Email and SMS Marketing Software

Email Marketing Strategies-Increase Your Segmentation Efforts

2010-07-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Whether you are new to email marketing or have been refining your email strategies for years, here is one strategy that is essential to your continued email marketing success:

~ Increase Your Segmentation Efforts

Email marketing data offers incredible segmentation power and the ability to take advantage of small audience segments that might otherwise be financially or technically difficult to reach. If you haven't started segmenting your list and sending more targeted messages based on recipient data or behaviors, start today. Most of the research in the email industry indicates that segmentation yields significant gains to email conversions. Some typical strategies for segmentation include:

Geography- This is an easy, fairly obvious segmentation strategy. For example, your customer in Florida is unlikely to be interested in a snowmobile. And your customer in Minnesota probably isn't interested in a jet ski--in the winter, anyway. Geography can also be a powerful indicator of buying patterns and other influences on the purchase cycle. Take the high tech industry, for example. In high tech pockets like Silicon Valley early adopters are far more common.

Demographics- This is another easy one, and can make a lot of sense. For example, we know men and women can interpret information quite differently. Younger vs. older audiences take in information in different ways as well.

Job title and function- Are you emailing potential users with no--or all the--buying power? An owner or CFO may want to know about ROI. A middle manager may just want to make his or her job easier. And an engineer or programmer wants to find better ways to work. And so on.

Purchasing frequency- Less frequent purchasers may require a time-sensitive offer to encourage them to act. Or maybe you want to reward frequent buyers with exclusive privileges via email.

Monetary spending- Adjust resources so you're dedicating your efforts toward customers who spend the most money with your company.

If you have been segmenting your email audience, don't stop. Try to find new ways to segment and look at segmentation based on historical email activity, perhaps treating people who are frequent "clickers" or "openers" differently.

For more information on an Email Marketing or Text SMS Marketing Solution for you business, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-Search Engine Optimization-Integrating Keywords into Your Content

2010-07-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

The first step in planning a new site or evaluating an existing site involves mapping your identified keywords into the content of specific pages on your site. To do this, first try to understand what the expectations a user will have when entering the particular search term. They may be looking for answers to a question ("repair rip in rug"), comparing different products or services ("best horse blankets"), or actually looking to buy ("cheap, extra large horse rug").

Once you have identified the expectations of your users, you need to decide what type of page to present them. There are basically five typical web pages:

1) Information pages are educational, answering a question or providing insight on a particular topic. Where you're selling a product or service they may act as an extension of your commercial site, attracting targeted traffic through free content, then funneling it through to your products or services. A user might land here after searching on how to "repair a rip in a horse rug"--then be drawn to your advertisement for new rugs. Some searchers may have irreparable rugs, so it's the perfect time to sell them one.

2) Summary pages contain links to collated information. A summary page might be a list of particular products, or links to categorized information pages. You may want to optimize your summary page so that it contains less specific search terms. For example, a searcher who enters the phrase "horse rugs for sale" would be well served by a summary page with options like style, color, or size.

3) Product pages are the sales pages for individual products or services. You would match these types of pages with customers who are ready to buy using specific search terms. For example, a searcher looking for a "blue, extra-large woollen horse blanket" would be best served by arriving on the appropriate product page--because clearly they're already sure of what they want to purchase.

4) Generic pages are typical to most web sites. These include contact details, FAQs, technical assistance (for a product), and so on. Generic pages can often generate the most traffic. They are put up on a web site to help support a product but, with the right keywords, can be quite good at attracting search engine users.

5) A homepage is the top level of a website. It contains links and pathways to other areas of the site. Homepages should be used for more generic search terms, as specific search expectations are harder to gauge for this type of page. You only have one homepage, so choose your homepage keywords wisely.

You'll find that most of the time, the most useful page for a visitor will be an informational page. However, your most profitable pages will be your product pages. If your product or service can dominate the results in ready to buy keywords, you'll see a dramatic improvement in your online sales. Attracting ten visitors to your site who are ready to part with $100 for your product is worth much more than 1,000 visitors who are just browsing.

For more information on an SEO, Text SMS, or Email Marketing solution for your business, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-Collecting Opt-Ins From Other Points

2010-07-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Your opt-in page should be your main focus for collecting opt-ins, but it shouldn't be you only opportunity to collect opt-ins. There are many other contact points with consumers where you could solicit an email address. The following are some great examples:

~ Contact form: Add a checkbox asking for an email sign-up on other web forms on your website. For example, a contact form for more information, a webinar registration form, a whitepaper download form, etc.

~ Product opportunity: The checkout process on your ecommerce site is a great time to ask purchasers to sign up for email from your company. These are your most active web visitors who have already shown an interest in your company.

~ Co-registration: Look into co-registration opportunities that would make sense for your business model. Be sure that your main focus remains on collecting qualified opt-ins, rather than grow a list of email addresses for people who may have no need for your product or service.

~ Transactional messages: Transactional messages present another opportunity to include a call to action that prompts users to opt-in to receive promotional email messages from your company. Again, these are people who have already shown an interest in your company.

~ Brick and mortar: If your company or organization has a brick-and-mortar business front, use this opportunity to collect email addresses from prospects either with a sign-up box on a counter or by asking directly for them. Again, be sure that the value of the opt-in is clear to prospects.

When adding a checkbox to a contact form, the checkout process or a co-registration process, you have the option to make this checkbox either pre-selected or unselected. It is a best practice to never have this checkbox pre-selected. Furthermore, it also makes good business sense. Using a pre-selected checkbox will add uninterested people to your list, and they'll end up skewing your results by opting out or generally never responding to your message. And it could be worse: they could end up reporting your messages as spam since they will not have recalled signing up for your email.

For an Email Marketing or Text SMS Marketing Solution for all your businesses' needs, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing Solution

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-Paid Advertising with Google AdWords

2010-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

From a business perspective, one of the most exciting and engaging features Google offers is AdWords. Every time you search on Google and notice the small, boxed advertisements on the right side of the page, you're seeing ads placed through the AdWords system.

What makes AdWords so exciting from a business perspective is that it's a completely different advertising model than anything you've ever seen. Print advertising is priced based on circulation, and if 10,000 people would see the ad, it'll typically cost you 10 times what a 1,000-subscriber publication would charge. This translates directly online with the CPM (cost per thousand) pricing of banner ads, animated ads, pop-up ads, and so on.

All of this traditional advertising, online and off, suffers from the same fundamental problem: an inability to ensure that the advertisement has some meaningful relationship to the content on the page. If I visit a web page about troubleshooting Microsoft Windows XP, ads selling me a carbonated beverage or vacation in Hawaii are pointless, off-target, and a waste of advertiser money. No one clicks on them. Contextless advertising is dead. It's a numbers game and the numbers are stacked against you.

By contrast, Google can already analyze and deduce the subject of any web page, a heuristic that's the basis of the Google search tool. Apply that to advertising and Google AdWords ensures that you only have ads displayed on searches that are from customers who are interested in your products or services. What's astonishing is that having your ads displayed on the search results page is free. You only pay for anyone who actually clicks the ad and comes to your website.

Relevance is a big deal because the goal of online advertising is to get visitors to click on your ad and get to your site. The better targeted your ad, the more likely your firm will appeal to the searcher and the more likely they'll click on your ad, come to your site, and purchase your product. The measure of success, after all, isn't how many people clicked, but how many sales were closed. That's the real bottom line.

For more information on a Marketing Solution for your business, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-How to Drive Traffic to Your Opt-In Page

2010-07-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Once you have your opt-in page, confirmation page, and welcome message set, you can now focus on driving visitors to the opt-in page. You should have a strong call to action on your home page in a prominent location that directs visitors to the opt-in page. A popular way to construct this email sign-up box is with a form field where visitors can fill in their email address directly on home page, then be directed to a second page (your opt-in page) to collect additional information. This sign-up box or call to action should include strong copy on the value to the potential subscriber of receiving your company's email. Additionally, your sign-up box and benefits should be prominently displayed on every page of your website.

You may want to consider using an incentive to drive opt-ins, such as a cash giveaway, drawing for a coveted prize or valuable coupon to be used toward their next purchase. You will certainly increase the number of opt-ins collected with an incentive vs. no incentive: however, you may also see a lower quality of opt-ins as people sign up for the prize rather than your email. On the down side, these people may not turn into active recipients and may thereby lower your response rates. On the up side, you now have the opportunity to turn people into active recipients who otherwise may not have chosen to receive email from your organization.

For more tips, and information on an email marketing solution for your business, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Easy Tips for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign-Create an Opt-In Page

2010-07-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Your opt-in page is very important because it is the place where consumers will decide if they will or will not give you their email address to receive email from you. It also sets the tone for future email communication. When done correctly, it can drive future email activity; and when done poorly, it will result in lower email activity. To these ends, the most important thing to do when constructing your opt-in page is to focus on building value and setting expectations.

Build the value of opting-in by focusing on what's in it for the consumer, not for you.

~ "Be the first to know"
~ "Free, timely market updates"
~ "Special offers" or "Special discounts"
~ "Save money with weekly coupons"
~ "Strategies to improve your....."

Set the proper expectations up front by explaining on the opt-in page:

~ The types of messages recipients will receive,
~ Message content,
~ Frequency of messages, and
~ If they'll receive third-party offers

Other considerations to take when building your opt-in page include:

~ Will you use a short or long sign-up form? A short form will garner more sign-ups, but a longer form will collect more information about the consumer.

~ Will subscribers need to create a password to opt-in? A password could give subscribers access to an account, but you are likely to lose subscribers who do not want to create a password just to receive email from you.

~ Will you provide options for subscribers to choose what types of messages they receive? Asking subscribers to select their interests allows you to send targeted messages, but requires more work to create separate lists and content.

Don't make these important decisions blindly. Test you opt-in page for higher conversion and/or more qualified opt-ins. Aspects to test include the following:

~ Incentive to sign up vs. no incentive
~ Long vs. short opt-in form
~ Copy (value statements)
~ Sign-up options vs. global opt-in
~ Create password vs. no password
~ Placement of opt-in box on your website

Follow these easy tips to create a successful opt-in page.

For more Tips and Information on an Email Marketing Solution for all your businesses' needs, please check out this website: Email Marketing Power

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-The Benefits of a Well-Crafted Email Marketing Campaign

2010-07-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Email receives a bad rap. Businesses often shy away from running email marketing campaigns in their marketing programs, as they are concerned they might be seen as spammers. Yet they're more than happy to have door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers represent them every day, where they lack any real control about the way those people interact with their potential customers--and it's never really made sense to me why.

The following is a summary of the benefits of Email Marketing:

~Email is cost-effective
While there are costs involved in email marketing, such as copywriting and design, your production and delivery costs are significantly cheaper than that of direct mail. For the same amount, you can send out around a hundred email for every direct mail letter.

~Email builds relationships
While email may not be the only method that helps connect you with your audience, it's the least intrusive--enabling the recipient to respond at their leisure. A well thought-out email plan can facilitate customer loyalty.

~Email is "push technology"
Just like telemarketing, email marketing pushes your message to prospective and existing customers, rather than relying on customers to seek you out first.

~Email provides timely results
The time between distribution and delivery of an email marketing campaign can be measured in minutes rather than days. This allows you to choose the time you deliver your messages with more precision, and also means results will become evident quickly after you start your campaign.

~Email is quick to produce
Once you're set up to run email marketing campaigns, you can easily launch a major marketing initiative to all your customers in a few hours. There is no other direct marketing source that could be implemented in this sort of time period.

~Email accommodates hyperlinks
With just a little click of the mouse, a customer can go from reading your marketing message, to purchasing at your online checkout. This speedy, one-step process is what marketing dreams are made of.

~Email provides detailed feedback
Email Marketing allows for comprehensive feedback. You can measure how many of your emails were successfully delivered and opened, how many times your links were clicked on, and importantly, how many sales you made. This also enables thorough campaign analysis.

~Email enables affordable segmentation and
targeting
Email marketing is agile, allowing you to vary the content sent to customers on your distribution list. You can segment, or split you lists up based on market segments such as geographic location, purchase history, gender, and age to send tailored messages, improving you conversion rate.

~Email plays well with others

Email works well when part of an integrated direct marketing campaign. While other methods can come across as pushy or disruptive, email is able to prepare your customers for a sales call--or as a follow-up to a face-to-face sale--without getting in a customer's face.

~Email can be a viral marketing tool
It's so easy for recipients of your email to forward your message to friends and family, quickly turning your small campaign into a viral bonanza.

For more information on an Email Marketing or Text SMS Marketing Solution for all your businesses' needs, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-The Do's and Don'ts of Email Marketing

2010-07-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

The do's and don'ts of email marketing stem from a mix of direct marketing principles, technical issues related to email, and email etiquette.

The Do's

~Do ALWAYS use confirmed opt-in and provide easy opt-out and try to get the reason they are leaving you. Yes, we're saying it again and again because it's so important. And don't forget to use the confirmation email for an offer (preferably a free offer).

~Do use a service to check the layout in the email reader that your participants use. That probably means testing in Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, Mac Mail, Entourage, and Eudora. There are services to do this for you. You'll want to periodically update your list of email readers as new readers come on the market.

~Do make call-to-actions (CtAs) prominent and locate them within the upper half of the layout. In a larger email, you may have multiple CtAs scattered through the email. Folds tend to be about 300 to 400 pixels south of your top border. But check into an email service.

~Do use the subject line to get attention and show you aren't spam. Email recipients tend to look closely at the initial, or top, content and then skip through the remaining layout; keep this in mind.

~Do use a consistent send-from address so you don't have to fight through spam filters again and again.

~Do make sure that content can be seen easily; many readers will scroll through the email in a small preview window. Make sure that a two-inch window holds brand and main CtA.

~Do design a text-only version that is easily read with HTML turned off, or on a mobile.

~Do add a hosted version of the email, so that is the images are stripped the subscriber can click through and see the entire email as an image.

~Do mix 'n' match. Keep the look and feel of all your emails consistent, but fit the email to it's purpose. Postcard emails for simple brief announcements; email newsletters of summaries that intrigued recipients can click on for more-in-depth, website information; catalog emails for product descriptions; E-press releases to the media.

~Do test on a small list first. Stuff-ups on a small scale are always preferable to their large-scale versions!

The Don'ts

~Don't forget to get consumers to opt-in at the stage when you are doing initial customer acquisition. Many companies, even today, capture email addresses but fail to get permission at the same time.

~Don't be petrified of using images, but have a healthy respect for the challenges of rendering and file sizes.

~Don't have CtAs only in an image format: Some recipients will have images turned off, or will not use HTML, or will make their read decision based on what they see in the preview pane. If your CtA is in image only, part of your audience won't know what they're missing!

~Don't use large copy blocks. Break up paragraphs with bullet points, highlight key information; remember you're writing copy, not corporate memos (and hey-corporate memos don't have to be boring either!).

~Don't forget data collection: Every time you provide something to a customer, try to obtain a little information about them. Data collection can be disguised as a quiz, or as something needed to provide the customer with a benefit (for example, a horoscope, or personality test).

~Don't be long-winded; get the best in first. The strongest message and links should lead at the top.

~Don't hound consumers; if they don't reply, especially after a few attempts, it's clear they don't want to do so. NEVER hound them! This is a critical element of good email conduct.

For more Tips and/or Information on a Marketing Solution for all your businesses needs, please check out this website: Pure Internet Marketing

Text SMS and Email Marketing-Four Best Practices for Your Text Message Marketing Campaigns

2010-07-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

There are some best practices that are particularly important to text message marketing. You'll want to follow all the industry guidelines, but these four are the most important.

The number one best practice (and law) of text messaging is to get permission. Never send a text message that has not been explicitly requested. You will harm your business immeasurably if you do. Think permission, permission, permission. Have a crystal-clear opt-in process and always follow it. Your opt-in process includes the initial information offering the text messages. This will be your marketing for the campaign. Your customers will then sign up to receive your text messages. They will so this by texting your keyword to your short code or by using an Internet-based sign up form, called a widget. In order to build your list of text message recipients, you must actually launch a campaign. You cannot gather names and cell phone numbers and expect to import them into a program. Most text message companies will not let you import cell phone numbers into their database unless they come from another verifiable opt-in source. As an example, if you have a collection of customers' phone numbers in your customer contact database, you cannot simply begin to text message them. They must initiate the interaction via their cells or on the web to unequivocally request text message from your company.

The second best practice of text messaging is honesty. Always tell your customers up front is they are going to be getting a subscription (more than one message). If you play to send them more than the initial text message requested, then you are starting a subscription (even if you're sending free messages). Be clear how frequently you will contact them and if you are charging them for this service, tell them what the price and billing terms are. Don't imply that a service or subscription is free if it isn't. For example, don't say that they get free ringtones if they actually have to buy 10 at full price first.

The third best practice of text messaging is to provide people an easy way to opt out. Share this information in every message that you send and in your Help message. The most commonly used approach is to tell your customers to send the words Stop or Remove to your short code. If you are using a shared short code, the opt-out text will be automatically inserted into each outgoing message for you. It will reduce the number of characters you can use for marketing to 140, but you don't have to remember to include the opt-out. Keep in mind that violating any of these rules can cause your campaign to be turned off without any notice by the cell phone carriers. This is one of most important reasons not to use SMTP for a messaging campaign. You cannot receive messages back in reply. Your only option for having an opt-out process involves using a website link, which is not in compliance with best practices.

As we investigate the options available in text messaging, it may be tempting to create a complex, multifaceted campaign. As the fourth best practice, keep it simple. Ask for one call-to-action for one specific purpose. Keep the actions that your customers need to do to the bare minimum. You want to keep it simple and straightforward so it is easy for your customer to participate. After all, the beauty of text messaging is ease of use and simplicity. Don't make your campaign too complicated; you could lose your audience.

For information on a Text SMS Marketing Solution for Your Business, please check out this website: Text SMS Marketing Made Simple

Creating a Mobile Web Presence-Content Ideas for Your Mobile Marketing Website

2010-07-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

The strategy of effective mobile web content should not be taken lightly. Put yourself in your customers' shoes and give them what they are looking for as quickly as possible. Think about where they are likely to be viewing your site: on a bus or the subway, sitting in their cars at a stop light, standing on a street corner, or sitting at a restaurant. Not surprisingly, another study by iCrossing ("How America Searches Using Mobile")found that maps and directions are the top items that people seek using mobile search. Additionally, your customers will want other specific things from you on your mobile website, and they may want more and more over time. To get started, here are some ideas about what to include on your mobile website. Of course, you will have other things that make sense for your particular business or industry, as well:

- Maps and/or directions to your business

- Your business hours

- Click-to-contact button

- List of items or brands your business carries (your menu)

- Fresh content in small chunks

- Timely information about your business

- Special offers or coupons

- Special event information

What you don't put on your mobile website can be as important as what you do. For example, don't include:

- Excess graphics (size or quantity)

- Long articles

- Anything that takes more than three clicks to find

- Large files or downloads that could cause a mobile device to crash or freeze

More more information or a Mobile Marketing Solution for your business, please check out this website: Text SMS Marketing Solution

Email Marketing and Text SMS Marketing-Using E-Mail in Online Advertising

2010-07-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

E-mail marketing can be an effective and inexpensive companion to your other advertising. Achieving that effectiveness and economy requires a delicate march, however. I have strong opinions about e-mail's place in the online advertising plan, and I have some concerns for businesses that ignore the subtleties. It's too hard to meet my basic measure of value in marketing tactics: Does this technique allow you to reach the right people and leave the rest alone?

People have been getting direct mail for generations, and most don't have a problem with that. Interesting offers get glanced at, and the rejects go in the waste basket without a second thought. Unsolicited e-mails are another thing entirely. These waste time and, even worse, carry a negative charge. Opt for mailing too often to a list too poorly qualified for interest in your message and guess what? You've just become a spammer.

If direct marketing by e-mail didn't work, there wouldn't be spammers or legitimate users of e-mail marketing, either. In my opinion, you are better off to focus your e-mail marketing not on generating new leads, but on communicating with prospects you've found via other means. E-mail's real strength is it's immediacy as a communication medium. Use e-mail to develop your precious one-to-one relationship with each prospect, and you use its power to your best advantage, without harming your brand or reputation.

For an E-mail Marketing, Text SMS Marketing, or SEO Solution for your business, please check out this website: Pure Internet Marketing

The Ins and Outs of Online Marketing-The Future of SEO

2010-07-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

Links, PageRank, and the chase for the top spot on SERP's are so ingrained in the SEO industry--I think some people are actually addicted to their own PageRanks. The reality is that over the next few years the importance of building links will become so insignificant, it will stop being a major tool in an SEO professional's toolkit.

Search engines are becoming smarter and their ability to determine the relevance of content to a searcher's needs is improving every day. Relying on aspects like overall site popularity is becoming less of a necessity.

The actual dynamic of a search engine is evolving too. For example, with Google searchers are able to personally influence their own search engine results for future searches, geographical searching is becoming more precise, and behavior-based and intent-based searching is on the horizon. While the doomsayers claim this will be the end of SEO as we know it, I see it as a bright future, where there will be more to SEO than just links and keywords. Where quality content will reign supreme over black hat SEO, and the people producing the highest value will reap the search engine rewards.

Rest assured, though, that the benefits of a good link-building strategy are still healthy. As long as you take interest in SEO industry news, you can adjust your strategies when and if there is a necessity to do so.

For an SEO, Text SMS, or E-Mail Marketing solution for your company, please check out this website: Pure Business Marketing

Email Marketing-Five Ideas to Remember When Improving Your Online Business Web Site

2010-06-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

There's quite a lot to consider when building a business website, just as there's a lot to think about when building a retail storefront. It's easy to forget the basics when you're mired in the details, and some web designers love those details and are constantly trying to pull you to their levels even if you are doing your best to only consider the big picture.

Here are five simple ideas that you should keep in mind as you progress with your business website development project:

- Pages should load quickly. A bad side effect of complex designs with lots of graphics is that they load slowly. If they load too slowly, then your visitors-your potential customers-are going to become impatient and go somewhere else. This is also a very strong argument against including audio,video, or animation.

- Your business is the most important element. Web page designs where the graphical elements are more visually attractive than the information about the company do not engage the attention of potential customers. You only have a few seconds between when the page loads and when they decide to stay or not. Make sure that whatever the design, attention is inexorably drawn to your message about your business.

- Identify your business. It's a business website, so the most important element on every page should be an introduction to your business, products, or service. Articles are excellent additions to the site, but the top of each article should offer visitors a way to learn more about the company, and that link should be duplicated at the end of each article, too.

- Don't link to other sites. Many websites will offer you a link exchange; they will point to your website if you'll point to theirs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but don't give them prime real estate on your site. Every link you have to another site siphons off some of those precious potential customers. If you want to link to other sites, create a separate "other useful sites on the web" page. If you do link to other sites, make sure those new links open up in a new browser window. Your website developer will know how to do this using the target attributes in links.

- Keep it fun and attractive. Attractive layout design is subjective, so we're not going to agree on the exact criteria, but sites that try to cram too much onto their pages are harder to understand--and therefore less inviting--than other sites with more open designs. There's lots you'd like to say on your website, but it doesn't have all be in the first paragraph!

Building a great business website isn't rocket science and doesn't involve large investments or state-of-the-art technology. It's like any other facet of your business; it's about clear thinking, focusing on the needs of your customer, and eschewing tricky and fancy for informative and useful.

For an Online Marketing Solution for All Your Businesses Needs, Please Check Out This Website: Your Online Business Marketing Solution

Using Dynamic Content to Send Targeted Information-Email Marketing

2010-06-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

Dynamic content can make sending targeted content to recipients easy. Dynamic content allows you to created a single email message that delivers multiple versions based on recipients' demographic profiles or other data. The possibilities are limited only by the data you have for your subscribers and the content you have that is relevant to that data. Messages can be customized to replace groups of text or images based on variables such as:

- A recipient's personal data (such as state, status, etc.),
- Past purchase history,
- Past email activity,
- Website activity or,
- Any other data you have about your email recipients.

The possibilities for customizing messages with dynamic content tools are almost endless. For example, an electronics retailer could use dynamic content to deliver an email newsletter with an opening paragraph about computers on sale or a paragraph about new MP3 players. The actual paragraph that was delivered would depend on the recipient. Here are some more real-world examples of how marketers are using this powerful technology:

- Customizing updates by state, province or other geographical characteristics
- Substituting entire paragraphs of text or graphics based on demographic data
- Creating cross-sell offers based on previous purchases
- Alerting customers of consumable products (items or components that need to be
replaced on a regular schedule) or recurring services (which need to be performed
at specific intervals, such as oil changes and tune-ups).

For more information on an Email Marketing Solution for business, please check out this website- Email Marketing Made Easy

Easy and Smart Campaign Ideas for Mobile Marketing

2010-06-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

To get your ideas flowing around what you can do with social networking, here are some campaign ideas you can try. More than any other tool, social networking is one you have to use in order to understand how it works:

- Market your social networking involvement off-line. Post signs in your place of
business and alert people that you are participating in social networking. This
can be as simple as posting a logo on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn (or what-
ever site you network you network in) somewhere prominently with your profile
page name. People who participate will notice it, and if they are interested,
they will befriend you. This would be especially good to get people to sign up
for your microblog coupons.

- If you think your audience might be interested in social networking but may not
yet be up to speed with how it all works, add an article in your company news-
letter to explain what social networking is and give a quick primer on what to
do.

- Promote your social networking in your online environment. Put a badge or widget
on your website. Use a signature line in your emails to encourage people to find
you on the social networks.

- Keep your eyes and ears open. When the next MySpace or Facebook becomes popular,
you want to be there. So listen and act on the news you hear. If you are active
in social networking, this will be easy because it will start to come up on your
conversations.

- Radio DJs can use a microblogging campaign to alert listeners to their on-location
spots and get people to stop by. Instead of only having one way (on-air Promotion
to listeners) to promote an event, you can grab people who are not listening to
the radio at all or who are listening to an alternative station by reaching them
via mobile.

For more tips or information on a mobile marketing solution for your business, please check out this website: Text SMS Marketing Made Simple

Mobile Promotions and Location-Based Marketing-SMS and MMS

2010-06-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best opportunities in mobile marketing is the capability to build brand awareness and goodwill with your target market. Mobile promotions help customers feel appreciated, and thus, feel more loyal to your brand. With the appropriate customer-tracking systems, loyalty programs can be layered in to create an even closer connection between your customers and your brand. This kind of deep connection can help drive sales, but it will also help create brand evangelists who will endorse your brand to all their friends, which is quite powerful.

Mobile promotion is also an ingenious way for companies to reach out to their customers and create a mobile presence without creating and maintaining a mobile website. The most common mobile promotions begin with SMS, MMS, and proximity marketing messages. These can be followed by coupons, discounts, or promotions that are sent directly to the customers' mobile phones. The coupons, or discounts can be redeemed in a variety of ways. After customers have opted in to your mobile communication, loyalty programs can be developed to optimize your customer interaction at the most granular and personal level.

The goal of mCoupons ( mobile coupons), is basically the same as that of traditional coupons. They should drive revenue by encouraging higher volume and repeat sales. They can also help increase product awareness and move overstocked inventory to make room for new, more valuable products. Mobile couponing can be much more tailored to the needs of the specific consumer and less costly than traditional print coupons. For the user, they are also nice because mobile coupons don't have to be clipped and carried around to be redeemed.

The most important consideration when you are developing mobile couponing strategy is the ease of use for the consumers. If the process for sign-up , delivery, and redemption of a coupon is too complicated or time consuming, users will not participate. To develop an effective mobile couponing strategy yo must understand the three elements of mobile couponing: coupon messaging, coupon targeting, and coupon delivery and redemption.

For all your text and mobile marketing needs, please check out this website: Text SMS Marketing

Advanced Mobile SEO Best Practices

2010-06-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

The differences between mobile and traditional SEO strategies and tactics all stem from the fact that different crawlers are indexing and evaluating your website as is it was being displayed on a mobile phone. It is essentially the same model, with slightly different parts and different algorithms determining how the website will be ranked. That being said, some more advanced SEO strategies are specific to mobile search engine optimization.

Search engines index the Web page by page, but they also evaluate the power and historical value of a domain name or website as a whole. A domain name that has been around for a long time, ranks well, and gets consistent traffic is considered more valuable than a new domain that has little history, few rankings, or little traffic. Each page on a website is judged independently, but pages on a more established domain will generally perform better than the same page on a less established domain.

Because the search engines index the Web based on individual pages or URLs, you must have only one URL for each unique page on the website. Some websites get into trouble when multiple versions of one page are indexed in the search engines, either because the servers are set up incorrectly or because multiple URLs are being dynamically generated and used to represent just one page.

Having multiple indexable URLs that represent only one page of content is a problem we call duplicate content, or DUST ( which stands for duplicate URL, same text). This is a problem for traditional and mobile search engines because it crowds their indexes. Generally, the search engines will pick up only one of the duplicate results to rank in search results. The best practice is to ensure a 1:1 ratio between the number of URLs that will resolve in a browser and the number of pages you would like to rank in search results.

In some instances, server settings or ModRewrite programs can be used to eliminate extra versions of a page that renders in a browser address bar. A good example is htt://mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com. These addresses both bring up the same page, but could confuse the search engines, because one page has two addresses. In this situation, you would want to see which of the addresses ranks better in search engines, and redirect or automatically re-write the other one to appear as the primary or "canonical" one.

Alternately, a canonical meta tag can be included on the secondary page, indicating the primary or canonical page there. That tag looks like this: and it explains that, in this case, the primary or canonical version of the page is the one with the 'www', and this tag would be placed on the page that doesn't have the 'www' included in the URL.

In the mobile world, things can get more complex, because some websites may have one page for the traditional rendering of the website, and another page for the mobile rendering of the website. They may even have one version of the traditional rendering of the website, and multiple versions of the mobile rendering of the website. In that case, you may need to use a mobile robots.txt, to explain to the search engine robots which content they should be crawling and indexing.

For all your Email Marketing, Text Marketing, and SEO needs, check out this website: Marketing Made Easy

Integrating Mobile Marketing with On- and Offline Marketing

2010-06-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

Although mobile marketing is powerful, it is not meant to stand alone. The goal of mobile marketing is generally not to engage the user exclusively on the mobile device, but to continually engage the user and keep your brand top-of-mind when they are out, living their lives. This kind of active and frequent engagement is also known as participatory marketing. When mobile marketing is integrated to your on- and offline marketing campaigns, it can become participatory and be fully utilized to create a deep and lasting bond. Integrating mobile marketing into both on- and offline marketing campaigns also helps create long term value in the customer relationship

Mobile marketing closes the gap between on- and offline marketing. Studies have shown that most people have to be exposed to a brand and a brand name at least eight times before they are cognitively aware of it, and another two times before it actually enters their consideration set when they are making a purchase decision. In the United States it is also speculated that more than 50% of major offline purchases are researched on the internet first, so appearing on the mobile phone when people are in stores comparing products can be very important.

The right mobile marketing can create a bridge between your customers online and offline experience ( online for the research phase and offline for the actual purchase). The lag time between research and the actual purchase decision can be long and usually is directly related to the cost of the item being purchased. The brand awareness created by an integrated participatory marketing campaign can be a key influencer to keep the purchase decision and the brand in the consideration set.

For all your mobile and email marketing needs, please check out this site: Marketing Made Easy

Mobile Search Engine Optimization

2010-06-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

Internet access and Web search have changed the mobile marketing landscape. They are changing the way we think of mobile devices as a whole, making many things that were previously hard to access now instantly available.

Many of us have a hard time even remembering what we did or how we accessed the information we needed before the Internet. When computers were all (or mostly all) hooked up to the internet, it improved their utility exponentially, and the same is true of mobile phones. Mobile phones provide infinitely more value when they are Web enabled. We will soon become accustomed to even more instant access to the endless wealth of knowledge that the Internet provides, to the point that some day we might not remember why we found mobile phones so useful when they just made calls.

Searching on mobile phones is still not as good of an experience as searching on a traditional computer, but mobile searchers are motivated searchers. A mobile search is a clear indication of intent. People search on mobile phones because they need information immediately, and they cannot wait until they get back to their computers to find it. The good news for us marketers is that the information people tend to search for usually informs an immediate purchase decision, meaning they are ready to spend money, and they need to know where to spend it.

Interestingly, when the mobile Web becomes faster and less clunky ( and it will) marketers might have a more difficult time separating those searchers who are most likely to make a purchase from those who are merely surfing. The current mobile Web is slow and clunky and because of that, motivated purchasers are easier to spot. What happens when everyone with a smart phone can surf just for fun? How will the marketer sort the wheat from the chaff? Just food for thought......

Mobile search is one of the most useful utilities a mobile phone provides. Most activity on the traditional internet begins with a search, and the same is true on the mobile phone. In both traditional and mobile computing, many people set a search engine to their homepage. Searching is the way people find what they need. If you have a mobile website, it is critical that it rank well in mobile search engines.

Mobile search engine optimization ( mSEO) is a very new tactic for improving the reach and impact that your company's website can have on a mobile phone. The strategies and tactics change rapidly as the mobile search algorithms change and as the mobile handset technology improves. A large portion of mobile SEO is actually architectural. With sound mobile architecture in place, mobile SEO becomes much easier. If the architecture is less than ideal, the effort to optimize a website becomes harder.

Many different mobile search engines exist, but in most cases, the top mobile search engines in any country are the same as the top traditional search engines in that country. In the United States, these are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Bing. For mobile marketing, we must understand mSEO.

For more information on SEO, Email Marketing, and Text Marketing for your business, please check out this site: Pure Business Marketing Made Easy

Creating a Mobile Web Presence-When to Use the Mobile Web as a Marketing Tool

2010-06-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Unless your target market consists of people who never use mobile phones, your best bet is to create at least a simple mobile web presence as quickly as possible. We have reached a point in the marketing cycle of the Internet at which consumers expect businesses to have a website, even if it is a basic one. We will reach that point with the mobile web quickly as well. Your business needs to have a mobile website when consumers begin to expect a mobile web presence.

Think of this time as the gold rush of the mobile Internet. Now is the time to stake your claim. It is much the same as going back in time to 1995 and creating a website before all your competitors did. You can be among the first to have a mobile site and be available on the mobile web when your customers are looking for you out there.

Your mobile site can be as simple or as complex as your customers will need and use. Start out with a basic site. As consumer use of the mobile web increases from the occasional by a few people to daily by most people, you can continue to add onto your mobile site. Start with what your customers or potential customers want to find (not search, but find) as it relates to your business. Then gradually add more features as your customers' needs change and you mobile marketing strategy develops.

For more information on mobile marketing, please check out this site: SMS Marketing

When to Use Mobile Advertising as a Marketing Tool

2010-06-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Mobile ads can be used for branding, mobile site traffic generation, and a range of direct response campaigns. If you have a branding budget and your target audience is likely to fall into the power mobile user group, then mobile ads are an excellent tool to increase your brand awareness. If you have a mobile site and want to drive traffic to it, then you will find that mobile advertising is an excellent source of traffic. When you want a campaign that is ultimately trackable and makes it easy to prove your ROI (return on investment), then consider building your mobile advertising campaign as a direct response campaign.

Mobile advertising is one of the fastest mobile marketing tools to implement. The major ad networks have self-serve options. You simply create your campaign and launch it. If you want a campaign that you can launch quickly, mobile advertising can fit the bill.

For all you mobile marketing needs, please check out this site: Mobile Marketing Made Easy

Why Mobile Marketing Is Like The Internet Was In 1997 (and Why It's Not)

2010-06-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

The emergence of mobile as a highly integrated consumer device is now similar to what the Internet was in 1997, especially in North America. Early adopters who use mobile and those who use it as a marketing tool are similar to those who jumped on the Internet when it first appeared. However, many people may think the process of going online using their phone is a completely foreign concept. "You can go online on your phone?" Millions of consumers still think of text messaging as something that only young people do and have no intention of doing it themselves. Don't worry, there were also many people who thought the Internet was a fad and that it wouldn't last.

However, the emergence of mobile marketing is different in that the adoption cycle is faster. In fact, more people worldwide were said to have accessed Internet content on phones than from desktop computers in 2007. Mobile use by consumers is growing fast worldwide; users sent 2.8 trillion text messages in 2007, and the short message service (SMS) industry generates $100 billion a year.

Marketing with mobile now is also different from marketing with the internet in 1997 because marketers already have a working knowledge base. Businesses took years to figure out that the Internet was more like direct mail than t.v. We can use that knowledge base to figure out how to market with mobile effectively more quickly than we did with the Internet. In fact, many of the technologies, including mobile search and mobile advertising are similar to their Internet counterparts. Yet, they are distinct services and technologies with an uncluttered landscape.

Mobile as a medium is not like the Internet in other ways. Consumer use of mobile is already inundated. People use mobile already; they just need to begin to interact with businesses via mobile. With the Internet's emergence, people had to learn about the Internet and the World Wide Web to begin using in. Remember when people used to say, "Go to H-T-T-P colon back slash back slash W-W-W dot" and then list the website name? There was a big learning curve for consumers who had to be convinced to use the Internet at all. Now, people already know how to use their cell phones, and they have already been through the internet learning curve. Plus, there is an entire generation of consumers who have grown up with mobile as an integrated part of their lives and don't need any lessons at all; they just need to be presented with the right offer at the right time. Mobile marketing is weaving it's way into society more quickly than the Internet did.

For more information on Mobile Marketing check out this site: Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketing for Your Mobile Marketing

2010-06-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

One way to market your mobile technology campaign is through mobile "moving" marketing. Anywhere people in your target market are gathering or walking around, you can market to them with movable signs. On behalf of MGM Grand, mobileStorm designed such a campaign. A billboard was transported down the Las Vegas strip where thousands of people were walking up and down the street. The sign invited people to send a text message with a short code to place their names on a VIP list for a party at a night club.

A local restaurant can accomplish a similar tactic at a local arts and crafts fair or local festival by hiring or recruiting 10 to 20 people (or more for a big event) to walk around the fair in matching T-shirts with a text message coupon offer on the back of the shirts. The repetition of the matching T-shirts would catch people's attention, and the uniqueness of the offer would create a response. The point is to reach people and interact with them while they are moving around with their mobile devices. If you provide value to the customer and make them aware of it, you have a winning recipe. When Amazon.com first started, the company representatives attended BookExpo America, the book industry's biggest U.S. trade show, and had dozens of people roaming the trade show floor in bright purple T-shirts. Amazon was quite visible at that show. Think about how much more powerful that marketing could have been if Amazon included a mobile offer on the back of each shirt. Such a large company can even have several offers going at the same time; people would try to collect the offers.

For more tips and information on mobile marketing check out this site: Text SMS

How To Set a PPC Budget For a New Product

2010-06-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

What if you're launching a new campaign and you don't have any data for your KPI's? How do you set your budget?

Google AdWords suggest the bids and a daily budget, but these are just their guesses. They have no idea of your average order value (AOV), close rate (CR), or your business model. Ignore their numbers.

To set the initial advertising budget for PPC, you'll need to calculate your CPL, as follows:

Estimate the number of sales you expect to make in one month. Use the minimum number of sales that you'll need to stay in business.
Guess at your close rate. For every 100 leads, how many will you convert into customers? Ten percent is fairly conservative. After a few months in business, you'll get better at selling.
Use your close rate to estimate how many leads you'll need to be able to make the minimum number of sales.
Calculate your target CPL. Talk with a few people with experience, make best guesses, and be conservative.
Multiply the number of leads by the target CPL. That's how much you'll have to spend per month to buy the leads you need.
Divide the monthly budget by 30 days to get the daily budget for Google AdWords.

For example, you want to sell 100 Koi per month. You have a 50% close rate, so you'll need 200 leads to sell 100 Koi. If the target CPL is $10 and you need 200 leads, you'll need to spend $2000 per month in marketing. Divide by 30 days to get the daily budget ($2000/30 days=$66 per day).

Watch you campaigns every workday. Yes, take weekends off. You need a break from all these numbers. Besides, you'll find from analytics that there are few buyers on weekends anyway. Try different ads and delete the ones that don't work. Keep your ad group's average CPL within your target CPL. It takes about four to six weeks to optimize a PPC campaign, so the numbers will fluctuate. The CPC will drop, so the number of clicks will increase. This means you'll get more leads. You'll get better at selling koi, so your close rate will improve. When your PPC account has reached optimal levels, you can recalculate your numbers. You'll know the actual CPC, conversion rates, and cost-per-conversion.

For more information on PPC check out this site: Email Marketing Power

Press Releases in the 21st Century

2010-06-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

With all these exciting new developments in online marketing, you might be thinking, "I can publish news to my website--why should I send out a press release?" Companies still send press releases because they're an effective way to spread the word about your company. Press releases, when written and distributed efficiently, can strengthen brand awareness, increase sales, and generate buzz about your company and products.

Today, press releases are used widely. As well as being sent to mainstream media journalists, press releases are now available online for customers to find through a web search, or read on a company's blog. Many bloggers and online publishers access these to read for story ideas close to their niche.

You can also use press releases to communicate directly to your customers, as well as bloggers, writers, and other key players in your industry. Press releases can be an incredibly effective medium for you to publish news and information about your company, products, or services.

For more information on Web Marketing check out this website: Email Marketing made easy.

Minimizing Spam Complaints

2010-06-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

Spam is also known as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Although numerous stories, analogies, and myths exist about the origin and meaning of the term spam, one thing is for sure--consumers don't like receiving it.

Even if your e-mail doesn't meet the legal definition of spam, consumers can easily report you e-mail as spam and thus impede you ability to send e-mail in the future. For example, Yahoo! customers can deem your e-mail as spam with the click of a button. Most ISP's (including AOL, Yahoo!, and Hotmail) give their customers spam buttons to use to block suspected spammers.

If your e-mails are perceived as spam by your audience and you receive too many spam complaints, ISP's will block your e-mail server temporarily, and higher percentages can result in your server being added to a permanent block list.

Because consumers have control over the spam button, no e-mail marketing strategy is immune to complaints. Keeping your e-mails inline with the consumer preferences is the best way to ensure that you spam complaints remain below industry tolerances.

You can minimize your spam complaints over time by doing the following:

Ask for explicit permission to send e-mail when you collect e-mail addresses from propects and customers to make sure that your customers want your e-mails.
Make your e-mail content valuable so your e-mail list subscribers continue to want your e-mails.
Make your sign-up process memorable for your list subscribers and clearly identify your business in every e-mail's From line so your audience can verify the source of your e-mails
Use logos and colors in every e-mail that match your brand identity so that your audience recognizes your business.
Keep your e-mail frequency in line with your e-mail content and your e-mail list subscribers' expectations.
Use an E-Mail Service Provider (ESP) that provides an unsubscribe link in every e-mail you send and allows you subscribers to access their profile to change their interests.
Ask everyone who unsubscribes from you e-mail list to tell you why they don't want your e-mail.
Use an ESP that authenticates your e-mails.

For all your email and text sms needs please go to: Email Marketing Power

Five Steps Toward a Data-Driven Organization

2010-06-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Because analytics lets you measure your strategy and tactics, it gives you the ability to make decisions based on objective data. With analytics tools, you can carry out tests and see what actually works. You can compare campaigns and channels and then rank them by the generated revenues. Here are five steps for implementation of an analytics strategy:

Identify you business goals: These are the company's strategic goals, such as the company's unique value for customers.
Identify business decisions or actions to be taken: What campaigns and tactics can the company use to reach these goals?
Establish benchmarking: This includes the trends for the recent past. It also customer surveys, voice of customer (VOC), panel interviews, and competitive intelligence to determine the competition's market share and the company's position in relation to competitors.
Set a time frame for the goals: This depends on how quickly your organization can move. Generally, you should expect four to six weeks to get campaigns underway. Don't try to launch too many initiatives at first. Start with one or two; let everyone learn how they work, and ramp up slowly.
Measure the results: Determine the KPI's, develop reasonable budgets, and collect the data. See how you can measure customer engagement, customer satisfaction, and so on.

This is not a one-time process. You won't do this once and expect the issue to be settled. This becomes an ongoing process that is reviewed again and again. You continually reevaluate your company's goals and strategy, look into new channels (which seems to pop up every 15 minutes), and use your tools to manage your campaigns.

For more information on all your email marketing needs go to: Email Marketing Power

SEO-Identifying Your Ideal Keywords

2010-06-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

There's a growing number of tools to assist you with identifying search terms. Google has it's own keyword tool, which is free and easy to use. Just enter a generic term, press a button, and you'll receive a long list of variations. You can sort that list based on relevance, average search volume, last month's search volume, and advertiser competition; there's even the option to export it as a spreadsheet for later use.

From this list, you can filter out irrelevant keywords and conduct further searches based on the shortlist. Using the Google keyword Tool should help you uncover many options, and once you apply some of the variations above, such as plurals and misspellings, your keyword list should look quite healthy.

While these are extremely helpful, you should look to other sources of information--such as you competition--for ideas. This can be as simple as looking for words on their web site that have a high density--that is, they appear frequently. It is also helpful to observe the kinds of words and phrases people use to describe you products and services on community forums, or on applications like Twitter and Facebook. You might go as far as running a small user test--for example, asking people to search for horse equipment--and observe the keywords they enter.

Want to learn more about Online Marketing? Check out EXM Marketing

Managing Your Email Lists

2010-06-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

Tools such as an Excel spreadsheet or your email program's address book are ideal for keeping track of a small number of contacts, but they're poor solutions for managing an extensive number of contacts.

Your regular email service is fine for everyday mailing needs, but will likely crumble under the pressure of sending thousands of messages. What's more, many Internet service providers consider large quantities of incoming or outgoing email to be spam, and will act accordingly--usually by blocking your messages and blacklisting your mail server. Ouch!

Instead, I'd recommend choosing a reputable email distribution service--one that's been running email campaigns for years, has solid management tools, and servers with the horsepower and bandwidth to deal with thousands of emails. The best ones will provide help with email templates, generate delivery and readership reports, and even test the content of your messages to see if they're likely to be picked up by spam filters.

When you're shopping around for a solution for list management, look for the following features.

Easy integration with your site: It should be easy to add a form to your site that's directly linked to your list management tool. Some solutions even allow you to connect with your customer database and match email subscribers with their purchase histories.
Profiles and segmentation: It's handy to have your visitors' email addresses, but what about their age, gender, or geographic location? An efficient list management solution will let you collect this information and use it to help segment your subscribers into groups.
Import and export lists of subscribers: It should be easy for you to add or extract email addresses en masse, ideally by importing or exporting a list from a common format such as a Comma Separated Values (CSV) spreadsheet.
Easy unsubscribe options: You'll damage your reputation and may even be in breach of the law if your users are unable to unsubscribe in a timely fashion. A good list management system will provide this facility, and a great one will let you know when it happens.

For more information on an email marketing solution for all your needs go to: Email Marketing Power

Branding Your E-Mails to Enhance Your Image

2010-06-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

Branding is the use of graphic design elements to give your business a consistent and unique identity while forming a mental image of you business' personality. Examples include:

Graphics and logos unique to your business
Text and fonts that differentiate your business
Colors used consistently to give your business identity

Branding your e-mails helps your audience to immediately recognize and differentiate your e-mails from the unfamiliar e-mails they receive. Keeping your e-mail branding consistent over time allows your audience to become familiar with you and your e-mails as they receive multiple e-mails from you.

Branding your emails with colors and design elements requires using HTML. If you don't know HTML, look to your ESP. Most ESP's allow you to customize your e-mail templates with your branding elements. If you aren't using an ESP to send your e-mails, an HTML designer can help you create a custom look and feel for your e-mail templates.

Making your email accessible in your email marketing campaign

2010-02-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

People with disabilites and physical challenges needs to be able to read your email marketing content and respond accordingly. Some disable and aging email users are able to read and respond to your emails with their challenges in mind, and some disabled people such as those with visual impairments have special tools that verbally read your email marketing message or otherwise aid them in the comprehension of email and other online content. Some email designs make such tools cumbersome to use so its important to design your email accordingly or provide two versions of your email marketing message.

Visual impairments are not the only disabilities that might make your email difficult to understand. Here are some tips for making your emails accessible to many types of disable and aging subscribers:

- Provide a link to a text only version of your email to allow text reading devices to easily read your content to people with visual impairments. Make sure your email begins with the link and a summary of your email content so visually impaired subscribers can tell whether your email is worth listening to in its entirety. Also make sure your text version adequately describes any video, images, charts and graphics in your email.

- Use image description (alt text) when including images in your email. Reading devices read alt text so a visually impaired person knows what images are in the email. This is especially important when use images that contain text.

- Use fonts and points sizes that are easy to read so that people with low vision can interpret them.

- Use text and background colors with sufficient contrast so that words are easy to read.

- Provide a link to a text only transcript of any audio used in your email.

- Make sure any forms you ask people in your email list to fill in can be tapped through in logical order and design your forms to minimize the number of keystokes necessary to complete the form.

- Keep your email design short, concise and easy to scan. Avoid distracting design elements such as blinking text, flashing images or audio and video streams that cannot be easily turned off.

If you use an email marketing service provider such as: Email Marketing Powers, ask about accessibility requirements.

Email Marketing is the best? or Not...

2010-01-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

Email Marketing is an amazingly cost effective way to build relationships that drive business success. In today's Challenging economic times, email marketing cost advantage make email marketing arguably the most powerful tool for building any business.

But the main advantage of email marketing is not cost. Email marketing is simply the most cost effective way to stay in touch with most of your customers. If you are like many businesses, the recession forced you to hunker down and focus on driving business and sales from those most likely to buy - people you already have a relationship with - and thats is what email marketing is mostly about.

Email marketing is powerful, but it is also a challenge because the inbox is a hostile enviroment. Whether your email is noteworthy or not worthy depends on your ability to stick to the fundamentals of authentic relationship building with your customers.

To learn how a professional email marketing company can help you achieve your marketing goals, please visit: www.email-marketing-power.com

So you want to be number 1 on the search engine?

2010-01-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

Keywords and more keywords:

Whatever industry or services your website offers, its fair to say that you are part of a very busy marketplace. You are not the first website nor will you be the last. Understanding and more important, accepting that you not the only player is a major stepping stone to ensuring that you will be successful. Im serious. No idea is orginal and deciding to use the web as your sales outlet is certainly not groundbreaking - someone, somewhere has been doing it successfully or unsuccessfully far longer than you and many more will follow. But dont let that put you off.

Go nich. be specific. Optimized our site on the specific not the generic. You will enjoy more traffic and more important, a higher conversion ratio. In simple terms you will attract the right sort of customer who was interested in your offering and more of those customers were committing to purchase.

Your potential customer are both of these things: special in that they require extra attention and unique in that they really do think for themselves. We are all guilty of forcing web users into a certain category but the truth is, they are different and picky about their web habits as they are about their everyday decisions. Treat them as individuals.

For information about internet marketing: http://www.pureinternetmedia.com/

Renting out email address list

2009-03-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Because quality confirmed permission email lists are so valuable, beware of supposed confirmed permission lists for sale as a data file. Quality confirmed permission email lists are always rented out because the email addresses are too valuable to sell.

As you might guess, list rental means that the list broker will never give you the email addresses used to send your email. Instead, you supply content to the list broker, and the list broker formats and sends your email to the list.

Because list rental buys only one sending opportunity, i recommend that you include a sign up link in your broker email. Simply asking the recipients to "Buy it Now" is asking for a small percentage of responses.

Include a sign up link asking recipients to subscribe to your personal email list can make it possible to own the information from people who are interested but who are not ready to buy the moment they receive your brokered email. If the email list broker does not allow a subscription link in the email, make sure that any links in your broker email lead to a landing page that included your sign up box, button or link.

If you can capture sales and information by using a rented email list, make sure that your emails continue to meet or exceed all possible professional standards to help keep subscribers interested and happy to be on the list after they have confirmed.

From more info on email list rental, please vist: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

Another great website for email list resources is: www.exmmarketing.com

Offering Incentives to increase signup in email list marketing

2009-03-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

Because your email list is an asset - hopefully containing email addresses belonging to loyal customers who spend more money as well as referral sources who love to tell others about you - offering an incentives in exchange for an email subscription is really the least you can do to thank and reward you most valuable contacts.

Offering incentives for joining your email list can reward your business in a least two ways:

- Increase signups: the number of people willing to share their contact information with you is likely to increase if they feel that they are getting something of value in return.

- Increase loyalty: An incentive rewards your subscribers and can cause loyalty, repeat business, and referrals to increase.

Some incentives, such as ongoing discounts, can be inherent part of being on the email list - and are, therefore, immediate upon subscription. Immediate incentives abound and could include:

- Discount or rewards points on every purchase.
- VIP access to special events, front row seats and so on.
- Access to members only information.
- Free trials, gifts or additional services.

To learn more about:

Email Marketing software please visit: www.ExpediteSimplicity.com

Full Service Email Marketing, please visit: www.Expedite-Email-Marketing.com

Other good bulk email broadcasting blog.

Organizing your email marketing message into themes based on Objectives

2009-03-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

Stating clear objectives gives you a platform for creating email content that accomplishes your objectives. Running a small business involves frequently setting new objectives and developing new email marketing content in line with those objectives. When your time is limited, you might be tempted to create email content that fits your schedule better than your objectives.

One of the most important reasons to use specific objectives to guide the creation of your email content is to keep you from bombarding your customers and prospects with all your information.

Sending all the information you can think of to everyone and then hoping that someone finds something interesting in your email is spraying and praying, and it is no way to reward all your hard work. Avoid using the following email strategies to prevent spraying and praying.

- Newletters with mixtures of themes, multiple unrelated article and numerous calls to action.
- Promotions featuring multiple contrasting products along with non-promotional content.
- Annoucements pertaining to a select group of contacts but sent to everyone.
- Procedural emails including excessive or confusing promotional messages.

While you develop email content, think about how your audience will perceive your intentions. If you want your audience to help you accomplish your objectives, your audience needs to know why you are sending them email and what you are asking them to do. Because you cannot just tell your audience to buy something, you have to translate your objectives into themes that clue your audience in on your objectives without explicity telling them what you are trying to accomplish.

Email message make more sense to your prospects and customers when the content you create and deliver is tied together under familiar themese. A theme is the main idea of your entire email campaign. Themes are not the same as format. Format refers to the classification and configuration of an email.

Most objective can be grouped into one of four familiar themes:
- Promotional
- Information
- Procedural
- Relational

Emails can sometimes include content with multiple themes, but in such cases, it is usually best to have one main theme and several related themes grouped together visually under the main theme.

For more information about email marketing: www.expeditemg.com

Email Marketing Message

2009-02-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

Repeating the wrong message with the wrong frequency has te potentail to drive your target marketing away. When you send follow up messages, make sure your repeat messages employ the following sound email marketing principle:

- Make your message personal: People are less likely to open your emails if they do not recognize who it is from. Before you send a follow up message think about where the people on your email list came from and then act accordingly.
- If you met each prospect on your list personally, send the email using your name in the from line.
- If you collect email addresses by using a form on your website, include your domain name in the from line.

Check with your email marketing software company whether you can do an electronic mail-merge on your database so that you can personalize your emails with each recipient's first name.

Make your message memorable. Most email marketing messages are easily forgotten by consumers. If you can not connect your email marketing message t0 a prior relationship, your prospect might feel that your follow up messages are junk mail. Your email will generally be more memorable when you consistently remind your prospects that they know you.

- Send follow up with in 24 hours of the very first contact if you met the prospect in person.
- Send a follow up email when your prospect signs up for your email list online.

Timing is everything. Setting your audience expectations and sending email according to a frequency plan helps to ensure that your messages are not overwhelming:

- periodically remind all your prospects how they came to be subscribed to your list and what they can expect to receive going forward.

- do not let to much time go between communications. Once monthly is a good minimum as long as your content is relevant.

- Remain consistent with your timing. For example, if you choose to send an email every Friday make sure you always send it on Friday at the same time.

- Make your email valuable. After you capture the attention and interest of your prospects, you generally have one or two chances to impress them before they decide whether they want more of your communications. Before you send follow up emails, ask yourself what your prospect is likely to find valuable.

Choosing the proper email marketing message length

2009-02-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

Email marketing message are generally more effective when you make them as concise as possible. Consumers who want to receive lengthy email messages frequently are the exception rather than the rule. There is no such thing as the perfect email message length that works best for everyone and every format. Frequency and length depend on your audience and value of your content.

Until you become familiar enough with your audience to know how much content they will tolerate in each email, adopt a less is more mentality. As a general rule, the longer the content, the less frequently your audience will tolerate getting your emails.

Although your audience will ultimately tell you when messages are too long by unsubscribing or opening your emails less frequently, you can reduce the size of your individual emails and correctly match your frequency with your length by doing the following:

- Break your content into parts and send a series of emails
- Use images to describe the value of your products or services.
- Use white space and design elements.

For more info: www.expeditesimplicity.com

Email Marketing Software

Determining how many emails to send for your marketing campaign:

2009-02-12T14:45:00.001-08:00

Determining the proper number of email address to send is a fine balance. Send too many email messages, and you overwhelm your audience with too many emails. Conversely, send too few, and you can overwhelm your email marketing audience with too much content in each one.

The total number of email messages that you send should match your consumers need for your information - and not your need to send information.

For example, a Realtor might want to send dozens of emails over a period of weeks to people actively shopping for a home while sending only one email per month to people who rent an apartment, with no immediate intentions of purchasing a home.

Estimating how many emails you need to effectively deliver all of your information might be as simple as dividing your information into equal parts or as complex as delivering successively greater amount of content as your audience becomes more engaged.

Full disclosure during email address list collection

2009-02-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

The CAN-SPAM Act encourages you to have affirmative consent with your email list subscribers to send them commercial email, but the most professional practice is to use an extra measure of disclosure when asking for permission. Here are some ways how you can take affirmative consent to a more professional level:

- Ask for Explicit permission to send email everywhere you collect email addresses.
whether you exchange business cards with prospects in person or collect email addresses through a form on your website, make sure you obtain explicit permission as part of the process. It is also a good idea to keep a record of your permission exchanges in case you are faced with a legal complaint in the future.

- If you use email list check boxes on website forms, keep each check box cleared as the default.
For example, if you use your web site shipping form to collect email addresses, require your shoppers to select a check box to add themselves to any non transactional email lists. Make sure that the check box also includes a description of the types of emails your shopper is signing up for.

- Send a professional welcome letter email to all new email list subscribers.
Make sure that the welcome letter email arrives within 24 hours of the initial subscription request and also include privacy information and a description of the types and frequency of emails that the new subscriber receives.

- Send periodic permission reminders to confirm that your email list subscribers are still interested are still interested in your emails.
You can send a periodic business letter or include a few sentences at the top of your emails asking your subscribers to confirm their interests.

For more information about email list, please go to: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

How you can minimize your spam complaints over time by doing the following in your email marketing:

2009-02-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

- Ask for explicit permission to send email when you collect email addresses from prospects and customers to make sure that your customers want your emails.

- Make your email content valuable so your email list subscribers continue to want your emails.

- Make your sign up process memorable for your list subscribers and clearly identify your business in every emails from line so your audience can verify the source of your emails.

- Use logos and colors in every email that match your brand identtity so that your audienvce recognizes your business.

- Keep your email frequency in line with your email content and your email list subscribers expectations.

- Use an Email Service Provider that provides an unsubscribe link in every email you send and allows your subscribers to access their profile to change their interests.

- Ask everyone who unsubscribes from your email list to tell you why they do not want your email.

- Use an Email Marketing Software that authenticates your email addresses list.

For more info on email broadcasting marketing software, please visit: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

Sending Multiple email marketing messages to drive revenue

2009-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Communicating with prospective customers is always somewhat of a numbers game because even your best prospects and repeat customers are not ready to make an immediate purchase every time you contact them. A successfully delivered marketing message usually reaches people who fall in one of three categories:

- Immediate Purchasers: The smallest slice represents immediate purchasers. Building a marketing strategy based on a single message or one time touch, to go after cold prospects in hopes of immediate purchases usually results in a loss or a small return on investment. Sometimes, immediate purchases email marketing purchases happen just because you delivered your email marketing messages at the right place and at the right time. A single message that results in an immediate purchase usually means that the prospect has already done some research or is otherwise familiar with you or the product and services you sell.

- Interested Prospects: A second portion of the pie represents prospects who show interest but are not ready to make a purchase immediately. Interested prospects are unlikely to return for these reasons. 1) Need time for more research or compare products. 2) Waiting for money to become available. 3) No trust built yet for you or your business. 4) A similar recent purchase.
Prospects who show interest but are not yet ready to buy are unlikely to remember a single message and turn to your business several weeks, months or years later when they become ready to make an immediate purchase. Instead, they might end up becoming the immediate purchaser in response to someone else's message.

- Uninterested people: The rest of the pie represents people who are not interested at all in your message. There will always be people who are not at all interested in your products or services for one reason or another. Even the best email marketing strategies can not keep you from spending a portion of your time and money needlessly contacting people who will never buy from you.

You can turn interested prospects into immediate purchasers by following up on your messages. Periodic follow up messages can also help to turn your immediate purchases into repeat purchasers.

For more info, please visit this email list marketing website: www.Expedite-Email-Marketing.com
Another useful email list marketing websites to review is: www.ExmMarketing.com

Maximizing Revenue with Email Marketing

2009-01-26T13:22:00.000-08:00

Your future customers are not going to come find you in a home office or start calling you the minute you hook up your mobile phone service. You have to find ways to tell people about your business and you have to make sure that your communication efforts make more money than they cost.

Email marketing is a cost effective form of communication but sending email only because it is inexpensive is sort of like buying the latest and greatest computer so you can play solitaire. Email marketing can help you capitalize on the power of email to turn your customer acquisition costs into more opportunities for growth and reward.

Increase returns with repeat customers and email marketing:

You do not have to be in business too long before you recognize that repeat customers are important. If you have been in business for a while, you might even know your repeat customers by name and you get excited when you see them pulling up in their car or when their phone number appears on your caller ID.

Staying in front of your customers with valuable periodic emails is probably one of the best things you can do to drive loyalty, repeat sales and referrals. Repeat customers are more likely than cold prospects - people who are totally unaware of your business - to make immediate purchases in response to a single message. Customer who are family with your business have history with you that makes up for alot of the communications you would have to send to tell a cold prospect why your products or services are worth paying for.

Please refer to this email marketing website for more info: www.expedite-email-marketing.com
For information on Email List, please visit: www.expeditemg.com

Evaluating your Email Marketing

2009-01-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

Not all your email marketing evaluation has to be based on clicks throughs. For example, you might ask people to phone you and request more information. Then, you can evaluate your email marketing message based on how many phone calls you receive and what people say when they call. Other methods of tracking and measurement include:

- Ask people to print your email marketing message to redeem an offer: You can then count the number of customers who return a printed email to your store or office.
- Ask people to mention your message when email a reply: You can track how many emails mention the message.
-Ask people to fill out an online form: You can analyze the data collected from the forms.
-Ask people to forward your email to friends and colleagues. You can track how many new subscribers you receive as a result of the forwarded emails.
- Track activity in the product lines and services mentioned in your message: You can calculate the difference between the average level of activity and the change in activity.

The following website for email marketing has more info.

Email Marketing Message Content

2009-01-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

People interact with emails in much the same way that they interact with billboards because people tend to hastily scan through the content of an email to see whether anything is worth responding to or reading in more detail.

Be sure to use headlines, images links and text in ways that allow your audience to internalize your email marketing message as they scan.

In contrast, people take action on email marketing much differently than they do from billboards and other indirect mediums. People who see a billboard have to employ another medium as a phone or a computer to make contact with the related business but people can actively respond to email messages by using the medium itself. For example, people can easily respond to an email by:

-Clicking a link in the body of the email message.
- Downloading a file linked within a the email.
- Forward the email.
- Reply to the email.
- Clicking a phone number in a mobile email.
- Printing the email marketing message.
- Saving the email to their inbox.

Please refer to this email list marketing website for more info: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

Your Email Marketing Message

2009-01-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

Determining the most effective wording for your emails usually entails some testing combined with educated assumptions based on how your customer perceives your business and your products or services.

Answer these questions to help determine what your email marketing message should say. As you answer each questions, think in terms of what your customers find beneficial about your business instead of simply stating your own interest.

- What are the features of your products or services?
- How will the features of what you sell benefits your consumers?
- How you are different from your competition?
- Why are your differences worth paying for?
- Can you summarize your answer to the previous four questions in a paragraph? Try to use two lines of text or ten words or fewer.

Please refer to this email marketing website for more info: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

Email Marketing into your tradational marketing strategy

2009-01-13T15:26:00.000-08:00

Including email marketing in your marketing mix is not as simple as transferring more traditional message formats into electronic formats or abandoning more expensive mediums in favor of email delivery. Maximizing your business email marketing potential involves two ongoing tasks:

1- Analyzing the strengths and limitations of each medium in your marketing mix.
2- Developing messages that work harmoniously across multiple mediums to achieve your objectives.

Determining which mediums are likely to work together to make a significant, positive impact on your business is a matter of some trial and error. At the same time, some mediums have obvious advantages for small businesses. Email marketing is one such example because it is cost effective and because the returns on permission based email campaigns are generally outstanding.

please refer to this email marketing website for more info: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

The exciting world of Email Marketing Intro

2009-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

Email Marketing represents an opportunity to experience both the thrill of increase customer loyalty and steady repeat business as well as the agony of bounced email addresses, unsubscribe requests and spam complaints. Whether you find thrills or agony in your email marketing strategy depends on your ability to effectively deliver valuable and purpose email marketing messages to prospects and customers who have need for your information.

Hopefully you can find help in this blog about time tested marketing strategies with consumer preferences and best practices to help you develop and deliver email marketing messages that your prospects and customers look forward to receiving. This blog should explain how to apply basic business and marketing principles to your email strategy, such as maximizing your revenue and coming up with meaningful objectives. This email marketing blog also explain how to use email templates to design professional looking email marketing message and how to come up with relevant email content to put into your design.

Please refer to this website because it where i am getting my topic comes from: www.expedite-email-marketing.com

Welcome my new email and SMS marketing software blog

2009-01-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my new email and SMS marketing software blog. I will try to bring the latest information on email marketing and text sms cellphone marketing. This is my first post on this blog. I will be writing something everyday.

www.expedite-email-marketing.com is website I will be blogging about.