The good and bad sides of email marketing

Email marketing can be highly effective for many types of business, big or small, online or off. Good marketing emails can make people more receptive to online promotions, or offline deals. There is a bad side to email marketing, and that is due to some unacceptable practices. Email marketers must take a positive approach and encourage website visitors to sign up for regular updates, or to receive email newsletters. A reputable business will never send unsolicited emails to anyone.

The big advantage of email marketing is that it keeps customers up-to date with latest offers, and allows more people to become better informed about a business. Email subscribers can be made aware or reminded of advantages to becoming a paid customer.

People who have actively subscribed to an email list will generally not unsubscribe, provided the marketing emails they receive are more than just advertising copy, and are not used only for promoting the same products and services. Rather than urging readers to buy or sign up, email marketing works best when it is a little more subtle.

Regular emails should provide valuable updates and be filled with tips or trivia related to the type of business. Email newsletter can feature free contests or fun quizzes, and articles that will encourage readers to add their own comments. Marketing emails should focus on topics that make readers want to click on links, to and find out more or to reach pages where they can take advantage of what the business has to offer.

A company website or business blog can encourage visitors to join an email list, by offering a free gift or a special price deal just for subscribing. A useful e-book or an exclusive money-off deal is a good incentive to opt-in to an email list. Customers and visitors should be assured that they can unsubscribe from emails at any time. When it is also clearly stated that an email address will not be used for any other purpose, and will never be sold on, this helps to build trust in the business.

Email marketing has moved on since the time when almost all emails sent were viewed by recipients. Most email systems now have an automatic spam filter, so unsolicited emails go straight into a spam folder.

Unwanted emails are easy to delete in bulk, and most of them never get read. The bad side of this is that some genuine marketing emails can end up in the spam folder.

There is no advantage to be gained by sending marketing emails that get lost in a sea of spam and are deleted unread. The best way to prevent this is to make clear to all new subscribers that the first automatic response they get after opting-in could be filtered out of their inbox, and they should look for it in their spam folder. The confirmation email should recommend subscribers set their email service to allow emails from that business and provide the actual email address used to send out marketing emails.

Email marketing can be of great value to any business and the good side of email marketing is that it allows any business to communicate directly with its target market. Marketing emails can be used creatively to entice readers with special offers. Email newsletters can delight regular readers with information that is relevant and useful The downside of email marketing is that it must be done properly, to make certain no unwanted or unwelcome emails are sent to anyone, and to ensure that marketing emails are not filtered into spam folders or ignored.

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Small business email marketing guide

Many small-business owners cringe at the thought of email marketing. They think: I already get too many emails Isn't that spamming? Will I get in trouble for that? Won't people be annoyed?

Personally, I don't mind receiving something I've signed up for. I may delete it if I don't have time to read it, but at least I know that another email will be coming my way soon enough.

So relax, because not only is this marketing method legal (when you follow best practices), it's also effective and fun. Let's consider how email marketing can help you to increase sales.

Benefits of Email Marketing

Cost effective - Achieve a solid ROI considering you can produce your own emails in-house using cheap tools, DIY templates and wizards Build relationships - starting a dialogue with your target market can offer new business ideas, improve service or product quality, bring attention to weaknesses Build brand consciousness - get people used to seeing your logo, your ads, your face, your identity Increase website visits - emails are a great way to pique a person's interest and direct them to your website, forum, blog, store, whatever Keep custumers informed - they will feel priveleged to be in the know about discounts, events, news, and other valuable information Harvest Emails with a Professional Email Marketing Policy There are both reputable and shady ways to get email addresses. The safest way to collect emails is to use an opt-in form on your website. A person opts-in (in effect saying, yes! send me emails!) and then confirms their subscription through a link in their email inbox.

Other ways of getting email addresses include purchasing or renting a list, and emailing people asking if they'd like to receive emails in the future. Many people don't like receiving these unsolicited emails and will consider them spam. Use good judgement and tread wisely.

You should always have an opt-out or unsubscribe option available in your emails. This is in case someone decides they don't wish to receive any more correspondence, or if they've received an email in error.
Plan to Be Consistent and Informative In order to have a consistent and productive email marketing plan, list the topics you'd like to cover. Decide with what frequency you will be corresponding with your contacts. Schedule everything out some businesses email once a month, others more freqently. You may want your emails to coincide with the seasons or sales cycles.

What can you write about? Write about new products, new services, discounts,

5 secrets to email marketing success

Email Marketing is one important tool that you as a business owner can use to improve the marketing, profits and customer service of your business. It is simple, cheap and fast, can be highly targeted, has a global reach, and generates a faster response from your audience. So you already have an email marketing campaign but how can you make it really effective? Here are five (5) tips that will make your email marketing more potent:


1. Make Signing Up Easy and Confidential:

Ask only for information that is most important to your business such as an email address and a first name. Make all other information optional. Tell the subscribers that their information will be kept private and that they have the option to opt-out. People who give you permission to send them emails are likelier to be customers.

2. Segment Your Lists:

Do not send one generic email to everyone. According to Salesforce.com, you should section your email lists into target groups. You may do so using criteria such as past purchases, job titles, and locale or through surveys. Then you can create emails which market products that are relevant to these groups.

3. Make use of Social Media:

Social networking is huge right now and almost every internet user belongs to one. Ask your subscribers to share your emails with their contacts on social media sites. AWeber Communications advises that you invite your subscribers to join you on your social media channels where they can interact with you and each other and they may promote your products amongst themselves. Social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are best for your business.

4. Timing is Paramount:

Send your email newsletters or promotions at a time they are likeliest to be read. Avoid Monday when people are busiest and Friday when people want to get away from work and business. Do not send emails during weekends. The time it takes you to reply to a customer response should be as short as possible and should be 24 hours at most.

5. Track Results:

After creating an email marketing strategy, you must measure the user response it generates. If it does not perform well enough to affect your business positively, then you should employ another strategy. Always try to refine your email marketing.

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Common e-mail marketing scams

If you have an e-mail address, chances are you have been the target of numerous marketing scams. These scams are easy to perpetuate, and unfortunately they gather enough victims to make it worthwhile. It is important to understand the most common scams so that you can protect yourself from these con artists.
We are giving away something absolutely free!

Who can resist a free product? You may get an e-mail stating that a company would like to send you a free product for absolutely nothing. There are different spins on this. They may say that they want you to try it out as a product tester. Perhaps they just want to get the word out about the product. All they need is your address and just for security reasons your credit card number or a cash deposit that will be returned.


So do companies really give away something for nothing? Most of the time the answer is no. Chances are you will end up paying for that product somehow, if there even is a product. They may charge your credit card. They may expect you to return it (at your own cost) within a certain amount of time if you do not want it. Sometimes there are shipping and handling charges that far exceed what the actual charges are. Sometimes you will get the product, but other times the entire e-mail will turn out to be a scam.

Congratulations, you are a winner!

You may be so excited by the e-mail that states that you won a contest that you forget that you did not enter a contest. According to Bankrate.com, marketing scam artists will try to convince you that you have won an amazing prize. You just need to give them your credit card number or some money to prove your identity. Of course there may not be any prize at all.

Fake gift certificates

Sometimes this scam is somewhat legitimate. The e-mail says that you have won a gift certificate that is worth $10, $20 or another amount. When you go to redeem it you find out that you have to spend a much greater amount. It really is a coupon and not a gift certificate. By that point you may have already selected items that you want to buy and so you go through with the sale anyways.

E-mail marketing scams are all too common. They range from deceitful practices to outright fraud. Remember that just because the return address appears to be from a trusted source does not mean that it is. Do not believe any e-mail until you have verified its validity and read every word of the fine print.

How emails could be made more effective in political campaigns

Facing criticism, Presidential hopefuls practice better email marketing strategies, but their emails are still not what everyone wants to read.

- Just another message to skip over. That's what Presidential campaign emails invoke in the minds of consumers and potential voters. And as the most recent emails will likely not be read, they can't be doing any good for campaigners or voters While their efforts have succeeded in improving the effectiveness of the sign-up system and email wording, campaigners have not fully addressed the motivational element that is essential in effectively optimizing email marketing software a difficulty easily overcome by examining practices from the business community when formatting emails.

What's in it for me? Obama and Hillary's most recent campaigns are unclear on this issue. The latest email message from Bill Clinton offers subject line: "Not big on quitting." No subject is apparent in the line. Who is not big on quitting? Hillary? Bill? The email team? The supporters? Next, take the latest message from the Obama team: "What's next." Again, no subject, or even action, can be detected. Open the message and find the first calls to action; "contribute by our midnight Monday deadline" and "check out these resources" by Bill Clinton and Obama, respectively.

Compare Obama's and Clinton's email practices to those of a well-known fashion retailer. Subject lines like "Tee Time: Buy 2 Save 20%" and "All The Dresses You Need For Spring" noticeably affirm the advantage of clicking and reading the message before email readers have seen any content. The first line uses two strategic verbs, "buy" and "save," while the second line directly accosts the reader.

A simple rewrite of the subject lines with a seller-buyer framework could deliver: "Deadline Ahead: Don't Quit, Act Now" and "Everything You Should Know about Obama." These subject lines create a sense of importance and shift the locus of power from the sender to the recipients of the emails.

Far from victorious on the subject lines front, Hillary's camp has made significant changes in the body of their emails. In an attempt to generate easy-to-read, visually arresting messages, they use bold font every few lines to highlight main ideas in the paragraphs. They also feature a bold-colored countdown clock with a yellow "Contribute Now" button link. Similarly, Obama's email emphasizes information by categorizing it under 3 headings (The Basics, Organizing, and Fundraising).

Unfortunately, emails from both camps lack images. Obama and Hillary rarely include photos in their emails, and McCain includes just a few small photos in his email banner. In contrast, retailers, internet providers and pizza joints alike have been utilizing large picture links to attract consumers. The picture link is standard practice today.

Democratic nominees realize that they need to modify their marketing strategy, however, and have begun using email marketing software to offer campaign contributors sweepstakes prizes, such as a private meeting with Obama or Clinton. Unfortunately, these offers can be hard to find. For example, Obama sent an email with the subject "Deadline," but the email included a drawing to win a dinner with Barack Obama himself, which was mentioned towards the bottom of the email.

Obama's use of contribution incentives in his email marketing campaigns could explain why his email program ranks third on Email Data Source's 2008 Email Brand Equity Ranking while McCain, who does not use similar incentives, is not among the top 5 of that list. Other factors may include the perceived lack of imperativeness in the emails or the news-like wording in McCain's subject lines.

Four years ago, pundits, bloggers and the general public declared that the Presidential campaigns lagged far behind the business, technology, and entertainment sectors in internet marketing practices. This year, the Presidential hopefuls got with the program; they just weren't entirely sure how to use it.

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Contacting prospects by email

The most important major tool of prospecting is email marketing. It is a fact because of overload of emails on free emails and webbased mail viral email marketing is loosing conversions and sales. But optin prospecting leads with your marketing autoresponders is still very effective Your optin list of subscribers is ready to buy from your website, your affiliate site or only your newsletter any time, if your marketing autoresponders are written up in a unique, effective and professional manner.

For affiliate websites and your own websites both, the easiest and Free advertising is through your autoresponders. Your optins are hungry buyers for your product, email information to them and see the highest conversions from your product. Your sales will boost higher than your expected goals.

Make sure all your contact addresses are correct and all email addresses are still accepting emails from you. This is easy to do if you do keep track and maintain your list be keeping current contact with them and delete those that moved away or do not need to buy anymore.

As a matter of fact this is the safest way to build your Internet business as a newbie too.

Start your newsletter with few optins and get more optins with the newsletter, many top Internet leaders have started this way. Usually it is very easy to find optins for an informative newsletter that is full of honest usable contents, as is Free. So with a news letter your optin list gets bigger much faster. Now when you have a list and your newsletter is publishing on required dates as expected with fresh contents and success stories, you can start selling other people products through your newsletter, when your optins receive your newsletter in their in box they open it up for information and see some great products that will be good for them to use, they will buy it right away as they are hungry for more information on Internet business.

Next step to continue using email marketing is to sign up with an affiliate program that is placing ad in your newsletter. Now when people who are receiving your news letter with the emails they will buy the product and you will get the commission.

just simple email marketing has given you two streams of income. Your optins are increasing in number because of the popularity of your news letter and you are getting paid by the advertiser for the ads that you are publishing, at the same time your optins are buying from your newsletter ads and you are getting the
commission from that too.

So far you have spent money only on your affiliate program subscription, the rest is basically email marketing.
You mostly used your auto responders to promote and prospect so far. This is how email marketing works as a pillar of your Internet marketing.

If you want to take your business to the next level again take the help of email prospecting. Following are the ten best ways to boost your income with email prospecting.

1. Announce specials: Unique and very professionally worded special ads for your affiliate or your own site or newsletter in such away that ad may give your customer an impression that this ad is written for him and he has to buy.

2. Plan special day or week: When you know which customers buy most products with you, email them an offer worded in such a way that they have to buy it right away and they can't refuse it may be a special price or any other feature that works the best.

3. Send a reminder of some kind: If your product has appointment reminders for next promotion or event or next subscription, just email them appointment reminders to connect and make them mentally ready that they have to buy it.

4. Email coupons - with a limited time offer- it can boost your sales a lot of sales as a planned project.

5. Send follow up offers to your customers via email autoresponders: Build a relationship with customer and establish credibility, overcome the obstacles of gaining their trust with emails.

6. Special emails to contest buyers. A frequent buyer always needs to be appreciated and treated as an special customer. Based on that rule find a group of buyers from your optins who buy the most and appreciate them in very nice words and send them a special offer that he cannot refuse.

7. Free Information: this is another way of keeping the customer connected to your product. Provide the information that they can use. and for free. next offer to buy the product will be welcomed by them as they have used your free information previously.

8. Since your optins have credibility and faith in your product, ask them a favor to let their friends neighbors and co workers know about the product or website of information and get some referrals for them for more sign ups, more email marketing and more buying by them.

9. Increase your optins by prospecting with email marketing to the new people who enter in your field as newbies, these are the real people who will
love to use the information you will provide through email marketing.

10. By now using all these steps one by one and starting your Interest business with email prospecting you are making a good yearly income now. It is time that you sell your knowledge of Internet marketing and email marketing also and create more income streams for yourself.

So contact prospecting with email is the main feature of Internet marketing and it is still working to make bundles of money if used properly with planning and positive effort.

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How to approach prospects by email

It's amazing to me how most salespeople still think they have to use the telephone or door to door presentations to be successful. If you are selling in a B2B environment the viable chances of even reaching a live person on the telephone these days are slim to none. You better get your radio voice ready and start putting together effective phone messages to hopefully get these people to call you back. Are better yet try calling people at home and see what type of treatment you receive? In most major cities nowadays you will find no soliciting signs posted on businesses or residences, so unless you want to be sued or fined avoid those places at all costs.

This brings me to my next topic - How to market by email. Email marketing was huge a few years ago, and many people got rich. Nowadays, though on account of what is known as spamming these marketers have simply had to come up with more clever ways to market their services. The laws have simply been as strict on email as it has on telemarketing. I don't know about you, but I rarely look at my trash bin in my email, as it would require me hours to sort through. Consequently, email by the masses, is just not the best way to go with all of the junk mail blockers that are supported by most Internet service providers.

Than how does email marketing work? First of all, you must either have access to templates or be a fairly reasonable writer. If that isn't you than maybe you should employ or have an assistant send your emails for you. You still must understand that email marketing is no different than sales by telephone or door to door. You must have numbers to generate prospects, so the faster you type the better. Make sure you send each message individually, as the email will be guaranteed to enter the personal in-box of your contact. If your suspect knows you personally than your contact ratio should be about 1 in 5. If your contact doesn't know you, plan on about 1 reply to every 30 or 40 targeted emails. Which is pretty good, if you can generate 30 to 40 emails per hour. A spammer would have to send tens of thousands to get one response. Mainly, because their email will hit the trash folder and will most likely be deleted.

Finally, does it really work? Absolutely, I have tested it for a company I work for in the states and the results have been incredible. So, if your tired of being abused by the phone, door to door, or your voice hurts from always leaving voice mails - try email. Make sure your emails are targeted, in other words if your marketing a home based business, make sure your leads are qualified people to begin with. If I am selling a franchise, I wouldn't target 20 year old college students if the start up fee is in the thousands. That is marketing 101, but I am amazed how most sales managers don't get that one. If you follow the above - you will not be disappointed and your contacts will appreciate that you value their time, by not interfering with their busy schedule. The nice thing is that most of the people who get back to you are interested, so therefore when you do make that call you are only talking to qualified people. I haven't talked to a rude person in weeks, wow sales is actually enjoyable.

Email marketing: What is a good click-through rate and how to improve it

According to the latest Epsilon Report for the Q4 of 2009, the average click through rate for email marketing (newsletters and promotional emails) ranges from 5 to 10%, averaging at around 5.9%. The good news is, that number is much higher for targeted emails and even better for emails sent as a response to something the user did on the site (triggered emails), which can have rates as high as 40 or 50%. But no matter what type of emails are you sending, there's ways of increasing the click-through rate and get better results.


The first reason why your mail blast may be having lower click-through rates than expected is that it may not be reaching the mailbox it's sent to. In many cases, the reason for this is your newsletter or mail is considered as spammy by the recipient's mail server, and it's either rejected or moved to a spam folder. Making sure your emails land in your recipient mailbox is the most important task with any email campaign. First of all, you must make sure your email blast provider follows good practices and isn't blacklisted, and once that is out of the way you will need to evaluate each of your emails using tools to see how spammy they look in the eyes of the most popular spam filters. SpamCheck is a free and really helpful tool for this.

Another frequent reason of low click-through rates (and one that can get you blacklisted for spam) is using a mail list that isn't clean enough. With a clean mail list I refer to a list where all the email addresses have opted in to receive your communications and actually exist on the server. Scrub your list frequently, removing addresses that bounce your messages and allow your recipients to unsubscribe in as few clicks as possible. This will reduce the likelihood of them marking your messages as spam just to stop receiving them. A word of caution here, purchasing a recipients list from a non reputable source may end up with a very low quality address list, that will upset the people receiving your newsletter instead of increasing your click-through rates.
Once you are sure about the quality of your recipients address and the low spam rating of your newsletter, the next factor is making sure the email subject and contents are as compelling as possible and targeted to your audience. Even if you are selling the same product, segmenting your mailing list into several different ones with different audiences (For example, corporate business and education workers) and changing the message on each can give you much better results. However, there's some guidelines that statistics have proven to be true most of the time. EmailStatCenter says that emails with a short subject line outperform greatly those with longer subject lines, and even better if the subject line is personalized. Surprisingly, the higher the number of links, the higher the click-through rate but you must strike a careful balance between enough links and so many links the automatic spam filters consider your newsletter spam.

Another important factor is when is your mailing sent. Try moving it around different days of the week, and analyse when your audience seems more inclined to open them. For example, if you are targeting business users, they are more likely to open your emails if they are send during the week, specially on days that are less busy (so Mondays are usually a big no no). The sending time also matters, if your newsletter is on your audience inboxes first thing in the morning chances are they'll at least take a look, instead of it being lost in the intense email traffic during the long busy day.

Even if click-through rates are generally quite low for the average email marketing, analysing your audience habits and tailoring your emails to their needs will generate much higher results. Make sure your newsletters and mailings have clear calls to action, catch the user attention and are sent when your audience is most likely to read them. And above all, do your best to guarantee that those emails actually reach their inbox by using reputable mail providers, sticking to the best responsible mailing practices such as opt-in and making sure your mailing list is clean and stays so. This way you will be able to increase your click-through and conversion rates, making mass mailing a cheap and efficient marketing channel for your business.

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How bloggers can use email blasts to improve traffic

Email blasts are simply email messages, usually done in an HTML format, that are used to convey information to your niche market. This email message is different from a subscription to your blog’s regular feed content so it should look and feel slightly different. The point of using an email blast is to jolt your recipients to do something out of the ordinary. Whether this is to bring them back into the fold of your readership if you noticed that your traffic statistics have fallen off or to get subscribe to a newsletter or purchase a product that is related to your blog content.

Email blasts are usually successful because they are infrequent and so people tend to pay attention. There are a few other factors that bloggers should be wary of though if they are going to use email blasts to improve their traffic and they are listed below.

Make Sure Email Blasts Go to a Targeted Audience

Your audience is of primary importance when you are setting up your email blast. There is no real point in sending your email out to a long list of people who are not really interested in your subject area or niche. It is wise to start building up your email list in advance if you are going to start sending out email blasts as part of your strategy.

Get Permission Before You Send

This is very important as well. You should never send unsolicited emails because you can easily be branded as a spammer. This is why taking the time to build your email list carefully prior to sending out your first email is worth the effort. You can use an email management service such as Aweber or MailChimp to start building your lists as well as for eventually sending and managing your email campaign.

Email Blasts Should Be Interesting

Your content should be compelling. If you are going to take the time to send an email to those who have expressed an interest in your blog you should at least make the content sizzle. Email blasts should not simply be a repeat of a post from your blog because people who have subscribed to your feed will view this as duplicate content. They should give the reader something extra, whether this is additional but relevant information or a link to clink for a free e-book.

Email Blasts Should Point the Recipient to Your Blog

Finally your email blasts should invariably point the recipient back to your blog. There should be no ambiguity over who is the sender or that your blog is the originator of the content.

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How to optimize e-mail marketing for Gmail's Priority Inbox

The most common complaint from email users is that their inboxes fill up with irrelevant and/or unwanted email messages. Most of the big web mail providers (including AOL and Hotmail) have enhanced their free email services by offering junk filters, of varying degrees of sophistication and accuracy. Junk filters offer a level of screening, but they aren’t always completely accurate and some important emails still get missed by being re-routed direct to a junk folder.

Google email (Gmail for short) has introduced a new, dynamic facility to address this. Launched in August 2010, Priority Inbox looks at a user’s behavior to decide which email messages he/she should read first. By examining details of the email sender, previous user activity and keywords, Priority Inbox identifies certain emails as top priority and marks them as urgent for the user to read first. This is great news for users, but makes life difficult for email marketers, who may struggle to get their emails past this process of filtering.
There are, however, a number of steps that email marketers can take to address this.

Allow users to customize email preferences

Sites can allow users to customize the frequency or content of emails that they receive. Users know how frequently they are willing (or able) to read emails and by customizing marketing campaigns according to this behavior, email marketers are far more likely to see their emails making it into the Priority Inbox. Additionally, web site owners should look at previous user behavior to customize future emails sent. Where users have browsed or purchased certain items recently, emails linked to these products are far likelier to be opened by users. Generally, users want to be able to decide what they receive and when.

An issue of quality over quantity

Simply mailing masses of addresses and hoping for a basic level of return is poor practice. Now, marketers need to ensure that emails are sent to the right groups of recipient, at the right time. One way to achieve this is through a process called double opt-in. This is where users add themselves to an email mailing list and then subsequently confirm this via a single email. Users that have completed the double opt-in process can be considered as ‘hot’ leads. These are customers that are confirming a real interest in the material. Far better rates of success are likely to be experienced with these smaller, more focused groups than simply by bombarding long lists of people.

Test different approaches
In a relatively experimental area such as email marketing, it is important to try different approaches and to constantly refine marketing models. This may be as simple as sending out a particular message in two batches, each with different designs and keywords. By tracking the relative success of each batch, marketers can constantly refine what they do and when they do it.

Introduce appropriate tracking mechanisms
Email marketers need to understand two key outputs from their campaigns. They need to understand the percentage of emails sent that were opened and the percentage that subsequently resulted in further action, whereby the recipient clicked through to whatever was being promoted. It is impossible to understand the success of a particular campaign without measuring these results. A campaign with a high open rate and a low click through has a good initial approach, but has issues with the content. A low open rate and a high click through indicates that the initial ‘grab’ is poor but that the content is appealing, once it has reached the target audience.
Gmail’s Priority Inbox may be the first of its kind on the market, but similar functionality is likely to be rolled out across all the other big web mail providers. It makes sense for email marketers to refine their approach now, to cater for what is likely to be a development that all email users will start to expect.

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How to use e-mail marketing to increase online sales

Customer data, such as email, is one of the most powerful items of information a small business can use to increase their sales. Email marketing allows a small business to contact new and past customers to drum up excitement into their business, build better relationships and bring customers back into the fold.

Every successful business has a running log of their customer's data but unfortunately it often goes unused.

If you're a small business owner and have decided to begin marketing their business through email, consider the following guides to help improve your overall response and success.
-
1) It starts with a great headline

Billions of emails are sent over the web each day and has many people overwhelmed by the amount of spam they receive in their inbox. Another offer from an unknown company quickly becomes deleted which places a high amount of importance to capture your recipients on the first past.

The email subject line is the single barrier between being opened and being trashed.

Each email your small business sends out should be crafted in a way which improves the click through rate by not only peaking the recipient’s interest but also tells them what to expect.

Although it's not recommended to write a link-bait headline (one which is often over exenterated to improve click through), a great headline should use all of the characteristics of a great line of copywriting:

1. Tell them what you're going to tell them

2. Stir up interest by exclaiming an outrageous (but true) claim

3. Use their name (people respond to their names)

Take time to craft the email subject line like a great headline from your sales copy; test out your email on a segmented group, record the results and after you've found one which converts readers into buyers run it in your full email marketing campaign.

2) Keep it short and to the point

There are two reasons why you want to keep your email marketing messages short:

1. People don't have a lot of time

2. Longer text increases chance for being flagged as spam

First, it's inherent that people do not have a lot of time in their daily lives especially to take the time to read another email from a company offering their products or services.

Ideally, your email marketing messages should always include all of the required information to tell them what you want your recipients to do but not drag on through fluff copy.

When writing your email, always ask yourself "is this really needed?" and edit down the message into only the  bare essentials this way you don't waste a readers time and bore them by long-winded copy.

Secondly, the more amount of text you include in your email the higher chances it begin caught in spam filters. There are hundreds of words which have been flagged as spam over the years and by using long amounts of copy you could be unknowingly be adding these words within the body text.

Keep your email short so your email can create excitement within the first few seconds, follow through with your email and get them to buy based on emotional response.

3) Utilize the fundamental emotional response

People buy things based on two different mindsets: Logical and Emotional.

The logical mindset is one based around facts while emotional is based around the emotions associated with how they react to the marketing message.

Most people will buy on an emotional response; create your email to touch on a select emotion and dig deeper into the problems behind each person.

For example:

Instead of writing "you'll save $100 if you buy my widget", try going with "you'll save 10 hours of your time if you buy my widget".

People often don't associate the items they buy with the dollar amount and features - they're buying it because it fulfills an emotion. In the above example, that emotion is time; anyone can save money but time is precious to everyone.

4) Use a call-to-action

So now you've created your email: you have a great headline, body copy is short and to the point, you're touching on deep emotional levels but never forget to tell them what you want them to do.

Sure, many marketers will say that you should just let people choose on their own accord but these marketers are broke. The only way you're going to increase your sales is by telling the recipient exactly what you want to do: the call-to-action.

There's no point to work extensively on your email marketing if you're not going to tell people you want them do something; really, it can be anything:

1.  > Buy a product or service
2.  > Give customer feedback
3.  > Read a new entry on the website

Your message needs to guide them into doing what you want them to do so be sure to create call-to-actions throughout your email and always close on a note which peaks their interest and entices them to click through and buy.

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Common email marketing mistakes small businesses make

As social media becomes more and more established as the communication method of choice, it can be easy to overlook the value of email. For small businesses, email marketing can be a cheap, simple and effective means of reaching out to customers.

Many small businesses are disappointed with the response from email marketing, however, and either simply give up on the basis that it is an outdated concept or keep plugging away with the same lack of results. It's likely that, on both counts, these businesses are making simple but significant mistakes in the way in which they are marketing their customers via email.

Some of the most common mistakes made are as follows.

Emailing customers that haven't given permission

Email providers and customers go to some lengths to restrict the content in their inboxes. Unwanted or spam email is likely to languish in a junk folder before being deleted, having never been read. Shrewd marketeers know that customers will only respond where they have opted in to the receipt of such emails and businesses should move to setting up marketing lists on this basis. Opt-in or double opt-in processes ensure that customers really are interested in what you have to say and mean that you are already ahead of the game when you click send.

Poor subject and “from” lines

Customers may be receiving hundreds of emails a week. With limited time on their hands, they will make flash decisions around which emails get opened and which go straight to trash. Subject lines that concisely but innovatively describe the content are far more likely to attract customer interest. Customers also need to recognise the sender, and will prioritize emails where the company domain name appears in the email address. Web-based email addresses such as Hotmail simply suggest that this is spam.

Sending the wrong things to the wrong people

Email content needs to be relevant to the audience. The more specific the content of the email, the more tailored the audience needs to be. Opt-in marketing can help with this enormously, because customers will have already started the process of identifying what they want to read about. Nonetheless, it falls to businesses to ensure that distribution lists are appropriate to the marketing messages.

Not tracking success

Businesses must always gauge the success of a marketing campaign. It is only in this way that they can establish what works and what they need to do differently next time. Metrics should be analysed to identify  the most productive formats, times of day, subject lines and those users that are most likely to click through. Ignorance is not bliss. If you don't know what works and what doesn't, you will simply be throwing good money after bad.

No purpose to the content

Some businesses opt to use email marketing simply because they think they should, not because they really have something worthwhile or important to say. Email marketing isn't compulsory. Businesses that target a certain number of customer contacts per year with bland, regular emails are simply wasting their time. The content of messages needs to be timely, valuable and interesting. Customers should feel that they want to do something else, whether it be to click through to a web page, to forward the email to somebody else or to share the information via a social network.

With all the attention on sites like Facebook and Twitter, email is now starting to be seen as an old-fashioned concept, but it still has great relevance to businesses of all sizes. Email doesn't need to be a substitute for social marketing and can easily sit alongside it, as part of an overall strategy. Nonetheless, businesses need to be aware of what to do, and what not to do, when it comes to emailing their customers.

Golden rules and best practices for email marketing

 You might have considered email marketing to advertise your products and services. It's a fast growing trend not only because it is a low cost way to contact your customers but also because it can be very effective if used correctly because it is instant, wide-reaching and motivates impulse purchases.

Nevertheless, in order to make email marketing work for you, you need to follow certain golden rules:

Rule #1: Don't spam

There are many ways for you to spam - knowingly or unknowingly. But at the same time you have to avoid this at all cost. If your email contains certain terms such as "Free" or "Discount" many spam filters will move it directly into the spam filter or even delete your email without your recipient even seeing it.

If many recipients report that they did not want to receive your email and consider them as spam, or if a large proportion of the mailed
addresses bounce, you might be added to a blacklist, which makes it very difficult for you going forward to use emails.

Learn about how the different spam filter softwares available function and try to avoid being flagged up.

And finally, don't send too many emails. Once or twice a week will be acceptable in most environments, but if you have a high unsubscribe rate, you might want to reduce it. And if you ask your customer how often he wants to receive messages from you, don't send him more than he asks for!

Rule #2: Personalisation rules

In Email Marketing it is relatively easy to personalise by using a code into your email template retrieving the data from your mailing file. If
you have the name of your subscriber or customer - use it.

Just think about it, are you more likely to respond if you are called "Dear Subscriber" or if your real name is used. Most of us like being
addressed directly, seeing or hearing our name, made feeling relevant and important.

If an email is directly addressed to us, we are more likely to be interested than if it is sent to "Whom it may concern".

Rule #3: Allow the customer to stay in control

If you like it or not - it is your customer's choice if he wants to receive your email. And even legally you are obliged to allow anyone on
your email distribution list to opt-out. This means, that you have to give them the option to notify you to stop emailing you - either by
clicking a link or by replying to your email.

Now, you might say, you just add this to the bottom of your email in tiny writing so that people miss it and don't unsubscribe. After all, it
is practically  free to email them and they might buy at some point. But I wouldn't recommend doing this.

Why? Well, your recipient is not bothered about your reputation. If he wants to unsubscribe and can't easily see how to do this, he'll just add you to his blacklist. Or in other words, he marks you as spam. And if many people do that you will get a reputation as spammer and your emails have an increasing chance to be caught in spam filters of people who actually want to hear from you.

Rule #4: Choose the right day

As a general rule of thumb, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to send email campaigns as response rates tend to be higher. But this rule doesn't have to work for everyone. By all means, test, test and test again to find the right time for your message and target audience.

Rule #5: Be relevant

It is tempting to send your email to absolutely everyone with an email address on your database. It doesn't cost much more to email 1000 or 10000 after all. But just as in traditional direct mail activities, sending relevant messages is the key.

If your mailing list receives a large number of messages not relevant to them, they will unsubscribe or stop reading your message. But if you send information targeted to them, you will increase your response rate considerably.

Rule #6: Get them interested

Companies often put a lot of effort in the actual email, but then forget to look at the door opener - in other words, the subject line

It is the first thing your customer will see and he will make a decision within an instant if the message is relevant to him. If you lose him at this stage, he will never read what you have to offer. So think about what will get them to open the email - but keep it relevant, misleading customers is not a good way to win their trust - and test what type of subject line works best for you.

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Email marketing tips: How to avoid getting blocked as spam

Email is a great form of communication. It’s fast, it’s cheap and it allows you to reach a large number of people with a relatively small amount of effort. However, these benefits also mean that there is a lot of competition for attention. Recipients are becoming less and less tolerant about receiving email they have not solicited so the chances of ending up getting blocked as spam are increasing rapidly.

The following tips can help your email marketing program not just to survive, but thrive and avoid the dreaded spam label.

Never Buy Email Lists

You should always collect your own email addresses and compile your own lists. This may be a bit more time consuming, but it is definitely worth it since it can help your email to reach its intended destination without getting labeled as spam.

Play it Safe With Double Opt In

People are more likely to remember that they signed up to receive your email if you offer a double opt-in feature. This means that before you send your first email, your recipient is asked to confirm that they want to receive your messages. Your opt-in message should also ask the recipient to add your email to their address book to avoid ending up in the junk box.

Avoid the Well-Known Spam Sins

There are a few tell-tale signs that an email message may be considered spam. They include the following;

* Subject lines that are written in ALL CAPS.
* A large percentage of blank lines in the body of the message.
* The message includes words like “free”, “offer” or “act now”.
* The message claims that it is not spam.
* The IP address cannot actually be reached.

Watch Out for Your HTML Coding

You should be careful when using HTML coders like Frontpage to do your formatting. These programs can produce errors that raise red flags with many spam filters.

Don’t Be Misleading

Your subject should coincide with the body of your message. A recipient should not be confused when they open your email or they could be tempted to simply click the Label as Spam button.

Offer a Way to Unsubscribe

If the recipient does not find a way to unsubscribe from receiving your email they could become suspicious and report your message as spam. Also if they genuinely don’t want to get your messages any more hiding your unsubscribe option leaves them with little choice but to hit the spam button.

How to remove your e-mail address from marketing databases

It is quick and cheap for businesses to send emails to customers and this makes the tool email marketing very profitable. This however led to abuse of the system and your mailbox might continuously be full of promotional messages you are not interested in. You probably think of it as spam.

Your first reaction might be to press the spam button which will blacklist the sender and you won't receive any more messages from this company. But unfortunately that doesn't prevent you from receiving more messages from other companies.

If a message is really spam (i.e. unsolicited offers often in a sexual nature) you should do nothing but flag it as spam. Replying to the sender will only make him aware that they are indeed mailing an active address and they will bombard you with even more messages.

If the message seems to be legitimate, e.g. from a company you know or it refers to your information request, it might well be that you knowingly or unknowingly agreed that they can send you email messages. Whilst flagging the sender as spam will have the required effect that you won't receive any more messages from him, this is not the best option. You might want to receive information from this company at a later point in time and you won't be able to receive the emails if you flagged them as spam in the past. It is also not fair to the business who has done nothing wrong, but might be penalized by email systems due to a number of recipients flagging them. The best option in these cases is to find the "unsubscribe" link that needs to be visible in every email a business sends. Within a few days of following the instructions in this link your emails should stop.

There might be other emails that don't look like spam, but you are absolutely sure that you never requested information from the company. You still should follow through with the unsubscribe route, however, you should also consider the possibility that your email address is sold in marketing databases. These databases are usually opt-in, so you might have inadvertently agreed to your email address to be sold or passed on at some point. Or of course this might have been done without your consent, which would make it illegal.

But what can you do if you suspect that your details are sold on a marketing database, but you don't know who is responsible?

You might want to contact the sender of one of these emails and request where your data has been obtained from. Companies are obliged to advise you on the source of  your own data. Then you can contact the supplier of the records and request that your data is removed with immediate effect in line with the data protection act. If possible you should send this request in writing so that you have evidence of the request in case that your demand is being ignored.

You also might want to google your email address - if you can find your email address that way, so can others. You should remove your address from the sites you can find. If you can't remove them yourself, contact the owner of the site and request your removal in writing.

You should also list your email address as opt-out through the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The mail preference service currently allows only opt-outs for phone, mail and fax, but is only a question of time until they take registrations for email addresses against which companies must suppress.

Going forward the best tip is to be very careful who you give your email address to and to which terms and conditions you agree. We are so used to provide our email address when subscribing to a site, that the thought of our data being sold on from there does not even cross our mind. So be careful which boxes you tick to avoid having to go through the trouble of being removed at a later point!

Using email marketing software to fight against spam

One of the most effective ways to fight spam is to practice legitimate email marketing. In order to do that, the email marketer should use email marketing software that enables message personalization. When more legitimate email marketers begin to follow email marketing best practices, spammers become easier to identify and block. Email marketing tools that allow marketers to personalize email messages help with several of good email practices at one time.

Confirming subscribers is essential to maintaining a good email reputation. It not only protects the subscriber from being signed up annonymously by a third party, it protects the marketers email list, ensuring that only those people who truly want to receive email message are included in the list. Confirming is simple, when someone enters an email on a web form to subscribe, simply send them an email with a link to verify that they truly do want to sign up. The marketer is responsible to send email messages only to those who have confirmed.
This in important because it keeps email lists free from both bogus email addresses and from people who are likely to report the email as spam. An email blast with a large proportion of failed emails will cause consternation with the recipient email clients. Big ISPs like Yahoo, AOL, and MSN do not like to get a lot of delivery attempts from one mail server that fails and will end up blocking that domain. Frequently that information is passed along to other small ISPs who will also block that server.

The report as spam button does the same thing, it tells the recipient ISPs that the email is unwanted. If engough people complaign about a particular mail server sending unwanted emails, that server will be blocked. Once blocked it is difficult to get removed. A good email marketing program will help manage both the complaints and the failed emails to prevent redelivery and maintain clean email lists.

Permission based email marketing programs allow you to fully engage subscribers in email conversations. Using the information collected during the subscription process, the savvy marketer can target the email to individual needs even while sending bulk email blasts. Engaging the subscriber minimizes the possibility of them using the report as spam button on their account and increases responses, whether it is simply opening and reading the email, or responding to it in some manner.

Honoring unsubscribe requests is also key to maintaining a good email reputation. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, unsubscribes must be honored no matter how they are sent. A good email marketing program enables the marketer to automatically filter out unsubscribe requests to ensure that those people never receive another email they do not want. Someone who unsubscribes and receives another message will reach for the report as spam button instead of notifying the sender again.

Email marketers who follow these guidelines separate themselves from spammers, thus making spammers easier to identify. Once spammers are isolated from legitimate email marketers, they can be identified and shut down more readily. The entire culture of email communications must change in order for spam to be eradicated. Unfortunately, too many email marketers do not take the time to do the things necessary to keep themselves from looking like spammers and being treated as such.

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How to create an effective e-mail marketing campaign

There are several online marketing strategies, but the one that guarantees repeated customer flow is email marketing campaign. Though there are other website promotion tactics like search engine optimization, article marketing and pay per click advertising just to mention a few, marketing through email remains the best in regards to generating repeated free online business sales leads.

To make use of an email marketing campaign, you need to have a sign-up segment where your readers can subscribe voluntarily to be receiving email messages from you. It is from the emails you send that you can establish a bond with your customers and market your products effectively. This therefore calls for proper etiquette in regards to writing emails that communicate and prompt online business sales.

The first and most important aspect of starting an email marketing campaign is getting permission from your customers. That is why I earlier mentioned about including a sign-up request form on your website. It can be really annoying to start receiving emails from people you do not know, this is also called spamming. Therefore, get your readers consent before sending emails to them.

It is always prudent to send introductory emails rather than rushing to send high pitched marketing messages. This then means you should not only concentrate on marketing your products and services. Offer your opt-in list insightful information that seeks to educate them. This will assist you to form a connection with your opt-in list members.

Once you have established a good rapport with your email list members, then you can be assured that your occasional email marketing campaign sales message will be read keenly. Though many shy away from email marketing and others misuse the strategy by spamming, it still stands out as one of the best online marketing strategy. Remember that your email list members are human being thus think of that before you hit the send button.

In order to succeed in mass email marketing, you need to employ strategies that will appeal to the masses in your opt-in list. It can be quite detrimental to your marketing campaign if people in your list begin to view your messages as irritating.

    * Setting your email signature option to include a link to your blog or website is important in regards to mass email marketing. However, make sure the signature is professional where you first type in your name then your status and at the bottom a link to your webpage. For example, you can write "Regards, Stephen Smith, E-Marketer and then the link to the product you want to promote appearing right below.

    * When sending a mass email marketing campaign, it is vital to take into consideration that some emails lack HTML capabilities. Therefore, some of your opt-in list members can end up getting really messy emails thus not understand your message. To overcome this, always send HTML and textual version mails.

    * Every time you send your occasional marketing pitched email, remember to prompt your readers to take some action. Include text links like "Click here to get started!" or "Follow link below to read more". In addition, for the link you intend to promote in a mass email marketing campaign, make sure you repeat it at least three times in the body of your email. Adding the link at the beginning and the end of your email will lead your readers to follow the link.

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How to use email marketing to find freelance writing jobs

Freelance writers are always on the lookout for new jobs. While a lot of freelancers realize that it is extremely important to get business from repeat clients, it is also essential to have a continuous source of new clients to keep your freelance business healthy.

One way to do this is to start an email marketing campaign that is geared towards attracting new freelance writing clients. Take a look at the following steps for information on how to get started.

Write Your Email Script

The first step towards creating an email marketing campaign to serve your purpose is to make sure you know what you want to say. The average email campaign not only tries to get the recipients to do something in return, in this case pitch a job to your freelance business, but it also provides the recipients with useful information. Therefore you need to come up with a series of topics that can attract and intrigue your target customers.

Use an Email Campaign Provider

MailChimp is a great way to start your email campaign because the service is free for the first 500 recipients. This gives you some time before you need to start paying a monthly fee but it also provides you with a reliable and professional looking service for absolutely no cost.

Create a Targeted List

The money is in your list. Before you can start sending out your email campaign you need to have a list. To go about creating your list you can use your blog if you have one, or you can also try to use social networks such as Twitter to get people to sign up for your newsletter or email campaign. This is one of the key steps in building your database of potential clients.

Make Sure Your Recipients Know What’s In It For Them

Nobody is going to sign up for your email campaign if it is clear that you are only going to send out self-serving advertisements for your freelance writing business. However, if you can manage to show that will offer real value you just might attract a decent number of people who are interested in your area of specialty.

Email marketing is popularly used by entrepreneurs but freelance writers must see themselves as business owners as well if they want to start increasing the business that comes to them from other sources. Email marketing can be just as successful for a freelance writer as it is for other types of business people.

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Email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

Don't dabble in email marketing unless you know what you're doing. Minor email marketing mistakes can anger your customers and ruin your company's reputation. Serious Email marketing mistakes can subject your business to government fines.

Don't send email without masking the "to" addresses

It always seems like a no-brainer once it happens, but still it happens: email marketers send an email marketing blast that leaves hundreds of email addresses in the "to" field exposed for all to read. This careless error is easily prevented by using the "blind copy" field for email addresses or using an email marketing application or vendor that automatically hides the addresses.

The severity and consequences of this mistake depends on the content of the email. If recipients of a Black Friday sale email see each other's addresses, no harm may have been done. If, however, the recipients are all participating in a health study, or taking a particular prescription drug, disclosure of email addresses could have serious privacy implications.

Make it easy to opt out

Every marketing email should include an "unsubscribe" link that will let the recipient remove her email address from your marketing list. Once an individual "unsubscribes" it is vital that her email address is purged from the marketing database. Sending email to someone who has unsubscribed is bad customer service - and a violation of US CAN-SPAM law.

Don't send mail to children under 13 without parental permission

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) restricts companies from gathering information online from children under 13. You may think it is okay to send an email to a child, since you are not collecting information from him. However, if the child replies to a marketing message, or makes an inquiry, or unsubscribes, then you have knowingly collected information from a child in violation of COPPA.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces COPPA. If the FTC finds out you have been sending email to children under 13, your company had better have signed consent forms from their parents in your files, or you can face serious fines and other consequences.

Don't keep stale email addresses

No one wants to receive outdated email messages from companies they no longer do business with. Clean and purge bounce-backs from your database. Don't save email addresses of customers who have opted out of marketing emails, and don't keep any personal information related to customers longer than you need to keep it.

Email marketing is a valuable tool, but companies need to be aware of best practices in email marketing so they can avoid making costly mistakes.

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How to become an expert in email marketing systems

There are a couple of ways to best learn email marketing systems but the best is by far by reading a book on the subject. I have looked through many and there are three that stand out the most.

The first is The E-Code: 33 Internet Superstars Reveal 43 Ways to Make Money Online-Using Only Email by Joe Vitale. This book is the ideal startup resource for someone looking to develop expertise in the field. It has action plans, websites creative marketing ploys and numerous resources. It is one of the best.

The second book is Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age by Bob Negen and Susan Negen. The couple shows you how to use innovative and inexpensive marketing techniques that combine time-honored methods with new high-tech marketing ideas. An absolute must for the modern marketer.

The third book that helps one master email marketing systems is Advanced Email Marketing by Jim Sterne. This book is a necessity for the would be marketer. It breaks a nuanced and complex subject down into its most articulate and simple elements, understandable even to the absolute layman. A must for the beginner.
Email marketing systems are vital to keeping business up and running through an onslaught of properly placed advertisement. And things are advancing at a quick rate... Utilizing the above resources will have you ahead of the game in no time.

Internet jobs: Email marketing manager

Although the title email marketing manager might lead you to believe that this is a role to co-ordinate email marketing campaigns, it generally is a wider role than this taking in any form of electronic marketing. The advent of the internet and the greater reliance on electronic forms of communication offer marketeers an ideal opportunity to get their message across to a wide range of people in a very cost effective manner. An email marketing manager will be responsible for managing the e-marketing strategy and individual campaigns.

Typically an email marketing manager will be required to:

* develop strategic e-marketing programs.
* oversee the creation of high quality sales and marketing literature for e-distribution.
* oversee the development and delivery of e-presentations and interactive awareness tools.
* the general management tasks, such as recruitment and staff development.
* provide marketing analysis and management reports on key marketing performance indicators.
* contribute to product marketing, business development and other related activities.

The role is very similar to that of a traditional market manager but has the added element of the dynamic and fast-paced environment of the internet and electronic commerce.

Email marketing: Understanding open rate statistics

If you're involved in email marketing, at some point you will probably be confronted by a table that includes a statistical analysis of your email's performance. This will list the number of emails sent out, the number undeliverable, percentage opened, and probably the click rate and unsubscribe rates.
The open rate is the number most often used as a key performance indicator when measuring the success of an email subject, on the basis that the more effective the headline included as the email subject, the higher the open rate.


Ignoring for now the caveats to that statement, let's take a looks at email marketing benchmarks as reported by www.mailchimp.com across fifty industries. Looking at the top five and bottom five performing industries, we see that open rates range from 15.29% to 36.62%

Top five open rates by Industry

Food                          36.62%
Self-Explanatory       34.80%
Photography             34.17%
Video Production      33.09%
Church                      32.95%

Bottom five open rates by industry

Other                       15.29%
Entertainment         15.42%
Arts & Music            16.22%
Software                  18.22%
Other marketing      18.49%

What does this tell us? Firstly, that if you have an open rate below 15% or above 35%, you either have a lot of room for improvement, or are doing exceptionally well, whatever industry you are in.
Another thing that can be gleaned from this, is that more specific niche target audiences are likely to produce higher open rates. Photography and Video Production both top performing areas, could have been included in either Entertainment or Arts and Music, which appear at the bottom of the table. With the lowest open rates recorded in “Other” industries, as indicated by participants, and an alternative “Self Explanatory” category

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Top ten email list marketing mistakes

Email marketing mistakes are easy to avoid if you keep your subscribers in mind and provide them with what they expect when they sign-up for your emails.

1. It is a serious mistake to use an email list where subscribing is not optional.

- Most recipients will never read your marketing emails if those emails are identified as spam and are deleted unread. You might also be reported for spamming.
- When using a subscription based email service, it is equally important that recipients can choose to unsubscribe when they no longer want to receive your emails. If you keep sending quality emails that have some value, your subscribers will be happy to stay on your list.

2. Sending out too frequent and repetitive emails to your list is a mistake.

- Avoid annoying your email recipients by sending them the same email more than once. You can send one or two follow up emails as a reminder, and use these to affirm the advantages of the product or service on offer.
- When people subscribe to an email list it is best if they are informed whether they will get daily emails, regular newsletters or just an occasional update.

3. Marketing emails should not be used only to send out advertising copy.

- Your emails should be to be informative and include subtle marketing material. Tell subscribers about a product or service by clearly explaining how it would be of benefit to them, and allow them to make the decision to buy. Always provide a link to a landing page that makes it easy for them to order and pay for the item or service.

4. It is a mistake not to start with a friendly greeting.

- Personalized emails usually get a better response than those addressed to all the subscribers. If you do not have the facility to show the individual name of each recipient in their own email, open with a nice welcome or note of appreciation.

5. Sharing email addresses is a poor marketing practice.

- Each email recipient should only see their own email address in the header. Emails that show addresses of multiple recipients will allow spam to be sent from other sources, and your marketing emails will not be welcome.
-There should be a privacy clause when signing up for your email list, stating that subscriber information will never be passed on. Be sure the email addresses on your list are only used to send the type of email those people have opted to receive.

6. Sending out emails with typing errors, incorrect spelling and poor grammar will not encourage people to buy from

Email marketing: Easy ways to market products

Marketing love it or hate it, it's a vital part of running a business, and a must if your business is to survive and grow. Whatever form your marketing takes, deciding on an effective strategy combined with affordable costs will possibly involve many long hours of thought and discussion before any campaign is even put in place.
As a business owner your place is running your business - and that includes marketing; so how do you achieve both of these time-consuming duties without inventing a 30-hour day? For the marketing side of things at least, there is a solution.

Easy, Fast and Low-Cost

One of the most efficient delivery methods is email marketing; currently the fastest and most cost-effective way of getting your company's message to hundreds or even thousands of businesses at a fraction of the cost of paper-based campaigns.

There are now many good email marketing programmes available, most of which will manage every aspect of your campaign from start to finish including those vital follow-up emails, which are often forgotten or ignored but much more important than you'd imagine.

Personalised Communication

Think about the paper-based advertising that arrives through your letterbox nearly every day. Leaflets and flyers advertising all sorts of services and products; promising you this and that; discounts here, free gifts there, and where does the majority of it end up? In a rubbish bin unread, ripped up and forgotten.
The same thing happens to many marketing emails; why? Because for the most part they are impersonal messages that have been sent to countless numbers of businesses without having been addressed to anyone in particular in the hope that somebody will read them and act on the information; consequently, they meet the same fate as their paper counterparts, albeit electronically.

Effective Targeting

Playing the numbers game is fine if you're happy to get one or two responses out of thousands of emails sent, but effective targeting could significantly increase the amount of replies and ultimately your sales. So how do you boost the chances of getting your emails read? Quite simply by personalising them and making the readers feel as though you know them.

Studies have shown that people respond better to emails that address them by their first name - this is the first step in gaining the target's attention and getting him or her to read on. Many email marketing programmes have a facility allowing you to build a comprehensive subscribers' list from which the information

Reasons to use email marketing

As a small business owner perhaps you have asked, “Should I use email marketing?”  What are the benefits of email marketing? Who uses it and why?  Is email marketing still effective?

Who uses Email Marketing?

Microsoft sends out 20 million email marketing pieces each month.  The drycleaner in town sends out monthly newsletters.  Your favorite clothing store emails you whenever they are running a sale.  Non-profit organizations use email marketing to keep in contact with donors and volunteers.  Even dentists are replacing postcard reminders to their patients with email correspondence.


Geographical borders and physical distance are no longer an issue.  Email costs the same whether it is addressed to someone down the street or across the globe.  Personalized emails are sent around the clock and around the world.  Graphics, videos, games, surveys, and quizzes are all instantaneously passed along via email.

Is the Investment Worthwhile?

With all the social networking and clever ways to communicate online some wonder if email marketing is still practical.  In any advertising/marketing campaign the decision-making question that needs to be asked is, “What is my ROI (return on investment)?”  If you’re not taking advantage of a marketing strategy with a positive return on investment, you’re missing out on “free money.”

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009. The expected figure for 2010 is $42.08.  Email marketing outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined by Direct Marketing.

To reach 5000 recipients an email campaign will cost up to 78 percent less than traditional direct mail marketing.  And no special equipment is required.  You can generate an email marketing campaign from your home or business.

The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in February/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are the second-most effective tools for generating conversions, just behind SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

A December 2009 survey by Silverpop found that companies were feeling the effects of recession, but "four out of 10 marketers reported that email budgets would increase in 2010.  Forty-seven percent said they would stay the same.”

Why Does Email Marketing Work?

Email marketing is highly targeted, data-driven, and builds relationships.  Email marketing services and constituent relationship management software continuously improves email marketing campaigns through analytics.  Where else can you simultaneously test and compare two similar campaigns, find out how many recipients read your mail, and continually grow and monitor your database?
Email is effective; email recipients can download, purchase, visit the site, and make inquiries immediately.  Highest response is achieved on day one.  With direct mail it could be seven to ten days before you know if
your marketing efforts have paid off.

If you have a list of people who want to hear from you and a well-crafted message, email blast services make it easy to deliver emails.  Opt-out or unsubscribe options should be included as standard courtesy.
If you need help launching your email marketing campaign, contact a freelance writer and marketing consultant who specialize in internet marketing.

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How to decide whether e-mail marketing is right for you

Email marketing is very beneficial to many companies. Some companies however do not get the results they are looking for from the email marketing process. An employer must have a clear vision of the objectives they are trying to accomplish with email marketing before starting on any no marketing campaign. Failure to do so will result in frustration when the email marketing efforts are not working as quickly as the company owner intended.

Email marketing is a great way to expand the potential client base of a business. The problem is that this usually takes a lot of time and some decent financial investment. This means that if the main boss is looking for immediate results, chances are email marketing is not the best option. The company must have a budget in place to handle the costs of starting the campaign. They should also be working with someone that has executed successful email marketing campaigns previously. Setting realistic objectives in this way is very important.

Contacting new customers to establish if they found out about the business through email marketing is very important. Orchestrated efforts to reward customers that have found the business through email marketing efforts are also very important. This is because most people that receive marketing through email do not translate into paying customers unless they came from a target demographic that have a history of purchasing from businesses. This means that the company must be willing to invest in market research before starting an email campaign.

Many companies can benefit from link swapping through email magazines. This is a form of email marketing that is very cost effective. Email magazines reach a large quantity of people on a regular basis and the advertising rates are usually very affordable. Any company that is going to use email marketing, must have a presence on the Internet that is very well established. Failure to do this will result in no progress being made by the company.

If the average person does not see a way to contact a business, however they received email marketing, they will not translate into paying customers. This happens because most clients are expecting an Internet presence from most progressive businesses these days. This means that a company should only use Internet marketing if they feel confident that the website properly portrays their business and is maintained on a regular basis. Otherwise, customers will not be impressed with the presentation of business as a whole

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Effective email marketing techniques

Using opt-in email lists is one of the most effective marketing techniques for any business or website. Marketing experts and businesses use email marketing techniques to boost sales, and to build traffic, by encouraging website visitors to sign up for opt-in email newsletters. Regular newsletters featuring latest offers and promotions are then sent to all the visitors who have requested updates by opting in to receive those emails.
  Using opt-in email marketing allows regular updates to include promotions that match the interest of subscribers. Links in emails can take subscribers direct to to appropriate page of a website, where they can find out more or purchase the product.

Email newsletters should have their own distinctive style and be creative in their design. Effective email marketing relies on eye catching attention grabbing words and images. Providing clear and crisp images of what is on offer will allow subscribers to know exactly what they can expect from a business.

Email content is far more important than presentation, and well written content will establish credibility. A good article writer can help to build trust between a business and potential customers. For some businesses it is worthwhile paying an experienced writer to provide compelling content.

Newsletter articles and marketing material should be original, and remain free from professional jargon. A serious business report will have less impact than a light-hearted article that is both entertaining and informative.

An effective marketing article will define the benefits of a product or service, and addresses subscribers in a way which invites a positive response. A good article writer will anticipate what target clients or customers need to know, and clearly explain why they need to have what is being promoted, without making them feel as if they are being pushed into buying something.

Subscribers want to read newsletters that are interesting, rather than filled with marketing articles designed to lead into a purchase. An effective marketing article will draw target customers naturally into making a purchase.

The best email marketing strategies are designed to grab the attention of subscribers and tell them what want to know. Effective email marketing strategies get people excited so they cannot wait to find out more. Persuasive opt-in emails may even get subscribers reaching for their credit cards before they hit the website.
Using effective email marketing techniques will make a difference to any business or online marketing campaign. These techniques for publishing an email newsletter can easily be used by anyone who needs to market a business or to promote a website.

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