Here we are once again, headed into a new week. What’s on your agenda for the next several days? I hope you’ve had a chance to read about the newly updated FTC guidelines for advertising. If you give away free products or services in return for reviews or endorsements (or pay for such services), the new rules will affect you. While it doesn’t go into affect until December 1st, it can impact you — so check it out before the holiday craziness makes you forget about it.
This past week I’ve seen a lot of posts about the new guidelines and …read more

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing in existence. That said, there are a number of potential email marketing pitfalls that marketers should be aware of that can derail a marketing campaign.
Too Much Overhead
Especially when you are sending hundreds of thousands email marketing messages, the marketing overhead can really add up. Find a solution that is cost effective — even if it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles.
Not Following Guidelines
If email marketing messages are marked as spam, that is a huge blow. Be sure to follow all guidelines to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Poorly Constructed Email …read more

Email marketing can be a difficult form of online marketing. When you send out an email marketing message, you don’t have much of a clue to know whether or not the message ever reached its destination. Despite the difficulties, email marketing can be highly lucrative. Here are three trick to email marketing that can aid your marketing efforts:
Don’t eliminate bounces right away
Many email marketers make the mistake of deleting email addresses that result in a bounce, which is definitely a mistake. There are many reasons why email messages may bounce — from a full inbox to misfiring spam blocker. Wait …read more

Although email marketing can be a very powerful form of marketing, it also has a number of risks involved. One of the main risks associated with email marketing is a fact that a large percentage of email messages end up as undeliverable email. Even worse, most of these undeliverable email fail to result in a bounce-back message to alert the sender.
According to Return Path research, less than 80% of email marketing messages reach their destination. Of the more than 20% of messages that don’t reach their destination, only a small percentage result in a bounce-back message.
There are many areas where …read more

For those who use email marketing as a way to gain clients or to sell products, then you are already aware of how powerful it is to use. Yet if you are not including social media in with your email marketing campaigns then you are missing out on an important part. When you incorporate social media in with your email marketing campaign, you open the door to grow the number of people that visit your social media website.
Or you might think about incorporating a message within your email marketing campaign that directs your followers to your social media profile.
If you …read more

Once again I get the good fortune of running across some articles that I just couldn’t wait to share with you. As I mentioned last week, I still have a lot of books on my to-read list. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten as far with them as I’d like. But I’m always open to adding more to the list for future reads, so if you have read something that made you take notice, I’d love to hear about it.
image: morgueFile

Monty Python & the Meaning of WOM (Word of Mouth)
Here’s an interesting post from the Zócalo Group. Who doesn’t love Monty Python? …read more

Email marketing can be a very lucrative type of marketing campaign. As your email list grows, the monetary potential of the email marketing grows at the same rate. Here are some tips for email marketing to make sure that you get the most out of your email marketing campaigns:
1. Use a service such as TinyURL.com to shorten long URLs.
2. Don’t assume all recipients can receive HTML email messages.
3. Include a summary at the beginning of the email message.
4. Add a poll or a survey to give the readers a voice.
5. Include links to Twitter and Facebook to tie together campaigns.
6. …read more

If you have a marketing newsletter, you know that the larger your subscriber base, the more there is potential to make money. While there are plenty of ways to build the subscriber base of your marketing newsletter, make sure that you utilize legit practices.
Here are a few ways to build your marketing newsletter:
Prominently display the opt-in form. When visitors come to your website, the opt-in form for the newsletter should be one of the first things seen. If you hide it too deep in the website, don’t expect to see many daily subscriber additions.
Offer an incentive. Everyone loves free stuff. …read more

According to the latest five year forecast by Forrester, search engine marketing could generate more than $31 billion by 2014. Compared to 2009, that represents more than a 100% growth in search engine marketing.
In all, Forrester project interactive marketing to reach nearly $55 billion by 2014. The other major interactive marketing areas are projected to be display advertising ($17 billion), social media marketing ($3 billion), email marketing ($2 billion) and mobile marketing ($1.3 billion).
Compared to 2009, the biggest percentage growth is projected to be in social media marketing — which is projected to experience more than a 400% growth. Mobile …read more

According to a new survey by StrongMail, email marketing and social media are the two fastest growing segments of the marketing world. Although this comes as little surprise to those who are following the online marketing trends, putting stats to the trends is interesting.
Of marketers who plan to increase their marketing budget in the second half of 2009, 83% said they plan to increase how much they spend in email marketing. Second place belongs to social media, which is at 62%. For comparison, search is in third place at 55%.
The StrongMail survey also asked about the top challenges for beginning …read more