Online marketing solutions

One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to combine email campaigns with SEO, by using the same keywords on your email campaigns as you use on your site. Now WordStream have released a new free keyword tool that can help you find the best keywords for your website. According to WordStream, “The Free Keyword Tool is continuously updating a database of over a billion of the world’s most popular keywords, aggregating over a trillion unique searches”.

Email marketers always look for more ways to collect email addresses and to enlarge their mailing list, in order to make their email campaigns more effective. VertcialResponse came up with 29 ways to collect email addresses. Few of the ways include:

• Put an offer on the back of your business cards
• Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
• Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you give them something for free.
• Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business
• Offer “Email only” discounts

57% of consumers feel more positive about companies who send them email campaigns, according to a survey by Epsilon. The survey, which includes 1517 consumers, also say that 50% of recipients are more likely to buy products from companies who send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business. Epsylon says that “Email builds loyalty and brand awareness and drives on- and off-line behavior”.

It used to be that everyone that had a Gmail account was considered an internet savvy, with geeky friends that sent out an invitation for the member-based service. But times have changed: Gmail became open for all and other trends took over the email world. But it appears that Gmail users still have their uniqueness: they are more interested in email campaigns. According to a new report by MailChimp, analyzing 184 million emails sent from their platform, the average open rate among Gmail users stands on 30.94%, compare to 24.54% with Yahoo users and 23.79% among Hotmail users.

The welcome message you send to customers who just joined your mailing list is your opportunity to greet them and engage them with further activity with your brand. Here are a few tips from email transmit to make welcome email messages a great way to increase revenue from email campaigns:

• Thank them for joining by giving them some kind of a reward
• Add a link to your contact us form
• Remind them the value they are going to get from your email campaigns

The holidays’ season sure looks far away, but planning an effective email campaign can take a long time, and you better start right now, so you’ll have time to review the plan and take it into action. Bronto gives us a full checklist for holidays email campaigns:

• Review last year’s holiday season – So you’ll know what worked and what went wrong
• Develop your strategy and goals for the season – Decide what you want to communicate to your customers and how
• Build out your communication strategy – segment your list to types of customers and build a special message designed especially for their needs
• Establish a calendar for your communications – decide when will you want to send out your email campaigns
• Plan your pre-holiday messaging & preference push – don’t give it all in one time. Prepare your customers to your special offers
• Stand out from the crowd – don’t forget to differentiate yourself from the crowd
• TEST!!! – as simple as that
• Don’t forget to optimize your landing pages – your email campaigns are just the first step. The next step is to convert those clicks to purchases
• Think post-holiday - your branding doesn’t end with the upcoming holiday season. plan ahead

Video is the new buzz word at the email marketing world, and everyone who uses email campaigns as part of his marketing campaign is expected to upgrade himself to video email marketing. But how would you do it? Email marketing reports lists eight best practices for using video in email marketing campaigns:

1. Use video as a means, not an end
2. Find the right video/copy balance
3. Don’t forget video analytics
4. Keep it short and sweet
5. Don’t disguise the video link
6. Design for failure
7. Test your options
8. Be aware of production and bandwidth costs

Spam volumes increased  by 400 percent compare to February 2009, to 94.6 percent of all emails, thus reached its highest pick ever, according to August 2009 Threat Forecast & Report, by MX Logic. According to the report, spam volumes increased by 27 percent since June, and the hottest spam topic among email campaigns is still health-related spam.

Aol will no longer send report cards to companies engaged in feedback loop with AOL, says AOL postmaster blog. the report card was used  to notify email campaign senders that their complaint rate crosses a certain threshold (.30%). AOL says that companies need to “make sure you are monitoring your spam complaints and not relying on the report card to alert you to complaint issues.”

Lots of email marketers prefer to send their email campaigns in plain text format, because they know that from a security standpoint, plain text email is better. Justin Premick from AWeber, explains how to create a plain text email campaign that the recipient will be able to read:

1. Set maximum character width
2. Make headers easily visible and scannable
3. Separate content between paragraphs
4. Include a conclusion or signoff