It’s really easy to get used to a particular approach to online marketing and stick to it. More often than not an initial wave of good results will cause this, but you’re likely to find that churning out a repetitive promo will end up generating less and less interest over time, and even turning your customers off completely.

There are plenty of ways to keep things fresh, and with a little strategising you can find a number of different approaches that you can keep to hand in your marketing arsenal, picking and choosing to suit. Here’s an effective one to try out…

Occasionally promoting an individual product or service can be a great way to generate interest in your wider offerings. Singling out one area of your business can create a more exclusive focus to your marketing, making a refreshing change from more general sales advertising. When you’re only taking about one thing you’ve got a better chance of streamlining your message and getting a positive reception - then opening the door to other opportunities.

A recent e-flyer for Aston Martin Lancaster Cambridge (take a look at it in our portfolio) showcased a rare V12 Vanquish, presenting the car as a ‘last chance’ for prospective buyers. Another email marketing campaign for Porsche Centre Cambridge highlighted a unique pink Boxster, the only one of its kind available at the time. Both campaigns played on the ‘opportunity’ of the offering, instantly demanding attention.

As well as drawing attention to a particular product or service, this type of marketing can also generate interest in your other offerings and create clear selling opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Although you’re genuinely advertising a single item to begin with, you’re ultimately exposing your prospective customers to everything else that you’ve got to offer once they click-through to your website or walk into your shop.

Think about what you’ve got to promote from every angle, and you might find that an occasional detour from a usual approach can deliver results.

Take a look at our newly updated portfolio page to see a selection of what we’ve been creating here at Green Media during October. You’ll find our debut Lamborghini and Toyota e-flyers, the website for Brenikov Training and the latest Aston Martin email marketing.

We’ll be updating the page regularly, so be sure to check it out again soon. Next month’s additions include an absolutely stunning Bentley email marketing campaign, which is our first sole branded work for the classic marque.

It’s a rare industry that has remained unscathed throughout 2008, and there’s now a real need to evolve your promotional approach to meet with the changing day-to-day demands of the market. The first thing to consider is the be-all and end-all of your marketing - the customer. Ask yourself - do you know your customer as well as you think?

Avoid guessing what your customers are looking for, as even missing the mark slightly here will cost time and money. It is always worth doing a little research every so often to find out exactly how you should be marketing your product, and it becomes even more important during turbulent times like these. You’re likely to be surprised at how willing people are to give you the information you’re looking for, and a questionnaire on your website or a quick email flyer could be all that’s needed. Everyone’s got an opinion, and most people like the opportunity to express theirs.

It’s hardly in-depth socio-demographic analytics, but you will find out some information that is new to you - something that could help you avoid wasting your marketing budget at a time when it needs to be more effective than ever.

The marketing budget is often the first outgoing to be cut during an economic downturn, but it is almost always the case that any immediate savings will be massively overshadowed by the imminent problems that reduced marketing will cause.

Marketing is absolutely key to your company’s performance, so if anything a financial nosedive like the one that is happening right now should make your marketing budget more important than ever. Your competitors will be cutting their own marketing spend, and when that happens you’ll find voids opening up. It’s up to you to fill these voids and benefit. Cutting your marketing budget leaves the gaps for your competitors to fill, and isolates you even further from your goals.

Your customers and prospects haven’t disappeared - they still exist, they’re perhaps just more discerning than they were earlier. Again, it’s up to you to react to this.

Refocus on what you’re trying to achieve from your marketing. It’s likely that you’ll need to adapt your approach or even your offering, but giving up altogether simply cannot lead to a positive outcome.

Riding out the turbulence can empower your brand in other ways, particularly expanding and consolidating your share of voice (SOV). Eventually once the financial storm has settled, if you’ve stayed the course and been ever-present throughout then this will be abundantly clear to customers and market observers - you’re not meekly emerging from a wreckage like competitors who disappeared by cutting their marketing, you’ve never been away.

We set our new email marketing system live today, with a debut mailing for a BMW client the first to experience the all-new features and results centre. All of our email marketing from this point will be through the new system, and we’re looking forward to seeing even better performance ongoing.

So, what’s new? In a word - everything. We’ve built from the ground up to create a system that is capable of providing the most complete service to our email marketing clients. The previous platform was already delivering outstanding performance, but with this new system we’re taking it to the next stage. Here are some of the new features;

New interface

Intuitive, easy-to-follow and beautifully presented. The main sections are divided with sliding tabs, clearly indicating each category. Results and statistics are shown in 3D graphs and simple grouped listings, making it easier than ever to navigate.

Unlimited link tracking

We’ve taken the limit off the number of traceable links that can be placed within an email, so no matter how wide the scope of your email marketing, our new system can comfortably cover it. Each link is clearly titled depending on its destination, making it easy to quickly scan through your listings and check performance.

Wider results date range

Date ranges have been extended to ten days from mailout, meaning that you can identify any opens or clicks within that period and clarify exactly when they happened. Discover when your recipients are most likely to act on your message and set target dates for the future.

Performance comparisons

Compare results from any two mailings, side-by-side. Find out what worked, and refine your approach for the next broadcast.

We’ve revamped our in-house email marketing system in the last few months to incorporate some exciting new features and introduce a new presentation interface. The new system, which is currently going through its final test sessions, will supercede our EDM for Business platform when it launches later this month.

Throughout the last eight years the Greenmedia system has provided email marketing to some of the biggest names in various sectors on a global scale, with phenomenal results across the board. We’ve built up an email marketing client list that currently includes the likes of Aston Martin, Audi, Porsche and numerous other prestigious marques - all of which have been acquired due to the continued strong performance of the system. We thought the time was right to take it to the next level, so, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We initially created the system because we couldn’t find anything out there that provided all of the email marketing features we wanted to offer our clients. In building from scratch in-house with our own development team, we were able to produce a system that offered the latest features in a single, scaleable package. In the eight years that have passed since version 1.0 went live, there have been countless additions and amends, but it is still the case that nothing else quite like it exists in terms of mass email marketing packages. We firmly believe that Greenmedia’s email marketing offers a superior service, and our experience in the area is second to none.

The revamped version marks the biggest change to the system to date, and we’re sure that it’ll provide the platform for even more email marketing success when it goes live soon.