seoontheweb.com Search Engine Optimisation Stratagies

There are two sides to the list building equation: Those who say you need to build a list to recycle your traffic, and those who don’t bother because they market affiliate programs.

I personally believe that the best thing to do is that if you do decide to build lists to market your business, put as much energy into it as possible. You will only be able to market effectively with two or three different techniques anyway.

One of these should be list building, especially if you sell your own products. The reason is that list building allows you to recycle your traffic.

The first step in building your lists is to find a good autoresponder. There are plenty of good ones out there like Aweber, as well as Get Response. You want an autoresponder that provides you with multiple sequential autoresponders. (This means that you get more than one autoresponder, and you may load multiple messages for each autoresponder to be sent out.)

The next step is to write your autoresponder messages. Mix them up. Offer your potential subscribers content as well as sales messages. Give them a reason to read your messages by providing them valuable tips about your topic as well as showing them how your products will solve their problems.

This is the key to success in business: show your potential customers how your products will solve their problems, and they will buy from you.

Load your autoresponder messages into your autoresponder. Don’t bombard your readers with messages. Too many internet marketers burn their lists by sending out messages to their readers every day. They’ve been told that you have to contact your readers every day in order to get them to buy.

That’s not true. In fact, I would recommend you only contact your readers about twice a week. Contact them as much as you think necessary but don’t alienate your readers. They won’t become customers.

Create a lead capture page or add the code to your site. If you have a content site, then you will want to add your subscription code to all of the pages on your site. If you don’t have a site yet, then simply create a page where your subscribers may go to join your list.

Offer a premium for joining. Free ebooks, reports, software, or any other exclusive content they can’t get somewhere else works best. Your premium needs to be a lead in to what you offer. Give visitors a taste of what you sell. When you do that, you’re more likely to make the sale.

Like these tips? Then get your free internet marketing membership and increase your business. Get my best free list building resources from my free stuff page.

Jinger Jarrett is the author of “Internet Marketing for Free, The GUIDE.”

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If you have any interest in email marketing, you’ve probably heard me extol the virtues of using a dedicated IP address for sending your mass communications. The rationale is that if you’re using a shared IP address, you’re basically at the mercy of every other marketer who is also using that IP address.

Let me back up just a little bit here… First, as a small business owner / entrepreneur, chances are you never realized that the IP address you send your email messages from even matters. Well, it does, and here’s why:

When the internet service providers, like AOL or Comcast or the myriad of others out there, receive email messages, they base the reliability of those messages on the address that the message is sent from.

If they receive your message from address 1.2.3.4 and that address has sent a lot of spam in the past, there’s a good possibility that your message will end up in the spam folder.

The problem is, every other marketer who is also using your IP address 1.2.3.4 to send messages is contributing to the reputation of that address. So even if you’re using fully compliant double opt-in email best practices, you could still be penalized based on what someone else has done.

So it would seem logical that you should always use a dedicated address to send all your email messages and then you won’t ever have to worry about what any unscrupulous marketers might be doing.

Unfortunately, dedicated IP addresses can be expensive. If you’re an entrepreneur with limited resources, it might be difficult to fit a dedicated address into your marketing budget.

The good news is, it might actually be beneficial for you to use a shared address, especially if you’re just starting out and your list is relatively small.

In order to qualify for a “clean” email reputation, you must send a relatively high volume of email messages on a consistent basis. If you’re a low-volume sender, you probably won’t qualify for an email reputation. And this can sometimes be just as detrimental as having a bad reputation.

Dishonest emailers often hop from IP address to IP address, trying to outrun their reputation. So an address with no sending reputation can raise a red flag for some internet service providers.

And if you’re a high-volume sender, and you suddenly start sending mail from a brand new dedicated address, this could also raise a red flag with the internet service providers. It can take months before the ISPs recognize your email sending pattern and reward you with a clean reputation.

What’s An Entrepreneur on a Tight Budget To Do?

There are many Email Service Providers (ESPs) to choose from that will take care of the monitoring and reputations with each of the internet service providers. Using an ESP doesn’t mean your mail will never get blocked, it simply means you don’t have to take charge of fixing the problems when they do occur.

1. Even if you are using an ESP, always monitor your sending reputation. Make sure your domain name is not blacklisted or blocklisted, and make sure your joint venture partners and other sites you are linking to are not blocklisted.

2. Watch your bounces. If your bounce rate is higher than 2% this is a good indicator of a deliverability problem. It’s important that you look into the cause of those bounces.

3. Track your open rate and click through rates by individuals and by internet service providers. If you notice that not a single reader with a Yahoo email address has opened your message, it could indicate a delivery problem, even if it does not show up in the bounce report.

Email marketing is an excellent way for entrepreneurs to distribute information and sales messages and to develop a relationship with prospects and customers. And the best part is, email marketing can be extremely cost-effective.

Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

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Online marketing may have developed a sudden surge these elapsed few years, but many in the know how have felt it’s arrive prone from way therefore. As more internet based businesses are put up, the need to develop new marketing skills and knowledge based on this new medium have arisen. Fresh and supplementary marketing strategies are being discovered and developed to tarpaulin with the changing face of business the business world.

The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have drastically grown again a new parent of business has been born, internet marketing strategies. spell there are companies that are full-dress too eager to second your site and power build a clientele for a fee, there further many ways that can spread the illumination about your sites subsistence in a fresh cost free passage. One of this is Opt-in email marketing, also close as permission marketing.

Opt-in marketing requires the permission of a willing customer to subscribe to your marketing materials, materials that take produce clout newsletters, catalogues and promotional mailings via e-mail. The more opt-in marketing mail is sent, the fresh chances know onions is to turmoil sales and more sales. To consummate this, you must build a list of all those who wants to yes to your opt-in marketing list.

From your list, you will get your targeted customer; this is a befitting list now they already fall for shown interest in what you have to show besides sell since they affirm willingly signed in for your register. These are the folks who have liked what they have seen leadership your apartment and have resolved they want to see additional further maybe even purchase what almighty product or assistance your cart and site has to offer.

Numerous people would think that building their lists would take problem work further a lot of time to build and collect names besides addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in worldliness this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of cynosure hawk. Take the training to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.

Licensed are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read also ensue character building a list. Sometimes they may enact confusing because there are so many and there antithetic ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in an opt-in list, but no matter how differential many methods are, there are always some not easy things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.

1) Put enlargement a good web form moment your region that immediately follows the score of your content. Generation some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to dwell upon that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just disdain about signing up.

A good framework form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to solve. Becoming writing a simple short bill about how they would have fun to see more and settle updated about the site. Then there should stage an area bearings they could father in their names again e-mail address. This web form will automatically stock again send you the data have inputted. As supplementary people sign in, your list will be growing.

2) Now mentioned drag the first tip, make your homepage very, strikingly impressive. You need to have largely written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is integrated about, you need to capture your website visitor’s fancy. Make your suburb useful and very easy to use. Do not guess everyone to factor tech relish. Formulate ascendancy having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.

Don’t waste your situation making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people be credulous devoted T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the more suitable. Go through a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.

3) Lock on good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more movement. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will nourish vim always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone restraint rake significance more bit than an expensive ad. As your clientele roster grows so shall your guide. Hide more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4) Keep a spotless and private brochure. Never lose the conviction your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they execute spammed, many entrust probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a convenient grain will drive dominion supplementary traffic and subscribers as well owing to hearten the loyalty of your customers.

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor

Sign Up Now and Receive Our FREE Make Money Online E-Course At: Free Affiliate Programs

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If you are not building a list now, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. A list is your asset as it gives you the power to drive traffic and sales on demand. Now, let me share with you 5 explosive ways to build your list quickly:

1. Forum marketing. Participate in forum discussions actively. Most forums allow you to place a link to your website in your signature. Contribute something useful to the community and build your reputation. When people find that you have something useful to share, they will check out the link in your signature.

2. Create a squeeze page to capture visitors’ email addresses and names. Your squeeze page should be straight to the point by offering visitors a free gift in exchange for their emails and names. The headline of your squeeze page is very important as it is the first thing that captures the attention of your visitors. Do not put other things on your squeeze page that distract visitors from opting in to your list.

3. Offer a free gift in exchange for emails and names. There are many things that you can offer as a free gift to entice opt-ins, some examples are: e-book, whitepaper, voucher, video, audio and email tutorial course. People always like to receive free stuff. Therefore, offering a freebie on your squeeze page is a good way to entice them to opt in.

4. Promote your squeeze page aggressively. List building is a number game. The more traffic you drive to your squeeze page, the more opt-ins you will get. There are many ways to drive targeted traffic to your page, some methods are: blogging, pay per click advertising, forum marketing, social networking, social bookmarking, search engine optimization, blog commenting and article marketing.

5. Increase the conversion of your squeeze page. Once you have enough traffic to your website, you can determine your conversion rate. The next step is to increase the conversion rate of your squeeze page. If your squeeze page is getting 100 opt-ins with 1000 unique visitors a day, it is a 10% conversion rate. Your goal is to increase the conversion rate by another 5% - 10%. Test different headlines, sub-headlines, opt-in button color, etc. Google Website Optimizer is a very good split testing system that allows you to test different variations of your page for free.

List building is all about relevancy and relationship. If you can offer something that people want, they will opt in. Once they opt in, the next step is to build a strong relationship with them and profit for years to come.

Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of OOm, an online marketing agency that provides email marketing services.

Find out more about email marketing at OOm Singapore.

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Are you using email marketing to stay in touch with your prospects and provide them with useful information? If you are not doing so, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Email marketing is one of the most effective methods to build relationship and drive sales. It is easier to sell to someone that you know rather to a stranger. If you provide value to your list subscribers, they will be more receptive to take action on any offer that you present to them in the future.

A list is your asset because it allows you to drive traffic and sales on demand. With a click of a button, you can access to a group of targeted audience instantly. Although email marketing sounds simple, it is not. Many email marketers make mistakes that spoil relationship with their subscribers and destroy any chance of getting sales.

Now, let me share with you 4 deadly email marketing mistakes that you must avoid:

1. Sending emails too frequently to your subscribers. If you send emails too frequently to your subscribers, they will see you as a spammer. The frequency is really dependant on the type of list that you are collecting. For example, if your list delivers a daily forex course, it is perfectly fine to send an email daily. If people join your list for updates, then a weekly or bi-weekly email will be good.

2. Poor content. If every email is a sales pitch or promotion, you will not get results from email marketing. You must deliver some real value to your subscribers. Send them free gifts, industry information and updates. When you are writing the content of your email, remember that your readers do not care so much about you. What they want to know is what’s in it for them. Your email should have more “you” than “I”.

3. Poor subject line. Your email open rate is directly influenced by its subject line. If your subject line cannot capture your visitors’ attention, they will not open it. When you are preparing an email campaign, always come up with at least 10 subject lines so that you can choose the best one for the campaign.

4. No call to action statements in emails. This is the most common mistakes made my many email marketers. If you want your readers to click on your link and visit your website, you must include call to action statements in your emails. Just putting a link in your email is not enough. You must tell your readers what to do next.

Hope that you don’t make these 4 mistakes when it comes to email marketing. Start building your list now!

Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of OOm, an online marketing agency that provides email marketing services.

Find out more about email marketing at OOm Singapore.

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Email marketing is designed to save you time and money. And those are two things that your local cultural attraction could use as the economy struggles and people tighten their purse strings. Whether you are trying to get more people to your local art gallery, museum, botanical gardens or petting zoo, in tough times it’s even more important to get your name out on the streets. The problem is that when you need to reach a lot of people, your marketing expenses go through the roof, right?

Not with email marketing. It is time to start making the transition from paper and print to online resources, like email marketing. It’s cost effective and takes little time to put together a professional campaign. By following 3 easy steps, your local cultural attraction will save money and attract more people. An email marketing can help you cruise through the rough economy. All you have to do is follow these 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Web Sign up boxes
Well established email marketing programs will give you, free of charge, a web sign-up box that is easily added to your website. An email marketing web sign-up box will allow your site visitors the opportunity to sign-up for your online promotions. This is a great way to build an opt-in list, so that you can reach out to your client base via the Email marketing that you’re using.

Step 2: Create your email
When you join an email marketing service, you will be guided through the campaign creation process, so that you can easily design a professional and effective email newsletter, flyer, promotion, etc. Email marketing is designed so that any one, no matter how little they know about using computers, will be able to put together a great looking campaign in just a few minutes. The main steps involved in creating a campaign are choosing your pictures or images, and writing your text. And, these are probably things you already know how to do. After that, you simply have to add your pictures when the email marketing prompts you to, then copy and paste your text into the spaces provided. It’s that easy!

Email marketing Email marketing Step 3: Sending out your campaign

This is the easiest part, as the best email marketing programs do this for you automatically. All you have to do is choose the date and time you want your emails to go out, then sit back and let the magic happen! The top email marketing services will even check your emails for warning signs of spam. If they see that something in your email message is likely to trigger the spam filters, the friendly people at your email marketing headquarters will get in touch with you immediately and show you how to prevent this.
The best news is that an email marketing cost as little as $10 to send out 1000 emails, which is considerably cheaper than paper and print. And that’s exactly what you need right now! Transitioning from paper to email marketing will save you thousands of dollars. With the right strategy, you can email marketing catapult your business to new levels with email marketing!

Robert Burko is the President of Elite Email, the complete email marketing package used by museums and galleries around the world. You can deploy comprehensive email marketing software for your upcoming exhibits with a no risk free trial. Start harnessing the power of email marketing today!

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Once an email is sent to the responder it sends a formatted response back to the sender. The autoresponder can be programmed to track the addresses of the senders. A database of these emails can be compiled for future communication. Autoresponders can help an entrepreneur save time and energy when used ethically and of course earn money online.

There are companies who provide email distribution, compilation of email databases, and autoresponder services. Most of them use a code placed on your website or blog. The code provides an online form. The visitor inputs their name and email address and hits the respond or click button to send the message to the autoresponder.

Autoresponders are an excellent tool for automating a business. Visitors usually have 3 options when at a website, either buy a product or service, leave their follow-up information like emails addresses or simply click away and move to another site. Clicking away is the worst choice for the site owner. Even if the visitor would like to return they often don’t remember the name of the site or how they found it in the first place. Offering a free report or newsletter through an autoresponder is one way to capture their contact information.

A word of caution, while you can ask for lots of personal information on the subscription form, the more you request, the less likely the visitor is to comply. First name and email address are the best choices.

Follow up messages, or your newsletter, can be personalized with the first name of the subscriber. Most people need at least 7 exposures to a product or service before they buy. An autoresponder series can build trust and increase the visibility of your product as long as it includes solid content and information the subscriber can use as well as a sales pitch.

While it’s possible to buy software to install your own autoresponders, many Internet marketers prefer to use services. Spam is a huge problem these days. The services use a double opt in requirement. That means the subscriber has to agree twice to receive email from you. The services also automatically unsubscribe someone from your lists. The double opt in and automatic unsubscribe decreases the probability that someone on your list will accuse you of spamming them.

Used properly autoresponders can help you earn money online.

Free report How to Start a Home Based Business: 27 Ways to Earn Money Online Dee Power is the author of several nonfiction books and the novel Over Time. Dee’s blog 101 Ways to Make Money Online You can Earn Money Online

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Building a successful MLM Lead Generation System online requires capturing the attention of internet surfers and being able to consistently provide high quality information that benefits them. Use the following six steps to build a valuable list of prospects in which you can use technology to market more business opportunity more easily.

Step 1: Focus All Efforts On Building Your List

There is a saying that “All roads lead to Rome.” It must be the same with all your Internet MLM lead generation system. However, we might say, “All roads lead to your list.”

This means that all of your articles forum posts, e-mail signatures, and PPC advertising must lead to your list building pages.

But do you wonder why?

You must learn to value your list like your most precious possession. Terry Dean once noted that his income grew with his list. He laughs about the fact that it took him six months to realize that when his list was 2000 subscribers, he made $2000 a month. When his list grew to 10,000 subscribers he made $10,000 a month. He points out this was a very huge discovery in
terms of building his business.

Communicating with your list gives you the opportunity to create a relationship with your subscribers and for them to begin to trust you. And let’s face it, they need to trust you before they will ever take any recommendation from you or buy any of your products.

Step 2: Give a High Value Freebie

How do you get subscribers to join your list in the first place? You offer them a high value product for free. Now remember this. It must be worth a considerable amount. No cheap collection of 15,000 low value articles you got for $7 in some PLR blowout. Make it worth their while, make it highly informational, and make them want more. They should be so enthralled with your information that they have no idea, or do not care, that they have just entered your MLM lead generation system.

Step 2: Make Them an Offer

When subscribers join your listing need to make them an offer right away. Some will take it. Most will not. But you have introduced them to your product and they are aware of what you have to offer them. It might be a front end product, and not your business opportunity. But it should be something relevant to the needs of the subscriber.

The average sale is closed on the fifth contact. So get those initial offers out of the way starting with your very first communication in your auto responder sequence.

It can be real subtle. For example you might write, “Thank you for subscribing to the XYZ Newsletter. Check your e-mail for the first issue. Since you’re interested in building your list you might also be interested in checking out the tools available in the XYZ product. Have a great day.”

The main thing is to make sure you present your offer early and continually, without being over the top forceful.

Step 4: Slowly Drip Your Content

The power of your new MLM lead generation system is the constant dripping of content to your leads. Like that leaky faucet in the kitchen and you need to “drip” your content to your subscriber at a regular pace. Your subject and type of content will determine the best rate to do this.

For instance there are some types of lists that benefit from receiving content every day. Usually this is too much for the basic list. On the other end of the spectrum is communicating with your lists approximately once a month. This can often be, depending on the niche, too long in between e-mails. Your list begins to forget about you. Most markers will probably agree that the best time is somewhere between a couple times a week to once a week or even
once every two weeks.

The point is to find the schedule that is right for your subject area and the list you are promoting. Then consistently begin dripping your best content to your subscribers.

Step 5: Prompt a Response

You have a most wanted response. Do your subscribers even have a clue what that is?

Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to go to this page and listen to this audio? Do you want them to sign up for this list if they’re interested in this special topic?

What do you want them to do? You need to be able to tell your subscribers where they need to go to find the best information. Don’t take it for granted that they will know automatically.

Use language and graphics that direct your readers to your most wanted response. Be specific. And be intentional.

And most of all remember that you have a limited amount of time to get your readers to the best response.

Step 6: Get your emails opened

Finally, make sure to use inviting headlines that awaken curiosity in your subscribers and let them know who the e-mail is from. For instance I might write the following for my headline and the first few lines of text, which are often seen in the preview pane in most e-mail software.

For my headline, I might choose, “27 ways to get more subscribers.” Then for the first few lines of text, I might say, “Hi, [insert your name] here with 27 ways to get more subscribers to your list. Most exciting is the fact that…”

Your name in the first few words will help your readers to pick out your important e-mails from the huge amount of e-mails in their inbox. People desperate for the information you offer will often subscribe to tons of newsletters and lists. You have to work to make yourself stand out among the rest of the “noise”. This will ensure your MLM lead generation system remains highly informational in the eyes of the reader and place you as an authority in your niche.

Another great idea is to send one e-mail specifically to teach your subscribers how to filter their e-mail. Even though many e-mail programs are very different, the basic ideas for filtering are usually somewhat the same.

Consider teaching him to put all of your e-mails automatically into a special folder with filtering rules. This will ensure they always know where to go to find your latest content.

Tim Heeter helps business owners design lead
generation systems that Capture, Qualify, and Convert leads. For more tips on increasing your business profits by working smarter with online tools, visit his website Lead Generation Coaching.

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Email marketing is an excellent tool for growing your customer base, growing your brand and growing your sales. But just like any tool, it’s most effective when it’s used within a plan. If you started off in email marketing without a clear-cut strategy, here are 4 ways to get back on track by the end of the week:

Figure out why you’re writing.

Do you want your newsletter to be strictly educational? Do you want to share client success stories and case studies? Do you want to introduce joint venture partners? Do you want to announce new products or services?

Choose one or a few tactics for your newsletter campaigns and then stick with those tactics. It’s important that your readers know what to expect, so be consistent with your style and your content.

Figure out whom you’re writing to.

Even though you will have thousands of different names on your mailing list, and even though those readers will all be at different stages in a relationship with your business, and even though they might be at different levels in the buying funnel, you should definitely have your target market profile in mind when you craft your newsletter campaigns.

Your newsletter will never be all things to all people; the most important readers to keep in mind when putting together your newsletter are your customers and those most likely to become your customers. Be prepared for negative feedback from a few readers from time to time. And when it comes, just ask yourself, “Was this person a likely customer?” If not, don’t worry about it.

For instance, just last week I received a negative comment from a reader who “reprimanded” me for offering a product for sale in my newsletter. While I love providing free information to my clients and prospects, and I invite every one to stay on my list as long as it takes for them to determine whether or not they’d like to do business with us in some capacity.

I’m rarely concerned with the opinions of those who are strictly looking for freebies and will never become clients. While I definitely encourage them to stay on our list, I would not change my strategy to suit them. (Now if a client or prospect had a suggestion about my newsletter, that would be a different story.)

Figure out how often you will send it.

With email marketing, consistency is an important factor, and here’s why: When you’re inconsistent, your readers might forget who you are and either not open your newsletter or report you as a spammer.
When you’re inconsistent, your readers learn to live without you, which causes your unsubscribe rate to increase.

And when you have inconsistently high sending spikes associated with your mail server IP address - in other words, you sporadically send a high volume of email messages - your readers’ internet providers might consider you a spammer and put a temporary block on your messages.

You’ll have to contact them through their designated channels and jump through hoops to get the block removed. The best thing to do is determine a sending schedule and stick with it on a regular basis.

Figure out how you will measure success.

If all you’re doing is measuring open rates and unsubscribes, you’re missing the boat. You need to determine early on the ultimate outcome you’re looking for out of your email marketing efforts. If campaign A has 2,000 opens and 10 sales, while campaign B has 750 opens and 30 sales, which campaign will you consider more successful?

Will you count all unsubscribes as a failure, or will you consider unsubscribes as an effective way to purge your list of less-than-perfect prospects? How will you take the statistics from current campaigns and use them to improve future campaigns? Having this mapped out ahead of time will make things go much more smoothly when it’s actually time to track and measure.

Now wash, rinse, repeat. Email marketing is an extremely effective way to grow your small business, but don’t expect miracles overnight. Develop your strategy, stick with it, track and measure along the way and make improvements as necessary. You’ll see your business, your branding and your sales increase in very short order.

Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

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Your email program is going strong and now your CMO is asking “what about mobile?” Let’s face it, the world and your customers have gone mobile, so your email program needs to follow suit.

Reaching your target audience today can feel like an exercise in virtual roulette-an assortment of options to choose from, each feeling as much a gamble as the next. Mobile has become a key component of today’s marketing venue, so you need to be prepared to enhance your email program to market to the exponentially growing numbers of mobile users and to introduce mobile messaging into your mix.

Be a mobile marketing maverick

Since your customers have adopted the ease and portability of handhelds and cell phones for media management, it’s time for marketers to adapt and customize their messages based on customer habits and preferences. As digital media adoption rates soar, customer demand for mobile engagement will skyrocket.

Be where your customers are

As an email marketer, it’s essential to be at the center of your customers’ attention if you hope to earn and hold their business. According to AOL Mail’s fourth annual Email Addiction Survey, 16% of survey respondents said they check their email from a mobile device. What’s more, 55% of respondents said they upgraded to a new cell phone in the last year so they could check email on-the-go. Crunch these stats and you’ve got a major trend towards mobile migration.

Clearly, to be successful in today’s market, your email program must adapt to meet consumer demand in the mobile stratosphere. Don’t think of mobile as a replacement to email-think of it as an enhancement to the strategies you already have in place today.
To get started, try out these simple yet powerful tactics for integrating mobile into your email strategy starting today.

Steps to mobile marketing success

Step #1: Create ‘mobile friendly’ formats for your email

Not all email layouts and styles are right for mobile media. As you target your traveling audience, be sure to think simple-design for tiny screens, mobile software, and use patterns most common to portable media devices. Mobile users spend mere instants accessing messages, so say it fast and focus on benefits.
- Craft clear and easily understood offers for the subject line.
- Put the most important subject matter at the top of emails for faster access to substance.
- If you include links, ensure landing pages are optimized for handhelds.
- Make messages brief, concise, and worth it… with clear action items and incentives.

Remember, the size, layout, and design features useful in standard email communication will not produce the same results in mobile messaging, potentially causing recipients to hit the delete key without bothering to read further.

Step #2: Have a plan and stick with it

Plan for success by identifying your goals and the tactics you’ll need to achieve them. Ask yourself, “How can mobile marketing help me build my business and meet marketing milestones?”

The first action item should include an assessment of the unique qualities of the mobile lifestyle. Content and user flow that informs via full-scale Web layout won’t necessarily scale on a Blackberry. Play to the strengths of this small, multifaceted platform and run campaigns that bring value to mobile users, e.g., click for ring tones, access mobile-only special offers.

- Build a mobile marketing strategy that integrates with your overall marketing plans.
- Outline campaigns and relevant offers that specifically appeal to mobile users.
- Set goals with incremental dates and milestones and track performance.

Step #3: Collect mobile data from your Web site visitors

Before you begin a mobile campaign, turn to your own captive audience-your Web site visitors-to see what, when, where and how they want to be communicated with on their mobile device. Within your website’s communications preference page, gather key data points, such as:
- Mobile number
- Mobile opt-in agreement
- Type of information users want from mobile messages
- Basic demographics, like age, gender, DOB, email, phone, zip (geo targeting), and interests
- Mobile phone type and carrier specifications
- Email address

If possible, offer incentives for completing the form to fuel sign-ups. While you’re at it, drop hints indicating that exclusive, top-list deals and announcements are coming soon in future mobile messages from you.

Remember, those who opt-in to receive mobile news are likely:
- Too busy to proactively obtain all their data from the Web, and
- Don’t want to miss the latest, greatest development about their favorite brands, hobbies, and heroes.

Maximize the medium by offering perks that save users time, give them useful tips, and sell them over and over again on your value.

Step #4: Create an infrastructure that’s industry compliant

Mobile marketing, like any medium, has its rules. The good news is, following these guidelines can afford you smooth travels along this new superhighway.

To ensure your infrastructure is up to snuff, first check with the Mobile Marketing Association - their code of conduct and industry best practices cover essential protocol you’ll need to know to keep yourself in good standing.

Simple things like using compliant SMS aggregators and sending permission-based communications are big deals in the small world of handhelds. Just like in the email arena, there’s no spam allowed! Also take note: clear, accurate and age-appropriate messages are keys to fair game.

Step #5: Get down to details-develop campaigns, then track results

Since mobile marketing is actually a segment of your overall marketing strategy, sync it up with business goals and develop campaigns that mirror and compliment what you’re doing in other venues. Get your hands in the details, set quarterly goals, and outline the steps that get the job done.

Take stock of these integrated tactics along the way:
- Compliment current promotions with mobile-only offers.
- Encourage mobile user interaction by emailing, mailing or broadcasting special offer access codes that deliver a “gimmee” (e.g., song, ring tone, coupon, widget).
- Use mobile messages to: drive people back to your Web site, build your brand, and promote your services.
- Set up a testing calendar to try out SMS methods, calls to action, and audience receptivity.
- Measure response time: speed, time-of-day, day-of-week; and create a matrix of best times and types of messages to send.
- Test calls-to-action that incorporate coupon redemption, click-through rewards, and latest/breakthrough news; adjust tactics based on results.
- Send different emails to different audience groups; test which performs best and modify future sends accordingly.
- Ask yourself, “What makes my audience respond?” and do that.

Step #6: Analyze and apply campaign success

As you wage campaigns, your testing and tracking activity will reveal what’s working and what’s not. Now’s the time to fine-tune your methods and build a strategy that grows with your business goals.

If a campaign results in a high number of opt-outs, take note and analyze the demographics, subject lines, calls-to-action, times-of-day, and message offers to locate the source of failure. On the flip side, if a campaign hits the roof, boosts sign-ups, surges sales, and triples Web site traffic, try to identify the muscle behind the homerun-and create a few clones!

Criteria by which to analyze campaign success:
- What was the level of interaction on handsets?
- How many recipients unsubscribed?
- How many new users subscribed?
- How many recipients sent in the survey?
- What days of the week and times-of-day did users respond?
- How long did recipients wait to respond?
- How many coupons were redeemed, songs/ring tones/skins/widgets downloaded?
- How many recipients clicked the call-to-action link and/or clicked to my Web site?
- What other responses did the campaign yield?

Stay focused and get in the game

As the face of email marketing forever changes, take charge and evolve with the times. Integrating mobile strategies into your marketing mix will help you reach more customers, more often, and more reliably. With a few adjustments to your program, you can create scalable campaigns catered to mobile devices that get you in the game to win.

Yesmail Direct is a leading bulk email marketing company that offers professional email marketing solutions and targeted email marketing services for small businesses nationwide. Our products are easy to use, visit http://www.yesmaildirect.com to see for yourself!

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