DealerIgnition

In addition to the email campaign system interface changes that we deployed over the weekend, we also have another big change to announce: we have lowered the price for sending an email campaign. Prior to this latest release, we charged 500 credits per campaign, plus an additional credit for each recipient the campaign was sent to. As of today, we have eliminated the 500 credit base charge per campaign. Going forward, we will only charge you one credit for each campaign recipient. To put that in perspective: if a campaign is sent to 500 people, it now costs half the price it used to.

If you have any questions about this change, feel free to drop us a line at support@dealerignition.com. If you are not yet a customer, request a demo today!

Last night we released a new version of the application. The big news in this release is the redesigned email campaign system. I’ll give a quick preview of it here. For a more detailed look, log in to your account. If you are not yet a customer, request a demo.

The focus of this release was making the email campaign system even easier to use. A few highlights of the redesign are:

• We changed the campaign creation process to be a simple four step process:

  

• The reply-to address and from name/address is now configurable on a per campaign basis, instead of being global settings. By default, it will use the values you used for your last campaign, so you will not have to change it for every campaign unless it needs to change for that campaign:

  

• You can now create and choose subscriber lists from the...

You probably hear it day in and day out that you need to be promoting your business online. If you are a dealer you probably see and hear solicitations every day from self-proclaimed experts in the online marketing space that can help you get a gazillion percent return on your Internet marketing investment.

Why do you think there are so many of these types of these businesses out there? Partly it’s because of the economy. Many SMB’s are finally coming to the realization that in order to survive they need to get into the Internet marketing game. Also, there are many eple out of work so it’s easy to throw out a shingle and call themselves an expert. Sad but true.

So how do you sift through the Internet dross that is being tossed at you regularly? Keep it simple. I recommend just paying attention to what Google is doing and that should be a good guide for you as the busy...

One of the great things about what we do is working with thousands of dealers every day to grow their business. Connect them with customers from online to in-store.

Recently a Report from the Outdoor Industry Association grabbed my attention “Retailers struggle to live up to online return policies and guarantees”

Nearly 96% of all e-tailers publish their return policy.

Further down you find out that:

Nineteen percent of the retailers shopped required customers to obtain a return authorization number (RA#) before returning an item, 15 percent offered online return processing and 32 percent offered pre-paid return labels/smart labels, according to the study.

Staying on top of returns is particularly important to outdoor specialty stores, which derive about a third of sales and profits from apparel, where online return rates can...

If it isn’t clear to the SMB’s (small and medium business) of the world by now then it needs to be said again. There is nothing, repeat nothing, that relates to Internet marketing that is a “set it and forget it” practice. In fact, with the confluence of social media, search and everything else that is online happening at such a rapid rate it is less so. Remember the old Yellow Pages? That’s a “set it and forget it” proposition for the most part and unless you are in a dire emergency and can’t get to your computer before you find your Yellow Pages book (would like to see some stats on that one) you can see where that mentality gets you.

So what can be done on a daily basis by your average SMB (which most dealers and resellers are, so brands and manufacturers please take note)...

When you conduct a search on Google, how far into the search results do you go? Do you go past the first page of results? Do you even venture to the bottom of the first page of results?

Most people will say that they don’t venture past the first page of the SERP’s (search engine result pages) for any specific keyword or key phrase unless there is a very specific need. The common searcher who is using Google, for instance, is doing it for a very specific reason: they want the search engine to narrow down their choices. As a result, they trust that whatever comes up on the first page of results for their search query must be the best choice.

Of course, there is a fly in the ointment with this thinking. Not every result at the top of the rankings is the best result. In...

Over the years, search marketing has evolved as the searcher themselves have figured out just how to use search engines to get the information they are looking for. As a result there has been an increased move toward longer search terms as the evidence shows that the more people tell the engines about what they are looking for the better the result will be.

This philosophy has influenced search campaigns on both the organic and paid sides of ledger for years and appears to make perfect sense. Interestingly enough, some new data has been released that shows some increase in the use of one-word terms for search! Go figure. Small Business SEM’s Matt McGee has brought this to our attention and we figure it’s worth sharing.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that searchers are typing longer queries into the search boxes on Google, Yahoo,...

The numbers are in and the news is good to a degree. We’re not here to try and make it seem like the economy has turned the corner completely. What has turned the corner is the level of spending in online advertising. What does that mean to you, the local business owner? It means it may be time to get back in the game since your competition may be thinking the same thing.

The graph from TechCrunch shows the increase in ad spend Q4. Now, of course we need to take into consideration that Q4 includes the biggest retail time of the year so the upswing should be expected. What is encouraging is the year over year increase in revenues shows that there was more spent on advertising in ’09 v ’08. We hope it is a sign of things to come for 2010. Are you using search to move the needle on your bottom line?

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You have probably heard that if you are going on a trip but have no destination then you will never know if you have actually arrived. You may have also heard, or experienced, the joy of leaving for somewhere without having a well thought out roadmap of how to get there. Unless you enjoy aimless meandering or you like the challenge of finding things the hard way, neither of these options sounds very attractive.

As an SMB (small and medium business) who is a dealer or agent for larger brands does it make any sense to run your business like noted above? Of course not, but many do. Many business owners get so caught up in the day to day of doing their business activities that they never step back to take a look and plan. The old adage is that they are too busy working...

More than ever local business search is becoming influential in how people make decisions on purchases of everything from carpets to technology, business services and more. Google is the king of this domain and likely will be for the foreseeable future. As a result, businesses of all sizes from the SMB to the enterprise will have to learn, understand and play by the rules that Google sets in this space.

An interesting side note of this growing phenomenon is just how Google is engaging in mobile search as it relates to their local services. You see, the battle lines between Google and Apple have been drawn clearly with Google’s entrée into the mobile device market with their Android operating system and phones. They compete directly with the iPhone.

So what does this mean to the local business owner and the enterprise? Everything. Why? Well, yesterday Google announced that when...