As the number of Millennials in the U.S. workforce increases, the more valuable these consumers become to your business as they obtain the responsibility and the pure adrenaline rush of joy of spending their hard-earned income. Of course your company will want to target these consumers, generally 18-33 years of age, with your marketing efforts, but there’s a catch: never has a demographic been more bombarded and thereby turned-off by media advertisements and gimmicks than the Millennials. Email may seem to be a fantastic way to keep tabs on this group of consumers, as 98% of Millennials check their email every few hours. But email marketing can become dangerously close to being considered spam for even your most loyal customers, Millennials and otherwise, when improperly executed. Thankfully, best practices have been implemented by customer-savvy companies that can revolutionize the way you use this tried-and-true method of communication to reach your customers, whatever their generation happens to be.

These new practices can be summarized with one word: personalization. And while it may seem to be asking too much to make every individual message personal to your customers, new technology has enabled ways to streamline this process so it can be realistically done. In what is known as cross-channel marketing, companies can utilize automated services in order to collect information on what consumers are buying from them, allowing marketers to email customers with unique, targeted offers that can help drive both business and the overall relationship. For the uninitiated, it may seem a little awkward to be collecting this kind of information, but it actually saves your consumers time and money in the long run— if someone is already buying something from your website, wouldn’t they want to hear about relevant products and services in the near future, especially if it’s at a discount and a frequently bought item or service? As a business, you want to stay in the mind of your easily distracted customers, and there’s no better way to do so than to be seen as a helpful and useful friend.

While building out your new email campaign to target Millennials and other tech-savvy consumers no matter the age, keep in mind the following pointers, courtesy of the Harvard Business Review. First, make sure your emails are friendly to mobile devices—88% of Millennials use their smartphones to check their email, so you want your own communication to be compatible with this trend. Time your emails for key points in the day, such as around bedtime when many consumers are checking their email before going to sleep. Make sure to use pictures, and to keep your emails concise; don’t let the curse of TL, DR (too long, didn’t read, for you non-Millennials out there) become the conversation killer for your campaign.

You don’t need to have gone to Harvard to know how to stay in touch with your consumers, but you do want a team to expedite the process as much as possible so you can focus on running your business. That’s where the dedicated professionals of Sun Sign Designs make the online world simple for your company. Reach out us today to see how we can construct a world class email campaign together with you!

December 3, 2015

Today Emphaticaleigh LLC is officially launching its site emphaticaleigh.com as an online marketplace for artists to meet, communicate and sell their pieces of work to interested buyers. The website already features work done by one of its principal artists, Shannon Leigh, and is looking to expand its roster of qualified artists going forward.

Emphaticaleigh.com is an extremely valuable resource for artists looking to sell their work on the internet and increase their name recognition among buyers. It features an expertly produced website as the portal for transactions, and is run by professional artists who deeply care about both the craft and business of visual art. Artists who previously viewed the internet as confusing and as a last resort for displaying their work can rest assured that we will act in your best interests so you receive a suitable return for what you do.

The website seeks to address many issues artists face when looking for online buyers. Many interested buyers simply do not know how to find and identify emerging artists if their work is not currently displayed in a gallery. Emphaticaleigh will serve as go-to resource for consumers to view art for sale. The price is of the work is also clearly displayed, eliminating the issue where buyers had to directly contact the seller for the price of the individual piece. Emphaticaleigh takes the guesswork out of purchasing premium works of art, creating an ideal experience for both artist and buyer.

Emphaticaleigh understands the difficulty that artists face when marketing and selling their art. Our platform and artist community network offers a non-traditional solution that will allow you to expand the audience of your work worldwide. In addition to our web services, we also handpick works of art to showcase in galleries around the country in displays that we create ourselves. Feel free to contact us directly so we can review your masterpieces.

Emphaticaleigh LLC.
279 McGuire Park Drive
Bloomsburg PA, 17815

P: 570-594-4216
F: 888.280.1272
E: [email protected]

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Strategy – noun – strat·e·gy\-jē\: a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal, usually over a long period of time.

Does your company strategy meet the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition? Would you consider your strategy carefully done, or put together on the fly? Is it in plan form, or is it more a set of loose guidelines? Do you consider your goals particular, or just a foggy idea? And perhaps most importantly, is your strategy built for the long term, sustainable in the face of adversity? Being caught without a strategy is at best embarrassing, and at worst, a disaster. But just having a strategy doesn’t make you bulletproof. By examining some of the most famous business failures of the past 30 years, your company can avoid similar mistakes, while sharpening your own strategy to meet the needs of both your customers and your bottom line.

After 40 years of existence, Sony finally announced the retirement of its Betamax Video Player for March 2016, 30 years after its failure in the video cassette war with JVC’s VHS Format in the 70s and 80s. While it was considered a superior technical format at the time, several strategic factors impacted Betamax’s ability to gain market traction (MediaCollege.com). JVC’s machines were cheaper, easier to make, and incorporated some of the elements from Sony’s Machine, as the VHS was released a year after the Betamax. However, the deciding factor was a simple difference: Betamax’s tapes could initially only tape 60 minutes, while VHS could record up to 3 hours, with most Hollywood movies clocking in at 2 hours. Sony attempted to adapt to the market demand for longer recording, but ultimately failed when VHS achieved dominance in the late 80s. Sony’s inability to meet the desires of its customers in the face of fierce competition led to its defeat in this field.

What happens when one of your products is so popular that it hurts your ability to innovate for the future? Commodore Computers realized that it may have created a monster with its C64, a system that held so tenaciously to its market share in the 80s PC field that it spawned the phrase “You can’t kill the C64” (BusinessPundit). During 1983-86 it was selling 2 million units a year and held almost half the PC market, and made it difficult for Apple’s newly debuting Macintosh—yes, that Apple—to achieve traction in the consumer market in 1984. Commodore’s luck ran out when it attempted to release its Plus/4 design, a system that despite being faster and in color was unforgivably incompatible with the beloved C64, and its customer base refused to make the switch. While the C64 stayed popular into the 90s, Commodore was unable to meet the demand without selling newer and commercially viable models, and filed for bankruptcy in 1994.

While both Sony and Commodore made the mistake of not paying enough attention to what their customers were doing, at least they had customers to lose. Pets.com has the dubious distinction of being the poster child for the Dot-com bubble of 1999-2001, and its woes could be best described by BusinessPundit’s comment that “in marketing nothing is worse than having everyone know who you are and no one interested in what you sell.” Pets.com rapidly expanded its warehouse infrastructure, flush with investor cash but lacking a base of customers. Rapid expansion makes sense for companies like Starbucks and Subway, entities that depend on constant interaction with consumers at their franchises in order to maintain market superiority. But warehouse capacity? Customers don’t care about warehouse capacity. Pets.com’s stock price went from $11 to 19 cents during the year 2000, losing over 98% of its value in that time frame.

While it can be entertaining to dance on the graves of these business failures, common themes emerge from comparing them together. Customers are the key to your bottom line – that should go without saying, but these companies show that anything from a simple oversight (Betamax’s tape length) to full-scale ignorance (Pets.com in general) can contribute to being blinded from that fact. Technological innovations are not always the answer – perhaps the right innovations can be, but all of these companies demonstrated that being caught up in the current trend or fad of what your competitors are doing could result in failure. Consumers may love your product like the Commodore 64, but if you don’t have a solid plan in place to develop from your success, then you are stuck in a stationary spiral while the competition blows past you.

How do you avoid these mistakes? Who do you have in your corner? Is your company built to compete in the current online landscape, or do the stories above hit a little too close to home? You need the answer to questions to be someone you can trust to stay by you through thick and thin, and understand exactly what both your company and your customers require. Sun Sign Designs is that answer.

Please reach out to us to find out more on how you can be eligible for a free strategy session and plan from Sun Sign Designs right now!

Fresh from its reorganization under the company Alphabet, Google turned its sights this week to the online app field by making its “Google Apps for Work” cost nothing for businesses already under enterprise contracts with competitors such as Microsoft (TechCrunch). Google directly called out Microsoft in its promotional marketing for the move, and the search giant is betting that by allowing users to work with Google’s own productivity suite, they will make the switch to become a paying customer after the contract is finished. Ironically, in the meantime, Microsoft has begun targeting Google’s Android platform as a new area to expand its applications, seemingly undercutting the company’s own efforts to establish its Windows OS Phone in the ferocious smartphone market (The Register). The Chief Experience Officer for Microsoft, Julie Larson Green, told a reporter from The Australian they would continue to expand on Android because the company will “go wherever our customers are.” But is it truly safe to say those are Microsoft’s customers? Amid the competition between the largest companies in the technology field, it seems as though Microsoft is grasping for its own identity.

Much like kids in middle school, all the cool big tech companies have their own smartphone. And while Apple continues to be the dominant player in that particular field, Microsoft has attempted to get its own market share with the Windows Phone. Strong selling points are essential to succeed in a competitive arena such as smartphones, and Microsoft’s hit Windows 10 operating system remains the highlight for its phone. This is what makes Microsoft’s expansion into the Android OS confusing: why push to develop apps for someone else’s operating system when you have your own? Especially for Google, a competitor who has no problem taking Microsoft’s customers out from under them. By showing a lack of confidence in its own product, Microsoft showed weakness exactly when it has to appear strong, and application developers are taking notes. There are new reports this week of apps disappearing and losing support from the Windows Store, increasing the already wide gap between the Windows phone and its far-ahead competitors in applications (The Verge).

This is why Microsoft’s big move this week seemed especially ripe for analysis. Today Microsoft is launching its first-ever flagship store on 5^th Avenue in Manhattan, touting its new Surface and Xbox products (Engadget). One of the obvious advantages of running a huge company is that it is easy to highlight your successes while downplaying your losses given the sheer number of products you have. A more penetrating examination would be that Microsoft longs for the past, when technology products were more physical and it seemed like everyone agreed that Windows was the only big kid on the block. But unlike Google, who in response to innovative competition made the bold decision of creating its own parent company to house its experiments—a move right out of the science fiction and horror genres—Microsoft seems content to stick to its old strategy of copying Apple, this time with a Manhattan flagship store just like Apple. And while that strategy has certainly carried them this far, a more successful strategy would perhaps be to simply be confident in their own products, such as their operating system and Windows Phone. This would be especially important to do before all these issues come together to potentially form a full-blown identity crisis.