Email Marketing

Archive for the ‘Email Marketing News’ Category

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This article goes into depth about Permission Email Marketing and how its in trouble as a marketing medium and why RSS is the solution to its problem.
rss promotion,rss,rss feeds,rss syndication,rss marketing,rss and blogs,blogs,blog,blogging,internet marketing,traffic generation,web promotion,online marketing tactic,online marketing,list building,
“Permission Email Marketing”, the only way to market your business via Email without getting yourself into trouble and giving you the ability to stay in touch and build a ongoing relationship with your customers and/or subscribers.

The only question is… is email still a reliable vehicle to deliver your marketing messages to your potential customers and/or subscribers?

With the rising concerns of SPAM, Blacklisting, Email Filters, and CAN-SPAM laws, it’s getting Harder and Harder for legitimate “Permission Email Marketers” to reach there Target audiences with there Product or Service offers.

The end result is… “Time Wasted” and “Loss of Profits”.

Is your online business suffering from this?

Only you can answer that.

Email used to be the MOST effective form of direct marketing online at one time before everybody started abusing it and there guidelines.

Don’t get me wrong, email still is effective, the question is… how effective?

The benefit to marketing with email was that you were able to get your marketing message infront of your Target audiences within a matter of minutes with a single click of your mouse, which at one time made MANY marketers “Buckets-Of-Money” literally over night.

Email WAS the answer at that time, but, what’s the solution for the future of “Permission Email Marketing”?

Is there an answer to this rising problem with Email?

I’ll give you three letters… RSS!

Yes, there is a solution for “Permission Email Marketers” and/or for any online business owner who uses email to stay in touch with there customers and/or subscribers and that is RSS(Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication).

RSS is the NEW technology on the block(though its been around for quite some time) and is transforming the Internet and how businesses communicate with there customers and/or subscribers as we speak.

The BIGGEST benefit you’ll receive by incorporating RSS into your online business is… your customers and/or subscribers will receive 100% of your Product and/or Service offers.

I’m going to say that again, “your customers and/or subscribers will receive 100% of your Product and/or Service offers”.

No other online technology offers this benefit.

Just imagine the increased response to your offers, which in turn will convert into more Sales and Profits for you and your online business.

Rest assured, you could sleep at night knowing that your messages are reaching 100% of your Target audience without the worry of SPAM filters mistakenly marking your email as “SPAM” and that all that time you spent putting your offer together didn’t go to waste.

Would you then consider RSS?

I think you would. But, that is just my opinion.

There are many others benefits to using RSS which you can read about in a earlier article I wrote by clicking on this link — http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_15.html — since there are to many to list within this article.

Things are changing online, so we must change with it and adapt any new technologies we can in order to get the most out of our time and online businesses.

So, with that said, if your a “Permission Email Marketer” and your not happy with the results your currently getting from using “Email”, then you might want to consider switching to “RSS”.

100% delivery rate is unheard of with Email, but, is GUARANTEED with RSS(Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication).

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The seventh of a series of 10 articles on advertising and marketing and how by studying the “classic” advertising and marketing books can give you a huge advantage. It not only covers how advertising and marketing originated but goes into the importance of copywriting and how you can make more sales. All top marketers steal their secrets from these early marketers – guys like Claude Hopkins, Walter Dill Scott, Elmer Wheeler and others.
advertising, marketing, copywriting, sales, books, marketing secrets, business secrets, marketing tips, advertising tips, advertising secrets, Claude Hopkins, Elmer Wheeler,Walter Dill Scott, sales letters, psychology, human psychology, scientific ad
Copyright 2006 Peter Woodhead

This is the seventh article in a series of ten.

Now we go back to Maxwell Sackheim. Sackheim is also well known for originating the “Book-of-the Month” club. So what can you learn from Sackheim’s Book-of-the-Month club? More than you think. People are lazy. Getting people to take any sort of action is not easy. That’s why much of advertising uses deadlines and limited time offers.Sackheim used this human characteristic to his own advantage. Every month, members of his book club would be notified of that month’s book selection and unless they replied that they didn’t want the book – it was assumed that they did and it would be subsequently mailed out to them. Clever!

Sackheim originated the idea and now every “of-the-month” club operates like this. Have you experienced this?

Perhaps you’re thinking: “this wouldn’t work for me” or “my business really is different” then you’re missing the point and just not being creative enough.

You can use Sackheim’s “Negative Option Plan” to your business. If, for example, you have a web based business, you can have a member or subscription site which brings in regular, monthly income.

Your customers’ credit cards can be charged each month for their renewal of membership. People being lazy will rarely cancel their subscriptions bringing you a nice recurring revenue stream.

Sackheim’s Negative Option Plan forces people to take action to cancel their renewals. Many just can’t be bothered. you can take advantage of this little bit of human psychology. Of course, you will have to provide a good product or service that gives value for money.

In 1917, Sackheim met a young man called Victor Schwab who he hired as his private secretary. Schwab, working alongside Sackheim soon developed himself into a good copywriter.

Maxwell Sackheim also wrote a great book on marketing called: “My First 60 Years in Advertising”. This book is now out of print (as are most of these classics) but if you’re interested in the works of Maxwell Sackheim there is a book available by Jerry Buchanan called: “Billion Dollar Marketing.” You should be able to get this from your high street bookstore or on Amazon.

On similar lines to the “character” formula is what is called the “open letter” technique.

1921 Publisher A.W.Shaw collected 5,063 letters that had made big sales for their originators. The publishers whittled this list down and published 72 of these letters. These 72 were analysed and dissected. The result was their publication: ?2 Letters and What Made them Pay.?
This book contains sections on letters that open doors; letters that increase sales; letters that turn prospects into your friends; in fact, letters for many occasions. 72 of them.

There are examples of letters that pulled 18% to 20% returns. Letters that gave 61% returns. What would you give for returns like that?

Take for example this opening sentence: “There is a man in Boston who has a unique way of making a living.”

Now who wouldn’t be interested in that? Most people, and that’s why they keep on reading the rest of the letter.

Even if you have to give something away to entice your prospect to reply, the letter still has to be effective.

Within the above opening sentence was a sufficiently good “hook” to get the prospect to read further. But the letter sooner or later had to reveal the “Big Idea”. Suffice it to say that this particular letter did get the results (a 61% return) and the pulling power of such a letter makes it well worthy of study.

“72 Letters and What Made Them Pay” will help you put together a persuasive letter for any situation, no matter what line of business you are in. And you can get tis book at: http://LongLostMarketingSecrts.com

1923 John Orr Young and Raymond Rubicam form Young and Rubicam in Phildelphia.

1928 BDO merge with Garry Batten Co. to form BBDO with billings of $32m.

1928 Victor Schwab and his partner took over Sackheim’s agency after Sackheim decided to ‘call it a day’. He was responsible for creating ads for Dale Carnegie; Charles Atlas; and Sherwin Cody’s courses (as was Sackheim).

His famous works included the best selling 1930s classic: “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

He wrote a series of articles called: “How to Write a Good Advertisement” and introduced a 5 step formula.

His series of articles were later turned into a book, also called: “How to Write a Good Advertisement.”

1930 James Webb Young worked as a professor and used his lecture notes to publish his first book: “How to Become an Advertising Man.?
1930 Advertising Age is launched in Chicago

1934 Another master writer was Robert Collier. He went to work in New York for his uncle’s publishing company. His first successes were that he sold many thousands of the Harvard Classics. These were books put together by Dr.Eliot of Harvard and sold by Collier as what became known as the “Famous Five-Foot Shelf of Books.”

Collier had an idea of writing a set of books on psychology. He worked day and night to get them finished. The books were titled: “The Secrets of The Ages.” He sold over 300,000 sets of that title and went on to write more self-help titles and books.

He was a prolific writer but his best abilities were in writing killer sales letters.

In 1934 he wrote, the now famous: “The Robert Collier Letter Book.”

Here are just a few of his secrets to writing sales letters.

Collier became famous for one letter in particular. His: “Will you do me a favor?” letter. He conceived this idea when he read about a manager who asked one of his competitors for a favor – he wanted to know how to handle customers that took advantage of their terms. And this technique helped to bring the two companies together.

Collier thought that this technique may well work in print. He wasn’t wrong!

One of his letters was responsible for selling 20,000 raincoats and over a dozen other products.

The letter contains some strong psychological principles.

Also, people like to help. Just as Collier knew all those years ago, people like to give opinions.

If you operate your business off-line, ask in your direct mail or your letters for people’s opinions.

If you operate on-line, a good technique to use is polls. If people aren’t yet ready to buy, they do love to give their opinions.

It becomes even stronger if you give them something for free in return. Something of value, like a report with some useful information. But what ever you give them, it has to be useful.

Now you may be thinking, OK, his letter were written over 70 years ago. surely, this technique is out-dated. Think so?

Just before his death in 1950, Robert Collier was asked to pick his 15 most powerful and hypnotic letters. These were compiled and sold as: “Robert Collier’s Million Dollar Sales Letters.”

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You know what an optin is right? You know, that little box that pops up on many sales pages that offers you more information or a free newsletter if you become a registered member or some crap like that. Well it may seem annoying and like a waste of valuable time and space, but let me change your thinking on them right now. It is critical that you know just how effective these little things are in the broader scope of bulk email marketing. They literally will double, triple, …
optin
You know what an optin is right? You know, that little box that pops up on many sales pages that offers you more information or a free newsletter if you become a registered member or some crap like that. Well it may seem annoying and like a waste of valuable time and space, but let me change your thinking on them right now. It is critical that you know just how effective these little things are in the broader scope of bulk email marketing. They literally will double, triple, or even quadruple your income if you use them appropriately.

So what is the basic idea of the optin? Well you have heard of email marketing where you form a list of people that are interested in your product (or other similar things) enough to learn more but not yet interested in making a purchase. Well the optin tool is what forms this list. Then once the list is formed you send them emails that expose their need or a problem that they may or may not realize they have and offer your product as a solution. It’s sounds crazy and a bit cheesy, I know, but you would be amazed at how effective it is. The lists that you form are also valuable for other selling other products to that subset of customers as well.

Yeah, well all you need is a simple software tool that adds the optin box and then sorts and manages the lists that are formed. It then allows you to input the emails that you want sent out, in a specific order, and at a specific time interval, and then tracks the outcomes to help you evaluate what emails are good and which ones need more work. So what at first seems relatively simple becomes a complex and incredibly valuable tool for any serious internet marketer who is always looking for ways to increase his (or her) conversions on any or all of his products.

So why is the optin tool so effective? Well, that’s a great question and unfortunately not one that has a good complete answer. But i will take a stab at it by giving you some of my ideas that could explain the amazing effectiveness of the optin.

For one thing it allows the customer to delay making a decision on something that they haven’t totally thought through. Either they didn’t realize they needed it as bad as your are telling them they do or it was just a quick idea that they were checking out for the first time. Second the optin generally gives the bait of free information about strategy or how the product works or life in general. And you know that humans LOVE free stuff so this reels them right in and the rest is simply age old marketing tricks. So there are my two cents, but seriously — don’t let this opportunity escape!

412

There is no dismissing the fact that e-mail, also known as electronic mail, is an indispensable medium of marketing on the internet.
email marketing,internet marketing,autoresponder,automatic responder
There is no dismissing the fact that e-mail, also known as electronic mail, is an indispensable medium of marketing on the internet.

Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is available high and wide throughout the world. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in those countries. E-mails are very techno-savvy and also very effective and fast. This is the reason that we can now see e-mails developing as an indispensable media of marketing.

Over the years individuals and businesses have started realizing the advantages of e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing carries a lot of advantages along with it. Some of the benefits include:

Speed:

This is the main factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered advantageous over other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing along with it brings the advantage of high speed. E-mail marketing has a very high speed of information transfer. It just takes a second for the person to transfer information from his working place to the internet, where anyone can view it worldwide.

Reach:

Another factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered a good option is because of the fact that it has a better reach to the people worldwide than other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing knows no boundaries and this helps people to continue to conduct their marketing work on a large scale. The higher reach of e-mail marketing attracts more people towards it and thereby assists the whole marketing process.

Inexpensive:

E-mail marketing is comparatively cheaper than that of some other medias of marketing. Individuals and businesses do not have to incur any special or extra cost to market their product or point of view. Being inexpensive, it suits many and thereby a lot of people resort to e-mail marketing for a large part of their online marketing efforts.

Effective:

E-mail marketing is very effective and a very popular form of marketing. The reason being, that they are very techno-savvy, very fast and still pretty cost effective. This whole package makes e-mail marketing very cheap and pretty attractive. This is the reason that e-mail marketing is effective and thus more approachable.

Personalized marketing:

E-mail marketing avails the opportunity to conduct personalized marketing. In this, people can send e-mails only to people whom they think would be interested in the topic of the message.

Thus we see why and how e-mail marketing has turned out to be an indispensable tool in marketing.

815

The mere mention of marketing via e-mail conjures up images of unsolicited e-mails offering penile enlargement pills, Viagra, various stocks offerings, and breast augmentation. Derogatorily referred to as “spam”, these emails have made it all but impossible to discuss the legitimate use of email as a marketing tool. Yet e-mail can be a powerful tool when sent to people who have either opted-in (indicated an interest in receiving e-mail from a specific sender) or have a direct interest in the information being sent. To exclude e-mail from your online marketing tactical basket is silly. You simply have to make sure you conduct yourself in a manner consistent with the accepted rules of the game – meaning you don’t engage in the blind mass sending of e-mails to databases you have not either developed on your own, or purchased from reputable opt-in list brokers.
email, search engine marketing, web design
The mere mention of marketing via e-mail conjures up images of unsolicited e-mails offering penile enlargement pills, Viagra, various stocks offerings, and breast augmentation. Derogatorily referred to as “spam”, these emails have made it all but impossible to discuss the legitimate use of email as a marketing tool. Yet e-mail can be a powerful tool when sent to people who have either opted-in (indicated an interest in receiving e-mail from a specific sender) or have a direct interest in the information being sent. To exclude e-mail from your online marketing tactical basket is silly. You simply have to make sure you conduct yourself in a manner consistent with the accepted rules of the game – meaning you don’t engage in the blind mass sending of e-mails to databases you have not either developed on your own, or purchased from reputable opt-in list brokers.
The successful use of email as a marketing tool can be broken down into 5 components. They are:
1. Database
Once you have determined that you wish to engage in e-mail marketing, you need to decide to whom you wish to send your messages. The selection of a list to purchase should be based on your knowledge of your targeted market and who comprises your most likely customer. Many list brokers have lists they can accumulate based on a variety of demographic information, and some can also provide names based on a history of responding to offers sent via e-mail. The more you can narrow down who it is you want to send the e-mails to, the higher the response rate will be. Another excellent way to gather a viable e-mail list is to build your own. Over time you can gather a list of customer e-mail addresses that will prove to be a tremendous marketing asset, as it is comprised of people who have bought from you already and presumably have an interest in what you sell. You can gather your own list at your place of business and via your website, by offering people an opportunity to sign up to get your emails (which feature special offers and new product announcements).
2. Content
The content of your e-mails should be designed to meet the needs of your audience. As mentioned above, you can use your e-mails to announce new products or make special offers. You can also inform your customer base about new developments in your market, announce special events, or provide opinions (based on the type of relationship you have with customers and the type of business you have). The e-mail content needs to be precise, well written, and engaging. You should make an effort to drive the reader to your website, where the information either continues, or the offer you are making can be purchased.
3. Format
There are two different ways e-mails can be sent and the selection of either is based on the content of the e-mail and how you wish for it to be presented. E-mails sent in HTML format look like web pages and can feature graphics. These are more effective for sales promotions, but some people do not have their e-mail programs set to receive HTML e-mails, meaning that the content will come in without the graphics. Text e-mail messages are useful when you want to relay information and are able to keep your message short and to the point. You can use a link in a text e-mail to send the reader to your website where he/she can view more information in HTML format.
4. Testing
Prior to launching a broad and ambitious e-mail marketing program it is recommended that you test your message with a series of smaller groups to make certain that what you are saying is being well received and that the response rates you anticipate are being met. The tests enable you to make adjustments before you go live in a big way. Not only can this help you sharpen what you want to say, but it will also avoid any large scale errors. Testing should be done to representative groups by taking random selections out of the lists you intend to use.
5. Tracking
The beauty of e-mail marketing is that it allows for the tracking of your marketing program in ways traditional marketing cannot do. The information provided can include how many people opened your message and how many of them responded to whatever offer you included. This tracking not only allows you to judge the worthiness of the program, but also gives you clues into how to improve it.
E-mail marketing is inexpensive and flexible, but should not be overused so that recipients don’t become overwhelmed by the volume of e-mails you are sending (and therefore ignoring what you send).
Sort of like direct mail, but with automatic immediate response mechanism – your website – e-mail marketing is a viable tool that can be leveraged as part of your overall integrated marketing program.

998

This has much more to do with the autoresponder than with women, but they do have a valid excuse for just sending emails with sales links. Don’t believe me?
autoresponder, email
Copyright 2006 Karl Stadler

Autoresponder is not the name of some cool dude or a new automatic device that can actually understand a woman correctly all the time. There might however be some faint similarities between women and autoresponders but this is not my place to say, neither would I ever dare. But what do women and autoresponders have to do with each other? Well read on and find out.

We all receive them daily, those pesky messages in our inbox. Most generated by an autoresponder. But still there are some that we open and read.

Now why do you think that is?

Let’s turn back the clock and have a look at how exactly we got to this point.

Since the advent of the internet using it for sales and marketing has become more and more lucrative. It has now become highly evolved and competitive that everyone is looking for new and better ways to market.

There have been all sorts of different tried and tested methods but the one that has stood the test of time is email marketing. Based on this it is pure common sense that a list of email addresses and names are extremely profitable.

At first you had to send each mail yourself, and so it went on until the advent of the autoresponder.

It would be similar to the discovery of fire many years ago. Suddenly we had cooked food so we invented pots and pans, found India and wonderful spices, discovered coffee, which I think is the most important of all, steam driven power, electricity and so on. Subsequently all of these have been improved over time to make our lives easier.

So has the autoresponder.

We fill in a form on a page or popup and instantly we receive a nice message with our name neatly in the title and we feel honored. But that only lasts until we know about autoresponders of course.

The autoresponder is a fantastic tool and it allows you to get on with other work. It is the use of the autoresponder to build relationships with your clients that has lost its touch, and consequently for many marketers it effectiveness as a sales tool.

You opted in, so they are allowed to send you a message. The only problem is nine out of ten of these messages are trying to sell something. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with using opt in email to sell products, what is a problem is that every message from the same sender is a sales message.

I must be honest, if I subscribe to a newsletter or other form of opt in and the first three messages I receive from them are sales letters disguised as newsletters they all get added to the junk folder or I unsubscribe.

Good information and building a relationship with your subscribers is not selling to them with every email.

All over the internet software called autoresponders are bombarding their unsuspecting subscribers with sales letters. You get them too, and think for yourself, how much have you purchased from any of those letters?

It is true and proven that most customers will buy after about seven attempts, and this is also where the most sales will take place.

But will he buy if he has no relationship with you? You did promise him something of value when they subscribed didn’t you? So what have you given in order to receive?

Many list owners do not want to make the effort to really build a relationship with their subscribers. They will all tell you that they do, but in reality it is actually really hard work. It is much easier writing seven or so emails based on a sales letter disguised as useful information than it is to write something of real value to your subscriber.

Let’s turn back the clock a few thousand years. If you were a male you would have to go out and hunt, if you think writing is hard work, grab a bow and arrow and slog behind some animals for a few days and see which one you prefer.

If you were a woman you had to attend to the fields, kids, fetch water, cook food and so the list goes on. Except for fetching water from the river and tending to the fields I think women still do most of these chores. So on second thought you do have an excuse.

In view of the last statement, ladies you are excused, this is only applicable to lazy males. If you have a little time on your hands though, you should definitely give it a go.

Your autoresponder can considerably increase your sales and it should not seem that all of your emails are coming from some pre-programmed software. Just putting a name in the headline does not personalize the email you have to talk to your subscriber.

Make each email contain valuable information to what the subscriber opted in for in the first place. Each piece of information should be complete, meaning that he will be able to use it without having to buy a product or subscribing to a site. Add your personal touch to the mails and actually write them yourself, don’t just copy and paste.

Make your headline interesting not the same old same old as you see on every second email. Once you give useful information that can actually be implemented you will find that your open rate for your emails will increase and subscribers will actually read your emails, whether they come from the autoresponder or not.

In this way you will build credibility and a rapport with your subscribers so when you do offer them a product or service they will be eager to buy from you.

The bottom line is that is you want to receive you will have to give. Women know how to do this men have to learn, sorry guys!

995

Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement f…
email,e-mail,email marketing,e-mail marketing,marketing,business email,business emails,elite web
Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

The best news is that the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

1. Spam! Spam! Spam! I don’t need any Viagra!
The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week, 62% of which are spam. No wonder there’s such hostility towards the industry. But spam filters, bulk folders and “report spam” features are helping consumers become more at ease about the perils of spam. While 89% of users cited spam as a major concern in 2003, that number dropped to 85% in 2004, proportionally to an increase in the use of spam-fighting tools.

So as a permission-based business email marketer, what can you do? One tip is to remind your subscribers to add you to their “safe senders” list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers’ inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

2. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?
Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. In fact, according to ClickZ, 40% of email marketing messages delivered to inboxes are “broken.”

So what’s the solution? Some email marketing programs publish all your sent email campaigns to a secure location on the web (a location only original recipients of the email can access, thanks to encrypted technology that automatically authenticates the user). In some programs, the technology also ensures you can track your users’ behaviors, even if they are reading your email campaign at the secure web location.

3. Personalization and relevant content: In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all.
In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. That number points out the absolute importance of allowing users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. The most popular interest categories, according to the study, are coupons and household goods.

But you’re coupon is no good unless the user opens the email. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the “from” field. So it’s a good idea to make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the “subject” line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

4. Click-through and conversion: Show me the money!
So the user has opened your email and read the content. Great. But where’s the sale? There’s good news here. For one, consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases as a direct result of a business email campaign. One-third of users in the DoubleClick study had purchased something by clicking a link on an email. Another 42% clicked on an email link for more information, then purchased the product at a later time. Second, online couponing is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline.

In terms of industries, the top performers are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

There’s no need to fret if your company doesn’t fit in to one of those industries. The overall landscape for email marketing conversions is looking brighter every day. The average click-to-purchase rate has increased nearly 30% since 2004 and the average orders-per-email-delivered rate has increased more than 18% since last year.

5. Stats tracking: Who are my real consumers?
E-mail marketing is an increasingly popular tool in effective CRM, and it’s about time more businesses recognize that. First off, if your provider’s email services for business do not include detailed, real-time tracking, you’re getting a raw deal. Real-time tracking is now an industry standard, and it’s highly valuable, as it allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last (several email service providers also let you compare the performance of your campaigns).

But many marketers are still in the dark. According to a recent WebTrends research, only 5% of marketers are very confident in the measurement of their online marketing efforts, while 26% admit they’re “flying blind.” WebTrends says the low confidence comes from a lack of knowledge when it comes to measurement, which means there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In email marketing, a blind shot won’t take you very far. But if you aim properly by following these essential rules of play, you should soon be reaping the same major results as so many online and offline businesses.

395

The biggest challenge with email is getting people to actually open the message! Many people delete messages without ever opening them. So, how do you avoid ending up in the electronic equivalent of “File Thirteen?
email, commmunication, business, marketing, customer service
The biggest challenge with email is getting people to actually open the message! Many people delete messages without ever opening them. So, how do you avoid ending up in the electronic equivalent of “File Thirteen?

The answer is: by using a good choice of wording in the subject line. The subject line is the field that appears on your screen somewhere below the “To?field when you are creating a new message.

On the recipient’s screen, the subject line is one of the only fields that the recipient can read without opening the message. Typically, the other fields are “To,?”From,?”Date Received,?and “Date Sent.?
The Gatekeeper

The purpose of the subject line is to allow the reader to see at a glance what the message is regarding. The subject line is vital! It’s arguably the most important line you write in an email. Why?

Because it serves as gatekeeper, determining whether the message is viewed by the recipient. It doesn’t matter how wonderfully you’ve written the message, if that message isn’t opened and read. The better job you do of crafting a subject line, the better chance you have of getting your message opened. So, how do you write an effective subject line?

Leaving It Blank

Leaving the subject line blank isn’t an option because many people won’t open messages if they don’t contain a subject. The recipient may not take the time to open a message if he/she doesn’t know what it’s about. Also, the onslaught of vicious email viruses has caused people to be cautious, as well they should be.

Many programs will give you a warning box if you try to send a message without a subject line. This protocol in many email programs is in place to warn you that leaving your subject line blank is not a good idea.

Avoid “Hi?
Typing the word “Hi?or the word “Greetings?in the subject line tells the recipient absolutely nothing. This lack of information might be acceptable for email messages you’re sending to friends. However, when you’re corresponding with customers and colleagues, remember to include a relevant subject line.

Keep in mind what to avoid when typing your subject line. Then, you’ll be well on your way to sending emails that are opened and (hopefully!) read.

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6 useful tips to help you effectively use your autoresponders to increase your sales and add to your bottom line.
autoresponder tips,how to use autoresponders,email marketing
1. Offer an email course.

Write up a course or use your articles to create a course that you can offer to your visitors.

You’ll be able to educate people about your product, and increase your sales by showing them the benefits they’ll get from purchasing from you.

2. Send excerpts of your ebook.

Increase your sales by showing your visitors firsthand the valuable information you have to offer them.

Simply string together excerpts of several or maybe just one chapter of your ebook, and then offer your autoresponder series to your visitors.

If you have an affiliate program, increase your sales by making this autoresponder series (as well as any email course you offer) available to your affiliates.

3. Publish an ezine.

With broadcast capable autoresponders, you’ll be able to double opt in all your new subscribers and send out your issues on the schedule you want.

Promote your ezine on your site, and submit it to ezine directories and ezine announcement lists.

If you write articles, you can also get more new subscribers by using your resource box to promote your ezine.

You can also promote your ezine in your signature file and get more new subscribers through your day to day emails and also from your posts to discussion lists and forums that you’re a member of.

4. Offer a sample issue.

Make one of your best, current ezine issues available by autoresponder.

Then offer it on your site, and also, when you can, include it along with your other ezine information when you submit your ezine to ezine directories.

5. Publish an article announcement list.

Get more ezine publishers and webmasters to publish your articles on a regular basis by creating a list that announces when you’ve written a new article or articles.

You’ll be able to keep in touch with people that enjoy your writing, helping you to get your articles published more often and increase traffic to your site.

6. Make a training course available to your affiliates.

Offer a generic email training course that your affiliates can use to learn how to successfully promote your products and earn commissions.

Your affiliates will have a handy resource that they can print out and go back to again and again, and you’ll be able to increase your profits by helping your affiliates get started on the right track.

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HTML email breaks in a wide variety of email inboxes. Lotus Notes is notorious for the way it handles HTML emails and Multi-Part MIME. In this article, I’ll show you what to do.
html email,lotus notes,email marketing,email,email campaign,mime,text email,multipart,multi part,multipart,email newsletter,lotus notes html
As the online world changed in the nineties from informational to commercial and highly competitive, marketers embraced the new technology and the need has arisen to send graphically appealing newsletters and marketing messages. You have only seconds to capture attention, and the right picture will grab quicker than the right copy, as they say, “a picture can be worth a thousand words”. Just ask your clients if they would use plain white paper, rather than letterhead, to send an offline message to prospects and customers.

Today, the vast majority of all email clients can render (that is, display) HTML emails fairly well. Notable exceptions are older versions of Lotus Notes and pre AOL pre version 6.0. So whereas a few years ago the answer to the question was rather complex, today it really comes down to message purpose, subscriber preference and multipart messaging. Studies show that roughly 95 percent of commercial messages sent today are sent as Multi-Part MIME.

Multi-part MIME is an older protocol that allows you to send both text and HTML versions of an e-mail in a single package, kind of like a sandwich. The recipient’s e-mail program then displays the HTML version, if it is capable of reading that, or the text version, if it is not.

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions and is an internet standard for the format of e-mail. Virtually all human written Internet e-mail and a fairly large proportion of automated e-mail is transmitted via SMTP MIME format. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and if nothing else, you’ll learn a few more acronyms if you stick around. Internet e-mail is so closely associated with the SMTP and MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/MIME e-mail.

Folks, while nobody can really agree on numbers and stats, we all agree on this: HTML Email Doesn’t Work Properly for Millions of Recipients.

HTML email breaks in a wide variety of email inboxes. This isn’t due to your creative abilities or lack of HTML knowledge – it’s due to the fact that the email client your recipient views your email in routinely breaks your message.

I feel like this is worth defining, as I know a lot of people get very scared when we talk about clients and servers, but will not admit it. An email client (some “big picture” folks also call it Mail User Agent) is nothing but a computer program that is used to read and send e-mail, such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, etc. A mail server (also called a Mail Transfer Agent or MTA, or a mail exchange server) is a computer program that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another. Most of the time, since nobody has time to learn all the acronyms and terminology coined by those “big picture” people, we are used to know a mail server as the entire contraption (wires and all) that runs the program.

Depending on the email system, your HTML images may be blocked so recipients see a blank white box and/or your live hotlinks may not work properly. AOL 9.0, Outlook 2003, and Gmail are most infamous for blocking and/or breaking HTML, “for security reasons”.

Another big offender for not letting HTML through is Mel, the guy that works in the corporate IT department. Many corporations have IT departments who can’t wait for the day when all attachments and all HTML emails are eradicated. That is because in their world, anything that is not pure text is spam, virii, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, pure evil(ware) that makes mailboxes grow and users growl. As a consequence, most of those cubicle inhabitants – the end users – who have to sign a hundred page policy before they start getting busy on those corporate e-memos, are unable to view and/or send HTML messages, whether the feature is turned off at a server level, or on their computers.

Everything else aside, there is no bigger offender here on Earth than Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes is notorious for its refusal to handle Multi-Part MIME the same way the rest of the civilized world does.

For your amusement, here is a definition of Lotus Notes that was created by one of those “big picture” executives: “Lotus Notes is a commercial workflow and groupware software package that also provides application developers an environment for quickly creating cross- platform client/server applications”. Still with me? Don’t be scared. For the purposes of this article, Lotus Notes is an email client. Ok?

If you work for a company that uses Lotus Notes as the email system, don’t even think about sending newsletters other than in text form from it. Besides the fact that as a general rule, I always recommend to marketers the use of a professional permission based email marketing service, in the Lotus Notes case you just have to.

If you communicate to the B2B market, particularly large professional services firms, large lawfirms, many Global 2000 companies, HTML email compatibility will be a thorn in your side, as a lot of these companies use Lotus Notes.

The issues include:

- Older versions of Lotus Notes (under R5) convert HTML emails to a Lotus Notes Rich Text format. Lotus Notes versions under R5 also do not recognize Multi-Part MIME messages (HTML and text combined in a single email).

- Some companies may be deploying later versions of the Lotus Notes client, i.e., R6, but using an older version of Lotus Notes/Domino server such as 4.6. In this example, the recipient’s email client would also render an HTML message incorrectly.

So for a recipient to view a properly rendered HTML email, a company must use both the Lotus Notes client and server of R5 and above.

Here are some quick tips you can take if you have a significant Lotus Notes subscriber base:

1. Include a link at the top of HTML emails named “View Web Version” or something similar. The link sends recipients to a web hosted HTML version of the email (either on the email technology provider’s server or the sender’s server).

2. Also include an “Update Preferences” link and provide a web site update form that then enables recipients to choose to receive Text rather than HTML.

3. Create complete Text versions for those who prefer not to receive HTML or cannot view HTML.

4. On opt-in forms, include an option to receive a Text version and potentially list tips (i.e., “If you are using Lotus Notes versions below R5, select Text”).

In conclusion, I will say it again: Folks, don’t try this at home. Instead, always outsource email marketing to one of the many professional services. Advantages are: No blacklists and established relations with the major ISPs, ensuring maximum deliverability (plus, you don’t want to be called a spammer and banned from everywhere). They also make it easy to create, send, and track permission-based email, have advanced reporting, message scheduling, the ability to create unlimited lists, bounce back handling (extremely important), subscription management, newsletter templates and many other major industry-standard features. The service I use for my company can be tried free for 15 days, here: http://www.bsleek.com/emailmarketing/