A trend that has been developing very quietly during the last few years, which lies somewhere in the twilight zone between the Internet and reality, is called cloud computing. People are becoming more mobile, and they are linking their life increasingly to the Internet. People have laptops, netbooks, blackberries and smartphones.

People are using the Internet as never before: Applications or relocating from the desktop to a server, photos are no longer stored but shared, and the same is also true for documents, address books and e-mails. Everything has to be available online, and it must be possible for everyone to consult this information. Or be able to lead ones completely shielded life.

The Internet is the computer of the future, and we are glad to be able to make a contribution to this. All of our applications are online tools: It makes absolutely no difference what kind of computer you are using. Regardless of whether you are using a desktop model, one of the most powerful laptops or your iPhone, you just simply continue to work without problems.

Your website, CRM systeem, knowledge base, webshop and yourmailings are available everywhere in the world. At work, at home, and also at the petrol station along the road. In the morning, at night and also during lunch. You choose where you want to work and when you want to work.
At any time.
Anywhere.
Online.
That’s cloud computing!

(inspiration)

About SEO, or search engine optimization , the last word has not yet been said. Changes in technology have increasingly been occurring in recent times.

Where, in the beginning, the Internet was propagating meta tags, they have melted away like snow on a summer day. Nowadays, SEO goes much further than simply adding a view well-chosen words in the code of a webpage. Real SEO follows the guidelines of search engines, works with a proper site structure and assures that the website provides what the visitor expects: What You’re Looking for Is What You Get (WYLIWYG).

The growth that the Internet has experienced during the last 10 years has meant that many people can’t see the trees for the wood anymore. At the time when a search term like “London hotel” only resulted in 10 pages of London hotel listings, it was easy for the visitor to search through all of the pages for relevant information. After an exponential growth of websites had inundated us (the term “London hotel” today provides no less than 12,500,000 entries), it became impossible to look through everything oneself.

And it is precisely for this kind of scanning of information, that we expect a proper effort by search engines. They look at whether a webpage provides the information that we are looking for, and then it provides a list with the best results at the top. The best results? No. Well, instead we get those results that conform best to the searching algorithm on the engine.

The power of the web therefore still resides with people: We determine what a search engine sees, and we determine which results may be shown. Power demands responsibility, and that is something we should be aware of. There will always be some jokesters surfing on the net, who will assemble a Google bomb just for the fun. Also the number of companies (for instance) those that useBlack Hat SEO and try to score, won’t decline from today to tomorrow.

But there is hope. We at Motionmill are happy to notice that we are not the only ones who are looking for the Holy Grail. When we see that more and more people are taking search ethics on the Internet seriously, then we see that the battle is becoming a bit fairer. We are prepared to respectfully use the power of that SEO provides. We like to show our responsibility in providing information. Relevant information for relevant search assignments.

Many strongly scoring websites have seen their page rankings decrease drastically during the past few weeks. The reason? Google has carried out an update of its page ranking system, which had been expected for quite some time. Quite a number of Webmasters and SEO marketers cannot say anything good about this change.

Google had nevertheless announced this quite some time in advance. Already for quite some time, the search engine had wanted to put an end to so-called “search engine spam”, which is caused by link farms and portals. For some websites, the consequences are quite harsh: They tumble from PR7 or PR6 to 4 or 5. Could they have prevented this? Yes, says Google. They have had more than enough time to provide their paying links with the attribute rel=”nofollow”. In this way, the link remains active for human visitors, while robots are told that they do not count in the algorithm Google uses for building up website rankings, since they do not provide any relevant information.

Because Google is searching for quality-rich information in the first place. So the more sites refer a viewer to your site, the better should be the information on your site, which is something that fits in this line of reasoning. However, someone who does nothing else but buy links and share them, simply for achieving a higher ranking, does not provide relevant information. And that is something that Google wants to clamp down on.

You can find out more about Google and its page ranking system on this interesting blog. Below you will still find one of the interesting diagrams, from the extremely lucid article about friends at seomoz. There you will find a proper explanation of how page ranking systems work.

The last word has not been spoken with regard to e-mail marketing.
Heated discussions on web forums, new presentations and a large varietey of opinions abound. From people with know-how, people without know-how and people who think they know. There are advocates and opponents, and there are advantages and disadvantages, but above all there are many myths.

Luckily there are a number of ways of handling myths. One of these is the way of denial. Denying that e-mail marketing exists. This way inevitably leads to a hard confrontation with the wall of reality, whenever you open your mailbox: The proof is there, e-mail marketing really exists.

Another manner is uncritical acceptance. “If the people say that it works, then it works. Period.” This could be something that you will regret, for instance if you have ordered an e-mail campaign and are expecting a really good results. Mailings simply don’t work perfectly all by themselves. Take a moment to look at what you yourself experience: What do you do with all those newsletters that you receive each day and that are screaming for attention?

At Motionmill we think that the third path is the way to enlightenment. Namely the rationality of numbers and statistics. Pure statistics, and pure numbers: Not some pre-chewed and opinionated pieces. We found this mountain of information at Mailchimp , and we feel it can be used excellently as a comparative tool.

These figures are of course not the holy writ of e-mail marketing. And hthey also do not represent the absolute truth. All figures always remain open to interpretation. That speaks for itself. And we are fully aware of this.

But when people ask us what the effect of their campaign will be, we can in good conscience present a realistic figure of the result that is to be expected. Those who expect that out of 100 addressees at least 50 will become customers, we must unfortunately confront with hard facts.

Reality has taught us the following:

More than 8% of the e-mail address that are used, are either wrong or have gone out of use. Or e-mail clients suppress your e-mail messages as spam.

Of all the e-mail messages that are dispatched, 25.5% are opened in the end. That is 1 of every 4 messages sent.

The e-mail messages that remain available at this moment will motivate almost 4-1/2% of the readers to click on a link.

So don’t let those smooth-talking marketing experts assure you that all of the e-mail messages sent out by them will find a good destination in the end. That’s nonsense. There are, however, a number of factors that can increase the chances of success.

We, for instance, take great care to make sure that our address files are well-maintained and up-to-date. The 8% of e-mail addresses, which are not linked to a mailbox, therefore fall away and lead to improved results. In addition, a well-balanced layout and interesting content also help to improve results: Our own statistics show that this increases the percentage of people who click through.

And last but not least, the moment at which an e-mail message is sent also plays a great role. E-mails that slip in somewhere on a Friday morning will invariably land in the merry-go-round of an overfull mailbox on Monday morning. And that is something we would all like to avoid.

We therefore would like to invite you, to come and listen to our interesting explanations. We will be glad to tell you everything about effective e-mail marketing, and on how to interpret the statistics and improve your figures.

Knowledge can be powerful, but shared knowledge is true power.

It has been clear for a number of years: E-mail marketing is an extremely strong marketing instrument. Everyone who listens today with just half an ear to the digital highway, will come into contact with e-mail marketing several times each week. Such a contact can take many different forms: As a recipient, as the sender of such marketing messages or as the writer.

The majority of the people are in the role of being a recipient. This can reach from a weekly newsletter from ones sport club to the expansion of the product range of your bakery on the corner, for instance: The e-mail messages just keep on coming into your mailbox, where they are then read or deleted. And of course, the person responsible for sending out a newsletter wants that the recipient reads it, and that he remembers what has been presented there. Deleted newsletters are simply thrown away money.

And that is precisely where the task of the writer of such a newsletter begins. He must make sure that such newsletters are conspicuous in the mass of mail messages that are received, are read, kept for possible further action and perhaps even sent on to someone else. Unfortunately it happens more frequently than hoped for, that e-mail marketing is a measure for next to nothing. The recipients will see your carefully drafted message as spam, and they want to be rid of it as quickly as possible. The effort you put into the layout is wasted, because the recipient doesn’t read HTML e-mails. Luckily there are a number of simple rules, which are guaranteed to lead to more interested (and perhaps also more) readers.

Pictures are increasingly being blocked

Since certain image formats can also contain viruses, the market leading e-mail programs play it safe. Thunderbird, Outlook and Gmail block every picture, until the user gives his approval. The first impression of your e-mail message is that of a failed website … and that is a shame.

A balanced mix of HTML and images is a solution for this problem. Make sure that you do not put all your information in one image. That way your readers at least have something to read, even without pictures. Also make the content available as plain text: Certain e-mail programs ignore all types of layout and only display the code.

A small overview of some good principles:

• Important content should be presented as text, never as an image. Items that may not be ignored should be headlines, and they should demand action and include links.
• Include a link to the web version of your newsletter, right at the start of your e-mail message.
• Ask your recipients to add you to their address book: That way the e-mail application will not see your messages as spam.
• Test the layout of the message without images, before you send it off.

1998?

Where we have advanced on the Internet to a design without tables, e-mail applications are still stuck in the good old nineties.

When you use a design with someting other than a single column of text, then it is best to use a table for aligning everything neatly. And for keeping it aligned.

That’s how it was in 1998 …

There are even some programs that remove the CSS from the header of an e-mail. Gmail, the e-mail solution of Google, removes all CSS components. Except for the inline styles.

So, when you have completed drafting your newsletter, you will have to go back and apply inline CSS everywhere. We at Motionmill will gladly help you in this, in word and in deed.

Offline text

Despite the fact that HTML and CSS are hip and cool, a large part of your readers would rather receive only text. People with a Blackberry, or some other mobile device, will frequently not get to see any special layout at all.

You should be aware of the fact that you should also provide a plain text version without any layout, besides making a fully layouted HTML letter. Luckily Motionmill Mailer includes an option that lets you copy your fancy designs as plain text.
A maximum result with a minimum of effort!