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  Popular Statistics

  • If email was a country its 1.4 billion populations would make it the largest in the World, bigger than China, bigger than the populations of the USA and European Union combined.
  • 247 billion emails are sent each day. That’s one email every 0.00000035 seconds.
  • In the time that it takes you to read this sentence some 20 million emails have already entered cyberspace.
  • Every second the World email users produce messages equivalent in size to over 16,000 copies of the Complete Works of Shakespeare (assuming a 30KB average email size).
  • $13.4 billion. This is the number of direct marketing dollars forecasted to be spent related to email in the US in 2009.
  • $583 billion. The return from that investment if you use DMA figures on email marketing ROI. That’s four times of Microsoft’s market value.
  • 181. The number of effective marketing emails that need to be sent in order to buy one share of Microsoft.
  • 83,689,738,832,367. The number of marketing emails that need to produce enough revenue to pay the U.S. National Debt.

When you see email stats like this you may appreciate the work of companies that manage email campaigns.

Every email is important. Atomic Email Studio – the cornerstone of your email marketing campaigns!

Tricks and Tips

Wow, introducing hot blogging techniques! Pros and Cons, DOs and DON’Ts, advices, tips and tricks. Enjoy!

First off, some basic guidelines on blogging, if you use a service blogger.com they have their own terms and conditions for posting content. You can’t just post anything, so always read the T&C’s. If you don’t follow their rules, your blog will probably get deleted. And that’s not the best way to start a blogger career

If you host a blog on your own hosting account, using software like WordPress – you have full control over the content you post, so your blog won’t get deleted. So this is a much better way to start blogging. Good blogging software is a cornerstone of a good blogging. So much opportunities are getting closer!

Email Pope Benedict XVI

The email address of Pope Benedict XVI is benedictxvi@vatican.va.It is unlikely you will receive a personal response if you send an email to the pope, but the Holy See does read, collect and route all mail. The Pope possibly has another private email address inside the Vatican.

Pope John Paul II, the First Pope of the Internet Age

When Karol Józef Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978, email was still in its infancy. The first email had been written seven years ago, but barely a handful of people knew computer networks existed at all.

Yet, John Paul II became the first email-savvy pontiff in history.

In late 2001, the pope reportedly apologized for injustices committed by the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania via email. Of course, the Holy Father would have preferred to visit the Pacific nations and deliver his words of penitence in person, but email was the second-best choice.

What was John Paul II’s Email Address?

Pope John Paul II’s email address was john_paul_ii@vatican.va.

1. Find Email Addresses in Previous Email Correspondence

If you have emailed them before, you probably have their address. Go find it now.

2. Find People in Email Address Directories or White Pages

From public records to MySpace.com to email address directories and change of address services: find people and their email addresses using dedicated search engines.

3. Find Somebody’s Email Address by Searching the Web

Search somebody’s email address like you search for anything else on the Web (and successfully).

4. Search for Email Addresses in Usenet Newsgroups

Find the person whose email address you are looking for in discussion groups.

5. Find an Email Address by Making it Find You

If the person you are looking for is searching for herself, she will find you, and her email address will find its way to you.

6. Find Email Addresses on Business Cards

Go through your collection of business cards to find email addresses of more people than you probably know.

7. Ask Somebody for Their Email Address

Yes, that’s obvious, but asking is still the easiest way to find an email address.

8. Find Somebody’s Email Address Using soc.net-people

If all other means to find somebody’s email address fail, you can turn to the Usenet newsgroup soc.net-people.

Too many times, marketers focus on the medium being used to transmit their message, instead of concentrating on the message itself. An effective marketing message will be effective no matter what medium is used to transmit it.

The trick is to know how to construct an effective marketing message. Luckily, this doesn’t involve deals with the devil, mystic VooDoo rituals or ancient Chinese secrets. (Unless you want to base your chances of business success on Satan, a dead chicken and a fortune cookie, in which case have at it.) There’s one simple method that is present in all effective marketing:

An emotional connection.

Let’s play a game. Look at the following group of letters and tell me what they mean:

Now, let’s look at those same letters, in the same order, but presented in a different way:

I’m going to bet the second group is easier to comprehend, easier to remember, and has more of an impression than the first group. Why? The same “message” is contained in both, but in the second case the message was constructed to play upon your preconceived mental images and emotional connections.

I don’t mean that proper marketing uses acronyms (although they don’t hurt at all)…in the second case, you don’t have to explain what “FBI” stands for, or “CIA”, “NASA”, etc. Your readers will automatically have a mental image pop into mind when they see them.

No one has to be told what the IRS is, but AIRS could be anything.

Let’s look at this from a completely different angle; Hollywood movie pitches. Pretend for a moment that you’re a movie studio executive, accepting one-sentence pitches for new movies. You’ve got $50 million dollars to invest in a movie…all you’re looking for is a sure-fire idea. (After all, you had to mow a lot of lawns to build that $50 million up!) Here’s the first pitch:

“A balding guy runs around in American cellars and caves, find treasure and solving mysteries.”

Okay…not too bad. It might even have potential. Now, let’s hear the next one:

“It’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ meets ‘Indiana Jones’!”

Which movie do you have a clearer picture of in your mind? They both describe the “National Treasure” movie franchise, but which one makes it easier to envision how great it could be?

Now, are you trying to sell balding guys in cellars and caves, or two blockbusters added together?

To bring it closer to home, I want to point out David over at Marketing Integrity, who explains what his company offers with the acronym “Mi4″. Read this from his site:

So what on earth does Mi4 stand for? Well, it certainly does not have anything to do with “Mission Impossible“…because with Marketing Integrity, your marketing will not be Mission Impossible!

Seriously, though…there are 4 M’s and 4 i’s that serve as the foundation principles of this business:

The 4 M’s represent the areas in which we serve you:

Marketing – Management – Media – Ministry

The 4 i’s represent our guarantee to you:

Integrity – Innovation – Inspiration – Illumination

Finally, the Mi also stands for the obvious: Marketing Integrity.

Notice how he made sure that potential customers make the emotional connection between his business and the “Mission Impossible” movie franchise by pointing out that it has nothing to do with the movies. (Sorry if I gave the farm away, David!)

Don’t focus on standing out…focus on being memorable. And the best way to do that is to form an emotional connection with your customers, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to help your customers make an association between your business and something they already have an emotional connection with.

The car salesman sits behind his desk, fresh from yet another meeting with the sales manager. As he slides the “four-square” worksheet across his desk toward you, you have no interest in what’s written there, and tell him…for the twelfth time this hour.

“Okay, what would it take to get you to buy today? Right now?” he asks.

“Nothing. I told you I was just looking; I’ll be in the market in a few months, but there’s nothing you can do or say to get me to buy today.”

“I’ll be right back,” he replies, standing up and starting for the door, “Let me see what I can do for you.”

“I’m just looking!” you shout at his retreating back to no avail, knowing he’s not going to stop trying to force you into a decision you’re not going to make.

Have you ever been in that situation?  Something similar, I’m sure, but not that exact situation. When you’re “tire-kicking”, you don’t wind up in a price-battle with the sales manager. And if you did, you would not leave with a good impression of the dealership, and wouldn’t be likely to bring your business there when you are ready to buy.

Of course, a high-pressure sales pitch has its place and can be very successful. But long-term potential lies in fostering a relationship with your customers.

Now, if the salesman had been helpful after establishing that you’re truly not going to buy today, giving you information you want, showing you what you’re interested in, and finishing up by saying “We run some special deals from time to time; can I call you the next time we’re in a tight spot? At that point, I can get the sales manager to cut you one heck of a deal.”

This isn’t a perfect analogy…few (if any) are. But here’s my question for you…in your marketing plan, are you trying to force your website visitors to make a purchase now, or trying to make sure that you sell to the people that are ready to buy, and position yourself to sell to the people that are going to buy later?

“Used car salesman” has become a clichéd personality type, and not in a good way. Don’t spend your marketing efforts trying to “slick” someone into making a purchase they don’t want to make…help them realize that you have a product or service they need.

With your online business website, provide useful information to visitors, make the experience enjoyable for them, and don’t forget to offer easy, highly-visible ways to collect their information so you can stay in touch with them. Don’t continually pressure them to make a purchase now now NOW.

Or the next time you come back from the sales manager’s office, the customer will be long gone.

If you had the opportunity to either tell ten people about your business or tell one million, which would you do?

I’m really hoping you said “ten thousand”.

Marketing is nothing more than telling people about your business while prompting them to take action. And while it’s true that marketing to ten pre-qualified targeted people will always give a higher percentage of conversions, they don’t let you pay your light bill with conversions. Sometimes, you have to put the marketing blowgun away and bring out the shotgun. Why?

Simple…if 80% of those ten people make a purchase from you at $10 each, you’ll have $80 in your pocket. But if only one percent of the larger group acted on your marketing message and spent that same $10 each, you would see a revenue of $10,000. And guess what? According to Jupiter Research, the average conversion rate for untargeted marketing email is 1.1%.

If you segment your list and mail to a targeted group, the conversion rate jumps to almost 4%.

There is a very good reason why companies are willing to pay millions of dollars to have one thirty second television commercial run during the Super Bowl…it’s the numbers game. Of course, to make the most out of getting your message in front of a ton of people, you’ve got to track your results. I’ll talk about that (and what should be in your email marketing message to improve your conversion rate) next week.