Category: Email marketing

Affordable Email Marketing Services

Posted by admin – April 20, 2009

Nick Kaplan asked:


With the advent of today’s troubled economy, advertisers are looking for reliable, affordable and feature filled marketing tools to build their business. To fill this void many are turning to email marketing services. When compared to the U.S Postal Service and other forms of advertising, email marketing is not only faster but much cheaper. You can make campaign changes almost instantly and update subscribers in a short period of time.

Campaign Costs And Features

An email campaign of 10,000 subscribers can be initiated for less than $18.

Campaign packages include tracking statistics that allow small businesses to increase sales.

Tracking features can supply critical data for reports that allow you to know who opens and reads your newsletters and the urls they click on. Monitor sent to a friend, compare monthly changes in size of subscription base.

Tools that allow for split testing ad copy to find the most effective sales content.

After you have created your email capture page and have added the email capture code. You can begin collecting names and email addresses.

Once you have built your list, you’re ready to start your first email campaign.

Email marketing providers have made it easy for even a novice to run a campaign with ready made templates and fill-in forms for auto responders and newsletter content.

Can-Spam Act

Email marketing services have made it easy for internet marketers to be Cam-Spam compliant.

According to U.S law all email marketers must comply with the  Can-Spam Act of 2003, which requires they identify who they are. Provide valid contact information and a physical address (P.O Boxes acceptable). Many email marketers these days will use a double opt-ins. when signing-up new subscribers. Opt-ins sign up from an email capture page by typically including just a name and email address. This will trigger an auto responder asking them to verify that they do wish to subscribe. Can-Spam also requires that you provide an opt-out link to remove anyone from your list who requests it.

Email Marketing Service Providers

If you are looking for a cheap email marketing services with lots of features then GetResponse may be the deal for you. Allowing you to maximize your dollars and reach more subscribers. GetResponse.com an Implix product located in Wilmington Delaware established in 1998. Get Response features include

• Sending unlimited emails Up to 10,000 subscribers for $17.95 per month and $4.50 for each additional set of 5,000 subscribers

• Excellent Email Marketing and support Forum

• Integrates with Joomla

• Co-registration

• Track software downloads

Pay As You Go Email Marketing Services

Can’t afford a monthly fee for email marketing? EliteMail (now EliteAnswers) a Pay as you go Email Marketing service.

Cost

• Sign-up costs $10 which buys 1000 emails.

• The free trial on Small Business and MySpace Editions “No Credit Card Required” allows you to test the service out and there is no time limit.

• If you sign up for the free trial and buy the $10 package that will give you a total of 2000 emails.

• You can buy additional emails as needed.

Aweber

Aweber one of the oldest email marketing services with over 10 years of experience in the email marketing services business.

Staying current with today’s technology Aweber includes features like RSS to Email allowing you to convert your Blog’s RSS feed to an email newsletter.

Features like publishing your newsletter to twitter to help broaden your customer base.

Free Email Marketing Tips

Aweber helps newbies get started in email marketing with free webinars.

Topics include how to use Aweber services, get more subscribers, develop and find content for newsletters and email campaigns.

If you have no time to attend webinars then take advantage of the video tutorials and knowledge base library.

Aweber Pricing

Basic campaigns cost $19 monthly for unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. Larger packages run $149 monthly and allow for 25,000 subscribers. There are a total of about 6 packages and pricing for these will fall in between these ranges depending on the size of subscription list.

In closing

Whether you choose to pay your email marketing service provider monthly or pay as you go, email marketing services can be very affordable. The ability to be scalable will allow cutting expenses and expanding as you see a return on your investment.



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Email Marketing Tactics

Posted by admin – April 18, 2009

AndreaFerdinand asked:


Today’s Business it is found that email marketing is a productive and cost-effective means of generating sales. The cost of sending a direct mail piece by postal service runs over a dollar whereas the cost of sending email is negligible. Analysts say getting even one percent response rate from direct mail is rare but an email marketing campaign can easily fetch a five to ten percent response rate. The benefit of email marketing is not confined to increased sales and lead generation. It also significantly helps to create powerful brand awareness and improved customer relationships.

Email marketing is one of the best ways of gaining publicity for your business online. As the number of email users is swelling by the day, more and more businesses are choosing email marketing as their primary advertising campaign.  Email marketing is cheap, fast and more importantly - effective. Email marketing is extremely productive and brings good ROI (Return on Investment) for internet marketers.

If you are planning to start an internet business or if you are already an existing internet business owner, it is beneficial to implement email marketing in your web business promotion strategy. A well planned email marketing campaign can help you boost sales for your on-line as well as off-line business.

Before embarking on your email marketing campaign, it is critically important that you clearly understand the difference between proper email marketing and spam. If you fail to learn the distinction, you may seriously hurt your business.  Spam is very unethical way of internet marketing. Simply stated, it means sending promotional email messages to people who did not solicit that information. If you try to spam, you may be even be banned by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) completely disabling you from sending messages from your email account again.

A much better and healthy method is opt-in email marketing. Contrary to spam it is permission based, which means that people have agreed to receive emails from you. This way of marketing is preferred by many businesses and it brings very good results. Unsolicited email marketing or spamming brings very low response rates. It’s not targeted, which means that email message goes to people who are not interested in your offer.  A majority of people will not even look at your spam email, so it is not possible to obtain good response rates using unsolicited advertising.

One of the most important elements of your email marketing campaign is the content of your promotional message. Learning how to write an effective message or follow up email messages is an essential step of your email marketing campaign. Write your message only to those people whom you consider likely prospects. 

Write your message individually putting his or her name in the message. Do not send out a collective message by addressing ‘dear subscriber’. For all that smart targeting, it’s still hard to get people to open e-mails unless they recognize the sender immediately.

Write interesting headlines as these are immediately get noticed.  Make sure your headline arouses interest of the recipient if you want your message to be opened and read. Give your prospects the option to unsubscribe from your list. If you retain them against their will, you may be accused of spam. So provide removal instructions at the end of your message all the time.

Email marketing is a unique way of developing long-standing relationship with your existing and prospective customers. If you are really serious about your on-line or off-line business, email marketing is a cost-effective way of promoting your products and services.



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15 Email Marketing Best Practices

Posted by admin – April 13, 2009

Mitchell Harper asked:


As you may know, most people now spend more time reading their emails than they do surfing the web. Email is one of the most powerful mediums that you can use to talk to visitors, customers and prospects.

In this article I will discuss 15 best practices that you can use everyday in your email marketing activities. Used wisely and consistently, there’s no doubt you’ll see an increased response from your subscribers — whether it be for more feedback, more product/seminar registrations, or even more orders.

1. Avoiding the Spam Filters The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigorous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customers inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted.

To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam — and deleted before they even get to your subscribers — avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘$$$’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc in both the subject line and the content of your email.

2. Maximizing Click-Thru Rates Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link — such as this — as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

3. The Power of Personalization If you were standing in a crowded mall, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalization can and should be used in your emails. In-fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription If you want to grow your mailing list, then there are 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed — courteously — from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation Don’t get accused of spamming — always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday = Increased Response Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email Communication An auto responder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Auto responders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 auto responders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becoming a paid member of your site.

Auto responders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

8. Consistency is the Key If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

Create a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

9. On Time, Every Time When sending a regular email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. The Half-a-Second Subject Line When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

11. The Free Bonus Hook-In Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup for your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an auto responder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe to your newsletter.

12. The Preview Pane Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

13. Link-Click Testing When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

14. Email-Based Learning Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of auto responders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc.

15. Always Sign on the Dotted Line Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products. Here’s a sample signature:

Regards, John Doe. President - Company XYZ. Visit our website at http://www.companyxyz.com Unsubscribe from this newsletter at http://www.companyxyz.com/unsubscribe…

Conclusion - By implementing the 15 best practices described in this article, you can take your email marketing to a whole new level — attracting more subscribers, and building both your brand equity and credibility at the same time.



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Concise Email Marketing Tips and Strategies for Novices

Posted by admin – April 6, 2009

Gene Higginbotham asked:


Email marketing guidelines and strategies are crucial to make a mark in the business world. Anyone who thought that sending out mass emails on a regular basis translates to email marketing, needs to think again. Strategies have to be worked out in order to be successful in an email marketing venture. And we are here to tell you about you some email marketing tips and strategies. In a world of severe spam laws, it can be quite complicated to begin an email marketing venture. But our email marketing guidelines and strategies will direct and help you set up your business as one of substance.

Email Marketing Tips And Strategies To Start You Off

• Double Opt-In: A customer must be given two chances to verify their subscription to your mailing list. A double-opt in usually works in the following method. The customer gives his email address on your website. He then has to click on a verification link sent in the first email by your company. This is an excellent email marketing tip or tactic.

• Unsubscribe Option: All customers to an email marketing list must be given a choice to unsubscribe at a future point in time. This unsubscribe choice is usually given at the bottom of every email sent by the company.

• Acquiring email addresses: A great way to gather email addresses is to gather them on a high traffic webpage on your website. Adding a subscription link to such a page works marvel. Offering free incentives to visitors to join your mailing list also works. Add to the email marketing package by creating free software, or an e-book or any other related gift to suggest to the customers as soon as they sign up on your email marketing venture. Another way to accumulate email addresses is to buy an email list. But do take into consideration the following email marketing guidelines and strategies while doing this. First- purchase these lists from distributors who enjoy an esteemed reputation. Second, try and purchase a list that includes customers in the market section that you want to target.

• Format: Your emails must be sent in both HTML and plain text format. This email marketing tips and tactic allows an greater number of people to read your emails.

• Regularity: The trick to email marketing is getting the timing right. Keep in mind to send email newsletters frequently. Once a month on a predetermined date, or once every two weeks is an excellent option. Sending too many mails might irritate the subscriber who then just might unsubscribe. So once you get the timing of your emails right, you stay in the subscriber’s memory and will be able to sell your ideas and products frequently. Following the above email marketing guidelines and tactics will improve your product value while adding to your business insight. No one wants his business newsletter to be cluttered as spam. Customer reliability has to be won and retained.



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4 Email Marketing Strategies - Improve Your Sales or Traffic via Effective Email Marketing

Posted by admin – April 6, 2009

Rosmizal Ibrahim asked:


Email marketing is becoming extremely popular but this does not mean all business owners know how to run an effective email marketing campaign. However, those who are well versed in the subject of email marketing and have experiencing using popular strategies effectively are likely to gain a huge advantage over their competitors who do not have these skills. This article will provide useful information for business owners who are hoping to improve their sales or website traffic through effective email marketing. There are four strategies we will discuss here:

1. If you do not have a great deal of information about email marketing and do not deeply understand the principles involved one of the best ways to orchestrate a truly effective email marketing campaign is to hire a consulting firm with a proven track record in promoting business through email marketing to assist you in your endeavor. Similarly to traditional marketing using medias such as radio, television and print media, the popular strategies governing email marketing are changing constantly. As a business owner you likely already have enough to deal with trying to stay up to date on business practices that you do not have the time, energy or finances to also stay up to date on the latest changes in email marketing.

2. For this reason it is certainly worthwhile to hire a professional in the email marketing industry who can devote himself full time to keeping up to date with the most effective email marketing strategies and designing an email marketing campaign for our business to help you achieve your business related goals. However, selecting a consultant from the many options available can be downright overwhelming. In general you should look for a consultant who has a great deal of experience, a proven track record, listens to your questions carefully, explains concepts simply and makes your project a priority.

3. Another popular strategy for email marketing is to offer an email correspondence course on a subject closely related to your website or the products or services you offer. These correspondence courses should include a number of short segments, provide useful information, be of interest to your intended audience and should also help to promote your business in some way. The simplest way to promote your business without having your correspondence course deemed to be spam is to use a soft sell approach to subtly urge readers to make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

4. Publishing and distributing period e-newsletters is another example of an email marketing strategy which can be highly effective. An e-newsletter is very similar to a newsletter which is printed and distributed by conventional methods such as mail delivery. The bulk of an e-newsletter should be quality content in the form of featured articles, short articles containing useful tips or product reviews. The e-newsletter may also contain graphical elements. These elements may simply be graphic designs or they may be graphics which also serve as links. The links may direct traffic to your website or to other websites. Finally, your e-newsletters should contain some type of soft sell sales approach. It is important to not make the sales pitch blatant as this may result in the e-newsletter being considered spam. Finally, the e-newsletter should contain a call to action urging the readers to either make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

Regardless of the method of email marketing you opt to utilize, one of the most important strategies is to evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing on a regular basis. This is critical because elements of your email marketing campaign which are not working should be weeded out. Likewise elements of your marketing campaign which are enjoying a high degree of success should be utilized more often. For example if you notice there is a spike in sales or website traffic each time you issue an e-newsletter, it might be worthwhile to begin issuing e-newsletters more often. This type of evaluation and feedback can turn a moderate success into a huge success.



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Email Marketing Terms to Know

Posted by admin – April 4, 2009

Rudy Barell asked:


When researching email marketing software, it’s important to know what to look for in the products you are looking up. Here are a few things to remember when looking for email marketing software for your business.

When evaluating email marketing software, it is important to know some buzz words, key words, and things to consider so that you are properly informed. As a small business owner, you will greatly benefit from email marketing, as it helps you stay in contact with your current or potential clients. It is an important service that can greatly increase sales. Therefore, it is important to be informed before making a choice on the email marketing solution you are choosing.

The following is a glossary of email marketing buzz words that you might come across, and what they mean to you and your business.

Email Authentication: These are various bits of information that identify the sender to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It’s a kind of accountability for the messages that you are sending out.

The latest technologies in this field include Doman Keys, DKIM and SPF records. Any great email marketing software provider will take care of these technologies on your business’ behalf, so you don’t have to worry about it. If you speak to an email marketing account executive, make sure to ask if they’re taking care of email authentication for you, and inquire about which technologies they’re using.

Domain Keys (DK); Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): Are signatures that are added to your emails to verify the sender (or domain) and the content within the message. This helps get your messages into your subscribers’ inbox, as it is information that spam bots/filters can identify. The best email marketing organizations have this in place, so that your emails have the best possible chances of landing in your subscribers inboxes.

Spam: Is the common term for unsolicited bulk-email. When an email is sent to an address that did not opt-in (or give direct permission) to receive the email, or is sent multiple times to the same address, it is considered Spam. The most respected email marketing companies will not take on customers who are planning to send Spam messages. In fact, the top companies will catch Spam messages before they go out, and prevent the sender from sending them.

Tracking - Once you send out a message, you can track opens, clicks, forwards, and bounces: The best email marketing companies will have a comprehensive tracking beacon allowing you to see which of your subscribers have opened clicked and forwarded your emails. You will also be able to take this information and use it for future campaigns.

It will provide you with a better understanding of your subscribers, and therefore allow you to develop a proper strategy to market to them accordingly. “Opens” relates to which of your subscribers have actually seen the content of your email, by clicking on it in their inbox.

“Clicks” are a list of subscribers that have pressed on one of the links in the email that you have set up. Look for an email marketing software that will give you information as to who, exactly who clicked on each link, and when they did it. “Forwards” lists the subscribers that have passed your message onto other interested parties.

“Bounces” are the emails that didn’t arrive to the intended reader, because either the subscriber’s mailbox was full, the address no longer exists, their server has timed out (meaning the end computer was not responding to the original computer’s message) or because the security features on the subscribers account are set extremely high.

Make sure that you know what you are looking for in an email marketing software, so that you campaign s will be as successful as can be. Look for the email marketing software companies that give you the best possible chances to get your email into the inbox of you subscribers.



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