NetSpeak Technologies

We were so well received by these pastors. It was a real treat for us to serve them coffee and spend time learning of their needs and help them with the Social Technologies that will keep their congregations plugged-in. We had a raffle for a Kindle, external hard drive, and a few other electronic items that Pastors would not ordinarily buy on their own.

Our presence was to enlighten the churches awareness and importance of social media tools such as email marketing, Live Streaming Services, and how they can implement them to attract the much needed younger members to keep the church fresh and active.  YourHost.com understands that Streaming is a key element for Church and Church planters, like Newbreed who we support, a proponent of  growth needs the Youth for growth. The youth is actively online. Our First Church plant Stream setup for $1,500 (camera, computer, monitor)  first step,  was Pastor Mark Convoy, Calvary Flagler Beach, Florida.

Today, you will never attract people to your church by expecting them to walk in the door.  The use of Social Media to have an ongoing conversation with both the Youth and the 40 something and above using Facebook and Twitter so they can  connect their, kids,  grand kids, and the church via  Live Streaming.

Live Streaming allows a people to anonymously to check out the church, its pastor, and sermons all about without stepping foot in the door. If they like what they hear, they might ask friends or online questions, or even walk through that door. (keep the conversation going). Think about the viral and networking impact by virtually reaching out to the sick, injured, and spiritual needy by Live streaming into the home, to any Country. One of our most Socially active and successful Churches is Calvary Chapel, Lexington South Carolina, Pastor John Hoppe, and brilliantly Webmastered by media director, Joe Scott.

Constant Contact, On The Road, Streaming

As a Constant Contact Partner, you will enjoy free Classes in Social Media and Email Marketing.

Constant Contact

The number #1 item that we all hate is SPAM.  If you are using our email system,  you should have noticed a significant drop in SPAM or Junk mail in the past 30 days.  This is due to our new Barracuda engine rules that have been put in place. My own Email In box SPAM is cut by a conservative 60%.

Email Improved, Junk Mail, NO SPAM

Over the years we have been seeing basic improvements with Constant Contact’s online emailing tool. Recently, after some major upgrades, YourHost.com has began offering Constant Contact as a economical alternative to the Market Manager – Blue Hornet solution. Both systems have their place, but Constant Contact is by far more user friendly and less frustrating to the basic user. Write us if your you want info on the differences.

Last month we rolled out the unique Constant Contact – ShopSite Pro API integration tool. We are now offering this tool to our customers  Constant Contact.  CC API allows their ShopSite customers who purchase products to be automatically added to email list at the Checkout. This will save the web developer many hours of export – import time.

In addition to the API tool, we have found that Constant Contact can be very fluid yielding a positive customer experience. In testing and supporting Constant Contact, we want to point out one item that can come up that the average person might miss when sending out the final email. First thing you want to do is to add your friends or office associates to the test group and then start composing your email. Remember, before you send, test, test, test your emails. A real pro takes from 2-7 hrs to prepare, test, and send out a quality offering or newsletter. When you’re done composing an email you might find that the "text" part of the message receiveds into the inbox appears jumbled-up and does not look professional. This is a common occurrence with any good email system as it is just that "text" which the system is electronically producing text by stripping out all the HTML from your composed email… get it? Don’t worry about it as you soon will and just follow the next steps. What you need to do is go to your Constant Contact text editor, select the "advanced" link and turn on text editing. Then reformat your text so it looks decent with the proper spacing and layout. Then, pick a person in your test group, select to send text only, and send a a number of tests emails until it looks good. We are also finding out that Constant Contact offers  city and statewide classes to teach the  basic and advanced usage and most of which are free. It is ok to pay for some of these as you know you get what you pay for.  We are encouraging our readers to use a  good solid email system so you can regularly touch your groups of customers and organizations. Enjoy your use of Constant Contact and happy emailing.

Constant Contact, Email Add new tag

Every time we turn around the cost of sending a letter has gone up. 41…42….44 cents. Bulk mailing has also increased in price.

More and more people have email on their phones and PDA’s, which helps you to keep your customer’s informed about the products and services you are offering. Email can cost as little as 1/2 cent  per email to send, which is far less than postal fees.

How do you write a good email or newsletter? There are many factors that go into continuous successful email campaigns. It all starts with the email system that you use. ISP’s are keeping close track on who is sending junk and abusing the way they get mail. You want to find a host that uses a system that has a good solid ISP reputation.

Bounced emails? Most people gauge the quality of your sending email system by how counting many get successfully opened and how many get bounced. Now days most ISP’s , Corporate systems are filtering email that have bad reputations into a type of "Black Hole" that does not show up as a bounced email. They also build their own database of who does not play well in the sandbox, and make sure they are penalized for it.

So, how do you make sure your system is working properly? Test it. There is only one true way to test it how effective and safe your system is and that is by letting your hosting company send emails from different seed email boxes. Sounds complicated? It is not but it really opens your eyes to how successful your campaigns can be.

So, Don’t Go Postal on your Customers, use a good solid email system that uses best practices and has a good reputation.

We will talk more about Reputation, and sending.

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Trivia -

Question: How long does it take to make a solid email campaign from start to finish, not including testing?

Answer: 6-12 hours!! Really? Yep it does.

Email blasts, Email, email filtering, Marketing, sending, traffic