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Monday, September 30, 2013

I Am Going To Show You How To Create Super Profitable Emails

Is it really an impossible dream to generate an obscene amount of money online? Is it all hype? Or is it indeed possible to make millions from an email publication or two?

Great American legends like Henry Ford became famous by first dreaming up and then doing something that had never been done before. If you take this article seriously and go on to own an email publishing empire, you will not have done something that has not been before. You will simply be a statistic, yet another successful Internet publisher.

In other words, all you need to do is carefully study what those who came before you did and then simply duplicate the process and your life could change – no hype. Here is one of the most successful publishing models ever. This technique that you are about to take a close look at, has served most Internet publishers well. Many of them have made huge sums of cash online, using it. It involves the launching of two separate email publications. Each will have its’ own different revenue source.


The First Email Publication Will Be The Foundation

The first email publication will be a free ezine. This publication is the key or foundation of the whole strategy or publishing model that we are discussing in this article. While it can be hugely profitable from advertising, the main aim here initially will be to pick up a huge number of email addresses to create a huge opt-in email list as quickly as possible.

The beauty of internet publishing is that even as you begin to gather your email addresses, there are several ways that you can use the material in this free ezine to start generating cash and at the same time marketing your free ezine. For instance, you can create a blog, publish your free ezine there and post Adsense ads (or the new Chikita ads which have proved to be more profitable for some bloggers) and start generating cash from clicks. The same article in your blog can be distributed to high traffic article directories, which will help to generate targeted traffic to your blog. You will therefore be in that super-profitable situation where you start earning money from your email publication even as you are setting it up for the real super profits.


Techniques To Speed Up Your Subscriber List Growth

There are too many free ezines being dangled in front of surfers these days that many have learnt how to ignore the lot. And yet the quicker you grow your list, the better. The way to do this is to dream up promotions and special offers. For instance you can offer some valuable report free to people who sign up. Or you can offer it to your current subscribers who refer their friends to your ezine.

You should constantly be thinking of ways of speeding up recruitment to your subscriber list because the bigger your list grows, the more profits you will be able to generate from it.


There Are Many Ways In Which A Targeted Opt-in Email List Can Earn You Serious Money

Even without considering the critical role your free email publication and opt-in email list will play in making your second email publication profitable, there are numerous ways you can profit from a large opt-in email list. There are many online entrepreneurs who make a very good living from a single opt-in email list of one or two thousand email addresses. An opt-in email list of only 10,000 can earn you a fortune.

Apart from being able to carry valuable ads in your email publication that should be your main source of income, you can advertise your own special products narrowly targeted at your list. You can advertise affiliate products or even simply refer the traffic to your Adsense blogs to earn from clicks on the Adsense ads posted there. There are actually dozens of ways to make serious money from your list, even before you refer them to your paid subscription email publication.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Make Sure You Get The Most From Your Email Service

When you work from your website as a home base to talk to your customers on a regular basis, you need a reliable form of communication. In the old days, a handshake and a smile were the best ways to greet customers, both new and returning. But today, as you acquire customers on the web, you need to have a way to make them feel welcome and attended to while they are shopping with you online. The most effective way is of course email.

When you sign up for hosting, whether you use a free service or go the more sophisticated route of managed hosting, you may get the chance to register one or more email accounts that you can use for your business. The number of email accounts you can get depends on the type of hosting account you pay for and the perks that come with it.

This is a fine option for someone who just needs one email account to go with a very basic internet site. So if you mainly use your website to present your qualifications or company overview, rather than a method of active sales or service, then you might only need one email account. You can direct comments or questions to one address and use this address on your business cards. For smaller Denver businesses, this is the perfect option.

But for larger businesses in Denver, email services are a must. Even if your hosting company offers you several accounts, you will probably want to look into another form of communication. This is due to the fact that these accounts are sometimes not as stable as the accounts you get with larger dedicated email services. The last thing you want is for your newsletter to get stuck and not be delivered because your hosting company is changing around the way they manage their email accounts.

So if you want to keep in touch with your clients or customers on a regular basis, if you want to welcome your new visitors who opt-in to your email list with a nice welcome letter, or if you simply want to set up an inter-office email network, look into Denver email services that are right for you. There are several options on the web.

Email services, Denver based and elsewhere, are basically companies that offer you email accounts that can either be independent or linked. Companies like Google's popular Gmail, allow users to chat with one another as well send email messages. You get free online storage as well as a great search feature that allows you to look up messages and find them instantly. On the down side, it only offers POP access and makes you look at a few ads along the way.

There are other email services that are popular on the web. These include Yahoo!, which has a decent spam filter included, FastMail, which offers IMAP access and few ads, and AIM Mail from AOL, which offers 2 GB of storage and great spam guards. Newer email services are offering more perks. Goowy Mail is a wonderful desktop program that also gives you an RSS feeder, games, and a calendar.

So before you settle on an email service for you business, look around and see what's available to you. Don't just settle for what you get with your hosting account when you could have so much more.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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It Is Never Too Early To Start Your Email Marketing Campaign

It's Never too Early:
We often talk with companies who aspire to reach many of the same goals we've achieved with email - regular communications, and enhanced relationships. Amazingly, many of these companies are considerably larger than us - but yet object on the grounds that they 'aren't ready.' Baloney! Email marketing is incredibly easy to get started - and in our opinion it is most effective when it is done with a philosophy of simplicity

Frequent Contact is Key:
Email marketing does not work as well for a one-time quick hit marketing strategy. Email allows you to build a regular, ongoing dialogue with your best clients and prospects. And that becomes self-selecting - those who most wish to do business with you will appreciate the regular communications. Those who do not can opt-out. It truly is a win-win.

Be Regular:
One of the real keys to success is how frequently (or not) you communicate. We occasionally provide special alerts, but generally, for us, once a month is plenty often to communicate. I firmly believe - and our results have confirmed - that regular but respectful communication is optimal.

Content is King:
Ultimately, for professional service firms like ours it is ideas that build relationships - and ideas are driven and supported by content. We strongly recommend the creation of a regular communications vehicle - whether an e-Newsletter or other vehicle. It has worked for us and it works for a number of our clients.

Be Brief:
We also have found that it is critical to keep the content out of the newsletter. While this may seem to be a contradiction to the previous point, it is not. You should let people know about your ideas, but not force them down their throats. Use the newsletter to point to your content (on your site or elsewhere) but don't try to cram it all in. It shouldn't take someone 10 minutes to decide if your newsletter is worth a read. An overly long, dense, hard-to-read newsletter simply wastes people's time. In addition, by keeping the content external, you can use click through analytics to see who is really interested in what content - and tailor your follow-up appropriately.

Keep it Entertaining.
We’re shocked by the number of dry, boring newsletters that clog our inboxes. We subscribe to many newsletters to keep up on our competitors, but we usually only read those that keep us entertained. Try adding a bit of humor if possible.

Don't Hard-Sell.
The flip side of the coin is when we see companies who feel as though they need to close business in every sentence. Email marketing is about relationship building, and it is something you're doing for the long- term - not a quick revenue hit. Even for consumer- oriented retailers, this fact still holds true- customer relationships are profitable when they are long-term, so your marketing efforts need to be oriented that way.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Using An Auto Responder To Generate Laser Targeted Leads

An autoresponder is probably one of the most important marketing tools you can have when you’re doing business online. In fact, there‘s probably only thing more important than an autoresponder, and that’s your opt in list. But as you probably know: autoresponders and opt in list go hand-in-hand: the list doesn’t  exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses!

If you want to build an email list, the easiest and fastest way to gather email addressess is to give things away for free: give away an ezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of. Your goal is is to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! This way, you create a win-win situation: the person that’s subscribing gets a freebie and you get his name and email address, and permission to email him in the future.

But if you give it some extra thinking, you could get even more than that. The freebie that you give away can also be used to promote your products or services. For example, if it just has (your) affiliate links for products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate extra revenue.  You also need to make sure to include valuable information in the emails you send, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies!

You need to use every opportunity that is presented to you to succeed.
- you can earn money in the freebie that you create
- you can earn money when you send the ‘thank you’ email after a person has requested your freebie
- you can earn money every time an autoresponder message is sent out to that list in the future

Don’t waste those opportunities, but  put them all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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You Must Earn Trust With Your New Email Subscribers

This short email in opt tutorial shows you some of my favorite tips and techniques for dealing with new subscribers to get them hooked so they stay in your list as long as you follow the following this techniques.

The main goal of email in opt tutorial is to explain how to develop a communication process with your new subscribers to build trust.

One of the biggest aspects of online business is trust, and how you are perceived. If you make a bad first impression, or come off as someone just in it for the money, people are smarter than that. They’ll see it coming a mile away, especially with all of the scams and people getting ripped off today.

Email in opt tutorial is composed with two main parts if you neglect one part things will go wrong. Please give all parts the required attention.

Part one of email in opt tutorial - make sure you have a system ready to take action!

Note: Don't buy or rent a mailing list unless you make sure the subscribers in the list know they will receive your marketing messages.

Before you buy, rent email list or start collecting email addresses from your web site, you need to have a solid system in place that will allow you to communicate with your list and allow them to get to know you and trust you.

Most of subscribers you will receive are new online users and / or new businesses starters. They are info seekers. They opt in because they want information about your product or service now. They won't wait for tomorrow to receive it. Use autoresponder to offer free valuable information via email! All you have to do is create your own series of email training to educate your prospects.

Get quality autoresponder service. You obviously can’t do this on an individual basis, because it would be nearly impossible as your list gets bigger, but you can easily do this through your automatic responder services.

Use addtracker to track your potential clients foot steps and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.

Make sure you have your tracking systems in place so you know what's going on once the promotions begin and the traffic hits. Don't do any guesswork. You need SCIENTIFIC numbers telling you what's going on, what's happened and what you need to do to increase sales and profits.

Part two of email in opt tutorial - How to structure your autoresponder messages.

Don’t ruin your business by sending out 50 or more follow up advertising messages. People are becoming very careful about requesting anything for fear of being spammed to death for doing it.

Teach your subscribers.

Set up seven parts autoresponder email course. Each course contains helpful information and quality gift related to the course theme.

Email courses are a very good way to build your reputation as a provider of useful information. Setup an email course series a bout a hot topic. Give quality information in the course. Don't advertise any product during the course phase. Don't show your subscribers you are here only for money. Instead, invite them to visit your website to see your special marketing offer, your web site update, your quality free information, etc... and the ways are endless to put your offer in front of your potential customer.

In each course you may send a free quality brandable ebook or software where you advertise your affiliate programs. Allow your subscribers to brand the product with their name to help them make money they will think you for doing so.

Show them you are a real person.

- Put your contacts info including your email address, your physical address, phone number, etc... in all your outgoing messages to make it easy for your subscribers to contact you and feel they are dealing with an authentic marketer.

- Show them your photo, your family photos or your employees' photo.

- Send them to where they can read about you.

Let Your Subscribers Know You.

After your email course series is over hook your subscribers with your follow up messages series.

Set up a series of follow up messages. You can set up a whole series of follow up messages that show your potential customer that you are concerned with their satisfaction and you are here to help them succeed.

In your first tree messages or so do not promote any product or service you are selling at all. These three messages are designed to open an unstoppable dialog between you and your potential customers to build relationship and trust.

Instead of sales pitches, you’ll be sending out to your new subscribers a series of emails that talk about anything you want but no product promotion. You may talk about yourself, your likes & dislikes, your favorite hobby, what you do for a living, any websites you have, etc. You can even talk about your family and friends if you want.

After they receive your emails that talk about what you have chosen to talk about. Invite your subscribers to contact you in a friendly manner. Let them know you are there to help them. Ask them to send you emails talking about anything and everything they want to talk about. Your subscribers won’t contact you on their own if you don't invite them.

In this introductory phase of the process, keep sending to your subscribers a quality information and gifts that they can't find elsewhere. When people see you as a provider of good information that they can use and profit from, then your reputation and the reputation of your company becomes more credible.

When this happens people will be more likely to buy your products and services or indeed the products or services you recommend them.

As soon as the communication starts up between you and your subscribers, start collecting information about your subscribers. Information like what business they are involved in? What are their concerns and fears? Their gender, age, where they live? What's their problem?

Once you have built trust and collect information....

At this time start sending promotional messages that promote quality products. Do not promote any product before you try it. If you try to promote a product you have never used, it will show. The visitor will see and feel the lack of sincerity and your reputation will suffer accordingly.

If you follow these techniques you will build a quality email list of ready to buy subscribers.

Permission email marketing is an art. Permission email marketing is not a hard science. Without question, email marketing is the most affordable and effective tool in your marketing arsenal.

You can use email marketing to maximize all of your other sales and marketing activities and improve the return on investment (ROI) of every dollar you spend to obtain new business.

If you want to buy targeted email list do it wisely. Do not send messages to these lists unless you are sure that they know they will receive marketing messages from you.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Email Marketing Is A Powerful Tool For Internet Marketers

Electronic mail, abbreviated e-mail or email is a method of composing, sending and receiving messages over the Electronic Communication System.

The enormous development of the Internet has enabled emails conveying useful information, to be transmitted simultaneously to several recipients worldwide in a matter of seconds. The Power, Reach and Sophistication of Emails are such that it has become the most inexpensive and effective way to promote your Internet Marketing Business.

Building opt-in lists has become part and parcel of the ritual of Internet Marketing today. Let's see what exactly the emails do to help the Internet Marketer?

1. I am right here.
Emails remind people that you exist, that you are right here and that you are a living entity. It further helps to project your image and personality. It is nothing but natural that people tend to forget you after some time and reminding them by email without harassing them is a way of ensuring that they remeber you, your product or website.

2. Traffic to your Website,
Email is acknowledged as the most effective way to drive traffic to you site. It is the email that keeps your clients and prospects returning to your site. This traffic without question is the very life blood of your Internet Marketing Business.

3. Building Awareness.
One wonderful aspect of the email and used all too often by the Internet Marketers is to Alert Customers, clients, users and friends of products, articles and events. In addition the email alerts, play a prominent role in the promotion of new products and technologies.

4. Building Trust and Confidence.
Sending emails is not a one off action. In addition to reaching out to customers, it is also used to follow up customers. Confirmation emails have become the norm today, especially after orders or subscriptions are placed. Over a period of time these email messages build trust and credibility between the parties concerned.

5. Building a feeling of Togetherness.
Receiving regular emails from organizations and groups makes you feel wanted and creates a bond or feeling of togetherness with that organization or group. Even if reciprocal action is not seen immediately it will ultimately create a bond if your emails are handled properly.

6. Sharing of Emails.
Another great advantage of emails is that it can be shared. Special promotions or informative content in Newsletters or emails are quite often circulated among friends and the end result is more traffic. Tell a friend images in websites too induce visitors to web sites to send email messages to friends informing them of their newly discovered product or information.

These are some of the main benefits enjoyed by the Internet Marketers but unfortunately the usefulness of emails is today being threatened by Spamming i.e. sending of unsolicited emails.It is hoped that technology will catch up with them before long. Nevertheless Internet Marketers continue to send millions of emails everyday with even more added sophistication such as embedded pictures and music.

Today the email has become such an inexpensive powerful medium of communication that it has become a reliable friend and an excellent indispensable tool of Successful Internet Marketers.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Sunday, September 29, 2013

This Is How I Use Auto Responders With My Email Marketing

An email automatic responder or autoresponder is the second most important marketing tool I have to make money online. The first would be my hosting company. Without these 2 tools my internet marketing business is dead in the water.

In the world of internet marketing, millions of sites are fiercely competing with each other to gain new clients. For any ecommerce site to succeed, it must capture the interest and the trust of its visitors. It is not enough that your site is perfectly designed or has the latest in animation of content.

You should focus your efforts not only in attracting visitors but also in leading them to make a purchase. There are dozens of marketing strategies you can use to attract more buyers and pump up your sales. One of them is by establishing an excellent and professional reputation for prompt and efficient response.

As more potential customers visit your site, you should expect a flood of inquiries and requests for information. This is an excellent opportunity for you to capture more clients and lead them to buying from your site. Thus, it is important that you carry out an efficient and prompt response to every email you receive. The fastest and most effective way to do this is by utilizing an email automatic responder.

Autoresponder services use a computer program that automatically return a prewritten message to anyone who sends an email to your site. It is widely used for responding to consumer inquiries and visitor comments and suggestions.

Follow up automatic responders are also used by e-zines in responding to people who subscribe or unsubscribe to their online magazines. Companies, who send out their e-newsletter regularly, also use utoresponders.

How can effective autoresponder services help boost your business? The answer lies in its ability to return a prompt response to any e-mail the site receives. By responding rapidly and efficiently, you create a very good impression on your potential customer. Good email autorespondrs help you get important information back to these customers immediately. An effective autoresponder service helps you communicate your message promptly, creating a sense of professionalism and efficiency that your clients will definitely appreciate.

Another very important advantage of email automatic responders is that it saves time with multiple marketing tasks. Certainly, you do not have enough time to personally make and send all correspondence. Autoresponder services allows you to send thank you letters, newsletters, product information, brochures, orders etc. to hundreds of clients almost immediately and simultaneously. Autoresponder services are also indispensable in any email marketing campaign.

Choosing the right autoresponder is very important. What makes the best automatic responder? First, you should pick an autoresponder that is reliable and can give you 24/7 service. You cannot afford to lose a customer because your autoresponder failed to answer his query or request for information. The ability to respond promptly is the first thing you must look for in any automatic responder.

Another key factor you should consider when choosing Autoresponder servcies is flexibility. Good autoresponders allow you to customize unique responses that will have maximum effect on the customer. You should avoid creating an impression that the customer is communicating with a machine instead of a real human being.

An excellent email automatic responder lets you provide the information that is specifically targeted for what the potential customers are looking for. Because any email from potential customers essentially represent the customer's intent on getting more information about your product, which can ultimately lead to direct sales, all emails are important. Thus, a top Autoresponder servcie must fulfill all these duties to help you boost your business.

For all of our autoresponder needs we prefer Aweber. They are very reasonably priced and have proved to be reliable and easy to use.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Building A Huge List Of Hungry Email Subscribers

An opt in list full of hungry subscribers are the soul and spirit of any online business existence. But how do you build it so that the subscribers will respond to every offer that you introduce them? First, we will take a look at what makes an online business and the techniques of getting hungry subscribers into your opt in list.

Every online business provides great service to generate satisfaction among their customers. As each and every customer receives satisfaction over their products or the services they get, there is a great chance that they will become a return customer and buy again. Better yet, they will recommend you to other people that could generate more business for you and your site.

As more traffic is driven to your site, you can entice many of them to subscribe to your mailing list or opt-in list. This is a list where in website visitors agree to be sent promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and such that could keep them updated about your site or the niche of your site. These promotional materials are sent via e-mail to the members of the list in different time intervals.

When using e-mail as the media of your marketing and advertisements, you eliminate the need for high costs. Email is free and if you can manage to make your own promotional advertisements you can also save a bundle there. With an opt-in subscribers list, you are pretty sure that what you are sending out is received, viewed and read by the subscribers and not simply being deleted. They have signed up for service and have consented in receiving it.

This means that there are constant reminders to your subscribers about all your products, new products and services as well as any promotions and special deals you are having. There is also the chance that they can be forwarded to other potential customers as they tell their friends and families about you and your site.

Of course you should be also aware that a subscriber may unsubscribe when they feel that they are not getting what they want or expected. Make sure that they are satisfied with your opt-in marketing strategies and keep them excited in receiving your newsletters and catalogs. Here are some tips that can help you build a list of eager subscribers.

Make your promotional materials interesting and fun. Try to use a little creativity but not too over artsy. Build around what your product or service is about. For example; if you are selling car parts, put some pictures of what is new in the auto parts world, a new wing door possibly that can fit any car and make it look like a Lamborghini.

Try to research what people are looking for, these way, you stay one step ahead of them all the time and you will be their bearer of new tidings. They will be eager to receive what you are sending them because they new you always have fresh and new things to share with them.

Write good articles that can be very informational but light at the same time. If your subscribers enjoy your articles, they will go to your site by clicking the links that you will be putting on your newsletter to read some more. You can provide articles that can connect to many people. Be diverse in your articles. Put something humorous, then put something informational, then put something that has both.

Are you wary about this because you don’t like writing? No problem, there are many professional and experienced article writers that   can do the job for you for minimal fees. They know what they are doing and can provide the need that you have for your newsletters, the money that you pay for your articles are going to be met by the many sign-ups and the potential profit from the sales that you will get.

Create and send an E-book to your customers about anything that is related to your business or site. Use your knowledge and expertise in the field you have chosen to help other people who are similarly interested. Offer this e-book for free. You can write about anything informational and helpful to your subscribers. For example; you can do manuals and guides in so many things. This e-book could be used as a reference for many people.

Share this e-book with everyone, even other sites; just make sure that they don’t change the links in the e-book that will lead people to your site. If you want, you can always get some people to write it for you just like your articles. Your investment once again will be covered by the great marketing this will generate.

Add e-coupons in your newsletters that will help them avail to special discounts. Put a control number in your e-coupon so that they can only be used once. When people get discounts that can be found in your newsletters, they will be eager to receive your newsletter in anticipation of what you are promoting next.

If your subscribers can get benefits from your newsletters, they will be very eager to receive them. Just don’t flood your mailing list with mails so that you don’t annoy your subscribers.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Using Email Marketing Software Helps You Keep Track Of Your Campaigns

For an advertising or marketing campaign to run smoothly and effectively good organization is required; for larger emailing campaigns this usually requires some kind of email marketing software. However, email marketing software has a lot more to offer than you would probably imagine.

Prospect Finder

Finding prospects can be a very time consuming activity. Some email marketing tools allow you to collect targeted email addresses from visitors to your web site. Creating a newsletter for visitors adds value to your site and keeps your company in front of your prospects.

Autoresponders

Responding to your prospective clients with a well-written and partial sales email is vital to winning business and gaining repeated business. Using email-marketing software you can set up autoresponders that will send these emails for you as soon as your visitors or customers complete certain actions, which are predefined by you.

Verify, Verify, Verify.

With modern legislation on spamming it is common practice to verify email addresses; getting prospects to click on a verification link makes them an opt in lead, meaning you can contact them as you will regarding your service or your product. Don’t forget, though, you must always offer them the opportunity to stop receiving communication from you.

Removal Service

Once you have your bulk email list up and running and you’ve been contacting people on a regular basis to forge a good relationship and sell your products you will undoubtedly get emails that become dead links. You should be removing these to save time, effort and space in your email.

Spamming policies mean you should also always offer your prospects the chance to stop receiving your targeted emails. Even though you won’t want to let go, sometimes you have to.

Email

Obviously, email marketing software offers you the capability to send targeted emails to everyone on your email lists. That’s what this software was originally intended for and what it is most commonly used for to this day. You can organize your prospects into categories and even status. You could run several campaigns at once and your email marketing software will keep track of which prospects belong to which campaign and therefore, send the correct email to them.

Most email marketing software will be able to schedule emails for you, so you could for instance send an email to new prospects that contains a link to your catalog. After a week you may wish to contact them to answer any questions. This technique will put your company name back in their minds and possibly produce more sales. Or, perhaps you sell a consumable good that most people buy once a month. You can set your email marketing software to contact your customers one month after purchase, perhaps offering them a discount for repeated business.

All of these are genuine ways to use email marketing software. Bearing in mind that some estimate as many as 70% of Internet users from the USA have made purchases on the back of an email marketing campaign, most agree they are useful tools to help your website or business succeed.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Improve Your Email Open Rates With These Tips

Many email marketers frequently fail to realize that their subscriber’s email application preview pane is the first opportunity their content has to attract the attention they require. And unfortunately those that don’t allow for a snapshot preview in their content design fall victim to lower than expected open rates as their subscribers are less likely to open the message in full.

Here are four simple steps you can to take to ensure your next email message preview pane design gets all the attention it should:

First, be aware that prior to Outlook 2003, the preview your subscriber sees runs horizontally along the foot of their screen. In Outlook 2003, this view is a vertical slice showing the left hand side of your content.

As a tip take a blank sheet of paper and then reveal the top third of your next message and then the left third. Does what you see in both instances seem interesting enough to entice your subscribers to click on?

Second, by allowing for the thinnest of newsletter mastheads, you should cram into these viewable snippets as much content as you can. Plus, if this content tells your subscriber exactly what your message contains, then the chances of them opening it increase even further.

Third, don't have too many images cluttering the preview space. By default, my version of Outlook 2003 suppresses all images sent to me in HTML messages. All I see is a sea of red crosses, which tells me nothing about the message. (I tend to leave these messages until later, which CAN become NEVER! Your subscribers may well do the same.)

And finally the smart newsletter designers use images sparingly in this top part. Even better, they build their masthead using not images, but HTML text and color to effectively get across their message. As a consumer, I’m far more tempted to break my train of thought and dig down deeper into that juicy piece of content I can see.

Thus, by treating the preview pane of your newsletter as a quick-peek mini-summary for your subscribers, you are on the right track to grab a new client!

It’s simple really--the quicker your readers are intrigued by the very first lines of your email, the more they will read them.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

So How Do Autoresponder Actually Work

Have you ever received an email telling you that the person you emailed is on vacation and will not be answering his email for the next week? What about a company that answers with an email thanking you for your interest and that they would get back to you in a day or two? Or even an email saying that the email you tried to send could not be delivered?

Each of these is a different version of what we commonly call an autoresponder.  An autoresponder is simply that, a computer program that automatically answers email sent to it.  This simple definition, however, belies a world of difference between the different types of autoresponders in use today.

The first auto responders were incorporated into mail transfer agents or email providers.  When they could not deliver a piece of email, they would send an autoresponse to you letting you know as much.  These types of emails were helpful, but not particularly sophisticated.

That has all changed radically in recent years, as autoresponders have been incorporated into the marketing strategies of many companies.  Today autoresponders are used by companies to immediately give feedback and information to prospective clients.  This might include sending an autoresponse to email inquiries which include pricing information, more details about a product, and a timeline for when they can expect someone from the company to get back with them.

These ‘client touches’ are a valuable commodity in the world of marketing because they improve conversion rates in the purchase of goods by keeping the product or service in the mind of the purchaser for a bit longer, as well as provide the company with an additional opportunity to provide the potential customer with more information on the product.

Autoresponders are setup primarily in one of two ways, with an outsourced ASP model, and a server-side model.  The Outsourced ASP model involves the company or provider who would like to incorporate an autoresponder into their business model contracting with an outside provider.  The outside provider will then typically provide the user with access to a web-based control panel.  From there the company or individual can dictate exactly what they would like the autoresponder to say to each email received as well as how to deal with different types of emails and other variations.  For these services, the company typically pays a monthly fee to the autoresponder provider.

The second category of autoresponders is server-side.  Server-side autoresponders simply refers to programs that instead of paying for someone to implement for you on a monthly basis, a company can install the system on their own server and run it for themselves.  While this process is typically not as simple as purchasing a program out of a box and uploading to the server, it has become significantly simpler in recent years.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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How To Start Building Your Email Marketing List

Having your own opt in list is essential if you want to succeed on the internet. Its common knowledge that email marketing is one of the most reliable ways of generating consistent free targeted traffic for your website.

Once you have your own responsive opt in list it can open up a variety of different opportunities, such as selling advertising space and setting up joint ventures with other list owners.

The first thing you need to do is collect email addresses from your visitors and you can do this by offering a free report or starting a newsletter using an auto responder, allowing you to set up a series of messages that will be sent out automatically on your behalf on a timeframe you specify.

Its important to choose the most reliable auto responder at the start because it can be very stressful and time consuming to transfer your opt in list from one place to another.

For best results you should not use a free auto responder service because advertisements will be added to all your outgoing emails. You will have no control over which ads are shown and this will distract your subscribers and dramatically reduce the response rates to your emails.

You can either pay a monthly fee and use a third party hosted auto responder service like Aweber or Get Response, or you can pay a one time fee and install an auto responder script like Auto Response Plus on your domain.

The problem with auto responder scripts is that the number of subscribers you can store will be limited depending on how much disk space you have with your hosting plan, and you will also need to backup your list on a regular basis in case a problem occurs and all of the information is lost.

Its much easier and safer to use a third party hosted auto responder service because you will not have to worry about installing a script and your subscribers will be stored securely on a dedicated server with no limits.

Its essential that you focus on one specific topic for your opt in list as this will dramatically increase your response rates. You need to create a landing page consisting of a short sales letter that encourages visitors to subscribe, and a subscription form that allows visitors to enter their name and email address. You should also offer some quality bonus gifts to increase your conversion rates.

Double opt in lists are becoming more popular because they provide extra security as subscribers must confirm their email address, but many people will forget to complete this confirmation which results in fewer active subscribers so you may prefer to use the single opt in feature.

Once you have set up your landing page and follow up messages you will need to start sending visitors to your website. Submitting content to article directories and writing press releases are the most effective ways of generating unlimited free targeted traffic.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Getting The Most From Your Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing campaigns allow you to get in front of your clients time and time again, at a fraction of the cost of printed mailings. E-newsletters also add value to your web site, can boost holiday sales and can make your marketing job easier.

Added Value to Your Web Site

Providing an informative newsletter adds value to your site and gives users another reason to visit. Posting archives of previous mailings provides your site visitors with a library of information - one more reason for them to come back to your site. Adding content also gives search engines more to index.

Stay In Front of Your Customers

Newsletters allow your company to stay in front of your clients and leads. A site visitor may only come to your web site one time, yet if you convince them of the value of signing up for your newsletter, the single visit surfer is much more likely to return. Staying in front of your customers and prospects in this way increases the chances that your company is remembered when the time to buy comes.

Holiday Sales Booster

Newsletters are an excellent holiday sales booster. Sending a newsletter during the holiday season offering special discounts reminds gift-buying people the value and appropriateness of your product.

Easy to Use Software

Getting the right newsletter software can make newsletter mailings a snap or a nightmare. Here are some features to look for when choosing email newsletter software.

Opt In and Out Easily - This process should be automated so that clicking on a simple link will allow users to opt-in or out of a newsletter without additional administrative intervention. It is no fun and a waste of time to have to manually add and remove names and emails from your list and also opens the door to human error.

Double Confirmation - To ensure that your subscribers really did in fact subscribe to your newsletter, double confirmation can be used. What this means is that after someone signs up to you newsletter, they must also click a link sent to their email address to confirm that it was actually the owner of the email address that signed up. This can be particularly useful as an added level of security, especially with newsletters of controversial content that may offend some readers.

Scheduled Emails - Advanced email software programs will allow you to schedule your mailing in advance. So while you are in Aruba sipping cocktails on the beach, your server can be working for you sending out pre-programmed material without you having to be there. For daily or weekly newsletters, this allows business owners or webmasters to send multiple mailings while only having to attend to administrative duties one time, saving time and effort.

Auto Responders - Auto responders allow you to follow up with clients and leads effortlessly. For example, perhaps you have a free e-book download that requires a user to enter his or her email address. Several days after the e book has been downloaded, you could send an auto responder asking if the reader has any questions or requires any professional services the company offers that relate to the e book.

Allow Recipients to Automatically Update Their Contact Information - By allowing recipients of your email newsletter to update their own contact information via an automated form system, the work of keeping your list up to date is partially transferred to the recipient, saving you work and time. Also, many newsletter recipients will appreciate that you have the correct spelling of their name and that updating their information is an easy task.

In conclusion, email newsletters can be some work to do right, yet the reward can be huge. Email newsletters can increase your sales dramatically and also help get your company name out into the minds' of buyers. Carefully choosing your email newsletter software before you embark on starting an e-newsletter of you own can save you countless hours of frustration. Choosing the right e newsletter tool can make the task pleasant and rewarding.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Email Marketing Is The Life Blood Of Your Online Business

It is not unusual to have high ranking at the Search engines yet see low conversion rates. In fact, someone else whose ranking is lower than yours may be making a killing online with his products. How could that happen?  With all other things being almost equal, good web design, good sales copy, quality products, it is highly probable the other person has an effective email marketing campaign set
in place.

It is a so-called ‘known secret’ of successful online marketers that the lifeline of any Internet business is email marketing. It brings longevity to your business. If you hope to make a long term living off your Internet business, you need to give serious thought to email marketing if you haven’t done so.

I started off my Internet business without seeing the need for email marketing. I spent a lot of time on SEO. Then one day this question dawned upon me. What am I to do with the traffic that would show up at my door?

It is a known fact that not many people will buy your product or service on their first visit to your website. Yes, some may buy the products that you are promoting but the majority won’t. The vast majority may never come this way again. You stand to lose substantial traffic in this way. Then what about those who bought something? How can they become your lifelong customers?

No wonder, successful online marketers have an effective follow-up system that allows them to touch base with their visitors.  What better cost effective way to do so than through email.

4 Benefits of Email Marketing:

1.Gives visitors a personal touch to your online business. Email communication is the most cost effective way at present to touch base with your website visitors.

In a highly impersonalized world of Internet marketing, simple personalized email communiqués can do wonders for your Internet business.

2.Allows you to build credibility and trust with your visitors. You can achieve this by conducting short courses in the area of your expertise through email. The courses you conduct must be relevant to the products or services you are promoting on your website.

For example, if you are promoting weight loss products, you may conduct a short course like 30 days to lose weight.  People are more disposed to buy your product or service if they gain confidence through the information you have provided.

3.Exposes visitors to your product or service. Sales statistics reveal that most people need to be exposed to an offer 7 times or more before they buy. You have no way of exposing your products or services before your website visitors except through Email marketing.

4.Turns first time buyers into lifelong customers. Email marketing is an effective way to update your customers of your latest products and services.

Follow-up with your customers immediately after they made a purchase with an offer of a free gift or special discounts on products that are related to what they have bought. This is good marketing practice. You will endear first time buyers to you, and turn them into lifelong customers.

After all been said, how to get visitors to leave behind their email address? Nobody will give something in exchange for nothing. Offer a free e-book, or software, or email course, or newsletter in exchange for your visitors’ names and email addresses. This is by no means tricking people into giving their email address. In the first place, your visitors have some expressed interest when they came by your website. Your job is to continue to arouse their interest that they want to know more about what you have to offer them.

The names and email addresses you collect is called an opt-in email list. With it you can touch base with your visitors without being accused of spamming.

Follow-up with personalized email communications, offer relevant information and leads. Don’t turn your email into one big sales letter. It puts people off. If they unsubscribe from your mailing list, it’s your loss. Say goodbye to your potential customers.

You cannot maintain the number one spot at the Search engines all the time. Other webmasters will overtake you sooner or later. However, this does not diminish the importance of Search Engine Optimization. For long-term success, SEO and an effective email marketing campaign are needful.

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Email Marketing An Indispensable Marketing Technique

Technology with its advent has taken a toll even in the field of marketing at last. E-mail also known as electronic mail, is now turning out as an indispensable medium of marketing on internet.

Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is spread whole and wide over the whole word. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in the country. E-mails are very techno-savvy and more effective and fast. This is the reason that we can now see e-mails developing as an indispensable media of marketing.

Over the years people and corporate houses have started realizing the advantages of e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing carries a lot of advantages along with it. Some of the benefits are:

a) Speed:


This is the main factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered better and over the other Medias of marketing. E-mail marketing along with it brings the advantage of high speed. E-mail marketing has a very high speed of information transfer. It just takes a second for the person to transfer information from his working place to the internet worldwide, where everyone can view it worldwide.


b) Reach:


One another factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered a better option is because of the fact that it has a better reach to the people worldwide than the other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing knows no boundaries and this helps the people to continue or conduct their marketing work in larger scale. The higher reach of e-mail marketing, attracts more people towards it and thereby assists the whole marketing process.


c) Inexpensive:


E-mail marketing is comparatively much and more cheap than that of the other medias of marketing. The people do not have to incur any special or extra cost to market their product or point of view. Being inexpensive it suits the people and they thereby resort to e-mail marketing than the other Medias.


d) Effective:

E-mail marketing is very effective than the other medias of marketing. The reason being, that they are very techno-savvy, very fast and still pretty cost effective. This whole package makes e-mail marketing very cheap and pretty attractive. This is the reason that e-mail marketing is pretty effective and thus more approachable.

e) Personalized marketing:


E-mail marketing avails the people the opportunity to avail and conduct personalized marketing. In this the people can send mails only to people whom they think that they would be interested in it. In this the mails will only be forwarded to people on whom the concern is interested.


Thus we see that why and how e-mail marketing has turned out to be an indispensable tool in marketing.

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Friday, September 13, 2013

The Easy Approach To Email Marketing

What is email marketing?

Basically, in plain English, email marketing is a targeted mass mailing done via email. The purpose of email marketing could be advertising in order to recruit new clients, introducing a new set of products or services to an existing client base, keeping your clients informed by means of a newsletter, etc. All of the before mentioned activities are very legitimate business efforts, as long as you respect some unwritten rules and as long as the list of emails you use is what is called 'targeted', in other words the names came from a database generated by your marketing division and represents your existing client base, a carefully selected list of potential prospects or a list of people who opted in to receive your messages.

If instead of the above you use a list that you bought (you know, "25 million guaranteed AOL email addresses for only 19.95 - plus shipping"), or are doing it without warning the people on your list, or using other shady methods, then you are considered a spammer and what you are sending is spam, bulk mail, unsolicited email, basically, the main enemy of all things virtue and life in general. Yes folks, it is that easy to be labeled as a spammer, and very hard to get out of it.
Once your message is considered unsolicited, you will immediately be put on zillions of black lists, side by side with those who promise inches and inches of extra extremities and hours and hours of ecstatic pleasures (for only 3 easy payments and some handling fees).

Sound pretty risky, so why bother?

Obviously, opt-in email advertising is far more cost effective than direct marketing via regular mail, door-to-door sales, or telemarketing. Paper, printing, envelopes, and postage can add up quickly. Door to door sales require paying out commissions. Telemarketing results in high long distance bills, often without great results, as people become more and more blood thirsty toward the people on the other end of the so called cold call.

So why not just use my personal email or my company's mail server and some mailing software?

In the early days of email marketing (that is, before the art of penile enlargement was crafted), that's exactly what people did. They would gather all their emails into some primitive version of a spreadsheet, fire up some mail merging program, hook it up to their corporate mail system and voila, thousands of emails were flying away.

Today, the scenario is certainly possible, but let me tell you in a simple set of scenarios what can happen:

One of the many not-for-profit groups that decided to police the internet will intercept that a large number of emails were generated and sent by a server near you (yep, they can do that). In order to protect the civilized world from those who spread spam, viruses and other vermin, they will put you on a list of threats to humanity. Those other nice corporate folks who were your indented recipients, have an IT department that gets constantly yelled at by angry users who get emails with naked people. Well - Mel, their IT guy decides to put up an anti-spam system that links to that not-for-profit's database of known spammers (oh yeah, did I mention you are now a 'known spammer'?) and block your emails. Your emails might actually be blocked so well that your company will have a real trouble communicating via email and your IT folks will all go nuts and/or get fired.

Basically, not so good. Other things that can happen are: you'll have to build some opt-in / opt-out system, in some states there are laws that require that you make it very easy for your audience to unsubscribe, you'll have a hard time formatting your emails in a decent, eye pleasing way, etc.

Lastly, the process of sending thousands of emails and managing lists, subscribing and unsubscribing people is tedious and just plain annoying. The only way to do it is with a maximum degree of automation, or, the better solution - to outsource to a company that does it professionally.

Folks, I am known for promoting the "do it in house" concept, and am not that big on outsourcing. But when it comes to mass mailing... I say stay away from it and let the professionals do what they do.

If you are worried about cost, know that the fee you pay for email marketing services, will still cost less than the continued overhead and expenses of the traditional options, not to mention the great possibilities of reaching a much larger audience, much faster (practically instantly).

What to look for in an email marketing company?

1. Automating Your Subscribe and Unsubscribe Requests

Many email marketing companies will provide you with exact HTML code you need to paste to your site to have a subscription form on your web site. The better services also provide a link at the bottom of each email that enables subscribers to update their information or unsubscribe from a list, automating everything for you.

2. Personalization of Emails

Another powerful feature of many email marketing services is the ability to use mail merge capabilities to personalize each email that you send. The better services allow to have custom fields, additional to the standard first name and last name.

3. Bounceback email handling

Bouncebacks are emails that are sent to email accounts that no longer exist or are full, blocked, etc. Essentially, you'll get a response stating that your message did not make it. All email list management software programs are able to manage subscribe and unsubscribe requests and send out messages, however without integrated bounceback email handling all the non-deliverable emails will be sent back to you, a rather big nuisance if your list is large. Ideally, the email software you use will be able to manage your bouncebacks for you. Whenever a bounceback is received, the software makes a note of the address and if another bounceback is received the email address will be sent to a list of dead addresses.

This remove capability is extremely important since if you continuously send out emails with many bouncebacks you may be blacklisted as a spammer. This is something you really want to avoid at all cost.

4. HTML email

The ability to send out HTML emails has been around for quite some time. Most email marketing companies support the ability to send out messages that include graphics and formatted text. This is surely something you'll want to look for.

However, not all of your users have the ability to view email messages in HTML format. This percentage is usually between 10-20%. Instead of seeing your aesthetically pleasing email they might see a string of meaningless code. Using most email list management programs, these 10-20% of users will open up emails from you and be very inclined to call you a spammer.

To avoid this, look for companies that use multi-part MIME to send out messages. When you send an HTML email in multi-part MIME, users who do not have the ability to view HTML messages will receive the email in the usual text format.

So who should you use?

Do your homework, read reviews, eventually, make use of a trial account and see if it fits your needs.

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Make Sure People Are Not Ignoring Your Weekly Newsletter

As Internet marketers we all know how important it is to have a successful newsletter to help us keep in touch with our customers. But it can be pretty frustrating to spend all those hours developing content and campaigns only to have the program flop. Open rates can dive into the single-digits and click-through rates can fall to mere fractions of a percent.

So if this happens, what do you do?

First of all, don't panic. Usually, if you spend a few minutes looking at your data you can identify the problems pretty easily.

Determine Which Problem to Fix

Take a look at where your leads are coming from. If you are purchasing lists from other websites or publishers, make sure you segregate each source in your reporting so you can measure the quality of each list. You want to make sure you have a way of determining the quality of a list source before you merge the purchased group into your master list.

Also, if it has been around for a while, try segregating your opt-in list into three groups by age:

* Under 6 months
* 6 months to 1 year
* Over 1 year

It is normal for open and click through rates to be highest for the "Under 6 Month" category, and lowest for those who have been on your list for over a year. However, there should not be a significant drop off as people move from one category to the next.

Look for anomalies in the data. Here are a few things I look for when I'm troubleshooting a client's campaign:

* Is there a significant drop-off behind the first mailing? If the first mailing that a recipient gets typically achieves a 35% open rate, but the second has a 7% open rate, then the problem is not with the list source, or the header information (subject line, "From" address, etc.) it is with the content of the newsletter itself. If the drop off is 35% to 29%, then one might consider that to be normal.
* Has there been a change in frequency? We all get busy, and one of the first activities that can get forgotten is the newsletter. Unfortunately, absence in the Email marketing realm does NOT make the heart grow fonder. In fact, a prolonged period of non-communication is one of the leading causes of opt-outs.
* Are your articles relevant to the demographic? It is a good idea to survey your house list periodically to test your assumptions about their levels of expertise and interest in different subjects.

Wake Up Your Sleepy Optin List

Look at how you approach the people who have subscribed to your list. Remember that with email newsletters the permission your subscribers have given you to send email to them is not permanent; they can opt out at any time if they lose confidence or interest in your newsletter.

More often than not, however, people don't actually opt-out. They simply stop opening and reading your email. I call these "sleepy" subscribers. They are getting your messages, but since they are "asleep" they can't read them. Although there's no way to know for sure, I would guess that your "sleep" rate is probably about 4 to 5 times the size of your opt-out rate. So your opt-out rate is an indicator of your "sleep" rate.

It is vital to understand what your subscribers think of your publication. Again, surveys are a great way to get feedback on your program. You can also provide an open link on each newsletter that asks for general feedback. Very few people will take the time to provide feedback on a feedback form, but you can bet that those who do represent a large chunk of your audience. Take their feedback seriously, and learn from it.

Five Steps to Improve Your Performance

Following are five steps that have always lifted the performance of my campaigns.

* Get in touch immediately – From the moment someone signs up for your newsletter, they start to forget you. If you take three weeks to send something to them, then they won't remember signing up and they will reject your email as spam. Make sure they get an issue of your newsletter (or an ebook, or a free report; something that is relevant to them and has value) immediately after they sign up.
* Make it personal and entertaining – Email marketing is a one-to-one communication, it is almost always best to keep the tone personal and entertaining. Try telling a few stories about yourself or your company. Let people get to "know" you, and feel like an "insider" with your company. This increases their personal equity in your brand.
* Make all emails "high-value" – Every time you send an email it should be valuable to the recipient, not just to you. Straight sales letters with no "meat" can dampen open rates for future mailings. Train your recipients to view each email you send as a valuable piece of information they cannot afford to miss.
* Test multiple article types – You can write all kinds of articles, and depending on your industry and demographics of your subscribers, they may prefer instructional and how-to articles; others may prefer current industry events, or breaking news. Test these out and see what works best.
* Test different formats – Try splitting your list and send half your recipients an HTML newsletter and the other half a "text-looking" email. Make sure that the "text-looking" email really does have HTML in it, or else you won't be able to track the open rates!

Keep Your Chin UP

All newsletters can experience a blow to their response rates. If this happens to you, it is important to identify the problems and fix them before you lose too much of your list to opt-outs and list fatigue. Variety is the spice of life, and it can "wake up" a sleepy list by injecting some excitement. Make sure each communication you send is high value, and provides something new. And keep the lines of communication open so your subscribers can help you improve the quality of your content.

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Direct email marketing is the solution to a very big problem for online retailers. Ask anyone looking at the traffic reports for their online store and they will tell you that nothing drives them more crazy than getting someone to their site (either naturally or through an advertisement) and then seeing them leave. They’re gone into the abyss that is the online market place, possibly never to return again. At this point they’re pretty much gone. This represents another lost customer, lost revenue, and increased frustration. If only there was some way you could stay linked in with that customer. You know they had some interest in your offering (after all, they ended up at your site in the first place) and maybe their next trip is the one that converts. Introduce a direct email marketing solution as part of your marketing and strategic mix and you might be able to lure those lost patrons back.

It’s a proven fact that it can take up to 6 touch points before a customer trusts you enough to make a purchase. Are you planning on achieving all 6 touch points on one visit? That is a very ambitious goal. Chances are you’ll get some touch points in on the first visit, but those are only the first steps. You can easily add a signup box to your website from any major email marketing company and collect visitors’ addresses. Once you have that, it’s a path to getting the necessary touch points to seal the deal.

Once you have a person’s permission to contact them (remember, do not spam as it will hurt your business in the long run!) you can easily create snazzy email marketing promotion to get them back to your site. Whether you’re selling T-shirts, office furniture, or DVDs, you know that certain deals just can’t be passed up. Why not put one of those deals in front of your customers and get their mouth a little wet. Even if it’s been weeks since they visited your t-shirt site, for example, if you offer a “buy 1 shirt, get 1 free” deal, you’ll see an instant spike in traffic and a boost in conversions. Reaching out to customer has always been the role of direct marketing, but now, with email marketing, it all happens electronically.

Direct email marketing is a powerful tool that can boost your sales, but don’t expect that to happen without a little effort on your part. You need to take the time to understand your customers, know what interests them, figure out how to pique their curiosity and make an offer based on all that. The more you target your email marketing message effectively, the greater your response rates will be, and the faster people will come back to your online store.

The online retail marketing place is fiercely aggressive and there are tons of competitors just a click away from your site. You need to outperform the competition by making sure your store is in front of the customer a lot more. With direct email marketing campaigns you can get your store information and special offers right in their inbox. You will ingrain your online brand in their minds so that come purchase time, they’ve racked up enough touch points that their decision is easy.

Direct email marketing is a gateway to building the relationships with your customers that will make them want to buy from you. By staying linked with your customers, you will develop an edge, because your offers will extend beyond your website and into the inbox of potential buyers.

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The Right Subject Line Can Make Or Break Your Email Marketing Efforts

Creativity, style, formatting and length of subject lines are all important points to take into consideration before you send an email.

Be Creative

Using a subject line that’s specific is most appropriate when corresponding with people who know you or with people who are expecting your message.  How do you get the attention of someone who doesn’t know you or who isn’t expecting anything from you?

The answer is – be creative.  Writing a subject line that’s creative is an excellent method for improving chances that your email message will be opened.

In this instance, the subject line isn’t used to describe the contents of the message.  Instead, the subject line is used to convey some other type of information.

What kind of information?  It will vary with each message you send, and it depends on the recipient.  The key question is – what can you tell the recipient that will convince him/her to open this message and read it, instead of deleting it?  In some cases, you’ll need to be quite creative.

There are numerous types of information you can provide in the subject line to help convince the receiver to open the email message.  Here are a few examples.

(Uses for the subject line):  Identify who you are
(Sample wording):  Lawyer

(Uses for the subject line):  Tell how you met this person
(Sample wording):  Chamber Networking B’fast

(Uses for the subject line):  Tell why you are contacting this person
(Sample wording):  Animal shelter fundraiser

(Uses for the subject line):  Find things that set you apart
(Sample wording):  E-commerce lawyer

(Uses for the subject line):  Find common bond with recipient
(Sample wording):  Fellow IU grad & lawyer


Subject Lines:  Formatting and Style

There is another challenge you must overcome when crafting an effective subject line.  This involves the length of the subject line.

The new message box you view on your screen for the subject line will allow you to type as many words as you want.  But, the receiver’s screen has limited space.  Only a small portion of the wording will be viewed by the recipient.

How much appears on the recipient’s screen for the subject line?  It varies, depending on the person’s system and how he/she has the screen setup.  A safe guess is that approximately 25 to 35 characters will appear.

Definition
Pay careful attention here.  This approximation doesn’t mean 25 to 35 words.  It means “characters.”

A character is defined as a letter, space, or punctuation.  For example, any time your cursor moves one space, that’s considered one character.

Phrases
Since the space is so limited in the subject line, you don’t need to type a complete sentence.  Use a phrase or series of words instead of a full sentence.

This is one time when an incomplete sentence is appropriate.  Leave out the little words, and get to the point.

Capitalization
The only “rule” regarding capitalization in the subject line is to be consistent.  For example, you may choose to capitalize only the first word.  Or, you may decide to capitalize every word.

Remember not to use all uppercase (CAPITAL) letters.  This is considered shouting.  Shouting at a person would certainly not be the best way to convince him/her to open your message.

Always remember that the creativity, style, formatting and length of your subject lines are important factors to consider before you send an email.  Be conscientious of the image you project to your customers and colleagues by using effective subject lines.

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Building An Email List Is Key To Your Online Success

Building a power list of loyal subscribers that are willing to gobble up anything you throw at them is the key to maintaining and expanding an online business. This list will be the main focus of any online business to earn money online successfully. Every online business provides either a great product or service focused on solving a problem for the customer and generating satisfaction. This satisfaction that customers get from the product or service can make them become loyal repeat customers and let you earn money online over and over again. They may even be so satisfied with your product as to recommend you and your site to other people.

The first step of building a power list is to capitalize on your current traffic and entice them to subscribe to your mailing or opt-in list. This list of subscribers has agreed to receive promotional materials such as newsletters and catalogs to keep them informed of the latest updates to your business or niche. Such promotional materials are sent through emails to the subscribers at various time intervals or as an occasional broadcast message.

Email marketing is the perfect media of advertising for online businesses. With email marketing, there is no need for any high costs as sending an email is absolutely free. Building a power list of subscribers will make sure that whatever you send them is received and read and not easily deleted. Email marketing will allow you to earn money online successfully as you build a base of loyal subscribers.

Your emails should ideally consist of information about all your products, new products or services as well as any promotions and special deals that you are currently having. Tell them that these promotions are your way of saying how special your subscribers are to you and is your way of thanking them. Making them feel special will ultimately make you huge profits in the future. There may be a chance that they will even forward your promotions to other potential customers as they recommend you and your site to their families and friends letting you earn money online with ease.

Occasionally, subscribers will unsubscribe if they feel they are not getting what they want or expect. It is not possible for you to please everyone but it is possible for you to improve your email marketing strategies and keep your subscribers loyal and excited. The following are some tips to build your own power list of responsive subscribers that will let you earn money online many times over.

Do some due diligence and research on what your customers are looking for. You can do this simply by asking them what kind of information or service they desire in a broadcast email. This will also show that you truly care about your customers and help build a long-term relationship and undying loyalty. You can even go one step further and look for fresh and exciting things that you believe they will be interested in. Having new and fresh things to excite your customers will definitely keep them ogling for your next email.

Provide good and valuable information with great articles will also keep your subscribers happy. They are interested in this niche and will definitely value good information. If your subscribers enjoy your articles, they will go to your site by clicking the links you put in your newsletters to read some more. Make your articles diverse and interesting, such as writing humorous articles, to ensure that they are well received. With both information and humor in your articles, you can be sure your subscribers are going to stay happy and loyal.

If you are afraid that you will not be able to provide great articles because you don’t writing, this is not a problem. There many professional and experienced article writers that can do the job for you for minimal fees. They know what they are doing and can provide the need that you have for your newsletters. The money that you pay for your articles are going to be met with good reviews, which can result in potential sales and profit for you. But of course, this is your own online business and nobody knows more about it better than you do. Ideally, you are the best person to write the articles that will allow you to earn money online successfully.

One great way to “one up” article writing is to create and send an ebook to your subscribers about your niche or business. Use your knowledge and expertise in the field you have chosen to help other people who are similarly interested and in turn they will help you to earn money online. You can write about anything informational and helpful to your subscribers. If you don’t like writing, hire a professional to create one for you for a small fee. Offer this ebook for free on your site to entice more subscribers and also to your present subscribers. Share this ebook with everyone and even other sites. This ebook will improve your credibility and can potentially be passed around to more people than your current reach of customers. Your ebook with your website link in it is a very powerful tool to earn money online the fast and easy way.

One final tip is to add e-coupons in your newsletters that will give your subscribers special discounts. Make it such that the e-coupons can only be used once. Your subscribers will be exhilarated to find special discounts in your newsletters. This will in turn make them eager to receive your newsletters in anticipation of what you are promoting next.

Building a power list of subscribers and keeping them loyal, happy and responsive is by far the most profitable way to earn money online successfully. Your subscribers will benefit from your expertise and you will be able to profit from them as well. This is an incredible “win-win” situation that will develop into a mutually beneficial long term relationship that can only mean more business for you and aid you to earn money online over and over again.

You May Also Be Interested In: The List Building Formula

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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Automate Your Email Marketing With Autoresponders

Automation is an important part to any business. The less time you devote to doing small redundant tasks the more time you will have to devote to primary business activities, such as: product development, advertising, customer service, and list building. Or, you may want to have more time for enjoying other things in life other than working, so the more you automate your business the more time you will have available to spend on whatever you desire.

Putting an online business on autopilot is not very difficult and much of it can be done by simple using autoresponders to do many simple tasks for you. An autoresponder is a software program that you pay usage fees for, or that you buy and put on your own hosting account’s server. It is a program that responds to email inquiries from other people with whatever you program it to send out. And it can also easily be programmed to send out email messages that you enter into it at whatever time you want. Therefore an autoresponder, abbreviated AR, can be used for many purposes to assist in handling business communication activities.

An AR can be used to promote your products or services and to get people to visit your website. Just type or copy and paste your sales or informational message into your AR and have it sent out to whoever you have entered into the AR. Then, when a person receives your message and visits your web site and makes a purchase you can have your AR setup to deliver another message to them. The message would thank them for their purchase and then deliver their product and receipt to them.

You may also program it to give your customers detailed instructions on how to go about obtaining their products and describing other products you have to offer that they may be also be interested in purchasing. In this way you have the ability to promote more products and possibly make more sales. You can also program your AR to send out follow-up messages a day or two after a purchase to ask customers if they are satisfied with their purchase. This assists in building strong customer relations and also gives you another opportunity to promote more products while saving your time.

It will also allow you to make more “back-end” sales by using follow up messages every few days. It is advisable to always include some meaningful and relevant information in your follow up messages so your messages do not appear to just be blatant sales messages, which most people do not generally like or appreciate. The beauty of all this is that you can be off doing something else while much of your business communication activities are being handled automatically by your AR.

Autoresponders are great for training and teaching purposes. Many college professors who teach correspondence courses set up their lessons in an AR and then send them to their students at specified times throughout the semester. And, because the courses being taught often do not vary much from semester to semester, or from year to year, the lessons can be set up one time and used over and over again with only minor adjustments being needed.

ARs are great for providing training lessons to all types of groups. For example, a 12 week training course can be written in advance and then scheduled for deliver when the time is appropriate. The lessons can even be set up to be delivered to different groups at different time intervals. ARs are great for keeping members of an organization informed of upcoming events, deadlines, and special offers or promotions.

Promoting products for sale is one of the most popular uses of autoresponders in online business. But when using an AR to promote your sales just realize that most potential customers do not like the direct “hard sale” approach and it has been documented that on an average a potential customer must hear from you at least 7 times before a sale is made. It is usually best to contact potential customers in the first 2 to 4 messages with valuable information that is interesting for them to read or use in their lives. It is good to give away something of interest and value and to thank them for subscribing to your email newsletter or ezine.

It has been said that the best way to entice sales is to build interest slowly and start with an informative message about something that interests your reader. And, when you do try to make a sale be sure to focus on a problem or solution that your product or service will help resolve for them. Gain their confidence by providing free information that is relevant, accurate, and informative for them.

There are many AR services available and you can certainly find them by doing a search with any of the main search engine services. Many AR services will give you free limited service, but be cautious of these AR services because they will put their advertisements on all of your outgoing messages, or limited the amount of messages and subscribers you can send to. These things certainly will not help your business any. Be very careful when choosing and signing up with an autoresponder service to use in your business.

Some popular ARs frequently used are listed below:

- http://www.aweber.com/
- http://www.getresponse.com

And, of course there are many, many more so please do a good and thorough investigation and analysis before deciding which AR to use. If you are a beginner then you may want to try the free service listed on the last line above. It is called, “EGGS” for short. It is very easy to understand and to use. It does have some limitations but it has plenty of functionality for most people and there is no cost
involved unless you would like to donate.

You May Also Be Interested In: Make Money On Autopilot With Autoresponders

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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A Simple Guide To Email Marketing With Autoresponders

Offering free things to your website visitors is one marketing method that often results in a lot of sales. Free courses that are delivered via email are very popular, and people sign up for such courses on a regular basis to learn more about a topic of interest to them. These courses are best maintained and delivered with the use of autoresponders.

An autoresponder can be set up to send out a series of lessons for an email course. The lessons can be set for distribution at specific intervals. You determine how often the lessons for the course are sent to the people who have signed up for it. Email courses are very different from traditional courses, web based courses, or any other type of course.

There is no student and instructor interaction. The instructor writes the information out, puts each lesson in an autoresponder series, sets the timing for the lessons, and the rest is automated. You can opt to have lessons delivered daily, every other day, every three days, or any other time frame that you think works best for your email students.

Email courses are commonly used to sell products and services. For instance, if you sell widgets, you might develop a course that teaches people how to use widgets or how to care for their widget. Experts agree that an email course can be written for almost any product that you can imagine – if you put enough thought into it.

Start by determining what your course will be about, and how long it should be. If the course should be delivered every other day for two weeks, you know that you would need seven lessons. Write the lessons, and load them in the autoresponder. Set the interval for each lesson, which in this case would be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13.

This means that the first lesson would be delivered one day after the person has requested the course, and the second lesson would be delivered three days after the person has requested the course, and so on. The interval for each lesson is set for the number of days after the person has signed up Make sure that everything is spelled right, and that your sentences are grammatically correct. You want the lessons to look and sound as professional as possible.

Next, simply advertise the email address that will activate the autoresponder. Make sure that you run a test first, sending each lesson to yourself. This will allow you to see what your email students will see when they sign up!

One program you may want to check out is linked below:
Squeeze Ninja - Ultimate List Building Software

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Do Not Let Your Potential Customers Forget About You

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person's need for information quickly!

But, after you've delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don't.

When you don't follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him. Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn't receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.


Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?
Following up with leads is more than just a process - it's an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don't follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!
When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the "List Technique." I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company's latest news as a follow up piece. I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn't a very good follow up method. Why isn't the "List Technique" very effective?

The List Technique isn't consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have "big news".

List Technique messages don't give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can't make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you've just moved your headquarters?

List Technique messages convey a "big list" mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?
Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you'll need to develop your follow up messages. If you've been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn't have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect's mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn't yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn't the right color or doesn't have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it's unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don't want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors'. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don't want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn't have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up - don't you want to be one of the few to get it right?

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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The Copy You Place In Your Emails Is Very Important

Want to double or triple the number of new leads and customers you generate each month with your emails? Try focusing your Email campaign with copywriting techniques.

Copywriting in Emails is the art of using attractively written content focusing around a service or product to sell. A tool used to tempt the reader by making the items for sale seem attractive, desirable and at the same time beneficial. Copywriting is often described as a play on words where the best and the most persuasive campaigns win.

Whenever you email someone, you’re basically trying to sell a point. So what better way to communicate than with the language of copywriting in your Emails.

The secret is to balance the right blend of benefits and features in your Email marketing copy. Here are some tips to try in your next email marketing campaign.

1. Pack a powerful headline punch. Check top magazine article headlines of the day to see what’s working best. Tailor yours accordingly.

2. Draw readers in with a great lead opening. Look to top articles in the news for ideas. And reach out and grab your readers in a similar fashion.

3. Keep the main message focused on no more than 3 main benefits your product or service offers the reader. Present credible info, not hype. And include testimonial when possible to back up claims.

4. State your proposition in a personal way, since the focus is all about the customer...i.e. write in the “You” form, not “he or she.” And talk about them or things that they can relate to.

5. Focus on customer benefits. People like to save money, join in and be a part, learn more, earn more.

6. Offer multiple selling points in bullet form. Write them from customer’s point of view & reflect their needs.

7. Thoroughly describe the product. Give the customer all the information they need on the product or service in order to make a well educated decision.

8. Create a call to action. Tell the customer what to do  exactly, step-by-step.

9. State your unique selling position to differentiate yourself from competition. For example, tell why your product is better than the competition’s.

Go for the gusto in selling your email messages with sound copywriting techniques. Sell your audience on reading more, navigating on your site and communicating in some way to show they got your message.

You may want to check out the link below:
Mega Money Emails

You may also be interested in: The List Building Formula

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