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.

Email Marketing Has It Lost It Effectiveness?

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, is the use of email in marketing communications. Email marketing is still very popular because sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication. It lets you deliver your message to the people (unlike a website, where the people have to come to your message). Email marketing has proven very successful for those who do it right.Is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience.

Email marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic. And is a technique used by marketing professionals that are looking to make contact with companies and individual prospect alike that have met their special parameters. Email marketing is still one of the most cost effective ways to contact prospects and customers. It is still one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes.

Email marketing is about developing a relationship with your recipients. While is one of the easiest, most convenient ways to market your company,and products. Email marketing is not expensive,is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget. Email marketing is very effective which enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site.Email promotion is inexpensive, extremely effective and very easy to do. And still a very effective way to generate traffic to your website and more sales.

Email campaign is most effective when the recipients are targeted and the information is relevant and timely.Is more cost-effective and achieves results faster than traditional direct mail marketing. Most importantly, email marketing is twice as effective as traditional direct mail in getting a response from the targeted audience. Is an easy, affordable, and effective online marketing tactic that allows you to open up dialogue with your customers so that you can send personalized more relevant communications which your customers want to receive.

An effective email marketing strategy includes content and frequency planning, creative and content development and usage of a spam-free deployment system as well as email campaign tracking, analysis and reporting. With response rates that range from 3-15%, marketers can not overlook the power, effectiveness, and cost savings that responsible; selecting email marketing can bring to an organization. It is extremely cost effective, can be highly targeted and customised, is measurable and best of all takes advantage of the consumer's most prolific touch point with the Internet, their inbox.

There are many different methods for promoting your business online, but one of the most effective is still the email campaign. Building your list online can be one of the most effective ways of promoting your business online. Email marketing is a very easy and effective way of staying in touch with your clients as well as your potential clients. An online marketing program is incomplete without the use of an effective email marketing of its product.

Email marketing is by far the safest, most reliable and cost-effective medium to get your message out quickly. Is perfect for approaching both businesses and consumers;Whether you are targeting consumers or businesses, you can use email to send an informational or marketing message to your most important customers or prospects. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible $48. It has been emphasized time and again that email marketing is the strategy to have in your business. Permission-based email marketing has some specific advantages over other tools of online marketing.

The Secrets To Affiliate Email Marketing

So, you've joined the ultimate affiliate program that's going to show you how to make a bunch of money online. But, it is rare that affiliate programs actually show you how to grow a huge email list via affiliate email marketing that you can profit from over and over again.

So, in this article, I am going to tell you how you can harness affiliate email marketing to boost your profits and make way more profits than the typical "internet marketer" that will never make enough money to pay for their phone bill.

1. Choose the perfect affiliate program to promote via affiliate email marketing. This may sound obvious, but a good affiliate programs, with banners, sample emails, and high converting sales letters indicate that they have a decent affiliate program you can promote via affiliate email marketing. The best ones actually train you how to promote their products, but these programs are one in a million.

2. Create an opt in page to collect names and email addresses for affiliate email marketing- In order to really practice affiliate email marketing, you have to collect customer's email addresses. This is commonly done by creating an opt in page that consists of an enticing headline, a couple "teaser bullets" that get their curiosity up and encourages them to enter their info. You also need a "call to action" which, in this case, is a simple name and email you can use to market to the prospect with affiliate email marketing. All of this info needs to go into an autoresponder service as Aweber or GetResponse that'll automate the affiliate email marketing process.

3. Write emails that promote your affiliate product. You'll then want to write a series of 7 autoresponder emails that promotes your affiliate product via affiliate email marketing. You can do this two ways: by writing a long email that promotes your product with a direct link to the affiliate page, or writing a short email that links to a blog post that promotes the product. The latter will allow you to evade spam filters that can scuttle your affiliate email marketing efforts and leave you with an empty bank account.

4. A special note on email frequency: we recommend sending out an email every 2-3 days during your affiliate email marketing campaign. Emailing your opt-in list may elicit spam complaints by prospects that aren't used to getting frequent emails. Emailing less often might allow the prospect to forget about you. An email every 2-3 days will give you a good baseline to start with you affiliate email marketing campaign---until you can test and track to see what frequency garners the highest response.

It is a common saying that "the money is in the list." This is especially the case for affiliate email marketing as it is if you were marketing your own product. So follow these general guidelines to get the highest response from your most valuable possession in internet marketing: your affiliate email marketing list.

To discover how to ramp up your affiliate email marketing efforts, get our free video and learn from internet marketing's elite players.

Online Email Marketing 5 Keys To Profits

Online email marketing has become a very important and crucial marketing plan for many companies offline and online. When you have just finished creating a product, the success of your product is largely dependent on how good you promote and endorse it. Online email marketing is just one of many efficient ways to endorse your product on the internet. Listed below are five keys to making profits with online email marketing.

When doing online email marketing, the first thing you need to consider is how well you build your email list. When building your email list, you want to accumulate a targeted list of subscribers and consumers that are interested in your target market. You should only have people within your online email marketing database that have a good probability of purchasing any of your products. Otherwise, your email promotions will be no more than junk and spam for the most part.

The second key to online email marketing success is to craft your emails really well. The emails that you write should convey a clear and precise message to the reader of your emails. The sales copy of the email should be appealing and you should not use too many images or graphics as well.

The third key to a successful online email marketing campaign is to make sure all of your emails are free from spelling and grammatical errors. If a reader sees an email with a few mistakes, it may turn him or her off from reading your email. In other words, it leaves a bad impression on the reader.

The fourth key of an online email marketing campaign has to do with the title or subject line of your email. The subject of your email is usually the first thing a reader will see when he opens his or her email inbox. Therefore, the subject will determine whether or not your email will get opened so that it could be read. That is why the subject line is highly important when it comes to doing online email marketing.

The fifth key is to be mindful of the type of readers you are sending your messages to when doing your online email marketing. Some of the readers who may read your email promotions may access your emails through their handheld devices and read them through the preview pan. So you may have to craft your emails knowing that this may occur when you send out your online email marketing promotions.

Email Marketing - The Key Ingredients To Prepare A Delicious Campaign Curry

To enjoy a delicious campaign curry, you need to put ingredients such that the final curry tastes good. You need to take utmost care, not to miss out on any of the ingredients, lest the curry will not taste good.

To start with, let me first tell you about email marketing.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of
Communicating commercial or promotional messages to an audience. It is a collection of related ads or offers. Email marketing is the practice of sending sales letters or customer newsletters by email. Email communications are often more effective than printed direct mail, because a reader can click on a link and go straight to the website the sender wants you to go.

In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. This method of direct marketing is less costly as compared to other media investments like Newspaper ads, TV Ads. Email Marketing is more than just sending bulk emails, newsletters, or auto responders, and then keeping your fingers crossed. Rather, effective email marketing campaigns involve a targeted developmental process and intelligent email list management - smart marketing that works for you.

Email Marketing campaigns are nothing but, promoting yourself and your products in the market through emails to your existing or potential clients to gain recognition of your product.

Let us now know about the ingredients for preparing an email campaign.

Ingredient 1:

Campaign: What is a campaign? A campaign contains a collection of one or more ad groups, which have the same budget, schedule, and geo-targeting criteria. Campaigns are typically created to achieve a specific marketing goal. To send email content to a group of email addresses is called an email campaign. An email campaign typically consists of Email Content, Email Addresses, Subject Line, Test Emails, From and Reply To address etc.(e.g. a new product launch campaign, or a campaign that targets customers in a specific geographic location).

An email campaign can be a normal campaign, a split campaign or even a recurring campaign.
Split Campaign: A campaign can be split based on specific criteria like list, content, subject line and other factors.

Recurring Campaign: A campaign which is sent again and again at specific interval set to email address. This could be based on certain criteria's if required.

Ingredient 2:

Opted Format: What types of formats does a email campaign go to the client? The Opted format could be in HTML, Text or AOL formats. The format is opted by user in the Campaign Request Form (CRF).

Ingredient 3:

Campaign Calendar: It is a calendar wherein you have the current and the upcoming list of campaigns.

Ingredient 4:

Campaign Request Form (CRF): The CRF contains the campaign name, campaign subject line, the campaign number, the client name, his email ID, the opted format, the TAT of the campaign(or the Deployment date. of the final campaign), the test list & the final list it has to be sent & any specific conditions mentioned by the client.

Ingredient 5:

Friendly From Address: It is the Friendly Form of from Address (email address) used to send an email, displayed when recipient receives email (eg.Begonia). It is the name displayed before the actual email address while sending an email.

Ingredient 6:

Friendly Reply to Address: It is the Friendly Form of from Address (email address) used to receive an email, displayed when recipient replies email (eg.seoindiaonline). It is the name displayed before the actual email address while replying an email.

Note: It is possible that the Friendly from Address and Friendly Reply to Address can be the same.

Ingredient 7:

Formal From Address: It is the Email address, from where the actual email is originated (e.g. info@begoniainfosys.com).

Ingredient 8:

Formal Reply to Address: It is the Email address, where the recipients send an email in reply (e.g. info@ebizinternetmarketing.com).

Ingredient 9:

Subject Line: It is the Subject of an email displayed in email box, which normally indicates the content of email.

Ingredient 10:

Turn Around Time (TAT): The TAT or the deployment date when the campaign has to be sent or deployed to the final email list.

Now, your delicious campaign curry is ready with all the ingredients to be served to the customer. But, it needs to be tested for deliverability.

Deliverability: It is the probability of emails delivered in INBOX of email recipients. This includes the Browser test and the domain test before deploying the campaign.

Now the email campaign is ready for deployment (to be served) to the customer (i.e.) Make the reports that need to be prepared for the client.

The report contains the Scheduled count of emails deployed, the Delivered count of emails(actually delivered), their percentage, the total number of clicks & opens, the Unique Clicks, the Unique Opens, their percentage, The Deliverability percentage, the track opens and track clicks, what is the number of Global Unsubs or Department unsubs, the number of Opt-ins and Opt-Out.

So, take care not to miss out on the key ingredients for preparing a delicious campaign curry.

Chapter 8 - Email Marketing - No Not Spam

At its core, Email Marketing is a tool for customer relationship management (CRM).

Its Purpose: To build virtual relationships with existing and potential customers.
Its Benefit: Maximize the retention and value of these customers, which should ultimately lead to greater profitability.

What is Email Marketing?
Simply put, Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing which utilities electronic means to deliver commercial messages to an audience. It is one of the oldest and yet still one of the most powerful of all eMarketing tactics. The power comes from the fact that it is:

o extremely cost effective and has a low cost per contact
o highly targeted
o customizable
o completely measurable

Email Marketing's main strength is that it takes advantage of a customer's most prolific touch point with the Internet... their in-box.

Although spam mail has done a great deal to discredit the Email Marketing industry, the benefits are still apparent and substantiated by the fact that in February, 2006, a JupiterResearch report concluded that spending on Email Marketing will rise from $885 million in 2005 to $1.1 billion in 2010.

Email Marketing - A Step By Step Guide
A successful email campaign requires careful attention - from planning to execution and evaluation of the campaign. There are certain best practices and steps to follow which will ensure the success of an email campaign:

Step 1 - Strategic Planning
The first part of any email campaign should involve planning around the goals you will need to achieve.

There are roughly 2 types of commercial emails you can send:
o Promotional emails are more direct and are geared at enticing the user to take action through purchase or sign up
o Retention based emails usually take the form of a newsletter and may include promotional messages but ultimately should contain information of value to create a long term relationship with the reader

A successful email campaign is most likely to be the one geared at retaining and creating a long term relationship with the reader.

Step 2 - List Building and Management
Running a successful email campaign requires that your business has a genuine opt-in database. This means that you need to have the user's permission to communicate with them or you risk having your mail regarded as spam or unsolicited (bulk) email.

Emails regarded as spam can have dire consequences for your organization as not only will your reputation be in jeopardy, but legal action may be pursued in many parts of the world.

An effective, best practice Email Marketing campaign requires an in-house list cultivated over time. This list should contain people who are prospects, customers or potential evangelists of your business, who have explicitly given their permission to hear from you. You can use the website, subscription campaigns as well as the newsletter itself (e.g. send to a friend function) to build lists. An equally important feature is the unsubscribe function. A reader needs to know how they can easily opt-out of your email communication should they need to.

Step 3 - Creative Execution
Email content that your readers will value is vital to ensuring the success of an Email Marketing campaign. Valuable content is informative and progressive and should address the problems and needs of readers. Its all about what they want to hear more than what you want to say to them. The reader determines what value your content provides, not the publisher.

Step 4 - Design
The design of a mailer is sometimes an area that has the least amount of thought put into it. This is usually due to the lack of understanding some designers have of usability. The common problems are the:
o length of the email
o disorganized structure of information
o readability of text

Interactive emails are best constructed with lightweight HTML capability allowing the email to open quickly in order to grab the user's attention before he/she moves on. The structure must allow people to scan and navigate the email without too much complication. The length of paragraphs, emphasis through bolding and colors as well as sectioning information with bullets and borders all contribute to a well structured email.

Any good designer will test their email on a variety of current, most used email clients. (E.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, Eudora etc). This process is called platform testing and ensures that the email will display correctly in as many email clients as possible. Sometimes it is not possible to ensure exact consistency on every email client; however the variations can be minimized through following best international practice and staying abreast of new developments in email clients.

Step 5 - Newsletter Components
Within every newsletter, there are a number of components that will aid the reader to orientate and better accept and react to your newsletter over time. Consistency is key in some areas while others can be refreshed although remaining within the style and tone of the communication. The most prevalent components are as follows:
o Subject Lines are essential! They aid the reader in identifying the newsletter and enticing them to open it. It is important to avoid promotional words like "free", "win" and "buy now" due to these being flagged as potential spam by email spam filters. Using the name and edition of the newsletter in the subject line aids in maintaining consistency and also helps readers filter them from their inbox.
o "To"," from" and "reply" fields are also opportunities to build the relationship through creating a perception of familiarity. In other words, the reader needs to perceive that the newsletter is somewhat unique for them and sent personally by the publisher. Using a personalized company email address for the "reply" field creates familiarity and builds trust with the reader. The "from" address should also include the organization's name. A meaningless "from" address which the reader cannot identify only serves to confuse the origin of the newsletter.
o Personalization should be standard practice with emails. However, some companies still start the newsletter with a greeting like "Dear Valued Guest". This can be acceptable as a default greeting; however, using their first name or surname can create a perception of a more personal email. This can be taken further if the customers give you a preference regarding the content they like the most. The text and images in the email can be tailored to match preferences and interests upon delivery.

Step 6 - Deployment
Any good email marketer should be able to ensure an excellent delivery rate. A challenge for email marketers today is getting past the various spam filters on the path to the readers inbox. It is worthwhile to check emails against various spam filters, like Spamassasin, to ensure your legitimate message is not mistakenly picked up by one of them.

Delivering emails at correct and consistent times also contributes to the reader fostering a relationship with your organization. A good offline example of this relationship is the daily newspaper delivery which arrives at your door at the same time every day, week or month.

Step 7 - Tracking and Reporting
It is crucial to determine the success of your email campaign on the short and long term basis. For this you will need an email tracking system which produces statistics in a user friendly manner. It is important that these statistics are used in a way which improves and refines the email campaign to boost your goals and return on investment (ROI). The following measurable contribute to your understanding of the performance of email campaigns:
o Subscriber Growth vs. Decline - Tracking the growth or shrinkage of your database can help you analyze what is or what is not working in a newsletter. A significant or consistent loss in subscribers is a key indication that you are not meeting the needs of your subscribers. A high pass on rate indicates that your list values the content enough to constantly share with others. Splitting the list and testing 2 versions of the newsletter can help determine the cause of high unsubscribe rates. The size of the list however, is not as important as the quality thereof as a high percentage response from your existing newsletter recipients carries more impact than subscriber growth which may still yield low response rates.
o Click Through Rates and Conversion - This measures the effectiveness of your email via the links placed therein. When a reader clicks through to a webpage, these can be easily measured as a percentage against number of delivered, opened or sent emails. By analyzing these statistics, the email marketer will be able to tell which content or promotion was the most enticing for the reader. Measuring the click through and conversion rates will ensure that you are able to track differences and trends the same way over time in order to improve the newsletter content and its impact.
o Feedback and Interaction Handling - The feedback from readers is probably the best way to gauge what impression your newsletter is making on them. If you are receiving regular positive feedback, chances are that many of your readers are impressed with the style and content of the newsletter. Evaluating what they are saying about you in other areas on the Internet will also help you get a better picture of the reputation of your brand online.
o Split testing - This is one of the most important parts of an Email Marketing Campaign! Split testing across a host of factors like open rates across different subject lines, different days of the week and times of the day, different copy styles and email length, for example, will enable you to see what is working best for your campaign. In short there is no alternative to putting a lot of time and energy into testing and fine tuning your email marketing strategy - your open rates will improve and the results are well worth it!

Well there you have it; we now know email marketing is controllable and measurable: making it one of the best means to ensure a return on your investment, by acquiring new customers and new sales.

Mastering 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!

The Real Deal With Opt-In Email Marketing Techniques

Some strictly defined opt-in email marketing as a marketing strategy wherein messages of marketing campaigns are sent through emails and targets only specific persons who requested the said information in the first place. Opt-in email is often times sent though bulk emailing and comes in the form of mailing list, newsletter or advertising campaigns.

This is very different from spam emails. In opt-in email marketing, permission is sought before marketing materials are sent to a specific email. All emails are solicited unlike in spam emails wherein emails are unsolicited bulk emails. Also, unlike spam emails, opt-in emails are only about the specific information requested.

One does not start sending out emails or materials concerning medicines if the email subscriber only requested monthly newsletters to be sent in his/her email address. You need to respect the decision of the email subscriber because they could choose to block or unsubscribe to an opt-in email marketing strategy.

We can still subdivide into categories opt-in emails. An unconfirmed opt-in email marketing refers to the subscriber that sends out incomplete contact information in its application to receive such materials. The danger from this kind of opt-in emails is that the materials might be considered spam after it is sent to other email addresses due to incomplete information or typo errors in the addresses.

This is different from a confirmed opt-in email wherein the subscriber is sent an email asking to confirm his/her subscription to a list software such as a website. The confirmation email functions in such a way that until the subscriber confirms his application, he will not be included in the mailing list and will not receive the emails he requested.

Double opt-in is another type of media marketing wherein the confirmation process is duplicated. Internet marketers add an additional confirmation process as an added security for subscribers. This is an anti-spammer technique and is oftentimes used to curb the proliferation of unethical practices of other web email marketing technique.

One more type of email marketing is the Opt-out technique. In this case, subscribers are added automatically on a mailing list but are given the option to unsubscribe or be taken out of the list.

With the popularization of email as means of communication, marketing practitioners have thought of ways to maximize the various communications technology which are now at the tips of the fingers of consumers. The solution they come up with is the opt-in email marketing strategies. Using email marketing in the right way is very beneficial for an internet business.

One of the most obvious advantage opt-in marketing brings is a faster and affordable method of advertising and marketing compared to other media communications. You can also receive an almost instantaneously feedback from your email subscribers. You can determine if your marketing strategy is effective and if it is you could start sending out marketing information to a wider audience almost immediately.

There are different formats that you could use for your opt in e-mail marketing strategy. One can use plain HTML, text formats and rich media formats. And because everything is electronic, you'll save time, effort and money from postage or courier services.

By just a click of the mouse things are send through the wire networks. The recipient receives the information almost at an instant and a reply could also be sent at the same speed.

Opt in email marketing is a valid internet marketing strategy that offers convenient, inexpensive and relatively effective marketing campaign. As long as market experts stay within the ethical and acceptable grounds, they can eventually earn a lot from such successful marketing campaigns.

Get Profit From Email Marketing

Email marketing is an important buzzword in e-business today. There are several reasons for this. First, it is a cheap way to get to prospects. Second, it is fast. Promotional messages can be delivered to a number of prospects through email marketing, and delivered fast. Third email marketing is very effective if used well.

Beginning An Email Marketing Campaign

To begin an email marketing campaign, first you need email addresses. Give potential customers the ability to opt-in to email newsletters that you may send. Give them the ability to invite their friends to the email list. You can do this by a simple invite-your-friend link in their email message.

Things To Remember In Email Marketing

Try to gain trust early on in the email marketing process. Make it clear to prospects that you will not sell email addresses to anyone. Also, allow an opt-out option with the email newsletter that you send. Try to gain trust by "talking" to your customer as you would talk to a friend. Only through trust will your customer get ready to buy your product and you make a sale.

Provide Useful Information In Your Email Marketing Campaign

Useful information is the only reason prospects subscribe to your email marketing campaign. So give it to them. If you sell dog products, explain to your prospects how to keep dogs clean and healthy and the benefits of doing so. Be the expert in the topic you are dealing with. Be willing to share useful tips, insights etc. with your prospect that will endear them to your email marketing campaign. This is essential to get profit from email marketing.

Interesting Subject Lines

Keep your subject lines interesting as well as hard hitting. Your subject lines draw readers to the subject at hand. These same subject lines determine whether your mail is treated as spam. Frame your subject lines in a manner that they are interesting as well as give some information on the subject and arouse curiosity. This ensures that the prospects get to the next part of the marketing message that is the email.

Keep It Short And Simple

This is also called the KISS principle. Use intrigue in the email. Just as the email subject line arouses curiosity in the email, the email should be able to sustain the curiosity. The result should be a curious would-be customer who cannot wait to go from the email to the website where you sell your products.

While you get profit from email marketing, use common sense mixed with marketing acumen for the best results. Endear yourself to customers. This can be done through simple authenticity in all dealings with them. "Talk" to your customers like a friend throughout the email-marketing message. Use creativity while delivering the message to the prospect. Email marketing is a godsend for small businesses. Use it wisely to spice up business and get those cash registers ringing.

Top Ten Email Marketing Mistakes Made By Small Businesses

Email marketing isn't complex or new. Yet we see the same mistakes being made over and over by the marketing executives, sales professionals and owners of small businesses.

If done correctly, email marketing is a very effective medium to generate new leads, and build continuous contact with your customers and prospects. It can easily help you yield new sales and meet your targets.

Take care of these top 10 mistakes and you are on your way to new sales!

1. Underestimating current customers list - This is by far the biggest mistake we have seen. Marketers just disregard their current customer list, and leave money on the table. Even worse, most have no systematic way of capturing their customer's email and contact details in a common list.

A consolidated customer email list can be easily used to market new products to existing customers or to get repeat orders if done regularly and consistently. Existing customers have seen your product and service before, and are more likely to buy from you again.

2. No specific target - One big, long message for everyone is no longer smart or effective. Nothing works the fast way. Now the trend is to do personalized, 1 to 1 marketing. If your standard message is for all prospects in all industries, chances are that it does not address anyone needs.

It is best to send several small, targeted emails to focus groups, which you can track to see what works in which industry, and who opened which mail. With this potent arsenal, you can focus your efforts on those chose few to spend your time upon, and generate sales with a much bigger ROI.

3. Using cheap lists - Using 300,000 emails from a $100 CD is bound to fail. These email addresses are mostly defunct, and most are acquired through snooping and email extraction from forums. Most will not be from your target market anyway. Just sending a blatant marketing message is a sure-fire way to get yourself banned from major Internet Service Providers. Anti-spamming laws are catching fast in most countries, so beware of such tactics.

You can either buy a good list of your target group from reputed list brokers, or start compiling your own house list of all past and current prospects, customers, vendors, suppliers, contractors to market to them.

4. No system to measure response - Marketing department just continue to send out messages after messages: There is no check on ROI, no measurement of efforts, and no mechanism to evaluate the response of past messages. No wonder these efforts hardly bring in any results or prospects.

A systematic measurement system is very important. With emails, you can tag each and every link, email account and email sent, so that when it is opened or clicked, you can immediately know who is interested, who is keen to buy, what product, and how eagerly.

With a good measurement, you can call those few that spent time with your message, or on your website, and by knowing their browsing behaviour, you can customise future messages for them. Market something that they have shown interest on, and you are closer to another sale.

5. No clear goal or strategy - Start with the right goal and marketing strategy. Your first goal should be to establish trust and credibility within your target market.

Secondly, get the prospect interested enough in what you are selling, so that they are willing to give you their contact information.

Thirdly, your marketing message should be sent out regularly so that the prospect expects it, waits for it, and it shows that you are consistent, reliable, and trustworthy.

Remember, marketing exists to generate leads, prospects and help sales and delivery teams to close the deals, & not for any other purpose. So focus, and strategize on these lines.

6. Marketing folks don't have time to update anyone about their initiatives - Most of the time, the services folks, the receptionist and other employees of the company are not even aware of what marketing is up to. So when a prospect calls the office to talk about the offer made in the email, neither the receptionist has a clue, nor the employee from the service department. None has seen the email, and have no idea who to refer this prospect to. Here goes another lost sales.

Marketing efforts need to be integrated over the entire organisation, and everyone should understand the need & importance of what's going on.

7. Marketing message is inconsistent - Many marketing firms just send out a message, without making sure that it is consistent with the other company collateral. It is not even properly linked to the company's website, and does not incorporate the complete office address, telephone, fax, contact information. Just giving an email address is not sufficient to build trust and prove that yours is a genuine offer.

8. Boring marketing message or ad copy - A long repetitive message is no way to capture the prospects attention. You can't watch a boring movie even if you paid for the tickets, so who is going to read your unasked for marketing email if you are not even addressing the problem.

Most messages spend countless paragraphs talking about what they offer, their products, services, and me, me, me. There's nothing in the message to catch the reader's attention. You need to talk about the problems faced by your target market, their industry, and their issues. Once you establish a bond by acknowledging that you know about their problems, they will be more amenable to your message, and products.

9. Dropping prospects half way in the engagement process - It is a proven fact that a new prospect will take an average of 5-7 different interactions or more, before they build enough trust on you, your company and your products or services before thinking of buying from you. So if you drop prospects after meeting them once or twice, thinking that they are not qualified or do not seem interested, you are losing sales too quickly.

Continuing to hand hold them and stay in constant contact will help you in the long run, as you will be familiar to the prospect and their needs.. People love to do business with people they know, and not strangers. Email is the most cost-effective way to stay in touch.

10. Not interested in educating the prospect - The marketers are so focused on sales, that they do not spend enough time with their prospects to educate them. Remember that if you service a prospect well, they will most likely convert to a paying customer sooner or later. Have patience. Use email to market to them regularly with information, education, free offers etc. until they build enough trust to buy from you.

Conclusion:

Email marketing has been proven time and again, if done correctly. Big companies like IBM, Amazon, HP are using it effectively, and smaller companies are catching up fast in understanding its marketing reach.

With its lows cost, and effectiveness, email marketing helps to build long term relationships with your target audience. Use it wisely, and ye shall reap its rewards.

To your success with Email Marketing,

Vinai Prakash

You Don't Use Email Marketing? Why Not?

If you are currently participating in other types of Internet marketing and neglecting to utilize email marketing, NOW is the time to seriously consider why you have been avoiding this type of advertising. Email marketing can be and should be a very important part of any Internet marketing campaign. Many business owners will avoid email marketing for fear of being accused of spamming. Internet marketers may not have a clear understanding of what spam is or what it is not so they avoid participation in email marketing campaigns to avoid the potential for being labeled a spammer.

Why are Internet marketers so afraid of being accused of spamming? This is a common fear for a number of reasons. First of all there may be harsh penalties associated with sending spam emails. Recipients of spam have the option of reporting the spam to their Internet service provider who will investigate the validity of the claim. If the originator of the email is determined to be a spammer there can be harsh consequences.

There are also concerns that email marketing will not be well received by potential customers. This is an important concept because Internet users can be overwhelmed with spam each day. Receiving such mass quantities of spam every day can anger some Internet users. Some Internet users are not likely to be receptive to email marketing. Some Marketers fear that these potential customers will see your email marketing as bothersome and stray to competitors.

However, it is important to note that despite the prevalent problem with spam, a certain element of Internet users are very receptive to email marketing and even prefer it. This is especially true in situations where they specifically requested to receive more information from you regarding your products or services. Potential clients are particularly receptive to email marketing which provides something of value such as in depth informational articles or free mini-courses you can write for your clients Offer to provide in depth articles or informative tips or reviews of your products in exchange for your clients email address.

Additionally, items such as e-newsletters and correspondence courses offered via email can be of particular interest to potential customers. E-newsletters are typically longer documents than traditional email marketing pieces and can provide a great deal of additional information to the email recipient. Email correspondence courses may be offered in short segments and typically amount to a significant amount of information which is likely to be greatly appreciated by the email recipients.

One final way to prevent email recipients from viewing your email marketing efforts as spam is to only send the emails to recipients who register with your website and specifically request for you to send them additional information and promotional materials. This opt in formula is ideal because it ensures you are not wasting your email marketing efforts on recipients who are not interested in your products or services. It also ensures the recipients of the email marketing campaign do not view the informative and promotional materials they are receiving as spam. This technique for compiling an email distribution list is quite effective but it is important to remember you should always include information on how recipients can opt out of receiving future emails.

By utilizing one of the many fine autoresponder providers available today for a minimal monthly fee, (some of them are actually free), you can completely automate the entire process of collecting names and distributing your email marketing letters for you.

With all these facts in mind, go ahead and begin building your opt-in mailing list and form a closer more personal repoire with your clients.

Direct Drip Email Marketing Tactic

If you have the products or services that you want to sell on the Internet, you'll want to create a web site where you'll advertise what you are offering and you'll also want to spread a word about your products or services to the world. You can easily and quickly do it via email. Email marketing is certainly one of the most powerful strategies in internet marketing. It's quick, cost effective - you do not have to pay a set price for every email that is sent out - and allows contact people in all parts of the world. So, you can get more purchasers and respectively more revenue for less investment of time and money.

How does one accomplish bulk email marketing campaign?

You can use online bulk emailing services, or you can pay a marketing firm to do your bulk email promotions, or you can use direct email marketing software to distribute your email campaigns sitting at your computer.

Using software can be the most cost-effective method if you have the time to manage your prospects list and accomplish your email campaigns with a constant frequency.

There is wide choice of direct email marketing software packages available on the Internet market. Some are even freeware programs that don't require any investment. Although they don't generally have the value-added features that come with software packages that you purchase; however, if you aren't running a large email marketing campaign, they may suit your needs for accomplishing specific tasks just fine.

What is Drip Email Marketing?

The concept behind drip email marketing consists in sending periodic emails to prospects and clients hoping to bring them to your website and make them purchase products or services. It is an effective method to generate new purchasers from your prospects and keeping relationship with your existing clients.

Drip Email Marketing tactic results from the idea that nobody purchases online products or services instantly. A visitor can come to your web site a few times before he becomes a purchaser. Keeping this in mind, how are you going to stimulate your prospects' interest to your site and keep them informed about your products and services? This is where a drip email marketing campaign is quite to the point.

Imagine that a prospect has just visited your site and left you the email address. It's important to note that you should add a sign-in form to your web site to collect the prospects' email addresses. It's rather useful if your sign-in form asks the subscriber to provide some about additional and not only the email address. I'm not talking about private information. I'm talking about the subscriber's area of interest, hobbies, specific needs, or at least the emails he prefers to receive, text or HTML. All this information will help you segment your prospects and send more relevant email messages to each group.

So, based on the subscribers' preferences, you set up a drip email marketing campaign catered to their specific needs. Each message you send them give more information about their inquiries slightly hinting them at you and your products or services. It is an importunate way to stamp your name in their mind. Remember, you don't sell anything yet. You just give an advice and information about their particular needs and wishes.

For your existing clients, a drip email marketing campaign is similar. You only need to tailor the emails so they are oriented to the client after purchase. Your email drips must contain relevant information that can help the customer with the products or services he purchased. The customer must be sure that you are always there to assist him. When your client believes that you are a faithful and reliable partner, he is ready to purchase again from you.

It may probably sound like you will need more than one tool to accomplish your drip email marketing campaign. But you can find many programs on the Internet that can handle your growing lists of prospective and present clients. Our email management software must be flexible enough to treat each client or prospect according to the routine of your drip email campaign.

The most important thing to remember about drip email marketing is that you must not send meaningless emails. Each message must have an informative content, a real reason to contact your prospects and clients, not just a note saying "Hi!" or "How are you?".

If your drip marketing email cannot keep the client's interest, it will be deleted immediately next time when they read the sender's email address. We all are busy people and won't spend our time for dull messages. If you are trying to build the relationship based on trust and faith, you cannot tolerate that they never open your emails. You can start directly from the subject line. The subject itself must grab people's attention and make them want to read your message. This is the essential concept behind a drip email marketing campaign - to develop a trust and faithful relationship with your customer by sending valuable information. When the rapport of informative and useful emails is established, your clients and prospects will be looking forward for every email from you and they will even recommend your company and your products to others. Isn't it exactly what you want for you business? I'm sure it is.

Email Marketing Success

Isn't that your goal?

The latest survey on email marketing revealed that email-marketing efforts are being dulled by record levels of Spam and email box over saturation. Those surveyed that use email primarily for home use stated that unwanted messages comprise of over one third of the email they receive daily. Those that use email at work indicated that over twenty five percent of their inbox is flooded with unwanted email.

The study also revealed that those who have long-term relationships with an opt-in mailer have had their buying decision affected by the mailings they received. They do no feel opt-in email as part of the saturation process.

While they are eager or at least curious enough to read permission based email, most said they delete op-in messages without reading them.

This high saturation level of unwanted messages is turning consumers off email as a communication method.

66% of those surveyed feel they get too much email. Less than 30% of these indicated that they are likely to "occasionally" respond to email-marketing mailings.

How do you deal with the problem of too much email?

As an Internet entrepreneur email marketing is the tool of choice to get your message out. How do you get your message read? What are the best practices to implement to achieve this goal?

The number of those who are competing for email user's attention is growing.

How do you boost your readership and response rate?

How do you guarantee your messages get to legitimate consumers and business email users?

How do you make sure your potential customer does not mistake your email message for Spam?

WHAT IS YOUR PLAN???

The Spam epidemic is one of the online businesspersons greatest problems.

While many of those online that receive email regularly appreciate opt-in marketing messages and as stated above will respond to your message, research has shown that proliferation of Spam threaten the legitimate email marketing.

Consumers are experiencing inbox burnout. Over time they will become less responsive to your email campaigns.

How?

By deleting your email message without reading it first. Even your permission based email.

Additionally, your prospective customers and their Internet service providers are using email filtering and bulk sorter software to block your messages. Are your messages among those being redirected, filtered, bulk sorted and deleted by software like "Clean My Mailbox"?

What can you do to combat this?

Email marketing has proven to be a highly specialized medium.

It is being used to generate revenue, deepen customer relationships and influence potential customer behavior. Brick and mortar businesses are using it to increase catalog sales, improve call center response and as an interactive customer service assistant.

Dramatic positive effects on the customer's behavior are occurring as the direct email marketing industry matures. It's relative inexpensiveness, compared to direct mail marketing and its increased acceptance by the mass market is attracting a great deal of attention.

As a direct email marketer, you must position your messages so the various obstacles in place to combat your efforts to contact your prospective and your opt-in customers are unsuccessful. In this e-course we will outline successful strategies, which will help you, get your messages read.

Here are 7 strategies you can begin using right now.

(1.) Referrals

Your potential customers open e-mail messages based on the "from" field. The sender has an important impact on your potential customers' willingness to open your email message. The use of a "refer a friend" button on your web pages stimulates referrals from satisfied visitors to your site.

Your follow-up with content rich, helpful information to these referrals and your request for them to take further action by opting into your e-zine or e-course mail list, as well as recommending a beneficial free offer will help you grow a list of loyal customers.

(2.) Privacy

Your potential customers want to know how you are going to maintain their privacy. Do you rent or exchange email list with others? This is a taboo to most of your potential customers.

Do you have a privacy policy? Is it listed where it can be easily reviewed? A hyper link on every message you send out, as well as on your web site should be in place. Let your current and potential customers know what your company's privacy policy, rules and guidelines are. This adds a since of comfort when doing business with your company.

(3.) Personalization

The sweetest sound to anyone is the sound of his or her name. The use of your customers name in your message adds a since of ownership to the message. Most importantly, it is an attention getter and increases readership. Isn't that your purpose, to get your message read by the receiver? Why not capture your potential customers' name as well as their email address?

(4.) Show Your Expertise

Are you publishing a weekly content rich e-zine? Do you write and post on topic content rich articles in newsgroups? Do you submit content rich articles to other e-zines?

What do you do to show your expertise? How do you communicate to your current and potential customers that you know what you're doing? That you know what you are talking about, that your advice is a result of experience, from walking the walk and talking the talk?
This is an excellent method to grow your list and customer loyalty. Email how to articles and helpful tips to your list.

(5.) Deepen Customer Relationships

Your customers will remain loyal only after you have established a positive and useful relationship with them. You establish this type of relationship through continuous meaningful contact with them.

The follow-up messages you send in response to your customers inquires, the helpful articles you write and submit, your content rich web site, your e-zine and its content rich information, your company's order fulfillment policies, and your customer service practices are your proof to your customer that you care about them.

When your customer feels you care about them, a "know, like and trust" connection develops between you and them. This makes them more responsive to your messages and offerings. Isn't that your goal?

(6.) Opt-In List Care

Your list of customers who have opt-in to receive your mailings is one of the two must-have ingredients for the successful email marketer. The other must-have ingredient is your product or service.
It is far easier to sell more to the customer you have than to sell to a new customer.

Regular management and maintenance of your list is important. Cleaning your list frequently so that it consists of deliverable address is essential. Purge all duplicate names and email addresses. Remove the names of those subscribers who have opt-out immediately. Use a double opt-in procedure to confirm that your new subscribers are authentic. Encourage your subscribers to provide more information about themselves, their likes and dislikes, and feedback about your product or service by using surveys. This will allow you to customize and/or target your product or service to fit your customers wants.

(7.) Long-term Associations

The number one cause for the loss of customers and subscribers is indifference. The online marketer's failure to make periodic contact with their customers and subscribers is the major reason. The online entrepreneurs who maintain long-term relationships with their opt-in customers have the most responsive list.

Strategies to establish a long-term association have been discussed above. Good, strong, solid online relationships take time, effort and imagination to build. Once in place, they become a source of profitable dealings through a loyal customer base.

Successful email marketing is built on loyalty. Your loyal customers and subscriber base will not mistake your message for Spam. Your loyal customers and subscriber base will look forward to your mailings and offerings. Your loyal customer and subscriber base will continue to purchase your product and service for years to come.

Isn't that your goal?

Direct Email Marketing Software - The 3 Required Tools

Is it likely to have direct email marketing software that contains every single component that is needed for a successful email marketing campaign?

Having a reliable direct email marketing software to manage all of your email campaigns can be frustrating if you do not have certain profit building tools built within the software. Frustration can occur if you setup email promotions that fail one after the other, without knowing the real reasons of the failure. The great thing about these required tools is that they let you know the reasons why your email campaigned failed. These tools are mandatory if you expect to reap excellent returns from your email promotions.

But before I begin describing what is needed in direct email marketing software, let me first explain what this software is.

Direct email marketing software is software that allows you to manage and control your very own bulk email marketing campaign. The great thing about having your own direct email marketing software is that you do not have to pay to send an email to each subscriber on your list. Having this type of software can greatly reduce your business expenses because not only do you not have to pay for your mailings, but you do not have to pay and hire a marketing firm to manage your email marketing campaign as well. This type of software can create large business efficiency.

Right now, there are multiple direct marketing software packages that are available online. Some of these packages are even shareware software programs that do not even require an initial investment in order to use the software.

But if you expect to have direct email marketing software that is full of the rich features that are needed to create profitable email promotions, then you will have to dig deep within your pocket book - but not very deep.

From my experience using direct email marketing software, there are only 3 mandatory tools that are needed in order to ensure email marketing success. Finding direct email marketing software, that at least utilizes these 3 tools, will greatly reduce the cost of this software.

Therefore, listed below are the 3 tools that should be included in any direct email marketing software that you use now or in the future.

Tool #1 - Open Rate Measurement

An excellent way to measure the effectiveness of your email subject line is to have software that tracks the number of subscribers that open up your email to read it. With this powerful tool, you can select and archive which email subject lines provided the highest open rate response. You can then tailor all of future your email campaign subject lines around the proven subject lines that provided the highest email open rate.

Tool #2 - Tracking Capability

Good direct email marketing software will track the number of subscribers that actually respond to your advertisement and click on a link within your email. In other words, this tracking capability monitors the amount of subscribers who are turned into responsive visitors due to your email promotion. The awesome thing about this tool is that it lets you know how responsive and loyal your email readership is.

Tool #3 - Anti Spam Filter

Another important tool to have in direct email marketing software is an anti spam filter. An anti spam filter is highly recommended because it will let you know whether or not your email will be considered as spam. It will be a tragedy if you spent the whole day compiling an email promotion that never entered into the recipients email inbox due to it being caught by the spam filters. Therefore, in order to guarantee that the email bypasses the spam filters of various internet service providers, you must make sure that a spam detector is included in your direct email marketing software.

I hope that these 3 required tools helped you discover what you need to look for in direct email marketing software. Just focus all of your efforts into finding software that contain these 3 important requirements, and you should be able to get this software at a decent price. In my free report, I include information about an affordable direct email marketing software that I recommend. You can access this report at http://www.list-building-videos.com. But if you are searching for direct email marketing software, you have to make sure it includes all of these 3 requirements. I can not stress this enough. You will reap incredible rewards in your business and with your email promotions if all of these components were included in the software.

Email Marketing Campaign Software And The 3 Requirements

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, you're 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 let's 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.

5 Reasons to Start Email Marketing Campaign

Almost everyone in online business have heard about Email Marketing Campaign, what it does and how it can help if not save a business. But of course there are some who still doesn't believe in the power of this new marketing technique. In this short article I will be giving you five reasons why you should consider trying email marketing right now, especially if you are looking for a way to increase your revenues. So to start things out let's start with the definition of Email Marketing for the benefit of the beginners.

What is email marketing?

"E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business."

Email marketing can be used by any kind of business. Almost every one nowadays has their own email account and they are treating emails more personally than the conventional mails or letters. Others go online just to check their email message but will not spend time to surf the web at all.

Email marketing helps businesses of all types and sizes to see instant sales from existing customers while maintaining and building long-lasting relationships, which is the most important part in the success of any business.

"54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts." Source: DMA Interactive

Here are the five reasons why you should start Email Marketing as one of your marketing strategies?

1. It is Less Expensive:

E-mail marketing campaigns are much more cheaper compared to other traditional marketing techniques like direct mail or print advertising. Email marketing is 20 times more cost effective and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.

2. It is More Effective:

Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of waiting for them to return to your website or store. It is a highly effective way to increase traffic to your website or store, and build a good relationship to your customers and develop loyalty and trust.

"We've done radio, TV, direct mail, and national ads, including full-page ads in Teen Vogue and YM, but, by far, Constant Contact has had better results every time. We track all of our participants, and have found that more than 53% of them found out about us through the Internet or our email newsletter. Email marketing is only a fraction of the cost of print ads. It brings in a phenomenal ROI." - http://www.girlslearntoride.com
(Constant Contact is a leading solution provider of email marketing campaigns.)

3. Get Immediate Results:

In just minutes after sending out your email campaigns, you can receive responses almost immediately. About 80% of responses to email campaign will occur within 3 days while traditional direct mail takes weeks. Well again, that is because people love emails.

4. Fully Trackable:

With email marketing campaign you can easily track the number of emails sent, the number emails opened, how many bounce back, how many unsubscribed and the number of click-through.
You can even tell who opened the emails and know which link generated the most clicks. That way you can adjust quickly and make decisions to your business which is very much critical since time is critical. With direct mails or other forms of advertising you'll have to wait for weeks if not months.

5. It's targeted, personalized and easier to create:

You can easily start an email campaign in just a matter of minutes. You don't have to hire an expert to do this. If your business has some promotions you can easily create and send those email campaigns. Also it is targeted; you know that the recipient will love to hear about your promotion because that is the very reason why they signed up an email subscription. And instead of using Dear Customer they will see the message addressed to them like Dear Mr. Robinson, making it more appealing to the recipient.

"We needed a way to communicate with customers on a timely, consistent and more personal basis. Advertising in a weekly newspaper was only partially effective in accomplishing this. It was only through using the email services of Constant Contact that we were able to build a connection with our customers, in a timely, engaging, unobtrusive way," - http://www.jacktarmarblehead.com

Email Marketing is being use now by a lot companies and is generating high revenues for them, one of them might be your competitor. Again time is critical in the online world, making decisions right away can greatly increase the chances of success for your online business. Email Marketing Campaigns can also help you get loyal customers as it builds a more personal connection with them.

The Essential Email Marketing Glossary

ASP - Application Service Provider. ASP's provide internet based software.

Access - Database software. Part of the Microsoft Office Suite. Organizations often store customer data in Access databases.

Autoresponder - a set of immediate or time-delayed messages that are emailed to someone after they request it

Blacklists - Lists of domains and IP addresses that have been reported or accused of sending spam. You can check blacklists at http://www.openrbl.org and http://www.dnsstuff.com.

Bonded Sender - A type of delivery insurance, stamp of approval company for Email marketing companies. If you purchase the IronPort Bonded Sender Certificate, they will guarantee that your mail gets delivered to the large ISPs that they have relationships with.

Bounce back handling - The process of dealing with email messages that bo unce. Caused by a 'bad' email address or an address that is temporarily over its size quota or on a server that is temporarily down.

Bounces - Emails that have been sent back to sender as the recipient email address was invalid or presently not working.

Click-through tracking - Tracking the number of clicks that occur on each link in an email message.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - The ability to keep track of every interaction with every prospect and customer and keeps tracks of trends and tabulates results of such notes on an aggregate scale. Essentially, an intelligent interface that allows keeping notes of every action, sale, phone call, email, fax, etc. Allows businesses to better know their customers and target messages to portions of their customers and prospects. CRM is an integrated system designed to identify, acquire, and retain customers. CRM helps organizations maximize the value of every customer interaction by managing and coordinating customer interactions across multiple channels and departments.

CSV - Comma separated value. A specific format in which each new field is separated by a comma. Ex: John,Smith,john@smithman.com,male,37.

Custom fields - Fields that one may use to personalize each message (see mail merge personalization). These custom fields allow our customers to import and store additional data such as address, city, state, zip code, country, birthday, spouse's name, dog's name, product purchased, date of purchase, notes, or any other data.

Database - A storing of records. Databases are made up of tables. Tables are made up of columns and rows. Data is stored in a field (aka cell). Popular types of web databases include SQL and MySQL.
De-duping - The act of removing duplicates from a list.

Delivery speed - How fast a mailing software can deliver mail.

Domain - what one types in to go to your web site.

Double opt-in (confirmed opt-in) - Single opt-in is when a visitor subscribes to a newsletter via a form on the web site. They have opted-in once. Double opt-in is when a visitor subscribes to a newsletter via a web site and then is sent a confirmation email. The visitor will only be added as a subscriber if they verify their email address and desire to receive the newsletter. Generally, the visitor must either a) click a link in the email or

( b) reply to the email. This is called double opt-in. Using double opt-in will give a listowner a cleaner list (no bo unces) and less spam complaints, although they will lose many of their subscribers who, for one reason or another, forget to or do not confirm their subscription.

Email client - what a person uses to view their email. Popular email clients include Microsoft Outlook, AOL mail reader, and Eudora. There are also popular web-based email clients including Hotmail and Yahoo. Often, HTML messages will display differently in different email clients.
Email list management software - Software that allows users to collect, import, and manage subscribers.
Email marketing software - Allows users to send out newsletters to their lists and track results. Standard features include mail-merge personalization, message scheduling, and bo unceback handling.

Excel - A spreadsheet program which is part of the Microsoft Office Suite. Used by many organizations to store the data for their lists before import. Can be used to convert data into CSV format.

Ezine - An 'electronic magazine.' Essentially the same as an email newsletter. Usually sent on a regular schedule. Contains content. Not an anno uncement or promotion list.

Feedback loops - Set up with Internet Service Providers. Once a feedback loop is set up, the ISPs will contact you and ask you to deal with the complaint. If a feedback loop is not set up, the ISPs may blacklist you without giving a chance to defend yourself. AOL, Juno, and Netzero provide feedback loops.

Harvesting Emails - Using a spider to extract emails from pages on the internet, either through a search starting from a single page or a search based on a specific term put into a search engine
HTML - Hypertext markup language, the basic programming language of the Internet.

HTML Built-in Editor - Allows users to create their own HTML newsletters right on the sending page, without knowing HTML.

HTML templates - An arrangement of graphics within which a email newsletter content can be inserted.
Importing - Bringing subscribers into the system in mass quantities. Once a data file is in the proper CSV format, it can be imported into the system.

IP address - The Internet Protocol Address. Ex. 209.51.151.158. Before the dynamic name server (DNS) system was setup in 1994, one would have to type in numbers (the IP addresses) to go to a web site. The DNS system allows one instead to simply type in the domain name. The DNS translates the domain name into the IP address and then directs the visitor to the server (or part of the server) that the requested domain name is hosted on.

ISP - Internet Service Provider. The provider of dial-up or broadband internet service that a consumer or business uses. Common ISPs are AOL, Juno, Netzero, Earthlink, and Time Warner.

Mail merge personalization - The ability to, on the fly for each email, insert data from the database into specific fields in an email. For example, one may place Dear [fname] in an email. When each email is sent out, a call to the database is made to retrieve the actual first name of that subscriber. It then 'pastes' this data into the email. Dear John or Dear Judy will result. This is a powerful tool as it allows our customers to send out personalized emails to their subscribers. One could send out a message such as:

Dear [fname] [lname];

I wanted to personally thank you for purchasing [product] or [date]. I hope your [disease] is doing better. Please let me know how you have been and if I can answer any questions.
Maximum lists - Many of our competitors will only allow the creation of one list. Some get around this by offering different 'interest groups' or 'targeting' within this list.

Message headers - The 'hidden' lines of text/code that is above each email message. Every email sent has a header.

Message preview - The ability to see what a message looks like before it is sent.

Message scheduling - The ability to set a time in the future for a message to start to be delivered to recipients.

Metrics - Term used to refer to message statistics such as open and click through tracking, number of bo unces, number of unsubscribes, etc.

Multi-part MIME - All messages have a header on them called Content-Type. A message can be sent as text, text/html, or multipart/alternative. If it is sent as multipart/alternative, the message is sent using formatting referred to as Multi-part MIME. The advantage of sending via multi-part MIME is that the email will automatically display as HTML if the subscriber's email client can read HTML, but revert to text if the subscriber's email client cannot read HTML, or has it turned off. Within a multi-part MIME email, both the HTML message and text message are sent. Between the HTML message and the text message there is a boundary. This boundary is defined in the Content-type header.

Multiple message autoresponder - A series of messages that is sent out at certain time intervals which are set by our customer. One could use a multiple message autoresponder to send out a ten day ecourse for example. One email ("tip") would be sent each day for 10 days. This can be a very good way to increase a visitor to sale conversion rate, build a relationship with a prospect, and improve the likelihood of a prospect or customer remembering your brand.

Open Tracking - The ability to keep track of the number of opens ("reads") a message gets.

OpenRBL.org - Web site through which one can view what blacklists a site is on.

Opt-in - A term that refers to any subscriber that has specifically requested an email newsletter. If they have signed up through your web site, they are opt-in. If you used a spider to harvest emails from the Internet and then added these persons as subscribers to your site, they are not opt-in. This latter tactic is often used by those who send out spam.

Permission-based - (see opt-in). Essentially, any list that contains only opt-in subscribers and does not contain any purchased lists or lists of persons who have asked to receive one type of newsletter and will be sent what they have not requested, such as additional promotions or newsletters on a different topic.

ROI - Return on investment. The amount of money one makes from an investment divided by initial investment.

Sign up form - A form that is to be put on a web site and allows visitors to subscriber to a company's newsletters and anno uncement lists.

Single opt-in - A subscriber that joins via a web form who does now have to 'verify their email address' or reply to a confirmation email to join. Most newsletter owners prefer single opt-in, as it maximizes the number of subscribers on a list, although bad email addresses are possible.

Spam - unwanted email that was sent without the permission of the recipient. Also known as unsolicited commercial email. One of Broadwick's main challenges is ensuring our customers do not send spam. To accomplish this, we have a strict Anti-Spam policy. We also deal with any spam complaints promptly. We will terminate the account of any customer who has sent spam. Many times, however, a complaint will be made in which the message in question was not actually spam and the recipient had actually requested it. When we receive complaints, we will read the message, look to see if the subscriber actually opted-in via a web form or was imported in, and then taking all in account, make a decision on what action to pursue.

SpamCop.net - A blacklist (but time based). A service that tracks spam and forwards spam complaints to ISPs and hosting companies. If one does not have the proper relationships or feedback loop with the ISPs, a few complaints to an ISP or hosting company can get your internet access and hosting turned off. If you are blacklisted by Spamcop and stop sending email, you'll be out in 48 hours or so.

UCE - Unsolicited Commercial Email. Another name for spam.

URL - Uniform resource locator. Another name for a web site address.

Unsubscribe link - The link at the bottom of each email which allows visitors to unsubscribe or modify/update their information.

Web-based - Can log into online

Welcome email - Email that is sent to subscribers after they subscribe to a newsletter. Doesn't go out unless the client (our customer) sets this option.

Whitelisting - Opposite of blacklisting. Many ISPs have lists of sites with which they have built good relationships with and trust. If your sending fits their standards, it may be possible to add yourself to a whitelist. If you are on a whitelist, your mail has a much better chance of being delivered.