Category

Marketing & Advertising

The marketing of an ecommerce business is paramount to its success. Our coverage includes insights on email marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest — affiliate marketing, video advertising, and much more.

Content Marketing | Email & Text Marketing | Google Ads | Influencers & Affiliates | Social Media
  • Email & Text Marketing

    New Gmail Tabs Impact Email Marketing, Expert Says

    July 26, 2013 •

    MailChimp, a popular email marketing solutions provider, says that the new Gmail tabs that are intended to help users clean up their inboxes have negatively impacted open rates for email marketing campaigns, but that there is no need to panic. Google began introducing its new tabbed Gm...

  • Social Media

    Create a Social Hub for your Ecommerce Site

    July 24, 2013 •

    The number of social networks in which merchants participate is on the rise. In addition to the big three — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — we now have Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and many others. Keeping up with all these from a merchant perspective is difficult enough, b...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Marketing Dos and Don’ts for Ecommerce Merchants

    July 23, 2013 •

    In "Email Still an Effective Marketing Tool?," we addressed why email marketing is highly efficient, inexpensive, and easy to measure. This is unlike social media marketing, which for smaller merchants is often difficult to manage and track. I used email marketing extensively in my pr...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Using Email to Maintain and Build Site Traffic

    July 18, 2013 •

    When I managed email marketing for a leading ecommerce site, I would receive calls from our IT department almost every Tuesday, asking if I had sent a large email campaign. The trouble was that we were sending too much traffic to the site at once. This was a good problem to have, but we...

  • Social Media

    7 Keys to Facebook’s ‘People Talking About This’

    July 18, 2013 •

    In "10 Ways to Improve EdgeRank on your Facebook Page," my previous post, I covered how Facebook sorts content in users’ News Feeds using its EdgeRank algorithm. This article is a follow-up and covers a metric that closely ties with EdgeRank: "People Talking About This," or PTAT.

  • Social Media

    4 Tips for Better Contest Forms

    July 16, 2013 •

    Contest marketing is a good way to engage potential customers, increase your social media fan base, give folks positive things to say about your store, and collect data that can improve both your business’s bottom line and your customers' online experiences. Consider for a moment just ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Using Content for Ecommerce Marketing

    July 11, 2013 •

    There is a lot of buzz about content marketing. Much of it applies to business-to-business marketers that develop sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns. But content marketing is also important for ecommerce businesses. Many are experienced content marketers and don’t realize it. What...

  • Social Media

    6 Tools to Monitor Social Media Conversations

    July 11, 2013 •

    It is common for consumers to seek recommendations and advice from their peers on social networks, forums, or rating and review sites when considering a purchase. Whether or not you choose to proactively engage in social media, it is important to pay attention because what people say ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    5 Ways to Get More Site Traffic

    July 10, 2013 •

    Online stores need shoppers and getting more potential customers to visit an online retailer’s site is an important part of ecommerce marketing. Many Internet merchants rely primarily on search engine optimization to drive traffic — and spend a lot of time focused on good title tags. T...

  • Google Ads

    4 Lessons from Google’s Dynamic Remarketing Ads

    July 9, 2013 •

    Google recently announced the launch of a sophisticated new ad feature called Dynamic Remarketing. It works much the same as general remarketing, but the ad units showcase products that visitors viewed. If a shopper came to your site and viewed, say, a specific running shoe, you can in...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 3: Promotion

    July 4, 2013 •

    There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) implementing and testing the tracking code, (c) developing your creative inventory, and (d) promoting your newly-launched program.

  • Social Media

    Podcasting: Getting Started

    July 3, 2013 •

    One form of marketing communication that gets overlooked is podcasting. Podcasts offer several benefits, not the least of which is portability. You can listen to podcasts on the go via mobile devices and, unlike video, podcasts can run in the background while you participate in other a...

  • Social Media

    8 Twitter Hashtag Tracking Tools

    June 27, 2013 •

    Twitter hashtags are a way to organize tweets into topical groups. Tools are available that make it easy to follow hashtag-related conversations, start hashtag chats, and analyze data around their ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    3 Social Shopping Sites for Merchants to Consider

    June 26, 2013 •

    The power of community and key influencers are changing the way we do business. The likelihood of purchasing a product that is recommended by a friend is much higher than a product without such a recommendation. Consumers are now more comfortable with recommendations from those with sim...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Cart-abandonment Email Best Practices

    June 25, 2013 •

    An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the reta...

  • Social Media

    11 Twitter Pointers for Ecommerce Merchants

    June 20, 2013 •

    Twitter is encouraging small businesses to use its service and has created a section on its website and a Twitter channel for that purpose. There are good reasons for ecommerce merchants to use Twitter. It's a place to share real-time information about the products you sell, engage wi...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Will Gmail’s New Tab Layout Affect Ecommerce Merchants?

    June 17, 2013 •

    Consumers have many options for email services. The top three providers are Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, which recently changed to Outlook. Occasionally these services make changes that can impact ecommerce email programs. The changes are often dynamic — changing algorithms, rules, and ...

  • Social Media

    How to Use Klout for Business

    June 12, 2013 •

    Klout is a popular influence measurement platform that ranks people based on their prominence in social media. Klout defines influence as the ability to drive an action related to someone's comments, likes, tweets and retweets. People use Klout to understand how influential they are a...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Implementing Google’s New Data Feed Specifications

    June 11, 2013 •

    Google updated its data feed specifications in early May, requiring online merchants who sell through AdWords or Product Listing Ads to include additional product attributes in the data they send Google. This article will address commonly asked questions on Google's new data feed requi...

  • Social Media

    How to Set Up a LinkedIn Company Page

    June 10, 2013 •

    A LinkedIn Company Page serves as a hub where members can learn more about your company and its products and services. This is the primary way for a company to have a presence in LinkedIn. Three basic steps are involved in setting up a Company Page: Create a company profile; Add a "...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    The Internship: Google Film Review, for Marketers

    June 7, 2013 •

    Thanks to a special sneak preview of The Internship last night — hosted by the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association — I was able to view the new film that was set at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley, a.k.a. the "Googleplex." I was particularly interested to see whether the film revealed anything new or noteworthy about Google from an Internet marketing perspective.

  • Google Ads

    PPC: How to Calculate Maximum Bid per Click

    June 6, 2013 •

    "Customer Lifetime Value" is a critical metric that enables you to optimize the long-term profitability of your pay-per-click advertising. CLV answers the simple yet powerful question, "How much is a new customer worth over the long-term?" It’s an important concept that almost every l...

  • Social Media

    Using Twitter Lists to Manage Followers

    June 5, 2013 •

    Twitter recently lifted the limits on its lists feature. Users can now create up to 1,000 lists that each contains up to 5,000 accounts. Previously the cap was set at 20 with no more than 500 accounts in each list. Though it's unlikely that smaller ecommerce merchants would ever need ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Still Effective Marketing Tool?

    June 5, 2013 •

    At a time when social media seems to be the only thing people talk about, email is still an effective ecommerce marketing tool. But merchants will have to alter how they use it if they wish to keep up with changes in how people access email messages. Are People Still Reading Email? Th...

  • Social Media

    10 Reasons to Consider Tumblr for Ecommerce Blogging

    June 3, 2013 •

    Tumblr is a fast growing social blogging platform suited to the creation of short form, multimedia content. It became so popular that Yahoo! just acquired the company for $1.1 billion. Tumblr started six years ago as a place for creators to showcase their work and it retains that eth...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 2: Developing Creative

    May 30, 2013 •

    Editor's Note: This is "Part 2" of a three-part series on launching a new affiliate marketing program. "Part 1" we published previously. There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) ...

  • Social Media

    Pinterest Introduces ‘Rich Pins’ for Products

    May 29, 2013 •

    Pinterest recently introduced a new feature called "Rich Pins" that should be especially helpful to merchants. It allows companies to include key information such as pricing, product availability, and where to buy to pinned items. The information can be updated daily. Rich Pins are also...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Promoted Post Generates Sales, Traffic

    May 28, 2013 •

    Although recent studies demonstrate that social media sites like Facebook work best to augment other ecommerce marketing campaigns, anecdotal data from a small Facebook ad test demonstrated that the promotion could boost both direct traffic and sales. “In its most recent [Ecommerce Qua...

  • Social Media

    Don’t Focus on Social Media Traffic

    May 24, 2013 •

    New data from a leading marketing optimization firm indicates that social media is not a significant traffic driver for online merchants, but traffic may not be the only indicator of success for social media marketing. Social media represented about 1.55 percent of traffic to ecommerce...

  • Social Media

    Google’s Purchase Path Tool Helps Merchants View All Marketing Channels

    May 22, 2013 •

    The path customers take before making a purchase has become more complex due to social media. Very often, they perform extensive online research that includes reading ratings and reviews, seeking advice on social networks from friends, watching product videos, and looking at competing p...

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