E-Mail Marketing Open and Click-Through Rates
Churches and religious organizations understandably have to watch their marketing budgets. Many congregants have a hard time understanding how you could further the kingdom of God through Internet marketing. As we have discussed before, Internet marketing can be astoundingly effective in drawing in seekers of the truth. The God shaped void is still there, waiting to be filled.
Email marketing is indispendable as a tool for churches and religious organizations. You are probably asking, “How can you know that?”
The answer to that is in analytic data. “Religious and spiritual e-mails had the highest open rates among large lists, followed by travel, general consumer and retail.” Whaaa – Laaa! Email marketing should, and can be a part of your outreach efforts. Leverage the insatiable thirst to find the truth as you engage those you are trying to reach.
I want to invite you to read the entire email marketing open and click-through rates report. Don’t worry, it is only two pages long and that includes pictures. 
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Faithful relations – The best things in life – are not really things at all.
We’ve all heard the quote before, I’m sure. “The best things in life are free.”
Recently one of my students sent me an e-mail with an interesting variation on this. For his signature line it stated:
“The best things in life – aren’t things at all.”
I thought to myself, it’s just a cool little paraphrase, but it made me ponder and think about writing.
What are the most important things?
My answer to that is that the best things in life are founded in “relationships.”
Yes, all things considered, life is all about relationships. You might even say “God appointed” relationships.
First and foremost is our relationship to God Himself, through what Jesus Christ did.
Then next, there are relationships with family and then friends.
I am referring to genuine, long term Christian community kinship where trust is always present..Where you know a friend is there to cover your back if anything fails. Through relationships with friends – God performs His work, fulfills His plan as one friend ministers to the other friend. From the God appointed relationships comes a safe place and a sense of peace.
One common list of pursuits today often seems rather random as follows:
1. Money – There’s nothing wrong with money. Money is a good thing, it allows us to do things and it is exceptionally good to have money (so long as it does not replace God.)
2. Freedom from mortgages and debt. (It’s a good feeling to be out of debt, but will anyone remember in 100 years from now?)
3. Relationships – (these days relationships come and go – but there is often something missing from some relationships.)
4. Long term planning – Make sure we have something left for our old age
…But I’m going to stop right there for a second. What if we reordered the list differently?
“Seek first the kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added unto you.” Now that Bible verse makes me ask why does it seem that for today’s time we have things all turned around backwords. Many folks are not happy very in their current relationships and perhaps we need to reconsider the order of things based on what God thinks is important – instead of what we think is important.
Let’s try that again…in a different order:
1. What if it were to start with “relationships.” First – beginning with a relationship with God.
2. Then with the next most important thing – genuine relationships with people that God raises up around us.
3. What about letting God help you find that perfect life partner for you?
4. Then more, what if we paid attention to the friends that God raises up around us.
5. Money – well it comes and it goes and it’s important – but God is not interested in money (which is temporal)
6. What if we were to invest and focus on the things most important to God – and that is “people.”
As God’s Spirit teaches us, renews our minds and makes us alive through ministry, Christian community kinship and understanding God’s Word, then our philosophies can become more properly balanced.
How important is what you believe?
It’s pretty important. It’s our very own “personal philosophy” that is being shaped.
Here is a paraphrase of something I read (can’t remember where) but I liked it:
- Our attitude – leads to the daily activitities we perform (or do not perform) or what we take part in.
- The results we achieve produces the lifestyle we live in.
- The daily activities we choose to take part in – will contribute to the end results that we achieve.
So then what are the most important things in life?
Life is not about accumulating vast wealth or properties.
God does not need your money and any amount of money will not impress him.
How big your home is, or how expensive your clothes are or even how many years
you have been a member of some Church – will not impress Him.
What God does care about is people. Life is all about people. People are eternal and God cares about all people.
Remember, when we invest in caring about people rather than “things,” then you are investing your time caring about what God cares about most.
Wishing you the very best,
John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at seo skills classes with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first optimization courses. John is author of the Free SEO Tip of the Day, author of Wordtracker Magic e-books and is part of the Faithful relations at Crosslands Church in Newmarket, Ontatrio.
These are the must know SEO Advantages of Squidoo that are used to increase Page Rank
Doesn’t it seem like everyone including your neighbor is running a blog or website that solicits personal information or tries to sell you something? You will tend to try to grasp at every straw if you fall into the latter group while trying to attract more traffic to your site. The road to making lots of money with this includes having lots of traffic in order to generate customers. One particular web 2.0 property that’s presently accessible to everybody is known as Squidoo, and there are a few certain search engine optimization advantages of Squidoo that you’d be fascinated in.
To set off, Squidoo is essentially a single page internet site that admits you to contribute articles to it, and you are not restricted to just adding plain old content. You can take advantage of site feeds from Amazon or eBay to sell goods. You can also contribute video content from YouTube. Imagination is encouraged and to get the most creative results, you need to utilize it. A lens can be created in a matter of minutes, even if you’re not an HTML expert, and this is a great SEO advantage of Squidoo.
Presently, Squidoo is among the big top three hundred most visited internet site in the U.S.. This is quite impressive when we think of its rather short four year history. Among the advantageous search engine optimization advantages of Squidoo is that when a lens is optimized decently, it will proform well in the localized SEs, which successively directs to the advancement of any and all pages you’ve produced. You can drive traffic to your Squidoo lens while at the same time giving it a boost in the search engine results by linking to it from your author resource box at Ezine Articles.
Product and Topical are, basically, two kinds of pages – or Squidoo lenses – that you will be able to produce. Create a product lens for use in marketing an affiliate program to visitors. Before you do anything else, get started by registering for a free account with Squidoo. The ability to create unlimited lenses in any topics you choose and make money from doing it are among the largest SEO Advantages of Squidoo. Squidoo donates 5% of it’s earnings to charity, and 45% of it is used for expenses. The 50% that is left over is passed out to the lens builders themselves. A great, easy way to make money online would be to build a Squidoo lens.
Internet Marketing for Beginners. Helpful Info to Consider
Internet marketing for beginners is somewhat of an oxymoron. This is because while in theory the concepts behind Internet marketing might be pretty simple, executing effective strategies can be extremely hard. This can even be tough for those who are pretty skilled in the world of Internet marketing. With this in mind, this article will attempt to clarify the concept of Internet marketing for beginners and will outline some fundamental strategies which can help a business owner to launch his own Internet marketing campaign. We will cover concepts for instance creating a website, placing banner ads, sending out e-newsletters, orchestrating an email marketing campaign and optimizing your website for search engines.
One of the most necessary steps for starting an Internet marketing campaign is to create a website. If you don’t have a website or have a badly designed website you should think about creating or re-designing a website to adequately market your ministry. If you do not have experience in web design, there are many software packages which make it plain for those with no design experience to make a functional website. However, hiring a web designer is worthwhile because he can work to create a website which is attractive, functional and suitable to your message. He can also help you include more advanced features on your website.
Sending out e-newsletters can also be a part of an effective Internet marketing strategy. E-newsletters are basically emails which may include a range of information including informative articles, practical quizzes, relevant advertising or any other information which is deemed worthwhile for the recipients of the e-newsletter. The meaning of these newsletters is that they can be used as marketing tools which are not viewed by the recipients as an advertisement. Care should be taken to keep these references minimal so the e-newsletter is not viewed as spam.
Email marketing campaigns can be another thriving aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Email marketing essentially involves sending out emails to a group of individuals who may be interested in your ministry programs. Care should be taken in sending out these emails to prevent sending emails which are unwanted and will be viewed as spam. One way to do this is to only send out the emails to users who have requested inclusion on an email mailing list. One more way to do this is to provide value in the emails as opposed to just including advertisements. This can be done by offering relevant recommendation in your emails and other practical information which may be of interest to the recipients of the email.
To conclude, optimizing your website for search engines is a essential aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Search engines rank websites according to quality and relevance for specific search terms. Numerous Internet users appreciate the effort by search engines and use these search engines to find the best websites on a special theme. This means the Internet users are likely to only visit websites which rank well with search engines. Consequently if your website is not high ranking, you are not likely to generate a great deal of traffic from Internet users who use search engines to find relevant websites. Top ranking websites are likely to obtain the most traffic from search engines and all websites falling on the first page of the search engine results will likely enjoy some degree of success in improving their traffic.
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Non-Profit Internet Marketing Research Partnerships
The Ministry Maven is reaching out to a few select churches or religious organizations for a unique opportunity for a research partnership. This is your opportunity to explore some “new-to-you” Internet traffic conversion micro-testing.
We select a focus area like a Google campaign, email marketing, organic SEO, or Social Media to determine how our research, and applied testing impacts your Internet traffic conversion.
This can be exciting in the discovery of effective Internet tools to reach out with the gospel of Jesus Christ, or to discover methods in which you can serve your members more effectively.
I want to invite you to learn more about how a Research Partnership can take your outreach ministry to another level.
