12 Tips and Best Practices for Successful Email Newsletters and Campaigns

It is not hard to manage a good email campaign and grow your list of readers. Here are 12 tips to manage a successful email campaign

1. Never purchase, trade or borrow email lists. There are many out there who offer to sell email lists. However these lists will not guarantee a good open rate and often get you in to trouble as a spammer.

2. Make signing up and unsubscribing easy and visible

3. Use double opt in registration – Double opt in ensures that the user wishes to receive your email newsletters or product information.

4. Create a link to your privacy policy and place it in a visible location in your email.

5. Send a welcome message to each new subscriber. This helps them to feel more comfortable with your service.

6. Keep accurate signup records. This is so that if someone reports you as spam, you can prove that the person signed up to receive the letter.

7. If you are using an older list, you may want to ask your customers to sign up again.

8. Remind people that they are subscribed. You can use phrases like thank you for subscribing to remind them.

9. Avoid certain terms in your subject line and text. Some mail servers will reject terms that are frequently used by spammers.

10. Include your physical address and phone number. This creates a sense of credibility to the reader.

11. Send your mails regularly.

12. If someone lodges a complaint or reports you as spam or asks a question, reply promptly.

Google’s Street View hits the trails

Google announced today the launch of Street View Trike, a project to bring Street View to new places that cannot be reached by car, such as running trails, pedestrian malls, universities and theme parks. By using its new creation, a high-tech bicycle with a mounted Street View camera, the company has already captured some imagery from hard-to-reach places such as the Arastradero Open Preserve and LEGOLAND California.

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Google’s Street View hits the trails

Buy Promoted Videos in AdWords

Google announced today the ability for consumers to purchase Promoted Videos directly in AdWords. According to the Google Blog, any AdWords advertiser with video content can use Promoted Videos to promote a product with the opportunity for it to reach a larger audience, from a small business looking to promote a service to a movie studio premiering a new trailer.

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Buy Promoted Videos in AdWords

The Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management

It is a common misconception that the days of email marketing campaigns are over. However, reality is that email marketing is bigger than ever and if done right you can easily reap the benefits. So here are 7 things that you should never do when creating and managing your email marketing campaigns.

1. Failing test your design in multiple email clients – There are many email clients available from open source applications to enterprise solutions. Therefore in order to make maximum use of your emails, you should test them in as many of these applications as possible.

2. Failing to spam check your email content – most email servers today are equipped with the capability of spam checking the emails they receive. Most messages with a high number of images or HTML content tend to rate higher towards being spam. So always check your content before sending it out.

3. Putting hurdles in the way of unsubscribing – it is a legal requirement to allow your recipients to opt out of receiving your emails and it must be an easy process. However, if you are worried about losing readership you could give your recipients options like subscribing to a lesser frequent newsletter, change the email address to receive your emails or offer them the ability to add your blog or newsfeed as an RSS feed.

4. Neglecting to maintain a list of invalid addresses – you should always know how many addresses are invalid and cleanup your lists often in order to ensure that everyone on your lists receives your emails.

5. Becoming complacent – Email newsletters should be sent out often and in regular intervals. Sometimes you may not have been able to create fresh new content due to several reasons. However you should make it a point to stick to a schedule, if not recipients will lose interest

6. Content that is not relevant to what the user signed up for – this is a big turn off for the recipients. They will lose interest and unsubscribe quickly if you send content that they are not interested in.

7. Emailing users without their permission – this will guarantee that the recipient will either unsubscribe or report you as spam. Therefore keep in mind to email only users who wish to receive your emails.

Mystery Google shows you someone else’s search results

In time for Halloween, Google has launched a new Web search site called Mystery Google. Located at www.mysterygoogle.com, the site provides search results – just not yours. Instead, Google says that with Mystery Google “you get what the person before you searched for.”

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Mystery Google shows you someone else’s search results

Yahoo! provides access to Search ads in Boss

In partnership with Domain Development Corp (DDC), Yahoo! has made it possible for developers to gain global access to Yahoo! Sponsored Search results and benefit from revenue generated by their Boss-powered products.

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Yahoo! provides access to Search ads in Boss

Google releases new version of Quick View

Google has launched an updated version of Quick View, a feature that allows users to view PDFs as HTML right in a web browser without having to download and open them in a separate viewer application.

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Google releases new version of Quick View

Microsoft enhances Reference section of Bing

With its Bing search engine hoping to continue to gain ground on market leader Google, Microsoft has announced another enhancement designed to compete with its rivals. According to eWeek, the newly-revamped Reference section of Bing will now include easy access to Wikipedia and Freebase articles.

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Microsoft enhances Reference section of Bing

10 Not-So-Obvious Ways to Promote Your Website

Business owners have a myriad of methods to promote their websites and products and services. However if you have already done the basics with regard to promoting your website and optimizing it for the search engines, you may want to look at the following subtle methods of promoting it.

1. Make sure to include your company website in your business cards, letterheads and all company stationary. You should also remember that it is an unwritten rule to print your URL as www.domain.com instead of http://www.yourdomain.com

2. Use emails and e-newsletters to attract visitors and drive quality traffic to your website. Using these methods and incorporating a powerful call-to-action you can drive qualified traffic to your website.

3. You should also make sure to add your company URL to all your traditional advertising campaigns.

4. Become an online expert in your field. There may be many things that you do not know about online marketing and sales tactics, but there is a plethora of articles available for free. Learning these methods quickly will allow you to promote your website for free.

5. Use press releases from time to time to get your website and company in the news. You should also remember to include the company URL in your press releases. There are many PR websites available such as PRWeb.com, PRWire.com and

6. Promote your website through mailing lists and newsgroups. Signup to as many newsgroups and mailing lists as you can.

7. It is also a good option to have a bookmark link on all the pages on your website. Also, you should make sure the link is in a visible place.

8. You should also place your URL in any yellow book or offline directories you want to publish advertisements.

9. Write articles or news stories to be sent out as newsletters or for other websites. You can include the website of your company in the authors byline.

10. Devise viral marketing techniques and use your company website as the landing page for these campaigns. There are many ways to conduct viral marketing, especially with the popularization of social networking websites.

Study shows interplay between search marketing and social media

A new study released by GroupM Search and comScore reveals the dramatic correlation that influenced discovery of brands through social media has with search behavior, including more lower-funnel queries and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).

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Study shows interplay between search marketing and social media

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