Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » e-mail

Winning the Internet Marketing Game

Gary Knox — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:03:27 +0000

Winning is what it’s all about, and in the internet marketing game, you’re going to have to be dedicated to success if you stand half a chance of winning. Competition is at its peak on the internet. Nobody sets out with any thought less than winning. You have to reach the top before you will even think about succeeding. You need to become known even before you sell a product. That’s the very nature of online businesses.

You will need to know and successfully target the customers in your area of sales. With all the competition out there, consumers have a great deal of choice and you risk being skipped over if your sales tactics aren’t the best. You need to know your customer and how he purchases both inside and out. If you have the money to do an actual market research, great; if not, you still need to seek that intimate knowledge of the people you wish to sell to.

Article writing is a very effective way to advertise your web presence. With the right content, you catch the attention of those seeking answers and lead them to your website. You can write articles yourself or have others write for you. The object is to get people thinking of you as an expert in your field. They will be more likely to view your website if that is the case.

E-mail selling is one of the simplest yet most effective ways of reaching your consumers. You start out at an advantage because the customer has already signed up for your list and indicated he was interested in what you had to say.A personalized e-mail message will help deepen the connection between you and your customer. This is the only method used by online marketers that has that advantage.

You ultimately decide if this is a game you will win. Whatever marketing methods you try, make sure you have done your homework and know exactly who your customer is and what your customer want to spend his money on. This is the first major step in success..

Why and How E-mail Viral Marketing Works

Gary Knox — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:05:33 +0000

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and then to millions.

Public health staff offer sage advice during flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. Viral e-mail marketing works great on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital formats make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. Remember the K.I.S.S. standard….Keep it Simple Stupid. The shorter and easier to remember is always better than long and complicated.

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. The desire to be cool and greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages.

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

If you can design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, you have a winner.

B2B Marketers Do It, Too

Gary Knox — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:47:05 +0000

They employ viral marketing by e-mail as a marketing tool… what did you think I meant? Viral marketing can work well for B2B providers, as long as the following is true:

1. The product or service delivers value for the sender, in addition to, the receiver.

2. The offer has to be deliverable. You do not want to offer a product that you are unable deliver if demand grows rapidly.

3. The offer has to be easily transferable to others. E-mail and Web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this.

4. The best viral marketing campaigns employ existing networks to move the message along.

The basis of viral marketing has been around for quite sometime. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass around something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends. Those that pass on your information get something in return. That something could be a gift or service related to your business.

Using e-mail makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, particularly if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet worldwide, the potential for exponential growth is enormous. The great things about viral marketing are that it is free and works almost by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility for referrals, viral marketing spreads like… well… a virus…but the good kind.

To implement viral marketing in your business; first, begin with your customer base. Motivate existing customers to refer new ones. Second, go to your referral sources. Service providers, your external network and colleagues can be encouraged to furnish referrals that lead to business.

When thinking of things to offer consider what is likely to be beneficial, For instance, if your customers are stressed business owners, propose a reward that supplies relaxation and leisure… like a weekend away.

Methods of Creating Email Lists for Marketing Campaigns

Gary Knox — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:17:40 +0000

If you plan to do some Internet marketing to promote your business enterprise, you should seriously consider email marketing as at least one level of your Internet marketing campaign. Some business owners tend to shy away from email marketing because they consider email marketing campaigns as purely spam. However, this is not true and not partaking in this type of marketing could cause your business to lose out on a good deal of business. By not appealing to potential customers via email, your business could lose a great deal of business to rivals who are employing email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. Nevertheless if you decide to use email as a marketing technique, the first step of an email marketing campaign should be to create an email distribution list. This article will discuss some popular options for doing this and should help anybody to understand more about what is acceptable and what is not as it relates to email marketing.

Having made the decision to begin using email marketing to promote your business you are likely to face the dilemma of compiling an email distribution list. This is, as you probably know, basically a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. One common way to acquire a list of email addresses is to purchase a list from distributors. However, this technique is not very effective and is not recommended. The trouble with buying an email list is you have no means of knowing whether or not the members of the list have any interest at all in your products or services. This is very important because whilst you want to gain a large audience with your email marketing you also need this audience to be members of your overall target audience.

When you purchase an email list you might be sending your email messages to some users who could be interested but this is mostly coincidental and is not likely to be well received because the message was sent unsolicited. Internet users are very quick to delete materials they consider to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. As a matter of fact some Internet service providers include spam filters which could automatically delete your emails if your messages are viewed as spam. These filters run complex algorithms on the subject heading and content of the message to ascertain whether or not it is spam and are rather proficient at weeding out spam. Therefore you run the risk of having your email marketing efforts turning in to a complete waste of time if the bulk of the recipients never even read or receive the message.

A far better way to make an email distribution list for your email marketing campaign is to ask current customers in addition to interested potential customers to register with your website to receive via email supplementary information and periodic updates about your products and services as well as other information which may be of interest to them. This supplies you with a database of email addresses fromÂ not only current customers but potential customers as well who have a genuine interest in your products and services and who are interested in learning more about these products and services.

Once you have your list of interested customers or potential customers you can send out emails or create an e-newsletter for distribution to the members of your email list. These documents should incorporate a wealth of useful information as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services. This information will be valued by your readers and might help to persuade them to sample your products and services. You might also want to include useful links to either your website as well as other websites which might be of interest to your readers. Your content should also incorporate a portion which urges your readers to take a specific action such as making a purchase or at tthe very least investigate a product further.

Subtle Email Marketing

Gary Knox — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:34:06 +0000

Everyday Internet users receive dozens of emails telling them to buy certain products or visit particular websites. Whilst these emails arrive in the inboxes of unsuspecting Internet users every day, most of them devote very little attention to these emails. That is because emails which are blatant adverts are often deemed as spam. Virtually all Internet users have very little tolerance for spam. Responses to spam tend to range from merely ignoring the emails and having the email addresses barred from sending future emails to reporting the email sender to their Internet service provider for further investigation. We realize numerous Internet marketers have difficulty keeping their email marketing subtle. Therefore with this article it is my intention to provide some useful information on how email marketing can be kept subtle so it is not considered as spam.

One of the most important criteria for ensuring your email marketing is subtle and will not be viewed as spam is to supply something of quality to the recipients. This might include insightful articles or other useful facts which members of the target audience are likely to find of value. When email recipients recognise that an email they have received is providing them something worthwhile such as knowledge or information about a particular niche subject they are often more likely to spend some time reviewing the email because they will not believe the email to be spam. In addition to using the creation of this copy to convince recipients that the email is not spam, the business owners can also capitalize on this copy by providing subtle advertising. This might include product references in the articles or links to your website throughout the email.

Avoiding language which makes exorbitant claims can also assist in keeping advertising quite subtle. Employing superlatives and describing the greatness of specific products is likely to be viewed as blatant advertising. When this occurs, it is likely that recipients will consider there is no validity in anything contained within the email because they will believe the entire email is just one big advertisement for your products or services.

Another method to keep advertising subtle when running an email marketing campaign is to simply send your email to those who are likely to be extremely interested in your products and services. This is important because when email recipients receive an email which does not reflect their interests at all, they are not likely to take the email serious and may consider the email as a blatant advertisement. However, when the email is only sent to those who share a common interest the email appears more personalised. In this instance the email recipients are not likely to view every product reference as a blatant advertisement because they realise there is occasionally a need to mention products or services.

Also email marketing remains subtle when the content of the email is penned as though it is not coming directly from the business owner. The copy may talk about the products and services as if they are being provided by a third party. This makes the advertising appear more subtle because it does not appear to come directly from the business owner.

Finally, business owners can help to ensure their email marketing efforts are not regarded as blatant advertisements by keeping reference to your own website to an absolute minimum. Most Internet users frequently view links from one website to another purely as an advertisement. For this reason it could be worthwhile for business owners who are marketing an email campaign to keep links to a minimum and to carefully thread these links into even the most rather benign copy. The links should be provided as if they were merely included to provide the reader with an opportunity to learn more about the products and not as a way to encourage them to buy these products. It could be worthwhile to consider employing a writer with this type of experience to guarantee the copy transmits the desired message and has the desired effect on the email recipients.