| June 2006 -- Issue 67 Valeriu S. Popescu, Editor and Publisher The Internet Marketing Profits Center, Inc. Past issues available on newsletter archive ISSN: 1583-4180 phone: +40-332-107122 fax: 1-925-676-2853 email to the editor anytime at: Marketing Online Since 2000 |
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This issue includes: 1) "7 Incredibly Powerful Email Tips To Make You Sell More and Even More Often to Your Opt-In List."2) "Harness the Real Power of Email Marketing With These Simple Tips that Will Keep Your Emails Out Of the Junk Folder... and Get Your Recipients to Open Them!"3) "Classified Ads."4) "Tell Us What You Think!"
Before we go into the subject, let me outline couple of things. As you know, the real key to using an opt-in list effectively is to develop a good subscriber database. Not just a large subscriber base, but a list of targeted and responsive customers! Although a large opt-in list might seems to be an important part of your online business success, the quality of your publication is even more important -- and both will play a very important role in your business equation. So before you deep into any email marketing strategy, be sure that you:
Next, I assemble a list of best practices that have proved to work for me over the years. 1) First thing first: get permission to email -- ALWAYS!
2) Your FIRST "instant" message it is crucial.
3) Use a riveting "From:" and "Subject:" line to get your email opened in a flash.
4) Design a successful email copy.
5) Don't over-email, don't get your subscribers bored!
6) Work hard to get your email delivered to the right inbox.
7) The email provider is your closest friend.
My Conclusion No matter how big is your email list('s), the key to a successful email business is keeping your subscribers close to you. Of course, many subscriber will come and go. But the relationship you build with your stable subscribers will determine your success. And above all, you must provide your readers with quality content! Once you've developed a healthy, trusting relationship with your subscribers, your personal recommendations will be a highly effective means of closing sales. However, it is very important that you only recommend a product or service that you truly believe in. Your professional reputation and business depends on this! Please remember that your subscribers' needs change over time -- so your emails will compete with this real fact. All you need to do is to survey your subscribers 1-2 times a year about their needs and interests. Once you gather the information, you will know how to develop your email marketing strategy.
Email marketing has experienced a lot of growing pains over the past few years. In the beginning, it was seen as the perfect marketing tool -- cheap, fast, and measurable. Click-through rates were the only numbers that mattered, and people were still excited to receive -- and open -- just about every email in their inbox. Then, it seemed like the explosion of spam, and the sheer volume of email people receive ruined the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool. Even perfectly legitimate emails were being trapped by spam filters or deleted, unopened, by wary recipients who were concerned about viruses. Yet there are still companies that, despite these challenges, manage to generate millions of dollars of profit every year using email marketing software. In fact, here at Internet Marketing Center, direct email marketing generated $3.5 million in revenue last year alone! And the opportunities keep growing. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, email remains the number one online activity of Americans -- ahead of web surfing and using search engines -- and now that more and more people are able to receive e-mail on their cell phones and PDAs, the opportunities for creative email marketing are only continuing to expand. At the recent MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit in Chicago, Barry Stamos of Responsys.com even stated that people now spend more time reading email than watching TV! All of these developments, combined with the fact that email can be tested and measured for specific results -- unlike other promotional methods -- means email marketing remains one of the most valuable tools in any marketer's arsenal. Despite the obstacles presented by spam and volume, email marketing can still deliver an exceptional return on investment (ROI) because of the massive amount of time people spend online, and the proportion of that time they spend checking their email. In fact, eMarketer reports that email generates a much higher return on spending than methods such as direct mail and newspaper and radio advertising. So if anyone tries to tell you that email marketing is dead, don't believe them! The truth is that spam and volume didn't kill email marketing the way many so-called experts predicted. But they did manage to create a few hoops you now have to jump through to get your emails delivered and opened. These days, you need to educate yourself on the best ways to collect, manage, and store email addresses, and only send out relevant emails that people will open without hesitation. Do these things right and you'll be able to profit from all of the new opportunities available to email marketers... and continue to enjoy the impressive ROI email marketing provides. Carefully manage your opt-in list to fully capitalize Okay, so you've written an opt-in offer for your web site and started to collect the names and email addresses of visitors who want to hear from you on a regular basis. These are people who have decided they like what they see on your web site enough to give you their email addresses. They are basically inviting you to sell to them! Now you need to decide how you will store, manage, and use this information. Many people simply store their opt-in lists in a spreadsheet or text file, but there is also great email marketing software out there to help you manage this information more easily. The method you choose to look after this information will depend on your own unique situation, but if you are going to get serious about email marketing, then you'll need to get serious about managing your opt-in list -- not just building it, but also cleaning and maintaining it to ensure that you always generate the best results and never look like a spammer. Here are a few things you need to know to effectively manage your opt-ins... and guarantee the highest possible response to any mailout you send: a. Manage your "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests One of the most important things you can do to minimize your headaches -- and maximize your profits -- is to stay on top of your "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests. If you don't have an automated system for managing subscriptions to your opt-in list, this is especially important. Always treat requests to unsubscribe from your list seriously. People who aren't promptly removed from your list after making an unsubscribe request can accuse you of spamming them, and you can quickly find yourself in trouble with your ISP. Of course, it's just as important that people who ask to be added to your list are subscribed right away, since you never know which one of those subscription requests is going to end up being your best customer. If your subscribe and unsubscribe requests aren't handled automatically, you should take care of them right before you send out a mailing. This ensures that your list is as current as possible, and it also means that you don't have to deal with this chore on a daily basis. b. Remove duplicate addresses Before you send any mailings, you'll want to make sure that you don't have any duplicate email addresses in your list. There will always be some people -- more than you might think -- who will opt in to your list, leave your site, and come back a couple of days later to sign up again, forgetting that they've already joined. Now, people are happy to get one copy of your email, but start sending them multiple copies and just watch how fast they unsubscribe from your list -- or worse yet, report you as a spammer! This kind of spam complaint is relatively easy to clear up, but it is still a hassle, and instead of having a potential customer who was so excited about what you had to offer that they signed up twice, you now have nothing. c. Clean your list Keeping your list clean means more than just removing unsubscribes and duplicate addresses. Cleaning your list means sifting through the messages that "bounce back" to you after a mailing, and deciding which ones should be removed from your list completely, and which ones you might want to try mailing again.
Hard bounces: These are messages that can never be delivered. Hard bounces are usually caused by the user typing in an incorrect email address when opting in to your list, or the subscriber no longer using the email address they originally opted in with. Hard bounces should be deleted immediately. If you leave these addresses in your list, you'll just have to wade through unnecessary bounce messages every time you send a mailing, and that's a waste of your valuable time. Plus, if you continue to send email to an address that is invalid, you can get into real trouble. This is one of the methods used to identify spammers, and if you are found to be repeatedly sending messages to a "dead" email address, you could have a problem with the ISP receiving the messages. Emails that are returned as soft bounces, on the other hand, should be dealt with in an entirely different way. Since soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem -- a full mailbox, for instance -- you'll want to re-send your promotions to all the soft bounce addresses a couple of days after you sent out the initial mailing. You'll be surprised how many messages get delivered on the second try. And since you've already written the email, there's almost no extra work on your part. d. Divide your list to conquer more subscribers Given the mountains of email people receive these days, most only want to see what's relevant. And, unfair as it may seem, anything irrelevant could be considered spam... and reported as such. If the people on your list know that the message you're sending is something they want, they'll open it! Using email to target different segments of your audience is one of the single most effective ways to market products or services on the Internet. In fact, email marketers practicing segmentation are currently seeing much better results than those sending undifferentiated mailings. A 2006 report by MarketingSherpa found that email marketers using segmentation saw click-through rates that are 72% higher than email marketers who are not segmenting their opt-in lists. The simplest way you can market to different segments of your opt-in list is by targeting them based on whether they are (a) existing customers, or (b) visitors to your site who have simply opted in to receive your free newsletter, eBook, etc. The message you send to your existing customers, for instance, might focus on selling them an upgrade to a product they already own. Because you've already earned their trust through a previous sale, this promotion should do quite well. Of course, you'll need to approach your subscribers -- those people who haven't made a purchase from you yet -- with a slightly different angle. You might try offering them a 25% discount off their first purchase, for example. There's no end of ways to segment your audience depending on the information you've collected -- and email automation makes it not only possible, but simple! By targeting different segments of your audience with a promotion specific to their current situation, you can just about guarantee that the results of your email marketing efforts will be dramatically improved. e. Snag your recipients' attention by using their names If there's a "secret" to getting email recipients' attention, it's this: Personalize the subject line. There is no other single technique that will boost the response rate of your emails as much as personalization. Have you ever noticed that a great salesperson will find out your name and then use it every so often while they talk to you? It's a way of establishing trust and building rapport. Using someone's name makes them feel as though they have a relationship with you. And the truth of the matter is that nothing gets a person's attention faster than hearing or seeing their own name! By personalizing your subject lines, you also make your email appear more authentic and safer to open, because recipients will be more likely to view your email as coming from a trusted source. Unfortunately, typing each individual recipient's name into the subject line of every email you send is just not practical! Once you grow your list to more than 50 or 100 people, it becomes unmanageable! It's way too time consuming... The good news is that there is great email marketing software available these days that will help you completely personalize your campaigns automatically, and save you tons of time and effort. Choosing the right email marketing Luckily, there are some pretty powerful products out there designed to help email marketers develop, manage, segment, and personalize their lists easily, from one user-friendly interface. Choosing the right email marketing software can save you literally hundreds of hours of frustration, and help you to avoid being accused of spamming. If the software you choose doesn't have the following features, you could be missing out on the full potential of email marketing, and leaving "money on the table." To be effective, your email marketing software must allow you to...
... And that just scratches the surface. If the email marketing software you choose doesn't have these capabilities, you will not be able to fully capitalize on the on the awesome, profit-boosting potential of email marketing. And, your email promotions will be more likely to be considered spam, which can cause big headaches. Final thoughts Email marketing remains a highly effective tool for any business. And the success of your campaigns rests largely on the percentage of your messages that get delivered and opened. At Internet Marketing Center, we've been using email marketing for 10 years now. We've got it down to a science -- and we've even created our own email marketing software that incorporates all the key features we've learned are necessary to run a successful email campaign. If you'd like more information, please read about our new released version of Mailloop software. It's a little more of a challenge to make sure your emails get delivered and opened these days, but by keeping your list squeaky clean and sending highly relevant and personalized messages you will not only improve the likelihood of people opening your emails, you'll avoid being labeled a spammer.
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Dear friend, I would love to hear what you think of this issue of The Internet Marketing Profits™ newsletter. And of course, if you have any suggestions for upcoming issues that you'd like to share with me, please send those, too -- just email me right away! And don't forget to check out the previous issues at the Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter Archive. "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." Valeriu S. Popescu, Editor and Publisher ^ back to the top of the Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter, issue 67 DID YOU LIKE THIS ISSUE? Please forward it to your friends, co-workers, colleagues and anyone else that you think would like it. Thank you for your continued support! DISCLAIMER: I urge you to exercise due diligence in responding to any advertisement or article posted here or in any other future issue. I do not give business or professional advice in this newsletter and therefore cannot be held responsible for results you get from responding to ads or articles in this newsletter. I urge you to exercise due diligence in all of your online dealings. |