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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:39:21 No. of Views: 184

Internet connecting every computer in the world and opening up the doors to new technology everyday ... One such revolutionary technology is 'Email'. Email tends to connect people from different countries and exchange their views and promote the businesses.

Opt-in email marketing encourages the publishers to run ezines or opt-in courses. And subscribers or people seeking information subscribe to those electronic newsletters to receive the information.

If your subscriber is giving his/her personal information means, it comes with a responsibility to use those details wisely. If a subscriber wants to stay with you, there should be some trust. So how to maintain your subscribers list intact and develop trust?

 

** DON'T rent or exchange your email list with the third parties. period.

If you rent your email list to somebody, your subscribers will think that the emails they are receiving from the third party are actually from YOU. If they are out of their interests and lot in number filling up their boxes, they will go for opt-out.

 

** Keep a private policy notice on your website.

And also keep a link to it from your emails. Explain how exactly their details are used by you or your company. If you are an organization which needs sharing of the subscriber details with other partners of yours, then specifically mention those facts in your private policy.

 

** Provide useful content.

Send them good articles, tips to improve their business or content that is focused on your opt-in list niche.

 

** Publish your physical address.

In every email, include your physical address at the bottom. Let them know your company, your name and website etc. According to ftc.gov, you have to keep your physical address in every outgoing email to your opt-in list. Otherwise it is considered as spam.

 

** Publish your photo.

This varies between person to person. Some like to keep their photo on their website and some don't ... But advantage of publishing photo is your subscribers connect to you subconciously while reading your email. It is like branding yourself.

 

** Offer help.

In every email put up a section that lists your contact email or helpdesk url. Encourage your subscribers to contact you if they need any help or further information.

 

** Fulfil your promises.

If you said you will give them some freebies after subscription, then do exactly what you promised.

 

** Don't send frequent emails annoying them.

People don't like filling up their inboxes which are not interested them. I really can't say that it's completely true ... I have subscribed to an ezine of a well known internet marketer. He sends emails almost 5 out of 7 days of a week. Every email has a link to promote his products or his affiliate products. To be honest I really don't mind to receive them. Because in most of the emails, I get some pointers to improve my online business.

 

** Not too many advertisements.

This is the main reason I would unsubscribe from the lists. I know part of the purpose of email marketing is to promote the business. But ads on all sides of the email? Simply they are very distracting.

 

** Consistent emails and Layout.

If possible keep subscription form on your site. So your subscribers actually see your site before subscribing. Use the same template to send them emails. If you are not using html emails, then use a consistent email template. This way your subscriber is tuned to your email layout and easy for him to go through it.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:36:07 No. of Views: 320

Many email marketers are using Double opt-in or Confirmed Opt-in to verify the subscribers interest in receiving the emails from them. Called 'Consent based email marketing'.

 

How it works?

There will be a form on the publisher site. Visitor submits his details. Now the autoresponder software that works behind the form, will send an email to the email address asking to confirm the interest.

Prospect clicks on the link in the email expressing his/her interest in receiving information from the publisher!

Basically the above is the method of 'Confirmed Opt-ins'.

 

Why you need Confirmed Opt-in?

* To avoid junk email or one time email address users. If the prospect confirms means, they are actually using that email account and most probably he/she is going to use it future. So your email will be going to a real person.

* To cover yourself from spam complaints. Say 'Tim Doe' enters email of 'John Doe'. Without confirmed opt-in, publisher don't know this ... So he will be sending email to 'John Doe'. 'John Doe' will be annoyed by these emails and wrote a spam complaint on the publisher.

 

What percentage of Confirmed opt-ins is reasonable?

I'd say 50% and more is a reasonable margin. More than 80% is an excellent figure!

If 100 prospects subscribed, only 50 people confirmed their interest in receiving your email ... not bad. But it is ALWAYS BETTER to improve this 50% to more than that. Right?

 

How to improve this Confirmed opt-ins?

* Your email series or ezine should provide good infomation to the subscriber. Sure he'd love to receive that info from you.

* Clear instructions on your web sites regarding your private policy, terms of use and anti-spam seal etc. Not only just displaying, you should follow them too.

* Recommendations or testimonials from your present subscribers. Display them on your subscription pages. This increases your credibility.

* Post your previous ezine publications as an archive on your site.

* Keep instructions on your subscription page that to check their junk folder for your initial email. If they don't check it there, they will miss the email to confirm their subscription.

* Ask your subscribers to add your domain to their safe list, so they will receive the confirmation email to their inbox.

* Use SPF record to improve your email deliverability from your web site. SPF records are usually set by your host.

* Make sure confirmation emails, links to click in the email are working properly.

* Set up a short tutorial and a screenshot on how to confirm by clicking the link or other means, on your subscription page.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:33:04 No. of Views: 181

The person who comes to your web site seeking products or information is a visitor. A person who bought a product or service of your's is a customer or client.

 

Why should you follow up Your *VISITOR*?

Simple...

People tend to forget easily.

After he gone from your web site, he may not remember that he came to your web site. He/She could have some reasons not to buy a product right now. Or he still searching for a product similar to yours. This person is a potential prospect to you. So try to get their email adddress and permission from them to receive emails from you.

How to get their email:

= Offer free product with basic feature, later they can upgrade
= Offer fully functional demo product that expires after a time
= Offer coupons that give discounts on your products
= Offer a free ecourse
= Offer an ezine
= Offer a free ebook
= Offer free membership for a certain period

 

Why should you follow up Your *CUSTOMER*?

You can ask me... Why should I follow up my customer? He already my customer, isn't it?

Don't forget the simple 'psychology of comfort'. Once your customer is using your product means, he will have more confidence in you and your service. So he/she will be easily influenced to buy your other products.

 

Tips on How to follow up Your visitors and customer?

The main aim of the following is to do opt-in email marketing.

1. ALWAYS do verified opt-in marketing. Let the subscriber confirm their email by clicking a link in an email message.

2. Use 'unsubscribe' link in all email messages.

3. Publish your physical address in every out going email.

4. Publish your subscriber details in every email like their ip at the time of subscription, email, date of subscription etc. This will be the proof that you are doing verified opt-in marketing.

5. Don't sell or rent your lists.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:29:39 No. of Views: 234

If you start your opt-in list, better read this before you go any further:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

Because of enormous spam email flooding the inboxes, subscribers are losing sense to differentiate between legit or spam email. They tend to click on 'Mark as Spam' button so often.

So you, as a legit email marketer follow some priciples that keeps you in a position to defend yourself:

 

1. Strict opt-in list :

Yes... strict. The mailing list softwre should be configured for double opt-in. The subscriber has to confirm his subscription by clicking on a link.

I also recommend once in a while sweeping out of the bad email addresses to keep server resources in limit.

 

2. Get subscribers details :

Your software should capable of recording details like ip of the subscriber, date and time, url of subscription form. This way you can keep a record of subscriptions.

You can keep these details in every email, so your subscriber knows that you are not sending spam. Less chances of hitting spam button.

 

3. Keep unsubscribe link in every out going email :

Give your subscriber a chance to remove himself from your list. Afterall, you don't want your ip/website to be banned by ISPs. Right?

State clearly to unsubscribe using the same email address if he is going for email unsubscription.

 

4. Display your physical address in the emails :

Let your subscriber know that you are not a fake. Either your business or personal address. Phone number is your option. Some people prefer to publish their phone numbers but some don't.

 

5. Don't put misleading information :

In subject of the emails or in displaying links in the messages don't mislead them. Give an idea for the subscriber on what he is going view once he opens your email or click a link. For example, don't keep link like 'Get free software' and link it to a MLM site.

 

6. Keep an abuse/spam complaint form on your web site :

Keep an email or a form to send you spam or abuse complaints. Take these emails seriously. If it is a complaint by mistake, try to contact the person to explain that your list is compliant with antispam rules. Keep a privacy/antispam policy on your website and make sure you follow it!

 

7. Set up SPF record :

You host can help you with this. SPF records indicate which mail servers are permitted to send email with a particular 'From' email address. Email clients like AOL, Hotmail etc. check the spf record of the email originating domain. Example - If you send email from yourdomain.com with 'webmaster@anotherdomain.com', it will be rejected as email client think, you are a spammer. So always use the same email in 'From' address from which the email is going.

More info on spf:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/senderid/default.mspx

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:24:56 No. of Views: 172

Are you publishing an ezine or offering an email course?
Are you talking with your subscriber through your ezine or email course?

If so what are you calling them?

"Hello John"?
or "Hello friend"?
or "Hello"?

If you want to feel the difference between the above three, stand infront of a mirror and call yourself with above three ways. Which one is more pleasing to you? The same with your subscriber too!

 

What is 'email personalization' means?

At the beginning of the emails instead of starting the message directly we will call the person by name like 'Dear John'. This is possible if you are sending email to one person or few people. But here you are dealing with a large subscriber base... Some thousand emails... So what to do?

You need a Mailing list Manager that works with this feature. While you keeping subscription forms, you need to keep two fields. One for the First name and second for the email address. So your script stores your subscribers name in the database. If you sending emails to your subscribers, you have to put some tag like [FIRSTNAME] or {fname} etc depending on your software instructions. Then the script replaces this code with actual first name while sending the message. You can send personalized email addresses, personlized names and other special data from your autoresponder. Pretty cool. Huh?

 

Where can you keep this personalization feature?

= In subject lines of your emails
= At the beginning of emails, ezines or email courses
= Before 'Unsubscribe' link. Ask them they really want to unsubscribe.
= If you are offering something exciting like discounts, free trials etc.

Rule of Thumb: Send personalized email. But don't Overdo it. It looks odd. If your subscriber sees his name some 10 times in your email, next thing he will do is looking for unsubscribe link.

 

OK...Very convincing till now. Why should You personalize your emails?

1. Calling your subscriber in the subject line of email increases the chances of opening your email. Their name in the email subjects catches the eyes. So more chances of opening it. I myself scan through the all subject lines of emails. First I open up the emails from the persons I know better. Second, subject lines with my name in it catches my attention. Certainly I feel like opening the emails with my name. But you should be careful with emails that carry virus to your computer. Some people send you emails with your name and attachments. This is especially common with free accounts like Yahoo, Hotmail etc,.

2. Once your subscriber opens the email there will be more chances of clicking other links in your email.

3. When you contact other webmasters for link exchanges, joint ventures make a habit of personalizing the emails. It makes lot of difference.

4. If you use your subscribers name before any special offer or an exciting bonus, it catches his eyes. Leave an extra line above and below the name. So the name stands a little prominent.

 

TWO LAST 'NEVER DO IT' tips:

Some people write the message templates and copy and paste them in their email programms and send them to different people. These templates if has a name on it and you are sending it to a person with different name, it looks very very embarassing. So check the names before sending email messages.

Another is DON'T misspell the names. Especially the person is from different country, you may not be familiar with those names. So check twice before clicking send button.

One last note... Try experimenting by implementing different features in your ezines and see how the subscribers response and your expected results.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-16 16:20:41 No. of Views: 362

What are Sublists or List segmentation?

Sublists or List segmentation means making seperate groups of your list based on certain variables. Variables can be like age, gender, interests, income, job etc. Any variable based on your intention of what to get from your list, you can add/remove many variable/criteria to make sublists of your list. This is also called List segmentation.

 

Why you need to do List segmantation? What are the benefits of List segmentation?

You can make your list more targeted to do 'Target Marketing'. More targeted the subscribers, more the results you can expect from them.

See the sublists example: Sublists from a list -

I have a double opt-in list of 10,000 Internet marketers.
Only 2000 subscribers from that 10,000 list are interested in Email marketing.
Another 2000 subscribers are interested in ebook resell rights.

So first 2000 subscribers are better tageted for email marketing offers. That list segment is more profitable if I send a discount promotion of autoresponder software.

Second sublist is interested in buying resell rights. So it would be more profitable if I send a brandable report with resell rights for a low price.

So the more targeted you make your list, more profitable it will be.

 

How to make or create sublists or List segmentation?

1. Questions during subscriptions:

Your autoresponder should be capable of creating Form with radio button, checkbox, dropdown fields.

You can ask questions while they are subscribing.

Ex: You asked a question-
What is your favorite color?
You gave them three options - red, blue, green
(All subscribers answers should be stored in database)
All subscribers who told you 'red' as their favorite color can be seperated by search function and you can send email to them.

You can send these tags in your emails:
From above Ex: You can send email to your subscriber - "As {color} is your favorite color, here is a free {color} color T-Shirt. Get Half priced {color} color hats with it!"

{color} will be replaced by the script as 'red'. So subscribers get freebie plus he also gets a discount on red hats from you.

2. Campaign based or advertising based:

Sometimes by default you want subscribers of a list who are subscribing from a special campaign to tag with 'red' color without them being selected. Then you can assign all those subscribers that tag in adminpanel automatically.

3. Demographic segmentation of list:

Marketers are now more focusing on demographic segmentation of their lists. This way they will get more targeted leads to focus on products that need demograhphic based advertising.

Another example: If your list is sublisted based on States of your country. You can send an email to your subscribers of one state like this - " ... Coaching on Search engine optmization in your area! Learn how to optimize your web site to double or triple Your profits!"

You can search and seperate subscribers in your autoresponder software based on these specific criteria and send promotional or requested information.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-11 12:14:45 No. of Views: 200

You want to start an ezine. You setup an autoresponder and insert a form on your web site. So your visitors can enter their name, email and other information in to the form to get subscribed. Then script will send them a 'Confirmation email' to click on a link. This is double opt-in.

 

So what if your subscribers enter wrong email address by mistake?

 

Scipt tries to send messages to this email and they bounce back. Your subscriber will never receive any Confirmation email and you will lose a prospect.

 

So what if your subscribers enters correct email during subscription and abandon that email in future?

 

This happens often. People register with free email accounts, uses it for couple of years and stop using it. Email provider will close the account or the email account is full and out of disk space. When the emails are out of disk space the messages you send will bounce back.

 

You can avoid these situations as much as possible by the following few checks:

 

During subscriptions:

 

* Let your autoresponder or mailing list software check the email format before the subscription. This is carried away by background check by the script so it sees that '@' sign, .com (or any other tld extention) are entered.

 

* Your script should have the ability to block certain email accounts if you don't want them in your list. Like hotmail.com, yahoo.com etc. This takes away half of the burden of bounces. But now a days 80% of the subscribers are using free email accounts. So it is entirely up to you whether to aloow free email accounts or not. But certainly bounce rates will be much less.

 

* Regular expressions: Some webmasters use these Regular expressions to disallow some characters or number of characters in emails. This needs to be integrated with your mailing script.

 

Double opt-in:

 

Double opt-in confirms that the email really exists. Same time it excludes misspelled email addresses. You can also get confirmation from your subscribers.

 

Bounced Email management:

 

Believe it or not ... you will get bounces with your lists all the time. Could be due to abandoning email addresses espeially free email accounts, expiration of domains, inboxes are full or deleted email addresses etc. Sometimes mail server won't be available. So in all these cases you feel like not sending emails again to these email addresses.

 

Because sending a message, dealing with a bounce etc - these are waste of your server resources if this happens repeatedly with same email address. So if your software lists an email address as invalid, just delete them asap. No regrets about this ... Clean list gives you more profit margins than bulk and junk list.

 

 

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Author: admin Posted on: 2011-03-10 20:14:36 No. of Views: 552

People tend to forget their subscriptions. Sometimes they don't even know why they subscribed to your newsletter. Especially if the person is seeking for information, he/she will subscribe to every ezine or ecourse that will come across their search. They don't remember it after a while. If you send email to them after a few months, they simply accuse you of sending spam.

 

So how do you safeguard yourself from this type of accusation?

 

Follow-up and mailing list management software can help you manage your ecourses, broadcasts, and follow ups with a single software.

 

1. Provide Personal Details in Every Email :

 

At the top of each email, put the subscriber's email address, their IP number with which they subscribed, the URL of the form where they subscribed, and the list name to which they subscribed. This way your subscribers are aware that you have their details with their permission. You only get the subscriber's IP when he/she subscribes using a form. If they subscribed using email addresses, the IP will not be grabbed by your autoresponder software.

 

2. Use Double Opt-in :

 

Some of the marketers say, "You have to make it easy for the subscriber to receive your emails." So people tend to neglect to implement double opt-in. They think that it will be a hassle for subscribers to click on the confirmation link in the email.

 

Remember one thing... if they are really interested they will click. A double opt-in list is better for targeting your information and gaining profits.

 

3. Include an Unsubscribe Link :

 

Put an unsubscribe link in every email in the footer area. Sometimes people subscribe using subscriberATdomain.com which then redirects his email to subscriberATdomain2.com. Then he tries to unsubscribe using the second email, which obviously is not in your database, and he can't be removed by your software. Then he/she will get upset that you are sending spam.

 

So tell them that they must use the same email address that they used to subscribe when unsubscribing. You can put this information under your unsubscribe link.

 

4. Use a Privacy Statement :

 

Create a tag in your autoresponder like [privacy_statement], if your software allows it. Then put this tag in all emails below the unsubscribe link. This privacy statement should be similar to what you put on the subscription form web page.

 

If your autoresponder software doesn't allow tags, then put the URL to your privacy statement on your web page.

 

5. Consider Authentication Seals :

 

Recently I came across these sites that provide email marketers a special code that goes in the headers of your email(s), making them legitimate.

 

http://www.habeas.com/servicesHowSWEWorks.php http://www.truste.org/businesses/email_services.php http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php http://www.bondedsender.com/

 

6. Remove Subscribers that Are Unsubscribed :

 

"Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address." (from ftc.gov website)

 

So when sending email, make sure that you delete unsubscribers or list them separately in your system."

 

7. Provide Your physical address :

 

Put your physical address in every email. In the body of the email message, you must include your name, company name (if sent on behalf of a company), physical address and return email address. This email address you should be checking regularly.

 

8. Don't send email to customers of Your affiliate products :

 

One question frequently asked by webmasters: I am an affiliate of these product and I made few sales. Can I send emails to them? ANSWER : Simply no. First, the customer is not your customer. He is your affiliate product owner's customer. Second, he didn't opt to receive your email. SOLUTION : If you want to send email to him, put a form on your website and ask him to sign up for your list.

 

 

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