But first I wanted to mention an update on my last post about Google Buzz. There were a lot of concerns about some of the privacy settings and how your information was being used. Google has made various updates and they mention the changes on their blog. Enough said.

A few days ago on the official Google blog they made a post about how webmasters and web site owners could specify your canonical. One of the biggest concerns for anyone that does SEO is that of duplicate content on their website. Now that Google, Yahoo and MSN (Bing) are going to start supporting the rel=”canonical” tag in the header it makes it easy for Google and the others to slap your website around if you have duplicate content.

For those that aren’t sure what I am referring to here is an example:

• http://micaljohnson.com
• http://www.micaljohnson.com
• http://micaljohnson.com/index.htm

All this links point to the same page and would cause a duplicate content penalty to be served. This is a very simple example. I’ll share more in a moment.

Those of us that use WordPress blogs should be familiar with this because of the way the link structure of the blog works we often times end up with duplicate content. Thankfully the genius wordpress plugin creator Joost de Valk at Yoast.com made a great wordpress plugin to canonical your blog and help eliminate that problem.

Here are a few places to check out to get up to speed on this:

• Yoast.com: Canonical URL links
• Google Blog: About rel=”canonical”

Here is also a video of Google’s Matt Cutts explaining it a little better

I raced over to the Google Reader blog to check it out for myself. Before the change if you wanted to add a subscription to your Google Reader account it required that the page had an RSS feed, but now thanks to this cool update that is no longer the case.

I’ve been using this feature for a number of years to keep track of cool sites so I don’t have to keep checking my favorites all the time. It has gotten to the point that I rarely even check my bookmarks…and there is a TON of them.

With the sites I check on a regular basis I have them come to my reader account then if the content is good I’ll go visit the site and finish reading. It saves me lots of time of endlessly going from one site to another. Now they don’t even need to have a RSS feed for me to add them.

Now it’s time for me to run out and check out all my favorites and see what I can add to my list.

Today is a GREAT day! Thanks Google

[img credit: filiph]

1. Private IP address
2. Customer support and training
3. Robust infrastructure
4. Good reporting
5. CAN SPAM compliance
6. List Segmenting
7. A/B testing
8. Free trial
9. No term contract
10. Pricing Plans

I have used a lot of ESP before over the years and here is a list of a couple of them out there now.

1. icontact.com
2. lyris.com
3. aweber.com (This is the one I personally use)
4. infusionsoft.com

**Help me build a list of good ESP’s comment on the one you use or think is the best**

One of the most important aspects of marketing effectively with email is to ensure your marketing efforts are reaching the members of your target audience. One way to do this is to ask former customers as well as potential customers to join your email distribution list. This will help to ensure the majority of members on your email distribution list have an actual interest in your products or services. This is important because you are much more likely to generate sales when you are marketing to this type of an audience than you would if you were marketing to a much larger audience without an interest in your products.

Another aspect of marketing effectively is to hire an experienced professional writer to draft the content for your emails, e-newsletters, email courses or any other methods you are using to email your message to potential customers. Having your content written can give you a significant edge over the competition if they are drafting their content themselves. The quality of your content is a reflection on your business and poorly written content with no substance will reflect poorly on your business.

Effective email marketing should also be written in a manner which will appeal to the target audience. If necessary you should conduct market research to determine demographical information for your target audience. This research may also determine preferences the target audience may have for receiving marketing information. This may include the type of language used, the format of the emails, the layout of the emails and even aesthetic appearance of the emails. Paying attention to these details can make the marketing management significantly more effective. email marketing campaigns.

Finally, effective email marketing should not be viewed as spam. This is a difficult situation. In many cases an email marketing campaign software will involve distributing mass emails but care should be taken in these endeavors to avoid having these emails construed as spam. This is important because many Internet service providers include spam filters which apply algorithms to each email account to determine which messages are spam and which ones are legitimate. Emails which are deemed to be spam may never reach the intended recipients. Emails which may it through the spam filters may also be automatically deleted if the Internet user believes it looks like spam. For this reason care should be taken to ensure all marketing emails provide quality content, advertise only subtly and ideally are only sent to email recipients who have specifically requested information about your products or services. This will give you the best opportunity possible to reach your target audience and have a positive impression on them and hopefully entice them to make a purchase or visit your website. email marketing service provider.

Have you read “Integration Marketing” yet?  If you
haven’t, stop everything and read it now.  It’s *that* good:
http://micaljohnson.com/IntegrationMarketing/

Email marketing campaigns can be tracked and sent with: http://micaljohnson.com/aweber