Internet Marketing Tips from Denise Wakeman

Internet Marketing: Six Ways to Improve Your Double Opt-In Rates

You probably know that having a double opt-in* process for your newsletter/ezine list is a must in business-to-business email marketing. It can be a confusing process to implement, depending on your ezine subscriber management system, but the benefits are clear:

• less chance of being called a spammer by someone who doesn't remember filling in the form (or because someone else filled out the form with their email address);
• fewer bad email addresses in your list;
• some mailing list delivery services require it!

BUT--sometimes your would-be subscribers don't click that link they receive from you in the confirmation email. And so you lose 10, 20, even 50% of your "subscribers". Arghh! How can you improve your opt-in rates? Generally, the more compelling and relevant your "offer" is to folks, and the easier it is for them to complete the process, the better opt-in rate you will enjoy.

1. Have some really strong copy that describes your ezine and the benefits they will receive.
2. Provide an incentive for folks to subscribe. A free ebook, ecourse, etc.
3. Remind folks that they must confirm (click the link in the confirmation email) to receive the incentive. You can do this on the signup or thank you page.
4. Help them make sure they receive the confirmation email, by offering a page explaining how to add your ezine to their whitelist.
5. Show them how to confirm. A snapshot of the confirmation email, with the confirmation link circled, is one way to make it crystal-clear.
6. Make sure your confirmation email matches the description of your ezine. Use the same wording, etc. Nothing will reduce your confirmation rates like using the generic confirmation email text!

Implement these permission-based email marketing best practices, and watch your subscription confirmations soar!

*Double opt-in defined:

1. new subscriber fills out a form on your site
2. your list management software sends a confirmation email with a special coded link
3. new subscriber clicks the link
4. subscriber is added to your list

Single opt-in eliminates steps 2 and 3.

Get more internet marketing tips for Solo Entrepreneurs

Traffic to Your Blog: Number 1 Challenge

Getting traffic is apparently the number one challenge for business bloggers.

We've been running an informal poll on our Build a Better Blog site, on which blogging tasks are the most challenging for business bloggers. Here are the results after a week:

1. Getting subscribers & traffic:                                 42.1%
2. Getting people to comment:                                  30.5%
3. Getting mentioned or linked to on other blogs:          28.4%
4. Finding time to blog:                                            22.1%
5. Finding interesting content to blog:                        21.1%
6. Getting people to register, vote, buy or take action: 16.8%
7. Adding appropriate widgets:                                   7.4%
8. Adding video & audio:                                           4.2%

While this isn't a scientifically valid study, I'll bet it's true for most of you, for your blogs and your websites. Want to learn how to optimize your blog for traffic and results?

Join The Blog Squad in a group coaching class in August. You can read information here.

You can still take the poll and weigh in on your challenges here.

Niche and the Search Engine Optimization Game

If you've been trying to learn internet marketing for any length of time, you've probably seen those internet marketing "programs" that specialize in helping folks develop "niche web sites". The premise is to search out keywords and keyword combinations that get a lot of hits, but don't have many websites serving that niche. Viola', you've found a lucrative niche. Slap up a super-search-engine-optimized website and you're in business.

Although I may be in the minority, this approach makes me cringe. Why?

Because it relies on "gaming" the system...finding loopholes, as it were. And as is with most loopholes, they eventually get closed. Suddenly your $10K/mo. site drops to $500/mo. because Google changed their search algorithm. Or it could happen more gradually -- other "niche" marketers using the same strategy figure out that there is a lot of interest in "blue frog statues", and your share of the market dwindles.

In a lot of ways, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a game too, one where the rules keep changing. There are dozens of elements of your web pages that affect your search engine ranking. For most solo entrepreneurs, it's impossible to learn how to incorporate all these factors on our websites, and dauntingly expensive to hire a pro to do it for us.

My advice: Learn a little about search engine optimization, implement what you understand, and measure the results. If you find it to be successful, do a little more. Just don't go nuts and spend your entire marketing budget on it. What's more important is having intriguing titles (that make you want to know more), using the words and language of your target market, and providing the information that your customers want and will take action on -- not how frequently you repeat the keywords, or what you put in your meta

Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Their methods and algorithms are just the mechanics of how they decide what is useful. Keep your eye on making your site useful, ask your customers for feedback to keep improving, and leave the SEO "game" to someone else.

Visit www.Solo-E.com for more tips for lifestyle-inspired solo entrepreneurs.

White Papers: Learn to Write Them in Beautiful San Diego

Here's my personal invitation to join me in my home town, beautiful San Diego, for a one-day workshop on writing White Papers. Let's have lunch on Mission Bay and learn how to harness the marketing power of white papers. Michael Stelzner is teaching this workshop, and he wrote the book on Writing White Papers for your business.

Space is limited to 25 participants because he will be working with us intensively.

Here's why this is important:

White papers are one of the most complex (and rewarding) writing projects you will likely ever undertake. They're expensive to outsource, so I'm learning to write my own, and you should too.

White papers also happen to be one of the most sought-after resources by prospects, according numerous studies by MarketingSherpa, CMO Council and KnowledgeStorm.

If you register before next Tuesday, July 31st at midnight, you'll get the early bird discount. This workshop will more than pay for itself in valuable writing skills that you can use to grow your business.

It's what you need to learn to write if you want to get new clients based on intelligent, well-researched, relationship marketing.

For more information, visit Michael's White Paper Seminar page here. The Mission Bay Hyatt is just gorgeous, so you can combine a weekend with a tax-deductible business expense.

To learn more about why this is so important, we interviewed Michael on Blogging and Beyond radio. Michael also revealed important information in a white paper teleseminar last month. You can get the CD here.

Free Press Release Builder

It's a privilege to be able to share with you a little solo entrepreneur internet marketing wisdom while Denise is off teaching and vacationing! I'll dive right in with a great new resource I just found out about.

A few years ago, Solo-E.com mounted a 6-month press release campaign. Although we spent a lot of time writing what we thought were solid, non-promotional press releases, they just never achieved the results that made it worth the effort, and so we dropped it as a strategy.

But I know that properly written and promoted press releases can definitely  work -- and maybe if we'd had access to this hot new press release writing tool, we'd have done a better job and gotten the press attention we wanted!

This astounding press releasing-writing resource from EvanCarmichael.com is the most comprehensive I've seen -- and it's easy to read and understand, too. Best yet -- it's free! It features a five step process, with dozens of topic ideas to get you started and a template where you fill in the blanks and it builds your press release for you. Plus direct links to lists of media outlets and scores of additional resources. A definite recommended resource:

Free Press Release Builder