4 Reasons Why Email Marketing Works

by Maxine on May 30, 2010

Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. To put this in perspective, that’s more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing and more than 6 times the return from print catalogues.

4 Reasons Why Email Marketing Works

  1. Cost Effectiveness:  Setting up your email campaign requires time and planning, but once set up it’s good to go. Your message can then be delivered with a click of the mouse to thousands of recipients at once, with no postage fees and no printing fees.
  2. Relevancy: A good professional email client will give you the ability to segment your subscribers. You can ensure your message is sent to those individuals and businesses who will be interested in what you have to offer and therefore your response rate will have a higher rate of success.
  3. Immediate Action: Rather than wait for a subscriber to visit your site to find out your latest and greatest news  or offer, you can send that information directly to their online mailbox at the time it counts. The majority of your recipients will see your messsage in the first 24 – 48 hours.
  4. Measurable: More than any other form of marketing, email markating can provide actionable data on the results it generates. Keep track of who opened your email and when, what topics they were interested in, who forwarded it on to a friend, how many sales were generated and much more. You can’t say that about newspaper ads, TV, direct mail, or radio advertising or any other form of marketing.

Email marketing requires some preparation, of course. Like anything else, the foundation is imperative to success.  Once in place though, email marketing will produce great results for your business. Ensure that your subscribers have given you permission to email them; send them relevant information, and looks professional when it arrives into their email account.

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Do You Really Need New Computer for your Home Business? Maybe Not!

by Maxine on May 16, 2010

You’re about to start a home business and you’ll be marketing online, right?   You’ll need to know whether your present equipment (computer etc) is up for the task, and if not, what to do about it.

You’ll want to ensure that you can use all the tools available to you right now, (video, audio and graphic capabilities) to get your home business off to a great start.

Firstly, check to see what your present system properties are by clicking on Start, Control Panel, System.

You need at least:

Intel(R) Core (TM) 2 CPU

Pentium 4 will suffice for now, but it won’t be long before you’ll need to upgrade.  The upgrades have been, in this order, Dual Core, Quad Core, i3 Core, i5 Core, with i7 the Ferrari of the CPU’s at the present time.

1.67 GHz  – (3GHz recommended) – this is your processor speed.

The media (video etc) capabilities we have today require more speed to run, and everyone is using video in their marketing efforts (or soon will be). You can’t increase your processor’s speed but what you can do is add more RAM to your computer.  RAM gives your processor more room to work with.  Large programmes take up a lot of RAM which slows down your processing speed.

1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended) – this is your computer’s “memory”.

The easiest way to get more memory space is to add more RAM.

Everything is working fine, then you add photo-editing software, surf to a graphically intense Web site, install a game, and suddenly your computer can’t keep up. One sign that your computer is under stress is when the drive light flickers like mad (that’s the red light on the front of your computer).

As you’re getting your equipment into good shape for your home business, and you’ll be using video conferencing, video streaming, or video in some shape of form (won’t you?) you’ll be wanting to to ensure your computer is up to the job now, rather than having to upgrade too soon down the track.

The amount of RAM you need depends on the operating system you are using. For systems running Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, you will need the minimum recommended amount, but more is often better, depending on your needs. If you just use your PC for surfing the Internet and writing letters, you need 512 MB to 1 GB. For more RAM-intensive programs, such as games or photo editing, or if you like to use a lot of applications at the same time, such as desktop publishing and video rendering, more than 1 GB is recommended. Each program should come with system requirements that show both the minimum RAM needed to run the program, and the amount of RAM needed for its best performance.

RAM modules can be purchased in a variety of sizes.

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The Donkey

May 16, 2010 Categories

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited his neighbours [...]

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The Importance of Bandwidth for Video Conferencing

May 15, 2010 Comf5

Whether you’re using a free video chatting service such as Skype,or a professional video conferencing service, such as Comf5, you’ll need to ensure your “system”, (your computer and your internet connection) is up to it.  Video conferencing or chatting needs a little more “grunt”. Afterall, you wouldn’t expect  to pull your yacht with a shopping [...]

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How to Get Your Computer into Shape and Maintain It

May 15, 2010 Computer Maintenance

My guess is that it suits the computer retailers if we remain ignorant. That way when our computer slows down and doesn’t seem to work as well anymore, we may believe we need a new one, right? We all know we have to change the oil in our car, have it “tuned” periodically,  ensure it [...]

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