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By Terri Seymour in Email Marketing

emailmktgOne of the most powerful ways to build a successful online business is by creating relationships with your visitors so they can begin to trust you and feel comfortable ordering from you. One way of building these relationships is by having a mailing list so you can keep in contact with your subscribers. This helps form a bond and will start to build that foundation of trust and credibility.

Sending out weekly online newsletters or mailings is a great way to solidify the trust relationship. But who do you send it to? Taking the time and effort to build a responsive email list is not easy but it certainly can be done.

The ten tips below will help you get started building that all important list of names and email addresses!

1. Privacy Guarantee – One of the most important things you can do is guarantee the visitor’s privacy. Be sure to let them know their information will never be given out or sold to anyone under any circumstances!

2. Easy Sign-Up – Be sure to put a quick and easy sign-up form for your visitors. You do not want your potential subscribers chased away by having to click through a maze of forms. Make the sign-up as easy and fast as possible.

3. Multiple Forms – Don’t make the mistake of just putting one sign-up form on your site. Be sure to have one on every page. Not everyone will go to your homepage. Also, be sure to add subscription forms to your Facebook page and other social networking sites.

4. In Plain Sight – When putting the sign-up form on every page of your site, be sure to put them on the top of the page on either the right side or the left side. I have read that the left side is more effective.

5. No Life Story – Don’t ask for a ton of information when trying to get people to sign up for your mailing list. You don’t need to know their phone number, address, gender, birthday, etc. The person is going to wonder what you want all that information for and they will be inclined not to give it to you. A name and an email address is all you need.

6. Double Opt-In - Always provide double opt-in for your subscriptions. So after they sign-up, an email will be sent to them to give them a chance to confirm their subscription. This will protect your subscribers from being added to unwanted lists and it will also protect you from being reported for spam.

7. Free Gift - Always offer a quality free gift to everyone who signs up for your mailing list. Show them you appreciate them and are willing to give something to them as well. I usually offer a free ebook with helpful, quality content. Put the download link in the welcome subscriber email you send out so they can access their gift immediately. Don’t make them contact you or wait for it.

8. Email Signature – Be sure to offer a sign-up form or link in your email signature. A lot of people will sign-up directly from an email.

9. Forward to a Friend – Encourage your subscribers to forward copies of your mailings to their friends and associates. Offer incentive contests. For example, whoever gets the most people to subscribe gets a free gift or big discount on their next order.

10. Ad Swaps - Contact other newsletter publishers and ask them to do an ad swap. You will run a blurb about their newsletter if they do the same for you. You can also exchange blurbs on your welcome email that is sent to all new subscribers.

Bonus Tip: Be sure to offer quality content and products in your mailings. Add some contests (for example: a trivia challenge), some fun and encourage your readers’ interaction with you. This will go a long way in building that foundation of trust which in turn will bring you much more business!

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com

By Charles Kiyimba in Email Marketing

emailmktgSelecting a good auto responder service is a prerequisite for the success of your email marketing campaigns and effective communication in your company. There are many web hosts that provide their customers with automatic email services and if you have a website, you might be having access to this service with your web host. But if you want to send follow-up messages to potential customers, then you need to consider sourcing for an advanced automatic email service and it’s important to select a good auto responder service that will best work for you.

When you are selecting an auto responder program, you need to think about several factors. You need to select a program with the best features, options and benefits. I would like therefore to take you through some of the key aspects you need to consider when selecting a good auto responder service that will serve you to your satisfaction.

1. A good auto responder service should be able to send personalized messages to the people in your opt-in list. It’s important for the recipients of your automatic emails to feel that the mails are sent specifically to them. You stand to benefit when they get that perception, which psychologically can turn them into buyers. The ability to send personalized messages is therefore one of the major factors to consider when selecting a good auto responder service.

2. Before you purchase any auto responder program, find out whether the program you intend to buy has the ability to send follow-up messages. Auto responders provided by your web host can only send one-time messages to your subscriber list. But you need to send at least seven follow-up messages to your subscribers to close a sale. It’s therefore important to select an auto responder service that has this feature.

3. Select an auto responder program that allows you to freely update your messages and auto responder campaigns at no extra cost. As a marketer, you are most likely always exploring new opportunities that necessitate making changes to maximize your earnings. If your auto responder service limits you in this aspect, it will be very hard for you to make updates and changes. Consider free unlimited updating when selecting a good auto responder service for your marketing campaigns.

4. Good auto responders should help you to track the performance of your adverts. Having an option for tracking your emails and other advertising campaigns is an important consideration. The auto responder program I use enables me to track all my advertising campaigns to find out what works and what doesn’t, what needs improvement and what needs dropping.

5. Buy an auto responder program that has the ability to notify you each time someone requests your information. These notification messages are sent directly to your email address. This enables you not only to know the progress of your marketing campaigns, but it also makes it possible for you to track your adverts’ performance. Think about this feature when selecting a good auto responder service provider.

6. A good auto responder service should not limit you on the length of your text. The amount of text your auto responder may contain should not be limited at all. It’s important for you to write your marketing messages with any length of your preference. Limited text length may force you to leave out some of the important parts of your sales letters. Unlimited text length is another factor you need to consider when selecting a good auto responder service.

7. You need to know how to use the auto responder program. It’s therefore important to select an auto responder that provides support in the form of training articles, videos, tutorials and a discussion forum. These are tools that enable you to learn how to use the various features of the auto responder program and how to write effective email marketing messages. It’s therefore advisable to focus on the support given when you are selecting a good auto responder service to effectively manage your email marketing campaigns.

8. The best auto responder service should be user friendly. I have never used an auto responder program that I found difficult to use even if other marketers recommended it. You need to look for a program that is easy to use.

9. Availability of various options to write and format your messages in the way you want is important. It is counter-productive if you cannot write and format your messages in the way that you feel will compel your subscribers to take the desired action. Choose an auto responder service that allows you to play with your text messages in the way you like.

10. Last but not least, it’s to your benefit to select an auto responder service that has an affiliate program which you can promote to others and from which you can earn earn commissions. The best programs to market are those that you use. You can easily promote them from a informed point of view and gained expertise. It doesn’t help you to use a program which you cannot promote to
earn some money back. Once you start using the auto responder program, you are most likely to continue using it forever in your marketing campaigns. If you do not earn anything from it, then you will always be paying monthly service fees for using the service. That’s not a win-win situation.

I conclusion, I would like to remind you that the first step to your email marketing success is to select a good auto responder service. Good auto responder services should have all of the above benefits to effectively market your products and communicate to your customers.

Charles Kiyimba owns http://www.CashWithGoleza.com and http://www.golezadesigners.com where popular home business ideas and opportunities are tested rigorously to find out what works and what doesn’t. Visit today to discover the secrets behind building a successful home business.

By Heather Seitz in Email Marketing

emailmktg2Deliverability all starts with reputation! And we’re talking, specifically, about the reputation of your IP address. This is the IP address from which your emails are being sent. This is not necessarily the IP address of your domain/website.

Reputation is kind of like your credit score! There are a number of factors that go into making up the score such as spam complaints, unknown email addresses, etc. Each has a different “weight” so to speak – just like the factors on your credit report.

Likewise, it takes some time to build a good reputation just as it takes some time to build up your credit.

And just as there are a number of different entities that “report” to the credit agencies, your IP reputation is the sum of several factors as well.

These include:

- The ISPs themselves

- The “Anti-spam” community

- Subscriber feedback (and interaction)

Let’s take a look at each of these components:

The ISPs (Internet Service Providers)

The ISPs are looking at things such as authentication measures, ISP spam traps, user spam complaints, DNS information, list maintenance, and even links (URLs) in the email messages themselves.

NOTE: We’re referring to items at the ISP level at this point, and not 3rd party providers of data.

These factors determine not only whether your emails will be blocked (rejected) entirely, but also whether they end up in the inbox. In other words, the ISPs may accept your message into their system, but filter it into their users’ spam folder.

Keep in mind that the ISPs are always testing new things and it ultimately comes down to their subscribers’ feedback so don’t get too worried if your emails temporarily end up in the spam folder IF you’re doing everything correctly!

TIP: On the first email you send to your subscribers after they opt-in, include instructions for them to whitelist your “from” email address.

The Anti-Spam Community

Next, we need to look at the anti-spam community.

This refers to both spam complaints AND spam traps.

The thing that’s important to realize is that there are dozens, if not hundreds – even thousands, of “lists” out there! But there are only a handful of reputable services that significantly impact your deliverability.

The main ones that you need to pay attention to are SpamCop and SpamHaus.

Basically, customers of the service simply forward objectionable emails as attachments to a customized reporting address. The service does a number of checks on the message and ultimately reports it to the ISPs.

These complaints are NOT the same as a subscriber hitting the “spam” button in their email client.

Subscriber Complaints

The next factor is your subscriber complaint rate. It doesn’t matter if you using single or double opt-in for your mailing list when it comes to subscriber complaints.

Even if someone has confirmed their opt-in, they can still click the spam button and adversely affect you. The ISP has no way of knowing if they opted in at all, let alone single opted in or double opted in.

One of the bigger problems when it comes to delivery problems is that the spam complaint rate is too high. Different ISPs have different acceptable rates. The bottom line is that you want this number to be as low as possible. The acceptable rate varies with different ISPs, email providers, and hosting companies (if you’re using a self hosted email solution).

It is best to treat these complaints as unsubscribe requests and remove these subscribers from your list.

TIP: Use a one-click unsubscribe process to make it easy for people to get off of your list. If you make the process too complex, you’ll increase the rate at which people simply click the “report as spam” button (or equivalent in the subscriber’s email client).

IP Reputation is one of many factors that affects your inbox deliverability. Download your free whitepaper entitled: “Get Your Email to the Inbox” Today at http://www.EmailDelivered.com/reports/email-reputation.

By Hannah Du Plessis in Email Marketing

emailmktgOne of the main reasons small businesses fail is that they don’t follow up with their leads. Usually it takes up to seven contacts with a prospect before they are ready to buy. Most people give up after one or two contacts. If you are not doing your follow up you, are leaving money on the table. Staying in touch with your prospects builds trust and keeps you fresh in their minds so that when they are ready to buy, they’ll come to you.

Email marketing is a great, inexpensive way to keep in contact with the people on your list and to form and nurture a relationship with them. If you do this correctly, you will get more business than the Average Joe and you will not have to do anything else to get clients to buy. It is therefore important to set this up correctly. Once you have done this, you can pretty much just leave it. Then you can concentrate on building traffic to your website because the system to capture leads and nurture the relationship with them is done for you automatically.

Here are a couple of ways you can improve your email marketing:

First, you have to worry about your prospects opening your emails. If you are not yet tracking your email open rates, you need to start doing so straight away. You need a good email marketing provider like Aweber (or mailchimp if you are in New Zealand). Not using a provider will give you too much work, as well as the possibility of you getting banned by your Internet Service Provider for sending bulk mail. Bulk mail just ends up in the spam folder just because it is bulk mail.

Once you have a provider, you can then set up your emails, set the frequency that they are sent as well as track the click through rates, open rates and bounce rates. You then have something to work from.

Once you have this information you’ll want to improve your messages so that it doesn’t happen again. Here are some reasons why your emails may not get through to your prospects’ inbox:

Spam Words

Some words are triggers for the spam filter. These include: “special offer, free, discount, cheap, home business, %, work-from-home, limited time, click here, coupon”. The chance that your prospects are getting your emails if these words are present are slim. Spam filters are becoming more sophisticated, and your email can be removed before it even hits the inbox. A good email marketing provider like AWeber will be able to pick up if you have any spam words in your messages, and will alert you before you send them.

Subject Lines

The next thing you need to worry about is getting your readers to open your email. This should not be a problem if they signed up because they want to read what you have to say. However, if you have a boring headline they may want to skip reading it because they have many other emails or they are busy. Make sure they know it is from you, and have a proactive title so that they want to open it. If your emails are interesting, and give them more information related to the reason they signed up in the first place, they should look forward to it, and open it. Avoid subject lines that are full of hype or make outrageous claims. If it sounds unbelievable, you will lose credibility with your prospect. Make sure your subject lines are real, convincing and a bit mysterious.

You need to put your name or your company name in the “from” field so that the prospect recognizes you. “Noreply” or “Systems” addresses are less likely to be opened.

Make Sure You Send Relevant, Interesting And Valuable Content

Make sure that the content of your email is valuable. When I sign up for something because I am interested in it and then get an email that says nothing or wastes my time, I unsubscribe on the spot. Most people will do the same. Make sure you deliver on the promise you gave when they signed up.

You should only send your emails to those who asked for it. Don’t use lists from somewhere else that you bought or lists that are out dated. This will just invite complaints.

Make sure your emails are interesting. Don’t copy from somewhere, be yourself. You should know how you are different from your competition. This will ensure that you stand out from the crowd.

Your content should guide your customers toward a sale. Every email you write should help your prospect get answers to their problems, clarify their misconceptions on the subject, climb over stumbling blocks they may encounter, and help them arrive at your product or service, ready to buy. I use again the example of the nutritionist who uses a different illness in every email, usually related to the digestive system. She describes it in graphic detail so that you feel with the sufferer. Then she offers her special diet as a solution. In every email she also has a testimonial from someone who used to suffer this illness, but is now cured thanks to the diet. This is powerful stuff. Think of how you can offer your prospect a solution to their problem. Find all the problems, misconceptions, stumbling blocks and objections they may have and solve them one by one.

Frequency

If you send out emails daily, you will be seen as a severe nuisance before long. This will get your messages deleted or result in unsubscribes. On the other hand, waiting too long between emails will make your prospects forget you. I send one email per week with good content. This ensures a list that looks forward to my emails. The only way to know for sure would be to ask your prospects. Take a survey and find out.

Adhering to these guidelines will ensure successful email marketing. Once this system is in place, you can concentrate on building traffic to your website.

Article by Hannah Du Plessis. For more information on setting up a Lead Generation System for your Business visit Attraction Marketing today. http://masterattractionmarketing.net

By Marcia Yudkin in Email Marketing

b2b-email-marketingMany of my b-to-b clients feel stuck in the mud when it comes to gaining the attention of their email subscribers. They use the same very limited number of techniques, strategies and angles time and time again. They realize recipients on their lists probably feel uninterested in hearing from them, which is but one step short of losing them when they unsubscribe.

If this describes you, try these bolder approaches that arouse curiosity, freshen up your emails and improve both open rates and response – without getting downright silly or harming your business image. Along with each idea, I’ve provided an example illustrating how you might put it to work.

1. Ask a surprising or provocative question.
Whoever Heard of a 78% Response to a One-Paragraph Email Blast?

2. Highlight an emotion.
Take Command of Your Meeting Expenses.

3. Refer to current events.
Avoid Going Into a Business Slump From Severe Weather.

4. Issue a challenge.
Would Your Top Salesperson Pass the Gorgonzola Test?

5. Use a line of dialogue.
Pssst, Your Customer Database Is Full of Holes.

6. Provide a specific number (or two).
Ten Reasons Why 51,794 Government Employees Trust Us.

7. Confess something.
Most People Don’t Realize That We Used to…

8. Present a quiz.
Take the Disaster Resilience Quiz.

9. Highlight case study results.
How Cassingham Coffee Won Five New Contract Bids Last Month.

10. Quote a client.
“Tasty. Tempting. Tropical. Tidy.”

11. Say what the reader is probably thinking.
Why Won’t They Just Tell Me What’s What!

12. Guarantee something.
Tougher Exteriors – Guaranteed.

13. Relate to social trends.
Cut Your Carbon Emissions in Half.

14. Promise to alleviate a hassle.
The End of Credit Crises.

15. Compare before to after.
Before: 17.5 Compliance Failures. After: None.

16. Name the exact type of person you’re targeting.
For the Supervisor Who Hates Annual Performance Review Time.

17. Create suspense.
What Will Happen to Your Expense Account With Fareware?

18. Evoke imagination.
Imagine Every Lead Turning Into Revenue.

19. Use un-businesslike language.
Computerwise, They’re Casing Your Joint.

20. Make a vivid comparison.
Some Days Your To-do List Feels Like Grand Failure Station.

21. Tell a story.
Last Year, Disaster Loomed Three Days Before Christmas.

Want to turn the hunt for livelier subject lines into group fun? Order lunch for everyone in the conference room, divide into teams and see which bunch can create the largest number of subject lines using the list above. Offer a prize for the most ridiculous and the most promising ideas. Then collect all the suggestions and separate them into usable and not usable. Have another lunch meeting to turn the seemingly unpromising ideas into better, more appropriate ideas. Sometimes that prize-winner of a ridiculous idea ends up triggering a brilliant marketing campaign!

Remember, the goal is to surprise and interest the customer who is wearily going through their in-box. What you’ll probably find is that your effort to excite that email recipient ends up re-energizing you about the delights of what you sell.

Veteran copywriter and marketing consultant Marcia Yudkin is the author of Persuading on Paper, Meatier Marketing Copy and 13 other books. Besides mentoring marketing departments in copywriting skills, she runs a one-on-one mentoring program that trains copywriters and marketing consultants in 10 weeks. Participants learn no-hype marketing writing skills and business savvy. For more information, go to http://www.yudkin.com/become.htm

By Susanne Myers in Email Marketing

emailmktgAre you actively building at least one list in your niche right now? If not, you’re missing out on quite a bit of potential growth and income. Let’s talk about seven reasons why you need to build a list.

Build A Relationship With Your Readers

The main reason to build a list is to be able to build a relationship with your readers. They have to know like and trust you before they ever consider buying something through your site (be it your own product or an affiliate offer). A list allows you to stay in touch and gives them that chance.

Connecting With Your Target Market

Not only are you building a relationship with your subscribers, you’re also connecting with your target audience. This means that once you have a list, you can ask them what they want to learn more about, what problems they are facing and the likes.

Bring People Back To Your Site

An email list also allows you to bring visitors back to your site. How many times have you been surfing the net, ended up on a really great site…but half an hour later you can’t remember what it was or how to get back to it (unless you spend a lot of time going through your browser history, which no one does). With an email list, you can continually send them more and more great content that includes links back to your site.

Branding Yourself As The Expert

And speaking of great content…it, in combination with a list allows you to brand yourself as an expert. Your readers get great advice from you over and over again on a certain topic. It won’t take them long to figure out that you know what you’re talking about…which again builds the trust you need to create a profitable and sustainable online business.

Easy To Automate

One of my favorite aspects of list building is the fact that it’s so easy to automate. I set up my list once, I drive traffic to the pages of my site that contain an opt-in box and then I start adding email messages to my autoresponder. Each of these things I only have to do once, but they will continue to work for months and years to come… growing my list, making money from my list etc.

Making Multiple Offers

Another big advantage of having a list is that you can make multiple offers. Think about this…if you are passionate about gardening, you’re not going to buy just one gardening book, subscribe to one magazine and buy one set of tools. Instead you’re going to get several of each and you’ll keep spending more and more on your hobby. Your target audience is no different. By having a list you can make them multiple related offers (again, both your own products or affiliate offers or a combination of both).

Being Able To Generate Income With The Push Of A Button

Last but not least, let’s talk about the reason that brings me the biggest peace of mind. If you have a responsive list (even if it’s relatively small), you have the ability to generate extra income at the push of a button. There have been many a times when we needed a few hundred extra dollars for unexpected bills. Each time I was able to come up with the extra cash just by sending a special offer to one of my lists.

I hope this convinces you that having a list for your online business is important and that this article encourages you to get started right away. In fact, I’m so passionate about this, I’ve put together a great resource for you. Sign up for this free ecourse on setting up your first email list in 7 easy steps at http://www.affiliateecourse.com/listbuilding/

By Jonathan McCulloch in Email Marketing

emailmktgEmail Marketing, although thought by some to be old fashioned, boring and ineffective remains one of the most powerful marketing strategy any small business has to increase its profits.

By changing to an email marketing model from selling to site visitors straight “off the page” it is a very easy matter to increase your sales by 10 times, 16 times or even more than that.

But WHY is… email marketing so profitable… and if it IS so profitable why do so many people claim it doesn’t work?

Well, the answer is simple: most people get their email marketing horribly, horribly wrong and make some simple but easily corrected mistakes.

The facts are inescapable: email marketing works… but you have to be careful to do it the right way, assuming you want the best results. Simply sending “an email” is like going into the boxing ring with a world champion with the advice “just hit him” and hoping to win.

So here are 5 simple ways to make more conversions and hence greater profits from your email marketing:

1. Email more often. I know this goes counter to the advice you’ve probably had in the past, but the truth is the more often you email, the more sales you’ll make.

You’ll make far more sales because you’re both giving them more opportunities and incentives to buy from you, and developing a better relationship with them… and your conversion rates will improve tremendously. By how much?

Well, your business may vary, but in my business and my wife’s business, we get conversion rates of between 10% and 16% through email and maybe 1% from sales straight “off the page”. Yes, you’re seeing that right: it’s a massive boost of 10 or 16 times or 1,000% to 1,600%.

2. Stop being ‘professional’. Forget sending stuffy and formal emails — they don’t work. People want to have a relationship with you, not be addressed as if they were in court standing in front of a judge. So write from one person, one human being to another, using the words, “you” and “me”, even if you’re writing to them from a big corporation.

3. Ditch the fancy designs. Newsflash: for all sorts of technical reasons we don’t need to worry about here, fancy HTML emails invariably look a real mess at the other end and very few of your readers will see anything even remotely resembling the gorgeous email you put together…look awful in your reader’s email client. if you have images in your emails they simply don’t show up properly and your “standard” HTML formatting is butchered by non-standard interpretation by your email programme.

Either use plain text, or, if you want the best of both worlds, use simply formatted HTML that looks like plain text but allows you to use underline, italic and bold as well as use anchor text in links.

4. Have a specific call to action in every email. Make it a personal rule that every email you send will have a specific action in it you want the reader to take, whether it’s to visit a page and buy something or to do something else. But make sure you have something in EVERY email because you are subconsciously training your readers to take action when you tell them!

5. Write about anything! This is a biggie: most business owners write excruciatingly tedious and boring emails that are nothing more than tired exhortations for people to buy their stuff. Don’t do that. Include all sorts of personal stuff about your life and anything else that comes to mind, including current events, news, that kind of thing.

Remember: you’re trying to form a relationship with them and the best way to do that is to share personal details of you and your journey through life. I’ve written about all manner of things to my list, from my dog messing in the kitchen, to my son passing his karate belt (he has cerebral palsy, so it was even more of an achievement than usual), and I’ve even written about the operation I had on my toe. And my conversion rate is 10% or more!

The truth is if you do it the right way, email marketing is fast, effective and extremely cheap.

These five tips will give you a real running start.

Jon McCulloch is Ireland’s foremost email marketing expert and helps Irish business owners increase their online conversions and sales by as much as 10 or even 16 times (that’s NOT a typo you’re seeing).To discover more about effective email marketing in Ireland download Jon’s FREE audio training, Email Marketing Kick Start: http://www.emailmarketingireland.ie/email-marketing-tips

By Jonathan McCulloch in Email Marketing

emailmktg2Email Marketing is one of the quickest and easiest ways for any business to increase conversions and profits.

By changing from “selling off the page” to an email marketing model it is easy to increase conversions by 10 times, 16 times or even more.

But WHY is… email marketing so profitable… and if it IS so profitable why do so many people claim it doesn’t work?

Well, the answer is simple: most people get their email marketing horribly, horribly wrong and make some simple but easily corrected mistakes.

The truth is email marketing DOES work… but you have to be careful to do it the right way, assuming you want the best results. Simply sending “an email” is like going into the boxing ring with a world champion with the advice “just hit him” and hoping to win.

So here are 5 simple ways to make more conversions and hence greater profits from your email marketing:

1. Email More Often

I know this goes counter to the advice you’ve probably had in the past, but the truth is the more often you email, the more sales you’ll make. You’ll make far more sales because you’re both giving them more opportunities and incentives to buy from you, and developing a better relationship with them… and your conversion rates will improve tremendously.

By how much? Well, your business may vary, but in my business and my wife’s business, we get conversion rates of between 10% and 16% through email and maybe 1% from sales straight “off the page”. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: it’s a massive boost of 10 or 16 times or 1,000% to 1,600%.

2. Stop Being ‘Professional’

Forget sending stuffy and formal emails — they don’t work. People want to have a relationship with you, not be addressed as if they were in court standing in front of a judge. So write from one person, one human being to another, using the words, “you” and “me”, even if you’re writing to them from a big corporation.

3. Ditch the Fancy Designs

Newsflash: for reasons I don’t have space to go into here, the fancy “professionally designed” newsletter templates you’re encouraged to use by the email marketing companies and your website designer… look terrible at the other end. If you include images, they almost never get displayed, and even your HTML formatting ends up looking like a dog’s dinner. Stick to plain text or very simple HTML that LOOKS like plain text.

4. Have a Specific Call to Action in Every Email

Make it a personal rule that every email you send will have a specific action in it you want the reader to take, whether it’s to visit a page and buy something or to do something else. But make sure you have something in EVERY email because you are subconsciously training your readers to take action when you tell them!

5. Write About Anything!

This is a biggie: most businesses write boring, stuffy emails that are just about their businesses. Don’t do that. Include details about your life, and pretty much anything you please. Remember: you’re trying to build a relationship and you do that by sharing of yourself. I’ve written about all manner of things to my list, from my dog messing in the kitchen, to my son passing his karate belt (he has cerebral palsy, so it was even more of an achievement than usual), and I’ve even written about the operation I had on my toe. And my conversion rate is 10% or more!

The truth is if you do it the right way, email marketing is fast, effective and extremely cheap.

And these 5 tips will get you off to a great start.

Jon McCulloch is Ireland’s foremost email marketing expert and helps Irish business owners increase their online conversions and sales by as much as 10 or even 16 times (that’s NOT a typo you’re seeing).To discover more about effective email marketing in Ireland download Jon’s FREE audio training, Email Marketing Kick Start: http://www.emailmarketingireland.ie/email-marketing-tips

By Jennifer Davey in Email Marketing

emailmktgI have been blogging a bit lately about WHY you need an email list, so I thought I should write about HOW to grow your list.

Your marketing should drive traffic (website visitors, people) to your website so that they can sign up for your list. Your list will allow you to leverage the “Know, Like and Trust Factor.”

1. Make it easy and intuitive for people to subscribe to your email list. You can do this by having a call to action (that tells visitors to subscribe) on EVERY page of your website. Be sure to always have the sign up box in the same location on all the pages.

2. Don’t ask for too much information. One mistake many small businesses make is asking for a ton of information on their list sign up form. The more information you ask for, the less likely that potential clients will subscribe.

At a minimum ask for their email address. At a maximum ask for their name and email address unless there is a reason you MUST ask for more information. (Such as you’re mailing them something).

3. Make a compelling offer. A compelling offer is VERY clear on the result the person accepting the offer will receive. It talks about the solution, not the process.

Ultimately, potential clients don’t care about you, they care about the VALUE they will receive. The value is what is going to compel them to take you up on your offer.

4. Link to a landing page (or squeeze page). You know your website inside and out, but your visitors don’t. You have about 4 seconds from the time a visitor lands on your page till they are either hooked or leave. Don’t give potential clients too many options which may paralyze them, keep it simple with a singular message and call to action.

5. Include your offer in your signature. One of the best (and must underused) places to share your compelling offer, or link to your landing page, so you can quickly build your list is the email signature. It allows you to get a clear message out to everyone you touch about the solution you provide.

6. Suggest your subscribers forward your newsletter. Potential and current clients who are subscribed to your list already know how great the content you provide is. Make it easy for them to recommend and refer you by including a link that allows them to forward your newsletter.

7. Provide Value. When you email your list, be sure to pack your newsletter, e-zine or blast with interesting and valuable content. I always recommend my clients follow the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the content should be informational, educational or helpful and 20% of the content is for your call to action.

8. Watch your unsubscribe rates. This is an often overlooked factor, but it’s useful for letting you know when you are off track. If you send out what YOU thought was relevant content and see a larger than normal unsubscribe rate, you can quickly correct without causing much damage.

9. Include an opt-in check box to your contact form. Make it easy for potential clients who are contacting you to sign up for your list. If they are interested enough to contact you, they are most often would like to be on your list.

10. Have a thank you page that reminds subscribers that they need to confirm their email address.

Getting potential clients to fill out the subscription box on your website is only half the battle. With permission based marketing you need them to double opt-in. In other words, they need to fill out your form, go to their email program and click a link before they are subscribed.

Managing their expectations and understanding of the process will make it MUCH more likely that they follow through and confirm their subscription.

Once you have these 10 tips working for you, it’s time to start marketing.

Small Business Coach and Marketing Strategist, Jennifer Davey, is the author of the “14-Step Formula for Getting Clients, Building Business and Making More Income”, Grab a FREE copy of her Report “What you Need to Know to Be Successful at Getting Clients” visit:
http://jjscoaching.com/free-report/

By Justin Cooke in Email Marketing

emailmktgOk, I admit it…I’ve been a militant emailer for years.

Whether it was requiring updates from employees, discussing strategy with partners, ordering from vendors, etc. I considered my emails as THE way to communicate and get things done, especially when working remotely. I’d get frustrated when emails were ignored or not comprehended and couldn’t understand why other professionals would take them so lightly. Yes, I’d read Tim Ferriss’s 4HWW and knew that some people were trying to cut back on their email consumption, limiting their time responding/sending emails, etc…but they shouldn’t do that to ME, I thought.

What I didn’t realize before starting AdSenseFlippers.com was that some people loathed getting emails from me and their poor response rate was a secret rebellion in protest.

Others have been writing about this as well, including such well-known bloggers as Seth Godin and Chris Anderson giving us email checklists and setting out to create an email charter. We’ve recently begun to build our list of subscribers through Aweber and in doing so, I’ve signed up for quite a few email lists to get an idea as to what kind of information is provided, how often they sell products or services to me, etc. What I’ve found is that over 95% of the emails I receive through their lists are junk. It’s not just that they don’t apply to me or help me out specifically…it’s that they could hardly be considered helpful to ANYONE. I’ve secretly come to despise several of these unnamed sources…especially those who I haven’t yet taken the time to unsubscribe from and it’s hurting their brand much more than it’s helping.

I’m still a little militant about email and I DEFINITELY haven’t got down to checking my email once a week like Tim Ferriss, but I’ve found a strategy of rules I can follow without unintentionally building up a network of people who secretly hate my emails:

Would you want the email yourself? No? Will sending the email potentially make you money…would the person you’re sending this to find it to be valuable information.

If it’s someone with whom you’re looking to do business have you considered what they get out of it and would it be a good deal if you were in their shoes? If it’s to your list, would you really find the information useful or is it just another excuse to promote a product, affiliate program, etc. Be honest with yourself.

Are you including people on the email that don’t need to be included? Does your boss, co-worker, employee, partner really need to have a copy of that email in their inbox?

I’m cc’d on so many emails that I currently don’t even need to know about. This problem alone literally eats up 20-30 minutes of my day, minimum. This is especially useful for subscribers and lists…that email that took you twenty minutes to write and are sending out to a 2,500 strong subscriber base could literally be eating up 800 hours of people’s time or more

Are any attachments or links relevant, useful, and necessary? Expanding on the previous point, it may only take an extra 30 seconds to include a few extra links to videos and articles, but how much time are you asking of your recipients to spend researching that information. (2,500 hours worth in the above example if it takes an hour to digest) Is it really worth it? A few weeks ago I sent a video and associated article to my employees and asked them all to read, watch, and respond with any thoughts they had and told them to do this on the clock, because I knew it was important. Would you be willing to go as far as paying for the time your readers spend reviewing your attachments and links? If not, don’t send it.

So I can’t say I’m down to checking my emails once a week or that everything I send out is award-winning or always useful, but I’ve gotten much more respectful of others’ time. It can become infinitely more difficult to keep up the more successful you become, so remember that the next time you have a business proposition or question for someone that’s doing well and be strategic about it. If they’re respectful of you, they’ll respond…but it doesn’t mean they don’t secretly wish you would have been more succinct and appreciative of their limited time.

Justin Cooke is an author, business owner, and a general business enthusiast. In addition to running TryBPO, an outsourcing company in Davao City, Philippines, he also creates runs AdSenseFlippers a site devoted to promoting free, actionable information to build niche websites for passive income, providing easy to follow strategies and detailed income reports.
http://adsenseflippers.com/category/income-report/2011

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