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"Top Ten Tips For Email Marketing" 

                                                        
1. You need to get your email opened and read, how do you help your cause? Through the subject line! But remember, email readers cut off the subject line if it's too long so get your message across with a few short words.

2. "From Label" faux pas - make sure that your email comes "from" whomever your recipients have established a relationship with. If they see that it's coming from someone with whom they aren't familiar, you're likely to see an increase in your unsubscribe rate and possibly receive some SPAM complaints.

3. Personalization is key! It's a great way to get your message read and VerticalResponse can help you set it up easily. Catch your recipient's attention using it in the subject line, in the introduction or even the in closing of your email. Personalization is a powerful way to bring you closer to your recipient.

4. Identify with your recipients in the first paragraph "You told us you wanted to receive information on [Product X] so we're sending you this information today!" Help them remember the connection you've had with them from previous correspondence. Sparking the memory of your recipient can also help to lower your unsubscribe rate.

5. Pictures, pictures, pictures. We see up to 10 times the response rate for emails using pictures vs. those with only text. VerticalResponse has the tools to help you easily upload your images so why not give yourself the advantage. Just make sure the images aren't too large (i.e. file size) as it will take longer to load for your dial-up recipients. Don't run the risk of losing a potential customer because they got frustrated waiting for your images to load.

6. Got a product? Make your offer up front and provide only the most pertinent information (i.e. price, model #, availability) in the email. Don't waste your customer's time by making them search for these details as this can have a negative effect on your sales. As long as you also provide them with a link to get more information about your offer they should have everything they need.

7. Create urgency with your offers. Apply expiration dates and enforce them. This can jump start your recipients behavior if they feel like a delay on their part will result in a missed opportunity.

8. Keep it short and sweet. If you send a monthly email and have a lot to say, try to convey your message in a concise manner. Get your message across with a few sentences and then include a link where they can get more information. You might think about switching your monthly email to a bi-weekly one to prevent your newsletters from being too long.

9. When you mail can be as important as what you mail. Keep in mind that certain times of the year people will be focusing more of their attention on get-togethers with friends and family than to their email inboxes. Schedule your mailings accordingly for the holiday seasons (i.e. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, 4th of July) to ensure that your messages are not left unread for longer than you expected. This is especially important for any time-sensitive offers or announcements contained within your email.

10. For success in the future you'll want to consult the past! Study campaign performance to learn from your achievements (and your mistakes!) by monitoring your clicks and open rate. Test, Test, Test: try different offers with your lists and compare the results. See which days of the week and especially subject lines garner the best response.

from the epublicist toolbox

by Paul Christ, KnowThis.com

Public relations often operates under the radar screen when marketers identify ways to promote their wares. For many marketers PR does not hold the same allure when compared with the creation of an advertising campaign. Many perceive PR professionals as only handling nuts-and-bolts communication activities, such as issuing press releases and handling calls from the news media. But in reality, in the age of excessive advertising, where the average consumer is inundated with thousands of advertisements and promotional message each day, public relations is one of the most powerful methods for cutting through promotional clutter.

A major task of those involved in public relations is image management. Specifically PR professionals attempt to build awareness and a favorable image for a company or client within stories and articles found in relevant media outlets. PR’s key point of power rests with helping to establish credibility for a product, company or person in the minds of targeted customer groups by capitalizing on the influence of an independent third-party -- the media. Until recently most of this was accomplished through person-to-person contact between PR professionals and members of the media, such as journalists and television news reporters. However, within the last few years new Internet technologies have emerged that may be affecting the roles and methods for carrying out public relations. Below we discuss several emerging techniques and tools that may soon fall within the realm of regular PR activity.

Search Engine Optimization Is Really PR
For several years online marketers have recognized the importance of gaining top rankings in search engines. In fact, a new industry called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was born as technology people realized that manipulating certain aspects of a website could lead to higher rankings. At first glance no one involved in SEO would consider themselves to be a PR professional, an Internet marketer maybe but not PR! But is there really a difference?

Public relations is about getting media outlets to mention the name of product, company or person. With PR the intention is to receive good publicity via a third-party media source without DIRECTLY paying the media source for placement. As PR people know, many story ideas for newspapers, magazines and television news often start with a suggestion from a PR person. If things work out, a reporter or editor will, at best, write a positive story with the company as a key feature or, at minimum, include the company’s name somewhere within an industry-focused article. In this way the credibility of the media outlet may rub off on a reader’s perception of the company mentioned. Why? Because the media outlet is viewed (hopefully) as a third-party that is unbiased in their coverage meaning that the decision to include the name of the company and the views expressed about the company is not based on payment (i.e., advertisement) but on the media outlet’s judgment of what is important.

Now let’s consider what is needed to gain top search engine rankings. The goal of SEO is to achieve high rankings or placement within a third-party source (i.e., search engines). When SEO is mentioned most marketers believe it is synonymous with search engine advertising. In fact, it is significantly different. Major search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, do not allow rankings to be purchased. Rankings occur based on criteria controlled by the search engine. However, just as PR people can work to influence coverage within traditional media, search engine optimizers can work to influence results in search engines by using techniques that allow a website to fit (i.e., be optimized) within ever-changing search engine ranking criteria. In this way SEO does what PR professionals do, namely get good placement in third-party sources.

RSS – New Ways to Get the Message Out
An emerging and important trend for PR professionals to consider is delivering news about their company or client is via an evolving Internet technology based on the XML web formatting language. Referred to by the acronym RSS (what it stands for depends on who you ask but most accepted name is Really Simple Syndication), this technology makes it easy for people to know when new content is posted to a website. With the use of news aggregator programs, which are either downloadable or web-based programs for retrieving RSS feeds, or by searching through search engines that track RSS, such as Feedster,  people interested in content from specific websites are instantly notified when new content is available thus being freed from the inconvenience of visiting sites to find out what is new.

While there are several flavors of RSS, the basic concept has content providers, such as news sites, corporate websites, blogs, etc., creating RSS documents that provide basic details of new content, such as content title, authorship information, description and links to the full content. The nature of the technology allows anyone who links to the RSS feed to instantly receive details of the content. Many journalists and others media members are finding this to be a more convenient way to acquire information, particularly if they follow a specific industry and can identify specific information websites to monitor. By subscribing to relevant RSS feeds they have information delivered rather than spending time searching. While this technology holds great benefits, PR people should be aware that the news media must still make the effort to subscribe to a RSS feed. Getting them to do this probably still requires old fashion PR skills!

Forum Watching and Rumor Control
Finally, it may be wise for PR professionals to closely monitor web forums where free flowing, often anonymous, postings, can cause big problems. Responding to a misguided comment posted on a web discussion board may help squelch rumors before they can catch fire. There are thousands of forums so unless you know specific ones within an industry (which you probably should) the best option is to monitor these through search engines. Two options are BoardReader and Lycos Discussion which index postings to forums found on websites. Website forums are generally accessible for reading without a registration but posting does require registration. Another option is Google Groups which allows searches of postings to Usenet groups, which are online communities with a long history on the Internet. Unlike website forums, Usenet groups can be accessed either via the web, such as through Google, or through email. Alternatively, for-a-fee Internet clipping services have emerged that can also monitor forums and send reports via email notification.

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