Automated Email Campaigns

Automated email campaigns can take the hard work out of your e-marketing promotions, saving you time while earning you money – what more could you ask? After the initial setup, your e-marketing system will automatically email leads, customers, contacts and anyone else you want it to, at predetermined times, over a predetermined period.

There are many advantages to setting up an automated email campaign within any organisation that can source sales from email communication. Our hints, tips and things to avoid will also assist you in developing a successful automated campaign. Whether you develop a simple campaign or a hugely complex series of communications, your e-marketing will benefit from an automated process.

Advantages of automation

We all love it when you can push a button and watch things happen – even if it’s as simple as your garage door opening without getting out of the car – and this concept can now easily be applied to your e-marketing efforts.

• Saves time. After the initial time invested in setting up the campaign, writing the emails and defining the rules for the send, an automated email campaign will run with little or no ongoing input from you. Simply push the button and your e-marketing system will do the hard work.
• Saves money. Free up resources to concentrate on other marketing activities. Automated campaigns are also relatively cost effective compared to other marketing activities – it’s a cheap way to keep in constant and direct contact with your leads/clients.
• Multitask. An automated email campaign can multitask on your behalf, contacting multiple database groups, sending multiple series of emails, market multiple products/services while you concentrate on other business matters.
• Measure the performance. Automated email campaigns are constantly providing more transparency on how your leads/customers behave. Are they clicking through? Are they purchasing items? When are they doing so? When do they unsubscribe? This information will help youconstantly improve your e-marketing and sales results.
• Increase sales. When you regularly communicate relevant and interesting content to your leads and clients, you are increasing your chances of retaining customers, encouraging sales and maximising cross selling and upselling opportunities.
• Communicate effectively. Establishing an automated email campaign is an excellent opportunity to plan, develop and conquer your e-marketing activities. You will have the opportunity to think through what you want to say, when you want to say it, and how you want to say it – and then stick to it. Done right you will develop a sophisticated campaign and remove those ad hoc emails that can often be a detriment to your e-marketing campaign. More

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Group chat showdown: Which instant messaging service is best for your business?

What happens when your team needs to have a conversation, yet coworkers are scattered across town or even around the world? Conference calls can be pricey and inefficient: Talkers often overlap, no one can hear each other well, and there's no record of who said what. Oh, and you can't exactly share a file over the phone.

Sometimes, when you can't meet in person, it's better to meet in a virtual space. Group chat services offer private rooms for business discussions, with handy features like transcripts, file sharing, and mobile apps. It's like regular instant messaging, but with an express focus on group conversations.

I put three popular group-chat services through their paces: Campfire, HipChat, and Imo.im. The first two were built with business users in mind, while Imo.im is a more general-purpose chat system that offers cross-platform compatibility--meaning you can talk with others regardless of what existing IM service they already use: AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, and so on.

Speaking of those more traditional IM tools, any one of them will do in a pinch. But they're more tailored to one-on-one chats between friends than mission-critical discussions with groups. Read on to find out how a more specialized service can help you keep in touch with far-flung workers--and which one offers the best mix of features and affordability.

Interface

Although there may be times when you need to chat on the run, it's a safe bet you'll do most of your messaging on your laptop or desktop. Consequently, you'll want a chat service that looks good and, more importantly, offers a simple, streamlined interface.

Emphasis is on "simple." The last thing busy workers need is a learning curve, so if it's not immediately clear how to join a room, share a file, or review the chat history, then that's no good. Fortunately, all three services keep things fairly straightforward. More

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Why Android is Gaining So Much Market Share

It’s very clear that Google’s Android operating platform (promoted as ‘DROID’ by Verizon) is gaining a lot of market share in the U.S. SmartPhone market.  

Why are Android-based devices doing so well?  Google’s business model for Android is very different from Apple, and, yet, both firms are growing in market share.  

In addition, the market is about to become even more crowded over the coming months.  Microsoft will be introducing Windows Phone 7. HP/Palm is likely to introduce their next-generation handset. Sony Ericsson just announced a new corporate headquarters in Atlanta &launch of the Xpera X10.  And Nokia just hired Stephen Elop form Microsoft as their new CO.  As Dick Enberg, the well-known sports broadcaster, might say in this situation, “Oh my!”

Android is an open source operating environment developed by Google.  Their business model is to make the source code available to anyone.  Handset manufacturers then take the Android base OS code and add their own features and functionality -- plus specific requests made by the operator -- to then launch their handsets into the market.  

This is in stark contrast to the PC world in which operating system software like Windows is built by Microsoft but licensed for a fee per unit to the PC manufacturer.  Every single PC customer has the same user experience.  Applications are then sold on top of Windows to provide additional functionality to users.

Apple goes about it very differently.  They own the operating system and tightly integrate it to the hardware.  The code is kept proprietarily by Apple, thus creating a ‘walled garden’.  Apple then enables developers to build apps on top of their closed operating environment for both notebooks (Mac OS) and iPhone (iOS).  The notebook apps are sold through retail and over the web whereas Apple controls the distribution of iPhone (and iPad and iPod touch) applications through the on-device Apps Store.

Google is getting device manufacturers such as Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG, and ZTE to use Android in their wireless handsets and, soon, in their tablets as well.  They are gaining converts because they have built a very good multi-tasking operating environment and are continuing to improve it.  This approach provides a low cost of entry for handset manufacturers.  It also allows the manufacturers to add software to the Android environment so that there’s a different user experience with each model that comes to market. More

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5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization

If you’re attempting to improve search rankings for your web pages, these days it’s no longer an option not to optimize digital assets. With search engines incorporating video, images and news into standard search results, marketers have the opportunity to achieve increased visibility by implementing basic video SEO principles.

These 5 basic tips for video SEO are a good starting point for marketers looking to improve the “searchability” of their videos.

1. Optimize with keywords.

Just like any type of text-based content, video SEO involves optimizing with target relevant keywords — both for search engines and for user experience. Use keywords in:

• File name
• Title
• Tags
• URL
• Link text

Beyond that, include a paragraph of optimized text that provides a brief description of the video. Again, the benefits are twofold: You’ll improve the user experience and your search rankings.

2. Distribute videos on video-sharing sites.

In addition to posting videos on your own site, video-sharing sites are effective tools for gaining visibility and additional links. Remember these few points to maximize results:

• Don’t forget that videos hosted on YouTube and other video-sharing sites should be optimized for keywords.
• YouTube channel pages — and those of other video-sharing sites — should be optimized, as well.
• Use a video distribution service like TubeMogul to deploy your videos to the top sharing sites.

3. Implement a linking strategy.

Video is judged by the same linking standards as all other forms of digital content. So building both internal and external links is crucial for video SEO. Ideas for a linking strategy include:

• Cross-linking to other videos
• Linking to videos from relevant web pages
• Linking to videos in blog posts
• Tweeting the video
• Linking to videos from social media pages
• Bookmarking the video

4. Encourage viewers to share your videos.

First thing is first — if you want users to share your videos, you must create content worth sharing. If your video isn’t interesting, relevant, entertaining or informative, users aren’t likely to share it, let alone view it. From there:

• Allow and encourage users to comment on the video
• Make it easy for users to share your video on You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
• Offer video content in multiple formats so users can choose the one that best suited to their platform and connectivity speed.

5. Re-purpose your videos.

As with text content, the more optimized video, the better. Get creative in order to re-purpose videos across the web:

• Embed videos in blog posts
• Break up long videos and create multiple shorter ones
• Use transcriptions of videos to create blog posts or content for web pages
• Take screen shots from videos and post them to Flickr and other image-sharing sites
• Turn offline content, such as training videos or videos of a conference keynote speech, into optimized digital assets for your website.

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What is WordPress and Article Directories ?

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and content management system (CMS) powered by PHP and MySQL. WordPress is presently the most popular free CMS in use on the web because, it has many features including plug-in, template/theme, widgets, multi-user blogging system & mobile friendly.

With these features you can develop any kind of websites from corporate websites to e-Commerce websites. Using WordPress you can easily design & develop article directory websites within 20 mins . For this you need some basic WordPress customization knowledge and a best article directory WordPress theme and few plugins. GDM is come with free & premium articles directory scripts that you will sure like.

Article directories are websites where users submit unique articles to be categorized and included to a specific niche. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.”

Earlier, Purpose of articles was to share your thoughts/knowledges with the world but, now days this is a way to promote websites on web world. In short, we can say that webmasters use article directory for SEM. So, this is part of market requirement. Now come to the point. More

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