Simple Solutions

For starters, and just to make sure we’re all on the same page, what is email marketing solutions? In a nutshell, it’s exactly what it sounds like: communicating with your customers via email. But there’s a key difference between legitimate email marketing solutions and the pesky spam messages that end up in your junk folder. The difference is that email marketing solutions is opt-in, or permission-based. This means that the people who are receiving your email messages have, at some point, signed up to hear from you. This is one of the key reasons why email marketing solutions is so effective.

But that’s not what I want to focus on today. In fact, now that we’ve gotten the basic stuff out of the way, I want to introduce you to a completely new way to look at email marketing solutions. Yes, email marketing solutions will help you communicate with your customers and leads, and yes, it’s an inexpensive and efficient method of marketing. But you probably already know that. You also likely know that you can use email marketing solutions for many methods of communication, including e-newsletters, e-flyers, e-coupons and promotions, press releases, postcards, event invitations (or e-vites), thank you notes, and so much more. But did you know email marketing solutions has another major functionality?

Email marketing solutions can help you get to know your customers. Just when you thought that market research and intricate customer profiling tools were reserved for big companies with huge budgets, here comes this nifty, easy-to-use and inexpensive online tool. Email marketing solutions is like a window into the actions, preferences and behaviors of your customers and leads.

So, the big question is: How? And, as cliché as it sounds, I’m happy to say it’s easy as pie (actually, since I don’t really bake, if you’re anything like me this is going to be much, much easier than pie!) Here are the simple steps you can follow to get to know your customers via email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Take Good Care of Your Contact List

When you ask customers or prospects to sign up for your email marketing solutions subscriber list, the one key piece of information you must collect is their email address. If you want to make the most of email marketing solutions, make sure you also ask for their first and last name, and other information that may be pertinent to your business. For example, if you run a sporting memorabilia store, you may want to ask for the customer’s favorite sports team(s). This way, later you’ll be able to send out targeted messages promoting merchandise from the selected sports team(s). The simple step of asking for pertinent information when the customer signs up will later help you send messages targeted to the exact interest of each customer. If you keep the information you collect in a simple Excel file, you’ll later be able to automatically upload it to your email marketing solutions software.

Now, you may be thinking: does targeting my customers’ interests mean I’ll have to manually sift through each customer record and separate customers by interest group? The answers is no, not if you are using a first-class email marketing solutions software package.

Step 2: Make Good Use of Interest Groups

An interest group is a group of email subscribers who share something in common. This may be a group of people who live in the same area, wear the same shoe size, purchase from your store with the same frequency, etc. In email marketing solutions, you can segment customers any way you want, or any way that makes sense for your business. By separating customers into interest groups, you can automatically send out email marketing solutions messages to one or more specific group(s) of people. For example, if you have segmented your customers by birthday month, you can send out a Happy Birthday email message specifically to the customers whose birthdays fall on the current month. You can even include a coupon for a freebie or a special discount on the customer’s birthday.

One really cool thing about that is that the top email marketing solutions programs can auto-fill information on an email message. So, for example, if Annie’s birthday is on April 2 and you want to send a coupon that can only be used on her birthday, the best email marketing solutions software packages include a feature that can auto-fill information, such as, “This coupon is only valid on April 2.”

Now there are 2 key ways you would know Annie’s birthday is on April 2, or Tommy likes the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first way is the one described in Step 1: you had the foresight to ask for this pertinent information when the customer signed up for your email marketing solutions list. So, what if you already have a list, but you never asked for customer information at sign-up? Can you still use email marketing solutions to get to know your customers? The answer is yes, of course.

Step 3: Make Good Use of Links In Your Email Messages

Another great way to get to know your customers through email marketing solutions is include pertinent links in your email messages. The best email marketing solutions programs provide you with detailed link click reports. This means that you will be able to see which customers clicked on each link contained in your email marketing solutions campaign. How does that help you get to know their interests and preferences? Easy! Once you have chosen how to segment your customers (by shoe size, birthday month, life stage, etc, etc..), create some email content targeted to that interest group. The simplest and most straightforward method is to say something like: “Want to receive emails about stuff that’s important to you? Tell us what’s important to you”. You can then include links to options like “traveling, my kids, work, etc..” Make sure these links take the reader somewhere, even if it’s a simple ‘Thank You’ page. And, you don’t even have to be so direct. Say you run a music store. You can include links to your product pages with link text like “See what’s new in classical music” or “Click here to browse through our hard rock music selection.”

Once the email has been sent, your email marketing solutions software will show you a detailed link click report. You will see which customers are fans of classical music, and which are fans of hard rock. Then (here comes my favorite part), if you are using a top-notch email marketing solutions program, you will be able to automatically turn these report results into interest groups. This means that with the simple click of a button, you will instantly have a classical music interest group, and a hard rock interest group. Next time, you can send each group emails with more of the albums that you know will interest them. And, you were able to get to know your customers that well simply by including a few pertinent links in your email marketing solutions campaign.

With these 3 simple steps, you too can get to know your customers using the simple, inexpensive and highly effective tool known as email marketing solutions.

Rudy Barell
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/how-email-marketing-solutions-help-you-know-your-customers-1209005.html

Could simple stress reducing solutions be the answers to our myriad modern problems?

Urban sprawl and suburban flight are causing massive traffic jams on freeways nationwide, as individuals are working longer and longer hours. The invisible effect is a nation buckling under accumulating stress that affects parents, children, and society in budget busting and heart wrenching ways.

70% of all illness is due to unmanaged stress according to the National Institute of Mental Health (US). Longer work hours and thickening traffic are part of the problem, but it goes deeper. Family stresses are piled onto this work/traffic stress. Children are often left on their own between 3 PM and 7 PM, after they get out of school and while their parents are working or fighting traffic. Tragically, and not coincidentally, this is when most crime is committed.

Our national crime costs are near $500 billion per year, while our health care costs are $1 trillion per year. Our system’s buckling from trying to repair damage that is already done to our bodies, our children, and our society, through backend spending on health problems and prison/court/enforcement costs. How can we deal with the front end, before these problems occur?

What if we went to the root of these stress related problems. Many children turn to the drugs and alcohol, which is behind most youth crime, for “stress management.” Their lives are increasingly stressful in a rapidly changing world, and their parents are unavailable, battling their own stress issues and the lives that cause them. So, how could we affect the root problem, or stress? Government can play a powerful role in affecting this deteriorating situation, by affecting the direction of our economic development.

Tens of millions of Americans could begin working several days a week at home, telecommuting via the Internet. The technology is there, yet companies and employees do not utilize it. Government could provide tax incentives to companies to establish telecommuting days for employees. Dollars would be saved immediately on traffic costs, road wear, and emergency care as millions are taken off the hi ways daily. Air would immediately become cleaner, reducing the alarming increase in asthma problems nationwide. But, the most important benefit would be a national sigh of relief as parents and children can relax more around the demands of job and family. A parent who works 8 hours from home, rather than fighting an hour or two of freeway traffic, working 8 hours, and then fighting the same traffic to get home too late to truly relax, brings an entirely different parent home to the children. This may help a parent be one who has time to “be there” to help with the challenges of life our children face.

This would not only affect telecommuting parents, but others who must drive or bus to work will find the roadways much clearer and less polluted, leaving them healthier and less stressed when they get home much earlier than before. However, the other issue affecting all is the one of hours worked. Too many Americans are skipping breaks, and working way past the 8 hour work day that our ancestors sometimes fought and died for. Breaks and 8 hour work days were not fought for because our forefathers and mothers had nothing better to do. They were established because this limitation of work to find balance in life is “essential” to our quality of life. Again, when most crime is committed between the time school lets out and the time parents get home and we are building and filling prisons faster than ever before in our history, it is time to “take a deep breath.” It is time to reevaluate how we are living.

We must decide whether human beings should be squeezed into a matrix that does not nurture us or our children, or whether we use the emerging technology to redefine our lives to flow around us like a soothing healing balm. We are entering an age of technological miracles that can provide an extraordinary quality of life — if we choose to use these tools for that. However, right now the opposite is occurring, as stress overwhelms us and 70% of illness and the six leading causes of death are the result of stress. With the dawn of the information/computer age the average worker is many times more productive than their counterparts decades ago, yet we are working longer hours for little more money. How do we change this? First of all by lifting our heads up to see beyond “what is” — to see what “could be.”

There is an extraordinary book called Flatland. The main character is a one-dimensional worm who crawls through a groove seeing only the butt of the one-dimensional worm in front of him. This is his world. But, then one day he suddenly on impulse turns to the side, and finds a whole new two dimensional world expanding outward, left, right, front and back. This blows his mind and he goes wild and discovers that he can “lift up” off the two dimensionalplane his expanded world had become into a “three-dimensional” reality. He can look DOWN, and look UP, and see LEFT, and RIGHT, and a whole new world expands all around him. But, when he goes back to his one-dimensional world, his peers think he’s gone crazy dreaming up these ridiculous possibilities of an “expanded world.”

Our society is at a point with the level of technological development to lift up from “the way we are doing things.” We can literally redefine our society to fit human needs. A compassionate economy can unfold within, throughout and all about us, until we see crime and health care costs whither, and surpluses growing, effortlessly and simply by learning to live in ways that “feel good.”

Bill Douglas
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/the-social-web-of-stress-simple-solutions-3512.html

Have you ever bought makeup that looks great at the store only to get it home and find it makes us look more ghoulish than gorgeous? Of course you have, but is the only alternative to toss it? No! And here is how you can easily recover…

To soften a blinding shade of blusher, start by applying a more neutral-colored blush such as tawny brown, which creates a natural-looking flush on most skin tones. Then add a pop of the bright color on top. To make it brighter, first sweep the blah blush over the apples of your cheeks; then tap the tops of your cheekbones with your most vibrant shade of pink blush.

Foundation can easily be made darker, just apply the foundation as you usually would and then dust a little powder bronzer onto your cheeks, forehead and chin using a large blush brush — the coppery tones will help add warmth and depth. Another option: Create a richer color by mixing a small amount of foundation with a drop of gel bronzer in your palm. To make it lighter, dilute the color by mixing it in your hand with a squirt of untinted facial moisturizer.

After filling in lips with a too-loud shade of lipstick, just top it with a neutral beige lipstick. Continue layering on the beige until you reach your desired tone. Create a more intense, matte version of a lackluster lipstick by first lining and filling in your kisser with a lip liner that’s at least two shades deeper than the lipstick. Then apply the lipstick and a deeper shade of gloss for sheen and much fuller and poutier lips.

To soften the color of eyeshadow, start by sweeping lids with a taupe-tone shadow or a pale yellow powder. Then apply a light coat of the blaring color. If it’s still too intense, add another layer of the lighter shade. Or if the shadow is bright green, blue or violet, you can use it as an eyeliner to softly define just your upper lids. Then to darken the color, dampen your eye shadow brush beforehand, which will intensify the hue.

Following these simple tips will mean no more makeup buying disasters and a much happier and more beautiful you!

Steven James
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/simple-solutions-to-recover-from-cosmetic-makeup-disasters-107203.html

While it’s easy to find acne and pimple treatments, finding the just the right treatment or treatment product for you is what’s important. By their mid-teens, nearly 35% of teenagers have acne severe enough to require some treatment from a medical professional. You can do it — look better, feel better, and raise your self-esteem 150% by getting rid of your acne and pimples for good.

There are several different types of acne. The most common types of pimples are whiteheads, blackheads, papules, pustules, nodules and cysts. Acne is most common in teenagers and young adults. In a survey conducted in Great Britain, 95% of 16-year-old males and 83% of 16 year-old females had acne. Nearly 17 million people in the United States have acne.

Doctors think certain factors might cause or contribute to acne including hormone increases in teenage years, hormone changes in pregnancy, starting or stopping birth control pills, heredity, medicines and greasy make-up. Understanding that hormones may have some influence on the cause of acne needs to be considered. Experts just can’t agree on what causes acne. Check your shampoo to make sure it isn’t causing pimples or other breakouts on your forehead.

Treatment with raw apple cider vinegar will work better on your skin if it isn’t already noticeably irritated from acne medicines, acne products or other failed treatment. One good natural method is to apply a thin layer of coconut oil and massage it deep into the skin to heal and soothe it. Coconut is one of the best treatments I’ve found for acne.

One helpful remedy seems to be to use ice to reduce the swelling caused by inflamed pimples: rub it over the blemishes for 2-3 minutes.

Choose your makeup carefully, it should be oil free. One treatment method some people have used is applying cornstarch, egg whites or milk of magnesia as a facial mask. For a good acne treatment, that has worked for many, try applying virgin coconut oil daily, but on a small test area first.

During my years as a registered nurse, I’ve learned a lot about acne scars, acne scar treatments, and acne scar removal. Severe, inflamed, cystic acne always leaves scars after healing. Acne scars are an ongoing reminder of a common skin condition that can cause embarrassment and social isolation.

Some alternative doctors recommend eating raw cloves of garlic daily for acne. Whether you eat a natural diet with living fruits and vegetables or eat dead junk food, what you eat may have a direct or indirect affect on the male hormones which may play a part in acne.

Besides external acne treatment it’s best to work from the inside out too. In any case, no matter what skin or acne treatment you choose, whether it is chemical, drugs, alternative, or natural methods, changing your diet will result in your overall good health!

Drink plenty of water, a minimum of a quart a day. The two most common digestion issues that affect your skin are not enough water and not enough fiber. Consider taking cod liver oil or fish oil supplements every day.

Unclean skin favors the development of pathogenic organisms – the dead cells that continually slough off of the epidermis mix with the secretions of the sweat and sebaceous glands and the dust found on the skin to form a filthy layer on its surface. The skin must be regularly cleaned or it’ll become cracked or inflamed.

Analyze all the acne treatments available and make the best decision for you, based on your circumstances. By simply following a simple, pimple reduction plan you’ve developed for yourself and sticking with it, you can reduce the severity of your acne or even eliminate it entirely. In any case, try not to panic about your pimples and acne and take it day by day.

Helen Hecker
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/simple-pimple-solutions-for-you-113350.html

Cellulite is a condition that most women worry about, with about 90% of women suffering from it.

Don’t despair though it’s not difficult to combat and you don’t need to spend a fortune either.

Here are natural ways to beat cellulite that work.

Firstly cellulite is linked to both physical and emotional health and is not a cosmetic condition so it won’t ever go away – However you can cure it, if you make some simple lifestyle changes.

You need to nourish your skin and stop fat cells from becoming to prominent and for this you will need to do the following:

1. Diet Changes

To keep the skin cells healthy you need to be hydrated.

Make sure you drink plenty of fresh water and combine this with foods that contain lecithin, essential fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamin B, to help nourish your skin cells and keep them in peak condition.

Good foods are:

Oily fish, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Try and eat as “naturally from the earth” as possible and avoid heavily processed foods and sugars that break the skin cells down.

2. Supplements

Take all of the following, which are all known to nourish and fortify the skin:

Omega 3 capsules, evening primrose oil, soy lecithin, Vitamin B Supplement and a general mineral and multi vitamin.

3. Exercise

Lack of it, will see your fat cells swell and cause cellulite.

Do some gentle exercise such as:

Swimming, yoga tai chi, Pilates – if you can’t face going to the gym.

Even brisk walking, doing the housework as a workout or walking up stairs will help simply do as much as you can.

Exercise burns fat, gets rid of toxins and some exercise is needed to get to grips with cellulite and any will help even if its gentle exercise.

4. Creams and massage

While only treating the top layer it’s the first line of cellulite, so use creams containing antioxidants.

Massage them in daily to problem areas and have a regular massage weekly to get the circulation going.

5. Pamper and relax

One of the major causes of cellulite is stress.

Tension and stress play havoc with your bodily functions and this will prevent the skins normal powers of self healing.

Try and of course reduce your overall stress levels with changes to your routine generally

6. Brush cellulite away

Get a natural bristle brush and stroke it use it on the front of your body doing long strokes towards the heart.

Why?

Because it stimulates the lymphatic system, which removes fluids and toxins from the body.

Simply, do once a day for just 5 minutes.

What will be the results?

In around six weeks you should se results and they will continue.

A lot will depend on your genes and how much of the above you can achieve, however if you do some or all of the above, you should see a dramatic difference to your skin tone and see those lumps and bumps reduce.

Fight cellulite with the above and you will see results that will make the effort well worth while.

Sacha Tarkovsky
http://www.articlesbase.com/women’s-issues-articles/cellulite-simple-solutions-that-work-to-beat-cellulite-81792.html