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Oct 28

This may not seem to be directly related to email marketing, but since most of my clients run full time websites I thought it would be nice to touch on this subject. I couldn’t even begin to list the hundreds of online resources for website valuation, so I have placed links throughout this post to the most accurate resources on how to value a website.

There are an array of online tools, sites, and consultants that claim they will give you an accurate estimate on what your website is worth. When using any of these methods it is always a good idea to take into consideration some commonly overlooked factors such as the effectiveness of your opt-in list and/or email newsletter.

You will often see the automatic website valuations gathering information on your site such as the number of back links. Back links can be links from blog comments, forums, and directories. If your site has valuable content people will want to link back to you, these are probably the highest valued back links one can obtain.

Many of the website valuation guides will mention your Google page rank, and overall search engine ranking position. Several other factors such as Alexa ranking, link popularity, and compete ranking can also play into your website valuation.

For more detailed information check out this site: how to value websites

Oct 24

Have you created a Squidoo Lens yet? We’re just getting started on ours and thought we’d share it with our readers.

Click Here to create your own Lens

http://www.squidoo.com/htmlemailtemplates

Help us out by rating our lens or adding it to your favorites. We have only scratched the surface of using squidoo so please bookmark our lens and check back often for updates!

Oct 18

So, what is a landing page?

Landing pages are those specialized pages that visitors to a site arrive at after clicking on a link. Usually these links stem from sources such as pay per click ads, while the landing page usually concentrates on a particular service or product with the sole intention of persuading the visitor to buy or do something that will lead to a sale.

When creating a landing page, it is better to do so after asking yourselves some questions about what you really require. It is only with the right thinking and planning that it’s possible to create effective landing pages.

Ask yourself what exactly it is you are offering the visitor you are targeting the product to, the reasons these people should be interested in your offer and what they have to do to make a purchase.

Landing pages should not be redundant

On asking yourself all these questions, you should write down your ideas, at first making them as lengthy as possible and then condensing them to motivated core elements which are not over-hyped.

While creating the link to your landing page, don’t send visitors to your home page where they have to look for the product or service you promote. Instead, make sure the link brings the visitor directly to the page with all the information they require about your service or product.

Don’t create landing pages that are redundant and offer the same information provided in the email or the page with its link. This will only infuriate the visitor and make them leave your website; instead give them something new and informative about your product or service.

Maintain consistency between your link and landing page

An effective landing page is one that confirms your call of action. This means that your landing page has to provide visitors with whatever you promise in its link. So if you promise more information, provide visitors with more information in your landing page and if you promise the order page, give visitors the order page in your landing page.

It is always better to maintain consistency between the email and the landing page. Even placing of the same logo on both pages ensures visitors know they are in the right place. Make sure that your instructions are clear both in the email and the page with its link. If you are not clear in your instructions and vision, your visitors will also end up lost in their quest for your product or service.

Use daughter windows for additional information

Not only does your landing page have to offer what the visitor is looking for, it shouldn’t have any distractions. There is no point in having landing pages with information that is useless to the reader like links to third party sites.

If you need to give some additional or ancillary information to your visitors, do so using daughter windows. With these daughter windows, visitors get the information they are looking for, without losing their way.

After looking through, and implementing all these tips for an effective landing page, you will be able to create better and more effective landing pages that increase your email marketing and profits for your business.

Oct 18

It is one of the most debated topics on the web; Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO. This is the process of optimizing your website to rank high in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Of course, these aren’t the only search engines, there are literally thousands of search engines on the internet. However these are the most popular. Getting your site to show up on the first page of Google for a keyword related to your niche will bring loads of traffic into your site.

You may ask, “what does this have to do with email marketing?”. Although they are not directly related, SEO and email marketing work very well together. For example, if you’re showing up in the first position in Google for a popular keyword you will in turn receive a lot of targeted traffic to your site. You can harness this traffic by adding an opt-in form to your front page, then just sit back and watch your list grow.

There are so many different SEO companies on the internet that it’s hard to know which ones will actually give you results. Search Engine Optimization is an investment, if you’re going to hire someone to do the work, choose wisely.

Oct 15
email marketing These high quality email templates are designed by me, and available for immediate download. Included are all necessary HTML and graphics files.

I’ve tested all for compatibility issues in the most popular email clients & programs.

All templates are modified for maximum deliverability results.

Download Free Email Templates

Oct 14
email newsletter It is very important for all businesses to have a regular newsletter for effective email marketing. It is with email newsletters that it is possible to keep in contact with customers, announce the release of new products and get-togethers and help build a good rapport with potential customers.

However, it is not sufficient to create just any email newsletter; it has to be effective and interesting enough to rake in sales leads and added revenue. For an effective email newsletter, make sure that it is a quick read as readers don’t usually have the time or patience to read long newsletters. The most time they will spend in reading a newsletter is four to five minutes.

Use short and interesting content in the newsletter

This means that the articles in the newsletter should be short and interesting so that it will immediately capture the interest of the reader. In addition to creating short articles, it is important that you use headlines to summarise the important points of the article. Also add some graphics in the newsletter design that are easily printable.

It is also possible to create a more interesting email newsletter by adding some attention-grabbing photographs and art work to the email template design. However in the process, don’t use too many graphics as too many graphics only lead to a cluttered newsletter design.

The email newsletter you create should be physically readable with fonts of a minimum of 12 points in size. There are many fancy fonts available for you to use in your email template design; however not all fonts look good when printed. Some of them are also difficult to read after printing; so try out different fonts before deciding on the best one for your email newsletter.

Choose your font and backgrounds wisely

The email newsletter should have consistent headings and text fonts. It is always better to use black or dark coloured fonts in the email newsletter and avoid using colored ones for the email newsletter’s text printing. You also have to pay attention to the colour of the background of the email newsletter. Don’t use dark colours; backgrounds in white, grey, beige, off-white, etc are easy to read, especially after printing.

It is important to hire a competent writer and editor for your email newsletter. This is because circulating an email newsletter with numerous errors only leads to creating a negative image to the readers. Just a spell checker will not suffice in creating the perfect newsletter; have it manually edited for grammar, readability and content.

Be consistent in the publishing of the email newsletter

It is not enough to only create an effective email newsletter; an email newsletter works in email marketing only if you publish it on schedule. It is up to you to decide if you have sufficient content, man power and money to publish the email newsletter weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually and once you decide the frequency, you have to stick to it.
All these efforts will lead to the production of an effective email newsletter that can be sent to all your present customers and to the new customers who sign in to the email newsletter.

Oct 12

Thousands of companies use email as a key marketing tool, sending out promotions, newsletters, and coupons to increase sales. This is a very cost effective method of marketing. Companies who have caught on to the obvious success rate in these campaign can easily send out 500,000 emails in one day.

email templates
E-mail marketing is not as simple as it may seem. It is more complex than just writing an article on a website or just posting on a forum, because for any email marketer to succeed, your emails must really reach out to your targeted audience. Therefore it is very important that you build, or obtain a quality, targeted opt-in list.
There are many brokers available in the market who provide quality email lists, however the best and most effective way of reaching out to your target audience is to build your own list. These opt-in lists contains email addresses of people who are your target leads i.e. those people who may be interested in buying your product/service.

I have received a ton of questions on the best methods to grow your site’s subscriber list, which is by far the most important factor in a successful campaign. There are many ways to build a quality list, you can start by building trust with your clients. Assure them that you won’t be selling their email to third parties, and do not spam your clients. Next, you will want a well placed opt-in area on your site, this should be in a highly visible area. Many companies will offer exlusive deals or incentives as a reason to subscribe. After you have these two important items in place, work on generating more traffic to your site and watch your list grow.