A recent study by Rasmussen Reports on behalf of credit card company Discover Financial Services turned up a shocking statistic: 46 percent of the small business owners surveyed said it’s a myth that every business needs a website.

Huh?

The report goes on to say that while the number of small businesses with a website has grown 36 percent in the past two years, only 45 percent of the owners polled currently have one. Of course, that means that 55 percent of small businesses do not have a website. The most common reason given (41 percent) for not having a website was that it is not needed. The second-most common reason (19 percent) was that is costs too much.

I understand the cost objection – it is expensive to put a quality website online. But it has should be viewed viewed as a capital investment, just like a new roof, a delivery truck or an upgraded computer system. It’s part of the cost of doing business.

But not needed? I guess there might be some small businesses out there that don’t need to attract new customers, don’t need to keep their old customers happy, has no need to even make their phone number and address available to the public.

A website, no matter how simple, should function as the hub of your inbound marketing activities. All roads lead back to your website, where you have an opportunity to take prospects into clients or customers.

Pivotal Veracity’s Engagement Index Q1-Q309 report found that the average elapsed time between when messages are first sent and when they are first seen has grown from 23.2 hours in January 2009 to 25.9 hours in August. “If you’re mailing time sensitive email campaigns you should consider that the average consumer would not see your email for more than 24 hours,” according to the report.

The time between when a consumer sees the message and when he or she reacts is also growing longer, the company found. This suggests that timing is becoming more important than ever as email marketers find themselves competing for customers’ attention, not only against other email messages and spam but also social media and mobile phone content.

Time of day is also important in the success of an email campaign. If it is B2B, morning is an optimal time, as most desk-bound workers start their day by going through their email inbox, according to B2B Marketing Magazine. The problem with morning is that recipients could be more focused on the priorities of the day than your message.

As the day progresses, users tend to have more intermittent interactions with email – shorter in duration than the start-of-the-day episode, the magazine said. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., users are likely to have five individual episodes of three-to-five minutes apiece, compared to the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. period when they are more likely to have a single episode that is substantially longer. “On the face of it, this would appear not to work in the marketer’s favor, but your message may be the welcome distraction from an otherwise busy day,” according to the magazine.

Pivotal Veracity’s Email Engagement Index is based on multiple proprietary data sources that are aggregated and analyzed monthly across authenticated mailer domains.

Bombard them with irrelevant, self-serving, poorly designed emails. It’s a recipe for a quick click of the “delete” or worse yet, the “spam” button.

As the email marketing industry has become more sophisticated, so too have the expectations of your recipients. They want to be educated, informed and entertained. If you do that consistently, they won’t mind the occasional sales pitch dropped in, especially if you are offering products and services they need and want at a price that meets or exceeds their perceived value.

Here are five tips to keep in mind when planning and executing your next email campaign:

Focus on being relevant and offering value: Keep your customers’ needs in mind. Will they appreciate what you are sending? Will they understand its value? Keep the message simple and the layout clean so there are no distractions.

Make It Eye-Catching: The process of getting someone to read and react to your email starts with an intriguing Subject Line and a familiar From Line. Even if those two critical components are on target, you still have only a few seconds to catch and hold your readers’ interest. Think of it like a billboard on a superhighway. Make sure your brand is easily identifiable, the offer is clear, and the call to action strong.

Be a Tease: Use only one or two paragraphs from a longer article, then drive traffic to your website by including a “Read More” tag. Snippets are easier on the eye and don’t discourage readers by forcing them to plow through dense mountains of information.

Opt-Ins Are Like Gold: The temptation might be to build your list quickly with unscrupulous tactics on the theory that bigger is better. Resist that temptation at all costs. Better to send your emails to a smaller list of people who actually want to read them than to a bunch of faceless email addresses. Consistently poor deliverability is a no-no for most email service providers.

Take Time to Build Your List: Highlight the benefits of being subscriber, then give people an easy way to sign up to receive your emails. Offer an incentive — a special report, a discount, or some other tangible product – to encourage people to subscribe. It may take longer that buying lists or using using shady tactics to harvest email address, but the results will be far better in the long run.

Here’s the bottom line – quality will be rewarded, quantity will not. If your ISP doesn’t flag you as a spammer, your recipients will ignore you. Either way, your email campaign will fall flat and you’ll be left wondering why.

The Right Message…
To The Right Market…
At The Right Time!

Unfortunately, many small businesses miss at least one of thse critifal factors. Heck, some overlook two or all three. The result is heaps of wasted money and squandered opportunities. Some businesses spend too much money on ego-feed image advertising, and not nearly enough on direct response offers, which are easy to track and evaluate. So, how you you change that?

Here are three ways to make the most of your marketing dollars:

Keep image advertising to a minimum. Sure, it’s nice to see a clever half-page ad in Sports Illustrated or the NY Times. But you never really know how effective it is? Does it lead to inquiries? Sales?

Test, test, test, especially direct response campaigns that are inexpensive. You can offer FREE stuff — reports, samples, coupons — or other response devices. Couple them with compelling copy that show you understand your target audience’s wants and needs. Connect with them, solve their most pressing problems and you’ll have a customer for life.

When you find a successful direct response offer, stick with it. Use every tactic at your disposal — autoresponders, email newsletters, postcards, phone calls — to stay relevant to your loyal customers.

Follow up is critical. Be persistent but respectful. If a potential customer tells you to back off, respect those wished. But don’t be shy about contacting leads if you have additional information that might help sway their decision.

A computerized system that methodically, repetitively and consistently follows up with your leads is the most cost-effective alternative. Otherwise, you might be spending too much time doing manual labor or, worse, wasting valuable leads.

Be Personable
You wouldn’t just walk up to someone you know at a cocktail party and say “Greetings” would you? No, you’d address that person by name. Same with your email marketing. Include your subscriber’s name right at the beginning. Studies have shown that emails with a personal greeting enjoy a much higher response rate. It’s human nature – people love being addressed personally. It makes them feel valued and appreciated. A simple “Hey Joe,” will go a very long way in increasing the response rate.

Think Like a Headline Writer
Most people make a decision about whether to read a story based on the headline. If it sounds interesting or informative, readers will give it a shot. The same is true for email subject lines. Avoid the boring, easy-to-ignore “ABC Co. Newsletter – September Issue.” That’s not going to entice anyone to open it. Instead, include a benefit in the subject, something that will pique a reader’s interest to the point of actually opening your email. How about something like this: “Improve Your Bottom Line in 3 Easy Steps” from ABC Co.

Always Include an Unsubscribe Link
Hard to believe, but some emailers still refuse to include an unsubscribe link in every email or make it so inconspicous and difficult to use that people don’t notice or give up after a handful of clicks. Beyond just being courteous, it’s also a legal requirement in the United States. And if that’s not enough, including an unsubscribe link can help keep your list clean and your deliverability high. You don’t want to waste time marketing to people who have no use for what you are offering. Make sure your unsubscribe link is clearly visible and easy to use.

Text Links vs. Image Links?
Everyone wants to produce emails that are visually attractive and graphically robust. But some research shows that bold, blue, underlined text links draw a better response than images that need to be clicked. Although image links are okay, text links are a more effective way to get readers to click-through to your strategic landing page.

Write Clearly
Make sure there are no spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors on your email message. Make your point and move on. Your message, especially on the web, has to be clear, concise and compelling. Readers won’t put up with rambling, disjointed, jargon-filled essays. Oblivion is just a mouse-click away.

Provide Additional Connections
Make sure the links to your social media profiles appear in all of your emails – you can add them as content blocks in your HTML newsletter and in the email signature of your individual emails.

Be Consistent
I know I’m a drying breed, but I’ve come to expect my newspaper to be delivered at about 6:30 every morning. If it’s even a couple of minutes late I get antsy. As long as you are delivering an email that is useful to your readers, they, too, will come to depend on it. They’ll look for it at a certain time and a certain day. The same rules holds true for your enewsletter design. When my newspaper changes its look, it takes me a while to get accustomed to familiar features in different places. Don’t change your design every other issue and keep your “From” field consistent, Minor tweaks are ok but people tend to prefer routine rather than surprises.

If you have any other best practices for email marketing, I’d love to hear about them.

Your persuasive copy must convince readers that not only is your product or service superior, it’s also a great value. Since it’s never a good idea to compete on price, how can you do this?

One way is to stress the cost of ownership rather than the cost of purchase. If you can show your product will last longer or your service will produce a greater return on investment, it’s easy to justify the higher initial price.

Take two digital printers with identical features, for example. One’s price tag is $300 more than the other. But the higher-priced machine produces copies at half the cost of the less expensive competitor. Over the two copiers’ expected life cycles, the higher priced version will save money in the long run. Your copy can and should reflect that.

Cost of ownership includes several factors: maintenance, support, and repairs are just a few that can be mentioned in your copy. The product or serve that costs the least to purchase may be the most expensive to own and operate.

Another way to build value is to stress that the price you are asking is small relative to the revenue it can produce or save. Copywriter Bob Bly uses this example:

“What would you do if the EPA assessed a $685,000 fine against your company for non-compliance with environmental regulations you weren’t even aware existed? Now get the special 50th anniversary Edition of Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook for only $4.97 (list price $129.50) with your No-Risk Trial Membership in McGraw Hill’s Chemical Engineers’ Book Club.”

Who could turn down paying $4.97 for information that might save them $685,000? They would probably gladly pay the $129.50 list price!

If you product or service will be used over a long period of time, it’s a good strategy to emphasize that cost over that extended time. It helps reduce the sticker shock. Life insurance companies are particularly adept at this. Rather than pushing annual premiums, they often break the cost down into months, week or even days. “Protect your family for 55 cents a day” sounds more affordable than “The annual premium is $200.”

(Next: Close with a Call to Action)

Somewhat related to the previous post (Prove It), establishing credibility in your persuasive copy takes the process one step further. It makes your customers feel comfortable doing business with you and answers the question “Who am I dealing with” that inevitably crops up during the decision-making process.

How do you establish credibility? Emphasizing longevity in the field is a good way to let the world know you know what you are doing. The implication is you that wouldn’t have survived in business for a long time without being good at what you do. The number of employees you have, annual revenues, number of units sold, industry and community awards, commendations, and publications are also good tidbits that can be sprinkled throughout your copy to establish credibilty.

Don’t use all your credibility-building ammunition in one place – that makes it too easy for a propsoect to dismiss it as fluff. Carefully sprinkle it through your persuasive copy in subtle places that have relevance to the point you are making.

Here are some good examples:

“We guarantee the best technical service and support. Our certified technicians respond within six hours and complete an average of three repairs a day — and we’ve been doing it for 27 years.”

“You’ll have the expertise of 250 professionals around the world to ensure you system will never fail.”

Our product meets and exceeds industry standards, which is why we’ve won the Gold Medal Award for seven years in a row.”

Customer reviews, testimonials from real people just like your readers, independent survey results and media coverage also are good ways to establish credibility.

(Next: Build Value)

Essentially this is put up or shut up time in your copy writing. You’ve gained attention with a great headline, made sure your copy is focused on customer needs, stressed benefits and set yourself apart from the competition.

Now it’s time to deliver the goods. You can just say you’re the best. You have to prove it.

The most powerful tool you have for backing up your claim is to provide tangible evidence of superior performance in your field of expertise. You need to show — with facts – that your product or service is successful in providing the benefits and other results you promise.

One way to spotlight your track record is with case histories and success stories in your copy. Real life examples about how your product or service solved a customer problem allows the reader to empathize with the situation and celebrate the victory. If they can see themselves benefiting in the same way, you’ve done a good job.

Testimonials from satisfied customers are another effective tactic in convincing prospects that you can do what you say. Make sure to use testimonials from comparable customers.

Running a list of your current clients — and including how long they’ve been with you — provides a subtle endorsement, especially if you have a number of long-time clients. It shows you’ve been successful in building relationships that endure. Clients don’t stay around long if you’re not meeting and exceeding their expectations.

(Next: Establish Credibility)

Here are some of their more interesting observations, based on the study:

• More than 110 million people – 60% of the online population – use social netowrking sites.
• Twitter has passed LinkedIn in overall popularity.
• MySpace draws the youngest audience (15-24); Facebook is next (18-34); Twitter is third (15-34) while LinkedIn is the most mature (18-44).
• More than half of U.S. consumers who use social networks belong to more than one.
• Social networks are not just for kids – nearly 30 percent of the 45-to-54-year-olds polled said they have a Facebook profile.
• The average social networker logs in about four times a day, five days a week, and spends about an hour online.
• Social networkers’ feelings about brands online are more fairly positive. Some 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand. When asked by Anderson if they would like more communications from brands, 45% were neutral, while 20% said yes and 35% said no.
• About 32 percent of social networkers are business users; 26 percent say they are fun-seekers; 22 percent consider themselves social media mavens; and 10 percent are casual followers.

The study tracked U.S. user behavior for 11 months. Anderson conducted the study online in June with 5,000 demographically representative respondents, and then went in-depth with 1,250 users, defined as anyone who had signed in to a social network account during the previous 30 days. The company also surveyed about 250 non-users.

After crunching the data, Anderson came up with observations about the typical social network user:

Twitterers: More interested than the others in many subjects but skew particularly high in all news categories, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance and religion. They also especially like pop culture, with music, movies, TV and reading. Buying habits mirror that. They’re more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups. Twitterers are also entrepreneurial. They are more likely than others to use the service to promote their blogs or businesses. More likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average), have an average income of $58,000, and average 28 followers and 32 other Twitterers they’re following. They’re not particularly attached to the site, though — 43% said they could live without Twitter.

MySpacers: While MySpace users skew younger. They also said they’d used the site much less in the past six months. The 67 million who are still there are into having a good time. They’re more likely to have joined MySpace for fun and more likely to be interested in entertaining friends, humor and comedy, and video games. They’re less into exercise than any other social group but seek out parenting information more than any other. Their average income is the lowest, at $44,000, and they have an average of 131 connections. They’re more likely to be black (9%) or Hispanic (7%) than users of the other social sites. They are also more likely to be single (60%) and students (23%).

Facebookers: There are 77 million Facebook users. Out of 45 categories, only national news, sports, exercise, travel, and home and garden skewed even slightly higher than average, and then by only one or two percentage points. They are more likely to be married (40%), white (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks. They have the second-highest average income ($61,000) and an average of 121 connections. Facebook users skew a bit older and are more likely to be late adopters of social media. But they are also extremely loyal to the site — 75% claim Facebook is their favorite site, and another 59% say they have increased their use of the site in the past six months.

LinkIners: All about business. More males than females (57% to 43%). Highest average income ($89,000). More likely to have joined the site for business or work, citing keeping in touch with business networks, job searching, business development and recruiting as top reasons. They like news, employment information, sports and politics. More likely to be into the gym, spas, yoga, golf and tennis.
Excluding video-game systems, they own more electronic gadgets than the other social networkers, including digital cameras, high-definition TVs, DVRs and Blu-ray players.

What does all this mean if you’re contemplating using social media for marketing? As is always the case, it starts with knowing your target audience and understanding their habits. Marketing to a younger audience via Twitter might be difficult; likewise, MySpace might now be a good choice for more mature consumers. Organizations really need to take a holistic approach to social media, one that reaches all potential consumers for the brand, and does so in a compelling and consistent way that builds awareness and equity for the brand. Not doing so will result in your brand failing to connect with your customer in a meaningful and viral way.

Consumers are bombarded by thousands of marketing messages every day. Everyone claims to have the best prices in town, the greatest customer service, the most satisfied customers. If you sound just like the other guy, chances are you won’t stand out from the crowd, no matter how good your product or service.

So, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

Start by taking an honest look at what you have to offer and compare it to others in the same industry. You’ll probably see a lot of similarities but there will be differences. Is it your experience? Your use of technology? Your clients? Your results? Your customer service record? Your price?

Once you’ve identified what makes you different from the competition, craft your copy to emphasize the benefits of those differences. Tell your readers why it is to their advantage to use your product or service instead of the competition. Don’t be afraid to provide head-to-comparisons — assuming they come out in your favor.

(Next: Prove It!)