By : Admin

This world has become a smaller place with the advent of internet. Internet has given wings to communication and business. A large volume of people uses internet these days in their business. If you are one of them you need to know that when you are dealing on internet as a means of marketing, you are not dealing with robots but with humans. These humans have a real world tendency of ignoring ads.

To be really successful with your email marketing campaigns it is must to avoid certain mistakes that are prevailing but overlooked. Generally companies do a lot for their e-mail campaigns, they build or buy e-mail lists, recruit people, buy software but leave out on really tiny but important things. You need to pay attention to seemingly little things as they can make or mar a campaign. Here are few of them.

1. Poorly written offers: Even the giants make this mistakes. They send poorly drafted e-mails to the people on their lists. This gives people a cue of unprofessionalism. Its not hard to imagine how many sales would the companies like Wal-mart or McDonalds would loose if they send in the poorly drafted mails to their clients. What actually happens, a poorly drafted e-mails containing your offer is a huge loss of your sales. You need to treat your customer like king and prepare well-crafted offers for them. Remember Your offers have to be crafted so well that even your clients will be very impressed.

2. Frequency: Another most often made mistake is sending e-mails too frequently. In the name of e-mail marketing, unnecessary flooding of customers inbox with adverts of products and services, might get you off their lists. They might turn down your genuine offer thinking it a spam. You must have a darn good reason behind sending too frequent mails otherwise it might hurt your campaign badly.

3. No Response: This is another big reasons why most of the e-mail marketing campaigns fails. Your reason behind not replying may be genuine as you may be busy doing other important chores but do not forget that the customer is king, so try to take out sometime to reply to their mails. A genuine customer needs a lot of questions to be answered and not replying to mails on time may take an opportunity out of your hands. Make sure you reply promptly as it will only bolster your business relation with them.

4. Proper Format: Most of the marketers do not create their mails in text, HTML or PDF format and hence lose on the opportunities. It is noteworthy here that a majority of people likes to read the mails in text format and then PDF and HTML. So it will be beneficial for you and your business to devote a little extra time on crafting your mails in proper format. Also, try to make them in more than one format so that you could reach out a large number of people.

5. Buy Immediately cliche: Try no to indulge in this practice. When people subscribe to your ezine or newsletter, they want full value of their money. It is advisable not to deviate from your prime goal- providing high quality information. If you will do so, you may lose a huge number of clients and may find it difficult to get their trust back.

Try not to overlook these aspects of email marketing and then see, your e-mail marketing campaign will never be a failure. Do not just know them but try to imbibe them in you campaign. These tips could literally save your campaign and not only put more money in your pocket than you could have ever thought; it will create for you, a loyal following of customers and clients who trust you!

By : Nidhi Gupta

Although networking on sites like Facebook, Yahoo 360, and My Space can be a lot of fun, there are drawbacks to becoming members of these, and other, general social networking sites.

First is the large number of people on these sites. My Space alone boasts 100 million plus members. Facebook is growing in popularity, and Yahoo is already the number one site online and has been for years.

You can also waste a lot of time on these sites. With all of the fun things to do, like games (Yahoo), and videos and music (My Space), you can spend a lot of time just surfing around and goofing off on these sites instead of promoting your business.

That’s why you may want to join one or two specialty sites. Unlike My Space, or Yahoo 360, on a specialty site, everyone is there for a specific purpose, or at least a specific topic. What’s important here is that you won’t have to deal with some of the things on a specialty site that you deal with on a general site. This includes too much content, as well as people who want to befriend you who clearly have no interest in the things you are interested in. Usually people who don’t share your interests simply want to spam you with their offers, rather than taking the time to target their markets.

Here are three reasons to consider signing up for a topic specific social networking site:

1. Your market is much more targeted.

   If you’re a business owner who wants to sell more of your products and services, you’re less likely to have to deal with those who are looking to make friends or find dates (Unless of course you offer dating services). Although there are some sites out there, like Christian sites, or dating sites, where you can make friends or find dates, most of these sites will be centered around the topic, not about building social relationships.

2. It’s easier to find those you want to meet.

   Since these sites deal with a specific topic, many will ask you to provide in your profile what you’re looking for, as well as what you’re offering. Although this isn’t always necessary, or mandatory, it will assist those who are looking for you to find you. It will also help you find those who are looking for your products and services.

3. You may be safer on these networks than others.

   Most social networks require that you do some kind of activation, which means that you have to provide a valid email address and confirm that you are joining. Some may even ask you to answer certain questions in order to qualify you before joining. Some sites you join may even require that you meet certain qualifications, as well as pay dues in order to become a member. The more exclusive a site is, the less likely your profile will be seen by those you don’t want to associate with. You’ll be paired only with those you want to meet.

Regardless of your reasons for joining a social network, whether it’s for fun or business, you should try out different networks until you find the one that’s right for you.

By : Nidhi Gupta

Yahoo Pipes, to date, seems one of those unsung tools that could really be useful, especially to SEOs. Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.

Uses of Yahoo Pipes:

1. Aggregate multiple related web feeds.
2. Filter for desired topics.
3. Sort multiple feeds by date, to aid in detecting temporal trends (topics).
4. Sort by keywords in feed item titles.
5. Sort by member who submitted the story, in the case of social bookmarking sites.

Building a Pipe

You can make a Pipe by dragging pre-configured modules onto a canvas and wiring them together in the Pipes Editor.

Each Pipe consists of two or more modules, each of which performs a single, specific task. For example, the Fetch module will retrieve a feed URL, while the Sort module will re-order a feed based on criteria you provide.

Each module has one or more terminals, represented by small circles in the interface. You can wire modules together by clicking on one module’s output terminal and dragging the wire to another module’s input terminal. Once the terminals are wired together the output from the first module will serve as input to the second module.

In addition to data feeds, Pipes also lets you add user input fields into your Pipe. These show up at runtime as form fields that users of your Pipe can fill in.

Read the rest of this entry »