1. Qualify your “prospects” though better targeting of your online media, whether it is SEM/PPC or Online Display
2. Communicate with your “prospects” in a way that is meaningful to them – i.e., targeted, segmented messaging. This can be Facebook, Email, Twitter, etc…, just make sure it’s on topic and relevant for the target
3. Have a communications plan – who, what, when, why
4. STICK TO THE PLAN! – It’s easy to want to move too quickly, but, these things build momentum over time and, if the plan is well thought out it will work.

We’re seeing some VERY dramatic results, in some cases increasing our “opt-in lists” by 20%+ per month and increasing our conversion rates by 10%+ per week.
The take away here, plan, plan, plan, and stick to the plan… and be RELEVANT!

Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing. “It’s a watershed moment,” says the study’s lead author, Outsell vice president Chuck Richard.

This is great news for digital agencies, and firms like Google who are the recipients of these online ad spending dollars. Keep in mind, however, that the majority of this revenue goes to the large ad vendor. Agencies keep only from 5-10% of the total spend.

• Every year an average of 30 percent of the people who signed up for your e-mail marketing list will not get your e-mails because their ISP will incorrectly block them.
• 85 percent of the people on your e-mail list will stop reading your e-mails (without unsubscribing) after the third message your company sends to them (yes, company, not just your group inside the company).
• 25 percent of the people on your list who receive your e-mails and never open them will be among the top 10 percent of your best customers.
• An average of 39 percent of your current year subscribers will either unsubscribe, or stop reading/engaging with your e-mails by the end of the year.
• Over 10 percent of people who initially read your e-mail on their handheld device will file it away, intending to take action, but never doing so.
• About 15 percent of your list will read your e-mails and look to a social network like Facebook or Twitter to see if others are buzzing about the message or offer before taking action.
• Over 49 percent of people who are happy with their recent purchase from your company will open future e-mails seven times faster than those who have not made a purchase in over three months.

Read the rest of her post here…

Here are their top 10:

1. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
2. Tradeshows – Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
3. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
4. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
5. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
6. Host your own event – Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
7. Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
8. Incentivize your employees – Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
9. Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
10. Referrals – Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you’ll give them a discount.

Let me set-up the situation, we have been discussing some of the problems with Social Network Marketing here internally and wanted to start doing some data gathering, independent of big research firms. We wanted anecdotal evidence for our clients. We didn’t have a big budget to run ads, send email solicitations, etc. What we did have, however, is a good survey tool (provided by Survs.com), and the social networks themselves. We built a quick survey, (to get some initial findings, more short surveys will follow), and then posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, our Facebook page, and a couple of local business sites (like OCMetro). Within five minutes of posting about the survey we were beginning to get results.

This illustrates the point that when you’re talking to people that are engaged in your subject matter, and don’t ask them too many questions, you’ll get good results. The same thing can be done with product owners, VIP club members, etc. Even without an incentive to take the survey we got a 97% completion rate!

Not only did we get a successful survey, but, overall site traffic and awareness went up as shown by these stats:
Unique Site Visits (vs. prior week): +107%
Absolute Unique Visitors (vs. prior week): +92%
Pageviews (vs. prior week): +86%
Increase in Twitter followers (vs. prior week): +350%

In addition, traffic came from completely different sources than normal:
Search (organic & paid): -70.46% (vs. prior week))
Referral: +141.67% (vs. prior week)

If the referral traffic it came from the expected sources based on our efforts:
Facebook: 16.67%
Our Blog: 13.33%
Twitter: 8.33%
LinkedIn: 1.67%
Other: 1.67%

Now, enough about the positive effect of the survey, let’s look at the survey results:

How Many Social Networks Are You Using?

Most respondents (>80%) are using between 1 and 6 social networks. There were no respondents that were unaware of social networking, or un-connected; this isn’t surprising, however, given our solicitation methods.

Do You Read All Of Your “Friends” Updates?

In an unsurprising outcome, more than 60% of our respondents do not read all of their friend’s updates, stay tuned for our next survey where we ask the question, “Why Not?”

Tell Us About Those Updates

The last question was interesting, it asked what people thought of the updates from their friends. Over half (>54%) of those surveyed said that the updates kept them perfectly informed, or, lead to interesting places or information online. Only 18% said that they were too much information, and another 27% replied with “Other.” Of those “other” responses, here is one that was intriguing, “Updates can be interesting but many are worthless attempts at attention.” Most of the “other” responses were a combination of the other answers.

We would like to thank you for your participation in the survey, and remind you to stay tuned for more.