EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is to use email in marketing communications (Mark Brownlow, 2008). Email marketing is a very popular marketing communication technique today because it costs less than the other forms of communication do, and it will be very effective if it is conducted appropriately (2008). According to EmailLabs, email’s average cost per order is less than US$7, while affiliate programs, paid search, and banner advertisements are US$17.47, US$26.75, and US$71.89 respectively (2007). Also, EmailLabs states that email marketing is effective in return on investment (ROI); its ROI is $51.45 per US$ 1 spent, while print catalogs’ and non-email online marketing’s ROI are US$7.20, US$21.08 (2007). Thus, email marketing is cheap and effective. Although email marketing can be very effective, if it is not conducted appropriately, it will not be successful. Simply sending out emails is not appropriate way to conduct email marketing. There are many tips that marketers should know in order to conduct their email marketing effectively, and some of those tips will be introduced here. One of the tips is to identify target market, and to send customized emails to the people in the target market. According to EmailLabs, email-marketing campaigns that target their receivers based on click stream analysis have the open rate of 33%, the average click thorough rate of 14%, and the average conversion rate of 3.9% (2007). On the other hand, the untargeted broadcast emails have the open rate of 20%, the average click thorough rate of 9.5%, and the average conversion rate of 1.1% (EmailLabs, 2007). The data indicates that email campaigns with targeting works more effectively than those without targeting. Another tip is the emails use in email marketing campaigns should have concise subject lines (2007). EmailLabs states that the emails whose subject lines consist of less than 50 characters have a higher open rate than those emails whose subject lines consist of 50 or more characteristics by 12.5 % (2007). Also, the click through rate of less than 50 characters subject lines emails is also higher than that of 50 plus characters subject lines emails by 75% (2007). Thus, the emails with concise subject lines are more effective. In addition, “marketing emails must have a familiar preview” (DS Development, 2008). DS Development remarks that most people decide whether the emails are interesting or not by previewing those before they actually open (2008). DS Development also states that knowing and trusting senders are important to make people open emails (2008). Thus, in order to motivate those people to open and read the emails, those emails’ sender names should be visible, easily noticed, and trustworthy (2008). Also, the emails should have addresses that people can see who the senders are (2008). Therefore, email marketing will be very effective if it is conducted appropriately. In order to conduct a successful marketing campaign, marketers need to know the tips.

Why Buying Virtual Goods

Let’s facing the truth, buying virtual goods was all about buying pixels. There we already referenced to Jeremy Liew as one of the most informed capacities to find on virtual goods. Today I learned on his blog that Jeremy has written on “Why do People Buy Virtual Goods” for Wall Street Journal. It is very condense and at the same time provides case examples do prove the theory. One of assumption that Jeremy brings out that“My theory is that people buy digital goods for the same reason that they buy goods in the real world; (i) to be able to do more, (ii) to build relationships, and (iii) to establish identity.”

There is no need to look for a distinct motivation set for buying virtual goods as compared to the goods in real world, but why people still tend to buy virtual goods? Is that only because we can not achieve in our real life or that can help us to do social life online?

1) To be able to do more: For example,owning a place on WhatsYourPlace lets you exclusively represent the online image on that place. It is up to you, what pictures and what content visitors to that place get to see there. The propose to doing that is let you friends and family knows more about you even you are in different country. Also it apply a space to people communicate within same hobby.

2) To build relationships: This is the major thing that people welling to purchasing virtual goods. WhatsYourPlace is a great platform to find like-minded people. If you buy a football stadium, supporters of the corresponding team will give feedback. If you are Michael Jackson Fan and you buy Neverland Ranch, other fans will share the latest rumors with you. In general, personal connections to real places of the world build the foundation for social exchange. It is also possible to buy someone’s favorite place as a gift. It could be a ideal gifts for girlfriend. Its shows you can interact and socialize with someone whatever where you living right now.

3) To establish identity: Buying a place on WhatsYourPlace is a social statement.  If you buy some place as a fan, this is a strong way of demonstrating your personal support or interest. If you buy a place that you have fond memories on, part of your history materializes – virtually

Search Engines as Tools

Search engines are among the most popular and most useful tools that the web has to offer. There are mass of information that can be found on the internet can be accessed by using popular search engines such as: Yahoo!, Baidu, Google, Excite, Lycos, and many more.There are some tips that teach how to find the prefect result you looking to.  

The importance of search engines can be review to find information on any topic. When it comes to search engines there are three types: crawler-based, human-powered, and hybrid ( 2008 Gale,Cengage Learning). Crawler-based engines are the most popular search engines. It is using software “robots” called spiders or crawlers. The purpose of these crawlers is to sift through web pages and follow links within websites. The crawler revisits the page from time to time to check for any changes that may have been made. Among the top search engines of traditional kind are Google, Teoma, Hotbot, and Alta Vista. Human-powered do not look for websites to index them; they prefer you to suggest your site. As human-powered search engines do not have own algorithms to rank websites, they make it according to alphabetic sequence or Google Page Rank. The most of them have “Add URL” pages where you fill out the required information such as the website title, keywords, description, or email. Basically, you select the proper category for the website and then, in accordance of tern, it will be examined by human editors. The decision of this editor could be accept or not to accept the site. Hybrid Search engines utilize both types of listing. For example, MSN presents human-edited listings from Looksmart and crawler-based listing of its own Web crawler. Nowadays, some top search engines also resort to opposite listings such as Google and Yahoo!