Writing Effective Emails

Writing effective emails can make a significant difference in the results you get.  A well written email can easily outperform an “average” email by 500% or more.  If you want to maximize sales, you really want to spend a few extra minutes to create an effective email.

There are several key steps you need to take into account when you sit down to create an effective email marketing campaign.

The first is to be clear on your prospects “hot button” concerns.  Not only do you need to understand what your prospect wants, you also need to deeply understand why they want it.

For example, say you are marketing a hot new stereo system for automobiles.  You need to understand if your prospect is interested in your product because they are an audiophile and appreciate excellent sound quality.  Or, perhaps your prospect is primarily motivated by getting the coolest neat equipment to impress his friends or prospective girlfriends.

The approach would clearly vary.

Once you have settled on just who you are trying to reach with your email and why you can begin to write.

Your initial objective is the get your prospect to actually open the email.  If you have been doing a lot of mailing to your list, the first obstacle may be your own past emails.  Were they all hype and sales? If so, the odds are that your prospective reader will be less likely to open your next one.  So the takeaway here is that as part of any ongoing email campaign, you want to be sure to offer a good amount of good content, information etc, so the recipients are more likely to be willing to open your email.

That said, the key to getting your email opened is a strong and interesting title or subject line that grabs their attention and arouses their curiosity.

Generally these titles should be short. Ten words or less. They should not telegraph that you are selling something, but instead should be focused on the motivation behind the “hot button” as described above.

If your selling gold clubs to people who want to improve their golf score, a subject line like, “These Golf Clubs Will Shave 5 Strokes Off Your Score!”

A subject like that speaks directly to their hot button and their motivation.  What is your prospect trying to accomplish?  If you identified that as we suggested above, the writing of a compelling subject will come easily.

Once you get them to open the email, you need to make your case.  But you case is not to get them to buy your Golf clubs, or stereo or what ever. The objective of the email is to get them to go to your sales page.  That’s where you will do your actual sales.

People are busy. They do not want to read a ton of stuff. Most have more email than they can shake a stick at and pretty much just browse to see what appeals to them.

Thus you want to keep the body of your email short. Generally between 3-5 paragraphs.

In doing so, you first want to connect with them on a personal level. You know their hot button, and used it in your title, now you need to build on that.  “When I was first getting started in golf, I was using an inherited set of clubs that weren’t right for me…”

Another key aspect of email marketing to a list is to always talk to individuals and not to your list. While people may understand that they are on a list, they really want to be addressed personally. So talk in terms of me to you, like you would in an email to your brother. Subconsciously, they will respond better.

Finally, tell them what you want them to do.  Close with a call to action to click your link to take them to your sales page. Remember the goal of your email is not to sell them anything, other than to move to the page that will do the selling.

Follow these simple tips for writing effective emails and you will get significantly improved results.

For more tips effective email marketing grab a free copy of Profitable Email Copywriting, and for other internet marketing advice bookmark my blog: http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com

Feel Free to Reprint this blog post on your blog or to link to it. Just be sure to leave in the link to the free ebook and to my blog.

[tags]effective email marketing, effective email, writing effective emails,[/tags]

Technorati Tags: effective email, effective email marketing, writing effective emails

The primary goal of writing articles for SEO purposes is to generate as many backlinks as possible to your web site or blog post.

Creating articles for backlinks is a long term strategy that will generate traffic to your site from people who happen to read your articles and come to your site for more information. This traffic can be substantial, if your article is attractive enough to get a lot of people, or even just one person with a large following to reprint your article on their site.

More powerful in the long run is the value of the backlinks these reprints generate. Every article directory that carries your article will generate a backlink to you, and thus help raise your sites ranking on the search engines.  That’s why some people use article submission services like Content Crooner to get their article posted on as many different article directories as possible.

Since many of these article directories have moderate to high page rank status, these are often valuable links.

The better the article itself, the more likely that it will then be reprinted on other blogs, ezines, etc.  And that is where writing articles for SEO really pays off.

Whether you have posted in many or few article directories, your goal is to get as many of these other blogs and ezines to post your article as possible.  To do so, you need to provide interesting topics for people to read.  Seems simple, and yet a lot of articles people post online are BORING, or pointless.

People go to the internet most frequently to find information. And while you may be mostly interested in selling them something as part of your business, that’s not what your article should be about.

For example, if you are a building contractor that specializes in remodeling bathrooms, you would be better off writing about new trends in barrier free tubs and showers for the graying baby boomer population.  An anecdote about Mrs. Brown who was having trouble getting into and out of the tub, will be interesting to thousands of Mrs. Browns and their children.

This potential interest by potential readers is the secret to getting other people to reprint your article. The editors and bloggers you want to reprint your articles are looking for material their readers will appreciate.

While your market may be local, the interest in your topic is more global, so you may get reprints from bloggers around the world. Their readers may be thousands of miles away from your market, but since you are writing articles for SEO purposes that doesn’t matter to you.

Your targeted web site is getting the backlinks you want, and they in turn will help you raise your standing in the search engines. Since you compete locally, you don’t need to have more backlinks than anyone else, you need to have more backlinks than your local competitors.

And in most fields, that is still relatively easy to do. Thus when a local Mrs. Brown starts searching for a barrier free shower or tub, the odds are better that your website will appear on the first page, where she may actually see it.  And that’s when the payoff of creating articles for backlinks begins.

[tags]articles for seo, articles for backlinks, seo, article marketing, more backlinks, backlinks, Content Crooner, article submission, article submission services[/tags]

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, article submission, article submission services, articles for backlinks, articles for seo, Backlinks, Content Crooner, more backlinks, SEO

Twitter has certainly become one of the major new players online in the past year or so. And it can be an effective tool for gaining backlinks to your web properties.

You can and should use your twitter account to develop relationships and promote your sites.

The most effective way to do so is to follow sound twitter guidelines. Tweet regularly and tweet useful and/or interesting stuff. Ideally stuff your twitter followers will in turn retweet to their followers.

One of the things I do is to use Twitter Feed. It shows recent tweets and allows people to sign up for an RSS feed of tweets. It’s free and is worth adding to your blog. Go to www.twitterfeed.com  You can see mine in the middle column below the long Green Advanced Twitter Marketing Banner. (By the way this is well worth buying, if you want to learn a strategic way to build your twitter following(s.)

I first reported on this a few weeks ago after catching a post in Mike Paetzolds blog. See: My Twitter Post or go to his: Paetzolds Post

Another free tool to use is now called Social Oomph! but I used to know it as TweetLater.  To get a free account go to www.SocialOomph.com

The key to all this twitter stuff is to expose more and more people to your blog or websites and get them to go there and to link to them.  To encourage them to do so, one simple but useful idea is to simply ask them.

In your tweets, include a phrase, “Pls RT”, same with your blog posts.

If it’s good content, many will.

Building backlinks is an ongoing process, and it does require some regular work.  And since so many tweets are ignored these days, it’s imperative that you offer good and most importantly relevant information to your list.

Now the best idea I’ve run across again comes from Mike Paetzold.  He sells the information so I will not release it here. But I can tell you its worth grabbing.

In his Twitter Time Saver report he shows how to connect several different free resources into a system that allows you to find and tweet abouthighly relevant material for multiple twitter accounts in less than half an hour a day.

This give you instant credibility with your followers, because you will be providing links to other people’s stuff worth knowing about, and you will come to be seen as an expert in a twitter world otherwise awash in hype and nonsense.

Twitter properly applied can be a very useful tool to identify hundreds of people interested in your topic or niche, and willing to backlink to your sites.

Again as always this assumes you are providing good content worthy of a backlink.

To get more ideas on generating backlinks do yourself a favor and get my report on Online Backlink Strategies .  Remember, backlinks are the key to getting your pages listed on the first page of the search engines. A small investment in learning the hows and whys will pay significant dividends down the line.

Finally, at the upper top right of this post you will see a green Tweet Me button.  This is from the TweetMeMe plug in. Upload it and put it on your blogs.

Now do me a favor and click on the Tweet Me button, and then when you are done,leave a comment for me below. Tell me what you liked, didn’t like and any additional comment you may have about this post, using twitter and backlinking in general.

[tags]twitter tool, twitter ranking, twitter rank, twitter pagerank, twitter backlinks, twitter page rank, social oomph, twitter time saver[/tags]

Technorati Tags: social oomph, twitter backlinks, twitter page rank, twitter pagerank, twitter rank, twitter ranking, twitter time saver, twitter tool

Strategies to Increase Backlinks

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a new report that outlines 10 strategies to increase backlinks.  Backlinks are critical to getting a better page ranking for your keywords and pages.  I am pleased to say the report is now finished, and I am offering it for sale for a mere $7.00.

To Rank High on the Search Engines You MUST Get Backlinks,  and Usually a Lot of Them.

This report outlines 10 basic strategies you can use to generate all the backlinks you could ever need, without having to pay a dime for them.

Full 30 Day No Quibble 100% Money Back Guarantee

Technorati Tags: add backlinks, backlink review, backlink seo, free backlinks, how to increase page rank, increase backlinks, pagerank backlinks, SEO

How and why one web site gets ranked on the first page of a Google Search and another is on page 23 is a mystery to many small business people. And even experts will disagree on the details.

The exact formula used by Google is a closely guarded secret that changes from time to time. However enough is known to provide practical guidance to anyone who wishes to improve their overall ranking for any given keyword phrase.

There are a number of “on page” factors that matter a lot in this ranking process. This includes a proper set of meta tags, and the effective use of keywords on the page and if possible in the URL of the site. But once these basics are properly completed, the focus of search engine optimization shifts to the creation of backlinks.

A backlink is any link from another web property that connects (or links) to the target site. These can be links from other pages on the site, but most importantly include links for other web entities.

In the simplest way to think of it, you could consider each such link to be a vote. The site with the most votes wins.

And while in general this is true, it is only part of the story.

In the internet world, not all votes are created equal. Google in particular give the votes from your cousin Susie’s occasional blog far less value than a vote from the Smithsonian. Different web sites are assigned a page rank value which is a rough estimate of its standing in Google’s eyes as an authority. The higher the page rank, the more weight in has in the equation to rank a site.

In a recent report released by Ryan Deiss called the Authority Codes, he suggests that a single link from a site with a Page Rank of 5 is roughly equal to 555 links from sites with a page rank of 1.

While I cannot verify his information, I use the example to point out that the differences in page rank are significant.

That said, one backlink is better than no backlink, and the more links you get the better in terms of your sites ranking.

Because in the final analysis, the fight for a high ranking is very much like the old story of two hunters who have a bear chasing them. One stops to tie his shoe. The other says, Don’t be silly, you can’t outrun a bear. The other says, I don’t need to outrun the bear – I just need to outrun you.

In the page ranking game you are striving not to be the highest ranking site in the universe. You just need to be the highest ranking site in your particular niche. And for most local businesses that means being the top ranking butcher in Peoria, or St Louis or what ever geographical reference point that applies to you.

Now you still do want to get the high value links when you can. Among the better values are links from .edu or .gov sites. Educational institutions and governmental agency rankings carry more weight than those of a standard .com. Why? Because the search engines tend to assume that such links are more authoritative and less likely to be “Commercially” motivated.

Google also appears to look at the relevance of the referring source. If your site is all about elephants and you are getting links from a petting zoo and a veterinarian, the links will likely help you more than a set of links from a poker site and a car dealership.

These effects are magnified on some popular web sites like Squidoo. Many know that Squidoo carries a fair amount of weight due to its relatively high page rank. However, the real power of link from Squidoo come when the referring lens is part of a group of similar lens on the same topic.

Thus a link to the elephant site from a single lens on Google may have some decent weight, its likely to loose out by a single link from a lens that belongs to a group of circus animal related sites on Squidoo.

All of this conversation on backlinks is preliminary to a series of posts I will be adding to this blog from time to time in the coming few weeks.

I am in the final stages of preparing a report on back linking strategies.
With any luck I will have it available in the next day or two.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to leave any questions you have about backlinking in the comments section. Also feel free to copy this post in its entirety to repost on your own blog or to provide a link to this.

And one quick tip. When you leave a comment here you will be building a backlink to your web site. So it pays to comment in the form of gaining a backlink. Now I do moderate the comments on my blog, and will delete any spam or irrelevant comments. But if you ask a legitimate question, or leave a useful comment, you win a backlink.

[tags]backlinks improve pagerank, improve pagerank, backlink, backlinks, seo, authority codes, Ryan Deiss, Squidoo, meta tags, page ranking, [/tags]

Technorati Tags: authority codes, backlink, Backlinks, backlinks improve pagerank, improve pagerank, meta tags, page ranking, Ryan Deiss, SEO, Squidoo

Here’s a ground floor opportunity for those who may be looking for a game plan to turn social media into a paying proposition.

Austin Walsh, is preparing to open the iSocial Academy next month and is lining up affiliates as I write this. If you are looking for a continuity program that sends you monthly checks this may be just what you are looking for.

The entire social marketing world is growing so rapidly, it’s difficult to keep up. I don’t know about you, but I belong to more social networks than I can shake a stick at, many of which I frankly don’t fully understand. And while I have made a serious effort to learn how to use YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, my skills on many of the others is pretty limited.

Now my guess is that what I consider the big three above will be the primary emphasis of this new iSocial Academy, I understand that they will be teaching a broader use of Social Media.

More importantly, they will be focusing on some power tools and approaches that are designed to leverage the media in less time and for greater benefit.

I mention all this today, because you may want to get involved as an affiliate. This is a two tier system, so I am interested in finding a group of sub affiliates to work the program with me.

One of the promised features of the affiliate program is a series of ongoing training seminars for affiliates. I like that. It’s one thing to teach and talk about affiliate marketing in the abstract. It’s much more productive to learn by doing.

Since this is a course on social media, it’s safe to say that the size of your list is not the key criteria for success. So even if you have a little – or no list – if you are willing to take action and make things happen for yourself, I encourage you to sign up and make this your project for September.

There is an affiliate training session set for next Tuesday August 31.
Sign up today, and plan on attending.

[tags]isocial academy, i social academy, social network marketing, iHit 17, [/tags]

Technorati Tags: i social academy, iHit 17, isocial academy, social network marketing

Free Article Marketing Tips

Effective article marketing can be a major source of traffic to anyone’s website or blog.

In an effort to assist as many people as possible to learn the basics of article marketing I have released a free report called Article Power.

In the report I discuss the two key ingredients of an effective article marketing campaign, namely Quality and Quantity.

I point out that articles generate traffic directly from people who read your articles and also discuss how backlinks from article directories and the republishing of your articles serves to drive search engine traffic to your site as well.

In fact, it’s this backlink power that I appreciate most, as it effectively builds traffic over the long haul.

Of course an effective article marketing campaign needs to be focused on appropriate keywords so I do discuss a bit about keyword selection as well.

The trickiest part of article writing for many people is the creation of their resource boxes, which is the paycheck for an article marketing campaign.

To finish up I list some of the top article marketing sites or directories, and provide a page of resources that could be of value to anyone seriously pursing an article marketing strategy.

As I said above, I am interested in sharing the message of article marketing near and far, so I have included giveaway rights to all who download it. That means you will be able to share it with your friends, your twitter or facebook followers etc.

The resource page includes a variety of affiliate links, so I do hope to make a few bucks here and there as well. But I have also made it possible for you to re-brand this report so that you can earn those commissions.

Get your copy of Article Power now.

Also please let me know what questions or issues you have about article marketing, and I will answer them here in an upcoming post.

Feel free to republish this blog post in its entirety on your blog or newsletter.

[tags]Article Marketing Help,effective article marketing, easy article marketing, article marketing sites, an article marketing, article marketing tip[/tags]

Technorati Tags: an article marketing, Article Marketing Help, article marketing sites, article marketing tip, easy article marketing, effective article marketing

Doug Champigny just released a quality package of 5 different eBooks you can acquire and use for your own personal education and to sell or giveaway as part of your list building activities.

=> List Building PLR Superpack

This particular set is ideal for anyone in the information marketing niche.

The titles include:
* Article Power
* List Explosion
* Traffic Triggers
* Video Marketing Secrets
* Profitable E-Mail Copywriting

In addition to the five eBooks, you will also get 5 sales pages and 5 squeeze pages. This will permit you to get these set up and producing results for you in no time.

Not only that, but in addition to being able to give away individual pdf’s of these eBooks, you also get rights to resell the package or just individual products.

Now for such a complete package you might expect to have to pay some big bucks, but as you will see when you click on the link below these are priced so that anyone can get started online.

=> List Building PLR Superpack

Grab this set and use them as your freebie offer to get people to sign up to your list. Use them as products for Giveaway events. Use them for ad swaps, use them as freebies to your existing list.

Tear them apart and use them as fodder for your blog. Imagine running a series with one eBook a week featured and broken down into parts.

You have content to use, and you can offer the full report to anyone who opts in for it.

=> List Building PLR Superpack

[tags]Doug Champigny, plr, list building, giveaways, Blog content, PLR Superpack, resell rights, list building plr[/tags]

Technorati Tags: Blog content, Doug Champigny, Giveaways, List Building, list building plr, PLR, PLR Superpack, resell rights

Just yesterday, I posted here an interview I did with Mike Paetzold.  I mentioned that Mike was my “Go To” guy on everything wordpress.

Like everything these days, things change, and just today, Mike puts out an alert that one of the plug in’s I use is about to expire and not be updated to meet new Twitter standards.

So I am spending my day in part updating my blogs.  If you use “Tweet My Blog” you really need to check out Mike’s post today. Go to Tweet My Blog Update

If you missed my interview with Mike you can access it here:

Mike Paetzold Interview

Mike outlines not only what the issue is but has a suggestion to replace the functionality and explains just how to install it.

That’s why, I recommend him to you.

[tags]Mike Paetzold, plug ins, blogging, Mr Word Press, Tweet my blog, [/tags]

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mike Paetzold, Mr Word Press, plug ins, Tweet my blog

I recently had a chance to do an interview with Mike Paetzold, also known as the Word Press Guy and author of the great video series for new and intermediate bloggers called, Profitable Blogging Steps.

Mike Paetzold

He is my personal “Go to” guy on WordPress issues.  I am a regular visitor to his blog http://wptutorial.com/blog to keep up on the constantly changing and improving wordpress world.

Tomorrow August 12th, Stephanie Mulac is launching her Ultimate Blogging Giveaway Event and I wanted to do something different for the event, so I arranged to do the interview with Mike.  It is one of the gifts I am offering on the Giveaway, and I think a good one.

I tried to focus on issues that go beyond introductory discussion of what plug ins to use, and Mike was most gracious to work with me.

If you would like to download the session to listen to it at your convenience you can do so by going here:  Interview Download

If you prefer to listen to it now, just click on the arrow below.  The entire interview is just under an hour in length:

Blogging Interview with Mike Paetzold

[tags]Mike Paetzold, Word Press Guy, Ultimate Blogging Giveaway, Stephanie Mulac, profitable blogging steps, profitable blogging, interview, [/tags]

Technorati Tags: Blog, Blogging, interview, Mike Paetzold, profitable blogging, profitable blogging steps, Stephanie Mulac, Ultimate Blogging Giveaway, Word Press Guy

The folks on my mailing list have all recently received a free report on how to succeed with Facebook Ads. Now, I try to get as much of my traffic for free as possible so I have only briefly experimented with Facebook ads myself. It’s clear to me though, that there’s bound to be some early adapter advantage to getting into Facebook ads today.

While similar to advertising with Google, there are multiple differences in rules and attitude that can be confusing and frustrating. Once learned, it’s a smooth operating machine that can offer exceptional opportunities to the entrepreneur willing to dig gold in what amounts to still virgin territory.

But the word is getting out there, so as always, the big profits will be made by those who spring into action, rather than waiting for the reviews of what happened.

To get your free copy go to http://bit.ly/aVyJd4

But the reason I mention it is to not only make sure you get your copy, but to discuss the viral nature of the gift itself.

You see, I formatted it and used James Grandstaff’s Viral PDF Generator.

When you download your copy of the free social media eBook I offered above you will discover that I have also given you free giveaway and resale rights to the eBook.  Since it’s well written and timely, it’s my hope you will do just that and profit in the doing.

There are of course affiliate links in the reports, and should you or anyone you send it to, decide to buy, I will get a commission. That makes my day rounder.

I’ve also set it up so you can get those commissions yourself.  For a small fee you can get the report re-branded with your affiliate links in about 10 minutes.  The rebrander itself is pretty slick.

Once rebranded, you can give it away yourself on Giveaways, use it as a bonus, or a gift to your existing list, or profitably sell it as a stand alone eBook or as part of a package.    Once launched, a viral product like this can propagate for a long time, bringing you sales far into the future.

If you own rights to your own eBook or other reports, the viral approach offered into a viral product may be worth serious consideration.  Instead of sitting on the hard drive and maybe selling once in a blue moon. Make it Free, Give it away, but give it viral wings to fly with.

I am experimenting with this facebook ad book, but am considering selling rebranding rights to my two popular ebooks.  So keep lookout for more info on that at a later date.

You should take a look at the Viral PDF generator. I can see how it can play a big role in my future plans.  I bet you could see it doing some great things for you as well.  But to do so, you need to click on the banner above and spend a few minutes reviewing the offer.  The exponential power of this viral tool is limitless in its potential.

To get more info grab Jim’s free report by clicking on one of the banners.  Then listen to Jim’s proposition.  It’s a good one.  Particularly valuable to anyone with rights to some dormant ebooks reports rusting on their hardrives.

Click on either banner, grab Jim’s free offer, and then take a moment to check out the Viral PDF Generator.    The free info provided is worthwhile even if you decide not to go the viral route.

[tags]viral pdf generator, James Grandstaff, rebranding, rebrander, viral marketing, Facebook ads, facebook advertising[/tags]

Technorati Tags: Facebook ads, facebook advertising, James Grandstaff, rebrander, rebranding, viral marketing, viral pdf generator

Technorati Tags: Affiliate marketing coaching, Direct marketing, Doug Champigny, internet marketing coaching, Offline Business, powerstart, Powerstart 2010