Email & Ecommerce

Sunday, December 23, 2018
Ben Settle on Getting Email Clients, $267.
Ben Settle on Info-taining clients, $267.

 Tuesday, September 4, 2018
This is a good description of what an event marketing program should achieve and what it's impact could be.  Give a read. 

 Monday, April 2, 2018
This was a very good interview with Ben Settle.  [See his site here.  And here is his CopySlacker.]  I don't like his nonchalant tones but I have to listen to him because he is successful, and generally that means that he knows what he's doing and that he knows how to solve problems in his industry or niche.  Fine.  He doesn't go into any detail.  But he does mention a guy by the name of Matt Furey.  Never heard of him before, so this is one reason why listening to some people can be interesting and of value.  Matt Furey's Tao of Writing Email Copy That Sells.  And The Original Matt Furey Email Copywriting Course. And more.  

 Monday, March 12, 2018

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Tuesday, December 12, 2017
This was not a bad instruction.  It reminds you to target your email marketing campaign to a particular industry: real estate, retail, plumbing, landscaping, teaching, and so forth. And here is a list of strategies for Realtors to use.  And more.  The Smart Plan?  
Get website in front of customers.  
Cost per Acquisition?  This is something that you'd want to review with clients, like in a B2B market.  

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Inbound Marketing is an approach focused on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful--not interruptive.  With Inbound Marketing potential customers find you through channels, like blogs, search engines, and social media--unlike outbound marketing, which fights for their attention.  By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, Inbound Marketing attracts qualified prospects and builds trust and credibility for your business.

Sunday, March 5, 2017
Email Marketing
1.  AWAI and more.

Sunday, November 6, 2016
1.  Boomerang Gmail.  Never heard of it.  Glad it was suggested.  

Thursday, October 27, 2016 [Happy Birthday, Mike!]
1.  Kattie Waters answered my question at Quora, "

Am learning email marketing but have no list. Do I simply run a few samples on MailChimp/Constant Contact/AWeber to build my portfolio? Her answer consisted mainly of this list:  MailChimp, AWeber, GetReponse, Marketo, HubSpot and (of course) Clickback.

________________________________________________
Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016

Wednesday, September 28, 2016, 6:26pm to  . . . 
AUTOMATE YOUR EMAIL
2 ways to send automated emails to customers.
An autoresponder is a single email sent automatically in response to a specific event or action. Examples include an email triggered by a specific date such as a birthday, holiday, or calendar date, an email triggered by a specific time such as lunchtime, or a few hours before an event, an email sent in response to filling out a form such as ordering something online, or joining an email list, or an email sent in response to a click such as a click on a link to a website page or a video.
Create an email with content.  Use provider to send it to one or more events.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 3:53 to . . . . 6:30pm.
Study Day #6 on Email Marketing w/Lyndadotcom. 
MAXIMIZING EMAIL CAMPAIGN RESULTS
And how do I do that?
Email isn't delivered 100% of the time.  But undelivered email isn't necessarily devoid of opportunity.  
Oh, really.
Dealing with bounced and blocked emails so you can turn as many negative results into positive outcomes.  Bounced emails are returned to the sender's email with code explaining why the email was bounced or blocked.  It's in code, so how does one understand it?  Use an email provider that can translate bounced and blocked emails into reports that are easier for humans to interpret.  
Of course, email servers don't exactly have a way with words, so I recommend using an email service provider that can categorize your bounced and blocked emails into reports that are easier for humans to interpret.
Bounced reports show you which emails bounced and why they bounced so that you can take the appropriate action. Emails that are permanently undeliverable are called hard bounces. A hard bounce means that the email address does not exist, so it's either misspelled, the email address has been changed, or it's been abandoned by the owner. When you see a hard bounce on your bounce report, you should either contact your subscribers via another method to obtain a new email address or simply delete them from your database. When your email bounce report shows an email return as mailbox full, temporarily undeliverable, or blocked, these situations are known as soft bounces.  
Good points.  
Reduce blocked emails by making sure your emails stay up-to-date in the first place.
Remember, the best way to reduce blocked emails is to make sure your email list stays up-to-date in the first place. Send an email once every three months or so, reminding your subscribers to notify you or update their subscription profile if they change email addresses.
Excellent point.  Lots of things to consider . . . .
Another preventative measure is avoiding email filters that deliver your email to junk and spam folders instead of bouncing the emails back as undeliverable.  
That is important.
AVOID GETTING CAUGHT BY FILTERS
email filters and how to avoid them as often as possible. Actually, email filters aren't always negative. Some people set up filters to sort emails into different folders to keep their emails organized. The filters you want to avoid are the types that sort emails into a junk or spam folder. Some junk filters are set by users who want to block attachments, profanity, or specific senders. But most filters are set by email companies that want to protect their customers from malicious content, spam, and other unwanted emails.
Not all are bad.  Pay attention to this:

To steer clear of as many automatic spam filters as possible, you should first check your email content for anything that shares the characteristics of a typical spam email. Examples include subject lines with all capital letters, attachments, and profanity, or certain words that are common in spam emails. Spam emails and legitimate emails often share similar characteristics, so I recommend using an email service provider with a spam check feature that scans the content of your email for spam-like content.
Good.
ESTABLISH A GOOD SENDER REPUTATION
Avoiding spam like content is an important part of avoiding filters, but it's even more important to make sure you establish a good sender reputation with email companies like Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL. Your sender reputation is made up of three things: the length of time you've been sending email from a particular server, the number of emails you've sent from a particular server, and the number of spam complaints you've received from your subscribers.  
IMPORTANT.
Email service providers with established reputations have earned their reputations through close working relationships with the email companies and by sending high volumes of emails to permission-based lists. When you sign-up for an email service, you also sign-up to adhere to their bestpractices and permission policies. So make sure your email list is permission-based and compliant with all of the email service provider's policies before you sign up and pay for a subscription or a software package.  
OPENS & CLICK-THRU RESPONSES
how to know who is opening and clicking on your emails and how to use the data to improve your email marketing results.Email tracking requires some serious HTML programming, or you can just use an email marketing provider with built-in tracking and reporting to show you who is opening and clicking on your emails. Once you have tracking capabilities in your emails, you need to understand what it means when your reports show opens and clicks.  
Who provides tracking capabilities on my emails?  Constant Contact?  MailChimp?  Others?
An opened email, according to an email tracking report, means that the person who received the email enabled the images in the email to display or clicked a link in the email. No images? No open counted on the tracking report. This is important to understand, because a lot of people read emails without enabling the images or clicking on any links. Use your open right as a guide to see how many people were interested enough in a particular email to enable the images or click a link, and then assume the people who are not listed in your open report noticed your email and just chose to scan the email content without clicking or enabling any images.  
CLICK REPORTS
When it comes to your click report, things are a lot more straightforward. Your click report shows who clicked on which links and how many people clicked on each link. Your click report gives you two great insights. First, clicks are indications of interest on the part of your email subscribers. For example, if 20 people click on a link to watch a video about dogs and 20 people click a link to watch a video about cats, you can determine which people are interested in dogs and which are interested in cats. 
That way the next series of emails you send can be customized for either the dog people or the cat people. Second, your click report also tells you whether your email content is valuableand interesting to your readers. When people click to view a web site, read an article, watch a video, or download a picture, they are engaging and that helps them to remember your business and your message when they're ready to buy. For this reason, it's a good idea to leave some of your email content out of your email and link it instead.  
What next?
Compare email data with website data.
your email drives a lot of traffic to your website but nobody takes any action from there, it's an indication that your website content or your user experience may be in need of attention.  
So let's go.  Possible to track non-click responses.
Here are some common non-click responses that are worth tracking. First, it's a good idea to track in- store purchases resulting from your emails if you have a physical store. To track in-store purchases, you can ask people to show your email either by printing it out or showing it on a mobile device screen. You can also track in-store purchases by including a special promotion that isn't advertised anywhere except your emails. 
That way, when someone asks for the special promotion, you know the only way they found out about it was through one of your emails. Including a special promotion also works well if you want to track phone calls generated from your emails, because you can attribute any callers who mentioned a special offer to your emails. You can take that concept one step further by including a unique phone number in your emails, so that anyone who calls the number is identified as someone who received an email. Another non-click response worth tracking is event attendance. Of course you can track event registrations electronically, but sometimes it's good to know how many reminder and invitation emails contributed to increasing actual physical attendance, especially if your events are free.  
 Automate tracking.  That's what I want.
. . . shows you how to automate the most mundane components of your email marketing program . . . .
AUTOMATING YOUR EMAIL MARKETING
Heed this instruction.
The first type of email automation is called an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a single email sent automatically in response to a specific event or action. Examples include an email triggered by a specific date such as a birthday, holiday, or calendar date, an email triggered by a specific time such as lunchtime, or a few hours before an event, an email sent in response to filling out a form such as ordering something online, or joining an email list, or anemail sent in response to a click such as a click on a link to a website page or a video.
Next.
To set up an autoresponder, you need to create an email with content that will be the same for everyone who triggers the autoresponder email. Once you've created the email, you can use your email marketing provider to assign it to one or more triggers or events. Sometimes it's appropriate to send multiple emails automatically in response to an action or event. An automated series of multiple emails is called a sequence. Sequence is perfect for targeting email content to individuals with different behaviors, interests, or contexts. 
For example, when a new prospect joins your email list, you may want to set up a sequence that automatically responds with the following 4 emails: 1) a welcome email thanking the person for joining the email list sent immediately after joining; 2) a follow up email with links to a product catalog, company information, or other helpful resources sent three days after the welcome email; 3) an email newsletter with the best articles and advice sent one week after thefollow up email; 4) and a promotional email offering a special discount as a thank you for joining the email list sent two weeks after the email newsletter. 
Sequences make your emails more relevant, because you can base them on a variety of relevant events and triggers such as clicks, dates, and periods of time since a prior action or event. When it comes to planning more sophisticated email sequences, you'll need an email marketing provider that has the ability to automatically stop or change a sequence based on multiple triggers or events. For example, you create a sequence for new prospects and one of those new prospects becomes a customer in the middle of your new prospect sequence,you may want to switch that person to a new customer sequence and stop the new prospect sequence.  
To automate sequence changes, your email marketing provider needs to integrate with your database and link tracking to identify changes in a customer profile. So switching someone from one sequence to another may be as simple as allowing the system to track someone's clicks or purchases and adjust each sequence accordingly. You can also manually add someone to a sequence or stop a sequence by changing the data in someone's database record. Email automation takes a little extra time to set up, but I hope you see the potential for making things more productive in the long run and I hope this email marketing course has helped to make your email marketing strategy more productive than ever.  
COMBINING EMAIL W/ SOCIAL MEDIA & MOBILE DEVICES 
In your emails, include links to your social media sites at the bottom of your emails: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, etc. 
Lots of folks use mobile devices--smart-phones, tablets, Surface Pros, laptops, and more.  Be sure to understand how an email on a smart-phone will appear on a tablet and a laptop.  Must consider how your email will appear on all three.  They're deciding what to open now, delete immediately, or save for later.  The more useful your email is in a mobile context, the more likely it will be to be opened.  I think I get that.  If you're sending out something to a smart-phone, make sure the tone is personal, perhaps as close to texting as possible without destroying the integrity of the language. Yes, people love stories, but I fear that some information is so time-sensitive that it begs urgency.  
If your email contains a coupon that can be used in a retail store, it's more useful on a smart-phone than, say, a tablet or laptop with an online form that requires a lot of typing. 
Emails can be forwarded, liked, shared, rated, tweeted, and reviewed.  I just did not find this to be true.  Everything I've ever learned or read on placement marketing involves putting key information at the right--where people end up after reading from left to right.
The most effective mobile email designs take advantage of the upper-left portion of the email. That's because most mobile devices either display emails beginning with the upper-left portion of the email, or they display the whole width of the email on the screen, requiring the recipient to zoom and scroll to specific sections of the email.
When people zoom and scroll, they often start in the upper-left of the email, at least in countries where people read from left to right. Here are some examples of the types of content that can be effective when positioned in the upper-left of your email. You can place your logo or the name of your business in the upper-left. You can begin your email message with the main headline at the top of your email. Images in the upper-left can be effective too, but you might want to make sure it's small enough for some text to fit next to it or below it toencourage people to scroll. 
We shall see.
You want people to take action at your site.  So make sure that that action is also mobile friendly.  As to emails, make them short and sweet, but frequent.
Mobile calls to action!  Here we go!
Smart phones allow users to touch or dial a phone number, so you'll want to include your phone number.  This is absolutely a no-brainer, meaning it goes without saying.
Address links to maps & directions.
Optimize web pages.  What does that mean?  Optimize them for what?  
A good web designer can help you to detect mobile device visitors and serve up a version of your website that's friendly to each type of device.Links to videos also work well in smartphones and mobile devices.  
So that's what it means.
Links to videos also work well in smartphones and mobile devices.
For the best results, post your videos to a public site, such as YouTube, to make sure your videos will play on all types of devices.  
Another no-brainer, but good that it got mentioned.  
For the best results, post your videos to a public site, such as YouTube, to make sure your videos will play on all types of devices. In addition to links in your email content, you can also use your email content to suggest mobile friendly actions such as taking a picture and attaching it when replying to your email, visiting a social media site to follow your business or write a review, checking into a location on a check- in site like Foursquare or Gowalla [is officially shutdown] or Facebook, or showing the email to someone else.
Good points.
_________________________________________________________________
Thursday, September 22, 2016, 4:15 to 
Study Day #5 on Email Marketing w/Lyndadotcom.  
DEEPEN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE WHO OWN YOUR EMAILS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
SUBJECT LINE
Your Subject Line is what prompts your reader to open your email and start reading immediately.  Subect lines get cut-off after about 40 to 50 characters.  Best approach is: to describe the immediate benefit to openig the email with the fewest words possible.  Subject lines like "July Newsletter" or "News from ABC News Company may be too generic.  Use value words.  "Over $50 Savings on Explore California Tours."  If they value of your email is information, then you should use words in the subject line that describe the immediate benefit of reading your information. "Compare Our Chocolate to the Competition in Under Two Minutes."  Newsletter can be named anything, like "Smart Shopper Weekly" if you're a retail store.  Or "Five-minute Sales Tips" if you offer sales consulting.  Do A/B Testing on a subject to learn which performs best.  Also, avoid all capital letters (of course), excessive punctuation "Order Now!!!!" or extreme urgency, "Hurry!!  Deal Ending!!!"  These can be off-putting and cause spam complaints. 
CREATING A FAMILIAR "FROM" LINE
People don't like opening emails from people they don't know. They fear it is Spam.  Receiver needs to know the sender, especially when it comes from a business.  Unfamiliar "From" lines can also result in Spam complaints even when they've signed up to receive emails.  If you and your employees have personal relationships with your customers, use your first and last name in the "From" line.  If your business is a local branch from a larger organization, make sure your "From" line includes your location to differentiate from other branches and the corporate emails.  If you use an acronym, Company ABC, make sure your customers know your acronym; otherwise, it's best to use your full business name.  And stay consistent 
WRITING AN EFFECTIVE CALL TO ACTION
One of the best ways to increase responses using multiple calls to action is to ask for three different levels of commitment from your readers. For example, a chocolate company might send an email promoting a new gift basket with the following three calls to action: order this gift basket today, download our gift basket catalogue, and like this gift basket on Facebook.
Each of these calls to action result in a positive action, but two of them are still options even if the person reading the email isn't interested in making a purchase right away. Of course, every email requires the act of opening the email in the first place. Next I'll show you how to get more emails opened by including a familiar from line.
______________________________________________________________
Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 3:20 to 4:33.
Creating a layout--
A good test of an email marketing campaign is to learn whether or not the campaign generates immediate sales, or moves people closer to a purchase decision.  Can this move be measured?
In short, your email should invite action and decision making. Actions in emails usually involve clicking on links, which may include text links, images, buttons, and other graphics. This section of the course explains how to get the most out of the links in your emails. Email links come in two varieties, external web links and internal navigation links. External links open up a browser window so the person who clicks on the link is directed to a webpage.
Regarding links, this is good advice: 
When creating text links, the best practice is to avoid using the phrase Click Here as the link. Instead use an action word or a phrase as the link. For example, a link to add an item to an online shopping cart should say Buy this item, instead of To buy this item click here.  
More good advice on how to label clicks 
The more descriptive you can make your text links, the better chance you have of inviting a click. For example, a link that reads More information isn't as descriptive as a link that reads Download the 50 page catalog. When creating image links, the best practice is to include some text in the image inviting the click and explaining what the image link points to. Some images are intuitive as links so text isn't necessary. Examples include pictures of products that link to more information about the product, company logos pointing to the homepage of a website, audio icons such as a Play button that looks like a speaker, or screenshots of videos pointing to a streaming video file.
IMPORTANT STEP TOWARD MAKING YOUR EMAILS ACTIONABLE:
Speaking of videos in other files, use links to deliver files and videos to your email subscribers. Never attach videos, pictures, documents, or other files to your emails, becauseemail filters and blockers are notorious for stripping attachments, bouncing emails with attachments, and filtering emails with attachments to a junk folder. Creating links and including them in your email is an important step toward making your emails actionable, but links all by themselves won't be too inviting to your email subscribers. That's why the next section of the course shows you how to include valuable and relevant email content to go along with the links in your emails.  
 INFORMATION SENT IN AN EMAIL HAS TO BE VALUABLE ON A CONSISTENT BASIS . . .  
Or your subscribers will quickly become unsubscribers.  
The information you send in an email has to be valuable on a consistent basis or your subscribers will quickly become un-subscribers. While it's great to send offers and incentives to make your emails more valuable, some of your email content needs to be inherently valuable as well. That's because typically only a small portion of your prospects and customers are ready to buy when they receive one of your emails. If you limit your email content to promotions and offers, your emails will be irrelevant to the majority of subscribers.Now, here are some examples of content that can add to the inherent value of your emails. 
This is good to know.  
Also, this . . . 
INFORMATION ON Products, Services, Your Company, New Products, and Latest Trends.
Information about products, services, or your company can be valuable, especially for new prospects or people who are interested in learning about new products or the latest trends.  Tips and advice can be valuable if buying your products and services involve research, expertise, or sound reasoning. Tips and advice can come from you or your employees or you can feature tips and advice from your satisfied customers or product suppliers. Instructions and directions can tell your customers how to get the most out of your products or services before a sale and after a sale.
INSTRUCTION & DIRECTIONS CAN BE HELPFUL; HUMOR, STORIES, PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCES.  ANYTHING
Instructions and directions can also help your customers feel smarter about the purchases they make. Entertaining content can include humor, engaging stories, and even professional performances. If you use entertaining content, make sure it has something to do with buyingyour products and services; otherwise your email subscribers won't be as likely to recall your brand as the source of the content. Facts and research are a good idea when your audience needs more than an opinion to make a purchase decision. Coming up with valuable content can be handled in-house or through external sources such as copywriters and agencies.
BE SURE TO ASK FOR PERMISSION
If you decide to use content from other sources in your emails, always ask for written permission so you don't violate any copyright laws. Assume all content is copyright protected and consult a licensed attorney if you aren't sure if you have permission to use someone else's content. Hopefully the information in this section has been valuable to you, because now it's time to explore all of the ways to include valuable offers in your emails, to help turn your readers into buyers.
VALUABLE OFFERS HELP OVERCOME PURCHASE HESITATION & DECISION AVOIDANCE. 
1.  What makes your offer valuable is a context with your customer--in other words, knowing your customers' wants, needs, and problems.
The first rule of valuable offers is to know your customers, because different groups of people may respond differently to the same offers. For example, some people love to know about a discounted product because they like to save money. However, some people associate the word discount with words like discontinued, cheap, or out of style. 
These two groups of people require very different offers. The former may respond positively to an email announcing a sale, while the latter is more likely to value an email announcing a sneak preview of the newest and most expensive product line. For the best results, conduct a survey or watch your email tracking reports to discover what your subscribers value. Then divide your email list into groups based on the types of offers that motivate each group. 
BEST KINDS OF VALUABLE OFFERS FOR EMAILS & MATCHING INCENTIVE WITH THE TYPE OF BUYER
COUPONS
Coupons included in an email can be printed out or shown on a mobile device for in-store redemption or linked to an item in an online store. Use coupons when your prospects or customers want to be rewarded with prices that aren't available to the general public. To add a personal touch to your email coupons use a Mail Merge to include your subscribers name on the coupon. Giveaways are free products or services offered in exchange for information or a purchase. Use giveaways in combination with another product purchase when you want to offer more value without discounting the value of the featured product.
MAIL MERGE (Read this) And here are some tutorials.



STEP-BY-STEP SANS THE BRITISH ACCENT

For example, if a car dealer offered a car at 50% off, people might wonder what's wrong with the car. If however the car was offered at full price with a giveaway worth 50% of the value of the car, the same value is perceived without discounting the car. If you decide to offer giveaways, make sure to check your local laws to make sure your giveaway doesn't qualify as a sweepstakes, contest, or lottery. If it does, you'll need to comply with local laws for these types of promotions. Loss leaders are another form of giveaway.
A loss leader is a promotional price that results in a loss to the business when the product is purchased. Why would you offer a product in an email at a price that loses money? Because you want to acquire a new customer with an extremely low price so you can realize profits through repeat sales generated by additional emails after the initial loss leader purchase. Use loss leaders when you want to attract new customers to your business and away from the competition. 
Once you have an offer that gets people to respond, it's time to help them take the next step by suggesting one or more actions.
That's called a call to action and it's the subject of our next movie.
CALL TO ACTION
You can also ask people to show the email by printing it out or showing the email on a mobile device. And don't forget to ask people to share your email with a friend or colleague when they find the content to be of value to someone they care about. You may decide to focus on one call to action in your email, but sometimes including multiple calls to action in one email can actually increase the number of responses you get. One of the best ways to increase responses using multiple calls to action is to ask for three different levels of commitment from your readers. For example, a chocolate company might send an email promoting a new gift basket with the following three calls to action: order this gift basket today, download our gift basket catalogue, and like this gift basket on Facebook. 
Each of these calls to action result in a positive action, but two of them are still options even if the person reading the email isn't interested in making a purchase right away. Of course, every email requires the act of opening the email in the first place. Next I'll show you how to get more emails opened by including a familiar from line.
GET MORE EMAILS OPENED BY INCLUDING A FAMILIAR "FROM LINE"  
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Email Marketing from Lynda.com Wednesday, September 14, 2016
I actually started this back on September 7, 2016: http://copybymichael.blogspot.com/p/email.html.
Hate is not a buying emotion and the government makes the rules, you should always check with what the government’s position on spam or unwanted and unsolicited email ads. Start with the law. Use a licensed attorney to make sure you follow the law. Can-SPAM Act.
1. Affirmative Consent.
2. simple, free way to opt out. One or two clicks to opt out.
3. Truthful content. True and accurate. don’t use misleading subject lines. Font fake from the line.
4. real email address.
5. physical business address. A PO Box is okay.
Your job is to make customers happy, not the government.
1. Ask for explicit permission.
2. Ask subscribers to share their preferences.
3. Send emails with the proper frequency and relevance. Weather is daily information, so weather information is likely to be appreciated every day. It’s got to be relevant and useful.
4. Daily deals must be actual deals.
BUILDING EMAIL LISTS
1. Without permission isn’t valuable. When it includes email list to stay informed, that’s valuable.
Fill the list with people who want to be there.
2. 3 basic types of permission:
a. Implied permission. Send an email confirming someone to your list. Confirmation is key. And include a link for opting out if your new subscriber was under a false impression and now prefers they’re not interested.
b. Explicit permission. Fill out the online form to be part of your list. Industry standard for email marketing.
c. Confirmed permission, aka, double opt-in. Ensures subscribers are highly interested.
3. Avoid building Email List on someone else’ permission. Since your email list is valuable, treat it as an asset. If you want access to someone else’s email list, ask them. Then ask and earn direct confirmation from individuals on those lists. Don’t violate your permission standards.
BUILD LIST WITH QUALITY & QUANTITY IN MIND.
1. Collect emails to build lists: 5 WAYS.
a. provide online signup form on every page of your website.
b. collect addresses from people in person. Networking events and appointments.
c. Printed marketing materials should describe an email list. Printed advertising.
d. Mobile devices. Scan barcode. Text email. Provide mobile signup forms. Hand your device to someone for them to sign up.
e. Social Media networks: LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, Instagram, Promote email address through FB post. FB allows application plugins so you can embed forms directly into your FB page. Email address is more effective when you combine it with more/other information. Ask additional information after you’ve established trust. Getting zip codes helps you target specific neighborhoods and understand why those properties are interested in your product/service.
OFFERING INCENTIVES TO INCREASE SIGNUPS
People are willing to share their email list. You just need to share the value of being on the list effectively. “Stay signed-on. You don’t want to miss any of our daily deals.” You never know when just that 1 idea, when implemented, will orient your business toward greater profit.” the idea is to exchange value for information. 3 Ways to maximize the value.
1. Information itself has to be valuable. Immediate incentives in the form of an automated email to send a coupon, discount, a valuable download, access to a special video, a free product or service, or anything else that has an immediate benefit to a new subscriber. You’ll gain a prospect in what your business is as well as what you’re giving away. Future incentives
EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING DESIGN
1. Format—layout, content, and purpose of email work together visually and functionally as a unit. All of these are email FORMATS:
a. Newsletter
b. Promotion.
c. Event invitation.
d. Holiday greeting
Use a variety of formats in your email strategy for 2 reasons:
1. People respond to different formats in different ways. With emails that look like a newsletter, they’ll wait to read it. Emails that look like urgent announcements, they’ll open and read right away. Getting immediate attention. Immediacy wears off if you use the same format for all your communications.
2. Need as many formats as reasons to communicate. Use different formats to categorize your information.
a. promotions.
b. Invitations.
c. News.
d. Info.
e. Greetings.
f. Appointment confirmations.
MOST POPULAR FORMATS & WHY THEY’RE EFFECTIVE
1. Newsletters typically focus on information rather than promotions. Newsletters can have columns like you’d see in newspapers. And they’re great for sending loosely related information.
Newsletters also should have a periodic frequency, such as weekly or monthly, rather than an event or date driven frequency.
For best results, minimize the amount of promotional content in your email newsletters. No more than 20% of your email newsletter content should contain promotions. If you need to promote more than that, use a promotional email format. Promotional email should focus on a single promotion, such as a single product, a group of related products, or a theme such as a sale. Promotional emails are usually date driven or they are triggered by specific actions, such as a recent purchase or an inquiry.
When using promotional emails, it's best to put some but not all of the details about the promotion in the email itself. Put the rest of the details on a website to invite a click so that you know how many people were interested in learning more about the promotion. Another type of promotion is an event invitation. Event invitations can focus on one event or a series of events. Events are highly date driven and usually require a series of emails in similar formats to get a good overall response.
Make sure you plan out your event invitations on a calendar to avoid over-communicating. An email announcement is a format that's sent when no specific response is expected on the part of the recipient. Examples include greetings, thank you messages, press releases, and order confirmations. Send these email formats when you want to focus on relationship building as opposed to generating immediate sales or leads. Sometimes it's nice to receive an email that doesn't ask you to do anything.
Email formats are most effective when your email designs and layouts are a good match for the formats you choose. That's the topic of our next two sections: branding your emails and creating effective layouts.
2. EMAIL HAS TO MATCH WITH LOGO OR BRANDING FROM YOUR WEBSITE.
1. Pay attention to the way your emails look. Your audience pays attention or not depending on the design choices you make in each email. The first rule of email design is to make sure your email designs are a good match with your other marketing media. For example, when someone visits your website and signs up for your email list, they might not recognize your emails if they look completely different from your website. To ensure a good match between your email designs and your other marketing designs, follow these guidelines.
2. Include your logo in all your emails.
 Use colors that match your logo for backgrounds, borders, and fonts. And when you send a promotion that suggests the use of colors outside your brand, such as of running a Halloween promotion with black and orange, just make sure to work the promotional colors into your brand instead of replacing your brand with the promotion. Also, use the same type of images in all your emails. For example, there's a big difference between the look of stock photography and the look of graphics and clipart.
Choose the image type that fits the personality of your business and then stick to it. When choosing email designs, it's important to brand each type of email format consistently. For example, make sure your email newsletter looks similar, but not identical, to your email promotions. That way people will recognize your brand and the purpose of each email. One of the best ways to ensure brand consistency with all your emails is to design your emails based on similar looking email templates. What's an email template? That's the topic of our next section.
3. EMAIL TEMPLATES
Custom made templates or pre-formed templates from companies, like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, E-Weber, and others.
1. Visual Anchors. Okay, so what’s the big deal? Images, headlines, links, icons, diver lines, background colors, and borders. Most important content should reside in the upper-left quadrant of your email. Now that surprises me greatly. Everything I’ve read in advertising is that the reader finishes scanning left-to-right at the right-hand side of the page, where their lasting impression is parked. Wow. Just surprises me. This is the first time that I’ve heard of benefits on the left.
Okay, his point about not having too many pictures in the email is good. One, maybe two, is adequate. Any more than that makes it difficult for the eyes to scan the email and to lock onto an important line, paragraph, or letter to focus their concentrations. 
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
We'll take a look at how to build your email list, while complying with regulations and consumer preferences. I'll show you which types of email content and designs are most effective. I'll give you tips for coming up with good content as well as making that content more valuable.
We'll also discuss how to adapt your email from mobile devices, combine emails with social media, and automate your emails to save time. Tracking your emails and avoiding balances, spam filters, and blocked email is important, so I'll show you to best practices for getting email delivered, opened and read.
This was helpful:
your business also needs to make sure that your marketing communications bring in revenue over and above the cost of those communications.  
Then there is this:
The fact that email is a cheap way to communicate isn't the main reason to use email however. Email also has a very high Return On Investment or ROI.
That I did not know, and that is good to know.
Then this . . .
In other words, an effective email marketing strategy can generate a lot of sales for a relatively small investment of time and money. In order to get the highest possible return on your email marketing investments, you first need to understand where to use email in your overall marketing plans. The first thing to understand is the fact that sending email to total strangers does not work. You're more likely to get spam complaints than interest from prospective customers unless you send to a permission-based email list. Now, I show you how to build a permission- based email list in another section of this course.
Add to that, this . . . 
Instead of spamming people, use email to help convert current prospects into customers and current customers into loyal customers. Use email to educate people about the features and benefits of your products or services, differentiate your business from your competition, and to ask for the sale. You can also use email to help increase customer loyalty and referrals bysending emails that strengthen your customer relationships. Send them thank you emails, holiday greetings, and offer special privileges to make your customers feel like they're appreciated.  
Be sure to keep strategy in mind throughout . . . 
keeping your customer relationships at the center of your strategy will put you on the road to email marketing success.  
What next?  You'll need two technology: an authoring technology and delivering technology.  Own your own email server and have extensive programming knowledge.  Really?  Yikes!  And database skills.  OMG!!!
1)  Use an EMP, an email marketing provider.
2)  
EMPs give you tracking reports and database tools to manage your email lists and some EMPs even provide support and educational resources to help you gain expertise in marketing and the use of the EMP's tools. Enterprise-level EMPs give you access to advanced features, such as point-of-sale integration, email automation, advanced segmentation, andbehavioral targeting. Remember that one of the most important assets of your email marketing strategy is your email database. Make sure you use a company that secures your email database properly and protects the privacy of your email list subscribers.  
What next? 
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Aspects of email campaigns:
1.  Design.
2.  Generate new customers. 
3.  Activate old ones. 
4.  Sell discounted items.
5.  Increase sign-ups for membership, conferences, discounts, etc. 
6.  Most important metric in email marketing:  delivery rate (% of people who actually received your email.
7.  Open rate.
8.  Click rate on email itself and offers inside the email.  
11.  15 Tips for Writing Internet Direct Mail that works, Bob Bly.  This is a great article and a quick read.  
13.  Email marketing Headline Tricks.
15.  Use email to get clients, AWAI.
Third, and most important, we need to remember that the copy for email marketing campaigns is not wholly contained within the email itself.  It is really in two parts.
The first half of the message is in the actual email.  The email contains a link to a page on a website or server.  When you click on that link, you jump to the page, where the remainder of the message is presented, along with the onilne order mechanism.  
In a traditional direct mail package, the message is unevenly split.  Consistently, 98% of the copy is in the letter and brochure, with the remaining 2% on the order form.  In email marketing campaigns, the division is less balanced and more varied.

"If subscribers like you, they'll be interested in hard information and soft information."  when readers seem to be very interested in you, they become interested in your life, what you think, career, and so on.  
Email is such a personal medium.  Write with personal overtones, writing as if you're talking to one individual.  So learn letter writing.  A big mistake is to be very boastful and brag a lot.  It turns readers off.  Don't have to impress them; just have to be real.  Self-effacing, "I'm not good at most things . . . ."
Another email mistake?  Thinking the email writer thinks the email and he is much more important that he really is.  The tone is "that people are going to be waiting for this and now you're going to be happy."  Most people don't remember who you are and don't care about you that much.  They care about their own fears, desires, and goals. Primary interests are their needs and problems, not yours. People are wary.  A sales email isn't just that important.  Clayton Makepeace teaches this as well as Collier. 
Another mistake is that internet marketers haven't read the classic marketing books.  
Any other mistakes that come to mind?  Sales emails that start with the product, "Hey, gang, we just want to let you 
Don't start with the product, start with the prospect.  The prospect is the reader.  Start
Hey gang" does not make someone feel special or personal.  "Hey Joe" is better.  50% content, 50% sales.  When should you be sending sales, when content?  Alternate.  People think that he publishes daily.  He does it 4 days a week.  4 messages/week. Monday is content, Tuesday is sales.  He skips Wednesdays. Thursdays is content, Friday is sales.  Sort of like Jay White.  "If you have something you want to know, email me."  1/3 of his emails are answers to subscribers questions.  "JL said in a recent email asked, . . . ."  People love giving their opinions; that's why Facebook is so popular.  Fresh each time.  Not in an auto-responder. Sent manually.  Does not inventory or stockpile old messages. Never stops sending messages.  Follow-up: he answers each question!!!
Bob Bly likes the problem/solution format.  
Some sites.
Gary Halbert.
Oglesby.  There is no Oglesby, only David Ogilvy.
Clayton Mayhies. 

18.
19.
20.

NEWSLETTERS?
3. 

LEAD GENERATION
1.  50 Lead Generation tips, Bob Bly. 
2.  14 Winning Sales Methods, Bob Bly.
3. 

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Friday, July 29, 2016
1.  Companies advertising the creation of email campaigns.
2.  Make time today to check out these email designs.  
3.  Constant Contact has this.  
4.  This was an excellent list from Constant Contact.  It shows the different areas concern marketing your email.  It's one thing to design an email; it's one thing to target your email to a specific audience, but it's another thing to get people to read, open, and take action with your email.  
5.
6.
I found this Craigslist ad today:
Email Expert Needed
*  Must be able to create a series of emails to promote a solid business opportunity.
*  Must have own computer with internet service. 
*  Must be able to follow strict instruction while offering a creative approach.  
Thursday, July 14, 2016
E-COMMERCE TERMS
1.  AOV, Average Order Value.
2. 
3. 

Wednesday, June 8, 2016
     a.  Target your customer. 
     b.  What do they want?
     c.  What do you want them to do--what's the goal?
          i.  generate new customers?
         ii.  activate old ones?
        iii.  sell discounted items?
        iv.  increase sign-ups for a conference.
     d.  What audience will most likely fulfill that goal for you?  Audience you identify will be your customer segment. . . .
          i.  what does your customer need from you in order for them to take action? 
         ii.  what will motivate them to follow through?  Customers may need a handful of emails before they take action.  Design a campaign that has 3 or 4 steps before your "big ask."  Emojis might appeal to younger audiences, whereas with small business owners clear, concise and short messages might prevail.  Make sure that mobile content loads effectively. iii.  Identify how your consumer will interact with your email.

Most of your audience will be reading on a mobile device but use your existing analytics to verify that idea.  Outline special considerations for mobile users.  Mobile optimized landing page. On your message, how often does it go out?  What time, morning or night?  8am EST or PST? Seasonal?  Use your data to help guide your decision.

SUCCESSFUL E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS
1.  MailChimp.  Integrates with Wordpress.  
2.  Constant Contact.  Phone support.  
3.  Emma.  $45, most expensive.  Incredible outcome.  Personalized service.  Custom reporting.  
4.  Each email tool has its own reporting tool interface.  Most important metrics in email marketing are: delivery rate (% of people who actually received the email; glitches do exist: spam, email restrictions, so on), open rate, and click rate. So focus on these 3.  Need to have links in your email for people to click. These links show customer interests in whatever it is that you're offering. "Always include specialized tracking on those links so that you can track those in Google Analytics because the click rate can be a little poor in these email tools.
Next class:  Google Analytics.  
Content Marketing: Is That What I Think It Is?
"Are you using your ice tray properly?"  Apparently, the question makes people think about standard, everyday items.  Is there value in that?  I am not sure.  
Understand that email marketing involves copy.  Meaning that we'll have to  
KPIs of SUCCESS OF EMAILS

Use long-tail keywords and topics worth discussing. 

Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Email Marketing Campaign: What They Look Like 

What's involved?  Let me count the ways:
Start a portfolio.  Build it.  Today.  
The Email Marketing Manager will be responsible for the creation, execution, and management of all email campaigns.

E-MAIL MARKETING MANAGER is RESPONSIBLE for: 
1.  Creation, execution, and management of all email campaigns.
2.  Work with marketing team.
3.  Consistently improve the performance of email marketing campaigns and identify the enhancement opportunities to maximize ROI 
4.  Continuously analyzing and improving lead and customer satisfaction with campaigns

E-MAIL MARKETING MANAGER QUALIFICATIONS:
a.  Financial or Banking experience is a plus.  Must know Marketo and Microsoft Dynamics (or similar CRM experience).  Here is a list of the 25 Best CRM apps.
Will be both onsite and offsite

If you feel you are qualified for this position please reply directly to this email with a link to your portfolio (if applicable) and attach your resume. Tell us why you are qualified for this opportunity (2-3 bullet points, including your strengths/skill set as they pertain to this role), and let us know your availability to interview or start.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Magento is the latest e-commerce CMS tool.  Check it out.  I couldn't find any courses on it at Lynda.com.  So I went to YouTube, and it is full of beginning tutorials.  Be sure to check these other tutorials.  You'll need to see tutorials on how to host Magento on your hosting account that hosts your e-commerce site.  So first, create an e-commerce site.  Second, you'll need to download Magento to your desktop or some file on your computer.  Next, upload it to your hosting site.


 Can't tell for sure, but the video above hinted that MAMP Pro may be needed to access the open source Magento.  And this video, among others, does a point-by-point comparison between WordPress' Woo Commerce with Magento.  They're both open source, but Magento is more for dedicated and large e-commerce sites.  For this reason, it should be worth your while to learn Magento.  Woo Commerce might be easier if you're already familiar with WordPress.  Magento is the most supported e-commerce platform out there.  Everything you're going to need with Magento.  If you have a brick-and-mortar store with a point of sale system, like Microsoft Dynamics [and here] or Light Speed Retail on Mac, then Magento is perfect and preferred for you.
is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. The software was originally developed by Varien Inc., a US private company headquartered in Culver City, California, with assistance from volunteers.
Varien published the first general-availability release of the software on March 31, 2008. Roy Rubin, former CEO of Varien, later sold a substantial share of the company to eBay, which eventually completely acquired and then spun off the company.
According to the research conducted by aheadWorks in May 2015, Magento's market share among the 30 most popular e-commerce platforms is about 29.8%.[2]
On November 17, 2015, Magento 2.0 was released, with an aim to provide new ways to heighten user engagement, smooth navigation, conversion rates and overall revenue generation, it has well-organized business user tools speed up to build up time and enhances productivity.[3][4] Table locking issues have been considerably reduced, Improved Page Caching and also allows in streamlining Guest checkout process for existing users,[5] Enterprise-grade scalability, improved performance and better code base are only a few benefits of new Magento version.[6]
Magento employs the MySQL/MariaDB relational database management system, the PHP programming language, and elements of the Zend Framework.[7] It applies the conventions of object-oriented programming and model–view–controller architecture. Magento also uses the entity–attribute–value model to store data.[8]
Monday, April 25, 2016 

Wednesday, March 9, 2016
2.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Monday, December 7, 2015
1.  Quickbooks is a is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit.  Quickbooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized business and offer on-premises accounting applicatyions as well as cloud based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.
2.  Outlook is a free, personal email service from Microsoft.
3.  Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) software.  What that means is that it allows you to keep details on clients, update it as new information about the company and its key personnel is shared with you.  Think of it as a digital Roll-a-Dex.  This company owns several different CRM services.
4.  Echo is a leading provider of technology-enabled transportation and supply chain management services. 
5.  

Monday, March 23, 2015
AWEBER
1.  Sign up subscribers.
2.  Send emails showing new post.
3.  Is this not like sending newsletters via email?  If so, how is this different from MailChimp?
The site uses Aweber to sign up subscribers and the AWeber blog broadcast option to automatically send emails to subscribers showing the new posts on the site. (Find details on how to do this at https://help.aweber.com/hc/en-us/articles/204031076-How-Do-I-Integrate-My-Wordpress-Blog-With-AWeber-).  Thanks to Bill Myers.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015
1.  15 Tips for Writing Internet Direct Mail that Works, Bob Bly.  This is a great article and a quick read.
3.  
EMAIL MARKETING
Subject line tips to help you get more of your emails opened . . . .
C.  More on EMAIL MARKETING.
     a.  Bob Bly.
D.  V.Bulletin is a community software.  I don't know what that means.
E.  Eryn Branham, PinPointe, is a blog on online marketing.  I think.
F.  AWeber.
1.   Use an ellipsis: Those three little dots at the end of a sentence? They indicate there’s an unfinished thought. And, the only place to finish that thought is—you guessed it—inside the email. So, adding an ellipsis to your subject line can possibly increase your open rates even that much more.
2.   Lower-case letters: This one has always puzzled me somewhat, because I’m a big believer in initial caps (only capitalizing the first letter of a word) in headers. But the numbers don’t lie. I’ve consistently seen subject lines with all lower case letters get opens more than headers with initial caps. And, they always outperform everything in all caps. (Who wants to be shouted at in a subject line?)
3.   Keep it short: Another reason why “quick question” works so well is because it’s only two words. Shorter subject lines are quicker and easier to consume, and in this day and age when we’re all being bombarded with marketing messages, the quicker and easier something is to consume, the better.
G. 

MailChimp looks like a premiere site to create dedicated email campaigns, newsletters, and mass mailers.  This link contains some inspirations for designing an email campaign.

1.  Opt-In.
2.  How to Keep Subscribers.
3.  The woman above has this site: 
Who Are Your Subscribers?
to find paying market, ask them what they're missing, what they need. what their favorite niche products are, and why?  Search for questions and complaints in my niche's forums and social networks.  As well as your poll respondent's answers for clues as to their most compelling needs. 
a.  Who do you chat to on your social networks?
b.  What questions do you get asked most online and in everyday?
c.  What do you always end up helping people with?
d.  Do you like doing that or does it make you feel tired and irritated?
e.  What do you want to help people with?  What do you think you can provide that no one else can?
f.  Do you know your top three strengths?  Weaknesses?
g. Do you know what your unique sales position is?  And if it fits with the people you're targeting for your new list?
h.  Are your goals aligned to your subscriber's success?

****************************************************************
e-Commerce
1.  KPI, Key Performance Indicator.  KPI checklist.  In the presentation below, CRM or Customer Relationship Management.  UX stands for User Experience; in other words, the end user's feel or experience.  UI stands for User Interface Design.  This really refers to designers and issues with the design and function of a site.  Put another way, UI is the saddle, the stirrups, and the reigns.  UX is the feeling you get from riding the horse with the particular saddle, stirrups, and reigns.
E-COMMERCE
4.  WordPress E-Store Plugin.  One-click checkout process?  Leads to a higher conversion rate?
6.  SEO Optimization w/Karon Thackston.
7.  Shopify can handle large catalogs.  You can bulk-import your products, lots of payment processors, customers have private accounts, etc.  If you ever sell products in person (or decide to start up a B&M store), you can also integrate that with your online sales using their point-of-sale credit card phone app.  

It looks like Shopify is the industry standard when it comes to building e-commerce websites.  
8.  Woo-Commerce is a toolkit for WordPress.  Divi Tutorial adding a Woo-Commerce page in WordPress.  
11.  Kagi.
e-book sites:
     a.  WindRiverPress.org.
     b.  TakeControlBooks.com.
     c.  InDesignSecrets.com.
     d.  
12.  GVO, Global Virtual Opportunities.13.  Weebly even has an e-commerce platform.  The idea is to build a few of these in a portfolio.

USF, Ultimate Sales Funnel.  Okay, so in the first graph you can see the steps that lead a client to buying from your e-commerce site:  
Phase 1:  Give away free stuff
Phase 2:  Offer items for sale under $100.
Phase 3:  Offer monthly subscription.
Phase 4:  Offer mid-level items for $100 to $500.
Phase 5:  Offer premium packages for $500 and up.

















Lead capture/Landing page first. These convert 25% to 43%. These are opt-in as leads.  Lead goes to an autoresponder and to the BnBack Office.  We need traffic to generate leads.  
This is a pretty good slideshare. 

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