If your business involves dealing with customers, here are five e-marketing tips.
1. Think mobile
My experience in working on various websites shows that around 50% of visitors to these sites are using mobile devices (phones or tablet), and this figure is going to grow in the next year. However, the majority of websites I see in Africa are not mobile-friendly.
Flow now only builds websites with responsive designs – meaning that the designs scale according to the device the website is being viewed on (desktop, mobile or tablet). Our latest example is the upgraded Table Mountain Cableway website. Below is an example of how the site scales on different devices:
See some recent Flow blogs about mobile-friendly design:
- Lessons you can learn from working with responsive design
- What you need to know about mobile for marketing your business
When thinking mobile, it's also important to remember that Flash plug-ins do not work on iPads and iPhones, which are used by a large percentage of people visiting your website.
Also, keep your website's static copy short and punchy; mobile users don't want to scroll too much to find what they are looking for.
2. Use social media to engage
I underline the word "engage" because while many travel companies are using social media, they are not using it to engage with clients and potential clients, and they are missing opportunities by not doing so.
Facebook has drastically altered its algorithm in the past two years, and the only way to get even semi-decent organic reach through Facebook posts is to attract engagement.
Tips for engaging on Twitter:
- Reply to people who mention you
- Search for questions people are asking that relate to your industry and start conversations around that
- Follow your clients on Twitter – you need to know what they are saying about you – and respond where appropriate
- Get involved in popular or regular # conversations
3. Work with partners
Your partners in business should be your partners in e-marketing as well, particularly on social media platforms like Twitter.
If you are working towards common objectives, leverage your combined social media reach to do this.
I recently spoke at the E-Tourism East Africa Conference in Nairobi, where members of the travel industry discussed the challenge of changing perceptions of Kenya and promoting a campaign called "Why I Love Kenya".
To demonstrate the power of working together to achieve a common objective, I asked everyone in the audience to tweet, "#WhyILoveKenya", followed by a reason, or accompanied by an image. I also asked them to mention one other person in their tweet, in the hope that that person would retweet them. My calculations found that #WhyILoveKenya was seen by more than 250 000 people on Twitter within two minutes.
4. Make your newsletters newsworthy
If you aren't already producing newsletters, you should start thinking about it. And if you are already sending out regular newsletters and getting an open rate of less than 20%, you should be thinking about why this is so.
When putting a newsletter together, ask yourself: Is this newsworthy? Will the subject line entice recipients to open it?
Some points around subject lines and distribution:
- To avoid ending up in spam boxes, avoid punctuation, digits and words such as "free", "win", "discount" (and "penis enlargement"!)
- Try to make your subject line a call to action
- Our experience at Flow has shown that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send newsletters, in terms of open rates
Keep newsletter copy short, punchy and visual – your recipients will be deterred if they have to read too much. Provide clear calls to action and links to web pages with more information, or where purchases/bookings can be made. Your target should be to get more than 20% of people who open your newsletter to click at least one link.
5. Content is king – have a king-sized plan
Plan content for your website and your social media channels a month in advance. Consider events and general messaging when doing this. You can even schedule social media posts in advance with programmes such as TweetDeck.
In addition to your planned content, be quick to capitalise on news opportunities relating to your company and your industry (for example, when your company wins an award).
As a general rule, you should aim to publish content on your website in the first instance and then use social media to direct people to that particular news entry.
Work with Flow
If you'd like help with the implementation of these tips, send an email to info@flowsa.com for Southern Africa, or roy@flowsa.com for East Africa.
If you have any questions, ask me on Twitter.
