Monday, June 2, 2008

Email Marketing Success - Optimization Techniques

It's a common trend that internet marketers do whatever they can do to get the e-mail address of the people visiting their site. Online, you have a really small window of opportunity to convert a visitor into a client and if they're not ready to buy whatever they're browsing on your site, it's a good idea to at least find out who they are so that you can try a different sales approach on them on another day. Just because they're not interested in what you're selling today doesn't mean you can't find something else to tickle their fancy.


There are many ways to do this such as:


- Offer a free report with information they'll find valuable

- Ask them to opt in to your newsletter or subscribe to your website for update

- Intrigue them with entry into a free draw for a prize.





Once someone has signed up for something you've got a valuable e-mail address that you can use to build your list of potential customers. Once you have that e-mail address, you want to be very careful with it because otherwise it won't do much for you.


How do you stay out of the spam filter?


It's a good idea to have someone confirm before you give away anything. Many will put in a fake e-mail address just to get something for free. You can require them to confirm by receiving an e-mail from you and clicking a confirmation link. Remind them to check their junk folder and if they mark your message as not being Spam, their email software could then automatically whitelist you so that you don't land in the spam folder in future. By requesting a confirmation, you also ensure that you are getting a real e-mail address.


Autoresponder software is a good investment for anyone marketing online. Buying into a package AutoResponsePlus or something similar will help you easily manage your mailing lists. The thing is, once you have a mailing list in place and a plan that includes autoresponders, you need to work on your email content and deliverability.


Each communication you make in future with prospective client should do two things:


1) The e-mail needs to offer them something valuable otherwise they'll unsubscribe. Give information or tips or helpful information that will have that person anxious to open future emails from you.


2) You need a call to action line at the end which will entice them to do something you want after they close the email. This could be to visit your website with a handy link, sign up for another service, refer their friends to you or even offer a purchase link so they can buy what you're selling.





Deliverability is definitely a key factor. You want to know that your e-mails reach their recipient's email box so here are a few things you can do to increase the likelihood of your target audience actually opening your e-mail. People are fed up with Spam and using all sorts of programs and techniques to ensure they're not having to sift through spam to get to the important e-mails.


People make use of domain keys and SPF records so that they aren't getting phishing e-mails by those posing as their bank or PayPal.


People use spam filters and this helps them build the trust in their incoming messages. Once you make it past that filter, you're set.


By getting yourself whitelisted, you can increase the likelihood of being delivered to an e-mail inbox instead of a Spam folder and by buying an autoresponder product that's hosted on your own server, you can more easily get past Spam filters because if you've done your bit to get whitelisted, you'll be trusted by your recipient's e-mail server which will increase the chances of your brilliant and persuasive copy being taken seriously.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are absolutely correct about user whitelisting. It is a must. In fact there is some evidence that a high whitelisting count at Yahoo can pull you out of the spam bin and get more email to the inbox.

I built a new free email instruction generator that will create user whitelist instructions for all the ISPs, mobile devices and most of the popular client side spam filters. This also includes things like Blackberries, SpamCop (used heavily by Microsoft) and more ISPs than previously included.

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