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Email Delivery & IP Reputation

By Heather Seitz in Featured

Deliverability 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).

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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.

List Building – 10 Super Fast Ways To Build Your Opt-in List

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base, but just how do you go about doing this?

An opt-in list is when you are given the option to receive bulk emails that are also sent to a large majority of other people. Generally you need a person’s permission to add them to such a list otherwise it will be seen as spam. Regardless of what you’re promoting or selling, if you want to succeed online you need to build up your own opt-in list. Most professional marketers use double opt-in which means subscribers must fill in an opt-in form on a web page and then confirm or verify their subscription in an email sent to them. This eliminates any spam complaints.

Virtually everyone uses email so it won’t be too hard to build your list if you use some of the simple tactics listed below. Keep in mind, using an opt-in contact list should have a place in everyone’s marketing plan as it is cheap, fast, and still more effective than other outdated methods of promotion and marketing. This is because a large majority of the people who are making money on the Internet are those who have built up a large opt-in list or are using strategic follow-up emails in their marketing. They will have refined, looked after and built up a trust with the people on their list who they can contact in the future.

If you need any help with how to approach compiling your opt-in email list then below are 10 quick and sure ways of getting people to sign up for your contact list:

1. Set up an auto-responder which will automatically send out messages to your visitor. It can be set up with a series of compelling messages, which will encourage your subscribers to buy your products or join your business. Using Pop-Ups, Pop-Ins and Slide-In forms on web pages will quickly build your list. Some professional marketers make the “Close” button on this pop-up form very hard to see, so that visitors will subscribe as a means of closing out the window. Use your own judgment here, do you want to be this sneaky? It’s not exactly the best way to start a relationship, but many savvy marketers use it. This is the equivalent of “getting your foot in the door” and then these marketers follow-up with quality content to really get and hold your attention.
2. Have a concrete image or graphic of your ezine or newsletter when giving people the opportunity to sign up as this will increase your conversion rate. Your ezine or newsletter can then be sent out daily, weekly, monthly or whenever you need to send it. Relationship building is the key here because you just don’t want a list, you want a responsive list.
3. Make it real simple for people to subscribe to your opt-in email; it needs to be quick and easy in order to encourage people to do it. For example you could put a simple form in the left hand column of your websites home page and other pages if possible. Most professional marketers place their opt-in form on EVERY page of their site.
4. Use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter… truth be told all of these sites are only glorified List Builders; make sure you’re taking advantage of them to build your list of contacts.
5. Use Forums – there are literally thousands of forums and discussion boards so all you have to do is find one that relates to your particular business and then participate in the discussion. The key is to get targeted subscribers, ones interested in your topic or subject.
6. Promote your website and yourself – this can be done through such things as article writing. This will promote your site in a way that will get your site known and recognized by more people; become an expert and people will want to get to know you and what you have to say.
7. Ezine advertising is a cost effective and quick way to attract visitors to your site in order to get more subscribers. Ezine ads can be a very cheap and effective way of building your list quickly. Many professional marketers also use co-registration strategies – this can be simply done by adding a form where your subscribers can check to subscribe to other related ezines or newsletters. You promote my list, I promote yours.
8. Have well written content – you need to ensure that your website content is well written, informative and appealing so that when people visit your site they will hopefully opt-in to your email list. Again, if you have nothing valuable to offer your visitors, they won’t join your list.
9. Always use incentives to reward people for joining your opt-in list. Enticing potential subscribers with a free report, video, article, ebook or software is still the quickest way to get subscribers on your list.
10. Provide access to “Members Only” areas of your site – this part of your website will be accessible only when people have signed up to your opt-in email list. Same can be done for articles or reports… give your visitors a good teaser and then they have to opt-in to get access to the rest.

These are just some of the ways to build your list quickly but there are countless others, especially if you have a product to sell and you can do JVs (Joint Ventures) with other marketers or big-name Gurus. Then using a “Squeeze Page” to collect contact information to quickly build your list. So too is creating an affiliate program and letting your affiliates build your list for you!

Just remember, building up the perfect opt-in email list won’t happen over night but by following the above steps it will build quickly. Just make sure that as your opt-in list grows, you provide your users with quality content and you keep the list organized and managed in order to keep your subscribers happy and satisfied so that they will be willing to do business with you over the long term.

About The Author:

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous niche sites. If you want to learn how to make your online marketing much more effective by building your lists try here: list building ecourse Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com

List Building – 10 Super Fast Ways to Build Your Opt-in List

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base, but just how do you go about doing this?

An opt-in list is when you are given the option to receive bulk emails that are also sent to a large majority of other people. Generally you need a person’s permission to add them to such a list otherwise it will be seen as spam. Regardless of what you’re promoting or selling, if you want to succeed online you need to build up your own opt-in list. Most professional marketers use double opt-in which means subscribers must fill in an opt-in form on a web page and then confirm or verify their subscription in an email sent to them. This eliminates any spam complaints.

Visual Techniques For Your Opt In List

By Joel Christopher in Featured

If you are going to use online marketing tools, you must be well-versed on what makes a page visually appealing to people. Have you ever encountered a page where you seem to feel bombarded or suffocated with the long lines of text and improperly selected colors or templates? Certainly, you would not want your website to be classified under that category.

You must be able to render some semblance of visual quality to match the quality of your products and your business. Few people are going to put up with lousy visuals no matter how good the offer is or how promising the product seems to be.

When you are designing your page, you must take into the account the usual manner with which people read. It is usually done in a left to right fashion. So it would do you a lot of good if you will position your subscription somewhere in the right. Also, it will draw the prospects’ attention to the upper right hand side of your page if you attach and image.

The top and center portion of the page is also a good place to put your killer headline, which must in a nutshell summarize the benefits that your prospect can get if he or she continues to focus on what is being offered in this page or the next.

Placing anchor text in the midst of your articles or blocks of text regarding similar topics that you have may also help the linger longer in the page and have a desire to explore it.

Speedreaders are also popular in the Internet. People apparently tend to read material in an S-like fashion. And people are least likely to take breaks while reading, so you must do this minor favor for them by providing lots of white space in the middle of chunks of information so that their eyes can breathe and be able to brace themselves to absorb the next point.

If anything, the last thing you would want your readers to suffer from is information overload. That will definitely have you in their do-not-visit-again list.

When you are also providing your contact numbers, please do include it already in your signature. The signature signals the end to the reader, and the text that appears beyond the signature is usually left unread because most people are more than ready to move on to the next page after the signature.

Before you also provide your readers with information, you might want to strategically place in your squeeze page and have them opt-in before viewing the rest of the page they are trying to read. This way, you will get their email address and have them instantly included in your prospects.

However, some people may actually put in a bogus email address. To avoid this, have the needed information sent to the email address they placed. This will compel them to give out their authentic email address to be able to have access to the desired information.

The way you insert the option for readers to opt-in must also be assertive in a non-obtrusive kind of way.

Joel Christopher is a best-selling author, speaker and mentor, known worldwide as The MasterListBuilder. To find out more on how you can triple your leads, sales and profits. Visit http://www.MasterListBuilder.com

Hate Squeeze Pages? A PDF Popup Is More Polite

By Willie Crawford in Featured

I’ve actually created about 2 dozen ebooks that use this strategy, and I offer them in numerous niches.

The way my gentler system works is that after they’ve read my free ebook, when they close it they get a popup requesting that they join my list.

The popup contains my standard subscribe form that feeds right into my autoresponders. A very large number of people fill in these forms and join my lists everyday.

Since they voluntarily joined my list, instead of being squeezed into doing it, we start the relationship off on friendlier terms, and provided I deliver quality information, they stay longer.

You can see a video demonstration of how I set my PDF’s up at: http://HowToAddAPDFPopup.com
I still have squeeze pages on many sites, but as I watch the results from this process, I’m beginning to see that it’s a much more productive approach.

It respects the future subscriber more.

It doesn’t force people on your list who don’t want to be there and can’t wait to get off of it.

You don’t get your database polluted with fake email addresses, or email addresses that are never checked.
Think about it. If you hate being “squeezed” should you really be doing it to your new clients?

Willie Crawford has been teaching proven effective internet marketing techniques for 12 years. To learn more of Willie’s tactics and tips, just drop by his frequently updated blog at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

Write Articles To Help Build Your Business By Building Your List

By Angela Meyers in Featured

I know you’ve heard many times that to be successful at Internet Marketing you have to have a list. You can build your list in many ways but the quickest and most effective way is by writing articles.

Many ezine publishers and website owners are constantly looking for new and up to date information for their publications and web pages. Article writing is the perfect way to provide that information and build an opt-in list.

A lot of new and some experienced Internet Marketers get confused about the obvious use of the opt-in list. The main objective is not just to build a list of names and email addresses. Its purpose is to help you build your business by providing you with a valuable list of names and email addresses that are of good quality.

Millions of people search the internet daily for numerous reasons. The majority of them are usually looking for information on one or a variety of subjects that they just want to know more about.

Here are a few things that you should consider when writing articles to build your business:

1. Find out what type of information people are looking for and provide it for them. This can be done easily by asking the members who are currently on you list what they want.

If you don’t currently have a list you can always visit different forums to find out what people are asking for.

2. Keep in contact with the members on your opt-in list and get to know them. Obviously, if they are subscribing to your list, and staying around, they are interested in what you have to say and you have something in common.

You can ask them to recommend you to their friends, family or co-workers who have the same interests that you have and they can help you build your business.

3. Be careful not to frustrate the members on your list by constantly providing too much information by email too frequently. Though they may like to get email, try not to send too many emails too often.

You can provide the best quality information there is but if you over do it some of your members will opt-out and leave you because of information overload.

When you write articles and submit them to article directories in most cases it is free. It is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website, get free advertising and build your opt-in list all at the same time.

Make your articles key-word rich about your website topic and strive to keep the word count between 400 and 600 words long.

There are times that they will be longer but make sure you check the article directories rules as different article directories have different rules about article length.

Always include a resource box at the bottom of your article with a little bit of information about yourself and include a link to your website.

You will soon build credibility and draw more targeted traffic to your website as your articles are read by others and they begin to click on the link to your website and opt-in to your list.

You will also start to get noticed by search engines and get established as other website owners begin to publish your articles in their ezines, to their list and on their websites.

So, to build your opt-in list quickly and drive traffic to your website, write good quality articles and submit them to the article directories often.

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Angela Meyers is a writer and internet marketer who writes and publishes eBooks and media material on various ways to make money online. Want to find out several different ways to make money online? visit: http://www.resellrightsandplrmadesimple.com

The Golden Rules Of Selling To Your Opt-in List

By Yunis Khan in Featured

You’ve got your internet business and you have created an opt-in list. Now what?

Well, you have to encourage your list to buy from you. This is a lot harder than you may first imagine. There are series of books written on this subject and it really is an art. Many people have studied for years to perfect this, however I’m going to go through some very important rules to follow when you start selling to your list. Email is the preferred method to contact your list as its free and very effective.

Always remember the vast majority of people base their decision to buy on EMOTION. They then justify their purchase through LOGIC.

When selling to your list you must address both these factors in order to maximise the sales from your list. Over the last five years I have been involved in various internet businesses and I have found the following rules to be most effective.

Get your customers begging for more information:

You have to grab the attention of your list, you must create enough interest so that your list is begging for more information on your products.

Carry out some market research for yourself, register with various companies and see how they sell, see how they make their products “sizzle”, this is sometimes referred to as “selling the sizzle” and can be very effective.

There are many ways to present your products and many promotional styles and methods. You have to grab your customers attention and get them to visit your site for more information and therefore buy your product. Content and creativity are the keys here, you are trying to lock in your customer to your marketing and therefore your products.

1. Keep your message simple, light and creative. Your customer does not want a long winded email with loads of facts and figure about your products and their performance. Keep it light hearted, your objective is to get your customer to read the email. We all live in a serious world, add a bit of humour or fun and it can pay off.
2. Add photos and splash some colour into your emails. Send out newsletters previewing your products, make them interesting, light hearted and eye catching. Grab your customers interest.
3. You must have good content and articles about your products. This will build trust between you and your customers. If necessary get a professional copy writer to do this for you in a style that is informative and light hearted, not stuffy. Outline the benefits of your products to your customers – do not talk about features – only benefits. Try not to be too keen here, people don’t like products being forced upon them, hold back a little, this often works.
4. A picture is worth a thousand words. If you do have clear and concise pictures of your products then use them! This coupled with clear concise benefits can work wonders.

Grab Your Readers Attention With Your Subject:

This is sometimes overlooked by new internet business owners. They don’t realise that just sending an email is not enough. In this day and age there are literally thousands of companies who market their products through opt-in lists via email. You have to realise that you are just one of the many companies vying for your customers attention.

Therefore it is imperative that you actually get your customer to open your email. To some this may sound rather a basic point. But do you realise that on average every 100 emails sent to an opt-in list, the average number of emails that are actually read is approx 30-40.

THE major factor in your customer opening your email is the subject heading in your email – that is why it is so important to get this right.

1. Try and keep the subject short and concise, it should ideally provide a summary of the content of your email. You need to grab the attention of your customer so that they are intrigued to open your email and read further. Tickle your customers curiosity, use emotion and selling words. Remember you only have a few seconds to grab your customers attention before they skip or delete your email.
2. A popular method is to indicate that your email will give your customer some sort of training or tips on certain subjects. You can do this by using such phrases such as “Guide To …” or “How To …” or “Tips for …”. These are known to work well but your email content must reflect your subject heading.
3. Asking a question in the subject heading can also work well. Again you have to get emotional buy in, even from the subject heading. So questions like “Are you looking for financial freedom?” or “Have you had enough of working for someone?”. These types of subject heading get your customers thinking straight away and are known to work well. Again always ensure your email content gives an answer to the question stated in the subject of your email.
4. New product announcements. This is perfect when previewing new products you are about to launch or make available to your customers. Headings like “Announcing great new …” or “2 weeks before launch of …”. Again can be very effective given the product you are selling.
5. Issuing a command or directive. Statements such as “Act now …” or “Limited opportunity apply now …” or “Triple your income, find out how …”. Again you are emphasising the benefits of your products to your customers.

Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List:

Online and email marketing is very common and your customers will be bombarded with many internet companies vying for their money. It is important for you to avoid getting into problems with the law or your ISP or with spamming. However, if you have created your own opt-in list then you should be o.k. and not have to worry from these problems. However there are still some things to avoid.

Remember it can takes years to gain a good reputation and only a few minutes to destroy it.

1. Analyse your email broadcasts, take note of those that bounce, i.e. that are undeliverable. Also get some information on how many were opened. Erase all bounced email addresses. Some autoresponders such as Aweber do this for you. Manually check the email address for common mistakes, it may be that it is a simple spelling mistake which you can correct.
2. Always but always provide an unsubscribe option at the bottom of your emails. Aweber automatically does this as do most autoresponders. It may be that someone used another persons email address so you need to give them an easy option to stop receiving your emails.
3. Do not send shocking or disturbing pictures or video, absolutely no pornographic content should be sent. You cannot be certain of the age of the person who has opted in to your list, therefore always keep your content respectable and above board. Always stick to the content of your site or your products.

Follow the above golden rules and you should be successful at marketing your products to your list and getting a favourable response. Remember, cultivating the relationship between yourself and your customers is key in establishing trust and thereby getting your customers to purchase from you.

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Yunis Khan – I have been involved in Internet Businesses for the past 5 years and have gained some valuable experience, sometimes bitter, sometimes with fantastic results. I hope my experiences can help others become successful Internet Business owners. http://www.earnmoneydailyonline.com

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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