Category: Email marketing

News Reporter Recognizes SEO Firm as Top Professional SEO Specialists

Posted by admin – December 24, 2009

The i-Guy (Investigative Reporter, John Mattes) has uncovered the real SEO’s from the fakers who claim they know search engine optimization and charge you a lot of money for nothing. The same guy who helped to break the Iran Contra Scandal has now found the one honest and true SEO that can and does make a difference.

San Diego, California – News Reporter John Mattes, also known as the Investigative Guy has distinguished the real SEO firm from the fakers who claim they know search engine optimization and charge you a lot of money with little results to show. The same guy who helped to break the Iran Contra Scandal has now found an absolutely honest and true SEO that can and does make a difference. That SEO is a local San Diego SEO company; SEO by the Hour and they have a track record to prove it.

John Mattes is an attorney, investigative reporter and tireless champion of the underdog. He’s broken many stories, big and small, but all ones that affect YOU. He tore the lid off ‘liar loans,’ gangs who’ve stolen mansions, and a phony veterans’ charity. He also took on the U.S. government and helped open the door to the Iran Contra Scandal. Don’t mess with Mattes if you’ve got ill intent. Rust never sleeps — nor does Mattes.

Recently Mattes investigated the field of SEO and found one of the most honest and most effective SEO firms in the game. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a field that has come about with the introduction of Google and other major search engines. Just how do you get your website to show up when someone is searching for it? It takes countless hours to learn how and what to do to make it happen and many need help, thus we now have the field of SEO marketing companies offering online marketing and SEO services. But not all SEO companies are the same. Some are better than others and some can even get you banned from Google. There are many guidelines that Google lays out for you on how to get your site ranked and some manipulative things you can do to get banned. Ever had a bad experience on the net trying to find info and getting redirected to some spammy and scammy sites instead?

The i-Guy set out to investigate and found that there are some bad SEO firms out there. Many he found are charging you for simple ridiculous things and promising you unrealistic rankings. John Mattes has investigated SEO companies and has found the best of the bests. “So many other companies just didn’t measure up. They charged high prices and would not show me proof of past results, even when services were tested under agreements, they failed”., said John Mattes. The truth is that there is no guarantee that your site will get ranked high on the searches. It can be a daunting task for anyone not in the know of how it works. The truth is as with every other industry there are clowns out to make a quick buck and sadly rip people off. SEO by the Hour was the only company that would show me actual clients’ results they had worked on and gotten on the first page and their pricing was the most fair and valuable anywhere. SEO by the Hour can show actual results achieved with other clients and will tell you realistically what you can expect. James Harrison a link building expert of SEO by the Hour, along with his team has provided professional SEO services for large corporations, small mom & pop shops and other SEO firms, and knows the SEO business inside and out. He now has his own SEO firm and is committed to excellence and customer service.

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Tips For Running An Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Posted by admin – June 30, 2009

Matthew Henderson asked:


It seems that what emerged as sound email principles and etiquette apply just as well to email marketing. But its not just email marketing… it’s effective email marketing.

Where previously formal letters and faxes used to be the way to communicate with clients and potential customers, the shift to the ’softcopy’ world of the Web has meant that this same type of communication would have to happen in a format pertinent to this new venue. Email and email marketing asserted itself as the prime method of contact then. From brochures to customer support, everything can now take place through a few types on the keyboard and few clicks of the mouse.

However, there still is a protocol and a proper manner for effective email marketing:

- Be clear

Email is a shortened form of communication. There is no space for flowery and overtly ego-soothing language. Basic courtesy applies, like proper greetings and such, but on the whole, emails should be short and clear. Get to the point as soon as possible. Let your recipient know what is expected of him, what he stands to gain through this communication, and how he can gain it (for example, what he has to do, such as be within the first hundred to visit a site and thus earn a discount)

- Offer value, not information

Provide incentive for the email reader to read and click through. Add value to your communication. Attract and seduce. Don’t be surprised a boring, hum-drum email is deleted as soon as the recipient reads the first few lines. Entice, and do not provide too much information in the content. The website is there for this purpose. The email is for communication.

- Prefer text

Graphics take long to load and often emails with graphics and attachments are deleted immediately or go to a junk mail folder.

- Label your images if you use them.

Some people get only the text in an email in their browser. If you include graphics but fail to label them, the whole message may not make sense or the reader may not be enticed. Providing labels lets him know what stands at such a place in the message.

- Use a hook

You should aim to catch the attention of your reader from the first line itself. A good hook works then. Its message should be relevant and clear so that the customer can then immediately decide to read on or not. Remember that a reader is won through the first few lines itself.

- Support the hook

In the body of your email, use relevant information to support your hook and its message. However, be concise, as this isn’t an opportunity for an info dump. Your information should simply reinforce your hook.

- Be short and concise

Readers won’t read every word that is down in an email. They usually scan the thing in whole. Use the space you have succinctly to maximize the opportunity to grasp the reader.

- Provide the most important information first

Make efficient use of the top space of your email. Many readers read email through a preview pane. The top third of your email will be displayed in this pane, and based on this information, a reader may decide to read the full or delete the message already.

- Use a legible and easy to grasp format

- Arrange your text in a manner that is pleasant to the eye.

- Delineate text and paragraphs using hyphens or lines.

- Use legible font such as Georgia and Verdana in a readable size.

- Use bullets and lists to more clearly define your message so it can be grasped at first glance.

- Use the active voice

The active voice ‘involves’ the reader in the message and pushes him to react.

- Know your audience

And write accordingly with appropriate wording and information.

- Avoid URLs that are too long

Such addresses in emails can be difficult to click as they lose their link when they are ‘broken’ onto 2 or more lines.

Aim to have a URL on its own line. If needed, shrink the text for the link. Or you can offer the address without a hyperlink but as a ‘copy and paste’ option.

- Avoid caps and excessive use of punctuation marks

That’s basic email etiquette, which carries forward into your business communication.

- Offer an option to unsubscribe

Always offer a ‘way out’ for your recipients. An unsubscribe link is expected to be seen at the bottom of the email.

Providing your recipient with the option to continue receiving emails or to terminate the reception shows caring and courtesy to the reader.

Also ensure that an unsubscription is effective immediately.

- Easy to subscribe as well

Make it easy to subscribe as well. Provide links and offer a way to your guest book or how to provide comments and feedback. This shows consideration on your behalf.

It is also a good idea to let your readers know that they are free to forward the email as well.

- Make it easy to change subscription address

This way, if a client or recipient changes his address, he can make sure the email follows as well.

- Make good use of your subject line

The headline of your message should go in the subject box, as this is the first glimpse recipients will have to your email. Use it judiciously to convey information.

- Address your recipients by their name

This shows consideration and a personal touch. You definitely win over more people through a personalized message than through an impersonal mass bundling.

- Avoid in holiday periods

This time is often holiday from emails too, so keep email marketing communications to the minimum too.

You could however send out a message with the holiday’s greetings and best wishes.

- Consistency with corporate design

Having the same kind of layout and formatting as your website and other business communication supports ensures that someone recognizes your email at first glance too.

Once you have found the right template/format, use it every time.

- An email address that says who you are

People are more apt to trust a message with a From line containing information about who you are and where you’re from. This will also prevent your email from being listed as spam and from ending in the junk email folder.

- The landing page should fit the email and the offer

Make sure you are leading your reader to the right destination through the links provided in the message.

People hate wasting their time, and if this happens even once, you stand the risk of losing credibility.

By tailoring your landing page for links, you also make better use of your website to further engage the customer’s interest.

- Motivate newsletter sign up with a freebie or bonus

Offer something in return as an incentive. This could win you a lot of new subscriptions.

- Have good multimedia if you are using it

If you are using audio or video, make sure they are of good quality and can be accessed easily.

- Reply to requests within 24 hours

This is basically common courtesy but it pays to be recalled. Ensuring prompt replies show you care and value your customers.

- Email should be service oriented, not marketing oriented as with paper

Your aim through email marketing is to inform and provide an ‘easy’ access to your company.

- Customize so it doesn’t look like spam

Make sure your message is unique in its content and format so it isn’t brushed off as spam.

- Offer user control if possible

Wherever possible, give your reader the opportunity to tailor your communications to him. People are most apt to listen to the information they have asked for.

- Provide contact information for you

Always provide a way of contacting you. The signature in emails is one of your greatest effective email marketing assets.

By making use of these email marketing tips, you should be able to create a successful and effective email marketing campaign.



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Sports Organizations Are Using Email Marketing Solutions

Posted by admin – June 26, 2009

Rudy Barell asked:


Whether you operate a baseball league in the summer, a hockey league in the winter, or any other type of sports organization, you know that communication is of paramount importance. In order to facilitate the smooth operation of your league, it is vitally important to communicate with coaches, players, sponsors and other organizers. In the past, this may have been a laboring activity. But now, with the power of email marketing solutions, it’s easy to create professional and effective email marketing campaigns with just a few clicks of the mouse.

One of the most common uses of email marketing solutions for sports organizations is to send out important announcements to coaches or team managers. In most leagues, if the coach/manager doesn’t know what is going on, then there will be chaos, which is obviously something the league organizers want to avoid. With the right email marketing solutions, the league organizers can send out a mass email to all the coaches, complete with maps to various venues (baseball diamonds, hockey rinks, swimming pools, etc), detailed schedules, links to websites like MapQuest for directions, and more. Through the power of email marketing solutions, leagues are no longer constrained to just plain-text emails. These communication messages can be jazzed up with graphics, which not only make them more eye-catching, but also more informative. As the cliche goes, “a picture says a thousand words”, so including a couple images can go a long way towards ensuring your coaches and team managers know everything you need them to know.

Email marketing solutions can also let you send captivating emails to all the players or participants in your league. Many leagues around North America have found it very effective to send out monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly newsletters to everyone in the league. This helps maintain a high level of interest because the participants are constantly being updated with all the latest news affecting the league. Most email marketing solutions will allow you to create a long or short newsletter, so there is no pressure to come up with a certain amount of articles to include. Sometimes newsletters during the off-season only have one or two articles, while newsletters sent out in the middle of a season may be packaged with five to seven articles. You can even ask players and coaches to submit stories and successes they’d like to share with the league. Your email marketing solutions will adapt to accommodate your needs so whatever it is you want to communicate, you will be able to do so easily.

Sending out newsletters with your email marketing solutions is also a great way to encourage enrollment for upcoming seasons, events or tournaments. Also, due to the viral nature of email, you can use your email marketing solutions to encourage current players to forward the email to their friends, which just takes one click, to further spread the word about your league and encourage additional enrollment. Ultimately, the more people you contact, the more people will be able to sign up for your league, and your email marketing solutions can put that communication on the fast track.

When you are running a sports league it is important that you know your message isn’t just being sent, but that it is also being read by your audience. With email marketing solutions, it is no longer a mystery as to whether your email is being read or not. Within minutes of sending your email campaign, most email marketing solutions will let you view real-time reports to see exactly who is opening your email and who is not. In most cases you can even see the date and time each person on your contact list opened the email. This lets you put your mind at ease because you will know that your communication was effective.

Email marketing solutions is an affordable and effective way to boost the communication efforts of your sports league. Regardless of the age or skill level of your league, being able to distribute information is always vitally important. With email marketing solutions in your arsenal, you will be better equipped to handle that challenge. Have a great season!



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Email Marketing Basics and Tips

Posted by admin – June 25, 2009

Mike Benner asked:


The first point you must remember is that email marketing is just a tool – not a new concept of doing business like Web 2.0 but a time-tested, hardened method for generating profits. In other words, email marketing is just like any other online business tool – affiliate programs, pay-per-click advertising, sales letters, minisites – one of many assets at your disposal. What makes email marketing so interesting (and important) is its focus on building a positive relationship with your customers. From a marketing perspective, email marketing is simply an online extension of the traditional marketing principle of acquiring “prospects” by taking their contact information and then sending them promotional information via email.

Think product catalogs, magazine subscriptions (advertising within a magazine is the “promotional material”) and newspapers (classifieds) – all of these involve the same two steps:

* Acquiring the prospect’s contact information (either by offering a freebie or a discount, or just by asking).

* Send regular promotional offers to the “list” – a collection of prospects whose contact information you have.

This is ridiculously simple. There are many more levels and much more depth to the subject (and we will be covering all of it today and in the next two lessons), but this is the essence of it. The issue that immediately comes out of this is: What motivation does the prospect have, first for providing their contact details, and second, for buying any products that are pitched to her? None at all.

Consider a social parallel – if you go up to a complete stranger and ask them to give you their name and email address (or worse, their home address as well) so that you can send them emails about what to buy, your chances of success are going to be very, very slim. Instead, you have to give the prospect a reason to hand over her email address. More so to tell you her name. And an even better reason for the permission to send her any sort of product or service promotions. In other words, you have to use the principles of “Permission Marketing” (a term popularized by Seth Godin) – provide the prospect with a valuable enough proposition for her to consider giving you the permission to “market” to her i.e. sell to her. All of this leads to the first principle of email marketing: Before anything else, give the subscriber something that she respects and values.

Creating Value.

Everyone has problems. Everyone is looking for answers to these problems. Marketing – effective marketing – is positioning your product as THE solution to a particular problem. Combine this with the first principle of email marketing, and you have situation where your first task is to create value for the prospect. In some cases, the “promise” and “proof” of a solution can be enough (like a sales letter). In other cases, you might want to try providing a rudimentary solution in the form of providing some information, and build that value over time by continuously giving more and more to your prospects (like an email newsletter).

Email marketing is all about providing useful information to your subscribers. First, you encourage them to give you their email addresses by promising a solution to their problems (for example, a short report on the real estate market if you are targeting investors). In turn, this translates into permission given by the subscriber to allow you to send them further information via email. The central core of this whole process is valuable, relevant information. Information that the subscriber is interested in. Information that the subscriber needs. Now many marketers make a hash out of providing valuable information and instead concentrate on “selling” to the list. Do NOT make that mistake. You first priority is to develop a bond of trust with your subscribers – this will only happen if you learn to give first and foremost.

Building Trust.

Once you’ve learned how to give, you’re ready to build your “list” by using any one or more of a number of lead generation techniques, all of which involve driving traffic to a special “landing page” where you make your “information pitch” (as opposed to a sales pitch) and request the prospect’s name and email address. But building your list isn’t the only thing you must do. Almost simultaneously, from the moment you have convinced someone to hand over their email address, you are on the road of building a positive relationship with your list. A relationship that is based on trust, where trust can include the following:

* Your subscribers consider you an expert in your field (and therefore someone they are inclined to believe and listen to).

* Your subscribers implicitly trust you to treat them fairly – this results from a commitment to give first, and sell later. In other words, invest time and effort in your list, and make it show.

* Your subscribers expect quality from you, and by extension, they consider any products or services you promote as valuable.

This trust is paramount in email marketing. If you can gain the trust of your subscribers, they will respond to your product offers (provided that you are selling something valuable and not just trash) and, eventually, make you rich. The money really is in the list. In the third lesson of this series where I discuss advanced email marketing strategies, I’ll cover in detail how you can follow simple steps to ensure that your subscribers trust you, and also a checklist of things that can break that trust (i.e. a NOT to do checklist).

Repeat Customers.

The greatest value in email marketing is that of repeat customers. In other words, through email marketing you can basically send product promotions to your list regularly and continue making money out of the same core list of subscribers. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated in that, but this principle of acquiring repeat customers is enlightening because it showcases an important fact about business: You can market different products to the same group of people. If you position it right over a period of time, you will have a situation where a certain group of people are buying new products from you every few months. Now this works, but only if you are able to identify your “target market” and are creating products and services that are the answers to the types of problems your subscribers need solutions to. Failing to do that will result in unhappy subscribers and a cold list – a list full of subscribers that are not interested in your emails, don’t want to buy what you are selling and are generally ignoring your emails.

Building a list you can contact again and again for continuing profits needs a lot of effort to build and maintain. A large part of creating repeat customers in email marketing is to maintain a long-term relationship with your list – this involves regularly providing information that is useful to your subscribers. When following email marketing, do not forget that other rules of marketing still apply – if you don’t give your customer what they want, they won’t hang around your website (or in this case, on your list) anymore.



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The hidden mysteries of Customized Email Marketing

Posted by admin – June 14, 2009

Khurram Zaveri asked:


The recent explosive growth of Internet has opened a lot of opportunities for marketers all around the world. A few years back a new type of marketing called Internet Marketing emerged, and sooner when email became the ultimate mode of communication on the Internet, a new Internet marketing technique was born: Email Marketing.

At first, when the internet marketers found that they can send out information about their products anyway they want through emails, they simply bombarded the email addresses of their existing customers, and also of those who were not on their lists. They sent out emails to public and private email lists, and even paid huge amount of money to get these lists for their broadcasting. When they saw that this is working great, they just keep sending out emails everywhere, and didn’t thought of any strategy to work on while doing that.

Sooner, email marketers from around the globe were just flooding their recipients, most of them never wanted to get any emails of such a sort. Finally, on a mutual agreement email providers all over the Internet implemented the spamming strategy and labeled all the email marketers as scammers. After this, no one even tried to read emails that ends up in their junk or spam folder.

Sometime later, opt-in email marketing strategy came in to place. Every Internet marketer started to use single and double opt-in email marketing strategy, and with this way even the recipients were happy to subscribe to the emails they wish to receive in future and deny requests to emails they don’t wish. However, a personalized catchy subject line with no particular personalized content failed to catch interest of email readers. This strategy also failed, but many still prefers to use it nowadays.

The ultimate email marketing strategy adopted by the Apple Company, I-Tunes, resulted far better than all other from the past. It was simple and efficient. After selecting any artist’s name you like, you can request the opt-in system to inform you via email about any new album or track that comes in. Then you will be expecting emails from I-Tunes that reflect your type of choice, and the significance of this strategy is that you are forced to open every email you receive from them, as the email reflect your favorite choices.

This customized email marketing strategy adopted by I-Tunes did play a very important role in verifying the needs of subscribers, instead of just spamming them or indulging them for un-relevant information. Any new Internet email marketer who wishes to be successful can use this strategy and make his/her business much more fruitful in a shorter period of time.



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Email Marketing Templates - How To Get Your Emails Read

Posted by admin – June 12, 2009

Candy asked:


Email is one of the a large amount of effective direct marketing techniques available. When done well it enables us to terminology to large levels of prospects and customers in an instant; alerting them to offers, telling them about new products and services and forming an continuous relationship.

Done wrong, email marketing emails get deleted without even being viewed. Even worse, our emails can be viewed as annoying spam, damaging the very relationships we are all trying so hard to nurture. So, as professional marketers, how can we ensure our intently crafted email marketing pieces get was reading in the beforehand place? It starts in the subject line Research has shown that open market values vary enormously, depending on the subject succession used.

Common sense tells us the punchy subject lines with treatment grabbing headlines are going to do better than dull versions. However, it comes as a big news to many marketers to figure out that the best open rates are from ‘informative’ rather as opposed to ‘creative’ subject lines. One notable study revealed subject lines such as, “[COMPANYNAME] Newsletter - February 2009″ typically outperform lines such as “The Future of International Trade” by a factor of 5 or more.

The simple truth is that the proper performing subject lines describe the subject of the email. To do somewhat unique flies in the face of hard evidence and is only attempted by the basically brave or the foolhardy. Not all email readers display the entire subject line. Just because you use Microsoft Mail doesn’t imply that all your readers do too. Keeping your subject sequence total amount under 51 characters will ensure that lendees can see all of your subject line, no matter what email program properties are using.

Some words are better as opposed to others Be wary of words that motive spam filters. The discernable sites are “free” and “discount”. Most spam filtering works by scoring the email according to length, origin, sayings used, images and so on. Once a threshold has kept on reached the email is classified as spam and the utility rejects it. Even punctuation such as exclamation marks in a subject line can increase your score, bringing you closer to the threshold.

If you are unsure virtually how to avoid spam triggers in your email re&wshyp;selling copy, a expert email broadcaster serves to be great to advise you. Grab Attention above the Fold In email marketing, preview panes are the equivalent of the mimic that falls above the fold of a letter. Preview panes undergo become the standard way of hastily glancing at an email and deciding whether it’s value reading or not.

In our quest to get our emails read, our mission is to grab service “above the fold” using our most compelling mimic and imagery. Design and write your email so so your offer, call-to-action, urgency indicator and branding all appear “above the fold”. Be aware that each email reader serves to hold a different preference for their preview pane. This consequences in the region available to grab attention being still different for each. Design and test your email selling pieces in different formats to ensure your “above the fold” copy can be viewed in each.

Many preview panes block images by default, so ‘alt tag’ considerations should be included in the creative and design process. Alt tags also help improve accessibility to those with ass impairments. UK Companies are required by law to take reasonable steps to ensure accessibility under the 2005 amendments to the Disability Discrimination Act, so missing out alt tags were able to prove a costly mistake.

Perhaps because email is so ubiquitous and everyone writes emails every day, companies have a trend to devalue them. However, as this article has shown, there is a lot to think about when planning an email marketing piece. A final proof is that precisely due to the fact that there is these kinds of a lot to think about and as situations are turning so quickly in the world of email marketing, calling a friendly expert once in a additonally is a great shortcut to success. Download your FREE Internet Marketing Preview Ebook @ http://tinyurl.com/7oaydp now.



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Business To Business Email Marketing - How To Use Email That Gets Results

Posted by admin – June 9, 2009

Vanson asked:


Many small business owners select to reach out to potential customers through email mailing lists. This is such an effective way of marketing because everyone has an email account. The occurence of the matter is that most borrowers are a lot more wary of emails as opposed to they got in the past. It is important to find a way that you can get potential purchasers to click on your emails and we will offer you some favorably proven email selling info to make it easier for you achieve ideal clickthroughs in this article.

Email Marketing Tip - Choose Your Subject Line Carefully One of the best ways to do this is by choosing a good subject line. The subject line is a first impression which is why it needs to be absolutely perfect. By choosing a wonderful subject line you should not get banned from anyone’s email list. Most people traditionally choose to create a mailing list with somewhat in mind whether such a be an age group, economic group, or even a selected niche.

The most savvy of marketers have mailing lists from those of us that own posted information about their business. It is of a high total amount importance to still be these people in mind when creating your subject line. You should always try and put yourself in the position of the email user when creating your subject line. You should write a subject line that can resonate among the people on your email list. It is also vital to create a unique subject line that shows you are not just another normal spam email.

Email Marketing Tip - Don’t Over Do Punctuation Many people make the mistake of overusing exclamation points and question marks. Doing so will get you banned from someones email list faster than you can say email. If you put a lot of exclamation points or think about marks in the subject lines your email will automatedly be viewed as spam by most email clients. You should also try and avoid the typical spam words such as free or limited time offer. If you use these phrases as enormously as a lot of exclamation points then you serves to definitely get banned from everyones email list quickly.

At the same time, it is important to use the proper spelling and grammar when writing your email. This will permit you a lot in the long run when sending out emails to your list. Email Marketing Tip - Don’t Over Email Many first timers make the big mistake of sending more than one email out a day. Doing the will get you banned according to peoples’ email store immediately. Doing so will annoy people on the other end because they will recently view your email as spam.

Believe it or not, people do not want to gradually hear about how you have to sell. You should send emails only once and a while. If you send too several emails no one will listen to what you suffer to say. Instead, you should email people less, but put more thought into every and most every email.

Email Marketing Tip - Be Genuine Most people make the mistake of along with a subject line that implies the you hold previously talked to the person. Another mistake overly people take in is by coming across as if properties got friends. The majority of folks can spot these kinds of spam emails extremely quickly and will fast mark it as spam. Even if they do open it they will quickly realize what is going on.

Just remember, deception is never the best strategy when trying to get someone to visit your website. The best strategy is to be completely honest and to choose an honest and catchy subject line. You should treat your mailing list as an extremely valuable item. The reason for currently is that if you treat customers on your mailing list with sympathy you am able to go far with your business. Doing so will help you establish astronomical relationships with your clients. You can get FREE Internet Marketing Preview Ebook @ http://www.massivecashgenerator2.com.



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Viral Email Marketing: How To Make Your Emails Viral And Outrageously Profitable

Posted by admin – June 7, 2009

Jeremy Gislason asked:


Viral email marketing is one of the most popular means of promoting your products or services. You can easily contact several thousands - or even millions - of individuals at one time and have them spreading your email message, promoting your business and generating income for you.

It is important that you understand the mechanics of viral email marketing to take advantage of its full potentials, and get the cash your business needs at a fraction of the usual time and effort.

What is Viral Email Marketing?

Viral marketing is one of the most efficient marketing tool innovated in the online industry. The term was coined after the idea of an information spreading quickly and effectively. In offline marketing industry, viral marketing is what is often referred to as “word-of-mouth” marketing strategy, which is considered by some marketing experts as the most effective type of marketing.

Viral email marketing is a branch of a variety of viral marketing tools and techniques that internet marketers can use these days. Although the benefits are quite appealing, there are certain techniques that online marketers need to follow closely in order to reap those benefits.

Since most people these days utilize their email to communicate on a daily basis, it is where viral email marketing is targeted. You can therefore appeal to every individual in your target market specifically, which when done correctly, have higher potential of generating sales.

If you were to recall the history of email marketing campaigns, it all started with Hotmail. They offered clients who availed of their service a free email account. For every online businessmen though, you can offer a variety of techniques to your prospects through their email that will enable you to utilize the power of this technology to spread the word about your marketing campaign.

Viral Email Marketing Techniques

The techniques you use in your viral email marketing campaign depends largely on your business goals. In most cases, the goals of an online marketer when sending out emails to the people in their mailing list is to inform them about a particular product or information. A subset to this goal is to compel them to forward the message or email to their friends in their email list, thus spreading the word about your line of products.

Why would your prospects forward the email they receive? The key here is to send them emails that are of some level of worth. If not, then it would probably take them a shorter amount of time to delete the email message than they would reading what the content of the mail is.

One effective way to increase readership is to carefully consider the information value or entertainment value you input in the content of your email message. Being informative does not necessarily mean your email message has to be dull. Learn how to infuse some creativity into it. With proper use of useful or amusing content, you will most likely compel people in your mailing list to read your emails and forward them to people who might benefit from them.

Prior to this stage though, you need to have had proper methods of building a large opt-in list. The methods you use must also be targeted, such that the people in your mailing list are most likely to respond to your viral email marketing campaign.

Subject Line of a Viral Email

Although this comes prior to the actual opening of your emails, this is incredibly important. The subject line is the first thing that a person sees whenever they open their inbox. There are only two options for them: to click on the mail you sent or not. Hence, it is important that you convince them to do the former. One technique is to keep your subject line interesting or provoke curiosity.

Using the “Open Me” or “Read Me” approach is fast becoming ineffective. Plus, it is a very lazy approach at convincing people to actually read the mail. Try to keep your subject line short but snappy for higher effectiveness.

Content of a Viral Email

You have three options in terms of how you build the content for your viral email marketing: sales letter, newsletter, or review format. Regardless of your choice of content format, you need to keep it brief yet ample in scope. Remember, people browsing the internet have short amount of patience and you need to feed them the information they need within the shortest time possible.

If you find that the message is too long but all parts are too relevant to omit, consider sending them in parts. This is also an effective way to rouse the reader’s interest.

Another way to convince them to click on the links you provided is by offering them a valuable and tangible object. It does not need to be a lucrative object but must be something of value or usefulness to them. This helps further an effective viral email marketing that produces real results.

Timing or Frequency in Sending Out Viral Emails

Here is another important component for an effective viral email marketing campaign. If you have set the schedule for the broadcast of your viral email messages using an autoresponder, make sure to limit the amount of emails you send the people in your mailing list.

Three times a week should be substantial to advance your viral email marketing, but there are always exceptions to the rule. The key is to be sensitive to the needs and desires of your audience, and to offer them the right amount of information at the right moments.

Overdoing it can result to annoyance on the part of your readers and cause them to opt-out of their subscription. Or worse, they could spread the word about their dissatisfaction, which could negatively affect your reputation.

After all, an effective viral email marketing campaign is built more around the powerful messages you send them, rather than the frequency of emails on their inbox.



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Not All Email Marketing Programs Are Created Equal

Posted by admin – June 4, 2009

Gene Sower asked:


NOT ALL EMAIL MARKETING PROGRAMS ARE CREATED EQUAL

 

Contrary to what you may think, email marketing remains an effective and COST effective method of staying in touch with people who want to hear from you. Remember, we’re not talking about blasting out millions of emails to people who don’t know you from Adam. That’s considered SPAMMING. Effective email marketing is at the crux of RELATIONSHIP and PERMISSION marketing and is still effective when you email to people who volunteer to learn about what your business has to offer.

According to alternative marketing guru and Squidoo founder, Seth Godin, “By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message,” he writes. “It serves both customers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange.”

This means that email marketing will INCREASE in effectiveness as a way to counter the growing ineffectiveness of more traditional methods of “intrusion” marketing.

But selecting the RIGHT email marketing tools is critical to both your success and your sanity. These are the email marketing companies and tools we recommend and those we don’t and why.

WHY YOU NEED TO USE A PROFESSIONAL EMAIL MARKETING TOOL

Well, it’s important to understand that if you’re going to engage in email marketing in any kind of a serious way, you need to sign-up with an email marketing company that will help you sign-up, grow and manage your list. While my company, Samson Media, develops the strategy and concepts for email marketing, even we use a third party company called iContact, to automate all the tedious but necessary tasks of managing a list of hundreds or even thousands of email addresses.

Professional email list hosting companies like iContact or the popular Constant Contact handle all of the imporatant tasks of growing and maintaining your list such as: Sign-ups Unsubscribes Duplicate management Deletes Undeliverables SPAM compliant Full reporting (deliverables, click-throughs, etc.) User-friendly email newsletter publishing tools and templates

A SHORT LIST OF EMAIL MARKETING COMPANIES — SIMILAR YET DIFFERENT

Most email marketing companies now charge by the size of your list and not how many times you use it (within reason). For instance, you can have 1,000 names on a list and pay less than someone who has 10,000 names on a list. And each one can send out once, twice or even 100 times in the same month and their costs are the same, fixed amount.

These email companies used to charge more the more you send but most have moved to al all-you-can-eat pricing structure based on list size. And when I said “within reason”, I think they actually do have a limit but it’s like one million. So if you have a lisy of a thousand or even ten thousand names and you’re anywhere close to sending them out a million times in a month —- well, you’re probably over doing it anyway and your days as an email marketer are numbered.

To that end, here are some of the main email marketing companies we know of and have some degree of first hand familiarity:

iContact (the service we now use) Constant Contact (very popular) Topica (we still use them but we hate it) Vertical Response (an industry stalwart) Emma (stylish and pricey) Elite Email (does it Old School — prefers to charge per email sent)

WHY WE USE iCONTACT

It’s All In The Details - Why Not Get As Many Included Features For One Low Price?

Granted, whether you choose Constant Contact, iContact, Topica, Vertical Response or the others,they all do the tasks listed above and are similarly priced (relatively speaking), but here’s what separates the men from the boys in my opinion:

THE WINNER IS…

The winner in terms of features, price and service is iContact hands down.

iContact has several features that the popular and more well-known Contact Contact does not offer, such as:

FREE ARCHIVING: Every newsletter you send out automatically gets posted on an iContact hosted page that’s unique to you and your business. As you begin sending out newsletters you’ll see how powerfiul this is. Because as you begin to build a history of newsletters, all you have to do is add a link to your webpage that says something like “CLICK HERE To Read Our Back Issues” and all of your past newsletters will be listed and viewable. Constant Contact offers this for an additional $5 a month, the others don’t offer it at all, and at iContact it’s free. You also get search engine traffic back to your own site from these archived newsletters - a double bonus!

AUTORESPONDERS: Constant Contact, amazingly does NOT offer autoresponders at all. Even if you don’t know what they are, trust me - you’ll want to have the ability to use them, especially if it’s included in the price. Autoresponders are a highly powerful email marketing tool that allows you to preset and pre-create an advanced email marketing strategy that allows you to offer multi-part reports and series. Topica also offers this feature but it’s not nearly as user-friendly.

TECH SUPPORT: All things considered, especially compared to Topica which I’ve used for over 10 years and still use today for older lists, iContact actually answers the phone. With a human being! Really!

So comparing, price, features and support, iContact is the email newsletter and hosting service champ!  But more importantly, which ever compnay you choose, definitely choose one.  Sending out hundreds of emails from your Outlook or desktop email client is not only ineffective and will get you labeled a spammer, but it’s a huge waste of your valuable time.

ll things considered, especially compared to Topica which I’ve used for over 10 years and still use today for older lists, iContact actually answers the phone. With a human being! Really!

So comparing, price, features and support, iContact is the email newsletter and hosting service champ!  But more importantly, which ever compnay you choose, definitely choose one.  Sending out hundreds of emails from your Outlook or desktop email client is not only ineffective and will get you labeled a spammer, but it’s a huge waste of your valuable time.



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