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Email Marketing Tips - Edition 27

Update on Feb. 8, 2013: Deleted all entries with outdated tips or broken links.

Welcome to the 27th edition of email marketing tips on October 27th, 2010.

As in the previous edition of this blog carnival I have exclusively handpicked the entries.




general tips - editor’s pick


Jordie van Rijn presents What is the marketing value of an “out of office” reply? posted at The Email Guide, saying, “Most of us filter them from the ‘real’ replies as soon as they come in. Or we even block the replies altogether. But that doesn’t do justice to the nature of that automated reply message. So what is the value of an out-of-office reply?”

John’s comment: The takeaway is, “Even out of office replies can provide valuable data and an opportunity to score points with your subscribers if you think outside the box.”




Ricardas Montvila presents Behavioural Targeting, meet the Audience. Audience, meet Behavioural Targeting. posted at Email Marketing News, saying, “Behavioural targeting email marketing has been in the headlines for some time now and there is a good reason for that. It works!”

John’s comment: A case study and practical tips included.




The E-Marketer Blog How Effective Is Sharing via Email vs. Social Media? posted at The E-Marketer Blog, saying, “In a statistic that has been backed up by other studies, including the August one by CMB, SocialTwist reported email was the most common channel used to share content.”

John’s comment: Reveals different patterns in social media and emails.





That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips blog carnival home page.

I have resumed the blog carnival in 2013. Now you can continue and read Edition #28 of my Email Marketing Tips.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 26, too.


Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related blog.
  • Get your blog more exposure!
  • It’s easier than you might think.
Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.



Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival




Email Marketing Tips - Edition 24

Update on Feb. 8, 2013: Deleted all entries with outdated tips or broken links.

Welcome to the 24th edition of email marketing tips on July 24th, 2010.

This edition is a little bit late; and it’s short. Enjoy.




editors pick


John W. Furst presents Getting to Know E-Mail Recipients - eMarketer posted at Articles - the latest Market Research, Internet Statistics - eMarketer, saying, “Personalization means more than just being on a first-name basis. E-mail marketers competing for attention in cluttered inboxes know that relevance and targeting will help get their messages read by consumers. While a personalized subject line can bring success, a survey of US and UK Internet users by e-mail marketing services firm e-Dialog suggests marketers must get to know more about their recipients than just a first name.”


general tips


Ian Lurie presents Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide posted at Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon.


tools and services


Michelle Waters presents Aweber Tutorial: How To Add A Broadcast Message To Your Autoresponder Series posted at Michelle Waters Online Business Mentoring Blog.



That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips blog carnival home page.

Go on and check out the next edition: Email Marketing Tips - Edition 25.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 23, too.

Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related blog.
  • Get your blog more exposure!
  • It’s easier than you might think.
Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.


Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival




How You Can Generate Sales Leads Using Inbound Marketing in 30 Days

When you ask someone with a successful social media presence how to build your own audience, the answer most often is, “Write a blog post, Tweet it to your following, and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn.” But what if you do not have many followers on Twitter or Facebook Fans?

A few weeks ago, my company decided to start a process to answer the question: “How can a business that does not have many hits on their website, has no followers on Twitter, and no Fans on Facebook, generate sales leads using inbound marketing in only 30 days?”



lead generation with social media
Catching leads on social media ain't easy without a plan (image credit)


Our goal is to get people to sign up for a webinar where we will share this marketing plan.

Below is how we are getting webinar attendees:


Create a Story


The web is a crowded space and you are in constant competition to earn your target audience’s attention. We have come to realize that your competition does not just reside in your industry, but is everywhere. Think about what you read – whether it pertains to your business or not. What stories resonate with you the most? It can be a blog post on how to grow your business, or news relating to your favorite football team, or the heartfelt story of a mother reunited with her child. All content producers are competing for your time, and no matter how you spend it, you only have 24 hours a day.

Before writing a blog post, and before building your social media plan, you first need a story that will resonate with your ideal customer. At Cloud Marketing Labs, we want to be known as the firm who can deliver sales leads in 30 days using Social Media. We feel this is something our audience can wrap their hands around, and will help us stand out from some of our marketing firm competitors.


Focus


You cannot join every network and be successful at all of them in 30 days. You need to focus all of your time and energy on 2 or 3 platforms. We chose blogging, public relations and Pay Per Click (PPC).


Blogging


After writing great content pertaining to your story, you need an audience to read it. In order to grow our audience, we would share our most helpful posts with friends and customers by emailing them a link to the post and asking them to share it with their friends. The key here is not to abuse your contacts. Only send a few posts, otherwise, you risk becoming a bit of a spammer and annoying. Even if you do not have a large following on Facebook, Twitter, etc., chances are someone who you are in regular contact with does, and will be happy to share helpful information with their network.


Public Relations


We found many blogs, such as the E-Biz Booster Blog, looking for guest posters and fresh content. If your story is compelling and unique, chances are they will allow you to leverage their network and help you grow your audience and expand your reach.

By pitching our “Sales Leads in 30 Days Using Social Media” story to various blogs and friends, we have been able to set up a few guest posts over the course of these 30 days. We get the benefit of expanded reach, and they get the benefit of new voices.

We are also going to submit a news release announcing a webinar where we will share this story with small and mid-sized business owners. However, instead of emailing the news release to journalists, we are going to use the online distribution service PRWeb. This will help with our search rankings and increase the visibility of our story as it gets picked up by various news aggregation sites.


Pay Per Click


Our final focus is on PPC advertising. However, instead of using Adwords, we decided to use Facebook’s advertising platform. There are two main reasons for this. First, it is cheaper. We are in a competitive space, and Adwords clicks would be well over $1.00 per click to get onto the first page. Second, Facebook ads will help you develop your buyer persona. You have visibility on things like age, gender, likes, and job titles that you are unable to see using Google Adwords. This will help us target our ads more precisely, increasing the efficiency of our campaign.

__________
Greg Digneo
Greg Digneo,
founder of Cloud Marketing Labs gets you leads.
Greg Digneo is founder of Cloud Marketing Labs, a marketing service that helps small and midsized businesses generate sales leads in 30 days using inbound marketing. He is hosting the webinar “How to generate sales leads in 30 days using social media” (offer has expired), is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog, and guest author on the reputable site Copyblogger.

Image source: Lasso, ©2007 by williac/flickr. - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY 2.0.



Email Marketing Tips - Edition 23

Update on Feb. 8, 2013: Deleted all entries with outdated tips or broken links.

Welcome to the 23rd edition of email marketing tips on June 6th, 2010.

The carnival is back after having had some wild turbulence including this blog getting hacked three times during the last six weeks. I am traveling and the last thing I needed was someone taking out my blog. The guys from blogcarnival.com lost patience with me and simply deleted the 21st edition which I had almost prepared for being posted. Shame on them.



Luckily a friend stepped in. Thanks to Pat Doyle, who hosted the 22nd edition of email marketing tips on her blog. Update in Feb. 2013: Unfortunately the blog has disappeared. So that edition is lost forever.

Now let’ start with today’s content.

editors pick


John Jantsch wrote The Right Way to Buy an Email List posted at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing saying, "I’m am not talking about buying or renting so called opt-in lists from list brokers. I’m talking about offering something of value as a way to motivate someone to willingly exchange their email address with you in order to receive your offers and additional contact."


Nick Moore wrote Better Email Newsletter Sharing on Facebook and Twitter posted at Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips saying, "Social media is a big part of the marketing world these days. Most net-savvy businesses have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. That being the case, we’ve found that people are always looking for ways to make their social media and email marketing campaigns work together."


Chris Brogan wrote Stop Adding Me to Your Email Newsletter posted at chrisbrogan.com — Learn How Human Business Works – Beyond Social Media saying, "According to sources, it’s not illegal to add my name to your email newsletter list if you’ve done some kind of business with me in the past. Evidently, this means that it’s perfectly fine to add me to your list if you’ve sent me an email. Ever. Because I’ve gotta tell you: I’m subscribed to a LOT of email newsletters that I didn’t sign up for, and I’m not very pleased with it. To me, it’s spam, whether or not that’s the legal definition."


Carol Ellison wrote 8 Email Marketing Tips posted at destinationCRM.com - The leading resource for Customer Relationship Management - from the editors of CRM magazine saying, "Experts provide commonsense advice about ‘one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communication.’"


general tips


GreatManagement presents Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Internet Scamming posted at We Build Your Blog, saying, "Anyone who surfs the web on a regular basis can probably remember the very first time they fell victim to an attempted scam."


Sheryl Owen presents Top 10 Reasons to Use Snail Mail posted at Change of Address.


That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips page.

Continue reading the next email marketing tips - edition 24.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the preceding email marketing tips - edition 20, too. Note: Edition 22 got deleted from the web. It was on a guest blog. Edition 21 was canceled.

Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related blog.
  • Get your blog more exposure!
  • It’s easier than you might think.
Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.


Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival



Email or Social Networks or Mobile or What For Business?

Isn’t it fascinating how social networking platforms are taking over the Internet in a storm?

Ease of use and multimedia capabilities seem to be the main driver behind this development. It makes it fun for non techie people to use the Internet, to play around, and to communicate.



Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, discussed today that he was quite shocked—even though he had anticipated it—when he realized that social networking has overrun email (↑) already.

Here is the corresponding slide from Morgan Stanley’s latest Internet trend report (PDF file, 2.5 MiBytes ↑). (Update in Feb. 2013: 404 Not Found)

Email versus Social Networking Trend
Communications Trends, April 2010

Now, let’s be honest and compare the two.


Email


Common email clients (even Gmail) smash a wall of incomprehensible letters into your face. I am talking about the inbox displayed as a dense list. Too many emails, too many of them irrelevant, and mostly not fun at all.

On the other hand when composing a new message you are staring at a scary white page. Ever had writer’s block in that situation?


Social Media


In contrast to that you are basically navigating in a space that’s comparable to your email client’s address book. But an address book on steroids.

You see avatars and blurbs with what your friends are up to right now, videos, pictures, full multimedia. And it’s so easy to use. You don’t need to compose a new message, you just click one time or even type your response directly. Takes you seconds and you don’t have to switch platform to do so.

Much of what’s happening on social networks is not private between two people, but it can be. Twitter’s direct messages and Facebook messages are a good example for this. And many users get email notification about activity on social networks anyway.


Don’t write off email, yet.


An email address is still a valuable asset of contact information for a business. For now and the near future. And I have pointed out some additional reasons in a previous discussion about email marketing versus social media.

But the one piece of contact information that might prove to be even more valuable in a short time is a mobile phone number.


Mobile Is Coming With Light-speed


When I compare the quality of contact information, then mobile phone number is a clear winner. It has certain advantages:
  • It’s more intimate than an email address.
  • Is tied to a device that is on almost 24/7.
  • Less likely to be a fake one.
  • Has direct billing capabilities built in for some classes of products.
  • And much more.

Regardless of mobile Internet usage with iPhone, Blackberry, Google Phone, whatever. Messages from the Internet can “ring through” to the user. An increasing number of services are taking advantage of this.

Facebook and Twitter can optionally handle your mobile phone number for texting purposes. Airlines offer to notify you about delays, etc.

Besides those “Internet attached cases”, the Net arrives at more and more users while they are on the road so to speak.

The mobile Internet user base is growing faster than desktop usage ever did. Morgan Stanley predicts that the number of mobile users of the Internet will outgrow the number of desktop users in 5 years.

Trend of mobile Internet use
Trend towards mobility, April 2010

What does that mean for you?


Big opportunities of course. Like if you are dealing in information product marketing, it’s smart to think about convergence.
  • Your free and paid content accessible from desktop and mobile devices. For some niches you might want to offer editions for Amazon’s kindle as well or put something in the iTunes store.

  • Delivering your content in multiple media formats. Video channels, podcasts, slide shows, classic PDFs, etc.

  • Advertising on mobile devices. Google once again goes that route early on as well. And its CEO, Eric Schmidt, has stated many times that Google is embracing mobile use BIG time.

  • Multiple ways of contact with prospects and customers. From presence on social platforms, having lists of fans, followers, friends to email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

This technological and social revolution does indeed change the way we communicate privately. This happens almost automatically.
However, it takes effort to change the way your business communicates.

Let’s do it.

Expand your sphere of influence.

Yours
John W. Furst


A Monologue: Listen Marketers!

Marketing gone wrong? The Pink Elephant
Pinky the Elephant (*)

It has become hard to listen to and concentrate on a specific message which is buried in ever intensifying noise.


You as a marketer cannot blame people for being ignorant.


You only can blame yourself for being ignorant.

When was the last time you listened to the response you stimulated? Did you adjust your message, your timing, the channel, …?



It’s easy to be the pink elephant in the room — and I mean the opposite of a Purple Cow. If that’s what you wanna be, fine with me, but don’t drop your shit in front of my feet.


I just picked that up from the universe with my telepathic senses.

Something to think about.


LISTEN!


You probably don’t care about what I have to say. But don’t worry, I might give a damn about your message as well.

Do you have a clue what I am interested in right now?

Yours
John W. Furst


(*) Image credit: ©2007 by myklroventine/flickr. - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY 2.0