Flowers fall in love just as us humans do according to the writer of our new absurdist style Twitter feed. As in real life though, things never run smoothly as you will see in the beautifully sketched drawing below entitled ‘If Roses Could Talk’.

TIP: If you are a flower looking for a holiday romance abroad – do not assume everybody else can speak English.

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When travelling around the web, one comes across lots of funny and bizarre things. The “flowers skeleton sculptures” below from Dutch artist Cedric Laquieze must rank amongst the more bizarre offerings we’ve seen recently though. Not a product  / service we’ll be offering at Flowers HQ anytime soon…

Original source.

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Dating.  A veritable minefield and as Valentine’s day approaches on the horizon, you may be wishing you could find someone perfect for you.  Whoever you are.

And whoever you are, there is probably a dating website which will suit you.

We have trawled the internet for the best of the unusual dating sites out there:

1. Muddy Matches

What: A website for people who are more paddock than pavement.   All rosy cheeks and tweed, this is a great site if you know your thoroughbreds and don’t mind plucking your Sunday lunch before you cook it.

Pick up line: “Are you a chicken? Because you’re impeccable.”

Things to do on a first date: Clay pigeon shooting and country walks.  Make sure to bring your wellies.

2. Date Doctors

What: This is a dating site for “doctors, physicians and the women who love them.”  (That’s what the website says anyway; someone forgot to let them know that women can be doctors too).

Pick up line: “Dial 999, I think my heart just stopped”

Things to do on a first date: Visit the Wellcome Trust collection and view all the creepy medical and scientific specimens collected by Henry Wellcome.

3. Love at first serve

What: Dating site for tennis players and tennis lovers.  For courting on the courts, the website advises you wear pro-style tennis wear or hang out at the club house with a jug of lemonade to refresh weary players.

Pick up line: “Love one?”

Things to do on a first date: Try a game of real tennis (an indoor game played on a court with sloping roofs and buttresses; the forerunner for modern day tennis) for a bit of a laugh.

4. Cupidtino

What: A dating site for Mac lovers.  Mac fans are a passionate bunch, get two together and the results could be very heated indeed.  What a great way to meet a future partner by sharing in your passion for iPads (that is until the iPad becomes fully sentient and capable of love)?

Pick up line: “iDate?”

Things to do on a first date: Mac lovers seem to be happy anywhere, doing anything, as long as they are talking about Macs.  So, cinema or a loud bar might not be a good idea.

5. The Altas Sphere

What: A dating site to get together people who really – really – like the work of Ayn Rand.  I’d say this is fairly niche, I personally enjoyed The Fountainhead, but perhaps not ‘that’ much.  There are, however, around 12,000 dating profiles on the site, though.  So if you do like Ayn Rand a lot you certainly have a good chance of finding someone compatible.

Pick up line: “Feeling Randy?”

Things to do on a first date: Visit the Ayn Rand institute for details on up-coming talks and essay competitions you could enter together.

6. Crew Dating

What: Date aviators; pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers with the thought that you ‘never fly solo again’.   Hailed as the ‘Facebook of aviation’, it’s a one stop dating site for people who understand the busy and long hours of people in our aviation industry.

Pick up line: “Cabin crew, prepare for take off; my heart is about to soar.”

Things to do on a first date: With all the wining and dining options available in most departure lounges, you’re spoilt for choice.

7. A sound match

What: Based on the idea that the music you listen to defines your personality, this site matches you with suitable partners.  If you like A-ha, you won’t be sent on a date with an AC/DC fan.  You can complete the free 3 minute music personality test, pick your genre and off you go.

Pick up line:  “I want to be on your most-played list.”

Things to do on a first date: How about some impromptu busking in the park?  You can use your earnings to go for a romantic meal afterwards.

8. Gamer Dating

What: As the name suggests, here you can share your love of gaming.  You can select your potential partner by the game they like the most.  Be warned, the potential date partners have profile names like The_reaper and NeonDragon etc.  Not the most romantic, but then I don’t think I’m the target market.

Pick up line: “Do you want to see my special moves?  Left, left, down, up, up…..”

Things to do on a first date: Make sure your avatar is dressed appropriately for the date, don’t bring weapons.

9. Sober and Single

What: A lot of dates involve meeting for a drink, but this doesn’t have to be an alcoholic drink, and for those who don’t drink, it can be an awkward moment when you order sparkling water in a cocktail bar.  This is the website for people who want a drink- and drug-free relationship.

Pick up line: “I’m intoxicated but only by you”

Things to do on a first date: There are lots of places where drinking isn’t allowed; libraries, public transport, many museums.  How about hopping in the car and driving out into the country side for a brisk walk and a hot chocolate?

10. 420 Dating

What: With the slogan “Why toke alone?”, this site is in stark comparison to number 9, and is a dating site dedicated to people who perhaps do dabble in drug-taking.  They don’t say what people smoke and the site doesn’t advocate the use of illegal substances, however, looking at the featured smokers you can have a pretty safe guess.

Pick up line: “You’re smokin’”

Things to do on a first date: Go to the local shop, pick up some snacks and you two are good to go…

11. Shy Dating

What: A dating site for people without immediate confidence meeting new people.  Shyness could rather get in the way of dating, since dating is all about meeting new people.  This allows similarly terrified men and women to meet potential partners.  I imagine the dates would start off pretty quiet, but it’s a good choice if you take time to come out of your shell.

Pick up line: “…”

Things to do on a first date: Watch something; cinema, theatre.  Takes the pressure off the conversation.

12. Love and Mate

What: Looking for the purrfect partner, for you and your pet?  This may be the place.  Sadly, they don’t allow you to browse by pet type. If you are an ardent chinchilla lover, you’ll have to trawl manually through potential matches to find a fellow ‘chilla enthusiast.

Pick up line: “If this were Crufts, you’d get Best in Breed”

Things to do on a first date: Walk in the park.  With the pets.  Bring snacks to feed your love interest’s pet furtively. It’s important to get their pet on your side.

13. Geek 2 Geek

What: Geeks looking for love; whatever your flavour of geekery.  Create your perfect dating pool by selecting  geeks who like comics, Dr Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Star Trek, Simpsons, Zombies, Super Heroes or Society of Creative Anachronism.

Pick up line: “You had me at “Hello World”.”

Things to do on a first date: No matter what your geek streak, most geeks (and non-geeks) love a visit to a Science museum, or how about a clue-based treasure hunt using all your GPS gadgets and tweeting clues to your desired.

14. Asexualitic

What: As with any type of dating, online dating throws up a fair number of people “just looking for one thing” (if you know what I mean).  This is a dating site for people definitely not looking for that thing.  It’s a website for people who don’t want sex – for whatever reason.

Pick up line: “You can leave your hat on.  And your coat and dress”

Things to do on a first date: Since the bedroom is out of bounds, time to take to the great outdoors.

15. Clown Dating Agency

What: The clown dating agency for clowns and others in the circus profession.  The site is no longer active but they say lonely clowns can still email and they will see what they can do. So paint on a happy face and get emailing.

Pick up line: “My love is like a red, red nose.”

Things to do on a first date: Go for a romantic drive in the country in a tiny, tiny car.

The best of the rest

Tee Fore Two – Golfers unite

The Ugly Bug Ball – Ugly love

Horsey Lover – Saddle up

Marry Your Pet – Why date humans, when you can marry your dog?

Mullet Passions – No need to mullet over

Embrace your individualism and go and find love this Valentine’s (and don’t forget to send that love some beautiful Valentine’s day flowers to show your affection).

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Hello all, my name is Freddie (a.k.a Flower Funster on the blog).

I joined Arena around the February Valentine’s period and as you can imagine it was a VERY busy first few days.  I came to Arena off the back of studying Environmental Business at Leeds, and was looking forward to trying something new and challenging in the world of online marketing.  It was all quite bewildering at first with so many acronyms being thrown around by everyone in the office, but I am beginning to get an understanding of the enormous worlds of Google Adwords, SEO (search engine optimisation) and general internet marketing and site housekeeping.  There seems to be a never-ending stream of information and techniques to learn about and trial.

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What has amazed me from when I first arrived is the pace at which things change and evolve, even in the short time I’ve been here.  One of the things that has been beeping louder and louder on the marketing radar is Facebook.  On a personal level I am used to using Facebook to chat to my friends, share photos and organise pub trips.  However, I – along with many others – have become interested in exploring its potential usage and capabilities in e-commerce (beyond simple banner advertising).  I can see how it can start to affect consumers’ decisions.  What could be a greater source of influence than friends and their recommendations?

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I heard that way back in 2007 Arena launched its own Facebook app, Flowers & Fun, which became really popular.  The idea was to send flowers to your friends for any occasion using Facebook.  It was even possible to send them anonymously as a secret admirer.  Overall, 28,000 people added the app to their Facebook profiles, and sent 65,000 bouquets.  This created a huge amount of brand awareness at a time when Arena Flowers was relatively new but the app didn’t necessarily have much direct effect on a consumer’s decision making and our sales.

The FaceBook “Like” button appears to be tapping directly into the power of recommendation.  Facebook are integrating themselves with external websites via the “Like” button.  Previously the “Like” button was only embedded within Facebook.  Some people have been looking at the possibilities of what this simple little button could well be capable of.  One friend of Arena, Nigel Whiteoak has posted some interesting thoughts about the “Like” button and what Facebook may have planned going forward; such as more search functionality (for example, where the “Liked” pages show in Facebook search results).

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ArenaFlowers.com, always keen early-adopter, has rolled out the like button across all our products, see here: Bright & Cheery (we put the “Like” button up 24 hours ago), and you will even be able to “Like” this blog post ;).  Luckily for us we sell an interesting product, if we sold duct tape online then this might not be so exciting.  Flowers are a fun and beautiful gift for so many different occasions making it hard not to “Like” them.

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I think the “Like” button has the potential to be huge.  One of the main reasons for this; Facebook has hit 500 million users, which is staggering and cannot be ignored for any online business.  The “Like” button could also be a very accessible way of tapping into those users and finding out what they actually like and want.  I think the introduction of the “Like” button has also started to create a shift of authority.  Previously the power was purely in the hands of the website, or the first results in Google.  Now people can essentially vote for what products they like with a simple click of a button – and show this to all their friends.  External reviews and star ratings are definitely still prominent but are by no means the only influence on a potential customer.

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People trust their friends’ tastes and preferences, when a friend “Likes” a product it appears in your news feed, in their user profiles and perhaps if Facebook bring out a search functionality, there too.  Facebook creates a sphere of trust between you and your friends; you share photos, news and all the rest.  The “Like” button could extend that trust to products and businesses.  Potentially for people that are still wary about shopping online, or on sites they’ve never tried before, with categorical recommendation from a trusted friend about a product or website, I think this may greatly influence someone’s buying in the future.

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**UPDATE: We are pleased to announce that Brenda is the winner of the Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition**

Thank you for all the entries and for all who voted.

Happy Mother’s Day.

We have had many wonderful entries for the 2010 Arena Flowers Mum of the Year competition.  We’d like to thank everyone who nominated their Mum or Mums they know – there were some very inspiring stories.  Mother’s Day is a lovely time of the year and it’s wonderful to celebrate Mums and guardians everywhere.

We have narrowed down the nominations to 15 finalists (no easy task considering the fantastic entries):

Adele
Adele has been nominated by Jane, who wants to thank Adele for being a source of strength through trying times, and for treating Jane and her partner so well.

Ann

Brenda

Christine

Jane

Margaret

Margaret M

Marion

Rachel

Sara

Sarah

Sue

Susan

Sylvie

Tina

If you didn’t manage to nominate your mum but still want to send her some flowers, please see our Mother’s Day flowers range.

(P.S. People are reporting difficulties voting from Safari for Mac browsers – if this applies to you,  I’m afraid you’ll have to use a different browser to place your vote.)

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It’s a week since Valentine’s Day – a busy time for florists around the globe – and things have remained as exciting as ever at Arena Flowers.

Particularly exciting as we launched our new tool: Flowers & Fun.  This is a completely free (and fun!) messaging service allowing you to send messages with a virtual bouquet.  Flowers & Fun is perfect for sending a quick note and provides something a bit different to a quick, one line email or tweet.

It’s simple to use; 1) Choose your message, write the recipient’s name 2) Edit the message and choose the bouquet. Then send!

Your messages can be easily sent by email, or posted to Facebook.  We’ve integrated it with Twitter too to enable you to quickly post notes celebrating Birthdays, achievements…and well, just about anything.

Flowers & Fun is particularly innovative because there’s some pretty clever technology running in the background that identifies people wishing one another a happy Birthday or sending congratulations through Twitter; our Flowers & Fun account (http://twitter.com/flowersandfun) sends a short message with a virtual card attached.

We wanted to create something innovative, surprising and something to make people smile. So far the community response to the Twitter messaging has been very positive.

Flowers & Fun for Twitter is the latest in technological gadgetry we are so passionate about developing at Arena Flowers. Our Flowers & Fun for Facebook application launched in 2007 and so far there’ve been 65,000 virtual bouquets sent via Facebook (try Flowers & Fun Facebook for free here).

Arena Flowers is developing a tradition of exploring the web’s capabilities and using new technology – not just to make fun tools – but also to enhance the customer experience.  We have a photo uploading service on Arena Flowers, allowing customers to add photos when they order our flowers for delivery.  Using our calendar service, you can create electronic reminders for key events to make sure you never miss someone’s Birthday and order your Mother’s Day flowers in good time.  Those who’ve used our flower delivery service will know of our SMS delivery messages to let you know when your orders have been delivered.

Coincidentally (and very timely), we were proud to have been announced as one of Smarta100, an award which celebrates dedication to innovation in small business. See our Smarta100 award here.  We are pleased to have been awarded and see this as an acknowledgement of our passion for using technology to create a great user experience and to engage new customers.

We love feedback, if you have any for us about Flowers & Fun (or anything at all), email feedback @ arenaflowers.com or follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/arenaflowers).

Many thanks to Marc G. Smith for helping us build Flowers & Fun and for being a good friend of Arena Flowers.

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It was my pleasure to be at Small Business 2.0 this year; an even greater pleasure to take part in the SEO panel and SEO forum session.

There were some interesting speakers there from BT Tradespace. Ivan Croxford had sage advice and hilarious anecdotes about managing reputation via the BT Tradespace platform and social sites more generally. Arena Flowers has long been an advocate of BT Tradespace, so please feel free to join our network there, or to watch our very own technical whizz, Sam Barton here talking about BT Tradespace and social networking for businesses, a very hot topic at Small Business 2.0.

Other presenters included Microsoft, with a focus on their search marketing offering with search engine/ decision engine, Bing. One of my favourites was friend of Arena Flowers, Dan Wilson, giving a very candid forum session on social media and some of its uses and pitfalls.

I’ve put up the SEO presentation I gave here, in case anyone is interested. I really enjoyed all the questions on the day and feedback about the panel and forum session. Thank you to everyone who attended.

For other resources, you can see Will’s post Arena Flowers at Small Business 2.0 from 2008 or have a look at our other posts about marketing and setting up an online business.

Thanks for asking us along, Dan. We already look forward to the next one!

P.S. Valentine’s Day is just over two weeks from now! Have a look at our Valentine’s Day Flowers for inspiration.

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I was recently invited by friend of Arena, Trevor Ginn, to write a guest post for his blog eBay, eCommerce life.  As well as being a blogger, Trevor runs an online baby and nursery shop, Hello Baby and an Internet consultancy, Vendlab.  Naturally, being a sucker for flattery from other webby types, I was happy to oblige.

I tried to avoid the totally obvious and compiled a list of the ten issues (good and bad) that we hadn’t really expected when we set up our little online flower shop nearly three years ago.  If interested, head on over to the post to have a look at the Arena Flowers post. (PS Trevor promises he’ll fix the typos I made shortly!)

If you enjoyed the post, you may also enjoy some of our other posts relating to the early days of Flowers HQ.

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A quick ‘Pop Quiz’ for you: What do Jon Bon Jovi, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Steffi Graf, Jodie Foster and Tiger Woods (pictured, right) all have in common? Apart from probably having a few bob to their names, they are all reported to be famous hay fever sufferers and/or allergic to flowers.

With an estimated 20% of the UK population suffering from hay fever this summer, watch any weather report from now through to September and you’ll see the emphasis increasing on the ‘Pollen Count’ as the allergy season progresses and airborne allergens attack their hypersensitive victims. We all know somebody who suffers from hay fever, and you may even have thought twice about buying flowers for them over the years.

But why should a seasonal dose of rhinitis stop you from receiving or indeed sending flowers? Truth is, if their allergies are particularly severe, many flowers are going to affect the recipient negatively but, in general, the more dangerous flowers are the ones with the most pollen. So a good guideline for sending flowers to a someone who may potentially explode into an itching, weeping, snotty mess is to avoid choosing flowers that have visible pollen.

Flower No-No’s(e)

Asiatic and Longiflorum Lilies are some of the most dangerous flowers for allergy sufferers, as parts of them are covered in powdery pollen. Songstresses Tina Arena and Britney Spears (pictured, left) are both alleged to have a lily allergy.  As the story goes, knowing of her allergy,  chart rival Pink once sent Britney a bouquet of lilies when they were feuding.

However, Lilies can be a good choice for allergy sufferers, as it is easy to simply remove the stems of pollen from each flower. Just try to find a non-allergic chum to do this particular job, as it will probably have the most robust nose and eyes and running at the earliest opportunity!

Another type of flower that is particularly bad for allergy sufferers is tree flowers / blossom. When choosing a spring flower arrangement, be careful not to include almond, cherry, apple, or any other kind of tree blossom.

Top Flowers for Allergy Sufferers

Andrew, our Head Florist here at Flowers HQ recommends chrysanthemums and gerberas, with new hybrids coming onto the market bred so that the parts of the flower that used to produce pollen now produce extra petals. But watch out for regular chrysanthemums and daisies as they can be highly allergic.

Another great choice for the allergy sufferer is roses. Not only are roses the most popular cut flower to send, modern roses used in floristry don’t have much of a negative effect on allergies. The reason for this is that their pollen is too large in size to be able to become airborne and truly infiltrate the respiratory system. To allergy-proof your bouquet arrangement, choose roses with little or no smell as these will contain the least pollen.

One of the best kinds of flowers for allergy sufferers are orchids and exotic flowers. Very few types of orchids cause any pollen-related allergies, and so are quite safe for those allergic to most flowers. It is important to note, though, that some orchids may cause a slight skin rash on sensitive individuals.

If in doubt, do contact us first before placing our order.

Hypo-Allergic Wedding Flower Tips

Traditional bridal gowns don’t normally include pockets for hankies, so the last thing a bride needs are snail trails up her lace sleeves from a runny nose. If the bride or groom is known to suffer pollen allergies, here are some simple tips to keep in mind when choosing wedding flowers which will help minimise hay fever symptoms:

1. Wedding Venues
   The best strategy is to avoid airborne allergens completely by holding your wedding ceremony indoors during the peak allergy season, especially if the main culprits are tree and grass pollen. So, no posing around in country meadows for those arty post-ceremony wedding photos, then!
2. Wedding Flowers
   Allergies to flowers are mainly due to their pollen count rather than fragrance.  Flowers begin to release pollen due to the aging process, so using Arena Flowers, the freshest flowers available, will prevent this problem. As for bridal bouquets, buttonholes, and other wedding flower arrangements, there are many flowers that don’t trigger severe allergies (see above for some suggestions).
3. Other Wedding Day Triggers
   Although many people may not realise it, hay fever symptoms do not always come from allergic reactions, but instead can be caused by everyday non-allergic triggers — and not just during the allergy seasons but at any time of the year.  So beware of perfumes and hairspray, sudden changes in temperature and even cooking odours.

Allergy-Free Artificial Flowers

If you want an absolutely 100% allergy-proof alternative for hay fever sufferers, then artificial flowers are the product of choice. No-nonsense and low maintenance, we are pleased to announce the launch of our new Artificial Flowers section added to ArenaFlowers.com — due to popular demand.

We will be adding more flowers to this section throughout the year, so let us know which artificial flowers you would like to see in the future.

Click to see our full range of allergy-free artificial flowers.

By following some of these simple guidelines, we hope you enjoy a pain-free summer this year, and don’t forget to consult a GP or pharmacist if symptoms persist!

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I like gadgets and as such love our Arena ‘toys’.  As the subject for this post is centered around our latest toy I have been charged with telling the story.

Something that I think I should clarify at this juncture is the definition of a ‘toy’.  We are a florist not a toy shop so by toys I mean something that is a fun addition to our flowers and which in particular makes use of the cool possibilities that the Internet has to offer.  Here at Flowers HQ we strive to be at the cutting edge in everything we do and to maintain that position we feel it is important to be as innovative as possible with the user experience.

To date this strategy has meant that we have built many fun (but useful) accessories that are used on and off our site every day.  These “toys” allow our customers to format the way their message appears on the message card and to include a glossy photo or video message to send to the recipient.  Customers are notified by text for free as soon as their order has been delivered.  Visitors who don’t want to send real flowers can send virtual flowers using another fun toy we’ve built, our free Facebook “Flowers & Fun” application.  And if you want someone to send flowers to you, you can “send a hint” from the product page (anonymously or not, the choice is yours!).

And so to our latest toy…

As a gifting company the majority of our flowers are being delivered to someone to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, new baby, or a wedding.  These are all events that recur and if you are anything like me the dates in question will be up on you when it’s already too late.  Enter Arena Calendar Reminders!

So how is a calendar reminder a toy and how is it new I hear you ask?  True most people have access to a calendar and the idea of being forewarned of an impending date is hardly new; other flower and gift companies also offer reminder services.  But, like with everything we do at Flowers HQ, we’ve tried to improve on what everyone else has to offer  – if we’ve missed anything, please let us know in the comments!

Next time you place an order on our site you will be asked if you want to set up a reminder for this event.  Setting reminders is not compulsory and if you don’t want to set a reminder, you can skip over it in a heart beat.  But if you want it, it’s there.  In the example below I have set up a reminder for my wedding anniversary (don’t want to forget that one!).  I have set the frequency as annual (monthly or weekly being the other options available), added a date and the number of days notice I need and, of course, a description of the event (so I know what I’m reminding myself about!).   Pretty simple.

Setting up the reminder in the checkout

This event is automatically added to My Reminders in My Arena and then (in this case) 10 days before my anniversary I will get my first reminder email (we also send a reminder email on the actual day).  Also, because I’ve given Arena my UK mobile phone number, I’ll also get a free text message reminding me to get my act together.  A load off my mind.  The reminder text message will be sent at 10am (rather than at midnight) so that we don’t drive our customers into a rage by waking them up with a late night text message. Once set up I can, if I want to, go and edit the event in My Arena.

The reminders section looks like this:

Important to note that you don’t have to place an order to set up reminders, you can log in to My Arena now and set up as many reminders as you like.  Flower buying is not compulsory either.  Worth noting that we’ll never sell the data you put into your reminders to others either.  This is a tool to help our loyal customers and that’s it.

The geeky bit: A year from now I will get an email looking like the one below.  The big feature in the email is of course the date and like with all our toys the date is made in a special way.  Rather than making hundreds of different images to cover all the possible date/month combinations, we make the graphic dynamically at the time of sending the email using a server side script that combines a blank calendar icon (the white and orange image) with the date of the event.  Clever huh?!

Arena Calendar Reminders is the latest addition to what we call “My Arena“, the console that we’re gradually building to make life easier for our regular customers.  Customers can use it to view all past orders, messages and purchased items, as well as to check on the status of current orders.  Customers can also save addresses that they use regularly so that they appear automatically in checkout and don’t have to be re-entered.   My Arena also captures all your previous messages so if you’re feeling lazy next time you want to send a birthday message, you can just grab a previous message, formatting and all.

The key with with My Arena is that we’re trying really to make life as easy as possible for regular flower and gift senders, without slowing down checkout for people who are just passing through on a one off sale.  Hopefully we’re getting there.

Interested? Go check out Arena Calendar Reminders for your self now.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy other posts in our “Matters Webby” category, where we talk about all the toys and bells and whistles that we’ve built into our service.

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Following up from her previous well-received guest post, we asked Pascale, friend of Arena and online marketing guru, if there was another topic she fancied sharing her thoughts on.  Sure enough, there was.  So here’s a very interesting discussion of how the web and TV and other media are getting increasingly intertwined and changing the way clever marketers get us to buy from them.  It’s certainly given us some food for thought for various partnerships we’re currently negotiating.

Search doesn’t occur in a vacuum

It’s a very familiar concept for marketers that no marketing channel (offline or online) works independently from another.  Exposure to advertising in print, television and radio commonly results in online traffic and of course, online search.  Offline push, online pull.  A survey by iProspect, 2007 showed that 67% of respondents searched online as a direct result of exposure to an offline marketing channel.

Whilst the concept is familiar, the potential benefit of the search demand created by offline advertising isn’t always harnessed effectively online by marketing departments or agencies and it is worth considering search behaviour when engaging in any offline marketing.

Using search prompts in offline campaigns

Increasingly, companies and organisations recognise this relationship and attempt to guide the consumer by encouraging them to “search online for [brand/company/campaign]” within the advertising campaign, rather than listing a long and often forgettable URL or telephone number.  Government campaigns have been doing this for some time – for example, Direct.gov’s Act on Co2 campaign in 2007, in which consumers were prompted to “search online for ‘act on co2’” in all the offline media.

The public duly responded, and there was a large increase in searches for the term “act on co2” (below is a screen shot from ‘Google Insights for Search” showing search interest for ‘act for co2’ between October 2006 to Jan 2009).

The offline push was very clear, and the search demand it created was caught by presence of the direct.gov content in both the natural and paid search channels.

More recently, a new government initiative promoting healthier lifestyles “change4life” also has a search prompt in the offline campaigns “search online for ‘change4life’”.

This campaign, which will cost the UK tax payer £75m over the next three years, so far has less than optimised search engine results listings on Google, with no paid search ad shown at the time of writing (although competitors are showing for the term), and press articles ranking above the campaign content on the NHS.uk domain (content which looks unoptimised for natural search).

Furthermore, ambiguity has been introduced by the use of ‘4’ instead of ‘for’ in the search prompt.  Searching Google for ‘change for life’ (which has shown as great an increase as searches for ‘change4life’ according to Google trends), shows first results which look relevant but are actually entirely different websites, unrelated to the Department of Health campaign.

It is clearly worth ensuring that the search results shown for a search prompt reflect the messages and websites you want consumers to see, and that the PPC budget assigned stretches far enough.  Earlier this year, confusion abounded when Orange launched a huge re-branding campaign with “search for ‘i am’” featuring on TV, radio, print and outdoor ad copy – despite the site not ranking in the natural search space at all for such a generic term (8 months on, the site currently ranks 2nd in Google); quite a few negative press articles also surface for search variations such as “orange i am” and “i am orange”.  Additionally, there were many competitors bidding on the ‘i am’ search term hoping to piggyback onto Orange’s campaign and driving up Orange’s PPC costs significantly.

Searchers don’t necessarily search for product/ brand

Some advertising creates an online search response without necessarily prompting it as with the examples above.  The infamous drumming gorilla Cadbury’s advert can be seen to have prompted a massive search response in Google.  Interestingly, there appeared to be a greater increase in searches for the generic term ‘gorilla’ than there was for the ‘cadbury’s’.

We can’t necessarily assume the terms and words people will search for when finding out more about something they’ve seen in offline marketing.  Sometimes a consumer may recall a tag line, image or theme rather than a product, brand or company.  This is worth considering when bidding on terms or optimising content for search campaigns related to offline advertising – it is worth broadening target words related to the advert or campaign rather than specific products or names alone.

Another example is the British Heart Foundation’s 2 minute ad “Watch your own heart attack”.  It aired on the 10th of August with much publicity prior to launch, and the search response to this publicity on Google is evident below:

Again, a greater response can be seen for the more generic term ‘heart attack’ than ‘british heart foundation’.  The BHF website doesn’t rank in the top 10 for ‘heart attack’ in the natural listings, so with luck they had PPC advertising with very targeted ad copy ensuring that they caught all of the search demand they generated.

Increase search spend/efforts during times of offline activity

Search prompted by strategic offline advertising can put companies at a competitive advantage.  You may have noticed that in the UK, Famous Grouse whisky is only advertised around Christmas time, when sales of spirits increase.  This type of reminder may create more brand searches for Famous Grouse compared to competitors.  Below shows ‘ardbeg’ whisky search interest vs. ‘famous grouse’.  We can see that the search difference between ‘famous grouse’ at Christmas versus other times of the year relates closely to the TV advertising – Ardbeg whisky on the other hand remains more stable in terms of search over the same time period.  It is conceivable that the offline advertising is generating this search footfall and giving Famous Grouse a competitive advantage, at least online.

It would be wise to up-weight PPC or natural search push to correspond with the timing of strategic offline campaigns to catch all the extra search demand generated.  Although this seems a logical and intuitive way to operate, with many larger companies using different agencies and different departments to run their ad campaigns, often communication is lost or is weak.  A study by iProspect, 2008 shows that 45% of companies surveyed do not integrate offline with online marketing citing having different departments managing the different channels or not having considered it as some of the most common reasons for lack of integration.

7 Top Tips to Integrate Offline Marketing with Search:

Some of these examples allow us to draw up a list of guidelines to ensure you make the most of search demand you are generating offline:

1. Integrate campaigns by ensuring that the search marketing team are kept up to date about offline campaigns.  Offline advertising campaigns should ideally budget for PPC spend, especially if they are prompting online search.  For natural search, where visibility can take a long time to achieve, terms and language used in the offline campaign should be known well in advance of the start of the campaign.
2. Ensure that when prompting consumers to “search for [product/name/brand]” online, a) you have targeted PPC ad copy related to the offline campaign b) you rank in the natural search space for the term.  The more generic the term, the pricier the PPC will be and the harder it will be to rank naturally.
3. Broaden the search terms targeted to include tag lines, themes or characters used in the offline campaign.  Don’t assume consumers will remember the brand name or product name.
4. Minimise potential misspellings or ambiguity of search prompts in offline campaigns by choosing something simple (but not too generic) and ensure that you rank for keyword variations naturally as well as bidding on them with PPC.
5. Up-weight search spend and natural visibility focus for times when offline campaigns are live to ensure that you catch as much of the search demand you generate as possible.
6. Bear in mind that competition for the PPC cost may increase as opportunistic competitors may start bidding on prompted search terms.
7. Beware of wasteful PPC cost in response to an offline campaign.  A campaign which drives interest online could be costly in terms of PPC especially if the offline teasers don’t specify what the marketing is for.  An example would be Posterscope’s Prism Search Tool, a product for marketing professionals.  The marketing campaign – brightly coloured posters on the tube and billboards around London – showed the word “Ooghle” within a search bar with no further information to indicate what the product did or the target market. With such widespread marketing and a lack of consumer discrimination (and relatively low natural search visibility) the campaign would have drawn many non-marketing searchers; clicking on their PPC ads with no chance of converting.  Having the ads only run in marketing trade press would have been much more targeted without losing the strength of the point being made.

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• Fancy a Twitter with Britney?

- The Sun, 10th January 2009

• How boring: Celebrities sign up to Twitter to reveal the most mundane aspect of their lives

- Daily Mail, 3rd January 2009

• Twitter set for its mainstream telly moment on Jonathan Ross’s comeback show

- Guardian, 7th January 2009

What started as a trickle at the end of last year has become a deluge in the New Year, with headlines in the most popular newspapers in the UK showing incontrovertibly that Twitter has moved into the UK mainstream this year and established itself as the papers’ latest web darling.  Their interest is doubtless due, at least in part, to celebrity “tweeters” – celebs sell newspapers, so the papers are going where the celebs are and trying to grab some “Twitter scoops”.

Recently Jemima Kiss, a prominent blogger and journalist, revealed Jonathan Ross’s intention to discuss the service with keen Twitterer and web aficionado Stephen Fry on his first show back from suspension.   Yesterday, the Times Online made a story out of another of Ross’s “tweets”, publishing an article about his “announcement” that he would be hosting this year’s Bafta Awards.  There’s no end of celeb twittering going on, so if you’ve always wanted to know what John Cleese had for breakfast or are desperate to learn how Lance Armstrong’s comeback is going then here’s your chance.

There have been a few “bah humbug” articles too (hey, this is the British media after all) – work place concerns focus on how Twitter may hinder productivity, whilst some media sources simply complain about the lack of juicy gossip from celebrity tweeters.

We twitter too.  So we figured we’d share some of our thoughts on Twitter and Web 2.0.  In 2007 we launched our blog with a post explaining why we would be blogging.  Basically, as a new business in the impersonal online world we felt the blog would help give us a more human a voice, would enable us to communicate more personally with our customers, and would allow us to share interesting or fun insights or snippets on flowers and the online world more generally.

Since we started blogging, the “Web 2.0” movement and the social web have expanded significantly, offering additional channels and tempos of communication to complement the “older” channels.  The most obvious change is that the flow of communication is no longer as one directional or contrived as it once was. New media, to differing extents, encourage a balanced and more frequent communication between businesses and customers / visitors.

The most important difference though, in our opinion, is that new media channels enable real time, easy going contact between parties in a way that has never been possible before.  Historically, interactions between a business and a customer have been about hard nosed selling by the business and the making of informed purchasing decisions by the customer.  Social media communications are, in most cases, far more laid back.  If old media channels are like a full on business meeting in the office, then Web 2.0 channels are more like the “getting to know you” drink in the pub afterwards.  Consequently, the conversations are sometimes utterly inane and pointless but it doesn’t really matter as there’s not so much pressure on the communication to deliver immediately or at all (at least not as far as we’re concerned).

Many prominent brands have embraced Web 2.0 channels, with varying degrees of success.  Some examples of doing it right:

• Last year the web world was abuzz with the news that Top Shop, one of the UK’s leading high street fashion retailers, was getting 5% of its online visitors from MySpace. (“But is it good traffic?”, mutters my inner marketeer);
• One famously early adopter of Twitter was the popular US-based shoe retailer Zappos. Of their 1600 odd employees, 453 of them are actively on Twitter listening, engaging and responding to customer concerns;
• US-based low cost carrier JetBlue is on Twitter and has earned kudos from customers as their Twitter responses are often faster than those their customer service team;
• More recently, Dell reported $1 million worth of sales from Twitter alone. Although this number is miniscule in comparison to Dell’s overall revenue, it does offer plenty of brand exposure (eg us writing about them here).

The intangible value social media can add to a business is thought to be high. Guy Kawasaki, an early exponent of evangelism marketing who, in his capacity as chief evangelist for Apple, was responsible for creating a number of passionate user-advocates for the Apple brand, describes Twitter as one of the best new marketing tools of the century.  Of course, PR departments of big companies always produce a lot of hot air about such trendy initiatives, trying to push how cutting edge and down with the kids their brand is, so any such figures or self-congratulatory back-slapping press releases should always be taken with a pinch of salt.

Speaking for Arena, we have seen real benefits from our blog, our Facebook application (Flowers & Fun) and from our Twitter feed, and all at low cost.  However, anyone who tells you these channels will change your business overnight is talking rubbish (and may be trying to sell you something you don’t need – caveat emptor!).  There may also be a danger that with more and more people engaging with such channels, that the value will drowned out by the additional noise.

Nonetheless, we think it’s clear that Web 2.0 and new media channels can undoubtedly add value in many ways to any sized business.  As well as being informative, engaging with social media can also be just plain fun, and even eye opening on occasion.  A lot of the things we’ve found out or leads that we’ve picked were totally unexpected or from left field, and that’s one of the most rewarding aspects of Twitter; such serendipity can’t, by definition, be planned or manufactured.  On which note, here’s a final example of the unpredictable path that twittering can take: Let’s all ‘sue Telegraph’, say Twitterers.

UPDATE: For those that live on the other side of the world, the point about Twitter having arrived was made a million times better than this post by the first pic of the Hudson River plane landing appearing first on Twitterpic.

Some Useful Twitter Resources:

• 10 ways to use Twitter to Promote you Business
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
• Guardian list of Celebrities on Twitter (constantly updated)
• How companies use Twitter to bolster their brands
• How to use Twitter to grow your business
• List of Businesses on Twitter
• List of UK Businesses on Twitter
• Why Twitter should matter to you: Twustomer service edition

If you liked this post, you may enjoy reading our other posts on Social Media: Flowers in the Social Networking Arena & Send Free Flowers on Facebook.

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Unless you’re  living in a cave somewhere, you’ll know it’s Christmas very soon indeed – Google has even added holly and sweets to the ads shown for Christmas related searches.  It’s very busy at Flowers HQ right now too, as well wishers send flowers home to loved ones.  We’ve even sold out of Father Christmases (though Steve got all sentimental and decided to keep the last one as a memento).

Given the economic environment and the weakness of the pound, we’ve spent an awful lot of our time recently trimming unnecessary costs to make sure that our customers continue to get great value for money out of every pound they spend with Arena.  We try very hard to deliver a great product at a great price and we hate wasting money.

One example of where we’ve trimmed cost is in our marketing.  Like other online businesses, we always look at our marketing channels in peak periods to see how we can bring in new visitors and orders cost effectively.  This Christmas we have been amazed how much some of our competitors are willing to pay to buy traffic and orders, especially given it’s “credit crunch Christmas”.  One might expect marketing budgets to go down in this environment, but in fact some companies are being extremely aggressive and, frankly, throwing their customers’ money away.  Who pays? The customer of course, with a substandard product being delivered as there’s no money left for flowers because of the inflated marketing spend.

Here’s a concrete example from one of our competitors, to illustrate the crazy commission deals currently on offer and some of the tricks they’re using to try to claw some of that cost back.

Here’s what they are paying for their affiliate marketing:

• 20% commission to affiliates who send them orders
• 6% to the affiliate network
• 10% off for the customer, through a promo code given out by the affiliates

That’s 26% marketing cost plus a 10% reduction in sale value.  But that’s not all.  The commissions are all payable on the gross sale price, including VAT.  But sales are only recognised ex VAT.  So for a bouquet listed at £40 on their website:

• The gross value of the sale is actually recognised at £36 because of the 10% discount
• The net value of the order once VAT is deducted is £31.31 (£36/1.15)
• Marketing cost is £9.36 (26% of £36), fully 30% of the ex VAT value of the order!

Believe it or not, it gets worse.  Given this competitor runs a relay service, there will also be a hefty relay charge in there, at least 20% but probably more, taken by the competitor as a fee for passing the order to a local florist.  I don’t know the exact relay cost % because we don’t use the relay model, as we believe it’s a waste of money to pay middle men plus relay means you can’t control the quality of the end product.

But I digress.  The point is that with this huge marketing spend and the relay fees, over 50% of a customer’s money is spent on, erm, not a lot! With 10% knocked off the overall sale value of the bouquet anyway, one has to wonder how much is actually spent on  flowers and floristry once the order makes its way to the local florist.  It must be virtually nothing, otherwise this would be a heavily loss making offer.

Or so it would seem. But the competitor has pulled some pretty Machiavellian tricks to mitigate the impact of its marketing largesse.  For example, there’s a £4 standard delivery charge on top of the bouquet price.  The 10% discount doesn’t apply to the £4 delivery charge, only the £40 bouquet price.  There’s also a minimum £40 spend (excluding delivery charge) for the promo code to work.  Yet the lowest priced bouquet over £40 is actually priced at £44 so if your original budget was £40, after the promo code you’re back to where you started (plus have the £4 delivery charge on top). Try to find a bouquet at £40, £41, £42 or even £43 and you’ll come up empty handed.

We saw this offer and didn’t even consider matching it.  Our marketing spend percentage is way way lower than those figures as we like to put our customers’ money into flowers rather than to blow it on middle men.  We don’t sneak a delivery charge in (we offer free standard delivery) and we don’t use clever tricks to get ourselves out of tight spots created by our marketing, as we think that that will just annoy visitors and customers.  If people want to get really good discounts and special offers from Arena, the only real way to do so is to sign up to our free newsletters or to become an Arena Flowers follower on Facebook.

I guess the fact that we refuse to offer such sky high commissions means that less affiliates will want to promote Arena and we’ll grow a little more slowly.  But on the other hand, we’ll deliver a high quality product with transparent pricing and we’ll wow and retain our customers (hopefully) so that the next time they want to send flowers they’ll (hopefully) come straight back to us. And for that second order, we’ll spend exactly nothing on marketing and our customer will continue to get great service from us because we haven’t blown all their money on relay fees and marketing – everyone’s a winner.  With 40% of our orders coming from repeat customers we feel that this strategy is working out pretty well so far and that’s exactly what we’re going to keep on doing.

On that note, “Bah, Humbug!” to wasting customer’s hard earned money, thanks to all our readers and customers, and Merry Christmas to everyone!

PS If you want to send Christmas flowers with no hidden costs or jiggery pokery, click here. :)

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy our other marketing posts.

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Yesterday was a busy day for anti-fraud newsflow plus some good old fashioned web fear mongering.  Don’t get me wrong – web fraud happens and needs to be combated but there is often something shrill and hysterical about the reporting of online fraud, especially in the UK.  “Everyone PANIC!” would seem to summarise the editorial style of quite a few media channels.  Before people lock up their PCs or throw them in the river, they should remember that they are significantly more likely to be a victim of crime and fraud when venturing into the real world than they are when venturing online.

There’s no doubt that education is key in battling web spam and other forms of online fraud and Get Safe Online in particular does a fantastic job of putting out clear, moderate and easy to understand information on how to take care of oneself online.  Common sense recommendations include running regular updates for your browser and operating system, having up to date antivirus, antispyware and firewall software and not responding to unsolicited emails or giving away key personal and account information online.  Often, sites like Get Safe Online recommend third party software vendors, such as AVG or McAffee.

Understandably, reputable online businesses recognise the challenge of building trust and at Arena we work very hard to address potential trust concerns of visitors, such as payment methods and checkout integrity, site security, quality / value / freshness of product, and data protection and privacy policies.  After all, if we’re asking customers to hand over their money without ever having met us face to face, then they will need to be convinced that we are who we say we are and that we’ll deliver on our promises.  We try as much as we can to be clear and transparent about what we do (posting to our blog regularly is part of that…I hope it’s clear that this post isn’t being written by a scammer in Eastern Europe!).  The key is not to slip up as, as they say, “trust is hard to win and very easy to lose”.  Once you have it, do your very best to hold on to it.

It’s therefore incredibly frustrating when a lot of hard work is potentially undone by a company that really should know better – MessageLabs (who were, incidentally, purchased for a whopping $700m by Symantec yesterday).  To explain, last week we sent out one of our regular marketing emails to our subscriber base.  So far so good.  But soon after the send, we started receiving emails from concerned customers.  They had received the following email from their mail client, Message Labs:

Subject: WARNING. Someone tried to send you a potential virus or unauthorised code

Body of email included the following: The MessageLabs Email Security System discovered a possible virus or unauthorised code (such as a Trojan) in an email sent to you.

Possible MalWare ‘Exploit/Phishing-paypal-1054′ found in ’7782603_2X_PM3_EMQ_MH__message.htm’. Heuristics score: 202

Now, I don’t know what you think, but if I received an email like that from my firewall supplier, I’d look very hard at any future communications from Arena and quite possibly unsubscribe immediately. After all, MessageLabs are a $700m company so they must be right, yeah?  Surely, they wouldn’t send out an email that slams a genuine business’s legitimate, opt-in marketing activity so thunderously by mistake?  Big boys like MessageLabs are bound to have complicated checks and balances in place to avoid accidentally torpedoing the legitimate marketing efforts of other organisations.  A web security firm in particular would understand the importance of online reputation and the hard work that goes into building trust.  And in any case, Arena has been sending regular marketing emails every other week for over two years, so no doubt MessageLabs would be able to use characteristics of our mail sends, such as previous send frequency, an unchanged IP address, subject lines etc etc to double check the validity of the send.

Nope.  It was a complete, 100% misdiagnosis by MessageLabs, as they subsequently confirmed.  We learnt that the reason that our email got hammered is that we put the word “PayPal” into the subject line yet we are not PayPal.  Blimey.  Sophisticated stuff.  We had PayPal in our subject line to let our customers know that they could win £10k cash if they paid for any order with PayPal during PayPal’s very generous 10th birthday promotion.

Obviously, customers of large online companies and banks, such as PayPal, can be targeted by spoof emails. However, our marketing email prior to this email also had PayPal in the subject line and email body and there was no backlash.  Also, I find it hard to understand how the word PayPal appearing in our mail can lead someone to imply we’re sending “viruses or unauthorised code”.  A virus would typically be an attachment of some kind, not a word in a subject line. I feel bad for PayPal too – we get way way more fraud from people who pay with credit cards than we do from people who pay with PayPal.  Fraud on orders paid with PayPal is virtually nil.  We much prefer people to pay with PayPal.

One of the first emails we received was in fact from a MessageLabs sales rep (who’d previously bought from Arena and who’d therefore received the MessageLabs warning email direct). His mail:

Please remove me from all your mailing list right away as you are sending viruses.
I can assist you with possible solutions however I was unable to reach your IT department.
MessageLabs Anti-virus solution has a SLA of 100% protection from all known and unknown viruses, phishing, trojans and other forms of malware.

http://www.messagelabs.co.uk/products/

Thank you

10/10 for being a pushy sales rep but frankly this mail was not terribly well received as you can imagine.  You wouldn’t want this guy consoling you if you broke up with your partner. “I’m afraid you’ve been dumped but I’m a pimp – have you considered paying for sex?”.  You’d then be even more upset when you found out that it was this guy that had caused the break up with your partner in the first place.

We also noted that, unlike the careful wording of the automated email sent by MessageLabs’ system, his email did not talk about “possible” viruses but came straight out and said “you are sending viruses” which was patently untrue. A rather terse email exchange followed, as you might expect, though not litigation as might have been the case with our American cousins (we’re too British for that).

In any case, I eventually spoke to the UK’s head of corporate sales who unsurprisingly was more reasonable and sort of / nearly / just about apologetic (although he too did suggest we bought their software, admittedly more tongue in cheek that his sales chasing colleague).  He gave me some spiel about how great MessageLabs is and how they use  complicated predictive algorithms to filter mail which all sounded good but didn’t stand up very well to “very nice, but it was just the word PayPal in the subject line that triggered this mess and you misdiagnosed it as a virus anyway”.

The frustrating thing about this is that MessageLabs has several million installed users in the UK, particularly in big, wealthy organisations, such as the government and banks etc.  These are obviously valuable potential customers and exactly the kind of people we’d love to retain.  Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how many such customers have now had their hard won trust in Arena dented or destroyed by MessageLabs’ misdiagnosis and there is no real way for us to fix this (bar writing this cathartic blog post!).  The chap at MessageLabs said “Sorry” but it’s not going to make any difference.  It’s clearly no coincidence that this email performed far worse than any other we’ve ever sent; it can realistically only be down to our MessageLabs mishap.

Maybe to add insult to injury MessageLabs will read this post and then use some of their freshly coined $700m to blast us right off the face of the earth and have done with it.  Ah well, you live and learn.  They didn’t do it on purpose but it certainly hurt.  I guess no matter how careful you are, there will always factors beyond your control, coming from any and all directions, that might disrupt your business.  The best laid plans of mice and men and all that…

Update: Following the post, we were featured on Mail on Sunday and other popular news channels. Read Mail on Sunday’s article on Arena Flowers here. The Register, one of the UK’s leading technology publishers picked up on our concerns and featured an article about Arena Flowers here. The article also featured on Softpedia, a leading technology related online publisher. Read the article on Arena Flowers here.

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Dr. Dave Chaffey, is the Director and lead consultant for Marketing Insights Limited, an independent marketing consultancy. He is also the best selling author of Internet Marketing books used by digital marketing professionals and on many University and College Courses globally. His latest book, Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, which features Arena Flowers’ case study is out in December 2008. Dave blogs regularly at digital marketing blog. He can be contacted at dave.chaffey@marketing-insights.co.uk.

Dave has been very kind in agreeing to our request for an interview for Flowers…Uncut. He shares his views on the challenges online Retailers, particularly small/startup businesses face in the online marketing environment and offers suggestions on improving website conversions to drive up sales. Read on…

Arena Flowers: Hello Dave. The Internet is a powerful channel of communication and commerce and has opened several new marketing avenues for small businesses. At the same time, it has also made possible many competitive threats and challenges. What are the main challenges online retailers face in the coming years and how should they react?

The biggest challenge for all online marketers has to be gaining and keeping attention, what the academics call “customer engagement”. Despite the Google monopoly, the search engines are still great for gaining attention for businesses that make the effort to understand the details of best practice.

SEO and Pay Per Click give a wonderful opportunity for small businesses since they level the playing field a little with more established businesses. Although the odds are still stacked in favour of the larger business because of their scale, small businesses that are more agile and follow the latest best practice in SEO and really understand the AdWords quality score can still compete online as the growth of Arena Flowers shows.

Keeping attention is a challenge due to online media fragmentation and more of us spending more time in social networks and reading blogs. Email marketing is vital as a customer retention tool, yet research by RedEye shows that around 60% of a typical permission-based list is “emotionally unsubscribed” or inactive over a 6 month period – subscribers never open or never click. To counter this you need to deploy what I call a “right-touching” contact strategy. Use the power of technology to automatically target customers with triggered email promotions and personalized web messages and where that fails offline contacts, according to their position in the lifecycle and their recent activity measured through recency, frequency and latency.

Arena Flowers: How do you see the role of search marketing and online advertising within the overall media mix, now and going forward?

With 90% of searches in the UK completed using Google according to Hitwise, we’re really talking Google marketing. It’s frightening that Google is now used to mediate almost every buying decision with most purchases starting with a search. The important point to understand is that the majority of searches which reach a retail site for a well-known brand are navigational – including <brand name> + <product name>.

So small businesses have to try to create a compelling brand experience which means that they are searched for by name at some point in the selection process. Large businesses such as Directline.com invest heavily in print and TV to establish this brand association with product, so small businesses are at a disadvantage here, but it shows the potential of tactical offline communications for small businesses. Many businesses who have analysed it have found that although online display ads have low click through rates, they do help in creating awareness and can add a brand onto the prospects consideration list.

Arena Flowers: The ability to drive traffic to a website is only a part of the objective for online retailers. The ultimate objective is to retain customer’s interest throughout the shopping experience to ensure higher levels of conversions. However, many retailers face a challenge of converting customer visits to a sale. What are main issues an Online Retailer should address to maximise conversions?

I have written a free article called the Perfect Landing Page which gives further tips.

Arena Flowers: What are your five golden rules for online businesses?

I’m a practical person, so these are practical rules: I’m assuming the strategy is in place targeting the right product at the right customers and the cost of acquiring new and repeat customers is being carefully controlled.

First, you have to put the time into reviewing and acting on the analytics once its setup. In many large businesses, not enough time is put into this, again smaller businesses can win here.

Second, and an example of the analytics you should be reviewing, all online businesses should measure and act on bounce rates for everything – different referring sites, different AdGroups, different landing pages, different product types. Work from the bottom up to increase overall conversion.

Third, become experts at Search Engine Marketing and online PR – it’s too important to outsource everything, you need to develop the internal expertise.

Fourth, become experts at all aspects of email marketing which affect response starting with a communications and targeting strategy to deliver relevant, timely messages and then going through to more technical issues like making sure your emails are delivered and render well in the inbox even when images are blocked.

Fifth, you have to get direct customer feedback on what works and doesn’t work for them in the experience to make improvements for the future. There’s only so much you can gain from analytics tools.

Arena Flowers: Which online businesses do you particularly admire?

Many traditional businesses translate their existing offers online. I admire businesses who use the unique facilities of the web to offer more than other channels to add to the brand. I call this the Online Value Proposition.

Looking at multi-channel companies, I admire the way that Dell really use the web to listen to their customers from their Ideastorm site to various blogs and YouTube Channels. Many businesses I speak to don’t see the value of the blog and are missing out due to their fear of the unknown.

The big travel companies like Thomson (Tui) and Thomas Cook have also worked really hard to use the web to support the customer in buying online. Thomson has it’s labs section much like Google Labs and will trial ideas, but pull them if they don’t work.

Of the online pureplay companies, I admire Euroffice for the way they are building an online brand in the Office Supplies sector and the way in which they use “right touching” through email and the web to deliver personalized offers for the customers. And of course, I have to mention Arena Flowers which shows how a new company can grow rapidly and profitably if they harness the latest technology and choose the right marketing approaches.

Arena Flowers: That’s great. Thank you for your time!

If you liked this post, you might enjoy our other posts on Brand Reputation Management and Protecting Website Content.

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