Buying Email Lists is a good thing?
If you go to classified sites, FFA sites and spammy...

Text based autoresponder or mysql based autoresponder?
Most of the scripts when installed on your web site...

How much html to use in html format emails?
Email clients don't display complicated html code: Many email clients are...

HTML emails and displaying html in different email clients.
What is a html email? Html email simply looks like a...

What do text email format and html email format mean?
Text emails are the simple emails that contains text as...

Autoresponder Basics
[15 article(s) in this category]
Autoresponder Usability
[13 article(s) in this category]
Email Deliverability
[6 article(s) in this category]
Email Marketing
[28 article(s) in this category]
Marketing and Promotion
[5 article(s) in this category]
Tech Articles
[3 article(s) in this category]

Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 15:35:54 No. of Views: 405

Answer is SIMPLY NO.

How many times you have seen ads like the following?

One Million Email for just $10.00!
Get 185,000 Email addresses For 0.99 cents!

If you go to classified sites, FFA sites and spammy looking web sites, this is what you see - selling email lists that are not worth to buy for few cents. Internet marketers who don't have a clue about these mailing lists, they easily fall for these type of scams.

Why buying Email lists is not a good idea?

* Harvested email:

These lists are developed by harvesting email addresses by automatic bots. These bots move from one web site to another web site and grab the email addresses that are linked by "mailto:" link. Newly emerging webmasters tend to keep these "mailto:" links without knowing this email extraction software.

As they are harvested email, the persons to which these email addresses belong to are NOT double opt-in. Means they didn't give you their permission to receive email from you.

Here is a way to protect your email addresses.

* High Bounce rate:

As most of these emails are abandon by the person because of the spam. So the email you sent will bounce back to your mail server. These are waste of resources and your host may not be happy to see these bounces and unlimited email spam from your web site.

* Low Response:

These people don't know you or push your email to junk. This dramatically reduces the response rate of email marketing efforts. Most of these lists are sold to many people before you. So all these junk emails to the email adddress holders is not beneficial at all.

What is the way out?

Develop your own list. Period.

Steps to follow:

* Buy and install an autoresponder.
* Implement double opt-in.
* Offer an ezine or ecourse to get your visitors emails.
* Promote your list in the forums, your article resourcebox and sidebar of your web site.
* Be loyal to your subscribers.

This process of developing your own list is very time taking. I tell you ... it is not a overnight process. Still it is worth doing it as marketing response will be high with these type of white lists.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 15:09:11 No. of Views: 548

 

What is a Text based Autoresponder?

Recently I got this pre-sale question - "Is your Follow up Autoresponder PRO is text based software? Because I don't know much about complicated phpmyadmin databases."

I guess by 'phpmyadmin databases', he means Mysql databases ... I explained him Follow up Autoresponder PRO is php script with Mysql backend.

Most of the scripts when installed on your web site needs to write the data into some kind of database. If the data is stored in text files, the script is refered as 'Text based script'. Same way if the subscribers details, your autoresponder and messages are stored in text files. This type of autoresponder which uses text files to store the data is called 'Text based autoresponder'.

Data will be stored like-
autoresponders.txt
messages.txt
subscribers.txt
etc.

Advantages of these text based autoresponders:

* Very simple to install.
* No need for the databases.
* Easy to manage (For web masters who don't like mysql to deal with ...)

Disdvantages of these text based autoresponders:

* Easily timed out while you running the scripts.

* Most important disadvantage is, text files can not hold much data. Ex: If you have like 50,000 subscribers, the text database runs very slow. On the other hand Mysql databases have good amount of speed and scalability.

When your business is growing you need a good backend of your web site to store your data. Mysql databases can hold large amount data and easy to manage if you have a good front-end interface.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:38:54 No. of Views: 230

Email clients don't display complicated html code:

 

Many email clients are enabled with minimal html. If you keep advanced html codes like -

* iframes
* forms and buttons
* marquees
* inline style sheets for layout of elements
* embed tags etc. ... they may not be displayed properly.

Simple tags like -

* paragraph
* tables
* break
* font
* bold etc ... will work fine and they are enough for creating effective html emails.

So don't use all html tags you know which also bloats up your html email size.

 

Javascripts and script executions:

 

Many email clients simply won't allow the scripts to run in email programs. Hotmail strips away the script code. It will also alerts the user that the message is unsafe to open. Likewise hotmail displays forms, but once your subscribers fills out, nothing will happen. The forms will not be submitted.

 

 

 

 

 

Attachments, Images, embedded flash objects:

 

Many html emails contain fancy images or embedded videos which play once the subscriber opens up the email. All these are good to see on your computer while you are formatting the email. But not on your subscribers computer where the email clients block these attachments, images etc.

 

Don't hide or block the links from the actual URLs:

 

Some marketers use links from their site and use different urls as actual links. This would be a big NO-NO.

Example:
<a href="http://some-other-site.com/">http://yoursite.com/product.html</a>

Use redirections instead. So they will go to product.html to see your message that they will be redirected to 'some-other-site.com'. If you try to hide links, email clients mark it as phishing scam and mark your email as junk.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:36:38 No. of Views: 760

What is a html email?

 

Html email simply looks like a web page with all the colors and graphics. You can see an example of html format email here.

 

What is an email client?

 

Email clients are the scripts/software used to retrieve, read and manage your email. Email clients can be 'Web based email clients' and 'PC based email clients'.

 

Web based clients: You can login into an online web based panel where the script retrieves the email from your mail server and presents infront of you. Examples: Squirrelmail Roundcube Zimbra Citadel

 

PC based clients: You can install the software on your computer that retreives email from your mail server. No matter which one you use, Windows or MAC, there are many free email clients for you to choose. Examples: Eudora Microsoft Outlook Thunderbird Pegasus

 

 

So all these email clients display Html emails?

 

Some of them need us to enable display of html in emails. Ex: Squirrelmail.

 

There is a link 'Options > Display preferences' in your Squirrelmail panel. You can enable or disable the html display.

 

Some clients display html by default. They can strip away the javascripts and images to keep your computer safe. Ex: Hotmail. Hotmail removes images and asks us whether to display those images or not. Hotmail strips away javascript code too. If html option is not enabled in your subscriber email clients, then the html email looks like this: See the raw html code ditecly displaying in the email client instead of rendered and displayed ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an email marketer what is your way out?

 

You are not sure whether your subscriber has enabled html in his email client. So sending html email will not serve your purpose of sending email if your subscribers have not enabled html.

 

An average person who doesn't know anything about html emails just deletes your email from inbox thinking that ununderstandable code might contain viruses. If you as an email marketer don't know how to deal with this problem, then you will end up in more unsubscriptions, spam complaints or moving your email into junk folder.

 

* You can offer the subscribers the option to select text or html during subscription process with 'Text' option selected by default. This way a person don't know anything about email formats can safely be receiving your text format emails.

 

* Send emails as MIME messages where both text and html email can be sent in same email and if subscriber email client allows html display, html email will be shown. Otherwise text version is shown.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:32:56 No. of Views: 692

Text emails are the simple emails that contains text as its content. You will see the plain text with hightlighted links. That is it! No colors or no images in text emails.

 

See the following image of text email format:

 

It is a promotional email sent to a list of an ezine publisher. Simple text is displaying.

 

 

 

 

 

Html emails are the emails with html in them. They look like web pages with colors, images and pretty font etc.

 

See the following image of html email format:

 

It is the html version of the above text email. See the contrast between the two email formats. Html emails are eye catching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most important things you should note before sending the html emails:

 

* Whether your subscriber likes it or not - some people don't like to receive html emails because of the bias that these emails contain viruses, attachments, background scripts running etc.

 

* Limitations of your subscriber email client - not all email clients display html.

 

Or your subscribers may intentionally turn off html display. In these cases the html emails won't display in a proper way.

 

What is the best thing to do?

 

* Send text emails as default. You will not have any problems with it.

 

* Give option to the subscriber. On your subscription form use a format option to choose from, whether text or html format. The problem with this is you need to create two emails one for subscribers who opted for text and one for subscribers who opted for html.

 

Email marketers differ in their opinion on email formats. It would be their personal preference most of the times. Personally I'd like to see text emails in my inbox, so I prefer sending text emails to clients and subscribers.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:29:13 No. of Views: 284

Open up your web site in a browser. Surf through few pages of your site. Remember, DON'T scroll down the page. Just look around your pages above the fold. Which part of your site is more eye catching? Any specific part of your site is more prominent? Use that area to keep your subscription form code.

 

Tips on keeping subscription form on the web site:

 

More exposed areas:

 

You can see the following parts of your web site are more exposed than others -

 

* Navigational bar above the fold

* Top header area, either left or right Keep a small subscription form in these areas.

 

These navigational bar and header area can be seen on all web pages of your site. So subscription form is seen by the visitor on any page of the web site.

 

Make it prominent:

 

Make the subscription form prominent. Keep a boder around the form or use a different background color for subscription form.

 

Use pop-up boxes:

 

Some webmasters use pop-up boxes. These pop-up boxes can be either of javascript type or dhtml type. Use dhtml pop-up boxes to catch your visitors attention. But the disadvantage is it will be annoying for the visitor to see this pop up on every page of your web site while he/she is surfing. So use pop up boxes only selected pages of your site.

 

Create landing pages:

 

You can also upload a seperate web page for subscription form only. This method is used by many marketers as landing pages. They test different criteria for each landing page and test them.

 

Subscription forms on special locations:

 

Other locations to keep your email subscription form(s) are-

 

* Your 404 error pages

* Download pages

* Member areas

* Free reports - Start giving away free report with a subscription form link.

 

List subscription form on other sites:

 

You can join in subscription co-ops where ezine publishers promote each others lists by keeping subscription forms.

 

For example, you will keep your partners subscription form on your thank you pages and the same with your partner. Your visitors once subscribes to your magazine or list, they will be redirected to a thankyou page where they will see your partrners subscription form.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:25:31 No. of Views: 2126

What is a subscription form?

Subscription form is a form that your visitors use to enter into your lists by sending their details.

Please remember that you need a backend system that grabs those subscriber details and store them on your site. This backend system is called Mailing list system or autoresponder system. The functionality of the system depends on the needs of your email marketing.

If you simply want to send a newsletter without any advanced features like tracking all you need a simple autoresponder ... If you like to send email campaigns with tracking code to track the email openings and link clicks then you need more advanced autoresponder. All autoresponder systems comes with the ability to provide you the code for the subscription form.

 

Subscription forms can be either:

* newsletter/magazine subscription forms
* ecourse subscription forms
* 'One time offer' subscription forms
* Announcement notifications
* Upgrade notification subscription forms
* Renewal subscription forms

All these forms should have bankend software to increase the productivity and usability of the data.

 

How to keep subscription form code on your site?

1. Login into your autoresponder or mailing system.

2. You can see links like 'Form code' or 'html code' or 'Get the code' etc based on the software you are using. Or ask your vendor where to get the subscription form code in your software.

3. Copy it.

4. Open a web page on your site. Paste that form code at an appropriate area. Save it.

5. If you are created the html web page on your computer and uploading it by ftp, then make sure you don't add extra characters into your form code. Ex: Frontpage extentions add extra tags to the form code.

 

Tips on creating a subscription form:

* Keep the subscription form on every page of your web site. This way your visitors are exposed to your offer more than once. You can use php 'include' or SSI 'include' tags to achecive this.

* Test the form by subscribing yourself into the list and check that all redirections and links are working properly.

* Use double opt-in which is a recommended method for permission based email marketing.

* Make your subscription form display prominently on your site. Example: Keeping it in top header area or top area of the navigational bar.

* Tell the subscriber about your private policy.

* Tell your subscriber what he/she is going to receive after the subscription.

* Educate your subscriber about your 'Unsubscription' policy and explain the unsubscription process.

* If you are going to use pop-up boxes for subscription forms, use them on very few pages of your site. Use DHTML pop-ups instead of javascript.

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:22:04 No. of Views: 347

Newsletter unsubscribe link is the link on which your subscribers click and remove themselves from your list.

 

Here are few tips that are useful for your email marketing:

 

* Always and remember ... always Include the unsubscribe link:

 

According to can-spam act, you have to include the unsubscribe link in out-going emails to your list. Make this unsubscription process as easy as possible.

 

* Provide instructions on how to unsubscribe:

 

Most subscribers don't know how to unsubscribe. So keep three to four lines of instructions in every email on top part.

 

Ex:

-------------------------------------

Unsubscription Information: Clicking on the link at

the bottom of this email will remove your

email address from our list. Please provide your

valuable feedback.

-------------------------------------

 

* Always test unsubscription process:

 

Once in a while subscribe yourself to your list and unsubscribe to see any errors or problems. If unsubscription doesn't work, your subscriber continues to receive your email and at one point, they might hit spam button in their email client.

 

* Ask reason for unsubscription:

 

If your mailing list software enables this features, use it to get the information on why they are unsubscribing. This data actually be useful to improve your email marketing strategies. Keep a textarea in which they input their feedback.

 

* Provide a viral gift to unsubscriber:

 

Yes, that is true ... Offer a free report or free template or free anything that he can use and/or distribute. This way though he is not your subscriber anymore, he will be using or distributing your product that gives you backend results.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:18:39 No. of Views: 1797

What is an 'email unsubscribe link'?

Unsubscribe link is a clickable link in email that your subscriber clicks and remove himself from your mailing list.

 

When a visitor subscribes to your list or newsletter or ecourse, your software sends an email to confirm their subscription. Means they are giving YOU the permission to send emails to them. Same way if they don't want to receive anymore emails from you, you should provide a method for your subscribers to get out of your list.

So you will keep a link (http link) in your email. So subscribers who don't want to receive anymore mailings from you will click on it to remove themselves from your list. This link is called 'Unsubscribe link'. Process is called 'Unsubscription'.

 

How unsubscription link looks like?

 

How to include it?

Two things to remember:

• Including unsubscribe link in your emails automatically. (or manually you can include it in emails once your software provides it)

• Removing your subscriber once he/she clicks on it.

The second step must need a BACKEND SOFTWARE/CODE to make it automatic.

 

In good olden days of email marketing the unsubscription process was manual. If the subscriber doesn't want to stay on the list, he/she will reply to the email with 'Remove' or 'Unsubscribe' in subject line and email marketer used to remove them manually from their database. But now including an unsubscription link and removing of subscribers is completely an automatic process that don't require any time from your side.

Only thing you need to know before buying an autoresponder or mailing list software is that whether it can handle automatic unsubscribe link inclusion in emails and unsubscription process. Then you need to enable that option in your software interface.

 

Tips on unsubscribe link inclusion:

• Keep the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

 

• Keep information on how to unsubscribe in the top part of the email.

 

• Can-spam law wants you to keep unsubscribe link in every out-going email to your list. Always test the unsubscribe link by sending a test email to your email address. 

 

• But also keep a link to your helpdesk below the unsubscribe link. This way if any error occured during unsubscription, your subscriber can contact you to report it and also remove himself from your email list.

Remember the rule: Email unsubscribe link prevents many spam complaints on you.

Email Unsubscribe link - FIVE Tips to Comply unsubscriptions.

Go to the Article Page ...




Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 16:00:15 No. of Views: 343

One basic feature of your autoresponder should be the ability to send HTML newsletters.

 

HTML email newsletters carries html code in them and display like web pages in your subscribers emails.

 

In contrast to Text emails, you can include graphics, colors and different font in to the HTML Emails.

 

What makes html newsletters attractive?

 

* You can keep your subscriber on your email content by using graphics, colors.

* You can track email openings by including an image in to your email (your autoresponder should equipped with this ability).

* Include affiliate links easily without subscriber knowing. (I am not talking about misleading your subscriber. By hiding the affiliate code, you still can tell your subscriber what the link is about and where he will be going by clicking on the link)

* You can make few parts of your email content presented prominently.

 

Are there any disadvantages of HTML format in email newsletters?

 

* Not all email clients support HTML emails. Means the software that your subscriber uses to read your emails may not capable of displaying html. In this case, your subscriber will see raw html code instead of processed web page.

* Sometimes your subscriber may turned off the email display feature in his software options.

* HTML emails weigh more than text emails because of html code, graphics etc.

 

How to send html emails?

 

* HTML templates: Create one template for your newsletter. Use this to send your newsletter. This consistent layout makes your subscriber more used to your newsletter content. Just change the content in between the tags of html.

* WYSIWYG html editor: If your autoresponder/mailing list software is implemented with rich text editor like MCE Editor, you can directly create the newsletter in your autoresponder interface.

* Use notepad: If you can code html, use simple html tags to create newsletters.

 

Any important points to note?

 

* Take care of html code while creating html newsletter template with WYSIWYG editor.

* If your autoresponder has the ability to offer an option to your subscriber to choose the html/text format option, you better give it to your subscriber. This way subscriber who wants text newsletters will get text emails and vice versa.

 

 

Go to the Article Page ...