Postscripts have been a very effective tool in direct mail marketing industry for many years. More often than not, the call to action is repeated in the postscript along with a special incentive. A postscript (from post scriptum, a Latin expression meaning “after writing” and abbreviated P.S. or p.s.) is a sentence, paragraph, or occasionally…
Mobile devices have changed the face of e-mail marketing. Why? Read on. A recent survey by American Online uncovered the following about the users of PDAs: • 59% of people e-mailing from portable devices are checking e-mail in bed while in their pajamas • 53% are checking e-mail while in the bathroom • 37% are…
The search marketing trade press waxes poetic about the value of keywords—the words or terms which people use when conducting an internet search with search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. These lauded words get you to a website but they seldom get you to take any other action. Once you are on the site…
Just when you thought your website was fully optimized, Google has decided to change their search engine ranking algorithm— again. Now, more than ever, it makes sense to look for help with search engine optimization (SEO) since what worked last year won’t be working as well in 2008. Google has shaken things up by introducing…
E-mail marketing is more than just getting past the spam filters. In fact, writing better e-mail copy only begins once the customer opens the e-mail. Writing better e-mails is all about good writing for a busy reader. Unlike a novel or a letter to your mom from summer camp, readers of commercial marketing e-mails are…
Contrary to popular opinion, large e-mail databases are typically not better. Often large databases will include “dead” e-mail addresses which exaggerate the “monetary value” of the list. It makes good business sense to cull your list regularly. This includes a prompt management of “opt-out requests” which are people who are not receiving value from the…
Successful e-mail marketing campaigns start with well written, relevant, and timely copy; technology is great but the words will provide the value to the reader. Great writing requires great proofreading which is extremely hard work (you can trust me on this one since it is very hard for me). One tip on proofreading your own…
It seems that we live in a thankless world and this void seems most pronounced in day-to-day business. The ever increasing pace of commerce in the new millennium seems to leave little time for a thank you or even common courtesy. Global competitiveness seems to have sapped us of empathy and compassion. Yes, this is…
Link baiting lures website visitors to leave URLs on a website. The reward for the website is a higher ranking by the search engines. The major search engines have algorithms for ranking that includes the quantity and the quality of inbound links for an individual website. The goal for the website is to have many…
Trust is hard to define, but we know it when we see it or feel it. And this is particularly true with e-mail marketing. The truest measure of trust in commercial e-mail marketing may be the “reputation score” which is calculated by all the individual ISPs. A reputation score is a complex algorithm used by…