10 Email Marketing Tips

Did you see me on Lab with Leo on Tech TV?

I was on Episode 132 talking about email marketing.

The segment will be live online eventually and I’ll update this post.

In the meantime, do you want 10 tips for improving your email marketing this year?

Constant Contact, which is one of the email delivery services I mention in the Lab with Leo segment, produces a great email newsletter.

Last week Amy Black, Constant Contact Editor, Hints & Tips e-Newsletters, offered up these 10 great tips:

1. Develop a communications calendar - This year, plan ahead. Sit down with a calendar each quarter and look at everything you have coming up. Think through what your goals are and how you want to market your products, events, or organization with email and the other communication tools available to you.

2. Create your emails early - Are certain times of the year busier for you than others? When you have so much going on, it’s hard to give the time and brain power needed for creating excellent marketing emails. A solution is to create some of these emails during a slower time in your year. If you have your plan in place, you know what you have coming up. You can even set the day and time your emails will go out, so you don’t have to give them a second thought.

Get 8 more ideas for your email marketing from Amy.

SEMPO Survey: Last Chance. Add Your Voice.

Want to know what Canadian advertisers and marketers are:
* thinking about search marketing
* doing about search marketing and
* planning on doing about search marketing?

If yes, take the 2007 SEMPO survey.

Who should take the survey?
* people familiar with, and actively engaged in, at least one type of the search engine marketing practices.
* people engaged in such programs in the capacity as advertisers (including both marketing staff and management), site managers, marketing agencies and search engine marketing service providers.

The survey takes 10-20 minutes. (I know it’s long, but without community participation there’s no information, no data, no analysis.)

Take the 4th Annual State of the Search Market Survey.

Here are some reasons why it’s worth your time:

• A special portion was created for Canadian advertisers this year, which means real information about the state of the Search Marketing Market in Canada will be reported.
• You could win a 8 Gb iPod Touch.
• You could win one free pass to a North American Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference.
• You’ll be the first to receive the summarized results of North America’s most comprehensive snapshot of the search marketing industry.
• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and the other major search players will know your thoughts, observations, and concerns about where search is and where it’s going. (They rely on this survey for that information!)

Take the 4th Annual State of the Search Market Survey.

About the Survey
The survey is conducted by Radar Research, and all responses are kept strictly confidential. All results are aggregated and made anonymous. The more people who complete the survey, the better the data.

More on SEMPO Canada:
SEMPO Canada is Canadian Non-Profit Professional Search Marketing Association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing in Canada. This Working Group was founded in November 2006 by Ken Jurina and Alexandre Brabant and focuses on improving the growth, awareness and understanding Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in Canada including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Link Building, Pay Per Click Management best practices in this new field of marketing and how it uniquely pertains and is of relevance to Canadians worldwide across any sector, vertical or industry.

5 Time Saving Tips for 2008

Swamped already? We are only days into 2008!

Check out these 5 time saving workflow tips.

For Firefox and Safari users:
Tip 1: See an interesting phrase on a web page you are visiting, rather than re-typing that phrase into a search bar, simply highlight the phrase and right-click or control-click. You’ll get a pop-up menu showing Search Google for [phrase here].
Estimated savings: 5-8 seconds

For Microsoft Word users:
Tip 2: Instead of going up to the Tools menu > Word Count, simply check the bottom of your document. Those numbers at the bottom are telling you how many words are in your document. For example, if you’re at the bottom of a 4 page document, you’ll see:

Page 4 Sec 1 4/4   |   At 3.3” Ln 9 Col 1   |   0/1083

“1083” is indicating that I have 1083 words in my document. If I highlight my last sentence (9 words), it would appear 9/1083. The selection is a word count of 9, the full document’s word count is 1083.

Cool eh?
Estimated savings: 8-10 seconds

Tip 3: Hate when Word auto selects an entire word, even though you’re trying to select only a few letters?
Change this in the preferences. Preferences > Edit and deselect the checkbox for “When selecting, automatically select entire word”.
Estimated savings: 4 seconds

Tip 4: Loathe Word making every URL and email address a web link? You can change that too.
Tools > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat As You Type. Deselect the checkbox for “Internet paths with hyperlinks”.
Estimated savings: 1-10 seconds and a significant reduction in teeth clenching

For email marketers:
Tip 5: Alex Dunae has created a cool little program called Premailer. If you have a web page or text document that you want converted to email-ready HTML, you enter the URL of your file and out comes the code with the CSS styles converted to inline style attributes.

http://code.dunae.ca/premailer.web/

Estimated savings: hours-months (depending of course on your technical know-how)

For entrepreneurs:
Bonus Tip: There are 168 hours in a week. If you spend 56 hours sleeping, 10 for hygiene, that leave 102 hours. That’s not really a lot of time for doing all the things that need to get done. So delegate and eliminate. Look at all the things you have to do the next day and after each item note whether it’s the best use of your time. If it’s not, delegate it to someone else. If it’s not even worth delegating, eliminate it from the list.

Don’t have someone to delegate to? Look for volunteers, co-op students, friends, neighbours, family members. In Vancouver, there’s GoVolunteer Probono, which takes applications from organizations needing skilled volunteers. If there really is no one, examine how you’re prioritizing tasks. There’s always something that can be eliminated.

Have a good time saving tip? Post it in the comments below.

Vancouver Tech Women to Watch in 2008

The good folks at Raincity Studios are acknowledging the lack of women (i.e., zero) mentioned on Techvibes‘ list of Vancouver tech-industry insiders to watch in 2008.

No “old boys club”, Raincity created a list of Vancouver women in technology to watch. It’s a Vangroovy list of women doing cool stuff. 

Read the list and add-on if you know of a Vancouver woman in technology who is doing work of note.

And if you’re super cool, Digg this story.
Digg URL: digg.com/tech_news/Vancouver_Tech_Women_to_Watch_in_2008_2

(What’s a Digg? It’s a way to say, yes, I think this story is important. I digg it. New to Digg? See how Digg works.)