Online marketing solutions

To carry out successful email marketing campaigns, business marketers must know their market and their competition – plain and simple. Whether your competition is direct or indirect, you need to know what your competition is doing, and why they are successful.  Remember that old saying; keep your friends close, but your enemies closer?  So why do you want to know what your competitors are doing?  Are you being too intrusive?

No.  We are not being intrusive.  Using savvy, strategic internet tools, gives you a picture of your competition’s present and past.

Let’s face it; we are in a race for better SERP ranking, higher sales, and most of all – sustainability.

Attracting new prospects, converting prospects into clients takes time, creativity, research, and strategy.  Oh, did I forget to mention patience and commitment.  This is no overnighter.  Be in it for the long haul.

However, there is good news.  Now, with social media exploding on the web, you can easily follow your market, and your competition, whiling still hearing your targeted consumer’s voice – speaking loud and clear.  Getting the facts enables you to make intelligent and specific decisions on what changes and directions you need to make, and where to make them.  What a fabulous moment in time to be an internet email marketer.  With all the technological tools at your fingertips, we can span the international globe, create accurate analytical reports, never leaving our desk or getting out of our pajamas.

Powerful Free Tools for Internet Marketers

Start creating your reports with some of these free and powerful internet tools.  Sure, there are plenty of brand named monitoring tools that are quite expensive, but in a recession, you need to keep your overhead down.  Listed below are just a few of the tools that you can start with:

1.    Google Alerts:  set up alerts (including blogs, news, web and video) using the names of your competitors and their products.  Be creative.

2.    Twitter Search: similar to Google Alerts, you can use this to find chats between companies, customers, and employees.

3.   Backtype: Set up alerts to find what is happening within your niche whether through new blogs, community forums, or news

4.   Website Grader:  Generate free reports about your site, as well as your competitor’s site including:

•    Website overall grade
•    Google Page rank
•    Google Indexed pages
•    Traffic
•    Inbound links (how many are linking back to you)

5.    The Way Back Machine: Displays the past changes of any website.  Just like a time machine, you can view your competitors’ past – what modifications they have made through the years, and what they have kept.

6.    SpyFu: Lets you check the keyword words and AdWords being used by your competition. (Create a free account to begin)

7.    Technorati – Search the latest new blogs and posts by subjects.

8.    Research Social Bookmarks and Social News: Social bookmarks and news are hot.  Bookmark databases can be searched with keywords, topics, and subjects as you do in Google.  See what people are writing about now.

9.   BoardTracker: Use BoardTracker to read what people are saying about your competitors across 37,000 forums.  BoardTracker also has an Alerts function that you can customize.
Remember to subscribe to your competitor’s newsletter.  Read their blogs and news; while receiving their updates, newsletters, and software information.  If it’s important enough for their clients, then it is crucial for you.

How to Use This Information
For any research and information to be useful, business internet marketers must skillfully and intelligently seek solutions towards greater marketing strategies.  Posing the right questions, helps you apply provable results, with focus, and meaning:

1.    What does my competition know that I need to apply to my business as well?
2.    What keywords and phrases are they using; what are their SERP results?
3.    How are my products and services doing worldwide?
4.    What channels are being used for their marketing tactics?
5.    Are there areas where I need to improve further?
6.    What are they writing and talking about?
7.    What can I learn from their mistakes?
8.    What are their customers saying about them, and about me?

Successful campaigns are not achieved by playing a guessing game.   Every business campaign needs to be founded on what works – the stats and the facts.

2010 is upon us.  The years fly and most of us feel we have not had enough time to reflect and reassess our marketing campaign strategies, goals, and hindrances to that elusive successful ROI.  Reflection is a good thing.  As online marketers we know that strategic planning is an endless process, filled with changes and adjustments along life’s way.  It is a continuous path of learning, changing, and taking chances.

In many homes, a new year means that dreaded spring-cleaning.  We attack those rooms in which we have hidden away so much junk and clutter, too afraid to face it head on.  It has been building up for some time.  Now, it is time to open those areas that have just collected dust, and sweep them clean.  Throw out the junk.  What do we do then?  We make room for change, for newer and better things that will now take their place, improving our quality of life.

So in parallel, we need to clean out our old ways, the ideas that have not worked; and the marketing strategies that are no longer relevant with the age we are living in.  We need to get a transfusion, improving the lifeblood of our business.  Let’s determine to make a new plan which incorporates innovative strategies the blessed internet has provided.  Our goal has not changed, but the path always does.  Our message continually needs to get out in fresher and newer ways.  We are always in search for greener pastures of growth potential.

The world is our oyster, but we must learn to crack its shell.

Vision: Every brand, product, and service, must start with a vision. What is yours?  Having a core goal and voice must be shared by your entire team.  It is your company’s foundation.  Before your next internet marketing campaign, get your team together and make sure you are all on the same page.

Conversation not Dictation: Do you have conversations with your clients or are they constantly listening to you?  Give them a voice. Engage their thoughts and thinking.  As email campaign managers, or internet marketing consultants, you may know your tactics, and know them well, but your clients are the ones using your services and products. Seeing the world view from their end can enlarge and start increasing your market niche simply based on their advice and comments.

Dare to be Different. Think about it.  If you could personally meet with a product manager, or even the owner of a business, isn’t that a good thing?  It gives a personality and voice to the product and brand.  Don’t just be an innovative thinker, live out of the box and take some new and uncomfortable steps that you may have never considered before:

1.   Visit your clients.  Let them know how valuable they are.
2.   Create events and invite them – they can be webinars, physical conferences and seminars
3.   Create a New Year’s survey asking how you can improve.
4.   Gather some testimonials for your next newsletter.

Let your clients know they are dealing with a person, not an impersonal business.

Demonstrate your Values. In this day and age of schemes and gimmicks, it is refreshing to see a company that stands by the values that it preaches.  What gives you the cutting edge in your competition?  Do you deliver what you claim?  What message do you send out in your mass email campaigns and enewsletters?  Your business should represent all you say you stand for.

Be Visible and Reachable – Say Hello to Social Media Marketing. Social Media is and remains the most cost-effective promotional method out there. You now have the ability to attract large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website repeatedly. If you are selling products or services, social media marketing gives you the potential you need to make your site profitable in a fairly short period time.

Statistics show over 17% of internet users spend their time on Social Media sites.  This has tripled in only one year!  According to a recent article from Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, 83% of U.S. Companies use Facebook and 45% use Twitter. This includes hotels, airlines and travel suppliers. Who would have thought this would be happening just a few years ago?

Establish your Social Media Presence. Become an active listener and follow other bloggers, twitters, and tweet.  See what your competition is up to; create a buzz about your company, product, and service.  Facebook and Twitter are free, but blogger beware!  It is a commitment to start and maintain Facebook and Twitter.  If you cannot do this, you can always find great freelance bloggers at a reasonable rate to do it for you.

Internal Tweets. Twitter can be used for internal purposes, as well, remember intranets?  Twitter some tweets about meetings, employee updates, or you can provide a link for company news and updated documentation.  Appoint an employee to do this for you; they will love it.  Bring the age of technology into your company by being a live example of a business that embraces and uses the latest and greatest.  You will be seen by all as a smart and savvy innovator.

Email Campaign Software. Email marketing campaigns succeed neither by chance nor prayer.  They are planned, strategically targeted, against the tracking results of statistics and demographics.  Only a campaign software can create targeted demographics, analyzing all the results, in detail, for each campaign,   Receiving information such as click-thru-rates, mail opened, discarded, bounced and unopened, along with comparative stats from previous campaigns, can only be achieved with this software.  Why repeat a poorly received campaign in the past.  Email campaign software gives you that cutting edge difference.  Get the facts and stats to help plan your next move.

Website Makeover. How long has it been since you have taken another look at your website?  If it has been over two years, it will definitely not be reflecting your new voice, goals, changes or business directions that you have recently taken.

ZAHave you created a landing page that represents your campaigns?  That page needs your utmost attention.  A properly and thoughtfully customized, well designed landing page increases your conversion rates. Your landing page should convert a prospect to a client, a possibility to a sale. Think of that page as a strategy within itself. Write the content with care, and focus on your goal which is that clickable call to action.

Everything is moving so fast as the internet becomes almost the sole source for international marketing, news, and communication.  To build your ROI, you need to be where the action is.

That is just your first step.  Know your goals, live your message, and shout your brand and product to the world – Be an effective, strategic internet marketer who, like a chameleon, can change colors, spots, and direction when and where it is necessary.  Your survival depends on it.



Every investor needs a diversified portfolio. A mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and cash.  Having your money invested solely in one place spells disaster. But is it the right mix?  Makes me think of the first time I baked a cake.  I followed the receipe until I found that I was missing an ingredient  Being a kid, I thought I could substitute with something else.  Well, the cake was so horrible, my  mom trashed it.  You cannot substitute the wrong ingredient and hope the final result is successful.

The same holds true for every business. Every email marketing campaigner needs to invest in a seriously thought out marketing mix. A well-developed marketing mix covers the most important and strategic bases in all your marketing campaigns present and future, covering the widest base of prospects and customers.  How do you know what the right mix is?  You don’t.  It’s called the three T’s – Testing – Testing – Testing

So, what does the term marketing mix mean? It refers to The 4 P’s of Marketing:

* Product (just the right product/brand)
* Price (price is marketable and competitive)
* Place (strategically in the right place – at the right time)
* Promotion (right offer – right audience)

There are no pat answers. Your mix will be unique to your business, product, or service. How do you find just the right mix? You will need to experiment and test the results constantly. The market is changing, and you need to continually adapt and change with it, or get left behind.

All e-marketers want their product or service sell to the greatest range of targeted prospects. Getting just the right mix will take planning, time, and tactics. Here are some steps to help you begin your journey.

How are you currently advertising? Where do people go and what do they read, to find out about your product or service?

* Internet Marketing Online: website, email campaigns, internet webinars, internet conferencing, social media, AdWords, AdSense, digital media
* In Person: one-on-one, networking, telephone, letters, faxes, public speaking presentations.
* The Media: radio, sponsorships, TV/Cable
* Other: direct mail, newspapers, magazines, stores, yellow pages

Your mix will include some or all of the above in different measures of approach. You and you alone must discover what market or markets you want to invest a greater part of your time, money and energy in.

Know your demographics. Every gender, age, and location brings in a different set of buying and interest factors. Meaning, that if you are marketing to college students, you would spend more time on an internet strategy, and some on cable and TV, for that is where your target market spends all their personal time. If your target market is more towards the adult generation, diversifying between internet, TV/Cable, and print might be just the right approach for your mix.

Creating the right mix to a mixed audience. In every successful email business marketing plan, you will need to have a strategy that addresses a vast array of customers, their diversity, and all of their needs and interests. In this case, your plan must consist of various techniques, enabling you to reach a larger targeted group of potential customers.

When preparing any recipe for a special cake or tasty meal, the right ingredients must be added in just the right amounts. Too much or too little, spoils the texture and taste. The meal or desert is spoiled, rejected and quickly tossed into the garbage. All that time and energy and passion goes down the drain. Do not let that happen to your business. Having a good product or service to offer is a great achievement, but without the right marketing mix, you will not have the right audience, not enough buyers resulting in no success.

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

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

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

Only 30% of online retailers give the option to sign up to an email newsletter during the checkout process on their site, according to a study by Dotcommerce. An online retailer which doesn’t take advantage of his checkout process to enlarge its mailing list acts as if it doesn’t want any new subscribers to their email campaigns. The study also found that only 5% of follow-up marketing emails sent to new customers are personalized or targeted towards the individual.