Monday, October 24, 2005
Bulk Email Marketing and Auto Responders:
Most people don’t appreciate the valuable role an auto responder plays in bulk email marketing. In fact bulk email marketing would not be possible let alone effective if auto responders were not around.
The amazing thing is that this handy bulk email marketing tool seems to have survived despite what at first appeared to be a death blow from the rise of annoying SPAM.
This article will inspire you to clean up and tidy up at your auto responder… yes, I know that it is the most boring, cumbersome task in bulk email marketing. In fact I hate it too… a lot!
But we need it and that’s why this article is so useful.
Read the article: Auto Responder Value By Carolyn Bell Smith
Please click here
The amazing thing is that this handy bulk email marketing tool seems to have survived despite what at first appeared to be a death blow from the rise of annoying SPAM.
This article will inspire you to clean up and tidy up at your auto responder… yes, I know that it is the most boring, cumbersome task in bulk email marketing. In fact I hate it too… a lot!
But we need it and that’s why this article is so useful.
Read the article: Auto Responder Value By Carolyn Bell Smith
Please click here
Miss This Crucial Point and Your Opt-in List Will Cost You Plenty
You have been told countles times that one of the "secrets" to making money online is to own an opt-in list. In fact you know of many people who own opt-in lists and they make fortunes from them, so why is it that after following all the advice you can't make anything from your own list?
You dived straight in, picked a topic which seemed a good money earner and started building your list. You probably poured quite a lot of money into your list, and... You haven't made a single cent in profit!
After your third or fourth month the realization hit home that you're loosing money, big time. 1500 subscribers and only 20 or so respond to an offer, 30 if you offer a freebie, but nobody ever buys anything.
So what's gone wrong?
Well, diving straight in, picking a good money earner and thinking others will believe you for starters. Think about it for a bit, you generally only buy from an offer in an email if you know the author is reputable and talking from experience. You trust them and the more the author is known across the internet, the more you trust their judgment.
That Ezine you joined the other day because it seemed interesting, do you really trust the editor? Let's face it you've never heard of him before, would you buy anything on his recommendation? Probably not...
So why should any of your subscribers buy from your recommendation, after all, the first they heard of you was in the initial email you sent them and it's only three months down the road since then.
The truth is, the money's in the list only if your subscribers believe in, and trust you.
This platform of trust is like a new building and you will either add a few extra bricks to it, or remove a few bricks from it with very email you send, every forum post you make, every website you post your testimonial to.
You don't need the guru's to sing your praises, although they will when you build a responsive list that's big enough to get their financial attention.
Big lists don't just happen, they have to be built and they all start small. As you build your list you are building your reputation, so:
- Build your list and your abilities at the same time.
- Build your list through your own abilities, not other peoples.
- Be honest with yourself and your list.
- Always provide truthful unbiased information.
- Don't look at your list as a money earner.
- Treasure your list; your subscribers deserve the best.
- Always reply promptly to subscriber's correspondence.
Don't forget to build your online presence at the same time, the more people hear about you, or read about you, the more your reputation grows:
- Reply professionally to forum posts.
- Send honest professional testimonials to product owners.
- Make friends with other list owners.
- Conduct joint ventures with other marketers.
The bottom line with building profitable lists is if you treat your subscribers with respect and offer honest and true advice, they will in turn respect you and take you up on the offers you make. Remember this - nobody minds paying for information if they know it will help them and it's through your reputation that they will come to trust your judgment. That's a big responsibility; you can't afford to abuse it!
Colin Evans is editor of the List Building Tips newsletter. Get a free detailed 7 step process to supercharge your opt in list, visit ... http://www.list-building-tips.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
You dived straight in, picked a topic which seemed a good money earner and started building your list. You probably poured quite a lot of money into your list, and... You haven't made a single cent in profit!
After your third or fourth month the realization hit home that you're loosing money, big time. 1500 subscribers and only 20 or so respond to an offer, 30 if you offer a freebie, but nobody ever buys anything.
So what's gone wrong?
Well, diving straight in, picking a good money earner and thinking others will believe you for starters. Think about it for a bit, you generally only buy from an offer in an email if you know the author is reputable and talking from experience. You trust them and the more the author is known across the internet, the more you trust their judgment.
That Ezine you joined the other day because it seemed interesting, do you really trust the editor? Let's face it you've never heard of him before, would you buy anything on his recommendation? Probably not...
So why should any of your subscribers buy from your recommendation, after all, the first they heard of you was in the initial email you sent them and it's only three months down the road since then.
The truth is, the money's in the list only if your subscribers believe in, and trust you.
This platform of trust is like a new building and you will either add a few extra bricks to it, or remove a few bricks from it with very email you send, every forum post you make, every website you post your testimonial to.
You don't need the guru's to sing your praises, although they will when you build a responsive list that's big enough to get their financial attention.
Big lists don't just happen, they have to be built and they all start small. As you build your list you are building your reputation, so:
- Build your list and your abilities at the same time.
- Build your list through your own abilities, not other peoples.
- Be honest with yourself and your list.
- Always provide truthful unbiased information.
- Don't look at your list as a money earner.
- Treasure your list; your subscribers deserve the best.
- Always reply promptly to subscriber's correspondence.
Don't forget to build your online presence at the same time, the more people hear about you, or read about you, the more your reputation grows:
- Reply professionally to forum posts.
- Send honest professional testimonials to product owners.
- Make friends with other list owners.
- Conduct joint ventures with other marketers.
The bottom line with building profitable lists is if you treat your subscribers with respect and offer honest and true advice, they will in turn respect you and take you up on the offers you make. Remember this - nobody minds paying for information if they know it will help them and it's through your reputation that they will come to trust your judgment. That's a big responsibility; you can't afford to abuse it!
Colin Evans is editor of the List Building Tips newsletter. Get a free detailed 7 step process to supercharge your opt in list, visit ... http://www.list-building-tips.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
Get Your Emails Delivered!
Deliverability is today’s biggest issue for every email marketer. Email marketers face deliverability problems because of email overload. Many people who spend much time online and that have businesses very much related to computers and Internet often get more than 100 emails per day. Usually, 8 out of 10 emails are considered as SPAM. Problem is that your email message, supposedly that you are legitimate marketer and have permission for contacting, can be flagged as SPAM. This can make harm to your business and reputation.
Here you can find some interesting facts about deliverability and SPAM:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/funfacts
Using some Hosted ASP email marketing software you will loose money because of the fact that you will pay for every message sent and not for every message delivered. Beside that, you will loose money in lost sales. Using desktop email marketing software like GroupMail you will pay one-time-fee for software licence and not for number of messages delivered.
You can have deliverability issues because of anti-spam lists, because of ISP filters and because of corporate/user filters. So there are three hurdles you have to jump over to get your messages delivered. So, how can you improve your deliverability rates?
Subscriptions
The first necessary step in getting your email message delivered is that you have permission of your members to send them your messages. Never, and we mean never, put people on your list without their permission. We recommend you double opt-in method for getting new subscribers so that they have to confirm their request to be your subscribers. It is recommended to ask them to enter their work email instead of free email addresses. Some companies go that far that they don’t allow subscribing if you use free email address. It is because of the fact that work email address is considered as more reliable and stable than a free email address.
Welcome message
So, after they confirmed their request you have to take the next step. You have to automatically send them your welcome message where you will give description of your company, email newsletter and list management info (information about subscribing, unsubscribing, digest mode, archives…).
In this welcome message it is very important not to forget two most important things. To tell them to put your From address in their Whitelist filtering rules to ensure that your message will arrive in to their inbox and not in their Bulk folder. And second very important thing, you should ask them to save your welcome message for future reference. Many people forget that they subscribed to certain email newsletter. Because of that they can accuse you for spamming and report you to your ISP or email marketing company.
Regulations, relations and reputations
You have to constantly have good relationship with major ISP in order to ensure good deliverability. ISP relation often can be a complex job so many email marketing software companies have special people assigned for this type of job. They have to actively watch news about ISP politics and to fulfil their request.
For example, some ISP won’t deliver your message if your messages don’t have a so called DomainKeys or Sender Policy Framework (SPF) key to ensure that the message really came from your domain name and to protect email sender identity. This prevents email spoofing. Some other companies won’t deliver your messages if you are not compliant with Habeas Sender Warranty Email Header. The Habeas headers allow you to guarantee that the emails you are sending are not spam and bypass filter systems.
Speaking about DomainKeys, for example if you send your message from one Yahoo email address to another Yahoo email address the recipient will see this info below From name:
“Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com.”
You can have your own DomainKeys so that your recipients get similar message like above only with your domain name in it. Not only that it is recommended to have your own DomainKeys it is also very professional to see that your company is have one. It shows that email communication is very important for you.
For more information about those standards and regulations visit:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
http://www.habeas.com
You have to ask your email service provider what steps they take in order to ensure the maximum deliverability. If your email service provider is blacklisted your messages won’t be delivered on many places. Also, you have to check whether your domain is blacklisted. You can use different services like http://www.dnsstuff.com, http://www.spamhaus.org, http://www.spamcop.net, http://www.OpenRBL.org. Having a good reputation with major anti-spam lists and policies ensures that your messages won’t be filtered.
List maintenance
You have to track which email addresses are undeliverable and if it repeats several times you have to remove those email address if your software won’t do that for you. Also, if you don’t use double opt-in method for getting subscribers it can happen that someone make a typo in entering their email addresses so instead of, for example, username@domain.com they enter username@domain in your subscription form. Email marketing software like GroupMail (http://www.group-mail.com) has add-on called Email Inspector which removes bad email addresses and can validate recipient addresses by format, using DNS lookup and full SMTP user account testing.
Content and consistence
“Content Is King!” – one of the best known rules on the Internet. In email marketing, it is not only important that you include quality content. It is also important that your message don’t look too “spammy”, that it isn’t full of words used by spammers like: free, buy now, guaranteed, limited time offer…etc, thay you don’t write words all in capitals. It is considered as SHOUTING!
There are several useful tools that will check your content if it is considered as “spammy” before you send your message. One of those services is EzineCheck (http://www.ezinecheck.com).
Also, you have to follow one of the most important rules in email publishing and that is consistency. You have to choose your From field name and stick to it, you have to make your Subject line in that way that it clearly represents you, to choose one format and always use it.
For example, let’s say you have a newsletter called Best Practices Guide. You can design your subject line this way:
[BPG] Article Title, Issue No., Date
This can be your template so it is more likely that your message won’t be deleted by mistake. You can make your style even further. You can make a practice that your every article starts with number or question so this template can be:
[BPG] 7 Best Deliverability Tips, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005 or [BPG] How To Get Your Emails Delivered, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005.
We have said that you have to choose your From field name and stick to it. Beside that, your From email address is even more important. Many subscribers make filters based on From email address so if you change your email address it is more likely that your message won’t be delivered or read. That’s why your From email address has to be consistent.
-------------------------------
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com
Here you can find some interesting facts about deliverability and SPAM:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/funfacts
Using some Hosted ASP email marketing software you will loose money because of the fact that you will pay for every message sent and not for every message delivered. Beside that, you will loose money in lost sales. Using desktop email marketing software like GroupMail you will pay one-time-fee for software licence and not for number of messages delivered.
You can have deliverability issues because of anti-spam lists, because of ISP filters and because of corporate/user filters. So there are three hurdles you have to jump over to get your messages delivered. So, how can you improve your deliverability rates?
Subscriptions
The first necessary step in getting your email message delivered is that you have permission of your members to send them your messages. Never, and we mean never, put people on your list without their permission. We recommend you double opt-in method for getting new subscribers so that they have to confirm their request to be your subscribers. It is recommended to ask them to enter their work email instead of free email addresses. Some companies go that far that they don’t allow subscribing if you use free email address. It is because of the fact that work email address is considered as more reliable and stable than a free email address.
Welcome message
So, after they confirmed their request you have to take the next step. You have to automatically send them your welcome message where you will give description of your company, email newsletter and list management info (information about subscribing, unsubscribing, digest mode, archives…).
In this welcome message it is very important not to forget two most important things. To tell them to put your From address in their Whitelist filtering rules to ensure that your message will arrive in to their inbox and not in their Bulk folder. And second very important thing, you should ask them to save your welcome message for future reference. Many people forget that they subscribed to certain email newsletter. Because of that they can accuse you for spamming and report you to your ISP or email marketing company.
Regulations, relations and reputations
You have to constantly have good relationship with major ISP in order to ensure good deliverability. ISP relation often can be a complex job so many email marketing software companies have special people assigned for this type of job. They have to actively watch news about ISP politics and to fulfil their request.
For example, some ISP won’t deliver your message if your messages don’t have a so called DomainKeys or Sender Policy Framework (SPF) key to ensure that the message really came from your domain name and to protect email sender identity. This prevents email spoofing. Some other companies won’t deliver your messages if you are not compliant with Habeas Sender Warranty Email Header. The Habeas headers allow you to guarantee that the emails you are sending are not spam and bypass filter systems.
Speaking about DomainKeys, for example if you send your message from one Yahoo email address to another Yahoo email address the recipient will see this info below From name:
“Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com.”
You can have your own DomainKeys so that your recipients get similar message like above only with your domain name in it. Not only that it is recommended to have your own DomainKeys it is also very professional to see that your company is have one. It shows that email communication is very important for you.
For more information about those standards and regulations visit:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
http://www.habeas.com
You have to ask your email service provider what steps they take in order to ensure the maximum deliverability. If your email service provider is blacklisted your messages won’t be delivered on many places. Also, you have to check whether your domain is blacklisted. You can use different services like http://www.dnsstuff.com, http://www.spamhaus.org, http://www.spamcop.net, http://www.OpenRBL.org. Having a good reputation with major anti-spam lists and policies ensures that your messages won’t be filtered.
List maintenance
You have to track which email addresses are undeliverable and if it repeats several times you have to remove those email address if your software won’t do that for you. Also, if you don’t use double opt-in method for getting subscribers it can happen that someone make a typo in entering their email addresses so instead of, for example, username@domain.com they enter username@domain in your subscription form. Email marketing software like GroupMail (http://www.group-mail.com) has add-on called Email Inspector which removes bad email addresses and can validate recipient addresses by format, using DNS lookup and full SMTP user account testing.
Content and consistence
“Content Is King!” – one of the best known rules on the Internet. In email marketing, it is not only important that you include quality content. It is also important that your message don’t look too “spammy”, that it isn’t full of words used by spammers like: free, buy now, guaranteed, limited time offer…etc, thay you don’t write words all in capitals. It is considered as SHOUTING!
There are several useful tools that will check your content if it is considered as “spammy” before you send your message. One of those services is EzineCheck (http://www.ezinecheck.com).
Also, you have to follow one of the most important rules in email publishing and that is consistency. You have to choose your From field name and stick to it, you have to make your Subject line in that way that it clearly represents you, to choose one format and always use it.
For example, let’s say you have a newsletter called Best Practices Guide. You can design your subject line this way:
[BPG] Article Title, Issue No., Date
This can be your template so it is more likely that your message won’t be deleted by mistake. You can make your style even further. You can make a practice that your every article starts with number or question so this template can be:
[BPG] 7 Best Deliverability Tips, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005 or [BPG] How To Get Your Emails Delivered, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005.
We have said that you have to choose your From field name and stick to it. Beside that, your From email address is even more important. Many subscribers make filters based on From email address so if you change your email address it is more likely that your message won’t be delivered or read. That’s why your From email address has to be consistent.
-------------------------------
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com
Internet Basics: Email Marketing is Like Butterfly Pheromones
Ever notice how you usually don't see that many butterflies? And then one day you'll actually see two of them, and they're kind of, well, they're sort of, well, let's just say they're flying awfully close. So close, in fact, that there's no doubt they're mating. And you know it's a good thing when there's that much closeness going on.
But since you usually don't see butterflies that often, how is it that now there's two of them? And in the same place at the same time?
The answer is pheromones.
Pheromones are chemicals that butterflies and other insects release to communicate over long distances. In the case of butterflies, they can release a pheromone to announce they're available for mating. Within a short period of time, another butterfly gets the pheromone message and suddenly, the two butterflies have hooked up. And all is good.
That's what email marketing is like.
Merchants have products or services they provide to Customers. And sometimes it might seem like there's not very many customers around, or the Merchants would simply like it if there were more customers in general.
So the Merchants decide to use email marketing. First the Merchants make it known they're going to send out emails every so often announcing special sales and communicating bits of information they know their Customers will appreciate.
The Customers are intrigued and "sign up" to receive these emails by telling the Merchant their email address. Finally, the Merchant sends out the email messages, often called e-Newsletters.
And just like with the butterflies, the messages get received -- even over long distances -- and often lead to the Customer and the Merchant hooking up again. And all is good.
And that's why email marketing is like butterfly pheromones
------------------------
Copyright (c) Grant Pasay 2005. All rights reserved. You may forward this article in its entirety to anyone you wish.
Grant Pasay is a writer, musician, moviemaker, and author of the new eBook, “The Internet Is Like A Refrigerator: And Other Weird Comparisons That Make it Easy to Understand Everything From AOL to Zip Files.”
Check out Grant's free/brandable ebook at: http://grantpasay.com/refrigerator
============================
Personal bankruptcy is generally considered the ultimate debt management option and although it will get you off the hook as far as many of your creditors are concerned, it is important to realize its’ long term effects and impact on your life. Although in certain situations it is the only option, it will stay on your credit report for 10 years and make life difficult for you in many ways. That is why many opt for debt consolidation instead. Debt consolidation involves taking out a low-interest loan that will pay off all your debts, leaving you with just the one loan to pay off.
====================
PowerOptions provides the essential data you need to invest with stock options. For example did you know that there is no need to rely on dividend paying stocks to make dividend like income in your portfolio when most stocks offer publicly traded options. You make these transactions with your broker, similar to buying and selling stocks. A call option gives another investor the right to buy shares from you at a price you set anytime before a certain date. You collect a premium by selling the call and you get the premium, in cash, on the day you sell the option. Just like a dividend.
But since you usually don't see butterflies that often, how is it that now there's two of them? And in the same place at the same time?
The answer is pheromones.
Pheromones are chemicals that butterflies and other insects release to communicate over long distances. In the case of butterflies, they can release a pheromone to announce they're available for mating. Within a short period of time, another butterfly gets the pheromone message and suddenly, the two butterflies have hooked up. And all is good.
That's what email marketing is like.
Merchants have products or services they provide to Customers. And sometimes it might seem like there's not very many customers around, or the Merchants would simply like it if there were more customers in general.
So the Merchants decide to use email marketing. First the Merchants make it known they're going to send out emails every so often announcing special sales and communicating bits of information they know their Customers will appreciate.
The Customers are intrigued and "sign up" to receive these emails by telling the Merchant their email address. Finally, the Merchant sends out the email messages, often called e-Newsletters.
And just like with the butterflies, the messages get received -- even over long distances -- and often lead to the Customer and the Merchant hooking up again. And all is good.
And that's why email marketing is like butterfly pheromones
------------------------
Copyright (c) Grant Pasay 2005. All rights reserved. You may forward this article in its entirety to anyone you wish.
Grant Pasay is a writer, musician, moviemaker, and author of the new eBook, “The Internet Is Like A Refrigerator: And Other Weird Comparisons That Make it Easy to Understand Everything From AOL to Zip Files.”
Check out Grant's free/brandable ebook at: http://grantpasay.com/refrigerator
============================
Personal bankruptcy is generally considered the ultimate debt management option and although it will get you off the hook as far as many of your creditors are concerned, it is important to realize its’ long term effects and impact on your life. Although in certain situations it is the only option, it will stay on your credit report for 10 years and make life difficult for you in many ways. That is why many opt for debt consolidation instead. Debt consolidation involves taking out a low-interest loan that will pay off all your debts, leaving you with just the one loan to pay off.
====================
PowerOptions provides the essential data you need to invest with stock options. For example did you know that there is no need to rely on dividend paying stocks to make dividend like income in your portfolio when most stocks offer publicly traded options. You make these transactions with your broker, similar to buying and selling stocks. A call option gives another investor the right to buy shares from you at a price you set anytime before a certain date. You collect a premium by selling the call and you get the premium, in cash, on the day you sell the option. Just like a dividend.
