Internet Marketing Tips from Denise Wakeman

Internet Marketing Retreat: Day 1

Virginia Beach: The Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center

Yesterday Patsi and I flew from California to Virginia to spend three full days with our Internet marketing mentor, Tom Antion.

Tom has set up his home as the ultimate retreat center.  The house has 17 rooms and can accommodate 6-8 retreat guests.  We were picked up at the airport by a driver with a looooong limo.  It's been first class all the way.

After a sumptuous breakfast, we began the intensive work at 10:00 a.m.  Tom began the day passing around original bank statements from the last 2 years showing his monthly income.  I think the lowest amount was $38,000 one month.  Most was much higher.

He covered shortcuts and tricks to be more productive on the Internet and with your computer. Next, it was search engine and directory strategy, lunch, a walk, shopping carts, website sales processes and copywriting. 

Over the course of weekend we will create a sales letter starting with the headlines; get critiqued; move on the the filler copy, etc.

At 6 p.m. the limo showed up to take us out to dinner.  After dinner, we got the low down on DVD production.

I'm exhausted.  I'm taking a lot of pictures, but I forgot the docking station for my camera so I won't be able to add them until I get back to my office.

Stay tuned.  More to come...

links for 2006-03-29

• How to Harness the Marketing Power of Blogs
  Hmmm, I wonder where this guy has been for the last year and a half while we've been saying how powerful blogs are to market your business?
  (tags: marketing blogs internet business)
• Bloggers Blog: Oops! Google Deletes Its Own BlogSpot Blog
  I'm hearing more and more stories about Google deleting perfectly legitimate Blogger blogs because THEIR automated systems determine that are spam blogs. Problem is you cannot get your blog back and a spammer can get hold of your blog's name. You get what you pay for.

Read a post about Blogger experiences over at Get Known Now Blog.

(tags: Google blogs blogging blogger)

• StreamCast Sues Skype - Forbes.com
  (tags: StreamCast Skype eBay)

EMail Marketing: What's the Best Day?

I've recently read two blog posts about a study done by ExactTarget stating that Fridays are the best day for open rates.  For a couple of takes on this info,you can read a post by Ken McCarthy and one by Christopher Knight of EmailUniverse.com.

Christopher gives an excellent analysis and explanation of email open rates vs. click through rates.

Personally, I haven't really tested this very well. A lot of very savvy email marketers advise against sending HTML emails which means you cannot track open rates.

Any comments or experiences you've had around email open rates and best delivery dates for you?

links for 2006-03-28

• SiteProNews: The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites
  This article caught my eye because my mentor, Tom Antion, frequently talks about this issue. The purpose of a website is to make money, if you're in business, that is. A fancy beautiful website that does not convert visitors to leads or customers is a waste of money and your time.
  (tags: website webdesign Tom+Antion marketing business internet)

PR and Buzz...does one lead to the other?

Church of the Customer Blog has an interesting post about good PR and buzz and how one may not lead to another.  The gist of it is that though your company may get a lot of exposure, and good at that, word of mouth buzz may not be as great if your company is not transparent or sharing information that bloggers (or other users of social media tools) can comment on and link to.

...any company, really, that stores and manages vast levels of data and metadata -- created sockets into its vast warehouse of data, or just shared data more frequently with the thousands of marketers, technologists and researchers who roam the the alleyways of social media, it would create new landscapes of buzz and ownership.

Source: John Trosko