In 2019, email users across the globe reached 3.9 billion. These figures only make it not only rational but imperative for businesses to use email marketing. 

But how many promotional emails are read per day? Most people pluck out only a few from dozens of emails they receive in the morning. This is the toughest challenge of any email campaign: to stand out in a sea of emails that swamp their subscribers daily.

Sending a clear, concise and grammatically correct email seems like a no-brainer. We all send them, whether it’s to colleagues or external workers; from our phones, homes, or desks, and yet consistently, mistakes are made. Most of the time, these mistakes are minor, quickly forgotten as the key message of the email is taken and acted on, but other times, they can be disastrous. Like turning up to a job interview in shabby attire, sending well-written emails is about presentation and professionalism. You don’t have to be the next Shakespeare, or even a particularly eloquent writer, but it is easy to write an email that is correct, and makes sense. Here are four common mistakes to avoid.

Why Amazon says your business is destined for the cloud.

Working in the cloud is an inevitable outcome for your small business, according to Mike Clayville, vice president of worldwide commercial sales and business development at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

At this morning’s AWS Summit in Sydney, Clayville reflected on last year’s summit, where he used his keynote to tell the audience cloud was not a question of ‘if’ for Australian business, but a question of ‘how’.

“[Twelve months ago] it quit being if I should go to the cloud, to how do I get to the cloud?” Clayville told the audience of more than 3000 people.

Twelve months later, Clayville says the business world’s interest in the cloud has evolved even further.

“It’s no longer a question how do we move our workload to the cloud, it’s about asking really big questions,” he says. “We’re now asking how do I get completely out of the data centre? How do we move all of our workloads into cloud?”

A Word About Web Marketing

Having a fantastic website means nothing if no one can find you, and more and more of our clients are relying on their web site as a core component of their business strategy.

The Internet is becoming more competitive. Not only do you need to draw potential clients and customers to your web site, you need to understand the key factors that encourage them to take the next step in the business transaction, whether it's to buy online, or seek further information and contact.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial to getting people to your site, but web marketing analysis is essential to understand customer behaviour and to identify the key factors that influence their web-based decision making.

So you’ve got your shiny new website and it looks fantastic on desktops and handhelds, is quick and has great content. Job done right?  Now you can move on to something else and let your site bring in the clients?  Not quite.

Over the coming weeks we’ll publish a number of articles discussing the care and well-being of your digital assets.

With the ‘bring your own device’ culture growing, businesses are at major risk of data breach unless they take tech security seriously.

Mobile technology has helped businesses become more flexible, efficient and well connected than ever before. But with more devices accessing their information, companies are putting their intellectual property and competitive edge, at risk.

According to David Markus, founder and managing director of IT services firm Combo, the importance of digital security is often underestimated: “In small business, there’s a real lack of understanding and appreciation of what’s at risk... most attacks are still not even perceived. Data’s going missing, and they’re not even noticing it.”
 

If your business website isn't mobile-friendly then you're about to slide down the rankings when people search from their smartphone or tablet.

Whatever business you're in, a high Google search ranking is critical. Whether customers are looking for a panel beater, a pastry chef or a plumber, these days they reach for a web browser rather than the old paper phone books. But more than that, if they're staring at a dent in their car or a broken hot water service, they'll probably reach for the smartphone in their pocket to look someone up on the spot.

If you're invisible in mobile search results then you've just lost a customer to the competition.