33Rockers » Jot Down

E-mail marketing: Don’t be an e-diot

Elvis — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:13:05 +0000

E-mail marketing or advertising can help you sell your product to thousands of people with one click. But it takes real art to be successful in email marketing. We list a few things that any internet marketer would, and should, already know but would still do well to be reminded.

What day is it anyway?

This one simple trick can do wonders for your business. Be careful of the day you are sending an email on. If it is a business email meant for merchants, send it out on business days, when they are more likely to check it quickly. But the average Joe who returns home after a hard day’s work doesn’t want to see an ad in his inbox, even if he signed up for it. So if you are selling directly to consumers, send out the email on public holidays.

Don’t buy lists

Buying a list might seem to be a quick way to jump into email marketing, but any veteran in the field knows it takes months to build a commendable email list. Most of the lists with a price tag on them are completely useless. Others are not much better. Make a respectable site that users love to read and allow them to opt-in for your emails. Not only does this makes the receivers of you email more receptive to you pitch, but also gives you an extremely targeted audience.

Also, when using an opt-in list, you’d do well to use a service like Aweber to easily manage your subscribers. Such services also ensure that your emails are not regarded as spam by mail providers.

Maintain focus

When sending out email, it is important not to bombard the readers with information. You might have a lot of great things to tell them, sure, but make sure you concentrate on marketing one, and only one, product/service. You don’t want to take the spotlight away from your star performer. If users see that you email is too long to read quickly, they will skip it entirely, including your flagship product.

Inform, don’t sell

It’s no secret that salespersons are among the most hated people on the planet. Most people hate them with a vengeance. There is a single reason for this – they try to sell things to people before they are interested in them. In your emails, tell people about why the product is great and how it will help make their lives easier. Don’t start the email with a link that screams ‘BUY NOW!’. It will do worse than not getting you a single sale. It will cause you to lose subscribers.

Make it jump out, but don’t scare the readers

This one should be a no-brainer. Yet it is surprising how many marketers can’t even get a simple subject line together. Smart people don’t read emails that shout their sales pitch in the subject line. The subject line should give people a reason to read the mail, not a description of your product. The rest of the mail should be just as well writer. Don’t send them a wall of text. Include images and an attractive template (nothing too big, you don’t want people to give up before the mail loads). And ensure there are absolutely no errors in your mail, grammatical, factual, or otherwise.

Next time you feel like clicking on the send button, come here for a minute and read the headings again. Don’t send out a mail before you have done that.

Are You Taking Advantage of the NetworkedBlogs App?

Janis — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:20:06 +0000

Adding your blog is fairly simple. Just go to networkedblogs.com click ‘Add Your Blog’ and you’re on your way.

Helpful Tips for Installing and Using NetworkedBlogs

After putting in the blog information you’ll be asked to verify the blog. You have two options for doing this; you can take the longer method and have friends verify it, or you can use the quicker, more technical method of adding a snippet of code to your blog. If you want to display the facebook widget on your blog use the code method.

The widget comes in really handy, allowing your blog readers to follow your blog on Facebook with the click of a button.

Get your friends to follow your blog. Once you have 11 followers NetworkedBlogs will automatically feed your blog to your Facebook profile page.

Blogtactics.com put together a very useful video that walks you through the steps of registering your blog with NetworkedBlogs.

PHP – Pagination With PEAR and MySQL

Jerry Lee — Thu, 01 May 2008 04:58:52 +0000

Okay so the usual way of paginating mysql result sets within php involves code that looks something like this:

$total_pages = ceil($total_records / $products_per_page);


for($i = 1; $i < = $total_pages; $i++){

  echo "" . $i . "";

}

if($_GET['page'] >= 1){

  $current_page  = $_GET['page'];

} else {

  $current_page = 1;

}
$offset = ($current_page - 1) * $products_per_page;

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name "; $sql .= "LIMIT " . $offset . "," . $products_per_page;

While this is fine for quick hack job scripts. We as programmers have access to a solid framework in the name of PEAR. Within PEAR a package called Pager can help us enormously.

Paginating with PEAR

PHP Code:

'Sliding', 'perPage' => 10, 'delta' => 2, ); $query = 'SELECT prod_name, prod_description FROM products'; $paged_data = Pager_Wrapper_MDB2($db, $query, $pager_options);


echo '
';

foreach ($paged_data['data'] as $product) {

    echo '
'.$product['prod_name'].': '.$product['prod_description'].'
';

}

echo '
';

//show the links echo $paged_data['links']; ?>

Lets take a look at what going on and i’ll explain the important elements.

require_once 'Pager_Wrapper.php'; require_once 'MDB2.php';

Line 1 and 2 we include the require PEAR classes which need to be installed into PEAR on the machine.

Next up are paging options, you can set these to numerical values to suit your needs, perPage value within the array = 10. This sets how many results per page. For more information on the other elements please visit the Pager Package documentation.

pager_options = array( 'mode' => 'Sliding', 'perPage' => 10, 'delta' => 2, );

Finally we give the SQL query to MDB2 which is another PEAR package. We use this for the database absraction layer, loop the resultset and echo the list to the page.

$query = 'SELECT prod_name, prod_description FROM products'; $paged_data = Pager_Wrapper_MDB2($db, $query, $pager_options);


echo '
';

foreach ($paged_data['data'] as $product) {

    echo '
'.$product['prod_name'].': '.$product['prod_description'].'
';

}

echo '
';

//show the links echo $paged_data['links'];

Finally we echo $paged_data['links']; to produce the pagination. That’s it you’ve learned how to use a more solid paging solution. Go Forth and paginate your heart out!

Can designers now ignore what a site looks like in IE6?

Jerry Lee — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:22:20 +0000

It has always been a challenge to design for multiple browsers, especially if you have let go of evil table layouts. With the addition of IE7, we have some additional challenges. But the reality is that IE6 will be around for a while. Can we expect all of our clients and their site’s viewers to upgrade or buy a mac or switch to Firefox? I think not – I still have clients use AOL and still have no idea that there is a web outside of AOL.

Seriously – how can a site that looks like this in IE6 end up on cssmania…

Oh – and another thing… can we ignore file size in order to use pretty PNGs? The header graphic alone is 374k! I actually had to wait for this site to load – and I have a 3500k connection.

Internet Explorer 6 screenshot

Firefox pretty screenshot

BBPress theme Crystal : updated

Jerry Lee — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:31:42 +0000

There has been alot of interest in the BBPress theme, Crystal - so I went ahead and improved-slash-updated it for the current version of BBPress, “Desmond” version 0.8. I fixed the issues with cross-browser compatibility and the code now validates. And no more bugs (that I can see).

google-hosted gmail for your domain

Jerry Lee — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:26:26 +0000

I have been testing the new gmail “google apps for your domain” service for some months now with great results. Although, when I first switched over, the service was down for a day or so and I panicked. Mail was being returned to senders and I thought I had made a big mistake. I temporarily went back to my normal mail server, but the amount of spam the filters were not catching was too much to bear. So, I went back to hosted gmail and haven’t had a problem since. I tried to keep my domains mail server as a backup server, but then all of my client’s email (on the same server) defaulted to server – so I bit the bullet and deleted the backup mail server settings.

The only issue I have had thus far is the inability to use the gmail notifier for my domain email. But today, I found a new handy piece of software, the hosted gmail client. This is a mini-browser that sits in your taskbar, auto loads your hosted gmail, and has shortcut buttons to inbox, create mail, addresses, settings – for those people more familiar with a desktop application. I like it because my email is not lost in the 20 browser windows I have open at any given time. It’s a barebones program at this point, but hopeful google will add gmail notifier functionality to the client app.

The other thing I like about using gmail for my work email is the handy tool to find out where your spam is coming from. Anytime you comment or signup on a website, you can use a “custom” email address tailored to that site. Something like myname+wordpress[at]mydomain.com anything u put after the plus sign will get delivered normally to your email account – and you can use it to filter or identify incoming mail. Very cool.

Google also offers other free services branded with your domain name… google talk, google calendar and google page creator. The service is stil beta, so you have to sign up with your google account and wait to “be invited” – but it’s worth the wait.

IE7 standalone runs alongside IE6

Jerry Lee — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:06:15 +0000

I have been using my laptop with IE7 installed to fix the mess in some of my websites, but it didn’t seem like a long-term solution.

I remembered a while back hearing about a way to install multiple versions of Internet Explorer at once, but I figured it would be too much to ask for this to be possible with version 7. But, it is possible!

Well, this is a Microsoft product, so – of course – it is far from flawless. I installed IE7 thru the standalone version installer from tredosoft.com(not windows update).

As soon as it installed , IE7 started right up. But, then I realized I couldn’t resize the window… ugh… and then I couldn’t close the program at all. After a little ctrl-alt-del action and upon further investigation, I found that if I went into “Manage Addons” (Tools > Manage Addons..) and disabled the 3 components of the very helpful IE developer toolbar, IE 7 acted normally.

Here is a list of some things that definitely will not work in IE7 – if you install it this way (from tredosoft.com):

Context menus (the one you see when you right click on an empty space)
The main menu bar.
Disabling popup blocker.
Feed reader.
Installing ActiveX components and ActiveX support.
Showing combo-boxes
Web pages that require authentication.
Adding search providers via websites
and my addition: IE Developer Toolbar

This is a great solution for web developers that still need to be able to see what their CSS will do in both IE6 and IE7. (I have already run into overlapping float problems with DIVS in IE7 – with a site that looked perfect in every other browser..)

For those of you foolish enough to have already auto-installed IE7, check out this article about the possibility of standalone versions of IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6

One final unrelated note – the thing that annoyed me the most about IE7 was its lack of a standard menu by default. I can’t stand hunting around their little icons to try to find what I need. Luckily, if you right-click in the area around the tabs, you can check “Menu Bar” to turn it on.

essential photoshop tool you may not have noticed

Jerry Lee — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:10:57 +0000

I have alot of small business owners as clients. Inevitably, they don’t have very good images for their websites. Overwhelming shadows is a common problem. A seminar speaker at the recent flash forward conference in Austin pointed out a tool that was introduced in Photoshop CS, that I – and probably you – totally overlooked.

Here is the shadow/highlight in action…

Before Image – terrible contrast – bad shadow cast

To find the shadow and highlight tool in Photoshop CS and above, go to Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight…. The standard tool will adjust most images, but if you check “Show more Options” you will see something like this…

After a quick tweakwith this shadow-highlight, and a few color adjustments, and cropping the important part of image (my nephews), I have a much more usable photo.

To err is human

Jerry Lee — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:58:45 +0000

hi all-

My name is Warren Cardinal. I am a web developer in Austin Texas.

err… I just bought the site 33rockers.com from Karthik (he is 17, btw – for those of you who asked).

Wow! this site has alot of bad press

I will do my best to delete or credit any plagarized posts. If you are the original writer of any (or know who is) please lemme know or comment on this post.

This is my first real foray into the world of blogging. I run a web design studio, pretty much night-and-day and haven’t had much time to get started. So, I thought beginning with a site in progress would be a good kick in the ass to start recording some things I have found and some things I am doing.

I am also new to WordPress, which powers this site. I met Matt, the genius behind WordPress at a conference in Austin a while back. Since then, I have wanted to try it out… but I just haven’t found the time.

Over at Lucid Crew, we are in the midst of developing a CMS that will run hundreds of sites from one install/one database. It’s not a blogging platform (though u can blog with it) – but a full-featured css-xhtml CMS that wil have custom features for everything from real estate sites to yoga studios. I am thinking of rolling it out as a hosted solution for other designers… details to come soon.

ReviewMe Goes Live

Jerry Lee — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 08:09:16 +0000

On the other hand ReviewMe requires you to disclose that this is paid review.. Also the price for your blog is set based on factors such as technorati rank, alexa rank, subscribers etc.. ReviewMe is also offering a huge sum of $25,000 for bloggers who actually try and write a review about ReviewMe itself.

I think ReviewMe is worth a try for most of the small bloggers and is 10 times better than PayPerPost. ReviewMe is a step ahead for bloggers and to many other people.. I will be writing about 5 reviews every month to make some reasonable cash.. For all those 33′Rockers fans I will be getting back to regular blogging pretty soon..

P.S : This is a paid Review