by Michael Johnston on September 29, 2009
If you do any email marketing, chances are you’re familiar with your newsletter open rate, which is simply the percentage of people who view the email you sent. Naturally, the goal is to have an open rate that is as high as possible.
Although there are lots of factors to consider when sending promotions, such as timing, sender name, and so forth, the subject line of the newsletter is perhaps the most important. With an enticing subject, the reader is more apt to open the email. For example, a subject line like, “Check this out,” almost guarantees your message will be deleted and/or flagged as spam. But a good subject line, such as “Invitation to Our Next Event,” stands a better chance of being opened and read.
Writing good subject lines is simply good copywriting. It takes time to master, but that doesn’t mean trial and error is the way to go about it. If you spend just a little time researching the dos and don’t you’re apt to find yourself reaping much better returns from your e-mail marketing efforts. A short but sweet article on this subject can be found on Mailchimp’s website, where they’ve spent a good deal of time analyzing what works and what doesn’t.
For those who feel they could use a little help, today Mailchimp announced their subject line suggester. As the name, ahem, suggests, you provide Mailchimp with phrases from the subject line you’re thinking of using and they provide you with examples of wording changes that will likely make it more effective. The suggestions are based on their analysis of subject lines used by their customers and the open rates those subject lines garnered.
As with any automated tool, use good sense when considering the recommendations.
by Michael Johnston on September 23, 2009
Always be honest with people if you want their trust. This is as true in life as it should be on the Internet.
Today, while visiting the site of one of the leading Mac OCR vendors, I saw a link labeled ‘Demo,’ which I clicked, assuming it would take me to the page where I could download a demo version of their software. I landed on a page that requested my name and email address, and I assumed that after handing over that information I’d get an emailed link where I could grab the software. It seemed like a fair trade.
But that didn’t happen. After I provided my personal contact information, I was taken to a page where I could view a Flash-only demo of the product – no download in sight, and certainly not what I was expecting or what I believe most people would reasonably have expected. I was so incensed by this blatant bait-and-switch that I no longer care about their product. (I’m also so irritated that I’m not even going to mention the company’s name)
This example demonstrates the type of tactic that will backfire all the time. Don’t do it.
by Michael Johnston on September 15, 2009
Often the most confusing thing about running a website is knowing what to do first. With so much to do, and without a clear set of priorities, you can end up devoting too much attention to things that don’t matter and completely forget the things that do. But if you have your priorities in order and adhere to them, there is zero chance you will fall victim to this common pitfall. At the end of the day, it’s a very liberating feeling to know you have’t forgotten anything important.
So how do you know what your priorities are? Over the years I’ve developed the following rules for managing websites. Remember, these are general rules I use to dictate the order in which I perform site-related tasks; my specific rule is that people who really know their business can get away with shifting the order from time to time, with one caveat: Rules 1,2, and 3 must always come first. >> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on September 14, 2009
A few months ago I wrote a post describing some of the methods available for taking your blog content and automatically cross-posting it to Twitter. At that time, I suggested Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin as the best solution. I still love that plugin; in fact, it’s what I continue to use for this blog.
But what if you’re on a Wordpress.com blog, where you can’t install plugins, or maybe you just don’t want to mess with plugins, period? The answer is Twitter Feed, a service that polls your blog, looks for updates, and posts them to Twitter on your behalf.
Twitter Feed is totally automatic, totally free, and works with any RSS feed – not just those from blogs. It couldn’t be easier to use.
by Michael Johnston on September 14, 2009
For several years, I banked with Commerce Bank. Last year, like many banks, Commerce had financial trouble and was acquired by TD Bank. From my perspective, the acquisition went smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that I didn’t know about the changeover until I paid a visit to my local branch. Nothing makes the heart skip like not finding your bank in the place where it has always been.
Since the changeover, I’ve been happily visiting TD Bank online using the same bookmark I’ve had for the past several years. The bookmark originally pointed to commerceonline.com, and that’s how I’ve done my online banking since the day I first saved it. When TD Bank took over Commerce, the link continued to work.
Not what I expected to see when I clicked my online banking bookmark.
When I visited today, I got a big surprise: at first glance, I thought my bank’s website had been taken over by a domain squatter. Actually, in a sense, it turns out it had been taken over by a domain squatter. It was filled with ’sponsored search results.’ After I recovered from shock, I realized that what had probably happened was that TD Bank, the new owner of Commerce Bank, had probably forgotten to renew the registration on the old domain, and so it fell into the hands of whomever has it now. The net effect is that when I use the my bookmark that has always taken me to my online banking login, I now land on a page not apparently controlled by Commerce or TD Bank, but one owned by some unknown entity.
This poses potential security problems. Let’s assume there are lots of people like me, people who long ago bookmarked the site and trust it to take them to their bank. Now, what if the new custodians of the domain decide to take advantage of this fact and masquerade as the bank? I’d be willing to bet a lot of people might accidentally give up their login and pin number before they realized what had happened. We’re all creatures of habit. How often do you really click the little security icon in your browser to verify a site’s identity?
This brings me to my point: guard your old domains. If you ever used them for anything important, it’s better to keep paying the $9/year to renew the domain than to let it fall into the hands of someone who might use them to take advantage of others.
And if you happened to once bank with Commerce Bank USA, I strongly suggest updating your bookmarks.
by Michael Johnston on July 31, 2009
When was the last time you didn’t open an order confirmation email? Now, what about confirmations to various subscription services, Do you open them? If you’re like most people, you probably do.
Studies have shown that Transactional Emails, as they’re known, are opened and read about 75% of the time. In contrast, regular email newsletters have much, much lower open rates – typically 10% – 30%, and often in the single digits. It’s clear that if you’re looking to grab the readers attention, you’re much more likely to be able to do it with a transactional email. Their higher open rates also tend to garner higher click-through rates, multiplying the effect.
>> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on July 30, 2009
A few days ago, I discussed site strategy with a prospective client who sells e-books. His concern was that sales from the site aren’t nearly what he’d like them to be and he wanted to know how to improve them. After we’d spoken for a few minutes, he asked whether I thought a complete site redesign was appropriate. I responded with a question that, from his reaction, seemed impertinent: How many visitors do you get each day?
To those just getting started in the online world, the question is usually surprising, and understandably so, because a site makeover just seems to be an obvious improvement. But the question of traffic is paramount, because without it you can change many things about a site and none of them will make the slightest bit of difference. Why? >> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on July 29, 2009
One of the biggest problems faced by any site trying to build readership is retention. Attracting visitors is hard work, and if you’re going to make the most of those efforts, you need to do something to keep readers coming back. Good content alone won’t do it.
“I don’t like to pay for the same real estate twice,” said George S. Patton, in the eponymously named 1970 film classic. (I don’t know if the real George S. Patton ever really said this, but it seems consistent with his persona.) It concisely describes what many site managers do: work hard to attract visitors but do nothing to retain them as regular readers.
Building repeat visitor traffic can be done in many ways. The first and most obvious way is to encourage users to bookmark your site. Unfortunately, this is the least effective method since people simply don’t bookmark sites the way they once did; even when they do there is no guarantee that they’ll remember to use the bookmark they’ve created. >> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on July 10, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote a post wherein I described my experiences crowdsourcing a new online list management application. One of the the highlights of that post was a relatively new service, called 99Designs, which provides an amazingly effective method of getting quality design work. After that post, I got a call from 99Design’s Jason Aiken, and we talked about my experiences.
During the call, we briefly touched on some of things I’ve found that have helped to make my experience with their site so productive, things I omitted from my original post because it was already on the longish side. Today I want to spend just a few minutes highlighting what I’ve learned and how they can help anyone to make the most of the experience. >> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on July 9, 2009
A few months ago, I met with a former colleague for some BBQ and shop talk. We’re 
both entrepreneurially minded, and during the course of the conversation I casually lamented the seeming lack of a good online tool for managing various lists, todos, projects, and so forth, all in one place. While, on the surface, they might seem entirely separate from one another, my feeling was that there was a strong common thread that ran between them, namely that they are all, at their core, lists of a kind, and that it should be possible to design an application that cleanly handles each of these needs.
Of course, I know that there are online apps out there that address each of these needs; but my complaints with all of them, to varying degrees, is that they fall short in some significant way, whether it be a rotten user interface, or functionality that is too limited for my needs. I also don’t like having to use multiple tools when one could do the job. I began to think that my needs weren’t very unusual, and that others might feel the same way, and that this might be the sort of thing that they would find useful, too. What really sealed the deal was that I felt that this was a tool I really wanted to use myself, and so I decided to begin building it. Thus, Lystie was born.
>> Read the full article
by Michael Johnston on April 6, 2009
One of the biggest problems in developing pay-per-click ad campaigns is knowing which keywords to target. The basic premise of building keyword lists is simple: The more keyword phrases you can target, the more traffic you can drive to your site. And by targeting some of the more obscure long tailish phrases, you can lower your per-click charges, since many of your competitors won’t take the time to do the research to identify them, thus keeping the bid prices low.
In short, building comprehensive lists of possible search phrases is among the most crucial elements of an PPC marketing campaign. It’s also an extremely time-consuming chore that screams for some form of automated assistance.
Today I learned of a Google product called Search Based Keyword Tool (SBKT) that does exactly that. Over at Occam’s Razor there is an extended description of the tool and how you can make the most of it. I can’t overstate how important this tool can be: If building keyword lists for AdWords campaigns is one of your concerns, this article is a must read.
