8 Tips to Increase Response in Email

Email marketing is a great thing to do when you own any kind of business. Here’s an article I found about increasing your response rate, by Paul Easton.

Opt in email marketing is no different than normal direct marketing in that small simple changes will increase your response and success. These tips will help with both plain text and html email:

1. Personalize - "A persons name is still the sweetest sound" Having first name in both the subject of the email, and the body of the message will help your email get read and not just deleted or being mistaken for junk mail.

2. Free - Offer something free: It's an over used word on the Internet, but it still works. It must 100% free, not an item you have to pay postage and packaging for. Otherwise your user who checks out your offer will feel cheated.

3. Tracking - Always track any promotion, which means using tools that will allow you to track responses and conversion of visitors to sales. A good service to use is adminder: http://www.adminder.com Tracking also allows you to find out what information is most important to your readers.

4. Talk - When you write your email copy, write as if you are having a one-to-one conversation with the recipient. This makes your customer feel like a real person and not a number.

5. Short but informative - Provide the information in a short and clear method showing the main information using short paragraphs of 3-4 lines making it easy to read or skim over. Using bullet points and line space between paragraphs to highlight important points.

6. Benefits not features - Show what the item or service can do for your customer, not what its features are.

7. Call to Action - Use a sense of urgency with ease of contact.

8. Easy to contact - Use a clickable link such as http://site.com or mailto:you@yoursite.com
This format will create a click on link in most email programs. If you are marketing internationally you will need a format suitable for American On Line -- The biggest US ISP. Something like this: [ AOL Users Click Here ]

Always test and target to your market, response rates can be up to 20% with the right message. Trial and error will prove you right or wrong. The power of the promotion to an in-house list is something very over looked. The list must have agreed to receive information (opt-in) from you or you just become junk email.

About the Author:
Paul Easton is a self confessed Internet Marketing Nut and Editor of "Power Promotion Plus" -- An ezine dedicated to web site promotion tools that work with 3 free gifts for subscribing Check it out here: http://www.Digitalawol.com/?source=Article

New Inspirational Dream T-shirts and Gifts

I’ve been adding lots of new designs to my online store. I especially like my dream designs that I’ve put in my Inspirational T-shirts and Gifts section.

They fit the positive theme of my entire store: nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough! Set your mind to it and go after your dream! givitup's inspirational tees and gifts will help keep you motivated.

Inspirational T-shirts and Gifts

My Flip Mino Press Release

I wrote and sent out a bunch of press releases about adding Flip Minos to my online store. Here’s the release:

Hickory, NC, November 3, 2008 – Online store, givitup, is pleased to announce the addition of custom designed Flip Minos

givitup, is part of CafePress, who recently announced a branded partnership with Pure Digital Technologies, makers of the wildly popular Flip Mino Camcorders. By teaming up together, video lovers can now take their movie-making creativity one step further by customizing their Flip Mino camcorders.

Nancy Geiger, owner of givitup, says, “It’s a perfect partnership. The amazing growth of CafePress shows how much consumers enjoy designing their own T-shirts, mugs, posters and books. CafePress shopowners are on the cutting edge of new trends and Flip Minos are very hip.”

"We're a destination for self-expression," says Amy Maniatis, vice president of marketing at CafePress, calling CafePress a "me-tailer." The company has seen its sales increase 40% year to year.

"Skins were fun and a trend for the last few years, but they can get messy and peel off," Maniatis says. "We're printing directly on the camera. It's a high-gloss print, more strong and durable."

Jonathan Kaplan, CEO of Pure Digital, says, "This generation wants to be famous, tell their story and be heard, change the color of their hair, wear tattoos and express themselves. It goes beyond the clothes and watch you wear and extends to the cellphone or camera you hold."

The ultra-thin & pocket-sized Flip Video Mino camcorder has a handy USB arm that flips out and hooks up to your PC or Mac. This charges the battery, plus lets you use its built-in software to easily view, edit, and upload video and photos to favorite sharing sites. It records 60 minutes of VGA-quality video.

givitup opened almost three years ago focusing on giving up negativity. “We believe there are too many negative and vulgar t-shirts out there. givitup is all about fresh starts, positive attitudes and becoming a better person. We believe people can alter their lives by altering their attitudes. And by wearing positive and inspiring thoughts people are reminded of good things all day.

Besides the Flip Minos, givitup has over 9300 items with its own designs: t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, buttons, magnets, stickers, aprons, journals, greeting cards, postcards, teddy bears, mugs and more. Customers may also send in their own designs or text for any of givitup’s products.

32 Most Important SEO Tips

I found a good article by Edwin Reyes that will help you with SEO on your website:

1. Make sure your site is not under construction or incomplete with little or no unique content.

2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engines but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Also submít your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.

3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)

4. Offer a sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)

5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but the same content.

6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keyword stuffing.

7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.
8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.

9. Your Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.

10. Your Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters, including spaces. (about 25-30 words)

11. The keywords Meta Tag must be 15-20 words maximum.

12. Optimize pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site's primary keywords.

13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.

14. If your site contains dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engine spiders have difficulty indexing dynamic pages.

15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a link farm by search engines.

16. Use lynx.isc.org as text browser to check your site.

17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.

18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since your site was last crawled. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.

19. Use a Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders that index your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. With bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders.

20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.

21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engine ranking.

22. Avoid links to bad neighborhoods such as web spammer, link farm, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, pörn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affect your search engine rankings.

23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.

24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings or perform other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a spammer.

25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show the search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site's reputation.

26. Do not attempt to create pages that contain phishing, scam, virus, trojan, backdoor, spyware, adware or other malicious programs.

27. Make your site useful and informative.

28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links is far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site's visibility, popularity and ranking. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.

29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.

30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some use illegal and questionable methods to improve rankings.

31. Do not buy or sell links.

32. Do not create sites that contain purely affiliate links and no valuable content that is useful to users.

I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!

About The Author
Edwin Reyes is a Web Developer and the Webmaster of Findmesoftware.com, a Philippine based website that provides free software downloads, tools, reviews, online tips, blogging resources, tutorials and Free SEO Tools and Software Download.

Twilight T-shirts and Gifts

CafePress and Summit Entertainment have launched an official Twilight Movie fan portal on the CafePress website. This is exciting as the agreement allows shopkeepers to create official fan merchandise for the portal which will be linked from the official Twilight Movie website.



Twilight Merchandise

Christmas is coming. Is Your Online Store Ready?

Do you have a plan to woo holiday shoppers looking for gifts online?

Millions of people are about to descend on the Internet, and competition for their dollars will be tough this year, with money tighter amid a weak economy. You need an online-marketing plan to help you make the most of the season.

Feel overwhelmed? Don't. There are many easy, yet high-impact, things you can do in the next few weeks that will improve your results once the bustle begins. Here are some of the top tips from Riva Richmond.

Click here to read.

The 10 Key Steps to Successfully Market Your Business Online

Here’s a helpful article I found by Richard D. Harroch, the author of The Small Business Kit for Dummies and other books and publications dealing with start-up and emerging companies. You may email him at rharroch@orrick.com

More and more small businesses are finding it essential that they market their products and services online. Customers are increasingly turning to the Web to research companies, compare product features and prices, and to purchase online. A company that does not take advantage of the Web and email to market their business can lose valuable customers.

It has never been easier or more cost-effective to market online. There are numerous Web sites, consultants, software packages, and other tools to help you implement a successful online presence.

Here are 10 key steps to successfully marketing your business onlne:

1. Obtain a Good Domain Name. Before you establish a Web site for your business, you need a domain name. A domain name is the internet address that allows computer users to find your Web site, such as www.Microsoft.com or www.BananaRepublic.com. Good domain names are difficult to obtain, as millions have already been purchased over the years. The most common domain names end in ".com" or ".net" and are seen as the most desirable.

It's easy to check whether a domain name is available. For example, Yahoo.com has a domain name service check and you can do a check in under a minute. The cost on Yahoo to purchase a domain name is under $10.

A few key tips on domain names:

Make sure the domain name hasn't been trademarked by someone else (check www.uspto.gov); Make sure it's easy to spell; Make the name easy to remember. But simpler and descriptive may be better — you don't have to come up with something as catchy as "Google" — and non-descriptive names require more branding effort.

2. Build a Professional Looking Web Site. Your Web site is a reflection of your business. People who come to your Web site can be impressed or turned off by the professionalism of your site. There are several approaches to building a Web site. First, there are plenty of sites (including Yahoo) that will give you templates for a site either for free or very cheaply. Second, there are professional site building consultants who will custom-build a site for you. And, third, there are multiple software packages available to help you build your own site.

3. Make Your Web Site Easy to Navigate and Make it Easy to Find What You Are Trying to Sell. Don't get caught up in trying to come up with dazzling flash and color for your site. The key to a good site is to make sure the viewers can easily find what they are looking for. This means a clear navigation bar and a good "search" box. Take a look at some of the great sites out there, and sites from competitors. That can help you plan how your site should be designed.

4. Build up Your Email List. One of the best and cheapest ways to sell online is through email marketing. It's a great way to communicate with customers and prospective customers. So it is very valuable to collect email addresses from visitors to your Web site. Offer them something worthwhile for their email address—such as a discount or a free newsletter.
Make it easy to get someone's email address, but also be sure that you have set forth a Privacy Policy on your site describing how you will use any personal information. And be sure you are up-to-date on the laws affecting email marketing, such as the CAN-SPAM Act.

5. Send Periodic Email Newsletters. Email newsletters can prove to be effective communication tools for existing customers, prospective customers, and other key audiences.

What are the hallmarks of effective email newsletter programs? Here are 6 tips:

Keep it reasonably short. Nobody wants to read lengthy emails. Make it well designed and visually interesting. Include photos and graphics. Provide multiple links back to your Web site. Make it look professional. Don't have typos, a sloppy look, or broken links. Include an easy way for the viewer to contact you and to unsubscribe from your email list. Constantly test and track how your newsletters are doing.

Email newsletter programs can be established through companies that provide turn-key solutions, such as Constant Contact

6. Buy Banner Ads. You can enhance visibility and traffic to your site by buying banner ads. The keys to effective banner ad campaigns are:

Make the ad visually interesting with links to a particular offer or "landing" page on your site. Place the ads on sites relevant to your business. Constantly monitor and test the efficacy of the ads, measuring not only click-throughs from the ad to your site, but also the actual resulting sales and return on investment.

7. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines. Hundreds of millions of searches a day are performed on the Web through Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The search engines "spider" billions of Web pages. There is a fast growing area called "search engine optimization" that refers to efforts you can employ to get your Web site to show up higher in search results. To get more information on this, go to the search box on the AllBusiness home page, select "the Web" from the drop-down menu, and type in "search engine optimization."

8. Buy Keyword Ads on Search Engines. Many businesses are finding that key word advertising on search engines can be quite beneficial. Here's how it works: If you sell computer books from your Web site, you might buy a small ad or listing on Google that would show up when someone types in the search box a term that you designate (such as "computer books" or "PC books"). If the searcher sees your paid ad and clicks on it, he is transported to your Web site and you pay on a "CPC" basis to Google (a cost per click, such as 30¢ a click). The goal is to get qualified prospective customers to your site.

The key elements of successful key word ad buying programs include:

Purchase the most relevant key words. Write the ads in a way to compel qualified buyers to click on the ad. Send the user from the ad to a landing page in your site that sets forth the precise product or service related to the keyword ad. Sending a viewer to your home page is generally not as effective as sending them to a specific product page. Constantly review the amount you are paying per click, and the conversion of that click into buyers. Constantly test different ad copy and different landing pages to determine what works best for your site.

9. Make it Easy to Buy From Your Shopping Cart. If you are selling products from your site, you will need a shopping cart system and a credit card authorization process. Many companies provide such systems off the shelf, such as Yahoo! Small Business. The key here is to make sure the shopping process is fast and efficient. Many Web sites have found that their checkout process was too cumbersome, and that they lost potential buyers who became frustrated with the amount of time and effort involved.

10. Provide Great Customer Service. A satisfied customer will return to your site. So go out of your way to give great customer support and service. And for those who are not happy with their experience, try to turn them around with an offer of a discount, a free product, or some other benefit.