Jun 08
Here is the summary of the most common mistakes people make when designing HTML emails:
- Not coding “absolute paths” to the images. Remember, attaching graphics and using “relative paths” won’t work. You need to specify a full path to the image on the disk. Or, host the images on your server, then link to them in your code.
- Using JavaScript, or ActiveX, or embedding movies. That stuff doesn’t work in HTML email. You can’t have CSS-positioning, DIVs, DHTML, and complex embedded tables in the HTML message either.
- Using free image hosting services. They don’t like it when they get lots of outside hits (such as from email campaigns). So they’ll sometimes start blocking your images.
- Linking to an external CSS file. Insert your CSS below the <BODY> tag because web-based email applications (like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail) strip <HEAD> and <BODY> tags from HTML email.
- Using a WYSIWYG to “code” your HTML email. WYSIWYGs are known to generate absolutely horrible HTML. They insert so much junk code, it’s unbelievable. To code HTML email properly, you need to learn a little HTML.
- Not including an opt-out link. It’s rather roughly and unprofessional not to allow the recipients to unsubscribe from your list.
- Letting your permission “grow cold”. If you’ve been collecting the email addresses for years, and you’re only just now sending your first email to everyone, a little remind of how you got the recipient’s email address is nice. If you didn’t email your subscribers for a long time, people can forget what email lists they subscribed to. You can include a string like “You are receiving this email because you subscribed to our mailing list at www.yourwebsite.com” at the bottom or at the top (if appropriate) of your email.
- Sending to a list without permission. This is the worst offense. Like a good marketer you should have a subscription form on a web site to collect the recipients’ email addresses.
- Not removing people who unsubscribed. It’s an important thing if you don’t want to pass for a spammer.
- Forgetting to test. Make it a rule to test your HTML email in as many email applications you can. You should always send at least a few campaigns to yourself before sending it out to your entire list.
Jun 07
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a process that first starts with how a website is developed. A website must be built with properly coded pages. The technical component of building a website is the foundations of other SEO activities. Once a website is built it need to get indexed by the search engine. Being indexed means your website has been found and its information is stored by the search engine ready to be called upon when appropriate. The next step (which never really ends) is developing the website “trust” and “authority”.
How does a website build trust and authority? Trust is built by the quality of links that point to your website. Not only how many but from whom. .GOV and .EDU site pass more trust to a site than .COMs. Another important factor that is sometimes overlooked is time. How old is your domain and website. It is estimated that it takes 18-24 months to start to gain traction in Google Search Engine Results.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing is the process of purchasing links or advertisements on a website. When you are looking at a Google Search results page the left side of the page is a result of SEO and the right side is a result of SEM.
Relationship between SEO and SEM
May 31
Pay-Per-Click campaigns are an immediate source of traffic to your Web site or blog, and can potentially be a crucial part of your marketing success. Before you jump in head first, though, I would like to provide a guide on how to go about starting a PPC program.
You can with little effort, following these steps transform your website from unknown to a successful and profitable business tool:
- Determine the Goals and Objectives of your PPC campaign
- Determine your budget
- Create a landing page
- Choose a PPC network
- Research keywords and key phrases
- Create the ads you will use
- Turn your ads on
- Measure your success
- Revisit, and make one change to your campaign
- Repeat steps 8 and 9
Continue reading »
May 17
What’s a meatball sundae you ask? Well, besides being the brand-spanking new book offering from bestselling marketing author Seth Godin, it’s also an analogy in which Seth uses to describe instances of when “boring” companies and brands use newly available and popular marketing strategies and tools to push their products and services.
American Express could have become PayPal, but they watched the opportunity go by. FedEx uses technology to make shipping easier for the customer; UPS uses technology to make shipping easier for UPS. Who’s winning? Google has broken the world into tiny bits. No one visits a Web site’s home page anymore; they go in the back door, to just the place Google sent them.
New Marketing, whose tools include things like MySpace, YouTube, Web sites, permission marketing, cable TV, and viral techniques, is reshaping our world. But many companies try to use the tools without first getting their organization and products in sync with them. The result: what Seth Godin calls a “meatball sundae”. A big, ineffective mess.
In his trademark style – clear, accessible, jargon-free – and full of real-life examples, Godin reviews how marketing used to work and explains how to use the New Marketing to become a better organization: faster, more flexible, and even more fun.
Meatball Sundae on Audible.com
