Email Deliverability Tips – Autoresponders

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliver-ability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & White-listing

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific white-listing programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliver-ability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

The ‘Amazon’ Jungle – Amazon Website

Amazon is amazing. It’s like eBay, but you don’t have to worry about being out bid on a product. You can just outright purchase the product. You can find everything from books, music, beauty, electronics, to things industrial. You can find nearly everything you need right there on one place. It’s like a jungle of goods on there.

To buy on Amazon you need to go to amazon.com and create an account. All you need to create an account on Amazon is your name, an email address, your birth date, and the ability to create a password. Once you get around the site, viewing several things that you like it will give you recommendations on what they think that you would like. It’s a very useful option to have if you aren’t exactly sure what you are looking for just yet.

In your buyers account they have several links that you can link on including your Browser History, which shows you the products that you have viewed. Recommendation for You, which shows you products that they recommend for you off the products you have already viewed. It also includes, Rate These Items, Improve Your Recommendation, Your Profile, Your Community, and a Learn More link.

If you are unsure about whether or not you want to purchase something, or you are just making your Christmas List there is a button called the Gift & Wish Lists, which you can send some of the products on Amazon there. It allows you to basically save what you are looking at for later views.

They also have a convenient Deal of The Day in which they show you an item which has been lowered in price. Which saves you money on items that usually cost a little bit more. You can save money, and buy the items you love.

Amazon accepts American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, EuroCard, Visa, Visa Check Cards, Amazon gift cards, bank account payments, Amazon Store Card, and Amazon Gift card claim codes as payments on anything you purchase off of Amazon. They currently do not accept PayPal, international wire transfers, or Smart Cards.

If you are looking to sell on Amazon there are a few things that you need to know. You have to sign up on Amazon for a sellers account. If you only plan on selling a little bit of stuff it is only .99 cents per sale plus a referral fee. If you plan on selling a lot of stuff then you can get a monthly plan with Amazon for 39.99 a month. That last plan is usually for sellers who expect to sell more than 40 items a month.

How you sell on Amazon is pretty much straight-forward. First, off you select the plan that you prefer. Then you start uploading your inventory to the website. Once you upload your inventory to Amazon then your customers can view your products. Once your customers view your products they can purchase them. Then you ship the products to there address, and once the customer gets there products you then get paid for that product.

There is help and support on Amazon in case you run into a problem. They will help you figure out what happened wrong, and what you can do to reverse it, and get it right. There are also tutorials in case you are totally lost in what you are doing. They have tutorials on everything that you need to know about starting your own business on Amazon. Customers can go on and review the products that are put up on Amazon as well.

There is really no end to Amazon. You can find everything that you want, and even sell those things that you don’t need or want anymore. Amazon is flexible and can do many things. Amazon is an experienced website which can work for you.

Twitter Me Happy

Twitter is the newest craze. From teenagers, to grandparent, to movie stars, to comedians it seems everybody is using Twitter these days. In fact, so do I. Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with friends, family, celebrities, and even those long lost pen pals, if they have Twitter that is.

On Twitter after you make your account with them you can go search to find people, or just invite them with your email address to you email contacts. Twitter is unique in a point that you can find people from Soulja Boy, in style Magazine, NY Times, to E! Online. You can add your friends, celebrities, and nearly anything you can think of.

With Twitter you just basically upload status messages, or how you are doing at the moment messages. It’s a great way to tell others how, or what you are doing. You can also go and look at how your friends are doing as well.

When you find your friends you can “follow” them, but that doesn’t mean they are following you back. They have that option to follow you back if they would like too. So you can be following more people, then people are following you.

You can reply to your follower’s tweets as well. A Tweet if basically your status message, of how you’re doing message. That’s what the formal term is. You can easily reply by typing @user’s twitter account information. That way you can reply and have a conversation about that tweet with the person that tweeted that message, and any other people that replied to that tweet.

In your Twitter profile you can also get messages sent directly to you from other people. It’s usually just as easy as @user’s twitter account information. That way you can directly send messages that you only want them to reply to. Like a private message of sorts.

Twitter has become famous quickly. It has nearly every celebrity and non-celebrities on there. It even has NASA. Yes, NASA tweets. It is estimated that Twitter has well over a million users who are Tweeting and following other twitter users. That’s a lot of user’s for a website that was launched in August of 2006. It has gained quite a bit of publicity and followers over the span of a few years which in of itself should testify to its popularity. There is also the fact that almost every big named celebrity has a Twitter, and there are even commercials and announcers announcing there twitter on live television.

Many people around the world use Twitter. It’s an easy way to get in touch with other people, to know where other people are, and in general talk with other people. You can upload pictures onto a special Twitter board, and even comment about everything someone posts. Twitter is popular beyond any doubt because in the few years it has gained quite a following. Are you next in line to tweet?

XSitePro – Complete Guide To Website Building course

I hope I am not late with this post, where I want to inform you about this great new webinar from XSitePro.

I am excited to let you know about the webinar they are organizing for this Tuesday, the 20th of October, at which they are going to be running through the “Complete Guide To Website Building” course.

It’s sure to be a thrilling webinar.

Here’s what it will be covering:

1. Who the course is aimed at helping

2. How they’re going to benefit from the course

3. What’s included in the training

4. How the delivery platform works

5. Details of the support on offer to trainees

6. Pricing and guarantee information

And their exciting set of bonuses that they are bundling…

…and these bonuses are not “free PDFs” or some other low-value thrown-in… they are quality additional benefits for:

- The First 100 fast acting signups, and;

- The First 1000 trainees through the door

Oh, and did I mention that they will also be giving away another TEN complete courses to ten lucky webinar attendees?

That is a HUGE deal for anyone who is been struggling up to now!

Here is the link to this great webinar - A Complete Guide To Website Building course

KPMRS Free SEO Tool – KeyWord And Website Rank Checker

I recently chanced upon this new website rank checking tool called KPMRS that has been making waves in the online marketing community and the Google top-ranking lists alike. This nifty service allows you to check your Website Rankings for particular keywords on popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, all at one place.

Apart from website rank monitoring, KPMRS.com offers a multitude of clever features for your website such as Google Page Rank checker, Alexa Rankings, Back Links tracking and the newest addition to their growing arsenal – the Social networking popularity of your website. KPMRS also dispatches weekly reports of the rank changes of your website for the UK and the US separately, to your Inbox.

According to the buzzword, KPMRS will also be launched on your iPhone soon. Ergo, check this website out pronto! And watch this space. This could be big.

- KPMRS Widget – Share Your Website Rankings With Your Site Visitors

A a handy widget to share how your search engine rankings in last 7 days, with your website visitors.

- Website Rankings Chart

Trendy flash charts to show your search engine rankings over the period of time.

- Share Website Ranks On Facebook

Share your website rankings with your friends and groups on Facebook.

- Website Rankings Email Report

Receive email notifications whenever your website rankings change.

- Social Media Popularity Of Your Website

Find out how popular is your site on social networking and bookmarking websites like twitter, delecious, technorati, stumbleupon. Monitor what people are talking about your website.

- Website Rankings Weekly Report On KPMRS

This is how a weekly report of your website rankings will look. It shows all the sites and keywords with their search engine rankings.

- Website Ranking Tool

KPMRS is a website ranks tracker tool for internet marketers, SEO consultants or anyone having a website. Check your search engine rankings for free

New Marketing Strategies for Tough Economic Times

When economic times get tough, it may be time to rethink your marketing strategies. Even when there are big job losses and large corporations go bankrupt, these challenges can be overcome and profit is still a possibility for businesses of all sizes.

You need to analyze your own business, market trends and seek out ways to tap into new markets. Companies must react to the new economic conditions by proactively seeking out new opportunities, both domestically and in the international arena.

Analyze Your Business

Markets are forever changing: some of your customers may take more interest in your wares, whilst others may not – that is the nature of business and often you may not know why sales are fluctuating from customer to customer.

Indeed, you can’t rely on your existing customers alone. So how can you change your marketing strategy to entice new clients on board?

Well, ask yourself the following questions and you will be heading in the right direction:

1. Which are your most popular services/products?
2. Where are your clients located?
3. How did they hear about you?
4. Why do they choose your services?
5. What advantages do you have over your competitors?
6. What advantages do your competitors have over you?

Analysis and customer feedback is essential in helping you come up with a viable marketing plan. But there are a number of other fast, effective strategies that companies can implement that ensures they can maximize their sales from new clients.

Lingo24, a successful global translation company based in the UK, entered new markets by setting up foreign language web sites in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and France and sales increased significantly in these countries immediately.

The initial investment was minimal; the web sites were translated and localized and the services were adapted to suit the local markets, costing only a couple of hundred pounds for each language.

How to Go International

Even small business should consider developing new sales channels for their businesses on the international market. The internet is accessible to everyone across the globe and launching websites in other countries is a small initial outlay that can yield a big return on investment.

Having a website in English is practical; however the English language internet is highly competitive. Launching a website in a different language may open up new sales opportunities and the foreign language internet offers greater opportunities to rank highly on search engines for key search terms.

So where do you start?

1. First and foremost, try to get a full understanding of the market.
2. Talk to any customers you may have abroad and ask if your product/service may be interesting to other clients in their country.
3. Analyze foreign markets to see what you would be up against. Find out who would your major competitors be and what they are up to.
4. Use keyword research tools from Google and Yahoo to identify what terms potential customers use in other countries.
5. Write web copy in your own language and have someone translate it for you in the target language(s).
6. Last but not least, use professional website localization services to ensure you get your message across.

Lingo24 is the UK’s fastest-growing translation and website localization company with operations in four continents covering every industry sector.

Logo Evolution – The Pepsi Story

When we are born, we are given an identity and that identity is our name. This isn’t something we are not aware of, nor were the people in the early days. However, they were not aware of the fact that creating identities for their businesses is exactly the same as naming a person and hold similar benefits. Later in the 13th century, people realized the need for creating different ciphers which they carved on the coins to do trade. They felt that there should be something they could do trade with, other than the exchange of goods with other men. They wanted to differentiate their goods with others. How could they do it?

They started by creating coins with carved in ciphers. All were different from one another to avoid confusion. Besides, they started creating different stamps to use as their trademark. They used to have simple designs on their currencies and stamps which benefitted them a lot. From there onwards they realized the significance of creating identities for their businesses. People expanded their trades and converted them into industries. This is how industries started evolving and with that, the need to give them recognition was felt.

However, with the advancement of time and technology, those trademarks started to convert into proper logo designs and amongst those logo designs, evolved brands…Remarkable brands!

With time many companies gained popularity and recognition partly because of their brand identities, which proved to be unique and creative. Today, professional logo for any business organization is considered a must.

There is a mushroom growth of businesses now a days. Every other person starts his/ her business on a small level but no matter how small your business is, you need to have a logo for it. And with time you further have to evolve your logo by modifying it to take your business to the next level.

Have a look at how Pepsi worked on its logo from 1898 till date:

Let’s get on with an example of one of the biggest soft drinks company, Pepsi and see how this company has adopted the idea of creating an identity for itself and to what extent it has been modified over time.

In 1980’s, Pharmacist Celeb Bradham started this company by the name of ‘Brad’s drink in New Bern, North Carolina. He had no company logo by that time, which proved good for him since he soon realized that there should be some other name for his company, so he changed it to ‘Pepsi-Cola’ and decided to have a registered logo for it which is visible in the 1898 logo.

The new name Pepsi-Cola became so popular among the masses that it was trademarked in 1903 and hasn’t been changed till date. In 1905, Bradham decided to modify the font type of the logo to make it more readable. However, there were no design changes as such.

One year later, he thought to add the word ‘Drink’ in the logo and made the fonts bolder than before.

In 1933, the company was bought by Loft, Inc. The company changed the bottle size from 6 to 12 oz. and came up with the ‘Refreshing and Healthful’ logo. The word ‘Drink’ was again removed from the new Pepsi-Cola logo.

However, the major breakthrough in the Pepsi logo design came in 1940’s. Walter Mack, the CEO of Pepsi came up with the idea of a new bottle design, with a crown having the Pepsi logo. The ‘Pepsi Globe’ emerged when USA was in WWII, and to support the country’s war efforts, Pepsi had a blue, red and white logo. This logo became hugely popular, and went on to be the identifier for the company.

As a result, in 1950 and 1962, this bottle cap with the swirling blue and red became prominent in the company logo. During the 1960’s when it became even more popular, the script was changed from the curly red, and the main attraction was on the bottle cap in the logo.

We see the first appearance of the Pepsi Globe instead of the bottle cap in 1973. The typeface was made smaller so as to fit in the globe. The Pepsi Globe was “boxed in”, with a red bar coming in from the left and a light-blue bar coming in from the right.

Later in 1991, the typeface was moved from inside the globe. The red bar was lengthened and the typeface came on the top of the globe.

The white background in the logo was replaced by the blue color, which also resulted in dropping the red horizontal band in 1988. The globe now had 3D graphic and larger than earlier versions. The name ‘the Pepsi Globe’ was given to the logo since both Pepsi and the globe were touching each other.

After 1998, Pepsi changed its logo and gave the globe more prominence than the script itself. So, the globe came on top of the script in 2003.

And now in their current logo they have removed the script altogether. The logo has a central white band arcing at different angles with red and blue parts on either side.
This is how Pepsi has modified its logo overtime. Though the transitions were subtle but they kept giving their logo a fresher look to keep the brand alive. Do write in the comments section if there is anything you can add to it or give your examples of how other company logos evolved with time.

Author’s bio:
This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.