Digital Marketing for eCommerce: 6 Online Courses in 1

With millions of products available, it can be difficult to know what to sell. This lecture provides sources of data for investigating hot products and tools for finding product opportunities.

The Nexus AI is Sell The Trend's proprietary algorithm that analyses multiple sources (AliExpress, Amazon, Shopify, etc.) to identify trending and profitable products. Unlike looking at just one marketplace, Nexus cross-references performance across different platforms, making the insights more reliable.

Get your free 14-day trial: https://www.SellTheTrend.com/join/trevorginn

Whilst many sellers choose to sell under a generic brand (e.g., TPG Trading, 247 Top Seller), developing your own brand will help customer to identify you and build loyalty. This video lecture gives guidelines for developing your brand and using this to create a cross-platform identity.

A URL is the address that users type into their browser to visit your store. It should be easy to remember and should reflect your brand. This lecture covered best practise for choosing a URL and how to assign it to your store.

Which channel should you choose? As an advocate of multi-channel eCommerce, I think that most sellers should aim to sell across the major channels. You do, however, need to prioritise.

Shopify is a leading eCommerce website solution that is easy to use and value for money. In addition, it supports a large ecosystem of apps, so it can be used to run your entire business. 

Shopify has two pricing tiers 'Shopify' (up to medium-sized companies) and Shopify Plus (enterprise customers).  Within 'Shopify' there are three pricing levels - Basic, Shopify and Advanced.  In this lecture, we examine the differences between the levels and ask which is right for you.

Your first step towards launching your Shopify storefront is to create an account.  A Shopify account can be created without a credit card on a 14 day free trial.  All the is required is an email address and your address details.

In this lecture, we look at the different parts of the Shopify storefront including pages, navigation, product and checkout.

A theme determines the look and feel of a Shopify storefront. Shopify provides a range of free themes, or if you require something different, there is also a paid-for theme option.

Shopify themes can be edited without the need for any technical knowledge. From the Online store option in the LHS menu, click theme, then customise theme.

Theme settings is where the global setting for the Shopify theme are specified. These include colours, fonts, favicon and social media links.

One of the great things about Shopify is that its functionality can be extended by installing third-party apps. There are thousands of apps available which can turn Shopify into a multi-channel e-commerce platform.

This lecture covers how to install and configure the Sell the Trend app and connect your Shopify store.

Get a 14-day free trial to Sell the Trend here: https://www.SellTheTrend.com/join/trevorginn

To complete a transaction on a Shopify website will require the setup of one of more customer payment options.

Shopify allows sellers to set shipping rates based on their location and the service they select for delivery.

One of the benefits of using Shopify is that the platform has a standard checkout that customers are familiar with from the many other Shopify stores from which they will have purchased.

A blog is a great way to publish news and communicate with customers. They also allow fresh content to be created that gets picked up by search engines.

Adding pages to your Shopify store, e.g. About us and contact us, will provide the customers with more information about your company, reassuring them that you are a reputable business.

Creating a helpful site navigation is a vital part of building a user friendly, high converting online store.  You should construct it to enable customers to find your product quickly. Filters will allow customers to refine their searches.

Collections in Shopify are used to group together products. These collections can then be used to populate the navigation or in featured sections of the website.

In this lecture, we step through the process of creating single and variant products on Shopify.

If you have many products to upload to your store, then it will be very time consuming to do this manually. You can use the export and import functionality to amend products or create new listings.

Creating products on your Shopify store using Sell the Trend is easy. This video demonstrates the process.

Get a free 14-day trial to Sell the Trend: https://www.SellTheTrend.com/join/trevorginn

Customers on Shopify are created automatically when an order is placed on a connected sales channel. Alternatively, they can be created manually.

Orders are automatically added from connected sales channels or can be manually created.  This lecture shows how to create and fulfil orders.

Learn how to process returns and refunds on Shopify

From the Marketing page in Shopify, you can create and manage marketing campaigns for promotions. The Marketing page also includes recommendations to improve your marketing strategy.  In this lecture, we look at how the marketing section of Shopify, focusing on email marketing.

Discounts are a great way to boost sales on your Shopify store. There are two sorts of discounts available voucher codes and automatic discounts.

Shopify Analytics enables sellers to understand the behaviour of their customers and make adjustments to their stores to increase sales.

This lecture summarises the steps you will need to start your Amazon business and where you can find the information in this course that will help you.

When setting up an Amazon account, you must select an account type. This lecture briefly describes the differences between the basic and professional account types. Note: We will be discussing the buy box later on!

In this lecture, we cover how Amazon referral fees are calculated.

Opening an Amazon seller account requires accurate documentation.  Be careful to submit the correct documentation and that the documentation is consistent.

Orders which are fulfilled directly by the seller are referred to as 'Fulfilled by Merchant' or FBM.  A second option is Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP), where the orders are sent by the merchant but using an approved courier so are Prime eligible

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) is Amazon's wildly popular fulfilment service where Amazon store the stock and manages dispatch and customer service.

Seller Fulfilled Prime is Amazon's fulfilment programme, which allows merchants to ship orders from their warehouse using an approved service and be Prime eligible.

This section considers choosing the right fulfilment method for your business.

Each product, as defined by a single barcode, should have only one listing on Amazon.  Multiple sellers will add their offer against this listing.  This is known as a catalogue system.

The page on the Amazon site which gives information about a product is known as the Product Detail Page. In section, we look at all the various parts of this page.

For a listing that has multiple sellers, Amazon combines the product information from various sources to create the product listing. It will also recommend data to be added to a listing via its 'listing enhancements' product list. By adding this information and improving the listing quality, the listing will do better in searches. 'Suppressed' listings are those missing vital information (e.g. product title) and so will not appear in the Amazon search until the missing data has been submitted.

The simplest way to create listings on Amazon is to add your offers to already existing pages.  This can be done one at a time or in bulk.

When a customer searches, Amazon produces a list of results that it thinks are most relevant to that query.  This is based on the ranking factors discussed in the following lecture.

There are multiple ranking factors in the Amazon search, including listing page conversion rate, click-through rate, sales volume, review rating.

This lecture covers the sections of the product listing which Amazon indexes for inclusion in the search.

Amazon natural search result performance is based on the historical performance of the listing.  This lecture discusses building performance by driving sales, improving CTR and collecting reviews.

How to research and generate relevant keywords for inclusion in your Amazon listings. 

Helium 10 (www.helium10.com) is a leading Amazon research tool. In this video I go through the process of researching, filtering and categorising keywords.

How to create an Amazon listing that drives traffic through natural Amazon search and converts browsers into buyers.

This lecture goes through the process of creating a single product on Amazon via the product listing entry form

There are several different upload file types that are used for various purposes e.g. product matching, creating products from scratch. Note the required attributes vary by category.

The Price and Inventory file is used to update the price and stock level of SKUs already in your Amazon inventory.  It cannot be used to add items to inventory.

When adding multiple products, it is much quicker to create the listing via a feed file. This is an Excel file where the product data is completed and then uploaded.

Variations (also known as parent-child relationships) are sets of products related to one another in terms of Size, Colour, etc. Good variation relationship listings allow buyers to compare and choose products based on different attributes such as size, colour, or other characteristics from the available options on a single product detail page.

If products are missing required information, they will appear in the product drafts, where the required information can be directly entered.

The buy box or featured offer is the default purchasing option available on the product detail page.  Which offer is selected to appear in the buy box is based on several factors.

Winning the buy box can be a matter of slight variations of the price. For this reason, many merchants use dynamic pricing to vary their price to maximise their buy box exposure.

The Pricing Health page provides an overview of your Featured Offer (Buy Box) eligibility sales conversion from a pricing point of view and any deactivated offers with potential pricing errors.

Fulfilled by merchant shipping settings are a vital part of inventory creation.  In this section, we consider general shipping settings, shipping template and SFP shipping settings

Shipping templates let you create your shipping settings across several products at once (default service levels, shipping regions, transit times, and shipping rates). You may create up to 20 shipping templates for specific groups of SKUs.

A shipping template must be assigned either by editing the product directly or uploading via the listing loader file to assign shipping rates to a listing.

This lecture covers Seller Fulfilled Prime settings. Items sent via Seller Fulfilled Prime requires a separate shipping template to enrol them in the service.

FBA is Amazon's wildly popular fulfilment service.  Merchants ship their products into an Amazon warehouse and from there, Amazon does all the work, including customer service and returns.

FBA has several program specific settings covering international selling, product returns and disposals and labelling, which sellers should familiarise themselves with.

Amazon charges several fees for FBA, including storage, fulfilment and optional fees.  These are started in the FBA rate card, which is examined in this video.

It can be challenging to work out what you are being charged for storage and fulfilment for FBA items.  This lecture shows you where to find what you have been charged for FBA.

Amazon inventory can be created as FBA inventory from the start using an inventory template.  Alternatively, Fulfilled by Merchant products can be converted to FBA in the Manage Inventory screen or the inventory loader file.

To send inventory to an Amazon warehouse requires uploading a shipping plan to create a shipment.

Amazon's inventory planning tool recommends inbound stock quantities based on sales velocity and the merchants' reordering schedule.

The payment report tab provides information about payment both at the order and account levels. Here, you can view disbursements (payment for sales minus fees), referral fees and other costs.

Amazon Selling Coach offers personalised recommendations to maximise your effectiveness as a seller.

The following Business Reports are available: Sales Dashboard, Business Reports by Date and by ASIN, and Amazon Selling Coach.

Amazon order details can be accessed from the main menu.  From here, sellers can see order details, contact customers, buy shipping and dispatch orders.

If a buyer requests a return, Amazon will email you the reason for the return. Return requests can be processed through your Manage Returns page, where you can review, authorise or decline requests.

Amazon does not provide a direct customer email to merchants. Instead, communication must be through the cloaked email provided or Amazon messages.

Amazon is serious about keeping its customers happy and sets strict performance metrics for its merchants.  This section looks in detail at Feedback, A-Z claims and the order defect rate (ODR).

Amazon's A-to-z Guarantee ensures that buyers have a consistent experience across Amazon, regardless of whether their order is fulfilled by Amazon or by our selling partners directly.  Customers who are unhappy with their experience can file a claim against the seller.

The Order Defect Rate (ODR) is the most important metric for an Amazon seller.  It is the sum of the negative feedback rate, the A-Z claim rate and the chargeback rate, with each order only being counted once.  If this goes about 1%, then the account can be suspended.

Amazon Business is a programme that enables businesses to set up their accounts and manage their Amazon purchasing centrally.

A Lightning Deal is a time-bound, promotional offer on the Amazon Deals page featuring an item for a limited number of hours, usually four to twelve hours (varies per marketplace). In addition, 7-day Deals are also featured on the Amazon Deals page for up to seven days at a time.

You can offer discounts on a single product or a set of products and enjoy automatic merchandising for your voucher through Amazon.

Amazon promotions can help your products stand out and stimulate sales.  They can be money off or buy one get one free.

Amazon's advertising service enables sellers to promote their products using a pay-per-click adverting system. The main options for retailers are Sponsored Product Ads that drive traffic to specific products and Sponsored Brands that drives traffic to collections of products.

Before you start your advertising campaign, you need to decide what your objectives are, which products you want to advertise, your budget, and how long you want the campaign to run.

Targeting and keyword matching types enable advertisers to optimise their ad campaigns.

Sponsored Product ads allow sellers to drive traffic to specific products based on keyword, ASIN or category targets. Ads are charged on a pay-per-click basis.

Sponsored brand ads allow brand owners (i.e. registered in the brand registry) to drive traffic to collections of products or the brand store homepage.

This lecture covers organising campaigns with adgroups and portfolios.  It also covers managing and creating campaigns using t bulk operations and copying campaigns.

Registering a brand with Amazon Brand Registry

This video details the features of Amazon's brand registry.

Brands that are registered with Brand Registry can create branded storefronts and add enhanced brand content.

A+ content is a rich content area that can be added to the ASINs of brands registered in the brand registry.  A+ content is used to give more information about the product and Amazon stated that it significantly increases the conversion rate.  A+ content can only be added by the brand owner.

Amazon has sites worldwide that work in a similar way to each other. Expand your sales by reaching customers all over the world.

The Expand Globally tool enables merchants to match the inventory on their home market onto Amazon's international sites.

This lecture details how to create listings on Amazon's international marketplaces.

Pan European FBA enable merchants to fulfil into the EU from a single inventory pool whilst paying the local fulfilment fee.

Customer service for your international customer need not be difficult and Google translate works surprisingly well. However, remember you need a local return address for returns!

eBay is one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world, with over 300 million users. Whilst it is not the market leader it once was, it is still a major eCommerce player. In this lecture, we look at why your business should have a presence on eBay.

If you plan to sell casually, like selling items you no longer want, a personal account is the best option. If you are going to sell in volume, it is best to open a business account. This video also discusses selling limits and multiple accounts.

This video covers the different fees for its services, how the fees are invoiced and where the transactions can be viewed.

eBay is a complicated beast, and it pays to spend some time configuring the account settings.  In video, we give a quick overview of all the account settings including postage, buyer requirements, business policies and listing settings.

Seller Hub is the central place for managing your eBay business. It consolidates all our selling information and activities into one location. It also gives you useful data and recommendations to help you grow your eBay sales.

When buyers search on eBay, the default order of results is called Best Match. eBay says it is designed to show the most relevant listings, taking into account the things users find most important when they are deciding what to buy.

With 15000 categories, most legal things can be sold on eBay!  This video discusses the two main types of eBay listings - Auction and Fixed Price.  We also cover the VeRO programme which allows brands to police the marketplace for fakes and copyright infringements.

The Sell Your Item form (a.k.a. Quick Listing Form), is the process a seller uses to list products on eBay one by one. In this video we step through the form to demonstrate all the info require to list an item on eBay.

When you have many similar items that have different variations, such as colour or size, you can create a single fixed-price listing that includes all the variations you offer.

For each eBay listing, the payment options need to be set. This is done by way of a payment policy that is applied to a listing.

Product identifiers (e.g. barcodes) and items specifics help eBay to classify your listing and get your products in front of the right customers. It is worth taking the time to complete these fields accurately.

Setting postage is a vital part of creating an eBay listing. By specifying your shipping correctly you can reach new international markets and give the customer the range of postage options they need.

To appear for relevant searches, a listing must include the keywords for which users are searching. In this video, we cover how to find the most relevant keywords for your listings.

With 15000 categories, almost anything can be sold on eBay.  However, it is not a free for all and eBay has some strict rules about items that cannot be sold.  There are also rules about listing content to prevent abuse.

For eBay sellers, having your listing appear number one in search results is crucial. Buyers tend to click on and buy from the listings which appear first. In this lecture, we look at how to optimise the different aspects of the eBay listing

This video shows how to connect your eBay account to Sell the Trend.

eBay's seller levels and performance standards help you track your performance, and let buyers shop with confidence.  These levels have a real impact on your performance as a seller as Top-rated sellers get higher placement in search, and below standard sellers pay an additional 4% final value fee.

eBay orders are managed from seller hub > orders.  From here the order status can be updated and shipping information added.  Sellers can print shipping labels, invoices and packing slips.  Order can be cancelled if they have not yet been dispatched.

The video demonstrates how to list products to eBay directly from Sell the Trend

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For each transaction, the buyer and seller can rate each other by leaving Feedback.  A buyer can leave positive, neutral or negative feedback along with a comment.  Feedback is a vital part of eBay's ecosystem and enables provides buyers with confidence that they are dealing with a reputable seller.

eBay offers buyers a money-back guarantee, protecting them in the case of non-receipt of purchases, or if an item is not as described. If a customer is not happy with their purchase, they can start a dispute. The buyer has 8 days to resolve the dispute before eBay can be asked to intervene.

eBay allows sellers to set their own return policies including the return period and who pays for the postage. Remember that as a business seller you may have legal obligations depending on your location.

Answering customer messages is an important part of trading on eBay.  This video covers options for communications with customers and how to answer messages.

Unlike Amazon PPC ads or Google Ads, eBay Promoted Listings are not auction-based or keyword-targeted. It is by design a much simpler tool. To promote listings, sellers specify the additional commission they are willing to pay to get a sale.

With 187m customers in 190 countries eBay is a great way to find new customers worldwide.

eBay's seller levels and performance standards help you track your performance, and let buyers shop with confidence.  These levels have a real impact on your performance as a seller as Top-rated sellers get higher placement in search, and below standard sellers pay an additional 4% final value fee.

An eBay Shop can help you reach the right customers and build your brand. Your buyers can learn about you and your business and can browse your items through a customisable shopfront, and you can benefit from reduced fees.

Promotions Manager provides eBay Shop subscribers with an easy way to set up special offers on eBay. Promotions can help you attract more buyers, clear old stock, increase average order size, and even lower postage costs by bundling more items per order.

The opportunities for businesses to promote their businesses via search engines are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Paid Search. This lecture looks at the pros and cons of both options.

Paid Search programs, such as Google Ads, have the potential to provide highly targeted, measurable and cost-effective traffic to your website. By advertising alongside the search results for queries relevant to your business, you target potential customers researching or buying a product.

Google Ads is Google's online advertising programme. It enables you can create online ads to reach people when they are interested in the products and services that you offer.

Google account level settings are specified in the tools menu. This includes account access and

billing.

Google displays Paid Search results in order, just like organic search results. The position of an ad has a significant impact on traffic. To decide the relative positioning of ads, Google has devised a score called Ad Rank. The higher an ad scores, the better its position. Ad rank is calculated for each search based on the relevance, bid amount and quality score.

With Google Ads, there are several ways to bid for your ads, known as bid strategies. These include focusing on clicks, impressions, conversions or views (for video ads).

Your daily budget is the average daily amount you want to spend for each campaign. It specifies the rough amount you are happy to spend each day over a month. Your daily budget can be edited at any time. They can be set at the campaign level or across multiple campaigns.

Your choice of campaign type should be based on your marketing goals, brand strategy and how much time you have the manage your account. For example, smart campaigns may be less optimised but are definitely easier to manage.

Before launching your Google campaign, you should first decide on the goal of your campaign. Your campaign objectives will determine the type of campaign you choose. Possible campaign objectives include sales, leads and website traffic.

Google Ads is organised into three layers: account, campaigns and ad groups. Organising your account allows you to serve the right ads to the right customers more effectively, and it allows you to track the effectiveness of your advertising efforts better.

Your campaign settings to help you target your campaign and reach the customers you want to reach. The campaign settings that you select will apply to all ads within the same campaign. The type of campaign determines the settings available.

Google ads can be optimised to improve ROI by focusing their targeting.  Targeting options include devices, location, ad scheduling and audiences.

To create search ads, advertisers specify targets (Keywords) for which they wish their ads to appear and a maximum cost per click (CPC) they are willing to pay.

To effectively reach potential customers, your text ads should be specific, relevant, attractive and include calls to action.

Creating Google Search Ads campaigns requires specifying lists of keywords which will trigger ads. Advertisers must research keywords and organise these into campaigns and ad groups based on themes to create successful campaigns.

Google's Keyword Planner is a free tool for discovering new keywords related to your business. It also estimates the number of searches they will receive and the cost of targeting them.

Keywords are words or phrases used to match ads with the terms for which people are searching. The keyword match types determine how closely the keyword needs to match with the user's search query so that the ad can be included in the auction.

Dynamic Search Ads make it easy to reach relevant customers on Google search. Dynamic Search Ads use your website's content to target your ads and can help and they automatically keep your campaigns up to date using all relevant keywords.

Once you have create your Google Search campaign, you should be constantly tweaking it to improve performance.

Display campaigns show visual ads on the Google Display Network. The Display Network enable advertisers to reach people on millions of websites, apps and Google-owned properties such as YouTube and Gmail.

This video goes through creating a Display Campaign step-by-step.

In this lesson, we cover how to get the best performance out of your Google Display Ads.

Shopping campaigns promote online and local inventory, driving traffic to your website or local store. Product data from the Google merchant centre is used to set up Google shopping ads in the Google Ads interface.

Google merchant centre is Google's online platform allowing merchants to submit their product data to Google for publishing. Product data is submitted to Google through a product 'feed' generated by your eCommerce platform. Google uses this data to publish your products on its shopping search service and also on product-focused ads across Google and its advertising network.

To run Google shopping campaigns and be eligible for free shopping listings, you must submit a valid feed through the Google merchant centre.

Global merchant centre settings are accessed from the cog icon in the top menu. Settings include shipping, reviews and returns.

There are two types of Google Shopping campaigns - Performance Max and Standard.  In this video, we discuss how to create these two campaign types.

Google Shopping campaigns are easy to create as they do not require specifying keyword targets. They will however underperform is you do not optimise your campaign structure and settings.

This lecture covered the important metrics which you can use to understand campaign performance.

The Insights page helps you find trends in your market and understand your performance. Insights for your business are based on your account’s performance and searches across Google for the products and services for which you wish to show ads. They are update daily.

The Google Ads reports give you after-click performance metrics for users who clicked on your ads and then went to your website.

Dashboards enable you to quickly gather your most important data to identify problems and spot business opportunities.

Conversion tracking enables you to track what a customer does after interacting with your ads, e.g. purchasing a product, newsletter sign-up, call or app download. When a customer completes an action you have specified, these customer actions are called conversions.

Google Ads Editor is a free desktop application for managing Google Ads campaigns. It can help you save time and make it easier to make changes in bulk.

Shared libraries allow advertisers to share features and settings across campaigns. They are accessed from the Tools menu at the top of the screen.

The Ad Preview Tool helps you discover why your ad or ad extension might not be shown.

Performance Max is a goal-based ad format that allows advertisers to access all Google Ads campaign types from a single campaign. It is a highly automated advertising programme that uses machine learning to optimise your ads and bidding in real time.

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of configuring a website to appear higher in the natural or free search engine results for searches relevant to your business. Obtaining a high search result for a business is hugely valuable as it has the potential to dramatically increase website traffic and, therefore, sales and brand awareness.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are web pages displayed to users when they search online using Google.  Before optimising your website, you should understand how it might be displayed in the search results. Understanding the layout of a search result page can help you create content that encourages users to click your link.

When Search Engines perform a lightening fast search, they achieve this not by searching the web itself but by querying a massive database of the pages on the website they have built.  The process of finding the information on the website is known as 'Crawling' and the database is called the 'Index'.

When a search is performed, search engines query their Index for relevant content and then serve that content to the user in order of relevancy. This order of search results by relevance is called ranking. The higher a website's rank, the more relevant the search engine perceives that site is to the query.

Most SEO tactics fall into three categories:

1. On-page SEO

2. Off-page SEO

3. Technical SEO

All three are vital to your SEO performance. However, they are very different.

Search engine optimisation techniques divide into Black Hat and White Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO techniques try to trick search engines into thinking that a website is relevant for a particular search term. White Hat SEO techniques build long-term traffic through quality content and relevant links from other highly ranked sites.

Basic technical knowledge of how websites work and how Search Engines read them will help you optimise your site for natural search. Technical SEO is about ensuring that a website conforms to the technical requirements of search engines to maximise organic rankings.

Technical SEO is vitally important to your natural search performance because, to include your site in their results, Google and other search engines must be able to find, crawl, understand and index the pages on your website.

This lecture outlines the domain, brand and spam site factors influencing search engine ranking.

Technical SEO refers to the behind-the-scenes set-up of your website, which can improve (or at least not hinder) your SEO performance. This document discusses technical SEO factors related to your site's configuration.

On-page SEO (a.k.a "on-site SEO") is the process of optimising web pages so that users and search engines can better understand your content. The goal is to create content that appears high up on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for search terms relevant to your business.

Keyword research involves finding and analysing keywords your ideal website visitors enter into search engines. It enables you to target the most effective keywords when creating content.

Once you have completed your keyword research and organised your content into topics, it is time to start planning your content. When people talk about content optimisation, they often refer to content that will drive organic search engine traffic. However, remember you should always be writing for the user and not specifically for Google.

Off-page SEO includes tasks done off a website to boost the site's search engine rankings. Off-page SEO activities include link building, encouraging branded searches, and increasing engagement on social media.

Off-page SEO aims to get users and search engines to see your site as more trustworthy and authoritative. It is one of the corner stones of a successful SEO strategy.

Link building is the process of building hyperlinks (or "backlinks") to a website to improve search engine performance.

Backlinks are the most important factor used by Google to evaluate a site's authority. When reputable and relevant sites link to or cite your website's content, it is like a 'vote' in favour of that site. All other things being equal, Google and other search engines consider a site with more high-quality links to be of greater authority and places them higher in the search results.

You should encourage sites to link to your content to build authority. Strategies can be passive (i.e. creating content which attracts links) or active (i.e. actively approaching sites for links. Whatever your plan, your site's content must be high quality to make it worth linking to.

Local SEO optimises your online presence to increase local traffic, visibility, and brand awareness. Any business with a physical location or that serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO.

This video gives a to-do list of the most important SEO actions you can take on your website.

Email marketing is the use of email communications as part of a marketing strategy to reach specific business goals. Emails can be used generate sales, enhance customer engagement (i.e., newsletters), acquire customers, create brand awareness and reward customer loyalty.

Email deliverability is about maximising the number of messages that arrive in the inbox rather than being blocked or marked as Spam by mailbox providers.

Email deliverability is vital to the success of any email marketing campaign. Follow these best practice tips to maximise success.

Setting up email authentication for your domain helps your emails reach subscribers' inboxes. Inbox service providers (ISPs) like Gmail want to ensure that emails are legitimate.

WordPress is the leading content management system. This video explains how to integrate WordPress and MailChimp. Other content management systems will work similarly.

Shopify is the leading ecommerce website platform. This video explains how to integrate WordPress and Shopify. Other eCommerce platforms will work similarly.

Businesses should take every opportunity to build their email list. The larger your list, the more business it will generate. In addition, as users subscribe to receive emails from your website, they are interested in what you offer and are more likely to convert into paying customers.

An email list is email addresses collected from people who have opted to receive emails from your business or organisation. These people usually subscribe (a.k.a. opt-in) through a web form. In MailChimp email lists are called audiences.

The audience dashboard provides you with clickable data to help you understand your contacts and how to communicate with them. You will see recent growth trends, top tags, locations, and how frequently contacts open and click your emails.

The Mailchimp Inbox allows you to view and reply to emails from your contacts.

Every page of your site is an opportunity to build your list, and you must make it easy for people to locate the sign-up forms. MailChimp supplies a web form builder that allows you to build sign-up forms for your website that you can customise to fit your brand and style.

A pop-up signup form helps you connect with your website visitors. Design it to fit your brand, and add a special offer or discount to help grow your audience and boost your sales. After you publish, MailChimp will automatically add the form to your connected site, or provide the code you need to connect your site.

Mailchimp landing pages help you grow your audience and promote products and services. Published landing pages are easy to share on the web or in other Mailchimp campaigns, so you can start to drive traffic immediately. And if your page has a signup form, you can tag anyone who subscribes.

There are three ways to organise your MailChimp Audience: tags, segments and groups. Tags are labels you create to help organize your contacts in Mailchimp. Segments are used to create target audiences based on shared data.  Use Mailchimp's groups to organize subscribers based on their interests and preferences.

This video discusses best practices for launching email marketing campaigns, including scheduling, offers and objectives.

Email marketing aims to write high-performing emails with high open and click-through rates. Several variables go into writing a great email. You rise to the top and get noticed by paying attention to all the elements that make up an email.

Consumers receive hundreds of emails every week. You must create a valuable, relevant, visually appealing, and compelling email design to stand out. This entails selecting fonts, colours, images, and layouts to increase engagement and click-through rates.

MailChimp campaigns are broadcast emails sent to all, or a sub-section of your audience.

Mailchimp's Campaign Manager helps you plan, execute, and analyze your marketing efforts. Create an end-to-end campaign that connects multiple marketing touchpoints to a single objective.

The purpose of automated email sequences is to nurture leads and promote sales. With the right sequence, you can increase customer retention and engagement by sending customers post-purchase, loyalty and re-engagement sequences.

Email journeys are easy to create in MailChimp. Use one of the many templates, use the AI builder to create a journey from scratch.

Before launching an email marketing campaign, it is essential to understand your goals to know if your campaign is successful. Several key email marketing metrics can help you benchmark the performance of your campaigns.

If tracking is enabled in your email, MailChimp will collect and analyse data on clicks, opens, social activity, purchases and other interactions after you send. You can view this information in your email dashboard and reports.

Audience analytics tracks the growth and change in your contact counts over time. An audience of engaged contacts could mean more sales and a higher return on investment (ROI).

If tracking is enabled in your email, MailChimp will collect and analyse data on clicks, opens, social activity, purchases, and other interactions after you send.

Create and build a custom report with the metrics most matter to you to see how your contacts interact with your email campaigns. Use custom reports to help you improve your email performance.