Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Email Marketing Software Terminology

When doing some research on email marketing software, it is important to know some buzz words, key words, and things to consider so that you are properly informed. As a small business owner, you can greatly benefit from email marketing, as it helps you stay in contact with your current and potential clients. It is an important service that can greatly increase sales. Therefore, it is imperative to be informed before choosing your email marketing solution.

The following is a glossary of email marketing buzz words that you might come across, and what they mean to you and your business.

This term refers to the success of your campaigns being delivered to your subscribers. Think of it as deliver-ability. That is, how frequently do the emails you send actually land in your readers’ inboxes? The deliverability of a system is dependent upon the relationship that your email marketing software service provider has with the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The top ranked email marketing software will have set up communications with all the ISPs, which enhances the deliverability of your emails.
I.P. Address:

This is an identification number that gets assigned to your computer. When accessing web-pages and browsers, or sending out email, the computer you are using has an IP address associated with it. It can seen as your “passport” to the Internet. For email marketing, an IP address gets assigned a reputation based on the content of your current emails and the previous emails you have sent out. If you receive many spam complaints, or a large percentage of bounce-back numbers, this has an effect on the reputation of your IP address (similar to the effect that bringing drugs over the border and getting caught would have on your passport). The ISPs have the authority to shut off your internet service or disallow you to send email on mass (blacklisting) if your IP address has received too many spam complaints. The top-ranked email marketing software solutions provide whitelisting, so that your IP address is trusted by the policing ISPs.

Whitelisting (or White Listing):

This is a status that the top ranked email marketing companies have been granted by ISPs around the world. White listing comes as a result of an email marketing software company’s positive reputation and ongoing relationship with the ISPs. Email marketing software providers must have a long standing relationship and a track record proven performance.

Blacklisting:
- This is basically the opposite of white listing. An IP address can get blacklisted by the ISP providers when the owner of this IP address sends out too many spam messages. The ISP providers have ’spam bots’, or robots that determine whether or not you are sending out spam. Spam status is determined by your content, the response from people who receive the email, and the bounces that are associated with the account. Blacklisting means that the ISP blocks you from being able to send out emails, which means that your email marketing campaigns will not be delivered or will land in people’s junk mail box.

Feedback Loops:- The best email marketing software companies have feedback loops in place in order to increase the reputation of their IP addresses. This is an ongoing communication process that occurs between the IP address owner and the ISP, detailing how a spam complaint has been dealt with, or ensuring that a reader who has reported a complaint has been removed from the associated mailing list.

Posted on November 17th, 2008 by Deepak  |  No Comments »

What is the Google Algorithm?

An algorithm is a mathematical equation that uses certain information from your website in order to define its rankings. If you’re looking for a printout of the specific equation Google uses to rank sites and how much each factor is weighed, this is not the place to get it. The actual algorithm used by Google is a secret, and will stay that way for as long as they can keep it. Although the specifics of the algorithm are not released at all, Google patented the basics of their algorithm, which makes it easily accessible to the public. If you would like to view the patent in all its splendor, simply search in whatever search engine you would like for the phrase “Google Patent.”

This is a general overview of the general things this algorithm searches for, written in plain English for the average webmaster. This guide will go over some of the things Google’s spiders are looking for, and how to utilize this knowledge in order to boost your rankings on the Google search engine. Keep in mind that while this guide is written specifically for staying on Google’s good side in regards to placement in their search engine, the same tactics are definitely portable to the other major search engines such as Yahoo and MSN. Although Google’s algorithm is extremely complex compared to those of Yahoo and MSN many of the same strategies still apply.

So, how does it work?

Basically, when a Google spider, or robot, finds your site a number of things are taken into consideration. Not only does this spider search through the content and links on your page, cataloguing keywords, page titles and descriptions, backward links, and meta tags as it goes along, it even looks through your whois information. Whois information is the information provided through your hosting company on who exactly owns the website, including name, telephone number, email address, physical address, how long your site is registered for, and more. To check the whois information on your site, as well as others, visit and type in the URL of the site you are checking information on.

All of these are major factors (yes, including your physical address and name and the duration of your registration on a particular domain name) in the algorithm. Therefore, it is extremely important to optimize every single part of your site, visible or invisible to the common browser.

Posted on November 6th, 2008 by Deepak  |  No Comments »

How To Use Social Networking

Before you know the importance of social networking, it is essential to understand what social networking is. To put it simply, social networking is the interaction of groups of individuals bought together by a common interest. It has existed ever since we developed communication and follow its mechanism even today. We meet new people and make them our friends if we share same interests. This way we make a social network and as we make acquaintances and make new friends, it is called social networking.

Social networking is equally useful for those related to website design business and trade. Companies who share same interests are able to share communication with each other, build up relations by entering in to partnership, and strengthen their businesses thereby. Social networking is very effective for small and medium size businesses as they are given the opportunity to reach more people all over the world.

If you have an e-commerce website, you can also utilize the potential of social networking for your business just like networking in the real world, online businesses who have the same interest would contact each other. This enables you to forge a partnership or an alliance to boost your status. Social networking is a great tool to generate traffic to your website.

You can design a list of your audience and use that as your group of social networking to generate traffic to your website. This is possible as the connections you have online can provide you with numerous ways to obtain more traffic. There is a community of people out there that may not be aware of your website. But, social networking will provide you other links that you may not have had access to otherwise.

Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Deepak  |  No Comments »

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is the traditional stuff that most people think of when they think about marketing and includes things like print advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, TV and radio.

The defining factor of outbound marketing is that it reaches out to the consumer in the hopes of:

  1. grabbing their attention
  2. holding their attention long enough to deliver a message
  3. hoping the message motivates them to take action - like spend money on a product or service

The success of outbound marketing hinges on its ability to effectively interrupt you. Outbound marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to. That’s probably because the average consumer is bombarded with anywhere from 250 to 3000 messages a day depending on how much time you spend online, watching TV, listening to the radio or reading newspapers and magazines.

With so much rapid fire information being hurled at consumers every day, is it any wonder that most people have become adept at tuning it out?

Posted on September 23rd, 2008 by Deepak  |  No Comments »