This post is not a how to guide, 5 tips to.., or even a roadmap for E-marketing success.  Rather, operating from the assumption that you are a person who is interested in growing your business (genius, I know), I will ask 5 questions that I hope might provoke thought and narrow your focus to that aim.

Balance is a buzz word these days. For me it brings back memories of gymnastics and the dreaded balance beam. Teeter too far to the left or the right and you were falling quickly to the floor.

What is it about an email that makes us open it and want to read it? This week we’ll share 3 quick tips on the anatomy of an effective email.

How do you ensure your contacts won’t miss the glory of what you are about to offer them? Here are some simple practices that when implemented, can have dramatic results. 

Email marketing not only generates tremendous ROI, it is more affordable than other marketing methods

To help you make the most of this all-important season we’ve put together 5 tips to help your campaigns make magic for your bottom line as you come to year’s end.

More and more, email marketing is now being viewed on the go.  So, how can you can be smarter in your approach to emails sent to Smartphones, and better accommodate your on-the-go readers?  Here are some suggestions.

Getting the results (open-rates, clicks, forwards, new subscribers) you desire with your E-newsletter will take persistence, and the successful implementation of a few best practice guidelines is sure to help along the way.

In the last couple weeks I have seen several articles discussing the phishing attacks that have had happened recently. Every article I read makes me believe more and more the importance of instilling consumer trust in all entities of your business and to your costumers. 

Newsletters hold the most important and up to date news happening for your company. Because of their consistency (monthly, weekly, quarterly), they can become something that is quickly passed over without much thought. Sometimes a little change is what your newsletter needs to spark the attention of your stagnant readers.

If you are Swiftpage customer you run into the Basic Editor every day (or at least every day you use Swiftpage). Have you ever wondered what the Swiftpage editor can do in its entirety?

Have you had a positive lead generation campaign?

I have been thinking about the art of producing good content and what elements are involved. I turned to my blog roll and past Swiftpage articles and here is what I came up with

A mailing list should be more that just contact information so that you can target your offers directly at them. According to AmazingMail, personalizing your direct mail can lift your response rates by 30-50%. Personalize your campaign by including the recipient’s name or referring to their company. You can also customize the imagery and messaging to be as relevant as possible.

What are ways you can get this information?

Segmentation comes up in many email marketing articles, but there are still big questions surrounding it. What does segmentation really mean? When is it most effective and what elements should focus on when segmenting your list? How do I start?

Karen shares shortcut tips from seasoned Sage ACT! Consultants on how to get an entire folder of information at the click of a button in Sage ACT!

As you close out the holiday season, you should be thinking about what’s in store for 2011. To help you do this, I have created a list of questions to ask yourself and ideas to think about for the New Year.

A sneak peek into Swiftpages’ soon to be released Automated Marketing White Paper…

There are virtually hundreds of add-on products that work with Sage ACT!. Need calculations between two fields?  Got it.  Need to link Sage ACT! to QuickBooks?  Done.  One of my favorite add-ons is the Call On CRM solutions that allows you to dial your phone directly from Sage ACT!.

The holidays have arrived. Most importantly Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner…

If you have ACT! 2010 or Sage ACT! 2011 and you’re not using the Web Info tab you are missing the banana boat as we say in Florida. And, if you haven’t figured out how to use the Web Info tab in conjunction with your favorite social networking sites, then you’re in for a treat.

As the holiday season comes quickly upon us it is crucial that you create an email campaign that produces the highest results. One way to determine this is to test the effectiveness of an email campaign against another. There are many things to consider when determine what is successful or not.

You can’t run your business without a telephone and office supplies, and you shouldn’t be running a business with outdated technology.

What are ways you are reaching your client base this season?

Surveys are a unique way to reach your customers. You are able to directly ask them what kind of user experience they would like to participate in and in doing so you are able to hear the voice of the customer. Read more...

There are theories around the send time, html vs. plain text, sending demographics and so on. An email campaign cannot rest on these theories alone. An email, by itself, needs to be effective in that it is able to engage the recipients to open and to take action. Read more...

You probably already “get it” that it is better to do things more efficiently. What I hope to show is there is a cost benefit to improving work flow processes. Read more...

How can your small business generate leads inexpensively? Read more...

There are a lot of cool new features in the upcoming release of Sage ACT! 2011, but the one I’m most excited about both for myself and my clients (yes, Hero Technical Solutions runs on ACT!) is Smart Tasks. I’m excited because among the new features, the one that will help me work less (especially on repeat, manual tasks) is what I’m looking forward to most. If you’re an owner, manager, or really anyone who would benefit from automating repeat tasks and putting parts of your business on autopilot, you should be excited too. Here are the first three of six reasons why. Read more...

Here are 8 ways that will get your closer to closing the deal with a qualified lead Read more...

Buyers have changed how they buy. You now have to influence an array of buyers and decision makers. You have to appeal to buyer personas and buyer Q&A. Read more...

A marketing campaign that touches your customers before your release can help to increase anticipation. By building expectations and engaging a buyer during the entire launch cycle, you can increase the chances your contacts will be excited and ready to make a purchasing decision when the product is released. Read more...

Today many of my clients are opting to use an online fax service such as MyFax or eFax for the few times that they actually need to fax. Ironically, those ACT! users often spend countless hours wrangling with the service’s interface to create a coversheet when they could just as easily use the ACT! fax coversheet. Read more...

Find out how one cartoonist effectively and efficiently moved his business forward using the Forward to a Friend strategy Read more...

HTML emails have become the most common email campaigns to send. The click through rate has also shown higher results with such emails. So is plain text email out of the picture? Definitely not. A plain text email will stand out from the HTML emails because of its simplicity and ability to seem more personal. Read more...

Spam is the baseline at which every Interruptive Marketer starts. Interruptive Marketers do not need permission to reach, or in other words, invade, customers with information and promotions as Seth Godin says in Permission Marketing. Read more...

What are ways you can let people know you are the good guy, the ones with the innovative or needed product/service that will revolutionize the market? Read more...

Getting the attention of C-level executives isn’t often easy and at times can seem impossible. Here are 6 steps to craft an email that will increase your probability of getting attention. Read more...

When you purchase a product, though you have done your research, you still may not know some of the tricks to using it to its full potential. We want to help you better use your Swiftpage service by sharing a few tips to get you started. Read more...

Swiftpage’s Thought Leader Series hosted J.B. Holtson, CEO and President of NewsGator, yesterday. He walked us through how to boost your ROI through social networking. Here are a few tips that he shared. Read more...

I found an old article on our site the other day. It discussed a practical scenario for using Drip Marketing when Drip Marketing was still new. Maybe you have had success with the situation it describes. Let’s see. Read more...

Social sharing opens doors to more and more prospects for your company. Email marketing’s sharing capacity has greatly increased due to this. Here are a few things to keep in mind while you start linking your email campaigns through social networking Read more...

Your sales team will be happy to pick up the phone to talk to the hottest leads first and those leads will be far more likely to try out your product or service using this drip marketing follow up process. Read more...

Surveys answer the “why” of customer interactions with your product or website. Through surveys you are able figure out the type of user experience your customer will rave about. Craft your surveys right and you will gain the results you are looking for. Read more...

We are coming out of an age of deep recession and growing further into the age of the internet. Product knowledge has become a commodity. The sales person of the future must possess business acumen and the ability to challenge their prospect’s intellect. Read more...

I’ve identified ten areas of communication that have changed over the course of the last ten years, at least if you’re a member of Generation Y. And, like it or not, if they want your business to survive you’ll have to adjust to those changes. Read more...

There are so many outlets in new media to reach your customers. Likewise your customers are gathering information from more sources than ever before. It’s great for you because you can reach new and existing contacts in so many ways, but how do you make sure your message is heard and ultimately taken action upon? Read more...

As an author I’ve been critiqued by some of the best editors in the world and I know the process. It’s not unusual for the early drafts of my books to return to me in the form of road kill. As the daily recipient of dozens of pieces of spam I know which messages will make their way through - and which messages will take a permanent place in the Spam Folder. Read more...

Are you asking your customers the right strategic question to determine if your efforts are effective? Read more...

All too often CRM shoppers succumb to the same sales tactics that got my friends to buy I-Phones. They’re told that one solution is “better” or “easier” than another when in reality most solutions offer pretty much the same standard set of features. A simple search on the Internet will provide you with hundreds of CRM solutions. So how do you narrow the field? Read more...