How To Create Compelling E-mail

If you want to create a dynamic e-mail campaign, you have to offer your clients more than a simple announcement.

If you want customers to buy from you, you are far better off offering “special deals” or a “special offer” than simply offering an announcement.

Why?
An announcement says, “Hey, I have a new product!

Wow, that’s terrific!

But what’s in it for the customer?

You have to think about what your customer’s needs are and how you are filling them with every contact you make.

An announcement doesn’t take these needs into consideration, and that’s why far too often Announcements fail to produce results.

An announcement also lacks a call to action or an incentive for customers to contact you.

It doesn’t make sense to contact someone unless you are going to offer him or her an incentive to buy your product.

Keep this in mind when creating your next e-mail campaign.

Types of Promotions
So now you know you have to offer incentives.

Now, what kind of incentive do you offer in your e-mail campaign?

There are many different incentives to offer. Most people rely on the special discount offer.

You don’t always have to offer a discount however, to get people to buy from you. You can for example, offer a new product to your customers. Say for example, you offer them a free publication, like a subscription to your newsletter if they buy your product now. Or,you can offer them 20% off your latest publication when they order.

You can also offer special deals by recognizing some special event in your personal life. Most customers appreciate e-mails that include some personal information about you. For example, let’s say you have an upcoming birthday or anniversary to celebrate. In your e-mail,mention this.

Say, “Because it’s my birthday today I’m offering you a special discount.” This will help your e-mails appear more personal in nature.

You have to share personal information if you want to build trust with your clients. Let them know something about you.

Say for example you are sharing your 10th anniversary with your partner. Let your customer’s know you are offering a one-time deal because of this.

Another promotion you can offer your clients is the “special sale.”
In this special bonus offer, e-mail your clients a day or two after you send out an
announcement.
Then let them know you forgot to tell them something in the previous “announcement”, so if they order now, they can take advantage of your mistake.

Then offer them something. Then after a couple of days send them a last minute reminder. You can phrase it similar to, “We almost sold out,and we only have a few hours left, so act now so you don’t miss out. Remember, you’ll be reaping A, B, C benefits.”

Special offers are great during holidays, like Christmas, Halloween or even Valentines Day. Speaking of Valentines Day, remember your offers don’t have to be discounts. They can be something unusual, crazy or fun. Like on Valentines Day, offer your clients a rose or chocolate for ordering that day.

Your goal should be to keep things exciting and fun. Keep all your promotions on an event.

Another way to produce more feedback from youre-mails is to send customers FAQ e-mails. Let’s say for example, you send an e-mail that creates some questions you’d like to respond to.

You can send an FAQ offer or follow up e-mail that answers all their questions and presents a new offer or special deal for your customers.

How Often You Should E-mail Clients?
How often should you e-mail your clients? If acustomer consistently buys your products andservices, you should send frequent e-mails.

If however, you are sending a special promotional offer to someone that has never
ordered from you, don’t waste too much time on it.

These are just a few things you can do to spice up your e-mail campaign. The bottom line is this… whenever you send an e-mail, you have to create much more than a simple announcement.

An announcement isn’t going to call people to action. You have to carefully craft your e-mails, to encourage your customers to act.
You want to offer your customers some incentive so they act on your e-mail immediately.

And one last point... Don’t reveal your price in the e-mail.Your job is to entice, compel and motivate your customers to buy.

This cutting edge software can automate an unlimited number of tasks, including tedious ones like handling email, writing content, checking stats, and building websites.

Why tech websites and blogs should not use third-party advertising like AdSense

Technological websites are money makers. The more how-to related articles in your sites the more visitor you tend to get. Internet related sites too get good traffic.
So in order to monetize from it you need to put ads on it. The first choice is of course Google's Adsense due to it's good CTR and CPC. Then there are several like chitika, ypn, bidvertiser, etc.

However, the problem is that most of your users would be geeks,(not true for reviews website as non-geeks will also vist for reviews) they probably might have embraced Firefox and most probably might have installed addon called Adblock Plus which blocks most of these ads.
You might have noticed that impression shown in your adsense stat is less than the actual impression. So, how to go around this?

The option is to have direct advertising hosted on your own server. As the url of the ad will be different(adblock plus works by detecting ad url like pagead..... for adsense) adblock plus will not be able to block this. But, make sure your url does not contain the word "ads", "sponsored",etc.
However, visitors can block these ads manually. But then only regular visitors would do this. Search engiene visitors will see your ads and hopefully click it.

Around 300,000 wikipedia pages don't meet it's quality standards

Wikipedia is great. But if you use Google you will be able to find out that around 300,000 pages have this tag "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards." ie. these pages are not of much use.

Wikipedia can tackle this issue only by paying writers. But, in order, to do so they will have to sell advertising apace to generate revenues. Advertising is unmentionable in Wikipedia, so it will be long before these pages are fixed.

Microsoft's Steven Ballmer's letter to Yahoo's Jerry Yang on abandoning of the deal

Yahoo's trick of outsourcing ads placement to Google seems to have paid off.

Below is the text of the letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang.

May 3, 2008


Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089


Dear Jerry:

After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.

In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

· First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.

· Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.

· In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.

· This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

· It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer


Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

Here is the threatening letter Microsoft had send to Yahoo few weeks back regarding hostile takeover.

Yahoo set to show Google ads on search results

Yahoo Inc. could announce an agreement to carry search advertisements from Google Inc. within a week, as it braces for Microsoft Corp. to go hostile or abandon its unsolicited acquisition offer for Yahoo, say people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo was waiting for Microsoft to announce its approach this week, after the two sides failed to reach a negotiated deal amid a divide on price. But Yahoo has also been pursuing a broad agreement to carry search ads from Google, which it views as a way to boost its cash flow and bolster its claim to shareholders that it is still capable of being alone

Dhoni's new Pepsi commercial in south indian lungi

Dhoni is now appearing in an ad for pepsi where he is seen as the south tamil super star (well, the typical lungi one, not resembling anyone) where he is throwing up cigarettes, sunglass and with a punch dialogue asking ” Yemm Ess Dhoni from Chennai, Doo youu have the baaals…I have the baeett ! Mind it ” Hilarious one.

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

Full Credits
Client: Discovery Channel
Agency: 72andSunny
Creative Director: Glenn Cole
CD/Designer: Bryan Rowles
CD/Copywriter: Jason Norcross
Agency Executive Producer: Sam Baerwald
Agency Producer: Angelo Ferrugia
Production Company: Outsider
Director: James Rouse
Director of Photography: Max Goldman
Producer: Jeremy Barrett
Editorial Company: Mad River Post
Editor: Lucas Eskin
Producer (Editorial): Ann Kirk
VFX: Method
VFX/Online Artist: Alex Kolansinski
VFX Producer: Helena Lee
Music: Beacon Street Studios
Composer: Brian Chapman
Producer (Music): Adrea Lavezzoli
Sound Design: Lime Studios
Mixer: Loren Silber
Telecine: Company 3
Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld

Nike ad featuring Ronaldo, maria, federer

New Nike commercial featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, Maria Sharapova, Roger Federer and many other stars.

Yahoo details plans for new online ad sales system

Yahoo Inc on Sunday detailed plans for its forthcoming Web advertising management system that gives its ad sales-partners access to online ad space both on Yahoo and other major sites.

The widely anticipated system, known as AMP!, aims to simplify the process of buying and selling online ads for advertisers, ad agencies, fast-growing ad trading networks and Web site publishers.

The ad management system seeks to capitalize on Yahoo's strength as a Web site publisher that reaches 500 million Web users monthly and recent efforts to sell ads off of Yahoo through major partnerships or specialized ad-sales networks.

The planned advertising system, formerly code-named Apex, is the lynchpin of the company's strategy to reach outside its own base of users and increase its position as the "must buy" location for online advertisers.

While the strategy remains in its early stages, AMP! is one of the products which Yahoo management believes will help propel the Web pioneer's next wave of growth. It is also one factor behind Yahoo's reluctance to accept Microsoft Corp's unsolicited takeover bid currently valued at $42.4 billion, which executives believe undervalues the company's assets.

AMP! will be introduced in stages starting in the third quarter of this year, Yahoo said. It aims to give individual sites the capacity to sell ads across the Web, replacing single-site systems that still use e-mail and even faxes.

The move also is a response to major competitors Google Inc and Microsoft Corp, which have each acquired major competitors in the market for sales of online display ads used by corporate brand marketers. Google closed its $3.4 billion acquisition of ad sales management firm DoubleClick last month. Microsoft paid $6 billion for aQuantive last May.

AMP! is a suite of tools that offers precise geographic, demographic, and interest-based targeting across a vast network of Yahoo sites and ad sales deals Yahoo has struck with more than 600 newspapers, Comcast and eBay Inc.

It also includes niche Web sites such as WebMD, Forbes, the major ad networks, and thousands of smaller sites on the Web.

In its initial stages, AMP! is designed to expand the reach of dedicated sales forces at newspapers or sites such as WebMD to allow them to reach many times larger audiences outside of their own sites, where they can cross-sell their advertising.

Cost of Google's April fool's prank-Few million dollars

Google's April Fool day pranks have achieved legendary proportion. This year, some pranks were quite evident while some cleverly done. The most evident prank was, of course, the Virgle prank. It was so obvious that even a 10 year old would understand that it is a April fool joke.

So why would the brilliant guys at Google cook up such pranks which goes this way "Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."

The answer is money. It is quite evident that Virgin inc. has paid Google to play this prank. With it's pay per click revenues wavering, Google has ventured into new territory almost like "get paid to blog". Just think about the number of links made by other site to this virgle page and amount of visitors due to this. It is easy advertising. This kind of unique advertising leaves a lasting impression of the brand on the users mind.

With Virgin inc. trying to enter eastern markets, this kind of advertising will help Richard Branson gather enough publicity for his company as Google is used by most internet users or because of the links made to the page by blogs and website.

How wikipedia can use advertising but remain non profit and neutral

Wikipedia has long being against advertisement on it's sites. It depends on users to donate. Users who are mostly below 16 years doing their homework. Wikipedia hardly manages to get any donation from users but some corporate samaritans do help. Instead, they could just start selling advertisement and use the required money for survival and donate the rest to charity. And as for neutrality they can avoid contextual ads.
They could just put one small image ad on every page of one company. Like only At&t ads on every page regardless of content. It can be pay per day basis. Just imagine how much big companies will pay to have their ads on every page of wikipedia even or a day considering wikipedia's traffic.

Here are few of the solutions which was proposed
* Ads on articles pages is the most widely rejected solution, though there are a few supporters
* An opt-in system. Readers will have the opportunity to say "yes, I want advertisement". This would likely require the reader to be identified by an account, and to login. Most readers are unlikely to have an account, so it is not clear this solution would bring much money.
* An opt-out system. Readers will have the ads by default, but can request not to have the ads displayed. Most editors also feel this solution intrusive and it is unlikely to be retained
* Advertisment on search pages. This may be the least controversial solution, as it can not be said to damage our concept of neutrality, and might on the contrary bring a benefit to the reader. It has not been approved though.

IPL marginalises other atheletes training for olympics

Sections of India's sporting community fear that the cricket board's new professional Twenty20 league will eat into sponsorship revenue that could have gone to athletes preparing for the Beijing Olympics in August.

The multi-million dollar Indian Premier League (IPL), featuring a majority of the game's leading international players in the eight franchises, will get underway on April 18 and is poised to become one of the most lucrative sporting events in Asia.

India's thriving advertising industry sees the IPL as a potential goldmine in a retail-booming economy and the franchises are also looking to acquire individual sponsorships.

Ranbir, Deepika to endorse Pepsi with Shahrukh

Pepsi has roped in Bollywood's debutants Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone as its new brand ambassadors. The duo will be seen with Shah Rukh Khan in Pepsi's first campaign of 2008.

Ranbir and Deepika join Pepsi's brand ambassadorial team comprising stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, John Abraham as well as cricketers including Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Sreesanth and Robin Uthappa.

PepsiCo India executive vice president - marketing, cola Sandeep Singh Arora said, "The inherent qualities of Pepsi - the youthful spirit, irreverence and competitive streak, hold the key while signing on a brand ambassador. The brand ambassadors of Pepsi are not only the face of the brand but also help strengthen the brand's connect with its consumers. We are very happy to associate with Ranbir and Deepika and welcome them on board."

Kapoor added, "I am extremely proud to be associated with Pepsi - an iconic drink of today's youth. It is a privilege for me to join Pepsi's league of such eminent achievers. I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Deepika as Pepsi's new brand ambassador. It has been a great experience working with SRK and Deepika in the new Pepsi Ad."

Padukone said, "I would like to thank Pepsi for choosing me as its brand ambassador. I have always loved the drink and enjoyed the youthfulness of its commercials thoroughly. I would also like to congratulate Ranbir on becoming Pepsi's new face. It was fun working together with Ranbir and Shah Rukh Khan in the new Pepsi ad."

Google must buy PayPerPlay to increase profits

There were signs of a slowdown at Google after it reported disappointing profits in its most recent quarter.
Google's profits were up 17% to $1.21bn (£608m) for the three months to the end of December.
Google's shares have fallen more than 18% so far this year on concerns that the slowing US economy will cause advertisers to cut back on spending.

Google's main source of income is through Adwords. Clicks generated on it PPC network Adsense bolsters it's profits. But lately, Adwords advertisers have been cutting ad spend due to various reasons. The CPC has also reduced. In this situation Google has to look at various alternative methods of advertising. Last year it bought digital advertising company DOUBLECLICK to increase profits. Doubleclick has the best solutions for banner advertising. Now greatness of Google's advertising is that even small advertiser can advertise and get good result. But, due to this big advertisers who spend big do not stand out.
Google should take over PayPerPlay Media. It is a unique audio ads concept which is contextual as Adsense. Unfortunately, PayPerPlay Media does not have the technology or the innovative power of Google to get huge profits. Advertisers spend huge on TV to capture audience. The super bowl is one event where ads spending rockets moon-high!! Youtube is one such part of Google that it can match Super Bowl. It's top videos has captured more eyeballs than Super Bowl. And with Google present in almost all major countries,it can easily deliver regional language audio ads which PayPerPlay media cannot offer(at least soon). Google can easily help advertisers target top sites like Youtube,orkut,etc and charge a premium. This will not only help advertisers get good results but also will reduce their unnecessary spending as small sites can be avoided if they want.
Also Adsense publishers will get even more ways to monetize their site.

After Feb 1,Digg and other sites will be spammed.

The most hyped intrusive advertising is here. Audio ads will be played whenever a visitor visits the site from February 1. The audio will be of 5 seconds.
Now, what is better source of traffic than the social networking sites. Just imagine how much a front page story can give you traffic. It is estimated that a front page story generates around 50000+ page views. It is estimated that every ad play will give you 0.01 to 0.03. Assume it is 0.01. Therefore for 50000 it will be $500. Whew!! Even the most successful webmaster will tell you that to earn this kind of money through Adsense in short time is very difficult. Even though if you don't get a front page even 100 views a day is very good.And remember I took the value of per ad play as 0.01, imagine after it becomes successful and the rate increases.
Living of the net has never been so easy!!!!
Click Here to join.

Get 5 cent for every visitor to your blog and website.

What is Pay-Per-Play Media?

NetAudioAds Pay-Per-Play (PPP) is an online media channel that plays 5 second audio advertisements.

Audio ads are only heard on web pages where the website owner has placed PPP code.
JOIN NOW as referral system closes on febuary 1,2008.

PPP audio ads will be contextually related to the text content (readable content) of any web page where the PPP code is placed. CLICK HERE TO JOIN.
The audio ad is only 5 seconds in length and a website visitor will only hear one 5 second advertisement per visit to any specific web page where the PPP code has been inserted. The visitor will only hear one audio ad for every 3 minutes they visit if they have already heard an audio ad on another page of the same website.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN.

Pay-Per-Play is now in huge demand by major branding advertisers all over the world. As of 12/29/2007 the Pay-Per-Play network has grown to over 6 million websites.

How Does Pay-Per-Play Work?

PPP audio ads play as soon as a visitor arrives on a web page where the PPP code is inserted. The audio advertisement is only heard and not seen and requires no action from a website visitor.

One of the main benefits of running PPP ads on your website is the fact that you never send visitors away from your site. This allows you the opportunity to continue to earn from your visitors.

PPP audio ads play automatically for 5 seconds so website owners need to choose specific pages of their website where it is appropriate for their visitors to hear a single 5 second audio advertisement.

You should be aware that PPP audio ads are not appropriate for all web pages. It is up to the website owner where they will place audio ads.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN.

How youtube can pay it's contributers

Do you feel that you are not getting enough from the video you have submitted to youtube except emotional happiness after seeing that your video is popular,then you are not alone.Youtube's founder a year ago had announced that the company is going to pay users who contribute original content.One year since the plan has not seen the light of the day. Main reason is that Youtube dominates the video sharing market and with its popularity unmatchable it does not feel the need to pay the contributers and reduce its profits even though several others like Metacafe and Revver pay. . One way it can do this and also make profits is by allowing contributers to put their adsense codes on their video page. Image ads would be better as they will create CPM impression. This will encourage users to create more original content. The company is busy paying royalties to several music and television companies but it is not willing to pay its original contributers who have fueled the site's success.
Just imagine how much 'leave Britney alone guy' would have earned.

Google might end up buying Wikipedia

In it's Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge Google announced that it is going to launch service similar to Wikipedia. But I think it might not succeed. Remember Google Video, which was launched to rival the already popular YouTube. It flopped and Google, to enter video sharing business, had to buy YouTube. I foresee similar fate again for Google. It might buy Wikipedia to get in to the business of knowledge sharing.
To prevent this the founders of Wikipedia will have to put Ads on it's site.

Add Your Link to the Free Advertising Homepage

This free automatic reciprocal link exchange works by recording the referrer document from an incoming link. That means when your website links to our homepage, then your website automatically gets a link back from the Free Advertising homepage. (But please, no adult sites.)

Your link will appear below each time you send traffic to this webpage. Nothing to sign up for, no registering, no forms, and no email to answer. The site is Free Ads with Adsense Revenue Sharing