We at mobileStorm are a pretty forward-thinking bunch. Hafta be, since our livelihoods depend on it! Luckily, two news reports this week prove that our enthusiasm for upcoming mobile-based technologies—and their resultant mobile marketing applications—are more than unbridled optimism. They’re inevitable realities, as confirmed by high-profile experts.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Google CEO Eric Schmidt furthered his company’s not-so-secret cell phone agenda by proclaiming the advent of a true mobile Web. I say “not-so-secret” sardonically, since (a) last fall Google took a major step in the space with its Android phone platform and the start of an industry alliance around it; and (b) the search company is bidding on airwaves being freed up after TV broadcasts go digital, in order to create an open U.S. wireless network.

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It’s easy to forget email, sometimes, among the glitz of mobile marketing (and the space’s shiny new “smart” handsets) and the hype of behavioral online ad targeting (and the cries of consumers afraid of what it could mean). But a report from emarketing strategy company Datran Media indicates that targeted email is the top results-getter for digital marketers.

Of 2,000 online marketing professionals surveyed by Datran, 80 percent said email was the strongest-performing medium. That beat other digital media such as display (37.6 percent said it was strongest) and search (which got top marks from 70.6 percent of those surveyed). Traditional media, such as print, broadcast, and cable, trailed much further behind.

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Last week, we talked about finding and getting relevant links. Now let’s discuss other ways to get links:

More link building techniques:

From Friends and Family:
You have lots of personal connections, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Most of them probably have sites or blogs or some other representation on the Web. Ask them all to link to your site(s). Provide them with the link code and tell them how you want the link to be added. Don’t worry if their sites aren’t related to yours. You just want to increase your total traffic numbers, which will affect your pagerank and the overall value of your site(s). Just don’t get links from the “bad neighborhood” sites: racist, terrorist, hacking, illegal, adult, pharmacy, MLM, gambling, etc. Stay away from those as far as possible.

From Clients and Partners:
Yes, you can get great links from your clients and partners. These are usually reputable and established websites, and gaining links from them definitely helps. Write down a list of sites that have this type of connection and entice them with something (a discount, reciprocal links, etc.) to have them agree to linkback.

From Networking Profiles:
Add a link of your site into your profile page in all the social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Since it’s your profile, you can optimize the links and maintain control over their placement.

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For my blog today, I thought I would share with you some of the tools that I use almost on a daily basis to help clients with their deliverability and reputation issues. While these tools can sometimes provide copious amounts of data, sometimes it takes a combination of them to truly understand the reputation of a sender.

Senderbase:
Senderbase is the world’s largest email and web traffic monitoring network. It aggregates data from over 100,000 organizations receiving email and tracks approximately 5 billion messages per day, equivalent to over 25% of the world’s email traffic. Data aggregated through this service that helps to determine reputation includes:

• Blacklist data
• User complaints
• Spamtrap hits
• Message volume and changes to volume
• Sender industry
• URL frequency

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