"A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart." -Robertson Davies
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Improve Your Online Small Business Profits
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Cort: Recently an Internet Marketing friend introduced me to Trendwatching.com and it has been a very valuable resource for me and I wanted to find out more about the person who had created this helpful site. So I am pleased to have with us today the founder, Reinier Evers.
Reinier I know that you are one of the "hotshots" in Internet Marketing; however I would like to know what you did before your Net involvement. When was this? What got you interested in the Net?
Reinier: I hold a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Amsterdam, and have been fascinated with the online business revolution ever since being introduced to the nascent web in 1994 at New York University, where I studied Business Policy.
While at interactive agency AGENCY.COM in New York and London (1997-1999), I worked with global clients like British Airways, Texaco, and Compaq, managing a team of strategists and analysts. Many of these projects involved trend spotting, business research, vision development and competitive analysis, making Trendwatching.com a natural progression of my activities. These days, trendwatching.com welcomes more than 150,000 visitors to its website each month, while 130,000 business professionals in 120+ countries receive the company's monthly Trend Briefing.
I also a co-founder of Urbanbite, an online food delivery portal in the UK and the Netherlands, which was sold in 2001 to Lastminute.com, one of Europe's largest travel and entertainment firms.
I have worked with leading brands like Coca Cola, O2, Young & Rubicam, KLM Airlines, SonyEricsson, Schiphol Airport, Electronic Arts, InterContinental Hotels Group, INSEAD, MasterFoods, and Unilever.
Cort: Wow, you definitely have the background for you are doing! Did you see the value of Email Marketing almost immediately after it appeared? What made you get involved with Email Marketing?
Reinier: Yes, have been active in this field for 10+ years, and from day one we saw the potential of having direct access to individuals who give permission to access them ;-) Even better: at virtually no costs, on a global scale.
Cort: You are definitely a pioneer like our editor, Abbie. What are you doing to avoid the ever present spam filters from putting your email in spam folders? Are you considering using PDF files to send your ezine like I have started to do?
Reinier: No, we just keep warning people to white list us, and work with a professional send-out company (Campaign Monitor) to avoid ISP issues whenever we can. We also try to make our site a known destination (mainly by building out our archives, for free), so that even if our emails get filtered, our readers will still check out our site (and remember our brand/url).
Cort: That's a GREAT idea for all of us to promote – our archives! What are your feelings about Plain vs. HTML Email Marketing? What about the Audio and Visual Email?
Reinier: We are all about visuals, so html it is. Audio is something we're considering, but we tend to be too busy forever, so we stick with text and pics, and do as good a job as possible on that ;-).
Cort: What have been your biggest successes in your business and why? Failures? What would you do differently if you could do things over?
Reinier: Biggest success is to build brand awareness and loyal readers by giving away quality content, that's not salesy in any way. Obviously, if readers DO want more, we have paid services. But the free content is top quality. Very expensive to do of course, but it has eliminated the need for advertising etc, so in the end it's saving us a lot of money. We've grown organically, so no investors or debts, which helps doing business without real worries.
No real failures so far, I think that we could have partnered with someone else earlier on to capitalize on certain opportunities we now neglect. But we're working on that. Wouldn't have done anything differently!
Cort: Yes, building BRAND awareness is so important today! What would be your advice to Internet newbies concerning Email Marketing?
Reinier: Forget the 'marketing' part and just deliver top quality, paid or unpaid: if it's good, unique, remarkable, it will spread!
Cort: UNIQUE & REMARKABLE, I like that! What would be your advice to Internet newbies concerning Internet Marketing in general?
Reinier: The same as the previous question, plus: keep your costs down. The less costs you have, the less worries. And many, many things these days can be done on a tight budget, so that helps too. Even better, without massive costs, you can experiment as much as you want, until you find the right formula. Keep it small!
Cort: The freebie for you this time is access to an incredible web site that will give you so much food for thought that could keep you up all night! I know it has for me! So make sure and go to http://www.Trendwatching.com and sign up for the monthly updates. Also for new business ideas there is also http://www.springwise.com.
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Cort McCadden also known by his real name Hugh Simpson is a former consumer investigative reporter for Post Newsweek TV and the co-founder of the new website http://www.showtheworldyoururl.com a video based business directory.
DEMC subscribers get a FREE upgrade Top Slot placement in the directory that will normally be $45 for the first year. So submit your 90 seconds or less, ORIGINAL video today - http://www.showtheworldyoururl.com !
If you would like a PDF that on creating a video contact -
cort009@gmail.com
Subject line: Video Creation E-book.
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