5 Pointers to Email Marketing
Success
Having access to a
quality autoresponder is an absolute must if you are going to
succeed in your email marketing endeavors. However, there are
certain guidelines which you will need to follow if you are to be
sure you are getting the best possible results from your email
marketing campaigns. Your Autoresponder is the most important of
email marketing tools and your only method of keeping in contact
with your prospects. Be successful with it.. Every time!
Last week I decided it was
time to clean up my email inbox which I have to admit was getting
more than a little crammed with hundreds of messages mainly from
lists Id joined in the past, and many of them I had not even opened.
Well I ended up un-subscribing from at least ten lists, half of them
because I have no strong interest in the subject matter, and the
others I quit purely because they were emailing me far too often.
The thing that surprised me was that three of these nuisance type
lists were well known internet marketing gurus, who really should
know better. One of them had posted me five emails in a single
day!
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The spam filter
designed to protect me from receiving unsolicited email in my
inbox, had diverted approximately 33% of my mail to the trash
folder and I had a quick glance through it before deleting. I
was horrified to note that there were several legitimate
messages in there which should not have been trashed, in fact
two of them were from friends unconnected with my email
marketing business, and the messages were personal. I had a
quick look through the legitimate email marketing messages and
was immediately able to identify why the spam filter
considered them as spam.
All this left me
with the realization that many email marketing list owners
were not having their messages read for one reason or another,
well not by me anyway, and I decided to look closely at the
causes. I then spent the rest of the day reading through a
random selection of generated mail, and came up with 5 really
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important guidelines that really
should be taken into
consideration when creating your email marketing campaigns, because
when all is said and done, if your messages are not being read by
your prospects, then your whole email marketing agenda becomes
futile.
So here are my five
pointers, which if implemented in your own campaigns will definitely
result in a larger percentage of mail being read by your prospects
and give your email marketing efforts a higher chance of
success.
Time Interval Between
Outgoing Messages.
Once a new prospect or
customer has completed their details and become a member of your
list you cannot just leave it at that! It is most important to
constantly remind the prospect of your website and the products or
services you offer. Just one email a week, sent automatically from
your autoresponder is all it needs. Never leave it longer than one
week between your messages, but on the other hand do not inundate
your prospects with too much mail. This is poor email marketing
practice and will often be seen as annoying by your prospects which
may result in them requesting to be removed from your
list.
Be Sure Your Messages Bypass
The Spam Filters
It can be infuriating when
you have put a lot of time and effort in crafting what you consider
to be a powerful email message to your list membership, only to have
half of the messages trashed by spam filters giving no opportunity
of any feedback from those members. By now you will know that there
are certain words which are taboo in email marketing practice. Words
which will trigger spam filters immediately. The more serious email
marketing pros will invest in software which will auto-edit, test
and make sure their messages are delivered properly to the
recipients inbox ready to be read. Whitelisting is also a good way
of making sure your mail is delivered and you would do well to
research that topic.
The Subject Box
Content
I personally only open
mail in my inbox if the subject of the mail demands that I do! A
high percentage of my mail goes unopened purely because the message
in the subject box does not sufficiently arouse my interest, and I
have to admit that a staggering 75% of the mail that reached my
inbox was still trashed before I read it! You must realize the
importance of your subject lines if your email marketing campaigns
are really going to kick into gear. I often laugh at some of the so
called gurus subject lines and cannot believe they spent more than a
nanosecond thinking about it. Gurus just have bigger lists I
guess... But hey I digress.. Give much thought to your subject
lines. Keep them short but relevant and make them demand that your
email message is opened and read.
One Promotion Per
Email
A good few of the email
messages I opened (purely for my research purpose), had several
promotions offered within the message, and with limited information
about any one of them. Your email marketing campaigns will bare more
fruit if you keep the content of each email relatively focused, and
preferably on just one promotion per email. Information overload
serves only to confuse and remember that a reader has only so much
attention to offer to your message. Do not dilute that attention by
spreading it over several promotions all in the same
message.
Never.. Ever..
Procrastinate!
This is my favorite.. Or
shall I say my least favorite and the one thing that makes me sack
an email and move on. If you get to the point where your prospect
has actually opened your message and is reading it, don\'t bore
him/her silly by keep repeating the same information over and over.
Keep every sentence offering fresh information and try to hold that
prospects attention right through to the end, or at least as far as
the link to the product or service you are promoting.
So that is it! Five very
simple guidelines for you to consider. And when you have finished
your email message, just ask yourself if its general content would
interest you. Would it intrigue you enough to take a closer look? In
these times when an average inbox will receive 30 to 40 email
marketing messages a day, it is your duty to do your utmost to make
sure your message is amongst the three or four that will actually be
absorbed.
Trevor
Taylor
Keywords: email marketing,email
marketing campaign,email marketing campaigns,marketing
campaign,marketing campaigns, | 
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