Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to a targeted audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. There are a number of advantages to email marketing – compared to other marketing investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, it is less expensive. and the return on investment can be high when done properly.

Whether you choose to do your marketing online or offline, one thing does not change. This is the concept that no single marketing strategy will be as effective as a combination of two or more marketing strategies. This does not mean it is necessary for you to implement every known marketing strategy to promote your business but rather it implies that it is worthwhile to market from a few different perspectives to help you achieve your business related goals. This article will examine the importance of combining email marketing with other types of marketing to create a successful; multi tiered marketing strategy and will also offer some advice on managing more than one marketing strategy at once.

As the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” and this is certainly true when it comes to marketing. You may enjoy a great deal of success with email marketing but this does not mean you should not try other types of online marketing such as website creation, participation in industry related message boards, placing banner ads, orchestrating an affiliate marketing campaign and generating inbound links to your website. While it is possible that not all of these strategies will be effective for your business, you are likely to find at least one other option which complements your email marketing and helps you to achieve your business related goals.

Alternately you may even wish to combine your email marketing campaign with more traditional marketing strategies such as radio ads, television ads and the print media. Just because these types of advertising do not take place online, does not mean they will not be able to help you generate more business. In fact advertising both online and offline can allow you to reach a larger target audience. This is because you will likely reach Internet users around the world but can also reach potential customers who do not utilize the Internet for purchasing or researching products or services similar to the ones you offer.

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Make sure you’re not blacklisted!

Companies considering an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act, the European Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 or their Internet provider’s acceptable use policy. Even if a company follows the law, if Internet mail administrators find that it is sending spam it is likely to be listed in blacklists such as SPEWS.

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Popular marketing strategies to combine with email marketing include banner ads and message board participation. These are all online activities and each one individually is fairly simple. However, in combination these simple activities can create a powerful statement. You may send out emails offering useful information about your products or services, purchase banner ad space on websites which may be of interest to your potential customers and participate in industry related message boards where you can earn the respect and pique the interest of potential customers. Even if your potential customers are not currently in need of the products and services you offer, seeing your business name so often can have a branding effect. Branding is essentially a process in which consumers see a company name so often that they are more likely to select a product from this company when they are in need of an item the company offers.

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 marketing strategy. This is especially true of the marketing strategies 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 the marketing strategy. However, when more than one type of marketing strategy is in effect, determining which strategy is producing the desired effect can be quite difficult. This situation can be handled by not making changes to more than one marketing strategy at a time. This will help 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.

About the Author

Michael Saunders has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He edits a site on Email Marketing and Web Hosting Services and maintains the Internet Marketing Waht site.

The number of emails which we send and receive each day is increasing at a staggering pace. Despite this increase, many businesses are not using the full potential of emails to promote and sell their products and services.

Recently, I asked one of my team at Local Service Guide to find a restaurant which used emails effectively as a part of their sales and marketing. It was hard, really hard.

Eventually he found an excellent example. The Landmarc Restaurant Theatre in Bournemouth runs a large number of special events. If bookings for a particular evening are slow then Josh Simons, Events Manager, checks his database of email addresses to find customers who may be interested in the event and he drops them a line – by email. The response can be almost instantaneous. A number of events which could have lost money have been saved by this simple and cost-effective approach.

It is easy to see how this approach could be used by pubs with live bands, travel agents looking for last minute bookings, a restaurant with a two for one offer and training companies with places to fill on a course.

Only minor adjustments would be needed to apply the idea to the launch of a new product or service or, as an example, for a heating engineer to offer a special price to customers who have their boiler serviced in the summer.

Now the idea of promoting these sorts of activities is not new and many companies use phone calls, direct mail and advertising to let their customers know what is on offer. The beauty of using email is that it is comparatively quick, cheap and easy to target. The following tips will help you to get started.

• Start collecting email addresses. Ask every customer and potential customer to opt-in to receive your newsletter and mailings about new products and offers. Opt-in email lists are really valuable because the recipients have said that they would like to hear from you.
• Make sure that you comply with all of the regulations relating to storing data and the use of email addresses. Key requirements in the UK include an obligation to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office that you are a Data Controller (2006 cost ?35 per year), to ensure that, where an individual has an e-mail account, you only send emails to them if they have opted in and every email you send gives the recipient the opportunity to opt-out of receiving further emails from you and each email includes your contact details. For more details go to www.ico.gov.uk.
• If you are sending out lots of emails, you may want to use a company which specialises in bulk mailings. They can help you to manage your email campaigns.
• Apply usual marketing good practice to your email campaigns – know what you want to achieve, stress the benefits to the customer, monitor results etc.
• Don’t abandon all other forms of sales and promotions. Email marketing can be very effective but it should be used in conjunction with other promotional and sales techniques.

If you have not tried email marketing before, give it a go. Good luck!

About the Author

Caroline Blatchford is the founder of Local Service Guide which helps people in the UK to find the service which they need. To feature your business on our site or to find a service go to www.LocalServiceGuide.com

Through Google AdSense you gain a passive income. Through Blogging you can get your websites indexed within 24 to 48hrs (5-7 days at the most). And through Your Opt-in Email List you get prospective buyers …

Without going into detail on what AdSense is all about or what a niche is or any other info that can be saved for a later article, I’ll just write as if you’re already familiar with these topics.

Google AdSense has been around for a few years now. Blogging has been around since the late 1990s and Opt-in Email Marketing has been with us eversince that first innovative internet marketer decided to get the names and email addresses of folks who visited his website by placing an Opt-in form on his site and enticing folks with a free report or free eBook just for filling out that form.

Through Google AdSense you gain a passive income. Through Blogging you can get your websites indexed within 24 to 48hrs (5-7 days at the most). And through Your Opt-in Email List you get prospective buyers and as we’ll see later, High CTR or “Click Through Rate” on your Google AdSense Ads.

Wouldn’t it be nice to combine all three of these items to generate even more income for you and your family?

You Can, you know, and here’s how:

FirstInstead of creating a website and paying for a domain name and monthly hosting fees, just run on over to Blogger at blogger.com

It’s free, meaning, want to create a domain name … it’s free. want to Create a Site…it’s also free.

It’s owned by, of all folks, Google and that’s an advantage you need right off the bat. Why? Well once you create your blogger account and start posting to your blog, Google’s curiosity is aroused since it’s their baby. They’ll spider YOUR BLOG and any links you placed on your blog to any websites owned by you or associated with you will also be spidered.

Can you say I-N-D-E-X-E-D. Sa-Winggg!!!

And it’s possible to get your website(s) indexed within 24 to 48hrs.

Why would Google be so generous? Because Google as well as MSN and Yahoo love Blogs. In fact, once Google indexes your blog, MSN and Yahoo will generally follow suit.

But back to WHY.

The content placed on blogs is always being updated and search engines just eat it up when you place New Content on your Blog so YOU, my friend, are feeding their “Frenzy”. That’s right…Content Is King and you can find no better place to prove that point than on your very own Blog.

So your next action would be to create content for your site. The idea is to write or use information that would provide value to the reader.

All your articles should help improve their life in some manner. You can create content for your site in a numbers of ways. This can include:

? Your own web articles? Guides, product evaluations, and ?How To’s?? Blogs and RSS Feeds? Public domain works? Private label rights? Hiring a freelancer to write your content

Obviously creating content for your site is an ongoing process, so once you’ve created at least 10 pages of quality information for your readers, you should create your web pages and optimize them for Google Adsense.

SecondIt’s time to get an AdSense account. just go to:https://www.google.com/adsense/

and click on “Click Here To Apply”.

It should take 1 or 2 days to get approval from Google and then you’re an AdSense publisher. Just make sure to read the Terms Of Service (TOS) so you can KEEP your publisher’s account.

NEVER Click on the Google AdWord Ads on your site. Google will drop you like a hot potato if you do this.

In Part 2 I’ll discuss 3 strategies rarely used, if at all, for Incredible Success.

???????????????????????? Part 2 Coming Soon To A Computer Near You!

Update: Part 2 of this article is located at:

http://Opt-in-Magic.blogspot.comJust look for the post dated: Sunday, January 28, 2007

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