Special Tips for E-mail Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most direct ways of the online marketing. It has been using for a decade once email becomes popular to everyone. Usage of email marketing is controversial, because it may be considered as a spam to somebody. However, email marketing is a very low cost advertising, so some marketers still like to use it to deliver their advertising messages. There are some special suggestions to make email marketing become more effective.

The first suggestion is to begin with an appropriate subject line for an email, because it is one of the most important reasons to make consumers to open the email. For instance, a lot of email accounts from different companies restrict the number of words in the subject line. If there are too many words on the subject line, the wordings will be cut shorter automatically. As a result, consumers may not open the email at all, even though the content inside the email is fantastic.  Moreover, the word on the subject line should be consistent.  It means the content in the email should be closely related to the subject line, otherwise consumers would feel being cheated, and they are not willing to open any emails again.

The second suggestion is to create a nice layout for the email to attract customers. Different programs such as Outlook Express, PDA, and WebPages has different width, consumers usually need to scroll side-to-side to read emails inconveniently.  Marketers can use the HTML’s table function to make their emails adjust its width to any email readers automatically. If the email has the better layout, consumers can read it more conveniently.

The last suggestion is to set up some good strategies for periodical emails. Marketers can put some good values in emails such as useful information, special offers, and some jokes or sites of the month to email receivers.  Moreover, the tone of the email should be comfortable interesting, so it can attract consumers to read the whole message.  Therefore, consumers are willing to open emails next time. If every email starts with the appropriate subject line, nice layout, and good strategies, emails will not be a spam.  In contrast, emails can be very effective to deliver advertising messages for most marketers.

Opportunities and Challenges of Web 2.0

Because of the development of Web 2.0, a lot of firms now have more opportunities and challenges in their business. For example, Internet users are more involve in the web content nowadays. Therefore, a lot of public networks and community on the Internet have been built up rapidly. The Internet traffic is huge busy in those social networks and community. As result, it generates a lot of opportunities for marketers to deliver their marketing message. Because of these huge opportunities, a lot of companies are considering using Web 2.0, but sometimes marketers do know how to use Web 2.0. There are three right ways to use Web 2.0. The first way is to define the business goals that business can achieve by using a community. Otherwise, you will waste the traffic in the web. The second way is not give up to use old marketing ways because some old marketing ways still work better than work as Web 2.0. For example, people still buy more products based on TV advertising. The last way is to build up the trust with consumers, because they trust in their own network rather than the network they do not familiar.

Inside the firm, Web 2.0 is more and more popular, because a research shows that more than 75% firms want to maintain or increase investment in web-based technologies. Moreover, more than half firms they adopted Web 2.0 are very satisfied with the results. However, a research points out that some firms just adopted the automation and networking rather than use Blogs and Wikis. It is because people worry to lose their power and value after they share the knowledge to others. In the bright side, 50% firms rely on Web 2.0 to communicate with their suppliers, and 75% firms use Web 2.0 to manage internal cooperation. The reason they found out why Web 2.0 is not fully adopt by the firms is the most of working force is baby boomers, so they like using old communication method such as telephone rather than new technology. As more time and training are invested, the situation will be better.

Is Rival Marketing Still Work?

Rival marketing plays a big role in the online marketing, because it helps marketers spread out their marketing messages rapidly. It is one of the fantastic online marketing strategies in the time of Web 1.0, in which marketers create most of their web contents. However, rival marketing is facing a big challenge, as Web 2.0 has been developed. Web 2.0 allows people to create their own contents on the web, and it is more interactive with others. That means the web content is richer and more complex than Web 1.0, so people may spend time on creating their own contents rather than forwarding interesting messages from marketers. Rival marketing seems to lose its power nowadays. A research shows that viral marketing’s campaigns are mostly ineffective, because only 15% of viral marketing campaigns can pass the marketers’ messages successfully last year. However, there are still a lot of successful cases in the online business. For instance, the Mentos-Diet Coke “geyser” video was generating 5 million views within three months last summer on the Internet. Because of the successful of this viral marketing campaign, Mentos’ sale almost increased 20% last year. This is a huge achievement. Moreover, Blendtec shows videos on YouTube in which its blender can blend almost everything from garden rakes to cell phones. This viral marketing campaign brings almost 36 million views. It boosts up the online sales of blender five times more than ever, and the in-store sales increases as well. Therefore, rival marketing is still effective if marketers can utilize it properly. The following examples are some insights to marketers how to produce a winning video in viral marketing campaign. In term of consumer behaviors, a research points out that people prefer to watch comedy and news video. Besides, about half of Internet users like watching videos and sending videos to their friends. If the target age group is 18-29, the online video sharing rate will be grown up to 67%.  In term of marketers’ strategies, the best suggestion for marketers is to hold more campaigns, and there are more than one media and differentiation in their campaigns. In short, there are no 100% winning strategies in the online business. In order to produce a successful rival marketing campaign, marketers should understand their target markets and utilize new and different elements.

 

X Factors

Since the technology improvement and widespread of the Internet, people can assess to the Internet easily, and they spend more time on the Internet than any traditional media. At the same time, the Internet advertising appears more and more in the peoples surfing experiences, because Internet advertising is one of the best ways to increase the awareness, interest, and selling of marketers’ products and services. According to the statistics, marketers tend to spend more money on Internet advertising instead of traditional media nowadays. There are different types of Internet advertising. In the early days, the Internet Advertising was mostly text ad or plain banner. However, those ads are not effective, because it was not attractive to people at all. Now, the Internet Advertising has more attractive and interactive form such as buttons, skyscraper, pop-ups, and pre-rolls. However, the Internet advertising seems to be too aggressive to people, so some people feel those advertisings annoying and intrusive. The Internet users ignore them most of the time. Therefore, some marketers are developing a new advertising strategy for the Internet advertising called behavioral targeted advertising. The methodology is to show advertising to the people based on the sites they visit and/or what they do on those sites. According to their research, it shows that people accept behavioral targeted advertising 14% more than contextual advertising. It also gets 10% more attention than contextual advertising. As the advertising is more relevant to Internet users, so it gets more acceptances from them. As a result, marketers’ advertising can be more effective and efficient. Moreover, the fact shows that the behavioral targeting advertising will become a new trend in the future. Last month, Yahoo bought the biggest advertising network BlueLithium, which is in the leading position of behavioral targeting advertising. In addition, the other big Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google, and AOL also have similar moves to buy advertising companies. In short, to be successful on the online business, having an excellent advertising and channel are not enough. Marketers should take more concerns of their consumers’ feelings and their behaviors then put those factors into their advertising campaign.

Virtual Advertising

Search engine advertising is one of the methods to make your website always busy. If you pay for a search engine, it will let you expose more to your target customers.  As a result, you can reach more customers and earn more profits from the Internet business. In general, if you have more budgets for a better search engine, your exposure rate will be higher. Therefore, the majority of the marketers believe this business practice, and they spend more and more money on the search engine advertising.  Consequently, many big Internet search engines can earn huge profits and expand their business rapidly. 
However, there are some issues that marketers need to consider. They have to think about the perception of search engine results to their consumers. According to the research, consumers tend to trust the organic listings rather than the paid one. Moreover, the research also points out that consumers always prefer the one with the most typically relevant descriptive text and link among the top five search results. It shows that behavior of consumers is more tend to non-sponsor link and informative link.
The second issue is the CTR (click through rate).  Sometimes, the CTR of websites is very tricky that marketers may need to pay huge cost. For example, all customers’ ads will be default to ads provider’s content network. When consumers click the content page, the CTR is counted. In fact, consumers may be just interested in the content page, and they may not be interested in the marketers’ ads at all. In addition, the pricing of CTR between inexperienced marketers and experienced markets has a huge difference. The price range is $0.75 to $4.00 per click.  Last but not least, click fraud problem is also a serious problem, because the research from pay-per-click (PPC) online ad model has revealed that average14.6% of the CTR are fraudulent. The problem does not only waste marketers’ money, but it also breaks the trust between ad providers and marketers.
In short, if marketers would like to be more successful in their online business, they may need to consider what consumers believe in search engine results. They may need to use more search engine optimization than search engine advertising in search engine marketing.  It may help marketers get more control and precise in their online marketing strategies.

 

 

SEO Tools

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the important areas in the search engine marketing. It helps website rank on the top of the list at the organic position, non-paid listing, after conducting a research in the Internet. Search engine optimization usually uses many ways to improve the ranking of the website such as computer languages, keywords, phases, graphics, and links. Since SEO is a very complicated process, there are some tools to help marketers achieve their tasks. The first tool is called SubmitWolf, which is from Trellian. It provides a great source of one way link to a website. It will update regularly and select directories to submit to the user’s site based on the selected topic.  The second one is WebPosition from WebTrends. It has the Page Critic function to rank individual pages on the site, so users can adjust their web pages. As a result, their pages will be ranked higher. In addition, it can generate ranking reports to see how the site is ranking by typing keywords in a search engine to study such as Google.com. The third software is Word Tracker, which can do keyword research to see how popular searches each keyword is.  It can help utilize the best keyword for the users’ websites. The last one is OptiLink, which can help understand linking patterns of other websites. Thus, marketers can change their linking structures better. Since all these softwares have different specialties, marketers should select the most suitable one for their needs carefully.  Therefore, all tools can help marketers achieve their tasks efficiently.

 

Vivid Experience

Designing a visual interface of the website is very important in website development, because it may influence customers’ future experiences. If the website has a very attractive interface, web-surfers will be impressed. If they have a fantastic experience in the website, they probably will visit the website frequently. In addition, they will share the experiences in the website to friends as well. In term of this success, the website can sell products and services to more visitors afterwards. Therefore, having an attractive visual interface design is a major step to success. In general, there are seven design elements of the customer interface such as context, content, community customization, communication, connection, and commerce. They all provide profound foundation of building a brilliant website. However, there are some key concepts also need to be focused. The first is the consumers’ needs and direct benefits. This is not only to deliver the information of products and services. For instance, many sites describe a product’s features such as a car with hybrid gas and electric power. Mentioning features is acceptable, but a focus on benefits to customers is more likely to get them motivated. Describing the fuel savings and quit ride will keep them clicking towards the sale. Second, the website designer has to make sure what consumers exactly need. For example, a financial firm tells their web designer their goal is to help users execute transaction. However, the survey find out that their users are more interested in tracking portfolio performance. The third is to apply the right strategy to guide the design to corporate with firm’s products and services. For example, iPod keeps it simple because iTunes is where the complex interactions take place, not on the iPod itself. By distributing functionality to where it’s appropriate, Apple has been extremely successful. In short, in order to produce an attractive website to deliver a fantastic experience to visitors, firms’ management should combine not only the basic principles, but also thoughtful concepts in their design processes.

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