February
9
2010

Email Marketing is essential for Internet success

Email the Personal Advertising Medium

Email is one of the most personal advertising medium ever invented. Here are four of the many ways you can improve your email marketing results.
Spread the Word Get others to sign up for your mailing lists with their consent. Spread the word about your mailing list through word of mouth. The beauty in this is that the list of emails will be self-screened and the database will only contain the people who are interested in your offers. Make sure you have their consent beforehand. You don’t want to risk losing reputation or SPAM penalties. For email marketing I use Veremail . It has all the features and benefits i need.
Persistence Before the internet, they used to say it takes around 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad. Today I would guess it to be over twice as high with the internet present. Make sure you are reaching out to your clients at least once a month in emails or other medium. Just because you emailed a list of people and had little or no response does not necessarily mean your audience isn’t interested in your product. Experiment with different emails, get to know which email strategy works best, and keep using it to reach out to your audience.
They Want Useful Information Emails should contain something that the customer wants. It shouldn’t be just a summary of your company or your resume. Focus on giving more than just what you sell. Specific content, messages, and other targeted information that interests your customers are good to include. For example, if you were selling makeup, you may want to include advice on how to apply the makeup or any makeup in general.
Make Sure Your Audience Reads Your Emails Graphics, Flash animations, logos are often blocked by email filters. Although they look impressive on an email, they will often lower your impression statistics. I recommend using flat text with hyperlinks to your site. Once they get to your site, you can show them as many graphics as you want.
Although some Email Marketing systems have both a HTML and a text edition of their email, with Veremail I like to use HTML optimized for text email clients.
John (read more)

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Innovation

Innovation
Some folks think there's only one way to do something. For some things that may be true. I believe in black and white, right and wrong for many things in life without any grey.
But I also think with many marketing situations that there are innumerable shades of grey and that there is more than one way to do something or at least there are positive modifications that can improve things. This is where most innovation comes from. Someone learning the tried and true way, and then tweaking it a little or improving it a lot for better performance.
Just like with most marketing systems and marketing tools. Usually there's more than one strategy to utilize the same tools to acheive the desired results, or more use of the tools not previously thought of.
Take email marketing for example. 4 people might write 4 completely different messages and get similar results selling the same product.
Same thing with most web marketing tasks like SEO as an example. There are several strategies employed and which combination of methods and how much of each is going to work the absolute best is certainly a question mark. Shop around and you'll find once you get past the basics many successful techniques are sold as the very best way to do things.
Which actually does work best? I sure don't know, I just know what works for me, and your mission is to find what works best for you. One good way is to do what someone that is successful and you respect does that works for them. Then adjust what you've learned to fit your talents and available tools.
A good example is golf. I doubt anyone would argue Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world and might try to copy his golf swing, use the same clubs and golf balls, etc.. This might make you a better golfer. But we are all different and what works for him will not necessarily work exactly the same for everyone. We know it doesn't because there is only one Tiger.
Jim Furyk is a pro golfer and they say his unorthodox golf swing shouldn't work well at all yet he is one of the best in the world. Seldom if ever will you hear about a pro golfer that has THE perfect golf swing, yet they find a way to do what works best for them..
Though all pros use similar appearing golf clubs and balls, they use a wide variety of brands of both and usually the clubs are tweaked a little here and there to work best for each individual golfer. Plus they may use totally different clubs and strategies to get from the tee to the green on any individual hole depending on their personal strengths to accomplish the same task. Once at the green, you'll seldom if ever see the same exact putter and style of putting used by the participants.
Experiment till you see what combination of methods, tools and strategies works best for you in marketing your business or product.. Learn from and adopt the methods of those more successful than you, but don't be a zombie when you hear someone say; "This is what I do and you have to do exactly what I do." Though that may be a good starting point and very good advice for newbies. Be yourself and always look for ways to modify your tactics to increase your positive results.
At the same time, recognize when something just isn't working and you must change your ways in a small or major way to accomplish your goals.
Be an innovator and remember this quote; "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." Linus Pauling
John
Target Your Success (read more)

Marketing relationships among search engines

Marketing relationships among search engines

The multitude of search engines have experienced considerable changes over the years. Both with technology and with assorted partnerships amongst the variety of different search companies as well.
You may be executing a search engine query on a certain search engine, though it may be another search engine that in reality is providing your search results. It might be a totally different search company than you expected.
Here is a list of the search engines that feed your most treasured keywords:
Google supplies the primary search results for Google AOL Search and to Netscape. Google also provides paid listings to Ask, Lycos, Netscape, HotBot and AOL Search. It also is a secondary results provider to HotBot and it's directory data is received from DMOZ.
Yahoo supplies primary search results for Yahoo search, Alta Vista, and AllTheWeb, and gets paid listings from Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture).
"On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding" Wikipedia
Ask supplies primary results to Ask, Lycos, and Hotbot. It obtains secondary search results from Teoma and directory results from DMOZ and paid listings from Google Adwords.
Lycos obtains directory search results from DMOZ, receives primary results from Ask and paid listings supplied from Google Adwords.
Hotbot receives primary search results from Ask, directory search results from DMOZ, and their paid or secondary results from Google Adwords.
Search engines can provide anything you want to know in relation to marketing. When someone is seeking a particular item or topic of interest, they typically go to search engine to find it. When they type in their search term, the highest ranked web sites on the search engines will appear, which is where the visitor will probably go.
By maintaining a top position on the search engines , you'll be in position to be one of the first for visitors who are looking for a particular service or product. This means you can make a lot of money with search engine marketing as well, if you know what you are doing.
John
Target Your Success (read more)

December
9
2009

Its about You

"You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy." Arthur Ashe

As I wrote this I was watching the 2009 PGA Golf Championship on my computer in a separate window. I find a lot of association with sports like golf and similar activities that require individual performance and online marketing.

Aside from the physical aspects success comes down to a player competing against the course maximizing his own strengths and minimizing his weaknesses to accomplish his task. Then utilizing that knowledge in a tournament, the main determination of success isn't to do better than everyone else, but to employ the best strategy to produce the best performance from ones self and let the chips fall as they may.

This requires coming up with a personal strategy to play the course before ever teeing off. Since all the players have different strengths and weaknesses the strategy and approach to playing the course is a little different for everyone.

Preparation with thought of desired results is essential. As the day and the tournament progresses adjustment is necessary as weather conditions may change for example that may detemine if the pretournament strategy is actually producing as desired.

With technology innovations, tools (clubs, balls), that change every year or 2 can also bring you to adjust ones style of play and strategies just as new marketing methods and tools must be given close examination and given serious consideration of how they best fit into your marketing strategies, before actually adopting them.

Each course played is different requiring a different strategy, while keeping the basic methods intact. This is similar to the different marketing choices like blogs, forums, social networking sites, email marketing and others. It's also a key consideration when entering different niches or kinds of business since one size does not fit all. Change is not only inevitable it is a sure thing especially in web marketing.

This calls for the vision to see the passing of a strategy that used to work but who's results are waning, while transitioning towards the use of new tools and methods that may be the only course of action to continue on successfully.

Keep what works, learn from experience and always look forward and adjust your marketing to new ways of doing business.

John mimbiz.com (read more)