Most people now know the official definition of spam - Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE for short). That definition does several things we should look at. It categorizes spam as commercial It limits it to email Calling anything unsolicited creates vagueness Even though all the above things may be true, there are several more things about spam that seem far more annoying. First: Spam doesn't have to be commercial to be a nuisance. Second: Unsolicited commercialism is so widespread that you can't avoid it by just changing websites....

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When it comes to your gravy, lumps are bad. When it comes to getting your marketing message through the mail room, past the gate keepers, and onto your buyer's desk, lumps are just the ticket. I love direct mail for small business marketing and I'm particularly fond of something I call "lumpy mail." Lumpy mail is a direct mail piece or package with some dimension to it. A box is lumpy mail. A balloon arrangement, a kitten, a hoola hoop. You name it. The point is you just can't ignore a piece of lumpy mail....

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1. USE POP-UPS Pop-ups are one of the most common methods you can use to capture email addresses and build your email list quickly and with ease. Simply construct a web page containing code for a form and set the page to open (pop up) when visitors ENTER OR EXIT your site. Make sure the pop-up offer is something that`s valuable enough to motivate visitors to take time to give you their contact information. Your offer can be a complimentary report, download, or ebook that arrives instantly through your autoresponder to their email inbox when they give you their email....

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Newsletters are often thought of as easy, do-it-yourself communications projects. The reality is different? and that can be discouraging. Developing a good newsletter concept can be difficult and time-consuming. It takes market intelligence -- and maybe research -- to find out what people will read. Then it takes careful planning, discipline and skill to crank out something worthwhile on a schedule. Why bother? Because the rewards are there for those who enter the newsletter game. 1. Build loyalty: Send out a regular newsletter to your customers to build loyalty....

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You've probably read 1000 times that "the money's in the list." If you're an Internet or email marketer, that's only partly true. The truth is that the money is in properly written emails, that get delivered to your list members. That last part is what most online marketers are missing! An article in the June 2004 issue of Time Magazine reported that 40% to 70% of email sent to the four major ISPs is deleted at the server. Those ISPs are MSN (including Hotmail), Yahoo, Earthlink and AOL. That simply means that there's a very good chance that your legitimate email is not getting through to those subscribers using those ISPs....

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After endless hours of writing, designing and programming your brand new web site is ready for prime time. You tested your shopping cart software and you made sure that all your external affiliate links have your affiliate id. You're making sure that you will get the commissions you deserve. This is a very exiting moment. You will expose your writing skills and your ability to design an attractive web site to the whole world. All of you who have a website know what I'm talking about. Your web site is online and you're open for business....

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The consumer of today is increasingly bombarded by marketing messages from various media channels. For those that tire of the constant onslaught of ads, they have the option to "opt-out". They may choose not to open up your email ads or simply "mute" their remote control so that they don't listen to your audio message. So, how do you, as a online marketer, ensure that your marketing messages reach your customer? What steps can you take so that your marketing campaign is "...

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Owning your own online business is a lot of work. Don't let anyone tell you that it's not. Typically, on a day to day basis, many businessowners end up putting most of their time and effortsinto performing these mundane, every day tasks leaving little or no time for the things that can helpthem grow their business such as marketing orpromotion. Of course, growing your business is a big part ofhow you acquire customers and make sales; but how can you focus on marketing and sales if you're constantly tied up with the daily tasks that consume so much of your time?...

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Before I do this, let me describe how autoresponders work. Think of autoresponders as the equivalent of fax-on-demand, but for email instead of fax. You simply set up a message and then whenever someone sends an email to your autoresponder email address they will immediately receive this as a response. Autoresponders can also be triggered from a form on your web site, where the visitor will enter his email address (and his name too if requested) and receive the autoresponse straight away. Many autoresponders on the market today are "sequential autoresponders", and save contact information in a database so it can send further messages to your prospects at intervals you specify (such as two days, five days and seven days later)....

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Getting other people to promote your web site is one of the most popular Internet marketing methods around, today. Affiliate relationships are all the rave with people who have web sites. Web marketers worldwide are trading links everyday, in hopes of driving each other's traffic to their respective sites. This is certainly something any hard-working Internet business owner should do, but it may be a bit overrated. While using affiliate advertising is a strong marketing ploy, effective use of multiple e-mail lists and an autoresponder is one of the most powerful, multi-faceted marketing tools available today....

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