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The burgeoning online marketing industry has produced a veritable treasure trove of technologies and their associated tools to support your efforts. With this cache of options comes the need to be accurate in your selection, making sure the tool matches the objective.

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Marketing executives and entrepreneurs alike have rushed to China in the last decade. Yet, today, India offers an excellent, although somewhat misunderstood, alternative. Here are some myths (and realities) about tapping the potential of this country of 1.1 billion.

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Retailers have been aggressively planning their holiday marketing strategies for months. In these stressful economic times, it is more important than ever to build messages that resonate with your audience. Like retailers, nonprofits should be thinking about how they can tell their story and leverage the holiday season. In this article, we'll discuss some techniques that nonprofits can use to bolster revenue and solicit support from members through email and online tactics.

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In 2003, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act) became law. It was a big step toward cleaning up the "Wild West" of email marketing. Continuing that clean-up, earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) modified the act, allowing email marketers to use their "accurately registered post office box or private mailbox" instead of a "valid physical postal address" in their emails. The CAN-SPAM act, however, has not changed much over the years and should be followed not only because it is the law but also because it will make you a better email marketer.

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Paul Barsch, Marketing Director at Teradata, the business intelligence and data warehousing firm, is responsible for coordinating services engineering teams to define, build, and bring new offers to market. A self-described "information junkie" with over 15 years in marketing for information technology and consulting firms, Paul challenges all marketers to bring value to their organizations by taking the analytical path to understanding customers.

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While mobile marketing can be invasive on its own, integration with the larger marketing campaign mix and proper tracking of customer response can ensure that customers are drawn in, rather than turned off, by mobile messages. The mobile medium has achieved staying power as a gateway for marketers to reach customers in motion. For example, SMS can serve as the initial point of contact with customers, with the intention to drive the customer somewhere (to a store, kiosk, Web site, and so on).

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

A customer-focused approach to marketing communications applies whether you're a property manager renting out high-end vacation homes in Maine to wealthy residents of NYC, or an international high-tech company providing support to clients who rely on an enterprisewide accounting software. No matter what you sell or to whom, by framing your marketing message from the customer's point of view first—not yours—you'll craft much more targeted copy: customer-centric copy.

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The good news: More of your customers can read your email messages on their smartphones now, instead of waiting until they get back to a computer. The bad news: The email that looks so great on your PC may look like a garbled mess on the phone. These HTML cross-platform optimization tips can make your message render better on both PC and mobile phone.

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Do you know what people are saying about you? Online reputation management consists of tracking your brand and reacting when necessary. Sometimes it's tedious. But brand monitoring can save you from a potential disaster. It can also help you proactively join conversations around your topic area, to get your brand name out there.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

While blogs and social networks seem to get most of the attention when it comes to social media talk, podcasts and videos also remain viable channels to reach and connect with an audience. CC Chapman should know, as he's been active in the blogosphere and social networking spaces for years, but was also among the first bloggers to embrace and effectively utilize podcasting as a communication and brand-building tool. Today, he continues to show his clients how they can put his knowledge to work for them via his work at The Advance Guard. CC was kind enough to talk to us about his Video and Podcasting: Making Media as Marketing session at Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer, and also explain how companies can use video and podcasting as tools to build their businesses.

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Since public relations isn't done "to" a company, it's done "with" the management team or owners, there's an essentially different nature to how this kind of professional service is successfully delivered. It's much more akin to legal or medical services with the "defendants" or "patients" (read management team members) having to be deeply and consistently involved in an on-going process. As the now famous slogan coined by tech PR guru Regis McKenna goes, "PR is a process, not an event." Without that, it generally goes nowhere and the agency won't be working with that client for long.

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Should SMS be used for every marketing message? No, definitely not. Your company must consider whether or not your intended message is urgent and determine if subscribers will appreciate receiving it in a mobile form. With that said, there are certainly are two major reasons SMS should be on your shortlist.

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Love 'em or hate 'em, politicians are some of the most effective marketers out there. Let's break down how they achieve their ends, and how we marketers can cop their best moves to win the vote—for our products and services.

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Marketers have recognized the immense creative talent that resides outside of Madison Avenue. They've recognized that, with Consumer-Generated Advertising, properly executed, they can generate quality, consumer-relevant content at a fraction of the cost of conventional agency productions. And these commercials break through the clutter with their "real" feel and relevant messaging.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Social marketing techniques such as blogging, wikis, podcasts, twitter, and virtual worlds have given marketers an extraordinary range of opportunities to reach out to audiences. But do these techniques really pay off—or are they just trendy alternatives that offer no measurable return on marketing investment?

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If you are an email marketer who is doing traditional "batch and blast" email marketing, now's a good time to start segmenting and sending triggered emails. Doing so allows you to send more relevant emails and achieves better response from your subscribers.

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Think of it: There are many businesses that offer similar products or services. Prospective customers can purchase goods or services from any competitor, literally anywhere in the world if they choose to, thanks to the Internet. Net result: effectively marketing a business, which translates to owning a slice of customer mind-share, is more challenging than it ever was. It takes something more to market successfully now. And it certainly takes something more than a one-time strategy and a couple of marketing tactics to be effective. That "something" is relevance.

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Companies have been scrambling to figure out how to leverage Web. 2.0 applications, but are they doing so for all the wrong reasons? With all the buzz about blogs, wikis, widgets, and other forms of user-driven Web interactions, the question your business needs to answer is, "Is this what our customers want?"

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Why are "mirror neurons" so relevant to marketers? Because they reveal why we're hardwired to imitate, cradle to grave. Mirror neurons explain why we sometimes do things that we can't explain. They can also be a source of valuable instruction for product marketers, able to turn a brand from a moderate success into runaway success that no-one can live without.

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If you're like us, you probably have one of those piles on your desk that keeps being moved from one corner to another. You know, that pile you need to get to but avoid because it will take some real effort to tackle? For many marketing professionals, marketing accountability, analytics ,and ROI are in this pile. Marketers must stop avoiding this topic and tackle the pile!