Personalizing emails sent to your email newsletter list can help improve its open rate and click through rate if you include a link.  But my email newsletter service provider which is Aweber sent me some interesting stats about personalizing your emails for the best open rate.

They stated that:

Subject line personalization using the date generated an average open rate of 51.4% compared to personalization using the subscriber’s first name generating 40.9% open rate. Newsletters sent without personalization of any type in the subject line generated average open rates of 28.9%.

17% of newsletter subject lines sent in the last 30 days contained date personalization while 19% used the subscriber’s first name. 56.3% of subject lines did not contain any type of personalization. Interestingly, using the subscriber’s full name or last name generated lower average open rates at 20%.

They collected this data from all of their clients. This information is very helpful and I actually tested this out myself. So I also found out the by using the personalized variable for the person’s name in the subject line did worst for open rates. I was shocked and I hope this tip helps you as well.

I think email marketing is awesome but you might also want to check out mobile marketing that I have been wanting to get into as well.

Its obvious that Youtube is also a search engine because you can search for videos with a particular term.  I have tested and found out so many ways to optimize your videos for Youtube and achieve awesome results.  Its incredible how powerful this knowledge is and its not even that hard in comparison to website search engine optimization- that’s because there isn’t as much competition in Youtube SEO.

I always had great success with search engine optimization with Youtube but never tried to actually optimize my Youtube home page or what they call “Channel”.

I was never really sure how effective optimizing my Channel for targeted search terms would actually be. I was skeptical because I didn’t see many Youtube Channel pages actually ranking high for terms and mostly saw individual videos ranking.

It turns out, the reason that I didn’t see many Channels ranking for terms was mainly because no one was actually optimizing for it.

There are many parts you need to optimize your Youtube Channel for SEO just like regular pages but the most important in the changing the title of the page. I changed the title of one of my Youtube Channel’s with two important search terms and checked back in a month (note the example below isn’t the one I’m talking about). When I checked back, the actual channel ranked on the first page for both terms.

You can change your Youtube Channel title by clicking on the settings tab. Change the title to whatever you desire and hit save.

Read more about some of my Youtube SEO tips and other blog posts throughout my site about video marketing services.

There is a lot of speculation that search engines like Google will check the Who Is information for all websites to see who owns the domain name.  If they do, this can be an issue for people that own multiple domains and link to each of them to boost SEO or search engine optimization rankings. This is a huge NO-NO for google as its against their quality guidelines. You can also purchase a Who IS block so that no one including the search engines can find out who the owner is, but there is also speculation that Google can find this information.

Whether Google is actually checking up on the WHO IS information or not, they most likely do document the IP addresses of each site so its a good idea to find different hosting IP’s for each site if you participate in this gray/black hat SEO linking practice. A standard “Rule of Thumb” in the SEO world is to make sure each site has a different Class C IP address.

I just contacted the web hosting service HostGator to confirm, and if you get a plan that can host more than one domain, the IP addresses will be the same.

But if you purchase a whole new plan with one hosted domain, you will most likely get a different IP address.  So I hope this helps someone out.

What is my video email marketing site all about- check it out.

Recently Ehow sent out an email to everyone stating that they will take every user submitted article down. So if you’re reading this looking for your article, its because they probably took it down. I posted the email message about Ehow articles changes here.

In 2010, they made drastic changes to stop accepting user submitted articles but left the current ones up and you would still receive your share of the advertising revenue.

But now as of May 2011, they changed everything again. They stated that articles will be taken down so you will stop receiving the revenue with it.

Not only is this bad for the very people that spent a lot of time writing articles, but its also bad for a Search Engine Optimization standpoint. Removing all those pages can really reduce your ranking power. It might be good to remove all the poor articles. There are a lot of great user submitted articles and I’d hate to see them go.

I can only guess that they decided to do this because they were scared of the recent Google algorithm changes that effects the ranking of sites. This update was called The Panda Update. Or perhaps they just wanted to have only the very best articles by authors with credibility. I believe their is a way to still contribute through another author website which probably has a very strict guidelines. They want the very best.

Here is the email update that Ehow Articles, they huge user submitted article website, stated about removing all of its articles that weren’t proofread through its current process.

We want to personally thank you for the time spent writing articles for eHow.com and helping contribute to the growth of our site. As a valued writer who’s written articles for eHow, you know we’re a site that is focused on excellence and delivering the best possible experience to our readers. As eHow.com continues to evolve and become a leading destination of trusted information, we are working hard to ensure all content is professionally created and editorially vetted.

As you might remember, we stopped accepting user-submitted articles in April 2010. At the same time, we also closed the Writers Compensation Program (WCP) to new participants and stopped accepting articles through that program as well. Though we stopped accepting user-generated articles, we kept legacy articles that had been previously submitted and published online so that readers could continue to find and enjoy that information, and participants who opted into the WCP could continue earning money for their work.
After much consideration, eHow has decided to close the WCP and remove user-generated articles from the site. We’re doing this because these articles were not vetted through our current editorial process, which includes professional fact checking and copy editing. Your article(s) will be taken down from eHow.com this month. If you are opted into the WCP you will receive final payment for earnings through May 5, 2011, during the regular monthly payment schedule in early June. Even though your articles will no longer appear on eHow.com, you retain all ownership of your articles for use on other websites.

We appreciate the time you’ve spent writing articles for our site and want to make it easy for you to have a record of your contributions. You’ll have an opportunity to retrieve your articles from us between May 17th and May 31st, if you wish to retain them for your records. Further details for article retrieval will be shared through your writer’s console.

We truly value your contributions to eHow and know that the site would not be what it is today without people like you. Thank you again and please feel free to contact support@ehow.zendesk.com with any questions you may have.

Kind Regards,
eHow Team

I hope that helps some people out.  Please check out what I do with my video email marketing projects.

This tip is fairly well known for most internet marketers. You can literally oversee everything talked about your company or website and its brand throughout the web. A way you can do this is by using the free service provided by Google called Google Alerts.

Google Alerts allows you to type in keywords or company names and every time a new page is written about that keyword online, Google will report it to you.

Google can report it directly to your email inbox or to a RSS feed so that you’re notified. I believe by default, the notifications will be sent each day but you can also change how often the reports are sent to you. So if you only check it once a week, I would change the frequency to once per week.

Google Alerts can be beneficial is many ways listed be

low:

1. It can be used to find the bad things people are saying about your company. This is helpful information which gives you feedback so you can make improvements and it allows you to establish a better relationship with the person dissing the company.  Once a better relationship is established, you can ask them to take it down or rewrite it to your advantage.
2. It can be used to find the good things people are saying about your company. This is beneficial because it allows you to find and thank the person.  Showing someone how grateful you are for talking good things about the company can enhance relationships and possibly build potential partnerships.
3. Leverage it for SEO link building. Its a great way to find and build links to relative sources.

This can be very important because you have to remember the digital / internet age is all about everyone.  Everyone has a voice and they can get their views across to thousands or millions of people.  So being in good terms with one small time blogger can be very important and can be leveraged for free good publicity at times.

I wasn’t going to post this but what the hay- it does seem really good and I can promote it as an affiliate for commissions.

So first off, this is a followup about my random blogging about the text message marketing service post.  I didn’t say where I heard about getting into this business.  Also, I just wanted to blog about it here so I remember for future reference once I launch one of my membership sites because the way this guy does it is pure genius.

First off, its called Local Mobile Monopoly at this link which is my affiliate link.  The whole idea wasn’t for me to promote this product to make some commissions, but to help you get some ideas about his page and mimic it for success.  But hey, if I am mentioning it, might as well post the affiliate link if there is a possibility of commissions.

Anyway, pay attention to these things when you get to the page:

• First off, he has a video salesletter.
• He talks genuine and seems like he has a great product which is probably true.
• He has great copy and testimonies.
• Its not really hype or seem like it has fake promises.
• He has a great pop up when you try to leave.
• His pop up has an eye catching graphic of him waving his arms (kind of funny too)
• His after pop up page offers a one time low price for a few days.
• The pop up page collects the email address.
• Then its automatically re-billed the full price after that.

If thats not a great marketing process, I don’t know what is.  You can really learn alot from this page and come up with great ways to promote your own products the same way.

Recently someone sent this idea to me about managing or consulting for local businesses with text message marketing services. I thought I had to blog about this because it is such a brilliant idea.

I will be looking into the different strategies for people to get into this and report it here.

The bottom line is, mobile phones are becoming the future. Our phones are getting more advanced and can be used anywhere to access all types of online media. Clearly mobile marketing is the future of interacting with your customers and branding your company.

So what’s my thoughts on creating a text messaging service?

Mobile phones can receive email, social media messages and updates, along with other app notifications such as RSS feeds. But even those things typically don’t always have a high open rate. What does tend to have the highest open rate is text messages.

I know this because I look at what I tend to open first. It is estimated that email marketing gets an open rate of about 20% while text messaging gets about 90%. That sounds about right to me. Its hard for me to not open a text message even if its from a company that I don’t care about.

Text Messaging Services

• YepText

- This is the only one I looked into so far but I know their is probablly another dozen or more out there. I will be reviewing them shortly and this is the one that I got an email about.

You can just do a google search for “text messaging services” and find a whole bunch of them to check out.

How to get people to sign up for the text messaging?

This is part of the marketing plan. To have a higher rate of opt ins, you need to have a hook. Try offering bi-weekly discounts or any other updates that people would really like to hear about. This will brand your business, develop a relationship with customers, and get them coming back more frequently.

To get the word out, pass out pamphlets to people leaving your business telling them what to do. Make an announcement on the microphone which would be ideal for bars and nightlife environments. Design a message in restaurant menus or place the pamphlet on the food bag.

I have realized this before on many social media sharing buttons but recently looked at the icons on Youtube under peoples videos. I knew Youtube placed these there but the cool thing about it is that they show how popular they are in the social media space.

If you take a look at the screenshot below of a video in youtube, you can see how many times people shared this on their profile. It shows the number of times shared for Facebook (27,000), Twitter (1,497), and Yahoo Buzz (143).

You can use this data for competitive intelligence or knowledge to see what type of information people really like. If a large amount of people enjoy the video content, then they’re going to be more likely to share it. Then you can observe the information on this highly shared video and create similar types of information. Then upload it and create your own viral marketing campaign to help brand your business.  You will need to start promoting you video too so try optimizing it with one of my Youtube search engine tip.

Viral marketing at its finest!

I wanted to add one other note about the previous CPA marketing thought post.

I never really new how long the high rated comments lasted on Youtube.

• Does it stay up on top until another comment gets more thumbs up reactions? 
• Does it only last for a specific amount of time?

These are some of the things I would like to know so I wanted to make a note here that I will come check back at the Youtube video page later on.

Then I will blog about my results that I found. So as of February 7, 2011, the guy with the highest rated comment promoting the CPA offer had 62 thumbs up. The next one had 18.

Also, so you can see yourself and for me to remember, the video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEe_eraFWWs