In a recent post entitled “Improve Your Email Marketing Etiquette For A More Successful Campaign”, I covered some of the basic email etiquette principles which will help increase the success of your marketing campaigns.

In this post I am going to look at four further ways you can improve your open and read rate by personalising the way you approach your email marketing campaigns.

Personalise Your Emails

When an email lands in your inbox the first thing you notice is the subject line, so many marketers will try and optimise this the its fullest in order to entice the recipient to open it. The first hurdle of email marketing is getting people to open the email rather than just deleting it, so I recommend you use the prospect’s name in the subject line as this immediately stands out.

Something like “Sean, download your six free cheat sheets today” will work much better than just “Six Free Cheat Sheets”, as the second example screams Spam email. Continue to use the prospect’s name throughout the email as this personal feel should encourage them to read on.

Give Them A Name To Reply To

The personalisation approach works in two parts; not only should you refer to the prospect by name, but you should also refer to yourself by name. Make sure the email comes from a real person, with a real name and a proper email address that the prospect can respond to. After all, email marketing is all about engaging and requesting a response, so if they can’t reply to you directly then they’re not likely to respond at all.

Also, sending an email from an info@ or no-reply@ address makes it very clear that this a mass send out, and that puts people off opening your email from the minute it hits their inbox.   

Plain Text Wins Over HTML

As aesthetically pleasing as HTML enabled emails are, they don’t get opened and read as often as plain text emails. Not only are they obviously a form of promotional email, but often recipients’ emails aren’t HTML enabled, so all the pictures and links are missing from them anyway.

If your prospects can’t read your email properly then they will simply bin it, so sticking to a plain text email ensures that your email gets through in full. It also looks less spam like and by combining this with the personalisation features I’ve discussed above, you should find that more of your emails get opened and read, because they look and feel like a direct correspondence rather than a mass email blast.

Avoid “Spam” Words And Phrases

Spam words and phrases are a pet hate of mine! Not only will you put the recipient off opening your email but it’s not even likely to reach their inbox, as spam filters will pick it up and “junk” it before your prospects even see it. Words and phrases such as “Earn extra cash”, “Bargain” and “You’re a Winner!” will be sniffed out and binned in no time so there is no point even sending the email.

You may think that everyone wants something for nothing, but the word “free” sets alarm bells ringing, so exchange this for “complimentary” instead and you should see a big difference in the response you get.

The key to getting the best out of your email marketing campaigns is to make the emails as “regular” as possible. By personalising the content to the recipient, sending them from a real person with a real email address and avoid spam-related HTML layouts and buzz words you will see an improved response rate to your campaigns.  

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Every small business owner out there is working hard. I see that every day. However, not every small business owner out there is getting the results that he or she deserves for all their hard work. Why is this? Is it because they’re marketing an inferior product? No, far from it, its just that too many people are not focusing on what makes their product or service unique. The results is that customers are seeing that same sorts of advertisements from companies that all look the same, and they’re not interested in any of it. If this is a mistake that you’re making, it’s time to fix it.

Understand the Problem

Before you can fix what’s broken, you need to understand exactly what the problem is. When a potential customer looks at their email or Twitter feed, they are probably being bombarded by all manner of offers, promotions, and special deals. That is to say that when you send a proposal or a product offer to a lead, it is probably not the only lead that they are looking it. Which means that you need to really put in the extra effort and differentiate yourself.

To remedy the situation, look at it from your customer’s point of view. They don’t know, or care, how much work you’ve put into your product, or how badly you want them to purchase it. All they really care about it how your product can make their life easier, more productive, or more enjoyable. So sell to them in terms that they understand.

You Unique Selling Point

This is where you make sure to emphasise what makes your product unique. Explain to your customers why they can’t get your product anywhere else on the market, or why your competitor’s products are nothing more than cheap imitations.

If you don’t have a unique selling point, then you need to put in the work and re-tool your business such that it is unique. Define your niche, and move into it. The market is a crowded place, and everyone is looking to sell in the middle. So define your product in terms that nobody else is using. Once you’ve found your niche, the customers will come to you, and you can enjoy the high road to high profits while your competitors bash each other around in the middle of the market.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

If for some reason your business doesn’t have a blog yet; stop reading this article and go make one. As we’ve discussed on numerous occasions previously, blogs are one of the most potent online marketing tools available, and essentially form the platform from which a social media campaign can be launched. And they cost nothing but your time.

With that said, blogging can be a difficult and time-consuming endeavor. It’s a self-replicating cycle, really. As you write more quality content, your blog gets more popular, and you have to manage increasingly more comments and readers who are looking for increasingly frequent updates. Before long, it can get to be way too much for one blogger to handle alone.

Guest blogging provides a convenient solution to this conundrum. Aside from saving you the trouble of creating and writing a new update, a guest blogger can effectively provide your blog with some free promotion, exposure to a new audience, and possibly a positive relationship with an important blogger in your industry.

However, before you get too excited and start soliciting contributions from guest bloggers, be aware that there are a couple of pitfalls that you need to avoid. First off, one of the biggest problems that successful bloggers take with guest blogging is that guest bloggers often take the opportunity to use your blog as a forum from which they can promote their own blog.

They might offer up an article filled with links back to their own blog, or simply promote their own blog, drawing readers away from your site. There is also the issue of needing to reject content that is not up to par. This is not only awkward, but could make your look unprofessional and possibly jeopardize important industry relationships.

By keeping these three guidelines in mind, you should be able to take advantage of the benefits of leveraging a guest blogger while avoiding any potential problems.

Manage Expectations. Explain everything up front. Explain exactly what you’re looking for, approve the topics before the posts are written, and explain where the posts will be published, and what you want them to achieve. And put a rough limit on outbound links and promotional bits in the article. This not only makes it easier for the writer, but gives you something to refer back to if and when you need to make edits or reject the article.

Ask For Outlines. This will make your editing process much easier. Without creating too much of a burden for the writer, ask them to provide you with an edit early on in the process, or to run the article by you a couple of times while they’re writing it. This makes it easier for you to push them in the direction you want, or to make edits as they write.

Lastly, Don’t Settle. If, after all this, you ultimately end up with an article that you do not feel is up to that standard of what you normally publish, then by all means reject it. Just reject it in the most tactful way possible. Make an earnest attempt to edit it, and if it still isn’t up to standard, explain to the writer that it just doesn’t fit the style that you’re looking for at the moment, but encourage them to use it on their blog, or to submit it to another blog.

By keeping these guidelines in mind, you should be able to leverage guest blogging while avoiding any potential problems.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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Email marketing is an effective, fast and cost-free way to promote your business, but it can be tricky getting your message to stand out in the crowd of emails your prospects receive on a daily basis. The average professional is thought to receive around 100 emails a day, and a great deal of these will be a form of email marketing – so how can you ensure your email reaches its intended recipient and is opened and read?

People hate spam emails, which are just sent out on mass and often have no relevance to the recipient at all. In order to break through the tidal wave of spam emails your prospects will receive every day and make your email stand out as being a genuine and well thought out attempt to connect with your recipients, you need to consider some basic rules of email etiquette.

Make Your Contacts Relevant

Not every company will have managed to build up a successful contact database to engage with through email marketing, and there is nothing untoward or illegal about purchasing contact information for this purpose – but you must ensure that you are purchasing data from a reliable provider, and that the contacts have opted in to this database.

This is the first and most important rule of email marketing, but to ensure complete email etiquette you should also consider how relevant these contacts will be to what you are intending to contact them about.  If your product or service has no relevance to a particular group of people, then simply spamming them with emails and hoping it will bear fruit is pointless – it’s a waste of your time, and you will simply be making a bad name for yourself by not targeting the right people.

Make Your Content Relevant

Following on from the issue above, the content you send these recipients needs to be specific to them too. Some of your list may be interested in different offers or information than another sector, so make sure that the content you send to these prospects is specific to them. If it’s relevant and well thought out, it’s much more likely to be opened and read and this is the goal with email marketing.

Don’t Spam Your Contacts

When planning email marketing scheme you should not only consider how relevant your database and information is, but you should also consider how often you contact each list. Spamming them every day or every week is not going to get them to take an interest in you and it’s likely that you’ll just put them off you and your company. One well thought out and relevant email a month will gain a better response than simply bombarding them every day or week.

Acknowledge Unsubscribers

Although these contacts have opted in to this database, you should always respect any requests to unsubscribe from your list and not contact them again. People have the right to ask for this, and if you continue to spam unsubscribers you are only wasting your time and damaging your reputation with them. It’s also a good idea to email back and acknowledge the fact that they don’t wish to be contacted again, as it shows respect for their right to choose.

These four top tips for improving your email marketing etiquette should help you be more targeted and direct when conducting email marketing campaigns. Although you can never guarantee all of your recipients will open and read your emails, adhering to simple email etiquette techniques will certainly help increase your chances of gaining a positive response from your contacts.       

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Trust is the key to a successful business relationship. Whether with current clients, or the people you encounter online who may be clients in the future, people are much less likely to undertake a business transaction with you when they don’t trust you.

Blogging regularly is one of the best ways that you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, and thus gain your readers’ trust. However, make sure that you go about it the right away, or you may as well not be blogging at all.

Post Regularly

This is true for a lot of forms of advertising, but it’s especially true for internet-based media like blogs and Twitter. Everything on the internet is changing so rapidly that if you don’t keep updating regularly, your site will quickly be rendered obsolete, or just simply lost.

Now, when I say regularly, I mean regularly. If you’re serious about building an online network of current and potential clients, you should be updating your blog every single day. Creating new content can be tough, but try to write an original post at least once per week. The rest of the time, it is sufficient to link to a video from YouTube, or a news article, or link to another industry blog.

Engage the Community

Blogging is a form of social media, and you can’t build your online network in a vacuum. While it seems like it might be counter-intuitive to send your hard-won readers over to competing sites, it actually makes a lot of sense.

One of the best ways to improve your Google page rank is through backlinks, or links to your site from other sites. When you link to other sites, they’ll notice this, they’ll appreciate it, and they’ll link back to your site when you create content that they think would add value for their readers.

Add Value

Not to beat on a dead horse, but ultimately online marketing always comes back to adding value. People have gotten accustomed to getting most of the information and entertainment they want for free on the internet. So if they land on your site and you go immediately into a sales pitch, they’re going to say “why should I pay for your product? I don’t know anything about you and I can probably find it for free somewhere else,” and click away from your site before even taking a look to see what you have on offer.

So you have to build the relationships slowly. One of the best techniques for building a customer base is by offering basic content for free, and charging for premium content. This fits perfectly with building trust. You offer every visitor to your site a quality product that they can download for free, or in exchange for an email address. You’ve successfully added value for all of your readers, and when they see the quality of your product, some of them will be willing to pay for your other products.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

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Article writing just isn’t what it used to be. Back in the day, you could get your site onto the first page of Google’s search results without actually creating too much quality content. By simply jamming as many keywords as possible into your articles, and linking to and from ‘link farms,’ you could make the search algorithms think that your site was providing a lot of valuable information.

However, this has all changed. Not only have search algorithms gotten a lot smarter, but social media has played a role as well. Modify your articles writing campaigns accordingly, and you’ll see your traffic increase dramatically.

Targeted Promotion

Where it was once possible to effectively promote your site by generating tons of low quality content and throwing it haphazardly around the internet, it is now much better to create a few articles that you know your target audience will appreciate, and target them specifically.

Consider the differences in exposure potential. A low quality article might be seen by a few people while they’re searching for something related to your industry on a major search engine. It can definitely bring in a few sales. However, the exposure from something that goes viral is higher by several orders of magnitude.

A video or an article that goes viral on YouTube or Facebook might very well be seen by several tens of thousands of people. And it may not have necessarily taken any more time or money to create than a lower quality piece. The key is just that it provided something to your customers that they wanted, which typically is information or entertainment.

When one of your customers sees an article which they like, they’re more likely to share it on Facebook or Twitter. When this happens a few times, you suddenly have hundreds or thousands of what are essentially personal recommendations for your product.

Adding Value

Of course, what it always comes back to is writing articles that add some value for your readers. Your customers have always been primarily interested in valuable content. The recent developments in social media, combined with Google’s changes to its search algorithms, just mean that the valuable content is now easier to find than it ever was before.

Today, more than ever, quality content rises to the top, while useless information sinks and is never seen again. Make sure that you’re on the right side of this trend.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

In this blog, I constantly stress the importance of quality content creation. Whether its blog posts, tweets, web copy, or ebooks, your website has to constantly offer new content.

Consumers are used to getting so much quality content for free on the internet, that they expect something in exchange for visiting your site. By offering them high quality, informative, engaging content, you can keep people coming back to your site, and ultimately bring them on board as clients.

But this means that not only do you have to constantly add content to your site, but also that it must always be top-quality content. Follow these tips to make sure that you’re generating content for your site that will keep your readers coming back day after day.

Keep the Ideas Coming

Inspiration is the most difficult part of content creation. Often, once you have an idea for the article, the actual content just flows out naturally. But where do you find the ideas? Surround yourself with potential inspiration, and capture the ideas when you think of them.

The best ideas are rarely entirely novel. Regularly read other industry blogs and follow industry leaders on twitter. When you’re constantly taking ideas in, you’ll find that your output naturally increases.

The second key is catching fleeting ideas when you think of them. When you read a marketing blog articles which gives you an idea for an article of your own, you need to record it in some way before you forget it. A notebook, a memo on your phone, anything works. Record everything that could possibly inspire you.

Thom Yorke, the front man for Radiohead, keeps a an ‘idea box,’ into which he puts a piece of paper with a word or phrase on it every time he’s inspired by a new idea. When he’s stuck for inspiration on a song, he pulls an idea of the idea box and gets writing.

Details, Details, Details

Nothing matters more than professionalism in marketing. Even the best content in the world will fall on deaf ears if the presentation is poor. Top content creators obsess over spelling and grammar, and make sure that their article titles are perfect.

If you’re not exactly a grammar pro, have someone else look over your articles for you before you publish them. It’s much easier to find the mistakes in someone else’s writing. As far as titles go, always rewrite your articles titles at least three times. The first one will rarely be the best. A great title should read like a newspaper headline – punchy, informative, and intriguing.

If your website offers regularly updated, quality content, customers will come naturally to you.

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

One of the first lessons that I learned as a young internet marketer was that 9 times out of 10, your customers do not want to be using your website. They would rather be on the beach, or at the pub, or watching the football. But they’re using your site because they think it has some information that they need.

With that in mind, the best user experience is the simplest and most intuitive experience. By optimising your website and making its design more intuitive, you will improve the experience of your customers. They will respond by spending more time on your site, building a better relationship with you, and ultimately purchasing more of your products and services.

First Impressions Count

As with everything else in life, your first impression typically matter more than the rest of the relationship taken together. The two impressions that you want to immediately convey to your customers is that you are reputable and professional, and that they will be able to quickly and painlessly find the information that they are looking for. The ways to convey this are through an intelligently designed site layout, and through an intuitive navigation system, respectively.

Site Layout Conveys Professionalism

Site layout refers to the physical appearance of your website. Where are different pieces of the site located, how do you use colours and fonts, and what is your use of images like. As a general rule, avoid anything that is not strictly necessary. Too many colours or fonts makes your website looks less like the public face of a professional business, and more like a yard sale flyer.

Think about the most successful websites, like Google, Facebook, or Wikipedia. In all cases, they just use two or three main colours, and keep the site clean and easy to read.

In no case, should you ever use music or animation on your site. This is a business website, not a teenager’s blog from the 1990’s.

Intuitive Navigation Gets Your Customers Where They Want to Go

Imaging a supermarket which could instantly transport you to whatever you wanted to buy as soon as you walked in the door. Chances are, you would do quite a lot of your shopping at that supermarket. Make you website do the same.

Label all the different sections of your website, and list them in tabs along the top or the left-hand site of the site. If your customers can spend less time on your site while still finding all the information that they need, then you’ve done your job properly.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Any savvy internet marketing or small business owner knows that blogs can be an invaluable resource when it comes to free and effective marketing. A blog provides an avenue for you to showcase your expertise while providing something of value for free to your customers and anyone else who visits your site. There are a few things that you should be doing with your blog to make sure it is providing optimal value to your site.

Open a Line of Communication

One of the things that really differentiates a blog from most traditional marketing resources is that it can be used to open a direct line of communication between you and your readers and customers. So if you don’t have comments enabled on your posts, change that right now.

Encourage your readers to comment by writing about controversial topics, and respond to their comment immediately. Be prepared to deal with criticisms, and have remarks and remedies prepared. People like to see the face behind the business, and are more likely to buy your products and services if you’ve established a rapport with them. A properly utilised blog is one of the most effective ways to do this.

Personalize Your Product

One of the fundamental truths of marketing is that people prefer to buy from people. Nobody wants to buy a de-personalised widget from a faceless corporation. This is why successful companies spend so much time and money on branding – making their products more relatable.

Thanks to blogging, you can do the same thing for little or no cost. Take an informal tone with your blog, and allow people to see the human being behind the product. They’ll thank you with their business.

Drive up Your Search Rankings

You should absolutely be using your blog to optimise your site for search engines. Search engines reward sites that are regularly updated, as well as sites that contain a lot of relevant and well-research content. Blogs thus give you an unparalleled opportunity to optimise your site. You can update your blog as often as you like, and since you can write about whatever your heart desires, you have a lot of leeway to include relevant keywords, and to write about controversial subjects which will be commented on and linked to.

Stay on Top of Your Game

This is an almost incidental benefit of blogging, but a sizable benefit nonetheless. When you’re blogging on a daily, or even weekly, basis, you’ll constantly be doing industry research. Whether this is reading other bloggers, following industry leaders on twitter, or keeping updated with podcasts, you’ll be learning tons of new information about recent developments in your industry.

The internet can change overnight, and if you’re not constantly following the changes, you can become a dinosaur surprisingly quickly.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

It barely even needs to be said again; social media is the future of advertising. Roughly 80% of large companies plan on incorporating social media into their advertising campaigns in the upcoming year.

Moreover, social media campaigns are maturing. No longer is the sole purpose of a Facebook or Twitter campaign solely to drive traffic back to your site. Today, online presence is being measured more in buzz/fans/tweets than it is in page visits.

A well-built Facebook fan page is the perfect way to take your social media presence to the next level, and costs nothing to implement.

Why a Facebook Page?

Despite the recent popularity, Facebook is the most popular social networking site around today. More importantly, Twitter is, by its very nature, incredibly fleeting. A Facebook fan page gives your business something of a permanent presence in the swirling maelstrom of the social networking world.

Additionally, a Facebook page provides your company with a standing platform where you can create a conversation, and have an ongoing give and take with subscribers. Keep a few simple tips it mind to make your page stand out from the crowd.

Create a Dialogue

This is the real beauty of social marketing. You can see what your customers are doing, what they want, and what you can provide for them. The best Facebook fan pages not only provide up-to-the-minute information about your company, but call for input from your customers and prospective customers.

Some excellent examples of this would be calling for user-created content like advertisements, or allowing users to play around with personalized product options.

Provide Free Content

Internet users are used to getting nearly everything for free. If you want your page to make an impact with today’s internet generation, you need to provide a reason for them to be there. Create fun and interesting polls that they can take, or interesting games that they can play.

In both cases, the point is to provide something that will keep people on your page, and keep them engaged with you. These are also perfect opportunities to make your content more viral, as you can provide an options for them to share their scores or results with their friends, thereby driving additional traffic to your site.

Facebook fan pages provide an excellent opportunity for your business to generate positive social buzz while providing value to your customers and winning over new customers. Look around on Facebook for some great places to get started, and then start working on your own.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog