E-Biz Booster Blog

The E-mail Road Less Traveled …

nospam@example.com (Daniel Levis) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:42:44 -0700

Daniel Levis

Dear Web Business-Builder,

Great things can happen when you build an e-mail list and learn how to sell to that list.

But it’s not as easy as the online marketing gurus would have you believe.

It takes a lot of effort to build a list in the first place. And a lot of effort to keep people reading and responsive.

See here’s the problem …

Chances are your subscribers did not subscribe to your list to be sold to. They subscribed in order to get useful information they can use to better their lives.

You, however, are not a registered charity.

You did not build an e-mail list for the sole purpose of giving away free information, did you?

You need a return on your investment. And that means you’ve got to sell stuff to the people who joined your list. Egads!

So how do you resolve this gut wrenching conflict?

If you send e-mails filled with reasons why people should buy a product … in an attempt to get them to click through to your (or an affiliate’s) order pages or sales pages, they’re going to unsubscribe in droves. Or they’ll just tune out, and your click through rates will shrivel.

And if all you do is send out free tips or an e-zine with various “columns” and incidental resource links that people can click on to buy stuff, you won’t make many sales.

One approach is to mix and match …

Switch up between these two types of e-mails. Send three or four “content” e-mails followed by one or two with a blatant offer. Then rinse and repeat. This can work.

Results will vary, of course, depending on the quality of your execution.

Another approach is to use some of your e-mails to sell your subscribers on consuming content via some other medium … perhaps a teleseminar, webinar, video, PDF report, blog post, whatever.

This can work as well, IF you gain some real leverage as a seller from the shift in media. If you don’t, you’re just putting a roadblock in front of the sale.

And there’s a fourth, less common approach.

How to have your cake and eat it too …

Write e-mails that make people feel like they’re getting value from the e-mail itself. And tie that value directly to a very specific offer with a strong and seamless call to action.

Now obviously there are as many ways to do this as Carter has little liver pills. And once again, results will vary greatly on execution.

That said, here’s an example of one such e-mail I have running in my autoresponder series right now. It’s working like crazy …

Subject Line: Psychological Ventriloquism?

Some cult leaders and con men can get people to do just about anything …

… While most people can’t even get their teenage children to take out the trash or load up the dishwasher.

What do the bad guys know that you don’t? It’s not what you’re thinking …

→ [[affiliate link here]]

Hi %$firstname$%,

It was 1925 …

A long black limousine pulled up in front of one of the ritziest hotels in Palm Beach.

Presently, a Japanese chauffer assisted an aristocratic looking gentleman out of the car.

Tall, dark, devilishly handsome … the man would later be seen in the lounge receiving telegrams at all hours of the night.

One after another they would arrive, brought to him by his Japanese chauffeur.

With utter nonchalance he would rip the telegrams up and toss them in the trash.

Sporting an elegant diamond studded cane … the man would take his place in the dining room each evening at exactly a quarter past nine and begin reading a large impressive looking book.

Before long, both staff and guests were buzzing with rumor, speculation, and interest in this strange man. And they were magnetically drawn to him.

All that was known about him was that his name was Count Victor Lustig, and that he came from one of the wealthiest families in Europe.

His real identity? The most talented confidence man in America — perhaps the world.

The limo was rented. The cane was a fake. And the telegrams were blank.

Lustig spoke several languages … prided himself on his cultural refinement … and was known in con artist circles for his fearless audacity.

But most of all, it was Lustig’s uncanny knowledge of human nature that gave him his edge.

Had Lustig used his amazing talents honestly and ethically he could no doubt have lived a charmed, perhaps even great life.

But he loved the game too much …

Lustig was a master. He could size people up in an instant. And he intuitively seemed to know how to win their trust.

But there was one thing above all others that allowed him to pull off the most outlandish scams imaginable.

It was a secret that allowed Lustig to sell dozens of supposed “money-machines” to wealthy and otherwise prudent businessmen for $30,000 a crack … the equivalent of $300,000 in today’s money …

A secret he used to con the most distrusting man on the planet — Al Capone — out of $5,000, just for the thrill of it …

A secret he used to sell the Eiffel Tower to a skeptical Paris scrap metal dealer for 250,000 francs — a million dollars in today’s money.

How did Lustig convince so many intelligent people to believe his outrageous lies, when most would-be persuaders can’t even get people to believe the truth?

The answer …

He performed a kind of psychological ventriloquism that made his lies seem true — true because they seemed to be thoughts that were emanating from within his mark’s own minds.

A phenomenon explained in depth in Blair Warren’s Forbidden Keys to Persuasion e-course transcript. Discover Lustig’s incredible secret on page 20.

[[affiliate link here]]

Now please remember … these keys are forbidden for a reason. They are amazingly powerful.

I’m trusting you to use them ethically and honorably to generate more sales … to create truly beneficial long-term customer relationships based on truth and service … and to live the genuinely charmed life that someone like Lustig never could.

[[affiliate link here]]

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis

Now I ask you, what kind of e-mail is this?
Is it a tutorial, or is it a pitch?

Answer: It’s both.

People read this thing all the way down to the bottom, click through on those links, and they buy, buy, buy! This e-mail gets phenomenal click through and conversion.

The net effect is much better than if I were to write a blatant affiliate promotion talking up Blair’s course. And infinitely better than if I had written a tutorial and simply put a resource link in my signature file at the bottom … or used an e-zine style mailing with ads all over the place.

What’s more, I get very few people unsubscribing from e-mails written in this unique style.

Now let’s be clear. This isn’t something I do all the time. Every marketing situation has its own unique requirements. Novelty is also part of the equation. But whenever I decide to use one of these e-mail oddities, it’s almost always a huge winner.

Why does it work? Not sure. But here are my suspicions …

It’s not immediately obvious that there is something for sale.
It is story-based, interesting, and informative.
It does eventually name a product, and gives a taste of what’s inside, while drawing attention to a key point or secret that can only be obtained by buying the product.
It talks to the prospect’s self-interest indirectly through story, and also by direct statement.
Delivers a specific call to action right in the running copy.

I admit this is a quirky, odd-ball sort of an example that’s very specifically targeted to the people on my particular list. But don’t let that fool you. You can apply the same basic principles listed above to virtually any business.

Simply tell a teaching story based on your own experience … or somebody else’s experience … or drawn directly from case studies used in the product. And follow the rest of the principles outlined above.

Not many marketers are doing this kind of thing. I subscribe to literally dozens of different lists and only a small handful of marketers are writing e-mails that meet all five criteria.

Give it a try and let me know how you do.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology Masters of Copywriting featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the “Top Money” marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit http://www.SellingtoHumanNature.com.

He is also one of the leading Web conversion experts operating online today, and originator of the 5R System (TM), a strategic process for engineering enhanced Internet profits. For a free overview of Daniel’s system, click here.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to “www.makepeacetotalpackage.com”.

Copyright 2009 by John W. Furst. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5. - If you find this content on a site that is violating our copyright, please, report its URL to us. Thanks for fighting copy scrapers.

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 18

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:31:10 -0700

Welcome to the eighteenth edition of email marketing tips on June 19, 2009.

This is—as you know a revival—after I had kept the pause button pressed for a couple of month. I am curious to see how it goes.

Here is my brand new “Intro-Video”

click here to watch it(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

Now, lets jump right into this edition with a quote that reminds us why growing an email list for your existing business or your startup venture is not such a bad idea.

Quote of the day

Legendary direct response copywriter Bob Bly wrote as a comment on his blog about a year ago:

“…I have over 50,000 subscribers to my e-newsletter with whom I communicate weekly via e-mail. In exchange, they send me between $4,000 to $10,000 a week to buy my information products. How much money do your 3,000 followers on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace send you each week?

Also, networking is only of value depending where you are in your life and career. At this point in my career, I have much more work than I could ever hope to handle, and people know where to find me. So doing Twitter or whatever would be a waste of time better spent on projects I am writing for clients and publishers.” --bly.com, May 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am

Today’s categories:

Editor’s Pick
Tools & Services
Email Copywriting
Strategy
Code Of Practice

Editor’s Pick

Those articles have been hand picked by me. The writers are in general too busy to deal with blog carnivals nor do they need the marginal and questionable benefits of submitting their posts. In other words: Read and learn!

Kevin Walsh presents Three tips to sharpen your writing posted at Copy Unlimited blog, saying, “…or how to avoid mixing, dangling and losing control.”

John’s comment: Tiny bit of theory mixed with examples that make it stick.

Bob Bly presents The Mini-Flood Factor in Internet Marketing posted at bly.com direct marketing blog, saying, “Here’s a secret working Internet information marketers all know that newbies don’t: you will know within the first 10 minutes whether your e-mail marketing message for that day is going to be a winner or a loser.”

John’s comment: A tip that makes sense. Bob is a legendary copywriter. Yesterday Rich Schefren told a viewer on his Live Q&A Ustream event, “Learn copywriting from Bob Bly.” I am not kidding. Bob’s blog post also attracted comments from other well known experts. Check it out.

Tools & Services

John W. Furst presents Autoresponder With Send Window For Scheduling Email Follow-Up Sequences posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “Now you can easily avoid that your subscribers receive your emails on the weekend.”

John’s comment: Awesome feature. There is at least one clickbank software product that let you simulate sending on particular days. Aweber added much more functionality on top of it.

General Tips

Jodi Kaplan presents 15 Tips for Writing Emails That Make Money posted at Fix Your Broken Marketing, saying, “With the economy in trouble, more and more marketers are shifting their advertising dollars online. According to a recent report by Forrester Research (New York Times, May 5, 2009), many merchants think that online businesses can withstand the downturn better than bricks and mortar retailers. In fact, 90% said that e-mail marketing was a top priority.

Since email is relatively inexpensive, and can be produced quickly, it’s an attractive way to sell your products. But, how do you do it correctly?”

John’s comment: I recognize immediately that Jodi’s tips come from experience. Print her list out, and I promise after a while you will have memorized it.

Relax presents How to improve your writing posted at The Wise Curve, saying, “You need to write well to become a successful email marketer!”

John’s comment: I’d say that it is quite relative what good means, the point is, people should love to read your information.

Strategy

John W. Furst presents Email Marketing Needs To be Personal posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “It’s more then a copywriting tip when I say, ‘your emails need to be personal.” You might have heard it before, it’s true. The relationship with your members is what counts.”

John’s comment: Ignore that tip and you will be one out of hundreds or thousands who don’t get their message across.

Giovanni Farotto presents Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers posted at Blog Auto Poster.

John’s comment: Sneaky way of doing it. Has made million for some folks. The trick here. Make your ebook as good as it can be.

Andre Nilsen presents How to Build an Online Community with Your Offline Customers posted at www.qualitynetworkers.com, saying, “Let’s face it, the Internet has changed the world and no matter what type of business you have, you need to figure out how to use it for your company.”

John’s comment: I like examples. Andre shows us what he means for a restaurant. You don’t need to have Einstein’s IQ to figure out how to apply this tip for a different kind of business.

"The Money Is In The List"

AWeber proves it to thousands of businesses every day.

Learn how email marketing software
can get you more sales, too.

Code Of Practice

AWeber’s Hot Email Marketing Tips!

Do you love AWeber, too?

Finally with some answers to the evergreen questions #1: “When is the right time to send?”.

And make sure to read AWeber’s tips about why you need to ask your members to put your email address in their email address book of their service provider, like Yahoo Mail.

2009-06-17 Deliver Smarter Autoresponders With Send Windows

2009-06-15 Email Autoresponders and The Trouble With the “Best” Time to Send

2009-06-03 Reason 9,785 Why You HAVE To Get In Subscribers’ Address Books

2009-05-27 Create Subscriber Expectations Over Time

2009-05-20 Thank You: Another Critical Opportunity to Create Subscriber Expectations

2009-05-15 Learn The First of 3 Critical Opportunities to Create The Right Subscriber Expectations

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of email marketing tips using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips blog carnival home page.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 16, too. Edition 17 does not really count. It was just a wrap-up before the pause.

Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related blog.

Get your blog more exposure!
It’s easier than you might think.

Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.

Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival

New Features - Autoresponder With More Flexibility For Scheduling Email Follow-Up Sequences

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:34:33 -0700

John W. Furst

What an email autoresponder does can be explained very easily. Once a new subscriber has joined your email newsletter, your autoresponder service will send messages which you have prepared over time.

An autoresponder has many useful applications

For example:

Martin signs up for an email course about expanding his vocabulary on Monday. For one month he will get 5 emails a week with new words and their meaning.

All you had to do was to prepare all messages for the complete course once.

Andre signs up two or three weeks later, but on a Thursday. He will receive 5 messages on the following days, have 2 days off and will receive 5 messages again.

You will notice the difference between Martin and Andre. Martin has off on the weekends, Andre doesn't.

Of course, Andre doesn't need to read his emails on the weekend, but let's say he decided to read his course on Monday evening, he will find 3 emails from you. The daily course for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Now my favorite email marketing service provider AWeber has solved this problem very elegantly.

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

Autoresponders by AWeber

To return to my example from above. By setting the send window for the follow-up messages of this email course to Mo-Fr you can make sure that Andre and everybody else who did not sign up for the course on a Monday gets their rest on the weekend.

What applications and examples can you come up with that utilize this new feature?

Let us know, leave a comment.

In case you are not using AWeber for your email marketing already. I think it's the perfect time to give them a try.

Take AWeber's 30 day risk free trial.

Email marketing is the most lucrative marketing and advertising channel when it comes to online marketing.

Great that you have a website, but if you do not have an email autoresponder you are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

Let's say, you are running pay-per-click ad campaigns,

prospects come to your website,
some buy,
most don't buy your product or service at the first time.

Even if your conversion rate on your sales page is an astronomical 10%, it means that 10 visitors buy and 90 out of 100 go away.

Let's say 10 of those 90 really would love your product, but just don't have the time right now to read your sales letter or they would love even more detailed information before they are ready for the purchase.

Guess what, those 10 and if you do a good job on your website even more than 10 would love to give you their email address.

Imagine how easily you could get them back to your website.

All you needed to do is send a couple of emails.

On average people buy after the 6th to 7th point of contact.

Okay, but you do not have an autoresponder. How are you bringing them back to your site? Ah, I see, buy more ads and feed the Google Adwords program with your money.

Well, I am sending an email, or two, or three, … for a flat fee.

Take AWeber's free test drive now. An email list is an asset.
More about this in future blog posts.

"The Money Is In The List"

AWeber proves it to thousands of businesses every day.

Learn how email marketing software
can get you more sales, too.

Don't wait.
Sign up now.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: This new feature is being rolled out to all new customers and existing customers with the email analytics package included in their price plan. Customers on the old price plan need to upgrade their package in order to be able to take advantage of this novelty features.

Is this fair?

I believe, “Yes”. Relatively new customers with the analytics package already included and those who have upgraded get it for free as an add-on anyway. Does your car dealer give you the newest model once it comes out without any compensation? I don't think so.

P.P.S.: I know that I have mixed up the use of sales page and opt-in page in the above example a little bit. I wanted to make the point clear. Their are different strategies about how and when to use an opt-in page versus a sales page or even different combinations of both at the same time. More about that in the future.

P.P.P.S.: And don't forget to leave a comment here.

Sharethis.com Changes Rules For Social Bookmarking

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:09:00 -0700

Sharethis.com (↑) Makes Bookmark Sharing Easy

If you have similar habits, then you will also frequently bookmark blog posts, articles, funny, sad, educational, in short interesting stories. My bet is you don't only bookmark them for yourself but you also want to share them with your friends, colleagues, with smaller, larger communities or with the World. At least that part of the World which has noticed you exist.

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog

For quite a long time I have been using the Sharethis plugin for Firefox, and I also have put the Sharethis widget on my blog (this one) and other websites I control. I don't recall when it happened exactly, but I think it has been a couple of weeks ago, when I received an email from Sharethis.com that said, …

“We are updating our widget.”
“You don't have to do anything.”

Especially the last sentence, “You don't have to do anything!” sounded great. I forgot about it for a while.

Then I started to notice those http://shar.es/… shortcut URLs on Twitter and on Facebook as well.

Nothing dramatic. Just another URL shorten service, I assumed. What caught my attention was actually the .es country-code top level domain of Spain. I am living on Spanish territory and wondered, because .es is not very popular for a variety of reasons, which don't belong in this discussion.

So I took a closer look.

Why do I think those shortcuts are a bad idea?

Mainly for the reason that I as a publisher want to be in control as much as possible. Using a shortcut URL from a domain that is not under my control is like handing over he keys to a third party.

It's like writing your phone numbers in the phone book of someone else.
It also reduces info, decreases usability. The trust factor of shared bookmarks goes down. On Facebook for example: You post a link in the news feed and the source of your link will be stated as http://shar.es/… regardless of the real, original domain. So whoever sees your note will ask themselves,

“Is this info posted on an authority site or not?”

Since I have posted my discomfort on Twitter I got contacted by Erin Robbins(↑) from Marketing [at] Sharethis.com.

We had a good correspondence and it seems like Sharethis reevaluates the situation and is trying to find a solution that will give some control back to its publishers and users.

I noticed that in the meantime they have stopped sending the shortened URLs to StumbleUpon and to Del.icio.us.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Needless to note that I have put the Addthis widget(↑) on my sites and their plugin in my browser in the meantime. I wonder what's going to happen. I really liked Sharethis.

How To Promote Your Business With Stardust

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:28:46 -0700

I am not sure if there is anything wrong with me, but it seems I cannot stop making videos. Here's another one about Rick Butts and his ultimate training for gaining your unique *Stardust Factor*.

Enjoy the video

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog

My special effects get better and better.

You can read my short review below or you can get Stardust now.

A quick review

I still hear applause echoing on the Web and Twitter after Rick's first StardustFactor Workshop last Thursday. I was on the on the call myself, just listened to the replay yesterday and I even can hear my voice in the group feedback from time to time. How cool is that? So I am qualified to tell you Rick shares solid information and tips. And it's big fun, too.

Believe it or not, but I am already doing a couple of things Rick taught me in that first one call. He got me and many of his other clients going, already. I imagine you would like to know exactly what that is, but I can't just give away Rick's assets here for free. You'll probably notice soon.

In case you haven't heard about the *StardustFactor* before, or you had problems understanding my accent, and for the search engines of course, a few facts:

Rick Butts teaches his own walk so to speak.
It's about becoming the Go-to Guy or Go-to Gal in your market in a short time. That's what Rick did himself, and that's what he shows you to do in this course.
If you want to increase your visibility and authority in your market, your niche, on-line or off-line than you need to have the StardustFactor.
And it works for any business — as I said — Rick gave an example of how a regular tire store managed to take out the competition in town by just making people talk about this store.
You could be literally sitting on a hidden “gold mine” that you are not using for your marketing right now.

So if you want qualified prospects chasing you with their wallet already open then

Download Rick’s StardustFactor Workshop Recordings right now.

Do it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you missed the first video which is a bit more on the funny side, you can watch it in my post about promoting small businesses with the Stardust Factor.

What Is Your Best Email Marketing Tip?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:51:06 -0700

Submit your article today.

Since email marketing is more important than ever I thought it's not a bad idea to revive my Email Marketing Tips blog carnival a bit. I have noticed a lot of worthwhile posts in the last couple of weeks.

That means I am also looking for your tips.

Take a recent, related blog post about email marketing …
Write a new one…
… and submit it to my blog carnival.
If it's good as defined by the competing entries, it will get published.
Check out my email marketing tips archive to get an idea what this is all about.

Why is email marketing important?

It's the most cost effective medium to “talk” to your members (customers as well as prospects). You are in charge to set the rules. Marketers who rely on their presence on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are playing a dangerous game. It's not their playground. And we already have learned that scumbag spammers are ruining it for everybody all the time.

Email is very old but still a strong performer

Till to this very day email is the most used communication tool on the Internet. Can you believe it it is 40 years old? Older than the World Wide Web or the early protocols of the Internet. Some of you might remember Gopher (Interestingly there are still 125 gopher servers online and even Firefox still supports that protocol. Since I was curious, I tried it out. Gopher was not really a great user experience, but the best at its time.

Gopher Protocol still supported by Firefox and other modern browsers in June 2009.

Back to email. It's even an older protocol. The important point is that you can send people messages on your schedule and you do not rely on advertising to bring them back to see your content or offers.

What is the first step?

Obviously you need to get email addresses and permission from your target audience. You have seen opt-in forms on websites in various forms right.
You need a service provider (ideally) that manages your contacts and sends your emails.
Pretty basic things, but details matter.
… more to come of course next week.

Here's the AWeber web interface for their email marketing solution for example.

Web Interface of AWeber Email Autoresponder

Now, the perfect time for the tips from my experienced readers.

Submit your recent blog article about email marketing today.

Yours
John W. Furst

PS. You can leave a comment too of course.

Upgrade Your Marketing - Rick Butts Is The Real Deal

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:03:51 -0700

I still hear the applause echoing on the Web after Rick Butt's first StardustFactor Workshop.

That's what I have to say about Rick Butts:

I was on the on the call myself and I can tell you, it's great, solid information, and … as always with Rick, it has been fun, too.

I am already doing a couple of things Rick taught me in that one call. To be honest … it's too early to report back dramatic results, but he got me going and that's the big road block for most people. Right?

Rick gives you a big kick in … and gets you moving.

Anyway: The replay of this first call is already available and on-line.

In case you haven't heard about the StardustFactor before:

Rick Butts teaches his own walk so to speak.

It's about becoming the GoTo-Guy or GoTo-Gal in your market in a short time. That's what Rick did, and that's what he shows you to do as well in this course.
If you want to increase your visibility and authority in your market, your niche, on-line or off-line than you need to have the *StardustFactor*.
And it works for any business as I said. Rick gave an example of how a regular tire store managed to take out the competition in its town by just making people talk about this store. It's easy if you know how.
You are literally sitting on a hidden “gold mine” that you are not using for your marketing right now.

So if you want qualified prospects chasing you with their wallet already open then

Download Rick’s StardustFactor Workshop Recordings right now.

Do it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I did not have a clue that Rick will like my Youtube video about the StardustFactor that much. He was nuts enough to put it on his blog.

→ Rick's Blog post featuring John

P.P.S.: Yes, Rick is fun, areal person, probably a bit ‘nuts’, but that's okay. You can learn a lot from him. At least follow him on Twitter @RickButts

P.P.P.S.: But you really should get Stardust to work for your business.

Email Marketing Needs To be Personal

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:44:39 -0700

John W. Furst

I just wrote a short forum reply for a friend on Triiibes.com who had asked,

“How can I increase the open rate of my newsletter?”

Here it is, I am sharing it with you.

A good point in time to deliver another email marketing tip after having stopped that series of articles for some time. Maybe I should revive the carnival? I have to think about it and check how many spam submissions I have received in the meantime. Well, I am preparing a guide, a tutorial for email marketing anyway.

The business in question is a European based specialist for colors trends and consults with designers in fashion, home design, …

Dear Carolina,

I find the content and design of your newsletter rather intriguing. However it's a constant challenge to keep readers engaged and interested over a longer period of time. Let me give you a couple of bullets to think about.

Just to start off the discussion here.

Make it more personal!

Have an editor, a spokesperson write the newsletter in a colloquial tone. Introduce that character as a person with a back-story, and also address the reader on the personal level. An email is communication from one person to another. A newsletter should not be an exception.

What about the idea of following the Editor - James or Jane on his or her personal journey through the universe of color and time.
Increase the frequency. Once a month is too infrequent to maintain and strengthen the relationship with your readers.

You don't want to be perceived as the 57^th agency which sends yet another trend report. You want to be perceived as “friend” who helps the reader through the jungle, who offers effective solutions for whatever the biggest problem in this industry is.

Go beyond of just being a reporter.

Interact with your readers.

Engage them to give you feedback. Give them something they can and want to talk about.
Find out what they want and need.

Don't assume! Ask.
Offer timely sensitive info!

Train your newsletter members that they better read each and every edition of your newsletter or they could miss out opportunities otherwise.
Email has not been invented for mailing “web pages”.

Just a couple of things to start with. It means more work, but you said you want to increase the impact of your email marketing.

In case your goal includes selling more of your services with the help of the newsletter, you have to make it a topic,too. Meaning you talk about your offers from time to time and ask for the sale! Or even better come up with “newsletter subscriber only deals”.

Last but not least, it has been said already that headlines are very important. But in the long run your members will continue to open the newsletter issue not because of the headline, but because they hardly can wait for the next one. They want to hear from that person - the personal voice of your brand. If not, you have lost them somewhere on the road so to speak.

One of the biggest mistakes in business to business marketing (B2B) is to assume “businesses are different” and you have to be super serious. (Same is true in the academic world by the way, but that's a different tribe.)

There is not such a thing as a BUSINESS … It's always a PERSON, who is reading your ezine.

In your particular case, I bet designers will really appreciate and value a real (not fake), personal touch in your communication.

It's about building relationships through value!

Yours
John W.
@johnfurst

P.S.: Don't be afraid of unsubscribes. It's natural, it happens.

P.P.S.: Subscribe to all your competitors list, spy on them, and be
different. Be remarkable.

I am sure this is useful for you as well.

Keep things personal. Okay?

We are humans, not information processing machines.

Again, Yours
John W.

Canonical URLs Explained By Matt Cutts of Google

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:34:37 -0700

Matt Cutts on Canonical URLs

This shall be a very quick update and summary with my final SEO advice for some time. It seems that my chronological report about the evolution of SEO configuration on this blog confused many readers.

I apologize and make it good with this post.

It was not so much the fact that most of you live and breath in a Wordpress world. It was more about my deep dive into the abyss of Apache's URL redirection, .htaccess configuration, and the ever changing schemes of URLs used here on this blog. That's where I lost many of you.

It's too easy to get carried away while being intensively involved with fixing a problem.

Yesterday I already have emailed a short summary with Top 10 SEO Tips for Blogs (↑) to my newsletter subscribers. It lists the major points and adds you should make use of sitemaps and Google's free webmaster tools.

Now, in order to conclude this short, unplanned series of articles about SEO I have for you:

A 20 minute long video presentation of Google's Matt Cutts talking about duplicate content and how to use the new canonical URL parameters properly.
Plugins for
- Wordpress and
- Serendipity S9Y weblog software.
And I also found a comprehensive SEO guide for Wordpress users.

Let me start introducing the video with a catchy quote.

We reserve the right to do what we think is best.
--Matt Cutts, Google.com

While watching the good video content, you could come to the conclusion that SEO is not difficult at all. It's common sense if you think about it. Well, in a perfect world … yes, if there were no SEO spammers, no bastard black hats out there. And if programmers had more simplicity in mind…

Now enjoy the SEO video

Canonical Link Element
Matt Cutts, Google.com, 2009-02-21

The main topic Matt covers is the good old duplicate content issue and the the new canonical link element which which will be respectively is already supported by all major search engines.

Enable Canonical Link Information For Your Blog

This can be done easily by installing a plugin.

Wordpress: Canonical URL's -- Wordpress Plugin (↑)

Author: Joost de Valk

Adds rel="canonical" links to the head of your site, which help to prevent duplicate content issues on your blog.
Serendipity S9Y: HTML Link Metatags: serendipity_event_linktoolbar (↑)

Author: Garvin Hicking

Inserts link rel="start|up|prev|next|canonical" metatags into your frontend for better navigation.

Download the plugin directly: serendipity_event_linktoolbar

Wordpress SEO Guide

Additionally I want to recommend Joost de Valk and his award winning — Semmy 2009 — article The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog (↑), written especially for Wordpress users.

He doesn't share share my opinion about the blog post entry ID in the URL, but as I have pointed out this is an issue of much debate.

Okay, that's it.
Go and optimize your blogs now.

Yours
John W. Furst

New SEO Lessons learned already!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:49:50 -0700

John W. Furst

Finally following up my previous blog post about the SEO improvements on this, my E-Biz Booster Blog. I promise I'll keep this post as short as possible and to the point. And I must warn you. This post might be a bit straight forward and advanced. If you have questions leave a comment and I'll be happy to explain what needs to be explained in further detail. At the end of this blog post I refer to other bloggers who are going a similar route. Kind of social proof that I have moved in the right direction with the latest changes in the inner workings here.

I originally stated, “I don't care about rewriting the short versions of the URL.” That means if someone typed for example, http://blog.fcon21.biz/230/ for an article about email marketing tips, into the browser or clicked a corresponding link the navigation bar of his browser showed exactly that URL. Not anymore.

I argued it does not matter as long as the content is what the user is looking for and the search engines can use the meta information for the canonical URL from the HTML Head section.

Well, that was theory.

Rewrite non-canonical versions of your post URL

Not all search engines and other types of robots are taking advantage of the meta information for the canonical URL at this point.

I noticed problems with Google Adsense when requesting a particular page with using the shortcut URL. The AdSense bot did not know what the page is about and served no or totally off-topic ads in many cases. I knew this is not very good. So I needed to fix this problem.

And I mean, rewrite the URL by sending a HTTP 301 Permanently Moved status response header for the new location. Where should I get the new location. From the blog database of course.

Besides that, it seems to be more user friendly as well, when the shortcut URL resolves to the canonical version in the navigation bar. More likely that people will bookmark or share it on social platforms.

Challenge with backward URL compatibility

The challenge was to make sure the “old” versions of all URLs (long and short) which contained date information at some point remain valid and serve the corresponding blog post but with redirecting to the new URL of course.

This was easier said than done. You probably have heard what experts are saying about the mod_rewrite module of the Apache web-server which is the main tool programmers use to achieve such URL related goals.

“The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail.”
-- Brian Behlendorf, Apache Group

“Despite the tons of examples and docs, mod_rewrite is voodoo. Damned cool voodoo, but still voodoo.”
-- Brian Moore, news.cmc.net

What made it even harder to implement is a tiny syntax incompatibility for pattern matching in different Apache versions. To find that undocumented source of trouble took … Well, too long. But it's done now.

Here's the trick (without detailed explanation):

Version 8 for regular expression syntax which is applied and used in mod_rewrite introduces the literal “-” (hyphen) character in a character class by preceding a “\” (backslash) character.

However, this does not work on older versions of the Apache web server.

To make sure you do not run into problems, use the old syntax, which requires to put the literal hyphen character at the very beginning or at the very end of a character class definition.

E.g.

[-a-z0-9A-Z%\+!\.,;] or [a-z0-9A-Z%\+!\.,;-]

instead of [a-z0-9A-Z%\-\+!\.,;].

Or in case of a negation [^-a-z] for example.

Sorry for the little pattern matching lesson. Don't worry if you don't understand what this is about. Folks that deal with sophisticated RewriteRules will know.

Even one more shortcut URL for Twitter

Since I was dealing with PHP code anyway, I thought it would be a very nice feature to have my own blog post shortcut URL service. Of course I don't tap into the social media arena that way like if I were using Hootsuite, bit.ly or other URL shortcut and Meme like services.

But it's under my control, in my domain.

The new shortcut for this blog post is

http://fcon21.biz/245

Directly in the root domain. Sexy, isn't it. And of course it resolves to the full canonical URL of the blog post with one permanent redirect. That means it is as search engine friendly as it can get.

Kind of Social Proof

Copywriter, marketer, blogger, and Wordpress expert Michel Fortin who also messes with the code himself (from time to time) quite recently backed my “remove the date” decision in his blog post, How I Grow My Blog Organically Using These 5 Tips (↑)

And I even pick up his suggestion to move the date stamp on the blog post from the header to the footer of the post. Thanks to Michel's posts I implemented exactly that in the tmplates as well. Looks more friendly now all of a sudden. What do you think.

If you write evergreen content there is no use for shying people away with a publishing date.

I also remember from memory that Chris Garret (↑) shares a similar opinion about the date in blog posts.

Okay, that's it. Enough SEO for some time.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Next thing to do: Finally upgrade the core of the s9y software to fully integrate pingbacks, which are so popular in the Wordpress world.

P.P.S.: By the way did you notice my new Tag flash widget in the upper right corner of the blog layout? Cool, isn't it. What do you think?

"RSS Gone Wild" is a SEO side effect. Sorry!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:08:45 -0700

RSS hiccups happen

I implemented a couple of SEO related (search engine optimization) changes on this blog. But I did not stop there. I introduced some new features for my readers as well.

As a result and the side-effect of it, the 10 or 15 latest blog posts have been re-published on the RSS feed with ever slightly changing URLs. I had the RSS feed turned off today to minimize the effect this had on Feedburner, and your RSS blog subscriptions.

I hope you can forgive me that faux pax. I wrote about those side-effects in the original article where I go in detail over the background for the SEO changes.

The main SEO changes revisited

remove the date from the URL
keep the numeric index for the post, but move it up one virtual directory
remove punctuation characters like [.,;!]
finally, keep all URLs lower-case
Use the entity to specify 1 preferred URL and solve the duplicate content issue this way.
introduce a new short version of the URLs
Of course last but not least, make sure all already published URLs (on the blog and out there on the Internet) remain valid

That's it in a nutshell.

I also have described the side effect of social media widget bankruptcy. No, it's not that serious. All that happened is the widgets and older posts show 0 (zero) submissions, because they don't know the new URL unless someone submits the post, again.

Social Media Related Changes

Here's the short list of changes you might have noticed already.

Yeah! The new “Tweet It Button” right in the upper left corner of every blog post. One click tweet. It's really that simple. Check it out.
I also put a Retweet This text link next t the ShareThis widget in the article footer.
I am not displaying the Digg, and Reddit widgets for older posts. You guessed right, because they show “0” from the social media bankruptcy.
For Comments: Now you can subscribe to the comments for a particular post blog post via a filtered RSS feed.

Blog comments available as RSS feed as an alternative to email subscription

All that is left to do is finally getting a “smarter domain name” for the blog.

What do you think?

Yours
John W. Furst

SEO Friendly Permalink Structure

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:07:39 -0700

John W. Furst

I must admit when I first setup my E-biz Booster Blog I did not know much about search engine optimization (SEO).

Finally I have changed and improved my permalink structure. It is not only more SEO friendly but in fact has increased usability, too. Whenever you change URLs it should be your goal to redirect your old URLs to the new ones because you

cannot change all links to your site that exists out on the Web
don't really want to spend the time to change internal links manually.

It is best to make sure the old and the new link structures work in parallel. That's exactly what I have done. Luckily Google has introduced a new feature in March 2009 that made that change more easy for me. You can read about that in a minute.

Bottom line, you don't have to be a SEO specialist from Stompernet.

However, let me start with the full story

When I originally had set up my S9Y.org Serendipity blog I had chosen the following permalink structure for blog posts.

(Note: I am not using Wordpress for this blog at this time, but don't worry, I'll keep the article relevant for everybody! I am aware that most of you are using Wordpress.)

    %year%-%month%/%id%-%title%

E.g.
http://blog.fcon21.biz/2009-01/230-Email-Marketing-Tips-Edition-16

As you can see I did a couple of things in an unusual way.

combined year and month of the post in one virtual directory
instead of using the more common .../2009/01/... notation
use no file extension which is actually recommended by W3C.org and did
not use a trailing slash “/” either.
I also wanted the post id, e.g. “230” as part of the file name because this
makes the URL more robust against truncation and mistyping. Serendipity is
actually very good at this and tolerates a lot of bogus while still serving the correct
blog post.
Additionally I configured monthly archives by calling, e.g. ...biz/2009-01/
And of course I introduced short URLs in the form of, e.g. ...biz/p230/ with or
even without trailing slash. Those come handy when used in emails.

What about the date in the URL?

The date in the URL is supposed to provide information about the publishing date of the blog post. That's basically a good idea but I wanted it for the wrong reason.

I thought search engine users will benefit from the additional information in the URL and that it helps them to decide to click on the link. Well, they enjoy it too much and don't even click through to “older” posts. Web users are hunting for the latest, greatest information. Most of them; there are a few exceptions.

However, the idea with SEO is to get people to your site. Depending on the topic of the particular article the date when it was published could be relatively irrelevant to the fact that it might provide the sought after solution to the reader.

There is a lot of “evergreen” content on the net, and on my blog as well. But using the date in the URL simply shies potential web visitors away. I want people to read it. Therefore, the date has to go. Bye-bye. The URL is 8 characters shorter all of a sudden. A nice side benefit.

Now what about the blog post id?

That's definitely a very good parameter to use in the URL because it's a “quick” database index which is good for the performance. And it helps to protect the URL from typos and truncations.

The above sample URL still works as
http://blog.fcon21.biz/2009-01/230-Emablah-blah-blah

You'll notice that I don't redirect the URL (what you see in the browser navigation bar) to the correct address. I only serve the blog post according to the blog post index 230. It doesn't really matter for the user. The link works and it can be bookmarked. I'll talk about the search engines in a bit.

What about SEO?

It's almost safe to assume that the most experienced SEO experts for blogging can be found being active in the Wordpress world.

So let's learn from them. I'll keep it short.

The URL should contain keywords in the domain and the path.
Cryptic URL parameters, like
index.php?author=A0076&post_id=234867&category=23&language=en-gb

are not so good. Easy to see why, isn't it.
The shorter the better.
Omitting the date has more human than SEO reasons, but in general the structures should not go too deep either because it can limit the set of keywords your page can rank for. E.g.

.../animals/mammals/small/rabbit/rabbit-flowers-garden

The flower and garden part in the post has a hard time to compete against the animal part in the path respectively virtual directory structure. This might be a silly example, but it shows the point.
Testing and statistical analysis indicates that sites with 1 virtual directory before the post title rank better. There's a lot of debate about this subject and search engine algorithms are modified frequently. So in reality we are never too sure about it. I simply trust my sources (without disclosing them here.)

That gives something like this:

example.com/email-marketing/why-squeeze-page/

With or without the trailing slash “/”. Using the trailing slash gives the hint that the URL is complete and no letters have been lost. So it's good actually for human readability.

Or you might have seen a lot of wordpress blog posts like this

example.com/why-squeeze-page/

This leaves out the category and is shorter as well. Bingo!
Bingo?
Let's not forget a category “email-marketing” in the previous example could have influence the ranking in a positive or negative way. Therefore my sources suggest to use numbers, digits instead. They don't have a negative influence.

Now I say, “Bingo”!

That's the perfect place for the blog post id.

My new SEO improved permalink structure

    %id%/%title%/

Easy, effective, elegant, robust.

My original example
http://blog.fcon21.biz/2009-01/230-Email-Marketing-Tips-Edition-16

becomes
http://blog.fcon21.biz/230/Email-Marketing-Tips-Edition-16/

and the associated short version
http://blog.fcon21.biz/230/

Update 2009 04 27: I finally decided to keep all URL strictly lower case, which produces the final version for now. And I also strip characters like [.,;!?%+] off.
http://blog.fcon21.biz/230/email-marketing-tips-edition-16/

You'll notice all ~~three~~ four URLs work, of course.
That's how it should be.

You want to avoid link rot and keep old URLs alive through redirection. I basically achieved that goal with a modified .htaccess file and Apache Mod_Rewrite. I simply have added ReWrite Rules from old versions of the URL to the new ones. Done!

Attention S9Y users: When you save certain changes in the Serendipity (S9Y) configuration in the administration panel it will overwrite custom changes in the local .htaccess file. That's why it is always a good idea to keep a backup with date stamp and a README file for taking notes about particular modifications. I also had programmed a tiny hack in 1 or 2 serendipity core files to make my life easier and introduced additional syntax for requesting a page via Apache Mod_Rewrite.

What about duplicate content?

Now I can access the same resource with many different URLs. That doesn't sound too good for SEO purposes.

The most elegant way to deal with this issue is to do a “301 Permanent Redirect” to the new permalink URL. In this case the displayed URL in the navigation bar of the Internet browser would change as well. And smart browsers could even update old bookmarks automatically.

There is a much easier solution. Thanks to Google.

They allow you to specify the canonical form of the URL now which can be achieved by a very easy change in your template file.

Simply add the following to the section of your index template for blog posts.

That's how you do it in Serendipity s9y. Wordpress uses a different variable, but it is as easy. Just look up the variable or there might be a plugin available that handles the new canonical attribute.

Therefore I do not need to change the internal links between older posts. Fabulous.

Here's the blog post from Google:

Webmaster Central Blog :: Specify Your Canonical

One last word. This new mechanism supports:

same domain
cross subdomain of the same domain
NOT: cross domains. Use 301 Redirects instead.

What's your opinion, leave a comment for us.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S. Of course it's always a good idea to keep your site and the sites of your competitors “on your radar” with this SEO plugin.

P.P.S. Update! There are some side-effects that you must consider.

RSS readers and applications will re-import your blog posts, because they look new! Let's say you publish the latest 10 posts in your RSS feed, then your last 10 posts will show up in your subscribers RSS feed. This happens eventually after every change. Even the tiny ones. So think beforehand and change it once. (or turn RSS off while you are experimenting. Ideally you have a development version of your blog. [I have one but I messed with the production engine right away. :-)]
Do you automatically send email notifications for new blog posts… Hurrah! This is usually triggered via your RSS feed, your subscribers just got a bunch of emails. If you played around around with the settings like I just did, they could have got about 70 emails each. (Is that spam?) No it's not funny. I think I have turned that automatic feature off anyway. Yes, it's off. I usually add some personal comments just for my newsletter subscribers. Therefore, the full automatic approach doesn't work for me.

(I knew about this, but I was not really thinking about it when performing the changes.)

So watch out people when messing with your blog permalink structures.
Another side-effect of-course is that is seems that you have lost all your social bookmarking “points”. I mean, 0 Diggs, 0 Stumbles, 0 Reddits, … Your entire blog looks virgin, again.

This might look bad on your blog, but the submitted URLs still work. That means you shouldn't loose traffic from the social sites, only the social proof as seen from your blog goes bankrupt.

Of course this doesn't have to happen and a smart programmer could implement a solution and write a plugin (there is probably one for wordpress out there) that changes the permalinks only for newer blog posts. Don't know if it's worth to keep a permalink history. It might be easy enough inside the blog software but could get really messy in combination with the .htaccess file and Apache's Mod_ReWrite module. (I guess a very smart programmer is required.)

As you can see, I just dropped all social proof with the blink of an eye. Well, I have Twitter, haven't I. Probably remove the Dig and Reddit widgets for a while. Let's think about it.

How Businesses Use Social Media - A Report

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:54:27 -0700

Social Media Report
March 2009

Michael Stelzner just published his brand new Social Media Marketing Industry Report

The question answered in this report is “How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses”.

He set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing with this report. Nearly 900 of his peers provided the kind of insight that previously has not existed. In this report you'll find:

The top social media marketing questions marketers want answered
How much time marketers are investing in social media
The benefits of social media
How time invested impacts results
The top social media tools
And much more!

If you're pondering starting social media marketing, these findings will help push you over the edge. If you're already onboard, feel free to examine what the really experienced marketers are doing (and use this study to persuade others).

Check out the details and download the report for yourself, I finished reading it a couple of minutes ago, and found it worthy to spread the message.

Check out the FREE Social Marketing Report now (↑)

RETWEET THIS NOW:
Your Followers Will Thank You…
(Click on RETWEET)

Enjoy.

Yours
John W. Furst

More Time For The Fun Parts In Life - Easy Time Management

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:51:54 -0700

Play Video (new window)

Click on the link to open a new browser window and play the video there. Make sure Javascript is turned on.

It seems like Javascript is either blocked or turned off. Some RSS feed readers and online applications like Google Reader block it.

As I promised in the video. Here's my FREE report.

Easy Time Management
18 pages without fluff, 208 KiBytes
~~(click with the right/secondary mouse button on the link above and choose, “Save Target As…”)~~ The report was directly available during Darren's Twitter Marathon. It is still available for my subscribers.

Sign up for my FREE newsletter and get it nevertheless. The sign-up form is on the top right side. You cannot miss it.

Have a nice day, and please, don't forget to tweet the video (click on the banner below the video).

Yours
John W. Furst

PS. Stay informed about those kind of things. Join up for my newsletter (upper right corner of the page)

PPS. Thanks to @darrenmonroe and his 24 hour Twitter marathon #24hrtwittermarathon.

Why .COM Is The Best Of All Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:07:49 -0700

There is a huge debate about which domain extension to use. Internet marketers usually have a different opinion than registrars who want to sell the most exotic domain extensions like .BIZ .TV .ME .NAME and so forth for a nice profit. Here is my answer to to that discussion.

The short answer: .COM is recognizable as Internet domain by the largest group of people when compared to the wide-spread of other generic top level domain extensions (gTLD) like: .NET .ORG .EDU or .GOV

When you say, MyBrand.COM, almost everybody will know instantly that you are talking about your Internet domain and they will associate it with a website as well.

.COM is definitely the strongest brand among all top level domains

As the domain name space has filled up rather quickly new gTLD were invented for use by businesses worldwide: .BIZ .INFO

And as I have read today the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN.org, which is the governing body of the Internet, plans to introduce hundreds of new top level domains.

That said I still believe that .COM will remain the strongest domain brand. At least in the Western world.

With .COM you simply cannot go wrong

Used by businesses, other organizations and individuals
For profit and non-profit, commercial, noncommercial, personal, ... basically any legal purpose.
Allows registrants from all over the world.
A very reasonable registration fee. As opposed to some country code top level domains, which cost more than 100 times the .COM fee.
A newly setup .COM domain propagates very quickly on the Internet. Meaning you can use it worldwide in less than the usual 48 hour time period.

Some SEO (search engine optimization) specialists also claim, that .COM domains are treated favorably by search engines, especially by Google. Although Google likes .ORG domains these days as well.

Besides recommending the .COM extension, what makes up a good domain name?

A Great Domain Name - Some quick rules

Is it unique and catchy?
Is it descriptive?
Does it convey the right image?
Is it memorable?
Can people type it without misspellings when they only hear it?
The shorter the better!

These rules are targeted toward the human psychology. However there are more marketing and SEO related rules that you might want to keep in mind as well.

People find websites on the Internet by typing in keywords in search engines. It is generally a good idea, if your domain name contains keywords people will actually use to find your website. Yes, that means do some keyword and market research.

Last but not least the legal part of it.

Follow the legal guidelines given by your registrar and the registry, which you will agree with during the process of your domain purchase. Just don't infringe any one's trademark and make sure your chosen domain name does not include a brand name or other trademark.

You have certainly noticed that I have chosen one of the worst possible domain names for this blog. I started it when I knew little about these issues. Anyway it's just not a priority of mine right now to move the blog to a different domain or to restart it from scratch.

One additional note.

Email marketing has its own and additional rules. For example the .BIZ top level domain is associated with spam. Email sent from a .BIZ domain is more likely to be blocked as spam. In general it's not a bad idea to send your email marketing campaigns from a separate .COM domain that you register just for that purpose. That way your regular email traffic is distinct from your large email campaigns. I see many companies and Internet marketers do this (for various reasons, but in general it diversifies risk of getting blocked.)

Resources

Find a good domain at www.NameBoy.com
Register your domains at Godaddy.com

Update 2009-03-09: Check out the comments as well. Good stuff.

Yours
John W. Furst

E-Biz Booster Blog

The E-mail Road Less Traveled …

So how do you resolve this gut wrenching conflict?

How to have your cake and eat it too …

Now I ask you, what kind of e-mail is this? Is it a tutorial, or is it a pitch?

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 18

Quote of the day

Editor’s Pick

Tools & Services

General Tips

Strategy

Code Of Practice

AWeber’s Hot Email Marketing Tips!

New Features - Autoresponder With More Flexibility For Scheduling Email Follow-Up Sequences

Sharethis.com Changes Rules For Social Bookmarking

Why do I think those shortcuts are a bad idea?

How To Promote Your Business With *Stardust*

A quick review

What Is Your Best Email Marketing Tip?

Upgrade Your Marketing - Rick Butts Is The Real Deal

In case you haven't heard about the StardustFactor before:

Email Marketing Needs To be Personal

Canonical URLs Explained By Matt Cutts of Google

Enable Canonical Link Information For Your Blog

Wordpress SEO Guide

New SEO Lessons learned already!

Rewrite non-canonical versions of your post URL

Challenge with backward URL compatibility

Even one more shortcut URL for Twitter

Kind of Social Proof

"RSS Gone Wild" is a SEO side effect. Sorry!

The main SEO changes revisited

Social Media Related Changes

SEO Friendly Permalink Structure

However, let me start with the full story

What about the date in the URL?

Now what about the blog post id?

What about SEO?

My new SEO improved permalink structure

What about duplicate content?

There is a much easier solution. Thanks to Google.

How Businesses Use Social Media - A Report

More Time For The Fun Parts In Life - Easy Time Management

Why .COM Is The Best Of All Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)

Now I ask you, what kind of e-mail is this?
Is it a tutorial, or is it a pitch?

How To Promote Your Business With Stardust