Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

Have you ever wanted to get your message out to a large portion of your customers all at once?

Email, has to one of the fastest and most cost effective ways to do this.

But finding the right system for Branding your emails can be a tricky business.

Quality Content = Quality Customers

Sending an email full of useful and interesting content can be one of the greatest ways to keep in touch with the people you’re aiming to serve.

Spamming a potential client with pushy sales jargon can be one of the best ways to scare them off.

So keep your emails friendly, interesting and full of products that will help customers rather than waste their money.

A quality email will help you grow your customer list, through word of mouth and ‘refer a friend’ options, which are common in many email systems today.

When looking for a system to send bulk emails to customers it pays to make sure you are using an email system that makes unsubscribing easy.

Giving customers a choice

A reader must always feel that they are in control of the email process or they begin to feel trapped or tricked into receiving your publication.

If that ever happens, your emails will quickly find their way into the nearest junk folder.

So, an unsubscribe button on your email will allow your reader the choice of continuing to receive your newsletter of whether it’s just not right for them.

Allowing people the freedom to choose in this situation will enable you to create the best list of potential customer possible. Customers who want to hear from you.

Other considerations are ease of use and an ability to manage your subscriber lists.

Easy to use email campaigns

If you find an email system hard to use, you simply won’t use it. Which, of course, will stall any email marketing momentum that you’ve begun.

Many email campaign managers come with ready to use template systems now, which make creating a quality, professional looking presentation far easier than it has ever been before.

Manage subscriber lists for targeted marketing

The ability to quickly and easily manage subscriber lists will speed up any management of an email marketing campaign, while enabling you to divide customer lists into relevant subdivisions.

Dividing customers into more targeted groups will enable you to send more relevant information, rather than a generic message.

Finding the right email system for your business is not always easy but considering that the majority of people on this earth are using email on a daily basis, you’d have to admit that marketing via email is a solid choice for cost effective customer communication.

If you’d like to see what email campaign manager we provide our clients click email marketing campaign manager for more information.

Branding your business is more than just a logo or a corporate image.

Everything your business does equates to it’s overall personality.

We can externally project an image to the buying public. But keep in mind that everything we say, promote or advertise about our business becomes a promise with our customers.

If we don’t keep those promises when interacting with these customers, before, during and after sales, that image becomes tainted and our brand takes on a life of it’s own.

You can read my article on branding your business externally vs internally here.

Feel free to lave a comment regarding your thoughts on the topic.

Click the image above to see the latest advertisement for Nintendo’s ‘Wario Shake it”.

Make sure to watch more than just the first few seconds.

You’ll begin to see how you can use popular online media such as YouTube but take your ideas about online marketing to a whole new level.

Let me know what you think.

Over the last few years, the Console and PC Gaming industry has become big business.

With PC gaming alone, making over $10.7 Billion in revenue for 2007.

While those playing Computer Games on a regular basis have been watching this trend rise for some time, the world at large is starting to pay attention with Brand names such as Grand Theft Auto, Halo and World of Warcraft hitting prime time news this year.

With the increase in revenue, there has been an increase in spending in the marketing space.

Companies such as Blizzard (World of Warcraft) has been spending time and money on amazing trailers and pre-promotion for some time - but with their success (over 9.3 million payed subscribers last year), other game creators are starting to see the light.

The up coming ‘Rock Band 2″ is one such example. A game intro and promotion definitely worth watching (Not your average commercial).

The Computer Game industry is starting to take it’s strides up along side the Movie industry in revenue and the audience is growing so it’s certainly worth keeping your eyes on.

You can view the Rock Band intro here.

I’d love to read your thoughts about the trailer or your impressions of the gaming industry as it is today and in the future, so feel free to leave a comment.

Here is a very interesting experiment being undertaken at brandtags.net.

It’s the equivalent of a word association test.

Simply view a brand logo and type the first word that comes to your head.

Don’t feel you need to finish the test, I think it goes through hundreds before you reach the end.

You can see the results so far here.

Click on any of the brand names to see what people said.

The larger fonts are the ones that were typed most often.

Let me know if you find any surprises.

Here’s an interesting article I found today on the effects and consumer reaction to green advertising.

That’s advertising based on your company’s environmental benefits – for those about to ask.

Is your company taking advantage of a ‘green’ perception?

If not, can you think of any way in which it could?

You can find the whole article here including to green advertising examples.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected the link above so it’s working better now.

Helping future clients find you online.

Millions of people search for products and services each day on Google, Yahoo and other Search Engines.

So, of course, we all want our part of it. But how can we help your web sites to be found online.

Search Engine Optimization.

We optimize our sites for keywords and phrases that people use to search for our business.

But how can we be sure that the keywords we’re aiming for are the right ones?

Well, we could guess. Pick words that we think people will use to find us.

Unfortunately, it’s often hard to know what words people ‘outside our business’ might use to describe our business.

Now, Crimson Fox fixes the problem by providing you with a keyword testing system that will allow you to test your keyword theories and get some real results about what people are searching for.

The customers that have used this service so far, have been surprised at the results.

We’ve been able to help them redirect the aim of their web site and they are already showing the returns.

If this service sounds interesting or if you would like to know more – contact us and we will be more than happy to let you know more.

I’ve just finished reading a great book that you might be interested in.
‘Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die…’

Written by Chip & Dan Heath, Made to Stick deals with why some ideas, stories and products become world famous and why most don’t. Why some things are ’sticky’ and why others are not.

I found the topic particularly interesting from a marketing and advertising point of view.

Not only does the book direct us to examples of the ’stickiness’ factor. But it then breaks them down and describes why they work. Then best of all, how we can replicate them.

Of course, with all great things, many elements have to align for our ideas to become hugely successful.

But by following methods described in the book, you will certainly place yourself closer to the mark. Giving you every chance to make sure that your next thing - is the ‘Next Big Thing’.

I’d definitely recommend reading the book if only to freshen your ideas about marketing and presentation.

To read more about the book including excerpts, you can visit the Made to Stick web site here.

I can’t finish the week without making reference to the biggest advertising event on the calendar.

The American Superbowl has become the most highly contested advertising spot worldwide.

With over 3 Million US dollars being shelled out for a single run during the game.

You then add the cost of producing each commercial, including A list entertainment talent. You are looking at a cool 5-6 million dollars for a single advertising spot.

While those figures sound insane from a return on investment point of view. Studies have shown that many products advertised during the Superbowl have received in excess of a 10% increase in yearly sales, directly attributed to Superbowl ads.

For high profile products this can mean an increase in revenue of tens of millions of dollars. Certainly worth the initial expense.

To see some of this years Superbowl commericals click here.

In my opinion, some Superbowl commercials are brilliant. Delivering a message that calls customers to action, while delivering just the right about of entertainment value to make the message stick.

While other ads have missed the mark by placing too much emphasis on the entertainment and not enough on the message.

Check them out and let me know which ones worked for you.