Twenty Tips For Guaranteed Email Marketing Success

Andrea Kalli    Email Marketing    

Email marketing is a reliable and lucrative method for generating leads. It is no wonder that this platform has become a very valuable one for Internet marketers especially now that marketing budgets are suffering due to the economic recession. Although email marketing is generally cost-effective, there are a number of things you can do to make the most out of your campaign. To help you achieve optimal open, read, and response rates, follow the twenty tips discussed below:

1) Offer Incentives to Attract Subscribers

Most Internet users won’t just sign up for something just because they see a registration form. Many people are hesitant to give away their email addresses because they believe that they may be risking their privacy and security by doing so. For this reason, you need to give them a good reason to sign up. Offering incentives such as free e-books or discount coupons may do the trick. Whatever you offer, be sure that it is something that will entice them to subscribe and retain their subscription.

2) Simplify the Registration Process

Make sure that your subscription form is visible on your website and provide details on what benefits subscribers can gain from signing up. Also, don’t ask for too much information. The fewer fields you ask for in your registration form, the more likely your visitors are to fill them up. If possible, ask only for names and email addresses.

3) Get Subscribers to Opt In Twice

Although the registration process should be as simple as possible, it is best to get your subscribers to opt in twice. This will allow you to ensure the quality of your mailing list. To do this, you simply need to send out an email to all those who subscribe through your opt-in page. Within that email, include a link that recipients must click on to confirm their subscription. There are, of course, other ways to do this but making the process simple for subscribers will encourage them to perform the desired action.

4) Be Consistent with Your Sender’s Line

When people receive new emails, they normally check the “From” line to find out who the sender is before checking the “Subject” line to learn what the email is about. Whenever an unfamiliar name appears in the sender’s line, recipients are likely to delete the email without even bothering to find out what it is about. Being consistent with the name you place in your sender’s line is important because you need to make your recipients familiar with who you are. If the name you use sparks recognition, your recipients will be more likely to read your emails.

5) Develop a Persona

Many business owners use the name of their brand, company, or service in the sender’s line. However, using a person’s real name is often recommended because it makes emails more personable. By allowing your subscribers to know who you really are and by communicating with them as an individual and not a corporate entity, they are more likely to trust you. Large companies have also found benefits in developing a fictional character that subscribers can relate with. This fictional character can eventually become a persona that companies can then leverage once it starts to be known as an expert within a given niche.

6) Use Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines

Typical email users take less than a second to decide on whether or not an email should be ignored or deleted. For this reason, it is important for you to make use of headlines that not only catches your recipients’ attention but also gives them an idea of what benefits they can get from reading through your email. Offering an enticing promise or a benefit in your subject line will lead your subscribers to be more interested in what you have to say.

7) Put Above-the-Fold Content to Good Use

Most email clients now provide users with an option to view snippets of new mail without having to open their inbox. These snippets often include the sender’s name, the email’s subject, and the first few lines of the main text. There are also software that feature preview panes that allow users to glance at the content of new emails to help them decide on whether or not to open it. Knowing this, you need to make sure that what appears in mail snippets and preview panes is enough to capture the interest of your readers. You can do this by positioning another heading or other interesting content at the top of each email and place supporting information below it.

Personalize Your Emails

Always keep in mind that people generally don’t like receiving emails that have nothing to do with them. They don’t like spending their time reading through content that won’t give them any benefit. By addressing your subscribers by name, you give off the impression that what you have to say is relevant. By simply adding your recipient’s name in the subject line and main text of your email, you can dramatically increase your open rate. Note, however, that you really need to be sure that your content is relevant to recipients before you address them by name. If not, you could easily disappoint them and cause them to opt out.

9) Write in a Conversational Tone

Apart from addressing your recipients by name, compose your content in a manner that makes your emails more personal. Your writing style should be casual and conversational just as you would write to a friend to share some interesting information. By writing this way, your emails will seem more like a one-on-one conversation with your recipients rather than a broadcast sent to thousands.

10) Send Out Relevant Information

As you move forward with your email marketing campaign, be sure to keep a record of your subscribers’ responses and purchases. By doing this, you’ll begin to learn more and more about them and use what you know to make your content more relevant to what they are interested in. You will also gain a lot of insights that will help you enhance your email marketing campaign to better suit your target audience.

11) Help Resolve Issues

By becoming familiar with your target audience, you can determine what issues they are facing. Use your newsletter campaign to provide useful information that will help them face their issues. Also, make sure that you provide them with valuable insights that they won’t be able to find anywhere else. Doing this will not only help you enhance your reputation but also demonstrate your expertise. Subscribers will then be more likely to patronize your business and become loyal to it.

12) Never Try to Sell

Keep in mind that people subscribe to your emails because of the promise of useful and relevant information. For this reason, you must never use your mailing list to send out sales pitches. Doing so will instantly irritate your readers and prompt them to opt out. Instead, use your sales copy on your website. If your email marketing content is persuasive enough, you’ll get your subscribers to visit your website for information on products that can benefit them.

13) Keep Your Emails Concise

The emails you send to your subscribers need to be short and contain only nuggets of information that recipients can easily read through. This will encourage them to read through your content and easily digest the information you provide. If you do have a long-winded article that you want to share, you may just want to publish it on your website. You can then send out a few choice quotes to your subscribers and lead them to the full article through a text link.

14) Provide Different Email Formats

Different individuals prefer to view their emails in different formats. While some like receiving HTML emails, others prefer plain text. HTML will give you more freedom to make your emails more attractive in terms of design and layout. However, emails in this format are never properly displayed when users set their preferences for emails to display in plain text. Furthermore, many Internet users now view their emails using mobile devices making it more important to provide different email formats. It may be best to ask each of your subscribers to choose their preferred email format upon signing up. That way, you can send them emails according to their preferences right away.

15) Make it Easy to Opt Out

Making it difficult for subscribers to opt out of your mailing list can easily damage your relationship with recipients and ruin your reputation. For this reason, you need to have a visible “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each of your emails. Also make sure that you honor your recipient’s request to unsubscribe immediately after the request is confirmed. Making it easy for subscribers to opt out of your mailing list will also help you properly track the results of your email marketing efforts.

16) Follow a Schedule

Before you even start with your email marketing campaign, develop a schedule for sending out emails and stick with it. Let your subscribers know whether they should expect new messages on a weekly or on a monthly basis. Also, try to send out your emails on the same day of every week or every month. This will allow your subscribers to expect your emails and become more preconditioned to open them once they arrive.

17) Use a Template

Develop a template for your emails and use it consistently. Your template should guide you in developing each email’s design and layout as well as the style of copy used in each part.

This will allow your subscribers to become familiar with your emails and determine which parts they like reading. Following a template will also help achieve your branding objectives.

18) Always Use Clear Call-to-Action Statements

Any email marketing campaign has objectives. Generally, the objective is to capture the interest of readers and prompt them to visit an online business website where they can make purchases or avail of services. No matter what action you need to get from your readers, be sure you state it clearly in your emails.

19) Experiment with Your Messages

There are many ways to communicate what you want to say to your subscribers. To find out which way is best, you may want to experiment with your emails. Try sending out different versions of your email to the different segments in your mailing list. Make use of various layouts, titles, and content to check which ones generate the highest response rates. Even if the results you are currently getting from your email marketing campaign are good, make sure you test everything. You might end up realizing that what you’re getting is only a fraction of your potential.

20) Test Your Link Placements

In addition to experimenting with your messages, you need to test your link placements. Most email marketers prefer to place their links towards the end of each message while others include links in between content. Link placement is important because it may be the only thing that will lead your subscribers to your online business website. By determining where it is best to place your link, you can continuously improve on the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign and increase the likelihood of subscribers availing of what you have to offer.

Email marketing can be a company’s most valuable lead generation tool. However, it needs to be planned and implemented correctly to produce optimal results. Following the twenty tips above will allow you to make the most out of email marketing campaign. It will not only help you achieve your sales objectives but also enhance your reputation online, build a rapport with your subscribers, and establish yourself as an expert within your community.

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC offers a wide variety of business services.

As a Certified Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant, she specializes in social media optimization to increase organic search rankings through brand awareness and community building strategies. Edit audio/video for podcasts, teleseminars, audio books. Create products to sell & teasers for marketing. She supports your internet marketing needs such as Website Analysis, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, and Article Marketing.

With a background in corporate productivity and team training for Outlook and SharePoint users, she offers video training tutorials through her e-learning site.

Outlook / SharePoint training and support, Podcast / audio editing, Certified Internet Marketing Assistant.

Affordable training courses for today’s business professional. Outlook, SharePoint, Word, PowerPoint, Social Marketing, Blogging with Wordpress, Photoshop, and much more.

Author: Andrea Kalli
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Email Marketing SIMPLY Revealed

Melvin Eugene Hill Jr    Email Marketing    

Email marketing is a form of direct mail marketing using electronic mail to deliver your message to your audience. There are a number of reasons why email marketing is the preferred method of delivering direct mail.

The power of email marketing is in building an opt-in list of email addresses which you can market to via email.

To do this effectively you must have an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a program that you use in conjunction with your email list to effectively market to your audience. This tool is used to automatically email your customers at predetermined time intervals, with predetermined email messages and in a predetermined sequence of email message delivery. Specifically it can be used to confirm subscription to your email list, unsubscribe emails, and for ongoing communication and follow-up with your list.

Why is this important? Imagine having an email list of thousands. Now imagine having to manually, confirm subscriptions, unsubscribe and send emails to an email list of thousands on a regular basis. Not to mention determining who gets what emails, when to send those emails and also when not to send the emails that have already received a response. Again, imagine having to do this for thousands of email addresses, even if you did this for 100 email addresses it may still be too much for you to do alone. You would never get anything else done. An autoresponder handles all of this and more for you. I’m sure you will want to take advantage of this wonderful piece of technology.

Email marketing helps you become more effective and efficient with the following:

• Selling to new prospects
• Selling to existing customers
• Promoting and advertising your or your affiliates product, service or business
• Provide your customers with information, updates and upcoming events
• For surveys, polls and other customer feedback

Reasons why email marketing is a direct marketers dream are as follows:

Cheaper to deliver

• Eliminates the fulfillment cost of paper, envelopes and postage when sending direct mail

Easier to deliver

• No waiting. No trips to the Post Office.

Quicker to deliver

• Delivery is done at the push of a button. Therefore, you can email a list of thousands and as frequently as you feel comfortable.

Targeting Capabilities

• Gives you the ability to target your emails by prospect, customer, interest, source and other possible distinctions.

Ability to track results of email

• Track and measure the success of your email campaign. Learn what works and what does not by your CTR (click through rate). Determine what adjustments need to be made to have your emails convert better.

Create traffic to your website

• When you send emails to your list you can provide links to send your prospects to anywhere you want on the web.

Builds familiarity, loyalty, trust and credibility

• Your email list gets to know you better by establishing an ongoing relationship with you as you inform, entertain and provide value to your list.

An environment friendly paperless process

• Not only can you save some trees, you can also save yourself some space in your office. The more files on your laptop, the less files on your desktop or in your file cabinet.

Things to consider when email marketing:

Spamming

• Spamming is sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE). Most folks views on UCE and UBE range from cautious, for various reasons, to just not being interested. Most SPAM gets blocked, ignored or deleted. To put this in perspective, ask yourself how many unsolicited emails have you read, commercial, bulk or otherwise? The conversion rate for spamming is not worth the risk for the trouble it can cause you. Spamming is against the law (See the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003) which can result in imprisonment, fines, a tarnished reputation and possibly a prohibition of working in the area of email marketing. The practice of “permission marketing” helps prevent you from being accused of spamming. With permission marketing you get permission from your prospect to email them. This is most effectively done through a double opt-in method. With this method, the prospect initially opts in to your email list and then a confirmation email is sent to your prospect. Your prospect must then confirm subscription to your email before your will begin emailing them. However, at anytime your prospect wishes not to receive your emails you must provide them in every email with a link to unsubscribe from your email list.

Constructing your email

• You want to construct a well crafted email that is going to get results. This is done by making sure that from the subject line to the post script your email is purposefully written to get results. Next, you shape, hone and fine-tune your emails to always increase your conversion rate, on an ongoing basis.

The basics of email marketing are building a list, crafting a message to that list and making sure your messages are received while doing all you possibly can to get your messages read and converted. The more advanced aspects of email marketing come in the form of tracking, analyzing and measuring the results of your email campaign.

An email marketing campaign is going to generate inquires, feedback, opt-ins, downloads, and sales. You can effectively handle these request with an autoresponder, there is no need to work harder than you must. If you want to save time and money then email marketing is very important and essential to your success when marketing via the internet.

There are other ways to promote your business on the internet but none as fast, efficient and cost effective as email marketing.

Melvin Eugene Hill Jr introduces you to a step-by-step system any one can use to grow there email profits – http://www.myemailmastery.com

Author: Melvin Eugene Hill Jr
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty on LCD/Plasma TV

Email marketing tool Clang expands to UK

Anna Hart    Email Marketing, Twitter Marketing     billed-as-providing, clang, crm, digital-marketing, providing-clients

CRM-based digital marketing tool, Clang, has been launched in the UK, billed as providing clients with a customer-centric approach to email marketing.

Read the rest here:
Email marketing tool Clang expands to UK

Experian Marketing Services is First to Unleash Integrated Social Media Tools for Email Marketing

Rob Mead    Email Marketing, Twitter Marketing     Availability, experian-marketing, extensive-social, global-marketing, marketing, media-tools, standard-within, the-availability, today-announced

Experian Marketing Services, a global marketing leader and provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies, today announced the availability of extensive social media tools standard within its email application.

Read more here:
Experian Marketing Services is First to Unleash Integrated Social Media Tools for Email Marketing

12 Email Marketing Tips For a Small Business

K Singh    Email Marketing    

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of advertising for small businesses. In order to be successful on the internet and maximise the benefits of the internet, a small business needs to implement a result driven marketing strategy on the internet. The real benefits of the internet can be realised only if a business is able to use the internet to market its products and services.

Email marketing is one of the most effective and fastest growing marketing channels. One of the first steps in a successful email marketing campaign is to build an email distribution list of potential customers. A business can build an email list from a variety of sources including its website.

Managing a substantially large email marketing campaign will require a well planned strategy and may involve the services of a professional marketing company. If you do not have a large email list then it can be purchased easily from a direct marketing company that specialises in email list management. A business can also collect email addresses from potential customers via a newsletter registration form on the website.

Following are some 12 email marketing tips for a small business:

1. Start building an email marketing list of customers

If you do not have an email marketing list you can start building one now. Whether you have a small or a large client base, you can start by first including your existing customers on your email marketing list which you can build upon with time. A small business can start an email marketing campaign from a relatively small list which can expand with time. As new enquiries are received, the list can be expanded. It is a common practice to purchase targeted email list from a professional marketing company.

2. Email registration on your website

Offering customer with a way to register via your website is probably one of the easiest ways to build your own email list. A registration form can be added to your website with ease. The placement of the email registration feature on your website is important and has an impact t on conversion rates. It should be placed on a prominent place on the website. If your website uses a content management system then most likely the newsletter registration feature will be built in.

3. Start a Marketing Newsletter

Sending newsletters to your customers is one of the most effective email marketing techniques. You can start a newsletter on a topic related to our industry. The newsletter can be weekly, monthly or even quarterly. A newsletter provides an excellent opportunity to communicate with your customers on regular basis. You can use the newsletter to subsequently market your own products or services.

4. Improve awareness of your email marketing list

You can take some simple steps to increase the popularity of your email marketing newsletters and growing your email list. Creating a quality marketing email or newsletter requires time and effort so it is best sent out to as many people as possible.

Following are some simple methods to improve awareness about your marketing newsletter or email list and encourage people to register:

o Include a link to register for emails in all email correspondence.
o Include information about your email newsletter in invoices, purchase orders and other company documents.
o Include email registration link in a prominent place on your website and blog.
o Let your team know to inform customers about your marketing newsletter at every opportunity they get.
o Create an incentive to subscribe to your email or company newsletter e.g. discount coupons or prize draws.

5. Follow data protection act

It is vital that you respect customer’s privacy and take all steps necessary to protect customer data collected by your email marketing campaigns. You should not share information without prior consent from the customer. Your email marketing list should be opt in. When customers register their email address they are agreeing to receive marketing emails from you. If you purchase opt-in email marketing lists, you should do so from reliable sources only.

6. Send quality marketing emails

Nothing can be worse fro your branding than sending out a poorly designed marketing email to customers. You should research the content of your marketing email and plan your marketing campaign in advance. The content of the marketing email should be well researched and offer value to customers. It is OK to promote your products and business in your emails but you should try and offer a variety of information. A well balanced email is more likely to succeed than a purely promotional email. If the email you send is full of self promotion and does not offer real value then customers are likely to un-subscribe or opt-out form receiving emails in future. Focus on quality over quantity.

7. Select an appropriate subject for the marketing email

A good subject for the marketing email plays a vital role in deciding how many emails are opened and read by customers. It is important to choose the subject of the email with careful thought and consideration.

8. Design and Layout:

You should plan the structure of the email with care. The layout should be clutter free and easy to read. The design should be clean and minimalist. Use images carefully. Any images used should be optimised for fast loading time. The design should reflect your brand. You should also Include your logo and contact information.

9. Clean-up your email marketing list from time to time:

If you are maintaining your own email list then you should perform basic list maintenance tasks periodically. Any un-subscribed user should be removed from the list immediately. Similarly all old or not working email addresses should be removed. It is better to categorise your list in to different categories so you can pan your emails and send specific information to specific groups. At the same time any new contacts should be added so they are not left out in the next email you send out.

10. Test your marketing campaigns

Whether you send out regular emails or send then less frequently, it is vital that you test your email marketing campaign properly before you send them out. A spell check should be performed. Any links in the email should be checked to see if they are not broken. A good technique is to send a copy to yourself first.

11. Measure the performance of your Email Marketing campaigns

It is important to measure the success or failure of your email marketing campaigns. There are many ways to monitor the performance. The ultimate measure of success is the number of enquiries you receive as a direct result of your marketing emails. Statistics related to your campaign can provide a useful insight. Most email marketing software will allow you to monitor deliver rate, response rate, click rate and so on. You can find out how many emails were delivered, how many were opened and even how many links in the email were clicked. You can use this information to judge the effectiveness of each email that is sent and to plan and improvise on future campaigns.

12. Call to action

An effective marketing email should encourage users to take an action. Including a call to action statement in your marketing emails can improve the chances of conversion. A call to action can be anything from a request for more information to a link to buy a product.

The Internet marketing blog discusses email marketing techniques and other ways and to market your website.

Author: K Singh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Beading Necklace

Email-Marketing – The Complete Guide To Email Newsletter Marketing

Zach Katkin    Email Marketing    

Email marketing is one of the most powerful, effective ways to market your company and its products, but it’s often overlooked.

Email – What is Email?

Well, unless you’ve been hiding for a generation, email or electronic mail, has become the #1 form of communication in modern society. According to recent estimates, the number is approaching around 60 Billion email messages per day!

Email is popular. Friends and family use it to stay in touch across long distances. Co-workers use it when it’s more convenient than getting up and walking over or picking up the phone. Email is used to verify who you are (on various websites)… email is everywhere.

Knowing that email use is so prevalent it brings us to our next section – why email marketing?

Why Email Marketing?

In preparing for this article I was able to come up with 5 major reasons why a company or entity should do email marketing. These 6 reasons really ignore email marketing’s statistics – low cost, high effectiveness, etc. and really just concentrate on the benefits to your business after you’ve implemented:

• The Amazing Return On Investment
• Sales & Discounts
• News
• Surveys
• Saying in Front! (of your competition, of your clients, of vendors)

Return on Investment - According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $51.58 for every dollar spent on it in 2006. The expected figure for 2007 is $48.56, and the prediction for 2008 is $45.65. Email marketing to in house lists outperforms all the other direct marketing like print pieces, brochures, sales pamphlets, etc. Email marketing is incredibly inexpensive to produce and replicate, but incredibly effective.

Send Information – there’s always stuff going on at your business. You have updates, you have changes, you have information that your customers would appreciate having, and would appreciate knowing. Email marketing allows you to get out this information in an extremely efficient manner. Compose one email regarding a recent change at your business – target an appropriate group of clients (more to come regarding targeting) – and suddenly thousands of people you do business with every day know exactly what is going on. Sending information – the real heart of email – is probably one of the biggest (and simplest) reasons why you should be doing email marketing.

Sales & Discounts – Are you holding a special sale or offering long-time clients a special discount? Let your customers know and you could be bringing in many more times the business you are now. They say it’s most effective to sell to an existing client. Email marketing is a prime way to efficiently (but personally) communicate sales, deals or discounts to your audience of potential and existing customers.

News - Communicate your good news! In business people like to know they are working with growing, prosperous companies. It rubs off! I met Colin Quinn a few years ago and contribute that awkward meeting in the Newark airport to my success today.

Just kidding, but if you have been mentioned in the paper or have had a ribbon cutting, let people know. Broadcast your good news, attain celebrity – even local celebrity, and continue to prosper.

Surveys – Your customers, vendors, employees – everyone you work with – deserve a voice. A quick email newsletter along with a survey can help you gain insight into all aspects of your business and associates.

Staying in Front – I saved the best for last. In my experience in setting up and creating email marketing, the biggest thing I would like to communicate is Staying in Front!
People only have a limited memory. If you performed a service – a great service – someone will probably tell a friend or two – or refer a business associate. But, as time goes by, as they get farther away from the date of the service, they may forget about you.

The detailing job you performed on your client’s car was fantastic, but as time goes by – as situations in your client’s life arise that warrant a referral (a friend of your clients buys a used car for example) – the transaction is so far away that they forget that you are available with a service that will benefit them.

Email marketing destroys this time barrier. Clients you performed services on years ago when properly informed on your latest information, sales, news, surveys, etc. are getting an inbox full of you and can’t forget about you. Even if they don’t read every email the constant small reminders are a great tool to help your business stay in front. Email marketing allows you to stay in front of all of those clients and vendors you worked so hard to get, but may not be working with or helping at this exact moment.

Additionally, an email newsletter helps you stay in front of your competition. I’ve talked with many companies recently unsatisfied with their vendors or other services they’ve hired out, but they can’t even remember the company’s name! People are busy, they will forget. But, if your client does get targeted by a competitor an email newsletter – one that has helped keep your company in your client’s mind – is a great tool to retain your client.

Acquiring Email Addresses

There are a number of ways to acquire the email addresses of individuals to which you will send your email newsletter. Any amount of size will do. You can start small. We started with only about 60 or so addresses (friends, family, colleagues, clients, etc.). Your list will grow over time. But, the ONLY way in which you should acquire emails are via free methods:

Existing Associates - Tap your existing clients for emails. If you already have some kind of excel spreadsheet with all of your clients and vendors or if you are using more advanced CRM software start there. Compile your list from people you work with every day.

Networking Events – If you go to networking event ask everyone you meet if they would mine receiving your email newsletters. More often than not your list will grow incredibly fast once you start concentrating on it. Most of these suggestions involve events and people you attend and see every day.

Trade Show – Offer a free gift, guide, or consulting session to everyone who is willing to be added to your list. You’re at the trade show to network and market your products or services, acquiring a real qualified email address allows you to do that for a lifetime.

Targeting - Different emails will have different audiences. A message you have for your vendors might not apply to your customers – in fact it might be imperative that you don’t send that message as it will send mixed signals or tarnish relationships. That is why as you begin to acquire your list make sure to break it up. This process will vary depending on who you work with, generally you will have clients/customers, vendors, leads, friends & family, etc. As your list grows and you continue to hone in on your email marketing skills the more targeted your list is the better.

DO NOT USE PAID LISTS – Paid lists or compiling randomly found email addresses from websites throughout the net – although allowed – will lead to nothing but trouble in all but the most lucky or extreme of cases. Simply put, do not solicit to anyone that you haven’t physically met or asked to a part of the newsletter – email marketing, when done right will take more time, but in the long run it will be more effective, have a higher return, and will keep you out of trouble.

Marketing to people who have not asked or given you permission can get your account banned from different services (if you are using a paid email newsletter service) destroying any hard work you put into the design or creation of your targeted lists.

Marketing to people who have not given you permission can also lead to the server where you send out the messages becoming black listed – hurting anyone else on that same server and leading to overall mail problems for your business and the other businesses on the server.

Creating Your Email Newsletter

You’re ready to go, you’ve decided you want to do an email newsletter. You’ve spent sometime gathering some addresses what do you do next?

Service: – Create your email. There are a number of ways to do this. If you are on a very small budget or just starting out you can simply use your own email, outlook, hotmail, or yahoo will all work fine. Paste your contact emails, draft a short message and hit send.

Outlook users can also do what’s called a mail merge – and if you’ve setup your email list through an excel document you can merge appropriate fields for a more personalized message.

If you’re looking for something more advanced, maybe something that is designed to look like a newsletter with your logo, you can play around with the tools the above services offer or move to a complete email newsletter service.

Personally, I am a proponent of Constant Contact. We’ve been working with the service for years. It is very easy to use and customize and you pay per contacts – not per number of emails sent. That might not work for all companies, but if you have a 5000+ list of contacts and you send a message out twice a week, the number of emails sent quickly adds up.

If you are looking to create a more advanced look, with accurate tracking I highly recommend investing in one of these services.

Etiquette – Your email should be polite, but laid back. Speak to your audience in the 2nd person, it takes a while, but the affect is tremendous. In the end you know you’re audience best – write your email for them. What works for a crazy online tee shirt company might not work for a financial advisor.

Subject Line – Make sure your subject line pertains to the body of your email but, be creative and inventive. Experiment with different ways to say what it is you’ve created. You need people to see your name, see your subject line, and want to click.

Design – Whether you use one of the above email newseltter services or just your plain email keep design in mind. You might not need a logo, fancy colors, or cool effects, but direct your audiences eye with bold text, bullet points, colors, etc. And make it as simple as possible. Email inboxes are getting more and more cluttered and people have little or no time to actually read. Quickly direct them to the most important points.

Content – Much like design, make your content short. Typically a paragraph works, but a few sentences is better. Time and time again in doing usability and optimization tests with clients emails that are short and simple perform the best. Additionally your email needs to include a call to action. Whether its drop dead simple – a big button asking your audience to donate – or included in the body of the text give your readers a next step. Do you want them to click, to call, etc. and whatever that goal is, make sure they can reach it quickly and simply.

Sending Email

When sending your emails there are two primary things to remember, send at the right time, and send to the right audience.

We discussed divvying your list up into different groups or lists. As you acquire the emails, break them out as best you can. That way, when sending emails you can send specific, targeted messages, to those particular groups. We’ve even gone so far as to create groups for certain events we’ve attended. That way we can send a message just to those people we’ve met – or perhaps a special promotion.

Timing is everything and email newsletters are no different. A message sent at 5:30 pm on a Friday will not usually be as effective as a one sent on a Wednesday at 2pm. Much like the crafting of your content, keep your audience’s habits in mind. Do they check their email at 5am in the morning? Do they have busy work days involving lots of email? Overall we’ve found that email send in the middle of the week has last chance of getting bundled in with the end of the work week mess or the overflow that seems to pour in on Mondays. Time of day is also important. All audiences are different but if you are seeking professionals we’ve found mid afternoon is great. Most people have already sifted through their inbox mess and when your email pops up in the lower right hand corner of their screen it is a wonderful distraction.

Tracking Your Emails

Depending on what service you use to send your email tracking may be difficult or simple. This is another reason why we love the email newsletter services as they allow for easy, almost creepy, tracking. You can view email-over-email who clicked on what and when. As you continue to send out emails you may start to notice that a certain time works better or certain words in your subject line leads to better open rates.

As you do track your emails begin to experiment and refine. Overtime with slow tweaks you can have a highly opened email that almost everyone reads.

Legalities

Inspired by my recent trip to the Entrepreneurs Law School at FGCU I decided to throw in a little bit about the legalities surrounding email. Basically you can send email to anyone, at any address, no matter where or how you got that address as long as these basic requirements are met:

• Use a non-elusive subjectline
• Allow people to unsubscribe
• Feature your company information (name, address, phone, etc.)

Whew… that was a lot. But, once you get started I am positive you’ll be excited at the results. If you have any questions regarding email newsletters or would like to learn more please feel free to contact me [http://www.atilus.com/contact.html]!

Author: Zach Katkin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff

Email Marketing… Still King of the Internet

Kevin T. Smith    Email Marketing    

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications. Marketing via email is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. It is also referred to by similar terms known as: bulk emailing, mass emailing, email advertising, email promotions, email ad campaigns, emailing service, email ad promotions, web emailing, e-mailing, e-mail marketing, opt-in emailing, opt-in emailing, email list management, email web advertising, direct email marketing, email marketing solution, bulk email marketing software, email marketing campaign, email promotion internet marketing, email management, email data management.

Email marketing is one of the most successful methods of marketing ever developed. By far it is one of the most effective and inexpensive methods of advertising available to you. If you have an email marketing strategy and if that strategy works then mail marketing is very affordable and effective. Because email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication it ranks high in popularity. This form of marketing lets you deliver your message to your potential market (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message).

Email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right. Often it is reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic. Emailing is routinely used as a way to advertise a product, company, or an opportunity. The underlying concept with sending emails to your market is all about relationship building. Email marketing is about developing a relationship with your recipients and building of trust. But be aware, if they feel you are misusing or abusing that relationship they will not hesitate to report you as a spammer.

Software

Apart from cost of email marketing software and Internet connection there is not any other substantial cost that a marketer has to bear to execute a successful email marketing campaign. With the help of
email marketing software, even individuals doing business from home are improving their marketing communications and adding new business. Using email marketing software is a very inexpensive
and effective way to create email marketing campaigns that are professional quality. Utilizing email software is a great way to contact your site visitors again and again with information about your products and services. Customization with the help of email software enables you to address your consumer by their first name in the subject line. Many email marketing software applications allow you to pre-schedule the mail delivery date and time and send it automatically, so that you don’t miss out. Many bulk email marketing software services track the number of users that have responded by opening your mail or replying to your email. Keep in mind though, before using email software or doing any bulk email marketing, make sure you comply with all spam regulations and the rules of your own web host.

Make sure you use reliable and well-recognized email management software. One of the most powerful and highly recommended sources for web based emailing software that will help you automate your
email marketing efforts is the Constant Contact email management system. It may sound daunting at first for those who do not use computers too much, but let me tell you from experience, it takes only a few hours to learn how to use the software and only a few minutes to create new emails to send out in bulk.

Email Marketing is Still King of the Internet

Email marketing is the perfect medium to pick up where other marketing leaves off. Email marketing is still very popular because sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication. It is an extremely cost effective way of reaching your potential market. Since email marketing is one of the most successful means of advertising ever developed, you should be using it. As you may already know, it costs a lot more to acquire a new customer then it does to keep an existing one, and email marketing is your secret weapon in your marketing toolbox when it comes to
customer retention.

Author: Kevin T. Smith
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker

Email Marketing for Success

Courtney Spaulding    Email Marketing    

We all know that when it comes to internet marketing for your business, one area of focus is driving traffic to your website. Additionally, most marketers and website owners want to keep track of how many unique visitors and hopefully new customers they are receiving. However, one thing most people dont think about is following up with the customers and site visitors they already have. Many people dont realize how beneficial follow-up/email marketing can be long-term. In fact, follow-up marketing can be fundamental to your businesss success. Studies show that email marketing can increase revenue and prevent the loss of 64% of your sales. You see, it is generally easier to sell to existing customers than it is to find new customers. That being said, email marketing becomes a hugely powerful marketing tool for business owners.

Over the years, email marketing has often been abused by spammers. However, despite such abuse, email is still very much valuable and valued by subscribers. Email marketing serves as a medium to notify former customers of timely deals, offers, and opportunities. Once subscribers to your website make a purchase, they are more apt to purchase again through a follow-up email. Follow-up or email marketing is based on having credibility with your customers and building trust with them. Now with email marketing, many people opt to use an auto-responder and have an auto-responder account. Auto-responders allow for quick, consistent, and personalized email follow-ups. Most newbie marketers dont realize it takes around 7 times of contacting potential customers to generate a sale. Guru and pro marketers are aware of this and understand that follow-up/email marketing is fundamental to any websites success. The beauty of auto-responders is that they allow you to put your email marketing campaign on auto-pilot, saving you both time and money. The whole process becomes automatic and you can market with structure and ease. When you want to send out information to your previous customers and subscribers, an auto-responder allows you to create your email content, send out the message, and schedule your delivery dates or times. Additionally, once you have your email marketing campaign set in motion, you can add new messages at any time or promote limited time offers. Auto-responders allow you to touch base with your subscribers, reminding them of your existence and your services.

Building your email marketing list for your auto-responder is not difficult if you have a decent amount of website traffic. Additionally, if your site is informative and your offer various free bonuses or offers you can easily get individuals to subscribe to your list. Remember, if
done right email marketing can be a very successful tool for business owners. But the key is doing it right. You want to offer valuable content and not be too sales pitchy with your marketing emails. Your list will remain loyal to your site as long as you dont abuse their trust. So when using email marketing, be honest, and only offer products or services you believe in or have tried yourself. As long as your subscribers remain on your email marketing list, you can use follow-up marketing to contact them. Your general profit stems from the multiple sales you make from your re-occurring customers. After your first sale to an individual, you should stay in contact and offer them new products or services of value to them. So you simply, set up your email marketing campaign and reach out to your list consistently, on auto-pilot.

With all email marketing, the content of your emails is very important. There are a few key things to remember when writing your emails. When it comes to the content of your emails, you want to make sure your emails are distinguished from spam and junk-mail. One of the best ways to do that is to make your emails personalized. Some auto-responders offer a personalizing feature for email marketing campaigns. People are more open to an email that calls them by their name. No one wants to feel like you just see them as one in a herd or like a nameless number. People want to feel special and thus, I always suggest addressing email recipients by their name with email marketing. Also, make the email content as personal to their needs as possible. Secondly, you may want to consider avoiding email marketing campaigns during the holidays. People receive so many emails during the holidays that some just delete them without a glance. Therefore, I suggest you avoid later November and most of December. You can start up your email marketing campaign again around mid to late January. Overall, avoid all major national holidays when you do email marketing. Thirdly, the subject line of your emails is very important. This is where you hook the email recipient and get them to open the email. Make sure your subject line is a brief sentence summarizing your emails content. People love the phrases free and free trial so if either can be used for the email marketing offer you are sending them try to use these terms in the subject line. These are typical words that sale and generate consumer interest. You may also want to try teasers like A personal message for or Members-only discount. With email marketing, you want to grab their attention, make them sit up and notice.

Now, when it comes to your emails content layout, remember to maintain consistency with email marketing. Your emails should reflect the design of your business or corporation. You want to be sure the email recipients connect the emails they receive with your particular business.
This can be done with the use of visual slogans or company logos. You want the image of your company or business to remain a constant both through your website and email marketing efforts. Additionally, in the body of the email always include your website address, reason for contact, and a call to action. I have learned it is best to be short and to the point with email marketing. No one has time to read long boring emails these days. Peoples attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. With this in mind, you may have to tweak your emails from time to time to find out what is effective for your email marketing project. The point is to pull people to your website again and again. Dont reiterate what can easily be read on your website just stick to the valuable new offer or information you can provide them.

The most powerful secret to increasing sales is email marketing. The key is being repetitive, consistent, fast, and personalized. Email marketing can double your web sales. Through follow-up marketing you can tap into your pre-existing customers and generate more sales. An auto-responder simplifies the whole process and puts your email marketing campaign on super auto-pilot. Email marketing is one of the most powerful techniques guru marketers use to optimize their business profit potential. Every marketer should try it; it is a proven tool for success.

Author: Courtney Spaulding
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty tariff

Mastering Email Marketing

PJ Germain    Email Marketing    

Affiliate marketers depend upon having their marketing emails opened, read, and acted upon. Unless those three things happen, the affiliate marketer will pretty much be out of the affiliate marketing business.

If you are formatted your email correctly and it is readable in all email programs, then you just need to be certain that you have done everything possible to encourage the recipients to:

Open the email: The subject line is one of the two determining factors of whether an email is in fact opened or sent unopened and unread to the deleted mail file of the recipient. The first factor is who the email is from. Since the recipient opted into your list, it is fair to assume that they want to get email from you. The second factor is the subject line.

Most autoresponders allow 50 character long subject lines. Only the first 25 or less have any real value. You must use those 25 words to entice the recipient into opening the email to see what you have to say.

Personalize the email in the subject line. Your autoreponder will allow you to do this. “John, you can save money and get a free gift!” is much more effective than just, “You can save money and get a free gift!” So first, personalize your subject line.

The word, “free” has been maligned but do not believe everything you hear. People like free. Everybody likes free….poor people, middle class people and maybe especially rich people.

There are other words that have proven to be effective in subject lines as well. Ease or easy, magic or magical, are some of them. You must use some mystery and some tease in your subject line, in order to get the recipients to open them.

Read the email: Once the recipient has been convinced to open the marketing email from you, the next trick is to get them to read what you have to say. The problem is that most computer users do not in fact READ anything. They SCAN. So it is up to you to get them to actually slow down and really read what you have to say.

The email must be interesting. If you can start with a story….and I’m not talking about a novel…I am talking about a two line story, you can get their attention. “Bill thought of himself as a loser until he tried our product.” This is a story.

You must include bullet points in order to make your marketing email easy to read. You do not ever want to include large blocks of text. Short simple bulleted points that list the advantages that your product can provide will make it easy for the recipients to see the important facts as a glance.

Act on the email: Once you have convinced the recipients to open and read your marketing email, the next step is to get them to actually act on your suggestions you have made, (i.e. buy what you are selling).

The first thing you need to do is to make the link for ordering your product or service easy to see. Remember to never word-wrap links. All email programs don’t deliver email with word wrapped links. All the recipient will see is the word…the link will not be included.

The second thing to do is to either make the offer for a specific limited time (midnight on Thursday, November 30th) and not just say “limited time” or to limit the offer to a specific number of people (this offer is limited to the first 200 applicants) and not just limited space is available.

Common Mistakes People Make when Writing Promo Emails:
There are at least as many ways to do a promotional email wrong as there are ways to get it right. One of the first mistakes that affiliate marketers make when writing their promo emails is that they…

Lose sight of the objective: The ONLY objective of a marketing email is to sell the product or service that you are promoting to the members of your opt-in list. Every word of the email needs to be directed at realizing that one objective.

See their list as email addresses: An opt-in list is much more than a list of names and email addresses. It is a list of people! Real, live, human people are what make up your opt-in list. You must market your product or service to humans and not email addresses.

Fail to provide themselves with the right tools for the job: If you are painting a room, you need paintbrushes, paint rollers, drop cloths, etc. If you are send promotional emails, you need the right tools for the job, as well.

Use weak and ineffective subject lines: Most auto responders allow you to use up to 50 characters in a subject line. The first 25 of those characters are what stands between the marketer and an email that actually opened and read. (The second 25 should be left on the table.) If marketing emails are deleted without being read, they are totally useless. Writing powerful, attention-getting subject lines that inspire recipients to open your marketing emails is an ability that needs to be developed to a high degree of expertise.

Effective subject lines are short, to the point, have a tease quality and never promise more than what will be delivered in the attached marketing email.

Use all capital letters: The use of all capital letters in any kind of email is the equivalent of shouting or yelling at a person that you are having a real world conversation with. It is rude and completely unproductive. Do not yell at the members of your opt-in list. All capital letters do not draw attention nor convey excitement.

Use a lot of exclamation points: One exclamation point at the end of a sentence means that the sentence is an exclamatory one. Multiple exclamation points at the end of a sentence are another form of yelling and they do not denote added excitement. They are taking up valuable space in your marketing email and maybe even irritating the recipients.

Never use bullet points: It is a known fact that people do not read marketing emails word for word. People scan marketing emails. Marketing emails need to be easy to SCAN. The use of bullet points makes it easy for recipients to easily identify the important information that is contained in the email. You should always use bullet points for the main points that you are making in your marketing email.

Make their emails too long: Marketing emails should be short. They shouldn’t have a scroll bar and they should only be 300 to 400 words long. They should never contain large blocks of text. It will not be read.

Fail to use the P.S. line effectively: The P.S. line(s) of a marketing email appear last but they are as important as the first word of a marketing email. The P.S. line needs to be used to hit the most important aspect of the email again or as a tease for an upcoming email.

Email marketing is a critical element for any successful internet marketing. Take time to learn these specific tips and they will pay you back 100 fold!

Author: PJ Germain
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

Email Marketing Campaign Software And The 3 Requirements

Melvin Perry    Email Marketing    

Is it possible to find email marketing campaign software that does everything you want it to do?

Having a reliable software that will track all of your email advertisements, as well as store all of your opt in subscribers is a necessary tool for email marketers. Without legitimate email marketing campaign software to track all of your email marketing campaigns, youre just swinging in the air with your marketing. The true earmark of an excellent email marketer is that he or she tracks every single detail of their email marketing campaign.

What caused many marketers in the past to move away from email marketing was the lack of seeing profitable results from it. This was mainly due to them not utilizing email marketing campaign software to track all of their campaigns. With good email marketing campaign software, you will have the insight on which lists are most responsive, as well as how you should write your emails in order to generate the highest response.

So what do the best email marketing campaign software offer to their users?

Listed below are 3 important requirements that should be included in any email marketing campaign software you use now or in the future.

1. Must Measure The Open Rate

A great way to measure your email subject line effectiveness is to have software that tracks the amount of subscribers that actually open your email to read it. With this one mandatory tracking tool, you can determine which email subject lines are the most effective. This is powerful because you can gather an archive or database of the most responsive email subject lines and tailor all of your subject lines around the database of headlines that produced the highest email open rate.

If you are going to invest in any email marketing campaign software, you must make sure that this open rate measurement service is included in the software. This is the number one tool that you should be on the look out for.

2. Must Track Visitors

Good email marketing campaign software will measure not only the email open rate, but also track the amount of visitors that click on your link within your email in order to visit your recommended website. This visitor tracking tool is very important because it lets you know 2 major things.

The first thing this tracking tool tells us is the number of responsive subscribers on the email list that we are marketing to. If you market to the same email list for some time, this tracking tool can give you an overall estimate of how many loyal subscribers are on this email list. For example, if you send out emails to a 10,000 subscriber list, and you only track on average 400 clicks from each mailing, then you can conclude that 4% of the subscribers on this list are loyal, responsive subscribers. Based on the information, you can then try to come up with creative ways to boost your email readership and improve the percentage of responsive subscribers. A decent percentage of responsive subscribers is around 10%.

The second thing this tracking tool tells us is what type of email copy we should write. Many people argue whether or not short email copy or long email copy is the best. This argument will be settled if everyone just tracked their own campaigns using email marketing campaign software. Different email list databases respond differently based off of the relationship you build with your subscribers. Therefore, there is no clear cut way to say that long email copy is better than short email copy. Only you can determine which works better for your own list by tracking the response of your email subscribers.

3. Must Gather a Database

Another excellent service is the capacity to compile a database of your most effective email campaigns. An outstanding email marketing campaign software will have the capacity to compile a list of your best email subject lines, as well as your best email ad copy that produced the most visitors. A high quality software will automate the arduous task of collecting data from your marketing results.

I hope that these 3 requirements helped you discover what you need to look for in email marketing campaign software. Finding software that includes all of these requirements can be hard to find. But if you find email marketing software that does all of these requirements at a decent cost, then I would advise that you take advantage of it. In my free report, I include information about a very affordable email marketing campaign service that I recommend. You can get this report at http://www.list-building-videos.com But if you are doing a search for email marketing software, then you must make sure that it includes all of these 3 requirements. These 3 requirements are important for the success of your email marketing campaigns and will guarantee that you earn the maximum amount of income from every email promotion that you make.

Author: Melvin Perry
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Beading Necklace