The Evolving Internet Marketer

One Hundred (and Seven) Ways to Get Your Email Blocked

Marketing Profs published an article by Jordan Ayen of SubscriberMail that lists the one hundred sure fire words and phrases guaranteed to get your emails blocked if you use them in your subject line (and often in the body of your posts as well). The seven they reference are George Carlin’s infamous list – I guess they still have legs in email if, increasingly, nowhere else. Funny, huh, that email is so prudish.

Interesting that while Cialis and Levitra made the list, Viagra was not to be found. Hmmm. Spam blockers as market research tool … you know that your product is hitting the skids when it can’t even make the list of top spam terms!

My favorite on the list was, you’ll never guess, online marketing, followed by search engine listings… No wonder I can’t get any of my clients to return my emails!

Common sense advice for email marketers:
Read the list. Post it at your desk or your online copywriter’s desk. And, at the end of the day, never use terms in your subject lines that you would block if you saw them in your email inbox!

Web 3.0 – Eric Schmidt’s (Google’s CEO) Take

If you’re interested in the evolution of the web — and really; who isn’t? — check out the YouTube video posted by Layla on her Thread Bare Gypsy Soul blog.

If Web 2.0 can be characterized by the use of AJAX (the software architecture that lets you drag google maps around) and larger fonts then Web 3.0 is going to be the application as widget – not purchased but downloaded or obtained through your social network. Kind of like Wordpress plugins, Yahoo Widgets or Google Gadgets – it’s the process of adding functionality not with full blown, store bought code but by assembling snippets of code to carry out very specific tasks. Functionality on demand, kinda cool.

Take a look at Eric’s video for his explanation… 

Can You Be Found In Local Search?

It’s amazing to me the number of businesses that I patronize locally that don’t show up when I search for them locally using local.google.com or local.yahoo.com or just thai restaurant 80227. Even if they have a web site many sites fail to register locally for the simple reason that they don’t do a good job of populating their sites with the geo tags (ie, zip code, city, etc.) that a search engine uses to assign you to a particular geographical area.

To find out if you’re registering locally, just enter your key search terms into your favorite search engine and include your zip code – if you aren’t showing up in the listings that follow, you have some work to do.

Here’s what I find when I enter the terms “internet marketing services” and my zip code of 80227…

Now being found locally may not be as big a deal to someone like me who really only needs a phone, pc and an internet connection to connect with my customers but it is VERY IMPORTANT if you offer products or services that depend on local trade. Here’s an example of what happens when I try to find my favorite pizza parlor locally…

Yep, the lights are on (for all of their local competitors) but nobody’s home (for them).

So what do you do to insure you show up when potential customers are trying to find you locally? Well to start look at your web site and determine if…

• your address & phone number are prominently displayed in search engine readable text, not embedded in a graphic or flash module.
• you use geo tags to modify your key words and phrases. Pizza delivery in Lakewood, CO rather than just Pizza delivery.

If the above are missing or lacking then fix them. I guarantee that you’ll be pleased when you start drawing customers locally because they found you locally on google, yahoo or aol. I don’t have any hard numbers but a significant number of web browsers are just like me; they eschew the yellow pages (even online) for the simplicity of typing in ’service’ or ‘product’ and ‘location’ to their favorite search engine. Believe me, you don’t want your business to be the missing tag on the local google map. Do you?