Nine Ways to Improve Your Email Deliverability Results

Welcome to the age of Email 2.0. We’re now in an era where marketers have begun to eschew the traditional (and often ineffective) “spray and pray” approach to email marketing, and shifted their efforts towards creating successful email strategies that target current customers.

What has caused this shift in strategy? The answer is basically intolerance. Users no longer tolerate spam. ISPs no longer tolerate spam.  Deliverability is King. Winning the battle of the inbox is the goal of Email 2.0.

Regardless of if you are currently running email campaigns or are considering taking advantage of this low cost communication option, below are nine email deliverability best practices you should remember if you want to make sure you end up in the inbox:

• Become a preferred sender by including verbiage which encourages recipients to accept your “from” address in their address books. Add address book instructions to your email content.

• Manage your lists. Make sure your list starts with a strong base in permission- based, opt-in email addresses. Quickly respond to un-subscribe requests from recipients and to those who may have reported your messages as spam. Monitor and remove hard-bounces – a bounce rate higher than 20% can harm your deliverability and ISP reputation. Purge old or inactive addresses. Continue Reading…

This week’s guest blogger, TruePresence Area President Bob Blake, shows us why we should stop thinking of websites as a business expense–and start treating them more like a business extension.

What, exactly, is Internet marketing and why do I need it, anyway?

It’s a question I get every day in my new life as a TruePresence local owner.  And it’s one that I enjoy answering.  Nearly every one of the businesses that I speak with each day already has a website; it’s pretty much a pre-requisite today for starting a business – like having business cards and a cash register.  However, I find that too many businesses still consider their website as simply a business expense – like business cards and a cash register.

I like to share with them that their website is a 24/7 front door to their business.

It’s available at 2am on Thursday or 7am on Sunday morning even if they are not.  A well designed website will reflect their business, their style and their personality and be available for their customers at all hours.  A well designed website will help potential new customers find their services and can help fulfill their needs by providing a shopping cart or means to contact the business at any time of the day or night.

Internet marketing simply extends the concept by using the website as a platform for Finding, Getting and Keeping customers.  In short, leveraging the website can be one of the most profitable parts of a well organized business. 

What has your website done for you lately?

As TruePresence Area President, Bob Blake brings more than twenty years of technology experience to his Fairfield County, Connecticut based customers.  He’s worked with customers in Finance, Transportation, Telephony and Insurance and truly enjoys helping his customers succeed in their businesses.

A Few Good Reasons Why Your Paid Search Campaign Needs a Landing Page Now (Think ROI)

You spent a good deal of time and attention to build an amazing website. You followed all the best practices out there. You’ve tested the contact forms, content subject, keyword selection, page titles, color combinations, and navigation usability to come up with the best customer experience.

So why is your search marketing team telling you that you need a “landing page” to send your paid search prospects to? Can’t you just send these clicks to that perfect website that you put so much time and sweat into?

First of all, it helps to understand what a landing page is. We define a landing page as a single web page that a user “lands on” after clicking a link or an advertisement. The landing page is intended to maximize user conversion, however that conversion is defined: sale, lead or branding. The most common conversion goal is data capture, getting the page visitor to complete an online form to generate a marketing lead.

So you know what a landing page is, but the question still exists - why do you need to create a separate landing page, or pages, for your search engine marketing? Continue Reading…