In the first of a serious of articles on improving results from email marketing, Azam Marketing’s Director of eCRM Operations Ryan Ranaweera, who has been in the email marketing industry for a decade, offers advice on improving open rates.

One of the core measures to identify the success of an email marketing campaign is the open rate.

If your email is unopened then results will not be achieved and targets will remain unfulfilled, whether they are to create brand awareness, stimulate a conversation or simply sell a product.

The open rate is generally calculated by taking the total number of emails opened divided by the number of emails sent. The industry standard open rate is less than 20%, however B2B open rates tend to be close to 30% or higher.

There are many dynamics which may influence your open rate.

List Source
Rental lists tend to have lower open rates than house lists, however, inactive/old house lists may well yield a lower open rate.

Email format
Email Service Providers can only track open rates on html based email content. If an email is sent as plain text based or only a text version is requested, these will not be counted within your open rate calculation, regardless of whether the email was opened or not.

Email client
When an email is viewed in a preview pane such as Outlook Express 2007 this is actually counted as an open. The user does not actually need to click to enlarge the email. B2B email campaigns tend to have higher open rates as recipients are likely to use Outlook and similar email clients. Web-based email readers such as Google Mail and Hotmail required users to effectively click on the email from a list of messages within the inbox before the email can be opened.

Sender Alias
This is the recognition factor, motivating the user to open the email based on their familiarity of the sender. The ‘from’ field is of crucial importance as users are more likely to open an email if they recognise the sender. A useful tip is to customise your from field such as using an established brand name. Be careful when using female names in the from field, especially first names, as these can trigger spam filters, people often delete emails from unknown women quicker than any other email.

Subject Line
You should put a lot of thought into deciding your final subject line. It is usually the first thing a recipient reads when the email is delivered into the inbox, so its content is crucial. Spend time doing thorough subject line testing to determine which yields the greatest response. Avoid using ‘promotional’ words or phrases, such as “Special offer” or “Free”. These are likely to trigger spam filters. Ensure your subject line is not too long, thirty characters at most. Short and precise content is both easier to read and straight to the point.

Timing
The time an email campaign is broadcast live is an important consideration. If a campaign is deployed late at night it is likely that most recipients will not read the message until the following morning. The problem arises here where the user’s inbox will most probably be flooded with multiple emails sent over night, mainly spam, so there is much competition for hierarchy within the individual’s inbox. There is no ideal time set in stone to deliver an email; it depends on the customer base, the content and the offer. Some like to read emails on the weekend, others may prefer the early evening. Experimentation is the key here.

All the aforementioned components together make a successful email campaign and can lead to significant increases in open rates.

Monitoring the open rate is necessary to ensure your activity is on track. Remember the open rate is an effective measure to the success of any email marketing campaign. The more time spent analysing, testing and configuring your email campaign down to the very minor details, the more significant chance you have of enhancing your open rate.

Our email marketing series will continue with advice on minimising unsubscribes, dealing with soft bounces, optimising email creative for mobile handsets and more. Subscribe to Azam.info so you are informed when the next article in the series is published.

Looking to generate more revenues from your email marketing activities? Don’t hesitate to contact our friendly team on +44 (0) 870 870 2222 or results [at] azam.net to find out about our database management, eCRM and email marketing services.

While many digital marketers are focusing on newer, sexier forms of customer acquisition and retention, often for little other reason than to be ‘trendy’, many of the wisest heads in the industry are focusing on the ongoing power of email marketing to generate impressive results.

Azam Marketing’s eCRM specialists now manage nearly 12.4 million records, either internal datasets or external ones for the likes of Trinity Mirror and Auto Trader, and in this, the first of a series of blog posts at Azam.info will share their expertise on how to get better results from email marketing. Part 1 of the series gives advice on ensuring your creative looks tip-top when it gets into recipients’ inboxes.

An email marketer sees many badly designed email creatives.

Even respectable design agencies are sometimes out of their depth when it comes to designing email creative. It is complicated as ISPs such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, Gmail and Outlook, all render email creative in different ways.

We will look at some of the reasons why you can suffer rendering issues with some ISP’s inboxes and not others.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Fireworks are commonly used to slice the creative and replace the image text with HTML coded text using Dreamweaver or alternative HTML editors. Unfortunately this may create a problem with rendering, especially if you have a 50/50 or higher image-to-text ratio.

Some people use CSS for their websites using Dreamweaver. This is usually set automatically within the program. It can be switched off via the options menu within Dreamweaver. CSS is a great language but not for email creatives. Many ISPs strip out CSS coding and if you have it within your creative it may cause fonts and other features to not show the way you wanted.

To avoid this, we would recommended you use the standard <font> tags or inline CSS within the email creative. To get to grips with inline CSS here is a website with an excellent tutorial.

If the problem with email rendering is not rectified by swapping CSS with normal font tags here is some more advice:

Normal rendering problems occur when text size is enlarged differently to the email creative. Examples of this may be that you have long text you’re displaying in a relatively narrow column. You use a line of underline characters rather than a horizontal line or div border as a column item separator. You’re using a narrow column, which will widen until it breaks up the images surrounding it. Here are your options:

- Add spaces wherever possible so you get the word wrap you’re seeking.

- Use a narrower font

- Don’t use underlines, periods and hyphens as div box dividers unless you make them short and centred.

- Space columns further apart

- Avoid coloured divs so at least one can still tell what the words are in spite of overlap

- Put a link at the top of the email that lets recipients see a version of the creative online

In our next three articles in this series, we will give guidance on improving your open rates, dealing with soft bounces, and ensuring your emails render correctly in mobile devices such as Blackberrys. Subscribe to Azam.info here. In the meanwhile, you may study Nadeem Azam’s presentation on growing and monetising your email database here.


If you’d like to hire Azam Marketing’s award-winning specialist to assist in any way, shape or form with your eCRM, database management or email marketing activities, get in touch by calling +44 (0) 20 7436 4496 or emailing results [at] azam.net

London’s Grosvenor House Hotel was the venue for the annual Performance Marketing Awards which took place on Tuesday. Over 700 agencies, advertisers, publishers and networks enjoyed a night of fine dining, socialising and dancing. Compering the glitzy black tie awards ceremony was renowned comedian Rufus Hound.

The number of award submissions had more than doubled over the previous year and Matt Wood, who founded the awards in 2007 and is a judge, exclaimed: “With a 75% increase in entrants, competition was fierce but it was not just about volume… the quality surpassed anything we’ve seen before and was an absolute pleasure to judge.”

To compliment our achievements in previous years, I am delighted to report Azam Marketing was once again triumphant, winning the Best Finance Publisher category and earning Highly Commended for Best Lead Generation Campaign!

The panel of celebrated industry judges from the likes of Yahoo!, Ogilvy and eConsultancy said they selected Azam for the Best Finance Publisher award for generating huge volumes of high quality leads and pushing the boundaries of innovation:

“Using innovative tactics to deliver a consistently increasing ROI, Azam Marketing’s approach through well thought-out and proactive campaigns that take into consideration a heavily regulated financial sector has been rewarded with the Best Finance Publisher award this year.”

The judges added:

“Azam Marketing’s campaign results show extraordinary commission generated for their partners through the past year, and are continually pushing the boundaries of their business.

“Judges applauded the innovative thinking that led to the creation of entirely new email creative by Azam that doubled conversion, thus having a significant impact on ROI not only for them but for all affiliates.

“One theme with many award winners this year is close collaboration and live technical implementations, which has led to new revenue opportunities for both parties.”

I’d like to offer my heartelt congratulations to the entire Azam crew, who through their hard-work and ingenuity enabled us to be acclaimed in not one but two categories at this years’ awards.

Thanks also to the guys from TradeTracker who kindly invited me to the awards ceremony and with whom I had a whale of a time.

You can see the full list of winners here.

If you require leads for finance or other campaigns, get in touch with us by emailing results [at] azam.net or calling +44 (0) 870 870 2222 and let our award-winning team flood you with valuable customers.

Further to our announcement that Azam Marketing has been shortlisted for two categories this year at the prestigious Performance Marketing Awards, we’re delighted to reveal that we’ll also be sponsoring the International Award at the event later this month.

The International Award is a new category this year and the judges will be looking ‘for a company or individual who operates or has expanded their performance marketing activity into more than one worldwide territory’.

The nominees are Commission Junction, Existem-AM, Invisible Hand, Neo@Ogilvy, Net Media Planet, Tradedoubler and Tradetracker. We’re looking forward to presenting the award to the lucky winner in just a few weeks time!

The awards, now in their fourth year, have truly gone from strength to strength and we’re thrilled to have been shortlisted eight times in the last three years. We’re sure that this year’s event will be a night to remember and wish all our fellow nominees the best of luck.

We’ve also invested in several high profile advertising campaigns recently, including full page ads in NMA magazine which you can see here.

Want to share in our success? We generated almost £13 million in sales for advertisers in Q1 this year, so contact us to find how we can help your business to grow!

The shortlist has been announced for this year’s a4u Awards, and following on from our successes in previous years, Azam is delighted to have bagged two fantastic nominations – ‘Best Lead Generation Campaign’ for Egg, and ‘Best Finance Publisher’.

The judges commented that Azam’s entry for Egg demonstrated “a well crafted and thought-out campaign, with significant ROI and impressive results”.

On announcing the finalists, Matt Wood from event organisers Existem noted that submissions for this year’s awards were up by a massive 75% with the standard being exceptionally high, so we are over-the-moon to be shortlisted alongside so many worthy nominees.

It has certainly been a busy year at Azam with a host of exciting new clients coming on board across all our divisions. Our email team has enjoyed phenomenal growth, running hugely successful campaigns for top advertisers including Dell, HP, B&Q, LOVEFiLM, and of course, Egg!

We have also had lots of new wins in our Affiliate Management and Search Marketing divisions, including TravelSpec, Borro, ActivInstinct and Millet Sports, and Ministry of Paintball.

This year’s awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London on the 17th May will be hosted by comedian Rufus Hound and promises to be another excellent event. We hope to see you there!

Here’s a full list of the 2011 nominations:

Publisher Innovation

• InvisibleHand
• Quidco
• Top Cashback iPhone App
• Top10.com
• VoucherCloud

Advertiser Innovation

• Argos & Commission Junction
• Expedia
• Route One & TradeDoubler
• The Gift Experience & Webgains

Affiliate Network Innovation

• Commission Junction & myThings
• Commission Junction & The Argos Affiliate Hub
• Darwin Marketplace
• LinkShare Aggregated Vouchers
• Webgains Multiple Data Feeds

Best 3rd Party Application

• DC Storm
• InvisibleHand
• myThings with Commission Junction
• Quidco Compare
• R.O.Eye & eBay for eBay Geo-Targeting Tool

Best New Entrant

• Affiliate Window for Best Buy
• Affilinet for Matalan
• Boots Treat Street
• myThings with Commission Junction
• The metamorphosis of Artemis8 into Found

Best Agency

• 7thingsmedia
• Arena Quantum
• Bigmouthmedia
• Stream 20

Best Use of Affiliate Marketing as part of a Multi-Channel Campaign

• Affiliate Window & SKY
• Affiliate Window for LOVEFiLM
• Commission Junction for Argos
• Debenhams
• RAC

Best Search Partnership

• Found & RAC
• Net Media Planet & O2
• Top10.com & Vodafone

Best Lead Generation Campaign

• Azam Marketing for Egg
• Found for Tempur
• MindShare & Affilinet for Mazda
• TTH Media for O2
• VoucherCodes.co.uk for LOVEFiLM

Best Use of Social Media

• Arena Quantum for Domino’s Pizza
• DiscountVouchers.co.uk
• Top10.com for Vodafone iPhone Facebook Competition

Best Use of Mobile

• Found for Autoglass Roadside Rescue
• Top10.com for Streetstats 3G
• VoucherCloud

Best Managed Affiliate Programme

• Affiliate Window & SKY
• Arena Quantum for Legal & General
• BT
• Latitude for JJB Sports & JJB Golf
• Red Letter Days
• TradeDoubler for Tesco

International Award

• Commission Junction & GAP
• Existem-am for Crocs
• InvisibleHand
• Neo@Ogilvy for British Airways
• Net Media Planet
• TradeDoubler & Hotels.com
• TradeTracker

Best Finance Advertiser

• Arena Quantum for Legal & General
• Commission Junction for Egg
• Neo @ Ogilvy for American Express
• OMG for HBOS
• RAC

Best Finance Publisher

• Azam Marketing
• Quidco

Best Retail Advertiser

• Affiliate Window for LOVEFiLM
• Commission Junction for Argos
• Hotel Chocolat & myThings
• LinkShare for Radley
• Red Letter Days
• Webgains for my-wardrobe

Best Retail Publisher

• Found for Red Letter Days
• InvisibleHand
• VoucherCodes.co.uk

Best Travel & Leisure Advertiser

• Arena Quantum for Haven Holidays
• buy.at for DFDS
• buy.at for Expedia
• Commission Junction for TUI

Best Travel & Leisure Publisher

• MyVoucherCodes
• Quidco
• VoucherCodes.co.uk

Best Technology & Telecoms Advertiser

• BT
• Affiliate Window for SKY
• Vodafone
• MEC for Orange
• O2

Best Technology & Telecoms Publisher

• Consumer Choices
• Top10.com

Our congratulations go to all the companies and individuals above, and we wish you the best of luck!

Azam Marketing’s vast experience and know-how in lead generation, digital marketing and design has enabled us to generate millions of pounds worth of revenue for advertisers. If you would like our team to help your business grow, contact us or call +44 (0)20 7436 4496.

I’ve had quite a few people asking to see my Powerpoint presentation about email marketing at this year’s a4u Expo performance marketing conference which took place a few days ago in London, so am placing it on this blog.

In the presentation I share the secrets of profitably growing, managing, and mailing a database. It covers how to actively growing one’s mailing list size; data collection strategies; cleansing and validating data; segmenting records into different verticals based on consumer preferences; getting into inboxes and optimising deliverability; negotiating higher CPAs and fishing for CPM, CPC, hybrid and tenancy deals; and much more.

The Powerpoint is below, after a few pictures of the talk.

Due to a doubling in our client base in the last 12 months we are on a recruitment drive once again and seeking new digital superstars to join the growing Azam Marketing team. Below are a list of exciting vacancies we have.

These are all senior roles; you must have at least two years full-time or three years part-time experience in the discipline you are applying for the position in. If you are multi-skilled it may be possible to combine roles to suit your passions.

Click on the job title for detailed information about each role.

Programmer/Website Designer/Graphic Designer – full-time

Business Development Manager – full-time or part-time.

Paid Search Marketing Specialist – full-time

Search Engine Optimisation Specialist – part-time

Affiliate Marketing Manager – full-time or maximum part-time

Chief Executive Officer – full-time

We are also seeking a Bookkeeper/Credit Controller and Public Relations Manager.

You may find out more about Azam Marketing on our website and see all the fun we have in our Facebook Fan Group.

Please send applications to Melissa White at hr [at] azam.net

Applications without the information requested in the job ads will not be considered.

If you recommend a candidate to us who we hire, we will pay a generous referral fee.

We are delighted to introduce Rana Hussain, the latest staff member to join us at Azam Marketing. We’re thrilled to welcome him onboard!

Rana brings years of experience of delivering successful email marketing campaigns for internal and external clients.

Having held positions at LG Media, the Islamic Conference Group, Dixons, Essential Soft Private Ltd, E-linx Solutions Ltd and Tower Tech Solutions, Rana has picked up a wide range of skills including systems design, project management, web development and software engineering.

Rana’s new role at Azam will include data management & research analysis, eCRM, and system integration.

We asked him to tell us a bit more about himself and his interests outside of work, and here’s what he had to say:

Describe yourself in three words: Courteous, honest, optimistic

Favourite Quotation: “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”- Benjamin Franklin

Favourite Book: Holy Quran

Favourite Film: The Life Series with David Attenborough

Favourite Website: The BBC website, and nationalgeographic.com

Hobbies and Interests:
Technology, international politics, and playing cricket

Proudest Achievement: Completing my Computer Applications in Accounting MSc from London Metropolitan University in 2006

Most Embarassing Moment: When I slipped and fell on the stage while receiving my university cricket tournament winner’s trophy

Get in touch with Rana:

Email: rana [at] azam.net
Windows Live Messenger: rana_khuram991 [at] hotmail.com
Skype: ranahussain229
Mobile: 07595 751 750

Would you like to work alongside us at Azam Marketing? Due to ongoing expansion we now have several vacancies available. Email hr [at] azam.net for more details

I’ve had a lot of people contacting me requesting the slides of my talks at the A4U Expo and so am making them available in this and the next post.

I am not a disciple of the ‘Death by Powerpoint’ school of thought and firmly believe Powerpoints should help annotate a presentation, not be the presentation itself – how tedious is is it when a presenter spends an hour reading out his Powerpoints to an audience?! – so my slides never impart most of the information in my talks, but hey ho, it’s all we’ve got for the meanwhile (I’ve read in the A4U Expo blog the videos of all the presentations are being edited and will be online in a few week’s time).

I’ll start with the talk which was entitled ‘The Affiliate Sales Kit – Writing Killer Proposals and Selling Yourself To Merchants’. This was presented with the terrific Grant Reid, Senior Consultant at Stream:20.

Here are Grant’s slides:

And here are mine:

Here’s an example document showing how to project oneself professionally to advertisers that I referred to in the talk:

In spite of the economic woes the past year has been a bright one at Azam and our eCRM division has seen rapid growth, with the agency managing activities for clients ranging from Trinity Mirror to Purple Parking.

I am therefore delighted to officially welcome two colleagues who joined the Azam team a while back as eCRM Managers, James Hunt and Ryan Ranaweera. The duo have nearly a decade of industry experience each, having held senior roles at The Media Buzz, Acxiom, Vertis, Hawksmere and Howitt. They have managed email marketing activites for the likes of O2, Domino’s Pizza, Bentley and HSBC.

Following an extensive interview process over several months, James and Ryan were chosen from over 300 applicants after impressing us with their undeniable talents and enthusiasm. The pair are responsible for overseeing all aspects of Azam Marketing’s existing email client base and implementing technical and workflow developments, as well as continuing our eCRM division’s expansion in North America and Europe.

James and Ryan are already proving invaluable to the team and they look forward to taking Azam’s eCRM division from strength to strength!

If you are attending the A4U Expo London, both of them will be present on all three days from Monday to Wednesday.

To gain some insight into what makes them tick, I invited them both to share a bit of info about themselves and here’s what they had to say:

James Hunt

Describe yourself in three words: Friendly, driven, optimistic

Favourite Quotation: “All things are difficult before they are easy” – Thomas Fuller

Favourite Book: ‘The Raven’ – Edgar Allan Poe

Favourite Film: The Godfather (Parts I & II)

Favourite Website: eBay

Hobbies and Interests: Crystal Palace FC, the French language and playing golf

Proudest Achievement: Getting married

Most Embarrassing Moment: Modelling for a childrenswear catalogue at 6 years old

Interesting Facts: I used to live in France, and am a trained chef.

Contact James:
Email: james [at] azam.net
Windows Live Messenger: james [at] jameshunt.info

Ryan Ranaweera

Describe yourself in three words: Funny, sporty, thoughtful

Favourite Quotation: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King

Favourite Book: The BFG by Roald Dahl

Favourite Film: Enter the Dragon, 1978, Bruce Lee

Favourite Website: Arsenal Football Club

Hobbies and Interests: Gym, football, cycling, badminton, martial arts, cinema, technology, cars, girls!

Proudest Achievement: Playing the saxophone at the age of 13 with the Queens Royal Orchestra

Most Embarrassing Moment: Whilst working as a waiter in a hotel, I once slipped and spilled a whole plate of soup onto a little girl’s dress!

Interesting Facts: I can leg press more than 3 times my body weight and have a serious passion for banana and marmite sandwiches, my favourite snack!

Contact Ryan:
Email: ryan [at] azam.net
Windows Live Messenger: ryucoup [at] hotmail.com

Would you like to work alongside Ryan and James in our eCRM team? Due to recent major client wins, including the eCRM contract for one of Britain’s biggest newspapers, Azam Marketing is hiring more email marketing and database management experts. You must have at least four years experience. For more information about these and our other vacancies please contact Melissa White: hr [at] azam.net.

The pet hate of many online marketers is the ever increasing level of spam emails which reach out to unlucky recipients with a bewildering array of bizarre product offers and services. According to Microsoft, more than 97% of all emails sent over the internet are now classed as unwanted or ‘junk’.

The first recognised email marketing message was sent by a marketing company on 3 May, 1978 in Florida to advertise their new range of mini-computers. In 1994, lawyers Canter and Siegel sent a marketing message to 6,000 Usenet discussion groups which is acknowledged to have been the first example of mass unsolicited email. Since that fateful day over 30 years ago, spamming has turned into a huge industry which sees millions of unwanted messages sent out worldwide every day.

Some ‘services’ offered by spam emails (marriage proposals and the like) are so ludicrous that they can be dismissed as an irritating but amusing distraction. However most people would agree that spam is a daily annoyance that can only be controlled with the liberal use of the delete button. Inconvenient and frustrating for sure, but is there a more serious consequence too?

In today’s world where we are all encouraged to be more eco-aware, it’s empowering to read that email spammers have become one of the green lobby’s latest targets: The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam report published by antivirus firm McAfee reveals some eye-opening facts about the ecological cost of spam emails. According to their estimates, the average year’s spam in the US alone is responsible for producing 17 million tons of CO2 and 33bn kilowatt hours of wasted energy as people sift through their inboxes in search of genuine emails.

So what can be done to limit the amount of spam that you receive? Thankfully, most ISPs offer spam blocking as part of their service, and there are also free downloads for your mail client from sites such as Mailwasher and Spam Assassin. These delete spam on your server before they even reach your inbox.

Another good tip that I picked up recently is to be cautious when attending industry events. In February I visited the TFM&A Show at London’s Earls Court, and on entering my colleague Nadeem advised me not to let anyone scan the barcode on my badge so that they couldn’t sign me up to their email lists. This turned out to be sound advice as I was surprised by how many people I had to stop doing exactly that!

Whilst it’s clear that spam is never going disappear completely, its good to know that there are still a few ways of fighting it, and you can now be assured that you are doing your bit for Mother Nature too!

Client News: The Belmont Thornton affiliate program is now live on the Tradedoubler network. Earn a generous £10.00 per lead. Contact karen [at] azam.net for more information.

While overall marketing budgets will drop in 2009 as the recession begins to bite, a number of recent studies have forecast that digital advertising spend will continue to increase.

The latest Marketing Week YouGov poll reveals that 42% of UK marketers foresee their digital spend increasing. 21% say they will cut TV advertising, 26% print and newspaper spend, and 29% magazine advertising. Outdoor, radio and cinema advertising will fare no better, with 18% predicting budget cuts for outdoor and radio each, and 17% for cinema.

Things are no different Stateside, with UBS Securities Research projecting spend on traditional media such as broadcasting, print and outdoor to decline 11% in 2009, its biggest drop in 60 years. The research firm’s assessment for 2009 is that “only the Internet should remain positive.” Online advertising is expected to grow 7% in the United States in 2009 and, by 2010, should make up 14% of overall ad spend.

Typifying the move from offline to online marketing spend is Electrolux. Whereas the company has been spending 80% of its £50/$73 Million pan-European marketing budget on TV and posters, in 2009 its investment in television will be slashed to less than 40% and outdoor to a maximum of 10%. Alexander Darwazeh, senior brand director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, predicts that, while marketing budget will remain the same depending on market conditions, ”we’ll be moving aggressively out of broadcast and billboards and into customer relationship management, the internet and experiential.”

The shift of advertising budgets to digital is leading to traditional agencies desperately trying to move into the electronic world to survive. BooneOakley, for instance, Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest agency, is setting up an in-house online division. “You can’t even say this is the future anymore,” says John Boone, agency principal. “It’s the present. Agencies that aren’t doing this won’t be around very long.”

Consumers are turning to the internet to save money on their shopping on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca have reported their best ever holiday shopping seasons. Seattle-based Amazon.com said it sold more than 6.3 million items on 15 December, 2008, its peak day. UK online retail sales are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 12% through to 2012 with cashback, voucher code and comparison shopping sites predicted to become particularly popular.

Client News: January is the peak season for travel bookings. Promote Purple Parking on AffiliateFuture and Tradedoubler who are DOUBLING commissions up to 20% for the month. Beats the typical 1% from airlines anyday!

I’ll never forget 4 August 1997 for it is the day Azam Marketing came into being (although the business had a different name in those days) and today marks our 11^th anniversary.

It’s been quite a ride, full of ups and downs, and I thank God for having given us the resilience to survive the many dark days when income levels were pitiful and the future of the business would hang on a combination of how soon those cheques from Books.com and Dealtime would arrive and how much longer I was willing to live on a diet of Sainsbury’s baked beans.

I never forget those bleak days and, when the times are so good that we have new clients beating their way to our door on a daily basis, I keep reminding myself and my team to not become complacent, and to continue to work with the same hunger and humility as those pioneering days in 1997.

I see the majority of businesses and business managers on the interweb become big headed when they become successful and, as sure as night follows day, they eventually pay the price for it. I am constantly reminding myself to keep my feet on the ground. I stay in touch with the grassroots by attending more gatherings than almost anybody else out there and listen attentively to everybody’s views about the industry be they 18 or 48. Just as we’ve always done since day one, the entire Azam Marketing team makes sure everybody we deal with, irrespective of size, is treated like a king.

As we charge into our 12^th year, I have to say none of it could have been done without our many friends and supporters, and offer a special thank you to the many terrific people in online marketing who make it the most inspiring and exhilarating industry to work in.

To shake things up in this month’s round-up of what’s hot and what’s not at Azam Marketing, we decided to list the updates on a divisional, rather than client by client basis.

Affiliate Management

It felt that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong in the four days in the run-up to the launch of the Moneynet affiliate program, but both our Senior Affiliate Manager Sinead and Commission Junction were at the top of their game: everything got sorted out and we were delighted to launch it on the target day of Thursday, 24 July (we usually launch a program on a Tuesday or Thursday to gain maximum visibility). We’re waiting upon some Is to be dotted and Ts to be crossed on a document and then will also be launching the affiliate program on Webgains towards the end of this month.

All our other affiliate programs are rumbling along nicely and we have published a PDF guide providing an outline of what they have to offer here.

Affiliate Marketing (publisher angle)

Because of the credit crunch, there’s not too much to smile about when it comes to the advertisers we are marketing in the finance sector. Approval rates for credit cards, for instance, have been declining and it has invariably impacted on us as we generate several hundred credit card leads a month.

But our affiliate arm is continuing to grow at such a blazing pace, whether it is in the finance or non-finance verticals, that increased scrub rates or decreased commissions do not stop each month smashing the previous month’s records and being our most profitable to date.

Paid Search Marketing

Long gone are the days when paid search involved ruffling up a few relevant keywords, bashing together an advert, deposting cash into a PPC account, and hey presto, you’re receiving more or less quality traffic.

Such as the complexities, intricacies and inconsistencies of the likes of Google Adwords and Microsoft AdCenter and such is the competitiveness of the search space now, that more and more clients who had an internal person carrying out PPC are outsourcing the work to us to squeeze more revenue out of their campaigns.

We are winning accounts from other agencies as well. Two months ago we took over the paid search account for a retailer previously being managed by one of the supposed top PPC companies in the land. In July we increased the click-through rate from 2.70% to 3.45%, the conversion rate from 1.76% to 2.34% and reduced the cost per conversion from £10.32 to £7.66.

If you too would like to increase the ROI on your PPC expenditure by using our eight years of experience in paid search, contact us at results [at] azam.net .

Search Engine Optimisation

Even though we’ve only been carrying out the SEO for three months for some new sites, we’ve managed to climb to the number four and five slots in Yahoo for several popular brand terms they are focused on. If only Google was so easy, but we’re chiselling away as usual!

It’s satisfying to see companies finally beginning to appreciate the value of high organic rankings and willing to invest to achieve them: last month we were invited to pitch for a £300,000/$600,000 a year and a £50,000/$100,000 a month contract.

Email Marketing

We are now managing the email newsletters for a number of companies, and clients are always overwhelmed with how we use our knowledge of most things internety to generate incredible results. For instance, here’s a quotation from the Director of Purple Parking: "Azam Marketing have been managing our email list since March 2007 and the results they have produced have far exceeded our expectations. Using their considerable know-how, they have ensured that each mailing to our customer base results is highly profitable. The standard of support is second-to-none."

Our newsletter management operations are carried out in a refined and considerate manner, only to double opt-in subscribers, and we are obsessive about the quality of every email we send out to subscribers (many agencies use us to advertise their brands and present the emails we sent out as case studies to their clients). It is therefore incredibly frustrating to see spammers, who have no consideration for whether data is opt-in or not, or collect email addresses from tacky websites promoting prize draws which nobody has a cat in hell’s chance of winning, give the discipline a bad name, but we can only hope that the people who pollute our inboxes with junk – some of whom will be showing their faces at Affiliate Summit Boston in a few days – will eventually be cornered by the law.  

Our other divisions, which deal with Public Relations, Web Design and Domain Name Trading, are as busy as ever, but I’ll leave insights into their workings until a future update… plus I’m not at liberties to write about projects as candidly as I’d like to (one sales guy, who has become a friend of mine, told me a few month’s back "Nadeem, I made sure I’d read your articles every week because you would reveal your clients and then I would cold call them to try to win them over to our company!"). Over and out.

Coming Soon: the third and final part in our series on how we designed Froggybank.co.uk.

Job Openings: the Azam Marketing team is growing and we are seeking a new Web Designer and Manager to join us. Flexible hours to suit your lifestyle. See the ads here and here respectively. Also experienced freelance Affiliate Manager sought: send your full details to vacancies [at] azam.net .

The email marketing industry certainly has more than its fair share of characters, but Adam Mangan, Lateral Group’s Sales Director, has always passed through the bayesian filtering with me. Combining an acute understanding of his realm, an affable disposition and a penchant for honesty which is in short supply among people working in Sales, I look forward to each meeting not as much to discuss the projects we are working on but to spend a pleasant hour or so with somebody who has become a Friend.