Minnesota Quick News for Feb 18, 2013

Pickup-car crash south of Granite Falls kills one

A pickup truck crossed into the opposite lane on an icy western Minnesota highway Monday morning, colliding with a car and killing the motorist heading the other way, authorities said.

The crash occurred about 7:30 a.m. on Hwy. 23 just south of Granite Falls and killed a 35-year-old woman from Marshall, Minn., according to the State Patrol. The woman’s identity has yet to be released.

Jennifer A. Henslin, 50, of Granite Falls, was heading south on Hwy. 23, south of County Rd. 17, when her pickup slid sideways and collided with a car in the northbound lane, the patrol said. Henslin was slightly hurt.

There is no evidence that alcohol use played a role in the crash.

Three killed, plows withdrawn as blizzard grips western Minnesota

Three people were killed on Minnesota highways Monday and the state Transportation Department pulled some plows off the road as a blizzard roared across western Minnesota, blinding drivers and coating pavement with snow and ice.

Two people were killed in a four-vehicle accident at midday on Interstate 94 near Barnesville, between Fergus Falls and Moorhead, and one died in a head-on collision on Hwy. 23 south of Granite Falls just after 7:30 a.m.

Winds of up to 30 miles per hour, with gusts pushing 40, were actually drilling under a crust atop a deep snow pack and lifting that snow into the air, reducing visibility, National Weather Service meteorologist Tony Zaleski said. More snow was falling as well. The state Transportation Department started ordering plows off the highways about 4 p.m. in the Willmar area. By 6 p.m. plows had been withdrawn from roads in six west-central Minnesota counties. Willmar school officials also ordered buses on out-of-town routes to return to the school because of the poor conditions and asked parents to make arrangements to pick their kids up.

Plows were expected to be back on the job before Tuesday morning’s commute under clearing skies, although winds were expected to remain strong through the day.

According to the State Patrol, the wreck on I-94 was caused when a car tried to slip past a semitrailer truck in the left lane and a MnDOT plow on the shoulder, hitting both, stalling and then being struck by a pickup truck. Names of the dead, who were apparently in the car, were not available. The pickup driver suffered a minor injury; the plow and semi drivers were uninjured.

The westbound lanes were closed for several hours Monday afternoon.

In the accident near Granite Falls, 35-year-old Terrie McCoss of Marshall was killed when her northbound sedan was hit when Jennifer Heslin, 50, of Granite Falls, lost control of her SUV and crossed the center line.

The cold front that brought the high winds Monday sent temperatures plummeting across the state. In the Twin Cities, the temperature dropped from a high of 34 just before noon to 16 at 7 p.m., with a windchill reading of 2 degrees. Fergus Falls at that hour was experiencing an air temperature of 0 and windchill of minus-24.

The Weather Service warned of windchills of 20 below to 30 below for the metro area Tuesday night; a blizzard warning was to remain posted for west-central Minnesota until midnight.

The Twin Cities temperature was expected to drop to 2 below by Tuesday morning, rise to only 5 Tuesday, then fall to 8 below by Wednesday morning.

The snow and following cold are part of a long parade of storm systems from the Canadian Arctic in recent weeks. But a jet stream shift later this week is expected to bring a storm originating in the southern Rockies to the Twin Cities, one that could dump 6 to 7 inches of snow on the metro area from Thursday into Friday, Zaleski said.

Temperatures should rise into the upper 20s with that storm later in the week, but the replenished snow cover “should extend the winter,” Zaleski said.

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How Web Design Can Be Important for Your Business

Some people still do not realize that having a website for any kind  of business is immense significance looking the competitive nature of  the markets globally. People tend to spend more time online when it  comes to carrying out many different activities such as researching,  shopping, relaxing, or even booking of tickets. Just imagine you have a  business offering numerous services or products. What would you do to  get them promoted? In my point of view, the first thing you should love  to do is getting them promoted online which is very easy and cost  effective. Besides, it is the best way to expose your services to larger  community or audience to around the world. This is the reason web  design services have become part and parcel of all business today.

As you may see, the increasing importance of E-commerce website has  given a new industrial shape and direction to website designing services  as there are numerous companies with such designing services that are  scattered in all over the world.  Web design process is accompanied by  many other things that are forming of company logo, page setup, layout,  CSS, graphics and most importantly the contents uploaded. Content is  still the most important factors for all website. Content will ensure  potential clients or visitor want to go back and explore your services.  Besides, a website usually identifies the kind of company, services, or  product available and it turns into a business portal where the clients  from around the world can contact with company.

It clearly that build up a new website will be a good choice for  those who do not own any website. However, this way will cost you much.  Along with the new web designing, nowadays, people are also more  inclined into getting their websites re-designed. There are certain  reasons why most of the people used to get their websites re-designed.  Re-designing is much more cost effective as compared with fully new  designing. Besides, website re-design has nothing to do with losing of  regular clients who may always be little confused about the structure of  the designs. Re-design will also make your website look fresh and  interesting. Most of the people simply like to change their designing of  website from either PSD as well as XHTML to something difference. There  are some of benefits associated with such transformation of websites. Major such benefits include easy designing and getting them navigable as well as SEO friendly.

With the majority of consumers using the Internet for information  they need, position your business online with a website is the most  cost-effective promotion you will ever invest in. For affordable web design price,  you should look for web design companies that are willing to list their  web design prices right on the websites. These companies often price  fairly and it also allows you to compare prices among different web  design companies without filling out a request form and have to wait for  days (if not weeks) for a web design quote to come.

Important Steps to process Email-Marketing

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As you know, marketing via email is a tricky matter. Whether you sell products or services, email is a fast, efficient and inexpensive way to keep in contact with your clients and prospects, make sales, get traffic to your website and boost your profitability. However, deciding how to approach and manage the process of email marketing can still be a challenge for most of online marketers. Therefore, I would like to share quick review of the most important points to keep in mind while building up an email marketing campaign.

Firstly, we must have good plan for all tasks. A direct e-mail campaign, like any other promotional effort, should have a detailed plan and come from your business's overall marketing plan. You should ask yourself some questions and then answer them before setting up the plan.

- What is your service for? (What does it do and who is it for?)

- Who are your potential clients?

- What is your competitive position?

- What target do you want to achieve with this campaign?

Besides, keep in mind that an e-mail campaign affects things such as fulfillment, delivery, customer service, etc. You also must let your customer know what you tend to offer. Basically, any offer should have a peculiarity, something that makes it unique, interesting or promising.  As a rule the offer is a straight sale: you give your clients the product with its associated benefits, and they give you money. It is useful for a business to structure more compelling offers or offers that sound like an exceptional value. Perhaps you could offer a discount price for those who order during a certain predefined timeframe during a special campaign. Or maybe you can offer a free pre­mium, something like: buy one and get one free. Whatever the offer, you should emphasize that in your ad template.

Secondly, after you getting a good plan, you have to pick up mailing list. If you don't have your own mailing list (collected from your visitors) then you will have to use a mailing service. The list or lists you mail to will be determined mostly by your budget and marketing plans. Some list providers offer many e-mail lists with varying demographics or interest areas. Some providers own only one list, but they should be able to tell you what the characteristics or interests of their recipients are.

After you've selected your lists, created the mes­sage, and arranged all back-end processes, it's time to test. Now you have several lists that match your purposes. Each list may have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of email addresses. Test a future e-mail campaign on smaller samples, a few hundred per list would be alright. Then examine the response to see which lists have the best "pull." Code your tests to determine where responses are coming from. Also test various offers and creative approaches to find out what generates the highest response rate.  

Finally, you have to keep track the result. Tracking the results is a very important activity because you can adjust landing pages as well. Landing pages take an active part in the visitors to customers’ conversion process. Landing pages are critical to organic search engine marketing, press releases and just about all Internet marketing efforts. Online marketers can have numerous purposes and several calls to action here. You can get the most mileage out of e-mail marketing efforts by tracking everything you can and then improving those results. To achieve the best working process and greater success each campaign and marketing technique you use should be checked for results and improved.

All in all, email marketing is a fantastic way to keep constant contact with various prospects or past clients as a way of staying top of mind when it comes time for your subscribers to act. One of the biggest advantages in measuring online direct marketing response is that replies to transmitting a message to an e-mail list are almost instant. Be sure to track the campaign and measure response.

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