Building a List

The first and most difficult step in setting up an email marketing campaign is gaining a list of people who want to hear more about what you have to offer them. Starting from scratch can be intimidating, since you have to strike a careful balance between urging visitors to sign up, but you don't want to come across as too forceful. Here are a few ways you can build the email list:

-      Online Signup - Place a sign up form on your blog or website

-      Social Media – Request followers to sign up through tweets or Facebook news

-      Email signature – Include a link for signing up to your email list in your email signature

-      Offline Signup – place a clipboard on the counter in your business

All of these have their advantages and disadvantages, but the common ingredient is time and patience.

Sending Emails

Email services such as MailChimp or Constant Contact allow you to easily email thousands of people at a time. These services will provide templates for emails that are easy to set up even if you are not a savvy web developer. If your business is located in the United States, it is important that you follow all of the rules in the CAN-SPAM act to avoid facing penalties. A good automated service will help you stay within the guidelines. The most important part to remember is that you must give people the ability to opt out of receiving any additional emails.

Integrating with Display

Now that you know how to get your email marketing started, next you have to integrate your emails with display ads. Basically, you want to create a virtual loop between the display campaign, your website, and your email campaign. First, display ads serve as little online billboards that catch the attention of new prospects and direct them to your website. Once they are on your site, your email signup form will capture their contact info and add them to the email marketing list. The emails that you send will then urge them to click back to your website.  Anyone who visits your website is tagged with a cookie, allowing the display ads to be retargeted to them as they browse the rest of the web, reminding them that you are there.

Studies done by Smart Insights show just how powerful advertising campaigns combined with email marketing can be:

1. The combined use of email and display advertising increases advertising recall by 13%

2. Email advertising is more welcomed than other forms of advertisement, improving the reach of campaigns

3. Email and display campaigns boost web traffic by a factor of four

When you combine your email marketing strategies with your display advertising campaigns, not only can you reach more of your target audience quicker, you will have a more successful time interacting with your customers and increasing traffic to your main page. Remember if you give people high quality content there is a higher chance that they will click through to your website, thereby keeping the loop going and giving you the opportunity to grow your relationship with your audience.

For more insights on how to make display advertising a powerful part of your online marketing efforts, check out the blog at Vantage Local’s website. Vantage Local is the leader in online display campaigns for locally-minded advertisers.

Still a Varied Landscape

Internet development has seen many transitions. Search marketing has been consolidated within the industry due to Google page rank becoming the most popular way of measuring relevance of a website. On the other hand, display advertising has not gained this same level of consolidation yet. Today it is still a fractured landscape that includes many types of service providers: ad networks, DSP's, DMP's, CRM, and resellers. This means that there are still opportunities for new companies to make it big.

No Longer Just for Early Adopters

Traditional advertisers must make use of this new technology to stay competitive. They must enter the digital game. Almost 50 percent of budgets set aside for advertising today are targeted for online marketing. With technology changing rapidly, advertisers should keep up with current trends and use them productively.

Cross-Platform Trend

A huge trend today is towards mobile device usage. Smart phones are on the rise. People are no longer content to sit on a personal computer or a laptop. The newest trends are towards tablets and smart phones. So far there has been much pooh-poohing of the effectiveness of mobile advertising.  But in the end, ads must move to where eyeballs can be found. Advertisers must always be aware of new trends and adapt within them to stay viable.

Smarter Marketing

Marketers are also demanding access to better data processing. This will end the need to group data into segments, creating a challenge for DMP's to stay relevant. Less structure creates more transparency of data.

Ad-Technology Arms Race

With such a fractured industry landscape, service providers are each trying to hold onto their market-share. But not all of them are making the necessary updates to their technology. Those that do stay updated will probably come out on top.  In addition, those that maintain a clear focus, such as Simpli.fi's niche with search retargeting or Vantage Local's focus on local display advertising, will be able to keep and grow their place in the industry.  My prediction for 2013 is that there will be big advances made in the creative tools available to ad agencies, and that the data provided for audience targeting will become more reliable and more immediately actionable. Who will come out with the best new advances will be an interesting race to watch.