Google has been verifying businesses/individuals by selecting themselves and contacting them.

But now it has added an option for businesses, organization and inviduals to request for verification of their Google+ pages. This is not available for local business pages now but will be available soon.

If you have an existing relationship with Google, you can contact your Google representative to request verification for your Google+ page created.

For those who do not have an existing relationship with Google, the request form is available at their site - Google+ page verification request

Here are the requirements by Google to be eligible for verification:

• Your Google+ page must be authorized by your commercial entity, organization, brand, or product.
• Your Google+ page’s profile must contain a link to your organization’s website.
• Your organization’s website must connect to your Google+ page, by adding the Google+ badge or by adding a snippet of code.
• Over 1000 people must have added your Google+ page to their circles.

Though, verification is not guaranteed even if you meet these requirements.

All the details for Page Verification Request are explained with the request form.

To have your verification request submitted, you 

• should have added a link to your organization’s website on Google+ page’s profile.
• should have added a Google+ badge or code snippet to your organization's website.
• should be authorized to administer and verify this Google+ page for the organization.

Read more on this from Google Help.

Go to  WebStrategy Marketing.com or subscribe to our blog for getting yourself updated on Online Marketing news, updates, tips and more.

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Social media will become one of the most preferred marketing medium in 2012. Real time communication is the biggest advantage of social media, so the marketers have to change their mind-set accordingly.

Marketing Trend in 2012 will be focused on business branding and customer service. Most of the companies will involve with the inbound marketing which involves Social Media Marketing as a major part, and other options like email generation, content creation, call to action, SEO, etc.

Social media sites like Facebook and Youtube are integrating new tools for measuring the social media effectiveness. So, in the coming years, the measuring the social media effectiveness will be an easy and undeniable task.

Data based on the social media sites will play a big role in defining marketing strategies. Companies will have to categorize their marketing plans according to the collected data, it may vary from location, age, sex, likes, messages, etc. Marketing plan would be more effective when the relevant data is collected and sorted out. Marketing agencies will convert this available data into actionable and more profitable marketing plans.

We are witnessing increase in the use of social media in mobile/smart phones which will continue. Therefore, there will be activiites/conversations done than using computing devices. Combination of social media in smart phones enables the companies to go for a real-time interaction with their customers.

Location based services will gain more popularity and usage due to the increased access of social sites through mobile phones. Location based sites have a lesser use and advantage for businesses now. Though this is gradually increasing and will promptly increase in 2012.

More availability of API key from social media sites enable developers to develop more and more applications for their clients. This will result in more number of applications developed for social sites.

Social Media Gaming will gather more momentum than ever.

Integration of traditional marketing with social, mobile and digital marketing will be a challenging task for marketers. Overcoming the clutter in social media and targeting/connecting with the right people, who is interested in your products and services, will become crucial for the companies.

In conventional marketing, it gets a lot of time for planning and execution but in social media immediate response is required to the customers/prospects as well as same time to deal with the negative feed back (And need to react instantly).

Also since there are more things can be predicted, this post is open for your comments/predictions.

We shall discus later on how to face these changes as a business, so stay tuned to our blog.
 

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Most of the businesses/brands are creating profiles in all social media sites and they are ensuring their presence in online marketing. Main activities of these business pages are spurring customers to “Like” or "Follow" the brand. Are these activities enough for the social media campaign? How many companies are doing effective campaign for engagement and give the visitors what they need? If your campaign is not effective, the interested customers become reluctant to connect with your brands.

Brands must study the consumer preferences and monitor what customer want from the business pages. Companies must understand what customer wants from the social relationship and this information is very important to meet the expectations of customers. Recent study states that half of the fans in facebook say that they are really not the fans because they don’t visit the page or site after the “Like”.

Top reason why the customers are breaking up

• Companies post too frequently with boring and repetitive content
• They don't offer any good deals/discounts for the fans
• User’s wall became too crowded with marketing or promotional post.
• Companies' post was not relevant to user and no good value.

Customers need meaningful connection and good value with your brands but some of the brands are missing the opportunity to engage with customers. As part of the IBM study, they asked their customers, "what they expect from brand engagement in social media" and top reasons are to:

• Receive discounts
• Make Purchases
• Learn about new products
• For general information about company

Success of the campaigns lies in understanding and delivering what customers want. Ask the people to what they expect from social media are primary step in online campaign. Big companies like Dell and Ford asked people about the ideas of their services.

Modify your social media campaign to deliver best to your customers and avoid unfollow the people from your pages. Ask your consumers to give feed backs, conduct surveys and other method to collect the valuable information. Effective social media campaign includes special discounts, promotions, valuable content, entertainment etc.

click on WebStrategy Marketing.com or subscribe to our blog for getting yourself updated.

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Marketing through the social media sites provides a better and cost effective business opportunity. These sites allow interacting with others, promoting content that can get links and viral attraction. It also provides new ways to showcase your news letter and invite people to signup for your newsletter. It explains that you have valuable content to share with subscribers and in addition turn those subscribers into your customers. This helps to increase brand awareness and extensive customers reach. So follow these tips to extend your email marketing in social media sites.

Facebook

Facebook is the #1 social media site. It is a place to share photos, videos, and favorite links and it is also about the different communities of people who can share information and passions. Most of the big and small scale businesses, organizations, and public figures are using facebook to reach out to their fans/followers.

• Create a facebook landing tab with lead form(let user to add their   name and email).
• Use double lead strategy: hide your landing page, ask your visitors to click on the like   button and get it, and they will become your fans, they receive what you provide.
•  Provide special offers and discounts to your subscribers and post your updates in fan pages and include link to your fans to invite their friends for subscribing your newsletter.

Twitter

One of the most popular social media sites where you can communicate your followers in 140 characters or less. So concise your content and include tiny link to your sites. Update your status regularly and follow the people relate with your business, location and gender. Post the links to subscribe your newsletter and offers.

Linkedin

It is one of the top business networking sites that you can invite your past and present colleagues to your network. Use the linkedin’s send message feature to reach out the people and invite them to visit your website and subscribe your news letters. Join in the linkedin groups and use the discussion group to popularise your business to the people at relevant spaces.

Youtube

It is the second most popular search engine after google and 70% of the online user watching videos on the internet than TV. Upload interesting videos about your business and related to your industry. Host webinar occasionally. Inform your subscribers through emails and social media sites and present audience polls and questionnaires.

Follow your new signup immediately with a welcome email and newsletter; use auto-responder to send email to new subscribers. Content of the newsletter will be worth valuable so that it will go virally through networks. You have to maintain a customer relationship so that you can go beyond the links and generate business.

Grab Your FREE Copy of The Killer Web Marketing Strategies Vol 1 That Will Multiply Your Sales And Profits In Less Time.

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Email marketing is one of the oldest and popular online marketing techniques. The main purpose of e-mail marketing is that to reach the prospects and convert them to customers. Sending E-mail is only the old approach and marketers are thinking of creative ways to engage customers with email marketing. Now the email marketing is more personalized and marketers are using interesting campaign to interact with customers.

 Email marketing in social media Networks

Most of the social networking sites like facebook, twitter and myspace adopted there own inbox systems. Individuals trust the messages obtained from their favorite social media sites rather than their inboxes. Social media presence is must in order to make real time conversations; it builds relationship and gives immediate feedback to your product and services. Now a day’s consumers are spending more time with social media sites than before. Remember it is perfect place for marketers to send more personalized messages through social media sites. Share the exclusive content through social media sites and ask user to share it.

 Email marketing through mobile phones

Future of email marketing lies in the smart phone users. Service providers can easily find what kind of mobile phones people are using and they can render the email to meet the phone specification of the customers. Mobile platform is very different and the screen size will be small compared to normal pc so that marketers have to optimize the messages for the mobile readers otherwise it will not provide good results. In this mobile platform you can send messages based on the location and you have to customize the message according to that. Add mobile option in your email subscription page so that mobile user can easily access your page through their phones.

 Video Streaming in Email marketing

Video email marketing is a latest and best marketing tool to boost sales and increase your customers list. Today social video sites are more popular than TV and people are watching favorite shows in their video sharing sites so you can send videos emails to your customers to drag their attention. Create variety of videos like; live presentation for your customers or affiliates, send video testimonials of your satisfied and loyal customers, preview of your products and services, etc. Marketers want to reach their customers using video messaging and you can send video email to them directly. In this way you can encourage audience to use your products and convert them to your potential customers.

 Personalize your subscribers

Always remember that not all of your subscribers behave the same way. Try to personalize your subscribers and make sure that they are not getting the similar generic mail. Try to create highly personalized messages, send the information that is worth otherwise your email will be treated as annoying and they will be more likely to unsubscribe. Change the content of the messages and try with new subjects so that subscribers will be interest on you.

Marketers are thinking of new and innovative ways to improve the email marketing. So subscribe our blog to keep updated.
 

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True or False: Many marketers report that their blog is the most popular entry point for online visitors.

The answer is: true! A MarketingSherpa study has found this to be a new trend!

Which means if you haven’t started working your blog into your email marketing campaign, it’s time to start! Fortunately, AWeber helps make this easier for you with the blog broadcast feature.

If you’re ready to set up a powerful tool to improve your email marketing efforts, we’ve got you covered on how to do it and how it helps.

How Blog Integration Helps You

The blog broadcast feature makes it easy for you to reap the benefits of integrating your blog with email marketing. Here are some of the benefits:

• Increase sign ups

  If you’re getting a lot of traffic to your blog, that’s another opportunity to ask visitors to join your mailing list! Whether your blog is your website or just a part of it, you want to have a form available for potential subscribers to enter their information. If you’re using WordPress, Aweber have got an app for that!

  You might also want to set up an email subscription just for your blog posts, in case that’s all some subscribers want. This can be done by creating a separate list that’s dedicated to blog post emails, rather than having one list for all emails. It’s good to offer options for receiving your emails, so subscribers aren’t just locked into one thing.

• Increase interaction with your site

  Your blog content gives your subscribers more to interact with. You can set up the blog broadcast to include a “Read More” link to get subscribers to click through to the website in order to see the rest of the post.

• Communicate a more personal tone

  Your blog can read as if you’re addressing a friend, so a blog broadcast can give your company the chance to set a more friendly tone.

  Opening up to your subscribers and connecting with them on a more personal level can help build subscriber loyalty.

• Provide more content for your emails

  The blog broadcast will allow you to send regular broadcasts to your subscribers. However, even if you don’t use the blog broadcast tool you can still integrate with your blog.

  You can simply link to a blog post (or a few posts) in your regular email newsletter. This way you’re still able to share more valuable content with your subscribers.

How to Set Up a Blog Broadcast

The blog broadcast will take content from your blog and automatically create that content in an email newsletter.

The way it does this is by checking your blog’s RSS feed. When you have a new post, the blog broadcast tool will pick it up and create a broadcast message for it. You can set your message to send at a certain time or after a certain number of posts.

You can also choose a template for your blog posts to appear in. The RSS variables will automatically pull your blog post (the dynamic content), but you can also set up your own text in the template that will be pulled in every time until you change it (the static content).

What Integrating with Your Blog Can Look Like

Here’s an example of AWeber customer Steven Aitchison’s blog:

Notice he has the sign up form on the right for interested visitors. You can also see his most recent post. This post was picked up by the blog broadcast tool and changed into an email:

Subscribe to this to have yourself updated on news, tips and more on email marketing and internet marketing

Why not get in touch for a FREE confidential no obligation chat to see how Email Marketing can bring in more customers and sales by calling 0845 643 5629 right now or contacting us here!

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How do you know you have the best web form for your email marketing campaign?

You might think you know what works best, but testing will let you know for sure and give you a better idea of what your subscribers want.

One of Aweber's customers in the sports car business decided to set up a web form split test that would give him a better idea of his audience. We’ll talk about what he learned from the split test, and how you can set up a split test to find out what works for your audience.

What is a Web Form Split Test?

Split testing allows you to set up a controlled experiment within your account to test which factors of your form work best, and more specifically, what will get subscribers to submit their information. This is usually done by setting up two different versions of a form at 50% probability for each one.

This information can also be used later when planning and testing other aspects of your campaign.

How Can I Find Out What My Audience Wants?

Remember that even though a test may produce a certain outcome for some, that doesn’t necessarily mean the same will work for your list. It’s important for you to run your own split tests to see what works best for your business.

You can get an idea of what your web form should look like by looking at subscriber behavior to see what your audience wants:

• Links clicked in your emails- Looking at what your subscribers are interested in will help with determining what will appeal to visitors on your site.

  For example: are they more interested in your cake recipes or dinner recipes? If it’s cake, then you should try using an image of a cake in your form.

• Location- Where your subscribers are located geographically will influence their wants and needs. If the majority of your subscribers are near Florida stores, you don’t want to display your cold weather merchandise.

You can also set up custom fields to learn more about your subscribers. Gathering this information at sign up will help you learn more about your audience, and then you can design your forms accordingly. Some of the custom fields you can try are:

• Gender- Do you have more men or women signing up? Knowing that can help you design a form geared towards the appropriate gender, or maybe show you that you need to be more gender neutral.
• Age- Knowing your target age group will let you know if you should design a form geared to young adults or older generations.
• Level of Knowledge- Are you getting people that are new to the industry or people who have some knowledge? Having that information can help you decide on the wording for your form.

Don’t have that much data yet? You can start off split testing other details. Here are two examples of what other customers have tested:

• When a popover should appear
• Changing the text in the submit button

Have You Found Your Best Form?

You won’t know what your audience wants until you start running some split tests!

If you haven’t tried split testing your form yet, look at what your subscribers are telling you and set up a test to find what’s the best form for your audience.

Subscribe to this to have yourself updated on news, tips and more on email marketing and internet marketing

Why not get in touch for a FREE confidential no obligation chat to see how Email Marketing can bring in more customers and sales by calling 0845 643 5629 right now or contacting us here!

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Free eBook: How To Brainstorm Content That Rocks And Converts http://goo.gl/eVpYZ

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Most of the businesses are aware of the importance of social media marketing and they know that if used effectively, it will bring enormous web traffic to their blogs or websites.

But people always say that Social Media didn't work for them, it's not worth spending time in Social media, etc. If you have social media presence, that doesn’t mean that you are using them effectively. You should have to be active on the social media space. Also there are certain things that should be avoided to have an effective presence on Social Media:

Self promoting content

Stop regularly updating your Facebook wall or posting tweets on your products alone. People only care about your product that can provide a benefit or satisfy their needs. You need to start listening what people are saying about your product and improving on that. You need to update the content regularly but it should be of value to your consumers.

Don’t forget to interact

Don't be so focused on creating contents and making your social media content better. Interact with people in different social media platforms. You can respond to people queries in your field of expertise. Be active in all Q&A forums. Engage everywhere, not just when people comment on your blog. Another great way to interact with people is to visit their blogs, follow and comment. Don’t just say, “Nice one”, “Thanks”, etc. Have an opinion about their blogs.  Give help or suggestion every chance you get.

Know your visitors

It’s very important that you be aware of who’s your audience, where they are coming from, what is their need? Unless you give it some concern, your efforts will be wasted. Particularly on Facebook, you should use the Facebook insights to understand the demographics.

Providing Content with consistent value

Your messages, tweets, notes, blogs, and videos need to be regular and valuable to the customers. Beacuse, without consistent value on the content, people will quit reading them. Make sure that your post is interesting enough to the prospect or reader, so that the content will be appreciated and forwarded - not deleted or forgotten.

Promote others on social media

You need to be a good promoter on social media, a promoter of great material and good value. Promote others also - can be your distributor, affiliate or client/customer and not just yourself. If you let know about great value and content of others, you will be promoted in turn.

Choose the Right place

There are unlimited number of social networks that exist. Choose the one that works for you or where your target customers will be. You must be in a wrong network to promote your products and services, all you need is to identify that right place to hangout. Eliminate the networks that are not for your product or service and focus on limited ones so that you can pay more attention to the limited ones.

Content must be shared

Make sure that your blog is providing necessary tool to share your content. If you are lacking in that, it'd do no good. Some of the tools for sharing are facebook, twitter, digg, meme etc. Allow people to share your content in these networks.

Not to focus on sales first

You need to build relationship with people instead of targeting on sales. Have the patience to let your prospects come to you. Be generous with your knowledge and expertise, people are going to ask you questions and you have to see this as the perfect opportunity to interact with them.

Effective planning is required in marketing to succeed in social media space. So plan your marketing strategies according to your business.

Subscribe to this to have yourself updated on news, tips and more on social media and internet marketing

Web Strategy Marketing -Multiply your sales and profit in less time.
 

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A powerful marketing and advertising strategy is a strategy that increases sales as well as creates a sustainable competing edge to become accomplished. Before you charge full steam ahead with any Internet marketing campaign, you must first clearly define your key target audiences and create a profile for each segment.

Know your customer

What are they particularly searching? You must understand their issues or wishes. You need to be in their situation and get to know about their problems; help to make them feel better with your solutions.

What customers need

Why should they buy your products? How you are superior than your competitors?  What the company is offering? Use measurable Internet marketing strategies to target a customer's decision to buy, rather than just just boosting brand awareness.

Online Research

You need to research your business and find your primary rivals. What exactly are they performing on the web? PPC, SEO, press release, Email Marketing, Affiliate marketing, etc.  What exactly are their particular weaknesses? Do they give a guarantee on their product/service?

Who is the favorite client? Where do they hangout: twitter or Face book? Are these people free gift searchers or desperate purchasers? Just what exactly forces all of these to purchase a single or even another product? Read reviews, forums, testimonials to find out as much as you can about your target market.

Marketing Strategy

Having an effective marketing strategy is distinct between businesses that are successful and those that are not. Utilize measurable internet marketing ways to focus on customer's decision to buy. Important marketing strategies are:

PPC (Pay per Click)

Pay Per Click marketing (PPC) offers immediate, measurable results as it drive traffic of buyers to your website. Ideally, you want more out of PPC results than just visits whether you use Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine.

Major benefits are:

•  Generation of targeted leads
•  Increased online sales
•  Increase in website traffic
•  Increase in company awareness.

SEO (Search engine Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization or SEO, technology associated with customizing elements with the site to achieve the perfect search engine ranking organically on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Email Marketing

A Powerful Internet Email Marketing and advertising method will help to boost brand awareness, create a continuous partnership with customers, and boost consumer acquisition, etc.

 Benefits are:
 

• Easier to target specific
• Increases customer relationship and loyalty
• Easier to track and measure
• Multiplies sales through repeat custom

Create Blogs

Create a worthy blog that relates with your products and/or services, and update it on a regular basis. You can use newsletters as blog posts, online articles, tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube videos, etc.

Active in Social Media

Social media sites play vital role in online marketing. Most of the successful online marketers are using social media for selling their products and services. You can use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for effective Marketing and increase your business revenue.

Monitor the performance

You need to analyze the performance of your campaigns and make appropriate changes according to the results. We can use different analytical tool to measure our goals, online growth, and update keywords periodically. In the online marketing, you can track and measure everything to improve your campaigns and accomplish your goals.

These are some of the ideas and there are more such options to make an effective online marketing campaign.

Web Strategy Marketing - Multiply your sales and profit in less time...
 

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Internet Marketing is the process of marketing products/services over the Internet medium. There are various other terms used like online marketing, web marketing, digital marketing, search marketing or e-marketing for Internet Marketing.

The options available to execute marketing over the Internet are exuberant. It is the individual's choice to decide what type advertising is suitable depending on the products/services/brand/business. Some of the options are:

Email Marketing
Email Marketing is one of the earlier way of internet marketing. Creating a list of prospects and sending emails to them having details about the products/services.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO)  improves the visibility of website, therefore the products/services, in the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.

Pay Per Click(PPC)
Pay Per Click(PPC) is the type of online marketing, where advertiser pays an amount to visitors who click on these links or banners on the advertisers page. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases significant to their target market.

Banner Ads
Internet banner Ads may contain products or services, which links to the parent website, and more information is provided about the products or services in the website. Main intention of Banner ads is to increase the traffic to the website by linking to it.

Text ads
This is similar to Internet banner Ads but is displayed as simple text based hyperlinks, and it doesn’t contain any graphics or images. Text ads are mainly sold on individual websites or publishers own ad servers.

Display ads
It’s a graphical advertising and it contains graphics, logos, photos or other images. And it is available in different sizes, shapes, etc. Display ads contain eye catching visuals to grab the attention of the website viewers. It is created from an image, script or programme using technologies like java, flash and it contains animations, video or sound to maximize the viewer’s attention.
 
Pop Up ads
It is the form of advertising to attract web traffic or capture the email address.  Pop up window containing advertisement created by java script or any other means. It does not interrupt the user immediately and are not seen, when the pop is closed.

Internet Auction
It is a type of marketing where one can sell his product through online. In this online auction buyers that are interest can bid for the items and raise their rates also. And one who with highest price will receive that product.

Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is one of the newest forms. By Interaction through the popular social media sites like facebook, twitter, and YouTube one can promote their products and services. This is one of the most cost effective online marketing and public relation through these sites allow you to go beyond the geographical boundaries of the world.

Online Business Listing/Directories
It is type of online marketing, where business owners can place their address, websites and other details about their business in some online business directories. This marketing is beneficial for small scale enterprises.

These are some of the options and there are many other ways to market through internet like online games, chat rooms, etc. Rich media interactive can also be used. Feel free to add other available options as comments below.

Web Strategy Marketing - Multiply your sales and profit in less time...

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7 Biggest Social Media Marketing Disasters

Uncover the 7 Biggest Social Media Marketing Disasters that could cost you £££’s and loss of credibility.

• Discover Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Disasters that threatened the credibility of companies such as Honda, Domino’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Walmart, Habitat & Rentokil.

• Whether you are just starting out or have been in business for years, this FREE report is a must read so that you can avoid committing these mistakes and protect YOU and YOUR business.

Simply click on the link below to grab a FREE copy of this report right now goo.gl/CWKWv

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Subscribers and email marketers alike are creatures of habit. We find comfort in the ordinary and expected daily course of action. Most of us probably even follow similar morning routines. We wake up, drink our coffee and get a move on with our day – squeezing in a few minutes to check our email either before or after we reach the office.

Believe it or not, those self-imposed procedures that we follow repetitiously have a lot to do with how we respond to the email marketing efforts of the companies we follow. Some companies understand this and set proper expectations for their readers, while others aren’t quite there yet. Keep reading to see who gets it right, and how you can do the same with your own email marketing campaign!

Importance of Setting Expectations

It’s important that subscribers recognise your messages and form an attachment to the times and formats that you send them in. You want readers to expect certain things in your emails because when they do they tend to open, click and share the emails with others.

Long after you send your first autoresponder to your subscribers, you continue to create expectations whether you try to or not. Before a subscriber signs up, you create expectations by offering samples of your newsletter or explaining exactly what a subscriber will receive on the thank you page. A few months later, your subscribers aren’t going to remember what you promised to send them. Most likely they won’t bother to return to your website to find out, either. So, what should you do?

Consistency

Recognition is a huge component of successful email marketing. Everything from the subject line and from line to the template that you use is important when setting expectations. You want your readers to identify your emails when they see them in their inbox. While plain text messages certainly have many helpful benefits, when they show up out of the blue they can still be overlooked and ineffective. Make sure that your emails are consistent. Whether they are plain text or HTML, the appearance of your messages will become a trademark that your readers will recognize.

Set A Routine

We talk about the importance of sticking to the schedule a lot therefore it is important to have crystal clear message for readers and email subscribers. In each message you send, include an image that mirrors your content schedule. Just be sure to include the day, the content and what they can expect to receive the next day.

(Source: Aweber)

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If you have people unsubscribing from your list at about the same speed you’re getting new ones, then your list isn’t going to grow. According to Aweber’s research, there are 3 strategies that will help keep subscribers on your mailing list.

1. Set Expectations

Email Marketing campaigns with high subscriber retention explain what the subscriber will be getting right from the start. When subscribers understand what’s going on, they are less likely to unsubscribe or complain.

Follow these 4 steps to set expectations:

• Start with your sign-up form

The sign-up form is where it all begins, so you need to do a good job explaining what the potential subscriber will get for entering their information. Check your form and make sure it lets subscribers know what they’re signing up for. You want to detail what you’ll be sending them and how often they can expect to receive messages from you.

• Have subscribers confirm

The confirmation message is sent immediately after the subscriber submits their information. You can customise the confirmation message so the subscriber knows what’s going on, and what to do next.

• Welcome new subscribers

After subscribers have signed up and confirmed, it’s time to welcome and remind them what they signed up for. The welcome message should reiterate what you’ll be sending them, how often they’ll be receiving messages and what they can do if they ever want to stop getting your messages.

• Assess and re-assess your campaign

After you have set expectations you need to periodically assess your campaign to make sure you are following the guidelines you’ve set. For example, if you said you’d be sending twice a week, make sure that’s what you’re doing. As long as you stick to the expectations you set, you shouldn’t have any subscribers leaving your list due to misunderstanding. However, there are still a couple other things you can do to increase retention.

2. Create Brand Loyalty

When people begin to associate your brand with positive things, they’ll stick to you. Everything that comes in contact with your subscribers should have your brand represented. Subject lines can be branded by including your company name in them, and messages can be branded by putting your logo at the top. Keep in mind that whenever you interact with subscribers and customers, you’ll be creating opinions about your brand.

3. Pay Attention To Subscriber Behaviour

If someone purchases something from you, they are more likely to purchase from you again. You should track who’s opening messages and who’s clicking on links. Setting up analytics will take this one step further. You’ll be able to track sales, clicks through your site even if that URL wasn’t specifically in your message and downloads.

Tracking subscriber activity allows you to use their information to send more personalized messages by sending to segments. Sending messages that are more personalized will help encourage subscribers to remain on your list. You might also want to consider setting up subscriber preferences right at sign up.

Giving subscribers the option to enter more detailed information about who they are and what they’re looking for will allow you to create messages relevant to what they need. If you want to learn subscriber preferences right away, you can set up custom fields in your web form and use that information for segmenting, or even to place the subscriber in the appropriate list.

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Simple RSS to Email by AWeber Communications

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Building Your Own Customer and Prospect List

If you want to exploit the full potential of email, you should develop plans to consistently grow your permission-based email list of customers and prospects. This allows you to build loyalty and promote cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

A houselist represents customer and prospects names you “own” and have full rights to use. It is important to have a plan to encourage customers and site visitors to sign up for your email promotions and newsletters.

How to leverage your web site to build your list?

1. Make sure your email programme is prominently featured on your website.

• Use your home page—and keep it visible, or “above the fold.”
• Be aware of home-page hot spots, such as the upper-right-hand corner.
• Promote your email programme on other most-visited pages or section pages. If you conduct search engine marketing or other traffic-driving techniques, many site visitors may not enter your site through your home page. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to promote your email programme.
• Employ persistent sign-up—include your email programme as part of site navigation.
• Include email sign-up on any entry forms (registrations, contests, order forms, etc.).

2. Provide a reason for people to sign up

Give people specific, compelling reasons why they should get your email. Too many sites simply promote their programme with “Sign up for email.” Use your marketing and promotion skills. This can be done with a short statement prior to sign-up or on the registration page.

What works and what doesn’t?

• “Get tips for increased productivity in our short weekly email newsletter” outperforms ”Get our newsletter.”
• “Be the first to hear about new styles, exclusive offers, special events and more” outperforms “Receive weekly offers.”
• Consider providing a sample issue online so people know what they will receive.

3. Leverage offline customer touch points

• Call centres
• Train your reps to ask for email addresses and permission.
• Consider scripting this so that the opt-in language is clear.
• Leverage your call center by flagging any bounces at your customer service workstations so the reps can ask for a current email address.
• Ask for email addresses on your direct-mail and print order forms.
• In-store: Have data-capture forms available at cash registers and store kiosks.
• Trade shows and events

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Many industry segments use email effectively as a marketing tool. Email marketing delivers the highest Return On Investment (ROI) of any form of direct marketing activity and at a relatively low cost.

If you are not using e-mail marketing to promote your business then the following reasons should give you enough signs of the massive opportunity you have missed so far.

1. Increases customer loyalty and retention

Regular and effective e-mail communication with customers increases trust and loyalty. It especially puts you in a driver’s seat when your competitors are not doing enough of e-mail marketing. It ensures that your current customers keep buying from you time and again.

2. It Can Be Used As A Launchpad For New Product or Service

E-mail marketing can be used as very low cost and effective way to launch new product or a service by warming up your prospects and facilitating the sale. It can also used in conjunction with print media.

3. Other People Can Promote You At No Expense To Either You Or Them

E-mail marketing can be used very effectively to reach out to prospects using joint venture partners or strategic alliance partners and utilising their database. Any e-mails forwarded by your own customers to their friends or colleagues will lead to your product or service promotion at no cost ! Where else do you get such a powerful tool ?

4. Increase Traffic To Your Website Instantly

Following on from reason no. 3, having hyperlink within such e-mail communication can lead to increased traffic to your website instantly. This also allows you to segment your market and have different web pages targeting different customer segments with different products and services. Sky is the limit!

5. Instant Response

When you send an e-mail marketing campaign out to your customers and there is a call to action contained in the message such as visiting a website or buying a product, you can almost immediately see or track the response. Measuring the response rates etc you are then able to test and refine the offer as required.

This was Part 1 of the article. Part 2 will be published shortly.

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