Methods of Acquiring an Email List

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Three of the most common ways marketers acquire contact lists to email:

1) Buy a list. You work with a list provider to find and purchase a list of names and email addresses based on demographic and/or psychographic information. For example, you might purchase a list of 5,000 names and email addresses of people with children who live in a certain city.

2) Rent a list. Also working with a list provider, you identify a segment of people to email — but you never actually own the list. As such, you can’t see the email addresses of the people you’re emailing, so you must work with the provider to send out your email.

3) Generate an opt-in list. Someone voluntarily gives you their email address either online or in person (at a trade show, for instance) so you can send them emails. They may pick certain types of email content they wish to receive, like requesting email alerts when new blog posts are published. Opt-in email addresses are the result of earning the interest and trust of your contact because he or she thinks you have something valuable and helpful to say.

When it comes to rented or purchased lists, you may come across vendors or marketers who say, “this email list is totally opt-in!” This means that the people on the list opted in to an email communication from someone at some point in time — like the list provider, for example. What it doesn’t mean, however, is that they opted in to receive email communications from your business. This is a critical distinction, and the next section of this post will go into more detail on why this type of “opt-in email list” (should be read with air quotes) is not a good idea for your email marketing program.

Read Why Purchasing an Email List is Always a Bad Idea from Hubspot…

13 Things to Check Before Hitting ‘Send’ on Your Next Marketing Email

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Don’t lose credibility by sending a broken email! Here’s a great checklist from Hubspot - 13 Things to Look Out for in Your Email Test Sends…

1) Broken Links

The mishap we mentioned in our intro scenario is probably one of marketers’ biggest nightmares, especially when lead generation is the goal of an email send. That’s why we’re emphasizing how important it is to check to make sure your links are working as the first item on this checklist. Like — actually click on them. Every single one. Does the (right) page load? Do you get a 404 error? Unbreak any broken link you find.

2) Forgotten Links

A close second to the dreaded broken link is the forgotten one. The most common (and regrettable) instance of the forgotten link is when you’re using an image to serve as a call-to-action (CTA) button. Double check to make sure everything that’s supposed to be linked is indeed linked. This includes anchor text, CTAs, social media follow/sharing icons, and images.

3) Broken Social Media Sharing Buttons

While we’re talking about social media buttons, let’s discuss how easy it is to break those little buggers. We’ve published a helpful guide to make creating the buttons for social sharing on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter less painful, so be sure to check it out. And luckily, if you’re a HubSpot customer, ouremail tool makes the creation of social media sharing buttons in email messages virtually idiot-proof. Just plug in the URL of the page you want your email recipients to share (whether it’s a landing page, blog post, or the HTML version of the email, which we’ll discuss later in this post), and — POOF! — social sharing buttons. But whether you’re using HubSpot’s email tool or another ESP, always be sure to try out those sharing buttons in your test send as an extra sanity check.

4) Spelling/Grammatical Errors

Spelling and grammar do matter in marketing, whether you’re creating an ebook, writing a blog post, or drafting your next email marketing message. Send your test email to the biggest grammar geek you have on your team to alert you to any slip-ups, and always be sure to spell-check!

5) Distorted Images

How do your images look? Are they stretched or squished? Pixelated? Overwhelmingly large? When they don’t render, did you remember to associate alt text with them? Check to make sure your images are displaying the way you want them to, and if not, adjust accordingly.

6) Wonky Formatting

When you view the email in an inbox, make sure the formatting looks the way you intended it to. Is there a line bleeding onto the next because you forgot to add an extra space? If you used bullets, are they displaying properly? (Tip: Some email clients can’t handle HTML bullets, so you’re best off just using asterisks (*) instead of rounded or squared HTML bullets.) If things are looking wonky, fix those formatting issues before you send the email to your true list.

Read the full article from Hubspot…

JT

15 Things People Hate About Your Website

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1) Pop-Up Ads

Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way. Pop-ups are seriously annoying. Yes, a pop-up could get you a few new email subscribers, but is that really worth all the traffic you lose when visitors abandon your site in annoyance? Convert site visitors into leads with well-written content and compelling CTAs/offers, not interruptive gimmicks.

2) Automatically Playing Multimedia Content When a Page Loads

Shhhh! I wasn’t supposed to be on this site at work! If someone’s enjoying what they thought was a silent browsing session and they’re bombarded with your theme song or a talking head on a video for which they didn’t press “play” and can’t find the button for “stop,” what do you think they’re going to do? Some might fumble for their mute button, but I can more easily locate the back button in my browser than my computer’s volume controls. Let visitors choose to play your multimedia content; don’t force it on them.

3) Disorienting Animations

You’re probably familiar with the blink test by now — the 3 seconds users have to orient themselves on any given web page before they click ‘back’ in their browser. Animations, auto-play videos, blinking and flashing paid advertisements, and other interactive entertainment may seem really cool (I’m sure it’s very well designed!) but it detracts from a visitor’s focus during those critical 3 seconds. Nix the animations, and let visitors focus on what they can do on that page with clearly written headlines and explanatory copy.

4) Generic Stock Photography

You’ve heard using images is great for your inbound marketing, so you go browsing and find this gem for your website:

Are we supposed to believe they work at your company? And are they always that delighted to collaborate over a piece of notebook paper? Show pictures of customers, real people that work at your company, your product, and your location. Or if you’re particularly design savvy, create visuals yourself that directly relate to what you do. Images are helpful if they clarify something for a visitor — generic stock photography doesn’t help visitors, so by extension, it doesn’t help you.

Read the other 11 in the full article from Hubspot…

JT

Google Slaps SEO – Don’t Get Sold on SEO Smoke and Mirrors

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Google is changing the way its bots are analyzing your website. After years of SEO companies and web developers trying to scam their way to the top of search results, Google will now begin penalizing sites for over-optimization. Gone will be the days of keyword-dense pages, low-quality links and the kind of annoying, fluffy content that would never find its way into a company’s brochures. Google wants searchers to return the best search results by awarding companies that have solid, relevant content and high quality linking relationships.

In my opinion, this is a win for marketers and for marketing communications. Rather than compromising our content to appease the almighty search, we can focus more on effectively connecting the benefits of our products and services to the needs and desires of our customers.

Barry Densa wrote a great article on the subject in his blog, Marketing Wit & Wisdom…

 

Google Slaps SEO Professionals

MARCH 26, 2012 BY BARRY DENSA 8 COMMENTS

It happens all the time… your website finally secures a starring role on the first page of a Google SERP. And then…

KAPOW!

Google “slaps” your website, sending it into virtual purgatory (SERP page 1,398,530 or beyond) – effectively flushing your web-based income down the toilet.

Google’s infamous slaps strike without warning, penalizing websites that somehow offend their never fully-disclosed notion of “correct and proper” SEO.

But now, Google is giving advanced warning that it intends to slap, believe it or not – SEO itself!

SEO, of course, is the art and pseudo-science of intuiting Google’s rules, so that your website, in a perfect world, appears and stays on the first page of a Google SERP.

But, the world is far from perfect – indeed it is ineffable, and Google prefers it that way.

Because Google lives in constant fear that bands of ingenious little techno-nerds and black-hat bandits will hijack their search algorithms, and “game” their system – bringing down their galactic cyber-cash cow, like Visigoths sacking ancient Rome – not only do they never fully explain their rules, they keep changing them!

So, at best, SEO has always been a gamble… a guessing game.

Their most recent algorithm change was PANDA, which penalized websites for, among other things, too many low-quality ads or links above the fold, and for poor quality traffic over all.

And now, here comes…

The newest Google slap

So new, in fact, this Google slap doesn’t even have a name – nor has it been activated yet. But it will be – says the man in charge, Matt Cutts.

Matt Cutts, you see, is the head of Google’s Webspam team, and he leaked a bit of info recently at Austin’s SXSW convention that has sent web-marketers and SEO professionals into a virtual tailspin.

Matt said:

“…We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there’s something we’ve been working on over the last few months and hope to release it in the next few months or few weeks. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or over SEO – versus those creating great content and a fantastic website – we’re going to level the playing field. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance more adaptive, and, we are also looking for those who abuse it, like using too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links, or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”

No doubt, the question you’re now asking yourself is:

How much is too much SEO?

Indeed, what is over-optimizing, or over-SEO-ing?

Well, you can bet you’re top page ranking that Google isn’t going to tell you any more than what Matt said above.

So don’t bother trying to micro-analyze his statement, or guess how many keywords or links are too many on any given webpage.

Google’s algorithms are probably the world’s best-kept secrets. Governments would pay dearly (and probably are) to learn how Google keeps their cyber-vaults hacker-proof.

So, unless you can somehow mind-meld with Matt Cutts’ brain… you’ll just have to…

 

Read the full article here…

 

JT