This video will take 5 minutes to share with you the 4 best practices of email marketing:
FIRST is NEVER SEND a NEWSLETTER as a SINGLE PICTURE FILE. Many people start to do the newsletter design in graphical tools and send the newsletter as a single picture (such as JPG / GIF). You are not advised to do so because if you send the newsletter using a single picture. Your customer will take a longer time to download the picture and there is a high chance that this type of newsletter will go into the spam mail. A good newsletter should have a combination of Graphic and Selectable-Text. Let me show you what is the Selectable-Text in this video.
SECOND is to MAKE YOUR NEWSLETTER RENDER WELL FOR DIFFERENT SCREEN SIZES. A standard newsletter design usually is at the sizes between 600px – 900px. Many big corporations also designed their newsletter based on this formula. When we design the newsletter in this size, we can make sure that the newsletter is responsive, and can fit nicely in the widescreen laptop, tablet and mobile screen.
THIRD is to OPTIMISE THE PICTURE. When the newsletter is designed in the sizes between 600px- 800px, meaning that we should attach the picture at these sizes or within these sizes. It is not suitable if we upload a larger size picture with 2000px or 3000px. Larger size picture will reduce the user readability experience and take longer time to download the newsletter picture.
FOURTH is to have your OWN-BRAND NEWSLETTER and use it repetitively. The newsletter design could be a complicated process but I will share with you my secret to designing a newsletter in this video. Do you ever receive a newsletter from other big corporations? You will realize that most of them have a standard newsletter layout and this standard layout is usually use repetitively in their monthly newsletter. Let me show you some of the examples in this video.
So, let me put a summary of the best email practices:
Never send a newsletter as a single picture file. A good newsletter should have a combination of graphic + selectable text, and you can add some hyperlink to link to a website or like to facebook. This will increase the open rate.
Make it compatible with different screen sizes. When your newsletter has a friendly design then the click-through rate will be higher.
Optimise the picture in the newsletter. Choose the right picture size and optimize it before a newsletter is sending to the customer. A well optimised picture will reduce the user downloading time and increase the readability.
Don’t crack your head to worry about the newsletter design. You just need to have one perfect template and use it throughout the year!
I am Lukas Jim. Tan, a technopreneur and software consultant. I launched my business Operion back in 2007 and got inspired to start my first venture when I discovered how automated systems can save time by being integrated with our daily workflow. To me, similar routine works that can be easily replaced by an AI program are waste of time. Humans are meant to do more than just sticking to one thing and running like a robot all day.
With this view in my mind, I developed my own billing/ CRM system by 2009. My target was to automate customer relationship management, quotation follow-up, payment requisition, HR, and leave management to save any workforce from such monotonous activities. Gradually I moved on to developing multiple automation to reduce manual workload from the office environment. I would rather have my employees investing their valuable time learning new things than having a tedious work life.
I drew my inspiration from the AI- bot Jarvis introduced in Iron Man 1. I am a software programmer. Unlike Tony Stark, I cannot build a robot. But my expertise and experience pushed me to develop what I call a Half-Jarvis. So that’s it. I automated whatever lies within my limits.
I seek knowledge, and I want everyone around me to do the same. So, I sought to change the work environment, facilitating an independent learning culture for my employees.
A little down the road…
Not long ago, programming was seen as a hobby of geeks tweaking with computers in their basement. But today, programming arose as something more. From our daily necessities to everyday entertainment, there are hints of tech and coding everywhere.
Ever since I stepped into the IT industry, I was introduced to monumental tech services. Soon I realized the technological ideologies are something that everyone should learn and not just me.
And this is what stirred me. When I launched Operion, all I could think about was how I could contribute to the technological advances of Malaysia and the whole world. When I look around the world, I envision the future in an automated mode. Everything related to coding and tech will continue to grow at an exponential rate.
Tech Talk with University Students
Here are some stats to back my claim:
● Web developers are expected to flourish by 13%.
● Computer systems and network administrators are expected to grow by 5%.
● Database administrators are expected to grow by 9%.
● Software developers are expected to grow by 21%.
This is the prediction for the next 5 years.
A handful of IT professionals are expected to outrun a lot of other career options. And if people are not educated with something so important, they will be missing out on a huge opportunity. I believe tech studies is not an option but a vital life skill for students of every walk. Therefore, it’s time to infuse tech studies into the curriculum.
The universities in Malaysia are sparing no effort to implement significant changes in their course structure. University authorities are pouring all their blood, sweat, and tears to resolve the gaps between courses and real-world applications.
Unfortunately, the process is painfully slow and requires several stages of approval from the government. For example, if we try to update the maths syllabus, it takes 1 year for a minor change and 5 years for a colossal swap.
Further, the research students conduct in their final year is below par. The result? Students literally have to struggle for internships and job placements. To me, it’s a tragedy. If students are rewarded with disappointment after all these years of studying, we failed- as a nation.
If this is the condition in my country, what about the rest of the world? There are still some parts of the world where people are deprived of fundamental education. Tech studies continue to be a dream or luxury for them.
Then…
There was one thing common amidst all the bright minds of the world. Each and every one of them leveraged the power of tech knowledge to get this far. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Larry Page – they climbed the success ladder through programming.
I quickly realized the best answer to the issue is to bring students and freshmen under a technological roof. That’s when I contemplated devising Invilent for tech and non-tech students.
My goal is to organize internship programs and technopreneur talks to boost the spirits of tech and non-tech students. With this motto in mind, I started collaborating with different universities throughout Malaysia. Currently, Invilent partnered with 22 universities intending to inspire students and freshmen for a better future.
I do not believe the country should be a barrier when it comes to education and internship. Every person around the globe deserves an equal opportunity in terms of learning or acquiring knowledge. So Invilent introduced the WFH strategy in its course structure.
No matter which part of the world the students are in, they are invited to join the Invilent program.
Naturally, people may wonder why any other tech giant hasn’t worked out such programs yet. I think this is the reason. Designing schemes like this is time-consuming and doesn’t yield any profit. We are doing this because we understand coding is a blessing to prepare for the future.
We call out students and freshmen from all walks to be a part of our portal.
How Invilent helps students and freshmen:
Companies do not feel confident hiring freshmen because they are inexperienced. So they always try to chase the ones with experience. The recruitment limbo sprouts deeper and actually affects the economy of
the whole world.
When I was pondering how to make a difference in the country with programming, the idea of Invilent just struck me. I decided to train students in IT and untangle the recruitment hassles for them.
Many people keep asking me about the internship program. They believe it’s nothing more than attending meetings and preparing reports. But now, I want to break my silence over the belief. In Invilent, we allow interns to handle their projects independently. We give our interns the space and facilities for personal development.
Our program was developed around offering interns a real-life experience of how things run in a tech company. We also show them how their internship activities integrate with different businesses. This is a bonus for recruiters around the world as we are sending out accomplished students and freshmen.
If somehow Invilent’s trainees end up unemployed, they have the chance to flourish as independent technopreneurs.
Programming is a game-changer, and the ones skilled in it have a competitive advantage in their career.
In early days, we have several ways to collect our customers data such as paper-and-pen, Excel spreadsheets, and Google Forms which still remain popular among the people. Either we ask our customers to do the data entry themselves, or admin to do the data entry manually. This requires a lot of manpower, and it is slow and time consuming. In Autobot, we offer various ways to make your data collection much efficient and practical. From their participation in lucky draws With our unique QR code and the winning prize of your choice, you can obtain your customers’ contact details and names through their participation, and begin building your customer database through transaction history. This method is convenient as you can automatically acquire your customer’s data without having to infringe their personal data. It is a way to rationalize data collection when they have something to gain from it.
From event attendance and campaigns If you’re using a traditional approach to manage your events, you’ll need to do the repetitive data entry and compilation. To solve this problem, we offer you E-ticketing platform to not only make your data collection automatic, but also ease your event management by a larger margin for a long-term period in the future. No more worries about drawing insights from your event delegates as we will help you make your data collected meaningful.
We have talked about many things that you can do with Autobot. But how exactly you can effectively use your customers’ data? You don’t just simply collect their data and leave it there, right? There are many ways you can do with them. For instance, use them wisely in your relationship management using our really365. Blast them with your scheduled promotion emails, holidays and birthday greetings to make them feel valued.
There is a significant reason we developed Autobot customer relationship management software, that is to help you on your business journey. We have many features all in one place – for an affordable price! Try it out today.
SERPROBOT is a free google ranking checker that can be used to find our websites google search ranking position instantly in real time. Previously, it was known as Serplab.co.uk but the company has decided to rebrand and drop the “co.uk” in order to reach a global audience. The free SERP check on the tool’s homepage is merely a spot checker. It allows us to enter our domain and check our website rank for a number of different keywords. We can also see the rankings of a specific page on our website by checking the “Use URL” box, and see how our competitors are doing for a particular keyword we want to rank for. By default, the tool offers us five fields to input keywords, but we can add up to a maximum of ten keywords at a time. We can also try the 14-day free trial offered by SERPROBOT to test all the features and see if we like it.
Highlighted Features:
Free Google Ranking Checker
Real-time, quick and accurate Results
Multi-keyword Support
Simple User Interface
Pricing:
SERPROBOT pricing plans are based on the number of bots we buy. The price starts at $4.99 for one Bot, which can perform up to 300 searches per day, and goes up to $49.90 for ten SERP Bots. Paying on a yearly basis or getting any more bots doesn’t get us a discount.
2. SEMRUSH
SEMrush is an all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights. The tools and reports are able to help marketers that work in the following services: SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, Campaign Management. It is a favourite for many critics as a keyword tracking tool, as it doesn’t differentiate between your site and competitive sites. Moreover, SEMrush is very easy to use. Using the tool’s search bar, we can ask SEMrush to rank a site or page’s Google and Bing results by providing the URL. Once the results are in, we shall also be able to compare them to how other sites and pages rank by selecting a keyword. However, we have to wait for SEMrush to finish analyzing our site or page first and then manually select each keyword.
Highlighted Features:
Organic Research
Product Listing ADS
Traffic Analysis
Advertising Research
Pricing:
There are three levels of subscription: Pro, Guru, and Business. If we pay annually, the price starts at $99.95 per month for Pro plan, $191.62 per month for Guru and $374.95 per month for Business.
3. WHATSMYSERP
WhatsMySERP is a free rank tracker that helps users accurately gauge their SEO rankings. The online tracker helps us monitor our website rankings through using a keyword tracker. Its free SERP checker allows us to check the top 100 Google search results for ten keywords per day. These searches are based on Google rankings and would be deleted the next day. There’s no trial, card or download required. It’s free, and available online.
Highlighted Features:
Regional Searches
Infinite domains and on-demand checks
Localized tracking
Desktop and Mobile Tracking
Pricing:
For premium plan, the price starts at $4.99 per month with 25 keywords and it goes up to $59.99 per month with 1000 keywords.
4. SMALLSEOTOOLS
Small SEO Tools is a commendable online search engine optimization tool available free of charge. Rather than just a keyword rank checker, it’s a full suite of easy to use SEO tools. Small SEO Tools include a plagiarism checker, article rewriter, keyword ranker, grammar checker, image compression tool, spell checker, backlink checker, backlink maker, keyword density checker, and so much more. The keyword rank checker is very similar to SERP’s. First, we provide a URL, select our search engine (there are several Google options available), and up to ten keywords at a time. Results can take a few minutes depending on how many keywords we use and only check in top 10 Google search results.
Highlighted Features:
Option to find rankings by either keywords or URLs
Check rankings on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Free to use, and no need to register an account to use the tool.
Offers a fast and easy user interface.
Pricing:
SmallSEOTools Rank Checker is free to use.
5. SERPWATCH
SerpWatch is an advanced rank tracker tool with deep rank tracking insights and workflow optimization. It differentiates with other rank tracker tools in terms of sophisticated image-recognition systems. Also, it particularly shows us the exact ranking position of our website domain for the keywords we entered to the checker. There is a limitation for the keywords we would like to check on SerpWatch, which is a maximum of 5 words we can analyze every day as a free for our website and see the rankings. We must sign up for further details about the tool provided for the SERP results.
Highlighted Features:
Excellent user interface that is easy to use
Very good reporting and scheduling features
Agency settings to add your brand
Very good and extensive documentation
Pricing:
SerpWatch pricing is based on the number of keyword checks per month. We can choose one of the three feature-rich plans that best suits our business needs and upgrade or downgrade our plan at any time. The price starts at $29 per month if we choose to pay yearly and it goes up to $199 per month for premium plan.
6. DYNOMAPPER
DYNO Mapper is a visual sitemap generator and keyword tracking tool in one. After creating a sitemap of our website, DYNO Mapper’s keyword tracker will automatically pull any keywords used in the meta of our site. We have the option of tracking individual keywords phrases by search engine or location. DYNO Mapper is also fully integrated with Google Analytics, information on our internal links, content inventory and audits, and accessibility testing in one tool. We’ll be able to single out our highest ranking pages, which is crucial information for planning future posts and editing existing content, especially when planning to redesign our site. We’ll also be able to monitor our competitors, allowing us to keep up with current trends and potentially gain the upper hand. DYNO Mapper will also send us regular notifications on our site’s performance, with sitemap comments, weekly or monthly content monitoring—and daily keyword ranking.
Highlighted Features:
Sitemap Generator
Content Inventory
Content Audit
Content Analysis Tool
Visual Sitemap Generator
Pricing:
DYNO Mapper is available monthly or annually—with plans starting at $40 per month for 1,000 keyword phrases and unlimited domains tracked daily, per device, and location. Each package allows for unlimited users but differs in the number of sites, pages, and keywords we can monitor.
7. SERPSURF
Serp Surf is a quick and reliable SERP checker that checks the Search Engine Ranking Position of our website for free. This SERP checker allows us to enter one domain and up to five keywords to rank check for free. We can also enter up to three domains of our competitors to see how we rank against them. The free to use tool then allows us to choose the region and device (desktop, mobile, or tablet) to search for. Once we press “Check SERPSurf”, we can expect to see our results within about 2 minutes. Additionally, SERP Surf will also show us the top ten rankings for each keyword that we enter.
Highlighted Features:
Completely free and no download required
Easy to use
Real-time result
Genuine search result
Pricing:
Currently, this tool only offers a free version with no option to pay for an upgraded version of the tool.
8. SEARCH ENGINE REPORTS’S KEYWORD RANK CHECKER
This fast and easy to use tool will check the search engine rank position of 1 of our domains. This program will check our domain ranking for up to 5 keywords of our choice. We can easily import and export our keywords by copying and pasting directly into the tool. Search Engine Report’s Keyword Rank Checker also gives us the option to include up to 3 of our competitor’s domains. It will then check those domains and compare their performance to our domain. The tool also gives us the ability to select which country and device we would like to search for. We can choose to search on either desktop or mobile for free.
Highlighted Features:
Immediate results
Faultless outcomes
Keyword oriented multi-features
Multi-platformed reporting
Pricing:
Currently, this tool only offers a free version with no option to pay for an upgraded version of the tool.
9. LINK ASSISTANT RANK TRACKER
Unlike other SERP tools we review in this article, Link Assistant’s keyword rank tracker is a tool that is required to download. Link Assistant’s free version is extremely useful and includes many of the features that we receive for their paid version. This SERP program allows us to track an unlimited number of domains and keywords. We can easily import and export these keywords as well which saves a lot of time. The tool also gives us an in-depth analysis of the best keywords to use. It does this by giving us a score on the difficulty of ranking for each keyword. When using the rank tracker, we can search both desktop and mobile at the same time. This is very useful as many free versions of SERP checkers only allow us to search one or the other.
Highlighted Features:
Clean user interface
Limitless keyword tracking
Pretty accurate results
Can track rankings from virtually all search engines and locations
Pricing:
To have more features, there are currently two paid options at $149/year and $349/year.
10. RANKTANK
Rank Tank is a downloadable program that uses Google Sheets. This extremely powerful and useful tool allows us to search up to 100 keywords for free. With Rank Tank being on Google Sheets, we can easily import and export our keywords by copy and pasting. The program also allows us to search across either desktop or mobile for free. Once our search is finished, we can save our results to a new tab. We can do as many searches as we want and track our rank history by looking back at past tabs. It will also compute an overall score for us based on how we rank for all the keywords that we searched for. In order to get this program, all we have to do is sign up for a free account on Rank Tank’s website and download the software to Google Sheets.
Highlighted Features:
Accurate and real-time keyword rank results.
Desktop and mobile user agent rankings.
Support for GEO location via UULE parameter.
Optional Ad and 3-Pack rankings.
Quick responses, results in seconds with intelligent retries.
Support for over 200 countries and 150 languages globally.
Many businesses do not know about their customer base, they will just keep on relying on new marketing tools to attract new customers. This may sound odd, but my belief and emphasis have always been on understanding my customer base so that I will be able to grow and retain them. The idea behind this is that, getting new customers is difficult, so it’s important to retain the ones I have, establishing a relationship with them while I continually look for new potential customers.
Let me share with you why you should get started to work on your customer base too!
Profitability of existing customers The process usually begins with knowing who your customers are, which eventually helps to improve their customer satisfaction, and in turn your products are being sold more to your existing customers. Statistics have even shown that the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%, which is much higher than to a new customer reported at 5%! Note that this profitability is not just a short term, it’s much more lucrative than that. Customers who stayed longer are more likely to spend at a bigger margin.
Customer lifetime value This might seem to be a big word, but it’s pretty simple. When we talk about CLV, we refer to two major keywords – total profit and longevity, which makes the entire explanation straightforward, “a predicted total profit generated by customers over a long run”. When you retain your customers, it means they stay. When they choose to remain, they bring your profit again and again through several revisits. Hence, I always choose to prioritize my resources on retaining my customers. And everything is quite simple here via Autobot.
Referrals Some of your existing customers, if motivated, they will do more than just announcing their permanent existence. They will introduce your business to their friends, family, colleagues, whoever they are that will bring you profit. The one thing which is great about this, is that those referred customers, combined with a little of effort from you, they are the ones you would soon retain too and if succeeded, they’ll do the same just like how your initial customers did. This is a hugely profitable infinite loop if being well taken care of.
To me, marketing is about how to attract and keep them, and I believe enough understanding of my own customer base is the core gist of action in sustaining my business. If you are able to maintain a good relationship with your existing customers, you are actually growing your customers exponentially. Now that you have a brief understanding on how customer retention can help your business grow, if you want to get started, contact us to learn more and do it in a much convenient way.
Challenges are rising over the food and beverages industries, where business owners find it hard in balancing between sustaining the supply chain and pleasing the customers at the same time. More problems are constantly being added to the list due to the proliferation of this type of industry. Today we are going to take a look at a few major problems that F&B business owners face.
Problem: The public are not aware of newly-launched products F&B industry is closely associated with constant product innovation, such as the ways to stir up new ideas to make new mouth-watering food and how to widely promote them so that people will be aware of them and get attracted to dine-in. Many business owners tend to put up attractive posters within their stores and via social media, but are they really effective? Solution: Promoting it in a modern way such as through your store’s official Facebook page is effective. To add as a bonus, you may want to consider Autobot to help you store customer data, which will come in handy when you use SMS / Email Broadcast to notify all of them at once about your latest updates.
Problem: Lacks customer loyalty In today’s trend, we observe that people’s taste for food are ever-changing in the sense that they won’t have a fixed preference on what’s going inside their mouth, especially among the Foodies. Majority of your customers will only visit you once, with no guarantee that he or she would come back again… Solution: You can’t fix your customers’ preference, but you can always get your customers engaged to your services! In Autobot, we have Lucky on The Spot which helps you to store their data by giving them the excitement and opportunity to win prizes of your choice. This will ensure frequent revisits in the future and convert them into long-term customers.
Problem: Difficulty in sustaining competitive advantage F&B industry usually revolves around product capacity, reliability and customer service. Many business owners only wish to expand their customer pool and think that it is the only way to create a competitive gap against other businesses? Does more customers mean more profit? Not entirely true. Solution: Maintain the existing customer pool while simultaneously having new customers to visit. The mechanism is more or less the same as mentioned in the previous customer loyalty issue.
All in all, we believe that although expanding your customer pool serves as an interest for many business owners, retaining the ones you have should be prioritized first as they are the main factor that brings repeating profit to any businesses. If you’re interested to delve into driving more profitable action from your customers, do contact us. Our experts are ready to serve you!
