Your marketing strategy can only ever be as good as the customer information that you hold. Time wasted on sending information to customer addresses that are incorrect or invalid is not money well spent and costs can increase if reposting items or information is required. Postcode lookup, or PAF, is a tool commonly used by UK businesses that can help reduce spelling mistakes, formatting errors and misinformation. Useful when collecting customer information either online or via a call centre, PAF allows you to select an address based on the postcode entered in to the system. When used in an online form it can help reduce the input time a customer must spend filling out the required information. It can also ensure that essential contact information, such as telephone number or email address, is also captured by making certain fields of the form mandatory.

PAF is the most up-to-date and complete address database available in the UK and contains over 28 million domestic and commercial addresses. For the few addresses where local spellings differ slightly from those held by the Royal Mail, most likely to appear in the areas of the UK such as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales where regional language differs, the system allows the customer to write their address themselves if no matching address is deemed found.

PAF can also be used to cleanse any databases you currently hold, comparing it to the Royal Mail information to ensure spelling and format is correct as well as every postcode and address being valid. PAF is supplied on disk as raw data that must be processed for use in IT applications. Versions are apparently available for those not wishing to program PAF that are sent as pre-programed applications, the list of third party suppliers is available on the Royal Mail website. More often than not, creating your own database will be the goal, and PAF lets you create mailing lists, look up addresses online, use postcode data to profile customers and allow you to capture verified information.

In addition to PAF there are also systems that allow you to ensure that emails are correctly inputted should you decide that electronically contacting your customers or clients is the route you’d prefer. Email validation will ensure that you have legitimate addresses that are live via SMTP validation and that email addresses comply with basic standards such as format (i.e. has an @ and a . in the address) and don’t consist of rude words.

Likewise, telephone validation can determine if the required number of digits for a valid telephone number has been entered, whether it starts with an 07, 01 or 01 and if it is a live number. Beyond that, it cannot confirm if that number belongs to the customer who inputted it, much like email address validation, it has the same limits. However, if you are planning on contacting your customers or clients via telephone it is well worth the time and expense to validate the information first as it will avoid calls to faxes or dead lines.

Advancements are constantly being made to upgrade and update methods and information collected to help companies maintain accurate records on the client database. While there are limits to what information can be checked, using validation software can help reduce the level of mistakes or formatting errors that can stop your information from being received by the intended recipient, saving you money in the long term.
Here at Red Star Digital, we have extensive knowledge of data collection and how to get the best from your data. To find out more about how we can help you, get in touch today.

We’ve compiled a few handy tips to help you get your emails opened and your customers converting.

To start, don’t beat around the bush – you only have a few words in which to get someone’s attention, so don’t make it too complex or long. Keep it simple, keep it catchy and keep it to the point. If you don’t generate interest within a few words the recipient will not engage with your email.

Avoid capitalizing text or some words in the subject line – when was the last time you received an email message where the “Caps Lock” key was over used to spell out some, if not the entire subject line? You probably didn’t open the message unless you knew who the sender was. It can be seen as quite aggressive and more importantly, ISPs will often mark this as spam which drastically reduces your chances of the message being delivered at all.

Get creative where you can and generate topical subject lines based around current news stories or events and if possible, personalise your subject lines as this will directly appeal to your customer base. In our experience, adopting both of these approaches can really improve response rates from your email marketing campaigns.

Think about what you would open – is the title something that would interest you if you received in your inbox? Your subject line should directly appeal to your target audience and provide them with a reason to engage with your email marketing message. It’s important to ensure your message stands out within the recipients cluttered inbox.

Not sure on what might work best? Then test your ideas! We always recommend our clients to split test various subject lines to see which perform better. Just ensure you track and measure any results as well as validating these before rolling out the most effective subject line to the bulk of your list.

For more advice on your email strategy why not get in touch with Red Star Digital and see how we can help.

To ensure your affiliate marketing programme is effective, it’s important to start at the campaign grass roots; ensuring your affiliate have everything they need to promote your brand. Each affiliate will have unique requirements in terms of content, images, links etc that will reflect their site and target audience – understanding these requirements is of paramount importance in building a successful programme.

We’ve compiled a quick guide to help you understand the main affiliates types are their needs when promoting your brand.

Content
Content affiliates do exactly what it says on the tin, they provide content heavy sites. These may be review sites or niche sites, they tend to focus their efforts on SEO to attain good rankings throughout the SERPS. The content affiliates don’t like to have their sales cannibilised by other sites such as voucher code sites so will often list codes on site too.
Likes – Exclusive content, Press releases, Codes, Exclusive Images from press shoots or of new products, Keywords, Commission Increases, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,

Voucher Code
Voucher sites or Coupon sites are sites that list discounts and offers from merchants. They focus their efforts on SEO, PPC and email along with a growing social media presence. Voucher sites will have a loyal following and often have high levels of email data that they frequently mail. Voucher sites have many rules and regulations they must adhere to, designed by the IAB and some have been known to break a few rules in the past, although most now play fair.
Likes – Exclusive codes, Commission Increases, Regular updates of offers, Content for blog posts, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,

Cashback/Incentive/Loyalty
Cashback and incentive sites are sites with a loyal following offering their users some form of reward for shopping through them. This might be cash or sweets or points to redeem online. They have large user bases that are emailed frequently along with additional blogs and forums for their users to participate on. Some incentive sites have neen hit in the past by fraudulent users, but most have now clamped down and are fast to stop this happening.
Likes – Commission Increases, Voucher Codes, Content to use for blogs, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,

PPC Affiliates
PPC affiliates are affiliates who will concentrate their efforts on driving traffic via PPC. There are a number of affiliates who have made successful businesses from doing PPC for merchants. This can be based on allowing the affiliate to bid upon your brand, generic terms or long tail searches. Quite often when allowed to bid upon a brand, there are deals done to ensure the affiliate puts a percent of their profits back into expanding the campaign to generic terms. PPC affiliates are still paid on a CPA so can be a low risk solution to increasing your search engine exposure.
Likes - Brand Rights, Top Sellers, Voucher Codes, Commission Increases,

Competition/Freebie
Competition sites and freebie sites are sites that offer their users something interesting or appealing – this may be a competition to enter or a free giveaway. They often have high volumes of users who are online savvy and love a bargain! These types of site can be rewarded for passing new users on, or for incremental sales.
Likes – Competitions hosted on merchant sites, Free gifts, Commission Increases, Voucher Codes, Exclusive content, Top Sellers,

Price Comparison/Shopping Directory
Price comparison sites do pretty much what they say on the tin, they compare prices of items or holidays or banks and much more. They use product feeds from multiple retailers or merchants to create a site filled with content. This is then sorted to show the best price or offer first. Most price comparison sites will take delivery costs and voucher codes into their listings. To get
Likes – Full Product Feed, Voucher Codes, Increased Commissions, Details of offers,

Email
Email affiliates are affiliates with large lists of data either of their own or through 3rd parties. They are highly skilled in sending email, delivery and converting email creative into buyers. They often have large lists that are segmented and will often test your creative first.
Likes – Email creative, Voucher codes, Increased commission,

If you want to discuss your affiliate strategy further or would like to know how we can help, please get in touch today.

3. Check For Duplicates and Un-Verified Leads
When you are paying for leads, the last thing you want to do is pay for the same information a second or third time. There are several software applications available that allow you to check for duplicates and strip them out (dedupe) of your data for future use. Data that cannot be verified is also something you should check for, emails such as spam@spam.com do not count as valid data and should not be paid for.

4. Test Different Marketing Channels
It’s a good idea to try different types of marketing strategies to know which will yield the best results for your product or service. While some customers will prefer a more personal contact like a telephone call, others will prefer to keep a certain distance through emails, etc. It’s good to test different marketing channels on your leads to see which work best for you and give the best results.

5. Focus Your Campaign
You should make sure your campaign as clear objectives that can be met through your lead generation. Make sure the criteria you put in place on your forms meet those objectives to ensure your leads are giving you the information you want. The leads should include specific information on potential customers; names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers or any other information you may require.

6. Honesty Is Important
Your marketing campaign is only as good as your word and the effort you’re willing to put forth. Whether it’s a contact you’ve promised to make or a promise made about your product or service, remain reliable throughout all your business dealings.

7. Be Realistic
Be realistic about your marketing strategy and the time for frame, you set, for it to reach your expectations. A good solid marketing strategy will be based on the budget you’ve set, the leads you purchase, and the energy and time you put forth.

8. Clarity Of Your Message
Make sure that your marketing message is clear and concise. If you are generating leads through an offer, have a think about what you might put – for example if it’s a free trial but card details are required – you should mention this somewhere t ensure the leads you get are less likely to complain.

9. Keep It Simple
An overload of information can render fewer leads and complicate the process. The average person might be willing to fill out three to four forms, but a continual stream of forms will turn the customer away, and the information becomes confused creating a greater work load for you.

10. Focus Your Efforts
If you only have a small budget to begin with, make sure you focus your efforts and concentrate on driving decent leads, when those leads convert to sales, you’ll have more budget to widen your lead generation campaign. Getting lot’s of leads to begin with may seem great, but if the quality is not there – it can be a waste of money and effort.

Red Star Digital offer comprehensive lead generation packages including advice and strategy. For more information, get in touch today and see how RSD can help you.

1) Creating a buzz with your subject line
This is still proven to be a very powerful asset when it comes to getting your message across before an email is even opened. This is the bark that makes people listen to you before you make your initial bite. When you have a subject line that attracts attention within the first few words, there’s a greater chance that your potential customers will click on it and read the whole email.

2) Create more text based hyperlinks within your email
Images are nice, but they can be a bit distracting when you are trying to get your message across. Also, take into account the some of your readers might have a slower internet connection so images will take ages to load. Within your body of text in the email you should place a number of text based call to actions, linking to whatever product or service you are trying to promote. ‘Click here’ is a popular text based link that gives your reader a prompt to find out more, get in touch or purchase.

3) Proof read your emails
If it’s one thing that ticks off a lot of people, it’s an email marred with errors. How can you be a great marketer or someone with writing authority if your emails are poorly written with spelling errors or poor grammar? Not only should you check for the spelling, grammar errors, but the links built into your emails. Make sure that all your links work, you email renders correctly and you have no glaring mistakes. Just imagine someone that actually wants to buy your product, but the link is dead or re-routed to somewhere else. That’s potential profit lost not only in the short term but you could lose your credibility because they may look at it as spam.

4) Don’t give everything away in just one email
If you have different products or different services, then spread them out. Use a teaser email that helps you to make your potential customer more aware of a product or two, create some interest and then go in for a more in depth email explaining more. This way you can compare which items have better clickthrough rates, sales, or leads so you can put more of a priority on which products to promote.

5) Don’t let your audience think you are a spammer
It’s better to spread out your emails depending on the market. Instead of sending out an email every single day, maybe spread it out for twice a week. This way you’ll build up the need for your product. Too many emails being sent to the same list will only result in people marking you as spam. Think carefully about what your message says and how often you need to send it.

For more help and advice on your email marketing campaigns, speak to Red Star Digital who specialise in email marketing. To find out more about our services click here.

In the fast changing digital marketing environment, the demand for talented and educated individuals is at it’s highest. To keep up to date with the emerging need for qualifications in the varied areas of digital marketing, CAM have just released a range of new digital marketing qualifications. Moving forwards with their qualification offerings, CAM have 4 new Diploma’s to choose from, all of which Red is already teaching.

Outlined below you’ll see the new Diploma’s now available;

Diploma in Mobile Marketing
With this qualification you will; find out more about how mobile phones are used in marketing, click to call, types of mobile advertising, SMS marketing, the importance of games, designing apps , mobile payment systems, proximity marketing and social media. Understand mobile analytics, legislation, regulation and codes of practice.

Diploma in Digital Metrics and Analytics
Learn more about; how web sites, blogs and social networks are monitored by marketing managers. Deciphering the jargon: CAWI, netnography, tagging, logfiles, sentiment, bounce rates, MROCs and DORCs. Understanding web analytics, how to design online questionnaires and how to choose commercial tools.

Diploma in Digital Campaign Planning
Find out more about how web sites, blogs and social networks are monitored by marketing managers. Decipher the buzz words and abbreviations: SEM, SEO, SMS, affiliates, email marketing and Web 4.0. Ensure you understand how to plan, execute and evaluate digital campaigns and how to organise for success.

Diploma in Digital Media and Branding
Receive training in; offline and online branding. Get behind the vocabulary to crack the acronyms: ACORN, ROMI, PESTEL and POS. Go beyond the abbreviations: SMS, MMS, SEO and RFP. Ensure you understand conversation banners, consumer psychology and models of communication. Discover how official web sites, adverts and promotional activities can complement consumer generated media to build an organisation’s assets.

To find out more about these new qualifications, visit CAM or to find out more about Red Star Digital’s Tutoring services, click here.

Integrating your social media campaigns and email marketing campaigns can not only provide an additional avenue for data collection, but when managed correctly can also help with creating and keeping customers. With more than 750 million active users of facebook, over 101 million LinkedIn users and over 100 million twitter users, social media is now at the forefront of digital marketing. It is now hugely important for organisations to embrace social media and to integrate it with their other marketing channels. Much like integrating your offline and online marketing, integrating social and email can have it’s difficulties, Red Star Digital have compiled some top tips to help you get things started;

Give Social Media Some Visibility In Your Emails
Adding in buttons such as ‘share this’ or ‘like this’ give your readers the opportunity to promote your organization to their friends, family and followers. Giving them clear calls to action will help them to spread the word about you and your brand, highlighting key products or services.

Use Social Media To Grow Your Lists
There are some great examples of social media campaigns that have been used to grow email databases. For example a recent campaign from Fox’s Biscuits saw Vinnie the Panda create a facebook page which captured email data. To be in with a chance of winning some free biscuits you had to first ‘like’ the page, then enter your details. Creating a personality with the emails and timely sends with relevant offers on were then mailed to this data. The campaign was launched to help promote their latest biscuit releases. Fox’s Biscuits now have data for biscuit lovers all generated through their social media.

Embrace The Latest Methods and Tools
It’s not just facebook anymore when it comes to social media, there are a wide selection of social media tools that should be considered when launching your campaigns. For example QR codes are now widely used in digital marketing direct traffic to specific landing pages or websites. As an example a well known fashion brand recently used a QR code in one of their email newsletters. Under the QR code it said ‘scan to receive an exclusive discount’, once scanned, the QR code directed the reader to their facebook page, where they were able to collect discounts and special offers. Keeping on top of the latest technology or social platforms will mean you can proactively market your goods in new and unique ways, creating interest.

Research Your Customers Then Use The Data
Social Media is a great avenue for market research. Asking questions of your fans and asking for comments you can quickly get a snapshot of your potential customer base. Do your customers like your products, are there services they would like to see, how do they find your organisation and many more insightful questions can be asked. Once you have those replies, you can act on them. For example if potential customers are wanting the latest mobile phone handset, you can use your social media to; find out which one, encourage them to sign up for notifications and finally email those people when you have it in stock. Using your social media channels as a research tool not only gives you invaluable data, but can also lead to conversations, which can lead to conversions.

To find out more about integrating your social media and email marketing and to discuss our services further, please get in touch.

Red Star Digital has put together a few examples of common mistakes some organisations make with their affiliate programmes to help you avoid these pitfalls in the future;

1. Set Unrealistic Targets
Don’t expect each and every affiliate on your campaign to send you hundreds of sales per month. Each and every affiliate is different with a varying capacity to send sales. Setting overly high tiers for commissions and incentives will mean that the smaller, but equally as important affiliates will not find it easy to hit any targets. This can mean they will become dis-heartened and could give up on the campaign all together. Equally, remember affiliate programmes will take time to set up and to iron out any teething problems before it starts to function at a decent rate. As with most things in life, the more effort you put in, the greater the result you will get out.

2. Cull Affiliates
It is a common mistake in affiliate marketing to suddenly decide to remove all the affiliates from a programme who have never made a sale for you. These affiliates are still relevant to you and your campaign – they may start in the future to set up niche websites around your products or they may even need help from you promoting your products. For those affiliates that only deliver one to two sales per month, these are still valuable sales and should not be snubbed. Keeping the inactive affiliates on the campaign does no harm. – Top Tip – why not set yourself a monthly goal to get a certain number of inactive affiliates active?

3. Failing To Understand Your Affiliates
Affiliates are humans too. Often working a stressful full time job, looking after a family and running their affiliate business, they can be very busy people with many demands upon each and every minute of their day. Running anywhere between 1 and 1000 sites with thousands of merchants to promote, they can often be under immense pressure. If you understand the affiliate mindset and what they need, you will find yourself in a much happier and evidently more profitable relationship. Taking them for granted and placing unrealistic demands on their time with little or no reward will do little for your campaign performance. Try to make things easier for your affiliate by providing a deeplink or code expiration date. By providing them with what they need; they are more likely to promote you and your products.

4. Did Not Do The Maths
When setting up your programme or planning for a key promotion in the year, ensure you fully understand all your costs, from the affiliate commissions, to the incentive bonuses to your network costs. Factor in all the costs to your profit margin and make sure you can afford to run the promotion. If you are running offline promotions, be aware these are leaked into the digital world and although you can do your best to monitor it, these promotions will still be used online. Stopping a promotion half way through or withdrawing voucher codes because you did not do the maths properly, will only have a detrimental effect on your campaign.

5. Leakage
Leakage points can include site elements such as; ‘contact us’ or ‘call us now on…’ across your home page. Similarly, using banners to promote other merchants on your home page is also a big ‘no no’ for a successful affiliate program. If an affiliate spends time and money sending customers to your site for them to then call a free phone number or be taken to another site, this means the affiliate loses out and will eventually stop promoting you all together. By using simple technology, you can hide your contact us/call us now messages when your site recognises that the customer has come through an affiliate link.

If you want to find out more about affiliate marketing and it’s benefits to your overall marketing strategy, then why not get in touch with Red Star Digital today and find out more about their affiliate marketing consultation packages.

Affiliate marketing is a powerful route to market that if set up, managed and analysed correctly can provide an uncapped source of high quality leads, sales or clicks depending upon your requirements at a minimum cost.
To help you manage your programme efficiently and in a constructive manner, Red Star Digital have put together a few handy tips to help you run a successful programme and ensure you don’t make any huge mistakes;

1. Monitor Conversions
First set your conversion parameters, is it clicks to sales, clicks to order value or something else? Once that is in place you need to closely monitor conversions across all your marketing channels and ensure your affiliate channel falls in line. If your conversion suddenly drops or jumps through the roof, you need to find out why, and either fix the issue or replicate it with other affiliates. You also need to ensure you take into account that different affiliate types will deliver varied conversion levels; incentivised traffic and traffic coming from voucher code sites will often have higher conversion rates, so bare this in mind when working out your averages. Benchmark against competitor conversions (where the data is possible) and make sure you communicate the conversion levels to affiliates if they are above the average or sit level with others. Good conversions = more sales = more money = happy affiliates.

2. Pro-active Recruitment
Use the tools available to you such as various search engines to find key affiliates to partner with. Spending a few hours a week researching sites you want your products placed on will not only give you the opportunity for increased sales, but it will also educate you in the different types of affiliate site out there and how they operate. Using handy tools like Whois.net can often help you gather contact details for the site owners.
- Important – When you are recruiting, remember that affiliates often read hundreds to thousands of emails a day, so make yours stand out. Offer them unique content, voucher codes, increased commissions, banners or whatever else you feel will entice them into not only joining your programme, but pushing it to deliver sales.

3. Regular Communication
Providing fresh and regular communications to your affiliates will not only inspire them to promote you, it will also give you the opportunity to advise them which products to promote and why, what new products you have, any offers you have and much more. Take some time to work on the format in which you send your affiliates tthis information, and consider what they may need. Some affiliates like a deeplink built in, some prefer a list, some like images, some like fresh banners. Find a way of communicating that best fits you and your affiliates and make tweaks where necessary. Find out how your key affiliates like to be communicated with, msn, email, phone or another means and how often. – Top Tip – Don’t flood them with 10 emails a day, they’ll soon get annoyed!

4. Provide The Affiliates With The Correct Resources
Different affiliates need different resources to help them drive sales for you, from feeds, banners, email creative, voucher codes and unique content to seasonal incentives and promotions. When planning a promotion or setting up your affiliate campaign, try to cover all the varying types of affiliate to make sure they have what they need to start and continue promoting you. Remember – when creating banners and email creative, remove any ‘leakage’ points like phone numbers and URL’s.

5. Build Relationships
Building relationships is key within affiliate marketing, from getting to know the network or agency staff to getting to know your affiliates. Many of the most famous deals in affiliate marketing were done, sitting face to face around a pub table whilst having a drink and a chat. By attending events and get-togethers frequently you will be able to meet your key affiliates and potential affiliates face to face, offering them and you chance to give and receive feedback thus enabling you to work together more closely to deliver the results you both need.

Here at Red Star Digital, we offer Affiliate Marketing Consultation, so if you have any questions or want to discuss our services further, please get in touch.

To make things a little clearer in the foggy world of online data collection, Red Star Digital have put a few tips together designed to assist with the setting up online lead generation campaigns and also to ensure you get the most from them.

Specify Your Exact Requirements

Ask yourself what data you require. If you have exclusions based on gender, age , annual income or something else appropriate to your needs, ensure you state this at the set up stage of the data generation.
It’s also important to specify your data delivery needs from the outset too. Do you require data to be delivered through a live data feed or through a CSV file? When would you like the data to be delivered to you, daily, weekly or monthly and would a certain time suit your needs? These are the key questions you need to answer before you set up any data capture campaign with a data supplier. The more questions you ask yourself at the beginning, the less time you will have to spend stripping out useless information or chasing the data to be delivered.
Make sure you also specify what constitutes a valid lead not only to your supplier, but also on any paperwork you draw up with them. By setting these parameters in place at the start, you can ensure you do not have to pay for invalid data.

Specify A Test Budget And Cap It

Don’t blow your entire budget on one day with one supplier. Try using a variety of suppliers and cap their leads on a daily basis – this avoids being flooded with leads and burning the budget too quickly. If you spread your data capture requirements with a number of suppliers, this will assist in optimising your campaign in the future with the best converting data.

Specify Your Reasons For Returning Data With An Accurate Returns Timeframe

By specifying your reasons for returning data that did not meet your needs or standards, you can work more closely with your suppliers to optimise your campaign. If you fully explain the reasons for returns, you and your supplier will be able to draw up some ideas of improving your data sources in a prompt and efficient timescale. You should also make sure that your paperwork includes a deadline for when returns will be provided, for example the 5th working days after month end.

Read And Re-Read Your Paperwork

It seems too many organisations do not read their paperwork properly. To avoid any issues further down the line, make sure you read your paperwork not once, but twice. This way you will fully understand exactly what you will be receiving, in what format and on what days, as well as the policies for returning data. Make sure you keep your paper work in a safe place and do not be afraid to ask questions if you do not understand any terminology on it. It is better to have a clear and defined picture at the outset rather than find difficulties later on.

Shameless plug:
Red Star Digital offers a range of service to assist clients with their current online data collection campaigns or designing and collating new prospect lists – if this is of interest or you’d like to chat further with a member of our team, please feel free to get in touch.