E-Biz Booster Blog

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 24

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:44:11 -0600

Welcome to the 24th edition of email marketing tips on June 30th, 2010.

This edition is a little bit late; and it’s short. Enjoy.

editors pick

John W. Furst presents Getting to Know E-Mail Recipients - eMarketer posted at Articles - the latest Market Research, Internet Statistics - eMarketer, saying, “Personalization means more than just being on a first-name basis. E-mail marketers competing for attention in cluttered inboxes know that relevance and targeting will help get their messages read by consumers. While a personalized subject line can bring success, a survey of US and UK Internet users by e-mail marketing services firm e-Dialog suggests marketers must get to know more about their recipients than just a first name.”

general tips

Ian Lurie presents Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide posted at Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon.

tools and services

Michelle Waters presents Aweber Tutorial: How To Add A Broadcast Message To Your Autoresponder Series posted at Michelle Waters Online Business Mentoring Blog.

That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. 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 23, too.

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

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Copyright ©2010 by John W. Furst. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0.

Choosing the Right Email Marketing System - The Who And How

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:09:00 -0600

I have not tried every single system out there. However, I have tried a few and have discussed the better ones in another section of this website. And since I have not personally tried every software available out there, the goal of this article is to provide a general overview of what to look for in an email solution provider to determine if the email marketing tool is suitable for your and your business’ needs.

Basically the entire process boils down to four key components. If you can check all four for any given email marketing system out there, go ahead and start playing with it!

Service
Functionality
Feasibility
Price

Assess the email Marketing Company’s Service and its Compatibility with You and Your Business

Read about the solution provider you are contemplating using both on their website as well as other discussion forums and online communities to corroborate what the company is saying to what people have experienced personally. If something doesn’t smell right at this stage, chances are something isn’t right indeed. So take your time with the due diligence.

If you know other business owners like yourself, reach out to them and ask them about what email marketing solution they are using. Find out what they like and dislike about it. Find out what feature(s) they wished their email marketing system provided.

Most importantly, get a good feel for the provider’s feasibility of use and customer service and support. As an entrepreneur you have very limited time on your hands and the last thing you want to do with that little time is to spend it troubleshooting email marketing software related issues.

Ensure that the company you go with has a good “functionality” track and in the instance it fails, that there is a good customer support program in place that will “fix your problems” with minimal interruption to your operations.

If the system you are evaluating does not pass this first test, I would simply turn back at this point and move on to candidate number 2. Don’t forget - Time is the equivalent of money!

Ensure Double Opt In email Marketing Functionality

Make sure that the system you choose has double opt in technology. Many email marketing system users bypass the double opt in option not deeming it important enough when implementing email marketing campaigns. Contrary to practice, this is actually one of the most important options to implement within your campaign. Double opt in ensures that your subscriber will respond to a automated confirmation email sent to their email address by your email marketing system when the subscriber requests to be signed up to your mailing list.

The only tricky thing here could be that you may already have an existing email list, in which case you will have to provide that list to your email marketing system company. Now some companies will go ahead and add the list to their database. However others will require you to send those individuals an email requesting confirmation. The risk here is that you may have some folks who don’t get see the message or simply do not respond for whatever reason.

If this happens you will definitely loose some email addresses. I would keep track of these and to the extent possible, follow up with these customers personally (hopefully you have retained their contact information). I know it’s a pain but this is the upfront risk of moving onto something bigger and better.

Why would you want someone who has not specifically asked to be on your list anyway? It costs money to send emails so make sure you aren’t throwing money away. Double opt in ensures that your email list is as clean and lean as it can get with only relevant and interested subscribers. Remember, it is not about quantity here, rather it is all about quality.

How Feasible Does Your email Marketing System Work?

Two components are key when evaluating feasibility; ease of email creation and amount of follow-up service required on your end. You can make your life a lot easier if your email marketing system provides multiple email templates you can choose from to craft your newsletter or article. This is a key factor to look out for especially if you are not a web developer who has minimal experience coding in HTML. The last thing you want to do is waste your time designing and tweaking the look and feel of your email message.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important for your email to be professional and aesthetically pleasing. However, you just don’t have to spend your time on non-value add activities that can be satisfied by a good email marketing system. Oh yeah, these templates should come at no additional cost to you.

You also want to ensure that your email solution provider has a proven track record of good performance and longevity in the industry. Those qualities mean that your system is reputable and likely accepted and respected by most email providers (paid or free). Often what happens is that email providers (i.e. Hotmail) will not accept any emails generated/sent by a particular email marketing system because of its reputation or lack thereof (maybe because it has not been around long enough).

Basically, what you want is an email system that delivers 100% of the time. You want to see your email make a landing on your reader’s Inbox, not their Trash, Junk Mail or Spam folder. You should be just fine if you put in the time researching and conducting your due diligence upfront.

Don’t be Afraid to Pay for a Good email Marketing System

It takes money to make money - I am sure you have heard of that saying before. Although it is not always the case, it is the case most of the time. If all the tests till now have been met satisfactorily, then don’t hesitate to pay for a good email solution. As long as the pricing is reasonable (and you are the best judge of this subjective measure), there is no reason not to engage a well qualified provider and risk loosing more time and money in the long-run.

There is no denying that you need a good email marketing system to have a successfully Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) program. So go ahead and be cautious, but please don’t be cheap when it comes to selecting the right email marketing partner. Using the best email marketing system for your needs is the number one email marketing secret my friend.

Sunil S. is the author of the Dubai Information Site, Easy Extra Money Online and Sue the Airlines; comprehensive content focused websites. Having created and sold two successful websites in the past, the Author’s focus on these websites is strictly educational. Information is provided in a casual instructive format and is 100% Free.

Easy Extra Money Online
http://www.easyextramoneyonline.com (↑)
contact@easyextramoneyonline.com (↑)
Article Source: EzineArticles.com (↑)

How You Can Generate Sales Leads Using Inbound Marketing in 30 Days

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:00:00 -0600

When you ask someone with a successful social media presence how to build your own audience, the answer most often is, “Write a blog post, Tweet it to your following, and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn.” But what if you do not have many followers on Twitter or Facebook Fans?

A few weeks ago, my company decided to start a process to answer the question: “How can a business that does not have many hits on their website, has no followers on Twitter, and no Fans on Facebook, generate sales leads using inbound marketing in only 30 days?”

Catching leads on social media ain't easy without a plan (image credit)

Our goal is to get people to sign up for a webinar where we will share this marketing plan.

Below is how we are getting webinar attendees:

Create a Story

The web is a crowded space and you are in constant competition to earn your target audience’s attention. We have come to realize that your competition does not just reside in your industry, but is everywhere. Think about what you read – whether it pertains to your business or not. What stories resonate with you the most? It can be a blog post on how to grow your business, or news relating to your favorite football team, or the heartfelt story of a mother reunited with her child. All content producers are competing for your time, and no matter how you spend it, you only have 24 hours a day.

Before writing a blog post, and before building your social media plan, you first need a story that will resonate with your ideal customer. At Cloud Marketing Labs, we want to be known as the firm who can deliver sales leads in 30 days using Social Media. We feel this is something our audience can wrap their hands around, and will help us stand out from some of our marketing firm competitors.

Focus

You cannot join every network and be successful at all of them in 30 days. You need to focus all of your time and energy on 2 or 3 platforms. We chose blogging, public relations and Pay Per Click (PPC).

Blogging

After writing great content pertaining to your story, you need an audience to read it. In order to grow our audience, we would share our most helpful posts with friends and customers by emailing them a link to the post and asking them to share it with their friends. The key here is not to abuse your contacts. Only send a few posts, otherwise, you risk becoming a bit of a spammer and annoying. Even if you do not have a large following on Facebook, Twitter, etc., chances are someone who you are in regular contact with does, and will be happy to share helpful information with their network.

Public Relations

We found many blogs, such as the E-Biz Booster Blog, looking for guest posters and fresh content. If your story is compelling and unique, chances are they will allow you to leverage their network and help you grow your audience and expand your reach.

By pitching our “Sales Leads in 30 Days Using Social Media” story to various blogs and friends, we have been able to set up a few guest posts over the course of these 30 days. We get the benefit of expanded reach, and they get the benefit of new voices.

We are also going to submit a news release announcing a webinar where we will share this story with small and mid-sized business owners. However, instead of emailing the news release to journalists, we are going to use the online distribution service PRWeb. This will help with our search rankings and increase the visibility of our story as it gets picked up by various news aggregation sites.

Pay Per Click

Our final focus is on PPC advertising. However, instead of using Adwords, we decided to use Facebook’s advertising platform. There are two main reasons for this. First, it is cheaper. We are in a competitive space, and Adwords clicks would be well over $1.00 per click to get onto the first page. Second, Facebook ads will help you develop your buyer persona. You have visibility on things like age, gender, likes, and job titles that you are unable to see using Google Adwords. This will help us target our ads more precisely, increasing the efficiency of our campaign.

__________

Greg Digneo
founder of Cloud Marketing Labs gets you leads.

Greg Digneo is founder of Cloud Marketing Labs, a marketing service that helps small and midsized businesses generate sales leads in 30 days using inbound marketing. He is hosting the webinar “How to generate sales leads in 30 days using social media” and is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog.

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 23

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:25:00 -0600

Welcome to the 23rd edition of email marketing tips on June 6th, 2010.

The carnival is back after having had some wild turbulences including this blog getting hacked three times during the last six weeks. I am traveling and the last thing I needed was someone taking out my blog. The guys from blogcarnival.com lost patience with me and simply deleted the 21st edition which I had almost prepared for being posted. Shame on them.

Luckily a friend stepped in. Thanks to Pat Doyle who hosted the 22nd edition of email marketing tips on her Blog: Internet Business With Pat Doyle. That was a great relief. Now I’ll try to get back on schedule with this.

(If you want to host an edition on your blog, please, contact me and let me know.)

Now let’ start with today’s content.

editors pick

John Jantsch wrote The Right Way to Buy an Email List posted at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing saying, "I’m am not talking about buying or renting so called opt-in lists from list brokers. I’m talking about offering something of value as a way to motivate someone to willingly exchange their email address with you in order to receive your offers and additional contact."

Nick Moore wrote Better Email Newsletter Sharing on Facebook and Twitter posted at Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips saying, "Social media is a big part of the marketing world these days. Most net-savvy businesses have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. That being the case, we’ve found that people are always looking for ways to make their social media and email marketing campaigns work together."

Chris Brogan wrote Stop Adding Me to Your Email Newsletter posted at chrisbrogan.com — Learn How Human Business Works – Beyond Social Media saying, "According to sources, it’s not illegal to add my name to your email newsletter list if you’ve done some kind of business with me in the past. Evidently, this means that it’s perfectly fine to add me to your list if you’ve sent me an email. Ever. Because I’ve gotta tell you: I’m subscribed to a LOT of email newsletters that I didn’t sign up for, and I’m not very pleased with it. To me, it’s spam, whether or not that’s the legal definition."

Carol Ellison wrote 8 Email Marketing Tips posted at destinationCRM.com - The leading resource for Customer Relationship Management - from the editors of CRM magazine saying, "Experts provide commonsense advice about ‘one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communication.’"

general tips

GreatManagement presents Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Internet Scamming posted at We Build Your Blog, saying, "Anyone who surfs the web on a regular basis can probably remember the very first time they fell victim to an attempted scam."

Sheryl Owen presents Top 10 Reasons to Use Snail Mail posted at Change of Address.

That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. 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 22, too.

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

Fast Site, Better Rankings And Happier Users

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:43:00 -0600

Speed Up Your Webpages As Fast As You Can (image credit)

Okay, now it is official.

Google finally announces that page loading time has become one of the ~200 signals (↑) that influence rankings in its search engine. If you are a little bit tech savvy when it comes to web technologies, check out the post. There you’ll find resources and tips on how to tackle the issue.

The Google Webmaster tool (↑) also offers a new function at Dashboard / Labs / Site Performance which gives you a hint how your site is doing right now.

I already told you in September, 2009, how to speed up your website.

Now it’s time to get going.

From a usability standpoint of view this makes totally sense of course. Not only Google but also your users would love to have your pages load in less than 1 second! What are you doing when a page loads forever. Maybe you move on right away.

The three most common problems with page load time:

Slow hosting (shared hosting)
Blog software that is not optimized
Too many external widgets, advertising, etc.

I did not say, “It’s easy to fix a slow site,” but it should be on your to do list.

In the meantime you can signup for Pingdom (↑), which monitors your website(s) for uptime and speed and more. (A free option is available.)

I’m aware of the issues with this site and I’m looking into VPS hosting in the cloud. But I’m super busy with other things right now and as weird as it may sound my income is not directly dependent on how this site ranks respectively how fast it is at this point.

Getting Faster Hosting

The hosting companies which I will investigate further are

VPS.net
mediatemple.com
rackspace.com

What catches my eye are their cloud hosting products.

But let’s first talk about classic hosting products:

Shared Hosting: Your website is hosted on one server together with hundreds or even thousands of other websites. If those other sites get a lot of traffic your sites slows down, too.
Virtual Private Server (VPS): One server is partitioned into several (10 to 20) virtual servers, which appears to you like one regular computer, just only 1/10th to 1/20th that powerful. You have more control over the resources of your server.
Dedicated Server: It’s all yours.

Classic shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS), and even dedicated hosting have one weak point: Single point of failure! When a critical component in the server on which your website is hosted fails, your site may go down for hours or even days till the hardware has been replaced and the server restored.

Cloud hosting

Hostingin a cloud infrastructure circumvents this issue, because the virtual cloud server uses hardware from more than one physical computer. If components fail, your site might slow down a bit, but should remain operational. At least in theory

That’s the icing on the cake so to speak. Another advantage of cloud hosting is that it easily can be scaled according to your needs. Your blog post gets on the front page of Digg, no problem! The cloud detects the rise in traffic and provides more resources within a minute or so. Then it scales back automatically.

I know this sounds like magic, but a fair warning: Shopping for a good cloud VPS host isn’t necessarily easy. You really have to read the fine print about how resources are allocated and shared, and not all of the mentioned providers offer this automatic scaling right now and maybe you don’t even need it at this point. Also note that — of course — those extra resources (CPU power and bandwidth) might need to get paid for extra.

Yes, this is the playing field of geeks and techies.

Getting your website to load faster is not as trivial as finding a couple of keywords to go after. All of three companies mentioned offer managed support in case you don’t have a team of your own for advanced server administration.

But hosting is only one factor that determines the speed of your website.

Here is an additional article that addresses the issue especially for Wordpress powered blogs.

Site Speed is now a Ranking Factor (↑)

That’s it for today.

Yours
John W. Furst

Podcast About Tribes And Speech About Purple Cows (Revisited)

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:56:00 -0600

This is a post I had written much earlier on a static web-page. Now I am importing it into the blog. It’s not such a bad idea to revisit Seth Godin’s work from time to time anyway. Enjoy.

Seth Godin - A Podcast and a video from a TED talk

Shortly after I turned on the computer this morning, I decided that I will continue to write about Seth Godin and provide you with two great resources about smart marketing.

The Podcast for Tribes

I just finished reading the book and published my honest review on my blog.
Tribes - A Review by John W. Furst
John, 2008-10-25

On September 12th, 2008 Seth Godin had recorded an exclusive interview style podcast done by and for his community Triiibes.com.

(I don’t hot link there, because it is a private community — and will remain to be private — and all you would see is a login screen.)

In this roughly 47 minutes Seth talks about

His notion of Tribes
The Book: Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us
Triiibes.com

Listen to the Podcast now

Podcast with Seth Godin (audio only, 47 min.)

Are you finally inspired to buy the book?

You should be. This book is about

marketing and leadership,
about leadership and marketing,
about tribes.

The book is already an Amazon bestseller, the book is short and small and simple. It argues, as clearly as Seth is capable, that leadership is the best marketing tactic to any organization — a company, a school, a church, a job seeker.

Our role today is to find, connect and lead tribes in order to make change happen.

We see Tribes behind every successful brand, organization, politician, non profit and cause. And yet it seems almost impossible to attract a tribe. In this book, Seth tries to explain that the challenge is leadership, not marketing or hype.

Check it out now.

top↑

The TED talk

This remarkable talk at a TED conference in February 2003 is of timeless value. It’s related to the content of Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”.

The talk is about 18 minutes long and quite entertaining as well as educating. Check it out.

Please, enable Javascript in your browser to view this video and reload the page.

Some RSS feed readers like Google Reader block Javascript. Open the post directly in your Web browser to view the video.

Seth Godin speaking at TED in February 2003.
A timeless treasure.

Are you ready?

No wonder that Seth Godin became a well sought after speaker. He manages to say a lot with a few words and hits the target in the center.

Average products for average people doesn’t work anymore.
The TV industrial complex is broken.
Safe is risky.
Your products need to be remarkable. I.e. Worth having a remark made about them.

I did not count how many books Seth already has written, but it’s a lot. Some you might already have heard of. some you maybe have read. I noticed with me and with other folks that once you have read one books of Seth you want to read more of them.

Seth Godin is Famous For More Books

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Before I forget.

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

Tribute Video by John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog and Triiibes.com

Email or Social Networks or Mobile or What For Business?

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:05:00 -0600

Isn’t it fascinating how social networking platforms are taking over the Internet in a storm?

Ease of use and multimedia capabilities seem to be the main driver behind this development. It makes it fun for non techie people to use the Internet, to play around, and to communicate.

Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, discussed today that he was quite shocked—even though he had anticipated it—when he realized that social networking has overrun email (↑) already.

Here is the corresponding slide from Morgan Stanley’s latest Internet trend report (PDF file, 2.5 MiBytes ↑).

Communications Trends, April 2010

Now, let’s be honest and compare the two.

Email

Common email clients (even Gmail) smash a wall of incomprehensible letters into your face. I am talking about the inbox displayed as a dense list. Too many emails, too many of them irrelevant, and mostly not fun at all.

On the other hand when composing a new message you are staring at a scary white page. Ever had writer’s block in that situation?

Social Media

In contrast to that you are basically navigating in a space that’s comparable to your email client’s address book. But an address book on steroids.

You see avatars and blurbs with what your friends are up to right now, videos, pictures, full multimedia. And it’s so easy to use. You don’t need to compose a new message, you just click one time or even type your response directly. Takes you seconds and you don’t have to switch platform to do so.

Much of what’s happening on social networks is not private between two people, but it can be. Twitter’s direct messages and Facebook messages are a good example for this. And many users get email notification about activity on social networks anyway.

Don’t write off email, yet.

An email address is still a valuable asset of contact information for a business. For now and the near future. And I have pointed out some additional reasons in a previous discussion about email marketing versus social media.

But the one piece of contact information that might prove to be even more valuable in a short time is a mobile phone number.

Mobile Is Coming With Light-speed

When I compare the quality of contact information, then mobile phone number is a clear winner. It has certain advantages:

It’s more intimate than an email address.
Is tied to a device that is on almost 24/7.
Less likely to be a fake one.
Has direct billing capabilities built in for some classes of products.
And much more.

Regardless of mobile Internet usage with iPhone, Blackberry, Google Phone, whatever. Messages from the Internet can “ring through” to the user. An increasing number of services are taking advantage of this.

Facebook and Twitter can optionally handle your mobile phone number for texting purposes. Airlines offer to notify you about delays, etc.

Besides those “Internet attached cases”, the Net arrives at more and more users while they are on the road so to speak.

The mobile Internet user base is growing faster than desktop usage ever did. Morgan Stanley predicts that the number of mobile users of the Internet will outgrow the number of desktop users in 5 years.

Trend towards mobility, April 2010

What does that mean for you?

Big opportunities of course. Like if you are dealing in information product marketing, it’s smart to think about convergence.

Your free and paid content accessible from desktop and mobile devices. For some niches you might want to offer editions for Amazon’s kindle as well or put something in the iTunes store.
Delivering your content in multiple media formats. Video channels, podcasts, slide shows, classic PDFs, etc.
Advertising on mobile devices. Google once again goes that route early on as well. And its CEO, Eric Schmidt, has stated many times that Google is embracing mobile use BIG time.
Multiple ways of contact with prospects and customers. From presence on social platforms, having lists of fans, followers, friends to email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

This technological and social revolution does indeed change the way we communicate privately. This happens almost automatically.

However, it takes effort to change the way your business communicates.

Let’s do it.

Expand your sphere of influence.

Yours
John W. Furst

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 20

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:04:00 -0600

Welcome to the twentieth edition of email marketing tips on April 7th, 2010.

We have a fine mix of submissions today so I did not add any external blog posts this time. Now it’s time to improve your email marketing campaigns. Let's begin.

This edition can keep you busy for some time. Here is how I want you to go about it.

Take notes

Get a piece of empty paper ready and a pen or use a fresh page in your journal.
Draw a vertical line in the middle all the way from top to bottom.
At top of the right column write the word “tip”, on top of the left column “to do”.
Now when you read each article take a short note and most importantly write down what you will do as a result of that tip.
Then of course do it. No excuses.

Today’s categories:

strategy
copywriting
general advice
tools and services

Browsing Tip: If not stated otherwise all links in this email marketing tips carnival edition will open in this window. Use the back button of your browser to come back here or open links in a new window or tab.

strategy

Jodi Kaplan presents How to Put Your Email Marketing on Automatic Pilot posted at Fix Your Broken Marketing, saying, “I promised to tell you how to market your services without lifting a finger. The secret…”

John’s comment: Solid advice! I suggest you sign up for her email class as well.

David Porter presents Internet Business Automation Or Virtual Duct Tape - Which One Are YOU Using? posted at eBusiness Journey, asking, “Are you actually helping your business grow with your automation efforts? (Thanks for this opportunity!)”

John’s comment: Yes, people want personal attention! There is a limit on what or how much you can automate.

John W. Furst presents two articles at once. They go hand in hand: How Often Should You Email Your Subscribers and Are They Burning Their Email Lists?, saying, “The ‘old question:’ How often should I email my subscribers.”

John’s comment: My humble posts.

copywriting

John W. Furst presents 5 Tips on How to Increase the Open Rate of Your Email Newsletter posted at E-Biz Booster Blog - Internet And Email Marketing Tips, saying, “In the long run your subscribers will stick with your newsletter because … it’s not that easy simple. You need to bond with them on an emotional level.”

John’s comment: Again, my post. Host your own edition of this carnival and you have the editor’s advantage, too. How? Look at the end of the post.

Rebekah Donaldson presents Get Higher ROI from a B2B Email Marketing Campaign posted at Red on Marketing Blog, saying, “There are right ways and wrong ways to write email newsletters and the best way to stay on the plus side of that equation is to focus on the client. These seven examples of what isn’t boring could up your click-through rate and lead generation.”

John’s comment: Right, you don’t want to be boring. Keep your email marketing fresh.

general advice

Andy Hayes presents The One Thing Missing from Most Email Newsletter Signup Forms posted at Travel Online Partners (TOP), saying, “Are you making this common mistake I see in 90% of all opt-in forms?”

John’s comment: A picture says more than 1,000 words.

Adriana Copaceanu presents What Is a Blacklist and How to Avoid Being Blacklisted posted at My Online Business Journey, saying, “You may have heard the term ‘blacklist’ and wondered what this meant. If you’re blacklisted it means you’ve been labeled as a spammer by the internet service providers and the penalties can be stiff.”

John’s comment: Using a top email marketing service provider, e.g. Aweber, saves you a lot of trouble in that respect.

“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.

tools and services

Amanda Gagnon presents Email Marketing, Meet Social Media posted at Aweber’s Blog, saying, “Over 70% consider ‘competition with social media for recipients' time and attention’ an important challenge for 2010, according to Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report.”

John’s comment: Lots of points for your action list.

That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. 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 19, too.

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

A Monologue: Listen Marketers!

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:08:00 -0600

Pinky the Elephant (*)

It has become hard to listen to and concentrate on a specific message which is buried in ever intensifying noise.

You as a marketer cannot blame people for being ignorant.

You only can blame yourself for being ignorant.

When was the last time you listened to the response you stimulated? Did you adjust your message, your timing, the channel, …?

It’s easy to be the pink elephant in the room — and I mean the opposite of a Purple Cow. If that’s what you wanna be, fine with me, but don’t drop your shit in front of my feet.

I just picked that up from the universe with my telepathic senses.

Something to think about.

LISTEN!

You probably don’t care about what I have to say. But don’t worry, I might give a damn about your message as well.

Do you have a clue what I am interested in right now?

Yours
John W. Furst

Internet Marketers' Paradise

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:57:33 -0600

Hi folks,

I just have updated my about page and thought you will like to see this video as well. It's paradise, … there are just not a lot of Internet marketers here.

Canary Islands

Enjoy and relax.

Yours
John W. Furst

Are They Burning Their Email Lists?

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:23:43 -0600

Don’t Burn Your Email List!
(image credit)

Something must be up in the air this spring.

Too much is too much.
Really.

Last week I advised you to write more often to your email list members. This week it seems like I say exactly the opposite.

Many friends and colleagues are complaining that they are getting too many sales pitches in their email inbox. They are fed up and told me they have unsubscribed massively from the email lists of company A, marketer B, blogger C, and so forth.

Too Many Affiliate Promotions

The main culprit seems to be those affiliate promotions,

“He’s my friend, a great guy, his product rocks! This helped me so much when I was in the same situation like you are in right now. Really, it’s a steal, you are crazy if you don’t buy this now before it’s sold out. Buy it now, don’t wait!”

It continues the next day:

“I cannot believe that you are still sitting on the fence. You cannot let that go. It’s a once in a life time opportunity. And it’s so affordable. Imagine how you will feel when you finally get the results you and your family deserve.”

Seen in weight loss, make money, find the better job, learn X,Y,Z, …, you name it. C’mon.

And so on.

And once you start not opening and reading their emails, they figure that out and send you the same email again with a different subject line. And again, …

Companies and marketers are loosing customers that way all the time.

For example, a friend told me,

“He and … try to sell me something every day. It’s almost like they are whoring themselves out. If they concentrated on their own products and customer service - which is awful by the way - I think I would be more interested in them.”

I clicked Remove Me From List. Done.

Emotional Bank Account

As a marketing professional you have to understand this. You have an emotional bank account with your email list members and whenever you promote something to them, it will cost you points. You must ensure that your subscribers keep getting way more value from you over time than what you withdraw with every promotion you do. This balance should remain high and ideally continue to grow.

For example:

When Maria just has opted-in to your email newsletter or bought something from you. Think about:

Does she really need this product right now.
Can she take advantage of it?
Does she need it?

It doesn’t make sense to promote an advance course to someone who just has bought your beginner product and normally wouldn’t even have finished to consume your program at this point.

… Webinars and Tele-Classes

Really? Webinars or tele-classes with special, free information are part of so many promotions today.

Honestly, how many time can one listen to the same “old story” over and over again. The content wears out quickly over time and what’s left is a 40, 60, 90 minute sales pitch,

That hurts a lot.

Costs many of those points in the emotional bank account you have with your email subscribers.

And even if your subscribers don’t watch the video, webinar or read the promotions, once the balance in that bank account is low, they start thinking that you want to steal their time and money. There goes your credibility as trusted adviser and friend.

This is not good.

Think about it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: There is a fine balance between sending too few and too many emails and it all has to do with the type of content you send along the way. I shall write more about this in the future.

A Lazy Man's Domain Name Tip

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:00:00 -0600

Are you searching for ‘a car’ or ‘many cars’?
Which domain name would you type first? (image credit)

A couple of month ago I have written about the basics on how to choose a domain name. Today let me add one important point.

A friend of mine runs a successful business and just has launched a new website with some great tips for lead generation. I wanted to read one of his articles again and typed-in his URL. Instead of his homepage I saw:

Error: Server not found

This was quite a surprise. He has one of those domains where you have a hard time to remember whether to add the “s” for plural or not. Like in

car.com or
cars.com

The weird mess up on his part is that he even has a very beautiful logo with …labs, but his domain name is …lab.com.

I don’t think I am the only one making this mistake, but I am one of the few who actually try the other version as well. The average web surfer might just give up right away.

Of course I wrote to him immediately and shouted,

“… get the plural version of your domain as long as you can.

You can buy it from me for $2,397.00 if you decide on the spot while we are talking. Otherwise I throw it on the market for at least $4,997.00 tomorrow. Your choice …”

Well, the last part is made up, I did not try to rip him off. Fortunately his missed domain is still available. That’s the secret reason why I don’t spell out his domain name here.

I am sure he understood the hint and will buy it.

Type-in traffic can be more valuable than you think

Ask yourself, “Who types in your domain directly into the browser?”

Likely someone who already has heard about you and wants to know more. For example she has remembered your company name, brand name, product name from an ad you ran in a magazine, from a radio or late night TV ad, or in best case from someone who mentioned your products and services in a very favorable tone — basically referred her in your direction.

Sounds like a not so cold prospect.

That type-in user whom you have lost just 3 minutes ago, and another one 10 hours and 27 minutes ago might have signed up to your newsletter or bought something right away. You’ll never know.

Tip: When you think about registering a certain domain name consider right away whether it makes sense to register both singular and plural versions of it.

Is there already a competitor using one version or the other?

Maybe you should get a totally different name then to avoid trademark related issues in the future.
How many searches are on the major search engines for each — the singular and the plural version of the keyword — respectively domain name.

A quick quiz

What do you think is the more popular site?

car.com or
cars.com

(display the answer)

The Answer

According to Alexa cars.com is more popular than car.com, it gets about 25 times more visitors.

Did you guess right?

5 million searches a month in the USA for cars and 1 million searches for car on Google. That’s at least what the Google keyword tool tells me.

car.com was registered in 1994; cars.com in 1998. Obviously those marketing savvy guys who grabbed cars.com had figured out at this time that a lot of people are searching for “cars”.

[close answer]

This treatment is a bit incomplete but don’t waste your time to find the holes in my argument. Take action instead.

Rather check if you have domains that are effected, shell out a few bucks and register the plural and singular versions of your important domains.
Then redirect your traffic with a 301 Permanently Moved HTTP status response code to your main domain. Your web hosting provider has documentation on how to do this or even can do it for you.

Now get to work.

By the way did you notice that in general most of the folks who make a good living on the Internet have a lot of domains. (Just a hint more.)

Yours
John W. Furst

5 Tips on How to Increase the Open Rate of Your Email Newsletter

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:37:00 -0600

Ingredients for Email Marketing Success (image credit)

A business owner who publishes a monthly email newsletter asked me for advice. The business in question is a European based specialist for color trends and consults with designers in the fashion and home design industries. In this particular case, Carol, wanted to know how to increase the open rate for her newsletter editions. Her company publishes the newsletter once a month.

I think my response might be transferable to your business or website as well. That is why I thought I should share it with a wider audience.

The content and design of the newsletter I was giving the advice on is rather intriguing. However, it is a constant challenge to keep readers engaged and interested over a longer period of time. I gave Carol the following tips to think about.

5 Tips on how to engage your readers and increase your open rate

(1) 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.

I came up with the following suggestions for Carol’s situation in our initial consultation. Let the reader follow the editor, James for example, on his personal journey through the universe of color and time. This allows for some great metaphors and brings the otherwise dry text to life. Instead of writing in the third person like in academic papers bring in personal points of view and emotions by writing in the first person to tell a story.

Look at how I have started this article. I am telling you the reason why I am writing this article. It works pretty good, doesn’t it.

(2) Increase the frequency of your newsletter

Once a month is too infrequent to maintain and strengthen the relationship with your readers.

You don’t want to be perceived as the 57th 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 your industry is. Go beyond of just being a reporter.

(3) Vary the type of emails

When I said, “Write more often,” I did not mean to just multiply your efforts. You still send your “full blown” monthly report to your readers, but you contact them with different kind of useful information in-between.

While you keep sending your beautifully designed report with lots of pictures in PDF format once a month, you introduce a shorter type of message that highlights important information for your readers. For example:

How to tips
Interesting links
Hot or controversial news in your market
Videos on the web
Offer timely sensitive info
Case studies from your readers
Survey your readers and report results back

Provide them with content they can and want to talk about. Then, they might talk about your email newsletter and your company as well. It is about keeping the conversation going. Don’t be afraid to link to other than your own websites.

You will be positively surprised that your readers will write back and thank you for this kind of content even when you don’t ask them to do so. I know that from my own experience.

(4) Measure the feedback

Keep an eye for your email marketing metrics: open rate, click through rate, replies, number of new subscribers and members who just unsubscribed. This data helps you to find a style that works best with your reader base.

Are you sure that one newsletter serves both groups? In my example, designers in the fashion industry and designers in home decor? While your monthly report might be of identical value to them, it could be that they require to be treated quite differently. Maybe you will find cues that you should segment your email list into two groups.

(5) Incorporate Social Media

Refer to your newsletter in social media and vice versa. Allow people to share your content with their colleagues and friends easily.

Rounding it up

These tips are just a couple of things to start with. It means more work, but it will be worth the effort and will increase your footprint in your market.

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

Successful email marketing is about building relationships through value!

One last note about losing subscribes. Without a doubt some people will unsubscribe when you introduce changes, but others will become more engaged with you, which is your goal here. You are writing for those who are listening and giving you constructive feedback. You should not write in order to keep people from leaving your email list. That’s a game you cannot win.

Now I hope that you put these ideas to practice right away.

Sign up to my newsletter in the top, right corner of this page. I’ll rush my free report “Become More Productive to You” that helps you to eliminate the time-wasteful side of email altogether.

Yours
John W. Furst
E-Biz Booster Blog

B2B Marketing Fundamentals Don't Change

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:09:43 -0600

(image credit)

I just have found this video, which demonstrates …

Well, just watch it. It's only 2 minutes or even shorter. (I didn't look at the timer.)

And then, please, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

That's what the description at YouTube reveals,

«While technology, communications channels and media usage habits change over time, the fundamentals of profitable business-to-business marketing, including the importance of building awareness, credibility and relationships, do not. In this excerpted video from a live staging of McGraw-Hill’s classic “Man in the Chair” ad at the Business Marketing Association’s 2009 national conference, BMA drives home the fundamental similarity between how buyers and sellers built business relationships 50 years ago and how they continue to do so today, albeit with many new and revolutionary tools and techniques at their disposal. For more information on BMA’s “UNlearn” conference, go to www.marketing.org/conference»

The Man In The Chair Ad — Then and Now

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

BMAintheUSA on YouTube

BMAintheUSA is based in Chicago. The Business Marketing Association is a leading marketing organization serving the professional development and networking needs and interests of some 2,500 senior business-to-business marketing professionals and 21 chapter organizations throughout the U.S.A.

So, what do you think?

Leave a comment, now.

Yours
John W. Furst

Daylight-Savings-Time Starts in Europe Tonight

info@fcon21.biz (John W. Furst) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:31:00 -0600

At 2 AM switch to 3 AM in Europe on March 28, 2010.

It’s time to adjust the clocks in Europe again.

Tonight (or tomorrow morning if you will) clocks will be advanced from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. when daylight-saving-time begins in Europe this spring.

That means we (including me) lose one hour that we don’t get back until next fall when daylight-savings-time in Europe will end on Sunday, October 31, 2010. (Of course we will get it back without interest being paid. Maybe we’ll save a bit on the electric bill, but I’m not really sure about that.)

Attention to you folks in the USA and Canada: The time difference to Europe will get back to normal again.

Here are some examples to demonstrate the ‘usual time differences’ between USA, Canada and Europe.

America	Europe	Time Difference [hours]
New York	London	5
New York	Berlin	6
Chicago	London	6
Chicago	Berlin	7
Denver	London	7
Denver	Berlin	8
Los Angeles	London	8
Los Angeles	Berlin	9
Example: 10 a.m. in Denver is 6 p.m. in Berlin

You’ll find additional information and tools at timeanddate.com (↑).

_____
Browsing tip: Links designated with (↑) will open in a new browser window.

I think the next transition is on April 4th, when daylight-saving-time ends this year in Australia.

Kind of confusing, isn’t it.

Have a ‘short’ night sleep
(if you are in Europe.)

Yours
John W. Furst