What is the most important word in a Subject Line?

As with direct mail,  “You or Your” remains a winner.

Here is an article in eMarketer Digital Intelligence discussing that. Other keywords that work in direct mail are good too.. but.. the word “free” is just a knockout by many servers and their spam filters.

http://ow.ly/1prsb

Direct marketing has always been on the early edge indicator of the health of the economy. Perhaps things are beginning to show “some green sprouts.” A few things I have noticed.

• WOMMA announced in their eNewsletter that a survey of Linked-In jobs listings in the Advertising area found about 1,700 jobs being advertised. This may be a big change.
• Linked In has become a defacto spot to list new jobs. Today, Sears was spotted using Twitter to announce jobs says the LA Times
• Direct Mail seems to be increasing (or will be) ..we are seeing a slight increase in average order size.  And, the occasional “good order” is beginning to show up again.
• The Census is using direct mail to increase response to the Census’ fill out and return percentages. Imagine sending close to 100 million+  pieces of mail
• eMail now seems to be used along with postal to boost response.

What are your signs of how the economy is doing?

This article is written by someone who lives and breathes this stuff.

Hard to imagine starting at age 16 doing this, but being young he has the energy and time to really devote to the in’s and outs of this topic. This article is really one of the best I have seen on this topic.  http://ow.ly/1aQVi

Tweeter and Corporate Blogging Guru Debbie Weil has a series of talks in Washington on social media topics. Last night the speaker was Anil Dash of MacArthur Foundation funded Expert Labs.

The location, a wired cupcake shop in Georgetown with a pink bike parked out front, thus the name of the series.

Dash says the goal of Expert Labs is to open government (gov 2.0) using social media to LISTEN as well as talk to their audience. His company is currently working with the White House Science and Technology office. So far, no other gov’t agencies, Congress, etc.  Of course, he saw applications in the commercial sector as well.

During the discussion of his project, there was discussion about citizen participants having  to “put on a tie” when talking to gov’t. Really some form of identification and a call for responsible comment.

IMHO, not the way to get folks to participate.  Especially in this over-media hyped environment. Dash mentioned that most issues now activate the legalize pot crowd when comment is called for. So his software is able to collapse issues and summarize.

This new software is designed to have a civil conversation and learned discussion. Good idea, hard, if not impossible, to impliment. That is where Expert Labs software and cloud computing coming in.

Other attendees, in discussion with me, felt the whole conversation with all 305+ million Americans, in theory, was 20-30 years away due to computer limitations. I don’t think it’s the computer limitations but the fear of government, the certainty that everyone thinks they know best that is factor to slow this “group listening.”

I live and work in the Washington area and see plenty of boldface political people in  everyday life – at the supermarket, the gym, getting coffee and whatnot. They generally seem to be genuine but all too often, their objectives are driven by many things, the least of which is direct public input. Even for good ideas.

That is hard nut to crack. Did the Constitutional founders expect us to run everything by opinion poll? Or was it their belief that even a “common man” can do the job of representative in Congress by voting and shaping legislation he believes best represents his voters and any other groups he is representing.

This article is written by someone who lives and breathes this stuff. Hard to imagine starting at age 16 doing this, but being young he has the energy and time to really devote to the in’s and outs of this topic. This article is really one of the best I have seen on this topic.  http://ow.ly/1aQVi

So says this very interesting article from WordTracker, “The long tail of keyword research”…

http://ow.ly/1g7TU

It appears the author is right. Even the top 20% of all your clicks have many, many very small traffic keywords.

The number of searches done in the month studied was 113 Billion across the search-universe. There are lots of potential customers who don’t think and act like you, thus you need to cast a wider keyword net than you might think you need to. But don’t just stuff words on the page, that is not too useful and your sentences sound and read in a very strange fashion.

The result on the “long tail” thinking is expressed as a graphic “the long tail is so long that the head is of no significance”.

This article is a goldmine of good ideas for natural SEO campaigns.

Bethesda Emedia has been working diligently to put up articles on a variety of subjects. We have about 100 articles that we consider a “best of” group.  Best of all, they are organized with tags that include:

• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Direct marketing
• Direct mail,
• Email marketing
• B2B
• B2C
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Social marketing

We search out articles from many sources, this is not just a bare knuckles promotion for one or two companies. Some of our best ideas come from those who Tweet themselves. Our Twitter site, djamesbethesda, re-tweets winners as well.

Access to the Bethesda Emedia Marketing Library is free.

Tell me what you think.

Excited to report Bethesda Emedia Marketing’s Email Knowledge System was given as an example of a good bit of Wisdom learned in 2009. The latest issue of Marketing Wisdom for 2010 has our contribution on pages 28 and 29!

Our article discussed how all too often many campaigns have lots of creative cooks.   The changes keep coming and when the final version is sent it is sometimes hard to figure out what actually went in the transmission.

Email Knowledge System (sm) solves this with it’s project management approach. The vault is there when you need it, next week, 3 months from now, or a year from now, or longer. And it is easy to see who made that change as well.

The Email Knowledge System is included free with your Bethesda Emedia Marketing eMail transmission account. Contact David James, djames@BethesdaEmediaMarketing.com for more details.

Bethesda Emedia Marketing is going to launch an Enewsletter…. BEM’s Marketing Tips… the in-house design team did the layout and design. I think this may be the best Enewsletter design we have done in quite awhile.  Kudos HH and the team.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Let us know what you think!

Thinking of launching your own PR or social media compaign? Not to fear! There are many new tools to use that will allow you to create the exposure, and delivery, you want that will be within you budget.

Tools
PitchEngine, a source of 300,000 journalists and bloggers, is a growing hub for content, multimedia, and social media. PitchEngine allows you to find your content, share it through social media channels, and to marry the idea of multimedia with relevant content.

Dro.io’s Presslift promotes media distribution. This tool allows PR professionals to include multimedia with their press releases. This is significant, considering that most journalists agree that access to multimedia is important, but only a few press releases are able to effectively include them. Presslift makes it easier to share related multimedia by making it flexible and easy to use through other channels (Facebook and Twitter).

Before you decide to launch your PR and social media campaign on your own, take a look at these marketing PR tools to get yourself out there.