More than 800 attendees and exhibitors joined the Exabytes Internet Marketing Summit 2018 on 9 August 2018 at MaGIC Cyberjaya!
Exabytes Internet Marketing Summit 2018 – the fifth grand scale of digital marketing summit is organized by Exabytes Network since 2015 and has brought together 35 digital marketing experts and gurus who shared on their insight and knowledge on marketing trends.
Over 800 eager participants, including business owners, entrepreneurs, digital marketing specialists, marketing/branding directors, advertisers, digital and social media marketers attended the event to learn, gain insights and exchange views in the numerous interactive sessions.
Event Highlights
To deliver a meaningful and memorable learning experience, we arranged two learning platforms/stages to run concurrently at the event, with the main stage focusing on presentation and sharing, and the workshop stage focusing on more hands-on learning.
The speakers, panelists and moderators of Exabytes Internet Marketing Summit 2018 shared their insights, knowledge and experience in digital marketing trends including:
Thank you for coming! We hope you enjoyed networking in this event!
Exhibition with the crazy crowdWe also provided this simple survey board to engage with attendees. It’s great to see everyone was excited to share their thoughts with us!Ross Wakeham, Market Lead of Singapore & Malaysia at Facebook shared his insights on the importance of connecting your customers with mobile.EIMS Workshop was full house!Meetup Space also provided in this event – for the attendees to have a better place for discussionYuh Wen, CEO & Founder of Sushivid shared on the revolution of influencer marketingPanel discussions with all the great moderator and panelists!Engaging with attendees by interviewing them, to know more their thoughts and experience at EIMSThere was a lucky draw provided for the attendees as well. Prizes included OXWHITE shirt (Proudly sponsored by OXWHITE); Sony Headphone and RC Helicopter. Attendees just need to scan the special QR code to know if they win the prizes on the spot!
Thank you to all our partners, speakers and of course all of the attendees who joined us yesterday!
Without you, this event wouldn’t be a success!
We hope everyone had fun, enjoyed learning & meeting the guest speakers in this event.
Registration for Exabytes Internet Marketing Summit 2019!
Missed out EIMS 2018?
No worries! We promise to gather the great speakers again at 2019, so make sure you get your tickets now – RM99/ticket(Limited to 100 seats only)
Never stop learning! See you at EIMS 2019!
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Courtesy of the partnership with Radix, we would like to give every attendee a complimentary .online or .site domain! Let’s check out the benefits of securing .online or .site!
Why .online?
Open doors to global reach
Whether you are a local business expanding or realizing your brilliant ideas, stay ahead of the curve with the modern and intuitive .online domain extension.
Let the world hear you speak
Create an online unique presence that reflects you or your brand. If you have a brick store, it adds recognition and announces to your customers that they can connect with your business online, from anywhere around the world.
Overcome language barriers
Did you know that the word “Online” is understood in over 24 languages? That makes having a descriptive .online domain your golden ticket to make a connection instantly.
Why .site?
Perfect generic
It is short and intuitive, it is a popular term with customers across all industries and verticals.
Industry agnostic
It is not a niche extensions. .site is perfect for all kinds of organizations & business!
Overcome language barriers
It cuts across languages and geographies and can be understood in 9+ languages. Hence, it’s suitable for all customers and brands, from individuals, small & medium business to large organizations.
The complimentary domain only opens for EIMS’ participants. By joining EIMS, you will get to know the latest trends of digital marketing and also meet the experts face-to-face!
So grab your tickets now and our team will send you a special promo code to claim the complimentary .online domain or .site domain!
Last Thursday, Exabytes (Setiawalk branch) was filled with more than 80 attendees for ‘ Manage WordPress Smartly & SEO Enhancement’ workshop. The turnout was a great success, and definitely better than we anticipated!
Our special speaker Vladimir Samukov is a Senior Engineer at Plesk Onyx. As an experienced engineer skilled in virtualization, web hosting, data center, and software as a service (SaaS), the audience was very keen to learn nothing but the best from Samukov.
The participants consist of beginners and experts from various backgrounds. WordPress developers, designers, publishers, or anyone who loves WordPress gathered to learn and share their experience with users from different areas.
In the session, Samukov shared on how to manage multiple WordPress sites effectively in just a few minutes. He also covered the subjects on how to monitor your website SEO performance, optimize it to achieve good organic search ranking, and make it 10X more secured.
In short, Samukov provided a fruitful session on WordPress easy installation, theme and plugin management, SEO simplification and optimization. We hope the participants enjoyed and learned valuable knowledge from the expert and we will continue to organize more sessions on different subjects soon.
Exabytes CEO Chan Kee Siak Wins Excellence Business Award
Congratulations to our CEO Chan Kee Siak for winning the triumphant award! Check out the video where Chan shares on his determination to bring Exabytes, Malaysia’s 1st Cloud Solution Provider Company to a winning success!
Last week, Nanyang Siang Pau celebrated their 95th Anniversary Gala Dinner in Penang. One of the many highlights was the award presentation of 20 Excellence Business Award.
After thorough screening and review, the organizer selected 20 outstanding Chinese businessmen. They were among the top outstanding business developers who have excellently branded their companies in Penang.
The Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow and Executive Director of Media Chinese, Zhang Chong jointly presented the 20 winners for their outstanding achievement. We were proud to announce that Exabytes CEO, Chan Kee Siak is one of the reputable winners!
Later in the evening, Zhang Chong shared that the Excellence Business Award was launched to recognize the elite talents and strength of Penang business community. Over the years, the business community has contributed to the Chinese and Penang economy rapidly. With this award, hope to inspire more businessmen to invest in the corporate world.
To win the prestigious award, they must shine in outstanding contributions to the societies and education. Besides, they also need to fulfill their social responsibilities. This means to give back to the society and actively participate in charitable activities.
Again, we’d like to congratulate our CEO for hitting another home run. Here’s to greater success and blooming of the business community.
You’re sitting in your office after a really long meeting thinking about the years you’ve spent building your retail business. Now, your employees and stakeholders are keen on getting on the digital bandwagon and moving this business online.
The idea of taking your brand online is making you nervous. What if it doesn’t work out because you don’t have the expertise needed to build a successful online store?
If this is you, then consider this — Facebook has 1.4 billion daily active users. That’s the potential number of people you can reach by having an online presence.
With consumers increasingly turning to the web to shop for everything from apparels, books, and movies to groceries and therapists—it makes sense that so many entrepreneurs are looking for ways to take their offline brand online.
While this move to the online world may seem like a daunting task, it really isn’t.
The notion of not being entirely familiar with building websites and marketing yourself through social media and other online channels can cause stress, but none of it is rocket science.
Fortunately, Rome wasn’t built in a day and your online business doesn’t have to either.
So how do you then start? Simple. No more delays. No more excuses. Now is the time to take your offline brand online.
1. Make the shift to the WWW
Alright, so you’re sold. It’s time to roll up those sleeves and understand how to take your offline brand online. The perfect marriage between your offline and online presence requires a bit of initial planning. Start by answering the following questions:
Do you want to go cold turkey on your offline business and completely switch to online?
Can you run the two businesses (online and offline) indefinitely?
Do you want to gradually transition from your offline business to taking it online completely?
First understand what your objective is, then craft an action plan and then make the shift.
On the Internet, you get to extend your reach and get in touch with thousands of people without having to rely on the uncertain marketing methods you used when you were offline.
The benefits of being online are you can track your conversions – it’s cheaper and much more dependable.
If you haven’t been able to figure out how you want to go about taking your business online, don’t panic. You can make that decision after you’ve tested the online waters.
Pro-tip: When you make the transition, consider upselling your online services to your existing customer base. It would be silly to leave them high and dry, and they’ll likely be excited about your new venture.
2. Assess your online presence
Now even though you have mostly been an offline business, you may at some point have tried to spread the word online through different platforms.
So make a list of all the online assets that you already own, whether or not you have been active on these accounts. Here’s how your list might look like:
A website
An email list
Presence on social media sites:
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Instagram
– Snapchat
– Pinterest
– Youtube
Irrespective of the length of your list, you’re in a good place to start. If you have a decent number of online assets then you can spend time enhancing them.
If you don’t then you can properly plan how you wish to go about building and maintaining them.
3. Get a kickass website
If you already have a website, great. If you don’t, this should be your first step. A website is like a roof over your head in the digital universe. Invest a significant amount of resources in making it nothing less than A-class.
One of the first decisions you’ll have to make when building a website is deciding on the domain name. This is where it gets exciting.
With the wide range of available domain extensions, you can pick the one that clearly defines your business. In the case of a retail business, it’ll be .STORE. Here’s why you should opt for a new domain extension such as .STORE:
It increases the chances of availability of the domain name you’re looking for
It’s very reasonable
It firmly establishes the industry you operate in
It looks different and helps you stand out
4. Build your online audience
Once you have a functioning website in place, you need to start establishing an audience of potential customers. You can either start by building your email list or build a following on social media.
Which one you choose is up to you based on the resources available to you.
Another way to decide which way to invest your efforts is to ask your customers. Do a survey and see which online platforms are they most active on.
If they’re not actively checking their emails and most of your communication is going to their spam folder then it’s pointless to invest there.
Instead, you could go for building an audience on social media. In the long run, you’ll want to have both; but to start with one of the two options is good.
5. Building a social media following
While you’d wish to be everywhere and talk to everyone, the right step here would be to choose one or two social media platforms and completely immerse yourself in them.
Figure out who your target audience is and on which platforms do they spend most of their time. That’ll help you choose the platforms.
Here are a few thoughts to get you started:
Use these platforms to interact, engage and (maybe) entertain your audience. This is where you do your brand building that eventually helps with conversions (sale).
Actually connect. When you’re using social media, be social. Make sure to follow others in your niche, engage with their content, and support them as much as you can. They’ll be much more likely to return the favor.
Follow strict brand guidelines. Have a color palette, a tone of voice and a standard way of communicating so that you become recognizable and stand out.
People love free stuff. The key to building your email list is to offer something of value to your visitors. This could be a special promotion, an exclusive discount, a free product in return for their email address.
To start collecting email addresses, gate your free resource (a.k.a., hide it behind a sign-up page that requires an email address) and drive traffic to your page.
Once you’ve driven traffic and people have signed up for your free resource, you can now start marketing to them directly via email.
For a retail business to stay relevant, it is important to constantly evolve. As an entrepreneur, it is important for you to identify the latest trends and developments and make the most of them.
Crucial decisions such as choosing the right domain name, designing a user-friendly website, giving amazing customer service helps in the long run when conducting business online.
We also summarized the steps below to help you get to the quick solution to take your offline brand online!
Get a domain. This is your door to your brand identity online!
2. Choose a hosting package that fits your business requirement:
a) Find a hosting plan to host your website (you have your own website builder/ developer)
b) With web design: Let our pros create for you!
c) With eCommerce web design: Let our pros create for you!
d) Build your own easily with Website Builder (no coding experience required)
According to Google, users have expectations that the web is safe by default, and they should be warned when a website is not under secured connection.
Google has started marking all HTTP pages as “not secure” since this July.
Chrome’s positive security indicators that are showing “Secure” will be rolled out in this coming September.
The “Secure” wording will be removed and replaced with just an icon for (Chrome 69) in September 2018.
Do you know your domain needs to be renewed regularly if you want to continue using it for your website, or for your portfolio?
You may renew a domain for a minimum of 1 year and up to a maximum of 10.
It is always best to renew a domain name before it expires so there is no interruption in services and the risk of losing ownership of the domain name can be greatly reduced.
If a domain had expired so long that it was removed from an account, it may still be possible to retrieve and renew it within 30 days.
Even though your domain has expired, you still have a chance to reclaim your domain.
The grace period allows you to renew the domain in case you change your mind and want the domain back.
*Kindly note that certain domain extension DOES NOT follow the above domain lifecycle. Hence, you may have a prior check with our DOMAIN TEAM at [email protected] for more details.
Redemption Grace Period
This is the last chance in case you forgot to renew the domain.
At this stage, you can still renew the domain during the redemption period, although it costs an additional renewal fee.
Different fees are chargeable for different registrars or web hosts.
Pending Delete Period
At this stage, the domain name is pending delete — you will never be able to get back the domain after this.
It can take up to 5 days for the process to take place. Next, the domain name will be fully deleted/removed.
Soon anyone can purchase or register it on a first-come, first-served basis.
Backorder
Anyone wishes to own your domain name can place a backorder on your domain name, and they will be notified as soon as it is available.
Auction
The domain name will be released to public auction if there isn’t any backorder.
Release to the World!
After backorder and auction period is over, the domain name will go back to registry — anyone will be able to purchase/register it just like any other available domain name.
We are currently updating our system, which will soon be able to show your domain lifecycle information, which includes Active domain, Expired domains, domains in Grace period and much more.
Please refer to the image below:
These information are helpful to you as a reminder of your domain status, helping you to avoid losing your valuable domain(s) due to absent-mindedness.
To check your domain status in Client Area, kindly proceed here.
MALAYSIA, JULY 5, 2018 − Exabytes eCommerce Conference 2018, the fifth grand scale eCommerce conference organized by the Exabytes Group since 2011 has brought together more than twenty five eCommerce experts and gurus who shared on their insight, experience and success stories.
At the same time, over a hundred eager participants, including business owners, business minded wannabe web entrepreneurs, sales directors, marketing/branding directors, advertisers, digital and social media marketers, attended the event to learn, gain insight and exchange views in the numerous interactive sessions at the event.
According to Exabytes VP of Marketing, Vickson Tan, Exabytes eCommerce Conference 2018 is a important one-day annual event tailor made to anyone who has a passion in eCommerce business, experienced or inexperienced.
This year, as the slogan ‘amplify your eCommerce competitive brand value’ suggests, the event emphasized on how to leverage data – analyze, optimize and identify a pattern of customer behaviour to improve customer experience and conversion.
Event Highlights
To deliver a meaningful and memorable learning experience, the organizer had arranged for two learning platforms/stages to run concurrently at the event, with the main stage focusing on presentation and sharing, and the workshop stage focusing on more hands-on learning.
The speakers of Exabytes eCommerce Conference 2018 shared their e-Commerce know-how and successful web entrepreneurial journeys included:
Prema, Manager of eCommerce, MDEC
Vincent Tong, Co-founder of Printcious
Joseph Goh, Founder/CEO of Jobbie Peanut Butter
Nor Syahirah Hanafi, Founder of Csmakeup.my
Mohamad Iylia Fahmi Bin Azmi, Co-founder & Managing Director of Pinkboxcereal
Sunny Ooi, Co-founder & Managing Director of ClickAsia
Kenneth Kuan, Head of Sales of iPay88
Clement Chau, Chief Operation Officer of EasyParcel
Lok Choon Hong, Founder Director of PINTAS IP Group
TK Chuah, CEO & Founder of BoostOrder
Derek Toh, Founder and CEO of WOBB
Alan Fung, Enterprise Growth Partner of MDEC
Pinky Tham, Partner Manager of Facebook
Mohd Danial, Corporate Account Manager of MOLPay
Ng Shern Yau, Chief Operating Officer of Logistics Worldwide Express
Divakar Subramaniam, Data Innovation Manager at Padang & Co
Erwin Foo, Group Chief Technology Officer, PUC Berhad
Dr. Lau Cher Han, Cheif Data Scientist of UCAN Technologies
Nowrid Amin, Digital Marketing Strategist at IQI Global
Yap Jun Fei, Revenue Director of Simple Tax
Rajiv Rai Singh, Chief Performance Marketer of Rajiv Rai Media
We thank you all our partners who work closely with us and make EEC 2018 a success!
The Exabytes Group powers over 200,000 customers (from individuals, small and medium sized businesses, to government and public listed companies) in 121 countries with products, services and technology to energize their online web presence, customer engagement, customer relationship, digital marketing, website creation solutions, and more.
Exabytes family of brands include: Exabytes Malaysia, Exabytes Singapore, Exabytes International, Exabytes Indonesia, Exabytes Digital, Usonyx, Signetique, WPWebHost, Cybersite, easyparcel and easystore.
Headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, Exabytes is currently backed by over 200 enthusiastic web professionals who manage 1000+ servers with 100,000+ websites, and 1,000,000+ email accounts.
Exabytes’ presence spread across several countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. For more information, visit: www.exabytes.my
Does email marketing work? If you manage to do it right, the answer is a resounding yes. If you’re not actively pursuing email marketing as an integral component of your overall strategy, you’re missing out on huge potential profits.
Building an email list and marketing to it is one of the most valuable marketing efforts you can put to improve your sales and overall brand awareness. While there may be a tendency to think email marketing is dead because the audience has moved to the social channels, the reality is far from this.
Email marketing is not dead. It has simply changed. When used effectively, it is a marvellous relationship builder and a highly influential sales tool. However, when not done correctly, it is marked as ‘spam’ (gasp!).
This article highlights the tips you can apply to use email marketing as a tool for laser targeting an audience and promoting click-throughs from prospects who you may have engaged on social media, your website or elsewhere. Let’s dive right in.
Get a Plan In Place
Nothing in marketing (or life) works unless you have a plan. Trying to fluke it might work once or twice, but it’s not a habit you want to build for the long run. Go with the odds — figure out the end result and work backwards from there.
Take out a pen and paper and write down the steps you need to take. It can be flexible but start out with a strategy and adjust as necessary. Ask these questions to get an idea of where you’re headed and how to get there:
Who am I talking to?
What is my objective?
What does a good result look like?
What happens after the reader takes the desired action?
Do I have the bandwidth for these new expected customers?
How do I make the process for the receiver smooth and easy?
Keep A Single Call-To-Action
It’s imperative to keep emails focused on a single action. Having more than one call-to-action in your email message can confuse your reader. Each email should be clear, simple and directed towards a single response. This will mostly be the action that moves the customer one step closer to what you want them to do.
Here, remember it is important that you provide value before you try to make the sale. Your email marketing campaign can be focused on more long-term goals; but you can still base each email around a single action, such as clicking through to see the benefits of a loyalty or rewards program.
Brand Your Email Addresses
The more specific your email address, the better it’ll resonate with your audience. For you to establish your professionalism and convey that you mean business, it is important that you create an email address that communicates that. There are hundreds of new domain extensions available today that can help clearly specify your niche. For example:
If you’re an eCommerce or retail store, you can go with .STORE
If you’re into technology, you can go with .TECH
If you’re a journalist or a publication, you can go with .PRESS
For personal or community websites, you can go with .ONLINE or .SITE
For blogs, portfolio or keeping customers up to date, you can go with .BLOG
These domain extensions will then become part of your email address making the sender (you) relevant to the receiver.
Automate It
There are a bunch of tools out there for you to create email campaign once and they do the job of repeating them. Most businesses are targeting hundreds and thousands of people at a time, and so it would be impossible to write emails all the time. There are more important things that need your time and attention.
This automation makes it easier for you to reach many without it being much of a hassle. Craft your email and some of the processes can be ‘set and forget’. These can only be ‘some’ because it’ll be difficult to set everything as certain things always need measuring, adjusting and improving.
Make It Personal
Put yourself in the shoes of the reader. Wouldn’t you prefer receiving an email that is directly addressed to you compared to something that is generic? There is no bigger ‘turn off’ for a customer than to be treated as one of the crowd. There is a software that can help you personalize emails that make your customers feel special.
It goes beyond mentioning their name in the ‘thank you’ emails when they confirm your subscription. Referring to a customer’s profile details, buying preferences, you can make personalization a powerful selling tool. You could also run a special promotion on their birthday.
Keep It Engaging, Original and to the Point
The content of your email needs to be simple, to the point and most importantly engaging. Original and engaging content can help you build a relationship with your audience and influence them in a positive way.
Try incorporating humor into your content. Use GIFs and memes if you’re trying to raise a chuckle, but don’t overdo it. Your reader’s time is precious. Respect that.
A general point for every type of email you send out is to keep it to the point. Every word counts therefore, it pays to get them professionally written. People do not want to read through waffle of irrelevant information to find what they’re really after.
Think Mobile
Tired of this one? There is a reason why it keeps coming up everywhere — because it is super important! Over 50 percent of your customers will be reading your emails on their mobile devices. Make sure your emails are optimized to be clicked and navigated from smartphones.
Keep your subject lines short, have enough white space, keep your content consumable and easy to scroll through. These are simple edits but they go a long way in generating positive results. So when you’re penning down your plan, think mobile first.
The points mentioned in this post only touch the surface of what you can do with email marketing, but it is enough to help you kickstart your campaign and explore the possibilities as you go along.
Make efforts to capture email addresses as soon as you can and try to build a large database quickly. Keep this list up-to-date and it’ll be one of the most powerful tools you have.
Share great personalized content and keep monitoring, testing, and tweaking until you get the best results. Keep nurturing your campaigns until they start to look after themselves.
That’s the power of effective email marketing — and if you’re not using it effectively, you’re leaving a LOT of money on the table.
Just to share a roundup with our dear readers here, Exabytes held a small, private Buka Puasa dinner earlier this month. All Exabees were invited to indulge in the irresistible local food. Needless to say, we cleared them up all good!
After the fulfilling dinner, it was game time! The committee members divided us into several groups and we had to scour the event areas for pieces of paper. On these paper, there were written words consisting of ‘Selamat’, ‘Hari’ and ‘Raya’. All participants must collect the entire phrase (as many sets as possible) to win the game!
The winning group walked home with the cash prize. On top of that, lucky draw prizes were given out to few lucky participants that evening.
We hoped everyone had a fun evening and joyous holiday this month!