Electronics Marketing News

15 New Online Marketing Tips and Tools to Jumpstart 2012

SupplyFrame strives to bring you useful marketing insights that make your day a little easier or your campaigns a little stronger. Our mission is to partner with you in market planning and arm you with valuable marketing tips and how-tos that make your business even more successful. This month's email uses a new format to share a variety of helpful industry insights tips to try out or implement in 2012.

• Online Marketing Tools That Can Save You Time
  
• Get a 360° Report of Your Online Marketing Performance
• Google Analytics Tip
  
• LinkedIn Little Known Features
• Branding Tips for YouTube's New Channel Design
• A Look Back at SupplyFrame Industry Insights

 

 

ONLINE MARKETING TOOLS THAT CAN SAVE YOU TIME

We love discovering new sites and tools that bring some efficiency or new approaches to our online marketing activities. There are so many new and exciting web tools on the market, we thought we'd share a few of our favorites with you.

• Rank Fixer
  Edge out your competition with SEO intelligence. Get a side-by-side comparison of your web performance to that of your competitors. Benchmark your site's authority, compare link details, and get tips to improve content relevance.

• BoardReader
  Tap into forum posts and buzz that mention your brand or target keywords to uncover new opportunities to interact with prospects and customers.

• Trello
  Collaborate with colleagues and organize your marketing projects into boards. See what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.

• Tagul
  Create custom word clouds for your website or presentations. Choose to generate them from a webpage URL, change color, font, shape and more. Then output web code or save as a static image.

• NutshellMail
  Get a social media update right in your email inbox. NutshellMail delivers an email summary of your social activity from Facebook Likes to Twitter Mentions to LinkedIn Profile Updates and much more. It's free and can be set up in seconds.

• EdgeRank Checker
  Ever wonder the best times to post your Facebook page updates? Are you posting quality posts that will show up in Facebook's news feed? EdgeRank Checker scores your posts and recommends opportune times to post them. Go Pro and get access to industry reports, individual post grading features and more.

 

 

GET A 360° REPORT OF YOUR ONLINE MARKETING PERFORMANCE

Review action items to help your top and middle funnels and analytics.

Last year, our article on web assessment tools featured HubSpot's Website Grader. Recently, the company moved to a more holistic tool, Marketing Grader. The free tool provides a window into not only your website performance but your social and online marketing efforts offsite, as well. In just seconds, Marketing Grader outputs a detailed report with easy-to-understand insights on more than 30 different factors of your online marketing.

From top and middle of the funnel examination to analytics, Marketing Grader offers you concrete tips for ways to improve. Plus it gives you an overall score of 1-100 so you have a benchmark in which to measure competitive sites. Even for those with robust analytics tools in place, the Marketing Grader tool could surprise you by offering you a window into your site's performance for an area currently off your radar.

TRY HUBSPOT'S MARKETING GRADER

 

 

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TIP

Are you measuring how social interactions impact your web visitors' behavior? Last year, social engagement reporting was introduced in Google Analytics. Many of you may go to the trouble of installing +1 or Like buttons on your website but may not be fully leveraging the power of analytics to see how shared content on your site is impacting a customer or prospect's behavior. It would be difficult to check each and every share button and see what's happening. With social engagement reporting in place, here's what you can do:

• See the number of social actions that occur on your site.

• Find out which of your pages get the most social actions (LinkedIn Shares, Likes, +1s, Tweets, AddThis shares).

• Segment your visitors into "socially engaged" and "not socially engaged," and then narrow the results further by traffic source or other segments to see trends among different sets of users.

SEND THIS LINK TO YOUR WEBMASTER TO GET STARTED WITH SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT REPORTING

 

 

LINKEDIN LITTLE KNOWN FEATURES

• Export Your Connections List
  Need a way to easily move your LinkedIn connections database over to your email address books? The little known Export Connections tool will export connections' email address, company, title and other contact info to a CSV, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail or Mac OS address book. Scroll down to the bottom of your Connections page and click the Export Connections link.

• "Signal" Your Network's Updates
  Get an aggregated view of your network's updates. Use filters to see updates by industry, connection level, location, company and more. It includes updates from 2nd connections, too!


• Run Promotions on Your LinkedIn Company Pages
  Want to promote your product videos or offers on your LinkedIn company page? Some companies are using this feature to promote their social networks. You are able to add a title, URL, description and even a YouTube video about the respective product...and it's free.

 

 

BRANDING TIPS FOR YOUTUBE'S NEW CHANNEL DESIGN

YouTube has set a March 7 deadline for its users to migrate to their new channel page. The change offers brands some new opportunities for marketing and audience engagement. Here are a few of the updates you should be sure to take advantage of. They only take a few minutes to make.

• Include Social Media and Website Links on Your Channel Page
  The option to promote your website, blog and social media links has moved to prime above-the-fold YouTube channel real estate. Take advantage of this new option to drive traffic to your sites.


• Leverage Channel Bulletins to Send Your Subscribers Messages
  Now you can send updates to your YouTube subscribers from your channel through the Channel Bulletins feature found in your channel's feed tab. This is an opportunity to engage subscribers and send them up-to-the-minute news, updates or video posts. Bulletins will appear on your subscribers' homepage in their recent activity feed as well as on your channel page.


• Customize Your YouTube Videos with Enhanced Annotation Features
  YouTube has enhanced its annotations feature to allow users to get more creative with their videos without ever leaving the YouTube site. A new color palette, timeline and annotation type are all part of YouTube's annotations update. Point to a specific area on the video, annotate in full color and more.


• Gain Insight through new YouTube Analytics Features
  YouTube added a couple new features to YouTube Analytics. The former Hotspots feature was revamped and is now called "Audience Retention." The feature tracks how far viewers are watching through your video. You can click on different areas of the trend line to jump to the exact spot in the video that resulted in a dip or surge in engagement. Another new feature, Playback Locations lets you see where your videos are being viewed—mobile device, embedded player on other websites, YouTube watch page or your YouTube channel page.

 

 

A LOOK BACK AT INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Our industry insights series brings you tools, how-to's and advice to enhance your online marketing efforts. In case you missed part of our series, here are some of our most popular articles.

• Assessing Electronics Website Performance


• Killer Social Media Tools for Electronics Marketers


• How to Track Design Wins with New Google Analytics


• Social Media in a Box – Instant Communities for China's Engineers


• Landing Pages for Successful Electronics Marketing


• A New Record: 5.0M Electronics Pros Now Online

A New Record: 5.0M Electronics Pros Now Online

PASADENA, CA - February 15, 2012 - 34,000 an hour. That's how many queries for product specs passed through the SupplyFrame network of electronics research sites last year — 24x7. That leads to a lot of downloads of the datasheets, applications notes and reference designs written by your product teams into the hands of engineers around the world. In fact, every day we delivered 314,000 datasheets to the worlds engineers.

Today, 5.0 million engineers and purchasers each month rely on us to discover and research electronic products for their new designs. That's up from our own record of 3 million just 12 months ago and we are still growing.

Focusing this power, SupplyFrame can shape the right audience for your next product launch into the designs of the world's most important engineers.

For the product marketing and marketing communication warriors of the electronics industry, sit back and watch this 45 second video of our key stats for your consideration in planning your growth in 2012.

Exclusive First Access: New Online Brand Benchmark Report

We believe that everything in online marketing can and should be measured to get the best results from your work. Keeping with that theme, SupplyFrame is sharing a new report with you that benchmarks 30 industry leading brands online. The report documents dozens of online marketing best practices, and further, provides ranking analysis on how each organization is performing against its industry peers.

The report, "Online Brand Benchmark Report: 30 Leading Brands in the Electronics Industry," was published by Heardable, a real-time contextual brand analytics platform. Heardable Co-Founder Gunther Sonnenfeld shared that "the objective of this report is to help leaders in the electronics industry understand the levers through which online brand value is created in order to identify opportunities to grow the value of their brand going forward."

Highlights from the Report's Findings

Electronics brands element14, Newark and Texas Instruments came out on top in social media and website performance. In-depth performance diagnostics measured many factors from mobile readiness to social network participation to adeptness at SEO.

Five Best Practices Leading Electronics Industry Brands are Following

1. Strong social media presence, participation, followers and advocates
2. Search engine optimized websites
3. Usable websites (easy to engage, share, interact, contact and transact)
4. Regular monitoring and optimization using web analytics software and testing tools
5. Optimizing websites for mobile smartphone browsing

More Information on the Report

Learn more about the report and Heardable's methodology or get insights into your brand with their free consultation: marketing@heardable.com.

DOWNLOAD COMPLIMENTARY REPORT NOW

SupplyFrame Launches E-Newsletter Program Targeting China's EE Design Engineers

Electronics manufacturers and distributors can generate brand loyalty and boost sales through exclusive program powered by eeFocus

PASADENA, CA – October 6, 2011 - SupplyFrame, provider of advertising and marketing services for the electronics industry, announced that it has launched a new e-newsletter marketing product designed for advertisers targeting China's thriving electronics industry. The new program is powered by eeFocus, the principal driver behind China's growing EE social media community.

Reaching over 400,000 electronics engineers in China, SupplyFrame's e-newsletter program is a key opportunity for electronics manufacturers and distributors to influence China's design engineers through messages, content and ads promoting their brands and products. Advertisers can choose from eight different vertical newsletter categories—from Embedded System Design to Analog and RF—or leverage them all.

"A strong combination of news, design tips and user-generated content from over 20 eeFocus engineering communities makes the program an engaging, cost-efficient tool for appealing to the vast EE community in China," noted John Schirmer, SupplyFrame's Vice President, Worldwide Sales. "Further, it is easy for advertisers to take advantage of this new program. An eeFocus team of industry-trained editors creates and manages all newsletter content so there's no impact on the advertisers' own resources."

"The content of our e-newsletters is unique in the market. It combines the appeal of social media with the industry news that matters most to our readers. We engage engineers through popular posts, blogs and downloads of circuit diagrams contributed by our community members—their peers. This provides our advertisers with a one-of-a-kind influence channel that reaches their target audience," added Gongyu Su, Founder and CEO, eeFocus.

For more information on SupplyFrame's e-newsletter program, please contact SupplyFrame: email sales@supplyframe.com or telephone +1 626-793-7732.

About SupplyFrame

SupplyFrame Media (http://www.supplyframemedia.com) is the one-stop provider for the electronics industry to reach and influence online decision makers from top to bottom of the electronics sales funnel. Reaching globally, SupplyFrame provides measurable advertising and marketing products delivering leading inbound and outbound results, plus inventory location products to expedite purchasing decisions and help electronics suppliers grow online sales. SupplyFrame, Inc. provides advertising solutions through the SupplyFrame Media Network. SupplyFrame also operates FindChips.com and QuoteFX.com.

About eeFocus

eeFocus (http://www.eefocus.com) is both a leading social network and a top-performing direct marketing and online advertising provider for the growing electronics industry across China. eeFocus, based in Beijing, China, publishes a series of Chinese language media products unique to the electronics industry, including turnkey branded social community sites, contextual advertising, and lead generation through e-news programs. eeFocus websites include the eeFocus.com engineering community site, the CNDZZ.com circuit design collaboration site, and the Datasheet5.com technical reference site. For advertising opportunities on eeFocus.com, contact SupplyFrame.

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

 

Email Marketing Tips, Tricks and Tools

Email is one of the tried and true channels to engage prospects in the electronics industry. In today's Industry Insight email, we want to share some our best email marketing tips and tools. What follows are some ideas and insights to help you improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

• Streamline Email Marketing Management
  
• Get "Fractal" — Solve Your Email Client Compatibility Issues
• Give Your Email or Email Landing Page the "Five Second Test"
  
• Use Social Media Design Apps to Enhance Your Email Programs
• Boost Your Email Open Rates

 

STREAMLINE EMAIL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Selecting a solution to help manage your email marketing may be difficult. For many, it's not just about picking an email provider but choosing a service that has the features to best fit your needs. Do you go with an Email Service Provider (ESP) or Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)? Let's explore both...

ESPs excel in email design, management and deliverability. MAPs streamline marketing operations by automating email-related processes (e.g., email management, lead nurturing and drip marketing). In reality, the lines are becoming blurred between the two platforms as ESPs are incorporating more marketing automation features. Today, most of the mid-to-enterprise solutions on the market have similar out-of-the-box capabilities and the ability to scale or customize as needed.

Following are some ideas to help you weigh which type of provider is best for you.

An Email Service Provider may be more suitable if you:

• Manage large subscriber lists or perform heavy list management.
• Are initially focused on starting out with email capabilities and plan to later add lead nurturing and marketing automation features.
• Specialize in high-volume email marketing as a core business (e.g., direct marketing agency).

A Marketing Automation Platform may be more suitable if you:

• Require a turnkey system that includes both lead nurturing and behavior scoring.
• Have the dedicated resources/team to administer the system and develop content that supports nurturing campaigns.

A few customers have asked us what we use to send you our Industry Insight emails. We use Act-On, a marketing automation platform. It is an on-demand/cloud-based solution that has integration with Salesforce. It is easy to use compared to other enterprise-level systems that offer similar functionality but may require more process planning and IT help. We love Act-On and would recommend it in a heartbeat. Still, you should create your own requirements list and ensure you compare vendors based on your criteria, not someone else's.

 

GET "FRACTAL" — SOLVE YOUR EMAIL CLIENT COMPATIBILITY ISSUES

You have a beautiful design. It shows off your brand and looks great in HTML on your browser. You send a "test" message to a couple email clients (Outlook, Lotus, Gmail, Yahoo) and BAM... your design goes down in flames. Emails have to be tested on all your prospects' clients to make sure they appear the way you intend.

How much time do you spend testing your email design before each send? This is definitely a sore spot for many, including our own team. We allot special time in our campaign preparation to test different mail clients and generally have to find and iron out bugs ourselves. Fractal, a new solution (currently free to use), does the hard work for you. Fractal finds compatibility issues with email clients and solves them for you by outlining them and adjusting your code. It takes just minutes and you can email the report if someone outside does your email design or programming.

TRY FRACTAL ON YOUR NEXT CAMPAIGN. GET STARTED HERE.

 

GIVE YOUR EMAIL OR EMAIL LANDING PAGE THE "FIVE SECOND TEST"

Understanding whether your email or campaign landing page achieves your desired results can help shape your campaign's ROI. A new tool called Fivesecondtest recently came to our attention. Fivesecondtest helps you fine tune your landing pages and calls to action by determining what a test taker recalls about your design after viewing it for 5 seconds. After uploading a design, a poll is conducted based on questions you outline. You receive a report following the test that helps you fine-tune your design to ensure your key message is being conveyed. There is a free version you can try out now. Note that private tests can be made with paid upgrade plans.

CONDUCT A FIVESECONDTEST

 

USE SOCIAL MEDIA DESIGN APPS TO ENHANCE YOUR EMAIL PROGRAMS

Email and Social Media go hand-in-hand. Many companies are adding social sharing and follow buttons within their email campaigns to strengthen audience development and content syndication. They are also leveraging social platforms to promote email and grow their email lists. There are some easy-to-use apps out there that generate forms for Facebook (try ShortStack or Pagemodo). Don't forget to add links on Twitter, Linkedin and other social sites to your email signup landing page.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BUILDING YOUR EMAIL LIST THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

 

BOOST YOUR EMAIL OPEN RATES

Be choosy with the name you assign to your emails' "From" line.
The name that appears in the "from" line of your email could make or break your open rate. The recipient often makes the decision about whether or not to open an email based on their familiarity with the "From" name. If your analytics shows a low open rate, the name you have assigned should be reconsidered for future emails. Most email applications let you customize the "From" name. Try testing your company name versus the name of a sales rep or account person on different segments of your list. Prospects may respond better to brands while customers may open more emails from their sales rep. Some email marketers find using a combination of the two works best.

Use verbs in your subject line that convey action and include words that create a sense of urgency
Effective email subject lines should be written like landing page calls to action. They should compel recipients to take action (e.g., Explore our new ABC selection guide). Further, be sure to include your offer or show value in the subject line and, where applicable, convey a sense of urgency or timeframe for taking action.

Incorporate "hot" keywords in your subject line.
Online marketing software provider Hubspot reported some findings on subject line words that received the most clicks. Words like "posts," "e-newsletter," "digest," "bulletin," "edition," "tips," "video" and "news" were among the top results. Try one of these out in your next email.

Incorporate "hot" keywords in your subject line. Keep subject lines on point and refrain from "marketing fluff."
Ideal character count of an email subject line varies when asking different email providers and experts. However, most will tell you to stay between 35-49 characters max and that anything over 55 gets cuts off. Twitter works for a reason. Every character counts. You have no room for waste. Email is no different. In fact, some studies have shown that as subject line character count rises, open rate goes down. Remember whatever the length, testing to see what works with your prospects is the key.

Determine your company's best time of day to send email.
There are many theories and online recommendations that will tell you to send email on a specific day or time of the week. Unfortunately, there is no magic "time to send" for all. We recommend you determine your own sweet spot by testing different send times and tracking results to see what time works best. You may be surprised at the result. Do you target engineers on a global basis or a specific country/region? If you tend to target individual geographies, you might factor working hours into your send time. Some email tools have features that deliver messages at the target time in the individual time zone of each recipient.