Targeting Your Email

There are a number of ways to keep in contact with customers, and to get them to visit (or revisit) your website. One of these is a newsletter. But how do you convince potential customers to sign up, and hold their interest long enough to make a purchase? Keep reading to learn how to do this and more.

Targeting your email

Email marketing has become a mainstay in advertising. With opt-in links on sites, webmasters aim to persuade users of that site to become members. The largest lure that websites offer is free newsletters (ezines). There are some sites that are simply not ezine friendly, in the sense that getting content for such sites on a regular basis would be tantamount to making gooey stuff look lively. What kind of information would a power tools company offer in an ezine that would be interesting enough to actually read, and relevant enough to enable the power tool company to sell and resell its products till the subscriber clicks on their secure site and places his/her order?

Yet all companies need to have an opt-in email database; you simply have to ensure that you are in the face of your potential customers without looking like George Orwell's "Big Brother." There are so many other adverts out there, on and off line, that to trust that a favorable first impression is all you need to ensure the return of an interested customer is a bit naive. You need a means of continually selling yourself to an interested customer.

To return to the example of the power tools company, a machine tool buff or do-it-yourselfer is most likely to go to a hardware store, or type "Black and Decker" into Google (the brands win again). So how does our power tool company target its email strategy in such a way that it will ensure that a reasonable proportion of users subscribe to its opt-in database so it can presell its offers to them? Keep in mind that the company needs to keep from being a victim of the "report spam" button, provide relevant information, and not commit a silly error until the subscriber (inevitably) buys their product...

Trends to Watch in Search Behavior


Certain trends in the behavior of web surfers conducting searches on the Internet confirm what SEOs have long suspected or considered “common knowledge.” Others just seem to make intuitive sense, while still others might be a little surprising. Keep reading to learn how you can take advantage of these various trends.

If old hippie slogans could be applied to search, most web surfers might groove to “Think Globally, Act Locally.” That could be used to characterize some of the findings of the Kelsey Research, as reported by Greg Sterling, former Senior Vice President and Program Director of Interactive Local Media at the Kelsey Group. He spoke about search at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. I’ll begin detailing those findings by showing you the general outlines of how search fits into the activity of the average Netizen.

According to Kelsey Research, search is now second only to email as the most important online activity. The gap between the two is fairly small and closing rapidly. About one third of those who shop online use only one search engine; a little more than half use two or three; while one out of ten say they use four or more search engines on a regular basis. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has seen figures for the percentages of searches handled worldwide by the major search engines.

The chances are, though, that these searchers are looking for something not very far from their own backyard. “Forty-three percent of search engine users are seeking a local merchant to buy something offline,” Sterling emphasized, “and 54 percent of search users have substituted Internet/search for the phone book, mostly for specific local lookups. Local is growing faster than general web search.” This is probably a much more literal way of letting your fingers do the walking than the Yellow Pages ever intended!

This implies that anyone who doesn’t take local search into consideration may be missing out on an important opportunity. This doesn’t mean that companies concerned with campaigns at the national level are going to lose out to Joe’s Hardware Store, of course (and I’ll cover branding a little later in this article). But it’s another example of how important it is to know how surfers use search engines...

Creating the Internet Buzz


In the previous article I gave you an overview of what buzz marketing is and how it has been an important part of marketing since the moment that humans could communicate. In this article, I want to give you specific ways you can promote buzz marketing for your product, service, or website.

Branding

I want to talk about branding first and foremost, because successful buzz marketing goes hand in hand with branding.  Branding is not about getting your target market or audience to choose you over the competition, but it is rather about getting your prospects to see you as the only choice that provides a solution to their specific problem.  You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact. 

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.  The objectives that a good brand will achieve include delivering your message clearly, confirming your credibility, connecting your target prospects emotionally, motivating the buyer, concreting user loyalty, and getting the public involved.

Now my last article wasn't supposed to be two parts, and I don't necessarily want to make this article a three-parter, but I do want to move on to online buzz marketing.  Soon I'll write a series of articles that deal with branding.  In the meantime, just know that buzz marketing covers all of the objectives I mentioned that are involved in branding.

1.  Blogs

One of the latest popular ways of buzz marketing is via blogging.  In essence, the blogger is someone who generally has many elements of his or her life online for the entire world to see, and it is through this openness that the blogger gains the trust of the reader.  So if your favorite blogger recommends a product, there is a very good chance that you and their other readers will either check it out or buy it.

If you truly have a product that relates to a particular blog, then send the blogger a letter, and in some cases, simply an email could do it.  It also can't hurt to send that blogger a free sample item or possible service in order to enlist their help to recommend your product, or write a review.  You might see if you can offer the blogger a link on your website or help them with some other buzz marketing method in return.

2.  Sales Letters

I touched on this in the previous article.  There are multitudes of sales letters on the Internet for just about anything.  You know just the ones I mean; you recognize them by their long single page that usually has a brightly colored background, with a table centered in the middle with a white background and a font size ANYONE can read even without their glasses.  There's usually lots of highlighting, quotes from people, perhaps trusted people in their areas, like doctors or other certified professionals, even celebrity endorsements.  There are huge headlines and bold text, italics, and anything else that can jump at you from the screen.

A good sales letter should be measured by how effective it actually is.  If a sales letter doesn't inspire people to purchase, or doesn't elicit trust in the reader, you might as well toss it out the door.

One of the most important elements of a successful sales letter are testimonials and amazing success stories.  Many times there are just so many testimonials that the reader is either fascinated by the testimonials or bored and scrolls on.  But the point is that they scroll on.  They want to get to the meat of the letter.  The letter is going to "let you in" on a little known secret.  You are going to be the lucky one to have this life-changing information.

I know it sounds like I am very cynical and hate sales letters.  Much to the contrary, I write lots of them.  I don't write them for myself, but I certainly write them for others.  And you know what?  I get EXCITED just writing them.  Readers get excited too reading them.  Excitement leads to talk, and talk leads to credibility, which leads to people being interested and passing on...the thigh bone is connected to the hip bone and the...well, you get my point.

3.  Freebies

Offering promotional software, an e-book, or a trial sample are methods that encourage buzz marketing.  The try-before-you-buy technique is not by any means new, but by offering a sample or by withholding certain items (like software features), you are in line for a buzz about your product.  Geeks definitely share recommendations on what software does this or that for them, and they always know where to find it.  Trust me, I have plenty of geek friends, so I know this on a personal level.

4.  Polls or Feedback Forms

People love to give their opinion, whether it has been asked for or not; if you ask your audience for feedback, you better believe they will give it.  And while you may not want to know all the negatives, knowing what people are saying about your stuff will encourage you to streamline your product into something they want.  Many times, just generating open discussion about a product can help imprint that product in someone's mind and promote branding.