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5 Steps to Better Web Analytics Management

With seemingly infinite amounts of data available from your website, actually using web analytics can seem complex and overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be!

By following these five steps, you can develop a successful web analytics strategy, start measuring success and opportunity accurately, and make better online marketing decisions overall.

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Track Email Marketing with Web Analytics

A lot of time and thought goes into your email marketing campaigns. You set objectives, write copy, develop creative, create landing pages, test subject lines, choose contact lists or segments, and decide what delivery time is best.

Once its launched, you watch your metrics to see how many have opened your email, how many have clicked, what they clicked on, who unsubscribed, revenue generated, and so on. From this, you may draw conclusions about the success of the campaign.

But those metrics are only half the picture. With all this time spent, your website better not fail to support your efforts! Learn how to track your email marketing campaigns with web analytics and start improving email marketing conversion rates today.

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Optimizing Online PR

There's more to online PR than putting out your press release, making a couple of phone calls, and hoping for the best. To get your message out there, you need to integrate tried-and-true online marketing techniques including SEO and social.

Optimizing your releases for search engines and crafting a quality media room on your website are key strategies to driving home your message – and getting it noticed. After all, engaged audiences are more likely to spread your message virally, making it even more likely that your news will hit the headlines.

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Ten Usability Resolutions To Improve Web Marketing ROI

Sometimes we get so caught up in the publicity, we forget about the party. Success in Internet marketing comes not only from drawing visitors to your website, but converting them into customers once there. Usability and accessibility relate to everything from the code used to build your site to the layout and text colour used to display the content. Key elements to measure for improved conversion include bounce rate, load time, content organization, and site navigation. Use this handy checklist to get started.

Use Google Analytics to Evaluate Professional Memberships

As a business owner, you’re likely a member of one or more professional associations, perhaps for conference discounts, networking, or referrals. But now the renewal has come up, and you’re wondering whether it’s worth the cost.

We look at professional memberships as investments. Like any investment, it’s wise to carefully analyze the value each association provides to your business. Fortunately, there is something that can be accurately measured and evaluated – referrals, via Google Analytics.

Using one of our own memberships as an example, learn how to measure referrals, and compare two or more memberships against one another – or against other marketing channels like Display, PPC, and Social Networks – and make an informed decision on whether or not to renew. Learn more.
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Use Email Marketing to Retain Your Most Valuable Travel Customers

Staying in touch with customers is essential for travel agencies. Providing information that is relevant builds credibility, and strengthens your relationship with your most valuable assets - your repeat customers.

With so many travel offers available, you need to match relevant ones to your customers and communicate, clearly, and often. Using travel email marketing best practices, learn how to segment your database based on demographic and purchasing information and use targeted email campaigns to stay relevant, build loyalty, and drive sales. Learn more.
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Quality over Quantity: Using Web Analytics to Identify ‘Hand-Raisers’

The Internet has become the chief source of information for travellers. As a DMO or tour operator, being able to analyze, and act on, activity on your website is crucial in today's highly competitive travel market. Web traffic is meaningless if it’s not the right kind. Focusing on the quality of a visitor's experience will help you understand how likely they are to travel. In this article, learn how to use web analytics to monitor engagement, and identify and measure "hand-raising" activities will define success for your website... and your business. Learn more.

Go Local: PPC for Travel Agencies

Most pay-per-click advertisers target large geographical areas, expecting better results out of higher search volume. But you wouldn’t pay for print advertising nationwide, so why pay for it online?

Locally targeted campaigns can beat national competitors due to the limited search volume. If you run a retail travel agency, you can successfully use PPC advertising to attract more business from your local market. Learn more.
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Discover The Most Effective Email List Segmentation Techniques

Higher email conversion rates depend on getting the right offer, to the right person, at the right time. How? The answer is segmentation. Your lists are your arsenal, your segmentation strategy, your game plan.

Discover how to define your segments, based on interests, behaviour, and demographics; improve your lists, by encouraging subscribers to update their information; and use newsletters to calculate important indicators such as loyalty and engagement.

Don’t let your email marketing ROI rely on mass mailings. Follow these steps, and you’ll be rewarded with more emails opened, more links clicked, and more subscribers converted into clients.
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Using Online PR to Build Your Hospitality Brand

While traditional PR meant hoping for coverage in publications that talked at travelers, online PR works by using what the Internet is all about: peer-to-peer conversation. Now, news and messages are spread using search engines, forums, blogs, discussion threads, social networks, and tools such as RSS feeds.

Whether you’re a hotel, resort, restaurant, or attraction, you can distinguish your brand, influence consumers, and build traffic to your website using strategic online PR. Understand why it works, craft a story, and get social - when you’re ready to start a conversation, these tips will get you there. Learn more.
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What Are Your Travel Customers Searching For? Three Ways to Find Out

These days, having a website that no one can find is like having an unlisted number in the yellow pages. Whether you’re a tour operator, cruise line, hotelier, airline, or destination marketing board, knowing what your target audience is searching for leads to increased traffic, engagement, and sales.

There are a number of techniques and tools available to understand your customer’s behaviour as it relates to search activity. Find out what they are, use them in your Internal travel marketing mix, and realize better ROI today. Learn more.
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Advanced Web Analytics: Beyond Page Views for Better ROI

How much time do you spend on your website analysis? No matter which web analytics program you’re using, you can dig well beyond the basic reports to get a better picture of your site’s performance - and increase ROI. Get tips on identifying and fixing poorly performing pages, filtering visitor data to assess behaviour, monitoring areas of the sales process where people are dropping out, and more. You can’t manage it if you don’t know about it – so go beyond your dashboard and find out what your visitors really want. Learn more.

Maximize the Reach of Your Email Newsletter for Better ROI

64% of decision-makers view emails on mobile devices. By ensuring your email newsletter is accessible and readable, you’ll increase your reader base and stand out as a savvy marketer who adapts to new environments.

But don’t stop there. Email content can also be published on your website, referenced in blogs, and used to create buzz in social networks. In this article, learn how to harness the power of email marketing to get your message to more consumers in a cost-effective way, with helpful best practices for each medium.
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Pay-Per-Click: 5 Tips to Decrease Costs and Improve Performance

PPC advertising can play an important role in your overall marketing. But it’s not about shooting arrows blindly To use pay-per-click wisely, you need to consistently monitor and optimize your keywords, ads, and campaigns. This article offers five tips – from dealing with low click-thru-rates to deciding which match type to use for your keywords – to drive more relevant customers to your site, at the lowest cost-per-click possible. Learn more.

Handling Unresponsive Email Subscribers

Email marketing may be costing you more than you think if your subscribers are ignoring your message. Unresponsive subscribers – those who do not open your emails or click your links – cost you money. Worse, spam complaints can cost you your reputation.

Because the quality of your email list is more important than its size, you’ll improve ROI by focusing on subscribers that matter most to your business. Using these straightforward identification and email segmentation techniques, learn how to win back your unresponsive subscribers, and what to do with those who continue to remain silent. Read more.

Enterprise Email Marketing: 5 Rules for Proper Data Cleansing

Keeping your marketing lists clean and up-to-date when emails change so often can be a challenge, and even put your company at risk. Get the competitive edge with these tips on enterprise email marketing - data hygiene and list management techniques that will improve email delivery, and keep you off those blacklists.

Advanced Email Marketing Segmentation For Your Ecommerce Website

Successful business owners are aware of how cost-effective email marketing is for customer retention and acquisition. Forbes Media concluded in 2009 that email marketing and SEO are the most affordable marketing tools—SEO topped the survey with 48 percent of the vote, while email marketing was a close second with 46 percent.

In this third instalment of the marketing optimization series we’re introducing an advanced email marketing technique that’s designed to persuade a higher number of customers to re-order. This technique uses email segmentation to target subscribers based on specific criteria and tailored messaging to deliver strong incentives to the right people at the right time, and works equally well with both B2B and B2C ecommerce websites. Read on.

eCommerce SEO: User-Friendly & Search Engine Friendly Site Search!

If you are running an ecommerce website, it’s likely you have an ongoing quest to find better ways to increase sales while managing a shrinking budget. You also know the importance of site search capabilities—meaning the internal search engine of a website that is responsible for indexing and querying its product catalogue.

Today we’ll help transform your site’s search functionality to improve user experience, as well as continuing to have Google (and other major search engines) crawl and index the pages in your site that focus on long-tail keyphrases. Learn more about eCommerce SEO.

Marketing Optimization: Crucial to Web Presence and Prosperity

Marketing optimization, whether online or off, is the smart approach to gaining new business. Unfortunately, those who are struggling to stay afloat are tightening their belts and one of the first departments to go under the knife continues to be marketing. When you cut off the direct link to your customers, you’re destined to become a statistic of the economy.

Want to learn more about fine-tuning your marketing to perform well in this economy through a marketing acceleration program? Read on.

Unleash the Power of Branded Email Marketing

In today’s busy online world it seems nearly impossible to be "out of touch." No matter where you look people are instant messaging, tweeting, texting, calling, and emailing. To maintain a competitive edge, businesses need to keep up with the latest trends and technologies - and they need an affordable solution to maximize their email marketing revenues. The future is branded email marketing.

Search Engine Visibility

Where are you on the Search Engine Ladder? - While Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now an item on marketers' agenda in boardrooms everywhere, we believe that its strategic importance to companies' online visibility is not yet fully appreciated. View the Search Engine Visibility Poll results, our commentary and a list of strategic steps to help you climb the search engine ladder.

Cost-Effective Organic SEO and Pay-Per-Click

New to SEO and PPC? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click (Advertising). Both tactics are used to increase the quality and volume of web site traffic originating from search engines.

Much can be written about SEO and PPC and why you should dedicate significant marketing budgets and efforts to these tactics. Read our brief examination and get two charts providing critical results on search engine rankings from Cornell University, and on cost per acquisition across channels from Piper Jaffray Co.