NOTE: Most of our case studies are real-world examples of BSA clients. This is an exception where I want to show how a bit of thought can help you make daily deal marketing work for you -and how to avoid the horror stories.

See here how some minor changes can turn a horror story into a goldmine:

Many people have heard the story of the local Cupcake baker who nearly went bust when their deal on Groupon swamped them. Clearly daily deals can give a real boost to your business but how do you make sure you get the maximum benefit and don’t let the success backfire….

Here are 4 key tips – the anatomy of a great deal….

1. Don’t over commit yourself

• Get some idea of what response you might expect. Ask the deal site for stats on how many users they have and typical numbers/percentage of deals taken up in your sector.
• Think carefully about your capacity to delver on the deal.
• Put a limit on the number of deals available. If you sell out it makes for great publicity and you can normally rerun the deal later.

2. Price your deal carefully

• The deal site will give you advice on the levels of discount you should be offering.
• Be clear about your objectives. Are you looking to make meaningful profit on the deal or using it to build your customer base where your real benefit comes from repeat business?
• Make sure you know your real costs and be VERY careful about offering a deal price that doesn’t at least cover these.
• How much do your customers normally spend with you? If you set the value of your deal below this amount you can realise significant overspend on the deal – more revenue to you.

3. Get your timing right

• Let your deal redemption run for a reasonable time so that you don’t get everyone coming at once.
• Don’t let redemption run forever. A time limit puts more focus in your customer’s mind.
• If you have busier and quieter days, set the redemtion to finish when you are normally quieter in case there is a last minute rush.

4. Think about terms or restrictions you could impose

• Limit the number of vouchers that can be purchased by one person.
• Limit the deal to new customers only.
• Only allow redemptions during times when you are normally quiet.
• Require voucher customers to complete a registration card.

Hopefully these tips will give you some focus on how Daily Deals may work for you.

And finally, here are a couple more thoughts:

Remember that the Deal Site will take a significant commission from your deal price – don’t forget to include this in your costs.

If you are looking to build your customer base don’t forget to record customer details when they redeem their vouchers. We have seen a client assume they would be given a list of all voucher purchasers by the Deal Site only to find out, when it was too late, and this was not the case. Their deal was offered at pretty much cost price so they ended up with a great deal of work for nothing.

To demonstrate our approach, I have put together a (dummy) case study showing how the Cupcake company could have made things work out better. Click here to take a look

Here is a link I found to a site listing lots of UK Daily-Deal sites

Even in these austere times, with the government clawing back any spare funding they can, there are still pockets of opportunity. The TR&DE programme from UKTI offers up to £3000 (which supported companies must match to give a total of up to £6000 funding) to SME  businesses based in the North West who get involved with Research & Development to support activity to promote export trade.

The programme also offers (in addition to the funding) access to international trade expertise from Grant Thornton and EV.

Funding can be used for a range of activities including:

• Market research projects for new overseas market entry
• Assistance with international marketing and branding, including website development and marketing materials
• Advice relating to international commerce and e-commerce protocols
• A review of existing IP assets and protection, strategy and future requirements
• Legal advice around international commercial agreements
• Attendance at overseas conferences
• Assistance in identifying and recruiting new staff to help enter international markets

The programme is limited to a maximum of 230 companies and applications must be made by 19 August 2011

Here is some further info from UKTI: Introduction to the TR&DE funding programme

Or contact me: davidw@bsamarketing.com for more details and to help you:

Be Heard and Be Valued.

Knowing when to send emails to best effect is an eternal question, and the decision is usually based on a gut feeling. However there is a way to make this a little more scientific using Google analytics.

This post on the e-consultancy website shows you how to analyse conversions by time of day, and by days of the week. Once you have this information,  you can make an informed decision as to the best time to send your emails.

How to use Google Analytics to find the best time to send emails

Using this type of analysis has caused us to re-think the scheduling of a number of our email campaigns

When you look at any technology news you can hardly fail to notice the massive growth in smartphones and tablet PCs, led at present by Apple with the iPhone and iPad.

The fact that mobile browsing of websites is on the increase should not come as a surprise, and preparing your website for this kind of traffic is something to consider especially those of you with ecommerce sites.

This recent post on the eConsultancy blog, suggests that 32% of browsers visiting ecommerce sites in the runup to Christmas were using a mobile browser. Our own figures suggest this may be on the high side (analysis of sites run by BSA Marketing suggest the figure is closer to 10% for ecommerce sites and 5% for non ecommerce), but with growth rates over the past 12 months in excess of 200% this a significant figure and growing fast.

To make effective changes to support mobile browsing need not be expensive to implement. If your site includes a WordPress blog it is a simple matter of adding a plugin and a mobile theme.Optimising e-commerce sites, is usually not much more complex.

If you would like to talk through the options then give us a call.

There is plenty of information out there about email marketing, and how it can improve ROI, but there are few straightforward facts on the effectiveness of e-mail in the real world.

To address this, we have put together a case study on how BSA are using email marketing to help one of our clients secure additional, profitable business, and how the effectiveness of e-mail compares with other marketing tools like SEO.

The Client – Mettricksbutchers.co.uk

Mettricksbutchers.co.uk is an ecommerce site offering high quality meat from local producers. The website is promoted using a range of tools including:

• Search marketing
• Off line brand development
• E-mail marketing

Objectives

The project had 2 main objectives

1. Building the contact list
2. Generating sales

These objectives were approached by

Encouraging visitors to the site to create an account, and join the emailing list.

Regular e-mail marketing to account holders,  reinforcing the Mettricks brand and encouraging the placing of orders.

Results

Building the mailing list
Through sustained on and off line marketing, we have succeeded in consistently growing the e-mailing list over time. The graph below illustrates how the customer list has grown over the past 12 months.

Generating Sales
As the site is an ecommerce site, we can measure sales directly, and through Google Analytics we can establish the traffic sources generating orders.

Through these tools we can measure marketing effectiveness through tracking e-commerce conversion rates for various marketing media:

The Traffic sources tracked are:

General searches (for example)

• online butchers
• butchers
• online butcher

Brand specific searches (for example)

• Mettricks
• Mettricks butchers
• Mettricks Glossop

Visits triggered by email

For each of these traffic sources we can measure Conversion Rate (% of visits that become an order) and Average Order Value.

The graphs below illustrate the breakdown of traffic, and the conversion rates for these three traffic sources

They demonstrate that although the number of visits from email is significantly lower than the number of visits generated from generic search keywords, when it comes to revenue generation the email visits are much more valuable.

This is further reinforced when we look at conversion rates on visits generated from email compared with search keyword visits. For site visits from general searches, less than 1% convert to orders. this figure rises to just over 5% for site visits from brand specific searches and up again to almost 6.5% for visits originating from e-mails – a total improvement of over 600%!

We must however also consider order values. Although, in our study, visits from general searches did deliver the highest order values, the range across the 3 revenue sources is only + or – 4%. The higher conversion rate from e-mail is much more significant

Conclusions

1. Search engine marketing & offline brand promotion encourage people to sign up to the site
2. The most valuable website visits come from email & people performing brand searches
3. Visits from emails have a conversion rate over 7 times higher than general searches

Although SEO and search marketing are important for helping to build a good e-mailing list, real success comes from developing relationships with contacts through email & brand building.

Successful marketing needs to be an integrated process utilising the appropriate marketing mix.

This is the essence of the BSA Marketing approach

Over the next couple of months, we are planning a series of posts looking at email marketing, including things like:

• Writing good email copy
• Best practice in email template design
• What to look for in a good email marketing tool
• Integrating email marketing & e-commerce

Before you start any email campaign it is essential that you have a good privacy policy so that users of your site are clear on how you will us their data.

So to kick off this series, we have sourced a good standard privacy policy. This is available for free download from www.diylegals.co.uk, and hopefully will save you some time without compromising on quality & accuracy.

You can download the policy here.

If you would like to be kept up to date with this new series, then sign up to receive our email newsletters.

BSA Marketing have teamed up with Business link East Midlands to bring a series of seminars entitled “Marketing Fundementals”. In the series, there will be 3 Seminrs as follows:

Book on line Marketing Fundementals for Retail – Glossop Gasworks, Glossop – Wednesday 29th October 9:30-12:30 (followed by lunch)

Book on line Marketing Fundementals for Service – Glossop Gasworks, Glossop – Wednesday 29th October 13:30-16:00 (preceded by lunch)

Book on line Marketing Fundementals for Leisure – Old Hall Hotel Buxton – Wednesday 6th November 9:30-12:30

Many business owners know that they could be doing more with the internet to promote their company but often they are not sure where to start.

Search Engine Optimisation, Sponsored Links, Website Updates, Blogs, Social Networking and E-mail marketing are just some of the options on offer. Which can be most beneficial to me? – or should I be looking at a strategy combining a number of approaches?

As an accredited associate of the Manufacturing Advisory Service – North West, BSA Marketing can undertake a comprehensive review of your web strategy to help clarify your options and show the best way forward.

If your North West based business is an SME* involved with the manufacturing/processing sector then the review could be100% funded** so there would be no cost to you. Get more information on the web reviews here

Even better, if you decide on things you want to do, you may be eligible** for further government subsidised project implementation work. Get more information on subsidised** project work here

NOTES:

*SME definition:

Companies with up to 250 employees and/or up to €50m turnover. In addition, no more than 25% of the company should be owned by a group with more than 250 employees and/or €50m turnover.

**Eligibility and Availability:

• All MAS services are subject to availability and eligibility criteria.
• Free reviews and subsidised project work are available to North West based small and medium size (SME**) manufacturers or related companies (including research, design, logistics & warehousing etc).
• Large North West manufacturers and related companies can benefit from a free MAS review if they engage their suppliers to benefit from the MAS programme.
• Due to limited availability, MAS North West reserves the right to prioritise its subsidised services.
• Companies not eligible for MAS subsidised support can purchase MAS services at standard rates.

As a marketer, I am a great fan of e-commerce for smaller retail businesses as it is a great way to get close to your customers & service a wide marketplace without spiraling overheads.

However, when making the decision to set up an ecommerce site, one key question is which shopping cart system to go for. There are many on the market, but which is the right one?

I recently found a useful summary of the main carts on the market which highlights their advantages & disadvantages so I thought I would share it:

www.itwebexperts.com/oscommerce_zencart_xcart_comparison.php

We develop our sites in CRE loaded, and the key reason for this is its flexibility. I am a marketer and as such believe that e-commerce is a marketing and not an IT issue. I am also firm believer that your business should drive the e-commerce system, and not the other way round.

CRE loaded is relatively easy to customise, so when a customer comes to me and says “Can I ……. with the online shop?” The answer is invariably “Yes” and the solution will not normally be expensive to implement.

So if you are considering taking the plunge into e-commerce, I recommend reading the above review, and feel free to contact us, as we are always happy to discuss the options.