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I'm going to do something different. Instead of discussing just one aspect - such as teaching you how to set up an email marketing campaign or give you an email marketing template - I'll be sharing some tips and tactics that I've learnt over the years while managing my newsletters. Not all strategies are created equal. For example, implementing Tip #1 might not increase your bottom line by much if your newsletter doesn't integrate the tips very well. On the other hand, if your current crop of subscribers were acquired from those cheap holiday mega-giveaways, you might be surprised to learn how much an effect Tip #4 can have on the profits generated through your newsletter. You might already know a few tips from this list - that's good, because now you know you're on the right track. In essence, these are the specific aspects of your newsletter strategy that you should "check" regularly to see if you're doing them (and doing them right). And make sure you monitor your own results to find out what works and doesn't work - you are bound to learn something every time you send out an issue (assuming that you're continuously plugging away and testing things). Below are my Top 10 practices and tactics that I've picked up over the years: 1 - Readers Come First People care less about you and more about themselves. In each issue, review each section with the specific criteria of usefulness to the reader. If it's not at least a 3 out of 5, either ditch it or push it to the end of the issue. In fact, you might try to structure your newsletter by sticking in what you think is most useful to the reader at the top, and working downwards from that. 2 - What Have I Done for You Lately? Depending on how frequent your newsletter issues are, you will need one new "big thing" to keep the publication fresh. Whether its in the form of a new service, a tool or a free ebook / report, make sure to provide something valuable (on a large scale) to your subscribers periodically (say every year, or every 6 months). You could even put the offering on a new website, and thus generate rapid publicity (and free links) to your site as a result of such a promotion. On a side note, be on the lookout for several new tools and services that I'll be announcing - a keyword tool (Keyword Elite) and an article writing service are just two of them. Stay tuned. I'm very excited to show you guys! 3 - Quality Source of Subscribers It's absolutely critical to the success of your email newsletter to figure out where your new subscribers will come from. Many subscribers to SEO Elite come from the thousands of inbound links to its home page, many more still arrive from the search engines and others are acquired through syndicated articles across a network of reputed sites. 4 - Keep It Simple, Very Simple That goes for layout, sentence structure, copy style and editorial guidelines. Readers in this medium need to "get it" fast. If you try to get them overly involved with complex schemes or hard-to-understand copy, you'll lose them. It's like radio, in a way. It's very easy to lose someone's attention in radio because there are no visuals. Online is a lean-in, rush-to-read-it medium. People lean forward into their computer monitors, usually with a very specific intention. Serve that intention or something very close to that intention - with speed. If you're building your online presence through podcasts (audio blogging) and/or vidcasts (video blogging), this advice applies in spades. Make everything easily accessible, and allow for a link to a page that helps out first-timers or people who are having any trouble. 5 - Pick Your Email Service Provider Carefully Read their white papers on email marketing and take it for a trial spin before committing resources. See which businesses similar to yours use a similar service - call them up and see what they have to say about that service. In short, do your homework before you leap. You don't want to be caught in a situation where you build up your list through one service provider before realizing that there's another email service that offers better terms, is more scalable and generally more suited to your needs. 6 - Show Your Face I'm guilty of not following this advice on the SEO Elite newsletter. However, understand that the Internet is (still) a pretty spooky place. Showing your face, rather than some slick graphic, is a good bet. People like to know there's a human at the other end of the line. 7 - Put the Subscriber First Even if your email newsletter is complimentary, first serve the subscriber as though he/she was paying for your product. If you don't, your readership will sense you have other agendas and lose their loyalty. Give your readers everything you have, and don't hold anything back. It's important you give MUCH more than you receive... so give them every ounce that you have in you. 8 - Make Your Newsletter Indispensable If your newsletter becomes a must-read, other sites will point to you, which will increase your standing in search engine results and bring you even more traffic and subscribers... but you must first be such a solid resource that other sites can justify pointing to you as that industry's "go-to" resource. 9 - Subject Headers Rule No matter who is in the "From" field, you know you need a compelling subject header. Keep it short, sweet and direct. No hyperbole or overly "sales-like" material. I've seen the very same solo email campaign draw 20% better response rates (and more) using a different subject header. BTW, I notice my subscribers love "How To" subject headers. It makes sense. After all, people who read an SEO newsletter are always interested in knowing how to do things or how to do things better. Never, and I repeat, never use the subject line: "Article 107 of 182" or something along those lines. Use something intriuging. Nobody cares if this is Article 107, or whatever the case may be. The purpose of the subject line is to get people to open the email. 10 - Never allow others to pay you to advertise in your newsletter Every once in a great while, it's ok to do a little advertising in your newsletter, but if you decide to do this, it had better be either for your own product OR for a product that you are a direct affiliate of. Wasting your 1 mailing containing an advertisement for something, on someone else's ad is a big no-no. You could earn far more money AND chances are you could be telling your subscribers about a much more helpful product if it's one you picked out yourself. Make sure that you review your publishing strategy and find out if you're not implementing any one or more of these tips - they could make a significant difference to your bottom line. Advanced Email Marketing Strategies Labels: affiliate, campaign, email, marketing, newsletter, strategies, tactics, tips By Trey Pennewell (c) 2006-2007 Links And TraffícCreating back links to your website is one of the best ways to gain a higher ranking in the search engines. Almost any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert will agree with this point. The SEO experts will also tell you that your placement in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) can make or break your website. It is commonly thought by many that if your website does not rank on one of the first two pages of the SERPs that your website will rarely be seen by visitors. For most people searching the web, this means that you must be in the top 20 search results. Think about it, when you do a search and you cannot find what you are looking for after a couple of pages, what do you do? I know what I do, I type in a different keyword or a variation of what I was looking for in hopes of getting better results. Google and Yahoo love to see a website that has back links leading to it. You can chëck this for yourself, take a look at a popular keyword phrase that everyone is trying to get ranked for. Most likely you will see that the top few sites have a large number of back links leading to that site. Conduct your own case study and look at your Number 1 competitor; does that site have more back links than you do? You can determine the number of back links that a site has by entering the following into the search engine of your choosing: link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com Of course back links are just one part of the equation, but they are a big part of the equation in getting good SERP results. So, if creating back links is such a good idea, why isn't everyone doing it? Well, not everyone is doing it, because it can be a real pain to create back links. Let's look at some of the more common methods of building back links: Email A Fellow Webmaster It is recommended that the back links that you get to your site be from a site that is relevant to the topic of your own website. Having a website about cars linked to a site about fishing does not help you in the SERPs, as much as having a site about cars linking to a site about tires. The problem here is that you can literally spend hours upon hours emailing various webmasters and asking them to give you a back link. In addition, it is common practice that you offër a reciprocal link to their website. This is fine for some people, but others do not want to clutter their pages with links that take visitors away from their website. Additionally, you will want to look and see if the site that you are trying to get a link from has a good Google page rank (PR). Google says that a back link from a related site with good PR counts as a strong "vote" for your site; the more votes that you get, the higher your SERP and the higher your PR will be at the next update. Once you create a salës pitch to a Webmaster for a link exchange, you have to hurry up and wait. You can email 100 webmasters and get a varied response, that is, if you get a response at all. It has been cited that reciprocal linking campaigns have about a 2-5% acceptance rate. In other words, out of those 100 people you took the time to research and to email, only 2-5 of them will give you the back link that you are looking for. Of course, a few more may be willing to do it for a fee. Directories Directories are another "tried and true" method of generating back links to websites. Again this is a process that will take hours of work. The two most popular directories are DMOZ.com and the Yahoo directory. DMOZ is human edited; this is good, because they work hard at only approving quality sites. The downside is that they often lack the actual human beings to approve or disapprove all of the sites that are submitted. There simply are not enough people volunteering for DMOZ to stay on top of all the submissions. Yahoo will allow for directory submissions for frëe if your website is not deemed to be a business website. If your website is deemed to be a business website, plan on shelling out about $300 to be "considered" for a listing in their directory. They do not guarantëe that your website will be listed in their directory. Yahoo only guarantees that they will consider your website for inclusion in their directory. You will find that many webmasters operate their own directories. You can find a líst of many directories on message boards like the one at DigitalPoint.com. Many of these directories provide frëe listings, or they wish for a reciprocal link in exchange for placing your link. At many of these directories, you can also pay for a sponsored link. The problem here? These directories are usually operated by software and are not human edited. This means that your site could end up in the wrong category or that your site is simply listed and forgotten about. These link directories often boast of having decent PR on their homepage, but the actual page that your site will be listed on usually has a 0 PR. These small directories also have numerous requirements, and you need to read the fine print. One mistake and the 15 minutes you spent constructing your submission could be wasted, when your submission is rejected. Reprint Articles For Back Links This is an option to create back links that many webmasters overlook. Probably the primary reason that webmasters do not take full advantage of this is because they do not feel comfortable with writing articles. Another reason is that the Webmaster may not have the time to write a quality article. Consider this, one well-written article can be submitted to literally thousands of publishers of ezines and newsletters, niche webmasters, and frëe reprint article sites and can result in dozens, hundreds or thousands of back links. Now, not every publisher will pick up your article, but for the ones that do use your article, you will get a back link from their website. The back link is achieved in the "about the author" box that is required to stay in place with your article. The more informative people find your article, the more linking results you can expect to achieve from your reprint article. A webmaster that says he or she doesn't have the time to spend an hour or two writing an article needs to take a look at how many hours have been spent submitting to directories or writing to other webmasters asking for back links. Don't feel comfortable writing your own article? Then hire a ghostwriter. Once the article is written, then you should consider paying a distribution service to distribute your article for you. Again, this is a relatively small price to pay in order to get those all-important back links. Some recommended article distribution services in alphabetical order include: ArticleSubmissionSites.com EzineTrendz.com PRLeads.com SubmitYourArticle.com thePhantomWriters.com In the end, you can save yourself time, monëy, and a lot of headaches by using articles to create back links to your site. You may be surprised by how many websites are starving for content and are more than happy to place your frëe reprint article on their website. Odds are that if they are placing your article on their website, then they are in your same niche market --- which only adds to the value that the search engines will place on that back link. Don't forget that people actually read these articles, and you can gain a boost in traffíc as a bonus to all of your new back links. In Conclusion... I know, you don't want to shell out the monëy to use reprint articles as a linking method, but how much monëy have you spent on being listed as a "sponsored" website in directories? How much time have you wasted in trying to drum up new back links through other methods? After all, your time is your monëy. You can spend your time or your monëy to do the tasks that you need to do to be successful. And literally, sometimes it makes a whole lot of sense to outsource specialized tasks to experts in their fields. No website is an island. You cannot just build your website and expect people to be knocking down your door to buy your products or services. You have to advertise. People have got to have a way to find your website. If you take the time and expend the effort to build your website in such a way as to attract the search engines and to provide what the search engines consider to be a good website, then you will find that the search engine companies can be your business' best friend. And whether you like it or not, one of the ways that the search engine companies deem a website to be a good website, is by the number of back links pointing to the website. You can have the best website on the internet, selling the best products and services at the best prices, but if people cannot find you, then your website is pointless. If you desire to be successful, then you need to do whatever is necessary to build links to your website. Give the search engines what they want (back links to your website), and the search engines will give you what you want (targeted traffíc). About The Author Trey Pennewell is a writer who writes for the "Links And Traffíc" guaranteed link building service. They use reprint articles to develop quality links from quality websites. Their writers know what it takes to write informative articles that generate above average linking results, and they put their monëy where their mouths are, by guaranteeing their results. Learn more at: http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com. Feel frëe to reprint this article on your website, so long as this About The Author information and all live links remain with the article. Labels: article, back, back links, back-links, directory, email, link exchange, linking, search engine result pages, search engine results, SERPS, success, website, website link popularity The first point you must remember is that email marketing is just a tool – not a new concept of doing business like Web 2.0 but a time-tested, hardened method for generating profits. In other words, email marketing is just like any other online business tool – affiliate programs, pay-per-click advertising, sales letters, minisites – one of many assets at your disposal.What makes email marketing so interesting (and important) is its focus on building a positive relationship with your customers. From a marketing perspective, email marketing is simply an online extension of the traditional marketing principle of acquiring “prospects” by taking their contact information and then sending them promotional information via email. Think product catalogs, magazine subscriptions (advertising within a magazine is the “promotional material”) and newspapers (classifieds) – all of these involve the same two steps: Acquiring the prospect's contact information (either by offering a freebie or a discount, or just by asking). Send regular promotional offers to the “list” – a collection of prospects whose contact information you have. This is ridiculously simple. There are many more levels and much more depth to the subject (and we will be covering all of it today and in the next two lessons), but this is the essence of it. The issue that immediately comes out of this is: What motivation does the prospect have, first for providing their contact details, and second, for buying any products that are pitched to her? None at all. Consider a social parallel – if you go up to a complete stranger and ask them to give you their name and email address (or worse, their home address as well) so that you can send them emails about what to buy, your chances of success are going to be very, very slim. Instead, you have to give the prospect a reason to hand over her email address. More so to tell you her name. And an even better reason for the permission to send her any sort of product or service promotions. In other words, you have to use the principles of “Permission Marketing” (a term popularized by Seth Godin) – provide the prospect with a valuable enough proposition for her to consider giving you the permission to “market” to her i.e. sell to her. All of this leads to the first principle of email marketing: Before anything else, give the subscriber something that she respects and values. Creating Value. Everyone has problems. Everyone is looking for answers to these problems. Marketing – effective marketing – is positioning your product as THE solution to a particular problem. Combine this with the first principle of email marketing, and you have situation where your first task is to create value for the prospect. In some cases, the “promise” and “proof” of a solution can be enough (like a sales letter). In other cases, you might want to try providing a rudimentary solution in the form of providing some information, and build that value over time by continuously giving more and more to your prospects (like an email newsletter). Email marketing is all about providing useful information to your subscribers. First, you encourage them to give you their email addresses by promising a solution to their problems (for example, a short report on the real estate market if you are targeting investors). In turn, this translates into permission given by the subscriber to allow you to send them further information via email. The central core of this whole process is valuable, relevant information. Information that the subscriber is interested in. Information that the subscriber needs . Now many marketers make a hash out of providing valuable information and instead concentrate on “selling” to the list. Do NOT make that mistake. You first priority is to develop a bond of trust with your subscribers – this will only happen if you learn to give first and foremost. Building Trust. Once you've learned how to give, you're ready to build your “list” by using any one or more of a number of lead generation techniques, all of which involve driving traffic to a special “landing page” where you make your “information pitch” (as opposed to a sales pitch) and request the prospect's name and email address. But building your list isn't the only thing you must do. Almost simultaneously, from the moment you have convinced someone to hand over their email address, you are on the road of building a positive relationship with your list. A relationship that is based on trust, where trust can include the following: Your subscribers consider you an expert in your field (and therefore someone they are inclined to believe and listen to). Your subscribers implicitly trust you to treat them fairly – this results from a commitment to give first, and sell later. In other words, invest time and effort in your list, and make it show. Your subscribers expect quality from you, and by extension, they consider any products or services you promote as valuable. This trust is paramount in email marketing. If you can gain the trust of your subscribers, they will respond to your product offers (provided that you are selling something valuable and not just trash) and, eventually, make you rich. The money really is in the list. In the third lesson of this series where I discuss advanced email marketing strategies, I'll cover in detail how you can follow simple steps to ensure that your subscribers trust you, and also a checklist of things that can break that trust (i.e. a NOT to do checklist). Repeat Customers.  The greatest value in email marketing is that of repeat customers. In other words, through email marketing you can basically send product promotions to your list regularly and continue making money out of the same core list of subscribers. Of course, it's a bit more complicated in that, but this principle of acquiring repeat customers is enlightening because it showcases an important fact about business: You can market different products to the same group of people. If you position it right over a period of time, you will have a situation where a certain group of people are buying new products from you every few months. Now this works, but only if you are able to identify your “target market” and are creating products and services that are the answers to the types of problems your subscribers need solutions to. Failing to do that will result in unhappy subscribers and a cold list – a list full of subscribers that are not interested in your emails, don't want to buy what you are selling and are generally ignoring your emails. Building a list you can contact again and again for continuing profits needs a lot of effort to build and maintain. A large part of creating repeat customers in email marketing is to maintain a long-term relationship with your list – this involves regularly providing information that is useful to your subscribers. When following email marketing, do not forget that other rules of marketing still apply – if you don't give your customer what they want, they won't hang around your website (or in this case, on your list) anymore. Labels: email There are numerous ways to earn money with your targeted mailing list. Simply having a large mailing list is no guarantee you'll earn money with it, however. The secret to earning money with your targeted mailing list is utilize it as a tool to not only get [people to your site but to tempt them into buying once they visit.Below are some suggestions you can use to make the best of your targeted mailing list. The first way to make money with your mailing list is to constantly add new subscribers to your list. It is necessary to have a large amount of visitors to your site to do this. If you send out regular mailings to your customers you can encourage them to forward the message by offering specials or freebies for new subscribers. You also need to make certain that your visitors can quickly find subscription information for your mailing list on your website. Compelling offers will work wonders for helping you use your targeted mailing list to make money. These can include free e-books, newsletters and free articles on relative subjects or a series of free how-to reports related to your product. Any of these things can be sent through e-mail, or you can place them on your site to encourage people to go there and download the item. Just make certain they won't be hard to find. While extending these offers, be sure to tell your readers how much you would like to have them forward the newsletter. Make certain to include an easy-to-read signature on the mailing that lists your name, your company's name and any other contact information. As long as the message is important and offers valuable your readers will gladly pass it along to others. There are some other ways of earning money with your mailing list that you may want to think about. Some people with huge, established mailing lists have started renting, selling and exchanging mailing lists. A few words of caution about doing this: 1 - Make certain you find out any rules, regulations or laws regarding the trading mailing lists. 2 - Think about the feelings of your customers before agreeing to sell or swap your list. Many will feel like you have violated a trust by not asking for their permission ahead of time. Making money with your targeted mailing list is quick and easy. With little time and effort you will see profits increase and your customer list grow. Labels: email
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Part 4: Advanced Email Marketing StrategiesNo Website Is An Island - Back Linking is Essential for SuccessOnline Business and Email MarketingUsing Your Targeted Mailing List to Make Money" style="font-size:13px;line-height:16px" face="arial,sans-serif" color="#000000" href="http://www.moxie-drive.com/articles/">Submit Your Articles To Moxie Drive Expressions Part 4: Advanced Email Marketing StrategiesNo Website Is An Island - Back Linking is Essential for SuccessOnline Business and Email MarketingUsing Your Targeted Mailing List to Make Money" target="_blank" href="http://www.moxie-drive.com/blog/">Bart The Bear Says Home Page Click here to email me Exchange Links The official NowSourcing blog © Copyright: 
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