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>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB > KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATED WEBINAR PAGE 11 > PROFIT CALENDAR PAGE 13 > STOP DOING EMAIL NEWSLETTERS PAGE 15 > DECREASE SHOPPING CART ABANDONMENT PAGE 18 > SPEED UP YOUR WORDPRESS SITE PAGE 22 > CUSTOMER RETENTION PAGE 27 > GOOGLE GLASS PAGE 29 JOIN US ON FACEBOOK Alexi Neocleous GROWING FROM $25M TO $100M april 2013

Internet Marketing Magazine April 2013

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In this issue… Growing from $25M to $100M with Alexi Neocleous, 4 Keys to a Successful Automated Webinar, Profit Calendar, Stop Doing Email Newsletters, 9 Ways to Decrease Shopping Cart Abandonment, Speed Up Your Wordpress Site, Road to 20,000 Customers and 95% Retention, First Look at Google Glass & much more....

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>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

> KEYS TO SUCCESSFULAUTOMATED WEBINARPAGE 11

> PROFIT CALENDARPAGE 13

> STOP DOING EMAILNEWSLETTERSPAGE 15

> DECREASE SHOPPINGCART ABANDONMENTPAGE 18

> SPEED UP YOURWORDPRESS SITEPAGE 22

> CUSTOMERRETENTIONPAGE 27

> GOOGLE GLASSPAGE 29

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

Alexi NeocleousGROWING FROM $25M TO $100M

april 2013

2 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

THESTATE OF THE INTERNET

> INTERNET UPDATE

Inactive Emails Going Rotten

Email deliverability is getting more and more dif-ficult in 2013 as Email Service Providers (ESP’s) get smarter and smarter technology.

I remember when first starting off in Internet Mar-keting 8-10 years ago the whole focus was on ‘you need to have a big list’… well that is no longer the case. A big list certainly helps with monetisation, but what is more important in 2013 and beyond is an active and responsive list.

Email service providers such as Hotmail are chang-ing their algorithms to review ‘opens and clicks’. If a hotmail user hasn’t opened an email or clicked a link from you in 4 months then it is more likely that your messages will now go to the spam folder, which is not where you want them to go.

I’ve used Hotmail in this example, but all ESP’s are heading this way.

Inactive emails are now like food pushed to the back of the pantry – they are great when you bought the food but over time when neglected can go rotten.

As an email list owner you now need to actively seg-ment off your list’s inactive’s and try to re-engage these people with high value irresistible free con-tent.

If you still don’t get any activity then the best course of action is to delete those contacts. There is no point of a full pantry where you can’t eat most of it and it’s affecting the health of the other food.

Adwords Now Allowing You To Bid on Trademarked Terms

In certain parts of the world such as China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Brazil in recent years you have not been able to bid on Trademarked terms such as many brand names within Google Adwords.

As of 23rd of April 2013 that will change so that key-words that were restricted as a result of a trade-mark complaint and investigation will no longer be restricted in the affected regions.

Google states that the reason for this change is “Google’s goal is to provide our users with the most relevant information, whether from search results or advertisements, and we believe users benefit from having more choice. Our policy aims to bal-ance the interests of users, advertisers, and trade-mark owners, so we will continue to investigate trademark complaints concerning use of trademarks in ad text.”

This is great news, especially for industries where

In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s the facts and provides expert commentary on what are the big plays that have recently happened online and how they affect you.

3internet marketing magazineapril 2013

one brand name is also the term that describes an industry eg. Ugg Boot, as it enables more competi-tion to advertise rather than one advertiser domi-nating a market place.

Same Day Delivery… But Not From Who You Would Expect

When you think of same day eCommerce delivery, most likely Amazon, eBay and Walmart come to mind. But the latest player in this space is not who you would necessarily think of in the same day de-livery space – Google.

Google is testing a same-day delivery service called Google Shopping Express.

The search engine giant put out a call for consumer “testers” for the service in the San Francisco Bay area, and also announced that the following large national e-retailers are taking part: Staples, Target, Toys ‘R’ Us, Walgreen Co. and several other Internet Retailers and local San Francisco merchants.

“We’re still working out our long-term pricing plan but early testers will get six months of free, un-limited same-day delivery,” advised Tom Fallows, product management director, Google Shopping Ex-press

This is an interesting play from Google who also now has its Google Trusted Stores program. eCommerce seems to be a major part of their strategy moving forwards as consumers purchasing on line has be-come main stream in recent years.

I believe Google will build an authority eCommerce marketplace site like Amazon or eBay in the near future, but time will tell.

Amazon Going Social

Amazon has recently announced the acquisition of social reading service Goodreads for an undisclosed figure.

Goodreads boasts over 16 million users and has cat-alogued more than 360 million books, adding 22 mil-lion each month.

Goodreads is a social community for book lovers to share what books they’ve enjoyed and also to dis-cover new books that they have a high probability of liking based off the previous books they’ve liked.

Amazon would have several motives with this move.1. It just acquired an all ready thriving social network of people who are it’s 100% target mar-ket2. It can very quickly and easily be integrated with Kindle as Goodreads doesn’t currently have an eReader of choice.3. This type of social integration could give Amazon a major advantage over competition e-sellers like Apple, who have no social components to their product offerings.

Amazon will treat Goodreads similar to it’s acquisi-tion of Zappos where it remains its own brand and maintains its own culture.

4 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

From the Desk of the Editor

If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free to do at http://internetmarket-ingmag.net/become-member/ (it’s free). This month’s complete audio interview with Alexi Neo-cleous has now been added. It has lots of learn-ing’s in it that were not included in the magazine, so be sure to check it out.

A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from Internet Market-ing Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :).

We have started work on developing a new ver-sion of the Internet Marketing Magazine ‘Google Play’ store app as the old one is out of date and we have no easy way of updating it. We expect this update to be 2-3 months off and will let you know when it goes live.

Wishing you the best of success online,

Regards,

GregCassarGreg CassarInternet Marketing Strategist & EditorInternet Marketing Magazine

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> EXPERT INTERVIEW

An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg CassarAlexi Neocleous is one of the leading direct response freelance copywriters in the world. Alexi is a profit strategist of the very highest magnitude, having driven many multiple millions of dollars in sales for his high-end client base. Alexi is the author of some of the most well received advertis-ing and marketing courses in the industry; titles, which include, “Advertising Secrets”, “The Three Minute Ad Formula”, which he co-authored with Scott Bywater and the “Kaizen Marketing System”.

Alexi, for those who have not come across your work before. Can you please describe who is Alexi Neocleous?

Alexi: The quick version is, first and foremost I do lots of direct response copywriting - long copy sales letters, video sales letters, product launches and quite elab-orate direct response marketing campaigns. Secondly, I’m also a strategist.

In terms of who I am, I fell into this work probably 12, 13 years ago. One of the richest men in the world at the time was Rene Rivkin. I got it in to my mind one day that I wanted to work with him and I just kept sending him ideas about his marketing; how to improve his marketing, why his marketing sucked - and so on and so forth. Until ultimately he just relented and said “Come in. Let’s talk”. It’s quite a funny story be-cause at the time I had no other clients, I had no track record, I had no website, no nothing, and this is one of the richest men of the country who acquiesced.

For me at the time it was just an interesting adventure to try and

get him as a client, but truth-fully I was scared – he was very famous. And then we started do-ing some stuff together and I re-alised quite early on that I had some skill to help business own-ers, both large and small. Then it went on from there, and since then we’ve worked with hundreds of clients. We’ve increased sales by certainly tens or hundreds of millions, its hard to say for sure.

Alexi, you have a unique way of looking at High Level Marketing and how it relates to your les-sons with the Bow and Arrow.

Alexi: What I found working with many business owners, both large and small, I’m always intrigued by the thinking and behavioural pat-terns that separates those who are plodding along and those that do really, really well. One of the big differences between those are doing ok, but those that are doing spectacular in the tens of millions and more, is those who do spectacular have quite an in-teresting perspective on how to approach their campaigns. This is something I’ve cultivated as a belief system. It’s quite concrete

in my mind now in terms of how strongly I believe it.

It’s quite simply this, approach all of your marketing as a scientist – every campaign is an experi-ment and with every campaign you will get feedback. That feedback can either be “posi-tive” or “negative”. A positive feedback is where made money. Negative is we lost money. But both are quite arbitrary and just to be treated as feedback.

Using all this feedback is quite valuable, because you can re-align your sights. A metaphor that I use is my bow and arrow. A few months ago I bought myself a pretty high-end professional bow and arrow. When you get a bow and arrow you need to adjust your sights. I’ve got six level of

ALEXI NEOCLEOUSDIRECT RESPONSE KEYS FOR

GROWING FROM $25M TO $100M

7internet marketing magazineapril 2013

sights that I need to calibrate for varying distances. So my top sight is calibrated for 15 me-tres, the second one for 25 me-tres and so on. When you start to first shoot your bow and ar-row you’ve got a whole bunch of challenges you need to deal with. Firstly, you need to culti-vate your technique. Then you need to improve your skill set. Then on top of all that when you’re starting out you need to calibrate the sights.

So what I had to do with mine was, I would stand say ten me-tres away and I’d line up the top sights and I’d shoot the arrow. Then I’d see where the arrow lands on the target in relation to the bullseye. Then I’d shoot another arrow. And I’d do that a couple of times initially, just to see if there’s consistency in my divergence from the bulls eye. Let’s say for example that I’m consistently a foot north of the bull’s eye; 30 centimetres above the bullseye consistently. That tells me straight away that I need to realign the top sights at least 30 centimetres.

Marketing is very much the same. Whether you’ve got an Internet business, or whether you’ve got a traditional business doing stuff offline, treat every market-ing campaign is an experiment. Then you throw traffic at your sales page, or you throw traffic at your ads and you track your response and you see – how many calls did we get? How many con-verted in to a sale? How many converted in to a repeat buy?

If you treat every single cam-paign as a test you eventually get to the point where you hit

on a really big winning cam-paign. All it takes is one big winning campaign to make a stack load of money. This is what separates those who do really well from those that just plod along.

Those that plod along are very scared to lose; are very scared to treat each campaign as an experiment. Those that hit out of the park not only do they al-locate a fixed amount in budget and say, for this test campaign we’re going to spend X dollars. Win, lose or draw we’re going to spend X dollars, and no matter what happens we’re going to use the data to improve next time. For them it’s a matter of just balancing their cash flow so they can afford to have a succession of losers, so to speak, until they find a winner. Greg: Then run those winners along and cut the losers short.

Alexi: Exactly yes. Cutting the losers short and running those winners for as long as they’re winners.

With one of your clients at the moment you’re working with them on a journey from $25m to $100m a year in sales. From a strategic point of view what are the sort of things that you need to focus on to achieve that goal?

Alexi: Every business is differ-ent. In that client’s case, up un-til about a month ago the front end was quite solid, we had mul-tiple traffic sources where we were sending millions of visitors over many months, to a landing

8 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

page, or a video sales letter. So in this particular case until a month ago the focus was on what hap-pens after the sale. How did we segment buyers? What do we do with buyers after they’ve pur-chased? How do our up sell se-quences look? What’s our custom-er service like?

But then about a month ago we decided to change the messaging on the front end, partly for com-pliance reasons.

What we’re doing to test is I’m working with the media buyer to try a whole bunch of different banners on the front end. On a fortnightly basis or so I’m send-ing through a whole bunch of dif-ferent creative for the banners. The banners that get the biggest click through, they’re the ones that we’re going to turn in to and amend the video sales letter copy and the headline on the landing page.

Most people what they do is, they get an idea and they’d say “ok, so this is the idea we’re going to head with our advertising”. I ap-proach it a different way. I said to the guys, “Listen, just forget that. Put that to the side for the moment. Our first step is finding creative that works really well. When we get banners that have got awesome click throughs, our cost per click is very manageable, then we use that to amend the opening and the headline of the video sales letter. This will let us fail faster”.

Also to fail faster we’re going to do email drops. I submitted a whole bunch of subject lines this morning for the exact same email. We’re just testing subject

lines with the goal being, if we can get a bump, if one of those can stand out more than the oth-ers, then we’ll stick them on ban-ner creative, and if those results stay consistent, then we’ll amend the VSL copy.

Greg: We do the same, but we also do it with testing different messaging on Facebook ads, or Google ads if we’re sending it to a Google compliant page. One of the things I’ve been doing with Google lately to drive traffic to somewhere that you couldn’t normally, say for example, like a Bing style landing page which has got beautiful imagery and just the one primary course of action – what I’ll do is make it the second logical page on a site. So then we send Google traffic directly then to the home page and have like a slider at the top with a really prominent call to action to take them to the non Google Compli-ant landing page where I want them to go. Then using Clicktale I’ll figure out exactly what’s go-ing on to make sure that they are clicking that and go over to the landing page. So I can then

send Google traffic to non-Google compliant landing pages by ef-fectively making the non-Google compliant landing page one step away from where I’m sending the traffic.

Obviously you get some wastage. It’s not as good as the media buys when you’re buying traffic on De-mand Side Platforms (DSPs) etc when they really don’t care what sort of landing page that you’re sending it to.

Alexi: What we do is we look at is the conversion rate on the sales page. Ultimately that’s what separates the results. But until we have hard and fast numbers there’s a whole bunch of analyti-cal things that we do, like assess-ing time on page, analysing the video heat maps in Wistia. We use Wistia as the video player so that we can see where the drop points are and where the replay points are. For the most part we have no player controls, but for tests we also put on player controls so the replay points can jump out at me as well.

Wistia.com

9internet marketing magazineapril 2013

These are all things that we do now do to really as-sess what’s working and what’s not working on the page. So if need to improve the Video Sales Let-ter we can improve it just by editing the drop-off points. I bumped engagement by 20%. Very quickly just by analysing drop-off points in Wistia. Depend-ing on what you’re selling, that could really make a difference to your bottom line. If you’ve got a lot of traffic and you’ve got some good margins, you’ve got some good numbers to start with, a 20% increase in engagement. Wow!

One of your strengths is that ability to really nail the ‘big idea’ for the client, or for any market that you’re going in to. What goes through your thought processes when you’re trying to nail the ‘big idea’?

Alexi: The first step always is understanding the ‘Avatar’. Avatar means your ideal target prospect. It’s really getting to the mind of your target mar-ket and finding out where they are:

• What are their issues?• What are their desires?• What are their fears?• What are their frustrations?• What’s going on in the media that relates to them?• How is that affecting their perceptions? • What bias is that leading to?

Really understanding where they’re at. That is the first point.

So basically a lot of the work to do with coming up with a big theme is related to research and under-standing your market. If you really get where your market is at then you can come up with a lot of the creative ideas quite easily and accurately.

That then ties in with lead generation. Would you then put out some kind of lead magnet that is related to those messages that you wanted to test from your big idea planning?

Alexi: Yes, exactly. But we take it a level further by getting very specific, depending on lead source. Like for example, electronic direct mail (EDM) for the readers of property magazines. That is quite a

sophisticated investor that’s agreed to subscribe to a magazine about property Investing. So our mes-saging tends to be somewhat more sophisticated and specific then if we do Google AdWords. Google AdWords traffic is less sophisticated usually, not always, depending on the key word and if it’s a long tail and so forth, but if we’re just talking in general terms here Google AdWords traffic is less sophisticated than targeted EDM traffic. Traffic on “junk related sites” is even less sophisticated, yet again, than AdWords. So that all influences what I put in the messaging.

When it’s more sophisticated we get very, very specific. We start to assume prior knowledge.

I wrote a campaign for a client in the states and the product was for a vision supplement. After we tested it we found that my copy got a 40% lift on the control, which is a massive lift. The sub-heads actually mentioned nutrients that I knew our audi-ence had tried before. Now, because I knew our audience, for that particular message and was quite sophisticated I could safely put that in a sub-head of the messaging.

Whereas if we were targeting very general traf-fic, people that are not too familiar with the vi-sion supplements, mentioning any of that stuff in a headline is just going to confuse them – because it’s all new to them. So you would need to lead with messages such as “How to get rid of blurry vision without needing glasses” or “How to get clearer vision in three easy steps” etc.

“ If you treat every single campaign as a test you even-tually get to the point where you hit on a really big win-ning campaign. All it takes is one big winning campaign to make a stack load of money. This is what separates those who do really well from those that just plod along.

10 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Greg: Yes, very clever. So you’re catering message based on the so-phistication of the market or the traffic source where they’ve come from, which is a whole degree more sophisticated than certainly most people think about.

What about now taking them from leads to sales, because get-ting leads is one thing and sales is another. What’s your thoughts on most effective ways of taking someone from a free trial, or lead magnet to a paying customer?

Alexi: There’s so many different ways to go about it, but I’ll give you the stuff that is just spectacular where situations apply – like getting people onto a phone as soon as pos-sible.

If you’ve got the pricing where you’re selling a somewhat bigger ticket item – getting people on to a phone and pre-qualifying them and again set an appointment using time trade, maybe even paying a refund-able deposit of X dollars so they show up to the appointment – that is a massive opportunity.

It doesn’t work for all situations like, if you’re selling a $150 supplement, you can’t get people on the phone, you can’t scale that, right. But if you’re selling a $450,000 property, or if you’re selling a $10,000 coaching program, or even a $5,000 coaching

program, or an event in those price points that gets viable. So the phone is one big rock.

Another one is certainly Webinars. To get people to act sooner, create an event. And one of the easiest events to create is a Webinar. Now, again it doesn’t work for all circum-stances, but it’s pretty robust. If you’re selling a relatively low priced product you can definitely set up an automated webinar sequence – and for some markets that works really well. Other markets where most of the people in that market are hip to it, they know what you’re up to.

Also I’m a big fan of video sales let-ters. I think for leverage they’re pretty hard to go past.

I know you work with a certain type of client, not everyone is your ideal client – so, really who fits that mould? And also how can our readers and listeners find out more about you and where you are hanging out online?

Alexi: The clients we work best with are the ones that are direct re-sponse savvy. Ideally doing at least seven figures in revenue. The really, really good ones are doing eight fig-ures, or beyond. When we work with a client that’s doing eight figures and beyond, Wow - The amount of opportunity or potential that we’ve got with an eight figure and beyond business is monumental.

And if anybody wants to know more about us, there are two sites that you can visit. The first one is the main consulting site. There’s loads of content on there, videos, down-load reports, that’s MarketingBump.com. We’ve also got my blog. I write a weekly article or so at MoreLead-sAndCustomers.com

THE 4 KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATED WEBINAR

11internet marketing magazineapril 2013

> WEBINARS

New strategies to get more cli-ents to your offer are great, but not when it comes at the expense of time every week updating and maintaining a system that is al-ways fluid – Does this sound a lit-tle familiar to you?

Automated webinars are a great solution and are quickly gaining popularity. However there are 4 main keys to their success. What’s the point of spending all the up-front time pulling it together, only to have it fall flat on its butt.

Here are our top 4 keys to a suc-cessful automated webinar:

KEY ONE: Drive trafficDriving traffic to your webinar is the single most important part of the process. In most cases, the lack of traffic driving strategies is the biggest failure amongst we-binologists today (*A webinologist being a person that practices the art of webinars).

Need some ways to drive traffic? PPC ads, opt-in on your website, joint venture partners, emails to your list, linked-in promotions, Facebook ads – I could go on, the ways are endless!

KEY TWO: Get people to attendOnce people sign up for your we-binar – Who is to say that they will actually show up? Have a strategy that will make them tune in. My recommendation is to give them a few ‘teaser emails’ including all

the usual suspects – Benefit driv-en outcomes, testimonials and a sneak peak of some of the con-tent.

KEY THREE: Provide Massive Val-ue – before, during and after the webinar

There is an art of persuasion that all good webinologists follow. It’s not as easy as just getting on the webinar, talking about something and then flogging your stuff. Here is the way that we recommend you structure your talking using our “WebinarNOW” system (I love a good acronym!):

W – Wild, WOW Headline Captureyour audience with your headline – For one of our clients who was offering real estate training, the headline was: “How we went from $0 to $750,000 in 18 months with no sales experi-ence”. That made the ears of the real estate agents prick up, from the moment the webinar began.

E – Engaging IntroductionCapture the attention of the au-

dience from the beginning – Make sure they are listening to you in-stead of writing emails, checking Facebook, shopping on EBay, up-dating twitter or the multitude of other things they could be doing.

B – Big, Bold BenefitsWhat will they learn by the end of the webinar? List these as you would in a sales letter: Benefit, benefit, benefit!

I – Irresistible Reasons WhyWhy should they stick around to the end? Tell them. In plain Eng-lish. Again, you want to hit them with benefit, benefit, benefit!

N – Nice To meet YouThis is where you get to build rap-port with the attendee as if you were one-on-one. Show them how you became an expert in the field and how you know exactly how they feel (depending on the topic area!)

A – A Journey To RememberThis is where you take them on a journey with your content. You teach them exactly what you promised them in the beginning. But…and a big But…you don’t want to entirely scratch their itch. This takes around 70% of the we-binar and is very important that what you tell them leads them to the sale. No point in you teach-ing them everything so they don’t need you! Teach them in a way that naturally makes them want to take the next step with you.

By Mare Jordanoski

THE 4 KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATED WEBINAR

12 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

R – Results DesiredThis could also be called ‘creat-ing the need for the solution’. This is where you say “There is only so much I can teach you in a 1 hour webinar…” Future pace your attendees to see how they would feel once they have all the benefits that your product or ser-vice will give them. Make them see how you could change their lives or their business.

N – Now it’s time for actionUnveil your product – Show them what you have! I usually break down my products into 3 simple components as it makes it easier to understand, but you can choose to do this any way you like. Just keep it benefit driven and tight. No wiffle waffle here.

O – Offer: Inviting Instant ActionTell them your offer. Very simply

tell them how to purchase. Have a buy now button appear and make sure it works (simple problem but it happens more than most peo-ple think!)

W – Wrap Up In A Positive Power-ful WayEnd in a motivating fashion. Wrap up the webinar and congratulate those that have decided to take the next step with you.

KEY FOUR: Follow UpFollowing from your webinar, there are a few lists you would have created. There are the peo-ple who attended and purchased; attended and didn’t purchase; did not attend. Each of these requires different follow up strategies and communication. Make sure you have this ready to roll before the webinar so it’s all ready to go at a click of the button, or even bet-

ter, it’s sent automatically so you never have to think about it!

All in all, the importance of an automated marketing strategy is to ensure that you leverage your time and set up your systems properly to ensure it’s on auto-pilot from day one. Follow these four keys and you’ll be on the road to success in no time.

Dr. Tom Forfa & Mare JordanoskiEntrepreneurs at heart, Dr Tom and Mare have created the world’s first ‘Made For You’ Webinar System to create webinars for your website or busi-nesses. This allows you to automate your online marketing and sales.Not sure how to implement webinars into your marketing strategy? Check out their free webinar showing you step by step how to implement it at www.webinarsmadeforyou.com

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PLAN FOR PROFITSWITH A PROFIT CALENDAR

> PROFIT CALENDAR

I hear it from almost 90% of my clients… “Ali, I’m working 10-to-12-hour days to run my business. My husband and kids hardly see me, and I’m starting to burn out. What am I doing wrong?”

When I dig a little further, I usu-ally find that the sense of over-whelm is coming from the same source: These people haven’t identified their most profitable projects, and placed those tasks ABOVE everything else in their business priority list.

In other words, they haven’t cre-ated a profit calendar.

A profit calendar helps you es-tablish what your most profit-able projects are for the months ahead—so you can focus your time and energy into ONLY those tasks that will generate maximum in-come. By creating a profit cal-endar, you get clear on the tasks that are worth your time, and those that aren’t. It’s a powerful tool to help you stay focused and energized. And it WORKS.

In my Elevate online business training program, we show our members how to plan for prof-its in these 5 easy steps. Here’s a quick peek at what we recom-mend. Enjoy!

STEP 1: Plan to re-launch past offerings, if any.If you’re an established business owner, you’re likely already sit-

ting on a hidden profit center—and that’s your existing invento-ry. Think of a service or product that sold well for you in the past that you can reintroduce to your market. If you offered VIP coach-ing days on the road, it might be something worth launching again. If there’s an old product that you want to get off your shelves, host a closeout sale. The idea is to put something out that will bring you income with minimal effort. It’s about leveraging what you’ve al-ready done—not reinventing the wheel.

Now obviously, re-launching an offering is going to take a bit of prep. But all you want to do for now is simply PLUG this launch date into your calendar.

STEP 2: Plan to clear away the dead wood.Here, you want to take a look at anything that’s not propelling your business forward and set a date to end it. This could be ANYTHING you feel is draining your energy, money, time, etc. Maybe it’s a problem client you dread working with, a team member who isn’t pulling their weight, or that office space you rent but never use. It could even be as simple as can-celling your extra phone line and fax if you’re mostly scanning and emailing docs to clients.

The point is to schedule in a day when you’ll take decisive action on these drains. Otherwise, it’s

too easy to let them get lost in your daily shuffle.

STEP 3: Plan to improve on what you’ve already got.Go down the list of what you cur-rently offer with a fine comb. What small improvement could you make to this one offering to improve your profits by just 5%? I’m not talking about big, sweep-ing improvements here—just mi-nor tweaks that take very little time to implement. Here are a few examples:

• Send an email to announce that you’re raising your rates, and why.• Start running new ads on your website or e-newsletter.• Add an upsell to your order page, or start bundling your products together.• Call three of your top refer-ral sources and reconnect with them.• Add a Facebook share button to your sales pages

The above examples could be im-plemented within a week. Make a list of what you’ll take action on

By Ali Brown

14 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

on within the next 7 days and plug this into your calendar.

STEP 4: Plan to launch new offerings.If your creative juices are flowing and you have a brilliant idea for a new product, video series, live workshop, coaching program, etc. set the ideal launch dates into your calendar.

Remember, you don’t have to look very far to launch something that is NEW to your list. You can always repackage something you already created to give it a fresh spin. If you hosted a live retreat (and re-corded it), make it available as a home-study pro-gram. If you hosted a 4-part teleseminar, turn it into an e-book or a series of free reports.

STEP 5: Plan for regular business-building activi-ties.Don’t overlook the important recurring activities that you must do every week to keep your business

growing. Your weekly e-newsletter, blog posts, net-working events—these should all be plugged into your calendar.Once you have a profit calendar in place, it will help you prioritize your daily and weekly tasks. You’ll see what MUST get done from week to week, and what can wait ‘til the next week or be delegated. You can plan launches around your vacations, kid’s activities—you can even plan for big expenditures. And that’s when you’ll hit that sweet spot as an en-trepreneur: turning your time into money, and your off-time into fun!

Ali Brownis the voice for women’s entrepreneurial success. As founder and CEO of Ali International LLC, she has created a dynamic enterprise that is devoted to empowering women entrepreneurs around the world, and currently has over 50,000 members in her online and offline programs.

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15internet marketing magazineapril 2013

STOP DOINGEMAIL NEWSLETTERS

> EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

Looks like my headline has grabbed your atten-tion and you’ve started reading. There’s a pow-erful teaching point in that which I’ll get to in just a sec.

For now let me get to the point, if you are dis-tributing email newsletters stop doing them right now. Why? Well there is not just one reason why there are five and I’ve listed them below.

1. Attention SpanFirst of all, I want you to think of the state peo-ple are in when they are checking and clearing there emails. You have micro seconds to grab there attention because all they are thinking in their heads is, how fast can I delete you. So what they would normally do is open, scroll how much there is to read and if it looks too much they’ll hit delete and move on.

However if you can grab their attention with a short piece of inciting copy and have an attrac-tive reason to click on a link, then get magically transported out of email mode (how fast can I delete you), to now I’m surfing the web. Once this happens people attentions spans goes from just a few seconds to a few minutes, which is now enough time to draw them into your mes-sage and offer.

To prove my point have you ever been on email, clicked on a link and then two hours later saying to yourself, “What was I doing? Oh yeah that’s right I was clearing emails.”

2. Training Your CustomersIf you want to start selling more of your products and services online (and you should), you need to start training your customers to go to your web-site. Because a person can’t buy directly from a

HTML form inside an email, as it’s not a secure environment.

So in the same way as Pavlov’s dogs if you want to sell products and services online you need to condition your customers to go to your website, because that is where all of the cool stuff and action happens. Plus, once there, it’s only one click away for your shopping cart and dollars in your bank.

3. Content for GoogleNext, lets talk about Google and this wonderful thing called the Google Algorithm, which is the process they use to rank your website compared to all of the other websites on the internet. Clearly your job is to get in favour with Google because the better your ranking, the more free traffic you get.

Now when people produce email newsletters, all of this wonderful content gets traps in email - and Google of course doesn’t see or index any of this content. So in the same way that, ‘today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper’, once you create an email newsletter it benefits people on that day, but does nothing to serve you long term.

By Dale Beaumont

16 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

What you should do instead is take all of that won-derful content that you have produced and add it to something called a ‘blog’ which sits on your website. Then you take each of those blog entries and optimise them for certain keywords that peo-ple are searching for. Google will then index these pages and they will become like spreading bread-crumbs spread across the web, which leads new people to your website.

4. Boosts Your RankingsTo further expand on the point above, commonly known factors which affect Google’s Algorithm are having a keyword rich title tag, an effective meta description and back links coming from high Page Rank websites. However other factors include the number of pages on your website, the length of time people stay on your site and amount of return visitors.

By moving your content out of emails and onto you website; you’re creating more pages on your web-site; you’re increasing the time that people stay on your site; and you’re ensuring that you have a lot of people are coming back to your site on a regular basis.

The net affect of these factors means the value and importance of your website increases and this will be reflected in better rankings, more traffic, more enquiries and ultimately more profits.

5. No Multi-Media RestrictionsIn email you are restricted to what you can say and do. If you use certain words like; ‘earn extra cash’, ‘compare rates’, ‘incredible deal’ or ‘lowest price’ - you might unintentionally trigger spam filters and

your emails won’t get through.

In addition, you can’t reliably embed videos or au-dio messages into massive broadcast emails. This is a major issue because videos are an excellent way to connect with an engage your customers. One way you can harness this medium is to start producing videos once a month covering the ‘latest news’ in your industry. Or start producing videos called ‘your questions answered’ where you take questions frequently asked by your customers and answer them.

Another medium which is gaining significant mo-mentum now is podcasting. This is where people can subscribe to receive audio messages from you. The benefit of this is your customers can access your content during times when their bodies are preoccupied but their minds are free. This could be driving in the car, working out in the gym or cleaning the house.

In Summary...So to sum things up email newsletters are like a flash in the pan. They give you some immediate benefits but they do nothing for you longer term. So what should you do instead?

My advice is to write your emails like a postcard. This means keep them short and unintimidating. As for the content your job should be to ‘sell the sizzle not the steak’. In other words, write copy that is intriguing and enticing, but don’t give all your secrets away. Share enough to get them in-terested then include a link that takes them out of their email and onto your website.

There you can proudly present your content, with-out restrictions and you are creating content that will earn you points with Google and provide you benefits for many years to come.

Dale Beaumontis a 16 times best-selling author, Business Owner and Entrepreneur. Dale runs Austra-lia’s leading business education and mas-termind program called Business Blueprint. See Dale live at NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au

18 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Any business selling online should learn how to op-timize their shopping carts so that as many cus-tomers as possible will go through with their pur-chases.

According to a computation on Baymard.com the average abandonment rate for online shopping carts is roughly 65.23% – an overwhelming majority.

So what can business owners do to ensure that their customers end up checking out? These nine tips are a good way to start:

1. Provide free or flat shipping – and make it vis-ibleAccording to a Forrester study, 44% of online cus-tomers abandon their shopping carts because of high shipping costs. In the same vein, 22% aban-don the carts because the seller did not mention shipping costs at all. A similar study from E-tailing Group also revealed that unconditional free ship-ping is the most important factor that leads cus-tomers to complete a purchase. In fact, 73% of respondents listed unconditional free shipping as “critical.”

Apart from completing their initial purchase, cus-tomers are likely to buy more products because of free shipping. A study conducted by Compete stated that 93% of online buyers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping is included. Customers who received free shipping also ended up being more satisfied than those who had to pay additional fees.

Zappo’s shopping cart is a good example of this, emphasizing free shipping at the top of the web-site, as well as within the item display on your shopping cart.

2. Eliminate hidden chargesWhile having free shipping is important to custom-ers, it is said that they also hate additional surprise charges as they are checking out. WebCredible UK’s 2010 survey indicates that 49% of online shop-pers abandon their purchases because of hidden fees that are only revealed upon checkout. But if online shoppers dislike these surprise charges, how will business owners introduce additional variable charges such as sales tax, and specialized shipping?

One way to do this is by adding a calculator or esti-mator within the shopping cart as early in the pro-cess as possible. In the below example, Best Buy’s shopping cart has a built-in sales tax calculator to avoid any additional surprise charges for custom-ers.

9 WAYS TO DECREASESHOPPING CART ABANDONMENTON YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

> SHOPPING CART ABANDONMENT

By Russ Henneberry

19internet marketing magazineapril 2013

3. Make cart items visible at all timesIt can be tricky (and therefore frustrating) for cus-tomers to keep backtracking and navigating a site just to find their existing shopping cart and check the items ready for purchase.

Though it’s simpler from a technical standpoint to create customer shopping carts on a separate page from your e-commerce store, customers need ready access to the cart regardless of the page they are on.

In one report, Movies Unlimited allowed its online shoppers to see their existing cart via a dropdown menu, rather than navigating to a separate page. This led to an estimated decrease in cart abandon-ment of 4% to 8%.

The below screenshot highlights this kind of feature in action. In Green Mountain Coffee’s example, the shopping cart shows up on the top right side of the screen whenever you add a new item to the cart. You can also easily make the cart viewable, if you want to check it as you’re shopping.

4. Reduce the number of pages involved in the checkout processThe Webcredible report also mentioned that around 10% of respondents abandon their shopping cart because of a lengthy checkout process.

These are most likely multi-page checkouts that keep presenting customers with additional forms, questions, or products.

But what if these additional options are necessary? This is where a feature like “Express Checkout” comes in. In the below example, NameCheap pro-vides customers with an “Express Checkout” op-

tion where, while viewing their cart, they can im-mediately check out and complete the purchase.

5. Have a wide variety of payment optionsThe below example shows Walmart’s extensive list of payment options for their online store.

These include a variety of credit cards, third-party online payment services such as PayPal, and even Walmart rewards cards. Apart from these digital payment options, they also receive payments for online purchases via check. According to Walmart representative Cynthia Lin, check payments help them reach more customers. “Initial data show we’re reaching customers who have not bought from us before,” she said.

6. Remind customers of their abandoned cartsJust because a customer abandoned their shopping cart, it doesn’t mean that the transaction is over.

In the same report about Movies Unlimited, they stated a 1.5% rise in transactions just by sending out email campaigns to remind customers of their abandoned carts. As a result, customers either purchase the “abandoned” items, save them for later, or clear the cart.

20 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

This move makes sense because the Forrester study also found that 41% of online shoppers who abandon their carts do so because they are unpre-pared to make the purchase. Therefore, online store owners should give customers the option to complete their purchase when they are ready.

Apart from email reminders, another way to re-mind customers to return to abandoned carts is the “Save for Later” or “Wishlist” feature, which is prevalent in most online shopping carts from es-tablished retailers. Amazon is a leader in this de-partment with its several “Wishlist” features. You can create multiple wishlists, add a “Wishlist Add-on” for your browser so you can bookmark items from other websites, you can also jot items down and shop for them later.

Also, if they see that you’ve browsed specific items or categories, they’ll send you fully customized emails reminding you to buy these items.

7. Ask the user to register an account after the sale, not beforeWebcredible’s study shows that 29% of online shop-pers do not like proprietary registration forms dur-ing check out. In fact, one respondent stated that because of their existing number of passwords, they feel inconvenienced when yet another service requires them to create an account.

But how can you track customer activity without inconveniencing your customers? Walmart is a great example of this. As you’re checking out, they give you 3 options for your account. You can login with your existing Walmart account, register now, or wait until later to create your own Walmart ac-

count. This puts less pressure on the customer, knowing that he or she can complete the transac-tion without registering.

While an email address is still required, creating an online Walmart account is not.

8. Have high-quality, interactive product imagesE-tailing’s 2011 Connected Consumer survey showed that the website features online shoppers found essential were high quality images, ability to see the item in their preferred colors or styles, al-ternate views of the item, and zoom functionality.

The below example from Timbuk2 is a great exam-ple of this, since the pictures dominate the screen, can be viewed from different angles, and clearly display what the item will look like when you’ve customized it.

9. Highlight your sales, discounts, and other spe-cially priced itemsThe same E-tailing survey showed that 62% of on-line shoppers think it’s important for an e-com-merce website to have sections for specially priced

21internet marketing magazineapril 2013

items. These include items on sale, coupon codes, and items being cleared from inventory.

In the example here, sale items are prominent on Steve Madden’s website, including specially as-signed sections for sale and clearance items.

As you can see, these tips aren’t just for improv-ing conversion rates, they help make for a better customer experience as well.

By applying even just a few of these tips to your shopping cart, you might see your sales increase, while providing a better, easier online shopping ex-perience for your customers as well.

Russ Henneberrya freelance content marketing and analytics professional. Russ is the managing editor of The Daily Egg and a fanatic about all things marketing. Check him out on Twitter.

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Be part of the solution to ending violence against wom-en and take the “next step” by supporting the Walk A

Mile in Her Shoes event. Make a quick and easydonation here.

If you are in or plan to be in the Sacramento area, join me at the fun filled event festival on May 4, 2013!

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22 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

HOW TO SPEED UP YOURWORDPRESS SITE

> WORDPRESS

Is your blog slow?

Do you want to improve the experience for readers?

In this world of instant gratification, speed of con-tent delivery really can impact your business.

Keep reading to discover ways to increase the speed of your website.

Why Website Speed Is Important

First impressions matter.

One way to see how fast your website is loading is to use Pingdom.

When new visitors come to your site, the first thing they notice is the load speed and then the design.Even if you have a fantastic website, if your page doesn’t load fast enough, visitors might leave be-fore they see your website design.

In addition to this, Google strives to deliver the best search results, so they put a great value on website loading speeds.

This means that if your site does not load fast enough, you may lose ranking in Google search re-

sults despite all of your other online marketing ef-forts. And this can easily lead to less traffic, which then translates to lost subscribers and customers for your business.

Here are some simple steps to help you improve the speed of your WordPress site.

Start With the Basics

Here’s a short summary of the basics you need to know about how to increase your WordPress site speed.

• Keep the number of WordPress plugins you use to a minimum. A high number of plugins adds an overhead to your blog and slows your website speed. Carefully choose your plugins and only use the ones you really need for your website.

• Delete spam comments. Another practice that slows the speed of your website is keep-ing thousands of spam comments in your da-tabase. Remember to regularly delete spam comments from your database.

By Eugen Oprea

With Pingdom, you identify what areas of a web page are fast, slow or too big, what best practices you’re not following and so on.

Remove any plugins that you don’t use or that you can easily replace with a code snippet

Remove all spam comments when they get to a 3- to 4-figure num-ber. All you have to do is just to click on the Empty Spam button.

23internet marketing magazineapril 2013

• Delete post revisions. Just like spam com-ments, copies of old post revisions make your database heavier and slow down the speed of your website. Be sure to delete your old post revisions. Install the Better Delete Revision plugin to remove the old revisions from your posts and pages.

Get a Proper Hosting Provider

WordPress is just like a car; it can run faster if you give it proper fuel.

In order to work, WordPress needs specific resourc-es, such as memory or central processing unit (CPU) on the server where it’s hosted.

And sometimes those resources are not enough for it to function properly. This is often the case on shared hosting.

So if you started your website using a shared account on a company like HostGator, Bluehost or Dream-host, consider upgrading your hosting account as soon as you can afford it.

You can get a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedi-cated server, but what might work best is managed WordPress hosting.

You can set up and optimize your own server dedi-cated for your WordPress sites, like I do, but this takes time and a certain level of expertise.

Here are some providers you can look into:• Synthesis• Page.ly• WP Engine

Each of these has different benefits, so check them to see which one resonates more with your busi-ness model and budget.

Choose Your Theme Wisely

Once you’ve looked into plugins and hosting provid-ers, the next step is to look at thetheme you use for your WordPress site.

First, I would recommend you choose not just a simple theme, but a framework for additional benefits to your blog, such as:

• Improved speed• Built-in security enhancements• Basic search engine optimization• Beautiful designs

When you choose a theme/framework, you should look at how often the framework is updated, how seriously they take security or what kinds of designs they can offer out of the box.

Additionally, one really important aspect is which SEO features are included with your theme. To strengthen your SEO, it’s important to easily be able to add a custom title or custom meta description to your articles.

Frameworks to consider are: Genesis Framework from StudioPress, Thesis, AppThemes, WooThemes or Headway Themes.

Optimize Your Database

In the basics mentioned above, you learned to de-lete your spam comments and post revisions. That is because they add a high overload on the database.

The database is the place where everything about your WordPress site is stored and it’s different from the physical files, uploads, themes or plugins on the server. WordPress uses the database to store posts, pages, comments, settings and plugin information. Every time a page is loaded, it reads the database. If your database is bloated, the information can take longer to be found and displayed.

Remove the old revisions from your posts and pages.

24 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

This is the main reason why you need to optimize your database regularly, especially if you have a larger website.

To do this, you can install the WP-DBManager plu-gin. This plugin helps you to back up, restore, re-pair and optimize your database.

Use the WP-DBManager to back up, optimize and repair your WordPress database.

Once you install it, you’ll see a Database item on the left menu.

First, back up the database from the Backup DB submenu.

Once the Checking Database Status is completed, just press the Backup button to back up your Word-Press database.

Next, repair the database from the Repair DB sub-menu.

To repair your database, just select all of your ta-bles and click the Repair button. To repair your da-tabase, just select all of your tables and click the Repair button.

Finally, it’s time to optimize the database from the Optimize DB submenu.

To optimize your database, just select all of your tables and click the Optimize button.

As you can see, this is easy to do.

And if you want to avoid doing this manually, you can also schedule these tasks from the DB Options submenu.

25internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Schedule the backup, optimization and repair of your database.

I personally back up the database every day, op-timize it every 3 days and repair it once a week. You can follow this pattern too. But if you blog mul-tiple times a day, I would recommend you schedule these more often.

Optimize Images

It’s also important to know what types of images you can use and when.

For example, if you have simple images such as il-lustrations or artwork, it’s recommended to use an 8-bit PNG. This makes your images smaller, which makes them faster to load on your website.

But if you have complex images with lots of colors, then JPG or 24-bit PNG is recommended. [Editor’s note: 24-bit PNG files are significantly larger than JPG files but are more visually stunning].

You can use a simple image editor to save images in these formats, such as Paint.NET or more complex editors like GIMP or Photoshop.

By using the proper format, you’ll reduce the size of your images. And when they’re downloaded by your visitors’ browsers, this operation will be much faster.

This will increase your website load speed.

Use a Caching Plugin

Caching is a process that’s essentially like taking a picture of your content and providing it to your visitors without requesting it from the database each time.

WordPress is an entire mechanism and every time you load a page, lots of things happen on the back end.

But when you use a caching plugin, this process gets simplified: your content is served from the cache without being generated over and over again.

The best plugin you can use to cache your content is W3 Total Cache. It’s effective and simple to use.

For simple images, illustrations or artwork, use an 8-bit PNG format.

If you need to save complex images that contain lots of colors, save them as JPG or 24-bit PNG.

26 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Install W3 Total Cache and activate Page Cache, Minify and Browser cache. You should also activate the preview mode and preview your site before ac-tivating your settings.

There are some advanced techniques you can use here, but to start with, just install and activate it and leave the default options on.

Deliver Your Content Through a Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network (CDN) helps to deliver your content, images and also CSS& JavaScript files from different locations across the globe.

Your content is served from the location that is closest to your visitors. So, if your visitor is from Europe, for example, then your content will come from a server in Europe.

A CDN saves your bandwidth and visitors will experi-ence faster loading speed.

You can get a free CDN from your hosting provider or you can set one up yourself using Amazon Cloud-Front and the W3 Total Cache plugin mentioned above. This will require more technical skills.

Your TurnBe sure to follow these steps to improve the loading speed of your WordPress website and improve the experience people have when visiting your site.

Eugen Opreahelps you convert more traffic into loyal customers using proven techniques that grow your business. Get his Google Analytics course for free to learn more and check his new WordPress plugin Elevatr.

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27internet marketing magazineapril 2013

In a city populated by purse dogs, Matt Meeker found New York’s pet stores to be lacking in prod-ucts for Hugo, his energetic, 100-lb. Great Dane puppy. “I was very obsessed with spoiling him,” Meeker says, but finding toys and treats for a dog of Hugo’s size wasn’t easy.

Starting BarkBox –a subscription-based service that delivers boxes of goodies to dogs and their owners once a month–was Meeker’s solution. He let other dog-lovers in on it too–thousands of others, in fact. Meeker co-founded BarkBox with Henrik Werde-lin and Carly Strife, both veterans of the startup scene, and the service launched in early 2012.

“We just wanted to help dog parents who are ob-sessed with their dogs discover the newest toys and treats and bones for their dogs and provide it to them on a monthly basis,” Meeker says.

In a little under a year, the company has amassed more than 20,000 customers, Meeker says. And, event better, Meeker says the company has man-aged to retain them at a steady rate of 93 to 95 percent for the first year.

In fact, one of their biggest problems has been un-derestimating growth. “We had a stretch goal and we raised the money in June of this year,” Meeker says. “The story we were telling the investors was that our goal for the year was to end with 8,000 customers, and the stretch goal was 10,000. And we really thought 10,000 was not possible.” But they’ve doubled that, and now they’re concentrat-ing on building a fun, edgy, irreverent and some-times inappropriate brand, he says.

“We don’t call anything marketing,” Meeker says. “We call it customer acquisition or brand building, so we’ve put a lot of emphasis on both. We’ve tak-en a lot of time to be thoughtful about our brand and create a narrative around it.”

At the heart of BarkBox is the idea that a dog is a member of the family. “We talk a lot about how our customers are dog parents,” Meeker says. “We see that everywhere. We see that with the people we interact with on Facebook, commenting on ev-erything we post, and people who write in or call in to support with questions. They all fall into this profile for sure.”

BARKBOX’S ROAD TO 20,000CUSTOMERS AND 95% RETENTION

> CUSTOMER RETENTION

By Alyssa Karas

BarkBox founders Henrik Werdelin, Carly Strife, and Matt Meeker

28 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Because BarkBox knows its cus-tomer base–women with dispos-able incomes, they tend to be 25-to 35-year-old professionals with no children, or 45- to 55-year old empty nesters–its founders have been able to tailor the business to their audience’s wants and needs, and interact with them in as many ways as possible.

“Our approach there over 2012 has been to try as many things as we can as fast as we can and see what works,” Meeker says. “And when we find channels that work, we go very heavy on those.”

For example, deal sites like Groupon and Fab have proved to be effective for bringing in big groups of customers to BarkBox over a short period of time, and the company’s referral program is popular too. Customers earn a free box for every new subscrib-er they refer. “We actually have one woman who has now earned over 24 years of free BarkBox,” he says. “She’ll be with us for awhile.”

Sometimes they’re surprised at what works. “One thing we kinda stumbled into is people love to do these unboxings and put it on YouTube,” Meeker says. The Internet is filled with home vid-eos of happy customers gleefully describing the contents of this month’s BarkBox while their dogs

nose through the toys and treats. “They actually translate really well into new people discovering it and purchasing, and so now we’re a little more systematic about identifying people who do that.”

The team recently launched a BarkBox mobile app, which allows customers to review and reorder products, as well as check the status of their boxes. “But you really can’t do much with it un-less you’re a subscriber,” Meeker says. “So it’s to add more value there, to give people one more way of discovering the brand and interacting with it.”

On the other hand, they focus their energy where it matters. When their retargeting service wasn’t bringing them the results they wanted, “We were spend-ing hundreds of dollars per cus-tomer,” Meeker says, they opted to switch to Perfect Audience’s services, which has been “super, super successful,” he says.

That includes focusing their ener-gy on certain groups of subscrib-ers too. Customers can purchase monthly, quarterly or half-year subscriptions, with the half-year plan being the best value. Only three percent of customers purchase the monthly package,

which is the most expensive, and if they don’t renew, they aren’t chased down. “We actually don’t put a lot of emphasis on reaching out to them and trying to move them into a different plan be-cause it’s such a small group,” Meeker says. Because retention rates for other packages are so high, it’s not worth the time for a small team.

In the future, Meeker and the BarkBox team plan on expanding the products and services they offer. Currently three variet-ies of boxes go out each month: Ones for small, medium and large dogs. Meeker said he hopes to address dogs’ needs not just based on size, but in categories like age, geography and behav-ior. Next year, six varieties of boxes will be sent out in January, 12 will go out in February, and in March they’ll expand to 18. Year-long subscriptions are on their way too.

But behind everything, BarkBox’s commitment is to its subscribers, and–especially–to dogs. Ten per-cent of every subscription goes to a shelter or rescue.

“It’s really not a technology com-pany,” Meeker says. “We think of it as a brand company, where it’s a brand serving a particular au-dience of people and doing that every which way possible into the future.”

Perfect Audienceis the widest-used Facebook retargeting platform. Perfect Audience is the fastest and easiest way to retarget lost web site visitors on Facebook and bring them back to convert. Follow PerfectAudience in Twitter.

BarkBox.com

PerfectAudience.com

29internet marketing magazineapril 2013

In the last few weeks Google has unveiled its first look at its new wearable technology that is still in prototype called Google Glass. Google’s aim for this product is to have it available to the public at the end of 2013.

Check out the video below to get a feel for how Google Glass will be used in the future in everyday situations.

GOOGLE UNVEILS FIRST LOOKAT GOOGLE GLASS

> GOOGLE GLASS

By Greg Cassar

Here’s how it looks:

30 internet marketing magazineapril 2013

Here’s the official images from Google explaining what is does:

Greg Cassaris Australia’s leading Internet Marketing Strategist. With InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com Greg & his team provide traffic, development and conversion optimization services for medium to large businesses, enterprises & eCommerce stores looking for serious growth online. You can follow Greg’s latest updates by subscribing to Internet Marketing Magazine at InternetMarketingMag.net for the new members area and the latest issue updates.

This technology is potentially as big a technology game changer as the iPhone when it first came out. The uses for the technology are near limit-less, especially if it is opened up to App develop-ers like the current Android Operating system.

Who knows how it will affect your life in the years to come… a surgeon operating using it, you navi-gating the streets of New York with a map app, or using glass to film your childs birthday party. It’s a game changer… of that there is little doubt.

* Images and videos courtesy of Google at http://www.google.com/glass/start

31internet marketing magazineapril 2013

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