Creating Successful Newsletters

Think about how quickly you scan the e-mail you receive every day and you'll realize that the format and style of the newsletters you send will make a big difference in how successful your campaigns will be. Here are some suggestions for creating compelling messages:

• Use short, informative subject lines. Make your message stand out in a crowded inbox with a concise description of what the recipient will find inside, e.g., "New Album Reviews at MyMusicSite.com" or "Find End-of-Summer Deals on MyApparelSite.com."

• Send messages in both HTML and text. Your e-mail will be most attractive and eye-catching when you send it in HTML, so you can include graphics and formatting. Many e-mail programs allow you to compose messages in both HTML and text, letting you send attractive graphics to most customers while still being able to reach those who prefer plain text.

• Reflect the brand of your Web site. Use similar colors, logos, and layouts to those on your Web site, so that frequent visitors will easily recognize your messages.

• Design for the preview pane. Many people use Microsoft Outlook's preview pane to glance at the beginning of a message before opening it. By designing your core message so that it fits inside the pane (which is around 500 pixels wide in the most frequently used setting), you can more easily grab your customers' attention.

• Include links to relevant content in all sections. Some customers may only read parts of your message, so make sure to provide appropriate links to your Web site from each section.

• Follow a regular schedule. Visitors to your site will begin to look forward to your newsletter if you establish a consistent, reliable schedule. You might start by sending it once or twice a month.

• Include great content. No matter how good your newsletter looks, it's the content that will create loyal readers. Make sure each message contains unique, valuable information that's relevant to your site's visitors.

 E-Mail Guidelines

If you send e-mail newsletters or other marketing e-mail to your Web site visitors, we encourage you to follow these best practices:

• Include an honest subject line.
• Never forge header information or otherwise mislead recipients as to the origin of your e-mail.
• Identify yourself as the sender, and include your physical address in the body of the mail.
• Provide a working opt-out procedure that is easy to find and use.
• Do not send e-mail to addresses gathered automatically off the Web (such as with robots or spiders).

As of January 1, 2004, your marketing e-mail must meet the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. If you have questions about your compliance with this law, you should consult your attorney.

Optimize to Get the Most from Search Engines

One of the most cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your Web site is to optimize it for search engines. Many of them use automated programs called "crawlers" or "spiders" to create an index of the Web, which they use to determine what sites are most relevant to users' queries. These programs essentially visit Web sites, read the pages' content, and follow any links to other pages, repeating the process on the sites where they end up. By also retrieving information on link destinations and frequency, among other things, the search engines are able to better "understand" Web sites than if they only took site text into account. Therefore, the key to better placement in search results is making sure it is easy for crawlers to gather useful information about your site. Search engines particularly take into account the location and frequency of keywords on your pages in determining your site's relevance. Here are some specific things you can do to optimize your Web site:

• Get yourself a good domain name. Not surprisingly, URLs containing clear keywords generally perform better than those that appear random or are excessively long. And in addition to getting you higher placement in search results, having its own domain name gives your site added credibility. You'll want to make sure the name you choose logically pertains to the subject matter of your site, isn't too long to remember, and isn't easily misspelled. Use keywords that a crawler will understand, and try to avoid numerals or abbreviations.

• Choose keyword-rich titles for your pages. The [TITLE]; element that appears in your page headers is often used by search engines as the text for their link to your Web site. (As an example, the title of http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/?node=11091801 is "Amazon.com: Musical Instruments.") When you just use "Home Page," your company name, or something similarly uninformative, you are missing an opportunity to drive traffic to your site, since search engines weight [TITLE] elements heavily when determining the relevance of a page to a user's search. Therefore, try to make your titles easy to understand and rich in the keywords that your customers will be searching for.

• Add META elements to your site. Make use of description and keyword properties in your headers' META elements. META name="description" content="[a brief description of your site]" is often used by search engines to determine what your site is about. META name="keywords" content="[a list of relevant keywords]" is used less frequently by search engines, but can also help boost your site's relevance in their eyes. In writing a description and choosing keywords, think about how customers will be looking for information on your site, and choose specific terms that will attract traffic. You may want to use research tools like Wordtracker to help you in this. Avoid using the same set of keywords on every page of your site, however--they should be tailored to each page's specific content.

• Content matters. You will also benefit from providing rich content on your site. It is important that you include at least a few paragraphs of copy that is visible to crawlers and full of keywords, which will enable search engines to better classify your pages. Use the keywords you included in your <META> elements, and don't be afraid to use them many times within your copy. But, of course, what you write should make sense and be easy to digest, as readability is vital. You should also display text on your site as text, not as images, which crawlers cannot read. Use <ALT> tags for pictures you do use, so that crawlers can get some information out of them, and incorporate HTML navigation wherever it is possible, even if this means adding redundant navigation at the bottom of your pages.

• Leverage links. Web sites that are linked to from lots of other sites are often deemed more popular and get a higher ranking in search results. However, more important than the number of links is the quality of those links. Contact owners of other Web sites that score highly for key phrases related to your content, and ask them if they will provide a link back to your site. Make sure, too, that the content on your own site is properly linked together. Crawlers will often start with your home page and then follow links from there to other areas of your site. Therefore, if you fail to provide working links to all your pages, some of your content may end up unindexed.

• Register your site. Once you've built and optimized your Web site, it's best to manually register your site with major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, the Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org, LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves, or have a partner like Submitnet to do it for you. Registration doesn't take long, but do be careful to follow the instructions provided by each engine, as they are all a little different. Careless mistakes could keep your site from being indexed properly, or at all.

• Avoid pitfalls. Your goal is to increase your search-engine rankings, not to decrease them, but there are some things you can do that will accomplish just that. For example, some search engines don't index dynamic content on framed pages. If this applies to your site, therefore, think about ways to modify it so that it can be more easily indexed, or create alternate, crawler-friendly versions of your pages. Also, keep in mind that many search engines are familiar with common spamming techniques, like hidden text and irrelevant metadata, and will take appropriate action when pages using them are detected in their indexes.

• Be patient. Above all, remember to be patient! There's no magic bullet for getting the top spot in search engine indexes. If you've spent a lot of time optimizing your Web site and you still aren't seeing results, it may not make sense spending more time tweaking it so it will surface higher. There are other ways for you to drive traffic to your site on which your time would be better spent.

Using Pay-per-Click Search-Engine Services

One of the best methods of increasing your site traffic is to use the pay-per-click services offered by many search engines. Most of them allow you to bid on key words or phrases that users are likely to search for. The highest bidder gets the highest ranking in the search results, and pays the search engine every time someone clicks on their link. Here are some basic guidelines:

• Choose your keywords carefully. Pick terms that apply to your site's content or your visitors' interests. It is vitally important that you understand what your customers are looking for, or what problems they might be trying to solve, when you generate keyword lists. Now, it's true that the most obvious and popular keywords tend to be the most expensive. You can benefit by thinking of more specific, but less obvious, search terms that will convert higher for you at a lower cost, but only if they match your site's content. For help in picking keywords, you can use tools like those offered by Overture and Wordtracker. You should also look at what terms your competitors are bidding on, and monitor referring URLs to your Web site.

• Closely track your ROI. Most search engines allow you to group similar keywords and monitor their performance at either the group or individual level. Additionally, Associates tracking tags allow you to track your Web site's performance or that of different keyword campaigns at a greater level of granularity. (For information on how to obtain tracking tags, see our FAQ.) Consult your Associates reports to see how many visitors to your site ultimately made a purchase. If your average conversion is 1%, then bidding 5 cents per click for a placement in a search engine's listings will cost you around $5 per sale. If you're making over $5 per sale, you're in good shape. If you're not, you'll need to continue to optimize your site. It is important to track your results at a level that allows you to easily understand what is working, and if you are making money. This will allow you to eliminate unprofitable keywords quickly.

• See where the traffic is. Search engine traffic has become greatly concentrated over the last couple of years. These sites all offer pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion services and are widely used by consumers: Google, Overture (a Yahoo Company), LookSmart.

Finally, it's often a good idea to start small and test a handful of keywords before you invest too much money and time in pay-per-click campaigns. While they can be a lucrative way to drive traffic, they can also be risky if your traffic isn't ultimately converting into. For some additional tips, click here to read how fellow Associate Art World Chicago successfully used paid search results to make money.

Additional Resources

For additional information review the following sites:

• Search Engine Watch, the authority on search-engine optimization.
• http://searchenginewatch.com/
• Webmonkey provides informative tutorials on driving traffic. http://www.webmonkey.com/01/23/index1a.html

You can also ask other Associates for advice on the Associates Discussion Board.

Crimsonbird.com: How to Increase Traffic from Search Engines

Search engines scour the Internet to identify Web sites that are relevant to their users' queries. They do this not only by reviewing pages' visible content, but also by taking into account content hidden in HTML tags, e.g., META elements and image identifiers. By making a few small changes to your Web site's HTML, you can significantly increase its chances of surfacing highly in users' search results.

To find a great example of search-engine optimization, we didn't have to look farther than the Share Helpful Tips section of the Associates Discussion Board. We had spent about five minutes searching when Mike Lepore, creator and Webmaster of Crimsonbird.com, flew into view. He had provided helpful tips to other Associates for a long time, so we sat down and asked him to identify some of the key practices that could help Associates who wanted to improve their search-engine placements. Here's what we found out:

• Remember that no single tactic works for all search engines. Each one has its own way of ranking Web sites. For example, Google notes the "description" meta tag and ignores the "keywords" one, while others take both into account.

• First and foremost, create smart content. Mike provides lengthy, information-packed reviews of books that he's read, which gives his visitors a reason to come back often. Check out his review of David McCullough's John Adams to see a great example of good content.

• Try to begin each Web page with phrases relevant to the page's content. Avoid starting with a lot of navigation elements or advertisements that don't contain keywords relevant to the page's major topic.

• Optimize each page separately. Search engines don't rank Web sites in their entirety, instead ranking each page individually. For example, even if your site mainly focuses on business software, if you have a children's software page, be sure to include relevant keywords to that topic.

• Use META tags, which appear at the top of your HTML documents. They can either be hand-coded or inserted by most HTML editors. They allow you to precisely describe certain elements of your page.

ArtWorldChicago: Smart Use of Paid Search Results

Paying for search-results placement has been around for a while, but you may have yet to try this incredibly measurable way of driving traffic to your Web site. Goto.com, which later renamed itself Overture, came up with the concept in the mid 1990s, but since then many search engines, including Google, now allow you to pay for placement in their search results. You only pay for the placement if someone actually clicks on your link, not if they just see it and do nothing--therefore, you're really paying for performance. By spending as little as $2 or $3 per day, anyone can participate, and placements can be live in minutes.

To get a better understanding of paid search, we turned to Dan Blystone, who has created several Associates Web sites.

He told us about one of his latest creations, www.artworldchicago.com. For residents of the Windy City and for art fans in general, this Web site is a great source of information. Dan provides a free space for local artists to highlight their work, and he's included a good amount of pertinent content, including gallery lists, classifieds, and links to artists' sites. Without a resource like this, Chicago's art fans would have a hard time tracking down local artists.

Of course, even with a content-rich site, Dan had the same trouble that many of you face every day--how to get your audience to find you! Enter the power of paid search results. Dan told us they're by far his favorite means of attracting his target audience, and that he makes heavy use of both Google and Overture, among others. Some specific tips from Dan:

• Pay for extremely specific terms. For instance, he avoids words like "art," since many people will bid for it--winning it would be expensive and the term is not as targeted as he would like. Instead, he bids for "chicago art" or "chicago gallery," which do a much better job of reaching his core audience.

• Works best for content-rich sites. The practice of paying for search results is recommended more for people with content-rich and content-specific sites. For example, if you have a site that specializes in "vintage railroad facts," you'll have a ton of opportunities to target your desired audience, and it won't be very expensive. However, if your site is just a list of online auction sites, you'll probably have more competition for your key search words.

• Get ready to test everything. The benefit of these services is that they give you a lot of data. They show you how many people searched for your keyword, and how many clicks you've received. You can then watch your server logs to see the increase in traffic and compare it to your daily sales and visits.

Dan also suggested that you "make sure that you have content that will keep your visitors coming back." No matter how many visitors you attract with paid search listings, you need to be sure they're given a reason to return. When we visited www.artworldchicago.com, we noticed he had Marshall Field's Associates links at the bottom of his pages and we thought that links to art books, for example, might do better. He then reminded us that Marshall Field's was a Chicago company; again, he's doing a great job of thinking about his target visitor and providing relevant content.

Remember, anyone can use paid search results, and in some ways, smaller and more focused Web sites have the advantage here over bigger sites, as the small ones are often much more focused on their target customers.