Since our post on The Perils of Poor Grammar the cartoons have been flooding in… our fave this week…

If you’re wondering where to start… or if you’ve got an account and you’re one of the 41% now sitting there and wondering what to do next… then this short video is for you…

Covering what it is, how to get set up and what to do next… in short, everything you need to know, packed into fewer than 3 minutes!

Just click here to view it in YouTube:

Thanks to the nice guys at Flowtown for this super overview…

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

A web expert has played down fears that scores of businesses could have their brand and reputation damaged by the new .xxx domain.

The domain suffix is intended as a voluntary option for “adult” web content and anyone can now register an .xxx domain name on a “first-come, first-served” basis.

This has prompted concern among businesses that X-rated sites could open up under the same name and register their name at .xxx, thereby harming their image.

But Rich Mehta, of Gloucestershire-based Elephant Creative Solutions, says these fears are generally misplaced.

“The prevailing fear seems to be that one day ‘Company A Ltd.’ will open up its browser to find a website of ‘ill repute’ has been registered at companya.xxx, and that its brand name will become tarnished by inference or by association.

“This argument, while it is seemingly plausible, is unlikely to become a problem. The main reason behind the introduction of the .xxx domain was a question of content filtering; so if all adult websites took up a .xxx domain name, those looking to avoid adult content could do so easily and consistently.

“So taking our example, it is likely that the vast majority of people looking for Company A are looking for the more established and ‘upstanding’ companya.com, rather than the newer and poorer trafficked companya.xxx.

“Google bases at least some of a site’s credibility on the length of time it has been online and it also applies SafeSearch, which is likely to remove .xxx websites from any results.”

Mr Mehta adds that the precedent of the .mobi domain suffix should also reassure businesses. This was intended to denote websites which have versions suitable for viewing on mobile phones.

“No-one complained at the time of the possibility of someone registering their brand name on .mobi and tarnishing their brand’s image. Granted, it could be argued that .xxx is more likely to have brand-damaging content, but the restrictions on .mobi say nothing about preventing adult content from registering on it.

“Above all, businesses should realise that unless their company is unlucky enough to share the same name as an adult website, it is very unlikely that someone will register the .xxx variant of it. Even if
someone does so out of spite, it is unlikely that the site would gain much ground in search engines.

“The good news is that if you do find yourself in the unlikely situation that someone registers an adult site on a variation of your domain name, you are never likely to be far away from an expert in SEO who can help.”

This post was written by Elephant Creative Associate, Rich Mehta and you can read more about him on our team page

We all get bombarded with marketing emails… everyday.  Every time I open my emails, 80% of them seem to be from people that I don’t know about things I’m just not interested in.  So, what makes a good email stand out from the crowd?  Here are my  top tips to help you get your emails noticed:

1 .Set one objective per email – do you want recipients to register for an event, visit a specific web page or make a purchase?  Be careful to only have one strong call to action that is immediately apparent as soon as you view the email.  All too often it’s easy to add just one more link to that email and before long, it’s so busy you just don’t know where to look first.

2. Don’t forget the subject line, it could be the only thing people see – it’s so easy to focus all of your attention on the creative and messaging within an email and then just dash out any old subject line.  The subject line is what makes a recipient decide whether to open the email or not, so consider this as much you do the main email message.

3. Carefully consider the sender name that you use from the outset – try to make it sound ‘human’, like a real person is sending the email, rather than a generic email address such as ‘info@companyA.co.uk’.  Instead, why not try ‘donna@companyA.co.uk’?

4. Decide who you are sending your email to at the beginning of the process.  Don’t always send every email to all of your database.  Instead, consider targeting different segments with different messages.  This will enable you to have a strong, targeted message, appropriate to the group of people you are sending the email to, thereby increasing your response rate and ROI.

5. Test personalisation within your emails – it’s so much friendlier to read ‘Dear Donna’ at the start of an email rather than ‘Dear Customer’.  If you’re able to, try to personalise the subject line, perhaps with the location of the recipient, or other data that you may have collected that makes the email more personalised.

6. A/B testing in email marketing can have massive impacts on the end results – only ever test one thing at a time so you can be sure what variables have affected the results.  Unless you have a huge database that you’re sending the email to it’s best to test one thing per email sent and so it can take time to determine the best combination of variables.  Things to test include subject lines, HTML v’s Plain Text, personalisation, imagery, headlines, copy, design, messaging hierarchy… the list is endless!

7. The day and time that you send an email can have a huge impact on the open rate, click thru rate and response rate so test this until you are confident you’ve got the best combination – if it’s a B2B email than sending Monday morning at 9am is probably not the best time to stand out from the rest of the emails that have been sent over the weekend.

8. Always check how your message looks in different email clients – all too often an email looks great in Outlook and so it’s sent to the recipient list only to find that in Yahoo or Hotmail the images don’t render correctly and the flow of the email is lost completely.  Most email broadcasting software has functionality to allow you to quickly check emails in a wide variety of clients, so be sure to find out how to do this.

9. It’s imperative that you include an unsubscribe link within each email you send – make sure you test the process so if someone does click on this link they are actually unsubscribed quickly.

10. Do as much as you can to ensure that your email doesn’t end up in spam folders there are so many guidelines of how to do this that they could warrant an article in their own right, mostly because they change so frequently, so, check with your email broadcasting software provider as they are likely to have already built a number of methods into their software already.

You can see from this top level list that there  are a lot of things to consider when planning email campaigns, but don’t be scared, if you can get them right email marketing can be a really cost effective, quick way to target  your audience.

This post was written by Elephant Creative Associate, Donna Hewitt and you can read more about her on our Team page

As we stride purposely into 2012, marketing budgets secured or still under negotiation, one thing is a certainty. 2012 is going to be a challenging year. ‘Ha’ you cry….and 2011 wasn’t?! True – but if the various worldwide financial predictions are true, (and if the French President Nicholas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, our very own David Cameron etc could look any more miserable as New Year speeches are delivered) belt tightening is due to get tighter. But the customers are out there. They may be in existing accounts, they may be new, but they are out there.

You may already have been through the mill as you wrestled your 2012 marketing budget to the ground, emerging triumphant, if a little lighter in pocket from a series of bruising approval cycles. Or, you may still be embroiled in negotiations, you’re hand in glove with your sales director, and backing it up with a marketing plan which takes no prisoners, pared down to the bone and to which you see no extra wiggle room at all. And they are still asking for reductions!

I was often asked in 2011 for strategies as to how to extend existing marketing budgets, and indeed there are many ways you can box clever, and find extra monies or just different strategies to create further lead generating opportunities for your sales team/s, both internal and external, and fill up that pipeline with good quality leads. Here are just a few ideas:

• If a programme has proved  to be a phenomenal success in one sector then why not look to deploy it in another? Just tweak the value proposition (please do not batter your customers with technical product detail – your message will be lost, your hard earned £s wasted) or look to joint sell with a partner who is already strong in this new sector and knows it well – create a new powerful joint solution and reinvent your product/s.
• And while we’re on it, take a long hard look at your channels to market. Segment them and have clear value propositions for each channel; your own sales force, your distributors, resellers, strategic alliance partners, manufacturers…..are they as well armed as your own sales teams? What’s in it for them and how are you communicating with them all to make sure your own value prop’ is clearly appreciated? Work out who has the strongest additional value to
  offer along with your product/s and create a joint solution.  It’s just like creating a product
  roadmap. The same processes apply – you just have extra products/services in addition to your own. The trick is to establish a compelling value proposition that really resonates with the prospect.
• Extend out the elements of  your current marketing programme; try new mediums from your marketing mix  (but with the same messages); social media, direct mail, a highly targeted
  ambassador programme, an event with a partner in a new sector you’ve never  tried before. Don’t stick to the same old ways of addressing your existing customers….circle the wagons in that target account…get viral!
• If you are not getting to  the key decision makers in your targeted accounts, sit back, do some
  short, sharp research, work closely with your sales team and understand  every nuance of the successful sale; what need promoted that customer to buy, is there a pattern in a particular sector – a common problem that your product or a joint solution (with a partner) may fix? Create a sales win grid and chart every sale and don’t forget the lost sales – just as important, if fact even more so. Get your sales team, round the table (put a beer or soft drink in their hand) and ask them what problems their customers are experiencing? Go out with them on sales calls. Galvanise your sales teams into joint sales reviews with your partners’ sales teams where appropriate. Help them work out the sales account mapping – it will give you insight into your value props’.
• Get to know the customer and how your company can be a trusted adviser. This will allow you to sell further up the food chain. You will often find that one successful sale into one part of an organisation can readily be repeated elsewhere in that organisation, and the decision maker will be more than happy to assist you, work with you. You may find that a partner has been successful in a part of a targeted customer account you’ve never been able to get to. Another
  door opens…

The golden rule in all this?  Never give up and accept the ‘current climate’… things might be challenging but with enough imagination, flexibility and determination you can make that marketing budget stretch that little bit further.

This post was written by Elephant Creative Associate, Ellie Pendreich and you can read more about her on our Team Page

We’re regularly asked about setting up Facebook pages… increasingly, they’re an important part of what organizations consider to be effective marketing.  However, it can be hard to work out what equals great use of the platform and how to take advantage of the opportunities to ensure that you achieve your goals (yes, that’s right… you have to set some for Facebook too…).

To help you see, at a glance, what it has to offer, we’ve compiled some of the best, recent, blog posts we’ve read.  If you have any to add, please let us know by commenting on this post.

If you’d like help with setting this up for your organization, please get in touch on helen@elephantcreative.co.uk or via @helenhammond.

1. The anatomy of an effective Facebook Business Page – understanding the options Facebook offers and they things you can (and should do).
2. 25 Facebook page ideas you haven’t tried yet – there might be some you have but this works as a great checklist.
3. 80% of social media users prefer Facebook for connecting with brands – some helpful stats and information, if you’re trying to convince your managers.
4. All the details on Facebooks latest updates – what’s been going on this quarter?
5. 5 best practice, Facebook e-commerce stories – as if you needed inspiration!
6. 8 creative ways to customize your Facebook page – a super checklist for creativity.
7. Creating custom tabs for Facebook – if you want to get a bit more complicated you could try this out.
8. MyFacebookCovers – a super little site with loads of cover ideas. Or try Pagemodo for free Facebook pages.
9. 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive content from business pages – some more stats, particularly useful if you’re in a content-heavy organization.
10. 15 of the best Facebook pages you’ve ever seen – yet more inspiration!

… and if all that fails… you can download this, excellent, free ebook from Hubspot here (not that there aren’t good resources available on sites other than Hubspot, it’s just that they do it so well…)

In my line of work, I get loads of spam from design agencies trying to tell me that they are the ONLY people in the local area that ‘get’ the professional services/SME/social enterprise [delete as appropriate] market… and that having this specialist sector knowhow somehow makes them better than all the other design agencies in the area.

The other week, though, I got a very clever email from these guys http://www.workbrands.co.uk/.  It was talking about how you can get a lot more out of your customers by knowing a bit about them… and asked me if I wanted to know more… well of course!  A message only a fool could ignore… When I ‘arrived’ I was presented with a quiz… All they wanted to know was three things… all relating to me… did I have milk with my tea, did I have sugar and what biscuits did I like.  Ever the sucker for filling in a quiz (especially one so simply designed), I fell for it.  At the end, up popped my personalized PDF, telling me all about them and their approach, with stuff totally relevant to me dropped in.  Impressed, I forwarded it a load of clients saying how cool I thought it was.

A few days later, what do you know?!  A tea bag, chocolate biscuits and two sugars (no milk, alas) turned up chez Elephant Creative.  In it, some more personalized information.  The perfect follow up.  It made the point that they were totally local to me… just down the road again… and then the call to action – let’s meet up for a cuppa.

This was followed up a few days later by a personal approach from their BD Manager, Kelly [actually, to be totally fair, several approaches... having stalked me down on both email, phone and twitter]

So, why am I telling you all this?  Both because of the things that were so great, and the things I’m yet hoping to find out.  The campaign itself was a raving success.  Not only did it really nail the totally local element but it made me realize that they’d done their homework.  Most importantly it showcased a full suite of what they do – emails, web pages, quizzes, personalized pdfs, print materials.

Have I met with them?  Not yet.  I’m not denying that I’m interested and it takes a fair amount to make a design agency jump out…  but what’s missing?  Well, in all of this ‘what we know about you’, I still haven’t seen the deal clincher… the ‘what we can do for your clients’.  So, they know I like tea…  but do they know the challenges my clients face?  Do they really ‘get’ what I’m about?  They haven’t told me who they work for that falls into my target markets and they haven’t told me some examples (real examples) of their work that will give them the kite mark of approval.  I know they’ve got the key clients to tempt me… but I just want to see a bit more of it before we meet.  That said… I’m hopeful…

Here at Elephant Creative Towers, we’re surrounded by a wonderful team of associates… each with their own marketing and PR gifts. But every now and then, one of them goes above and beyond and does something totally inspiring.  Jessie Allen (@jammyminx) has just come back from a life-changing trip to climb to Everest Base Camp, with Women for Women.  We thought we’d let you read about it in Jessie’s own words…

I’ve just experienced the most mentally and physically toughest three weeks of my life. Harder even then the four days I was in labour delivering my daughter (yes, really 4!)

I’m just back from 18 days of trekking in the Himalayas to reach Everest Base Camp in aid of international charity Women for Women. But just like my daughter’s birth, the trek was one of the most rewarding and life changing events in my life.

About six months ago, I received an email from the charity looking for nine women to do this trip with Sue Harper Todd, one of only 5 British women to reach the summit of Everest. While we would not be summiting Everest, the trek to Base Camp would involve a serious time commitment, with travel and acclimatization, of 18 days. 9 days up, 3 down and a few days in Kathmandu to rest.

As part of the Everest Base Camp challenge, the charity asked each of us to pay our own way and commit to raising £10,000 each. £100,000 in total, all of which would go directly to the charity. Women for Women run year-long programmess in which women from war torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and South Sudan, are taught marketable skills, their legal rights and are given counselling to rebuild their lives so they can become self-sufficient.

Physically, the Trek involved long days of trekking ultimately reaching an altitude of 5600 metres.

It was hard. Really, really, really hard. Uncomprehendingly-until-you-actually-experience-it-you’ve-got-no-idea-how-hard-it’s-going-to-be-hard. And of course I didn’t train enough. The trek was labeled as suitable for moderately fit walkers, which I thought, hey presto that’s me. I do go to the gym after all and walk everywhere in London and regularly do yoga and pilates. Ha! Double ha!

But it was the combination of the physical challenge, with truly primitive conditions (I didn’t shower for nine days and toilets are often just holes in the ground), increasingly limited food choices (rice, bread or potato and that’s about it), the length of the journey, and of course, the group dynamics of nine strangers thrown together on this intense and tough journey, which really made this an endurance test. There were days that I really didn’t think I could take any more – being unable to breathe or sleep, slipping on yak poop in a particularly perilous patch of trail, the no shower for nine days, the same stinking clothes, the altitude sickness, my heart continually pulled away by my two and a half year old daughter whom I left behind at home and missed deeply.

I despair to say that the day we trekked to Base Camp, our goal, my mind was tugging me back to relative comforts of our lodge. I no longer cared about reaching accomplishing our mission anymore. I just wanted to go home, see my daughter and get clean and eat vegetables.

But the strength of the group pulled me along and I did make it. And what an experience it was.

Not just to reach accomplish our goal, though that sense of achievement I’ll take with me everywhere for a long time. But because we had a truly magical time there. We were blessed with having the Base Camp to ourselves for well over 40 minutes. We used the time to unfurl a string of prayer flags made by our supporters and some of the women in the programmess from around the world with wishes for love, peace and compassion we had brought with us. With the crisp Himalayan wind cracking the flags and the sun shining down on us, you could feel the energy of the prayers being taken up to Chhomolungma, the Tibeten name for Everest which means Mother Goddes of The Earth and granting their wishes.As we were trekking back down to our lodge, one of the girls from our group received a call from a dear friend to say she had beat her cancer. Of course I said my own prayers for friends and family. I really do think the universe was listening to us that morning.

Above and beyond the innate amazingness of this trek, there was something extra magical about this group of women that spanned four generations and socio-demographic groups. I think it was because we were all drawn together by the philanthropic mission of the challenge and, that doing good karma spun its own magic in the universe.Despite being strangers to each other, our group of ten disparate women bonded together and as a team we all urged each other on and made it as a group to Base Camp. That in itself was a major accomplishment; Sue said that at least one person from every expedition normally doesn’t make it to Base Camp. 100% of our group making it is a rarity.

In the end, ten women who did not know each other (but know, and like each other very much now) all made it and thrived. No one got hurt, injured or sick. We all accomplished our goal. We had the most glorious weather for the entire trek – sunny, crisp skies and no fog despite being just at the tail end of the monsoon season. Flights to and from Lukla, the village where the trek begins were delayed for two days but we were completely unaffected. There were no hiccups, no problems. Everything was as it was meant to be.I wanted to do the trek for a myriad of motivations -  for the love of my daughter – to do something really worthwhile that’s worth telling her about. To step outside of my comfort zone – to reset my compass. Rather less inspirationally, to finally shift the extra baby weight I’ve been carrying around for over two years. And of course raise awareness (and money) of the amazing charity Women for Women International.

I succeeded in all those aspects, plus so much more.

Our trek leader Sue often says ‘you don’t know what you can do until you try’. It’s so true. There were many times when I doubted myself and ability to do this challenge. But I did do it. And that feeling of empowerment is something I’ll carry within me like a light that can never be extinguished. Within each of us lies such an incredible energy and power that daily life and routine dull over and we forget what we’re made of. You can do whatever it is you set your mind to.

Having done this challenge now, I realise how lucky I am to be able to freely embark on such an amazing journey to the Himalayas and make it an achievement to be proud of.

But not all women in the world can claim such privileges and these are exactly the same people Women for Women are attempting to serve. Take Pari Gul’s story for example.

Pari Gul is a 42-year-old Afghan woman, who after taking part in Women for Women’s first vocational training session in Afghanistan in 2002, took up stone polishing and as a result now heads a profitable, 500-employee stone cutting and polishing company in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Despite being threatened, harassed and accused of corrupting Afghan women by the local community, Pari Gul has persevered and been able to send her eight children, including three daughters, to university – a luxury she was deprived off. “Afghan women face so many problems in Afghanistan – beating, stoning, killing,” Pari Gul says. “Here we feel so lucky to be able to be a part of Women for Women, to learn skills, help our families, educate our children.”

You can read more incredible stories of empowerment here.