ForumsEvents

Tell us more. This is your business and therefore you are the Expert.
How long have you been in business?? Do you have an Accountant??
Have you made any changes in Personnel?? Advertising??
Is there new competition?? You are the expert, it is your business
so you have to give us some input and then we can tell you why.
It is also GREAT that you will be donating this months proceeds,
BUT are you getting FREE PUBLICITY that you are doing so??
Good luck, LUCKIEST

Thanks for your comments

At the present time the sole purpose of www.TheBestCityGuides.com is to collect funds for Non for Profits and worthy causes at NO cost to the end user.

The best marketing for this has been 'word of mouth'

Googld ad words was not very helpful.
No recent design changes were done
We continously update the data
Our IT Team has done a great job with Search Engine Optimization

We provide Free Event postings for all the cities all over the US

Obviously we are missing something...

The purpose of www.TheBestCityGuides.com is to help the community.
No ulterior motives
What is the best way to communicate this to people ?
Any thoughts ?

TheExpert - I'd like to know more about mass e-mail campaigns myself. I've tried contacting people directly through e-mail from a mailing list I purchased, however I think many e-mails were probably filtered out by SPAM filters. Does anyone have info on how to get around being filtered out as SPAM?

MnlyTechnlgy,

There are various ways to make sure that your e-mails are being delivered and not flagged as SPAM. First you have to understand that there are a few different things that affect the overall SPAM "rating" of an e-mail.

First, common SPAM filters such as those found in Microsoft Outlook as well as personal e-mail servers such as Yahoo! and AOL will automatically take notice of your message if it contains HTML. 95% of marketers use HTML, of course, so the filter will then look for tell-tale SPAM signs such as excessive use of capitalization or exclamation points.

Second, the "from" name and e-mail address are very important. SPAM filters are likely to block an address that contains a lot of numbers (ex: fa729348@yourbusiness.com).

Third, having a lot of images or complex tags in your HTML could also set off an alarm with the SPAM filters.

Finally, individual user activity will have an effect on your SPAM "rating". Programs such as Microsoft Outlook are built to remember user actions. So, if you send me an e-mail and I delete it without reading it, the next time you send me something it will likely go into my Junk folder. Furthermore, on personal e-mail servers if I were to receive your message and mark you as SPAM, you will have to have roughly 1000 delivered e-mails to counteract that single SPAM flag.

If you'd like to discuss this further, or speak about various options to avoid SPAM filtering, please let me know.

Take Care,
Kimberly
Worldwide Solutions

WWS_Creative - Kimberly, Thank you very much for the clarification. I knew about the HTML thing, but wasn't sure about the rest (even though I think I've heard it discussed at least once before). Have a good day!

If you're just in a local market, I'd suggest issuing a few simple press releases. Most areas have a few business or social websites/ services that will let you post a press release for free. It will at least get you some more exposure, and it will take just a short time to do the research and write something.

On the technical side, my guess is in line with one of your other responses, in that your site is probably been identified as a directory by search engines and your ranking has gone down.

Good luck.