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Strongmail Survey Reveals 2010 Email Marketing Trends
Dec 10th
Another survey, this one conducted by Strongmail during the latter part of November, has concluded that email marketing will be a major contender amongst online marketing solutions in 2010. Quite a few surveys released recently lend further proof to these findings.
In an article posted by Karen J. Bannan on btobonline.com, she writes:
What will they be spending their dollars on? Social media and e-mail marketing are the top two areas, with 69% of respondents saying they will be increasing e-mail spending; 59% saying they would be increasing social media efforts; and 69% saying they would be integrating social media and e-mail marketing. They will do so using several strategies, said Kristin Hersant, StrongMail’s director of corporate marketing.
Read the full article about the email marketing survey here.
Learn more about email marketing and how it can benefit your business.
Email Marketing & Social Media Marketing Big Winners this Holiday Season
Dec 6th
For online retailers and consumers, it’s been no big surprise that email marketing has been the online marketing solution of choice this past year, and especially this holiday season. Cost-effective and quick, email marketing was utilized heavily by thousands of online companies, and their efforts gathered momentum in recent months as they vied to increase brand awareness and and capture consumers during the holiday shopping season.
But social media marketing has also entered the picture in a big way this year, and an increasing tide of companies are quickly realizing the online marketing potential. Both email marketing and social media marketing are forecasted to increase in 2010, especially for small business, to whom the cost efficient marketing solutions hold wide appeal.
A recent survey by VerticalResponse Inc. provides evidence of this, stating that “74.1% of respondents plan to increase their use email marketing and 68.3% will increase their use of social media in 2010.” The complete details of the small business online marketing spending plans survey can be found on MediaPost.
Three Tips for Increasing the Visibility of Your Linked:In Profile
Dec 1st
Linked:In can be used to find jobs, new leads, clients or customers, gain valuable information related to your industry, and more, but of course, in order to achieve any of these goals, ample time must be spent associated with others on the site (it is a SOCIAL media site, after all). Additionally, Linked:In can be very lucrative for those who know how to properly optimize their profile for increased visibility.
Display your website along with keywords on your Linked:In profile
Linked:In is all about networking, and getting your information in front of others who might find it interesting and/or useful. To help you accomplish this, Linked:In allows you to showcase a link to your website, along with a tagline that can be customized to include keywords or key phrases, thus increasing the chances of your profile ranking high in organic search results. Additionally, you can also showcase your blog, and any additional websites you deem valuable.
Syndicate your blog feed on your Linked:In profile
If you desire, you can also syndicate your blog feed directly on your Linked:In profile page by utilizing the blog feed application made available through Linked:In (access this through the “Edit Profile” page.)
Display your Twitter account and Twitter updates on your Linked:In profile
Linked:In, like many other social networking sites, now also works in conjunction with Twitter. Display your Twitter account on your profile, as well as any Twitter updates if that is your preference. This can also be especially useful if you make sure to insert keywords into your tweets!
Email Marketing: Critical Factors and New Trends. How Well Do You Know Them?
Nov 26th
November 11, 2009
Recent years have shown a significant increase in the use of email marketing campaigns by both major corporations and small businesses. As new email marketing trends continue to emerge, the practice is expected to grow another 15% this year.
But companies must be ever vigilant in how they approach email marketing, including message content, managing targeted email lists, and tracking the effectiveness of each campaign, whether it consists of a single email message or multiple messages throughout a period of time.
Because email marketing is cost-efficient and low-risk, it is fast becoming a favored marketing strategy over many other online marketing solutions, such as PPC or SEO. However, it can be a wasted effort if a company’s email messages are not constructed properly, or if they are simply blanketed across a single list without proper study of the target market. Additionally, many messages may not even make it to their intended recipient, as most email programs offer users wider control over message filtering.
An effective email marketing campaign can yield a high ROI and be a worthy investment. The most effective email campaigns are typically comprised of messages that contain creative, engaging content, as well as clear, concise information, and a method for allowing readers to make a further commitment to receiving your messages or visiting your corporate website.
Active Web Group Expands It’s Web Presence with Web 2.0 and Informative Newsletters
Nov 19th
Hauppauge, NY, November 19, 2009 –(PR.com)– Active Web Group, a full-service web marketing firm located in Long Island, NY, has always prided themselves on being an innovator in the online marketing solutions industry, and regularly embraces cutting-edge, advanced marketing strategies such as Pay-Per-Ranking. So it’s no surprise to find AWG also utilizes Web 2.0 to further expand its strong online presence.
With many companies only touching their toes to the Web 2.0 waters, or avoiding the pool completely, Active Web Group has jumped in head first, spreading ripples through Facebook, Twitter, and Linked:In.
Just as Active Web Group understands that one of the key fundamentals of a successful website design is rich content, they’ve applied the same principles to their Web 2.0 presence. Focusing on delivering quality content to attract followers, rather than spamming techniques employed by other companies and individuals, they regularly update their pages with interesting news topics related to the online marketing industry, encompassing both national and local Long Island news.
What Search Engines Don’t Like About Your Website
Nov 11th
You may not know it, but you could be hindering or preventing your website from being crawled by search engine spiders. As spiders crawl the web, they rely on the architecture of hyperlinks to find new web pages and revisit those that may have changed. Complex links and deep site structures with little unique content may act as “speed bumps” in the process by slowing down the spiders. Even worse, data that cannot be accessed by web crawlers are really like “walls” in that they completely prevent your web pages from being ranked.
Beware of the Following “Speed Bumps”:
- URLs with 2+ dynamic parameters; i.e. http://www.url.com/page.php?id=4&CK=34rr&User=%Tom% (spiders may be reluctant to crawl complex URLs like this because they often result in errors with non-human visitors)
- Pages with more than 100 unique links to other pages on the site (spiders may not follow each one)
- Pages buried more than 3 clicks/links from the home page of a website (unless there are many other external links pointing to the site, spiders will often ignore deep pages)
- Pages requiring a “Session ID” or Cookie to enable navigation (spiders may not be able to retain these elements as a browser user can)
- Pages that are split into “frames” can hinder crawling and cause confusion about which pages to rank in the results.
Beware of the Following “Walls”:
- Pages accessible only via a select form and submit button
- Pages requiring a drop down menu (HTML attribute) to access them
- Documents accessible only via a search box
- Documents blocked purposefully (via a robot meta tag or robots.txt file)
- Pages requiring a login
- Pages that re-direct before showing content (search engines call this cloaking or bait-and-switch and may actually ban sites that use this tactic)
In order to avoid the above pitfalls and ensure that your website’s contents are fully crawlable, be sure to provide direct, HTML links to each page you want the search engine spiders to index. Remember to make every page of your site accessible from the home page, since the home page is usually the place spiders begin their crawl. It’s also a good idea to add a sitemap to your website in order to increase its navigation.
For More Information CLICK HERE
This article was written by David Montalvo, Senior SEO and Director of Business Development at Active Web Group.
Five Simple Ways to Increase Website Traffic
Nov 5th
1. Thoroughly examine the features of your website. Ask yourself if some things are totally necessary, and if there is anything that might be missing. More importantly, is your website user-friendly? Imagine yourself a user visiting the website for the first time. Is navigation easy? Can you find what you are looking for quickly? It’s understandable that you might be proud of your website and object to making any changes, but at the same time, ego should never stand in the way of progress.
2. Keep information fresh, concise, and interesting. Visitors to your site don’t want to wade through several paragraphs of information to find the one key element they might be searching for. Cut out the fluff and give them exactly what they want.
Additionally, maintain an area of your site to provide interesting, industry-related news, expanded product information, or articles and press releases. This type of rich, informative content is what keeps users coming back, and also serves to increase brand awareness. It also reinforces your image as an authority in your relative industry.
3. Analyze the best and the worst of your site, and make any necessary changes. Utilize your in-house website technician or an outside source if necessary to analyze your site for things like broken links, pages that display incorrectly, pages that load slowly because they might contain too many pictures, movies, music, etc., and other factors that may annoy and frustrate visitors.
Additionally, analyze what areas of your site appear to be the most popular: which pages are users visiting the most, which pages do they spend most of their time on, and perhaps most important, how are they discovering and arriving to your site. Knowing these things can give you greater insight into what paths to take to ensure your website traffic remains consistent, and what steps you might take to keep it growing.
4. Build a community. Whether you utilize the advantages of social networking, or pass out business cards at a tradeshow, or even if you start a conversation with someone in passing on the street, there is potential to build your community. Consider everyone you meet, speak to, email or connect with a potential visitor to your site. Remain active in your community. Engage, interact, ask and answer questions, send out newsletters, start a blog, leave comments on other blogs (with a signature linking back to your site), etc. There are endless possibilities enabling you to build and expand your community.
5. Repeat steps 1-4. Regardless at how successful your efforts might be to increase traffic and improve your website, there is likely still always room for improvement. Set dedicated intervals to refocus your efforts on the above steps. The Internet is constantly changing, and competition is always active, possibly engaged in the same thorough examination, analysis, and community building as you. You must remain ever vigilant to ensure that your website traffic does not decline as you lose visitors to the competition or as a result of other factors, such as outdated information or lack of contact with the community.
Russell And Miller, National Clothier Supply, Shopsalesigns, and More Go Live on ‘Superengine’ Website
Nov 2nd
New Century Direct (NCD*), a manufacturer and direct marketer of archival quality storage products and printed merchandising products, through its strategic partnership with Active Web Group, converts five websites to New Century Direct’s new ‘superengine’ web technology.
In addition to creating the ‘superengine’, the Active Web Group helps supports NCD’s team in building three main marketing platforms of improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO), managing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs, and creating targeted email blasts with unique and compelling promotions.
Findley continues, “Each one of the ‘superengines’ marketing efforts have a positive ROI. We will continue to drop catalogs in a manner that supports the dual approach of a modified catalog circulation plan with aggressive web marketing techniques.”
Beat This Economy And Your Competition Tip #5
Oct 30th
Email Marketing
Email marketing is cost-efficient, effective, quick, and easy. Create email lists based on specific target markets and launch a campaign based on those particular markets. Have that newsletter yet? Email it. Wrote a press release about a new product, or an important industry event? Email it. People spend a good portion of their day reading email, and if your emails are creative, informative, and engaging, you can reach thousands in an instant. For more information about the benefits of email marketing, visit Active Web Group.
Depending upon the nature of your business, there may be other things you can do to increase revenue and beat the competition, but these five fundamental concepts should be applicable to any company.
Follow Active Web Group on Twitter, and be sure to sign up for Marketing Tips.
Beat This Economy And Your Competition Tip #4
Oct 29th
Offer Information
You might offer a great product or service, but couple that with valuable information, and you’ve got a winning combination that keeps customers coming back consistently. Offer a newsletter on at least a monthly basis, create press releases, and start a blog and keep it regularly updated with industry-related news and information. Many businesses tend to underestimate the high value of a regularly updated blog or periodic newsletter. These simple company expansions are a great way to reign in new customers and keep the existing ones.
