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(Nerds) Mourinho To Replace Ferguson At Manchester United

By Martin Sejas

 Mourinho’s declaration that he will head back to England when his contract is up at Inter raised a couple of eyebrows yesterday. Is he sick of Italy already? Or does he simply love England more than Italy? Whatever the case, the fact is that he has made his intentions known publicly. For one, the Board of Directors at Inter Milan will not be too pleased with what he said yesterday, given that he still has a while to go before his time at Inter is up.

After a brilliant start to his tenure at Inter, it is perfectly normal think that his English intentions could now distract the ‘Special One’ and at the same time, the team’s performance on the pitch. This could be a turning point for both Mourinho and Inter and it will be interesting to see how the teams play from now on.

The other debate that has been ignited by his declaration is where in England Mourinho would go. There is no doubt that he would be tempted to go back to Chelsea, the club which made him a managerial superstar. However, Roman Abramovich is still at the club, and one must not forget that it was their falling out that resulted in Mourinho ending his time at Chelsea. So for the moment, Chelsea is unlikely.

What is more probable, and his most likely destination is Manchester United. There’s a feeling this season that Sir Alex Ferguson is really keen on retiring from football very, very soon. He has, however, announced his retirement intentions countless of times in the past only to re-consider and push on.

He was very close to pulling the pin 6 years ago, and has since then won 3 more domestic titles as well as Champions League title. Perhaps his time has come to leave the game. Maybe he should have left at the end of the last season after their unforgettable night in Moscow.

Whatever the reason, everything points to Ferguson’s retirement and Mourinho’s return occurring at the same time. What other club could possibly afford and satisfy Mourinho’s ego and ambitions? Arsenal and Liverpool are the other possibilities.

In the case of Arsenal, Arsene Wenger is a god at Arsenal and like Ferguson, he will never get sacked and will be one to decide when he leaves the club. In the case of Liverpool, out of the big 4, it is the poorest club and I don’t see it being able to match offers from other clubs for Mourinho’s services.

Everything points to Manchester United. In 3 seasons time, Manchester United will be saying goodbye to a legendary manager and welcoming the Portuguese magician.

Martin Sejas is the chief writer of http://www.SportsNewsFootball.com, a leading sports news football website known for its fearless and critical analysis of the major issues affecting the beloved game of football.

Three Ways to Increase Newsletter Signups on Your Winery Website
By Mitch Tarr

 There is no question that having a longer list of email addresses in your newsletter list should be a top goal of any direct to consumer marketing initiative.

I’ve noticed one mistake that is common on most winery websites. That is, they don’t make much of an effort to invite people to sign up for their newsletter list.

You may not know it but making it easy for your website visitors to do something can have a 2, 4, or 10 times effect.

Many winery websites feel that if they have a contact page or a dedicated newsletter signup page that may be enough to get people to join the list. The assumption is that if they want to join up badly enough, they’ll find a way. If you make it super easy for them to sign up, it stands to reason that more of them will do so. Signing up for a newsletter is more of an impulse and as such is a bit more unpredictable as to when that impulse will strike. One thing is for certain, if you don’t sign them up on this visit, you probably won’t see them again on your website.

Right now you might be collecting one newsletter signup per day–works out to 365 new subscribers per year–all done automatically by your software.

However if you were to increase that number to 10 per day, (which I have done) you are talking about 3,650 per year. It doesn’t take too long before you have a formidable list to send out offers to join your club, buy your wine, or visit your tasting room.

Here are three things you can immediately do to accelerate your subscriber list growth.

1. Put a signup form on your home page. Many wineries don’t offer a chance to sign up for the newsletter on the home page. And by sign up, I mean place a form requesting First Name and Email Address right on the page. More people will take you up on your offer because it is convenient for them. Most of your traffic is through your home page anyway isn’t it?

2. Put a ‘Newsletter Signup’ link in your navigation bar. In addition to having a signup form on the home page, put a link in your navigation bar to a signup page. Make sure this link is on every page in your site. Just because your visitor didn’t sign up on your home page doesn’t mean they won’t if they are somewhere else in your site reading about your wine.

3. Add in a hover ad. A hover ad is a box that appears on your screen at some point between 5 and 60 seconds after a visitor arrives on your webpage. Many people don’t like to use a hover ad on their site and in fact I have only seen one after reviewing over 1,000 winery websites. The argument is that the hover ad annoys visitors and sends the wrong impression. In actual fact this effect is so small as not to exist. But I have seen hover ads increase signups by a factor of 10 times!

Finally, it doesn’t hurt to make more of an effort than to say ‘Newsletter’. One of the strongest offers I saw on a winery site stated ‘Please Join Our Mailing List and Receive a $25 Coupon!’ You can be sure that small incentive encouraged more people to join the list (and generated a few extra orders too!)

So take some time to evaluate your website and ensure you are building your list as aggressively as possible.

Mitch Tarr is an email marketing guru and CEO of ZinMarketing Inc. Learn how to use email to cement winery-client relationships and create a buzz that sells wine and supports winery brands. For information and free reports visit Mitch’s exclusive website - http://www.zinmarketing.com

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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.