FulcrumTech.net | Mitch Lapides Blog

Get Realistic about Improving Your Email-Marketing Campaigns

2010-09-03T04:03:00Z

Many clients ask us how to make dramatic improvements in their email-marketing efforts. Typically, the urgency to grow their lists—usually by a lot—comes to mind for most people. Although list growth is often at the heart of improvement, the right combination of efforts beyond list growth is also important to help you reach your goals.

At FulcrumTech, we often review clients’ email-marketing programs and immediately see issues with their lists. In some cases, a list is too small to generate the desired results. Or we find a high percentage of inactive users, and the list hasn’t seen growth in months, or even more than a year. The solution? Growing the list 25% a month would fix it—right? Unfortunately, most companies can’t realistically generate that type of growth.

Measure the impact of multiple improvements
So, beyond list growth, combining a variety of improvements to boost your financial results is important—open rate improvements, reduction in active user growth, increased click-through rates…the list goes on.

Email marketing is all about measuring. You must measure everything about your program. Why not estimate the impact of every potential improvement? Then, look at the combined, potential improvement of multiple initiatives. Finally, find the combination that (a) yields the results you need and (b) is realistic to implement. If you can identify exactly what you need to achieve across a basket of metrics, you’ve completed half the battle.

When you work with multiple types of improvements, you’ll likely realize that you don’t need to achieve unrealistic improvements in any single metric, but that you can achieve superb improvements through the combination.

At FulcrumTech, we use a sophisticated email-marketing financial model to help our clients quantify the potential financial impact of multiple improvements. Once we determine the right combination, we can then develop a cohesive strategy that delivers.

Let us know how you overcome some of your biggest improvement hurdles when that boss is really breathing down your neck!

How to Effectively Share Your Emails on Facebook: A 5-Step Tutorial

2010-08-09T20:53:01Z

One of Facebook’s many methods of sharing ideas to your network is through “links.” This function, much like Digg, Reddit, and Twitter, lets users share links to interesting Web pages, Flash content, videos, audio files, and more.

Much like the aisles near the front of Bed Bath & Beyond, we’ll actually be focusing the rest of this post on the aforementioned “more” (or “beyond,” if you will): emails!

Sharing Your Emails on Facebook
The idea here is to encourage people to share your email on Facebook so that more people can be exposed to your content. Also, you’ll want to be able to control what Facebook shows, so you’re sure relevant content is displayed with the link to your email. Unlike any content hosted on the Internet, however, emails don’t have URLs for people to copy into Facebook. That means you have to provide a method for the user to link to your email.

Here are five steps to help you effectively share your emails on Facebook:

Create a web version of your email.
Usually, when sending an HTML email, creating an accompanying “Web version” for those users whose email clients mangle their emails beyond comprehension is standard. If you haven’t created a Web version for your emails, you’ll need to do this to make the “share to Facebook” functionality work. Once you have your HTML email hosted on the Internet, you should have the URL for your email’s Web version.
Encode the URL of the web version.
Take the URL from step 1 and enter it into a URL encoder, such as URL Decoder/Encoder. This basically converts each special character into its ASCII equivalent, which is explained further in the next step.

For example, this is the URL to the latest web version of our newsletter:
http://www.fulcrumtech.net/email/5_tips_for_writing_winning_subject_lines/

The encoded version of that URL is:
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fulcrumtech.net%2Femail%2F5_tips_for_writing_winning_
subject_lines%2F
Build the URL to share the link on Facebook.
Now place your encoded URL at the end of the following string: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=

You’ll end up with something long and ugly like this:
http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fulcrumtech.net%2F
email%2F5_tips_for_writing_winning_subject_lines%2F

What we’re basically doing here is putting your URL in a format that Facebook will understand, but your Web browser won’t. Click here for a full explanation of why this is necessary.
Add the “Share on Facebook” link to your email.
Next, create a link to the complete URL from Step 3 in your HTML email. You can also link a graphic to this URL – such as a Facebook logo – or simply suggest to your readers to click on a link.
Customize the information that Facebook will display.
Now for the fun part – you’ll want to control what content Facebook displays with the link including:
- the bolded title of the link
- the summary (or description) of what the link is about
- the small graphic that’s displayed to the left.
To control these things, you’ll use some tags in the header of your email. The header of an HTML email is the code between the and tags in your HTML.
- Title – Begin by specifying the “title” of the link. To do this, simply use this tag:
  
  Replace "your_title_here" with what you want the link to your email to be titled. For example:
- Description – Specify the “description” of the link. (This is the summary content underneath the title.) To do this, simply use this tag:
  
  Replace "your_description_here" with your description. For example:
- Image – The last tag specifies the thumbnail graphic that is next to your title and description. This image should grab attention, while still retaining a professional style. To specify the image, use this code:
  
  Just replace "your_image_here" with your image URL. For example:
  
  There are a few rules for the image you use:
  - It must be hosted on the Internet (preferably under your own domain).
  - You must use a full – or absolute – URL, making sure “http://” is included.
  - The width and the height must be at least 50 pixels.
  - The size of the image can’t exceed 130 x 110 pixels.
  - The ratio of height to width and width to height can’t exceed 3.0.
You can place the above codes anywhere inside the header of your email. But be careful not to place them inside of another tag. If you are unsure, you should place them after any tag that starts with “” (as these tags close themselves).

If you don’t see a header in your HTML (i.e., the tag is missing), you can add it yourself. Just type right before the tag that starts with “ and .

Test it out for yourself – click here to share our latest newsletter on Facebook, and see the above steps in action.

Have fun and enjoy your extra traffic!

Ever Heard of the Active Unique Open Rate?

2010-07-08T19:05:00Z

When it comes to email marketing, you've probably heard of a unique open rate or total open rate. But another interesting metric to track is your active unique open rate—the number of opens by the active members of your list. It gives you a better picture of the extent – month to month – that you’re meeting your subscribers' interests.

To understand all of these metrics, let's quickly review the standard ones we’ve been using:

Unique open rate – the unique number of individuals who opened an email at least once. If you have 1,000 subscribers and 200 opened the email at least once, you have a 20% unique open rate.
Total open rate – the total number of times an email was opened. Sometimes subscribers open an email more than once, so all of those opens count in this metric. If you have 1,000 subscribers and 200 people open the email a total of 550 times, for example, your total open rate is 550/1,000, or 55%.

When looking at what we’re calling the "active unique open rate," you first need to know how many users are active. I've written plenty on inactive versus active users; you can learn more here: Active versus Inactive Users: Who's on Your Email List?

The active unique open rate looks not only at the unique open rate, but also at the actual active users on your list. You can define active by choosing the appropriate parameters for your list. For a monthly newsletter, you may consider calculating the number of people who have opened at least one newsletter over the last 6 months. If you have 1,000 subscribers and 200 people open the newsletter, for example, but only 400 have opened an email over the last 6 months, the "active unique open rate" is 200/400, or 50%.

The question becomes whether this metric has value. We argue that it does. In email marketing, we are constantly analyzing whether the emails continue to be relevant to our audience. (Remember that Seth Godin preaches relevance as one of the three most important foundational elements of successful permission marketing.) This metric helps uncover relevance, albeit a bit more dramatically than our standard measurements.

By reviewing the "active unique open rate" over several months, you'll get a much more dramatic picture of whether your content is resonating. If you have a large list with many inactives (e.g., 70%), a slow drop-off in readership may not be all that obvious. Looking at the "active" metric in conjunction with your total active users, however, presents a clear picture of whether your content is resonating. If you see your "active unique open rate" declining while your total active users are also declining at a high rate, you have a problem.

Also, if you're disappointed with an email open rate of 7%, have a quick look at the "active unique open rate." That presents an entirely different picture. You may discover that your 10-year-old list has a lot of inactive users and your active unique open rate is actually 40%. If your list is not experiencing a significant annual attrition rate (i.e., you're losing "active" subscribers at an alarming rate, such as more than 25%), then you may actually have an open rate to be proud of.

Let us know what you think of this metric. We're interested in what it tells you for your list.

Looking for Leads? Use Twitter to Find Them

2010-06-14T05:03:00Z

As I previously discussed in a recent NewsLever feature, Twitter is a valuable tool that you can use to optimize your email-marketing campaigns. It also provides a great and easy way for businesses to find new leads. Here’s how:

Go to Twitter Search at http://search.twitter.com/.
Click on the Advanced Search link.
Set Up a Saved Search by filling in the form. Then, you’ll automatically be notified when someone who is looking for the products/services you provide tweets about them.

Let’s say, for example, you’re a dog groomer. You can set up your search for “dog grooming” and set the distance within 20 miles from your business. When someone in your area tweets about dog grooming, you can reach out to them through Twitter.

More and more businesses are realizing that social media can be a highly effective networking and lead generation tool. Set up your own Twitter Advanced Search and see what happens.

Have you had success using Twitter to find new customers? Share your experiences with us.

How Good Was Your Last Haircut?

2010-05-21T04:21:01Z

We’re often reminded that marketing always starts with your product or service. If you don’t have an outstanding product or service, no amount of marketing is going to get you to or keep you at the top. Recently, I had a wonderful reminder of this lesson. I needed a haircut. If you know me and how little hair I have, you know that this is not a complicated task. In this situation, however, my service provider (a franchisee of a very well-known company) managed to strike the kind of fear in me that you only see in 5-year-old boys who have the completely irrational fear of having a haircut.

Here’s how it went. I walked in, and there were about six stylists walking around, none of whom had a client at the moment. There was one, though, who stuck out. She appeared to be in a daze, looking at the ceiling and almost walking around in circles…she really seemed out of it. I had already given my name at the register. So, I stood there looking at the stylist options before me, hoping that Ms. Dazed was NOT going to be my stylist that afternoon. Well, as luck would have it, guess who ambled up to the register next. OMG, this was not my day.

So, she asked me the first tough question. “So, is there something I can help you with?” I responded that I needed a haircut. She walked me back to her chair.

Now, I had quite a bit work left in my day, so I asked that she put a towel around my neck before she put the cape on to keep the hair from going down my back. Maybe I’m crazy, but I hate the itchy hair down my back. She looked at me totally confused. (OMG #2.) She walks away, and ambles back with a towel, throws it around my neck, and asked me if that was right. Why is she asking me? Hasn’t she ever dealt with this before? I replied, yes, that will work. Then, she grabs a cape and leaves plenty of space above the towel and snaps it. Will that do? (Are you crazy?) I responded that usually it works best to make the cape go around the towel and snap it over the towel, not above the towel. Now, I’m really getting nervous. She made a real attempt to do this, but failed. She asked if that was good. By this time, I had given into the fact that I was going to have plenty of hair down my back. This was not going to be worth explaining. “Sure, that’ll be fine.”

Then, she asked me how I want my hair cut. I explained. She came back with the right buzzer number, then asked me a second time how she should cut my hair. Is this woman on drugs, I wonder? Then, she starts buzzing. OK, so now I’m pretty nervous. If this wasn’t bad enough, she begins talking to someone, while looking in the direction of the person she’s speaking to. Need I say that she was looking completely away from me, while still cutting my hair!

And so it went. She was confused about how to shave down the top. She dug the buzzer around the base of my neck, which was probably sore for 2 days, etc. To top it all off, she smiled and asked me if she could give me her card when we were all done. I thought, “You must be crazy.” But answered, “I know where to find you, thanks.”

So, before you ever market your product or service, always remember to make sure you’re doing whatever you can to deliver the best product or service possible. And be sure your staff is trained. As for my hair? Well, thank goodness, it’s time for a new haircut. I’ll be going back to my old stylist, thank you very much.

What Can Email Marketing Learn from Twitter?

2010-04-25T21:22:00Z

The short answer is plenty. Once you filter out the noise and focus on what’s relevant, you can uncover treasure troves of information. When it comes to email marketing, we are always looking for the following:

Hot issues in a market — these drive great newsletter articles.
Problems that people are having — if you’re building an online business, monitoring the Twitter chatter will help you determine the articles to write, promotions to develop, and case studies to feature that address current problems in your market.
Offers that resonate — discover which promotions are generating “buzz” and then consider how such concepts may work in your world.
Lead generation opportunities — uncover prospects who are having challenges that you can solve; offer help and free information via your newsletter or blog.

Making sense of the voluminous Twitter feeds is not necessarily the hard part. There are so many tools out there—and more arriving every day—to help with analyzing the millions of tweets in a way that they’d be useful for you. Here are a few tools I’ve found:

Tweet Volume — Enter up to three terms or phrases, and see the amount of Twitter volume that’s occurring around them.
Twitter Search — Enter any terms and get a list of tweets meeting your search criteria.
Trendistic — This provides you with a quick snapshot over various time periods for a term or phrase.
TwittURLy — This is really neat one that shows you the top URLs recommended on Twitter over the last 24 hours.
TweetStats — Check out the volume of tweets for any Twitter user or uncover recent trends.
Twazzup — One of CNET’s top three tools; Twitter Search, plus a whole lot more.
Collecta — Finally a tool that doesn’t start with a “T” and analyzes Twitter, plus other sites, as well.
CrowdEye — Real-time search engine using Twitter's "firehose" feed which provides filtering between tweets and links, sentiments, and more.

Play around with these. You’ll quickly discover how each can help in your quest to stay current, write about what’s hot, and ensure your readership gets the analysis, opinions, products, and more from you.

Do you have favorite Twitter tools not on this list? Please share them with us.

Goals - Know Them to Meet Them

2010-03-22T19:22:00Z

The year 2010 has been all about goals for me, my team, and our clients. Reminding ourselves, regularly, of the value of establishing goals is important. In business and our personal lives, having goals is so critical to achieving success, balance, or anything else you want out of your life. Yogi Berra once said, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else." Interestingly, once you know your goals, getting there is often the easy part.

Many people tend to get lost in the infinite details during their daily lives. I'm just as guilty as anyone else. The truly successful, though, establish goals, remind themselves every day of where they are trying to get, and don't lose that focus. That focus becomes a part of who they are.

I recall building a big Web site for nurses a number of years back. With the success we were having, a multitude of ideas continually flowed in from around the company about what we should add next. I kept a clear set of goals visible and public: an enhancement must 1) drive traffic, 2) drive revenue, or 3) be strategically, incredibly important to the company. If an enhancement didn't further one of those goals, it didn't get done. Were some people upset? You bet. But business isn't about pleasing everyone. At the end of the day, in your business life, you'll be judged by what you accomplish.

So whether you're working on a broad, far-reaching plan or a small campaign, knowing your goals and sticking to them is what will have a dramatic impact on your ability to succeed. Once you know where you want to be, you can identify the obstacles, figure out how you can overcome each one, and establish a plan that you believe can help you succeed. It all starts with the goals. Stick to them, and there could be no saying how successful you can become in business and in your overall life.

Create a Financial Model to Help Prioritize Improvements and Quantify Results

2010-02-25T15:25:00Z

Have you ever wondered exactly how much, in dollars, your email-marketing campaign can improve? Most likely, you've read numerous articles and have attended webinars about what you can do to step it up a notch. But how do select from the many options for improving your program? Where should you focus your efforts? A financial model can help you answer these questions!

When it comes to improving email, things can get very complicated. You can have a list that is hardly growing, open rates that are dropping off, conversions that just aren't happening, and the list goes on. Yet, if you do some simple math, you might determine that what you need to do is grow your list by 25% more a month—or increase your open rates by 200%. Individually, these are extremely challenging goals.

You could, however, develop a series of improvements to help get you to your financial goals. By developing a model, you can quantify the improvements and their impact. The idea is to find a combination of improvements that:

are realistic
get you to your goal.

Then, you'll no longer be shooting in the dark. Instead, you'll be setting very clear goals for you and your team. Aim to increase list growth by 5%, for example, or to improve conversion by at least 4.5%. Once you have these goals, you can then create an internal competition within your team to reach those levels. You know that if you do, you have gotten to where you need to be.

What to think about when creating your financial model
Creating a full, sophisticated model like we do for our clients may be beyond your Excel capabilities. So take it one step at a time, and keep it simple. What you need is to get at least a rough idea of the aggregated impact of improvements.

At a high level, you'll want to consider the following when creating your own model.

What are the key characteristics that drive the growth or decline of your active email list? They can include current list size, number of new subscribers per month, average number of unsubscribes per month, etc. You'll want to consider these as assumptions that you can change.
Then, consider the drivers of your revenue. For example, what are your open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and dollars per sale? With this data in hand, you'll want to build upon your model to approximate the dollars generated from your list each month.
Then, using the assumptions you've built in, you can play with those to determine what might have the greatest impact in your case.
Over time, you can develop your model to further mirror your actual situation and the complexities of your business.

We often see clients who assume that they can reach certain goals, but after we do a few calculations, they can see what's really within reason and what's not. Your model can become one of your best tools. Aside from testing (which we're always preaching), modeling is one of the most important analytical tools available to marketers.

If you're ready to build a model, contact us at FulcrumTech. We're here to help.

What’s a Valid Email-Marketing Test?

2010-01-25T20:46:00Z

Many of our clients and prospects hear us constantly note that marketing is testing. What subject line do you think will perform better? Which layout will drive more clicks? Which text on a button will deliver more click-throughs? Well, I promise that I always have an opinion. And so should you. That's called a hypothesis. But the right answer comes out of testing. And that test must be valid. Only when it is valid will you confidently be able to make the best decision.

Now, I can't possibly give you a course on testing in a couple hundred words, but I do want to briefly explain the concept of validity…statistical validity, that is. Without validity, you could end up making a decision with confidence, but using data that was not valid. That's blind confidence, and that's worse than doing no test at all.

I'll use an example to explain statistical validity. Imagine that you have a quarter and a penny. I want you to flip each coin 100 times, and for each heads you get, pretend I'm going to pay you $20. Which coin will earn you more money?

I'm a nice guy, though, and I let you do a test before deciding which to use. So, you flip the quarter and get 2 heads in a row. You flip the penny and get 1 head and 1 tail. So, you quickly decide to use the quarter for your 100 flips.

Now, I know you're smart enough to know, logically, that flipping twice isn't enough to make such a conclusion. Suppose, though, that you flip each 50 times or 500 times. As you do more flips of each and count the results, you'll get a closer approximation of the "real" answer, which we know to be 50/50.

With valid tests, we use statistical formulas to determine how big your sample size should be (the number of times you flip the coins in this case) and when the difference in results between the two options can be deemed truly "different," statistically. We typically apply a confidence level to the result saying, for example, that we're 95% confident that the difference in the two options is not simply a difference due to normal statistical variation but is truly different.

It can get much more complicated, but this is one of the core principles behind some of the types of testing we do. To confirm, though, there are many other factors that go into creating a valid test. Knowing how to do these tests correctly can give you the confidence that when you make a decision that it is, in fact, the best decision given the time and money you have to conduct them. And that's one of the reasons I recently got certified in online testing…to be sure we're doing the best job we can when we help you perform your tests.

Ask the Obvious with Your Email Preference Center

2009-12-16T16:00:00Z

If you've read much on our FulcrumTech site, you undoubtedly know that we are constantly talking about the importance of knowing your audience. Knowing your subscribers and then consistently sending relevant content is your key to driving your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to higher levels. Using an email preference center is part of the key to knowing your audience because this is where they can tell you a little more about themselves. Then, you can use that information to improve your segmentation and content relevance to your subscribers. The better you get, the better your return.

What's a preference center?
A preference center is where your email subscribers can go to add or update important information about themselves, such as their email address, name, desired email frequency, and anything that may help you tailor your emails to them. Other important preferences can include preferred mobile devices or social media preferences. Fred Tabsharani mentions an interesting comment in his article The Preference Center, Mission Control for Your Subscribers: "…subscribers may prefer to utilize Twitter for customer service inquiries, while other subscribers may choose to receive more 'entertaining' messaging via Facebook."

Getting users to visit the preference center
So, you're probably wondering how you can actually get a busy subscriber to enter information in your preference center. There are numerous ways, but here are few quick ideas:

Opt-in — Your optin form needs to be as short as possible to encourage the maximum signups, but your optin form begins the relationship and is where your users are given the reasons for signing up. When they offer their email address and first name, for example, they've given you the first set of information for initiating a relationship. After signup, you have to give good reason to provide more.
Welcome email — This is one of the best places to request a little more information. They've just signed up, and they will likely feel good about what they hope to learn or receive from you. Combine that with the fact that the welcome email is one of the most read emails of all emails! So, gently ask them to share a little more information, and try making a personal request — "Hi Sandy, thanks so much for signing up. Would you please share your single biggest challenge in [fill in the blank]? We really appreciate your feedback and look forward to helping out however possible…" You get the idea. People will respond to that plea because it's clear that you're going to help them.
Ongoing emails — As you send out emails, make it easy for subscribers to update their name (e.g. when someone gets married), their email address, email frequency, or anything else that they've provided along the way. Put a link in the footer, thus making it easy to always find and click.
Periodic information requests — If you sell pet supplies, for example, and you have a bunch of information on cat supplies and other information on dog supplies, put a simple link right up top: "Are you a dog owner, a cat owner, or both? Get an instant coupon for clicking below, and you'll get more relevant information and promotions based on your preference."
- Dog owner
- Cat owner
- Dog and cat owner
Some e-mail systems will let you record the click right into the attributes of the subscriber.
Surveys — Run sweepstakes or other incentives to get subscribers to provide additional information about the preferences that can help you deliver more relevant content and offers. It's best if you run such a survey surrounding a topic you are writing about, so it's clear why you may be asking. In effect, with each additional bit of information, you're deepening your relationship with your subscribers. The more comfortable they get with you, the more willing they'll be to provide you with a little more information about themselves.

Happy Holidays from FulcrumTech

2009-12-14T16:02:00Z

Driving List Growth with Twitter Is NOT Rocket Science

2009-11-17T01:20:00Z

But, it does take some planning, consistent work, and some creativity. With the tremendous growth of Twitter usage over the last year, it's hard to ignore the 18 million people currently on Twitter. Here's a quick overview for how Twitter can drive your email list growth and ultimately your sales. Fasten your seatbelt – this is really cool (and fun) stuff!

Create an account. Create a Twitter account at http://twitter.com.
Develop a mini-editorial plan. Yes, even these little 140-character Tweets can benefit from a little planning. Know what your goals are right up front. Are you trying to build a list? Are you trying to build support for a cause? Whatever it is, your mini-editorial plan can benefit from what your "target followers" will want to read and benefit from. Create a list of general topics and types of content you might want to tweet. How much news would you want to tweet? How frequently might you want to throw in some sort of promotion? Be sure to think about the tolerance of your target market for what they're willing to read before they may stop following you.
Do a little research. Don't forget to do a little research before you start tweeting. What keywords should you incorporate? What topics are really hot? Check out TwitScoop for trends on any topic. See an example below for "iPhone."
Start tweeting. Jump in the cold pool and start tweeting. The more you tweet, the more people will find you and start following you.
Follow others. Yes, it's important for you to follow others because that's one of the ways they find you. Identify the primary bloggers/Twitter users in your market and start following them. Some just might start following you, too.
Retweet other tweets. If you find a great tweet, re-tweet it. If someone retweets your tweets, thank them.
Mild promotion could get you somewhere – whether blatant promotions or mild promotions will be best depends upon your market. Once you have a strong following and people are appreciating your content (yes, content is still king and what drives all of this – that's the publisher coming out in me!), start making some offers. Or, make some offers early on to get people to follow you.
Move them down the sales funnel with email. So, here's where email comes in. As you get more followers, incentivize them to join your email list too. Those will be your best prospects, right? They now know you and trust you enough to sign up for more. Now is the time to use email to begin moving them down the sales funnel, but that's a topic I've covered before.

So, basically, it works like the below diagram:

Want to learn more? Check out this interesting article on how Twitter drives traffic.

If you need some advice or even some additional resources in any aspect of your interactive campaigns, be sure to give FulcrumTech a call at 215-489-9336 or contact us online. We love this stuff! And, don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

SEO Books and Other SEO Nuggets from SMX East 2009

2009-10-06T05:04:00Z

It's been a great meeting at SMX East so far. For those of you who don't know what SMX East is, it's one of the premier conferences on search engine optimization.

It's clear that SEO tools and strategies continue to evolve, but the one key take-away continues to be the importance of doing the "right" thing and posting high quality content on your site. For many reasons, and in many ways, that's what will make the difference for a site over time.

Each presenter emphasized that in a somewhat different way, but that's the point. In the early days of SEO, "black hat" SEO experts (those driving up SEO rankings in ways Google, Yahoo, and MSN didn't really approve of) used a variety of not-so-kosher tools to improve page rank. Today, as enforced by the ever-improving algorithms of the major search engines, it's about posting high quality content and getting reputable sites to link back because the content is actually worth linking to.

The number of tools for keyword research continues to be mind-numbing. Each provides a somewhat different, but important perspective during the keyword analysis phase of SEO efforts. It often comes down to a bit of art, though, in translating the hard-core data to meaningful keyword strategies, though. The SEO experts continue to point to using good old human intellect to call the really important shots.

Some books cited that may be worth looking into include the following:

Finally, Benu Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, gave a passionate talk about how he recreated himself and his companies in ways that positively impact people's "fun" each and every day…a heartwarming and inspiring story, especially for all those pet lovers who enjoy the Cheezburger user-generated content. And, he's implemented a proven and effective business model that works and now pays his bills! Let this be a reminder to us all to continue to push ourselves to keep things simple and produce products and services that make a positive difference to your prospects, users, and clients. Focus on helping them, not you.

Relevant Email - Driver of Top Open Rates and Click-Throughs

2009-10-01T03:00:01Z

Everyone is concerned about building a powerful email list that will deliver sales. And delivering relevant email is at the heart of it all.

To capture the interest and attention of your recipients, you must provide relevant information that addresses their high-priority challenges. Keep in mind that many people we contact through email marketing efforts receive between 10 and 20 newsletters a month, yet may only read two or three. You want your email newsletter to be one of those two or three. That means you must be relentless in delivering newsletter content and resources that make your material most relevant to your email subscribers' top challenges. And, being relentless means you need to continually ask your audience what they want to read more about.

Here are five ways to help ensure that your email marketing is relevant to your subscribers:

Conduct Online Surveys. Use an online survey tool such as QuestionPro or SurveyMonkey to find out what your subscribers need or want to learn about.
Include a Survey in Your Welcome Emails. When someone signs up for your newsletter, send an immediate trigger email asking for the single most important topic he or she would like to learn more about. Make the note sound as personal as possible, engaging the person at an individual level.
Ask Subscribers to Rate Your Articles. Collect data on how people like your email newsletter content by providing subscribers with a quick click-and-submit radio button selector that includes a rating scale at the end of each article.
Pay Attention to Your Click-Through Metrics. Look at your click-throughs in every email, as well as across emails, to see which topics your audience is most interested in. Write more on those topics for your email newsletters and on your Web site.
Use Keyword Research. Do some keyword research using any of a variety of online tools (e.g. WordTracker) to see what people are searching for and with what frequency. This is yet another way to help you determine the topics you should write about.

Of course, there are other ways to figure out what's relevant to your email subscribers. Once you know what matters to your audience, you can begin the work of generating your list of article topics and writing about or massaging these issues into your content.

Please share your stories, examples, and tips about how you've made your emails relevant to your audience, successfully driving your sales or other calls to action. Thanks for your input!

Don’t Email Like a Clown

2009-09-15T17:14:00Z

Please share your stories below. We'd love to hear from you. I was recently reading one of Seth Godin's books, where he republished one of his blogs – “Send in the Clowns.” Having lived in the big companies, consulted for the large and small…well, let's just say that I could see that this blog provides some great reminders for those trying to get their businesses to the next level. I've translated his broader lessons into those relevant to email marketing, in particular:

“Clowns ignore science.”
If you know anything about FulcrumTech, then you know that we live and breathe by the numbers. This lesson means we all need to be relentless testers and gatherers of the important data surrounding our email marketing. In other words, don't just collect your open, click-through, unsubscribe, and bounce data. Really look at it. What is it telling you? Do those A/B split tests, and let good, statistically significant results — not subjective opinions — drive your actions.
“Clowns don't plan ahead.”
I love this one. Godin talks about the big laughs a clown gets from slamming into a brick wall. Examples abound of companies that don't plan ahead and hopelessly overspend, until one day they have nothing left. Plan your campaigns. Think through all of the pieces ahead of time, and you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish with a little more planning. Yes, it takes time. But you may just have to spend a little less time on future campaigns if the previous ones do just 10% – 15% better.
“Clowns overreact to bad news (and good).”
Keep an even head and evaluate each data point (whether subjective or not) in the context of the big picture. Quick reactions on every piece of input can lead to a haphazard strategy and a plan that never achieves your ultimate goals.
“Clowns aren't very nice to each other.”
OK, so this one gets to our working relationships with those around us. I've seen time and again that behavior — whether good or bad — begins at the top. If poor behavior is initiated or accepted at the top, it becomes an epidemic in the organization all the way down. When that happens, the worst part is that creativity, innovation, and risk-taking are the first things to go. Do the opposite — don't stand for disrespectful behavior. Instead, build a culture that accepts and learns from mistakes, and your marketing can really go into overdrive.

Just to be clear about my view, clowns are hilarious and fun, but let's keep them at our kids' birthday parties or at the circus! I invite your comments on great examples of clowning around when email marketing. We can all learn from your stories.