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Site Beat - MightyMerchant Monthly Newsletter > December 2006 

December 2006

Greetings from MightyMerchant

Welcome to the December issue of SiteBeat, the MightyMerchant newsletter offering news, tips and useful information for our clients delivered right to your inbox.

In this issue we'll talk about our switch, this month, from Urchin to Google Analytics. We will also discuss capturing e-mail addresses for marketing purposes and we will profile Ed and Stacie Liao, who run Connecticut's Pink By The Harbor - a popular "brick-and-mortar" retailer with a successful website. One feature you won't want to miss is the first in a series of articles about web marketing resources. We will look at some of the options available for building incoming links to your site.

We welcome your feedback. Please contact us with comments as well as suggestions for future editions.

In This Issue



• MightyMerchant Announcements
-- Signing up for Google Analytics
-- Billing procedures
-- E-mail quotas
• Tech Tip — Capturing e-mail addresses of your site's visitors
• Welcoming new MightyMerchant clients
• Marketing KickStart — Overview of marketing resources
• Client Profile — Pink By The Harbor, a Connecticut "brick-and-
mortar" and online store offering Lilly Pulitzer and other fine clothing and home collections


MightyMerchant Announcements

-- MightyMerchant switches from Urchin to Google Analytics by 1/15/07


MightyMerchant has long offered Urchin as our statistics software for those clients who wish to gain a deeper understanding of who is visiting their site, what they are searching for, and what they buy. However, as some of you may know, Urchin was purchased by Google and has been improved as Google Analytics.

In January we will be transitioning users from Urchin to Google Analytics, which is a more useful and sophisticated site analysis tool. There is no charge from MightyMerchant for the switch, and Google Analytics currently is a free service provided by Google. All you need to do is sign up for a free account with Google and provide us with your Google Analytics code. Please sign up for your Google Analytics account by January 15, 2006. Visit our documentation page for instructions on signing up for Google Analytics: http://docs.mightymerchant.com/home/doc/cpage_308.

-- Billing Procedures

As always, we strive to provide our customers with the highest level of support in the industry. Much of the support we provide is included in your monthly fee. We have created some clear guidelines so you can understand which requests are included in the monthly fee and which will involve an additional charge. You can read the details of our billing policies at http://www.mightymerchant.com/home/mm5/page_1176.

-- Email quotas

All MightyMerchant e-mail accounts include a 10-megabyte disk quota. This amount is ample space for typical e-mail usage, but is not unlimited! If you make use of MightyMerchant Webmail, please remember to regularly use an e-mail program on your computer to download the mail to your system so it does not accumulate on our servers. If you need additional storage space for your e-mail, please talk with us so we can work with you to develop a good solution.

Our support site has many useful tips on managing your e-mail, from filtering spam to using SquirrelMail (a program that allows e-mail access through your server from anywhere in the world via the Web). We encourage you to check it out:
http://support.mightymerchant.com/home/mm4/smartlist_12/


  • Capturing e-mail addresses of your site's visitors


    Capturing Emails


    Utilize every opportunity you can to invite your customers to share their e-mail addresses with you. On your website, we recommend having a newsletter/announcement signup form, an opt-in check-box on your contact form, and an opt-in checkbox on your shopping cart checkout form. If you don't already have these set up on your site, please contact MightyMerchant to find out how you can do so.

    Any form on your site which you are using to collect e-mail addresses should be clearly marked as such. As long as you give your customers the option of signing up for your mail lists, and don't sign them up without their knowledge, you should be building a list of solid addresses. Some e-mail marketing experts recommend a system called double opt-in, which involves sending your customers an automated follow-up e-mail after they subscribe so they can verify their subscription. The downside to this approach is that it requires one more hoop for a customer to jump through to join your list.
    Remember to think about your subject lines before you send your message; If they are ambiguous, customers may mistake them for spam. Always including your store name in the subject line could be a good way to avoid this.

    Storing Addresses


    When you store your messages, we recommend organizing them in clearly defined lists or mailboxes. That way, you can more effectively target your e-mails. You will likely want to send a certain message to newsletter subscribers and a different message to customers who have previously ordered. If you sell to wholesale and retail customers, you will want to do your best to break those groups into different lists, to accomodate the different information each of them is interested in.

    If you store your addresses on your own system, be sure that you have those files included in a regular backup routine. Your address lists are valuable, and you don't want to lose them if you have a problem with your system. You may have addresses from other sources besides your website. You can potentially combine these addresses in to the same lists, but consider whether these addresses are from users who have specifically agreed to get e-mails from you. As mentioned earlier, you don't want to be sending e-mails to users who have not indicated they would like to hear what you have to say, and it is better not to mix the "approved" addresses with the "non-approved."


    Communicating


    Here are some brief guidelines for communicating with your customers:

    Communicate regularly, but not too often. The frequency of your e-mails depends to some extent on what business you are in. Sending marketing pieces monthly is often a good routine. If you have lots of timely product releases and news that will interest your customers, you can send more frequent e-mail marketing blasts. Keep in mind that you run the risk of alienating your customers if you send messages too frequently.

    Send concise and simple e-mail messages. People often skim through their e-mails. Keep your messages focused and short. It is fine to include images, but you want to try to keep the number of images to a minimum, because an abundance of images can trigger spam filtering programs.

    Have clear links back to your site. If the goal of your e-mail is to get customers to your site, be sure to include frequent and well-marked links throughout the message to invite customers to go to your site and complete their transaction or contact you.

    Give recipients clear instructions for unsubscribing. Each e-mail marketing piece should give the customer instructions for opting out of future e-mails. Be sure you have a system in place for processing the unsubscribe requests, so the user gets removed from your list.
  • Overview of Marketing Resources

    Overview of Marketing Resources

    Sources of incoming links:

    • http://www.mightymerchant.com
    When we build your website we automatically add your website to our gallery. This link is free and you don't have to do anything to get it. MightyMerchant is a trusted website with a Google page rank of 6, and that offers an excellent jumpstart for your own website.

    • http://www.dmoz.org
    This is a human-edited directory of websites, and there is no charge for submitting to this directory. It can take several months for your website to make it into this directory, but a listing in DMOZ is one of the most trusted, authoritative incoming links a website can have.

    • http://www.paypal.com
    If you accept PayPal as a payment method on your website you can get a free listing in PayPal Shops. More information is available here: http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_shop-ext

    • http://www.yahoo.com
    Here's what Search Engine News (see below) has to say about a Yahoo Directory listing:
    "Subscribers often ask us if it's worth paying the $299 to be listed in the Yahoo Directory. Our answer has always been YES! ...simply because this is one of the easiest trusted links you can get. Google even recommends in their webmaster guidelines that you buy this link."

    For a wealth of information and tips on how to market your website online, we recommend http://www.searchenginenews.com. A subscription does cost $99 per year, but you get a monthly newsletter filled with the latest information and changes in the search engine world. You also have access to all of the past archived articles. Check out some of these helpful articles:

    “7 Great Places to Get Authoritative Links for Free! — It's high time to harvest that low-hanging Link Fruit”

    “Getting Started with Pay Per Click Search Engines — A Side-by-Side Comparison of AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, & Microsoft adCenter”

    “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your Site into DMOZ — Find out the number one mistake almost everyone makes when submitting their site”

    “Your 8 Week Step-by-Step Link Building Task Planner — A Timetable Guide that explains exactly what to do! ...and where and when to do it.”

    We also recommend http://www.ducttapemarketing.com, and we aren't alone. Forbes magazine says, "Clever marketing ideas galore and lots of contrarian thinking on what works and what doesn't."
    Entrepreneur magazine says, "For growing businesses in search of some great marketing ideas, Duct Tape Marketing is a worthwhile online pit stop."

    The link below is to a series of articles from Duct Tape Marketing with a trove of great marketing ideas, enough to keep you busy for months!
    http://www.aweber.com/z/article/?ducttapenews

    We understand that getting the word out about your online business is a top priority for many of you, if not all of you! Keep checking SiteBeat in the coming months for more great marketing tips and resources. Let us know if you have made any changes to your marketing process, and if you are noticing results!
  • Pink By the Harbor
    Stacie Liao couldn't find Lilly Pulitzer clothing and home collections in Milford, Connecticut, so she did the only natural thing she could do in that situation; She opened up a licensed shop and started selling the items herself. "The only store in the area that sold Lilly Pulitzer mentioned to her that she was the fifth person that had called that day looking for it," said Stacie's husband, Ed, "so that gave her the idea, 'well, people are looking for it and they can't find it so maybe I should open up a store to sell it.'"

    While some people agonize for months or years over whether or not they should take the plunge into opening their own business, Stacie and Ed went from idea to realization in about two months. "My wife contacted Lilly Pulitzer headquarters and asked if we could open up a store in our area," Ed says. "It took a couple months because we had to write up a business plan. We probably spent more time looking for the right place and dealing with Lilly Pulitzer than deciding if we were going to do this or not." That was in early 2004, and their walk-in store on the harbor in Milford, Pink By The Harbor, has been a growing success each year.


    (Pink By the Harbor storefront in Milford, Connecticut)

    The Liaos, whose family also includes a 3-year old son and 5-year old daughter, are somewhat unique as MightyMerchant clients go in that they run a successful "brick-and-mortar" store as well as a major online presence for selling Lilly Pulitzer designer clothing and accessories. Stacie runs the walk-in store full time, while Ed maintains the website, http://www.pinkbytheharbor.com. While the store does focus on Lilly Pulitzer merchandise, they also sell a variety of other high-end clothing and home collections, such as Vineyard Vines, Eliza B flipflops, Lacoste clothing and Lalique crystal items. The store also just started selling Burberry. "Because we're a Lilly Pulitzer store that's our focus, but we do sell other things," Ed says. "People have bought engraved jewelry from us, people have bought monogramming stuff from us. It's actually very diversified right now." According to Ed, their online business comes "from all over the place."

    He's seen a 15 to 20 percent increase in sales each year since the store opened in April of 2004, and that traffic is a combination of both walk-in and online. "From a traffic standpoint, there's people coming into the store, and word-of-mouth, people letting others know that we're in the area," he says. "Locally, I don't think we have a lot of online traffic." But Ed says they have "a fair amount" of people in Connecticut who do shop online, and he isn't sure if they actually prefer to shop online or if they see the store and then decide to look on the website. Either way, he's happy with their growth so far. When the store first opened, the Liaos bulked up their advertising budget to include print ads in the local Connecticut papers, The New York Times, and Connecticut Magazine. Ed says they tried radio ads a couple of times, and that brought in traffic. At this point, with the business being successful and established, the store no longer keeps a budget for regular advertising.

    The Liaos discovered MightyMerchant early on in their search to start a business and didn't have experience with any other companies. "We knew someone who was in the computer field, he had his own business … and was into search engine optimization," Ed remembers. "He mentioned Datahost [as MightyMerchant was formerly known] to us as someone who was able to design websites, so I just contacted Michael directly from that recommendation." Ed uses the MightyMerchant shopping cart software to maintain the store's inventory, post photos of new items and do general maintenance. He does pay attention to search engine optimization and understands how important keeping up on that is. "I know when I type in a search term to either Yahoo! or Google, usually we come up on the first page and usually within the top ten on the relevant things that I think people would search on, so I know that helps."

    The Liaos have recently begun using the MightyMailer part of the MightyMerchant shopping cart software in order to send out "e-mail blasts." "A lot of people asked to be put on our e-mail list," says Ed. In these e-mails, Ed will let people know that new merchandise has been added, or that last season's merchandise is on sale. He also includes codes so that customers can get special discounts when ordering, ("Use this code for 15% off in the next week," and things like that) which is a great way to increase sales. "We'll send an e-mail out to everyone who's on our e-mail list and that generates a lot of traffic," he says. "Within the first day or two you'll see the spike in the number of visits."

    Here at MightyMerchant, we congratulate Ed and Stacie Liao on the success of their business and wish them more success in years to come. They've found ways to put the advantages of MightyMerchant's software to use for their benefit.
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