E-Biz Booster Blog

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 24

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:44:11 -0600

Welcome to the 24th edition of email marketing tips on June 30th, 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.

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

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Copyright ©2010 by John W. Furst. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0.

Choosing the Right Email Marketing System - The Who And How

nospam@example.com (Sunil S.) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:09:00 -0600

I have not tried every single system out there. However, I have tried a few and have discussed the better ones in another section of this website. And since I have not personally tried every software available out there, the goal of this article is to provide a general overview of what to look for in an email solution provider to determine if the email marketing tool is suitable for your and your business’ needs.

Basically the entire process boils down to four key components. If you can check all four for any given email marketing system out there, go ahead and start playing with it!

Service
Functionality
Feasibility
Price

Assess the email Marketing Company’s Service and its Compatibility with You and Your Business

Read about the solution provider you are contemplating using both on their website as well as other discussion forums and online communities to corroborate what the company is saying to what people have experienced personally. If something doesn’t smell right at this stage, chances are something isn’t right indeed. So take your time with the due diligence.

If you know other business owners like yourself, reach out to them and ask them about what email marketing solution they are using. Find out what they like and dislike about it. Find out what feature(s) they wished their email marketing system provided.

Most importantly, get a good feel for the provider’s feasibility of use and customer service and support. As an entrepreneur you have very limited time on your hands and the last thing you want to do with that little time is to spend it troubleshooting email marketing software related issues.

Ensure that the company you go with has a good “functionality” track and in the instance it fails, that there is a good customer support program in place that will “fix your problems” with minimal interruption to your operations.

If the system you are evaluating does not pass this first test, I would simply turn back at this point and move on to candidate number 2. Don’t forget - Time is the equivalent of money!

Ensure Double Opt In email Marketing Functionality

Make sure that the system you choose has double opt in technology. Many email marketing system users bypass the double opt in option not deeming it important enough when implementing email marketing campaigns. Contrary to practice, this is actually one of the most important options to implement within your campaign. Double opt in ensures that your subscriber will respond to a automated confirmation email sent to their email address by your email marketing system when the subscriber requests to be signed up to your mailing list.

The only tricky thing here could be that you may already have an existing email list, in which case you will have to provide that list to your email marketing system company. Now some companies will go ahead and add the list to their database. However others will require you to send those individuals an email requesting confirmation. The risk here is that you may have some folks who don’t get see the message or simply do not respond for whatever reason.

If this happens you will definitely loose some email addresses. I would keep track of these and to the extent possible, follow up with these customers personally (hopefully you have retained their contact information). I know it’s a pain but this is the upfront risk of moving onto something bigger and better.

Why would you want someone who has not specifically asked to be on your list anyway? It costs money to send emails so make sure you aren’t throwing money away. Double opt in ensures that your email list is as clean and lean as it can get with only relevant and interested subscribers. Remember, it is not about quantity here, rather it is all about quality.

How Feasible Does Your email Marketing System Work?

Two components are key when evaluating feasibility; ease of email creation and amount of follow-up service required on your end. You can make your life a lot easier if your email marketing system provides multiple email templates you can choose from to craft your newsletter or article. This is a key factor to look out for especially if you are not a web developer who has minimal experience coding in HTML. The last thing you want to do is waste your time designing and tweaking the look and feel of your email message.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important for your email to be professional and aesthetically pleasing. However, you just don’t have to spend your time on non-value add activities that can be satisfied by a good email marketing system. Oh yeah, these templates should come at no additional cost to you.

You also want to ensure that your email solution provider has a proven track record of good performance and longevity in the industry. Those qualities mean that your system is reputable and likely accepted and respected by most email providers (paid or free). Often what happens is that email providers (i.e. Hotmail) will not accept any emails generated/sent by a particular email marketing system because of its reputation or lack thereof (maybe because it has not been around long enough).

Basically, what you want is an email system that delivers 100% of the time. You want to see your email make a landing on your reader’s Inbox, not their Trash, Junk Mail or Spam folder. You should be just fine if you put in the time researching and conducting your due diligence upfront.

Don’t be Afraid to Pay for a Good email Marketing System

It takes money to make money - I am sure you have heard of that saying before. Although it is not always the case, it is the case most of the time. If all the tests till now have been met satisfactorily, then don’t hesitate to pay for a good email solution. As long as the pricing is reasonable (and you are the best judge of this subjective measure), there is no reason not to engage a well qualified provider and risk loosing more time and money in the long-run.

There is no denying that you need a good email marketing system to have a successfully Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) program. So go ahead and be cautious, but please don’t be cheap when it comes to selecting the right email marketing partner. Using the best email marketing system for your needs is the number one email marketing secret my friend.

Sunil S. is the author of the Dubai Information Site, Easy Extra Money Online and Sue the Airlines; comprehensive content focused websites. Having created and sold two successful websites in the past, the Author’s focus on these websites is strictly educational. Information is provided in a casual instructive format and is 100% Free.

Easy Extra Money Online
http://www.easyextramoneyonline.com (↑)
contact@easyextramoneyonline.com (↑)
Article Source: EzineArticles.com (↑)

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

nospam@example.com (Greg Digneo) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:00:00 -0600

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?”

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
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” and is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog.

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 23

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:25:00 -0600

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

The carnival is back after having had some wild turbulences 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: Internet Business With Pat Doyle. That was a great relief. Now I’ll try to get back on schedule with this.

(If you want to host an edition on your blog, please, contact me and let me know.)

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 blog carnival home page.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 22, 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 - My New Blog Carnival

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:30:00 -0600

Email marketing is more important than ever. It's a very cost effective means to stay connected with your customers and prospects. And you do not only want to stay connected, you want to build a relationship with your members.

While social media platforms like twitter and facebook allow you to be present as a business, as a marketer, they very often change the rules, … You don't want to be at their mercy. Build your email list. Start now and continue to grow it.

Email Marketing Tips - Blog Carnival

→ Submit your email marketing related blog post to the next edition.

The Archive

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 23, Jun 5, 2010
Includes: (*) The Right Way To Buy A List; (*) Sharing Your Newsletter on Social Media; (*) 8 Eail Marketing Tips; and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 22, May 19, 2010. Hosted at Internet Marketing With Pat Doyle
Includes: (*) Affiliate marketing: $103,789.85 revenue in 2009; (*) Email is not dead; (*) Funny side of customer service;
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 21, canceled
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 20, Apr 7, 2010
Includes: (*) Email marketing on autopilot; (*) How often should send your emails? (*) Increase the open rate; (*) Get a higher ROI; (*) The one missing thing; and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 19, Mar 23, 2010
Includes: (*) Copywriting tips from David Deutsch and Sonia Simone; (*) Email Template Design Tips; (*) “Single or Double Opt-in?” and more, …

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 18, Jun 19, 2009
Includes: (*) Why you should build YOUR email list; (*) How to improve your writing; (*) Better scheduling for your autoresponder follow-up messages, and more …
Email Marketing Tips - 17 (History), Feb 19, 2009
Includes: “Do you have an opt-in form?”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 16, Jan 20, 2009
Includes: Tips and case-studies on email subject lines, how to send video emails (can you?), much more,… and last issue of Chris Garrett's series about email marketing for bloggers. A real power edition, great start in 2009.
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 15, Dec 12, 2008
Includes: Tips for authors & freelancers, affiliate marketing strategies, email marketing tips for bloggers from expert Chris Garrett, and much more. This is the last carnival edition of 2008.
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 14, Nov 26, 2008
Includes: Email marketing tips for bloggers from expert Chris Garrett, tips on how to prepare for Christmas and clues about copywriting,…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 13, Nov 10, 2008
Includes: Tips from Yaro Starak about targeting, auto-responder tips from John W. Furst, copywriting email tips for bloggers, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 12, Oct 29, 2008
Short Edition, because blogcarnival.com is down, again. Includes: Chris Garrett's killer post about how to increase the return of investment (ROI) of your Email campaigns…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 11, Oct 17, 2008
Includes: A video tip from Ed Rivis about tracking life time value. Chris Garrett writes about plugging holes in your campaign, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 10, Oct 1, 2008
Includes: Tips about video emails, email etiquette, social networking, and email marketing tips for bloggers by Chris Garrett, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 9, Sep 15, 2008
Includes: Tips for a more catchy subject line, explains testing, continues with the 2nd article about list building for bloggers from Chris Garrett, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 8, Sep 03, 2008
Hosted at Internet Marketing Chaos - Internet Business Without Hype
Includes: Tips about list building, choosing subject line, and timing of your campaigns
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 7, Aug 26, 2008
Includes: Tips from Ryan Deiss about increasing the opt-in rate and an email marketing course for bloggers written by Chris Garrett
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 6, Aug 6, 2008
Includes: John Carlton, “Who Gets Read” (about copywriting)
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 5, Jul 23, 2008
Includes: Ed Rivis, “1,035 email subscribers in 35 days”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 4, Jul 9, 2008
Includes: Marcus Hochstadt, “Freebie Seekers” (about strategy)
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 3, Jun 25, 2008
Includes: Fred Black, “Behind Bars: Could the New FTC CAN-SPAM Rules Land You In JAIL?”, and Ed Rivis, “How to increase sales by 300%”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 2, Jun 11, 2008
Includes: Manuel Viloria, “Is Listbuilding Just A Dream?”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 1, May 28, 2008
Includes: Brian Terry, “Become a Listbuilding Genius!”

The facts are as follows:

Description: The tag line says it all! I.e. Tested tips and tricks, copy writing for email campaigns, comparison of providers, scheduling, how to ..., software reviews, web site integration, how to collect email addresses at a fair, legal issues, ..., etc.
Keywords: autoresponder,email,marketing,business,newsletter,list building
Filed under: business
Submission deadline: every second monday at 11pm Pacific time as in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Submission categories: copywriting, tools and services, legal, strategy, general tips
Maintained by: John W. Furst

→ Submit your email marketing related blog post to the next upcoming edition.

I will refine the submission guidelines as I move forward with this. And I definitely don't come up with stupid rules, like “1 submission per author, per blog, per edition, but only when the sun shines on the other side of the country you are living in”. It's cumbersome for authors to keep track.

What kind of content seems appropriate?

Again, the tag line, “How to successfully use email autoresponders and follow-up newsletters in your business”, says it all.

Subjects like:

Tested tips and tricks
copy writing for email campaigns
comparison of providers
scheduling
how to …
software reviews
web site integration
squeeze pages know how
how to collect email addresses at a fair
legal issues
the more recent the better
specific advice better than general blabla
…, etc.

I'd like to see a lot of original, recent articles from real people on real Blogs with about info and a real email address.

First edition will be hosted here on this E-Biz Booster Blog on Wednesday, May 28^th, 2008.

Yours
John W. Furst

Fast Site, Better Rankings And Happier Users

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:43:00 -0600

Speed Up Your Webpages As Fast As You Can (image credit)

Okay, now it is official.

Google finally announces that page loading time has become one of the ~200 signals (↑) that influence rankings in its search engine. If you are a little bit tech savvy when it comes to web technologies, check out the post. There you’ll find resources and tips on how to tackle the issue.

The Google Webmaster tool (↑) also offers a new function at Dashboard / Labs / Site Performance which gives you a hint how your site is doing right now.

I already told you in September, 2009, how to speed up your website.

Now it’s time to get going.

From a usability standpoint of view this makes totally sense of course. Not only Google but also your users would love to have your pages load in less than 1 second! What are you doing when a page loads forever. Maybe you move on right away.

The three most common problems with page load time:

Slow hosting (shared hosting)
Blog software that is not optimized
Too many external widgets, advertising, etc.

I did not say, “It’s easy to fix a slow site,” but it should be on your to do list.

In the meantime you can signup for Pingdom (↑), which monitors your website(s) for uptime and speed and more. (A free option is available.)

I’m aware of the issues with this site and I’m looking into VPS hosting in the cloud. But I’m super busy with other things right now and as weird as it may sound my income is not directly dependent on how this site ranks respectively how fast it is at this point.

Getting Faster Hosting

The hosting companies which I will investigate further are

VPS.net
mediatemple.com
rackspace.com

What catches my eye are their cloud hosting products.

But let’s first talk about classic hosting products:

Shared Hosting: Your website is hosted on one server together with hundreds or even thousands of other websites. If those other sites get a lot of traffic your sites slows down, too.
Virtual Private Server (VPS): One server is partitioned into several (10 to 20) virtual servers, which appears to you like one regular computer, just only 1/10th to 1/20th that powerful. You have more control over the resources of your server.
Dedicated Server: It’s all yours.

Classic shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS), and even dedicated hosting have one weak point: Single point of failure! When a critical component in the server on which your website is hosted fails, your site may go down for hours or even days till the hardware has been replaced and the server restored.

Cloud hosting

Hostingin a cloud infrastructure circumvents this issue, because the virtual cloud server uses hardware from more than one physical computer. If components fail, your site might slow down a bit, but should remain operational. At least in theory

That’s the icing on the cake so to speak. Another advantage of cloud hosting is that it easily can be scaled according to your needs. Your blog post gets on the front page of Digg, no problem! The cloud detects the rise in traffic and provides more resources within a minute or so. Then it scales back automatically.

I know this sounds like magic, but a fair warning: Shopping for a good cloud VPS host isn’t necessarily easy. You really have to read the fine print about how resources are allocated and shared, and not all of the mentioned providers offer this automatic scaling right now and maybe you don’t even need it at this point. Also note that — of course — those extra resources (CPU power and bandwidth) might need to get paid for extra.

Yes, this is the playing field of geeks and techies.

Getting your website to load faster is not as trivial as finding a couple of keywords to go after. All of three companies mentioned offer managed support in case you don’t have a team of your own for advanced server administration.

But hosting is only one factor that determines the speed of your website.

Here is an additional article that addresses the issue especially for Wordpress powered blogs.

Site Speed is now a Ranking Factor (↑)

That’s it for today.

Yours
John W. Furst

Podcast About Tribes And Speech About Purple Cows (Revisited)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:56:00 -0600

This is a post I had written much earlier on a static web-page. Now I am importing it into the blog. It’s not such a bad idea to revisit Seth Godin’s work from time to time anyway. Enjoy.

Seth Godin - A Podcast and a video from a TED talk

Shortly after I turned on the computer this morning, I decided that I will continue to write about Seth Godin and provide you with two great resources about smart marketing.

The Podcast for Tribes

I just finished reading the book and published my honest review on my blog.
Tribes - A Review by John W. Furst
John, 2008-10-25

On September 12th, 2008 Seth Godin had recorded an exclusive interview style podcast done by and for his community Triiibes.com.

(I don’t hot link there, because it is a private community — and will remain to be private — and all you would see is a login screen.)

In this roughly 47 minutes Seth talks about

His notion of Tribes
The Book: Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us
Triiibes.com

Listen to the Podcast now

Podcast with Seth Godin (audio only, 47 min.)

Are you finally inspired to buy the book?

You should be. This book is about

marketing and leadership,
about leadership and marketing,
about tribes.

The book is already an Amazon bestseller, the book is short and small and simple. It argues, as clearly as Seth is capable, that leadership is the best marketing tactic to any organization — a company, a school, a church, a job seeker.

Our role today is to find, connect and lead tribes in order to make change happen.

We see Tribes behind every successful brand, organization, politician, non profit and cause. And yet it seems almost impossible to attract a tribe. In this book, Seth tries to explain that the challenge is leadership, not marketing or hype.

Check it out now.

top↑

The TED talk

This remarkable talk at a TED conference in February 2003 is of timeless value. It’s related to the content of Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”.

The talk is about 18 minutes long and quite entertaining as well as educating. Check it out.

Please, enable Javascript in your browser to view this video and reload the page.

Some RSS feed readers like Google Reader block Javascript. Open the post directly in your Web browser to view the video.

Seth Godin speaking at TED in February 2003.
A timeless treasure.

Are you ready?

No wonder that Seth Godin became a well sought after speaker. He manages to say a lot with a few words and hits the target in the center.

Average products for average people doesn’t work anymore.
The TV industrial complex is broken.
Safe is risky.
Your products need to be remarkable. I.e. Worth having a remark made about them.

I did not count how many books Seth already has written, but it’s a lot. Some you might already have heard of. some you maybe have read. I noticed with me and with other folks that once you have read one books of Seth you want to read more of them.

Seth Godin is Famous For More Books

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Before I forget.

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

Tribute Video by John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog and Triiibes.com

Email or Social Networks or Mobile or What For Business?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:05:00 -0600

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 ↑).

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 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

Touch It - Do It - Get It Done - Part 2

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:38:44 -0600

Last week I introduced the “Touch It - Do It - concept for more productivity.” It basically requires that you stay focused and complete a task, once you have started working on it. No more task switching! It always takes ( = wastes ) some time to get tuned in for the current task in front of you. Don't switch it. Start and complete it. Then the next one, and the next one, etc.

But how to deal with all the interruptions during the day?

The phone rings, a co-worker comes into my office, …
If it happens that you work in your home office, your kids or your wife may come in, … How are you dealing with it or how should you deal with this?

When you are reading articles from successful business people, artists, managers you quickly see that they value their time highly and don't allow interruptions. They have certain time slots during the day, when they don't pick up the phone and have the door to their office closed.

Some may have 1 hour, some even 4 or 5 hours depending on the kind of work they do. They only deal with the most important tasks of their business. This is not limited to business it could also be the daily training for an athlete, or practicing for a musician.

The secrets of not getting interrupted are:

You set the rules, and you change and train your environment to respect your time and don't disturb you.
Your business has to be organized in a way that it runs like a clock without having everybody interrupting each other all the time. This is not limited to you, of course. No matter if you are the CEO of a large corporation or the owner of a smaller, probably home based, business. You will increase “production” by enforcing good time management and work habits. It will take some time till it sticks, but you have to start with yourself and make your staff follow your good example.
You have to switch from “Reactive mode to Responsive mode”. Read this article that I have written about that topic two days ago. It will give you additional ideas about the significance of being in control versus being controlled by others.
In the home office situation, you even have to train your family to respect your time. Just explain that you have more time for your love ones at the end of the day, if they stop pounding at your door all day long. This is not rude at all. Let's say your business fails, because you don't get enough done. What would be the outcome? You have to get a job, have to drive to work and back, which takes additional time. The result is even less time for your family. Make them understand that, when your door is closed, you are “not at home”.
If you are just starting your own business at night time, while you still have your day job, you might think about re-investing some of the first money that rolls in to do some fun things with your family (spouse, ...). That way you can show them, how they benefit from your growing business. It is a bribe, but one that usually works. Your environment is part of your success or failure. You have to deal with it the right way.

Now, we understand why it is important to concentrate on each task at the time and how to change yourself and your environment to help you follow it through.

Next I need to line out how to select the tasks and how to plan your day. But before I get into this, I will introduce the concept of “impact areas”.

An impact area is any part of your business that affects the profits somehow. In a larger corporation those might be identifiable according to the departments (if set up properly), but even a home based business has some distinct impact areas.

Some examples: sales, marketing, product development, customer service, accounts receivables , purchasing, traffic generation, SEO, … When you manage to improve one impact area, your profits will go up. That should be the deal.

How to improve an impact area?

You start out by assigning a one hour time slot each week (on a regular schedule) to have a meeting with all relevant team members or managers of that particular impact area. You set up those meetings for each of your impact areas. The goal of the meetings is to check on the status, discuss problems, come up with possible means for improvement and most importantly to assign tasks that have to be performed during the following week in order to improve that specific impact area.

Keep notes — meeting minutes — about the assignments and status. This will be a great guide in your next weekly meeting and allows to inspect the progress.

No matter in what position you are, you get already some tasks assigned during this “virtual or real” meetings.

Home based business: You will assign the tasks to yourself and stick with it during the week, like you would do it for your boss. Without this focus on impact areas you might perform important tasks (e.g. social bookmarking for a bloggers, …) not as consistently as you should.
Large Corporation: Being the CEO or manager of a department you will have most tasks delegated. You can turn to other things, while you know that the important areas of your business or department are being constantly improved. A major advantage of such meetings is that everybody in the impact area is informed and becomes part of the improvement process. Also decisions are made quickly during the meeting, because all involved persons are on the spot.
Virtual business: Just the same thing, but the meeting might me via a teleconference call.

If you see the areas of your business from this angle, you will distribute your energy more evenly and address all aspects of growing your company to the next level. Impact areas already can give you some hints about what is important for you to do, first. But how can you integrate the knowledge about impact areas into your daily schedule?

I will answer that question in the next issue of this series of articles on Friday, September 28. The subject will be “Priorities and Planning”. Stay tuned, don't miss it. Subscribe to my announcement email newsletter or RSS feed.

Have a great weekend.

Yours
John W. Furst

Continue reading about productivity and planing in part 3 of this series of posts.

The author John W. Furst has 15+ years of business experience in various management positions in small, and large companies in different industries both in the USA and in Europe. He has settled down on the Canary Islands to be an Entrepreneur and leave the hectic corporate world behind. Want to learn about lead generation?

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 20

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:04:00 -0600

Welcome to the twentieth edition of email marketing tips on April 7th, 2010.

We have a fine mix of submissions today so I did not add any external blog posts this time. Now it’s time to improve your email marketing campaigns. Let's begin.

This edition can keep you busy for some time. Here is how I want you to go about it.

Take notes

Get a piece of empty paper ready and a pen or use a fresh page in your journal.
Draw a vertical line in the middle all the way from top to bottom.
At top of the right column write the word “tip”, on top of the left column “to do”.
Now when you read each article take a short note and most importantly write down what you will do as a result of that tip.
Then of course do it. No excuses.

Today’s categories:

strategy
copywriting
general advice
tools and services

Browsing Tip: If not stated otherwise all links in this email marketing tips carnival edition will open in this window. Use the back button of your browser to come back here or open links in a new window or tab.

strategy

Jodi Kaplan presents How to Put Your Email Marketing on Automatic Pilot posted at Fix Your Broken Marketing, saying, “I promised to tell you how to market your services without lifting a finger. The secret…”

John’s comment: Solid advice! I suggest you sign up for her email class as well.

David Porter presents Internet Business Automation Or Virtual Duct Tape - Which One Are YOU Using? posted at eBusiness Journey, asking, “Are you actually helping your business grow with your automation efforts? (Thanks for this opportunity!)”

John’s comment: Yes, people want personal attention! There is a limit on what or how much you can automate.

John W. Furst presents two articles at once. They go hand in hand: How Often Should You Email Your Subscribers and Are They Burning Their Email Lists?, saying, “The ‘old question:’ How often should I email my subscribers.”

John’s comment: My humble posts.

copywriting

John W. Furst presents 5 Tips on How to Increase the Open Rate of Your Email Newsletter posted at E-Biz Booster Blog - Internet And Email Marketing Tips, saying, “In the long run your subscribers will stick with your newsletter because … it’s not that easy simple. You need to bond with them on an emotional level.”

John’s comment: Again, my post. Host your own edition of this carnival and you have the editor’s advantage, too. How? Look at the end of the post.

Rebekah Donaldson presents Get Higher ROI from a B2B Email Marketing Campaign posted at Red on Marketing Blog, saying, “There are right ways and wrong ways to write email newsletters and the best way to stay on the plus side of that equation is to focus on the client. These seven examples of what isn’t boring could up your click-through rate and lead generation.”

John’s comment: Right, you don’t want to be boring. Keep your email marketing fresh.

general advice

Andy Hayes presents The One Thing Missing from Most Email Newsletter Signup Forms posted at Travel Online Partners (TOP), saying, “Are you making this common mistake I see in 90% of all opt-in forms?”

John’s comment: A picture says more than 1,000 words.

Adriana Copaceanu presents What Is a Blacklist and How to Avoid Being Blacklisted posted at My Online Business Journey, saying, “You may have heard the term ‘blacklist’ and wondered what this meant. If you’re blacklisted it means you’ve been labeled as a spammer by the internet service providers and the penalties can be stiff.”

John’s comment: Using a top email marketing service provider, e.g. Aweber, saves you a lot of trouble in that respect.

“The Money Is In The List”

AWeber proves it to thousands of businesses every day.

Learn how email marketing software
can get you more sales, too.

tools and services

Amanda Gagnon presents Email Marketing, Meet Social Media posted at Aweber’s Blog, saying, “Over 70% consider ‘competition with social media for recipients' time and attention’ an important challenge for 2010, according to Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report.”

John’s comment: Lots of points for your action list.

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.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 19, 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 19

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:55:00 -0600

Welcome to the nineteenth edition of email marketing tips on March 23rd, 2010.

This is the first edition of my email marketing tips blog carnival this year. I have hand-picked all entries myself and hope that I will get useful blog article submissions to the next edition.

By the way: Here is the complete archive with highlight of the best contributions with useful email marketing tips.

Today’s categories:

copywriting
strategy
general tips
practical tips

copywriting

Sonia Simone wrote The Betty Crocker Secret to Email Marketing that Works posted at Copyblogger, saying, “You’ve heard it a thousand times: the money’s in the list. If you’re serious about getting results online, you need to build a list of people who are paying attention to you, typically an email list.”

John’s comment: A must read article! I only have one objection: “The money is not in the list! It’s in the relationship with the list.”

Doberman Dan wrote David Deutsch’s Advice To Copywriters posted at Doberman Dan - Direct Response Entrepreneur, saying, “At John Carlton’s Action Seminar David Deutsch shared several life-changing pieces of advice with me. David is one of the handful of top “A list” copywriters… the very best hired guns who write for the HUGE direct response companies like Boardroom, Agora, Rodale and Phillips.”

David Deutsch gives copywriting advice to Doberman Dan.
(Click the image to open the video in a new window.)

John’s comment: With that tip you actually can earn while you learn. Doesn’t matter if you get started with direct mail or you simply start to build an list of your own.

strategy

Scott Hardigree wrote Email marketing: Scott Hardigree on email list rental posted at Social Email Marketing, saying, “Frequently maligned and often misunderstood, email list rental is a widely accepted marketing practice that can provide a potent ROI, if you know what to look for and respect the inbox.”

John’s comment: Good advice. Leverage other people’s legitimate e-mail lists.

general tips

Jo Miles wrote Email is not a webpage posted at Beaconfire Wire Consulting, saying, “There is a simple rule, ‘Keep your email design simple!’”

John’s comment: And think about the fact that there is a growing number of mobile devices that have e-mail clients with limited display capabilities.

John W. Furst wrote Single Opt-in Or Double Opt-in Email List - Are You Wasting Money? posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “You might not like the answer I am giving you. Wake up, that’s what it is about.“

John’s comment: My humble post for this edition. What do you think? Leave a comment.

“The Money Is In The List”

AWeber proves it to thousands of businesses every day.

Learn how email marketing software
can get you more sales, too.

practical tips

AWeber’s Hot Email Marketing Tips!

Do you love AWeber, too?

2010-03-22 Now Supporting Google Chrome, Safari

2010-03-18 How Email Can Make You A Customer Service Star

2010-03-11 Segment Your List with Survey Results

2010-03-10 Newsletter 101: Conquering Structure

2010-03-02 Grow More Than Grapes: Email List Building For Wineries

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of email marketing tips using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips blog carnival home page.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 18, too.

P.P.S.: And submit your related blog article for the next edition. Do it right, now.

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

A Monologue: Listen Marketers!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:08:00 -0600

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

Internet Marketers' Paradise

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:57:33 -0600

Hi folks,

I just have updated my about page and thought you will like to see this video as well. It's paradise, … there are just not a lot of Internet marketers here.

Canary Islands

Enjoy and relax.

Yours
John W. Furst

Is Life Hitting You With A Brick?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:47:03 -0600

Nobody can win all the time, every time! Facing obstacles is the norm when walking down the road of life

I just discovered this motivational, timeless video with Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple and Pixar Animation) telling 3 stories of his life.

Take the 15 minutes that it takes to watch this video, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

“Don't live other people's life…
Have the courage to follow your heart ...
Stay hungry, stay foolish!”

Yours
John W. Furst

Are They Burning Their Email Lists?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:23:43 -0600

Don’t Burn Your Email List!
(image credit)

Something must be up in the air this spring.

Too much is too much.
Really.

Last week I advised you to write more often to your email list members. This week it seems like I say exactly the opposite.

Many friends and colleagues are complaining that they are getting too many sales pitches in their email inbox. They are fed up and told me they have unsubscribed massively from the email lists of company A, marketer B, blogger C, and so forth.

Too Many Affiliate Promotions

The main culprit seems to be those affiliate promotions,

“He’s my friend, a great guy, his product rocks! This helped me so much when I was in the same situation like you are in right now. Really, it’s a steal, you are crazy if you don’t buy this now before it’s sold out. Buy it now, don’t wait!”

It continues the next day:

“I cannot believe that you are still sitting on the fence. You cannot let that go. It’s a once in a life time opportunity. And it’s so affordable. Imagine how you will feel when you finally get the results you and your family deserve.”

Seen in weight loss, make money, find the better job, learn X,Y,Z, …, you name it. C’mon.

And so on.

And once you start not opening and reading their emails, they figure that out and send you the same email again with a different subject line. And again, …

Companies and marketers are loosing customers that way all the time.

For example, a friend told me,

“He and … try to sell me something every day. It’s almost like they are whoring themselves out. If they concentrated on their own products and customer service - which is awful by the way - I think I would be more interested in them.”

I clicked Remove Me From List. Done.

Emotional Bank Account

As a marketing professional you have to understand this. You have an emotional bank account with your email list members and whenever you promote something to them, it will cost you points. You must ensure that your subscribers keep getting way more value from you over time than what you withdraw with every promotion you do. This balance should remain high and ideally continue to grow.

For example:

When Maria just has opted-in to your email newsletter or bought something from you. Think about:

Does she really need this product right now.
Can she take advantage of it?
Does she need it?

It doesn’t make sense to promote an advance course to someone who just has bought your beginner product and normally wouldn’t even have finished to consume your program at this point.

… Webinars and Tele-Classes

Really? Webinars or tele-classes with special, free information are part of so many promotions today.

Honestly, how many time can one listen to the same “old story” over and over again. The content wears out quickly over time and what’s left is a 40, 60, 90 minute sales pitch,

That hurts a lot.

Costs many of those points in the emotional bank account you have with your email subscribers.

And even if your subscribers don’t watch the video, webinar or read the promotions, once the balance in that bank account is low, they start thinking that you want to steal their time and money. There goes your credibility as trusted adviser and friend.

This is not good.

Think about it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: There is a fine balance between sending too few and too many emails and it all has to do with the type of content you send along the way. I shall write more about this in the future.

A Lazy Man's Domain Name Tip

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:00:00 -0600

Are you searching for ‘a car’ or ‘many cars’?
Which domain name would you type first? (image credit)

A couple of month ago I have written about the basics on how to choose a domain name. Today let me add one important point.

A friend of mine runs a successful business and just has launched a new website with some great tips for lead generation. I wanted to read one of his articles again and typed-in his URL. Instead of his homepage I saw:

Error: Server not found

This was quite a surprise. He has one of those domains where you have a hard time to remember whether to add the “s” for plural or not. Like in

car.com or
cars.com

The weird mess up on his part is that he even has a very beautiful logo with …labs, but his domain name is …lab.com.

I don’t think I am the only one making this mistake, but I am one of the few who actually try the other version as well. The average web surfer might just give up right away.

Of course I wrote to him immediately and shouted,

“… get the plural version of your domain as long as you can.

You can buy it from me for $2,397.00 if you decide on the spot while we are talking. Otherwise I throw it on the market for at least $4,997.00 tomorrow. Your choice …”

Well, the last part is made up, I did not try to rip him off. Fortunately his missed domain is still available. That’s the secret reason why I don’t spell out his domain name here.

I am sure he understood the hint and will buy it.

Type-in traffic can be more valuable than you think

Ask yourself, “Who types in your domain directly into the browser?”

Likely someone who already has heard about you and wants to know more. For example she has remembered your company name, brand name, product name from an ad you ran in a magazine, from a radio or late night TV ad, or in best case from someone who mentioned your products and services in a very favorable tone — basically referred her in your direction.

Sounds like a not so cold prospect.

That type-in user whom you have lost just 3 minutes ago, and another one 10 hours and 27 minutes ago might have signed up to your newsletter or bought something right away. You’ll never know.

Tip: When you think about registering a certain domain name consider right away whether it makes sense to register both singular and plural versions of it.

Is there already a competitor using one version or the other?

Maybe you should get a totally different name then to avoid trademark related issues in the future.
How many searches are on the major search engines for each — the singular and the plural version of the keyword — respectively domain name.

A quick quiz

What do you think is the more popular site?

car.com or
cars.com

(display the answer)

The Answer

According to Alexa cars.com is more popular than car.com, it gets about 25 times more visitors.

Did you guess right?

5 million searches a month in the USA for cars and 1 million searches for car on Google. That’s at least what the Google keyword tool tells me.

car.com was registered in 1994; cars.com in 1998. Obviously those marketing savvy guys who grabbed cars.com had figured out at this time that a lot of people are searching for “cars”.

[close answer]

This treatment is a bit incomplete but don’t waste your time to find the holes in my argument. Take action instead.

Rather check if you have domains that are effected, shell out a few bucks and register the plural and singular versions of your important domains.
Then redirect your traffic with a 301 Permanently Moved HTTP status response code to your main domain. Your web hosting provider has documentation on how to do this or even can do it for you.

Now get to work.

By the way did you notice that in general most of the folks who make a good living on the Internet have a lot of domains. (Just a hint more.)

Yours
John W. Furst