How Do Different Internet Marketing Skills Cross Over?

I was talking to a few buddies that work in different aspects of internet marketing, and started debating with myself how much different skills within internet marketing cross over. For example, is it easier to become a mailer after excelling at PPC? Is it easier to do good at PPC after excelling at SEO? I’ve done all 3 now(though I’m still learning PPC), so I figure I can speak about this relatively accurately.




My Conclusion? Absolutely.



Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over

I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.



Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.

Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.

Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.

So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?



E-Mail Marketing

Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.



Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.

Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.

Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.

SEO

Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.

Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.

Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.

PPC Marketing





Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.

Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.

Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.

With All That Said…

I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.



Still Pondering,

XMCP

E-Mail Marketing Precautions and Tips

So you’ve got an e-mail list. Your sites have been slowly gathering the list for months, and you’re ready to market it. What should you do?




Getting Your E-mails

Do not Mine the Internet for E-mails. They’re crap, illegal, and will get you blacklisted so fast it will make your head spin.

Under no conditions do you ever BUY an e-mail list. Yeah, they say it’s not gotten from web crawlers, but e-mail list sellers are scammers 95% of the time. They generate new dates and information for the e-mails.

You can test for this, by matching the state to the given IP address for the customer. A IP to Location database is available somewhere out there, and a quick fix can be found here.

You can verify non yahoo/hotmail/msn e-mails. The smaller the better.

Connect to the mail server, and emulate a SMTP connection(docs online for that, lookup SMTP through telnet), and try an obviously non-existant e-mail address. When you enter the RECPTO address as this, and it should give you an error. If not, it’s a catch all.

If it was NOT a catch all, try the e-mail address up until that RECPTO command. If no error, the e-mail is valid. Do this with at least 10 from the sample. This gives you an idea of how many are valid, without sending an actual e-mail.

Beware the cheap, massive Co-Reg feeds. They are filled with spam traps first of all, which we’ll get to later. But secondly, real, illegal spammers use those, and completely max out any marketing capacity they once had. There’s only 3 or so co-reg feeds that are available on the net, so write off any promise that it’s “unique”.

Hosting

Get it okayed with your server administrator. Or better yet, PAY someone to do it. It’s worth it.

Note that your hosting will take the same, if not more heat than the servers sending the e-mail. Get hosting okayed as well as the mailing servers.

Do not buy servers from individuals. Use companies. Individuals often to not understand what they’re being asked, or are unreliable, or are shady as shit. Oftentimes, they also use compromised servers.

Beware of anyone claiming to have rotating, unlimited IPs. This is probably botnet hosting/mailing, and you do NOT want a piece of that. No matter how enticing it might sound.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Spamhaus Scorned

These guys are the enemies of people with a LOT of money, including the russian mob. They do not play games. They do not care about you. They do not accept excuses.

I have known of situations where they SBL(a death sentence) blocked 5 entire net ranges owned by a hosting company with a flawless record. And not because of “spamming” per se, but because of a messed up configuration for a message that was meant to be CAN-SPAM compliant(legal). They would not unblock the ranges, or authorize the data center to come back up, until they had information on who sent the legit-ish e-mails in question.

Since they refuse to do anything without having information on those in question, keep track of who you do business with. Who you rent servers from(Resellers). Who you bought the e-mail lists from. Things of that nature. If you’re sending for a client, make sure to have their real name/phone/address on hand.

Do not bother rambling about them being vigilantes. Do not bother mentioning they have no right to block your servers or shut down their datacenters. Should they be able to? No. Can they? Yes. Deal with it.

Read up on the CAN-SPAM act, if you’re in the United States or not. Being CAN-SPAM compliant is your only chance, since traditional spamming is not easy, and you probably lack the resources. Oh yeah, and it’s polluting the net. Even if you are CAN-SPAM compliant, most anti-spammers will not be ok with it.

Send out only offers directly relevant to the offer you got their e-mails from. Sending out common offers will result in problems. Many problems. You want to seperate yourself from the spam that barrages their inbox.

Use completely, 100% solid and seperate hosting from your normal hosting. If something goes awry, like a misconfiguration, you do not want your normal site going doing. Anti-spammers lately concentrate on eliminating hosting and DNS servers, almost moreso than the sending servers. Providers react swiftly to an Spamhaus request

Check, double check, re-check your settings. Make sure your stuff is setup properly. If you are not 100% compliant, or make one single mistake, You Will be Shut Down

Show these guys respect. If they find a problem with your marketing, try and fix it. Do whatever you can.

Avoid Mailing Servers in: Russia, Brazil, Korea, China, or really any Asian Country

Most of these are blackholed by common service providers. KoreaNet and ChinaNet especially.

Getting your Mail Inboxed

Look into whitelisting. Earthlink, Aol, and I believe Yahoo offer whitelisting services. Guard this with your life.

Have multiple IPs. Preferably on different 255 blocks. All major e-mail providers now employ graylisting, which will allow you to send perhaps, 250 e-mails per IP that will hit inbox. After that, they’re spam boxed, or delayed on delivery until the users classify them as spam or ham.

Rotate redirect domains as well(as long as this is CAN-SPAM compliant, I believe it is). Whether it’s spam or not, it’s ridiculously easy to get on the SURBL blacklist, which will make it impossible to hit inbox. Also, once again, large provider graylist domains.

Search for the company’s name online. Figure out if it really hit inbox. Also, make sure to search NANAE for any reactions to the company. Although, be aware, these guys hate pretty much all internet marketing, so you’ll never see a glowing endorsement. Best case scenario, the company is not mentioned. Also search for the owners name.

Do not troll. Do not piss these guys off. They will destroy you from within.

Ignore Jamie Bailey(aka Lamie). Everyone else does.

Check the company’s IP blocks. Figure out where they’re blacklisted. DnsStuff.com has a badass RBL check.

Ignore the APEWS list. It’s worthless, and no one uses it.

Use the customer’s name somewhere in the e-mail. It’s reassuring. Remind them of who you are, who you represent. And of course, as with all CAN-SPAM compliant e-mails, give a physical address.

Keeping your List So Fresh and So Clean

Process your Remove List. Every single day. Have it be instantaneous if possible.

Remove small domains, that are also catch-all. They’re likely used to inflate a list’s size, or are spam-traps that your list guy screwed you over with. You do not want them.

Let it Go! An old e-mail list is likely to get you complaints. Kill it off if necessary.

Talk To your Fellow SEOs

Many whitehats have experience, and can make reccomendations

Many blackhats have spewed their share of mail, first hand. Very usefu

Do Not Abuse Your List

Do not send out unrelated offers.

Do not send out mail every day.

Do not use obnoxious or misleading subjects

Finally, the #1 Most-Important-You-Should-Never-Forget-This-Rule Rule

Never, Ever, Ever Use Your Home Computer For Anything! Leave it to the pros, or get yourself some dedicated servers.

There is not room for argument here. You do not have room to be shady or original. Prepare to play by the rules, or spend a lot of money, and risk a lot of legal problems, to play by your own. These are your options.



I don’t do this anymore, but I thought I’d spread some knowledge about how to pull it off. Stay legal, and have fun.