Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 16:31:01 No. of Views: 291
What to afraid?
Many internet marketers who participate in all types of advertising like Pay per click searches, Banner advertisings, Affiliate marketing, forum marketing etc, are actually afraid of doing Email Marketing. They think that people accuse them of being spammers ...
Why are Internet marketers so afraid of being accused of being purveyors of spam? This is a common fear for a number of reasons. First of all there may be harsh penalties associated with sending spam emails. Recipients of spam have the option of reporting the spam to their Internet service provider who will investigate the validity of the claim.
Hosts are not interested in hosting web sites that send spam. So they take down the web site if they receive spam complaints.
However, it is important to note that despite the prevalent problem with spam, many Internet users are quite receptive to email marketing. This is especially true in situations where they specifically requested to receive more information from the business owner regarding his products and services. Potential clients are eager to receive the information they wanted.
The problem with spam complaints can be prevented by:
* Double opt-in: Make sure your subscribers confirm their subscription by clicking on an email link.
* Get subscribers details: Get subscribers details like ip number, date of subscription, web site where they subscribed etc. Send these details in every email.
* Include unsubscribe link: Include unsubscription link in every outgoing email. Very important criteria under CAN SPAM ACT.
* Good quality content: Offer what you have promised to your subscribers. Good information, ebooks, useful emails ...
* Use constant From address: Let your subscribers know who you are and company from which they are receiving emails. They used to this specific 'From address', so less chances of complainng that you are spamming them.
* Physical address: Include your physical address, web site url and private policy link in every email so they get to know you ... again less spam complaints.
Good luck with your Email marketing ventures!
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 16:27:41 No. of Views: 284
Email marketing is a very simple concept which is also extremely cost effective because of low cost and easy communication with potential customers. The general idea behind email marketing is that an email is sent to a list of subscribers that are opted by 'Double opt-in' and these emails are intended to create an interest in the products or services offered by the email marketer.
Goal of an email marketing campaign is to convince the subscriber or recepient to either make a purchase or visit the website to obtain more information. When an email recipient performs either one of these actions, it is considered a huge success. However, thanks to the power of the forward button email marketing can actually be much more successful than even the business owner intended.
Some email marketers add the link called 'Forward' to their emails. What happened is when the subscriber clicks on 'Forward' link, they are taken to the web page of the email marketers web site. There they can enter email(s) of the people they know and forward it to them.
The great aspect of email marketing is that when the email recipients receive an email which they think is worthwhile they are likely to make a purchase and may also forward the information onto a friend or family member they think might be interested in this information as well. The ability to forward email messages has become comparable satisfied customers using word of mouth to spread the quality of the products or services they received.
However, the ability to forward a worthwhile email message is exponentially more effective than using word of mouth to spread the word. With just a few clicks of the mouse, the original email recipient can forward the message to several of his friends at once. This can result in significantly better results than the business owner had originally intended with no additional effort on behalf of the business owners.
So try to keep 'Forward the Message' link in Your email campaign emails.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 15:52:58 No. of Views: 311
Calculating Email opening rates is Reliable Indicator of Subscribers response?
Email Opening Rates - Track them to follow Email marketing response.
DON'T RELY ON EMAIL OPENINGS ALONE TO CALCULATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING PROFITS.
Also keep in mind that there might be some disparity in the email opening rates and click tracking rates.
Why?
As I said in this article not all email clients allow image display by default. So the pixel image tracking in HTML emails is not quite reliable.
See the images below from Hotmail email client:
Hotmail blocks the images by default. Unless your subscriber(s) have enabled image display these email openings are not being tracked. To display the images in Hotmail, your subscribers have to click on 'Mark as Safe' link. But what percentage of subscribers actually click the link?
Another image from Squirrelmail email client:
Though the html option is enabled, still the images are not displaying unless the subscribers clicks on 'View Unsafe images' link.
So perfect tracking of the email openings is a hard nut to crack ...
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 15:45:53 No. of Views: 905
What is Email opening rate?
Simply it means how many subscribers are opened the email that you have sent.
Just sending an email is not enough. You need to track your marketing efforts. Otherwise you end up spending your dollars on the email marketing campaigns that has no response or profits to you.
Your autoresponder software should capable of adding this one pixel image and tracking email opening rates.
Tracking an Email campaign can be done by-
* Email opening rates
* Click tracking rates
* ROI tracking after an email campaign
See the images below:
Here is the image to see how many subscribers opened Your email. (Note: This interface might be different for you based on the autoresponder program you are using.)
Here is the image to see how many subscribers ACTUALLY clicked on a link in the email. (Note: This interface might be different for you based on the autoresponder program you are using.)
How to track Email openings?
* By adding a pixel image in Your email: Usually your software adds a one pixel image to your outgoing email. This image will be tracked down by the script when your subscribers open the email. You have to remember ... these pixel images can be added only to your HTML emails. Text emails can not be tracked for email opening rates.
Drawback of this pixel image tracking is that NOT all email clients allow to display images in the emails. Image is an image, though it is just one pixel ... so these images are blocked by the email clients by default.
* By adding javascript: Adding a small javascript to track email openings is another way of tracking. But all email clients block javascripts running in the emails. This method once tried but failed miserably because of restrictions of email clients. If email clients detect javascript in the email, they push your email to junk or stop delivering them to your subscribers at all.
Try checking your email opening rates once in a while to see how you are doing!
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 15:30:43 No. of Views: 185
1. Email bounces.
The more the freebie seekers and free email accounts in your list(s) the more will be the bounces. Bounces are common with hotmail, yahoo like free email account providers. Bounces are the rejected emails from email address servers. Bounces can be due to expired email addresses, changed email addresses, full inboxes etc.
The more the bounces more will be the server resources used and your host won't be happy about it.
Keep your list clean. How?
* Delete bounces. Your autoresponder software should be able to detect the bounces.
* Use double opt-in. So atleast you can make sure that it is not a fake email.
* Block free email accounts during subscriptions. This is not possible because most subscribers use free email accounts.
2. Low Email opening rates.
You can track email opening rates if you send html emails. This is not possible with text email format because in html emails your autoresponder software attaches an one pixel image. This pixel access can be used to track the email openings.
Improve email opening rates. How?
* Provide good and useful content.
* Use consistent 'From' name.
* Use enthusiastic subject lines.
* Be moderate in number of emails that you sent to your subscribers.
* Avoid hype/sales pitch emails.
3. Abandoned lists.
Once you develop lists, don't abandon them after a while. Keep in constant contact with your subscribers. If you develop a list of 2000 subscribers and you don't send follow ups to them, then what good it makes? You are just ignoring the potential buyers.
4. Spam complaints.
Certainly you don't want these from your subscribers. Most subscribers forget that they actually are subscribed to your list(s). So it might be possible that they hit spam button in their email clients. Although it might be an honest mistake, you have to pay the price of getting backlisted by many DNSBL services.
Try to display your subscribers details in every out going email. For example like this:
Your subscription Email: {email_tag_here}
Your ip address: (ip_tag_here}
URL where you subscribed: (url_subscribed}
Time of subscription: {date_subscribed}
5. Unsubscriptions.
Too many unsubscriptions are not a part of good email marketing strategy. Usually subscribers unsubscribes when they are not receiving the emails as expected or too much sales pitch or spammy emails. A percentage of unsubscriptions are ok as long as you follow good email marketing rules.
There is no hard rule that tells you this much percentage of unsubscriptions are allowed. Unsubscription rate depends on niche too. Some newsletters like health related niche can have low unsubscription rates when compared to IM niche.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-19 14:49:49 No. of Views: 655
Most of the marketing gurus tell us to send email format in text. Means the content will be displayed in simple text in your subscribers email clients.
In contrast, in html emails you can use images, colors, tables etc. to display the email content which can be very appealing to your subscribers eyes..
Recently I want to see how many people prefer text format and how many prefer html format. Did a small autoresponder experiment ... Details are here.
Note: Only the outline of the procedure is explained here. No personal details of any subscribers are revealed.
STEP 1:
I created an autoresponder where the visitor subscribes to get free ebooks. I copied the form code on one of my sites.
See the image? I want to tell you about couple of things that eliminates biased selection of format by the subscriber ...
1. Radiobuttons of BOTH formats are unselected. People tend to go with 'default' selection most of the times. So to let them click one radiobutton, both are left blank intentionally.
2. Both formats are presented by radiobuttons instead of dropdown to eliminate the chance of selecting the first format by the subscribers just because it is first and easily accessible.
3. Both radiobuttons are in same line. So subscriber can reach either one of them with same effort.
4. It has been stated clearly that all three fields need to be filled. This is to avoid frustration of the subscriber as he gets any error, it might alter the option of format as he clicks nearest radiobutton.
STEP 2:
The subscriptions are followed for 2 months. Details are as follows ...
Total subscribers - 281
Subscribers who opted for text 227 (80.78%)
Subscribers who opted for html 54 (19.22%)
What caused this drastic difference?
There certain myths(?) on why people don't prefer html emails to be delivered to their inboxes.
* Html emails are used by spammers: Spammers tend hide links to redirect the readers to a wrong site or wrong download link. Like as in the example of Paypal ... Sometimes people receive html emails exactly like emails sent by Paypal saying that your account was hacked, please login and check the account. Newbies tend to fall for this and click on the link in the email which redirect them to a fake Paypal site. They login with their details and those details are captured by spammers to hack your real Paypal account. Enough said ...
* Html emails caries viruses: Hackers send html emails with virus exe files attached. Ofcourse they use text emails too for this purpose, but html emails are more easily blammed for this.
* Subscribers like plain links: Subscripbers especially who are used to Internet marketing are like to see plain text and plain links rather than links hidden by html.
* Html emails takes up more inbox space: Because of the attached images and html code, html emails tend to occupy more space in subscribers inbox. So subscribers who have the idea of this inbox space, they tend to go for text emails.
But there are certain percentage of subscribers who like to see html, I guess. That is why 54 out of 227 are opted for html emails.
You as an Email marketer, have THREE options:
* Either go with Text format emails as most of the subscribers will be pretty happy with text format.
* Or offer both formats as an option to select for your subscribers.
* Send MIME email messages.
Any drawbacks to this study?
This is very short 2 months study. So there might be little difference of values if study is done with large group which can alter the results either way ... But as overall I think we can see a trend towards text emails.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 23:32:13 No. of Views: 275
What is an unsubscribe link?
Unsubscribe link is an email link that your subscriber clicks and remove himself from your autoresponder or list.
According to ftc.gov, you need to keep unsubscription link in every out going email in your email marketing. The subscriber who don't want to stay in the list clicks on the link to remove themselves from your list. This is also called 'Permission based email marketing'.
Don't keep guessing about why your subscriber is leaving your list:
Most email marketers complain about the unsubscription rate of their list(s). They wonder why this person was unsubscribed inspite of good information he is receiving ... Nobody can tell the reason why a subscriber has unsubscribed. So stop guessing and keep a form (mostly a small textarea) on the unsubscription page. So in that textarea your subscriber enters why he is leaving yur list. These comments are useful for you to improve your list marketing. Ofcourse, your software should allow you to get this information from the subscriber.
Don't let them go empty handed:
On unsubscription page give them a gift and say thank you for staying on your list all these days. It won't hurt to say thank you. Right?
Keep links like:
* download link to a free report
* irressistable discount code on your product
* free access to your membership area
* free software
All these are to make your subscriber to stay in your present or new list as a subscriber or member.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 23:28:55 No. of Views: 279
1. Make it short:
Long email subject lines will be truncated and short email subject lines will be entirely visible in the email clients. When your subscriber opens their inbox the entire subject line will be seen and message will be conveyed entirely if you use short subject lines.
Sometimes you can not avoid long email subject lines. Then the best option is to keep a pretext at the beginning of the email.
Example of a short email subject line -
John, Increase Your online Income by $100.00 a day!
Example of a long email subject line -
John, Internet Marketing research finds the correct and profitable keywords in Four simple ways.
Example of a long email subject line with pretext -
Profitable keywords - Internet Marketing research finds the correct and profitable keywords in Four simple ways.
2. Personalize:
Call your subscriber by his/her name. Though this is very old strategy, it never gets old. People eyes get caught at their names. Few seconds of that time can be used to make the subscriber to go through the email subject line.
3. Keep it real:
Your subscribers are smart. They know the hype ... so don't fluff-up your emails with unreasonable claims and promises. Deliver what you have promised. Make sure your email subject line is out of hype. Let your email subject line increases the interest of the subscribers so they can click to open your email.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 22:55:42 No. of Views: 371
1. Keep in touch with your customers and subscribers:
You don't have to send emails every day or week ... A bimonthly or monthly newsletter is very nice way of keeping in touch with your clients and subscribers.
You can send information like -
* articles
* announcements
* free resources
* related products
* new products
* free upgrades
* Just to say 'hi' newsletters ...
etc
Your subscribers remember you and keep their memory fresh about your product or company. The newsletters bring your subscribers back to your web site once in a while. This is a good thing that they will checkout your new products or they might use 'Tell a friend' script on your site.
2. Brand Yourself as an expert:
The more you talk about your niche the more you will be recognized as an expert. Talk about things like -
* research that is going in your niche
* updates
* technical issues
* your experiences
* your opinions
Print your subscription url on your business card and distribute them at local business places or friends.
3. Publish on your site to increase content:
Not only send the newsletters but publish them on your site. As most of these newsletters have content around your niche, these content pages are keyword targeted which attract the search engines.
While sending articles in newsletters, remember few things-
* let the content be around your web site niche
* use facts
* use well written articles that provide true value
Use social bookmarking buttons on the newsletters publishing pages, so people can bookmark them. This increases the backlinks and traffic to your site. Keep the newsletter subscription form on these newsletter archives pages.
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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-18 22:47:53 No. of Views: 219
What is an autoresponder service?
Autoresponder service is a third party service provided to you who sends emailings to your subscribers on your behalf. Simply you use their email service to send emails to your subscribers.
But you can manage your own mailing lists, subscribers, broadcasts and follow up emails through their web interface.
Why marketers are moving away from them?
* Smart marketers learned about server optimization with SPF record and Domainkeys:
It is impossible to achieve 100% deliverability ... no matter you use a third party services or your own script on your own VPS. I saw many emails ending up in my junk folder from reputable third party autoresponder companies.
There will be abandoned emails in your list that will bounce back ...
Web sites will be expired making email addresses invalid ...
Certain spam triggering words push your emails into junk folder ...
Few subscribers instead of unsubscribing they hit spam button and blacklist your ip ...
All these factors make it difficult to get 100% email deliverability.
So why not send your emails from your own VPS which is optimized. Recently cpanel makes it easy to set up SPF record and Domainkeys.
* Smart marketers don't like to pay increasing and recurrent monthly charges:
Recently there is some increase in the pricing structure of third party autoresponder services. This mainly based on the number of subscribers you have in their system.
If you have a list of 5000 subscribers, you have to pay $50.00 or more ... You can get a VPS for that cost with unlimited subscribers with your own autoresponder.
* Smart marketers like the word 'unlimited':
Autoresponder services come with some restrictions like limited number of lists and campaigns you can create, restrictions on custom fields and form fields etc. You have to use the email address from their web site for emailings.
* Smart marketers don't like to use double opt-in with some lists:
I highly recommend double opt-in. But there is no need for certain lists like product upgrades emailings, emails to members about product bug fixes etc. Ofcourse the emailings go with an unsubscribe link.
If you import list into a third party autoresponder services, your subscribers need to confirm it second time. There might be a chance that all of them are not reconfirm their subscription. This leads to losing of some subscribers.
* Smart marketers like more control over their lists and emailings:
Marketers like to see their web site in the 'From address' and 'unsubscribe links'. They think that this will look more professional than using third party autoresponder service email addresses and links.
You can customize the redirect pages that suits your web site lay out with your own autoresponder. I used to keep my affiliate links on subscription redirect pages. This certainly brings some sales to you.
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