Friday, October 31, 2008

Content Strategy and Email Marketing

On the Web, content is king - and having a content strategy is key to any site's success. Lesson Two explores the important role of Web content. You'll look at how to develop and cycle content to attract visitors to your site and ways of sharing content with partners. Viral and tell-a-friend strategies will be examined with reference to successful case studies. Finally, you'll learn about ways to promote fresh content through email marketing campaigns. Topics will include how to generate a quality list, write an effective campaign, schedule appropriately, craft compelling subject lines, and observe CAN-SPAM compliance laws. In the exercise, you'll put together a content development strategy and map out a one-year email marketing campaign.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Internet Marketing Foundations

Internet marketing isn't your father's marketing channel. How will you make your Web campaigns count? Lesson One explains the ways in which Internet marketing can be more measurable, targeted, and cost-effective, than print, radio, and TV ads. You'll read case studies on companies that have successfully leveraged online advertising and examine reasons that companies succeed or fail in this space. You'll explore the critical issue of how to identify and attract your target audience through thematic, language, technology, and even color choices. In the exercise, you'll conceptualize a product, company, or service (this could be your own entrepreneurial project), analyze its target market, and design a home page targeted to this market.

Internet Marketing

Taking a business online? Building a commercial Web site for yourself or a client is just the start. To grow any business on the Internet, you'll need to market strategically to your customers, using a range for tools from content sharing to email marketing, search engine optimization, co-branding, ad buys, and more, to reach your target audience.

Email marketing

Promoting your products or services by email can be a powerful and flexible form of direct marketing. You can communicate your messages quickly and cheaply. You can also tailor your message to specific types of customer more cost-effectively than with paper-based marketing.

However, you should plan your email marketing with care to make it relevant and interesting to recipients. You also need to be aware that you must always obtain their consent before sending them marketing emails.

This guide shows how to get customers' permission to receive email from your business and how to ensure you reach the right people. It also covers how to monitor the effectiveness of email marketing and newsletters and the legal issues you need to be aware of.