E-Mail Marketing - Engage Your Newsletter Readers
February 25, 2008
In our email-saturated environment, your subscribers will lose interest fast in your email messages if the only message they get from your newsletter is “Buy me!” That’s what all the other commercial email, spam and permission alike, is saying as it clutters up the inbox.
“Come join us” invites your most enthusiastic shoppers to become a part of a wider group of experts, willing to share information, tips, and advice, maybe even to brag about how they use your products.
A newsletter that gives its subscribers many ways to interact with you and the product is one that they will anticipate and welcome. By extension, they’ll find more value in it, spend more time reading it and ultimately buy more from you through it.
Look at your newsletter, and count up the ways your readers can interact with you. And, don’t count your unsubscribe link. Instead, look for any way that you offer readers to get involved with the newsletter, your products or your company. If you found only one, or even none, then check out these strategies below for ideas on how to add more ways for your readers to interact with your emails.
10 Strategies to Build Reader Engagement
Great emails find a balance among interactive content, entertainment value and purchase behavior. However, not every email message needs to follow this content-heavy format, nor does every reader seek it out.
Still, you should strive to add a little value to each email you send, whether it’s your regular customer newsletter, a one-off sales announcement, company news, or transactional emails such as subscription, registration and order confirmations or updates.
- Add more channels to collect feedback.
You should already have at least one Web link and an email contact address in every email you send (along with someone on your end monitoring those locations in order to reply in one business day or less), as well as postal and telephone data. But, the more, the better.
Some creative avenues for feedback:
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Short surveys: One-question pop quizzes relating to your product or market niche rather than statistically valid queries. Intro the quiz in the newsletter, then link to the actual quiz on your site. Use a quiz module that shows a running vote total.
Perennially good topics: Ask how to improve the newsletter or Web site; solicit new product ideas; ask how a product solved a problem or improved the user’s life. Publish good replies in the next issue.
Spotlight a useful or noteworthy question or comment chosen from your feedback. Offer a small prize appropriate to your product line or publication for the question that gets picked.
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- Tell your story.
Everyone likes to peek behind the curtain to see how the company works and who the people are behind the email addresses or the telephone voice. Add a little storytelling to your newsletter as appropriate.
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The company picture: Launch new products, announce news or highlight email-only peeks into company operations, especially fun facts, history, personnel changes and the like.
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Employee spotlight: Introduce employees who are either on the hotseat all the time, such as a customer-service rep or product manager, or those who work far from the bright lights but have relevant comments, such as a tip for negotiating your Web site or their favorite products.
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- Give your newsletter a personality.
This isn’t the same as personalization, where you mail-merge your subscriber’s name into the subject line or Dear Whoever line in the message body.
If your newsletter were a person, would it be male or female, shy or smart-alecky, a serious authority or the fun guy at the desk next to you who’s always working an angle? It should reflect either your customer base as it is or as it would like to be.
Once you know that, you can adopt a distinctive tone and personality that guides your copywriting and topic selections. This is mainly a newsletter initiative, although you can continue it in broad terms through all of your email.
- Add customer reviews or publish the best recommendations.
This one can be tricky, because you risk customers filing negative comments along with the glowing ones. To counter that, pick the most useful of your good comments and feature them in a product spotlight, on your site and in your emails. Publish and promote the link to your review site to encourage readers to file their own comments.
- Get blogging!
Got a blog? Link to it. Also, create a blog just for your customers and subscribers, and publish a good comment in the newsletter.
Avoid the gushy posts; they’ll sound phony. Instead, choose anecdotes or comments that highlight problem-solving or premium quality or praises an employee. If one post generates a lot of good comments (no flame wars!), publish those to keep the conversation going.
- Create mini-sites around specific topics or seasons, and populate them with reader-generated content. Be clear that the content comes from readers. Highlight the link to the form or email address where readers can send their content. Possible topics:
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Seasonal recipes and anecdotes.
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Their favorite products.
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Feedback on these and other topics.
Readers’ pictures showing how they use your products or adopted your content for their own use.
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- Add video content to your Web site and link to it from your newsletter. Also, patrol video-sharing sites like YouTube and promote any that relate. Promote the link and provide detailed instructions on how to upload content.
- Add a small bit of editorial content to your commercial email messages (not transactional emails).
This could be the reader-generated content we saw earlier in this article, or something you write to bring the company closer to your subscribers, such as an editor’s note, inspirational quote or reader comment.
But, proceed carefully. If your sales messages previously have taken the hard-sell route, introduce the content gradually and watch your feedback addresses and delivery reports to see if people love or hate your new approach. After all, you may be taking a much different course from what your readers want.
- Give away a prize in each issue and then spotlight the winner.
And not just any prize either, but something you know your readership would want, either tied to your regular promotion, a new product introduction, a paid download, a subscription or the like. So, no free iPods unless your newsletter caters to Mac fanatics, and then make it an upgraded version.
Don’t stop there. Feature the winner in your next newsletter to double the exposure and interest for the winner. Don’t just run the name but include a fact, tip, quote or similar item to promote your newsletter’s value.
- Post job openings.
Are you a Fortune 500 company? One of the fastest-growing companies in your area? Is business booming and product flying off the shelves? Every company needs product advocates, particularly employees who use the products and services, and can evangelize effectively.
SEO : Five Easy Steps to follow when launching an online business.
February 17, 2008
One rule for a new Web site hoping to catch traffic out of search engine attention is to find a niche market. This cannot be stressed enough, as it is much harder to receive top search engine rankings for a new site than an established site. A new site will have to fight amongst Web sites that have established high search engine rankings.
There are ways of achieving top rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that are kept secret.
In the following article you will learn how to take advantage of these tips and gain more traffic to your site than you could ever imagine. Here’s an easy-to-follow guide to achieving top search engine rankings.
1. Chose Your Keywords Carefully
Once you have chosen your business and purchased a domain name, the next step before submitting your site to search engines is to find useful and relevant keywords. Without this step your Web site will get lost in the millions of Web sites competing for your business.
To start our keyword research we need to utilize some very useful tools. The first Web site viewed should be Google Keywords, which is a free tool that displays the amount of searches and competition for specific keywords. It also allows you to find more specific keywords that can better describe your site.
A better tool would be to purchase some type of software such as Word Tracker, which offers detailed information about keywords. Unfortunately Word Tracker is not free, but there are other services that are.
2. Find a Niche Market
This cannot be stressed enough, as it is much harder to receive top search engine rankings for a new site than an established site. A new site will have to fight among Web sites that have established high search engine rankings.
You would be crazy to compete with these Web sites. You first need to find a niche market, and then build up your Web site to a position where it can compete with these generic terms.
For example, let’s say you have a Web site geared towards healthy living. You would not use the keyword "healthy living" because it has too much competition. You can use one of the keyword tools to find suggestions of related keywords that you will be able to compete against. You may find the keyword "healthy living techniques" or "healthy living at home." These phrases are much better keywords than generic terms like "healthy living."
Use the list of a few keywords and check out the competition that word or phrase has on Google. Look at the number of competitors. If this exceeds a few million, then you need look for a more specific keyword. The next step is to observe the top listed pages and see how well they are optimized. You can download Google Toolbar and add Page Rank to your browser for free.
Here’s a quick definition of Google Page Rank. Page Rank is Google’s way of giving a specific value to how popular a Web site is. It is based on the number of "votes" other Web sites cast for another Web site. A "vote" is simply when another Web site places a link on their Web site that is pointing to another Web site.
Generally, the more "votes" or links you have pointing to your Web site, the higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank is one of the many factors that Google takes into account when ranking Web sites.
In order to see your own Google Page Rank, as well as others, you must have the Google Toolbar installed on your computer. You can get that for free here.
A low Page Rank between 0 and 3 means that you can easily compete with these Web pages. A Web site with a Page Rank of 4 to 6 is a bit tougher to compete with, but is manageable using guided steps and expertise. You do not want to compete with Web sites that have a Page Rank above 7. Check the domain’s homepage, not a sub page, to get an accurate Page Rank.
3. View Competitors’ Source Code
It is important to view potential competitors’ source code to see if they have efficiently performed on page search engine optimization. To do this on your browser, click "view" and then click on the "source" option as displayed.
This will bring up a page with all the HTML (hypertext markup language) code on it. You do not need to be an expert with HTML to understand what we are looking for. We need to see if our competitor’s Web site is properly optimized. We look to see if they are using their keywords in the header tags <h1> KEYWORDS </h1>, the title tags <title> KEYWORDS </title>, and the image alt tags <alt> KEYWORDS </alt>. These should all be located near the top of the source code.
If you cannot find these, then go to the toolbar and chose "edit," select "find" and type in <h1> or <title>, etc., to see if there are being used for the keywords. If these do not exist or are not being used to hold keywords, you have found an easily beaten page. This means that with some proper optimization, you will be able to outrank this page. The last thing you want to look at is the body content to see if the keyword is used a few times there. A site lacking in keywords in the body context is a poorly optimized page. You should always make sure your Web page is keyword-rich with relevant content.
4. Keyword Placement
After you have selected a few keywords to use, we want to combine the ones that have like terms. For example, suppose you have selected three keywords:
Budget Healthy Living;
Key Steps to Healthy Living;
Adult Healthy Living
As you can see that all three keywords contain the words "healthy living;" therefore, we can combine the words to better optimize your page.
For the title tag, the fewer the keywords used, the better the search engines will rank your page.
When we create the page it should NEVER be: <title>Welcome to our website!</title>
It should also NEVER look like this: <title>budget healthy living and key steps to healthy living and adult healthy living</title>
The way it should look is: <title>Adult Healthy Living | Key Steps to Healthy Living</title>
You should always remove prepositions such as "and," as this will only hurt your search engine optimization. The fewer, more relevant the words there are, the higher your search engine ranking will be.
Header tags <h1> should be placed above your body content. This should contain your most relevant keyword in this tag. Example: <h1>Adult Healthy Living</h1> This main keyword placed in the <h1> tag will substantially increase your page ranking.
The <h2> tag should contain your second most important keyword. The <h3> tag will have your least important keyword placed in it. These header tags are often overlooked, but they make a significant difference in your on page search engine optimization.
The body content of your Web page should be rich with keywords and relevant content. You should have each keyword appear at least once for every 1 to 2 paragraphs. Do not stuff your body with keywords, as this will only hurt you. You want to give your body a clean, natural look, meaning do not overuse or underuse keywords.
Image tags <alt> should also be keyword-rich. Search engines often look at the alt tags of images on your Web site to get a feel of what your Web site is about. If the alt tags do not have your keywords, then you will be ranked lower than if you had keywords in your alt tags.
5. Homepage Organisation
We want the search engines to notice your keywords and index you according to those keywords. In order to do this, you should start your body and end your body with your keywords. This gives the search engine spider information that your page is highly relevant to your keywords.
Remember that when the spider looks through your Web site, it reads through your content from top left to bottom right. Therefore it is important to have your main content of your site being read before your navigation.
