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Minggu, 03 Februari 2008

Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

Effective Email Marketing Campaigns
by: Len Hutton



Are you interested in using email marketing to enhance the
traffic and sales of your website? It can be a confusing process
if you don’t know where to start. You will need to establish
your goals before you send the first email. What are you hoping
to accomplish? Make sure these goals are clear and realistic.
This will help you measure the success of the email marketing
campaign. This is a great way to learn what works and what
doesn’t for future email marketing campaigns. While your
particular goals will vary, some common ones include increasing
sales, getting more traffic to the website; improve awareness of
about your company and what products or services you offer, and
building a solid relationship with your customers.

As you start measuring the success of your email marketing
campaign, make sure you are comparing the data only against your
own information not that of the industry. For example did your
sales increase by 10% and traffic to your site increase by 25%
after your email marketing campaign rather than discovering the
rate that sales and traffic increased for the entire industry
you are in.

Don’t be discouraged if your first email marketing campaign
doesn’t do as well as you hoped, especially if you are a new
business. It takes time to build trust with consumers. Make sure
you use your original email address when you send out the
emails. This will help it get past the spam filters.

Make sure you take the time to update your email listings.
Remove any requests to opt out quickly and efficiently to
respect the consumer’s privacy. You will be wasting your time to
email to incorrect addresses or those who don’t want your
materials. Never change the first part of a person’s email
address even if the mail is undeliverable. However it is a good
idea to look for misspellings in the email service provider name
such as Yahoo being Yaho or Hotmail being Hotmall.

Some businesses like to use an email marketing template. Don’t
get too comfortable with a successful marketing campaign though!
This is because customers become bored easily with the same
format. You need to keep their interest by mixing things up a
bit in future email marketing campaigns. Opt in email marketing
software collects email addresses from your website. This is a
great method that is simple for getting you a data base started.
As your data base grows you can choose to send your future email
marketing campaigns to everyone on the list or just a select
target group based on their purchasing history.

You will need to design your email marketing campaign very well.
It needs to be attractive to hold the attention of the consumer
long enough for them to decide it is worth reading. You don’t
want your efforts to be mistaken for common spam or junk mail
right? Make sure all the content is spelled correctly. Keep the
text short and to the point. Readers who open your email may
choose to delete it or save it to read later if it looks to
lengthy. You want them to open it, be captivated, and read it.
The first sentences need to identify your company and what you
are offering. Place the important information first. Then reader
is likely to keep reading. Give them a sense of urgency for
responding by clearing stating the day the promotional offers
expire.


Email marketing is an effective tool if you take the time to use
it properly. It is anticipated to be the most used method of
advertising on the internet by 2008. While this means you will
have lots of opportunity to market your business, it also means
there is going to be a great deal of competition trying to get
consumers to look at their business. You will have to be
creative and work hard to develop effective email marketing
campaigns that are attractive, informative, and encourage the
consumer to take action.
Len Hutton is an information publisher specialising in helping people start their own home based business. You can read up on how to create your own info products in one day without writing a single word by going to http://www.nicheresidualincomes.com/
How To Turn Other Peoples Hard Work Into A Part Time And Instant Internet Business
http://www.nicheresidualincomes.com/underground.htm

Want to Be a Client Magnet? Try This Little Used Technique

Want to Be a Client Magnet? Try This Little Used Technique
by: Sandra Martini



I recently needed to contact a vendor regarding a delivery question. Without naming names, I can tell you that the vendor is a small business and I do a not-insignificant amount of business with them.

The person who answered the phone (not the owner) sounded as if my call were an interruption in her day (ever have this happen to you?). She was not pleasant and wanted to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. She was able to answer my question and off I went – not feeling appreciated and not feeling valued.

So be it. I went about my day and needed to contact another vendor to see if I could use an American Express card for payment as their invoice didn’t state. This should have been a minute-long phone call. It wasn’t.

The accounts payable person – also apparently having a rough day based on her tone – told me that they did indeed accept Amex. “Great – more points!” is what I thought and happily gave her all the information.

About an hour later my phone rang. It was the same woman, clipped tone and no sense of friendliness whatsoever, now telling me that they do not accept American Express and I would need to pay in another manner. Not a big deal and I gave her another credit card. Once she had the information, she said “goodbye” and hung up the phone.

It obviously wasn’t my day to call vendors.

These two companies – one large and one small – have forgotten to train their employees in the art of common courtesy. There are several ways that both of these employees could have made me feel, their customer, feel valued:

• Answer the phone while smiling (people really can tell)

• Be helpful without making me feel that I was an intrusion on their day – I won’t even mention that had their respective ordering and invoicing documents been done correctly, there would have been no need for my calls.

• Say “thank you” for calling

• And, in the case of the confused accounts payable person, apologize for not knowing whether or not the company accepted a certain credit card (whether her fault or not, she should have apologized to me on behalf of the company). This very easily could have turned into an amusing part of the day for both of us.

Companies of all sizes need to understand a very basic concept:

Everyone in the company is involved in marketing. Every customer/client contact is a chance to positively OR negatively affect how the customer feels about the company. Do it correctly and a customer is happy. Screw it up and they may forgive you – screw it up too many times and you lose the customer.

Let me tell you another quick story:

A client of mine recently had several cartons of brochures delivered from a printer. There were four different types of brochures. The driver, smiling, wheels in several cartons and asks where he should leave them.

My client asked him to just leave them in a corner of the store room as they needed to sort them by brochure title before placing them on the shelves. Turns out the driver had already done that and put the names of the brochures on the sides of the cartons (not just on top where you can never read them) to make them easier to read while on the shelves.

As he was leaving, he thanked my client for his business.

Surprising? It shouldn’t be. This is common courtesy and what a good company instills in each of its employees. Every employee who has the slightest contact with a customer or client should know that each customer/client is THE most important person to the company.

The truck driver in the above story “gets it.” Be sure that you do as well.

Courtesy is often overlooked as a means of getting, and keeping, clients. Another example is the doctor who calls a patient at home the evening after a treatment; just to be sure everything is okay.

Want to really impress your clients? Take it a step further and thank them for their business. People like, and need, to feel appreciated and valued – show them gratitude for doing business with you and watch them turn into great sources of referrals.

Some simple ways of saying “thank you” include the following:

• Send birthday cards/gifts depending on the size of the client and your budget.

• In the U.S., send Thanksgiving cards or letters – everyone sends holiday cards, be a little different.

• If you are located near your clients, occasionally drop in with a small surprise gift.

• Be sure your invoice includes a line thanking your clients for their business.

• If it works with your business, have some type of a customer appreciation event.

In this world of running here and there, email, voicemail, blackberries and MDAs, the personal touch combined with a little courtesy and gratitude goes a long way.

Thank you for taking time from your busy day to read this today. :-)

Find Out All Keywords That Bring You Sales Within 3 Minutes

Find Out All Keywords That Bring You Sales Within 3 Minutes
by: Egidijus Andreika



The effectiveness of an internet marketing campaign can be summed up in three words: search engine ranking. The higher your website’s position is in search engine results, the more popular it is. Popularity means two things – increase in revenues and greater traffic. To bring these good fortunes into your website, you need to pinpoint the keywords that bring customers and potential new clients to your website.

See these examples: “Snag PGA-standard Golf Shoes at Half Price Now!” vs. “Avail of Golf Footwear like the ones used by Players in the PGA at discounted prices!” Which is more effective and delivers the most impact? If you go for the latter, you must seriously reconsider your banners and ads. Both deliver the same message but the first ad is more likely to draw in a lot of clicks. Why? It uses strong words and a focused keyword. You can use SEO campaigns and pay-per-click advertising services in order to boost your sales and traffic but how do you find which keywords reel in the money? Here’s how:

Measuring click-through rates

Click-through rates are simply the number of times people clicked on your advertisements. Where is the keyword in this scenario? Do not forget that the life of your banners and other advertisements is built on words but not just any word. Banners and advertisements reel in potential customers by being targeted and focused.

There are two ways by which you can measure click-through rates: PHP and ASP Scripts and CGI Script.

There are plenty of CGI Scripts for tracking click-throughs available online. Install the script in your website but make it invisible so that visitors will not feel that they are being watched or something. You can also opt to have a CGI Script custom-designed for your website if you have extra cash. You can also inquire about CGI tracking scripts from your web host.

If a CGI script is passé for you, you can opt to go for PHP and ASP scripts in tracking your keywords’ click-through rates. Ask your web hosting service provider if it supports the script you want. You can also inquire about server-side scripts to find out which is more compatible for your website.

Online tracking services

If scripts are too technical for you, there are online tracking service providers you can sign up with. These providers usually let you try the free version of their tracking client so you can shop around for the best deal before upgrading to a paid version. Paid versions are generally more useful since the providers let you have automated reports detailing click through rates and other important information you can use to beef up your internet marketing campaigns.

You can also sign up with internet marketing and affiliate networks like Click2Sell.EU for a marketing campaign. Affiliates can use your own advertisement materials to ensure consistency and quality in your ad campaigns. By using its own software, the network can provide you with updated reports about your traffic, click-through rates, lets you track keywords and sales each keyword bring and even lets you manage your affiliates for maximum efficiency.

Tracking which keywords bring you the money lets you streamline your internet marketing efforts so you can focus on the keywords and methods that produce results.

Harness The Power of Membership Websites

Harness The Power of Membership Websites
by: Jeremy Gislason



Look through the eyes of your members and you might be surprised. You might find new ways to meet their needs. You might find new ways to offer benefit. Heck, you might even be able to anticipate there needs – there’s no better money maker than that!

What do members want?

The best way to answer that question is to ask yourself. What do you want from a membership site?
Take a moment and write down 10 things that you want from the membership sites that you belong to.

Go ahead...we’ll wait.

Okay, you have your list? Let’s see if it matches any of the items that we came up with.

Presumably you want:

A trusted source of information, products, and resources.

A wide variety of resources that meet your needs with multiple price points

Easy to use website

Easy to process transactions

Membership policies that make sense

Subscriptions that are worth their price

Subscriptions that are easy to renew or cancel

Updated content

Updated resources

A way, or many ways, to communicate with members and website staff

An efficient customer relations protocol

An easy way to return products

Clearly established terms of use

A website that protects your privacy – and doesn’t sell your information

Communications, via email or newsletter, that are frequent enough to keep you in the loop but not so frequent that you feel hassled.

A website that is fitted specifically to meet your needs

Does that cover it? Not likely. That’s just a short list of the things you probably want from a membership site that you belong to. You may also want to be able to use the site, products, and contacts that you make to generate profits. You certainly want to belong to a membership site that you can be proud of and that is recognizable – this means you’ll more likely be a loyal and frequent visitor if not a frequent purchaser.

Now comes the second question…

What can you do to make your membership site meet the needs listed above, and any others that you came up with?

Many of the needs are fairly easy to fill. Customer relations can be automated. Billing, renewals, and auto responder thank you messages can be automated. Content, much of it anyway, can be outsourced. Terms of use and policies can be posted on your website and handed out in the form of a report when members subscribe. Affiliate programs and other wealth building tools can be automated. That leaves a few things: making sure that your customers know that you’re an upstanding site with their best interests at heart, keeping the quality content, resources, and products up to date and quality, and tying all of their needs together into a cohesive website. Not too hard, right?

It doesn’t have to be. Use the resources that you have, such as those at http://MembershipMillionaire.com, to make your membership site the absolute best that it can be for you and for your members.

How To Find Free Internet Marketing

How To Find Free Internet Marketing
by: Mark Walters



New ecommerce businesses are caught up in SEO and web optimization. They view Google as the holy grail of making profits via the internet. Their internet marketing budget is sank into buying traffic, optimizing pages, and establishing major PayPerClick programs with the major search engines. All the work, and expense, involved in following the pack, is virtually unnecessary in today’s ecommerce world.

Marketing the Website

Submitting to search engines is only the first step toward a strong Internet Marketing campaign – it should never be the full focus. There are several ways to market a website.

- search engine optimization
- Pay Per Click
- Search Engine Submission
- Generating Inbound Links and increasing Page Rank
- Building Content
- Adding Social Networking Tools such as forums

Each one of these tools have a benefit. Recently a blog community went from PR0 – PR4, and receiving 300 000 hits a month with a budget of $50 a month. The blog community invested $20 a month in a PayPerClick program to ‘boost’ their exposure on Google and be accepted and ‘ranked’ faster.

www.communati.com submitted the website to more than 3000 search engines, free, using www.webceo.com. Despite the ‘old’ search engine hype, this should only be done once or twice a year. They embarked on an article writing, forum promoting, and encouraging members to ‘put the word out.’ The inbound link campaign increased their Page Rank to PR4 within 5 months, an incredible feat.

Next, communati added social networking features like points and a chat. The important ‘trick’ to remember is that search engines give more rank to pages inside the website, not the index or home page. Building links to the home page is becoming a waste of time. Five articles with specific topics that contain high keywords, links to the rest of the ecommerce website, and ‘hooks’, will generate more PR than links to a buy now page, the index page, or a page with heavy images and graphics.

Marketing the Blog

All websites should include a blog. Not because a blog is necessary, or because people read them. The number one reason for putting up a blog is to increase keyword density, but keep in below the 5% ‘red flag’ level. It also generates dozens of extra content pages, increases the number of ‘in house’ links which are also important to increasing page rank.

A blog can also be submitted to blog directories. The best way to submit is using a service. When an Internet Marketing manager submits a blog to a directory, they must include a backward link. When they use a service they can submit to about 1000 directories without back links. The price ranges from $200 - $500. http://www.lazyurl.com/, http://www.submitcomfort.com/

One advantage of a blog is that it is submitted to the blog directories every time someone writes a new post. Web sites that are submitted more than 4 or 5 times a year may find themselves banned. However, a blog can ping the search engine several times a day without risk of being banned.

In turn, the blog search engines ‘ping’ the big search engines who give the ‘new’ content high page rank for the first few hours.

Marketing The Podcast

No podcast on your ecommerce website? Why? Submitting it to the podcast directories is another way to generate free exposure. The podcast only needs a few streaming or downloaded files to qualify. Podcasts can also be listed on dozens and dozens of free services, each building links to the main site, as well as increasing the exposure to the website. AmigoFish.com, Digg Podcasts , Podcast Pickle , www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts or http://podcasts.yahoo.com.

The most popular podcatcher software is iTunes, which is available as a free download from www.apple.com/itunes/download.

Promote Video

Does your product Appeal to younger people? Then load video at facebook, youtube, etc and then submit those videos. Don’t make a dry workshop or seminar style tutorial, but make it interesting. It is amazing how many younger people click in keywords, and then use the ‘search video only’ link to view relevant videos instead of reading articles.

The list continues. Submit your newsletter, forums, and chat directories. A single article can be submitted to more than 50 000 article submission ‘free content’ sites. No cost involved, except time, and the exposure will create a ripple effect sending your message farther across the web than a $100 000 SEO, traffic buying, and search engine submission campaign.

Choosing a Network Marketing Company

Choosing a Network Marketing Company
by: Troy Rocavert



Choosing a network marketing company can be a difficult task. There are Literally hundreds of network marketing business opportunities to decide from and you could spend hours, even months finding the best one. Many people who search for a network marketing business will not get past the first step as the amount of opportunities and misleading information presented on the Internet is confusing.

We support you to keep strong, go after your dreams and keep on your journey to finding a home business that is right for you. The optimum way to keep on-course is to read through this article and apply our simple six step process.

1. Where to start?

The Direct Selling Association (DSA) web site is a great place to start when choosing a network marketing company. The Direct Selling Association (DSA) is the national trade association of the leading firms that manufacture and distribute goods and services sold directly to consumers. In fact, you will find 70 different categories of products and services, and over 200 different companies you can potentially choose a home based business from. These categories contain everything from financial services to Animal Care industries.

This means you automatically have a list of 200 companies and 70 different products and services that you could potentially partner your self with. You are not just limited to this list either. There are many more companies in network marketing who are not members of the DSA and there is a good reason for this. So we strongly recommend that you choose a company who is a DSA member for your own good.

2. What do you love to do?

One of most significant criteria when choosing a home based business opportunity is; will you love it? The most successful people in the world become successful because they really love what they do. Donald Trump, for example - property investor, over 60 years of age and still working, not because he needs to but because he loves to, there is a major difference.

Imagine a MLM business where you can wake up in the morning feeling energised and thrilled to go to work. Most people that are searching for a home based business do not enjoy their current employment, under paid or would prefer to be at home with their family. Whatever the reason, you must love what you do.

3. Look for a trend

In addition to working out what you love to do, you must look into the service or product the company has to offer and in particular the opportunity it has to grow. If you do some study into this topic you will find that one of the driving forces behind many of the economic trends over the past 60 years was directly related to the baby boomer’s spending. Why you may ask? Well, the baby boomer period accounts for one third of the world’s population and two thirds of the world’s spending. Leading economic forecasters have used these trends to predict where the baby boomers will next spend their dollars, namely Health and Wellness, and Financial Service industries.

4. Compensation Plan

What you need to look for is a lucrative Compensation Plan that allows anybody to succeed and succeed equally, not just those who are at the top. Personally we are big advocators of the Binary System, not because it is the most lucrative of compensation plans, but rather because it is the fairest compensation plan. If you been in the industry for numerous years and you are a power house, which only accounts for 1% of the network marketing population, then the Stair Step Breakaway plan will be the most lucrative for you, but for the rest of us regular people, we suggest that you stick to the binary system.

5. Choose a solid company

If you are going to put all your blood, sweat and tears into a MLM business, you want to choose a company that is going to be around for the long term. Research suggests that 90% of all MLM companies FAIL within their first 2 years, slightly stronger than a traditional small business where 80% will fail within their first year. There would be nothing worse than putting four or five years into a home business for it to fold, leaving you with no business and no residual income. So we strongly recommend you choose a MLM company that has been around longer than 5 years and is still growing.

6. The Product

There is two criteria that your product must meet, (1) your product must be consumable and (2) would you use it yourself? If the product meets these two requirements then the MLM Company receives a tick in this section.

Once you have finished this six step process, you will observe that you will be able to abolish 99% of the MLM companies and make your decision quite easy. But always remember, even the best MLM deal in the world will not make you wealthy without consistent hard work. We wish you all the best in your journey.

What Is “The Secret” To Finding Real Wealth?

What Is “The Secret” To Finding Real Wealth?
by: John J. Lynch



Did you know that less than one percent of the people currently living on this planet account for almost twenty-five percent of ALL the wealth? These powerful people certainly don’t want you to know this...they want you to stay as mindless drones whose sole objective is to keep THEM wealthy. What is the secret this small fraction of the population knows that the rest do not?

If you haven't seen the movie "The Secret", I implore you to watch it! The Secret is the most powerful law in the universe! If you have already seen it, watch it again. To watch "The Secret" online, copy and paste this url into your browser; http://www.thesecret.tv/home.html

Or you can watch "The Secret" On Demand via cable and satellite for audiences in the United States and Canada.

This small minority of people who are currently pulling the strings on world politics and world economics have mastered The Secret. These are the same people who want The Secret banned like it was once banned hundreds of years ago. Now The Secret has been un-earthed for all to discover its tremendous power once again!

There also have been great leaders who have mastered The Secret and made positive contributions to all of humanity. Leaders like Albert Einstein, Abe Lincoln, and Mother Teresa to name a few.

We are now living in an exciting new age of technology where humanity can do incredible things. The brick and mortar corporations who once ruled our economy unequivocally over the little guy are slowly losing their death grip due to the astonishing power of the internet!

So what is this secret you ask? In a sentence; "The Secret Is The Law Of Attraction". Simply stated, you get what you wish for...or your thoughts dictate what you get in life. Your health is dictated by your thoughts as well as your wealth.

Think of your thoughts as little tiny magnets...the intensity of these tiny magnets or thoughts are in direct proportion to the emotions you attach to it. The stronger the magnet, the stronger the attraction. This explains why a lot of people don't get what they wish for. They have not attached a strong enough emotion to their dream. Or they feel they don’t deserve their dream so they don’t bother pursuing it.

Let me give you an example of how the law of attraction works in a negative way. Think of the days when you got started off the wrong foot, then said to yourself "this is gonna be a long and terrible day". What happened? A long and terrible day...you got what you wished for! The degree of how terrible your day turned out was proportional to the intensity of the negative emotion you attached to the thought, right?



So how do these little "magnets" or thoughts attract what we want or don't want in our lives you ask? Well, and this is based on quantum physics that scientists have just learned in the last 10 or 15 years. There is an invisible universal mind if you will that contains all the dreams and thoughts of everyone who has ever lived or will live...past...present...future. This is quite the paradox you may think, how can this be?

The "time" element in this universal mind has been negated or altered. Quantum physics has recently shown us that a single electron can occupy two different spaces in an electro-magnetic field at the same exact point in time, once thought impossible. This goes against the laws of physics unless time has been negated or altered some how, the only possible explanation. So you may be able to connect with the dreams of someone who hasn't been born yet. Are you getting excited yet?

The Universal Mind is a sort of collective consciousness. The place where dreams are born. These dreams are invisible and waiting to take physical form.

How do you convert your dreams from the universal mind to the physical realm? By constantly thinking about your dreams with strong emotions and just as importantly - taking action! I am NOT talking about wishful thinking here...you must take action on your dreams!

It helps to have pictures of your dreams and look at them every day. Write your dreams down. Formulate a plan that is specific and with deadlines that will bring your dreams to fruition...and stay the course! “Don’t die with your dreams still inside you” as Dr. Wayne Dyer likes to say.

That is why I firmly believe you should pursue ventures you have a passion for...then you will find it easier to attach strong positive emotions to your thoughts and dreams.

This is the most powerful law in the universe, use it wisely my liege...

Good Luck and Stay the Course!

John Lynch