Business Articles For Online Businesses

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With further development in technologies like cellular phones, instant messaging, PDA’s and mobile email, the world is becoming more personal. People identify better with actual people than with a business. They want to feel that there is a real human being on the other end that they are communicating with and not some generic business reply. The same applies to your email marketing campaign. Follow those quick tips on how to add personality to your email campaigns for maximum success!

Build Relationships Be sure to welcome any and all questions your customers may have. Having a separate email address for customer service is a great idea, but don’t let it turn generic. Send a reply from a qualified real person. Answer their question in full and ask if they have any more questions. Not replying to a customers email is an easy way to lose credibility. Answer your customers emails immediately!

Use A Real Person The reader will feel more comfortable reading a newsletter from an employee of the business rather than the business itself. Let this person send out the emails and inject their own personality as well as the collective personality of the business itself. This way, you don’t stray from the image of the company, but you also include that crucial human element.

Include Images Has your company had any recent outings, promotions or events? Did anyone take pictures of them? Include these in your newsletters with a brief description of what went on. Including these pictures can make your customers feel almost like family and much closer to the company.

Be Personal Remember that each person that receives your email newsletter is reading it by themselves. You are not projecting this letter onto a pull-down screen in a meeting room for a large group to read. Speak to the people as if you are speaking to them one on one, because you are. Think about how you would write the email if you were writing it to a friend. This can be tricky because you need to balance personality with a good business sense. It is important to find the thin line in that regard. Personality is an aspect that is too overlooked in a fast paced business world. With so many automated answering services and generic reply emails sent out, people crave personality. Don’t be afraid to put some personality into loyal-email.com” target=”_blank your email marketing campaigns and watch your business thrive!

About the Author: Tyler Houts is the Public Relations and Online Marketing Director for Kinetica Media, an internet marketing company that works to harness the power of the internet for businesses of all sizes. Visit kineticamedia.com kineticamedia.com to see how their proven online marketing campaigns can enhance customer loyalty and attract new clients.

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If you’re like most people, you typically need some sort of guidance or instruction before you can be successful in performing a task. The same is true for visitors looking for information on your web site – you must provide them with appropriate directions and navigation in order for them to use your web site effectively.

Jakob Nielson, an authority on web site usability, design strategy, and user-centered methodology, has said that “Most sites have miserable information architectures that mirror the way the company internally thinks about the content and not the way users think about the content. Predictably, users ignore such unhelpful structure.”

Most of the time, users not only ignore bad navigation, they click off the site and move on to the next one, in hopes of finding whatever it is they are looking for.

Follow the Leader

It’s up to you to make sure that your web site leads visitors down the right path. Whether the goal is to make a sale, subscribe to something, fill out an inquiry form, or simply provide information, you need to guide your visitors by giving them intuitive, clear, and consistent navigation.

Good navigation should make it impossible for visitors to get lost. To help orient users, always provide them with a point of reference, and make it clear where they are in the site and how to get back. Avoid putting information more than 2 or 3 levels deep – you don’t want users to get buried 4 or 5 levels down in your site, since they may become frustrated or disoriented and just move on.

Consistency is also key in good navigation; don’t confuse your users by changing the navigation links on every page. Instead, consider using an overall menu structure, then adding sub-categories and links on individual web pages as necessary.

Think Like A User

The best way to design an effective navigation system is to think the way your users think, and anticipate the ways that they want to go. Users are typically very goal-driven; they are pretty focused on finding what they’re interested in, and tend to ignore the things that don’t apply to them. Give them a clear navigation system that lets them find what they’re looking for first – once they know they’re in the right place, they can look at the rest of the information on your site in more detail.

Designing a navigation system that looks really cool to you but ultimately sends your visitors clicking away in frustration is not good navigation. Good navigation accommodates the searching patterns and behaviors of your visitors, making it more likely that they will find what they want, and more likely that they will make a purchase.

Lauren Hobson is the Editor of Biz Talk Newsletter, a free monthly publication designed to provide small businesses and non-profits with tips and techniques to help them make the most of their web sites and marketing efforts without spending a lot of money. Biz Talk is published by Five Sparrows, LLC.

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