The following article by Danielle Deray focuses on the ‘viralization’, if there is such a word, of email marketing campaigns.
What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and then to millions.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Human Motivations

Viral email marketing and the Internet have always had a strong relationship, as they complement each other. With the use of  the Internet, communication is speedier, and the financial cost is much smaller. For your message to be remembered, and easily understood, always take note of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Your readership will always prefer something short and easy, to something long and complicated.

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. The greed and the desire to be cool drives people. So does the hunger for popularity, love, and being understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of email messages.

Sociability

According to social scientists, people are generally social. There might be exceptions, like those who prefer to mingle online instead of meeting people in person. According to studies though, 8 to 12 is the usual extent of an individual’s network (people with whom they are in regular contact). For people who opt to establish a network online, they collect website URLs and email addresses. These are the types of lists that affiliate marketers tend to exploit. Therefore, make sure that your recipients have an existing and active network online, as this assures the transfer of your ads.

In launching a viral marketing campaign, you need to not only focus on the transfer of messages, you should also look into the motivations of people to execute the transfer.

About The Author

Looking to find the best deal for online business tools? Check out, Danielle Deray’s site to see her product reviews at Fast Video Reviews.com. To get more free tips on creating traffic visit Instant Lead Magnet.

Email marketing is all about utilizing electronic mail as a means of communicating with a target audience of customers, prospects, etc. It is still probably one of the most powerful marketing methods available to today’s online marketers—provided it is done properly. Among its many benefits is the fact that it operates on a ‘one-to-one’ basis, so it is not just about sending emails to contacts about your offers. It is more about opening a dialogue and encouraging individuals within your target audience to take whatever action you recommend. There is surely no doubt then, that it offers marketers the most efficient and cost-effective method there is for reaching target audiences, generating leads, qualifying prospects, moving them through the sales cycle and retaining their loyalty.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Email Power

Using email is still one of the most powerful ways there is of building relationships with customers. Current customers, provided you look after them, are always your best prospects for future business, so email marketing used this way can also be a great technique for gaining repeat sales. Similarly, email marketing may convert those who weren’t ready to purchase on first contact by cultivating an ongoing relationship whereby you can push your message to your target audience and pull them back to your website. It’s perfect therefore, for engaging, educating, and retaining your valued customers, prospects and website visitors with efficient email communications that can maximize your marketing efforts. The true power of email is illustrated by the fact that over ninety percent of all Internet users and more than sixty percent of all Americans use email on a regular basis.

Spam

The latest statistics show that 80% of all email today is spam. Spamming means sending unsolicited commercial email using broadcast methods to multiple recipients without first establishing a relationship with them and without first asking if they are interested in hearing from you. Email marketing can be the best and most profitable tool for promotion, but it really must be done correctly and ethically to be acceptable. It has received very bad press lately due in large part to the numbers of unsolicited spam emails that cause problems for everyone. We’ve all become conscious of this misuse of our inboxes, so we should understand people’s frustrations and that you’ve got to send value, or your message will be misunderstood. Today’s ethical email marketer always operates on the understanding that the recipients of his messages have, in some way, already indicated an interest in his products or offers, or agreed in advance to receive them. That is why effective email marketing today is also sometimes referred to as permission marketing.

List Building And Maintenance

Once you have a decent sized email database you are ready to start your email campaigns but first you have to build that database (or email list, as it is more commonly known). There are various ways of doing this but the easiest is to put up an ‘opt-in’ form prominently on as many pages as possible of your website and offer some form of incentive for people to sign up. Be sure to respond to such sign-ups though by sending an email asking for them to confirm that they do indeed want to sign up, in case someone else used their address fraudulently. When they confirm, you can enter them on your list. There is software available that will automate the whole process for you. By supplying their email addresses, these people have given you permission, either explicit or implicit, to contact them by email. Ongoing list maintenance is essential, as is the need to ensure that every mail sent out is exciting and fresh. If your list members start to associate your emails with uninteresting or unimportant messages, they just won’t open them, or, if they do, it may well be just to find your opt-out link.

Effective Campaigning

It shouldn’t take long to set up and implement a campaign but for it to be truly effective, it has to be managed properly and conducted in a professional manner. High quality email campaigns can deliver effective messages that drive action and enhance customer relationships. By following some simple guidelines and practices, you can easily run effective email campaigns and ultimately enhance your own reputation too. A typical email campaign can deliver responses within forty eight hours if it hits the right target. The frequency at which you conduct your campaigns really depends on your aggressiveness and the amount of effort you put in but a good rule of thumb is not more than once a week and not less than every two months. Be sure to keep a close eye on your efforts to make sure that you are on-plan and remember that HTML email continues to produce higher click-through rates than text-based email (when sent to those who can receive it).

Preparation And Planning

Your first concern should be your email’s subject line because its job is to get the recipient to open the email. It should also, of course, specify the subject of the email. Before you send a single email (or if you’re already using email marketing, before you send another one), you must have a plan. It should detail how often you’ll do mailouts and the form your emails will take (newsletter, blog compilations, sale copy, etc) among other things. The content of your emails will be dictated by your plan but make sure that you do more than simply bombard your list members with offers. Come up with some original content in the form of advice, a ‘how-to’ piece or something similar. One of the surest ways of getting people to unsubscribe is to send emails that are confusing or pointless. Create a landing page for your email campaign, blending the page design with the message to reflect consistency and increase return on your investment. And provide real time tracking so that you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Summary

These days, most people’s first response when email marketing is mentioned is a negative one. Reading through this article, you’ve probably realized by now, if you didn’t already know, that email marketing is a critical part of the overall online marketing puzzle. We now know how to effectively and efficiently leverage email communications to ensure lasting and profitable customer relationships, strengthen our brand value and increase our returns on investment. So long as you do not abuse the hard-won permissions your list members have granted you, or otherwise violate accepted rules of netiquette, you will be well on your way to effective e-marketing and generating those high response rates. Email marketing increases your business and website traffic by putting you in regular contact with your target audience, your subscribers and future clients, to deliver effective messages with measurable results. I’ve had a few people mention that successful email marketing campaigns hinge on two main factors: 1, only give the reader one thing to do in the body of the email, and 2, compose the email (including the subject line) as if you were writing to your best friend. This helps foster the relationship even further, and doesn’t confuse the recipient of the email at the same time. By employing best practices as outlined in this piece and elsewhere on this site, marketers can deliver email campaigns that are both efficient and effective.

In this short but to the point article by Brian Tubbs, you will find some commonsense tips on one way to ensure that your emails get read: by getting them opened. You would probably be amazed to discover that more than 30% of the average marketer’s emails never even get opened. Find out how to make sure that you are not one of these ‘average communicators’.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Using The SubjectLine

No matter how high tech the world becomes in regards to communication, there are still the same old problems. With email, you face the same challenge as you do with regular mail: convincing the recipient to open the message (or envelope).

Look at it this way, how many emails do you send to the trash without ever reading them. So the main thing you have to figure out is how to get people to open your email before trashing it. The best way to do this is by using a subject line that grabs the readers attention.

By entering a subject line, you let the viewer get a good idea about what the email is about and whether or not it is worth it for them to open. It is like a guard, letting the receiver know whether the email should be opened. Below are some tips on how to write the best subject lines so people actually open your emails.

Say Something Important

Leaving the subject line blank isn’t an option. Nobody is going to open a email if they have no idea who it is from or what it’s about. For one reason, they don’t have time to be bothered. For another reason, the threat of email viruses makes people nervous.

Something that is just as useless as not entering anything, is entering something like Hi or Hello. Feel free to use subject lines like that for your friend and family. But using a subject line like that is not going to get you anywhere but broke.

Be Specific

People receive lots of email. Now if you want to get your email open you need to be specific in your subject line and let people know what you have to offer. If you put good information in the subject line along with the specifics about what you have to offer, then the chances that your email gets opened will increase.

Be Creative

How do you get the attention of someone who does not know you? Be creative.For example, Instead of using a term like ‘traffic’ use “Guaranteed Website Traffic”.

Spellcheck

Make sure that the spelling in your subject line is right. If people think you can’t spell, they are not going to open your email or buy anything from you.

Summing Up

By using these guidelines you will get more people to open your emails. Now it’s up to you. You can keep doing what you’re doing right now, or you can start getting more of your emails opened.

About The Author:

Start advertising with an email marketing list, and make sure to visit our site to find more info on email marketing and programs for your internet business.

This article by Gregg Housh covers that perennial old problem ‘spam‘, and the general insecurity and potential dangers that come with it. Email is basically an insecure communication method due to the ease with which an account may be opened (and abandoned when any nasty stuff might be suspected) and because, with the prevelance of  so much ‘underground’ software that can do virtually anything being so easy to come by, it can so easily be compromized.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Red Flags

Most of us are very familiar with the annoyance of spam (unsolicited e-mail ads). In recent years, these entirely unwanted emails have evolved into sophisticated attempts, very often successful, to avoid increasingly advanced filters and wary consumers. We have put together a list of red flags to help you quickly spot the commonest emails that may be harmful to your PC and your bank account.

Suspicious Attachments

Attaching files to an email is a quick and simple way to share with your friends and co-workers. The downside is that unscrupulous individuals can attach viruses and trojans within files in the hope that unwary recipients might download them and infect their computers. Whenever you receive an email with an attachment that you were not expecting, be careful about opening the attachment or even reading the email.

Links That Don’t Make Sense

In an email that claims to be from Yahoo, a link to a specific page on Yahoo’s site appears. So why does the text of the link not begin with “http://yahoo.com”? Because it’s a scam. Many hackers attempt to gain account information and credit card numbers by posing as respectable websites looking for information about your account. These emails typically have a link to a page where you can reset your password, confirm your credit card information, or log in to access some special new feature. To spot these bad links, you will need to look at the URL, the address of the page that is being linked to. All URLs begin with ‘http://’ or ‘htpps://’ and from there differ from website to website. If the URL isn’t visible in the link, you can hover your mouse over it and see it apelt out in the lower left corner of your web browser.

Accounts That You Don’t Have

Scam emails that disguise themselves as emails from major websites are betting on their recipients actually having accounts with that website in the first place. If you get an email about your FaceBook account when you never even signed up with FaceBook, the odds are very good that this is a scam or virus email.

Password Reset Requests

One of the most common email scams currently running is the fake password reset. These emails claim that you recently made a request for a new password, and direct you to a webpage where you can enter your old account name and password. You may be able to pick out these emails by the link URLs or because you do not have the account that you would theoretically be resetting a password for in the first place. Even if you don’t see anything wrong with the link or the account information, never respond to a password reset email that you did not specifically ask for.

False Sender Addresses

An official email from YouTube.com should be sent from an account that ends with @youtube.com. If joey5683426$$@ytmail.com is sending you official updates about your YouTube account, it’s a safe bet this too is a malicious email. If your email system hides sender information, you can change your settings to show full headers or usually click a link right in the email to show all of the sender information.

Money Transfer Plots

Frequently claiming to be from Nigerian royalty, these emails claim that there is some tremendous amount of money sitting in an account somewhere that the sender wants transfered to the US before something terrible happens to it. It’s not unusual for these emails to be completely in caps lock and poor English, although there are exceptions. These are ‘phishing’ attempts, trying to get your bank account information so that the sender can access your funds. No matter the pretense for the email, you should never share bank account information with anyone you don’t know. Newer varieties of these emails claim to be from ‘a member of your church’ or some similarly innocent-sounding source.

Emails From Friends

The most dangerous and difficult to pick out types of malicious emails are the ones that seem to come from your friends and other contacts. Typically, if you get a suspicious email from a friend or other contact, it’s either because, unknown to them, their PC has been infected by a virus or because their email account has been compromised. If you find an email from one of your contacts that contains strange characters in the subject, has attachments that you were not expecting, links to a file sharing site, or otherwise looks different from the emails you’re used to from that person, take the time to contact them before clicking on any links or downloading any attachments.

Emails From Yourself

These types of emails can be disturbing when you find them. If you find an email from your own account sitting in your inbox that you know you didn’t send (and you have not given anyone else access to your account) immediately change your password and security question for your account. Next, check out your ‘sent mail” folder to see if any other emails went out that you were unaware of. Let everyone who received one of these suspicious emails know that you did not send the emails, that they should not read them or click any links or attachments and that you suspect your account was compromised. You can also let your email provider know about your concerns. If this problem comes back, your machine may be infected and require virus cleanup service.

Summary

As users and email filters become more aware of these malicious emails, scammers will develop new schemes to get at your computer, bank account, and other information. The best weapon against these attacks is a healthy dose of skepticism, though even vigilant users can fall victim to scams and viruses. If you believe you may have a compromised email account or infected system, or if you just want to learn more about how to avoid these problems, give a professional a call.

About The Author

Gregg Housh is the Technician Manager at Geek Choice a Computer Repair company. Geek Choice solves computer problems such as: Slow computer, Virus Removal, and much more.

This article, written by Pri Anish Vag, presents a simplified outline of project activities that need to be developed by businesses looking into the possibility of marketing by email.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Promotional Activity

Email marketing is an essential promotional activity for businesses in today’s economy and commercial landscape. It is obviously more important for online companies than traditional bricks and mortar firms but nevertheless it applies to both.

Creating The Emails

The first step is to produce a set of emails that are informative and interesting to your customer. Studies show that customers need an average of 7-10 contacts before they will engage in making a transaction.

Sending Out The Emails

The next step is actually sending out the emails. Before this can even take place though, a customer database and an understanding of what your customers want, must be developed. For trade customers, the best way to build up this list is to ‘cold call’ (visit potential customers face to face or, sometimes, by telephone). Lists can be created using a number of methods including free sources (marketing list companies are often a waste of time).

An Example

Wine-Bag.co.uk, which sells gift packaging for wine, have developed a list of contacts from various sources. These sources include lists found on wine advertising portal magazines (such as ‘Decanter’), visiting trade shows, collecting business cards, and of course, actual people that have bought from their site. A great way to generate leads also is through a website email sign-up facility. This means offering something for free in return for the customer’s contact details.

Autoresponders

Once the database has been developed, technology comes into play that can really take the pain out of email marketing. Email autoresponders are software applications that can automatically send emails out to your customers. They can be configured to feed from the database and once loaded up with all the email text, they can send emails out periodically according to a pre-conceived schedule. Sometimes they can even be configured to segment the database to send mails to different customer groups at different points in the week.

About The Author

For the best quality wine bags and boxes, as well as, an excellent collection of wine bottle bags, please visit http://www.wine-bag.co.uk/. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service.

The following article by Mark Victor Balotelli covers the use of anti-spam filtering for users of Microsoft Exchange. If you like this piece, be sure to read his thumbnail bio at the end of the article.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Spam Filtering

Email spam filtering is the process of organizing incoming email according to specific criteria in order to eliminate unwanted messages. Spam filtering software plays the role of sorting mail in a bid to identify and remove any junk. Exchange spam filters are commonly installed on internet mail servers, on private network servers or on personal computers. They have the capacity to recognize spam and prevent its delivery. Exchange spam filters and spam emails play diametrically opposed roles whereby spam is effective if it is capable of evading filters whereas exchange spam filters are effective if they are capable of recognizing spam.

Unethical Mail

Spam mail can generally be regarded as unethical email that accumulates and lacks suitable header information. Spam email equally performs involuntary tracking after being opened thus spreading spyware as well as viruses. This unsolicited email generally plays the role of advertising the services and products of a particular company to potential customers who do not have any association with the company. It is common to find spam emails that are generally malicious rather than advertising the company services and products. In such instances, senders devise an approach to make emails appear similar to spam in the hope that recipients will visit a website and consequently allow virus downloading onto their particular computers.

Trojans, Viruses And Scams

In addition to the spread of malicious trojans as well as viruses, spam can be responsible for perpetuating phishing scams and this leads to spam filters being considered the proper means of protecting the network and the computer besides eliminating the junk mail. Exchange spam filters function by comparing parameters involving the configurable rules listings and the incoming mail. The settings of spam filters may, for example, be used for scrutinizing the subject heading of any incoming mail specifically for terms associated to pharmaceuticals and pornography in addition to other spam products that are common.

Subject Headings

The subject headings that spam generally includes are innocuous and personable and this increases the complication for the general spam ISP filters to differentiate between email that is legitimate and spam. Thus, certain spam emails have a chance of penetrating the internet mail servers onto the connected private networks and end-users. This is why most network administrators install spam filters and this is equally true with end-users who work from home. These are the sort that require intense configuration in order to catch junk mail and more so that which goes past spam filters that are configured online.

User Reviews

A similarity exists between exchange spam filters and certain programs, in the sense that they are not all equal. There is a spam filter which is presently regarded as intelligent and this is based on a statistical methodology. A comparison is made by this program between the set of user-defined rules and every incoming mail before spam can be identified based on mathematical probabilities. An exchange spam filter passes junk mail onto spam folders in the simplest configurations although mail that is legitimate is passed to the inbox. The user reviews the assignments before the mistakes are corrected. The exchange spam filter program is capable of recalling corrections and hence ensures that there is no potential repetition regarding this sort of mistakes.

About the Author

Using an Exchange spam filter is vital for business worldwide to protect users against a flood of spam, which causes unnecessary frustration and wastes time. GFI MailEssentials is the leading anti spam filter for Exchange and catches over 99% of spam.

The following piece by Arthur Rewob covers email marketing for newbies or established marketers, who want to move into this area or improve their email results. It is included here because it is a well thought-out treatise on four of the most important steps that need to be taken. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, be sure to visit the author’s site (the link to which can be found in the last paragraph).
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Introduction

Online and offline marketers have found a way to quickly build ‘success’ lists and monetize on their email subscribers. Follow up email lists are a critical tool for any marketer. Lists of 10, 100, 10,000 or 100,000 people are all valuable. A short term mistake however, is focusing only on the size of the list. List size does not produce results; we must learn and understand the strategies and programs it takes to build and monetize a list. We begin with laser focused lead generation, followed by targeted challenges, effective opt-in boxes and value driven follow up content for subscribers. These paragraphs will summarize four email marketing list building strategies and show you how to build a successful email marketing list.

Step One

Step one is to target your market or niche objectives. Business success comes from focused attention to a specific market’s needs. What are you trying to achieve? What service do you provide? What problem can you fix? Look at the big picture of your business and then plan effective marketing programs, timelines and milestones to accomplish predetermined goals. Develop a series of messages to lead your target audience to your offer page. We accomplish this with traffic methods.

Step Two

Step two is strong and focused traffic generation. Traffic (people reading your content) is the foundation of success in the Internet marketing world. That’s seems simple. What is not obvious is what needs to be done to develop this traffic.

For example, there is organic traffic, paid ads, referral incentives, and many offline ways of generating online traffic. Some marketers spend $10,000 a month on Google Adwords, some incentivize with affiliate commissions and some employ teams to generate and publish content. If you are an Internet marketing newbie, the vast amount of differing methods that are available can be overwhelming. In the end, traffic depends on how much time you have, how much you have to spend and how good a manager you are.

Step Three

Step three is well placed lead capturing or “opt-in” forms. Once we create a steady stream of readers, our opt-in box gives people the ability to ask for more information. To increase our opt-in numbers we use incentives to coax prospective clients to leave a name and email address. The more value you give away the higher the opt-in rate.

Step Four

Step four is to follow-up your subscribers. Again value is the key. After subscribing to your list, people are going to look for valuable knowledge, ‘feel good’ entertainment or relevant information about what you are doing and how they can benefit. When your prospect’s perceived benefit is higher than the perceived monetary value then they will be willing to purchase whatever it is that you have available for sale.

Mail-Outs

Experienced marketers differ on how many messages to send to a list in any given week. Aggressive marketers or guru’s send several times a day. The downside is that this practice causes rapid list burn-out or churn. Consistent and valuable information is the key. Emailing valuable information two or three times a week cuts down on churn and increases reader interest. Longer periods tend to decrease retention and your list will get stale.

Summary

These four steps are the basis of a profitable email marketing plan and the key to building a valuable list. Follow-up lists are basic building blocks for any online or offline business. This is where the gold is. Each and every subscriber is a potential sale so treat them as if they were live customers and write to them as you would speak to them in person.

About The Author

We scoured every corner of the Internet to find everything you ever wanted to know about Proven Networking Secrets. Here is the absolute best source we uncovered, Home Based Business Leads.

In accordance with our policy of including ‘email marketing‘ topics in this blog, we are pleased to post the following article by Matthew Krause. In it he espouses a few short and to-the-point tips on making your emails more acceptable and more likely to be read. Please also check out the About The Author paragraph.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Effective Email

In today’s world, the ability to write an effective email has never been more important, especially for business owners and professionals. With this in mind, here are a few tips for writing more effective emails.

Have A Meaningful Subject Line

Subject lines give the reader an idea of what they can expect upon opening the email. Having a subject line that’s unrelated to the email is a recipe for miscommunication and possible disaster. Anything that appears insignificant could very well get lost in the shuffle. A subject line needs to contain information that’s not only important to the reader but interesting as well

Stay Focused

Figure out what your message is and stick to it. If you have several messages, it’s actually better to write several emails. This will ensure that each message has focus, enabling the reader to respond to them (or not) with equal focus. Also, always begin your email with your most important points. It’s been shown that most people scan emails, losing interest the further they go.

Play By The Rules

Follow the rules of standard capitalization and spelling. Capitalizing everything is equivalent to shouting, and using all lower case is amateurish at best. Proper capitalization will be better received.

Also, avoid using fancy fonts as well as your ‘Tab’ button. Many people’s email readers aren’t equipped to handle strange fonts or indentations. Use standard fonts such as Times New Roman or Arial. When you begin a new paragraph, try skipping a line rather than tabbing over.

Avoid Spamming and Attachments

Everyone has at least one friend who has sent so many frivolous emails that you no longer even bother to look at his or her messages. Don’t become that person.

Be Nice

Being overly critical in an email or disciplining via email is tacky and can lead to more trouble. It’s also important to keep in mind that email is not always confidential. What you write may be used against you down the road.

Proofread, Proofread, Proofread

Regardless of the author, if an email is being sent out on your behalf, it is your responsibility to proofread it. Not just once, but two or three times.

About The Author

Looking to find the best deal on Mortgage Emails, then visit www.flmortgagelink.com to find the best advice on Email Techniques for you.

This article by John Stewart espouses the value of email marketing. Out of the many alternative marketing strategies available online, email marketing, or bum marketing as it is sometimes known, is still as relevant as ever; and probably will remain so. After all, ‘content’ will always be king of the Internet.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

A List Of Loyal Readers

If you have a capture page, blog site, or website, then you know the importance of email marketing. Effective email marketing gives you the ability to send out newsletters and e-mails that build the confidence of your prospects so that they will be interested in you and buying from you.

Generally, the definition for email marketing is building a list of loyal readers that you can make sales to through e-mail promotions.

If you want your readers to hear from you again and again, good content is essential so that readers feel like you are a valuable asset to them. You need to give them good ideas and information that will help them to progress in their business

Making Email Profitable

What makes email marketing profitable?

1. It’s immediate. You can contact hundreds of people immediately with the same message.

2. It can be tailored to each prospect by categorizing your list. Then you will have the information that is most relevant to each prospect for your email campaigns.

3. It can become infectious. As one person sees the value of the information and products you offer, they will naturally want to share it with each one of their friends and contacts, helping you to become more widely known.

4.  It’s inexpensive. Using e-mail to communicate with your prospects is much cheaper than traditional direct mail campaigns.

Email Etiquette

One thing you need to keep in mind if you don’t want to have problems with your email marketing campaigns. You must use accepted email etiquette.

First, when you have someone ‘opt in’, or subscribe, to your email list, make sure you verify that you have permission to return the contact on a regular basis. Only when you have the permission of the person that you’re marketing to will campaigns work. Without this permission, you will more than likely never get past this prospect’s spam filters.

Also remember that permission loses its power over time. No matter how you get someone’s email address, don’t wait to contact them. You need to send something right away. If you wait weeks or months, or even days, they will probably forget who you are and what you are about. So they might just delete it or maybe even unsubscribe from your list. So be sure to send them a welcome email. Maybe give them something with your most recent blog post, hopefully something of real value right away. Then they will have you fresh in their mind and look forward to your next message.

It is important that you include an unsubscribe link or an opt out link giving them instructions how to be removed from your list. If they opt out, take them off immediately, at least within 10 days. Remember, it’s the law if they unsubscribe, you must remove their name. Otherwise you could be branded as as a spammer. Make sure prospects know what they are signing up for and use an autoresponder service like Get-Response or Aweber. They will help you take care of this issue.

One other thing to remember is that your prospects are people. Don’t just try to sell them something every time you contact them, telling them how urgent it is that they buy now. Give them value. Give them tips and information that they can use, include a funny story or just tell them a little something about yourself. Let them know that you’re a human, and that you want to treat them the same way. And the best way to keep your email out of the spam folder is to never use words like ‘free’, ‘money’ or ‘bonus’, and never write using the CAPS Lock key.

About the Author

Want more network marketing information on Email Marketing? Then visit John Stewart’s site. You can also get a ton of essential marketing tools for your needs.

The following article on email marketing for retailers has kindly been submitted for your enlightenment by Pri Anish Vag, to whom we are very grateful. As stated in the article, this form of customer contact is not used to anything like the extent that is warranted by the amount of goodwill it can generate. Now that the Internet is maturing, perhaps that will start to change.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Contact Method

Email marketing is a contact method that is highly undervalued and underused by retailers. It is a tool that can be used to great effect by traditional retailers but hardly ever is. The main advantage with this form of marketing and advertising is that it is free.

It is also a medium that can put products and services straight in front of potential customers. It can also be tailored to individual customers’ needs and provide a direct link to a website that sells the products or services it mentions.

It has been proved that most customers do not necessarily buy a product or service upon the first contact with the seller. Indeed it can take up to 8 or 10 contacts before a customer buys. Given this, the retailer of goods and services who can maintain contact over a long period of time will be the retailer that is uppermost in the customer’s mind at the point at which they are ready to buy. However, the trick is to keep in the customer’s mind without boring them.

Keep Them Interested

Therefore the contacts that are made must be something of interest to the customer. For example, the wine packaging retailer (www.Wine-Bag.co.uk) which sells gift packaging for wine, is offering a service by which customers can log onto the website and sign up for a series of gift wrapping tutorials.

These tutorials show how ribbons and bows sold by the retailer can be combined with boxes and bags, also sold by the retailer, to enhance gifts and turn otherwise bland products into an attractive gift using easy and quick presentation and wrapping techniques.

The Art Of Giving

Not only is it essential that the email contact is something of interest but it is also important that there also be an element of the promotion that is also free. Let’s face it, everybody loves a freebie! In the example described, the emails feature a link to a video that provides free knowledge about how to put together attractive, elegant, yet simple to implement gift packaging.

About the Author

In Part (1) of this article we looked at targeted email marketing, first from the point of choosing an electronic newsletter (or ezine) over a transparently false ‘personal letter’ (unless, that is, you have a particular talent for creating them), and next we looked at what we need to know in order to ensure that our newsletter is truly effective. This was determined by asking three questions:

1. What do they (the readers) think of us (the organization represented by the newsletter)?
2. What would we like them to think?
3. How do we get them to think it?

Armed with the knowledge gained from answering these questions, and by using ‘balanced content’, we can more efficiently achieve our goal. Part (2), then, is about what our goal is (or should be) and what type of content is likely to get us there.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Promoting Goodwill

Of the three questions, the latter is the most important and therefore the one that needs most careful thought. Practically every day I see examples of newsletters that don’t pay enough heed to question 3. They read like flyers and get clicked to the trash without hesitation by most readers. A sure-fire way of losing readers is to miss the opportunity to disseminate information and promote goodwill and, instead, try to sell a product or service. A sales spiel in a newsletter (even a marketing newsletter) under the guise of editorial, will invariably have the opposite effect to that which is intended. A newsletter is not a brochure or a catalog.

The Prime Objective

For many managers and entrepreneurs this begs the question “if I can’t use our own newsletter to sell our product (or service) then what is the point of it?” They sideline newsletters altogether when they don’t get a satisfactory answer. Practical and busy people do not want to be involved in something the benefits of which are vague or difficult to quantify. If they can’t measure a practical result they start to doubt that the effort is worthwhile. Unfortunately, this thinking results from a basic misunderstanding of the role of PR in the marketing mix—to create an atmosphere of trust and goodwill. These are crucial elements in the sales process; they must exist for a sale to take place. This is precisely why newsletters are just as important a tool for organizations that sell things as they are for special interest groups, non-profits etc.

Trust

Trust comes from people knowing who they are dealing with. A regular newsletter sends a message to readers that they are dealing with a valid concern, probably with an established clientele, and in business for the long haul. Likewise, once they perceive you (or the person or organization represented by the newsletter) as an expert in your particular field they will trust your advice.

Goodwill

Goodwill is a result of doing good things and telling people about them. A newsletter is the perfect communication vehicle for this. They may be things that involve time and effort, or even money, like supporting charities or other good causes. Even the very act of publishing a newsletter can itself be a ‘good thing’ if done properly. Helping people by announcing upcoming events, reporting past events, offering free advice (such as running an ‘Ask the Expert’ column) can all be seen as offering a valuable community service that engenders goodwill.

Why Readers Read Newsletters

Once you come to terms with the fact that one of the primary purposes of a good newsletter or ezine is to promote trust and goodwill, and that, for entrepreneurial concerns, this has a positive effect on the company bottom line, you probably need to be reminded that readers read it for entirely different reasons. They want to be informed, amused and even entertained. News is an essential component of a newsletter and, since the focus of most newsletters is fairly tight, so too should be the type of news featured. A fund-raising organization’s newsletter, for example, could report how funds are used, including perhaps some personal interest stories about individuals affected by the group’s efforts, personnel involved, future plans and goals etc. Similarly, a club newsletter might have the usual types of club news (committee meetings etc) plus details of tournaments planned (if its a sports club), reminders about club rules and so on. An employee newsletter or HR newsletter would have news about retiring personnel, new people joining, company news including policy explanations, success stories like contracts won etc.

One question that is sometimes asked is “what about marketing newsletters? If I can’t sell my products or services, what do I include?” The answer is that you can, of course, promote these things in your newsletter but avoid the temptation of using editorial content to do so. It is far better to publish ‘reviews’ of your products or services in such a way that the publication itself appears to retain its independence. As regards content in general, report on your general field of expertise. In other words a hairdresser might include news about a new product range she is trialing as well as featuring supporting items on hair care, the latest hair fashions etc. A Real Estate newsletter could have news about current market trends in her area plus things like ‘How to add value to your home’, ‘The pros and cons of solar heating’ etc.

Hard News Or Soft News

Worth noting also is the value of being able to balance hard news (up-to-the-minute facts) with soft news (unusual, little-known, quirky or amusing facts such as magazines use). Plenty of soft news items, suitable for many types of newsletter, are available at ClipCopy Content Solutions and more are being added all the time.

With hard news, try to follow the journalist’s code: what happened, where, why, how and when did it happen and who did it happen to? Many community events could be described as soft news and they can be particularly valuable in almost all locally and regionally distributed newsletters, especially when coverage can be seen as a service to the community.

In Summary

To sum up then, the primary goals of a newsletter, regardless of the type of organization publishing it, should be to:

1. Promote trust and goodwill towards the principal organization on the part of the target group.
2. Disseminate information to the target group about the principal organization.

This is best achieved by using a good balance of:

• Hard news.
• Soft news.
• Supporting material.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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Put as simply as possible, targeted marketing means directing your promotional efforts at a specific group of potential prospects. In general, the easier it is to define the group concerned, the easier it will be to match their needs and wants with suitable products or services, as well as other things of interest to them.

In the case of email marketing, the group must, of course, have access to email. This then gives you two options. You can either try to win their confidence by adopting the stance of a friend who is emailing advice and offers with a ‘goodness of heart’ motive, or you can adopt the slightly more formal approach of an email newsletter (often nowadays referred to as an ezine). Which of the two you choose should be a matter of understanding your own personality and, dare I say it, recognizing the limitations of your own ‘person to person comfort zone’.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Email ‘Letter’ Or Email Newsletter

Choosing to communicate with your target group by means of an email ‘letter’ (in other words, on a person to person basis) is fraught with problems. In the first place, you are not, strictly speaking, a friend. Even if you address them by first name, which you should always do, they know perfectly well that the same email is being sent to hundreds, or even thousands, of others. Therein too lies one of the problems: the more successful you are the bigger your list, yet the hollower you sound to someone who knows he or she is just one of many. To make this kind of contact work you need to have a real talent for it. You need to be able to project a likeable personality through a particular style of writing that they quickly come to recognize as yours.

Communicating by newsletter, on the other hand, has far fewer drawbacks. It’s a more ‘up front’ approach without any undertones of duplicity. It can follow a much more recognizable format too where the reader knows what to expect in advance and appreciates the fact that what they are getting is more of an ‘information sheet’ than a private letter. In fact, regardless of the means of distribution (i.e. whether by email or not) newsletters are created solely for communicating with groups. That is what they are best at.

Effective Group Communication

Take the word ‘group’ out of the heading above and the subject of this section might be about any one of a whole range of competing media. For example, the telephone might be thought of as one of the most effective communication tools of all time. Then again a good argument could be put for television. Or newspapers. Or radio, or… , well, you get the idea. The point is that every form of media has its strengths and, accordingly, its proponents. But by including the word ‘group’, the field is narrowed dramatically and only one stands out way above its competitors: the newsletter. Newsletters, whether sent by email or post, or any other distribution method, are absolutely the number one tool for communicating with groups.

It doesn’t matter who comprises a group. They might be formal members of an organization large or small, or they might be seemingly disparate people who just happen to have a common interest. The key word is ‘common’. A group consists of people who have something in common. They may be customers, prospects, employees, club members, family members, etc; in fact there are an infinite number of possible groupings.

How Public Is Public?

You may be forgiven for asking why, if this is the case, newsletters are so often suggested as being ideal for public relations. Surely the term ‘public’ implies the general populace, doesn’t it? Well, er… no, actually. Put simply, what is meant by ‘public relations’, or, as it is better known, PR, is how an entity’s public, i.e. its target market or group with a common affinity, relates to your organization and your organization to it. For example, if you publish a school newsletter under the auspices of the P&C Association of the local school, your publics would include all parents of children at the school, the schoolchildren themselves, the school’s teachers, neighbors of the school, other community groups you look to for assistance such as Rotary, local media, companies in your area, and so on. All these groups will have contact with, or be affected by, the activities of your association.

Largely as a result of this misunderstanding, the term public relations has often been misused. Over the years it has become incorrectly associated with propaganda (particularly for government groups) and confused with advertising. It is, admittedly, difficult to define because it encompasses such a broad range of techniques. The best all-round definition I know is ‘promoting goodwill’ for a company, government body, individual, or the like; in other words, the practice of working to present a favorable image. And certainly this is the area where newsletters, whether they are ezines or of the ‘hard copy’ variety, excel.

What To Include

You don’t need to be an expert on how to write a newsletter to work out what needs to be included for your newsletter to be most effective. It is important to first evaluate your organization’s current image. This can be achieved by asking the following questions:

• What do people think of us?
• What would we like them to think?
• How do we get them to think well of us?

Don’t assume you know all the answers. Conduct some research and find out what people really think of your organization. Talk to representatives of your ‘public’ and ask them to assist you by giving an honest assessment of how they see the organization. You can’t improve your image if you don’t know what it is!

The Balancing Act

Finally, put together your newsletter’s content and present it in as balanced a form as possible. The issue of balance is crucial. It isn’t necessary to labor over it, though. The very act of striving for balance should, in most cases, ensure that you have it. After all, it’s not an exact science! Just try to make sure you include enough humor to offset any technical or complex material. Balance your ‘must-include’ items with fun or trivial items. Include something graphical (such as a cartoon, crossword or diagram) on pages with a lot of tight text.

The balance we are concerned with here is in terms of newsletter content. There are other issues to do with the look of your newsletter that you might want to consider, such as balancing large areas of print with a reasonable proportion of white space. Whatever you do though, avoid using numerous typefaces in the one publication. This is a common mistake among ‘newbies’.

Part (2) of this article will look more closely at the specifics of ‘content’ in creating a newsletter or ezine for communicating with a group.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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There are basically two kinds of email newsletter template: plain text and HTML. Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages so a publisher’s choice of one over the other needs to be carefully thought through. It’s the circumstances under which they operate, and the outcome they want, that will determine which they choose in the end.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Plain Text Or HTML?

Plain text templates are produced using ASCII, which is the in-built protocol that all computers use to interpret any keyboard input and is most often seen in Notepad (or any other text editor) or when using an email client with HTML switched off. ASCII output cannot be formatted, hence the term ‘plain text’.

HTML templates, on the other hand, use the language of the World Wide Web to interpret the author’s keyboard input and therefore can be formatted in any number of ways, such as by using different fonts, different styles and by including graphics, tables, hyperlinks and so on.

I don’t know what the comparative usage statistics are for each but there are pros and cons, as there are with most things, that can help you decide which is most appropriate for you. This section offers a small number to choose from, complete with thumbnail descriptions.

Plain Text Newsletter Templates

This type tend to be hard to come by but the best that we know of are our own Text Newsletter Templates. These are monthly plain text newsletters or ezines that are already populated with balanced copy such as articles, anecdotes, jokes etc. They are also seasonally correct, which means that the December editions celebrate Christmas, February centers around St Valentine and so on. Permission is granted to add to or replace the copy already included and there are very few restrictions on usage. They cover a three year period.

HTML Newsletter Templates

There are a lot of these available on the Internet, ranging from simple inexpensive ones up to the ‘hi-tech’ snazzy types that can sometimes be somewhat costly. The main one we offer here is called Ultimate Newsletter Templates; an excellent example of the less expensive variety whilst at the same time offering professional quality graphics. The alternative to this offering is the Ezine Machine, which is an HTML ezine editor program that includes a set of templates.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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As a genuine software tool it had great appeal. Many similarly promoted programs are often little more than a list of submission directories together with instructions that need following. Ezine Announcer’s main promise was that it actually takes the hard work out of the necessary actions.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

The Promise

A one or two click solution, if you like. Also, the comprehensive nature of the program had great appeal. Submitting to directories on the web by form entries is only part of the program. It also boasts quite impressive emailing capabilities, where this is necessary, including the use of templates and personalization of messages. As a database oriented program it can also be used to record everything, such as what actions were taken and when, what actions are pending etc. Compared to many comprehensive software tools it is quite inexpensive too, at less than $70 including a money back guarantee and lifetime upgrades as the product is improved and updated. Database additions and amendments are available from its home website. Last but not least, for me, is that it can be on-sold by recommendation through an affiliate (reseller) program.

The Real World

Well, those are the promises! But how does it stack up in the real world? Before I answer this, let me make one thing clear. This article only includes my first impressions and first impressions tend to be shallower than when one has enjoyed a more prolonged period of familiarization. Further reviews of this software will follow and I fully expect them to be more positive. Having said that though, first impressions do affect one’s approach to something and in the case of tasks coming under the heading ‘work’, have a bearing on whether the task is looked forward to or avoided at all costs! In the case of Ezine Announcer I have to admit to approaching each session with some degree of trepidation!

Investing Time

The main reason for this is that it’s not, in my opinion, a very intuitive piece of software. This, admittedly, is a difficult thing to quantify. However, suffice to say that I am a fairly experienced user of a large number of applications and my experience goes right back to the old days of DOS as an operating system. The main advance in the evolution of software has been in the area of intuitiveness. Intuitive software allows common procedures to produce expected outcomes, such as right-clicking an object resulting in a pop-up menu and so on. Non-intuitive software produces unexpected outcomes or no outcome at all. Ezine Announcer seems to need further development in this respect. This doesn’t imply that it’s a bad program but it definitely affects the incline of the learning curve, which is a pity if your main reason for investing in it was to save time.

Help Files

To make matters worse the Help files don’t always seem to help much. It seemed that the majority of things I tried to look up didn’t even get a mention. There’s no detailed explanation of menus either or shortcut buttons (though, to be fair, all buttons feature hover captions, which is an important intuitive feature). There are, however, a number of other assistance files available as separate downloads, such as PDF files and tutorials on video as well as a 2 Part ‘Getting Started’ course by email. These are all excellent, especially the video files, which I believe are indispensable to a newcomer to this program. Unfortunately the videos only scratch the surface when it comes to teaching the full range of what it can do which, I suppose, is a compliment to its comprehensiveness. I believe that more video tutorials are planned though, so I don’t want to sound too negative in regard to their coverage.

Specifics

There are a number of specific points I could raise as shortcomings but, since they would mean nothing except to people who have a passing knowledge of the program, there is not much point in mentioning them here. The most significant point I can report is that the creator of the software, Jason Potash, seems a very amenable character who listens enthusiastically to criticisms, takes them on board, and seems willing to put things right. Time will tell to what extent this proves the case.

Wrap-Up

All in all I think Ezine Announcer will prove a valuable addition to any ezine (or mailing list) publisher’s arsenal of marketing tools. It may even prove to be the only one necessary. I will update this report in due course to let you know how I’ve found it with the passage of time and subsequent to the free upgrades. In the meantime, should you want to try it, there is a 30-day trial version available.

© 2000 Mike Alexander, All Rights Reserved

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Many people believe that the proliferation of spam (unsolicited commercial email or ‘UCE’) is leading to a future where email will become virtually unusable. Some think this is a gross exaggeration and that spam is nothing more than a minor irritation. Should newsletter publishers who distribute their tomes by email be concerned about what people think about the issue? Of course! Because ezine readers are those people.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

An Average Day

I get, on average, about 200 spam emails a day. They attempt to market everything from ‘stop smoking’ cures to job opportunities that promise you’ll be a millionaire within 3 months for doing practically nothing. Do you get as much? Maybe you get even more. If not, just wait a while. It’s only a matter of time before your email address will appear on a mailing list that’s available for sale. No-one will tell you it’s been included. The first you’ll know about it is when you start getting dozens of messages from complete strangers making outrageous claims about things you’re not interested in and wouldn’t buy off them even if you were. The longer you’ve been online, the more lists your email address(es) appear on. And the more junk mail you get.

Scams

Scams abound. In fact, the terms ‘spam’ and ‘scam‘ are virtually synonymous. Many are sex related, like body part enlargement pills and other quite laughable wares. Not all are so amusing though. Some unsolicited emails I’ve received included actual pictures of such things as bestiality and child sex. I’m a man of the world and shrug off such intrusions but I’d hate to have had such images presented to my children when they were young.

Nuisance Value

But isn’t it all just a nuisance really? After all, shouldn’t parents be ultimately responsible for what their children view on the Internet? And besides, what’s all this got to do with newsletters?

Spam And Your Readers

The answer to the first question (isn’t it all just a nuisance…), from the average reader’s point of view, is obviously “yes” but without the prefix ‘just’. It’s an awful time-wasting nuisance and a major intrusion for many people. The answer to the second (shouldn’t parents be ultimately responsible…), in my opinion, is also “yes”, but therein lies the heart of the problem. The answer to the third, (what’s it got to do with newsletters…), is “a lot”, if you use email for distribution. It’s the way the general public (in other words, your readers) deal with the problem that counts. You need to know what measures they are taking to combat it and how that affects your mailings.

The Popular Solution

By its very nature, spam is unsolicited and unasked for. Therefore the only way to prevent it completely is to stop using email altogether. Obviously, this is far too radical a solution for the vast majority of people, which is why they opt for the slightly less radical alternative of spam filtering. This is a process whereby software is used to scan incoming mail for common spam words and phrases, such as “$$$”, “!!!”, “Special Offer”, “porn” etc., and blocks any emails containing them. This is by far the most popular way of handling the problem and the chances are that a large and growing proportion of your readers are using this type of software.

ISP Filtering

It’s not just individuals, though. Some people’s mail is being filtered before it even gets to them. In an attempt to reduce the number of complaints they have to deal with, an increasing number of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are also using such software on all incoming email in the hope that spam never even reaches their customers’ Inboxes.

Spam Filter Flaws

Spam filters have already gone well past the point of blocking legitimate emails from delivery, especially in the case of newsletters. This is because such ordinary things as ‘opt-out’ (unsubscribe) instructions, and many common phrases used by ezine publishers, are now designated ‘spam-like’ by a lot of filtering software. If you’ve been wondering why so many of your mailings bounce, even on first dispatch, this is very likely the reason. If bouncing doesn’t seem to have been a problem for you so far, you’ve just been lucky. It’s only a matter of time before you begin having the same problem.

The Vicious Circle

Spammers retaliate against spam filtering software by employing counter techniques such as ‘funky punctuation’, as Janet Roberts of List-News calls it. This attempts to disguise words, as in “p*rn”. You will, I’m sure, have seen many similar examples. This is where the tit-for-tat merry-go-round starts. Eventually, of course, so many words, phrases and possible permutations of funky punctuation will be filtered that the language itself will be called into question. You, as an ezine publisher, will find yourself spending increasing amounts of precious time trying to figure out how to get past filters that were meant to stop spam, not you. And every time you succeed you know that the spammers will too. It’s a vicious circle.

Spam Checkers

One solution that has appeared recently is a spam filter flagging tool. There are now several available online that let you check your ezine for spam ‘triggers’, thereby allowing you to make amendments so that they get through. These are an excellent short-term solution but, in the long term they are going to diminish in usefulness as the number of potential triggers increase. After all, what’s the use of fine detail when you already know that half the words and phrases in the English language are going to ring an alarm? And never forget that these will be popular tools for spammers as well.

Lesser Evil

As long as spammers emulate genuine emails, and they always will, any measures aimed at weeding them out, especially by keyword filtering, will also kill off messages that potential recipients would have preferred to receive. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to deter people from using them. It seems that losing the occasional message is considered the lesser evil.

My Solution

As an addition to providing the option of plain text and HTML formats, why not provide an onsite version as well? This is simply the HTML version on a static webpage. All recipients whose email bounces can then get a short email containing ‘bare bones’ information with links to the content where it appears on this site. This is the method I’ll be using for the 101 Newsletter Answers ezine from now on.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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Spam generally means unsolicited commercial (bulk) email. If your situation is anything like mine, you will receive quite enough email already without having to deal with masses of spam as well. I now receive, on average, over 500 unasked for and unwanted messages a day, and it’s still increasing. I know others who get several times that amount. But for ezine publishers there are more things to consider than just the volume of spam coming into your Inbox. As an email distributor, you need to be aware of certain hazards and take steps to safeguard yourself against them wherever possible.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Getting Listed

In order to be able to take such steps effectively it is a good idea first to understand how addresses are collected and distributed. Most email addresses on spam lists are ‘harvested’ automatically by robots, sometimes called URL spiders. These search for and instantly recognize email addresses on websites, newsgroups etc, and can add many hundreds an hour to their database of addresses until it eventually grows into millions. They are then often touted as (put your tongue in your cheek) ‘opt-in’ collections and sold by using the same spam methods they have been collected for. Once an email address is on one of these lists it is practically impossible to do anything about it. For instance, many such collections are distributed in hard copy form such as on CD or DVD, and therefore trying to do anything about them is like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Preventive measures are far preferable, such as disguising email addresses on websites and in newsgroup posts so that the bots won’t recognize them. There are several ways to do this, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the right one depends on your circumstances.

The Spamming Mentality

Another thing you need to understand is how spammers think. My guess is that most are ordinary people, probably totally new to the Internet, who get hooked into joining scams or buying lists of email addresses in the hope of making instant riches in return for very little work. In other words, they are the type of people who fall for spam themselves and presumably think that everyone else is as gullible as they are. Not understanding the culture of cyberspace or having any notion of ‘netiquette’, they mistakenly think that selling on the Internet equates exactly to Mail Order, as it’s called in the real world, the only difference being that costs, in the form of email transmissions, are microscopic in comparison. When they discover that response rates are equally microscopic, they do what human beings always do in such situations: they redouble their efforts. Those that have leaders (people in their ‘upline’, as the jargon goes) are told that it’s a numbers game and are urged to ignore all the complaints they’ve started getting and press on with even greater vigor. Depending how much they’ve invested in terms of money or time or whatever, this can go on for quite some time before they give up disillusioned. Until that time though, they quite literally ‘go for broke’.

Spam Reactions

Unfortunately the recipients of their endeavors, people like you and me, can feel as if they’re under attack and that relentless persistence in the face of rejection proves that spammers are either vicious or half crazy (and sometimes they are!). Because of the deluge of rubbish that results from being on one of these lists, some people get quite desperate looking for ways to combat it.

In fact there are only a limited number of sensible options available. Diverting what you can by using your email program’s filtering software is the favorite (most modern email applications come with one included). The rest are then deleted by hand. This is time-consuming but changing email addresses is the only other real option, which would be very much a last resort for most people. Desperation though, can sometimes be so great that all reason flies out of the window and herein lies the core problem for ezine publishers. Some spam recipients try to take revenge, and it’s these revenge-seekers who can inadvertently or carelessly cause havoc.

Reporting Spam

The commonest way they seek revenge is by trying to ‘dob in’ perceived perpetrators by reporting them to their ISPs, their web server providers and/or to anti-spam organizations, of which there are several. The trouble with this, apart from the fact that it doesn’t make the slightest difference to the amount of spam received, is that many ISPs or web presence providers don’t have time to investigate the validity of such accusations and take the easy way out by erring on the side of the complainant. If the complainant is mistaken (for example, if they forget that they ever subscribed to an ezine and just mistook it for spam), and sometimes they are, it’s no big deal for them. But it might be a disaster for the innocent ezine publisher.

In the case of anti-spam organizations, some are so fanatical in their determination to hound spammers out of business that they fail to properly check the facts before turning their anger on the so-called wrongdoer – who might, in fact, be entirely innocent.
You would probably be surprised how easy it is to be blacklisted as a spammer, or even have your ezine or website closed down, by an over-enthusiastic ISP or web host.

Address Spoofing

Most spammers try to disguise their real identity by using free temporary return addresses (such as through Hotmail or Yahoo), or even completely false ones, but some try to look genuine by using someone else’s address. These are often picked at random from the very spam lists they are using but occasionally a malicious spammer might deliberately choose the address of someone against whom they’ve decided to harbor a grudge. The reason is obvious. Address spoofing, as it’s usually called, is done to avoid the howls of anger that their spam generates, so what better way to get even with someone than by arranging for them to receive it instead? This is why I advise against reacting to spam by trying to track down the real people behind it in the vain hope of reasoning with them. Not only are they unlikely to listen to reason but they commonly retaliate in just this way against anyone who tries to point out the error of their ways.

I’ve always stood firmly against spam and, as a result, have been attacked in this way more than once. One of my self-appointed enemies took it upon himself (or herself) to enter spam on as many website guestbooks as he/or she could find and sign off each entry with my email address. I found out about it when someone wrote a complaining email to me. She was understandably incensed that someone who took such a strong stand against spam (she had checked my site) had resorted to spamming her guestbook. I politely asked her to check her site statistics, which should prove that it was someone other than me who had visited her site that day. I have no idea whether she bothered or not because I never heard from her again.

Mail Bombing

Or they might try another way to get back at you. After I wrote two articles about the new scourge of what I call website spam, otherwise known as Scumware (see 101 Internet Answers), I was bombarded with more spam as well as hundreds of completely pointless messages, all aimed at the autoresponder addresses I’d set up for people to download the articles. I had to close down the autoresponders and use a different site address to stop the campaign before it completely jammed my server and its associated mailbox. So beware! We’re talking about near psychopaths here.

What To Do

First, always include unsubscription procedures clearly in every issue of your ezine. Avoid using the word ‘unsubscribe’ though, as it’s commonly filtered by anti-spam software. Make sure your instructions actually work (correct unsub address etc). Stick to the same format so that your ezine is instantly recognizable to subscribers. Include an identifier in the email subject field for the same reason. This can also be a help to your subscribers in that they can use it, if they wish, to filter your posts straight into a predetermined folder for later reading. Consider a ‘double opt-in’ system for new subscriptions. And so on. If your subscribers become familiar with what your publication looks like and the methodology you use they are far less likely to mistake it for spam.

It is also essential to keep records, including actual emails whenever possible, of all subscriptions and other relevant material so that you can show them in your defense in the event of an unjust accusation. It shouldn’t be necessary to prove your innocence; the burden of proof should be on the accuser but, unfortunately, that isn’t how it works in the real world.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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There has been a lot of talk extolling the virtues of email marketing but there is not a lot of information about exactly what is meant by it. Is it just a matter of sending out normal emails or is there a standard method—and if so what is it? The answer is, “no, there is no standard”, but the generally preferred method is by means of a newsletter that follows a standard format. The advantage is that a newsletter, because of its mastery for communicating with groups, gets the message across in a friendly, but not too personal, way. In other words, it projects an air of professionalism.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Creating A Winning Sales Environment

With business to business email marketing, standard optin email marketing, do it yourself email marketing, or in fact with any kind of marketing by email, especially email marketing for a small business using an email marketing template, nearly all sales can receive a significant boost if properly managed email marketing newsletters are used. The secret is in offering well balanced information in a carefully prepared package that both informs and entertains. This, then, helps create a winning sales environment, which should be the main goal of most marketing and PR newsletters.

Newsletter Content Ideas

So, what type of content is best for a newsletter? If you use material that focuses on the general area of the company’s operations, especially tips and advice items, you won’t go far wrong. For example, Pruning Hints for a gardening tool manufacturer, or Safety Tips For The Home for a household insurance broker. Too tight a focus and you can run out of ideas very quickly but, if you cast a wide enough net, you should always have fresh and compelling subject matter for your target readership. Never allow the company or its services or products to become the only item of attention or even the main focus. That’s fine for a brochure or catalog but a newsletter needs to win readers, and therein lies it’s strength.

How Do You Get Proper ‘Balance’?

It is essential that business newsletters, like most others, contain news that is presented in a relatively light, easy-to-read but focused format. Whether your goal is to promote a service or a product, it is best balanced out with other, attention-capturing material that adds balance. That balancing material should also subtly serve, where possible, to promote the company as the established authority in its realm of expertise.

Intersperse serious or complex matter with light-hearted supporting copy but always keep an eye on the conventions of good taste. Promotional newsletters tend to be much less focused than most other types. The wider the newsletter’s reach, the more chance that you might inadvertently offend someone if you take chances with dubious material. Unfortunately, all your promotional efforts are worth nothing if this happens.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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Email newsletters, sometimes known as e-newsletters, online newsletters or more commonly nowadays ezines, fulfill exactly the same purpose as their hard copy equivalents in the ‘real world’ and, like them, have software designed for them particularly. They are (usually) regular bulletins sent to a well-defined group of potential readers that contain news, information and/or written coverage of events relevant to that group. Email marketing for small businesses is extremely popular due to its potential for inexpensive promotions in an environment where strict rules exist to prohibit many forms of unsolicited contact by email (known as spam).
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Opt-In Email Marketing

Ezine publishers should therefore always use opt-in email marketing by inviting potential subscribers to ‘opt in’ to their newsletter’s mailing list, usually by means of a form on their website. That then allows them to legitimately contact such subscribers by email on a regular basis. Using an opt-in mailing list is now the only acceptable form of address list in use online. Double opt-in means that the applicant is not put on a list until he replies to an email asking for his confirmation that it was indeed his wish to join.

Communicating With Groups

It needs to be remembered that newsletters of all kinds are by far the most powerful way to communicate with a group—any group—on a regular basis (by ‘group’, I mean any bunch of people who share something in common). Members of a family, for instance, or club, church etc. Employees, volunteers (for a non-profit organization), customers, clients, prospects—each of these groups is a perfect candidate for a regular newsletter. A group might be tightly-knit, such as a geographic community (group of dwellings, a whole town, etc) or they might be scattered across the country (or even the world) but still be a group with something in common, like the disabled, car enthusiasts, coin collectors, young mothers and so on. Virtually anybody who needs to communicate with such a group should seriously consider using some sort of newsletter software to help make it easier. A publishing program (such as Microsoft Publisher etc) should be considered for paper newsletters or one of the many types of e-newsletter software for an online one.

Paper Or Electronic?

So how do you decide whether you should publish your newsletter online or as a traditional hard copy? Well, it’s simple really. We don’t differentiate between newsletters printed on paper, ‘ezines’ transmitted electronically, or static web newsletters, either. We believe that a newsletter is a newsletter regardless of how it’s delivered to the reader so we cover them all. So it’s all a matter of delivery. If the readership is widely spread geographically, and/or they all have computers and are online, then obviously an ezine is the way to go. After all, there is very little cost involved. On the other hand, if they all reside within the same local area and/or very few of them are online, then a hard copy newsletter with all its related expenses is nevertheless the obvious solution.

Types Of Email Newsletters

Once you’ve decided on an ezine rather than a hard copy newsletter, you then need to consider the two different types of email format available to you.

Plain Text

There are a number of pros and cons to using plain text but the most noticeable disadvantage to most people is that plain text is just that—plain. In other words it cannot be formatted to display different font sizes, styles or colors and doesn’t allow the inclusion of graphics, etc. On the other hand, it is much more secure and generally free from the threat of viruses and other malware.

HTML

HTML, on the other hand, is fully configurable and can also incorporate hyperlinked phrases that hide the actual URL (such as ‘Click Here’). This allows the list owner to create attractive and appealing emails that look and respond in exactly the same way as web pages, and can do everything that they do including the display of graphics. This is not surprising as HTML is the language of the World Wide Web. The downside is that they also contain the same security holes. This makes HTML emails a particularly attractive communications media to those with malicious intent since, unlike a website owner, they can easily spoof (forge) someone else’s email address as the sender and cover their own tracks. One of the resulting downsides for newsletter publishers is that legitimate HTML newsletters are more prone to aggressive handling by anti-spam software.

Online Newsletter Software

There are a number of e-mail newsletter software applications available but first you have to decide whether you want to publish in plain text or in HTML, as explained above.

Plain Text Email Software

Plain text emails can be created using a text editor, such as Notepad, or more commonly, an email client configured to produce ‘text-only’ emails. All the popular email clients, such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora etc can do this and they use ASCII, the built-in language that all computers use to produce the symbols, characters and numbers represented by the keys on a keyboard.

HTML Email Software

Ezine software for HTML is a little more involved but there is an abundance of HTML newsletter software available that makes composing HTML emails a breeze. Most popular email clients, as mentioned above, can be configured to code your emails in HTML, as can some Web Editors too. You can also find proprietary HTML email software by doing a simple online search. Last, but by no means least, take note of The Ezine Machine that is part of the ClipCopy Content Solutions site and can be seen at http://www.clipcopy.com.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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Newsletters, whether hard copy or ezines, can often be the most effective way to publicize and promote a business, especially small, owner-operated businesses and, in the case of ezines, those with a wide geographical reach. There are a number of reasons why this is so but, for the purpose of this article, I will just sum up the main ones from the point of view of email marketing only.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

How To Make A Newsletter That Works

First, you need to come up with some newsletter ideas but don’t be put off by what’s involved. After all, creating newsletters isn’t rocket science! Considering newsletter names might be a good start. Look at a few newsletter examples and then choose a name which embodies the gist of what you want to convey but leaves room for a twist. Try to avoid using a product or company name but do use a name that offers a general idea of what the content of the ezine will be.

When considering how to write a newsletter (if you are going to do the writing, that is) first draw up a list of ezines articles you’d like to see in it if you were the reader. Empathizing with the reader is half the battle if you want to create email newsletters that will be read. Also, try an email newsletter template that keeps you to a set layout for consistency; consistency is so important. Of course, you will need an HTML email template if you are not sticking to plain text, and why not look for some email marketing templates while you are at it?

If you keep these points in mind and do a little research (remember, ClipCopy Content Solutions is a good place to look) you’ll soon learn how to create a newsletter that people will want to read.

Marketing Strategy

Regularly produced and well-written newsletters are wonderful platforms for demonstrating expertise (on the part of the owner) in a particular subject. Readers automatically acknowledge the authority of the newsletter owner (it goes without saying that this is assuming she has a degree of expertise to demonstrate!). Secondly, regularity of production establishes credibility that helps overcome the doubt and uncertainty that readers would have if they were dealing with people they don’t know. And thirdly, newsletters can engender loyalty. Reader loyalty can be every bit as potent as the loyalty that members of a club might feel, and it comes from the same source: through them identifying with an entity that offers them something special—something unique to them as a group.

These are really powerful marketing factors. They are so powerful that every small business owner, without exception, should consider a newsletter, either hard copy or online, as part of his or her overall marketing strategy. The benefits vary depending on the type of business concerned but, in general, they center on developing a mutually beneficial and receptive sales environment in the target market, devoid of any pressure. Once the benefits are understood it is simply a matter of balancing them against the costs of production and distribution. In order to determine the costs involved it is necessary to decide which format is to be used and, in the case of email, the costs of production and distribution are negligible.

Electronic Newsletters

The number of electronic newsletters, or ezines, is growing at an incredible rate. Originally, ‘ezines’ referred only to online magazines; publications consisting of a number of articles covering a fairly broad range of topics. These often included illustrations, formatting etc such as those found in the real world—and that they often emulated. Over time, however, the term ‘ezine’ has come to mean virtually any electronically published and distributed periodical, including short, plain-text, relatively focused newsletters. I once preferred to differentiate between them more easily by calling these ‘e-newsletters’ but the accepted jargon now is for them to be called ezines.

Why Ezines Are Popular

It is not hard to work out why publishing ezines has become so popular. For a start, anyone with an Internet connection can produce one. As a result, there are many that, frankly, are not worth the bandwidth they use up. To put it bluntly, these are often written by people with scant knowledge of the mechanics of language (spelling, grammar etc) resulting in text that is barely readable. Also, the novelty of the medium has given rise to an inward-looking culture that tends to feed on itself. There is surely a limit to how many newsletters about Internet marketing even the keenest student of online commerce can digest. Seemingly, however, there is no limit to how many might be produced, including some written by people with little or no practical knowledge of the subject. Many of these, like a lot of other activities online, are the result of some individuals recognizing an opportunity (in terms of numbers, ease of communication etc) and feeling compelled to do something—anything—to cash in on it. This is not a criticism but an observation. More people need to think more carefully about why they want to produce an ezine in the first place. If it is purely a vanity thing the best advice would be not to bother. There are many easier ways to get their name up in lights.

Business Promotion

If the purpose is business promotion, however, then it is always worthwhile, provided it’s done correctly. Assuming that the business is a real-world venture (as opposed to a purely online one) the first consideration should be whether electronic production will get the best results. The format works best for businesses with a (geographically) widely spread target market; and/or with a high proportion of ‘connected’ individuals in their target market (such as computer users).

If these criteria are met then I would recommend going ahead but only after studying how to do it properly. There are many helpful articles and plenty of good advice on the ClipCopy Content Solutions website and more are being added all the time.

© 2000 Mike Alexander (Revised 2009), All Rights Reserved

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