Is Email Marketing Dead?

Probably one of the mainstays on the Internet has always been email marketing. Is email marketing dead though? I guess a lot of that depends on who you ask. Many marketers are reporting that email marketing is dead. Now I don't know about that, but one thing for sure it sure has changed over the last few years. With spam on the rise email marketing has taken a real hit on that end of it. Spam is a problem that has hurt email marketing more than anything else. one of the reasons spam has hurt it so bad is that the spam filters that many of these email clients use actually block mail that isn't spam and many will block html emails also. This my no stretch means that email marketing is dead. It definitely has slowed down as far as getting a very good response.

Can you do anything about it? Of course you always have different options to make your email to get through and get read.

Now their our some companies out their that you can join where they will make sure it gets through for a certain amount of money per month. That is one option that you have to get the message through. The other is set up a whitelist which is mail that you want to get through. By putting email addresses on the whitelist the mail has a real good chance of getting through.

Their are email marketing tricks that you can also use to get the email opened instead of toss in the trash. One of the first thing is the email subject line. Making promises that are impossible is something that just won't get it open.

People have seen so many different subject lines that they can basically tell the lies from the truths. If you want to get your emails open the best rule is be honest and have short subject lines. Email marketing has changed through the years in the body of the emails to. People are getting time of long emails with winded sales letters. People get sales letters all the time and if you start your email out like that look for it to get deleted real quickly. Starting your emails out in a friendly manner just like you would if your talking to a friend and than work towards helping that person in the email. This is the proper way to market things. Many people have lost this conception thus they will tell you email marketing is dead when in reality it's not.

People will also tell you that email marketing response is very low. Now really this is a myth. I know marketers who market solely by emails. How is this possible with such small open rates according to the various marketing guru's. It's real simple when you provide a quality product people will open your emails. Email marketing is built on trust and once you lose that trust you are in trouble. People don't realize that trust is big when your talking about email marketing. Building trust and a relationship with people will get emails open at a much greater rate. As people realize that this is the key to email marketing than we can get read of the misconception that email marketing is dead. People actually don't mind reading emails as long as they have value if they don't they won't those are really just simple facts. As far as the future of email marketing it will go through changes over the years just like it has before, but if done right it's still a viable option to get your message to the masses.

5 Ways To Fail And 5 Ways To Succeed At Email Marketing

5 Ways To Fail

How many ways are there to really mess up at email marketing? Let me count the ways! There are at least an equal number of ways to do things wrong as there are to do things right.

There may even be more ways to do things wrong than right. There is usually only one right way but

something there are multiple wrong ways.

1. A marketing email must be formatted so that it can be read in any email delivery system. All email delivery systems do not use HTML. Some only use plain text.

Plain text is only ACSII characters. Those are the characters that you can see on your keyboard. The only program that comes on your computer that uses only ACSII characters is NotePad.

Use that program to write your email marketing messages. Not doing that is one of the primary ways to fail at email marketing.

2. Plain text email delivery systems will deliver messages that have lines longer than 65 characters but all of the characters greater than 65 will be scrambled. The email message will be a lot of gibberish. This is yet another way to fail at email marketing.

3. Marketing email messages should only promote one product or one service at a time. Multiple products and services advertised at the same time will lead to email marketing failure.

4. Links that are sent word-wrapped will not appear as clickable links in plain text email delivery systems. The recipient will only see the words. They wont see the link and they wont know what the link is. Not sending full website addresses is another way to guarantee email marketing failure.

5. Marketing emails that are filled with misspelled words and poor grammar will cause the recipients to think that the sender is not all that bright or, maybe just uneducated. This is yet another way to fail at email marketing.

5 Ways to Succeed

Success is a beautiful word! Success at email marketing is a beautiful phrase. There are so many ways to fail at email marketing....that's the bad news.

The good news is that there are techniques available that, if not guarantee success, at least increase the odds and put them in your favor.

1. Build your list. Do NOT even consider buying a list. Build your list from scratch. Yes, it will take time but once you get a list going to will actually self-propagate and it will be a list of names of real customers and real prospective customers. Use all of the available techniques and your list will be your most valuable asset. A long and impressive list of real prospects opens doors for you that will otherwise remain closed.

2. When you send your marketing emails to your list be certain that they are formatted in such a way that all email delivery systems will deliver them in readable form. Use NotePad to compose your messages so that you have only ACSII characters and be sure that your lines are never longer than 65 characters.

3. Never, ever word-wrap links. Plain text email delivery systems will deliver word-wrapped links without the link. Always type out full website addresses.

4. Never promote more than one product or service per marketing email. Keep your emails short. 300 to 400 words long is long enough for a marketing email. Be certain that all of the links in your marketing email work and that every word is spelled correctly. Double check your grammar, as well.

5. Do NOT over-do sending marketing emails. Remember that these people who opted into your mailing list gave you permission to email them but they did not give you permission to pester them to death with marketing messages.

Earn Money Online With Email Marketing

Many companies of all sizes and types use email marketing as a low cost way to contact customers and potential customers because it is very cheap to do when compared to avenues like traditional direct marketing.

Email marketing is a proven way to promote products, whether they are products you promote through an affiliate program or your own products you develop. Email marketing is a very powerful tool to make more money online.

Your email marketing campaign works by first getting people to join your opt in email subscriber list. You can do this by placing an email capture form on your website and creating a free theme-based newsletter to send to your subscribers.

You can even be extra careful to follow email spam laws by making your list a double opt in list where the subscriber has to confirm their subscription before they can join your your list.

Your newsletter will feature interesting content for your target market. Once you have built up a good sized list, you can start placing some ads for the product or service you are promoting in your emails. You can even build a separate list for announcements for people who want to know about new products, tools and offerings in the industry. They will be more likely to buy from you because they already trust and like you.

Types of Email Marketing:

* Newsletter (Free) - will have a couple of ads, as mentioned above.

* Information Please Mailer. These will help you close more sales. You place either a link or email capture box on your website for visitors to fill out with their email address. They will then get a series of emails with more information about the product with a call to action at the end. This method of email marketing is very effective because it warms up the reader before sending them to the sales page to close the sale.

* Special Broadcasts. these are sent to your whole list and discusses a product or service that will help your visitor in some way. Having loyal subscribers who trust you and want to know what products you recommend is a great way to make money online.

Two Tools For Effective Internet Email Marketing

* An Auto Responder. There are many services for email list management

* Email Signature File

Can Spam Act

It is very important to follow the Can Spam Act when sending your emails. In every email you send out, it is a good practice to include your name, company and physical address at the end. I didnt like doing this either, but you wont have any problems since people can always opt out of your list, and email list building and email marketing is crucial to building your online business. It is also very important to allow your visitors to opt out of your email list should they want to.

Spam Filters

Email marketing list management services save time for hundreds of webmasters. Some services have a built in service that lets you check your email messages against a Spam Filter so you can know what to change so your email will be more likely to reach the visitors inbox, and not get trashed in the spam folder.

Another good thing about email marketing is that it is very easy to set up an autoresponder or free newsletter and the results are easy to track. You can know what links they click on inside the email and how well your messages are working in getting you more sales.

Email marketing management services run on very fast machines so your emails arrive instantly and most people check and read their email everyday. This makes email marketing easy to use to as a great way to supplement your online affiliate marketing efforts.

Since you will need content for your newsletters, try to find affiliate programs which provide you with quality pre-written articles to use to promote their products. Without the need to spend time researching and writing your own content and with an effective email marketing system on your side, you will surely earn more money online and bring in more affiliate commissions.