The XIC Blog

Spice up your direct mail campaign.

Posted on February 14, 2012 by XIC

This week we are divulging some tips on how to maximise effectiveness of your direct mail campaign.

Planning

First off, in order to get the most out of your direct mail campaign there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

•Is it clear what you’re actually promoting?

•Is your offer or message relevant to the recipient?

•Is there a mechanism for the recipient to respond?

•Is there a resource in place to deal with the response?

Setting some simple objectives will help make your campaign more effective.

Creating

This is the really fun bit and the part where you have the opportunity to spice things up a little with different techniques. Try these out for size:

• Human Touch: Write as though you are communicating with an individual directly. You want to be as human as possible which will help you build stronger client relationships.

• Catchy Tagline: Get creative and brainstorm some catchy taglines that will encourage recipients to open and read your mailer, take inspiration from bigger brands or parody a popular tagline for maximum effect.

• QR Codes: Take advantage of the increase in popularity and use of smartphones and integrate a QR code into your piece. If done well and placed correctly with an appropriate landing page, you can really increase conversion rates.

If you would like to know more about or simply want a chat, please leave a comment here or check us out on Twitter @xicdotcom or at Facebook.com/XICsocial

Granite Expo, get your free Haribo’s here!

Posted on October 25, 2011 by XIC

Thursday 27^th from 9-6 at the Hilton Treetops marks this year’s Granite Expo http://www.granitepr.co.uk/, exhibiting and celebrating SMEs across the North East, including our fantastic selves, ! We are all excited for the event and have been busy organising freebies, case studies, products, and a FREE prize draw for our stand to show off & give to all you lucky attendees!

We have lots to show and giveaway including four banner stands boasting our services from branded products to our bespoke marketing services.As for the freebies, you will just have to come pay us a visit at Stand 67 to get your hands on them, but we can tell you that there are some of our famous Haribo giveaways on the uptake if you come and chat to us, we’re a friendly bunch, honest!

This year we are co-promoting with Simpsons http://www.simpsonshotel.co.uk/ and showcasing our first X-media Case Study on the popular West End hotel! Calum and Jason will be on hand to discuss the Case Study after working closely on the project as well as talking you through our customised golf products, who wouldn’t want their own branded balls?Moreover, we will have our own in-house Social Media ‘Butterfly’ Cheryl on hand to discuss all things Twitter and Facebook, there were rumours of hiring the Blue Twitter bird outfit for the exhibition but they were swiftly thwarted, much to Cheryl’s relief!

But, the focus isn’t just on us, Granite Expo is showcasing over 100 exhibitors, 12 must see seminars and plenty of crucial local SME networking, you really can’t afford to miss this. So please come down and pay us a visit, partake in some conversation and of course indulge in our giveaways, they are pretty great if we do say so ourselves!

We love Blogging, and here is why you should too!

Posted on October 19, 2011 by XIC

There aren’t enough words to describe how much we love Blogging and writing content that we are passionate about. It is an extremely cleansing and powerful way to convey your knowledge and even better, your opinions, we all have them! Our passion is sparked by articles all the time that are relevant and topical to XIC and it is also a chance for us to praise and raise awareness of other people/companies whose content we love also… interactivity is the aim of the game!

In order to promote our Blog, we try to keep our content fresh by updating it once/twice a week with topics from print to social media, marketing to cakes! Then we link it up to blogs/articles/influencers who have spurred our creativity and @mention them on Twitter and tag them on Facebook…it’s a reciprocal thing folks!

We can almost guarantee that if you haven’t started Blogging yet you will fall head over heels for it when you do, and for those avid Bloggers already out there, you will know exactly what we are talking about J

Since we are waxing lyrical about Blogging, here are some of the benefits and some tips that we personally have found particularly valuable:

· Brand Building: Blogging is an excellent way to build your brand with real communication and knowledge, proving what’s important and great about your brand. We have received cross-Atlantic recognition with some of our content through networking we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, nothing like a bit of self-promotion!

· Social Media: An excellent tool for marketing your Blog, enabling you to tag and mention all sorts of relevant influencers and businesses local or global and if you’re really lucky you might even get your Blog re-tweeted or shared as we have managed through specific networking.

· Search Engine Optimisation: This is one of the benefits that we have only become aware of recently, but it is in fact possible for you to blog your way to the top of Google. You can do this by regularly updating your content, keeping your blog fresh, including relevant links and using key words specific to your company.

We also would recommend this here site: http://www.thelinkmedic.com/ for useful tips on Blogging, tools and promotion, you can also follow them @TheLinkMedic on Twitter for up to the minute information!

So whether a Blogging virgin, a new start or a keen bean, please feel free to leave your comments, questions and feedback about Blogging, we would love to hear from you!

Social media week, excited much?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by XIC

Beirut, Berlin, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo, sounds like the travellers holiday of a lifetime…hold the phone, “what’s that” we hear you say? Yes, it is in fact a list of all the cities that are involved in and playing host to Social Media Week! Pretty Amazing, right?

As you have probably noticed from our tweeting and Facebooking we are pretty excited about Social Media Week and are inclined to agree with The Urquhart Partnership in their blog (http://bit.ly/rbX3Cy) and fess up to being ‘a bit geeky about social media’, well said UP! The event takes place September 19^th-23^rd 2011. So, we at XIC thought we would dedicate this week’s blog entry to the festivities.

For those of you who don’t know, Social Media Week started in 2009 and brings hundreds of thousands of people together every year by offering the opportunity to share experiences and educate what and how social media has affected them and their business. Consequently, as part of Social Media week Glasgow, Creative Space are hosting a day in Aberdeen, this Friday 23^rd, so check out the link and get involved, you know you want to: (http://bit.ly/oaNGwN)

In light of the event we thought we would share some of our experiences and encourage you to do also! We want all our social media to be a hub of interactivity between us and our fans, clients, customers, followers and anyone who is interested in our business and content. However, we recognise that this is a long term strategy and takes time and effort to cultivate. Building brand awareness and harnessing customer loyalty are all aspects of our goals and we think that things are really starting to happen.

We have noticed marked improvements on our likes and interactions on Facebook, even more followers and mentions, re-tweets on Twitter and plenty of networking on LinkedIn! Moreover, new advancements have taken place such as building a company profile on LinkedIn, building a Facebook landing page, including a ‘Like’ box in our blog amongst many others.

This is excellent progress for us thus far as we can now start to measure and track our responses to further target and improve our content. We feel we are starting to understand our fans and followers more and more and recognise that this will continue to be an on-going process.

So, how much are you a social media (for business) geek, have you caught the bug? Leave a comment on the blog, post us an update on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/nzJPB7, give us a shout on Twitter: http://bit.ly/pLhIT1 or visit us on LinkedIn http://linkd.in/mU7ngc.