Email Marketing Mobile Devices Need Mobile Friendly Websites Mobile devices are quickly being adopted by consumers. The Nielsen Company provides a view of the device usage and audiences in the U.S for 2010. * Number of Mobile Phone Users (13+): 228M * Percentage of U.S. Mobile Subscribers with Smartphones: 31% * Number of mobile phone web users: 83.2M
Advertising Déjà Vu Have you ever had the feeling that you have experienced a sales and marketing challenge before, but were uncertain about what to do next? Have the conventional tools become less effective for you? You tried direct mail, networking, print advertising, and cold calling. Nothing seems to work anymore. Welcome to
Email Marketing Trust Enables Email Marketing 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
Email Marketing Deja New Marketing I just finished my new book "Déjà New Marketing: Increase Sales with Social Media, Search Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Blogs, and More". It is now with the publisher and should be available in 120 days or so. The book took 3 years to write and is an update to
Email Marketing Impermanence A basic teaching of Zen Buddhism is that things are always changing. Just because we can see, hear, or feel something today does not mean that it will be there tomorrow. Essentially, nothing is permanent. And, so it is with our economic slowdown or meltdown or whatever you want to
Email Marketing Differentiation By Personalization So how can you differentiate your service or product from the thundering herd? Better stated, how can you create a clear competitive advantage that makes choosing your offering over the others an easy decision? Michael Porter, acclaimed Harvard strategist, describes a competitive advantage as something about a product or service
Direct Mail Your Signature Please At the end of every e-mail is the signature line which tells the reader how to contact you. It also tells them a lot about you and your brand. Surprisingly, many people don’t take advantage of this last step in the communication process in an e-mail letter. The minimum
Email Marketing I Got an E-mail From Jesus My spam filter let an e-mail from am "unknown sender" named Jesus get through to my mail box today. My first reaction was to immediately delete it or hit the spam key, but instead I opened it. I thought to myself, "What if…?" What if the
Email Marketing How to Write Great E-mails E-mails dominate B2B communication. E-mail volume dwarfs that of the telephone, fax, and direct mailer. If you are like me, you are getting dozens if not hundreds of e-mail messages a day; most are spam and are deleted. The rest are scanned or put aside to be read later. The
Branding Humor, Funny Stuff, and Sarcasm in Marketing In the ancient Greek poem "The Odyssey," the story's hero, Odysseus, tells the Cyclops that his name is "Nobody." When Odysseus instructs his men to drive a fiery iron spit into the monster's single eye, the Cyclops yells out in vain, "
Email Marketing Profile of a Spammer Ever wondered who creates the spam that you get in your e-mail inbox? It turns out that spammers are “very special” people and they might just be your nerdy neighbor next door. SpamBlockers created the following profile which describes the typical spammer: * Predominantly male * 16 - 35 years old * Single
Email Marketing Writing Great E-mail Marketing Copy Writing great e-mail marketing copy is hard work. You can always outsource it to a professional copywriter, but you will discover that the good ones are already booked and that they are very expensive. If your budget dictates doing this writing in-house, here are a few ideas, in no particular
Email Marketing E-mail Marketing and Children For many e-mail and web marketers the youth market represents a major financial opportunity. Yet, the legal risks are high. The website “Xanga” was recently fined $1 Million for COPPA violations, for repeatedly allowing children under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's consent.
Email Marketing When Opt-in E-mail Becomes SPAM E-mail marketers figure that once a list member has opted-in that this means that their readers will read and value their e-mail marketing letters. Well, this is not always the case. According to blogger Stefan Eyram, "BACN” is a marketing e-mail that many readers agreed to receive, but is
Email Marketing Personalize Your E-mail Marketing Letters A highly effective marketing technique used by successful e-mail marketers is to personalize the e-mail letter. This personalization can be accomplished in many ways. One way to personalize an e-mail letter is to use the recipient's organization logo or web site. The purpose of a personalized image is
Email Marketing Spam, Spam, Spam Thanks to Monty Python, the U.K. based comedy troupe from the seventies, “spam” became the symbol for mediocrity. Later spam became the symbol for unwanted e-mail from unknown senders. Spam is actually the trademark name for the Hormel Corporation canned meat product. SPAM was used by the U.S.
Email Marketing Privacy Policy: A Must Have for a Website Your website must have a posted privacy policy. No exceptions please. With e-mail marketing the most practiced form of customer communication and the most common way that contact information is gathered, a privacy policy needs to explain what you plan to do with customer contact information. A privacy policy is
Email Marketing Staying in Touch with E-mail Newsletters Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects; they can create a new relationship or maintain an existing one. When sending a regular newsletter to your subscribers, always make sure that it's sent on the same day, at the same time. Your
Direct Mail P.S. Everyone Reads the Postscript 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.
Email Marketing Mobile Devices and E-mail Marketing 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
Email Marketing Writing Better E-mail Copy 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
Email Marketing Smaller E-mail Marketing Lists Are Better 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
Email Marketing Writing Better E-mail Marketing Campaigns 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
Email Marketing Trust Is Everything in E-mail Marketing 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
Email Marketing Are You a Spammer? My money says that there is about a 50% chance that you are a spammer and don’t know it. Why do I think so? It is my observation, that although the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is old news, half of the commercial e-mail marketers either ignore the law or