When designing the home page of any new website, it’s key to remember that potential customers (prospects) will be coming to the home page in search of a few key items.

If those items are not readily available (i.e. hidden or obscure), the bounce rate of people leaving the site will be fairly high.

To prevent this, those key items need to be integrated into the planning of the new design right from the very beginning. I always sit down with a pencil and paper, (I know – how old fashioned of me!) and sketch out those features which must be included for a successful home page.

Distinct Branding and Contact Information

This one is a no-brainer. Make sure that as soon as anyone hits your site, they can see immediately who you are and how they can contact you. Get your logo in the all familiar position at the top left of your page (that’s where you look for it, isn’t it?) and have a phone or clickable email up there too – possibly in the top right corner. Easy to see and act on.

Call to Action

In website marketing, a Call to Action (CTA) is a predominant item somewhere on a page that provokes the site visitor to gain an immediate response. Usually the CTA utilises action verbs such as “Call Us Now”, “Click here to find out more” or “visit our online-store”.

The CTA must be easily visible so that it attracts attention and get a response. On the new site for Tropical Coast Web Design, the CTA is in the main header for each page:

• Get a CMS Website.
• Build an online Store.
• Boost your site traffic.

These are the three keys services that I offer and I want prospective customers to find which service they require immediately.

Essential Information

Grab that pencil and paper again and think about the information your clients need to know about you straight away?

• Do you have a strict geographic area that you work within?
• What are the services that you provide?
• If you provide professional services, prospective clients may need some information on your experience and background.

Stick to the K.I.S.S. principle – keep it short and simple. If your site visitors wish to expand on the basic information that you have provided on the front page, include links to the pages with the expanded details.

Clear Navigation

Don’t overload your site visitors with a gazillion options in regards to navigation around your site. Keep any menus in their familiar positions (i.e. in the header or left side bar). When site designers get a little too inventive with the placement of components, confusion can often set in with site users.

Keep your menu options to a basic level – maybe utilising dropdown menus if you want to allow quick movement to content elsewhere on the site.

Conclusion

Take a look at your site’s front page and ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there enough information? Or is there too much?
• Does it encourage further exploration into the site?
• Can a prospect interact directly with me form this page or will they have to dig deeper to do so?

If you need any help with the above, get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design. We can discuss those very questions and create a front page that will get you attention!

It was once optional for a small business to have a website. Nowadays, having an 24/7 online presence is mandatory to remain competitive in a global marketplace.

But keeping a website current and up-to-date is often hard for a small business. Your employees often have little “spare” time for tasks such as site updates and, as a result, websites can easily be forgotten – left on the “do it tomorrow” pile. Without this required attention, a stagnant site will soon start to repel potential business customers, rather than attract.

Luckily, with a little planning during the development stage (and a regular dedication of time), these problems can be easily avoided and your website can become a strong marketing hub for your small business that doesn’t drain your resources.

Integrate a Content Management System (CMS) from Day One

A user-friendly Content Management System allows site owners and managers the ability to update and create new content directly on their websites. By integrating a CMS as the framework for a new website, you are instantly putting yourself into the driver’s seat to control what goes on your site and how “fresh” it stays.

Learning a CMS is not hard either. The basics of WordPress CMS can be learnt in a matter of minutes, as the editing functions are styled like that of a Word Processor. As I often say to new clients – “If you can create a document in Word, then you can update your own website!”

Use a Content Calendar (and stick to it)

A content calendar (also known as an editorial calendar) helps to plan out new content for your website or social media feed and details when it will be created. This weekly, monthly or yearly calendar should be an integral part of your business’ overall marketing strategy.

By planning content in advance, you (or whoever manages your website) can commit to producing site-worthy information that is suitable for your target audience. By putting a due date on it and ensuring that date is adhered to, working on your site becomes part of your everyday business schedule.

Automate Site Updates and Customer Interaction

If it is possible to time aside for working on your site’s content, take advantage of tools such as the content scheduling that is built into WordPress. Create five blog posts or page updates at one time then use the schedule to program the dates that you want the content to be released onto your website.

Allow an Employee to take ownership of website management

Although small businesses don’t have employees to “spare”, it would be ideal to assign the maintenance and upkeep of the website to one person – a web-savvy employ who could take care of both website and social media posts.

Giving ownership of the site to an employee (with guidance of course) ensures that the site will be monitored and “fed” new content to keep your online customers, and Google, happy.

Get your Web Developer to care of updates for you

If all else fails and managing your website is just not possible in-house, look to a professional. Many web development companies offer a monthly plan which includes website content updates. Caution though, if you are taking this option, compare the plan price against the everyday (hourly) rate of the company to ensure that you are getting a decent offer.

You will still to need to provide content via email but a professional will get it online, make it look pretty and ensure that it gets the right sort of attention.

An out-of-date website that is uncared for will cost you business. Prospects visiting the site will get a poor first impression and Google won’t care for your site either. With the tips above, your site remains “fresh” and acting as a positive reflection of the small business that it portrays.

A few years back, a client of Tropical Coast Web Design went through the unfortunate experience of having their .com.au domain name “stolen” from underneath their feet.

Whilst the domain “hijacking” was done through legitimate means, the registrant who acquired it had no right to the name itself and it caused disruption as my client’s customers could not access their website for many weeks.

Domain Hijacking sounds like a criminal activity but the actual definition can go both ways.

Wikipedia describes Domain Hijacking as “the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of its original registrant, or by abuse of privileges on domain hosting and registrar software systems, a cybercrime.”

In the case of our client, their domain name had simply lapsed in payment. In Australia, lack of payment doesn’t mean that the name is immediately available for anyone to buy. Even after the due payment for renewal has passed, the business still has 14 days to “pay up” and reacquire their .com.au domain name.

During this 14-day period though, the domain name will appear on the Australian Domain Authority’s (AudA) website as pending expiry and this is where those dubious businesses can swoop it and attempt a hijack. They can set up a domain backorder account through legit means such as GoDaddy and CrazyDomains.  If the payment isn’t forthcoming from the original registrant, the backorder will immediately purchase the domain as soon as it becomes available.

What can you do?

Fortunately, in Australia, our .com.au domains are protected to a certain degree. To register a particular domain, it must have a clear or exact link to the business who is registering it. For example, Tropical Coast Web Design, who specialise in website design, cannot register a domain name for deckfurniture.com.au – it has nothing to do with our business and, if picked up by the AuDA, we would receive a rap over the knuckles and lose the name with no refund.

It’s important to note that this does not apply to regular .com domain names – that is why it is so important to register the Australian .com.au domains.

In the case of my client, the domain name was taken and used by a business not related to anything in the domain name itself. At my suggestion, my client quickly contacted the AuDA about the hijacking issue, a brief investigation was undertaken and the domain was released for re-purchase. Tropical Coast Web Design purchased the domain back on behalf of our client and we were back in business.

The downside was that their business website was out of action for over a month – a long time, especially if you are an online retailer.

To prevent your domain name being taken, be sure that you have automatic payment renewal set up through your domain register and credit card details are current and not likely to expire soon. Your domain register will email you in advance when renewal is upcoming so also check that your registered email address is correct.

Tropical Coast Web Design can register domain names on behalf of clients and take care of any automated payments ensuring that domains remain in the hands of their rightful owners.

Domain Hijacking is not the end of the world. If you do have a legitimate claim to the domain name – get in touch with the AuDa and they will investigate the issue on your behalf.

But as always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Facebook is a powerful force in the online marketing world, easily second only to Google.

You won’t find a member of Gen Y who isn’t using it and, over the past few years, Facebook’s “mature” user base has grown considerably.

This growth is continuing with the increasing use of the platform by businesses around the world. The general attitude towards FB is becoming “if you are in business, you must be on Facebook.”

But why? If your business is only doing Facebook because “that’s what the others are doing”, then you might just be wasting your time.

But a small business owner doesn’t have any time to waste!

You should only get into Facebook if you have established a real goal for doing so. Your particular business’ goal for entering the world of Facebook could be to:

Humanise your business and brand in the eyes of your customer.

Genuine interactions and their associated connections are integral to any form of Social Media and Facebook is no different. It allows a business to put a human face to a brand that people can actually relate to. Through Facebook, your business can engage in one on one conversation with customers, share tricks and tips about your industry or display your latest wares after a customer has bought them, encouraging others to do the same. These types of “relationships” with your customers, draws them closer to you and much more likely to use your services or purchase your products.

Get people talking about your business.

The average user has, on average, 130 Facebook friends to share with. Imagine what could happen if you could get in front of those 130. If your brand is compatible with these people and engages with them, they might just LIKE you as well!

If only ten from that number decide to LIKE you, pure mathematics shows that the growth of your exposure would be exponential (10 x 10 x 10 x 10…..). There is no other (free) marketing method that can match this. Facebook also has paid options that can expose your brand to even more around the globe.

Directly target your ideal demographic.

Facebook knows everything about you. In your profile, you have entered your location, age, hobbies, even your favourite brands in some cases. A user would be naive to think that Mark Zuckerberg only wanted this information to help you share with your friends. Zuckerberg wants this information so that his company can sell targeted advertising.

As a business with a little advertising cash to spend, this is a golden opportunity. With such detailed information on hand and using Facebook’s paid advertising, a business can market more directly than ever before. For example, if you wanted to target expectants mothers, aged between 20 and 25 who live on the Sunshine Coast, you can. Your business information, once you set up an advertising account with Facebook, will appear on the pages of your exact target audience.

Put your business in front of your customers every day.

Even if you don’t opt to pay for advertising on Facebook, once a (potential) customer has liked you, any posts that you make on your Facebook business page will automatically appear on their feed. Don’t abuse this by posting multiple items a day (which will lose your following) and you have a “friend” for life.

Continue to offer conversation and social interaction, build that relationship up and you have a client who won’t look elsewhere for your goods and services.  A branded Facebook page is a very powerful way to expand your audience and increase the overall awareness of your business online.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that a new business client has contacted me and said “I decided it was about time that I got a website. I mean, everyone else has got one!”

That’s it – that one statement sums up their entire thought process about hiring a professional web designer to produce what could be a very lucrative part of the business’s marketing strategy. That’s generally when I, as the web designer, pull up the reigns and say “Steady on – let’s have a better look at this before we dive on in!”

If you are in the market for a new website, there are a few considerations that you must take in to account before even talking to a web designer.

Be clear on what you want to achieve with your website

Some businesses simply want a web presence so that their physical services can be found (who looks in the Yellow Pages anymore?) Others may look to the web as an additional source of sales through the integration of an online store. Some may just want a place to provide service and support to their customers. Maybe you want to achieve all three? Grab a pen and paper and jot down some notes about the whole purpose for your new website existence. Why are you doing this?

A good website cannot be built overnight

Gone are the days where a website was a simple online version of your company brochure. A fully functional site is comprised of many components, some of which include the visual design, the CMS framework, SEO infrastructure, online commerce tools and backup systems. All of these parts take time to build but most importantly, they take to time to test and fine-tune. If your designer promises this overnight, it’s probably best to look for another designer.

Your Web Designer should be treated like a professional.

Everyone knows someone who has built their own website but just because your nephew built a site for his school assignment, that does not make him a web designer. With all the skills required to make a functional site with the necessary integrated components, a good web designer has honed their skills over many years. You need to trust them to do their best work for your business – and they (generally) will. After all, the future success of their business is dependent on the success of your site – if they do a rubbishy job for you, who else would want to hire them.

A new site never has guaranteed traffic.

As I have mentioned on a number of blog posts, you cannot expect to simply build a site and it will be automatically successful. It won’t appear on Google for a couple of weeks at best so you will need to put in the initial hard yards and get traffic to the site.

You need to fill it with quality content and let those in your industry and target audience be aware of its existence. Even then, it will take time to build a following and you, as the business owner, need to be ready for this lull from the beginning. Plan out what you can do once your web designer hands you the “keys”. If you don’t have the time, elect an employee to do the task of web management, if possible.

Right from the get-go, take the time to plan out where you want to go with your new website and what type of end result will be better for your business. Of course, no one can be expected to have all the answers. Once you have chosen a web designer to build your site, hit them up with the hard questions to help formulate a successful web strategy.

Let’s be clear from the very beginning – using the internet for small business is NOT the guaranteed golden bullet solution to all your problems.

The addition of an online presence will not automatically turn your fortunes around. Running your own website, engaging customers on social media and selling products online takes effort and hard-work – as will all the strategies outlined in this post.

The internet definitely offers you more avenues to market your business than ever before. You can generate followers and advocates that will purchase from (and market) your business 24/7, sometimes without any one-on-one interaction from you.

Below, there are five online strategies outlined that your business can employ to help raise awareness of your business and its offerings and, most importantly, boost that bottom line.

#1. Boost your Facebook Posts

Ever seen the big BOOST button on your Facebook page?

This is the button you will see next to any posts you have made. With the power of a BOOST (and a minimum spend of $7/day), you can actually display your posts in the Facebook feeds of a very specific audience. These people are the prime candidates to which you want to market your products and services.

For example, our local dance shop is selling Fascinators for the upcoming races in town. With Facebook BOOST advertising, they can target:

Women, who like Fashion, and live within 50 km of the town, in the 18-50 age group

With targeted boosts, you get your message sent out exactly where you want it to go – much better than casting a broad net and hoping you catch something.

#2. Build an eCommerce Store

Coupled with the low overheads associated in running an online store alongside your “bricks and mortar” business, there are two major advantages for building your own online store

Firstly, an eCommerce store can sell your products and services 24/7– your customers don’t have to wait for the doors to open or for you to even be available. A good online store is set up to run automatically with payment options and shipping processes integrated.

Secondly – your online store is capable of selling anywhere in the world. Your customer base is dramatically widened beyond the immediate geography of your shopfront. If someone on the other side of Australia (or the world) wants to buy your goods, they can access your online store and make the purchase whenever they want.

#3. Provide 24/7 Customer Service

Good customer service can be time intensive, and sometimes very repetitive with no immediate remuneration for your time.

With a website, you can off-set some of the repetitive parts of your customer service through the use of frequently asked questions (FAQs), video tutorials and downloadable help sheets (Bunnings are the masters of this) to name just a few. 

Setting up your website’s customer service area properly would be time well spent as the support you provide online can save you hours either on the phone or answering emails.

#4. Plan and maintain a Content Marketing strategy

Content marketing is a must have on any small business website. To clarify, Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and producing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and retains your target audience. It is also a key element of the Google search algorithm, helping to determine your website’s placement in search results.

How do you create an effective Content Management Strategy?

Decide on your content mediums according to your strengths and your target audience (Blog, videos, podcasts, newsletters….)

Generate a plan in calendar format which includes the dates, topics and mediums for the creation of your content. This includes social media updates and blog posts.

Stick to the plan – consistency is the key to success!

Monitor your traffic to gauge the success of each item. This will give you valuable information in relation to what is working and what isn’t.

#5. Give Email Marketing a try

If you are thinking of employing an email marketing approach to broadcast your small business, you can’t look past MailChimp. It has almost everything built-in to help you create great looking emails, distribute them and, most importantly, keep you within the law regarding SPAM.

Note: You cannot send emails from a business in Australia to anyone you like. You must have the recipient’s permission or an existing customer relationship with that person.  For more information, take a look at the Spam Act 2003.

Using MailChimp (and common sense), you can create an email campaign that drives business to your website and your physical store:

Use a pop-up plugin on your website to acquire email addresses from your site visitors. Some of these can be set up to send collected addresses directly to MailChimp.

Create list of your existing customer’s emails. Excel is a good way to do this as you can import spreadsheets to MailChimp.

Using one of the many templates, create your first email newsletter. Re-purpose some of the content that you have created for your site – blog entries are perfect for this!

MailChimp has a built-in unsubscribe option. Recipients of the email simply have click Unsubscribe in the footer of the email and MailChimp will automatically remove them from the list, satisfying another condition of the Spam Act.

Conclusion

The real secret to a successful and productive online presence for your small business is summed in one word – consistency. Your website cannot be a stagnant brochure for your business, it needs to be dynamic, helpful and must reinforce your position as an expert in your field with quality service and/or products. Make an effort to set aside 15 minutes a day and develop each of the strategies into a workable system for you – the rewards for your business will become clear in no time at all.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? If your business needs help developing any of the strategies above, please get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design – we love to help small business!

“The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy takes a look at the way that small actions influence our lives and long-term goals every day.

The advice in this book is mostly common-sense practice that people simply ignore in their day to day lives. It does contain a lot of “aha” moments that will influence the way you operate and interact with people. The author ties each “lesson” in with powerful real world examples from his own experience as a business coach and Editor of Success Magazine.

Here’s five take away lessons that I picked up reading “The Compound Effect”:

The Compound Effect

Each day, we make thousands of big and small decisions. Every one of these decisions “compounds” with other decisions to determine whether we achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Some decisions set us on a path to a positive outcome, others to a negative outcome. This is “The Compound Effect” in action and, whether you like it or not, it’s happening every day. We’re powerless to stop it – it’s part of life.

Our actual power lies in the fact that we can choose to make the right choices that will compound to achieve desired goals we seek. This is where the book steps in to help.

Be the Tortoise

The book makes it very clear that effective change does not happen overnight. Making a “gung-ho” decision and jumping in all guns blazing to achieve your goals may appear to work in the short term. In the long run though, that effort could simply burn out your enthusiasm and lead you right back to square one. A good example is a diet blitz – cutting out all the yummy things in your diet may appear to be a good idea at first but is it sustainable?

To succeed, be the tortoise and make slow, sustainable changes to your life that you can keep steadfast to. The results will not be visible overnight but six months down the track, you will have gained a steady momentum and you’ll definitely see the benefits.

Small Changes can make a BIG Difference

An analogy is given in the book of a plane flying east from Los Angeles. Just a slight 1 ½ degree change in the plane’s direction results in a massive difference in its final destination (over 150kms). This is comparable with the small choices we make in life – small choices we make over time will either lead us to achieve our desired goals or, if we make the wrong choices, somewhere totally different.

Track Everything

To keep yourself on the right path, the book suggests tracking everything you do to achieve your desired goals. If you want to lose weight, keep a diet and exercise diary. If you want to grow your business, write down the steps that are being implemented to achieve that goal.

Tracking keeps us accountable to ourselves – it becomes a habit to record what you are doing and, if you miss a day, you will feel that you didn’t really commit on that day. This feeling alone will drive you in future to keep your tracking (and desired goal) in mind.

Make the Change a Habit

The overall message of “The Compound Effect” (for me anyway) is to make each step towards your ultimate goal part of your daily routine. Add the changes in such a way that you can commit to them every single day without fail.

Once the changes are a consistent habit, the desired goals will become part of your reality and they won’t disappear overnight like when a “quick fix” fails to deliver long term results.

I must confess that I have a pretty awesome list of clients.

We work well together and always create functional sites that look good and grow business. Sometimes however, there can be issues that disrupt that client relationship and we both need to work a little harder to see the job through to the end.

One of the main problems in the development of a site can be the timeline from when a client accepts the quote to the actual upload of the final website. Invariably, as with any project, there can be issues that can slow down the entire process and hold things up. And if you are “chomping at the bit” to get that site online, it can sometimes feel like your designer is dragging their feet. But it often comes down to issues that are out of their control.

To give potential site owners an idea of the problems that can pop up from time to time, let’s take a look at some of the “little” issues that can hold up the release of a website.

Domain Name Issues

If you have already purchased a domain name and are transferring it over to the technical control of your designer, there are a number of steps to be followed, all of which can hold things up. Some of these can take up to 48 hours to take effect even after they have been implemented.

Even once the required changes to the settings behind a domain name, it can still take another couple of days for those changes to “bounce” around the web and become official.

ARRRGGHHHH for all parties involved – drives me nuts sometimes!

Server Hold-ups

I won’t list company names in this section but if you were using my services, it would be my job as your developer to steer you right away from some of the largest web server providers in Australia. From past experience, I can guarantee that the biggest holdups in site development can be caused by these providers.

Some are so fernickety about their servers that, even after a customer has purchased server space; they cannot make any changes online with submitting a customer service ticket. These often take up to a week to get any action taken and some even demand that the customer must give a reason for the change (What? – it’s my server space – I have paid for it!!!)

If some of these guys need to be contact via phone, you will always be routed through the Philippines or India. Not a great situation when you need something done straight away.

Google

Once a site is complete, some customers hold the false notion that it will automatically appear on Google. Unfortunately, sites need to be submitted / indexed by Google before they will appear on the search results. Although there are tricks to expedite this delay (I have a nifty trick…) – in the end, it is completely out of your developer’s hands and into the realm of the Google Gods….

On-Site Issues

Another hold-up in the completion of a new site is the creation of the content for the site. This generally will not be done by your web developer and some customers have not read the fine print to find this out.

If you don’t want to write your content or you feel that you can’t produce the quality you want, get in a touch with a copywriter. They can take dot points for each page and create fully written paragraphs for placement on your site.

Despite the potential for the issues above to arise, the road to a website is more often than not smooth sailing if you have the right web developer “on the job.” They will be able to foresee the problems above and build waiting time for various parts of the process into the overall plan.

How do you find this developer I hear you ask? Quite simple really, just ask around. Find some sites in your local area that have been well designed and contact those business owners for the details. You can check client testimonials on various developers’ sites too but take these with a grain of salt, no developer will ever post negative comments on their own services for the general public to see.

If you have any questions about the issues above or you want to talk to someone who navigates these murky waters on a regular basis, give the team at Tropical Coast Web Design a call on 0488 406 050 – we’d be glad to help.

Twitter, the 140-word social media platform, has been with us since 2006 and one could be excused for thinking that the #hashtag has been with us just as long.

However, the first tweets that featured a #hashtag actually appeared a year later when user Chris Messina decided to create a method of grouping like-minded tweets into the same clusters.

Nowadays, the #hashtag is an integral part of Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and even Facebook. It can be used as a powerful tool for online marketing and any business owner who wants to drive their social media marketing on to success need to master their usage.

Choosing the right #hashtag to engage with your target audience needs some thought and practice. They are remarkably similar to the keywords that are used in conjunction with search engines to find a website, if the wrong words are chosen then the results won’t point towards your business, and you risk losing potential clients.

Thankfully, it is not too hard to select #hashtags that will work for you. Here’s some simple items to consider when using #hashtags on your Social Media marketing:

• Ensure that the #hashtag is relevant to the topic. Don’t be obtuse.
• Take a look around the web and use #hashtags that are already in circulation. This doesn’t mean that you can’t create your own but commonly used tags have already got a “readership.”
• When creating unique #hashtags, use words that will directly link back to your business. For example, if I were tagging marketing memes, I could start a “trend” with #troppossmarketingmemes. Watch that you don’t be too broad, as tags can be hijacked, leading to detrimental effects for your business.

The perfect mix for #hashtags in any single social media item was once between one and two. Anymore and there was a drop in engagement.

In 2022 however, more hashtags equal better results. There is actually no defined “correct” number of hashtags for an Instagram post however the social media gurus at HootSuite* says that “about 11 hashtags is a good number to start with”.

* HootSuite has written an excellent guide to using hashtags with Instagram. Click here to visit their site and access this amazing resource for your social media.

The #hashtag can be a powerful tool when used correctly and smart companies like Black Milk Clothing have built themselves successfully through smart Social Media marketing. There is no reason other businesses can’t follow in their footsteps. Integrate a Social Media plan featuring the use of clever #hashtags with your regular business website and help your online traffic grow.

While Social Media for small business continues to be a rave topic in marketing forums around the world, statistics indicate that, although annoying to some, email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools that a business can use to engage with its customers.

Your Inbox is irrevocable proof of this – how many items of marketing did you receive this morning?

Although some will never be opened, the humble email can still be an effective way of reaching out to your customers. But, as with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way. Here’s our four top tips to help you create an effective (and legal*) email marketing strategy for your business:

Step 1: Grow your database

Before you start any email marketing campaign, you need legitimate* emails in your database to use. Gathering these addresses is quite easy if you have an established website. You can use the popular method of the pop-up window or simply have a newsletter subscription somewhere on your home page. MailChimp has plugins that work directly through the WordPress framework and integrate with their newsletter systems, saving the hassle of collecting email addresses and adding them manually to your campaigns.

Whatever method you use, remember to always declare why you are gathering the addresses and what can be expected in return (see value point below).

Step 2: Remember the Mobile Users

Due to the unstoppable growth of smart phones, more emails than ever before are being viewed on a mobile device. In fact, up to 75% of email opens* could be via mobile depending on your industry. To cater for this audience, ensure that your emails are mobile optimised – easy to read on a small screen, low on data usage and concise in their information.

* http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

Step 3: Be aware of the SPAM Act 2003

To keep your email marketing within the lines of the law, you must ensure that any emails you send comply with three main points – Consent, Identity and Unsubscribe.

Consent – The receiver of your emails must be made fully aware at the time they subscribe exactly what they will be receiving in return. Consent can also be in the form of an existing relationship with the receiver i.e., they are already a customer.

Identity – Marketing emails must identify who is sending the emails and their contact information.

Unsubscribe – Each email must include an Unsubscribe option so that consent can be retracted at any time.

Learn more: http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam

Step 4: Offer Value

The secret behind any email campaign that wants to grow and be effective to offer subscribers VALUE in what they receive. Value can come in multitude of forms. You can reply with a free eBook, a newsletter filled with tricks and tips or keep them up to date with the latest industry news. If you are advertising products or services, butter up the receiving party with a discount voucher for their next purchase.

Everyone loves getting something for free and your subscribers are more likely to stick around.

Remember, what may work for one business may not necessarily work for yours. As with any marketing, try out all your ideas but be sure to MEASURE the response. Don’t spend hours of your precious small business time barking up the wrong tree only to find out that you aren’t getting a decent return from your efforts.

Make a note of what works and what doesn’t, fine-tuning along the way. This approach will lead to an effective email strategy that will grow your business without eating away at your marketing budget or your valuable time.