But when is the right time to begin the renovation process? And how do you know your website is due for a tune up?

My best advice: as soon as you have to ask the question, “should I update my website?” is the exact moment when you begin the updating journey.

In an instance, a visitor will decide how they feel about your website and your business. First impressions count. How do you want potential customers to feel when they land on your homepage? In 2016, a clean and quick website is considered the indicator to how the rest of your business will function.

Why should I update my website?

Whether we want to accept it or not, we live in the digital age. Personally, I’ve very recently turned my back on certain businesses (anyone else currently planning a wedding?) simply because their online presence was lackluster at best. I feel that if I cannot trust a business to be Internet savvy in 2016, then I surely cannot rely on them in general. While a slick website may not be the true representation of a company 100% of the time, first impressions are lasting. For many potential customers out there, not being immediately impressed with a company’s website can be a deal breaker.

According to a study completed at Stanford University, 75% of people judge the credibility of a company based on the design of its website alone. Seventy-five percent?! That’s pretty staggering…

How do I know if it’s time to update my website?

I have developed for you, dear reader, a “Do I need to update my website” checklist below. If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the following questions, it’s time to re-think your website design…

Has it been over 3 years since you last updated your site?

If so, this is a good indicator to start seriously considering a refresh.

Is your website in line with your current brand?

Each time your company makes a change, your website should reflect that. No matter how major or minor, neglecting to update your site can turn people away. New phone number? Update it on the site! Revised company vision, mission statement or value proposition? Update! New partners or clients? Update, update, UPDATE!

Is your website intuitive and user-friendly?

How many times have you been attempting to navigate a website to the point of frustration? This is a feeling you never want to impose upon your website visitors. Making your site easy to zip around in is a must. The one thing professionals never have enough of is time. Don’t make your website visitors waste any of theirs on a site that does not flow well.

Is your website responsive?

Again, it’s 2016, most people are conducting business via their smartphones and tablets as they sprint through JFK. It would be a shame to lose a customer before you even had one due to a non-mobile friendly website.

Are you still using Adobe Flash for anything on your site?

1. See above (Flash and iPads DO NOT MIX).
2. Not convinced yet? Read this: Flash is one step closer to death, thanks to Google.

Do you have your social sharing buttons in a high traffic area?

Make sure the access to your Twitter, LinkedIn and/or Facebook are in a prominent location on your website. Keeping these sharing button icons in your website header, for example, will allow traffic to access your social media platforms from any page in your site!

Are you using social media platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) at all?

If you said, ‘no’ please digress for a moment and read this blog post about social media and business in 2016.

Is your company contact info easy to find?

Well, it should be! You are advertising your fabulous business through your amazing website. PLEASE allow people to be able to reach out to you so they can start purchasing your services. The most successful websites incorporate a ‘Contact’ tab in the main navigation menu of their site.

Is your website URL 10 miles long?

Does your website literally look like it was created in 1994?

Behold, Amazon in 1994 (when they only sold books!):

For the sake of making a point to my dear readers out there, what would you think if
Amazon– AMAZON! still looked like the picture above when you visited their site today, in 2016? I promise you they would not be the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States, had they never bothered to update their website.

Need I say more???
With such easy access to content management systems like WordPress and Squarespace these days, there is really no better time, and no excuse to not update your company website.

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If you could make suggestions to company websites that you must frequent in your business dealings, what would you have them change to make the user experience better?

What are some great things you have come across on websites that make you think, Hey! That was so easy!

The post How Often Should You Update or Rebuild Your Website? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Email marketing is a two-way street. If you are encountering obstacles as the sender, you can imagine that the contacts on your lists have their own special circumstances in place that could be prohibiting them from receiving your emails. In this post, we’ll share tips on how to overcome these obstacles to help ensure that your emails are getting through to your audience.

First things first: What is the definition of “spam?”

Spam is an email that is not wanted. An email that is sent to large numbers of people and that consists mostly of advertising. Unsolicited (usually commercial) emails sent to a large number of addresses at one time (Merriam-Webster, 2015).

Any emails that fit the above definition of spam, are likely to become caught in spam filters before they ever reach your list of contacts.

What is a spam filter?

A spam filter is a program that is used to detect unsolicited and unwanted email and prevent those messages from getting to a recipient’s inbox.

Now that that’s all cleared up…

I’m kidding. Let’s break it down:

• Like any other filtering program in existence, spam filters look for a certain set of criteria on which it makes its judgment calls.
• These judgement calls are made within an email service provider (ESP) such as, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.
• However, each ESP will have its own set of filtering rules that it uses to make these judgment calls. These rules can be similar OR drastically different from provider to provider.
• AND from within the ESP, each user’s account could have another layer of filtering rules set up.

Is your head spinning yet? Wonderful! Let’s keep going.

• All of the above could be going on, AS WELL AS your company’s email server having yet ANOTHER layer of spam rules/filtering taking place before the email even makes it to your Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo inbox.
• All the different criteria being ruled on within your ESP functions on a point system. This point system is called a ‘spam score.’ The spam score will determine if the email is making it to the recipient’s inbox or not.
• And yet, all spam scores are NOT created equal, so what Gmail allows could be a huge no-no with Outlook (for example).

Good grief! Why even bother?! (amiright, Charlie Brown?) Well, before we just give up, let’s get down and dirty with spam filters. Find out what really makes them tick.

How do spam filters work?

Like we learned above, spam filters can be persnickety and possibly function differently based on the service provider, but there are still some basic characteristics of spam that we can trump! With enough knowledge, gusto and determination, all email marketers can stand up to the dreaded spam.

Please keep in mind that when it comes to email marketing, nothing is certain except uncertainty, but if we play it smart, we can still find enormous value in this marketing medium. The following tips will help to minimize the amount of your campaigns that become caught in spam filters.

Tip 1: Ask yourself, “What are the rules and regulations of my third party email marketing automation provider?”

Any reputable email marketing tool/platform will have established rules and regulations that they expect their user base to follow. The rules are in place to protect the users and also the recipients of email marketing. These service providers are hip to the email marketing game. They only exist to help make their users the best email marketers out there. Listen to what they are trying to teach you! You can expect to find an extensive knowledge base surrounding your email marketing tool. Find it, read it, live it, LOVE IT. It only wants to love you in return.

Tip 2: Never neglect your subject line

Subject lines are a preview to the rest of your email. If the subject line is riddled with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, a lot of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and trigger words like, “FREE” or “FOR LIMITED TIME ONLY” you can go ahead and safely assume that email went directly to spam. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Tip 3: No one likes a messy email

Yes, you can even get caught in spam filters for having an unorganized email campaign. The content in an email marketing campaign should be clean, tight and straight to the point. Long intros, blurbs, offerings to win something, too many images and wacky colors can all trigger spam filters. Messy code, shortened links and anything copy/pasted from Microsoft Office can all negatively affect your deliverability.

Tip 4: IP addresses – There is no escape

No matter how hard you try, it is impossible to escape from an IP address. ESPs also use IP addresses to send their users’ email campaigns. Many times IP addresses are shared among the ESP community. This means that if one member of the community has been flagged for sending spam, any other user on that shared IP address could have their deliverability affected too.

This is why it is so important to adhere to the rules and regulations of the ESP that you use to send large email campaigns. Chances are, your behavior is affecting other users in that community even if you don’t realize it.

Tip 5: Not personalizing your email to each recipient

And no, I don’t mean sending each contact on your list of 2,000 their own, personal, special email. That’s just silly! However, many spam filters are checking to see how well you know your recipients.

Send the email to your contact’s name instead of just their email address. Most ESPs allow for custom contact fields or merge fields to assist with this.

It is also wise to avoid sending to role-based email addresses (info@, admin@, marketing@). Again, not very personal and spam filters will smell it coming a mile away!

Tip 6: Know your firewalls

I’m going to let the experts at MailChimp explain this one:

“Before an email even gets to an email provider filter, it first has to pass through a gatekeeper or “firewall.” (Yep, spam is now such a problem that spam filters now need filters of their own.) Firewalls are used by ISPs, large corporations and small businesses alike, and they all communicate with each other to help identify spam and spammers.” (MailChimp 2015)

Tip 7: Whitelisting email domains

Whitelisting an email domain within your ESP (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) can greatly increase the chance of you receiving email marketing from trusted companies. This can also be done at the company email server level, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood IT personnel.

Whitelisting an email domain means you are setting up a rule to specifically allow emails from a certain source to be granted access into your email inbox.

Adding trusted email addresses to your whitelist will allow them to pass easily through your spam filter or junk folder. This is a good place to start if you feel like you are not receiving email marketing from expected companies. This is also a good tip to share with your contacts should they question why they are not receiving the email you promised was coming their way.

Check out this great resource to learn more about whitelisting email domains across multiple ESPs.

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Do you have any spam filter avoidance techniques for the email marketers out there? What have you found to be successful strategies? What has not been effective advice?

The post Email Marketing: 7 Tips to Help You Avoid the Dreaded Spam Filter appeared first on Zift Solutions.

You can create the most original, ingenious email campaign ever, but if your contact list is a bust, the entire campaign will soon follow suit.

There are some very common mistakes out there that new email marketers make without even realizing it. This post is here to help guide you along your way to becoming the most savvy email marketer in the biz!

Common Mistake #1: Purchasing email lists from third-party vendors

Many email marketers make the mistake of purchasing contact lists. This is one of the most risky moves you can make as an email marketer, and I’m not talking about Tom Cruise in his tighty-whities, sliding across the living room floor…

Why is this such risky business?

Purchased lists can be problematic for many reasons. First and foremost, you don’t know a single person on the list. You have not established a relationship with any of the contacts from a purchased list. I know, I know, “but companies sell these lists!” you say. “They must be valid and reputable!” Possibly, but please understand that there are businesses out there whose sole purpose is to collect email addresses and sell them to the highest bidder. While this is not illegal, many email service providers strongly prohibit the use of purchased lists.

Another reason to avoid purchased lists like the plague is, you have no idea where the email addresses are coming from. This leads to not knowing how old an email address is, or if it’s still in use. Email marketing best practices urge you to never send to an email address that is more than six months old. People move, change jobs and even get fired! The more invalid email addresses you send to, the higher bounce rate you acquire. High bounce rates will get your email marketing sending privileges shut down quick, fast and in a hurry.

Common Mistake #2: Assuming people are chomping at the bit to hear from your business

Riddle me this: what do you do with an email you receive from someone/a business you have never heard of? Me, I move them to the trash faster than you can say, “inbox.” As an email marketer, you can expect recipients who consider you a stranger to, more often than not, move your email to the trash without even opening it. Perhaps you receive emails from people you have never heard of and you have found it helpful. Even cases such as this, if a business sends an email “blast” to a list of unauthorized contacts, it is still considered spam.

If you are sending emails to contacts on your list because you assume they all want to hear from/about your business, you are sending spam. If you want to send email marketing to “prospects” who have never heard of you, you should use your own server and not an email service provider (such as Zift123). Email service providers that offer email marketing or bulk email services must adhere to anti-spam laws.

Common Mistake #3: Sending to contacts who have not opted-in to your email marketing

Tip 1 – Get permission from all your recipients before you begin sending them emails

Getting permission automatically ensures that all your contacts can’t wait to hear from you! With some email service providers, you have the capability to configure settings so that you can only send to contacts who have been marked as authorized to receive communications. This action will result in better deliverability, clicks and open rates.

Tip 2 – It should be clear to your contacts what they are authorizing and why they are receiving emails from your business.

You can direct contacts to sign up to receive communications from within most email service provider accounts. This type of structure clears up any confusion your contacts may have about who, what and why they are signing up to receive marketing from your company.

Common Mistake 4: Sending to stagnant contact email addresses

Once a contact has opted-in to receive your email marketing, they have about a six-month shelf-life before the contact goes stale. If a contact has not heard from you in over six months, it is safe to assume that sending to them without a fresh authorization, will not generate good results. It is wise to continuously update your contact lists and reconfirm your opt-ins twice a year.

Please visit the email marketing gurus over at MailChimp to see a great scenario chart containing the do’s and don’ts of obtaining contacts for your lists.

Share a time when you had less than desirable results with an email marketing campaign you sent out. What did you find to be the most difficult obstacles in your email marketing journey?

The post 4 Common Email Marketing Mistakes SMBs Make (And How to Fix Them!) appeared first on Zift Solutions.