December 30, 2007 – 1:26 pm
As you know the world of the email marketer can be fast paced. There are deadlines to meet and multiple projects going on at the same time. You are always pushed to get mass emailings out and to the customers. It is human to make mistakes. The more you are rushed and have multiple things going on at the same time, the more likely you are to make an error.
It can be to leave off a link to a site. Or it could be to leave off the time and date of an event. These are very common errors, but ones that can cause you to lose time, customers and ultimately money. You could have a full time editor, but that can be too costly.
What I recommend you create instead is an email checklist. This is a list that goes through each part of an email to make sure nothing is missing and it can catch mistakes. You can create the email check list by looking at an email you have already created. Go through each part of the email and write down all the components of each area that need to be checked and rechecked before mailing it out. Below I have listed some examples of things you can look out for in an email.
Subject Line
· Do the first few words grab the reader’s attention? Is it readable on a number of different devices such as a blackberry? You may want to send a test email to see how it looks and experiment with it a little.
· Does the message convey a sense of urgency? Does it indicate that the reader must act immediately?
December 29, 2007 – 1:24 pm
Internet marketers spend millions of dollars each year trying to find better ways of driving customers to specific websites. They use all kinds of tricks and tools from the trade. Once the customers make it to their site they then use all kinds of sophisticated programs to analyze the traffic coming to their sites and […]
December 28, 2007 – 1:22 pm
It is a gift when you can change the content of a website and make it SEO friendly. Most times you have to work within the original confines and design of a website. Often older websites are not set up with SEO in mind.
SEO is short for search engine optimization. This is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. Often Internet users do not click through pages and pages of search results. It is very important that site ranks high in a search so that it directs more traffic toward the site.
December 27, 2007 – 1:19 pm
It is important as you are developing and analyzing your search marketing plan that you know what your competition is doing.
Having the information about your competition can help you have an edge over your rivals. In addition you will know how much money to spend on your search marketing budget as well as where your SEO efforts should be on different sites. You would not close your eyes if you had a shoe store in a mall with another shoes store right across the hall. You would be looking at what they were selling and for what price.
In this article you will learn some strategies for knowing what your competition is doing and using it to your advantage.
What is my Competition spending on marketing?
December 26, 2007 – 1:13 pm
Most sites that sell goods have pages that direct you toward locations of their stores so that you can find an outlet close to you to buy goods or servises from. These pages usally contain their store location and times they are open. What they sometimes lack is enough information to compete in the local SERPs. You rarely see a dealer’s page compete with an Internet yellow pagesprovider, vertical aggregator, or special interest directory in a SERP.
Because these sites lack this vital information it has opened the market for independent dealers and providers to get a higher ranking on both organic and paid local search results.
The number of local businesses that have their own websites has grown to about 60 percent. About 9 million of the 12 million business lcoated in the printed yellow pages are independent businesses. These buisnesses see the value of having their own website . About 3 million of these businesses have a paid display ad that allows them to publish a URL.
Research has shown that 50 percent of customers that use on online yellow pages usually clicks back to to it after visiting a site. The reasons is that these sites lack essential and useful information for consumers.
December 24, 2007 – 1:11 pm
I have been using email for the last 10 years and am often amazed that email does not get more recognition from larger companies and their high powered executives. The Rate of Return on email is the highest of any mode of communication but always seems to end up last on the budget listing.
Many different experts have spent an abundance of time proposing reasons for the lack of respect given to email. The real answer may be more fundamental than anyone has proposed. Perhaps the real reason is that we just don’t speak the same language. The languages of “email†and “business†are truly very different. Business clients may have difficulty understanding exactly what email can provide because the terminology is so foreign to their business model.
December 23, 2007 – 1:06 pm
“Search Assist” is one of the latest integrated functions of Yahoo that assists users with finding what they want, faster. Their research has shown that Yahoo users generally form query chains, with three to five reformulations of a query. After two or three unsuccessful attempts, users generally feel like it is their own fault for not being specific enough.
Yahoo’s Search Assist operates in the background and monitors keystroke speed. When a user slows down their typing, Search Assist will employ a drop down bar and suggest similar query strings that may be related to the user’s topic. A number of other search engines use this same type of function to assist users. Yahoo’s function is different in that it does not stay on the page all of the time. Instead, its implementation is based on the speed of the user’s keystrokes. An example, type in ‘John’ and then ‘Den’ and pause, Search Assist will think you are stuck and drop down some suggestions to complete your search.
December 22, 2007 – 1:04 pm
Marketing executives, those who are the keepers of the brand, have had some difficult years recently. The statistics for the life expectancy of a Chief Marketing Officer is two years or less. Finance and procurement departments however have risen in influence and necessity. One key goal for many organizations is to make sure “those marketing/creative folks” don’t neglect t the bottom line; profits. This issue is very hard for “creative/marketing folks†to dispute, but it is also still of utmost importance to market an authentic singularly identifiable brand.
Authenticity is crucial now more than ever to the successfulness of a brand. Research on branding used to be limited to press releases and a few news stories. The Internet and all of its search engines changed that process forever. Now, anyone with a very basic understanding of HTML can create their own Web page that is dedicated to a least or most favorite brand. Even without a bit of knowledge and a simple understanding of search optimization, that Web page can be seen by billions of internet users overnight.
As the technical ability of the general public increased, brands lost control of findable internet content and the internet user/consumers got the power. Today, you don’t need to know HTML to clearly and specifically share your feelings about a company or their products. By posting reviews, writing a blog, or creating video, you can publish your thoughts and feelings and make them instantly accessible to the entire world in a matter of seconds.
A marketing executive should constantly be asking: “What defines this brand’s authenticity?” and “How can I make potential customers understand what that means?” These are always difficult questions to answer, especially if the marketing expertise in the organization isn’t the one leading the discussion. Every interaction that a consumer has with a brand defines its association and creates an opportunity for those consumers to discuss these associations. As a result, marketing departments should have a say in product development and in the very important customer service departments and others as well.
December 21, 2007 – 1:03 pm
Search Engine Marketing Firms hear the following questions repeatedly:
What kind of increase in traffic can you guarantee? And Will sales increase?
These are of course very appropriate questions for a company that is about to spend the majority of its marketing budget on organic search marketing. These are the two questions that any marketing department asks repeatedly no matter what they are buying.
It seems amazing then, that the answer from a Search Engine Marketer is almost always: I don’t know.
December 20, 2007 – 1:02 pm
When people are going to purchase an item they can go through a decision making process. If it is a small everyday item, they make a quick decision. If it is a larger more expensive product, the process is more involved. Knowing how your customer makes a decision can help you make decisions about SEO building and website information.
First, they will due their initial check. This involves looking around a deciding what it is exactly they wanted. Let us consider the example a large television. They consider what type of TV, How big the TV is what brand they have success with in the past.
