Archive for July, 2006
July Magazine Available Now
Posted by Helen Montgomery, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing Friday, 21 July 2006 07:37 No Comments
The July 2006 Affiliate Classroom Magazine is on article marketing, a skill you must develop if you want to get an edge in these days of rising PPC costs and constant search engine updates. Download now to get advice from expert writers and working marketers on:
Article marketing best practices: what works and what doesn’t.
How to develop hot article titles and content, even if you’re new to the game.
How to make PLR articles unique, with before and after examples.
Plus there’s an entire article that explains white hat “tag and ping” social bookmarking tactics in a nutshell. Click here to download the July 2006 Affiliate Classroom Magazine now!
Word of Mouth Mathematics
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing Thursday, 20 July 2006 17:43 2 Comments
Don’t panic! There are no equations in this series of posts � only common sense ideas you can apply to boost your business.
First, a pop quiz. What’s the most effective form of marketing?
Time’s up. Wrong, close, and sort of. Well, some of you were right, I’m sure, because some must have thought “word of mouth”. (The title is a pretty big hint.)
People buy stuff they want in large part because someone they know and trust recommended it. You may not listen very much when your best friend touts a movie � tastes vary and you’ve been disappointed before. But lots of products or services are much less subjective than that.
And, in some cases, it isn’t even a question of quality. It may be simply information about a source for a good price, or availability, or rapid delivery. There are all sorts of reasons one product or merchant is preferred over another.
But before it can be preferred it has to be known. And knowledge comes � more so on the Internet than anywhere else in the modern world � from the high tech equivalent of low-tech: word of mouth.
Word of mouth can spread the literal, old-fashioned way � by words out of someone’s mouth. (Hence, the expression…) More often these days, it happens in the form of a viral email. Or, growing every day, it may be in the form of a blog post and the comments on it.
In short order, the most common form will be social or business networking, ala MySpace and others. (If it isn’t already. Current studies contradict one another.)
But whatever form it takes, it all comes down to the same simple idea: referrals in a good word of mouth campaign grow exponentially.
Remember the old fable about King Shiram of India. Pleased with his counselor’s advice, he granted a wish to double the amount of wheat on each square of a chessboard. One grain on the first, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, etc. This very quickly becomes an impossibly large number.
(For those who enjoy math, this set grows as 2^N where N is the number of squares. For an eight by eight chess board this is 2^64, more than 18 quintillion � 18 followed by 18 zeros, a number larger than the number of grains of sand in the universe.)
You may have heard that geometric progressions get very large, very fast. As the number of referrers in your network grow, the word spreads very fast. Even though there will be dead ends where the word doesn’t go any further, if there are enough ‘tentacles’ reaching out, the word still gets to a very healthy-sized crowd.
But, and it’s a big but, keep in mind that negative word of mouth can grow just as quickly. Often quicker, in fact, since people sometimes seem more inclined to express a complaint than to enthuse when they’re pleased.
Boosting Email Deliverability
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, E-mail Marketing Wednesday, 19 July 2006 19:55 1 Comment
Popov and McDonald have done it again. Well, in this case Popov and Pollard. In their recent ClickZ column, the pair offer 10 excellent suggestions for increasing your email deliverablity probability. That’s a mouthful, but the ideas are simple. Here’s a sampling, with my comments:
1.Two-thirds of senders don’t ask to be added to the Safe Sender’s list or address book.
There’s an old rule in sales: you don’t ask, you don’t get. If you do ask, you may also not get, but if you don’t for sure you won’t.
2.Nearly two-thirds neglect to provide a link to the website version of the email content, or related content.
Emails, as list marketers know only too painfully well, often don’t arrive intact. Images can be blocked, special characters can be garbled, etc. Give yourself a second chance by providing the full, unblemished and smartly tailored message in a special area on the site. And on that same page, be sure to provide links to important content � like the product or service you want to sell.
3.Half don’t provide a feedback email address.
Email marketing is about selling, certainly. But it’s selling by establishing and then building a relationship. Give your readers an easy-to-use channel to tell you what they think. After all, you’re emailing them. You surely want them to be able to email you, as well.
4.Nearly one-fifth fail to use a compelling subject line.
A good subject line is often the difference between your email being a spam message and being a successful sale email. Use a line that encourages opens not deletes.
For more tips, see the full text of Popov and Pollard’s excellent column, here.
And, oh, by the way:
a) Please add this email address to your Safe Sender’s list: info@affiliateclassroom.com
b) Use that email address for any feedback, but better still leave comments on the blog at http://blog.affiliateclassroom.com/
c) Thanks for being a reader of Affiliate Classroom and the blog. We welcome your comments.
Affiliate Classroom at The Affiliate Summit…
Posted by Anik Singal in Affiliate Classroom Events and Products, Affiliate Marketing Tuesday, 18 July 2006 13:15 1 Comment
Just got a note from Shawn Collins letting me know that a video of me had been put up on YouTube.com!
Basically Brook Schaaf from Shaff Consulting was coming around interviewing all the exhibitors and I got to be one of the lucky ones!
For your viewing pleasure:
Email Copy, The Short and The Long of It
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, E-mail Marketing Sunday, 16 July 2006 19:32 1 Comment
How long should a marketing email be? What style should it take? Should you say everything in the body or tease the reader with a few tantalizing tidbits, hoping they’ll click for more?
The answer to all these is: Don’t confuse the medium with the message. (Marshall McLuhan be damned.)
Length. There’s a similar long-standing debate in the motion picture business about how long a movie should be. The generally accepted answer is: as long as it’s good.
Email copy could profitably follow a similar principle. Keep the reader engaged, by offering them valuable information well conveyed, and you can write as much as you need. Or, to paraphrase a quote from Einstein: An email should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Just get the message across and get out. But make sure you do convey the message.
Style. Asked and answered. If you keep them interested you have the right style. If you don’t, you don’t. Think of article writers or novelists you like. Then ask: “How do they keep me reading?”
Tease or Full Monty? A very good question, and one to which the answer is probably: “Either or Both”, depending on your purpose.
Some emails are primarily to inform about a sale, an event, or a product. Others are intended more to establish, retain, or build a relationship. Tailor your message accordingly.
Writing email content is similar in many ways to writing good, albeit short, articles. Pick up some tips in our upcoming issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine. In the meantime, consider the old joke: New York Tourist: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”. Isaac Stern: “Practice.”
