Sunny Suggs!

Good news for Spam haters out there – Spam is almost dead. E-mail marketing has mostly taken over and Spam is gradually undergoing regression at a rate of 13% per year. Marketing pros have chosen E-mail marketing as their primary medium, so by 2010 they say that Spam will be a thing of the past. It will also be exciting to take notice of the growth of market spending, estimated at $885 million, to $1.1 billion dollars in as little time as well.

The transactional, acquisitioned and retention methods will make up the bulk of the e-mailing for businesses in the year 2010. Customers gain and personal e-mails level out the remainder of e-mailing. The reason why Spam is losing ground is the e-mail filtering system, which is gaining strength almost on a monthly basis. With new technology in place, it is easy for someone to recognize the difference between Spam and an actual e-mail from a company that is doing a follow up for business purposes.

Consumer reports state that users will keep away from e-mail servers that do not offer state of the art Spam filters. Nevertheless, the open market still has an excess of server available.

The real concern of marketers with regards to e-mail filtering systems is the cost of incorrectly blocked e-mails. From an estimated $107 million, it is expected to decline to roughly $88 million by 2010. Once Spam is taken out completely, reaching the consumer via e-mail marketing, an economical and remarkable medium, will be much easier.

The motivation to maintain a safer marketplace coupled with new technology will enable e-mail marketing to become one of the most productive marketing and business tools of the future.

But for the meantime, there’s still this trash called Spam to deal with.

If the cost-effective Internet marketing business has a “killer” method, then it’s e-mail marketing. It’s the most popular and best performing when it comes to getting targeted traffic to websites. There are so many ways to utilize email marketing like staying in touch with customers and prospective customers, sending out invites, or making special offers.

It’s a simple matter of writing an e-mail in newsletter form, or just a basic announcement, and sending it to the most number of targeted recipients possible.

Nevertheless, e-mail marketing isn’t just about writing and sending e-mail to anybody. To make thing clearer, here are some tips to do email marketing in the best possible way:

1. Be part of the “Can Spam” campaign – Keep this in constantly mind. Not at anytime should useless information be sent to your e-mail list.

2. Make your e-mail list want to open your e-mails – More often than not, your list members receives hundreds of e-mails daily. Use that extra white space creatively to improve your subject line; start each word with a capital letter, add text symbols, ask persuasive questions. Don’t make any unbelievable claims though and try not to use the word “free”.

3. Keep it real – Your e-mail content must represent something your business can back up. Offer you recipients something of authentic value.

4. Don’t go too low – Remember that you are out to make a profit. Do not defeat the purpose of your email marketing effort. Never offer discounts lower than your profit.

5. Make it exciting – Include seminars, conferences and other events. Repetition is necessary with these RSVP-entailing emails. Send out reminders after a sufficient interval.

6. Post news – Perfect in newsletter and postcard forms. You can provide useful information but keep it short and direct to the point to enhance effectiveness.

These simple tips should improve your e-mail marketing venture in a short time.

In e-mail marketing, they say that “The money is in your list” – and this is an absolute fact.

E-mail marketing is considered as highly effective in transforming leads into eager buyers. Still, many people are unenthusiastic in using this technique because of the time required to make it successful. Indeed, there was a recent study that discovered that three quarters of people who do e-mail marketing spends from 15 and 50 hours per week to maintain it.

Busy people can hardly afford to allot that much time just on e-mail marketing. This is exactly the reason why “Mailloop 7.0”, the best e-mail marketing software on the net offers great advantages to the user. Let’s see some of them:

1. You get an opt-in form template including full instructions so you can easily add it to your site.

2. It automatically stores every email saving you precious time and headaches.

3. It automatically e-mails new subscribers a welcome message moments after opting in. No more manually preparing and sending e-mails to hundreds, even thousands of subscribers.

4. Mailloop 7.0 gives you attractive looking templates to use for your newsletter so that it looks friendlier to your subscribers.

5. It keeps your e-mail safe from spam complaints, blacklists or filters so that it doesn’t get trashed.

6. You can schedule your promotions so that you can go on your vacation without worrying about interrupting campaigns.

7. You can use as many autoresponders as you need, create as many campaigns, write as many emails as you wish.

8. Manage all of this from a complete user-friendly control panel.

A lot of sales usually result when you offer free things to your website visitors. People sign up regularly for free courses delivered via email. These courses are quite popular and are best maintained and delivered with the use of autoresponders.

A series of email course lessons can be set for distribution at specific intervals. It will be up to you to determine how often the lessons are sent to the people who signed up for the course.

There is a big difference between email courses and other types of courses like web based and traditional courses. For one there is no interaction between student and instructor. Everything is automated. All the instructor has to do is write the information, install the lessons in an autoresponder series and set the timing. Lessons can be delivered daily, every other day or any time frame that you decide would be best for your email students.

You can develop custom courses that can help sell your products and services. According to experts, given enough thought, an email course can be written for almost any product in existence.

First, settle on the topic and length of the course. Write the lessons and load them in the autoresponder. If the course should be delivered every other day for two weeks, set the interval for 1,3,5,7,9,11 and 13.

Note that the interval for each lesson is arranged for the number of days after the person has signed up. Make the lessons look and sound professional so be sure the words are spelled right and the sentences, grammatically correct

Lastly, advertise the email address that will trigger the autoresponder. Better run a test and send each lesson to yourself, so as to see the course as your students will see them when they sign up.

Hundreds of breakthrough responses, money-making emails and online Marketing promotions have been written. Here are some that have been found that work best when used properly:

1.    Be consistent. Your brand name or company name should be your email “from” sender line. Your personal name should be used only if that is your brand image.

2.    Be relevant. Send emails only when you have something meaningful for the readers benefit.

3.    Get straight to the point. You only have a few precious seconds to pass the vital “what’s in it for me?” test so don’t waste time with non specific messages that do not benefit the reader.

4.    Forget the boring, stuffy, corporate format. The copywriting tone and language should be personal and conversational.

5.    A reader should be presented with a specific offer, possibly including a short deadline by which he must respond to get it.

6.    Use as much copy as is needed to fully pile on all the benefits the reader will get by ordering, answer objections, create urgency, and close the sale.

7.    Before sending the email to your entire list, it would be advisable to test your subject lines on a limited section first.

8.    For “pass along” and “viral” marketing, include “Email this to a friend” in your communications.

9.    If you don’t want your future emails ending up in the in the spam box, request your recipients to “white list” your email address.

10.    If your email service to identify this information, re-mail non-opens again one week later.

11.    Entrust the copywriting of your emails and online marketing only to an experienced, successful copywriter. These are the top keys to much higher leads, sales and profits so it’s best to hire the finest copywriter you can afford.

Having an effective direct mail campaign that draws in new and repeat customers is really not all that difficult. Just spending a bit of effort to develop an effective for you company usually does the trick.

Having a clear objective of what you want to accomplish with your mailing is the most essential idea to ensure when having a direct mail listing. Whether you want more customers or you want to offer an incentive to existing customers to have them buy more, having a concept of what you want to do with your mailing will save you money. Not to mention effect a more successful mailing campaign.

People would rather have letters form friends and loved ones than junk mail, so make your campaign more personal. Make them like letters to a friend than junk mail add will keep your promotion from the trash bin.

Who doesn’t like incentives? Whether they’re discounts or free items, everyone loves incentives. Give them out to repeat customers to them coming back, or to new customers trying to familiarize themselves to your company. Incentives work for both customer categories.

Include the benefits and reasons they should come back to your business, in your direct mail campaign. Guarantee that they know that your company and products are superior to the competition, but keep it relatively low key. No one likes an oversized ego.

Always provide a method for them to contact you or your business. When a customer is sold on your ads and wants to use your product but has no means to call you, then that could be considered a travesty.

These steps will help make your direct mail campaign more effective in attracting customers to your business. Keeping your business in the minds of the average consumer will increase your profits while you save money at the same time.

We live in a virtually high-tech world but we still seem to be plagued with many old-fashioned problems when it comes to communication. Take email for example; how do you convince the recipient to open the message (or envelope in regular mail)?

The answer would be – use a good subject line. This helps your messages avoid getting deleted without ever being opened.

The reader has to see at a glance what the message is all about, and a subject line allows this ability. He can then determine if the message is worth opening. These are 3 methods for writing an effective subject line:

1.  Say something useful

Never leave a subject line blank. People have no time to be bothered and there’s always the threat from email viruses. Subject lines give them an idea of what the message is concerning.

Typing “Hi”, “Hello” or “Greetings” is just as bad. Those are good for your friends or family, but it means nothing in the professional sense.

2.  Be Specific

People receive tons of email. You topic needs to be specific if you want it to get through the muddle and actually get read. The best chance to catch attention is through a very detailed subject line.

Here are good examples, instead of typing “Question,” try, “Question about ABC event.”  Instead of typing “Proposal” try, “Proposal for event on 12/14.”

3.  Be Creative

Specific subject lines are most suitable on people who are expecting you message, or people who know you. A little creativity will help you on those people you do not know.

So, what sort of information will convince the recipient to open and read your message? Based on the recipient, the exact content will diverge.

Let’s see a few examples that display an assortment of goals:

•    To identify yourself, try “Local Meeting Planner.”
•    To tell how you met the person, try “Chamber Networking Dinner.”
•    To explain why you’re contacting him/her, try “MPI Fundraiser.”
•    To exploit a common bond with recipient, try “Fellow MIT grad.”
•    To distinguish yourself from others, try “Japanese Speaking Realtor.”

One more thing to watch out for when writing your subject line is length. Be advised that most recipients can only view 25-35 characters of a subject line. So you have to develop a skill in making short, detailed and creative subject lines.

Some simple tips would be to use phrases instead of complete sentences. Abbreviations that are easily understood by recipients are also acceptable

When I open my mailbox, there’re always the usual bills, bank statements, bogus million dollar offers, etc. but every so often, in the middle of that junk an envelope seems to just jump out. Sometimes it’s from my favorite restaurant saying “thanks for being a loyal customer, next time you come by, your dessert is on the house.”

Well you are probably like me – you certainly can’t resist an offer that is so pertinent to you. There are millions like us out there too and we check our email more often than our actual mailboxes.

Forget about Spam. Those are the bogus offers. This is direct email marketing at its best, reaching the right customers with the appropriate offers.

Now let’s see that coupon from the restaurant again. Envision the results from their perspective; if you come in the restaurant with their coupon, then their marketing efforts were successful.

On the other hand, think of the cost in terms of time and money that the management went through just to get that coupon into your hands. The printing, envelopes and postage and the hired help were surely expensive and time consuming.

Here’s where direct email marketing stands out. The emails are all pre-designed and the backend is ready-made for you so you can do everything yourself. There’s absolutely no postage, no stuffing or expensive printing costs. All it takes is a few minutes of clicking a few buttons on your computer.

As a result of the sudden popularity of direct email marketing among a growing number of small businesses, several email marketing programs are now designed for non-technical persons. This means anyone can be an expert in these programs in a short time.

Another advantage provided by direct email marketing programs is access to the most advanced functions. Again, assume the role of the restaurant proprietor. You’ve earlier asked your customers to fill up a customer satisfaction survey which includes their email addresses. A few days after, you sent them a Free Dessert email coupon with a “forward to a friend” link. This enables them to email the Free Dessert coupon to their friends.

Did you know that you can see exactly who opened the messages and when they did it? You can also find out who forwarded their coupons to their friends. All you have to do is go into the Reports and Stats section of your direct email marketing program.

That’s not where it stops. You can offer extra incentives to that group of readers who forwarded their coupons to their friends.

Direct email marketing amplifies the power of information, at relatively no cost. So next time you get a coupon from your favorite restaurant, think about how much better things would be if he had used direct email marketing instead of traditional mail.

One of the best means to maintain return customers is to keep them on a consumer mailing list by reminding them about your company and what it stands for.

It’s important to always ask a customer if they want to be added to the list before they check out. To simplify things, have a box on your website that the consumer can check if they want to be on your consumer mailing list. Make it short. Too much blanks to fill out usually turns a person off.

Too many mailings will be annoying to customers. Monthly messages are sufficient to keep you fresh in their minds as the likely source to approach when they need a product that you have in your lineup. Your newsletters and promotions are a great way to include consumer incentives and the fact that these customers might use them for future reference are a definite plus.

Send out mailing list as efficiently as possible. There are programs designed to accomplish the task of sending out correspondence that will save you a lot of time.

Keep your mailing lists to a proper limit and certify that they are related to the affairs of your company. Maintaining a practical list will keep your customers focused on the information you want them to have.

Consumer mailings are one of the most crucial tools that you can use in your internet business. Taking action to increase your list’s efficiency will advance your company’s growth potential and bring in more business by keeping you in the front ranks of your customers mind.

Business growth largely depends on information technology. Today’s rapid paced environment has caused an ever increasing number of people to discover the convenience and emerging necessity of the Internet, which has enabled millions of people’s names and addresses from around the world to connect. A number of opportunities to advance “below the line” marketing strategies has been enabled as a result.

In the 1990’s, innovative marketers employed “bulk mail marketing” – sending out of advertisements and infomercials to email users. This is what we currently call SPAM mail, or unsolicited email. This went on unrestricted although today, measures are being taken to stop “spammers”.

Many US states and countries worldwide have enacted anti-spamming laws to protect the internet public against unsolicited mail. To reduce the risk of breaking these laws, the sender must have a clean list of targeted email addresses. This also guarantees the success of bulk email marketing strategies.

Extraction of targeted email addresses from URL’s and email service providers is possible through some commercially available software. This makes generating a handy addressee list a straightforward task.

Another viable option is a ready-made list which is usually offered from email services, agencies that conduct surveys, and other online vendors.

Email address lists should contain only those that indicate willingness to receive your email. Marketers cannot risk offending potential customers by sending magazines and newsletters these people are not interested in.