Cover Story: 50 Best Tips of 2009

8. Try free services like Twilert and Google Alerts.
These tools let you pick specific search phrases and then automatically email “mentions” to you on a schedule you choose. For search words, the possibilities are endless: company name, key products, services and more. You may find a blogger or two that loves your brand. These brand evangelists have the power to drive the masses in your direction. They can help increase traffic — and even sales — and they’re some of the best people to engage with online.
Bryan Jennewein, infoGROUP
“3 Ways to Make Social Media Work for You,” Sept. 1, The ROI Report

9. Use promotions in your transactional emails.
About 80 percent of commercial email isn’t opened. But transactional emails (e.g., “Your product was shipped today”) are opened and read at about double the rate of promo emails. While customers are reading about their transactions, promote a related product below the fold.
Arthur Middleton Hughes, e-Dialog
“3 Tactics for Email: Promote, Personalize and Be Relevant,” July 21, The ROI Report

10. How to make the best offer possible.
The best kind of offer encourages people to buy faster, contains a reply-by date and a minimum order size, is exclusively a product of yours or a gift with your logo and URL screened on to make it yours, and is easy to fulfill with online coupons and gift cards, both of which can be emailed digitally, for example, with no postage or breakage.
Carol Worthington-Levy, Lenser
IndustryEye Shop Talk section, “5 Creative Ways to Make a Good Offer,” June, All About ROI

11. Be mobile for mobile marketing.
“A mobile site should have a coherent and consistent presentation for a variety of mobile devices. We made sure a search box was prominent on nearly all of our mobile pages, because search is really important.”
Eddie Sutton, The Strand Bookstore
IndustryEye Mobile Minute section, “Q&A With Strand Bookstore’s Eddie Sutton,” June, All About ROI