The great and terrible thing about online marketing is how quickly things change. Here’s a post from the VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog that points out some things that not so long ago were widely held to be universal truths — but may not be so any more: Mythbusters: Do Old Wives’ Email Marketing Tales Hold True?.
- Using words like ‘free’, ‘dear’ or ‘save’ in the subject line will cause your email to be marked as spam.
- Test everything!
- Send email only during the week.
- All unsubscribes are bad.
- Sending too many emails too often will make you to look like spam.
As always with things like this, test before you decide to remove it from your rulebook.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Jul 1st, 2012. Comment. 
There are many things to address to create an effective marketing email. An example is how to acquire a sizable email listing. How can you use email marketing to its fullest advantage? Read on to find simple solutions to these quandaries, and more. By using these tricks, you will find yourself with an extremely effective and well thought out marketing campaign.
Always include any preexisting brand logos and colors in your email messages. Your subscribers know your site already and they associate certain colors, logos, and designs with it. Matching your emails to your website makes them seem more familiar and reduces the risk that a subscriber will accidentally delete them.
Include a confirmation page prior to finalizing an email subscription with a visitor. People will realize what they are signing up for and be less likely to receive emails they did not want. This may appear counter-productive, but this can ensure your business will avoid any misuse reports.
Place a prominent unsubscribe link in your email messages so customers can easily get off your list, if they don’t want your messages anymore. Even though sending emails is basically free, they can still take money out of your pocket. More importantly, if you’re seen as a spammer, it’ll hurt your reputation as a business. Customers may block your email address if they get annoyed.
Emails are very fast, personal methods of communicating with your customers. When creating an email message, you want it to be short. Nobody really wants to view an extremely long wordy message about something that is not interesting. Provide links to your web site so your customers can get the details there.
Make sure your emails contain your company logo and features your brand name prominently. Whatever distinctive design elements and styles your company already uses, such as logos, fonts, and color schemes, should be incorporated into the emails you send out, too. That way, you can take advantage of immediate familiarity on the part of your audience.
Do not send any more than a single email message a week. Remember that your readers probably get a lot of emails everyday. If you are sending too many emails, people will get annoyed and block these messages or unsubscribe from your list.
Anyone who is interested in bettering his or her email marketing strategy should compile an organic list. A commercial email list may not include many people who are actually good prospects for your business. Instead, give your customers a place to sign up for your listings, both on the Internet, and in your store.
Be sure that each person on your mailing list has granted you permission to send them emails. This reduces the chances of your emails being marked as spam.
It’s very important that you don’t underestimate just how important layout is when it comes to email marketing. It is tempting to use graphics, but spam filters can block logos, pictures, and animation more now than ever. Put anything that is vital in plain text to ensure that your customers see it. You can provide the audience with links to an external site to view your graphics.
Always get permission before contacting any customer via email. Most people disregard unwanted emails and often delete them unread. It may violate the policies of your ISP if you do mass emailings to people who have not asked to receive your emails.
You want to figure out a way to provide as many opportunities for people to subscribe for updates from your webpage without feeling pressured at the same time. Assure your customers that their information will never be compromised and that you are worthy of trust. Make certain to also inform them how they will benefit from signing up with you. Success in email marketing solely relies on the ability to acquire customer information.
Keep your messages short and to the point. Nobody will read more then a paragraph or two within your email marketing message. They may not have the time to waste, or may have no interest in what you are trying to communicate to them. Make your mail brief, and on topic, to assure that your email won’t be skipped next time they see it in their inbox.
Follow your competition by subscribing to their emails. If you join their email list, track them with ease. Seeing first-hand their email messages will allow you to make your email communication much better than theirs. Try to find needs that are going unfulfilled and capitalize on them. If your competitors offer incentives or promotions, be competitive with yours and offer something better.
You can follow up with past clients by sending a freebie through email. Include a statement as to how they can take advantage of this deal. Encourage them to act swiftly by including a message regarding the available number of free offers.
Email subscription forms should include information as to what your customers can expect from you. Inform your subscribers about the kinds of emails that will be sent, along with the frequency of the emails. This prevents new subscribers from experiencing shock over the content or quality of your emails.
Now that you can see the potential of email marketing, take the time to create a campaign that your customers will appreciate. Think about what you would like to see and market yourself. You will quickly notice an improvement in the response to your marketing emails.
The R.O.I from traditional marketing channels that are often used by business owners has diminished over time. These days the success rate of advertising through television, print media, radio and yellow pages is at an all time low. If you are still using just the traditional methods to advertise your business, you are definitely leaving a lot of money on the table.
Just how much money you may ask? Well, consider a recent study by the Direct Marketing Association concluded email marketing to generate a mind blowing 4200% R.O.I – that works out to almost generated for every spent!
Can you now see the potential of using email marketing for your business?.
Of course, you need a website to fully benefit from your email marketing campaigns. So get an affordable small business web design from a web design company and then setup your email marketing campaign for your business.
Filed under Chris Stoddard by on May 15th, 2012. Comment.
If you make an ad for beer, chances are you’re not going to show a whole lot of beer. After all:
- All beer looks about the same, and it doesn’t look interesting.
- All beer tastes pretty much the same.
- All beer has roughly the same affect on you.
So beer ads tend to be abstract and indirect. It’s babes, sports, and jokes, not beer.
You don’t have to do that if what you’re pushing is saving the lives of kids who have cancer. Being straightforward and literal covers it for you with emotion and depth.
But not according to an ad agency that recently did some work for the Dutch cancer charity KIKA (Kinderen Kanker Vrij, or Children Cancer Free). They took the beer-ad approach of pushing something other than the issue at hand.
Check out this print ad:
No kids. No humans at all. No cancer, no need, no tragedy, no triumph.
Just a mild joke. I chuckled a little, once I figured it out.
Helping kids in need is one of the most potent motivators in existence. If your cause has anything to do with helping children, you are automatically several steps ahead of everyone else in the race to influence donors.
Helping children is not anything like selling beer.
So if an ad agency comes to you with a bold plan to replace children with a joke, or some wordplay, or an abstraction, or symbolism — tell them no thanks. No matter how sophisticated and clever they make it sound.
Thanks to Osocio for the tip. You can also find other examples of the campaign there.
More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on May 1st, 2012. Comment.
The Internet is constantly changing, which means you should constantly change the ways you use it to market your products. To do that, you should be sure to keep track of new marketing tips and tricks. Here are some great pieces of advice that will help give your old Internet marketing techniques a boost.
A good Internet marketing tip that is feasible for smaller businesses is to follow up with customers whenever you make a sale. Send the customer an email or phone call thanking them for their business and ask them how they feel about their purchase. This is a great way to make your business seem like it cares.
Increase your exposure and market your products by participating in online message boards and forums. Post and offer answers and suggestions to others comments, ask questions, and contribute relevant information. Many message boards allow a signature on every post, so make sure you link back to your website when replying and posting online.
A monthly newsletter can often be an effective way of increasing customer loyalty and revenue. Several businesses offer affordable, easy to use newsletter software that businesses can email out to their client base. By sharing about new products and services and keeping their name in customers’ minds, businesses who send out newsletters can often see an increase in profit.
Before using flashy, resource-intensive multimedia formats like Flash, make sure that the information you are giving to your website visitors cannot be communicated any other way. Multimedia content demands more attention and patience from your visitors. Make sure the rewards you offer them are worth the extra effort they have to make.
For successful internet marketing, make your customers feel comfortable with you. Consider putting your business address on your website, along with your business phone number. This is much better than simply using a P.O. box address, and will allow your customers to feel better about purchasing from you.
How To Make Money
To network and improve the visibility of your brand, go to real-world internet marketing events. There are several such events every year, such as PubCon, where internet marketers can interact with their virtual colleagues and share ideas on how to make money. If you’re lucky, you can even find a business partner.
You can sell anything online and if you establish an effective internet marketing program, you can sell even faster and more effectively. Taking your business’s marketing efforts online is practically a necessity today. If you take the time to learn the best methods for doing it, you can minimize the time and effort you need to spend to get great results.
Go here to obtain more information and facts on how to make money
Filed under Chris Stoddard by on Apr 27th, 2012. Comment.
At Non-Profit Humour, a strangely familiar tale of a nonprofit organization that was lulled into a state of stupidity by an ad agency: Advertising campaign reaches Mrs. Betty Turner, 93, and 17,678 people who don’t care.
In this satire — and despite the realism, it is satire — an organization runs a meaningless awareness campaign that costs a lot and has absolutely no impact:
The campaign, which lasted an entire week, was seen by an estimated 17,679 people and many hundreds of cats and dogs. Since the Foundation’s website doesn’t have web metrics Snidely says they couldn’t actually tell whether the ad campaign had any impact, but she’s optimistic that the ads made a big impression on the public.
It’s all too common. A nonprofit is persuaded that “awareness” is a powerful thing. So they develop a multimedia campaign built on abstract concepts (sometimes including opaque wordplay and/or weirdly photoshopped images). After paying the agency for developing the ads, there’s little budget left, so the impacts are spread thin.
The agency then counts “impacts” — which means how many people might have seen or heard the campaign: If the publication running an ad has a circulation of 15,000, that’s 15,000 impacts. Never mind that the huge majority didn’t see the ad at all, they merely had access to it. And if that ad is abstract and lacks a clear challenge or call to action, even most who see it will be unaffected by it; it’s just more noise in their noisy days.
Counting impacts yields pretty big numbers, so they report the large number as if it has any kind of meaning, creating visions of 15,000 people who are now fanatical supporters, when in reality, there are zero new supporters, and awareness was raised in about three people — like the woman in the story who was hit by a falling billboard.
If you’re serious about recruiting people to join you in your cause, you will not waste time or money on vague awareness campaigns. You’ll do measurable, donor-oriented marketing that actually brings supporters in the door.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Apr 23rd, 2012. Comment.