Posted by seotech on December 29, 2009 under Corporate E-Cards, E-mail Marketing | 
E-Cards
E-cards are digital cards delivered usually via email, rather than paper or cardboard cards sent through the post. E-cards are a great alternative to traditional cards because they are delivered in seconds rather than days, have no postage costs, and are environmentally-friendly since they don’t use paper. Additionally, they can be sent to many people at once while being personalised for each recipient.
E-cards are also more versatile than traditional cards. Rather than just a picture and a message, e-cards can include animation, video, sound and music. Typically, senders choose an e-card from an online catalogue of e-cards so they don’t even have to design the card themselves. After selecting a design, the sender can personalise it by various degrees including name, a message, photo or video. Then the sender fills in the recipient’s email address and the web site delivers the email. On the other hand, web-based card creation is also an option. This is where the sender chooses all the individual elements of the e-card from the website, including the background, images, animations and text font.
With advancing technology, e-cards can now be sent to mobile devices including PDAs and mobile phones (also known as mCards). These multimedia messages can be sent by the user from a website on a PC to the recipient’s mobile number.
Business E-Cards
E-cards are used for all sorts of occasions, from Christmas to birthdays, Valentine’s Day, graduations, weddings, engagements, Easter, New Years and so on. Or they can be sent just for fun, many e-cards just being designed with amusing animations. E-cards are also increasingly being used by businesses to keep in contact with previous, present and potential customers and shareholders. They can replace traditional business Christmas cards, be used as invitations to conferences or seminars, inform customers of changes and more.
SEO Technologies Pty Ltd can design and host animated business e-cards. This Australian company, based in Sydney, offers high quality e-cards with a professional edge, suitable for all business communications.
Posted by seotech on December 17, 2009 under E-mail Marketing |
E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing uses digital mail as a direct form of marketing to make contact with existing and potential clients and customers. It is a versatile, efficient, and affordable means to communicate, whether to advise of changes in services, location, goods, staff, management and so on, special offers, send invitations to seminars, conferences or other special events, or encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business.
These e-mails can take many forms. They can simply be in the form of a traditional letter with just text, or a multimedia letter with graphics, sound and animation. The e-mail can be interactive with hyperlinks that take the reader to a website, or with a form to be filled in and returned by e-mail. It can be a digital newsletter with pictures, contain attached documents such as annual reports, or be in the form of an e-card.
Advantages of E-mails
E-mails have many advantages over more traditional marketing methods, whether printed newsletters and catalogues, or television and radio advertisements. Firstly, targeted e-mail marketing using a opted-in mailing list allows companies to distribute information to a wide but specific audience. By using permission marketing, the e-mails are only sent to those who have given permission to be e-mailed, so is not deleted as spam.
E-mail is also much less expensive than traditional marketing means, and by using digital media instead of paper e-mails are more environmentally friendly. The delivery time for an e-mail message is much faster than mailed advertisement, and they are easier to track through mechanisms such as read receipts and autoresponders. As a result, an exact return on investment can be measured and enables tuning and refining of techniques.
E-mail marketing is a pro-active method of advertising, pushing its message to potential customers rather than just waiting for customers to visit a website or calling a phone number. Especially since most internet users will check their e-mail every day. Finally, it can generate repeat business affordably and automatically. Automatically because with a database of opted-in e-mail addresses and contact details, companies can simply select to send to all recipients or just a specific segment.
