There are 3 advantages that really stick out especially in regarding to your business, data collection, and building an e-mail marketing campaign; low-cost, tracking, and opt-in.

Every company looks for the most efficient way to advertise at the lowest possible costs. Communicating via email has many of the advantages of traditional direct mail but with much lower costs.

Being able to tracking how effective an email marketing campaign is very important, being able to track  everything from how many emails were opened, through to each individual link click can be tracked, meaning you can hone your techniques and improve performance.

Lastly, opt-in email marketing is an organic method that builds an email list with users who want to receive the email, meaning you have permission to contact the person. This permission is very powerful and should not be underestimated.

Now before we get to far ahead of ourselves we need to remember that the primary goal of email marketing is to make the sale is fundamentally wrong. Your focus should be on building long-term relationships. Achieve this successfully and sales will follow automatically. E-mail marketing is taking advantages of low-cost and tracking users in order to build strong loyalty with customers.

To show the effectiveness of email marketing lets look at a company that has had previous success using this strategy:

MarketingSherpa Summary: This campaign uses elements that we’ve seen before quite a few times in the overcrowded field of viral e-card campaigns. Consumers get to play with an interactive form (including adding their own audio) to send a silly, personalized e-card to friends. We’ve all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. So why did it make Sherpa’s 2006 hall of fame?

Check out the landing page. It’s the best we’ve ever seen for this type of campaign because everything’s included above the fold on just one page. You don’t have to click through a screen by screen process to send an e-card. And we bet that meant considerably higher response rates.

This shows that e-mail marketing can be effective for companies.  Remember that this is a cost effective way of advertising campaigns, it is important to track emails and ensure users opt-in for your emails rather than spamming their email account.

It is becoming more apparent the value of having a strong internet presence and the branding value that goes along with it. Businesses and companies that are not plugged in to the internet right now are definitely losing customers to their competitors, something which no business can afford to allow. There are many of the typical types of online advertising strategies such as SEO and pay-per-click; this is nothing new for marketers.  The change to the digital age in inevitable as everything from news papers to phone books are being made digital, but does that mean SEO and pay-per-click advertising really the best way to go for marketers?  I can see the advantages of SEO and pay-per-click as it is a great way to get your brand and product out the the internet users, however I believe a more effective way of acquiring purchases is opt-in marketing.

For those of you who haven’t heard of opt-in marketing it is a type of permission marketing.  If you haven’t heard of an opt-in program before it is “marketing to people who voluntarily opt into the marketing program”.  The advantage of permission marketing is that it is a good Internet marketing strategy, users are given the option to sign up for data or service provided by a explicit site. Building opt in list and affiliate promoting reduces the danger of spamming since the recipient voluntarily chooses to receive emails from a website. From a marketers perspective this has huge implications on how you can market to these types of users who are CHOOSING to receive a news letter.  Instead of buying a random email list to send spam or advertising, an opt-in program can help build a strong reputation and add value for the user.  It is a different approach that can be more efficient and effective strategy for marketers to use.

The picture below demonstrates exactly where these advertisements show up on a search engines site.  Right below the search field we immediately find advertisements that geared at trying to sell the user some service or product.  On the right hand side we also see these same advertisements but they are generally smaller and less noticable, these advertisements have to compete with the advertise listings directly below the search field and the organic listings as well.

Why would a company decide to use this kind of advertising method?  If your company is not being successful with an organic approach it may be time to switch to buying your way to the top, this is where companies would use search engine advertising.  Web.com is online company that specializes in search engine advertising, they explain that  the “idea behind Internet search engine advertising, as with any ad campaign, is that you have to spend money to make money. Paying for search engine advertising may be your best approach for gaining immediate exposure in the engines, thus helping to increase sales.” Their focus is to help companies utilize their pay-per-click and pay per action advertising campaigns by utilizing keywords with high conversion rates.

The proper software can be used to increase the conversion rates, there are 3 tools help maximize keyword optimization in search engine advertising. Attention Wizard, clicktale, and Google’s website optimizer these softwares help track users movements and actions in different and unique ways.  These are powerful tools that will give you vital information from what site the user clicked through all the way to the end purchase of your products.

The keywords that are used to describe your product or service are just as important as where they come up on in the search engines.  A better location on search engines could lead to improved keyword conversion rates and in turn increase business for your company.

Buying your way into a search engine is how SEM works, this can be a very effective way to advertise.  Most major search engines carry paid placement listings, where advertisers are guaranteed a high ranking, usually in relation to desired words. These paid listings can be found normally at the top of a website or on the right or even left side of the web page.  Placing ads here can be expensive and costly, but this is a fast way to get to the top however the down side here is that web surfers might not click because they see it as an online infomercial.

SEO is another way to get a page one rank it uses an organic approach; it starts with rich page content and utilizing key words for the search engine spiders.  A search engine spider is a program that searches web-pages all over the internet, it is designed to retrieve all the sources relevant to keywords that are typed into the search engines.  Web page designers have to build a site that creates stickiness for users to come returning, easy for the spiders to search for keywords or content, and linking from other pages is important;  all these factors play significant part in how well your web page gets ranked! Linking to hundreds of sites or adding huge quantities of content will red flag your site and possible be penalized or worse banned from being in the search engine.  This process takes time and if done well can keep you in the top position for months or even years!  The best part is that your web page won’t look like an online infomercial and users will be more inclined to click your link in the search engine.

Depending on time restraints and the chose of SEM or SEO is up to you.  The advantage of SEM is that page content is not important as much as the right keyword that your advertisement will show up under, creating a sticky  page that keeps users coming back is another concern.  With SEO it takes more time and effort!  There needs to be rich content, links from to and from other sites, and creating a sticky page to keep web surfers coming back is a must if you want to get onto that first page.

RSS icon

How many times have you seen this icon on the right side of the URL bar?  I have seen the icon before but never really thought much about it.  This icon means users can receive updates from websites through web-feeds or channels.  This is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and these documents can be very useful tool for all users involved.    Many bloggers rave about the benefits of this program, that uses XML documents; a standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. Marketing firms and customers alike can enjoy mutual benefits, marketers can advertise to people who are interested in these new feed updates because you have to sign up for these services (to receive updates for a specified website).  While customers will be able to receive new updates from their favorite sites and have them located into one place.

RSS is a simple software that delivers news updates to one place from multiple sites, it simplifies having to go to each separate website to look for any updates.  Signing up for RSS feeds is made simple with just 3-easy steps; from signing up for a free account to receive feeds to which sites to look for that will send feeds.

My favorite website NHL.com has the option to sign up for RSS feeds, they have updates for NHL.com Top Headlines and NHL.com Feature Stories.  These feeds are used to update users on scores, injuries, game reports, and related stories.  My favorite team, Vancouver Canucks, offers instant news updates through RSS feeds. This can be used not just for news updates but promotions on merchandise and special ticket sales.  Since users opt in to receive these feeds it makes advertising products and services that relate to the site.  The great thing about using these web-based updates is the ease to view them which can be done on laptops, PC’s, and cell phones.

RSS feeds can be very useful tool in promoting and connecting with users who opt in to receive these updates.  The video below breaks down RSS in plain English so we can all understand how to use RSS feeds and their advantages.

There are different social networking sites, many of which can be found by just searching in google or clicking here to view a list of the top 15 networks.  In a blog by Matt Saunders about social networks and their place in busniess, he points out that marketers can better target segmented customers with increased efficiency. Companies can gauge consumer response through other channels such as Twitter or Digg.  Groups can be made 0n Facebook where fans of a product or service can join the group to find out information, promotions or talk about anything they chose,  this could be a great way to improve the quality of a product or service.

Facebook has emerged as a powerhouse in the social networking game with over 150 million members. This is the largest of all the social networking sites, Orkut sits third on this list.  Facebook is growing in markets previously dominated by Orkut.  From July to August 2009, Facebook gained about 700,000 new members while Orkut lost about 800,000 visitors from India. What does this mean as marketers?  We are told to follow market trends to maximize marketing strategy.  If more users are going to be using Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family, then marketing firms will promote and pour in money into that site.

Social networking is a great tool for marketers and users alike.  Marketers now have a new marketing channel to promote products and services to a wide rang of audience, it’s important to market to a channel to the right social network.  For users it allows us to keep in contact with friends and family who could be miles away.

If you start just start gathering information it will be tedious if you don’t have an overall game plan. I’ve been lucky that I have been able to make contacts through my brother which has made this adventure that much easier. As for site goals and the audience it’s a bit more complicated because I have no clue of products to advertise. In T.Dettys’ blog it talks about people using the internet more and more for researching and purchasing of products. Internet marketing is a new form of marketing that still use basic marketing concepts. The blog keys up on making a website that would appeal to consumers, or create stickiness to your page.

As I touched up in a previous blog, the product you choose to advertise has to relate to the website your are advertising on. There are no limits to what you can advertise on the web, the problem is advertising to the right audience. I learned that it is important to link a product with the proper website/blog to make the advertising campaign successful.

Any marketer can utilize the internet to further marketing campaigns. I’m still trying to figure out how I can take advantage of online marketing, it starts with the product. Oncece there is a product to advertise then a marketer can figure out the audience and realistic site goals. I found this video useful for trying to create stickiness and draw users to a site.

Perez Hilton has been blogging about celebrities since 2004.  His website has a huge following of people looking for the most up to date celebrity gossip, this has helped Perez gain a tremendous loyal following of fans and forbes even listed Perez as the “#1 based web celeb of 2007.” Forbes Magazine took 200 web-base celebrities (people who were famous  as a direct result of their web pressence) and gave them points in 6 different categories.  Both the websites of Perez and Forbes are using their high user volume to charge advertising firms more money for space on their website.  Look at Perez Hiltons’ web-site, there is a list of Perez advertisements all down the left side, while the right side shows more celebrity advertisements for books, clothing and music.  Marketers and Perez himself have utilized the traffic coming to the site to promote products that these online blog readers could have a desire to buy.

To create a buzz of a new product or to try and sell an old product, marketers can try to match up their products with blogs.  There are millions of people trying to blog and have thousands of people following their every word.  Just like the video says, it’ll take time and dedication to begin earning money through online blogging.