Email Labs has a great tool that enables you to see how your ’subject line’ and ‘from line’ will look like in various email clients.
Add Your CommentsA good article from Matt Blumberg on how to prevent your email newsletters from getting blacklisted with various ISPs.
There are several immediate steps you should take to reduce complaints, build customer trust, and increase delivery:
- Use confirmed or double opt-in when building your list, to make sure the people you are sending email to really want to be getting your communications. Sending a welcome message also further verifies your permission to email.
- Make sure you only send email that matches what you say you?ll send upon registration. For example, if they sign up for coupons, don?t also send a newsletter unless you have explicitly told them you will.
- Be sure any language surrounding how you use email addresses and what email you?ll send is clearly stated up front. Do not bury it in a privacy policy.
- If you don?t share your customer information with others, promote your privacy policy at the time of registration, and reiterate your sensitivity to customer privacy in other relevant communications.
- Make unsubscribe links obvious, and make sure they work. Also, if your company?s list is used by different departments, make sure emails are removed from all lists.
- Monitor public blacklists to make sure your IP addresses are not listed. If you become listed on a blacklist used by ISPs, your messages could go missing.
No big suprise - but a recent iProspect survey found that more than 80% of Internet users don’t look beyond the first three pages of search results.
Even more important:
- 22.6% end their search after viewing the first few results listings
- 18.6% stop after first page of results
iProspect also found men dig deeper into the results than women.
Internet ad revenue moved up 21 points in 2003 to a cool $7.3 billion according to the IAB.
Keyword search led the charge accounting for more than 1/3 of revenues. Other ad types included:
- Classified ad revenue - 17%
- Rich media - 8%
- Display advertising - 21%
Who did all the spending?
- Brand advertisers - 37% (Retail 41%)
- Computer industry - 20%
- Financial services - 12%
Read more at AdWeek
Yet another new search engine. This one, called IceRocket, combines results from Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista. Results seem ok but not sure what to make of the name? Ice Rocket?
Amazon - the book seller, turned tool seller, turned online shopping portal has now launched a search engine.
The engine, called A9, allows you to search through regular web results and store your search history. Of course you can also find book information related to your search.
If you want to get your website listed in A9 you just have to ensure you have good placement with Google, which is where A9 gets their regular web search data.
Those little ads along the right hand side of Google’s search results just got more relevant. Today, Google told advertisers they now have the option of delivering their ads to local audiences. For example, a pizza palor in Calgary can choose to show its’ ads to searchers in the Calgary area only.
Previously, businesses could only target their ads based on country and province / state. This upgrade is great news for small, local businesses who will no longer have to worry about paying for an ad that is clicked on by someone in a city 1000 miles away.
Google has reversed its decision and will once again allow advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. For example, Ford could bid on any search terms that contain the word “Chevy”.
CNET calls the move a “high-stakes gamble that could boost revenue but also create new legal problems for the company.”
Legal problems is right! This is sticky territory - and not just for Google. If you’re an advertiser whose considering bidding on trademarked terms you might want to wait and see how this all plays out. Some advertisers have already found themselves in court over such tactics.
Good times ahead for trademark lawyers!
What do online consumers hate more than spam and entering their credit card number online? Shipping charges! A NFO WorldGroup study says 20% of those surveyed cited shipping costs as their biggest frustration related to online shopping.
What’s your shipping charge?
Online retailing is now a $61 billon a year market and it’s not too late to have a piece of it. But be warned, the bar has been raised.
Internet shoppers have high expectations for performance and customer service. They won?t put up with broken links, time-out errors and shopping carts that take too long to complete transactions. They know that if one retailer?s site doesn?t perform up to their expectations, a more satisfying shopping experience is only a click away.
The rules of the off-line game apply online. Make sure your site stacks up - read Internet Retailers “10 Ways to Boost Site Performance.” It’s a good start!
