Kim is a friend, talented professional photographer, and owner of TwoRoads Studio .  She wanted to sell some of her prints online so she came to me to help make that happen.  TwoRoads is just getting started so, like any small business, money is a primary concern.  Time management is also a concern since Kim would rather be out shooting and developing photos than managing the website so the website had to be easily managed and not too technical.  From a technical and marketing standpoint Kim needs a website that will look and perform professionally because sales get lost when customers have to wait for images to load, and her business is all about images.  The website would also need a shopping cart and have to accept credit cards because online shoppers today expect convenient shopping and payment.  What an interesting case.  Here’s what we did: Read the rest of this entry >>

You send emails every day.  You send an email to a friend or colleague, and it goes through.  Occasionally you check the spam folder to see if anything important was missed.  Usually it wasn’t.  Spam filters have gotten pretty good in that way.  But, in this case, the spam filter is on your side.  As marketers, even legitimate ones, this is not the case.  Many people do not realize the real impact of spam filtering on legit marketing campaigns.  Here are just a few things that happen: Read the rest of this entry >>

The concept starts as an organization who wishes to increase value to their customers.  Not so bad.  But what happens when this goes horribly wrong?  Suddenly it becomes blatantly obvious that you really don’t know your customers very well.  And that’s a scary thing. Read the rest of this entry >>

What is the value of an ad not seen?  Worse yet, what is the value of an ad seen but not acted upon?  For years we as marketers have worked hard to turn the Internet into a place where ads are proactively blocked, filtered, and ignored.  Agencies are paid to increase list size, not list quality.  Rather than put time into properly segmenting our prospects and compiling an offering that is relevant, we collect information in any way possible and blast emails to everyone.  This is because we choose quantity over quality thinking we’re getting the best bang for our buck.  We’re not. Read the rest of this entry >>