The biggest danger of doing email broadcasting, is not running afoul of the law (that is, the CAN-SPAM act). If you are a legitimate business that is easy to comply with.
Internet Service Providers have a MUCH lower threshold. While it is legal to send unsolicited email under CAN-SPAM, it violates the Terms of Service of pretty much every ISP and email subscription broadcast service in the country. Also most ISPs have limits on how many emails you can send per hour or day.
(This is part two of an article on how to do email broadcasting.)
Door #2 says, knowingly violate the rules but do it in such a way that you never come up on their radar screen.
I strongly recommend Solution #2, and it isn't hard to accomplish. There are basically two ways to do this.
If you are sending to a list of people who really do know you and the list isn't too large, go ahead send it out through your ISP. Or you can use a subscription service for larger lists. Either way, chances are the percentage of people who complain or ask off is likely to be so low as to not trigger labelling you as spam.
There is an alternative, which works just fine even with huge lists from dubious sources. You send the emails out from a domain other than your regular one; and you send out using an "SMTP service".
About 3-4 years ago spam became such an issue that Congress stepped in.
One reason was because states were starting to pass laws - and they didn't necessarily agree with each other. You can imagine what it would have been like with 50 states having different rules, since email is by its nature, national or international!
I am frequently asked about purchasing email lists. Here's the straight dope on the subject.
Three years ago, you could pay a company $1000 or so to send out 1 million emails to a targeted list.
Those days are gone, killed by spam and the CAN-SPAM act.
If someone is offering to sell you an email list at ANY price, it is almost certainly a scam. There are essentially no legitimate lists for sale. There are certain circumstances where you can get a legitimate list for free (see below).
|
Since I mentioned it and didn't completely cover the subject, here's the full story on "the other Web PR" - "Page Rank."
For those who don't know the history of Google, there were other search engines and ways of navigating the web such as directories that were important in 1996 when two Stanford graduate students - now billionaires of course - came up with the idea that became Google. |  |
"PR" has two completely different meanings in relation to the Internet and websites. There's "Page Rank" which is a number from 0 to 10 Google assigns to each page of a website, as to how important that page is in the scheme of things. 10 is the highest, 0 lowest. It is one of the important elements to achieving high search engine rankings.
But that is not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about "PR" as in "Public Relations" as in what does the world think of you?
If you are successful, people are going to start talking about you on the Internet, and if people start talking about you, some people are going to say BAD things about you. Maybe even lies.
Oh the horror! What is one to do!!
Marilyn Monroe, with and without makeup:
... I often hear.
I've written before about the first element of successful marketing: volume. There is no such thing as successful marketing that doesn't involve a volume of "impressions" - a technical term for the number of eyeball pairs you are (potentially) reaching with your marketing.
But let's say you ARE getting a volume of reach with your marketing, and little to no response? Here's a short checklist of the BIG REASONS why:
It's a great day in America when a black man can be elected President.
What made it happen was brilliant marketing. Marketing Guys have been writing articles and talking about the Obama campaign for months - and will undoubtedly do so for years to come.
This article by Al Ries, one of the true gurus of modern-day marketing, is the best I've seen yet on the subject. Here are lessons for all of us to learn:
What Marketers Can Learn From Obama's Campaign
One of the truest truisms in marketing is just because you wrote it, published it or posted it doesn't mean anyone is going to see it.
That is certainly true of the Internet in general and blogs in particular.
The whole idea with a blog is to generate repeat visitors. But you have to get them there the first time somehow.
So here are a few tips on how to traffic to your blog.
There's an easy and free way to get started blogging.
That is with Blogger, another one of Google's fine and free services.
If you create a blog on their hosting platform, Blogspot, it doesn't cost a thing, and they make it really easy to get started.
Later, you can host a blog elsewhere or add it to your website, even use different blogging software, and do it in such a way you don't lose your existing posts, nor lose any links to your blog.
It's a great way to get your feet wet in the world of blogging.
Believe it or not, the FIRST question to answer in deciding whether to do a blog is:
Am I going to have fun doing this?
There's a very simple reason for that. If it isn't fun, you aren't going to do that. We seen this clearly over the years. It is just one of those things. It doesn't matter how good an idea it is, it just isn't going to happen otherwise.
I first noticed the emerging phenomenon of blogging about 5 years ago. I predicted it would become a huge medium of communication, and I was right.
These days, most people have the idea blogging is a good thing. But not everyone knows how to get started, what are the pitfalls, or even WHY you should.
Actually we might start out by telling you what a blog is, just in case:
If you watch or read The News you know that:
We are all going to die.It is the end of the world as we know it.
We are already deep in a recession.
We are about to enter another Great Depression.
It is hopeless if (McCain)(Obama) is elected (you pick 'em).
Continue reading "Why You Should Market Despite (or Because of) the Economy" »
"Business Development" is the most common name for that portion of a company responsible for bringing in new customers, clients or patients.
If you are ambitious, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is getting Business Development working. This is FAR more of a task than people think, if they've always gotten their new business from word of mouth, referral.
Everyone wishes they could get all the new business they want that way. Of course the best prospects come by word of mouth. They are already half sold.
But it just doesn't work that way.
In any industry there are many marketing niches, defined by WHAT you sell and WHO you sell it to.
Sometimes business owners think they will be losing out on a lot of potential business - if they narrow their target market or what they are selling.
There are many reasons for doing market research…
To establish WHO your target market is.
Surprisingly, many businesses never do this and simply go on “coping and hoping.” They try to promote to anyone and everyone instead of finding out what identifiable market segment would give them the best bang for their buck.
I mean you wouldn’t want to try and sell Hyundai’s in Beverly Hills. Or the obvious classic, refrigerators to Eskimos.
To make sure the message you are putting out is working for you.
The choice of font (typeface) in a website or print or video piece can make a BIG difference in the impact or effectiveness. Fonts communicate emotion and style, are easier or more difficult to read, stand out or not.
But you're limited in the use of fonts in websites because of the way websites work.
One of our favorite "tricks" for Internet marketing is to work "click ads" (paid search ads) and website search engine optimization back and forth.
Continue reading "Click Ads and Natural Search Engine Rankings" »
There's a great rule of thumb for whether or not you are marketing effectively:
Is anyone complaining?
Good marketing is often a balancing act between being old and b-o-r-i-n-g and being SO new and different as to be incomprehensible, confusing or scary.
More and more, businesses are using video on their websites.
Why? Because they can.
We certainly live in a fast changing world. Nowhere is that more true than marketing on the Internet
Continue reading "The Internet: Fast Changing Marketing Environment" »
Too often, those creating or purchasing marketing services judge an item only by its visual impact or cleverness.
This is known as The Curse of The Clio - that being the marketing world's version of an Academy Award.
Continue reading "Marketing, Visual Impact and Cleverness" »
Occasionally I get a call from someone who wants to conquer the world for $9.95. Or, to give a real example, to make their brand a household name on a budget of $1000 a month.
This is known as having champagne taste with a beer budget
When your marketing isn't working well it's time to stop and take a long look at what's wrong. As a wise man once said, when you've been beating your head against a wall for a while, it only makes sense to stop before it (your head) gets soft and squishy.
For many businesses, the best mailing list or customer database they will ever have is their own customer list. Yet time after time, we see businesses wasting this most valuable asset. They waste it by not keeping it in good shape, not mailing to it, not staying in communication with their current and former customers.
If you are in a business where you could be getting repeat business from former customers, and you are not contacting these people on some sort of regular schedule, then you are losing out on a lot of traffic and potential income. Failing to stay in communication with former clients, customers, patients, is a fatal flaw in far too many businesses and practices. Fact. And it's usually cheaper to get back an old customer than it is to create a new one. Of course, you need to create new customers and continue doing business with a good portion of the "old" ones if you really want to boost income and profits.
We sometimes hear from business owners that the positioning they would like to get in the minds of their customers has already been taken by another business. However, we often find that this is not true. In many cases that "other business" appears to "own" a certain position, when in fact it does not. How can this be? Because they are not capitalizing on their supposed position.
Preemptive positioning means that you preempt the position, even when others "appear" to be ensconced in that position already. Let's say that five business were competing in a certain geographical area for the same customers. And let's say those businesses all had online stores where people could place their orders over the internet. But what if none of those businesses were really pushing their online stores? They were just sort of up there online, with little or no traffic coming in.
One of those stores could decided to "own" the online position by really beefing up their online store, announcing their store loudly and clearly through their marketing and promotional efforts, and so on. They create a great online guarantee of customer satisfaction, make their website user-friendly and easy to navigate, provided useful information, on and on.
Bottom line, they end up owning the online "position," even though the other businesses also have online stores. The other businesses, if they eventually wake up and scramble to get their online act together will be perceived as "me-toos." Followers, not leaders.
Now this is a rather crude and off-the-top example of preemptive positioning. I'm sleepy this morning and it was the best I could come up with. But you get the idea. Before you decide that another business already "owns" a certain position in your industry that you wished you had, make sure that it's a fact that they do.
Sometimes you just assume it, because you know about certain aspects of their operations. Maybe they should own that position you covet, but, in fact, they don't because they are not capitalizing on it. You can then preempt them by grabbing that position and making it your own through effective marketing and PR channels.
Why are we harping on this USP thing again? Because many business owners still don't get it. If you do not have a USP, you have nothing to differentiate yourself from other competitors or similar businesses. So you do not give your potential customers a good reason to deal with you instead of the other "me-too" businesses out there. If there's no difference, they might as well throw darts to decide who to give their business to.
You can read up on the USP at this link: http://www.attractcustomers.com/usp.htm
"He who whispers down a well
About the goods he has to sell
Will never reap the golden dollars
Like him who shows them 'round and hollers"
- Anonymous
TIP #1: First and foremost you need a strong headline.
People who write mail order ads for a living have learned over the years that the headline is the most important part of an advertisement. The headline is what catches or hooks the reader's attention. And, really, it's the same for radio or TV ads: your opening statement has to “hook” the listener and pull them into the rest of the ad.
Following are the best types of headlines according to many studies that have been done by direct-response marketers. These individuals create ads or mailing pieces that ask for an immediate response - “call (800) 555-555.” Or “Send your check or money order to...”
Direct-response marketers eat or starve in direct ratio to the number of responses to their ads or mailers. They know what pulls and what doesn't. And they are always testing their ads.
Continue reading "10 Advertising Tips To Improve Your Ads" »
If you don't have a product or service that enough people need or want to make it worthwhile (or could be made to want), you won't prosper.
If the costing and pricing of your goods or services is off, you won't prosper.
If you can't locate "suspects" to contact and promote to, in order to see if they are prospects, you won't prosper.