Cost-efficient marketing strategies

Hello!

I hope you had a lovely chocolate-fueled Easter break and the back-to-back short weeks have been restful, not stressful.

Last week, I hit you with some top-level economics. This week, I’m diving into cost-effective marketing strategies to boost conversions and website traffic.

There’s a time and a place for paid media – great creative with clever targeting can be incredibly effective. But organic traffic and engagement carry a certain credibility, often driving stronger loyalty and advocacy – just at a slower rate.  

Here’s what we’ll look at today:

Conversion strategy:
✉️ Email marketing tactics

Traffic strategy:
💻 3 ways to increase traffic with organic SEO 

Studio news:
🤝 Our new office – featuring our clients

✉️ STRATEGY

Email marketing tactics

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a good mailing list is one of the most valuable tools you can have in ecommerce.

An engaged audience who you can contact directly about your brand and products can generate a lot of conversions. It’s also incredibly cost-effective.

Email marketing platforms like Klaviyo link seamlessly to Shopify, allowing you to create automations, audience segments and ultra-targeted campaigns.

Here are some ways that you can make your email marketing work even harder:

Increase engagement by being inclusive

For visually impaired users, alt text is vital in the absence of an image. Be sure that the alt text on your images is descriptive and compelling so that you don’t alienate any potential customers.

For linked images, consider adding CTAs to the description, such as ‘click here to learn more about [product name]’.

Create audience segments

Personalising your emails improves their relevancy and effectiveness. Target different messages, products or campaigns to those who will be most receptive.

For example, if a certain region just got hit by a cold snap, a fashion brand could target customers in that region with an email about their new winter coats.

There are limitless opportunities for audience segments, some of which include:

• Demographic — age, gender, occupation, family status

• Geographic location — country, region, city

• Purchase patterns — seasonal, irregular, new arrivals, sales

• Loyalty — ordered over X times or spent over $X

• Purchase journey — new customer, abandoned cart, only 1 previous order

Optimise for mobile

A large portion of your readers will view your emails on their phones. Ensuring your emails work just as well on mobile as they do on desktop is key to creating a conversion experience.

Some areas to keep in mind are:

Short bodies of text
Keep your paragraphs succinct and scannable. This is best practice regardless but becomes especially important for people reading off a small screen.

Responsive design
Most email marketing platforms will have this built-in, but it’s always a good idea to test the email on your phone before sending it out.

Optimised images
Avoid large files that will slow down loading times. Slowness is an engagement killer.

Appropriately sized links and buttons
There’s nothing worse than trying to tap a link on screen that’s too small for your fingers – not only is it annoying, it directly affects the click-through rate.

Ensure your links are big enough for a smaller screen and that there is enough empty space around them so they’re not competing with other elements.

Tip: Buttons are often easier to tap than text links.

Nail your timing

The time in which you choose to send an email can impact your open rate. Test different times for each audience segment, tracking the results to see where the sweet spot is.

💻 STRATEGY

3 ways to increase traffic with organic SEO

Incorporating organic SEO into your online store is one of the most cost-efficient ways to increase traffic. When you appear near the top of a search organically, users are even more likely to click your listing than a paid Google search.

Here are 3 tactics that you can implement straight away:

1. Incorporate relevant keywords into product pages

2. Create blog content based on common searches

3. Increase links to your website with partnerships

Keywords

These can be incorporated into your site to help your store appear in searches. The trick is to find keywords that have a high search volume (over 1,000 monthly searches) but low competition.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Google Keyword Planner

2. Click ‘Discover new keywords’

3. Type some search terms for specific products. Think about words or phrases that people search when they’re in the mindset to make a purchase e.g. “buy organic single-origin coffee”

4. Click ‘Get results’ to see the volume and competition for each of those terms as well as suggestions for others.

5. Once you’ve got a set of relevant keywords for a product, try to incorporate them naturally into your:
   - product title
   - product description
   - image alt text
   - search engine listing
   - URL

It’s important that you don’t fall into the trap of jamming a tonne of keywords in where they don’t belong. Google recognises “keyword stuffing” and penalises you for it. Keep it short, succinct and above all, natural.

Blog content

How-to guides, listicles, and videos can all be used to answer common queries, leading potential customers to your website.

Consider what people are searching for before they know about your product or are considering buying it. Start typing those queries into Google to see what auto-populates.

For example, a fashion brand could create style guides that link to their product range. By typing ‘how to style’ in the Google search bar, they can see the most searched queries.

From this search, wide leg pants and baggy jeans are two areas that they could explore.

To get even more ideas for content, check out the related searches. Select one of the search options then scroll down to the bottom of the page. In this example, we selected ‘how to style wide leg pants’.

Any of these topics would make a great blog post, adding value to users by offering advice they actually want, while allowing the brand to promote multiple products.

Partner links

The more your website appears on relevant third-party sites, the higher your store will rank in Google search results.

One of the best ways to do this is to get partners (other brands, charities you support, influencers, directories, etc.) to link to your online store on their website.

Links to your website can be added to all sorts of places, including:

• blog articles

• a dedicated partners page

• a product collab

• store locators

• gift guides

Where relevant, offer to add links to your own site to make the partnership mutually beneficial.

🏠 STUDIO UPDATE

Our new office – featuring our clients

We’re in!

I’ll be honest, it feels like we did a reno and moved house all at the same time. At the risk of sounding like every person who has ever embarked on a construction project – for a small job, it was a bigger undertaking than I expected.

That said, we are so happy to have a studio space that feels like us. It’s a big milestone.

We pride ourselves on working with amazing brands who inspire us and whose products we love. So it made sense to feature a few of them in the new office.

Ambitec – suppliers of the most beautiful polished plaster you’ve ever seen. Look out for their Suave finishes coming to our open kitchen and meeting room soon.

We’re currently working with Wendy to rebrand, reposition, and redesign Ambitec’s website. Stay tuned.

Woodwrights – designers and makers of stunning furniture.

After designing and building the website for their sister company, Acorn Furniture, we got the call up to do the same for Woodwrights. What can we say, the team are a joy to work with.

We can’t wait to have their pieces in our meeting room and kitchen.

Acme Cups – creators of the most loved crockery in hospitality and home kitchens alike.

They say good things take time. Megan and Paddy first messaged us around 2 years ago saying they’d love to work together. We’re excited to announce that we’re starting on their new site this month. You’ll find both cups and cutlery in our new space, serving Kōkako coffee of course.

Leif — packaging designers and makers of the most delicious hand wash and creams. Leif will add a little bit of luxury to our bathroom and kitchen.

We’re very excited to work with them on their tone of voice as well as a brand new website. Kick-off commences in a couple of weeks!

❤️ REFER A FRIEND

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time.

Alex Murton
Managing Director & Co-Founder
Studio Almond