TP Javeton WebNet

Category: Web Marketing

Advantages of Effective Email Marketing

Reaching global audiences

Email marketing today is considered one of the most popular forms of Internet advertising, offering a number of distinct advantages to the overall concept of Web marketing. However, email marketing also comes with its own set of disadvantages and pitfalls that can derail a business in short order. In this article we will examine the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing and will also provide some insight into planning and executing an effective email marketing campaign.

Email marketing certainly has a set of unique advantages over other types of marketing, both online and offline, with perhaps one of the most significant of those advantages being the ability to reach a worldwide audience with minimal effort. It is possible to reach a worldwide audience with other types of advertising, but some traditional types of advertising such as television, radio and the print media are not nearly as effective (cost and practicality) in reaching potential customers around the world all at once as email marketing is.

Another major advantage of email marketing is its extreme affordability; significant because there are many other types of marketing, including Web marketing, which are significantly more expensive than email marketing. The costs associated with email marketing are minimal, in the sense that you will already have a list of email recipients who are interested in your products and services, so there is no cost associated with obtaining a list of email addresses. Additionally the cost to send out emails is minimal and can be considered part of your regular operating costs. All of these factors already make email marketing campaigns extremely cost effective.

Economics of email marketing

However, there is some cost involved with email marketing which primarily consist of writing the advertisements and creating certain graphics which will accompany the email ads. Specifically, these costs include hiring a writer to write the copy for ads and a designer to create and implements the graphics. The cost of these services will vary pretty widely but in general you will pay more for writers and designers with more experience because these writers and designers are expected to be able to produce a higher quality of work than those with less experience could produce.

The most obvious disadvantage to email marketing is the possibility of having your email marketing viewed as spam, which is a very noteworthy problem because it could prove to be quite costly in terms of the profit margin for your business. Each day Internet users are bombarded with unsolicited emails serving as advertisements, a problem that has reached epic proportions; and the abundance of spam infiltrating email boxes of innocent Internet users cause them to be cautious and suspicious about any email they receive that is unsolicited and appears to be promoting a particular product or service.

Proceed with caution

Emails which contain subject lines or content that appear to be similar to spam might be automatically transferred to a spam folder by the email system; and emails that are not automatically deleted may be deleted without being opened, simply because the recipient does not recognize the sender of those email messages. Both of these problems can result in wasted time for the business owner since the recipients are not even viewing the emails advertising, products and services offered by the business. Furthermore, they may result in complaints being lodged against the company for being a purveyor of spam.

Now that you have a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing, you might wonder how you can maximize the advantages to use email marketing in a profitable and effective way. The most important factor to consider is your email distribution list, which should consist of former customers who have expressed a desire to receive emails with information and advertisements, as well as potential customers who have also expressed interest in more information.

The soft-sell approach

The content of emails should also be carefully considered, in the sense that they should highlight the products and services you offer, but should do so without appearing to be a hard sales pitch. A writer with experience in writing this type of copy should be able to assist you in providing insightful and accurate copy which also entices the reader to find out more about your products and services. Finally your emails should provide readers with a call to action. This should be a statement urging the reader to take a specific action such as making a purchase or researching a product.

Digital & Electronic Products – Unbeatable in Quality and Price!

04/19/2016
About Blog Hosts and Blogging Essentials
The nature of a blog

Blog, which is an abbreviation for the term, weblog, is a piece of Internet technology which provides individuals with in a number of different forms; including text, video, audio (podcasts) and photos. The activity of blogging has grown tremendously over the past decade to include users (bloggers) from all over the world, many of whom utilize it to publish and update posts, crop up entries of personalized life snippets that are mundane or bizarre in nature. For most bloggers, however, a blog is personal, unedited and authentic in nature; a journal meant to be shared in an online community.

Blogsites are locations on the Web where bloggers can publish anything; from their thoughts, feelings and photos, to special events, experiences and comments on issues, in addition to many other types of content. A blogsite in its truest form is similar to an online diary to which entries are made in a variety of content types that might encompass videos, links, documents, newsletters and opinions on just about any topic the reader might have interest in.

Personal blogs are created and intended to welcome the insights, opinions and comments of all comers, and therefore should not be written in a way that could be thought of as intimidating, or in a way that readers might consider as too formal in context; because such a blog can turn off readers and cause them to turn away and never return. The basic blog should be conversational in tone and context, a format which would be more appropriate to reach desired audiences.

Blog functions and advantages

Blogging can reasonably be described as being all about individuals reaching out to other individuals, and as such, blogs have their own sets of advantages, some of which might include the following:
1. Freedom of expression – If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinions, blogging is one of the best ways to create a line of communication;
2. Networking at its best – Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from your readers to you as marketer of certain products. Sound opinions and points of view are often better than simply showing the price quote;
3. Excellent advertising platform – Blogging as a way to advertise products, is a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets, and it is cost-effective;
4. Gauging public opinion on products and services – The key to this particular activity is nice, catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This will assure you of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs are excellent locations for the exchange of ideas between sellers and consumers; and they’re good for measuring public opinion regarding products and services, and can even be effective in the political arena;
5. Useful tool for internal communication – Blogging can help your company build a knowledge-based community of employees, as it is also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance;
6. Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blog to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is therefore very good exposure for your products and services.
Choosing a blog host

Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet, but perhaps the most important question in this regard pertains to choosing from the many Web hosting services to find one that will best suit your purposes when starting your business blog program. Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which could help them maximize their marketing potentials. For blogging beginners, it is best to first study the services offered by blog hosts, because an ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.

A company might decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a “blog aggregator page” and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals. Business blogs are required to have ; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potential.

Basic blogging essentials

COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provides the opportunity for dialogue; and for business blogs this is a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps based on loyalty and trust. So blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.

TRACKBACK. This helps to maximize company and product exposure in the sense that, your consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you all over again. If your blog is popular in a specific online community, chances are that links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.

CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These are helpful, both in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation, as well as on site searches. Categories act as libraries because they classify posts by subject matter which might include business, distance learning, eCommerce, online auctions and much more. Tags, help in classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.

RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.

In order for your company to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies with the most compatible services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are more appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages which may be best for your company’s needs. You may want to take a look at some blogs that already use a particular host first, by simply reading and closely examining their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is whether or not the hos provides reliable technical support.

The blog: A reflection of the blogger

After choosing the blog host a team should be ready to plan the in which case the team should:
- create a style that meets the needs of your audience;
- establish an open, credible tone;
- schedule weekly updating of blog – ideally, a few times a week;
- include weblinks of other website and blogs;
- blog post should be in the “first person;”
- focus on the business blog objective;and,
- maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.
Remember, the look, style and content found on your blog is always a reflection of you and your company. Apart from the chat rooms, instant messengers and electronic mails created for communication and dialogue beyond the traditional methods of communication, blogs have emerged as the most innovative and convenient methods used by regular folks to build opportunities for interaction. The need for personalized and human elements of building online communities have changed the technological landscape of Internet life.
04/02/2016
Email Marketing Combined with Other IM Strategies

Plurality of strategies

It has been a long held belief among marketing professionals that no single marketing strategy will be as effective as a combination of two or more such strategies; and this pertains to both online – Internet Marketing (IM) – and traditional offline marketing venues. This is hardly a recommendation for marketers to try and implement every known marketing strategy to promote his/her business. It is however, an opinion that various strategies can work in combination with each other; but only after proper market-based tests have been conducted, and resulting determination made, that it is worthwhile to market from a number of different perspectives to help the marketer achieve business-related goals.

In this article we will examine the importance of combining email marketing with other types of IM strategies to create an effective, multi-tiered marketing strategy, and also offer some ideas on managing more than one marketing strategy simultaneously. According to the old adage, “There’s more than one way to get the job done,” and this is certainly true in the case of marketing on the Web; because, while you may enjoy a great deal of success with email marketing, it certainly doesn’t mean that you should not try other types of online marketing such as website creation, message boards, banner ads, affiliate marketing campaigns and back-linking.

Of course it is possible that not all of these strategies will be effective for your particular business, but you are probably more likely to find at least one other option that will compliment your email marketing, which might also go a long way to help you achieve your business-related goals and ultimate success.

Online-offline approaches

That having been said, you can take a look at combining your email marketing campaigns with other, more traditional marketing strategies such as radio ads, television ads and ads in the print media. It is important to keep in mind that the absense of these advertising strategies in the online marketplace does not mean that they will not be effective in generating more business. In fact, advertising both online and offline can allow you to reach a larger target audience; since you will likely reach Internet users around the world, while also reaching potential customers who do not utilize the Internet for purchasing or researching products/services similar to the ones you offer.

Some popular marketing strategies that might prove effective when combined with email marketing include banner ads and message board participation. These are all online activities, and each one individually is fairly simple, but when combined with email marketing, these simple activities can create a powerful statement, in the sense that you may send out emails offering useful information about your products/services, while purchasing banner ad space on websites which may be of interest to your potential customers; and also participate in industry-related message boards where you can earn the respect of potential customers and pique their interests.

Test. Evaluate. Market.

But even if your potential customers are not currently in need of the products/services you offer, seeing your business name so often can have a powerful branding effect, since branding is also an important business process during which consumers see a company name so often that they are more likely to select a product from the particular company when they are in need of an item offered by that company. So the long-term benefits are just as important as any short-term gains you derive from your combination of marketing strategies.

If you are planning to combine multiple forms of advertising, you should be aware that this can make it difficult for you to evaluate the effectiveness of each strategy. This is especially true of the marketing strategies that are implemented concurrently. When you are only using one type of marketing strategy, you can generally attribute increases in sales or website traffic to changes in that strategy. However, when more than one type of marketing strategy is in effect, it can be quite difficult to determine which strategy is producing the desired effect.

This situation can be handled by not making changes to more than one marketing strategy at a time, an approach which will help you to pinpoint which changes produce an increase in sales or website traffic. It can also help you to determine when changes to your marketing strategy have a detrimental effect on your sales and website traffic. However, if you are having difficulty determining which marketing strategy is most effective, you can consider asking customers to answer survey questions and provide information such as how they learned about the products or services your business offers.

03/30/2016
Great Advertising or Spam? A Conundrum!

Avoid alienating customers

Many who are familiar with, or actively engage in, Web marketing will agree that there is a very fine line between legitimate ads and spam; but what makes this distinction so alarming is the fact that many business owners – online and offline – do not understand the difference between the two. In view of this lack of understanding, it is therefore important that marketers have the ability to identify spam and avoid it at all costs; because while a clever, well planned Web marketing campaign can help to attract new customers and keep existing customers loyal, spam is likely to alienate both new and existing customers, which can be extremely damaging to profit margins for the business owners.

That having been said, we will take a closer look at the grey area between ads and spam while touching on a number of Web marketing strategies, including email marketing campaigns and banner ads as well as message board posts, and describe how each can quickly cross the line from clever advertising to spam.

Email marketing campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are very useful tools in an industry like Web marketing, since these campaigns are comprised of the most important means of communication between the marketer and his/her client and/or customer base. Included in such campaigns might be periodic e-newsletters consisting of information requested by subscribers along with advertisements, brief educational email courses and/or offers of discounts on products and services. Loyal customers who opt into the marketer’s email list will likely not view these emails as spam and may purchase additional products and services from the marketer’s business which will justify this kind of marketing strategy.

Additionally, potential customers who have specifically requested additional information about the marketer’s products and services will also find this type of marketing to be useful. But email recipients who did not request information from the marketer are likely to view these emails as spam, which brings us to one of the key points in differentiating between advertising and spamming. It is the difference between those who “requested” information and receive the marketing emails; and those who “did not request” information, but still receive marketing emails.

Simply put, emails to those in the “request” category are considered legitimate advertising, while emails to those in the “did not request” category are considered spam. In view of this distinction, it can be said with some certainty that harvesting email addresses in a deceptive manner and using these addresses to send out mass emails will likely be considered spam in ninety out of ten times.

Banner advertising

Banner ads have for a long time been considered among the most popular strategies utilized by Web marketers, including email marketing professionals, because they are the types of ads that can be placed atop most websites and span the width of those sites. In fact, this placement is directly related to how they earned the name “banner ads,” but actually banner ads can refer to ads of a variety of sizes, shapes and colors that appear in an array of different locations on a website. Business owners have been known to purchase advertising space on various websites, but the banner ad may also be utilized as part of an exchange or an affiliate marketing campaign.

The most popular kind of banner ad exchanges is when business owner #1 places a banner ad from business owner #2 on his/her website in exchange for business owner #2 placing a banner ad from business owner #1 on his/her website. These agreements may be made individually between business owners with comparable businesses, or as part of exchanges facilitated by a third party or network. In the case of affiliate marketing, an affiliate places an advertisement for a particular business (often referred to as a merchant) in exchange for compensation when the banner ad produces a desired effect such as traffic to the merchant’s website or generating a sale.

Terms of advertising

The terms of banner exchange agreements, as well as affiliate agreements are determined beforehand and are generally based on a scale of pay per impression, pay per click or pay per sale or lead. Now that you understand what banner ads are, it is also important to understand how they can be overused and give the appearance that they are spam. If you are a Web marketer who advertises with banners, you might judiciously place your banner ad on a few websites which are likely to attract an audience similar to your target audience, and this will be seen as smart marketing; but placing your banner ad on any website which will display the ad regardless of the target audience can be construed as spam.

In advertising, whether it may be offline or online, must always be done with the audience in mind; and in the case of marketing on the Web, your audience is the many Internet users who will decide whether your ads are legitimate or spam; because if they sense that your banner ads are everywhere they turn, and are being placed indiscriminately on any and every website who will accept them, they will likely not take your business seriously and would probably not purchase products or services from you as a result of your banner placement activity.

About message boards

Message boards provide an excellent opportunity for business owners to obtain some free advertising where it will be noticed by members of the target audience; and if the products and services you offer appeal to a specific niche, it is worthwhile to join message boards and online forums related to your industry of choice, which will allow you locate a large population of Internet users who may have an interest in your products. As a result of your membership in such a program, you might consider including a link to your business in your signature area, or post the link when it is applicable to the conversation.

However, be mindful of the kind of promotional activities you engage in by carefully reviewing the message board guidelines so that you can be certain that your activities are not in violation of those guidelines, and that you are not engaging in any inappropriate behavior. Message board advertising is a smart marketing strategy, but you could run afoul of best practices by replying to every message with a link to your website, especially when it is not relevant to the conversation since this can be construed as spam by other members. And once they begin to view your posts as spam, they are not likely to visit your website via any links you post.

03/20/2016
An Opt-in List as the Sole Money-Making Vehicle

A mutual consent list

An opt-in list, which is also referred to as a subscriber list, can be a crucial component in any site or Web-based company; and even in the case of a small venture such as a niche profit site, an opt-in list can make a world of difference while also putting some extra money in the owner’s pockets. In fact, opt-in lists are so important to the revenue-generating apparatus to an Internet-based business that e-commerce sites – big and small – seldom operate their businesses without one.

Opt-in lists allow companies to market their wares and websites via email communication and promotions, activities that are commonly referred to as email marketing, but there are guidelines and “Best Practices” that email marketers must adhere to. An opt-in list can be thought of as an agreement between a site owner (email marketer) and a subscriber, whereas the marketer consents to sending a newsletter from his/her company, and the subscriber consents to receiving such a newsletter.

Based on such consent the marketer can keep subscribers abreast of latest trends pertaining to the subscribers interests, as well as what is currently available on the marketer’s website, and whatever is coming next. And as a result of the mutual consent between the two parties, any email sent to subscribers is not considered spam mail. It is also based on this agreement between the two parties that a great number of promotional materials (such as catalogs, newsletters and such) sent to subscribers are read successfully. This is all made possible because the subscribers themselves have signed up for the material which obviously indicates that they do want to be sent those items.

List-building: A nuanced art

Building a list is crucial, but only a small percentage of Internet users actually subscribe to an opt-in list, since many people find promotional email annoying; but if you, as an email marketer, provide quality newsletters or promotional material, you will probably get very positive results in building up and growing your list. Another way you can achieve such results is by having good content on your website; because if site visitors like what they see and read on your website, then they surely would want more, and a newsletter would be a great way to entice them back to your site.

Other than a vehicle by which to market your products and services, an opt-in list can also be used to earn extra money, but not all lists can be used to accomplish this goal, however; because only those who have already built a successful list with a huge number of subscribers should attempt to maximize earnings directly. ultimately, the more subscribers you have, the more money you can make from your list through a variety of techniques, some of which are outlined in the following paragraphs.

Advertisements and affiliations

There are many corporations who will consider paying a fee to have their banners and ads promoted to a list with many subscribers; because since selling or renting out lists is generally not a good idea, many companies forego such a risk and, instead, place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your newsletter could be placed with many ads and each one could result in more money for your efforts.

Establishing affiliations with Web-based companies that have at least a semblance or similarity to what your site is about can also supportt your list management efforts, because these companies will provide links and brief descriptions of what they offer in the way of products and services. As a result, every click made on the “affiliate link” that directs or leads a subscriber from your list to their site, the company will pay you. This is known as P4P or pay for performance.

Making deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of the sales done through your list can be an effective way to generate additional income and give your subscribers a variety of items to choose from; and every sale generated by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage based on those sales. The more people who buy from them, the more money you make.

Consignments and ebooks

Consignments and ebooks have been very popular approaches to doing business on the Internet. Pertaining to consignments, you may get products from other sites on a consignment basis and sell them to your list via a newsletter you create just for that purpose or via your standard newsletter. By placing descriptions, articles and photos of the product(s) in your newsletter, there will be those who will buy from you, and when that happens you can order the specific product from that other site and sell it to the subscriber(s) who requested the item.

Selling or giving away e-books or a compilation of your articles to your list in the form of manuals and how-to articles is in great demand; and there are people who, for various reasons, will consider shelling out money to obtain knowledge about certain aspects, techniques and information about a variety of topics. With your existing subscribers trusting your expertise in a given area, an e-book could be offered and sold; or even used as an incentive.

Networking and credibility

Developing a network out of your list by getting people to invite their friends and relatives to your site and subscribe to your list is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward approach you can take to build and grow your list. It’s important to keep in mind that the larger your list is, the more people will be able to click on your product links and affiliate links which in turn will make your advertisement rates higher.

Subscribers are willing to pay for information if they know that it can be trusted and relied upon; but perhaps the more important aspect of their decision making is whether or not the entity providing the information is credible. Such credibility will go a long way to enhance your list-building prowess, and in helping you to simply use your list to get more and more people to subscribe, as well as browse your site. Lastly, you can earn a lot of money from your subscribers by making them your partners, and your list will be the bloodline of your growth and marketing success.

03/10/2016
Blogging and Teenagers: Perfect Together!

The blogging movement

Today’s teenagers are the first generation to have grown up using the Internet at every stage of their development, as evidenced by the seemingly innate sense of Web technology usage skills and familiarity possessed by many adolescents when expressing their innermost thoughts and ideas.

It’s true that by people of all ages and from all walks of life, but in the case of blogging as a communication vehicle, teen bloggers are truly on the cutting edge of that movement; and while older writers often experience a kind of learning curve when they begin to blog, many young people find that using a word processor and blogging software is a more natural and direct mode of communication than writing in a diary could ever be.

One of the reasons for blogs having undergone kind of an explosive growth in the teen community, and is still expanding by leaps and bounds, is the fact that they provide a unique mixture of visibility and anonymity. A teenager can invite friends and peers to read his or her with a simple email, thereby attracting the attention or possibly even praise for the content s/he is creating and sharing.

Communicating through blogs

Of course, with visibility usually comes the possibility of embarrassment, but having anonymously with an invented handle or nickname, negates a lot of the potential for humiliation. In fact, there are many blogging teens who live in fear of their blog being discovered by a parent or guardian; but by publishing under an alias teenagers can spill their fiercely-guarded secrets without fear of being traced.

Outside , teen writers often have very limited opportunities to be published; because magazines and journals are often reluctant to publish young writers who may not have as much credibility as older writers who possess a lot of experience and extensive credits to their names. And this kind of reticence can discourage many adolescents from seeking the opportunity to publish their work, or from writing altogether.

With the advent of , young people can begin to gain a following of readers without first having to obtain the approval and support of an editor or publisher who may not be very interested in teenaged authors; and in view of the fact that blogs provide young people with a chance to demonstrate their impressive technical aptitude, to gain visibility without compromising privacy, and to build a readership for their writing without having to jump through the traditional hoops of a publishing industry which shows little interest in their work, it comes as no surprise so many teenagers blog.

…And the social aspect

For some teenagers, as a social endeavor that allows them to meet people with similar interests from all over the world; and a great number of blogging teens have discovered that having a personal blog on the Web is as great a way to explore self-expression and to win positive feedback from new friends as any other medium in existence today.

03/08/2016