World Wide Web Communications unveiled its latest e-Newsletter on June 18th, which it emailed to nearly 4,000 clients, vendors, partners and friends.  It’s online and can be viewed here.

Many of our clients engage in email marketing.  We know because we send out nearly 50,000 emails each month for them.  Many of our clients, of course, do it themselves.

One of the questions we hear quite often from those who send out email blasts is “how can we improve our response rates?”  Here are four “Best Practices” to maximize response rates.

Be repetitive – Give your readers multiple opportunities within your email to respond.  One link at the bottom of the email is insufficient because your readers might not scroll that far.  Be sure to place your links towards the top of your email.

Focus on what’s important – Focus your email on whatever it is that you think your readers will be interested in most.  I know this sounds obvious, but so often we start out our email newsletters with a lot of extraneous verbiage to lead up to the real message.  It is better to start right off with the offer or content that is most compelling to most of the people on your list.  Also, remember too many messages will confuse your readers.  Stay focused!

Include a call-to-action – Every email newsletter needs a call-to-action.  What do you want your reader to do?  Buy now?  Sign up for something?  Register for an event?  Make sure that your readers know exactly what you want them to do, and fashion the email so that they do it.

Leverage an expiration date – You can create a sense of urgency around whatever you are offering by including an expiration date.  If the offer is to attend an event, give a discount if they register by a certain date.  If you’re selling something, offer a discount for a certain period of time.  You can always improve the chances of people responding to your message by reducing the time they have to respond.

Email Marketing is an inexpensive, effective way to keep in touch with your existing clients and to generate new ones.

On June 10, 2008, Howard Yermish spoke about blogging before a packed audience of 80+ business people at the Cherry Hill Regional Chamber of Commerce weekly networking lunch.

For those of you that happen to be female and live in the Greater Philadelphia Area, Howard will be speaking at the event for the Women of Wit and Wisdom on June 26th, 2008 at 5:30pm at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia.

Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Is it 12 or 73 invitations that you have received from LinkedIn so far? You have either ignored them or perhaps created an account. So now what do you and you 4 connections do next?

Learn to use LinkedIn to improve your reputation online:

• Create powerful connections for business networking
• Give and receive recommendations
• Promote yourself by answering questions
• Create opportunities for new business

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: $35 advance registration/Pyramid Club Members; $40 at the door. Cash bar.

There are literally hundreds (well according to Technorati as of this post about 113 million) blogs out there. So How do you claw your way out of the Long Tail of blogging?

From a recent Q&A…
“I’ve had my blog on business and innovation for 9 months now. It hasn’t been doing badly, but it hasn’t gone viral yet…Are there any smart strategies for clawing out of the long-tail faster than the 1-yard-at-a-time I am able to maintain now? Or is it just a long slog of just keeping at it?”

The simple answer is patience. Start by writing good content - that is the key. Also, link to others with related content and use the trackback links. If you can get a “guest post” with more popular blogs, that will also help.

Many bloggers are not writers, so the content issue usually becomes more challenging over time, typically when you start getting some results with Technorati and Google.

That said, I’ve seen some companies “team blog” (as we are doing here) with several people contributing on a regular basis. This way no single person is burdened with the entire task.

Some additional tips:

1. Personalize your blog - If your blog looks like every other blog out there, some people will assume that you aren’t completely serious about your content. It is definitely worth it to hire a professional to create a custom blog interface. The default templates are overused and stale.

2. Answer every email - Blogs are all about conversation. If someone takes the time to comment on your blog, make sure to continue the conversation and thank the person for the comment.

3. Check Google Analytics for trends - If particular posts on your blog are gaining popularity, continue posting new content about these topics.

4. Be social with your blog - There are a number of plug-ins to help facilitate posts to other sites such as DIGG, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Make sure to go where your community is going.

5. Don’t get tired - I see blogs that start with fire and then fizzle into the night. I think that after 100 posts, you start to develop a habit. If it is too much work, you may not be cut out to blog. At the very least, pick a schedule and be consistent.

6. Schedule posts - I also schedule posts usually at least 5-10 days ahead of time. This way if I have a couple of busy days with no time to post, I still have things going through the air waves to keep the momentum going. Then when I get a chance to catch up, I don’t feel like my readers (all 2 of them) have gotten bored.

It isn’t just one thing. The website needs to be coherent and credible, obviously. Credibility also happens outside of the site: other blogs, customer reviews, sites like LinkedIn, etc. Online reputation is part of a “conversation” between the company and its customers. When the company participates in an open way, it is possible to make the conversations work for the company in a positive way, rather than trying to do damage control when a problem arises or there is a single disgruntled customer.

Click here for the complete conversation on LinkedIn…