9. June 2008 by Damian Petrini.

After receiving the email below I felt that in addition to providing you with some interesting tips on getting more from your painful trips to the gas pump at your local gas station, you can also see how content rich emails can become viral and flood the internet.

This email not only provides some tips on how you can get more from each dollar you are paying out at the gas pump, but also makes a request at the end to start a movement to boycott foreign oil, as well as give a plug to the company that started the email, Kinder Morgan Pipeline. Can you see why that is powerful?

Just imagine how cool it would be to have an email that mentions your company becoming a viral marketing tool that not only shows up in inboxes all over the world, but also gets forwarded again and again!

Do you see the implications on how the concept of this email could help the marketing power of your business? I see many lessons that you can learn from this, but how many lessons you think you can learn from it and tell us about it?

– Go ahead, Post your comment! (I have a prize for the one who can come up with the most learning lessons!!!)

Damian Petrini
Marketing Potential, LLC
http://www.marketingpotential.com
(440) 238-5815

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TIPS ON PUMPING GAS

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline….but here in

California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon.

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in

San Jose, CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some other liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some f the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.

SHARE THESE TIPS WITH OTHERS!

WHERE TO BUY

USA GAS, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. READ ON

Gas rationing in the 80’s worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us! The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor.

An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS.

Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of

Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don’t import their oil from the Saudis.

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.

I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil.

These companies import Middle Eastern oil:

Shell……………………… 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco……… 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil…………… 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway… 117,740,000 barrels
Amoco……………………….62,231,000 barrels

Citgo gas is from South America, from a Dictator who hates Americans. If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION! (oil is now $90 - $100 a barrel

Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:

Sunoco………………0 barrels
Conoco………………0 barrels
Sinclair……………..0 barrels
B P/Phillips…………0 barrels
Hess…………………..0 barrels
ARC0………………..0 barrels

If you go to Sunoco.com, you will get a list of the station locations near you.

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. It’s really simple to do.

Now, don’t wimp out at this point…. keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I’m sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)…and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)…and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers !!!!!!! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it…..THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. How long would all that take?

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27. October 2006 by Damian Petrini.

According to a recent article on InternetRetailer.com, a study by Piper Jaffray & Co. showed that search engines are still the most efficient method by far at acquiring new clients.

The study revealed that at an average acquisition cost of $8.50 per client, Internet search was shown to be more than twice as efficient as the next-best marketing channel in a study of five channels.

The five marketing channels covered in the study compared the customer acquisition costs of online search, yellow page ads, online display ads, e-mail and direct mail.

Here is a breakdown comparison of the average acquisition costs per client:

Online Search - $8.50 per client acquisition
Yellow Page Ads - $20 per client acquisition
Online Display Ads - $50 per client acquisition
E-Mail Marketing - $60 per client acquisition
Direct Mail - $70 per client acquisition

Yellow Pages came in as the second-most efficient at $20 per customer acquisition, followed by online display ads, $50; e-mail, $60; and direct mail, $70.

Also concluded in the study was that consumers are becoming more likely to use Internet search to research and find products and services, rather than going to online marketplaces. And with the growth of local search, the current number of 700,000 online advertisers could reach 2-4 million over the next five years.

This study demonstrates the importance of developing a successful and strategic search engine optimization and search engine marketing plan for your business, as well as for each of your products and services.

Posted in e-Commerce, Direct Response Marketing, Email Marketing, Business, Online Marketing, SEM, Advertising, Search Engine Opitmization, SEO, Marketing | No Comments »

16. August 2006 by Damian Petrini.

Below is Google’s answer to the question everybody on the internet is asking, “How can I improve my site’s ranking?”

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“Sites’ positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don’t manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.”

Source: Google.com
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&hl=en

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At first glance you will feel somewhat cheated by the answer, perhaps because you were looking for the holy grail of answers to the question that everyone claims to know the answer to, but fewer actually achieve it.

The biggest take away lesson you should learn from Google’s definition can be found in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

One of the most powerful strategies to improving your website rankings is to get as many other higher ranking websites to link to yours. The higher the ranking of the other websites linking to yours, the better.

1. Buy or Rent Links – Find high quality, high ranking websites, and pay them to link to your website.
2. Reciprocal Links – Identify the most relevant websites to your product, service, or industry and contact the webmaster of those sites to arrange a link exchange between both sites.
3. Read “10 Easy Ways to Increase Links to Your Website” for more ideas on how to get more links pointed to your website.

Learn more about how to get greater leverage out of your online marketing activities or how to put together and implement powerful marketing strategies.

Posted in e-Commerce, Direct Response Marketing, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, SEM, Sales, Search Engine Opitmization, SEO, Marketing | No Comments »