Depaul Travel

It’s well known that email continues to provide the most cost effective marketing medium and has great advantages in immediacy and ability to measure the ROI.

But in today’s world we also all know the risks of an email not getting to the inbox. A solution to ensuring an email gets to the inbox is to use Certified Email, for example as provided by Goodmail.

So how does it work? Your ESP (email service provider) needs to support Goodmail and Goodmail in turn have relationships with some of the major ISPs to ensure inbox delivery. The systems of your ESPs, Goodmail and the ISP then work together to put a certified stamp onto the email and the email is delivered to the inbox without the ISP filtering it out. The recipient sees an icon to let them know it is a certified email. Reporting is then available to confirm it was delivered.

So what is to stop spammers becoming certified? To be accepted into the Certified Email scheme you have to show you are well behaved. In today’s world Sender reputation in email marketing is everything. If you have a poor reputation then you can’t become certified until you clean your act up.

Crucial today to sender reputation is the ‘report as spam’ button on many email clients, such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and more. If too many people hit ‘report as spam’, then the ISPs will consider that it is spam. The reality is that the definition of what is spam is in the hands of the recipient and not some legal definition. To have a good reputation means ensuring:

- Recipients have agreed to let your message to their inbox. Make the opt-in permission obvious and clear as to the extent of the opt-in. Is it for particular messages, or is it an opt-in to any email from you?

- Your email branding is clear and consistent with the branding when the user first got to know you. If your sister company sends an email with different branding there is every chance that the user won’t understand it was opted-in.

- Don’t send too frequently. Between once a week and once a month is typically right.

- Target the content, sending content that is useful and interesting to the user. With all professional email marketing systems content can be heavily dynamically targeted.

- Provide a clear unsubscribe method that works. If the process doesn’t work or isn’t clear then users will hit the ‘spam’ button as the easier option.

- Let them know they did opt-in and when, to jog their memory. How many people can remember all the times they have provided their email address and to whom?

- Stop sending to people who show non-responsive behavior patterns.

- Look at the spam complaint reports that the professional ESPs can provide. Do the people who report as spam share common characteristics? Did they come through the same source, did they all subscribe a long time ago (eg more than twelve months). This can allow you to remove people before they complain.

Copyright (c) 2008 Konstantin Koss

No man is an island unto himself, which explains why people feel the need to communicate, interact and form strong relationships with other people. With social wellness, a person will have the capability to socialize, be confident and function normally with other people. The lack of social wellness often leads to anti-social behavior and causes inability to adjust in social surroundings.

*What is Social Wellness?*

Social wellness refers to the relationships and connections we have with others. It also refers to our capability to build and maintain relationships, develop intimacy with family and friends and manage our feelings and emotions. Social Wellness Group Image

Social wellness is an important element in every person’s life, primarily because it helps him recognize his natural interdependence with others, regardless of the relationship. A person who is well-adjusted on a social level is capable of making friends, offering support to others and becoming a productive member of the society he lives in.

Social wellness also encourages a person to focus on other people’s needs and make his contribution for the greater good of the community. It also helps her maximize and share her life experiences.

*Indications of Social Wellness*

There are certain standards with which our social wellness is known and measured. These include:

-positive relationships and interaction with other people

-ability to build and nurture relationships

-ability to empathize and care

-ability to function in social situations

-willingness to accept other people’s attention and care

*Measuring Your Social Wellness*

There are several factors that determine the state of your social wellness. These are:

-the intention you have to give time for socialization with family, friends and acquaintances

-the quality of your relationships

-your willingness to learn about others and explore information regarding other people

-the enjoyment you feel when you spend time with other people

If any of these factors are missing in your life, it’s probably time to consider carefully what you have been doing in order to address this concern and make the proper steps to improve this area of your life.

*Creating Social Wellness in Your Life*

Nobody attains perfection in his life, mainly because life is a process and will continue to evolve. However, people can perceive perfection in terms of happiness and satisfaction. To create social wellness, here are some of the most important steps you can take:

Know your needs.

We all have unique needs. What someone might find important may seem irrelevant to you and vice versa. Learn to identify what your needs are so you don’t feel the pressure to perform in an environment you don’t enjoy or care about.

Reach out.

Offering friendship to people is a first step to social wellness. Without this initiative, it will be difficult for you to take advantage of potentially productive relationships. Consider joining groups and clubs that focus on your interests. Explore other avenues that may present certain possibilities for you, such as volunteer work and travel.

Choose your relationships.

Some relationships can take quite a toll on people. Sometimes, it could come from experiences with an insincere friend, an abusive partner or an overbearing relative. The problem here is that all of these can cause unnecessary strain on your emotional state and affect your ability to function socially.

Learn to build and stay in healthy relationships. These relationships involve people you care about and who care about you and your well-being. Generally, these are people whom you feel can nurture and support your needs and whose needs you yourself can offer support for. Since there is trust and compassion, you feel safe and satisfied, two vital ingredients for social wellness.

Don’t feel the pressure to conform.

This is a rather tricky step because often, conformity is required in the society we live in. However, cooperating with standards and mores doesn’t necessarily mean changing yourself and becoming a person you are not. Everybody’s different and it’s our job to accept that.

When trying to conform, you’ll find that the pressure to change yourself will affect you in many ways, all of them negative.

Learn to communicate effectively.

You can only do so much about hiding your feeling and thoughts. Being able to communicate well is a vital component of social wellness because this is generally how you initiate relationships in the first place.

Make it a practice to constantly work on your social connections and soon you will have an abundance of what we call “social wellness”

In conversation with other marketers, I am often asked how Social Media Marketing is useful to a website. I realize that not everyone understands how social media marketing (SMM) can affect a websites page rank, traffic, sales (the list could go on).

Content is an extremely valuable resource to all web users. By putting it to work for your website you can find yourself as the “Reliable Content Provider” also known as an “Authority” on that topic. You can use social media to give you that authority.

Recently, I implemented just a few of the social media techniques taught my Social Media Rockstars and promoted my website to top ten Google rankings – making it an authority site for a keyword related to my business. Here is my example of how social media marketing affects the natural search listing.

1. First, I had a business website that needed more traffic (what website couldn’t use more traffic). This is already a successful website for a few other keywords, but I wanted to spread the valuable content provided with this website.

2. I then researched a high traffic, low competition keyword that was related to my business website. You only want traffic that is looking or searching for what you can provide them. I do not want to falsely advertise with irrelevant content otherwise all my efforts with social media marketing would be a waste.

3. Next, I researched my market to find out what they were looking for and how I could best provide valuable content to the web searchers looking up that keyword.

4. Then I created multiple forms of content – content is information provided to a website searcher; this can be text, video, or audio. *Remember that relevant content is what you want to create.*

The content was broken down into one short video and 12 articles. 3 of the articles were 1000 words, and the remaining nine articles ranged from 300-500 words. Note: be sure that this content is in someway relating back to the main site that you wanted to increase traffic, sales, or reputation. Whatever your purpose, be sure that this content is helping.

5. Now you need to spread the content across the different social media sites. I added the larger articles to the more popular social media sites.

Of course the video went to you tube. And for the social media sites that allowed me to share a video along with my content I added the video to it.

These 12 articles and one video spread across 13 sites drove traffic back to my businesses website. The key here is to post your content on a site that has a high page rank. This will tell the search engines that the content is coming from a reliable and valuable source. In return, those high ranking sites give your site higher rankings (or a more trusted reputation) because it’s being promoted by a high ranking website. (Sort of like the popular high school student introducing the new kid – you start off on a higher social status).

Don’t stop there! With social media marketing you need to share the content. You can so this by using social bookmarking sites, posting the information to a blog and sharing the article links in a forum. People are always looking for free information. Share your free information with everyone you can. If it’s valuable and relevant to the web users you shared it with they will also bookmark it on social bookmark sites creating viral traffic.

Now if, you remember form the beginning my main purpose was to increase traffic to an already published website. I now have 12 articles, loads of social bookmarks, and a video linking back to my website. If I did my social media marketing correctly this will definitely increase the traffic coming to my business website.

But that’s not my only result: because I have all of these popular authority sites sending traffic my way, the search engines now see that I am providing valuable content. In return for providing this content and sharing it through social media marketing tactics I have boosted the listing placement of my original website. Now in the search results for my targeted keyword I have dominated the top 5 pages with articles, social bookmarks, videos, and more importantly my main business website.

With my recent efforts in social media marketing (with in the last month), I moved my business website from the 21st position in Google to the 8th. On top of that, I hold 14 other positions in the top 30 search results for my targeted keyword. All this and I didn’t use half of the resources available with social media marketing.