June 2007

In This issue:
:: Hi Jim! Nice to meet you
:: Constant Contact Unleashes the Power of the Poll
:: Introducing the $1 Million website
:: Getting Found in the Haystack
:: When Marketing Can be your Website’s Worst Enemy
:: Tidbits
:: All the rage

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hi Jim! Nice to meet you

We’d like to welcome Jim Underwood to our staff!
Jim came to future-ink via an adventurous move from Dallas, Texas where he spent four years with Southern Methodist University’s e-Marketing Department. There, Jim successfully designed and developed e-Marketing campaigns that supported alumnae affairs and revenue generation for the University’s Development Department. Jim’s accomplishments creating engaging and interactive online experiences has proven to be a great asset to us and our clients.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Constant Contact Unleashes the Power of the Poll
- Christianna Connell

Starting this month, Survey by Constant Contact will make conducting online surveys simple, fast, and highly affordable. No technical or market research skills are required! Survey gives you the insight, new ideas and the knowledge to help meet customer needs, keep your customers happy and grow your organization. You’ll make more informed decisions because you’ll have a broader, more representative view of what your customers and members really think about your products, services and communications. With Survey, you can:

• Create online surveys fast with the step-by-step Survey Wizard, or create your own survey from scratch
• Choose from more than 40 professionally-written survey templates, from member satisfaction to testing new products
• Save time with question and answer choices written by experts
• Invite survey participants with an email invitation, or post a survey link on your website
• Manage your survey contacts with email list management
• Interpret results fast with easy-to-read graphs and charts
• Export results into Excel for comparison over time

With your online survey results, you can:

• View summary results or drill-down to individual survey responses
• Uncover revealing trends and patterns with Survey’s powerful filtering option
• Create targeted email lists based on survey responses, and then follow-up with relevant communications

Discover how the power of Survey by Constant Contact can help you better understand your customers, meet their needs, and have them coming back again and again!

See Survey in action and take our survey now!

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Introducing the $1Million website
- Jeune Ortiz

If I asked our clients what their site is worth, most of them would probably say, “Hang on let me find that invoice.” What your web site cost to develop is definitely a sign of the kind of functionality and marketing that went into its creation. However, it doesn’t come close to representing the site’s true value.

What if I said that your website is worth $1Million or even multi-millions of dollars? Would you believe me?

To understand true value we have to look beyond your site’s obvious structure and functionality to uncover why you have a website in the first place. Most of the sites we have created were for clients who felt they “needed” a site because everyone has a site. However, without a clear vision of what their website can do for their business they’re only scratching the surface of a web site’s true value.

If your website was doing everything you wanted it to do—such as selling a product or service, increasing the number of prospects, and qualifying prospects—what would the potential sales be worth to your business? What if your site was able to send out automatic reminders for payment collection, allow your staff to update the site, provide a knowledge database for frequent questions or procedures how much time would that save you and your employees?

If your website is living up to its full potential, your website’s true value is worth millions of dollars.

Our expertise goes beyond the nuts and bolts of building a website. Is your site a $1Million dollar site or is it simply a stale brochure that you don’t even look at anymore? If your site is not living up to its true potential, we can help. Call us and let us know you want your site to live up to it’s full potential. We will design you a comprehensive emarketing plan to help you achieve your ultimate goal for your web site.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Getting Found in the Haystack
- Christianna Connell

With the unpredictability of search engine algorithms it’s no wonder that many clients have been looking to PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns as a way to avoid the expensive hit-and-miss results of organic search engine efforts.

While we understand the importance of organic search results, we also know that SEO can tend to max out many marketing budgets and it can take months to see any results for your effort. Enter PPC…

The biggest advantages PPC offers:

1. Instant results
   Campaigns can be built in as little as 2 weeks, and once the campaign is live, your ad shows instantly.


2. Predictability
   After startup, the monthly maintenance cost is low, and you can set your monthly budget. Not only that, but once you set your monthly budget, we will manage your account and make sure that you don’t exceed your maximum level, while getting the most out of every dollar.

Just these two things alone are reason enough to dive head first into the PPC world, but it gets even better.

3. Flexibility
   PPC operates on many of the same concepts of organic search engine results. We use a variety of research tools to create customized keywords, keyphrases, and landing pages for your ad. Google provides detailed reports so we can monitor what people are clicking on and how popular certain ads are in your campaign. Later, when you are putting together your organic search strategy, you can use these reports to zero in on the keyphrases/words that you know have a proven track record.

Additionally, the more traffic you get from PPC ads, the higher your site popularity, which improves organic searches. In this way, PPC works hand in hand with traditional SEO and both methods can play off each other for optimum search engine results.

4. Measurability
   With the potential to test new markets, promote special offers and create brand awareness at the click of a button, PPC is showing itself to be not only a valuable marketing tool, but a flexible one that no marketing plan should ignore. With the robust reporting capabilities, you can see immediately which ad campaign is resounding with your audience. The AB testing of headlines, concepts, and copywriting has never been easier – at the click of a button you can see immediate results and fine tune your marketing message.

   Spencer Dyment-Shone, head of online marketing for Loot.com, the classified ad portal, agrees that PPC is an essential component of the marketing mix. “It’s almost impossible to envisage planning an online campaign without PPC. The responsiveness, measurability and predictability of PPC eclipses all other marketing channels.” - .net Magazine

If you’re interested in having a $1 Million site, one of the first steps is to get found! PPC is less expensive than you might think, give us a call and let our Certified Google Adword experts help you tailor your next campaign.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Getting More from your Advertising or PR Efforts
- Jeune Ortiz

PR and marketing are great tools to get the word out about your company. But the results can be greatly improved by utilizing your web site’s marketing muscle and making sure it is prepared for the attention.

Three great ways to add muscle to your ads:

1. Testing and FunnelingTesting is imperative to make sure you’re on the right track. By creating two different version of your ad (known as AB-Split testing) you can find out which ad pulls the best results. Each ad becomes even more powerful by creating a specialized landing page for each ad and funneling your prospects to see specific information.


2. Tracking and Monitoring
   Once we have landing pages set up, we can install tracking on each page that will help you know which page/ad was most popular. Comprehensive reports can tell you where your visitors came from, and in some cases, how long they stayed.


3. Hosting Preparation
   Even the smallest ad can make your bandwidth spike and bring your site down before your host can even spot the problem. If your marketing plan calls visitors to your web site, be sure to let your hosting company know ahead of time.

Number of blogs worldwide in 2005:
22 million

Number of blogs projected worldwide in 2010:
Approaching 1 billion, spurred by Flickr and other new blog uses

Registered Skype users worldwide:
60 million just before eBay’s purchase of Skype

Projected U.S. household use of Tivo and Tivo-like devices in 2010:
70%

Easier than FTP, Faster than E-mail, Larger than Your inbox

If you regularly send large files to clients or vendors you may want to consider using a great new service called You Send It.

Unlike the dual upload/download of each file using FTP, You Send It only requires 1 upload thereby saving you half the bandwidth for each file. For busy sites the impact of bandwidth savings will reveal itself immediately. The advantage over email is that You Send It won’t choke your network for minutes at a time only to return with the all-too-familiar error “Mailbox quota exceeded.”

You Send It takes care of all the geeky stuff, all you have to do is register for an account and you can start sending 100mb files to anyone you want! The recipient will be notified that you’ve sent them something and will be directed to a URL where they can download. It’s that easy. And it’s free!

future-ink.com | privacy policy
2716 Fifth Avenue • San Diego, CA 92103 • 619-303-8454