A new year has arrived and now would be the time to review how you do your online marketing and maybe make some changes for the coming year. It’s important to know that online marketing is an industry where change happens often. This is exactly the reason why online entrepreneurs need to adapt to the changing climate and review their strategies. Many are wondering about how the landscape of online marketing is going to change during this year. It should be known that changes aren’t usually drastic and take a few months to take effect. Here are some things that can be expected to happen during the year:

• Some E-Commerce Sites will Change their Business Models

2011 saw the rise of daily deal websites such as Groupon. There have also been many other sites that followed the same business model, some were targeted towards specific geographic areas, while others were centered around a specific line of product or services. The issue with these sites is that many merchants didn’t get the results that they wanted from them. Instead of getting customers that would be loyal and be willing to spend more at their business, they ended up with many freebie and discount seekers, which simply meant a net loss for them. As such, starting a daily deal website in 2012 is not really a good idea.

For those interested in promoting savings and deals, a return to more “classic” methods is expected to happen. Websites that would offer both printable and online coupons are expected to get more popularity. Also, websites which offer merchandise by a subscription model, such as book clubs and other sellers of items that consumers buy regularly are expected to grow, due to the fact that they can be quite profitable for the owners and also mean good savings for their subscribers.

• Social Media Marketing Will Rise Up and New Methods Will Become Popular

It probably won’t surprise anyone involved in the online marketing and advertising industries that social media marketing will get a lot of attention in 2012. New advertisers are expected to appear on social networking websites, including smaller businesses. Many small business owners, which are looking for targeted advertising options are going to consider advertising on social networking sites such as Facebook in order to get the customers that they need to keep their business running successfully. Another thing that attracts small businesses is that social media advertising can be less expensive than paid search advertising while remaining just as profitable if done correctly.

Social networking sites are considering new ad placement strategies, such as including ads in the middle of users news feeds. Also, advertising inside social media apps, such as games, dating plugins and other applications is expected to get some more attention from those who use social media to advertise. With all of this considered, if you don’t currently run social media ads, now would be a nice time to start doing so.

Previously, we’ve seen just how important targeting is when it comes to email marketing. However, many online marketers and entrepreneurs aren’t too sure about how to actually implement it as part of their online marketing campaigns. This is understandable, as there are actually few of them which truly segment their subscribers in order to deliver them personalized content when they send out email advertisements and newsletters. Here are some tips that will make it easy for you:

Maintain Separate Lists On Your Website or Different Websites

One of the most common mistake is putting in email submission boxes and capturing the client’s permission to email them on the checkout pages of all your websites, then putting all of these email addresses onto one big list. If you run websites that sell products that are very similar and which all target the exact same type of buyer, then this might be OK. However, it is better to keep separate lists for separate sites. Also, keep the email list that you got from customers that just signed up for your newsletter on your site without buying anything separate from the newsletter that you have for your paying customers.

Keep Track of What Your Customers Buy

If you have an e-commerce website that directly sells products to your customers, then keep track of who buys what. This will allow you to specifically tailor your promotions to them. Buyers who have purchased a specific kind of item are more likely to buy that type of item again, so if you include promotions on your products as part of the emails that you send to your list, you should show them products that are relevant based on their past purchases. This is something that’s already done by the leading e-commerce sites out there and is something you should definitely do as well.

Use Demographic Information

The most basic piece of demographic information that you could collect would be the country where the subscriber lives in. If you include affiliate offers as part of your emails, then this will ensure that you only include offers that accept traffic from that subscribers country. It could also allow you to display prices in the subscribers local currency. As for other demographics such as age, gender, income level, etc. you could include this as part of an optional survey when signing up for your mailing list or making a purchase. To increase the number of visitors that fill it out, you could offer a small discount or promotion of some sort.

Ask What Made Your Visitors Interested in Your Site

This is something else that’s good to include as part of the sign up survey. Ask your visitors what they’re looking for on your site and what they hope to buy in the future. This would allow you to create sub groups in your email list and then include offers and promotions that are relevant to these subscribers, thus making them more likely to actually buy something.

The content of your message is obviously an essential part for the success of your overall email marketing campaign. You need to plan what you’re going to be sharing with your readers from the start. Remember that if you bore them or otherwise make your readers uninterested with your message content, then this will reduce the effectiveness of your overall campaign even if you improve your messages later. Once readers stop reading your messages or view them as simply “junk”, they are unlikely to start paying any significant attention to them later on.

Here are some useful tips to deliver powerful content in all the messages that you send to your email marketing list readers:

• Don’t Simply Repeat What You Already Said

Many online marketers, webmasters and entrepreneurs that use email marketing also use other ways to get content in front of the eyes of prospective buyers. Website updates, blog posts, as well as posts on social media websites are all excellent ways to connect to your targeted audience. But you need to remember that many of those who are on your email list will already be subscribed to your social media page, or reading your blog from time to time. So if your emails are simply a repetition of what you already deliver through other channels, your email subscribers will start viewing your mails as “useless” and stop paying attention to them, even if you later change your practices.

It’s OK to link to your other communication channels, such as inviting a subscriber to read a blog post of yours. But don’t simply make your email messages a “repeater” of what’s on your other channels.

• Include Special, Email Only Promotions

People like to feel like they’re getting something special. This is why including discount codes, virtual coupons and other advantages that are exclusive to your email list members is great to keep readers interested in what you’re saying. Even if they won’t buy right now, they have a higher chance of opening your next emails just to see if there would be an item of special they would be interested in.

• Keep Messages Brief

People receive dozens of email daily. They don’t always have time to spend 15 minutes reading each message. If there is a long piece of content that you want to present to them, then include a meaningful description in your email and post the rest of the content on your website or blog, which would be linked to in your message. This allows yours readers to quickly see if they want to continue reading.

• Include Calls to Action

Just like on landing pages, including a call to action helps guide the reader to do what you want them to do. If you want the reader to check out some of the products on your site, tell them to do so. If you want them to provide more information to get a quote on a service, let them know in addition to providing the link to the relevant page on your site. Including a call to action is a great way to increase your conversion rates.

There are many things that you can do to have a successful email marketing campaign. Of course, getting good subscribers to your email list is one thing. The more subscribers you have, the more people you can deliver your message to. And the better quality these subscribers are, then the more likely they would be to buy something from your business. However, the quality of the list is only one part of being successful when it comes to using email for online marketing purposes. You also need to take some other elements under consideration.

• Use Quality List Management and Email Marketing Software

There are plenty of email marketing solutions out there, such as Aweber. These tools allow you to simplify your list management by automatically managing people opting in and out of your email list. Some also allow you to create sub groups within your email list, letting you segment your subscribers according to certain variables. Using software is quite useful if you have a large list, as it will automate many of the tasks and help you save time when you market by email.

• Choose the Subject Line Carefully

One thing that will determine whether or not a subscriber will actually read your email or not is the subject line. Sometimes, having a standard subject line such as “ACME Products – December Newsletter” will work, especially if your readers are looking forward to each newsletter as you provide them with news and updates that they find useful and relevant. You can also get more creative, of course, but then there are some things you need to keep in mind. Be as descriptive as possible in the subject line. Instead of “Super Promotion for You”, use a line such as “50% Off All Accessories and More”. This increases the chance that the reader will even bother opening your email. In any case, you need to consider the fact that your readers are probably on many other email lists as well, not just yours. So avoid using cheesy or deceptive lines such as “Your $1000 Payment is Waiting for You!”. Anyone who has used email has already seen this and this is a good way to get your mails ignored or marked as junk.

• The Message Content

Now, you need to focus on the actual content in your message. In order for your campaign to be an effective marketing tool, special attention needs to be paid to the message itself, so that your users will perform the action that you want them to, such as buying a certain product, reading one of the articles posted on your website or blog, requesting a quote or more information, clicking on an affiliate link for a product that you’re promoting, etc. Tomorrow, we will see some more information on how you can make sure that your message content is actually useful for your recipients and will give you a good chance of having the readers perform the action that you want them to do.

Many online marketing experts will tell you something like “the money is in the list”. Well, this is actually true if you have a mailing list of interested and targeted subscribers who actually see a need to buy the products that you are promoting. But having good subscribers and lots of them is not the only thing that need to be important for you if you have a mailing list and send out newsletters. Even having 100 000 subscribers on your list will not do you any good if they never click on any of your links or even read your messages. Here are a few tips that will help your interactions with your mailing list become more productive and profitable for you.

• Mind the Rate at Which You Send Out Your Messages

Unless you really need to send out daily updates for some reason (such as having a site that collects industry news each day), avoid sending out your newsletters too often. If they didn’t find anything too interesting in the first few days, many users will either unsubscribe or start ignoring your messages if you send them out too often. Remember, it is better to communicate with your list once a week and have some conversions on your products, rather than bombarding your subscribers with daily messages only to end up losing half of them before the month is over.

• Include a Calls to Action

This doesn’t only apply to items that you are selling, but also if you are just sending visitors to your website for something, such as to read one of your blog posts, or to watch a video. Including a call to action will make it more likely that they will go ahead and visit your site.

• Be Brief and Direct

Avoid making your email messages too long. People get dozens, sometimes hundreds of emails each day. They don’t always have the time to completely read each of them. If they see a wall of text, they just go into TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) mode and simply don’t pay any attention to the message. Keep your communications brief, direct and to the point. If you need to explain more or give additional information, link to a blog post or a page on your website. Websites and blogs are better made to convey longer information to your readers. Also, one of the goals of newsletters would be to get people on your site as well. From there, it is possible that they could buy something, or keep reading other things on your website for information on products and services that might be useful to them.

• Include Contact Information in Your Messages

It happens that subscribers sometimes forget who you are, especially if they are subscribed to many mailing lists. Include things such as your email address for questions, the URL of your main business website, as well as links to your social media profiles. It will remind your readers as to who you are and also will give a more “human” feeling to your message, with ways for people to contact you if they want to know more about something they saw in it.

Previously, we’ve seen quite a few ways to improve the overall conversion rates on your website. If you have an e-commerce site which sells something online, then conversions are obviously something that you want to have. Here are some more ways to increase your website‘s conversion rates in addition to what we’ve covered before:

• Optimize your website for mobile visitors

Depending on the geographical location of the visitors that you are targeting, as well as your niche, anywhere from 10% to 25% of website visitors will be using mobile devices such as smart phones. What does this mean to you? Quite simply, you need to make sure that your website will work well to someone who is using a mobile device to access it. All parts of your site should be functional on mobile browsers, especially the checkout process. If a visitor that is using a smart phone notices that your website is not loading as it should, then they will obviously go somewhere else, which is definitely not what you want when it comes to your sales.

• Find ways to capture visitors contact information

In most cases, this will be limited to just their e-mail address. It is also a good idea to give visitors a certain incentives in exchange for getting their e-mail. For example, you could have a contest where one of your subscribers will win a free product. Or if you offer intangible products, such as e-books or software, you could give a free trial of your software, or a free guide in exchange for the user signing up for your mailing list.

Some of you may think: how does this increase conversions? The user is not buying anything right now… Well, even though they are not making a purchase at the moment, they may very well return to buy something later on. By getting their e-mail address, you will obviously be able to send them a newsletter which contains information about your business, updates on your products and current promotions.

• Include videos on your site

Including videos on your website can increase conversions by giving your website a look of authority on your niche. These can include instructional videos, a presentation of what your business is, as well as customer testimonials. Whether the video should play automatically when your page is opened is still the topic of debate. Some believe that it simply annoys users to have to hear your video if they didn’t want to, while others say that it will focus the customers attention to the video. In any case, you can put up a video on your site and simply put in a call to action for the visitors to watch it if they want to.

If you follow the tips that were presented in this series, you should definitely see at least some improvements in your conversion rates. But of course, there are many other things that you can do, which are left only to your own creativity.

     The power of email marketing is vastly underappreciated by today’s business owners. It is not a technique that is strictly used by large corporations, on the contrary it can do wonders for small internet based businesses too. Through email marketing you can inform subscribers about upcoming product launches, promotions you are offering, and news related to your niche. This is a great way to advertise to consumers who are already interested in your niche and your products. Here are some considerations to remember when creating an email marketing campaign:

• Create emails that are relative to your niche and products. You can include tips, new technology, and information about your products and what they can do for your consumers.

• Send regular emails. A good rule of thumb is one email at least every 90 days but not more than one in a two week period.

• Add images and graphics that relate to your article topics. There are email templates to use, or you can design your own email marketing pages

• Include a business email and encourage your subscribers to give feedback and ask questions about your business or products. Be sure to give prompt feedback on any emails exchanged.

Email marketing is a free way for you to begin marketing your online business and it doesn’t require an intense amount of technical computer knowledge. Begin your relationship with your clients as repeat consumers are a great way to consistently develop revenue to your business and in your pocket.

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     One of the most successful email marketing software companies is Aweber communications. Aweber.com is centered around creating a strong relationship with customers so that a business owner can in turn generate revenues. Although there are fees associated with the products offered by Aweber, they are in no way going to take food from your mouth, instead these services are going to pay for themselves.

     Aweber has a strong and accurate autoresponse system that will take the worry out of managing a successful email campaign. All you have to do is create and email and assign a day when it will reach the members on your subscriber list. There are even services available to let you know how many people actually open your business emails or merely threw them in the trash bin.

     There is also a subscriber list service offered by Aweber that allows you to generate lists of subscribers based on categories that you group them into. You can create categories for new subscribers, previously purchased clients, and so on. This service also allows you to personalize your emails with the name of the recipient, making the client feel a little more valuable to your business.

     Additional services offered by Aweber include template emails, in case you are not creatively-inclined there are great templates for any business. Blog to newsletter creation is a genius implementation that allows you to take information from your websites blog and place it into your upcoming newsletter, this is a great way to highlight an important conversation with followers to your other consumers, and a great way to advertise your blog to subscribers.
  

     Just these few benefits should be enough to consider seeking out some of the services Aweber.com has to offer online businesses, especially if you need just a little more help with your marketing campaign.

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     When marking over the internet there is one form of marketing is virtually hand delivered to your previous consumers and subscribers, emails. Setting up a successful email marketing campaign is important for any online business and can help create repeat customers and drive revenues through the roof. In order to make use of email communications consider the following when setting up your marketing campaign:

• Use a reliable autoresponder system that can ensure your emails reach your intended subscribers at the appropriate intervals.

• Create subscriber lists that are appropriate to how you would like your emails sent. You might have a different email for previous buyers as opposed to new subscribers.

• Answer all concerns and questions of subscribers who email you. There is a level of respect that is generated between a consumer and seller, you expect subscribers to read your emails therefore you should do the same.

• Place links to your page in every email you send out that way if a product or idea peaks their interest you can direct them to the location on your site where they can purchase that product or find out more information.

• Keep your emails relevant to your niche or business interests. This will allow you to demonstrate your expertise in your area and can inform others of new and developing ideas related to your products.

     Remember that your emails should be informative and sent out at least once every 90 days to each subscriber. With these basic email marketing tips you can solidify your relationship with all of your subscribers.

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Email advertising is just one of the ways for you to get the word out, either about your own business or product, or about an affiliate offer that you are running. Unfortunately, this method of advertising is often associated with unsolicited email (spam) and as such is avoided by many marketers. But there are ways to leverage the power of email advertising and have great results, as long as you follow these tipis outlined below.

Make sure you are allowed to do it: If you are promoting an affiliate or CPA offer, be sure that the offer in question can be promoted by email and what the restrictions or rules are. Certain offers are barred from email promotions, while on certain others the messages and subject lines have to be entered exactly as provided by the merchant. If you fail to follow these instructions, at best you will be warned by your affiliate manager. At worst, you can get banned from the network outright and even lose all of the money that you have accumulated during the month.

Make sure you have permission to email these people: This means that they have opted in, either by entering their email on a dedicated box on your website, or were aware of the fact that they will receive promotional emails when registering for a site that you own. You should always keep the logs which include the timestamp, email and IP address associated with the subscription, as you may be asked for it if you are running affiliate offers.

Be wary of certain “email marketing” providers: Some companies may claim that they are able to send your message to “millions of targeted opt-in subscribers”. Unfortunately, in many cases these email addresses are simply scraped from the web to form a list. If not, they are sent to a list of emails that have opted in on a certain site (usually a contest or freebie site) which had a mention stating that “we may give your email to our promotional partners”. While this may not be against the rules of most offers, you will get poor results, as these lists have been sold and resold and resold again. Chances are your email will just end up in the recipient’s “Junk” folder or simply be deleted.

Don’t waste time with “paid to read” email providers: While all of these people did indeed opt-in to receive these mails, and the provider guarantees that people will click through to your site, you will once again get poor results, meaning little or zero conversions. Why? The people clicking on the link in your mail are earning points or a small sum of about half a cent to do so. They don’t care about what’s on your site and will close it just as soon as the timer runs out. You will indeed get a lot of traffic, but chances are none of it will convert anyways.

Whether you’re involved in email marketing or social media marketing, it can be extremely tempting to buy more friends or subscribers. Resist that temptation. A lot of companies offer thousands of subscribers, or friends for one “low low price”, but the ACTUAL price of those new subscribers and friends is much higher than you want to pay.

The first thing to keep in mind is that you have no way of knowing how those subscribers or friends were obtained. In the case of email addresses, the addresses could have been obtained either illegally, or at the very least, fraudulently. If that’s the case, well, we don’t need to explain to you why you don’t want any parts of that.

Social media friends could also have been obtained through nefarious means. If someone is offering you a lot of friends for a low price, it’s possible that all of these friends are either fake accounts, or accounts that have been hacked, and used as part of this deal. Again, if that’s the case, you don’t want any parts of it.

Let’s assume for a minute that all of the subscribers and friends you buy were obtained legally. If that’s the case, then you have no way of knowing how many of those email addresses, or social media accounts are still active. People abandon both every day, and there’s nothing stopping these companies from selling you inactive users.

Let’s assume that all the accounts were legally obtained, and that they’re all active. There’s still no way to know that all of the new subscribers or friends you’re buying will be interested in your products or services. You might very well be buying subscribers and friends that are just going to mark you as spam, and ignore you.

If enough people flag you as spam, then you’ll have a hard time getting your emails to make it to anyone’s inbox, and your social media accounts could get closed. In short, the price of those cheap friends and subscribers could be an extreme slow down in your online marketing efforts. In the long run, it’s just not worth it.

It takes a lot of effort to build up a good list, and once you have one built up, you have to be careful not to lose subscribers. You need to handle your newsletter the right way. The obvious thing to do with your newsletter is to promote your products and services, and while it is a good idea to do so, you have to do more than that. If you just send out sales emails, your subscribers will stop reading your emails, unsubscribe to your list, or even start flagging your emails as spam. To avoid losing readers, there are a few tings you can keep in mind.

Entertain And Inform

Do your best to entertain, and inform y our subscribers with your newsletter. Keep them informed of any interesting news happening in your niche, and if you come across an entertaining video, comic, or other article related to your niche, be sure to share it with your readers. If you can inform, and entertain your readers, they’ll open your emails every time they see one hit their inbox. In other words, you’ll have more eyes on your sales emails when you send them if you take the time to send out informative, or entertaining emails on a regular basis.

Updates To Your Site

Share any information about new features or products you plan to offer on your site in your newsletter. This type of information goes over well for sites that have blogs, or other methods for sharing information about your niche. When sharing information about site updates, it’s important to keep it clear and concise. Don’t ramble on about the changes you’re making, just give your readers the primary details.

Sales Information

You’re going to want to send out promotional emails to your subscribers, but you have to be sure to present that information the right way. If you’re sending out a promotional email, be sure to lead in with your best or most exciting offer. Don’t make your readers scroll through a  lot of information before showing them the best promotion you have to offer. Also, keep your promotions clear, and concise, and don’t leave out any essential details. If there are exceptions to a sale you’re running, be sure to mention them in the sales email. A well constructed sales email will bring in more sales than you might think.

Using your email newsletter the right way can do great things for your website. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll have a newsletter that your subscribers are happy to read.

Your squeeze page (or opt in page) is your way of introducing your visitors to your email list, and as such, it needs to have a few specific elements in place in order to convince them to sign up. People get a lot of email each day, and convincing them to sign up for another mailing list isn’t always easy, but if you have all the right elements in place, you’ll get as many new subscribers as you can.

Headline

Right at the top of the page, you should have an attractive headline. Your headline should be brief – one sentence is enough. It should also be catchy. For example, instead of something like “These five training modules will help you learn the PHP programming language” you might want to use something like “Learn PHP in just FIVE steps”. That way, the viewer will get excited about your list, and they’ll be more inclined to sign up.

Bullet Points

Instead of forcing your readers to wade through paragraphs upon paragraphs of text to find out why they should care about your list, give them the major highlights of your product in a bulleted list. That way they can get a clear picture of what you’re offering right away. To be clear, include the paragraphs that describe things in more detail, just do so after the bulleted list.

Opt In Box

You should have an opt in box for your list right at the top of the page. You don’t want to make your readers scroll down the page if they know they’re interested in signing up. The further down the page you put the opt in box, the less likely your readers are to sign up for your list. Keep that in mind as you lay out your squeeze page.

Putting these elements in place on your opt in page will help you get more subscribers to your list. Email marketing is getting more and more challenging, but by setting up a strong squeeze page, you can still use it effectively. Remember, include a strong headline, a bulleted list of benefits to the customer, and put your opt in box near the top of the page. Doing those things will help you to be successful with email marketing.

There’s no question about it, email marketing is extremely challenging. A lot of emails wind up in spam folders without ever getting looked at, which means that all the work that went into that email was for nothing. If you want the time you spend creating your emails to count, you have to take a few steps to ensure that your emails will get read, rather than deleted, or flagged as spam.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that you’re never going to get everyone to read your emails and respond to them by buying your products and visiting your site. Almost everyone gets a lot of newsletters, and other promotional emails in their inbox every day, and they’re just not going to read every one. You can increase the chances that yours will get read by working to build a relationship with your subscribers.

In order to build a relationship with your subscribers, you have to give them some really strong reasons to keep opening your emails. For starters, be sure to do more than just send advertisements to them. Send out emails with interesting information about your niche. Link to any news that might be of interest to your subscribers, and maybe even give them your take on it. Do everything you can to both inform, and entertain your readers instead of just advertising to them. If they see that you’re sending out great information, they’ll be more likely to keep reading your emails as they show in their inboxes.

It’s also a good idea to engage your subscribers in a conversation. For example, you could include a poll in one email, and the results of that poll in the next email. That way, you can get some useful user feedback, and engage the reader. When you ask your subscribers questions, and include them in what’s going on with your company and your products, you create a feeling of inclusion in the reader. If they feel like a part of your company, and they feel like they’re engaged by your emails, they will be more inclined to keep reading your emails.

It can be tough to keep your emails from getting lost in the sea of messages in your subscribers’ inboxes, but if you work to inform and engage your subscribers, you’ll find that they pay attention to your emails.