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Just when you thought you knew email marketing…

• Your email marketing campaigns are sent out on schedule.
• Advanced email marketers send out campaigns when it is proven to be convenient for both them and their recipients.

• Your email marketing campaigns provide consistent results.
• Advanced email marketers review email strategies and look to explore how else email marketing can work to their advantage.

• Your email marketing budgets are based on how much you want to spend.
• Advanced email marketers base their budgets on how much they want to make.

• Your email marketing lists are clean of inactive addresses.
• Advanced email marketers attempt to define ‘inactive’ by looking for decisive patterns which may turn active addresses into inactive ones and seek to rectify the problem by developing preemptive reactivation strategies.

• Your email marketing lists only contain active addresses.
• Advanced email marketers reward active addresses for their loyalty over a specific period of time.

• Your email marketing campaigns are conscious of anti-spam laws and ISP regulations.
• Advanced email marketers care more about what their recipient thinks of their emails and understand that abiding to anti-spam laws and ISP regulations is often negatively influential on the quality of the actual email.

• Your emails are tested regularly and efficiently across different browsers and operating systems.
• Advanced email marketers test their emails more, and are committed to changing things when they simply aren’t working.

• Your email marketing is consistent with best practices in your field.
• Advanced email marketers plan their strategies because it suits their long term objectives.

• You are evaluating your email marketing campaigns using statistics on your email marketing software.
• Advanced email marketers incorporate this data into their ongoing strategies to target statistics which are more relevant to their long term goals.

• Your email marketing campaigns show good open and click-through rates.
• Advanced email marketers aim to find out why people aren’t opening or clicking.

• Your email marketing campaigns show proven results.
• Advanced email marketers try to gather solicited feedback and aren’t afraid of criticism.

• Your emails abide to all the best practices in the field.
• Advanced email marketing abides to most of the best practices in the field but to the best of their potential.

http://www.design-logix.co.uk/blog/blog-entry/do_you_think_you_know_email_marketing

The term entrepreneurship may sound very ordinary to your ears, but has huge scope in the field of business. There are various definitions for this term but in simple language an entrepreneur is an ambitious individual, who assumes full responsibility of the risks and the consequences of his/her business venture. This person is a skilled individual, who is able to sniff out various opportunities with the purpose of discovering a successful project. He/she possesses certain characteristics in order to start a new business enterprise, which is elaborated below:

For starters, and just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is email marketing solutions? In a nutshell, it's exactly what it sounds like: communicating with your customers via email. But there's a key difference between legitimate email marketing solutions and the pesky spam messages that end up in your junk folder. The difference is that email marketing solutions is opt-in, or permission-based. This means that the people who are receiving your email messages have, at some point, signed up to hear from you. This is one of the key reasons why email marketing solutions is so effective.

But that's not what I want to focus on today. In fact, now that we've gotten the basic stuff out of the way, I want to introduce you to a completely new way to look at email marketing solutions. Yes, email marketing solutions will help you communicate with your customers and leads, and yes, it's an inexpensive and efficient method of marketing. But you probably already know that. You also likely know that you can use email marketing solutions for many methods of communication, including e-newsletters, e-flyers, e-coupons and promotions, press releases, postcards, event invitations (or e-vites), thank you notes, and so much more. But did you know email marketing solutions has another major functionality?

Email marketing solutions can help you get to know your customers. Just when you thought that market research and intricate customer profiling tools were reserved for big companies with huge budgets, here comes this nifty, easy-to-use and inexpensive online tool. Email marketing solutions is like a window into the actions, preferences and behaviors of your customers and leads.

So, the big question is: How? And, as cliché as it sounds, I'm happy to say it's easy as pie (actually, since I don't really bake, if you're anything like me this is going to be much, much easier than pie!) Here are the simple steps you can follow to get to know your customers via email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Take Good Care of Your Contact List

When you ask customers or prospects to sign up for your email marketing solutions subscriber list, the one key piece of information you must collect is their email address. If you want to make the most of email marketing solutions, make sure you also ask for their first and last name, and other information that may be pertinent to your business. For example, if you run a sporting memorabilia store, you may want to ask for the customer's favorite sports team(s). This way, later you'll be able to send out targeted messages promoting merchandise from the selected sports team(s). The simple step of asking for pertinent information when the customer signs up will later help you send messages targeted to the exact interest of each customer. If you keep the information you collect in a simple Excel file, you'll later be able to automatically upload it to your email marketing solutions software.

Now, you may be thinking: does targeting my customers' interests mean I'll have to manually sift through each customer record and separate customers by interest group? The answers is no, not if you are using a first-class email marketing solutions software package.

Step 2: Make Good Use of Interest Groups

An interest group is a group of email subscribers who share something in common. This may be a group of people who live in the same area, wear the same shoe size, purchase from your store with the same frequency, etc. In email marketing solutions, you can segment customers any way you want, or any way that makes sense for your business. By separating customers into interest groups, you can automatically send out email marketing solutions messages to one or more specific group(s) of people. For example, if you have segmented your customers by birthday month, you can send out a Happy Birthday email message specifically to the customers whose birthdays fall on the current month. You can even include a coupon for a freebie or a special discount on the customer's birthday.

One really cool thing about that is that the top email marketing solutions programs can auto-fill information on an email message. So, for example, if Annie's birthday is on April 2 and you want to send a coupon that can only be used on her birthday, the best email marketing solutions software packages include a feature that can auto-fill information, such as, "This coupon is only valid on April 2."

Now there are 2 key ways you would know Annie's birthday is on April 2, or Tommy likes the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first way is the one described in Step 1: you had the foresight to ask for this pertinent information when the customer signed up for your email marketing solutions list. So, what if you already have a list, but you never asked for customer information at sign-up? Can you still use email marketing solutions to get to know your customers? The answer is yes, of course.

Step 3: Make Good Use of Links In Your Email Messages

Another great way to get to know your customers through email marketing solutions is include pertinent links in your email messages. The best email marketing solutions programs provide you with detailed link click reports. This means that you will be able to see which customers clicked on each link contained in your email marketing solutions campaign. How does that help you get to know their interests and preferences? Easy! Once you have chosen how to segment your customers (by shoe size, birthday month, life stage, etc, etc..), create some email content targeted to that interest group. The simplest and most straightforward method is to say something like: "Want to receive emails about stuff that's important to you? Tell us what's important to you". You can then include links to options like "traveling, my kids, work, etc.." Make sure these links take the reader somewhere, even if it's a simple 'Thank You' page. And, you don't even have to be so direct. Say you run a music store. You can include links to your product pages with link text like "See what's new in classical music" or "Click here to browse through our hard rock music selection."

Once the email has been sent, your email marketing solutions software will show you a detailed link click report. You will see which customers are fans of classical music, and which are fans of hard rock. Then (here comes my favorite part), if you are using a top-notch email marketing solutions program, you will be able to automatically turn these report results into interest groups. This means that with the simple click of a button, you will instantly have a classical music interest group, and a hard rock interest group. Next time, you can send each group emails with more of the albums that you know will interest them. And, you were able to get to know your customers that well simply by including a few pertinent links in your email marketing solutions campaign.

With these 3 simple steps, you too can get to know your customers using the simple, inexpensive and highly effective tool known as email marketing solutions.

Motivation can be defined in numerous ways, but there are two basic definitions or descriptions. It can be defined as the main reason or reasons that individuals partake in a certain behavior, specifically human behavior pursuant to the study of psychology or neuropsychology. It can also be defined as the driving force that initiates and drives an individual's behavior. It is the internal energy that propels us to achieve our goals. Typically, it is considered to be a dynamic state of mind not concerned with personality.

There are three aspects of human behavior that motivation is based and founded in:

1. arousal of behavior
2. direction of behavior
3. persistence of behavior

Arousal of behavior relates to a specific thing that activates behavior whereas direction of behavior relates to what is responsible for directing the behavior. Persistence of behavior relates to how the behavior is sustained.

What drives an individual to be successful is referred to as motive. Usually, all motives fall into one of three categories and are considered to be physiological or psychological in nature:

1. homeostatic motives - hunger, respiration, thirst, etc.

2. nonhomeostatic motives - curiosity about the environment, seeking shelter, etc.

3. learned or social motives - achievement, approval, power, social affiliation, etc

In any endeavor that an individual undertakes, motivation (or the lack thereof) is the key element behind the success or failure of the endeavor. It plays a key role in the workplace where the effective performance of an employee is concerned. Management or supervisory personnel have a direct impact and play a significant role in employee motivation in that they employ different motivational techniques to raise productivity levels. It also follows that this has a direct effect on the cooperation levels between the employer and the employee.

Motivation can also be classified as

1. negative or positive
2. obvious or subtle
3. intangible or tangible

Education or learning is also interrelated with motivation and instructors will oftentimes employ motivational techniques to get their students to learn. It can benefit the student by making them more competent as well as encouraging confidence and the ability to solve problems.

Self-motivation has also been classified into two different types:

1. Extrinsic - generated by external factors

2. Intrinsic - generated by internal sensations and is longer-lasting than extrinsic

Self-motivation is considered to be intrinsic in nature, and originates from an individual's internal drives. It is the basis for overcoming obstacles in the path of achieving one's goals. Additionally, certain external factors are responsible for driving a person into undertaking a new project or to move in a positive direction. Characteristically, self-motivation is comprised of three factors:

1. beliefs
2. desires
3. values

Since an individual cannot rely on others for motivation, self-motivation has to come from within. It plays a key role wherein the individual gathers the courage and strength to achieve certain goals, and is essential for developing new undertakings or making a positive change in one's lifestyle. Training programs have been proven to be the best way to educate oneself in order to improve motivation and self-motivation.