Marketing

A photo expedition of Bermuda highlighting much more than is marketed

This photographic expedition of the Island of Bermuda reveals the simple things and places that would often not meet the eye of the regular tourist. These are things that one may overlook when looking for the typical tourist attractions. Instead of filling this presentation with descriptive words whose interpretation is only as good as your guess of my intentions may be, I have chosen to present an album of photographs focusing on the things that caught my eye. Going forward, I will also add comments where need be to give my authentic reaction to what I may have considered an advantage, disadvantage of hindrance in my opinion. This word of introduction ends here, and you can use the below links to see for yourself what cannot be put in words. One last thing though... the photographer's perspective is never neutral, and anything from the framing, to the choice of subject, lens, depth of focusing and light source is an element of bias.

The quality, formating, and content of an email message is an integral part of an effective email marketing campaign that has the ability to generate interest in your products and services, cultivate existing prospects and  keep your subscribe list informed. This, along with the other channels of Web Marketing and Website design and production work together to form an effective web strategy for your organization.

Context

For a long time, email was the favourite and most efficient way for marketers to dessiminate their message. This popularity resulted in the nuisance of SPAM and the many software filters and applications that have been written to block the unwanted email. This document will outline the best and safest way to create an email message that will not fall prey to the first SPAM email filter.

To be able to reach all your prospects, it's recommended that you send a hybrid message that contains both an HTML and ASCII test message.

HTML Message

The common email readers vary in standards compliance; therefore the compatibility of web browsers to HTML 3, 4.x or XHTML is not representative how how email clients interpret HTML messages. Because of this, the lowest possible standard will be used. HTML 3.0 as it was created for Netscape 4.x is a good basis to go by.

1. Do not use CSS (either inline of in an external file *1)
2. Do not embed any external objects *1 such as CSS rel links, script files etc except JPEG or GIF images
3. Use the very basic HTML taks and attributes to define your content layout. Usr a table, font tags and image taks to accomplish your layout objectives
4. Use ALT attibutes for images ad well as TITLE attributes for HREF tags, these will make it easy/possible for people to understand the message even if the images do not display
5. Make the images as small as possible (file size) without overly compromising quality 

The Internet has grown from an alternative marketing channel to the sole auditable and highly cost-effective marketing tool. Much like not-having a website is no-longer an option, having a sound and effective Web Marketing strategy is imperative for any organisation that needs to grow and interact with its customer-base and consequently increase sales and customer satisfaction.

Traditional methods of marketing communication are not effective enough since a significant amount of trade and human interaction happens on the internet. The online community is less and less exposed to traditional media because members of this group do not look to television, radio, newspapers or billboards for information and product research. Even in cases where they do, they often use the internet to access publications, television and radio programming.

One must recon that a large majority of economically capable and influential individuals belong to the above-described section of society. This makes it only reasonable to conduct marketing communication through the media that is most pervasive - Web.

Web Marketing is a combination of Opt-in Email Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, and prospect communication infrastructure such as: feedback forms, and marketing campaign management tools.

Considerations for migrating to Drupal from a static website or other CMS

Web Content Management Systems have unfairly been blamed for killing traffic by compromising Search Engine Ranking as a result of the so-called Search Unfriendly URLs. to properly migrate a well-indexed static website to Drupal or any CMS without compromising your ranking, it is necessary to maintain existing paths. In my opinion, using a good CMS has so many advantages that the misplaced fear of machine URLs (no-longer an issue with mod_rewrite and ISAPI Rewrite).

Advantages of using a CMS

• Findability of content in development and production - Even the meticulously organized and labeled static folder structure can leave one wondering where his/her content is located; and just because you know where your pages are does not mean that your visitors know your structure.
• Automation of routine procedures - it's a life-saver when the schedule automatically publishes and archives content for you, especially when it's time-sensitive (events, announcements, press releases etc)
• Although server-side includes SSI may seem like they make it possible to create one piece of content and reuse it in multiple places, Web CMS makes it possible to add logic to the locations where you would like the content to appear

These and many other smaller advantages that one discovers while using a CMS have the potential of improving your SEO efforts (when properly used) by availing related content and links along with certain pages. Also, CMS make it possible to track content accesses at a granular level that regular logs cannot provide. As such, here is what I propose when migrating a static website to Drupal:

1. Clean URLs: This feature is indispensable in making sure than even legacy search engines can access and index your pages
2. GsiteMap: Google Sitemaps make it possible for site-managers to guide the way that google indexes pages on a website by providing priority guidelines. When using a WCMS, content is created and manipulated (published, archived, accessed) in a very dynamic manner that availa a virtually limitless linking structure. This makes it very difficult for you (the site owner) to create a list of documents in XML and submit the file to google on a regular basis. This module will ensure that google is informed of your (healthy) constantly updated website and any new pages you publish as well as how to find them. In addition, the WatchDog module in Drupal can log all the times when google visits and indexes a page.
3. URL aliases: This feature in Drupal enables you to control the path-name of your pages thus enabling you to recreate already indexed static paths in your new CMS so that search results continue to point to your content in the new CMS home.
4. Click tracking: I am the kind that constantly monitors traffic and wants to know what's working ad what's not, so by using this nice module, I can track upto 10 channels to know which traffic sources are bringing in the most traffic, and comparing these numbers as well as results from the tracker and browscap module, you can establish what is causing a perceived increase or decrease in traffic instead of guessing.
   
5. Even without the click module, Drupal Tracker logs the referrers and will tell you who is bringing in the most traffic. Compare this with your past server-logs and you will not only be able to know the traffic sources, but also which pages are popular.
6. PHPOpentracker: As tricky as it can be to properly install and configure, this application can show you exactly what paths your traffic is taking thereby helping you decide what pages need help/updates