5 Big Causes of Failure in Your Email Marketing Campaign

Posted by admin on April 8, 2012
Posted in: marketing. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

Why your email marketing campaign fail? You can think of various reasons for your failure in email marketing. But, there are 5 big causes of failure in your email marketing campaign that you should avoid. Here they are:

1. Your subscribers don’t get your message

Sometimes, your email marketing simply fails because your subscribers never read your email. How can you expect result with your email marketing if no one reads your email? Yes, this phenomenon is common. There are two basic reasons why your subscribers don’t read your email:

- Your email title is not appealing.
- Your email gets filtered into junk folder.

If your email is not appealing at all, your subscribers may choose to skip it and move on to another email in their inbox. So, you need to make sure that your title is inviting your subscribers to read your email content.

If your email gets filtered into junk folder, recheck the content of your email. Did you include spam words such as FREE, Limited Time Only, Big Discounts, and other spammy words? Does your email look like spam? Be sure to give real content in your email and avoid sending full advertisement email to your subscribers.

2. You are inconsistent

If you are sending your email message inconsistently, it will eventually affect your response rate. To make sure that your email message is getting read, be consistent with your sending frequency so that your subscribers can expect your message to come to their inbox.

3. Your subscribers are bored with you

If you send email that contains the same information with your previous email, and you are doing this over and over, your subscribers might get bored quickly with your email. They will naturally avoid reading your next email, and eventually you will drastically drop your response rate. To avoid boredom, be sure to give something new to your subscribers, such as new information, new tips, and new free stuff.

4. You fail to deliver value to your subscribers

Do you write only teaser in your email? Are you using your email only to hook your subscribers to your landing page or your blog? This is a wrong approach. Although this approach can help you to boost your sales if you use it occasionally, you can’t expect your subscribers to stick with you if you send teaser email too frequently. If you want to succeed with your email marketing campaign, delivering value to your subscribers must be your first priority. Remember that content is still king even in your email marketing campaign.

5. Your email is difficult to read

The last cause of failure in your email marketing campaign is that your email is difficult to read. First of all, you should know that your subscribers don’t like to read anything too difficult to comprehend. So, if you are giving technical and complicated information to your subscribers, you can expect them to eventually discard your email. Give your subscribers information that is easy to read, easy to remember, and easy to apply. Email that is too lengthy will also be considered difficult to read.

If you think that your email marketing campaign is failing, think about how you deliver email to your subscribers. Did you do the things that cause failure in your campaign? If so, it’s time to improve your email campaign and make it better by avoiding the 5 big causes of failure in your email marketing campaign.

Denis Bitson is a contributor to carinsurancecomparison.org where you will be able to compare various insurance policies.

Show and Tell for Grown-ups: Social Media

Posted by admin on April 6, 2012
Posted in: social media. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment


Call it social media, interactive media or simply a good way to waste time, websites aimed at connecting you with others and giving everyone a chance to speak up are the most popular properties on the internet.

According to Alexa, a company that tracks website visits, Facebook is second only to Google in frequency of use. Following them are YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and LinkedIn—if you have been on the internet for much time at all, you already know their names and have probably visited one or more of the major social media sites.

What about new social media sites, though?

Newcomers tend to crop up like weeds after a spring rain—but are they worth checking out, or are they just wannabes, trying to capture a piece of the pie? In order to help you through the maze, here is a categorized listing of some social media sites you may want to visit.

Speak Your Mind

Not counting the forerunners of online community—email and bulletin boards—the first wildly popular social media site in the speak-your-mind category was MySpace. It, in turn, gave way to the current heavyweight champion of the world, Facebook. Here are a few you may not (yet) have heard about though:

  • Google + . . . if Facebook is the place to connect with your friends, G+ is the place to impress them. It’s like leaving the department store and taking a table at the bistro.
  • Orkut . . . it’s a Google property, primarily visited by folks from Brazil, India and Japan. You can join communities, find old friends or make new ones, and generally get a more global perspective on life.
  • Ning . . . a social site where you can make money. Members are able to form closed groups around special purposes. You might start a millionaire’s Ning network, for instance, (someone probably already has) where you charge a membership fee for instructing people on how to get rich. Ning, by the way, is Chinese for “peace.”

Other dedicated social media sites are Friendster, Bebo, MyLife, and Renren. There are plenty more. Facebook is not the only game in town.

Post and Pin

There is a fine line between talking and showing. G+ is an excellent example of that line being blurred. Some social media sites, though, are more inclined to specialize in the “show” part and downplay the “tell” part. Given the movement towards online brevity (Twitter, for example), these may be the next big wave:

  • Delicious . . . a social bookmarking service, this site is the place to make note of the websites you like, categorize them and share them with the world. If you want, you can make your bookmarks private—that’s not the intention of Delicious, though. The idea is all about sharing and discovering.
  • StumbleUpon . . . a discovery engine that helps users find websites of interest. You create a count, checkmark your interests and begin stumbling—every time you click the Stumble button, a new site is presented for your review.
  • Pinterest . . . a relative newcomer to the game, this site is getting a bunch of attention. Users select interesting graphics and photos from their internet travels, then use a bookmarklet tool (provided) to pin the ones they like on their Pinterest virtual pinboard.

Other sites in this category are FriendFeed, Diigo, and Dzone.

News Sites

User-generated news clipping allows you to get a finger on the pulse of the people. A few of the most popular of these social media services are:

  • Mashable . . . a giant. One of the largest websites in the world, it allows you to view categories of your choice, see what is trending on Twitter, Facebook and more, even search for jobs. If you haven’t been to Mashable, you ought to take the trip.
  • Reddit . . . plenty of categories, from common to arcane, Reddit . . . styles itself the “front page of the internet.” Users vote on stories to move them up in position. It is a social phenomenon, and a goldmine for sociology majors.
  • BuzzFeed . . . with a trendy magazine sort of feel, this site seeks to find out what is hot and who is talking. The aim is to provide realtime information about the next big story.

Other news sites are ShoutWire, NowPublic, and Digg.

Your turn to experiment

We’ve barely tapped the depth of the potential here, but I hope you get the point: If you have an interest, chances are there is a social media site that will not only cater to your desires—but would love to have you share what you know with others.

Don Sturgill (Roadturn) is the author of Dream Into It: The Roadmap to Freedom.  Roadturn’s topics are centered on Health, Spirit, the Environment and Entrepreneurship.

How To Protect Your Privacy While Surfing The Web

Posted by Les Scammell on March 23, 2012
Posted in: General. 1 comment

“This is a guest post from information assurance and security experts ECA Limited. For more information on bolstering the security of your business property, please visit the ECA Limited website.”

Browsing the Web is not as leisurely an activity as it seemingly appears – there are threats to you, your data, and your privacy that require effective information security and risk management. You do not need to become a security expert, you just need to make sure that none of your valuable information is jeopardised. You can do that through:

Street-Smart Surfing

Hollywood tough guys would want you to think that there are book-smarts and there are street-smarts – and they are not entirely wrong. What keeps you safe in your day to day life is your street-smarts, while what you use to function at work or in school is your book-smarts. Surfing the Web is like walking at night – as safe as you feel, hidden dangers may still be present without your knowledges. This is why street-smart surfing is a basic prerequisite to keep yourself away from information threat-harboring websites.

If a website looks and feels spammy, it probably is, and you should bail out. Double check the URLs to see if any tell-tale (and usually deliberate) spelling mistakes point to a phishing site. Get a feel for the content of the website and its claims, and never be trigger-happy with links – especially downloads.

Automatic Protection: Antivirus Add-ons

You can only be so smart out on the mean streets of the world wide web, though. To get the best possible insurance against data theft or virus attacks, you should have measures in place to account for the unexpected. Chances are, you already have an efficient antivirus providing you with protection and a nifty firewall. If your antivirus software has yet to download its browser add-on that protects you while you actively surf the Internet, configure it to do so or carry out some research on how to enable the feature.

Software like AVG, Norton Antivirus or Malwarebytes Anti-Malware go to such lengths as double checking Google search results for you automatically – these can be a fantastic resource, so consider using them to protect your data.

Manual Protection: Checking Reputation

So you’ve made sure to keep your guard up and your antivirus says a website seems secure. You still have some doubts, though, so what now? You can double check the background of a website in multiple ways. Often finding reviews or testimonials from the Web can be enlightening, but otherwise, you can easily research the company behind the website by checking its contact information for a physical address and a contact number. You can also use free online tools to check who owns the website, when it was registered, and other details that can show you anything fishy.

Tools for Checking a Website’s Background

Checking a website’s background manually entails a bit of work, but with the right tools, you can be sure the website is legitimate.

  • Google. Always the first stop for most people when it comes to research, Google can find reviews, news, and other information about a website. Using other Google products like Maps and Local, you can also easily search a website’s contact information.
  • Domain information databases. WHOIS and hpHosts are among the most popular domain registration information sites that can dig up domain data for you.
  • Traffic statistic sites – Alexa, Compete, and sites that calculate for Google PageRank tell you how much authority the website has. Spammy, scammy websites will not have high authority rankings with these companies.

It’s a common misconception that with the modern technology available to consumers these days, information security and risk management measures are put in place automatically. Unfortunately this is not the case – but going the extra mile can save you a lot of problems in the future. Surf smart, use effective antivirus software, and manually check website’s reputation if you are ever in doubt.

SOPA Copyright Bill Has the Potential to Forever Change the Internet!

Posted by Les Scammell on February 25, 2012
Posted in: Politics. Tagged: , , , , , .

If you’ve been in touch with the online world lately, then you must have seen the entire buzz created by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) supporters and opponents fighting it over every social media networks available at their disposal. You can read about it on various fan pages on Facebook, or check the trending hash tags on Twitter. It’s everywhere! But there are other people who are totally disconnected with the online world and therefore have no idea what’s going on nowadays with all the SOPA drama. Many of them have no idea what the SOPA acronym even stands for. However, it is absolutely vital, that everyone has a clear understanding of this proposed bill and what the government is seeking to achieve with the implementation of this bill. It is vital that both sides of the story be considered rather than taking inspiration from the various campaigns all across social media. But one thing is surely for certain. This bill has the potential to forever change the way we use the internet and how we interact with each other through social media.

What is the Stop Online Piracy Bill?

This act was created to preserve and protect the intellectual property rights of those people who work so hard to make quality content for their businesses/customers so they can make their livelihoods. Even without this bill, any individual living in the United States can be suspected and put in prison on the basis of violating copyright laws but what about those who are in other countries and are therefore outside of the jurisdiction of the United States. Even if they are charged, they cannot be put in prison because the law of the land does not work that way. This is where SOPA comes in.

How can the use of SOPA be manipulated?

Everyone, including the opponents agree on the good intentions of the proposed SOPA bill which is to protect the rights of content creators and stop others from copying copyrighted content to their advantage. But the trouble starts when any person or company can take to the courts to file a case against any website for violating the copyright laws. That site will essentially be banned by search engines and restricted to access without even a court hearing or a fair trial! Worst still, the burden of proof will be on alleged website to clear its name rather than the other way round. This scenario is just one of the many reasons that online giants like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn have all come forward to support the opponents of the SOPA act.

Current DMCA effects on social media sharing

Right now, copyright laws are enforced by the DMCA act, which is short for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This allows the copyright holder to make a complaint about a certain website which will then be required to remove the content. Let’s say you upload your favorite ‘The Simpsons’ episode on YouTube after recording it with your VHS player. The copyright of course is not yours, but belongs to the entertainment channel, Fox. YouTube will be required to take down your video and a warning will be sent to you. No problems all around. However, you can imagine what sort of problems YouTube can get in to if the SOPA act is put in to place. It will nearly be impossible for YouTube or even Google to keep track of the videos being uploaded and check it for copyrighted content.

Written by Frederick, guest blogger and marketing specialist, interested in economics, web software, registry mechanic and films.