Our newest member of the team is me! Chloé Grayling. Having lived in the North of England and London for 8 years combined, I have finally realised that home is where the heart is and am now happily back living in Okehampton, Devon. I have a background in Fashion PR, Footwear Marketing, and even Decking and Cladding, but my true love has always been writing about and exploring the Southwest of England. 

Here are 10 facts about me to help you get to know me a little better…

What’s your name and role?

Chloé Grayling, Digital Marketer

When did you join the MiHi Team?

I joined the MiHi Team in October 2023 making me one of the the new kids on the block.

What’s your favourite viral video?

It’s got to be the Zoom “Lawyer-with-a-cat-face-filter” saga! Working from home I spend a lot of my time on Zoom calls, and this just had me howling with laughter. The fact that the other (very serious) members of the meeting kept straight faces throughout gets me every time. 

Touchwood this will never happen to me – but I can’t promise my dog Winnie won’t make a background appearance every once in a while!

“I’m here live, but I’m just not a cat!”

Who’s your number one influencer?

I’m quite into my health and fitness and during lockdown when gyms were closed, @courtneydblack was my saviour. She had me jump squatting across my living room and I’ve never looked back!

What is your office essential?

COFFEE and a fresh bunch of flowers every week.

Where was your best holiday experience?

It has to be snorkelling in Sharm-El-Sheikh in Egypt on my 30^th birthday – it’s honestly like a whole new world under the sea! (cue the Disney karaoke!)        

Top tip for starting out on social media?

Don’t take planning, algorithms or statistics too seriously – whilst it’s important to have a tone of voice to suit the brand you’re working with, it’s also great to let your personality shine through and think about what you would want to see as a consumer.

What would your Mastermind category be?

Poochons (it’s a dog breed, Bichon Frisé x Poodle)

How many followers do you have on your most popular social media account?

Embarrassingly, my dog has more followers than I do at 1,265 – @winnie.thepoochon – she is a model though…

Recommend a great place to eat/drink in the Southwest.

I love a good country walk with my dog Winnie (did I mention her yet?) followed by a Sunday Roast in a cosy pub on a weekend. My all-time favourite place has to be The Three Crowns in Chagford  Their Yorkshire puddings are as big as your head!

if you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Meet the MiHi Digital Team… Chloé Grayling appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Create contact between purchases and decisions

Aside from daily consumables, the majority of products or services sold in the South West will have some level of time period between the first and second purchase action or decision. Think of a website for example; we’d say the average life of your website is going to be between three and five years. If we meet you tomorrow and your site is two years old, you’re not going to be making a buying decision today; you’re potentially going to be making it in a year’s time. We’d want to be in your thoughts when you come to make that decision – after all, we do make nice websites! How do we achieve that? By creating regular contact between today (when you’re not making a decision) and next year (when you are). Local businesses can achieve this contact and dialogue with email marketing. You should be actively creating contact points in order to make sure you’re in their thinking when the time to act comes. Regular contact will ensure you’re at the forefront of their mind when they make their decision, rather than that guy they met a year ago.

Develop long-term relationships and add value

Email marketing shouldn’t all be about sales, although that may well be your end goal (and will definitely be a bi-product if you’re doing it right). Think about ways in which you can create a positive contact point between you as the sender, and the recipient. What would they like to hear about? What can you offer them in terms of value? Remember this doesn’t always have to be a discount on your product or service. It could be useful tips and help, or information that is ultimately going to add value to their business or personal lives. We all get a lot of emails; make sure you are delivering information the recipient wants to hear about, and you’ll strengthen the relationship you have with them. What leads from a relationship that adds value to someone? A longer-term bond which provides more individual and regular purchases (and revenue).

Take advantage of seasonal fluctuations

Most businesses are affected by seasonal demand. Think of tourism as the ultimate example. Although the season continues to extend you have a clear time period in which the majority of us travel during the summer, and as a result, a clearly defined period in which many of us will be making decisions on where we’ll be staying. Don’t just rely on people finding your site or remembering it. Give them a nudge. Make sure your emails are reaching them when they’re making the decision. And remember from the first point I made in this blog post, it may well have been a year since they made their last decision; have you had constant contact with them during the year? Has that content added value (my second point?).

Control stock levels

When we put sales on our website it can often be in expectancy of a stampede of new visitors, rushing to get the latest deals. Unfortunately, life often isn’t as easy as that. If you’re in a business that has stock control, consider emailing promotions to your previous customers, if you don’t already do so. It makes sure they know you have a sale, and also remember that you have more information on what they may be interested in from what they’ve previously bought than on anyone else. Use this information to your advantage. Hitting the right people with the right message at the right time will help you increase sales and get rid of stock sitting in the cupboards.

Create loyalty

Loyal customers are gold dust. How do you create loyalty with your customers using email marketing? By having regular contact (point one), by adding value to their lives (point two), by communicating with them when they’re making a decision (point three), and understanding what it is they want and when (point four). So what are you waiting for? There’s a reason statistics show that for every £1 spent on email marketing in the UK, between £15 – £25 of revenue is generated.

If you’d like to talk to us about generating more revenue from your email marketing or designing a bespoke Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor template for your emails give us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk We look forward to seeing your emails in our inbox!

The post Five ways local business can use email marketing to increase revenue appeared first on MiHiDigital.

WHAT YOU GET WITH OUR EMAIL DESIGN:

Bespoke email template designed specifically for your business that you’ll be able to use in your email marketing platform e.g. Mail Chimp
We’ll provide you with a visual before we build your email to make sure you’re completely happy with it! 
We’ll upload it to your account – all you’ll need to do is select it when you send your next campaign!
It will be fully responsive – more and more people access their emails from their phone so we want to make sure it looks great there too!
No hidden fees – once you’ve paid for that email design there’ll be no on-going costs. 
We can design emails for your newsletters, specific campaigns, ecommerce or a wide range of other purposes.  You tell us your goals and we’ll make sure they’re met!

WHAT IF YOU AREN’T CURRENTLY USING EMAIL MARKETING?

If you aren’t currently using email marketing then we’re able to set you up with an account, talk you through how to use it and get you sending campaigns that deliver for your business.
If you’d like to understand if email marketing could work for your business then please do give us a no obligation call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk
To discuss your email marketing template please call 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk
We look forward to helping you get more from your emails!

OUR LATEST DESIGN BEING BUILT

Here’s a sneak peak at our very latest design which is being coded right now! We hope you enjoy it!

The post MiHi Digital launches new email template service appeared first on MiHiDigital.

There are 3.6 billion email accounts in the world!
There will be 4.6 billion email accounts by the end of 2016!
96% of your customers will have an email account!

Your customers want to hear from you!

77% of people prefer receiving email to other forms of communication such as telephone!
44% of people made a purchase as a result of a promotional email in the last year!
82% of people open emails from company’s they know!

What’s in a subject line!

33% open an email based on the subject line alone!
64% say it impacts whether they open it or not!
Emails with subject lines 10 characters long are opened 58% more!
If you can personalise your subject line it can increase open rates by 22%!
If you’d like to know more about email marketing or any other areas of online marketing please do gie us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post 10 Reasons You Should be Using Email Marketing appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Why some have said that email is dead: Social Media

The most important thing to do during that initial visit and the next is to continue to nurture and build a relationship.  An effective way of doing this is by creating dialogue with those that have visited.
You want them to view your business as a relationship rather than a transaction.
Some have said that Facebook and Twitter are able to perform this function.  You can establish regular dialogue and build relationships in real time.
This is very true, but does it have to be to the detriment of another potential channel?
Does the emergence of one channel necessitate the extinction of another?
We don’t think it does.

Integrating email and social

The best businesses and marketers understand that customers are multi rather than single channel.  This is a snazzy way of saying that they consume information at different times through different channels and technology mediums.
So if you’re using just social media or just email marketing in isolation then you’re probably doing yourself an injustice.
The sum of both should be greater than the value of the parts.
Email marketing can co-exist with social media and it actually should.
It can also do that without making it information overload for your visitors, without you pestering them or making them feel like you’re pushing your marketing too far, too regularly.
You can use each to provide different communication types.  An email in the inbox saying welcome home after staying with you will be that much nicer than a request to like your Facebook page.
Work out what communications you can use for each and ensure they’re complimenting each other.  You’ll reap the rewards of that integration.
For more information on how we can integrate your online marketing to greater effect please give us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Why you should integrate social media with email marketing appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Many businesses will have email addresses for their customers obtained through the sales process. These could be the cost effective key to keeping in touch and promoting your business all year round.

Email marketing adds another bow to your promotional armory; whilst you can keep your website up to date on the latest developments and deals, unless a visitor proactively goes on to your website how will they know about them?

This is where email promotion can compliment your website and comes into its own – delivering your news directly to the inbox of those that have already enjoyed everything your have to offer and in doing so adding to your chances of repeat business.

The first question to answer is what are you looking to achieve from your emails? Do you want a newsletter that gives them information about the latest deals or goings on? Or do you want to keep it simple and have a postcard image with some basic information?

Identifying what you want to communicate in your email at the outset will be important in achieving success with your email marketing. Once you have this in place simply press the send button and get results on who has opened your message and monitor any responses – particularly if you are offering a promotion. This way you will fully understand the value your email campaigns are adding.

For more information on how email marketing can help your business please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Achieving success and creating relationships with email marketing appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Whilst open rates and click throughs will vary from industry to industry we tend to look at anywhere from 25 – 35% as being an average open rate.  You should then be expecting around 20 – 35% of those emails opened to be clicked on by the recipient.

There are many factors that will contribute to an open rate, for example how focussed your communication is to the recipient and the quality of your email database.  Again, if you send an email without many clicking opportunities or an email campaign that isn’t really relevant to the recipient then you shouldn’t be expecting mass amounts of click throughs.

A more in-depth list of figures has been provided by Mail Chimp.  By clicking on this link you’ll be able to see the open and click through rates for a range of different industry sectors:

http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks/#section_average_by_industry 

For more information on how we can get your email marketing off the ground please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post How do your email marketing open and click through rates compare with others? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

20 writers working around the clock generated a staggering $690 million for the campaign. So how did they do it? After all many have been doom mongering email marketing for some years now.

The answer lies in the research. Extensive A/B testing was carried out on all aspects of each email campaign, from the wording used to the subject lines and the layout of the emails themselves. Up to 18 variations of each email were tested and only once there was a clear winner that resonated with recipients was the campaign pushed out to the entire database of millions of subscribers.

The results of the research and testing were fascinating. They found that tone of voice was a key ingredient. Despite being mocked on many popular US television programmes the campaign found that subject lines that were similar to those used by people you may know were definite winners. Subject titles such as “Hey” and “We should go to dinner” were used. The most popular subject of “I will be outspent” was the top performing campaign email, generating $2.6 million alone.

It wasn’t necessarily the highly styled donate buttons that brought the most success – with large and bold font sizes on links proving to increase their click through rates.

Research also indicated that there was no upper limit for the amount of emails a recipient was willing to receive from the campaign, with no clear increase in people unsubscribing as they received more and more emails.

So email marketing does still have a role to play after all – who would have thought it!

To get your own email marketing up and running please give us a call on or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Email Marketing – Getting Barack Obama back in the White House appeared first on MiHiDigital.

There is evidence to suggest that the time of day and the day on which you send your email can have a significant impact on the performance of your campaign.

Email marketers have for some time bestowed the virtues of sending a campaign at 2:00pm on a Tuesday.  The logic behind this is that on a Monday morning people (particularly in a business context) have plenty of emails to get through, their inbox is slightly fuller and Mondays are also not (with certain exceptions of course) the best time to catch someone.

Move on to Tuesday; by sending at 2:00pm you miss the morning email clutter and hit their inbox potentially as they return from lunch.  So in this case by thinking about the habits and actions of your email recipients you have maximised your chances of an open and subsequent engagement by considering how and when they receive their emails and what sort of mood they might potentially be in when they receive it.

Research carried out by email marketing giant Mail Chimp supports this theory.  Their research indicates that most emails are opened between 2:00 – 3:00pm with more emails being opened on a Tuesday and a Thursday.

Now, there are two ways to look at this:

1. Tuesday and Thursday are the most successful days for sending an email as on these days more emails are opened.
2. Tuesday and Thursday are not great days for sending an email as these are the days that everyone else is sending theirs so it is going to be more difficult to stand out in the crowd.

Whether you glass is half empty or half full on this point the thing to bear in mind is that your email should be focusing on content that is tailored to the recipient.  They should want to read and digest your email content because it is interesting and very importantly, it is relevant to them.  If the competition isn’t relevant then they will read yours and not theirs.

The big no, no for sending a campaign remains to be on the weekend and you should definitely avoid sending on a Saturday or a Sunday.

The statistics that you gain from your email marketing should be there to assist you in making informed decisions on how to optimise and improve your performance going forward, whether this be in terms of what subject lines work best, what content is most popular and finally when you need to be sending.

If you have regularity in when you send, try changing your time of day or day you send to see if it has a positive or negative effect on performance.  If it does have an impact don’t just do it for one campaign; it could be an anomaly.  Continue to trial new things and you will be working toward what works for you and your recipients.

For more information on how MiHi can help get you started with email marketing or how we can improve your current performance please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post When do you send your emails and when is the best time to send an email campaign? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

One figure that will be of particular interest will be your ‘open rate’.  Now essentially this is the amount of people that open your email when they receive it, but there can be a little more than meets the eye here.

The open rate of your email is in fact the amount of people that open your email with images automatically enabled or click to enable the images on your email when opening.

This is because each email sent has a 1px X 1px square in the corner that is used to measure an email open.  If this square isn’t opened because the reader has not enabled the images on your email then it will not be registered as an open and therefore contribute to your ‘open rate’.

This means that your ‘open rate’ becomes a minimal figure rather than an absolute measure.  You can expect your ‘read rate’ (the amount of people that read your email) to be higher than your ‘open rate’ as some will be reading and viewing your content without enabling images.  As you can imagine this user is still engaging with your content and may click on links without registering as an email open.

For this reason it is always worth bearing in mind that your ‘open rate’ should be used and seen as an indicator of performance and not an exact measure.  When conducting A/B testing on subject lines it is for this reason also worth checking which email clients your recipients are using.

For example, Microsoft Outloook will default to not enable images when you send email campaigns.  For this reason if there is a disproportionate amount of users in your A segment with clients that do not enable images compared to your B segment you should factor this in to your results, particularly where testing indicates a close or massive difference in performance.

The majority of figures gained through your online marketing efforts should be used make better and more informed decisions in the future.  The open rate is no different, just be careful when using it in isolation as a specific measure.

For more information on how we can get your email marketing off the ground please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Email Marketing Statistic – What is the difference between an open rate and a read rate? appeared first on MiHiDigital.