Didier Grossemy - Digital Marketing Blog

Didier Grossemy - Why Most Email Marketing Does Not Work?

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO
Email Marketing is a science that requires to follow these six simple rules:
Know your Audience	Make it relevant Make it personal Make it worth their while
Get to the Point	Be Quick to engage, show me - don’t tell me Answer ‘what’s in it for me’ Don’t sell, inform
Too many words	People are too busy for fluff Pictures are better than words Abbreviate your thoughts
Create a relationship	Don’t stop at one brief chat Build trust and expectation Reward your readers
Plan, Test and Measure	Every element, every time Broadcast Times and offers Clicks and Calls
Clear Outcomes	Answer why I should … Be clear on the reader’s next step Make your Call to Action obvious

Need professional help?
X2 Digital - As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Call us! on +612 9238 8125 or enquire now. Click Here

Didier Grossemy - 2008's Top Five Explosive Web 2.0 Trends

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

Web 2.0, the second generation of the Internet.

Didier Grossemy says that Web 2.0 is transforming the Internet into an even more powerful tool for businesses seeking to leverage technology to drive revenue, increase profits and reduce expenses. Didier Grossemy provides an holistic approach to Digital Marketing.

As Didier Grossemy says, it is easy to understand that virtually all businesses will be spending their marketing dollars online in the New Year. In fact, BtoB Magazine found that 79 percent of marketers plan to increase their online marketing budgets for 2008. In doing so, businesses will need trusted and experienced individuals, such as Didier Grossemy or company like X2 Digital behind them in order to fully capitalize on the following top five hot Web 2.0 trends:

Interactive web sites
In order to effectively compete and meet the growing demands of today's more sophisticated customer, businesses are fanatically seeking to upgrade their web sites with features that enhance the user experience and deliver a measurable ROI from their marketing dollars. Businesses will focus on shifting their web sites from isolated, static information based destinations to highly functional platforms serving powerful web applications to end users that emphasize online collaboration, sharing, interaction and learning.

Managed Email Marketing
With email marketing delivering a $51.45 return on investment (ROI) for every marketing dollar spent, according to Direct Marketing Association, businesses will continue to shift greater portions of their direct mail budgets to email marketing. More email marketing campaigns in 2008 will focus on highly targeted offerings, links to rich media content and social networking.

Social Networking
As online interaction becomes more and more prevalent in society; consumers are turning to online ratings and reviews, testimonials and blogs to educate themselves on products, services and much more. comScore recently found that more than three-quarters of review users in nearly every industry category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase. Businesses need to have social networking interaction features such as customer reviews, testimonials and blogs implemented into their web sites for 2008 to meet the growing needs of their customers.

Video
Whether businesses plan on implementing video to run ad’s, product demonstrations and reviews or as email links, the main point is that they will be using video in 2008 more than they ever have. In fact, 86% of online retailers used some form of video during the shopping experience in 2007, up from 52% last year. While potentially enhancing the user experience, video can also annoy and frustrate visitors. Businesses that use videos incorrectly on their websites can cause pages to load slowly, crash browsers and lose customers and dollars.

RSS Feeds
RSS is heading closer towards mainstream adoption as more businesses begin to implement RSS feed subscriptions via their web sites. For 2008 the pace of RSS growth is set to accelerate for both consumer usage and business implementation. RSS is geared around segmentation, therefore, failing to offer subscribers options with their subscription or sending them information they didn’t sign up to receive will quickly lead businesses to RSS failure.

Need professional help?
X2 Digital - As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Call us! on +612 9238 8125 or enquire now. Click Here

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

Does your email marketing software includes SPF

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

Article presented by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

SPF is the breakthrough for sending emails from an external email technology (other than Outlook). This document is to make you understand the importance of setting up your SPF before starting sending emails.

Common Types of E-Mail Abuse where the Sender Address is Forged

Spammers want to avoid receiving non-delivery notifications (bounces) to their real addresses.
Fraudsters want to cover their tracks and remain anonymous.
Computer worms want to cause confusion or just don’t care about which sender addresses they use.
Phishers (password fishers) want to impersonate well-known, trusted identities in order to steal passwords from users.

The Problem: Sender Address Forgery

Today, nearly all abusive e-mail messages carry fake sender addresses. The victims whose addresses are being abused often suffer from the consequences, because their reputation gets diminished and they have to disclaim liability for the abuse, or waste their time sorting out misdirected bounce messages.

You probably have experienced one kind of abuse or another of your e-mail address yourself in the past, e.g. when you received an error message saying that a message allegedly sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient, although you never sent a message to that address.

Sender address forgery is a threat to users and companies alike, and it even undermines the e-mail medium as a whole because it erodes people's confidence in its reliability. That is why your bank never sends you information about your account by e-mail and keeps making a point of that fact.

But it does not have to be this way!

Sender Addresses in E-Mails

Like paper mail letters, e-mail messages have at least two kinds of sender addresses: one on the envelope and one in the letterhead.

The envelope sender address (sometimes also called the return-path) is used during the transport of the message from mail server to mail server, e.g. to return the message to the sender in the case of a delivery failure. It is usually not displayed to the user by mail programs.

The header sender address of an e-mail message is contained in the "From" or "Sender" header and is what is displayed to the user by mail programs. Generally, mail servers do not care about the header sender address when delivering a message.

The Solution: SPF

The Xmail (X2 Email marketing software) uses SPF standards.

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an open standard specifying a technical method to prevent sender address forgery. More precisely, the current version of SPF — called SPFv1 or SPF Classic — protects the envelope sender address, which is used for the delivery of messages. See the box on the right for a quick explanation of the different types of sender addresses in e-mails.
(There are other solutions that protect the header sender address or that do not care at all about who sent the message, only who originally wrote it.)

Even more precisely, SPFv1 allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy, e.g. which mail servers they use to send mail from their domain. The technology requires two sides to play together:(1) the domain owner publishes this information in an SPF record in the domain's DNS zone, and when someone else's mail server receives a message claiming to come from that domain, then (2) the receiving server can check whether the message complies with the domain's stated policy. If, e.g., the message comes from an unknown server, it can be considered a fake.

Once you are confident about the authenticity of the sender address, you can finally "take it for real" and attach reputation to it. While IP-address-based reputation systems like Spamhaus or SpamCop have prevailed so far, reputation will increasingly be based on domains and even individual e-mail addresses in the future, too.

Furthermore, additional kinds of policies are planned for a future version of SPF, such as asserting that all of a domain's outgoing mail is S/MIME or PGP signed.

An Example Policy

Let's look at an example to give you an idea of how SPF works. Bob owns the domain example.net. He also sometimes sends mail through his GMail account and contacted GMail's support to identify the correct SPF record for GMail.Since he often receives bounces about messages he didn't send, he decides to publish an SPF record in order to reduce the abuse of his domain in e-mail envelopes:

example.net. TXT "v=spf1 mx a:pluto.example.net include:aspmx.googlemail.com -all"The parts of the SPF record mean the following: v=spf1 SPF version 1
mx the incoming mail servers (MXes) of the domain are authorized to also send mail for example.net

a:pluto.example.net the machine pluto.example.net is authorized, too
include:aspmx.googlemail.com everything considered legitimate by gmail.com is legitimate for example.net, too

-all all other machines are not authorized

This example demonstrates but a small part of SPF's expressiveness.

Do not take it as a guideline for building your own record — things might not work out as you expect and legitimate messages might get blocked! Instead, learn more about the record syntax, or get the complete picture by studying the full specification. Community support is available.

Is it all Mambo Jambo TO YOU?

Leave it to us. Click Here

Xmail (X2 Email Marketing software) has built in triggers to generate an SPF record.

Meaning that all you email communication will not end up in the spam box.

Need professional help?
As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Call us! on +612 9238 8125 or enquire now. Click Here

Article presented by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

Didier Grossemy - You need it more than anytime before

You need it now more than anytime before!

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO New Client Acquisition Didier Grossemy says that, when it comes to acquiring new customers, you need to build databases quickly and cost effectively. Didier Grossemy says that most business owners would not have the appropriate technology and advanced analytics you need to determine your allowable cost-per-new-client, so you know your limits as well as when to increase spending. Technology allows you to understand and build “Business Intelligence” with your customer’s behaviours. Please be kind to your business and the law requirements, DO NOT send email with Outlook, as it is not SPAM compliant and does not provide you any business intelligence to grow your business. For example, when you send an email would it be helpful for your business to understand in real time the following? Did they receive your email Did they open your email How long it took them to open their email How many time they open the email what where they interested in reading Did they forward the email to a friend Did they click on a particular link if so how many times Automatically track and flag invalid e-mail addresses and more… Your marketing efforts on acquiring the right type of customer for your organization must be constant and focused on building a strong database containing as many as possible prospects and customers through direct mail, print media, email, online activities, telemarketing, and point-of-sale registration. If you don’t have an email database, here is a simple tip: Step 1: organise a competition with a big prize e.g. “WIN A TRIP for TWO” (work with a travel agent to promote them and get it for free). Step 2: design and print a postcard and send it to your database or distribute it through your network or point of sales. Step 3: yes... you may have to use an old delivery system such as the post services. Result: conversion of an address book to an online database by getting the card recipients to register online. Et voila...you did not have to call everyone to ask them for their email address and now your digital database is growing. PS: Today the most cost effective communication solution is email (up to 1000 times cheaper) to create  and send emails than direct mail distribution, the sooner you start building your email database the sooner you will build customer acquisition and retention at a very low cost. Customer Retention You must know that it is equally important to retain customers, as it is to generate new ones. When you look at marketing solutions and deep analysis into your customer data you need to focus your efforts and investments on the most productive segments. Build a retention plan that delivers the right message and communication to your customers to keep them coming back, to improve response rates, increase order values, and develop loyalty programs that maximise revenues and profits. You must rely on lifetime value and regression modelling to predict future revenue streams and to determine the present value of new customers. This best practices approach ensures that money spent up front to acquire new customers pays dividends well into the future. Customer Loyalty Programs You may spend 5 to 10 times as much acquiring new customers as you will retain existing ones. You will work hard and spend a lot of money to get customers to use your services or buy your products. It only makes sense to put an appropriate amount of effort into retaining those customers so that your company may enjoy long-term repeat business. Your customers have more information today than ever before. Many are Internet savvy and all are out to find the best deal for them.  One proven way to improve your chances of customer retention is through a carefully constructed customer loyalty program. Quick tips: Identify and retain your best customer segments Extract more value from your customers Communicate more effectively one-on-one with your customers Estimate the value of your customers by segment Derive an allowable cost-per-new-customer Improve your brand or company image Need professional help? As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Contact X2 Agency Call us! on +612 9238 8125 or enquire now. Click Here

Nobody knows you yet | By Didier Grossemy

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

So you have put your web pages on the internet and you expect people to know of your presence without promotion and marketing effort... this will not happen...

Let’s face it – NOBODY KNOWS YOU YET!

Finish creating pages for your web site is not the end. In fact, it is only the beginning. Just as completing your schooling is not the end but the beginning of your journey in the world beyond the walls of your classroom.

Unfortunately, a big number of you seem to think that the main battle has to do with the difficulties to understand HTML or for the X2 clients using a content management system (CMS), creating the web pages.

People seems to rejoice too early as soon as their pages are live on the web.

Why, that is a big W-R-O-N-G!

Since indirectly you are operating an Internet Business promoting your products and services, like any other business, you need to communicate. You need to interact. You need to let people know you are around and open for business.

I am sure you got my point by now. If you have not been making much progress in your early stages of your Internet Business, this may very well be the reason.

To get yourself started quickly and let people know you are in business, you can do the following easily for no fees or of course you can use professional services. While you do not necessarily need money to make money on the Internet, the life and death of your business depends heavily on your sweat equity and wisdom.

Here are 6 basics to make you known at no or very little cost

1 - If you use a content management system (CMS) make sure you have prepared your Meta Tags inside every page of your website.

If you don’t have a CMS, then prepare a spreadsheet and give it to your web designer.

The Title Tag - The HTML title tag isn't really a meta tag, but it's worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the TITLE and /TITLE portions) will appear in the reverse bar of someone's browser when they view the web page.
The Meta Description Tag - The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag. The first meta tag is the one that says "name=description"? That's the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).
The Meta Keywords Tag - The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy.
The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important.

TIP: to see the meta tags of a page, right click on a web page and select view source. - at the top of the page you will see the meta tags

2 - Submit your site to major search engines (Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.). In internet jargon, it is called search engine submission.

This should always be the first thing to do as soon as you have your web site up and all your pages include meta tags.

3 - Submit your link to web sites with high Page Rank.

Having your link submitted to directories, forums or related sites with high PR value will also result in increasing your site PR when Google bots crawl on your pages in your web site.

4 - Participate in discussion boards.

Join one or two discussion boards where your prospects are gathering. You can interact, submit articles and this gives you the chance to leave your website URL on the board for people interested in what you have to offer. Do not join too many as it is actually unethical and disturbing if people view your profile to find that you post only once or twice on the board. If you have to leave the board, make sure you leave for a good reason.

5 – Join some online social networking sites and start promoting your profile and your business.

Be creative and create some activities and groups around your professional activity or your personal liking.

Here are a few:

Ecademy.com (business)- I recommend
Fastpitchnetworking.com (business) I recommend
Linkedin.com (profile) - I recommend
Notchup.com (Profile)
Zoominfo.com (Profile)
Zaabiz.com.au (Profile)
Xing.com (Profile)
Myspace.com (Friends and family)
Facebook.com (Friends and family) I recommend

6 - . Submit your articles to other websites and write a Blog.

There are many sites online that specialise in listing directories of articles. If you include a link to your website in your author’s resource box, publishing your articles on these sites is a great way to establish some links back to your website.

To write a blog I recommend using Type Pad

Furthermore, other sites and e-zines publishers might even want to publish your article in their publication!

With 6 easy ways to start, you can promote your website at no cost but if you value your time and it is all too hard, then talk to us.

Need professional help?
Contact X2 Digital.  As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies.

Click Here

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

Are you connected or becoming disconnected - By Didier Grossemy

Didier Grossemy theory is that the more connected we are, the more we become disconnected

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO

We are living in an unprecedented social experiment.

Never so much technology has been available to everyone.
From a very young age, children start with a computer connected to the Internet then graduate very quickly in the name of parent security with mobile phones, they are the new generation of connected kids.
For these kids social interactivity is happening through emails, SMS and of course what it is called “Social” sites with the likes of Facebook and others.

Adults are very much the same, if you are working in an office, how many times do your co-workers send you an email? Rather than just talking to you... Even if they are just a few meters away…
People just don’t communicate any longer by delivering through their voice and posture a unique charisma and message. Today they will simply SMS or email each other. Individuality almost does not exist as more and more people evolve amongst groups within the so called “Social Networking Sites” and try to outdo each other.

Remember the blink in the eyes and the nice smiles… all gone…

Our interpretation of laughing is now put in three letters “LOL” at the beginning I could not understand people telling me always “lol” I thought I was a kind of a… you know… lol…Lolita… etc… anyway one day I finally graduated and find out that “lol” meant “Lots of Laugh” so you make someone laugh they will reply “lol”.

This is what the world is all about now? Having a good laugh with someone, a tap on the shoulder, a cry, a kiss, a strong emotion is now tree letters. Great! or actually very sad…
If you want to find friendship or life companion, don’t bother talking to your friends or going to a party simply hit a dating site. People will say, it’s SAFE…that’s on itself relatively scary… what’s safe about talking to someone that you don’t know and could be pretending to be anyone. What about falling in love with that person and discover later that the athletic description and impersonation is in fact right the opposite.
Strange world… people are feeling more comfortable in using technology to connect with someone else rather than being in front of another human being.

Are we are becoming a slave of technology rather than using it for what it was designed for…productivity.

What are the consequences of this social behaviour?

Are we connected or socially disconnected…

I personally believe that technology has reduced our social capital—the relationships that bind people together and create a sense of community. Consequences include decreased civility, loss of behavioural boundaries and increased crime. We must find ways to deal with our profound loss of social connectedness.

Even though technological advances have contributed significantly to the problem of isolation, the emphasis on individualism in today’s society has compounded it.

Pappano believes that often we may want to connect with others and to have deep and meaningful relationships, but we want it on our own terms. “We have moved from a society in which the group was more important than the individual,” she says, “to one in which the central figure is the self. ... From the ashes of duty we have risen to claim not merely a healthy dose of freedom but individual supremacy. ... We want success, power, and recognition. We want to be able to buy or command caring, respect, and attention. And today so many of us feel deserving of the service and luxuries once accorded a privileged few. We may live in a more egalitarian society, but we have become puffed full of our own self-worth.”

She believes that the concept of self-sacrifice is no longer a significant part of our modern cultural makeup and is often seen as weakness, not strength. More and more people are evaluating their relationships in terms of cost-benefit analysis and weighing friendship in light of investment and return. Today, instead of considering others, people are more likely to put their own needs first and ask, “What’s in it for me?”

As a result, many are experiencing a new loneliness that stems from being overcommitted and under connected. And increasingly we are being led into a social isolation that we barely notice. As Miller says, “little by little, isolation becomes familiar, even normal. Sadly, even loneliness becomes like the wallpaper in your room; you don’t even really notice it’s there.”
Is it because we want more? Of course it is…

Journalist Laura Pappano (The Connection Gap) examines the impact of the market-driven frenzy to have increasingly more. As we cut ourselves off from one another, we are surrounding ourselves with the newest and latest gadgets and material comforts. Not only do we want these things, however; we want them now. Like Gleick, Pappano believes that “speed has become the Holy Grail.

We want faster service, faster computers, faster fast food, and faster athletes. The pace is so frenetic that speed that is merely linear is no longer speedy. Speed must now have bulk. It is not enough for one thing to be done fast; many things must be done fast at the same time or in such tight sequence that one nearly cuts short the next.”

Multitasking, a term coined by computer scientists in the 1960s to express the ability of a computer to perform multiple operations simultaneously, is now applied to the human machine. Because it is possible to do several things at a time, we try to cram in as much as possible.
As Gleick writes, “These days it is possible to drive, eat, listen to a book, and talk on the phone, all at once, if you dare. No segment of time—not a day, not a second—can really be a zero-sum game.”

To be or not to be… technology free

Some tech-free celebs are recovering tech addicts. Tyra Banks told New York Times Magazine that her BlackBerry habit caused her physical pain. She has since gone low-tech and jots her thoughts in a notebook.

Technophobia, of course, extends far beyond cell phones.

Christopher Walken and David Sedaris don't use cell phones or e-mail. Simon Cowell says he doesn't know how to work a computer. President Bush was lampooned in 2006 for saying he uses "the Google" to look at maps of his Texas ranch. He reportedly doesn't use e-mail for fear that his messages might be subpoenaed. Recently, however, his 84-year-old father, George H.W. Bush Sr., said that he enjoys emailing.

Paul McCartney has admitted he doesn't know how to use ATMs and prefers writing letters over e-mail for "aesthetic" reasons. Elton John is nostalgic for the low-tech vibe of the 1970s. The singer frequently talks about the Internet's stifling effect on community and creativity and even suggested to U.K. paper The Sun that the Internet be shut down for five years to spark better quality art and music.

Technophobia isn't simply generational.

Some young celebrities strive to be tech free, too. Thirty-one-year-old Orlando Bloom has revealed that he doesn't email or own a computer, because he "just [doesn't] want to deal with it."

So here we are… it’s like every good thing in life, you must know how and when to use it but not abusing it. Technology and social tools of all sorts should be used to facilitate relationships but not be the only way of life or business communication. If you only rely on one aspect of communication, personal life or business will simply be disconnected from the real world and from the ultimate end results.

Common! Pick up the phone, don’t be scared…talk or meet someone, it’s good for you.

Article written by:  Didier Grossemy | X2 Digital CEO