Practical Wisdom
30 lessons from the frontline of
e-marketing
Andy Redfern and Ben Mawhinney
Introduction
• Andy Redfern, CEO, EthicalSuperstore.com
• Ben Mawhinney, Head of Online Marketing,
EthicalSuperstore.com
• EthicalSuperstore.com is the leading ethical online
retailer based in the North East of England.
• We:
–
–
–
–
Have 150,000 customers
Sell 8000 different products
Have a 400,000 unique visitors a month
Run shops for Natural Collection, Cancer Research, Greenpeace,
Friends of the Earth, the Green Party, the Guardian Eco Store,
Divine Chocolate and many more
What we will talk about
• Paid e-marketing techniques
– When you pay someone else to drive traffic and
conversions to your site
• Unpaid e-marketing techniques
– Those times when it just your personal blood,
sweat and tears that get people coming (and
hopefully coming back) to your site
Paid – Google Adwords
• No Goal tracking or Conversion Tracking?
Don’t bother.
• To agency or not to agency?
• “Green Kettles”, “Easter Eggs” and “Christmas
Stockings”
– Keep it simple. Make sure all your URL’s terminate
in the right place! Send people to the destination
that they’re expecting. You’ll get better conversion
rates.
Paid – the rest
• Don’t even think about MSN, Yahoo and the
rest if your Google Adwords strategy is
incomplete. (Apart from Brand. Protect your
brand).
• Don’t buy traffic. Don’t get involved in paid
link exchanges.
• Unless your selling dating or pranks don’t even
think of social media banners.
Paid – Affiliate traffic
• Affiliate recruitment
– Set a low barrier to entry for anyone
– Headhunt the best
• Make sure your affiliate model works for
repeat purchasers
• Make them feel the love
– Keep banners, feed and programmes up to date
Paid – Comparison and Review sites
• Maintaining an accurate product feed
optimised sensibly for humans and search
• Google Products – its free so why wouldn’t
you?
• ROI, ROI and ROI
– No site is worth it for “branding” so cut if it
doesn’t perform
Paid – the dross
• Link Exchanges
– Maybe but usually no
• “We’ll get you visitors”
– Definitely no
• Buying mailing lists
– Usually no
Unpaid – Search Engine Optimisation
• Its a whole organisation task
– Every department is involved!
• Identify your most important keywords and
key phrases
• Google emulates people – so best to write for
people first!
Unpaid – Twitter, Facebook et al
• Minimum – protect the brand
– Fan page, Twitter account, cause page, myspace,
Bebo
• Tweet, tweet and more tweets
– Opted in comms with people willing to be
contacted several times a DAY – where else can
you do that?
• Devolve, decentralise and empower
– Zappos has several hundred Twitterers
Unpaid – Bloggers, RSS and News
• Make sure you submit your blog to BlogCatalog,
technorati, etc. and make it easy for readers to
share your content
• Make friends with everyone who blogs about
your “space“
– send them stuff for review
– 50% of something small is better than 0% something
big
– Engage, comment and add value
• Sticky content – e.g twitter directory
Unpaid – Email
• Get them to open the email – compelling
subject lines
• Get them to click through to your site –
competitions, surveys, offers, feedback,
reviews
• Test the offer – AB mailings, segment for
different geographies, buying and profile,
think carefully about frequency
Unpaid – Free stuff
• ePR – article submissions
– Works best with relevant content and no more than 2
links
• Directory submissions
– DMOZ\Google Directory still relevant but hard to get
listed – submit but don’t stress
– Focus on specialists for your space that deliver value
• Use whitepapers or other virtual freebies for
gathering opted in lists
Final thought...
Social media is like sex. It’s fun
to talk about and read about,
but you can’t truly
comprehend unless you do it.”
George Colony, CEO, Forrester research
Thank you!