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Friday
April 23, 2010 Are You Committed to Your Blog?Filed under: Tips and Tricks I finally got to watch an entire movie start to finish last week. If you are a working parent, you know how tough this is. Someone is either hogging the box with Elmo or ICarly (my husband) or you are so exhausted by the end of the day you just can’t keep your eyes open. The movie was Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep who was a spot-on Julia Child. The story is about Julie Powell who blogged every day for an entire year as she made recipes from the Julia Child cookbook. The blog was obviously successful, proving that anyone with compelling, relevant content can be a digital publisher. What impressed me most was her absolute commitment to her blog. It’s a piece of cake to get a blog site live with the free online software that is available such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com. You can literally have your blog live in minutes without a web designer. It’s the actual act of blogging that is the hard part. A blog is a long term commitment and the key to sustainability is passion. You need to throw yourself into maintaining a blog or you need to have a dedicated person assigned to update the blog for your business. Or, maybe it’s just not the right time to start a blog. When you commit to a blog, the payoff can be huge. An established blog with a collection of articles referencing your business shows that you are the expert in your field and builds trust. As you continue to document your experiences, you are building an accessible, centralized location. You can refer customers to your blog on past articles about events, case studies, products and programs that worked. One of the biggest payoffs is that relevant content and links are picked up on search engines. Your blog becomes a vehicle to your web site so Set a goal Stay on Schedule Find a Friend with a Red Pen Market your Blog Bonus topics for you to kick start your blog Blog about upcoming events. “Back to school is right around the corner and it is time to start planning. We have great ideas for your school fundraisers and events. Last year, we created a program for Lion Elementary and they had their best fundraiser year ever. Here’s how…” Blog about your vacation or day-to-day amusements and relate it back to your business. “This weekend my family and I went to my husband’s company picnic. The food was less than memorable but what made an impression on me was the great use of promotional products with the company’s logo.” If you have a blog for your business, please send me a link at kcoates@asicentral.com. I would love to read your stories.
Thursday
February 18, 2010 More Eyes on YOUR MessageFiled under: LogoMall, Marketing, Member Benefits, New Features, Tips and Tricks Email marketing is powerful. No other medium gives you the instant results that an email marketing campaign can produce. You know immediately who is opening your email and what they clicked. However, now your promotions and informational content no longer need to be limited to just the email addresses on your list. With social media added to the mix, you significantly expand your audience exponentially (think: Twitter and Facebook!). RatePoint, ASI’s email marketing member benefit, has just announced a new feature that easily helps you combine email marketing and social media. RatePoint’s social media option will automatically post your email marketing content such as newsletters, coupons, specials and announcements about new or hot products directly to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. With very little effort you can push out content in one location without having to go to each social media site to send your posts. RatePoint easily connects your Twitter and Facebook accounts. You select by campaign if you want to publish your content to social media sites and then create a personalized text status message for Twitter and Facebook that will link back to your email. Social networking sites are increasing the exposure of your marketing campaigns and stretching your marketing dollars. And the audience is not limited to the number of contacts or followers you have. Search engines like Google are quickly indexing social media content such as Twitter posts. By pushing out good messages with valuable content, you enhance how your potential customers will learn about your business and how you can provide promotional product solutions for them. More eyes on your brand, more eyes on your web site, more potential for sales. It’sthat simple. A Free account is now available for up to 125 contacts. When you upgrade to a paid subscription with more email contacts, ASI has negotiated great pricing for you. The new social media tools are free to use with the trial and any paid subscription. Visit www.asicentral.com/ratepoint to sign up for your Free account today.
Friday
July 24, 2009 Paper or Silicon? How savvy distributors turn catalogs into LogoMall leadsFiled under: LogoMall, Marketing, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized Contributor: Jack Flohr, Director of Marketing, Membership Services One of the best drivers of Web traffic is the tried and true paper catalog. From LL Bean to Victoria’s Secret to the Counselor Top 40, businesses continue to rely on catalogs. In fact, “50 -70% of online sales are driven by catalogs,” said George Hague, senior marketing strategist at J. Schmid & Assoc. Inc., a catalog consulting company in Mission, Kansas. As a distributor with a LogoMall site, you can easily and immediately drive customers to your site using imprinted catalogs that are personalized with your Website. When followed up with an email that links to your site and a personal call, this integrated program has proven to increase sales. Kayla Tollen, of Kayla Advertising asi/239482 has seen real world results using integrated campaigns, “I’ve been using catalogs for 24 years. One or two orders cover the cost of my investment. ASI’s fulfillment service is an added bonus and creates additional savings in time and money.” The challenge of course is finding the time to market your business effectively doing all of the things you already know you are supposed to do. One suggestion is to block out a ‘Marketing morning’ once every two weeks and dedicated at least 6-8 hours/month to marketing efforts. You can also use ASI services directly. Not only does ASI do all of the work for you, often times it saves money due to our leverage and position. Services include catalog fulfillment, prospect lists, email marketing, self promotions, and telemarketing. If you’re looking for a great program to drive traffic and sales from your site you should consider 4th quarter gift giving. Start by featuring gifts on your LogoMall site and doing a fulfillment program with ASI’s Gift Book catalog. There’s no better time than now as nearly 40% of annual sales are made in the gift dominant 4th quarter. Will you be ready? Get help today, get leads tomorrow, and grow your business now. Call Dan Brown, ASI Catalogs Manager, today to learn more at 800-546-1392. P.S. In these challenging times history proves that those who advertise not only make money right away, they wind up with significantly more sales as things improve. This is your chance to win big! Jack joined ASI in 2005 and is the Director of Marketing for Membership Services at ASI. He is a direct marketing veteran with over 25 years of diverse sales & marketing experience in international business. Jack’s previous experience includes owning a marketing consulting firm with clients that included firms such as NutriSystem and SmartBargains.com. Prior to that he was in charge of the catalog division at The Franklin Mint, and has held numerous positions in operations, purchasing and finance. Today, Jack specializes in multi-channel marketing and is adept at creating vision, strategy and execution across multiple mediums.
Monday
November 17, 2008 Fraud Protection TipsFiled under: Tips and Tricks We received a few calls from members last week that someone was trying to purchase multiple DVD players with a credit card and they wanted them shipped overnight. Are your scam senses tingling? A few bells should go off when you hear that an order is for high end technology products with street value that don’t need to be imprinted and they need it overnight. Protection from fraud starts with you. You should know your own customers better than anyone. You can’t rely on your bank or the credit card companies to catch the scam. Authorization of the credit card means that the holder has sufficient credit, the card has not been reported stolen and that there has been no fraud activity reported to date. The card number that was submitted to you could be fraudulent but hasn’t been reported stolen yet. Unfortunately, banks that issue the cards won’t cover the cost of the scam. Using Visa and Mastercard rules, you, the merchant, will be charged back for the sale amount and will bear the cost of the lost goods. As the merchant, you are the first line of defense. We asked for advice from Dave Dauer at the Access Group, ASI’s affiliate for credit card processing, for the signs of possible fraud when the card is not present. Be alert for transactions that show several of the following characteristics. Keep in mind that none of these by itself means you are being scammed, but a combination of them might. - Request to charge the purchase amount on multiple credit cards If you suspect fraud, CALL the customer. Confirm the information that you have received and make sure you get the card verification number and the card’s billing address from the customer. As a part of your authorization process, you should always be requesting the card verification number which is the 3 digits on the back of the Visa or MasterCard. Failure to receive or failure to “Match” is an indication that they may not have the card physically in their presence. In addition, you should be completing address verification during the authorization process. Verifying the “bill to” address that you received against what Visa or MasterCard has on file for that card holder is a very important step and a strong indicator of possible fraudulent activity if the address information does not match. Never ship to a billing address that does not match the card holder address. Report any suspicious activity to your merchant bank. If the order is from a new customer, you can purchase an Experian QuickCheck report online to verify your customer’s information and check their credit. Protecting your business comes down to knowing your customer and using your instincts. For more information on credit card processing, contact ASI’s affiliate, Access Group at 800.809.0719.
Sunday
July 8, 2007 Promoting your Web Site Offline TipsFiled under: Tips and Tricks I’m just back from the ASIShow! Chicago and going through the stack of business cards that we all collect. In doing so I noticed that some were missing a critical piece of information – a Web address. How is that possible? If the card was in the hands of your customer, wouldn’t you want your web address to be available? Seems minor but you could be missing out on a big sales opportunity. Let’s get back to the basics with the top places to promote your web site offline. Printed Materials VoiceMail Catalogs ASI offers a variety of catalogs to meet the needs of your customers such as the Select catalog that includes products from top suppliers rated by ESP Online™ users. Visit www.asicentral.com/catalogs for more details. Promotional Products |
