I received the following inquiry on LinkedIn.com, and wanted to share my thoughts here on my blog as well...
"I'm looking for a method by which to incorporate this program (iContact.com)into my current marketing efforts... I need to develop a method to drive targeted traffic to my opt-in form..."
I would like to start out by saying that every business is different, and marketing strategies will differ greatly depending on industry, niche, geographical location, economics, and client demographics for that region. What may work for one organization, may not be as successful for another.
In regards to online marketing, some of the above considerations will still apply, while others can be negated, like geography and regional demographics.
iContact provides organizations with the invaluable ability to reach out to globally diverse markets of potential clients using both direct and indirect methods to attract and convert these leads. The following are just a few tools that are available to all iContact clients, and are fully inclusive in our pricing, irregardless of which plan you select.
Digital Word of Mouth Marketing:Every email campaign distributed via iContact, allows for the automatic placement of a Forward-to-a-Friend (F2F) link at the bottom of the email. This allows your contacts to forward your content to other potential clients, and even allows those clients the ability to subscribe to your list.
Global Exposure to Diverse MarketsUtilizing our iContact Community, allows iContact Publishers to quickly and easily publish online archived versions of their content. This content is organized into content categories within the iContact Community, and is further organized into Publisher Profiles for each Organization. With hundreds of thousands of hits to the Community each month, we provide Publishers with the ability to capture Community visitors via sign-up forms available in each Publisher Profile.
Social Bookmarking:Utilizing the iContact Community as an integrated part of your email campaigns allows for your email content recipients to bookmark your emails via a variety of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and more. This function actually bookmarks the iContact Community version of your content, and allows for social bookmarking to drive massive amounts of viewers to your content (and iContact Community Publisher Profile), thus increasing your chances of sign-up conversions.
Google Page Ranking (including other Search Engines):Due to the consistently high volume of traffic to the iContact Community, it boasts an impressively high Google Page Rank. Having external links from your content to your organization's website, increases the number of heavily weighted links to your website. This in turn allows for a much better potential to have your organization's website show higher is search engine results, as each piece of content within the Community is another "vote" for your website.
Utilizing a Website Sign-up Form:One of the most important aspects of permission-based email marketing is having an easy to find sign-up form on your website, which can convert site visitors into opt-in subscribers. Remember to clearly state the intention of the sign-up form, and make the sign-up form simple enough for visitors of any attention span. The iContact application provides a simple to use sign-up form wizard that will walk you step-by-step through the creation process.
So, I hope this helps to shed a little light on just a few of the various ways of how you can utilize iContact's services to assist your organization in terms of online marketing strategy, and for driving targeted traffic to your various iContact permission-based opt-in sign-up forms.
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