Any at given moment, we’re bombarded with internet marketing and website optimization advice. We’re told to simultaneously be marketing on Facebook, Twitter, email and more. We know we need to be testing and optimizing our sites to the max.

These are all worthy endeavors. But I’m going to suggest that they aren’t always the most fruitful pursuits. I think we often bypass more obvious quick-wins in favor of sexier projects that we get excited about.

I was recently reminded of this at C28. For years, customers have been telling us to show the pictures of clothing on real people, rather than mannequins. For years we ignored the advice due to the impractical task of always having models on standby when new products arrived. So instead we optimized the heck out of everything we knew how. We overhauled the design of the site. We built a new and improved shopping cart. We ran incessant split tests on our marketing emails. But we started hitting a point of diminishing returns. All those a/b tests weren’t as effective as they used to be.

Then we decided to do the obvious. We actually listened to our customers and starting photographing all products on models. And the results? Let’s just say it was the single most effective optimization project we have ever done to the website. It wasn’t technical. It didn’t take an online marketing specialist, just a bit of old-fashioned listening to the customer.

You and me are online marketing junkies. We eat, sleep, and breathe conversion rates, CTRs, SEO, and SMO. Yet are we missing the obvious? What are the roadblocks preventing you from growing your business? You can have a flawless checkout process and fastest loading pages in the world, but if your basic product information is lacking, what’s the point?

Before you begin that next optimization project, take some time and revsit the fundamentals of your business.

1. Stop relying on discounts: Pretend that for the next year your business had to survive selling only full price products or services. Would you survive? What does your answer say about the health of your brand? Kevin Hillstrom reminds us that “discounts and promotions are taxes placed on brands for being unremarkable”. What truly sets your business apart? Why would a customer choose you over a competitor? If you’ve been overly reliant on deals during last year’s economic debacle, ask yourself when enough is enough. The sooner you start weaning customers off discounts, the sooner you’ll begin cultivating healthy, long-term business.
2. Stop relying on “best practices”: Internet business is maturing. It’s not good enough anymore to simply follow the wisdom of the crowd. We all know we need fast loading pages and easy to use shopping carts.  Now is the time to start testing bigger and bolder ideas. It’s ok to imitate for so long, but you can’t always play follow the leader. This year, be the one who makes best practices instead of the one who follows them.
3. Stop relying on “more”: When sales are slumping, the most appealing solution is often “do more”. That means more emails, more promotions, more ads, whatever. But more is a slippery slope, and only digs you into a hole for next year. What if your marketing budget was cut in half this year? How would you adjust? Start obsessing about doing better, not just more.
4. Stop drinking the feedback Kool-aid: Many businesses think they’re getting good feedback from their customers. The problem is the people who are most likely to give feedback (your best customers) are the ones you need it from the least. Start thinking about how to get the painful, yet necessary feedback from ex-customers or non-customers. Why have they not considered you or stopped shopping altogether? This year, do everything it takes to reach the people you really need feedback from.
5. Stop the analytics overload: Dozens of advanced web analytics tools have sprung up over the last few years. Yet we seem to be drowning in data and thirsting for meaning at the same time. How can we make sense of this paralyzing analytics overload?  For many etailers, it really all boils down to a few metrics worth tracking: visits, conversion rate, and average order size. Start with these 3 fundamental KPIs and move backwards, asking yourself what the root problems are preventing these metrics from improving. Take your top ideas and start testing now.

Have you made any new years anti-resolutions for your online business? Share them below.

Such is the problem for many online business’ when gazing into the vast array of tools available in internet marketing. As with any tool, the internet marketing tactics are best when used for their intended purpose. Despite what any consultant says, there is no one web marketing tactic that works for everyone, in all situations. Below is a guide to help you choose the proper tools for your unique marketing needs.

Search Engine Optimization

When to use it:

• When you have time, and can patiently wait for results
• When people are already searching for your product/service
• When you serve a local market (competition is much less)

When not to use it:

• When you need results fast
• When people don’t know they need your product (more often than not, extremely innovate products with little competition fair poorly with SEO, because no one is searching for them)

Pay Per Click

When to use it:

• When you need a quick burst in traffic
• When testing what keywords to do natural search engine optimization for
• In combination with search engine optimization (studies show both used together are synergistic)

When not to use it:

• In an extremely competitive market. Bid prices are high and click fraud is rampant
• When targeting customer early in the buying cycle. Search users are less likely to click on a paid ad when they are still just looking for information

Social Media Marketing

When to use it:

• When you are genuinely interested in contributing value to your customers, not just pushing out messages
• When customers are already talking about your product/service on social media
• When your product/service is truly buzzworthy (let’s face it, some products, while valuable, aren’t worth talking about)

When not to use it:

• When your products are, well…. boring. There’s nothing wrong with having a boring product, we all need them. We just rarely talk about them on Twitter and Facebook.
• If you’re a brand control freak. A certain openness is required for social media to work. If you can’t open up a discussion about your brand, SMM isn’t for you.

Email Marketing

When to use it:

• When customer retention is your goal. Email is permission marketing at its core, therefore its best used with a list of existing customers.
• As a lower cost substitute for direct mail. Most businesses find email marketing to provide much better ROI traditional mailings

When not to use it:

• When attempting to acquire new customers. Email is a terrible customer acquisition mechanism because you typically have to buy or rent a list of emails, which is bad news all around.

A/B Testing and Conversion Optimization

When to use it:

• When managers or designers disagree about which version of a page is best. A/b testing is the ultimate equalizer.
• When you have the resources: Creating multiple version of pages or emails can double a designers work load. Remember to count this cost as well.

When not to use it:

• If your site is barely getting any traffic. You’ll be spinning your wheels trying to a/b test a page that gets 5 visitors a month. Focus on getting critical mass first.
• When you’re focused on the small stuff. You may have heard stories of Amazon testing the colors of their buttons, but unless you have millions of visitors a day, don’t test the small stuff. There is much lower hanging fruit.

The tactics above are by no means exaustive, but are probably the most widely used (and abused) methods in internet marketing today.

What has been your experience? When have the tools above worked and not worked for you?

Social media can no longer be ignored, even by traditional marketing agencies and old-school business. But before you make the plunge into this powerful, but often misunderstood marketing tactic, ask yourself these 7 important questions.

1. Can you have a conversation? I recently saw a wall comment posted to a major clothing retail chain’s Facebook page, questioning whether the company was going out of business. As of today, the comment still has not been responded to. Obviously, they are not interested in having a conversation, or managing their brand reputation for that matter. If you want to do social media, make sure you have the time to listen and respond, not just push out content.
2. Do you have the time? Managing a Twitter or Facebook account can easily suck hours of productivity from an aimless employee charged with the task of managing it. Are you willing to invest the necessary time, but able to limit fruitless, unproductive chatter? Are you able to commit to the long-haul? Social media is more of a commitment than a campaign, if you start, expect to finish and stick with it for the long run.
3. Are you saying anything worth listening to? If you’re thinking of using Facebook updates as another channel for press releases or pure advertising, think again. Your friends and followers will quickly see through this sham. The key is to strive for interactions. If your updates contain only push content (e.g. “Come buy our new widgets!”) your followers will quickly tire. Much can be accomplished by transforming push into pull content (e.g. “please comment with your opinion on our new widget!”)
4. Can you stomach the negative? A certain openness is required for social media marketing to work. If the thought of an irate customer posting a negative comment on your Facebook wall scares you to tears, SMM might not be for you. In my experience though, nearly every time I’ve witnessed negative comments on a company profile page, the true fans jump in and defend the organization, sometimes before even the company does.
5. What role will customer service play? Once customers know they can reach you through social media, you will undoubtedly need to get customer service involved. How will you handle the inevitable customer service issues that surface? In my experience, giving at least a few senior customer service representatives the ability to interact instills a sense of ownership, ensuring that customer service will view social media with the same importance as they view a phone call or email.
6. Are you joining the right conversations? You don’t have to be everywhere. Consider first polling your customers and finding out what social media sites they use. Only join those that have a critical mass, there’s no point in talking to no one.
7. Can you accept a fuzzy ROI? Social media ROI can’t and shouldn’t be tracked in the same way as other online marketing venues. Say goodbye to the CPMs and CPCs from typical online marketing channels. Tangible revenue can be tracked in some ways, but much like traditional offline advertising, you’ll never really see the full picture of brand awareness benefits. Make sure your company management sees some of the more subjective ROI indicators, such as positive comments and the extent of conversations.

Social media is surely worth the time and effort, as long as you understand the cost. SMM isn’t free, it takes a serious investment. Before you get into social media, make sure you truly get it.

1. It’s biased: If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In other words, the SEO consultant believes that natural search is the key to your growth, while the social media guru says Facebook is the goose that lays the golden eggs.
2. It’s unprioritized: It’s easy to be overwhelmed by a mega-list of recommendations. I’m a fan of top 10 (or top whatever) lists, but they do have a tendency to produce unprioritzed advice that can easily swamp the small business owner.

With plethora of marketing options (e.g. email, SEO, PPC, social media)  competing for your attention, how do you decide how to allocate resources? Here’s some guiding principles: (that are prioritized, of course)

1. Strategy before Tactics: You need to know where you’re going before you choose the vehicle to get there. Some marketing vehicles are better than others depending on what you’re doing, and who you’re trying to reach. If you’re shooting for a 55+ audience, twitter probably isn’t the best place to start. If a consultant says you should be doing such and such, first stop to consider whether their recommendations gel with your strategy.
2. Leverage what’s already working: Is 50% of your business coming from natural search? There’s a good chance there’s still some low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. A 10% improvement on your top performing marketing tactic is more effective than a 50% improvement on your worst performing one. Study and live by the 80/20 rule.
3. Budget for the future: While the point above may imply only sticking with what’s safe, such would be a short-sighted plan. It’s easy to get too comfortable with what you already know, and ignore what’s up and coming. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma: why seek something new and improved when what you already have is working fine? Because you never know how long it’s going to work. Plan for obsolescence.
4. Imitate the Innovators: If the competition is already engaging in a certain tactic, there’s a good chance you could be missing the boat. You don’t always have to be the first in order to be the best. Stay on top of what your competitors are doing.
5. Fail Quickly, Fail Inexpensively: There’s no harm in trying something new that doesn’t work, just cut your losses early. Don’t invest too heavily, despite what any of your peers say, until you see promising results.
6. Demand Tangible Results: While the benefit of every marketing activity is not as easily quantified, you should be seeing results in some way. Don’t accept “branding” as an excuse for poorly performing banner ads, or “higher link-popularity” for ineffective search engine optimization. Insist on bottom line results.

The good news for internet business owners is there’s 1,000 things they can be doing right now to improve their business, the bad news is that not all 1,000 are equally important. Choose wisely, because the order in which you execute is critical for success.

1. SEO Digger: My top fav right now, this innovative tool allows you to see which search queries you are ranking in the top 20 Google results for. According to the SEO Digger site, here’s how it works: “Seodigger works by building a reverse index. The first 20 SERP results are saved from 60 million search requests. Then, a “backward index” of the search engine is built, linking sites with keywords these sites can be found by.” For me, the tool is useful because it shows me keyword phrases that I haven’t intentionally optimized for, but present a great opportunity for capturing good traffic with a little work.
2. Google AdPreview: A godsend for PPC marketers, this tool allows you to see ads as they appear to the normal Google visitor performing a search. (typically your Adwords ads don’t appear for your own searches when you are logged in). You can also change your geographic location in order to preview local ads as someone would in other part of the world. Thanks to Jeff Novak from 10 Golden Rules for alerting me to this one.
3. SEO Book’s Firefox Plugin: This is the one Firefox plugin I can’t live without. The plugin shows 22 SEO metrics directly on the Google SERP, including incoming links, PageRank, Technorati Rank, Domain age, and more. You can also right click on any webpage and look at these same metrics at a glance.
4. Google Sets: This Google labs tool is a great way of generating related keyword ideas. Basically, you enter a few keywords, and Google generates a list of related search terms. While the regular Google Keyword tool also generates keyword suggestions, Google Sets takes into account more than just one keyword phrase at a time.
5. AdCenter Keyword Mutation Tool: Microsoft AdCenter’s keyword mutation tool is great for finding misspellings. Thanks to Linda Bustos for pointing out this tool as a great way to optimize internal site search.

Have you found any other SEO or SEM tools that are making your job easier? Please drop a comment.

1. Hubpages: Hubpages is a community of articles, or “hubs” on various topics. Their unique system discourages spammers by slapping no-follow tags on outgoing links if your “hubscore” falls below 75. You can increase your hubscore by participating in forums, commenting on hubs, and most importantly, submitting high quality, completely original articles. It takes some work to maintain your hubscore, but the high quality links are worth the effort. I’ve seen some of my hubs picked up by Google in less than 2 hours.
2. Work.com: Work.com specializes in business related guides and tutorials. As long your guides are high quality and pass the approval process, they can contain as many followed links as you’d like. In addition, I’ve received decent traffic from the guides I’ve submitted so far.
3. Ebay Blogs: Who doesn’t want a link from ebay.com? Ebay blogs are a great way to showcase your ebay products, or just provide useful content to the ebay community. Links posted within your blog are followed, so the potential SEO benefit is huge. My first ebay post was indexed in less than a day.

Discovered any good link building methods lately? If you don’t mind sharing them, leave a comment.

I hope everyone has a happy new year.

1. Compound Topics: I’ve seen this used regularly by Karmaloop. They cram about as many topics, brands, or product names into the subject line as possible, in hopes that something will grab the users attention. In order for this strategy to work, it’s important to still keep the subject line scan able by breaking up the topics. I personally like using the “+” symbol. (”New Nike + Reebok + Addidas Shoes!” vs. “New Nike, Reebok, and Addidas Shoes”)
2. Short and Simple: If you can communicate the topic email in 2 words rather than 6, you’ll stand apart from the rest of the inbox clutter.
3. Use Special Characters: I like using special characters in order to communicate ideas and create eye magnets. Below are a couple of suggestions:
   • New Widgets = Great Gifts
   • Huge $avings on Widgets
   • { New Widgets, In-Stock Now }
   • New Widgets @ YourURL.com!
4. Question Marks and Exclamation Points: Creative use of Question marks and exclamation points within subject lines can stress urgency or create curiosity in the mind of the subscriber. I like combining the 2 and creating something like “50% Off All Widgets?!”
5. Top 10 Lists: There’s something so attention grabbing about top 10 lists (or top 7, 13, or whatever). People want valuable information in bite-size, scan-able chunks. A list delivers value that can’t be achieve by endless paragraphs, even if they contained the same information.
6. All Caps: Once considered a spam trigger, I believe all caps is back on the table. I frequently see it used by large companies that would probably not be doing it if it was harmful to the delivery rate. However, I would suggest only using all caps on special occasions. In addition, I think it’s much more effective to capitalize only 1 word in the subject rather than the whole thing. ( “HUGE Sale this Friday Only” vs. “HUGE SALE THIS FRIDAY ONLY” )
7. Use Magical Word “Free”: It sounds trite, but “free” still works. With less ISPs nitpicking on words like this in the subject line, it shouldn’t hurt your delivery rate.
8. Use the Recipient’s Name: Let’s face it, we love to hear our name. Adding the recipient’s name to the subject line will make them believe the message is personalized for them. I would strongly caution, however, not to use this tactic unless something in the email is personalized for this individual. Simply appending the name to the beginning of a subject line, and not delivering personalized content, is gimmicky.
9. Leave them hanging: Subject lines that end with an … (an ellipsis) suggest there is a continuation of the topic within the body of the email. An example of this might be “Checkout these new widgets…” or something similar.
10. Make them Witty: If appropriate with your demographic, use witty subject lines that make your readers smile. Threadless is a master of witty subject lines.
11. Solution Oriented Subject: Rather than using product or brand names in the subject, consider writing from a solution oriented perspective. For example, a site selling anti-Spyware software might consider using a subject line like “How to get rid of Spyware Forever” rather than a product oriented subject such as “Brand New Spyware Software Released.”
12. Don’t Be Gimmicky: If your subject line is “How to Live Forever” and the content of your email is offering a new alternative health supplement, your readers will eventually see through your gimmicks. The subject should be intriguing, but not over-promising.

The key to successful subject lines is a/b testing. Without solid data, there’s no guarantee any of these tips will necessarily improve your
open rates. Every subscriber list is different, so it’s essential that you understand what works for your list.

As always, be sure to leave comments with any other successful subject line tactics you’ve seen.

1. Join Feedback Loops: Feedback loops allow you to see who is marking your email as spam (so you can remove them). Some ISPs, like AOL, provide an easy way to join the feedback loop. For other ISPs, you may need to contact your email service provider to see if they can provide you with this information.
2. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are most likely to mark your email as junk. Sure, nobody wants to willfully shrink the size of their opt in list, but you have to think long term.
3. Consistent Timing: ISPs love it when you consistently send email on the same day at near the same time. Since spammers don’t care, consistency is the mark of a responsible email marketer.
4. Use Consistent From Information: Be sure to always use the same from name and address. Changing the from email will require your subscribers to add each address to their address book in order to ensure deliverability. In addition, a consistent from name helps readers recognize your brand.
5. Use Double Opt In: Double opt in is a best practice required by many ISPs in order to be considered for
   white listing. In addition, it protects your database from misspelled email addresses.
6. Unsubscribe Link at Top: Why at the top? Because if unhappy subscribers can’t find it within a few seconds, they may hit the junk button instead, which damages your rep. Better to lose a subscriber than get a spam complaint.
7. Static IP Address: If you send marketing emails from your own server, always send from the same IP address. If you use an email service provider, find out if they offer a dedicated IP for an additional charge. If they do, it’s worth it. Like shared webhosts, many ESP’s group many clients under one IP address. In other words, what another company does with their email marketing can affect your deliverability. It’s much easier to manage the reputation of one IP address rather than many.
8. Reverse DNS: Many ISPs perform a reverse DNS lookup, which checks to make sure the IP you are sending from is authorized to send from your domain.
9. White List Reminder: Encourage subscribers to add your email address to their address book or white list. Some ISPs look at the number of times you are added to an address book as a sign of trust.
10. Get Authenticated: Email authentication is confusing as heck. There are a few standards out there that are not necessary competing. The Sender ID Framework uses a simple SPF record with your DNS Zone. Microsoft has a handy Sender ID wizard to help you create this text record for your DNS. In addition to Sender ID, DomainKeys is another popular authentication method. Both methods help to both ensure deliverability and prevent spammers from spoofing with your domain.
11. Don’t Worry about SPAM Words: Don’t stress about using the word “free” or occasionally putting all caps in the subject. I find these tactics to be successful and have no affect on delivery.
12. Remove Bounces: Be sure to remove all hard bounces that come back as undeliverable. Repeatedly sending to an invalid email will send off red flags with most internet service providers.
13. Reply to Challenge Responses: Occasionally, SPAM filtering software will send back a reply to your email asking you to confirm that you are a real person. Invest the 30 seconds or so it takes to do this for each challenge response you receive. Not only will it ensure that this particular recipient receives your message, but it can improve your sender reputation as well.
14. Be Relevant: Nothing encourages spam complaints more than sending people stuff they didn’t sign up for. If they signed up for a ezine newsletter, and you send them nothing but sales pitches, you’re likely to get complaints.
15. Send In Spurts: Some ISPs have limits as to how many emails you can send to in a given period of time. If you’re having trouble sending email to a particular ISP such as Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail, see if your email service provider gives you the ability to stage the email over a longer period of time.
16. Get Off Black Lists: MxToolBox offers a great tool to check if your email server is blacklisted. If it is, begin the process of contacting each of the the black list service and find out the process for getting your IP removed.
17. Get On White Lists: Achieving white list status with the major ISPs is no small feat. If you’re not up for the challenge, consider uses an email deliverability consulting firm such as Return Path that specializes in this area.

As with any improvement program, it’s important to track your progress as you attempt to improve your delivery rates. Email Delivery monitoring services such as DeliverMonitor.com offer ways to track your delivery rates across most of the major ISP’s.

Be sure to checkout my previous post 25 e-mail marketing tips. As always, I’d love to hear everyone’s experiences with email deliverability.  Like the ideas listed above? Find out 3 Things you need here.

About the Author

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, an e-commerce and internet marketing consultancy. Justin also manages the e-commerce website for C28, a Christian t-Shirts company.

1. Spend tons of money on advertising and PR campaigns
2. Let your customers do the marketing for you

With the rising cost of most traditional forms of marketing, who wouldn’t prefer the second option? Unfortunately, very few customers ever become true fans. After all, many businesses focus entirely too much on customer acquisition and neglect customer retention. But in order for customers to become fans, not even traditional retention strategies will suffice. Companies must go out of their way and transform their customers into friends, advisors, and partners. Below I’ve listed some ideas I’ve either used or seen used to accomplish this purpose.

1. Street Teams, Brand Reps or Brand Ambassadors: Street Team marketing is a fascinating concept that developed from the underground music industry. It centers around a grass root strategy where your fans do the marketing for you. Using this strategy, an online retailer might give customers access to branded wallpapers, screensavers, or avatars. Customers are encouraged to copy and paste banners ads into their personal Myspace profiles, blogs, or email signatures. Customers can easily email friends through easy to use tell-a-friend forms. Some online Street Teams, such as C28 or Threadless, combine these tactics with a customer referral program, allowing users to earn store credit for sales referred to the site. Street Team marketing will not work for everyone, but it can be powerful if this style of marketing fits your target audience and brand.
2. Create a Community: Whether its through forums, Myspace, Facebook, or your own sub community site, allow your customers to interact with others of similar interests. Circuit City recently launched a social networking site complete with forums, blogs, photo galleries, and user profiles. Hot Topic has a robust Myspace profile with over 35,000 members. Only time will tell if social networking continues to grow, but for now it’s inexpensive and effective brand exposure.
3. Rewards Programs: Rewards programs are nothing new, but they work well for creating brand loyalty. Maybe your online store doesn’t offer the cheapest prices, but if you let customers earn points redeemable for merchandise, they just might overlook that.
4. Recognize your Brand Warriors: Be sure to recognize top spenders by displaying their stats for all to see. Recognizing your top customers will only encourage them to spend more. One company I worked for decided to send hand-written thank you notes to their top customers along with a gift card.
5. Share and Listen: How well does your business interact with your audience? Corporate blogs, forums, customer generated product reviews and surveys can be great two way communication channels. Run your business like a democracy. Let your customers vote with their opinions and preferences. Policies and procedures should from the bottom up, not the other way around.

Be sure to leave your comments with examples of anyone successfully using these or other brand building tactics.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.
2. Don’t Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like “free” or “sale”. In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I’ve used words like “free” in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.
3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.
4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I’ve calculated from emails I’ve sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.
5. Don’t Over or Under Mail: If you send too much, you’ll get deleted or marked as SPAM. Oddly enough, if you send once every 3 months you may have the same problem. Keep your brand top of mind for your customers by finding the perfect balance between over and under mailing.
6. Forward to Friend Feature Many users automatically do this, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. First time potential customers can be very open to company when it is introduced by a friend or colleague.
7. Subscribe Feature for Forwards: Make it easy for potential new subscribers to subscribe if they receive your email as a forward. Include somewhere in the body a subscribe link.



8. White List Reminder: If you want your subscribers to add you to their white list or address book, you need to ask. Sure, not everyone will add you. However, those who do are likely the people who care most about receiving your emails and, therefore, you have the most to lose if your emails get flagged as spam.
9. Unsubscribe at Top: I know what you’re thinking, “At the TOP!?” Yes, at the top. Lazy unsubscribers have a tendency to click the SPAM button instead scrolling down to find the unsubscribe link. By placing the link at the top, you might increase your unsubscribe rate, but that’s better than an inflated SPAM complaint count.
10. Single Click Unsubscribe: I generally recommend keeping the unsubscribe as simple as possible. However, you may want to confirm the action if you place your unsubscribe at the top of every email in case users click the link on accident.
11. Privacy Policy: Always place your privacy policy at the bottom of every email. Assure customers that you obtained their email address in a legitimate fashion, and you will not sell their personal info.
12. Call to Action: Each section must contain a specific call to action that avoids vague phrases like “click here.” You’ll be surprised how an effective call to action button or link can improve your click through rate.
13. Mix Freebies with Products: Too much selling can burn people out. Engage your subscribers with useful, free content. For example, if you sell home theater equipment, send out an article on the explaining the benefits of newer technologies. When you provide additional value to your customers with learning resources, they are sometimes even willing to pay more for your merchandise. In addition, strategies like this keep your brand top of mind.
14. Find Your “Tuesday”: For the eCommerce sites I’ve worked with, Tuesday morning has always resulted in the best open, click-through, and conversion rates. However, every list is different. Find which day works best for you.
    
15. Same Day, Same Time: Be consistent in the time you send your emails for two reasons. First, the ISPs see inconsistency as a possible SPAM flag. Spammers can care less when they send out mass emails. Second, your customers will begin to anticipate your emails at a certain time each week, possibly increasing the likely hood of them opening and clicking through.
16. Keep the Good Stuff above the Fold: Remember that many email clients will obscure a large portion of your email unless the user scrolls down. Make sure the top 400 pixels are as engaging as possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to send artwork back to the design department because the top of the email failed to grab your attention.
17. A/B Test 1 Variable at a Time: It took me far too long to learn this. For years, I would change several factors in each successive email blast, but never could find that perfect mix. If you really want to find out what works, you can only change 1 variable. For example, should the subject line be short or long? Keep the same content and split your list in 2, sending half a longer subject and the other half a shorter one. Do not change any other variables!
18. 600 Pixel Width: Due to the limitations of many email clients, stick with a width somewhere between 500 to 600 pixels wide.
19. Experiment with Subject Lines: I wish there was a magic principle I can share with you about subject lines. Unfortunately, there isn’t. The best we can do is test, test, and test again. Sometimes short subjects are better, sometimes long, sometimes intriguing, sometimes urgent, whatever works best for you. Here’s a great article on email subject lines.
20. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are the most likely to get you in trouble by clicking the SPAM button. Consider automatically removing a subscriber that hasn’t opened an email in several months.
21. Proofreading: Always have every email proofread by at least 2 detail oriented people. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a typo in an email blast.
22. Monitor Replies: When you send out thousands of emails, you’re bound to get a few replies. Occasionally, you’ll get some good feedback from your subscribers. In addition, some people reply with unsubscribe requests.
23. Don’t Rent Lists: Some may disagree on this, but I’ve never seen anything good come from a rented list. Don’t risk your sender reputation with emails from questionable sources. If you want to reach a new audience, consider a joint venture with another firm in a similar but non-competing industry.
24. Develop your Brand: Remember that your emails will slowly build your brand in the minds of your subscribers. Even if they never click-through and make a purchase, be sure to keep a consistent and accurate corporate image with your email content.
25. Begin Segmentation & Personalization Now: In a few years, email marketers that don’t practice segmentation and personalization will be left in the dust. There are an endless number of ways to segment your email list. Some popular ways are by purchase behavior, geography, or ordering frequency.

As a long term strategy, I would also greatly encourage researching transactional and trigger based email marketing, as they tend to product much better open, click-through, and conversion rates. In addition, I’ve had great results tracking email delivery rates for the major ISP’s through a deliverability monitoring service called Delivery Monitor.

Like the ideas listed above? Find out 3 Things you need here.

About Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, a web marketing & e-commerce consultancy. Justin also operations several other websites, including EnjoyinJava.com, a coffee reviews and coupon blog featuring coffee for less coupon codes.

1. Refer a friend form: After the user completes the purchase, ask them if they would be willing to tell a friend or family member about your product or service. Obviously, if they trusted you enough to give you their own money, they might be willing to recommend you to a friend.

2. How to Track your Order: In order to prevent needless queries to your customer service department, you might consider showing customers the process for tracking their order. Show them how to login, and find out when the order has shipped and what the current status is on the delivery.

3. Show products related to those ordered: By doing this, you might be surprised at how many people will immediately order again. Just be sure that your customer service team is prepared to deal with customer requesting to add additional items to their orders.

4. Feedback Survey: Ask your shoppers about the experience they just had. Because the experience is fresh on their mind, they will tell you about any frustrations while using your site.

5. Coupon for Next Purchase: Encourage customers to bounce right back with a coupon for their next purchase. Make it clear, however, that this discount cannot be used on previous purchases.

In choosing one of the above tactics, your company priorities will apply. For example, if you’re most concerned about providing preemptive customer service, then you might be inclined to use the receipt page to clarify how to track the order. If you’re more concerned about driving sales, you might choose to show related products.

A word of caution applies to these ideas. Before you encourage your customer to perform another action, make it very clear that the purchase process is complete, and order has been submitted. In addition, always send an email confirmation receipt.

By using one of the above tactics, hopefully you’ll steer clear of the mistake many ecommerce sites make on their Thank You pages and continue to build a long lasting, profitable relationship with your customers.

1. Offer Bounce Back Discounts: Think about how much traffic your site will receive during the holidays. How can you harness that traffic to create year long business? Consider offering a good discount incentive for customers to come back and shop in January. You can automatically email them a coupon after each order, or send one along with the package. Make sure that this coupon is not valid until after the holidays.
2. Loosen Up on Your Return Policy: While a 30 day return policy is commonplace for the rest of the year, it may scare off early shoppers during the holidays. Make it clear to your visitors that you will accept returns and exchanges on all Christmas gift purchases.
3. Use a Website Monitoring Service: Odds are, your website will go down at least once during the busy holiday season. If you’re not big enough to have a 24 hour IT department monitoring your server, signup for a website monitoring service such as Alertsite, who will email or text message you if your site goes down.
4. Gift Receipts: Gift givers hate revealing how much they spent on a gift. Make sure you allow customers to click a Gift receipt option that will hide the prices on the packing list from the recipient.
5. Gift Messages: Let your customers add a personal message to their gift. For simplicity, you can have the message appear on the packing list which will already be included in the box.
6. Determine Shipping Cut-off Dates: This is quite possibly the most important information to communicate to customers during the holidays. Check with your shipping carriers to determine what the cutoff days are for the various methods of shipping.
7. Prominent “No Hassle” Return Policy: Your return policy should be easy to find. Consider re-packaging it as a ”no hassle” policy in order to calm the fears of first time buyers.
8. Holiday Graphical Themes: Show some holiday spirit and redesign some of the artwork on your site with a holiday theme. Hopefully, this will get visitors in a buying mood.
9. Increase Server Capacity: Talk with your web host about how you can increase your server performance during the holiday rush. You don’t want to end up like Walmart or Amazon on last year’s cyber Monday. Here’s a sad, but funny example of Macy’s servers getting overloaded.
10. Checkup on your Domain, Web hosting, and Merchants: God forbid that your credit card or domain name expires during the Christmas rush. Double check the basics just to be safe.
11. Audit Your Online Product Catalog: Have a detail oriented person visit each of your product pages to ensure accuracy. Check for typos, broken images, and bad hyperlinks.
12. Seasonal SEO and PPC Landing Pages: Don’t forget to optimize your SEO and PPC campaigns for seasonal keywords. Visitors searching habits change around the holidays, so your marketing strategy should as well.
13. Mystery Shop your Site: Either do it yourself or hire a professional service to mystery shop your site. Mystery shopping should include ordering, contacting customer service, and returning the product back to you.
14. Learn from Your Past Mistakes: Just for fun, checkout your site at Christmas time last year on the wayback machine. You’ll likely spot issues that can be improved this year.
15. Learn from Your Competitors: Also, checkout what your competition was doing last year. It may give you some tips on what or what not to do this year.
16. Build up those Wish Lists: Start encouraging your visitors to build their wish lists now. Come Christmas, they’ll know exactly where to find what they want. Check out this post for Wish list improvement ideas.
17. Offer Online Gift Certificates: If your site doesn’t offer online gift certificates, and your visitors don’t find that perfect gift, they will just leave. Gift certificates make great last minute gifts. In addition, they’re a great way to drive sales at the beginning of next year.
18. Gifts by Price: Organize and suggest gifts by price range. For example, highlight gifts under $10, 25, 50, 100 or whatever price points are appropriate for your business.
19. Gifts by Person: Organize gifts intended for different people groups such as kids, teens, parents, grandparents, etc.
20. Get 404 and 500 Error Notifications: Talk with your webmaster and ask him to setup a script that notifies him every time a 404 (page not found) or 500 (internal server error) occurs on your site. You might be surprised how often errors occur. When we set this up for one of my clients, they received over 1,000 errors in one day. These errors can be costly, especially at Christmas time.
21. Stocking Stuffers: Be sure to highlight low cost products that would make good stocking stuffers. These can be a great way to increase your average order total.
22. Shipping and Return Info on Product Pages: Shipping and return issues will be top of mind for your customers at this time. Assure them your policies are convenient and fair by linking to your shipping and returns page from your product pages.
23. Offer Gift Wrapping: Many don’t like the idea of sending gifts to friends or family wrapped in nothing but bubble wrap or Styrofoam popcorn. If you can, offer gift wrapping services to your online customers. Be sure to charge enough to cover the labor and material costs for this additional service.
24. Emphasize Urgency: Let your customers know it’s not safe to wait until the last minute. To prevent shipping issues or product stock outs, encourage your customers to shop early.
25. Bundle Products: Gift selection is much easier when related items are grouped together in some sort of gift basket or bundle.

Hopefully you’ve found something here useful for your site. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.  

Good product descriptions should both inform and persuade your customers. Below I’ve gathered  some tips for spicing up these powerful selling tools.

1. List benefits, not features: Have you ever encountered a salesman who rattles off useless specs and features that you either don’t care about or don’t understand? Don’t be guilty of this with your product descriptions. Suppose you sell a wireless phone that offers a wireless headset feature. Rather than boasting about “Bluetooth wireless technology” phrase the feature as a benefit. “Safe, no-wire hands free operation allows you to keep your hands free for more important tasks.” For more suggestions on selling benefits, not features, checkout this post.
2. Proofread them Thoroughly: There’s nothing more embarrassing than being told by a customer that your product description is erroneous or contains typos. Make sure your descriptions are proof read by someone other than the original copywriter.
3. Let Customers Describe It: Allow your customers to review your products. The information they provide will be very valuable to customers considering a purchase. Visitors may trust a user generated review even more than your own product descriptions.
4. Don’t just sell, educate: When you educate your customers about your products, they feel like you are providing additional value for the price they pay. RadioShack does a nice job of this with their Research library.
5. Use Enticing, Image Oriented Words: Let your customers see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your products through descriptions that create powerful images in their mind. Here’s a great comparison of 2 very different descriptions of the same product.
6. Too Much is a Bad Thing: Don’t overwhelm your customers at the outset with a huge, novel size product description. Crutchfield uses a JavaScript enabled “Read more” link to hide or show additional product information.

As always, please leave a comment if you have any more suggestions to add to these.

In this post, I’ll share some of the tactics I’ve used to improve product page rankings for my clients.

1. Product Reviews: Product reviews are a sure fire way to ensure your pages are rich with unique content that occurs only on your site. Back when we were able to view supplemental results on the Google SERPs, I found that pages that had unique products reviews did not end up as supplemental results. On the contrary, pages without unique descriptions or product reviews did.
2. Keyword Rich URLs: Because most ecommerce sites are linked with a dynamic database, they use ugly url’s which contain at least one number parameter. Convert your category product page URLs into friendly, keywords rich file and folder names. For more info on URL re-writing, check out this Wikipedia article. For IIS users, you might want to consider this software from Isapi Re-write.
3. No Follow Tags: Many sites distribute their internal link juice in such a way that is not favorable to the product detail pages. In order for your pages to rank highly, they need to receive a decent flow of PageRank. I would strongly recommend slapping a no-follow tag on your less important pages from an SEO perspective (e.g. Privacy, security, about us pages). Just be sure to link to them from your sitemap without the no follow. For more info on this tactic, check out this post on the no-follow tag.



4. Avoid Manufacturer Descriptions: Resist the temptation to copy and paste manufacturer provided product descriptions. Why? Because all your competitors use them as well. When Google sees multiple pages with the same content, it will likely favor the site in which the content was published first. In addition, these stock product descriptions often are not the most well written from a sales perspective.
5. Add SEO Keywords to Title Tag: It goes without saying that all your title tags must be unique and contain the product name. However, this is simply not enough. Create an extra field in your product database where you can add alternative SEO keywords. Then have these keywords show up in the Title tag for each product page. For example, while you’ll likely never rank for a high volume keyword search such as “apple ipods”, you may stand a chance at ranking for “discount apple ipods” or “Apple ipod mp3 player” if you add those phrases to the title tag.
6. Internal Contextual Linking: Link to your important product pages internally from a non navigation link. For example, you may want create a keyword rich link in the product description of one product linking to another product page.

I hope you’ll find these suggestions useful. As always, leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.