So you may be thinking, as I’m sure quite a lot of Facebook’s almost 500 million registered users are, what exactly is going on?

Not so long ago Facebook changed their privacy settings to allow users granular access to their privacy settings, to control exactly who can see what, when, where and in what context. Personally I thought this was a marvelous idea, and the first thing I did was set everything to private. Job done, straightforward and spelled out for you there in black and white.

Unfortunately this spelled trouble for people who found the level of control to be overwhelming and confusing, and after a few privacy gaffes (including a few choice comments from Mark Zuckerberg himself) and millions of users threatening to delete or abandon their accounts, Facebook have caved to the pressure and are rolling out a simpler, one click approach to privacy controls. But what exactly does this mean?

- There is now the equivalent of a big red flashy button. Facebook explains: “A new simple control makes it easy to share on Facebook with friends, friends of friends or everyone—all with just one click. The corresponding settings are immediately applied and displayed in an easy-to-understand grid.”

So there you have it, to change your privacy levels, one click. Bang, and you’re done.

- Fortunately (at least from my point of view) the granular privacy access controls will remain as an option. These now appear on a single page in your settings panel and any changes apply account wide, from your wall to any applications you might use Facebook connect with. This applies to all your information. Perfect for those that like to control (and don’t mind taking responsibility for) their own privacy settings.

- The amount of information that is available on your profile, such as gender, age, job, relationship status etc will be reduced and is also controllable by the end-user.

- Facebook pages will “have privacy settings that work for both ends of the connection”. Meaning that you can now hide what pages you like from friends and connections, and also on the fan box on the pages themselves.

- You can now opt out of your information sharing on platform applications.

Following the raging debates and heated threats to leave Facebook a ghost town, the much demanded privacy settings are in the here and now. It’s difficult to strike a balance when simplicity and yet total control are your end goals, and time will tell whether this will be enough to calm the storm of angry users. Hopefully they can now go back to Farmville and Mafia Wars safe in the knowledge that their private information remains just that: private.

But then, is anything ever really private on the internet?

Or you’re engaging in email marketing. How many split tests have you done recently? Do you know what your database likes? Does one part of your recipients always receive a different version of your emails or does everybody always get the same design, same message, same “from”,  same everything? And how many times do you change your Google AdWords to see if you can get in those extra % clicks…

Do you know which digital mix gives you the best conversions…?

Do you constantly test and improve…?

If the answer is yes – great! You’re doing the right thing to monitor and (potentially) improve your communication with the customer then this is what marketing is all about. If not, it might be worth considering – simply because in the fast changing digital world something that worked a year ago can be the spanner in the works 12 months down the line.

The magic formula is testing, testing and again testing. Everything that can be changed in your digital mix is worth testing to ensure that your marketing works. Test your website (layout, images, design, the options are endless), test your email marketing, try different ads in  your Pay-per-click, play around with your banners, test different approaches in Social Media and see what works and what doesn’t.And then go out and do something about it.

The question here is not “Do I want to communicate with them?” but “Do they want to communicate with me?”

Who are the people who respond to my email marketing – and who are those that don’t? Reducing a database hurts but is absolutely the right thing to do when you realise that part of it is dead weight. They are the people who never open any of your emails and who are quite clearly telling you “I don’t want to talk to you”. It is their right to refuse any contact with you but at the same time you should make sure that you are focussing your effort on the people who are actually engaged. The ones who open your emails, who download, click on links, phone you and ultimately, buy from you. They are your evangelists and they are the ones you should nurture.

So, when you’re doing email marketing, keep an eye on your database. Monitor who opens your emails and who doesn’t – and don’t hesitate – after let’s say 9 or 10 months – to delete the persistent “non-readers”. You’ll save money, it will do your figures good and you’ll end up with a nice and engaged email marketing community. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

On the one hand, a regular newsletter is the ideal place for this type of information; after all, you want to remind people why they should come to you and / or stick with you. On the other hand, like with so many things in life, you should be careful not to overdo it. When gathering ideas for a newsletter you should always put yourself in the position of the reader and ask yourself the famous WIIFM? “What’s in it for me?” In other words, what’s the benefit for people who have agreed to be emailed by you on a regular basis? (yes, they should agree in some way to receive your marketing communications!).

Treat the contacts in your database as people that are special; because they are. They are the people who want to engage with you. So, give them something special from time to time; invite them to an event and offer reduced (free?) tickets; give them access to materials (e.g. white papers) which others can’t get their hands on; let them have something – e.g. a special offer – which others can’t buy or before others can buy it. These are only examples but I’m sure that if you look at your business and your client base you will find a lot more little treats for your faithful newsletter recipients. Exclusive is the word. So – what’s in it for them?

While failing to optimize your site will not necessarily exclude you from search results on websites like Google, Bing etc it goes along way to making the process smoother and more efficient. The search engine bots that crawl the net can see the website metadata as well as the page contents, giving your pages and results more context and better relevancy. It also gets your website on there much more quickly so people can start stumbling upon you!

SEO isn’t just for new websites either. Pretty much any website could be improved SEO wise in at least one way. Much like the Aldridge Brownlee website that the team recently worked their magic on.

Background

Aldridge Brownlee Solicitors LLP, established in 1929, is one of the larger firms in the Bournemouth district, with three offices in Bournemouth and one in Highcliffe and some 80 persons in the firm altogether. The firm advises both private and commercial clients and can assist on Legal Services Publicly funded work where appropriate.

RTMedia recently re-branded, re-designed and re-built the AldridgeBrownlee.co.uk from the ground up with all new content. This presented an opportunity for the team to come in and, with what was essentially a blank canvas, optimize the new website for better organic search results.

The team first broke down the site on a page-by-page basis to determine optimal keywords, descriptions and phrases to use that would be most relevant to the content. With this completed, a request was submitted to Google, Bing and other search engines to send crawler bots to the website to index the website.

With the help of RTMedia / GetShaking team the Aldridge Brownlee website and individual landing pages has moved up in the ranks quite substantially. Over the past few months since the process was started we have seen an average increase of five places with the majority of the chosen keywords now displaying Aldridge Brownlee as the top result.

As an example, a search for “commercial solicitor Bournemouth” previously resulted in a listing that was half way down the first page. After the SEO tweaks it now shows as the highest organic search result.

During November alone, AldridgeBrownlee.co.uk started to appear on Google, Bing and Yahoo under 17 new keywords. Including the much sought after “personal injury solicitors” search returns. And then in December it moved up a further four places to the second organic search result.

This will continue over time, and every few weeks we are seeing increases and new keyword result additions where there was previously no sign of Aldridge Brownlee.

The success of any campaign is influenced by all areas of the process, requiring the close co-operation of everyone from the IT/Server guys to the designers and database handlers.

One of the main contributing factors to the failure of a campaign can be the number of hard bounces and complaint rates. AOL, one of the world’s largest ISPs, recommends maintaining a <0.1% complaint rate. That’s a threshold of 1 in every 1,000 emails that you send out. That may sound harsh, but by adhering to some rules it’s entirely possible.

Even if you beat the spam filter there is no guarantee that your mail will ever be read. Finicky recipients who are unhappy at having received your mail may just click that “Report as spam” button. On local email clients the effect is minimal, but on web-based services like Hotmail or Google Mail, this can have a serious knock on effect for other recipients on the same service as these are tracked, recorded and taken into consideration in future (as if you didn’t have enough to worry about already).

Over the next few weeks I will cover some of the specific problems that the aspiring email marketer would encounter during the course of a campaign, from set up through to the post-send fallout. For this first part we will look at where it all begins: your server and domain.

Server and Domain

Server and domain processes and configuration will mainly be of use to if you are running marketing software on your own server.

There are a few things to consider when taking the step to set up your own email-marketing server, starting with the IP address. Having a static IP address to send email from your server is a great way to build your reputation as a trusted sender. The closer you keep to rules, the better your reputation. The better your reputation, the better your deliverability. It’s as simple as that.

In addition to your IP address, there are a couple of processes and frameworks that can be utilized to help your emails along the way.

The first, and probably most popular of these, is an Open Source project called the Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy. The information is published to their Domain Name Server (DNS) in the form of an SPF Record which contains specific instructions for the receiving server, telling it which mail servers can send outgoing mail on it’s behalf.

When the inbound server receives the mail, the SPF Record is checked against the senders mail server for consistency. This speeds up the process of receiving and decreases the load on the server, allowing more mail to be processed in a shorter amount of time. If the records match, it is put through a less stringent spam-check process and then passed onto the recipient. Conversely, if the records do not match and the email is being sent from an unauthorized source, it will be put through a more rigorous checking process and will more than likely be trashed.

Another similar process is the Sender ID framework, a project initially spearheaded by Microsoft. While similar in action to SPF, the fundamental difference was that Sender ID could verify the IP address of the server that has sent the mail, compares it to the Sender ID record, and then deals with it appropriately. (Currently, both frameworks now support this.)

The final authorization process is known as Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which uses public-key cryptography to digitally sign all emails. The inbound server then checks this public-key for verification. This process is of particular importance when sending email to GMail accounts, and is recommended if a large amount of GMail addresses are present in your recipient database. To use Domain keys, a third party software package or proxy must be implemented on your mail server.

All of the above methods do require either a working knowledge of DNS records or server changes, and care should always be taken when making changes to such settings – as it’s very easy to break something if you don’t know what you’re doing (best to get a professional to do it for you). It’s also worth noting that currently, not all domain registrars support SPF or Sender ID but they are quickly gaining in popularity and in the future the option to have them will surely be offered as default. If you are not sure if your domain supports it, check with your registrar’s technical support.

That’s it from me this week. Check back soon where I will cover off how to keep your database clean, relevant and minty fresh!