Ideas for Segmenting Your Email List

Posted by Jeff Powers

Credit: Flickr User - RambergMediaImages

Keeping your email list interested in your messages is essential to a business’s online marketing, and even sales, success. Being able to determine who is interested in what is the key to creating and maintaining your list’s interest. Sending relevant, targeted emails can turn you from a stranger into a friend/adviser in the eyes of your subscriber. This is why segmenting your email list is essential to the success of your business online.

Here are a number of ways that your can segment your own email list:

• Sales Funnel Position (prospect, lead, customer, etc.)
• Past Purchases (revenue, quantity, product, etc.)
• Demographics (age, location, etc.)
• Subscriber Age (new, old, etc.)
• Persona
• Opens
• Clicks
• Implied Interests (email replies, survey responses, etc.)
• Inferred Interests (email opens, downloads, etc.)
• Industry (Tech, Healthcare, etc.)
• Contact Source (website, convention, etc.)
• Authority (VP Sales, CEO, etc.)
• Influence (little, major, etc.)

This list of segments should be enough to get you started. The key is to test, test, test. If your success metric – whether its opens, clicks, or sales – is increasing, job well done! If not, just try out one of your many other segments.

What segments best increase your success metric?

Steve Jobs – An Eternal Source of Inspiration

Posted by Jeff Powers

Credit: Flickr User - secretagent007

Steve Jobs was one of the most innovative, inspirational leaders of our age. He had always kept us on our toes. Every creation was surprising and ahead of its time. Steve’s philosophy wasn’t to create products with the most features like other orthodox technology companies. Instead, his focus was on providing intuitive solutions that could directly benefit end-users.

Here are some inspirational videos highlighting Steve’s legacy.

Here is a great article by Nilofer Merchant, titled Steve Jobs’s Legacy: Design Your Own Life.

Don’t settle for the status quo… Think Different.

3 Google Search Operators to Determine Keyword Competition

Posted by Jeff Powers

image credit: pokerfuse.com

One of the challenges in search engine optimization is determining the competition for a keyword. There are many premium keyword research tools available to the SEO expert, but not everyone can afford them. Instead, with a little grunt work, you can conduct keyword research at no cost.

In February 2011 Google searches accounted for 67% of total U.S. searches. So, when conducting our research on keyword competition, we will be using Google. Google has many advanced search operators that go unnoticed. So why not take advantage of them?

Here are 3 Google search operators that can help you determine keyword competition.

1. ‘Rank Number 1 in Google’ – This is the easiest ways to gauge the competition for a keyword. By entering the keyword Rank Number 1 in Google into Google, it will tell us how many pages have this keyword or a variation somewhere on the page. We can see that there are 83M pages that contain this keyword. This is also the most common search query a person would conduct. So, based on how you rank here, you can get a feeling of the general competitiveness of the keyword.
2. ‘allinanchor: Rank Number 1 in Google‘ – This search operator will display pages with inbound link anchor text containing Rank Number 1 in Google. This is a very useful search query as it will tell you the off-page SEO competition. It’s estimated that around 80% of search engine ranking factors are from off-page optimization. Specifically, 20% of search engine ranking is from the anchor-text of inbound links.
3. ‘allintitle: Rank Number 1 in Google‘ – This last search operator will display pages with title tags containing Rank Number 1 in Google. By looking at these results, you can determine how well optimized competing pages are. If the titles are optimized for the keyword, chances are that the rest of the page is optimized as well.

Using these 3 Google search operators can help you with your keyword competition research. There are many other advanced search operators that you can try out on Google as well. Are there any others search operators that you use when conducting your keyword competition research?

Introduction to Long Tail Keywords

Posted by Jeff Powers

The long tail is taking hold – there is no doubt about it. Have you embraced it yet? If you are involved in internet marketing, listen up. You can apply concepts of the long tail to your online marketing strategies by utilizing long tail keywords. At its essence, a long tail keyword is a targeted, 3-5 word phrase.

The hardest part about online marketing is reaching your target audience. There are millions of other websites that you have to compete with.

By using long tail keywords you can both crush your competition and draw in your target market.

Let’s take a step back and get into the mind of one of your prospects. When looking online for your area of experience, what are they going to do? Chances are they will turn to a search engine to look for an answer to their inquiry. 86% of consumers say search engines are very important in the buying process. After typing in their phrase, they will be presented with a long list of results. A broad keyword phrase will result in an extremely long list of results and a small chance of answering the inquiry at hand. If they do not find a relevant answer, they are going to type in an even more specific phrase… this is where you come in – more targeted and less competition.

Since we have a basic understanding of long tail keywords, we should take a look at an example. Let’s map out the actions of someone who is searching for a new computer, specifically a laptop. The first thing they will do is research. They are not sure what kind of laptop they will get yet.

We will try to map out a rough sketch of their online research/shopping process:

1. They type ‘laptop’ into a search engine. This turns out 998,000,000 results! Here they will find a wide variety of information on laptops. This is a great starting point for any researcher. They will gather their information and decide what kind of laptop they will want to research further. Let’s say that they settled on Apple laptops, and specifically an Apple MacBook Pro.
2. Next, they would type in ‘Apple MacBook Pro’ into the search engine. This will result in 81,700,000 results. This is 12 times fewer results than their original ‘laptop’ inquiry. Now they will focus their research on what type of MacBook Pro would suit them best. Are they into gaming, business, general browsing?
3. After their research, they decided that the ‘Apple MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core i5′ suits them best. So, they then type this long tail keyword into the search engine to find their ideal online vendor. This returns 15,400,000 results. This is 65 times less competitive than the ‘laptop’ inquiry and 5 times less competitive than ‘Apple MacBook Pro’. And even more-so, if they search ‘Buy Apple MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core i5′ they will be presented with only 5,830,000 results. What a drastic difference!

By optimizing your landing page around ‘Buy Apple MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core i5′ you are competing against a lot fewer websites and you are attracting prospects who are already considering buying this product. This is where you can see the true value of long tail keywords. As said earlier, have you embraced the long tail keyword yet? Now is your chance to get started!

Binomial Distribution Explained

Posted by Jeff Powers

Binomial distribution!? That’s right, I’m busting out the stats. The first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions the binomial distribution is someone flipping a coin. The essence of this distribution is made up of either a success or failure, 1 or 0, or a yes or no. There are only two outcomes, hence ‘bi’-nomial.

The binomial distribution can be used in a number of ways. It can be used when looking at the number of defective items produced, individuals with a certain terminal illness, lead conversions in a marketing test, and so on.

The following are some characteristics of the binomial distribution:

The binomial distribution is discrete… it’s made up of a finite number of values.

the number of independent trials performed
the probability of a success in a single experiment
the probability of a failure in a single experiment

Combinations – A combination is the number of ways a subset k of n objects can be chosen without regard to order. This can be written as and is read ‘n choose k’. This is written mathematically as: .

Q. How many ways can a subset of 3 individuals can be chosen, without regard to order, from a group of 5?

A.

The average number of successes – the mean – of trials is

And the variance of trials is

Lets take a look at an example…

If we have a fair coin and we consider a head a success…

1. What is p, the probability of a success?
2. What is q, the probability of a failure?
3. What is when n=20? When n=50?
4. What is when n=20? When n=50?
5. Given n = 50, what is ?

Take a second and see if you get those.

The solutions to the questions can be found below.

1. Since the coin is fair, the probability of heads is equal to tails… p = q = .50
2. q = .50
3. . .
4. . .
5. 

The neat thing about the binomial distribution is how intuitive it is. Let’s look at the probability density function: . If we were to intuitively figure out the probability of x=2 successes with n=3 and p=.6, what would we do? Well, if the trials are independent, the individual probabilities of each experiment can be multiplied to find the probability of n experiments. The successes (S) have a probability of .6, which leaves the probability of failure (F) at .4. Since we are trying to find all the combinations of two succeses () and 1 failure (), we just need to multiply the probability of these 3 experiments by the number of possible combinations – SSF,SFS,FSS. It’s that easy.

As said before, the binomial distribution has many applications. I will be referring back to this article in the future.. so start studying!

Understanding the Long Tail

Posted by Jeff Powers

What’s all this talk about the ‘long tail’ in economics? This revolutionary concept was coined by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. His theory was that as the cost of overhead decreases, the variety of products increases. We can see this through the increase in niche markets.

Looking at the graph above, we can see that that there are products with high popularity (red/head) and products with low popularity (yellow/long tail). It looks like there are a lot more products in the head, but it turns out, with the long tail, there are even more (niche) products.

This is why we see so many online retailers, such as Amazon and iTunes, doing so well. The overhead cost they pay is extremely low because there is no storefront. That is why they are able to sell millions of products. iTunes has over 18 million songs available in its online store! No brick-and-mortar music store could hold that many cds. Millions of songs are downloaded from iTunes relatively few times, but the revenue generated from the aggregate is more than from the small number of hit songs. This is why the long tail, advanced by digital technology, is such a revolutionary concept.

We can also see its effect on the media. The media used to be dominated by a select few radio stations, tv stations, and newspapers/magazines. Now we see online news aggregators, blogs, video channels, podcasts, and even social media tracking today’s stories. Top news networks are reporting trending twitter stories… what does that tell you? Anyone can be part of the media now! There are no limits – no boundaries. The ‘media of the people’ has taken off so fast that it has put printed media in dire straits.

We will be seeing more and more industries in the future affected by the long tail, such as healthcare with mhealth. Grab on to the long tail while you still have a chance.

3 eBook Essentials

Posted by Jeff Powers

eBooks are a great way to publish content. People seem love them and they are easy to make. That’s why ebooks are such powerful marketing tools. But, not all ebooks are created equal. There are some poorly made ebooks. You know those ones that look like a dictionary… yeah, you remember now. So, we should be drawing conclusions from ebooks on the other side of the spectrum. Well-made ebooks seem to share 3 of the same qualities.

Here are 3 ebook essentials that you should follow:

1. Readability. eBooks should be easy to read. Text that is too small, spacing that is too thin, and fonts that are too bunchy can cause some serious eye strain. You should never use less than 12 pt font. White space is also key – it gives your eyes the ability to focus on one thing at a time. Clear breaks should be set between each paragraph. Additionally, bright color, boldface, and increases in font size can make important sections stand out from the rest. As far as the reading flow of the ebook, it should progress logically. Every new section/chapter should start on a new page.
2. Graphicality. One of the things that separates ebooks from articles is the use of graphics. Relevant, catchy pictures and infographics placed on each page brings an ebook to life. If you are edgy enough, using humorous graphics can set your ebook apart from the rest.
   
3. Shareability. eBooks should be easy to share. You are going to have a hard time promoting your ebook with no social media sharing buttons or links. If you have the time, you should make your ebook interactive. Whether it is sharing the ebook itself or its landing page, your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for your readers to share.

Following these 3 ebook essentials can turn your content from good to great! It doesn’t take that much work. All it takes is a little creativity and awareness.

What do you find to be common characteristics between great ebooks?