ Open Rate: How Many People Are Opening Your E-letter
You can see that we have had a consistent open rate with 36%, 38% and 41% range on our campaigns after a low of 29% to start. Not a surprise that our first broadcast had a lower number, it was unexpected by our audience to a certain degree. We’re encouraged by our recent high of 41% on our last campaign. We hope to hit a 50% open rate in the next two months.

Keys To A Successful Open Rate:

1. A subject title that is concise and states the value or benefit clearly.

2. Picking a content/subject that has value and relevance to your audience.

3. Feature great content. To get improvement on your opens, you must get those who do open to find it valuable (that’s value for a third time). This builds a following of openers and allows your “newbies” to help increase your open rate.

+ Click-Thrus: Getting Your Readers To Take Action
After you get your audience to open your e-letter, your next goal should be to get them to take action. For some, just getting their name or message to a reader is fine, but a truly good email marketing campaign has goals to be achieved. Clicking a link to buy, fill out a request form, set-up a meeting or get a free report are all examples of a goal for an email campaign. We have had both success and failure with our click-thrus, but we have learned a lot.

Keys To Successful Click-Thrus

• Clearly state, show and offer a call to action
• Test and learn what your audience responds to:
  • Money saving offers
  • Free reports
  • Urgency or time sensitive offers
  • Limited quantity offers

Here is our best campaign for click-thrus. It was where our call to action combined a money saving offer and limited availability. Offering half priced video production to only 3 customers was a success. We generated interest beyond the offer.

+ Success Past One Open & One Week
A great thing we have noticed is how our recipients go back and open our e-letters multiple times, even weeks or months after getting it. While we have yet to make any determinations on why we can only speculate that they found the content/information of value and revisited it to review, get a link or grab our contact info. Having some “shelf-life” to our email communication is great and we look forward to building upon this as well. It caused you to think about your message and how to make it one that has longevity past one read or click.

Summary Of Our Email Marketing Campaign
So as you can see, we have had some successes and some challenges lie ahead. Each time we have sent out our monthly e-letter it has generated opens, clicks, contact forms and phone calls. That’s the goal and we love watching it happen (and tracking it).

We also have some challenges ahead in continuing to deliver valuable content to a growing list. I hope that the next blog post on our email marketing program covers how we have implemented and succeeded at list building and nudged our open rate over the 50% mark.

If you have anything to offer or would even share a few of your email marketing numbers or findings, we’d love a comment from you or your business.