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Email Marketing 'HOW TO'?
by Jim Daniels
Of all the
ways to get website traffic and make money online, nothing tops email marketing.
Of course, email marketing in itself means many things to many marketers. After
all, it can take on quite a wide variety of formats. Today I'll cover the
various forms of email marketing available to online businesses and reveal what
works and what doesn't. Here's what we'll discuss...
1.
Unsolicited bulk email marketing
2. Opt-in email list rental
3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising
4. Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)
5. Email newsletter network advertising
6. Opt-in "series" email marketing
1. Unsolicited bulk
email marketing
Let's jump right into that dangerous endeavor referred to as UCE
(Unsolicited Commercial Email). Most of you know my take on this. Sure, you can
get some website traffic using bulk email. (Though a response rate close to the
10% rate some companies promise is not likely - .01% is more likely.) You can
tackle the rigors of unsolicited bulk email marketing yourself (you'll need lots
of ISP connections because they'll be canceled quickly!) or hire a company to do
the dirty work for you. But the fact is, since unsolicited bulk email angers a
huge percentage of recipients, your risks can be rather high. Your domain will
end up being blocked by many ISPs and you could even face some legal battles. In
my humble opinion, unsolicited bulk email is not worth the trouble. Read on and
you'll find that bulk email marketing isn't really necessary either.
2. Opt-in email list
rental
A much "cleaner" version of bulk email marketing is "opt-in email list
rental." There are plenty of companies on the web that will rent you email
addresses that have opted in to receive commercial email. Actually, in most
cases they are not really renting the addresses; that is, you never see the
addresses. Instead, they charge you a per email address fee for mailing your
message to a list under their management. But does it work...?
As long the recipients are
not being paid to read the messages and they are genuinely interested in the
offers they signed up to receive, this strategy can be profitable. The problem
is that in most cases you'll pay from ten to twenty cents per address and
mailing to a list large enough to get great results can get quite expensive. But
if your budget can handle it, you can generate some great targeted traffic.
I've tried a few list rentals myself, though not recently. The best was from the
site www.postmasterdirect.com
which has millions of addresses in a huge variety of categories under
management. A few others offering this type of service include
www.bulletmail.com and
www.htmail.com
3. Email newsletter
classified and sponsorship advertising
Now let's jump to a more reasonably priced email marketing solution...
"email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising". In my opinion this
one still gives the best bang for the buck, especially for small businesses with
modest advertising budgets.
Some people think I
recommend ezine advertising because I have an ezine and I'm trying to sell my
own ad space. On the contrary, I've been trying NOT to sell my ad space for the
last few years. That's why my own rates are fairly high! I can run my own offers
or affiliate offers and make much more than I can selling the ad space. Many
other ezine editors are finding the same thing. While this has resulted in
rising ezine ad costs over the last few years, one fact remains... ezine
advertising is still one of the most effective ways to get targeted traffic --
cheap.
Ezine advertising works best
when you locate ezines that your target market actually look forward to reading.
And that's not difficult to do... Just visit an ezine directory and search for
ezines in your niche market. Subscribe to a bunch of free ezines and read them
as they arrive. Look for larger circulation ezines that have a good following.
If you like the content in any particular ezine, then hundreds or thousands of
other readers probably do too. Place a classified ad and if your site and offer
are up to snuff, you'll make a profit nearly every time. If you can swing a top
sponsorship ad, that works about five times better than a regular classified ad!
Here are three great ezine directories you can scour and locate lots of ezines
that target your particular niche...
Direct Email List Source
http://market.emailresults.com/
Ezine Hub
http://www.ezinehub.com/
WebScout
http://webscoutlists.com/
4. Email newsletter solo
mailings (text and html)
An even better way to utilize email newsletters to drive traffic and sales
is to purchase "email newsletter solo mailings." I've been able to locate both
text and html solo mailing offers lately and some ezine publishers really
underprice these. (especially compared to list rental costs.) I've found html
email to be especially effective, returning 4-5 times the cost of the ad in most
cases. Once again, the list should be tightly targeted to your niche audience
for best results. Use the same directories above to locate ezines that reach
your best prospects and you'll undoubtedly find some that offer this type of
advertising.
5. Email newsletter
network advertising
The next email marketing strategy which I've been using quite a bit lately
is "email newsletter network advertising." In a nutshell, you pay email
newsletter management sites to run top sponsorship ads across their network of
newsletters. The traffic can be targeted to just about any niche and it's faster
that finding each of the ezines yourself. Although this requires a larger
initial investment than running ads in individual ezines, in the long run it is
usually cheaper and it requires much less effort. The best advertising resource
I've ever found on the web is an email newsletter network. It's one of the
proven, super-resources I share only with my Make-A-Living-Online.com members!
6. Opt-in "series" email marketing
Finally, I'd like to cover one last email marketing strategy which very few
Internet businesses use, and use properly. It's called "opt-in series email
marketing." This is a secret weapon many of the big name marketers prefer not to
talk about much. It works like this... You offer an attractive and irresistible
freebie at your site, (in most cases this works best via a pop up or pop-under)
and when your visitors claim their freebie, they are required to enter then name
and email address. They then are subscribed to your series of personalized,
scheduled email messages that you have pre-written. The best type of series is
one that offers free valuable help and information about the subject they were
looking for help on in the first place.
A well-written email series
will form relationships with your best prospects, something that holds more
value than most online businesses realize. The best part of this strategy is
that once you do the setup work, everything is completely automated and
personalized. There are a number of sites that offer follow-up email
autoresponder services. I use my
www.webbusinesswizard.com service for my own follow ups and it has worked
wonders for my business. When used properly, and with a bit of originality and
flare, this email marketing strategy can be one of your top sales producers.
There you have it; six email
marketing strategies and the results they yield. Of course there's one more
email marketing strategy I highly recommend, that strategy is "publishing
your own email newsletter."
Tips by Jim Daniels
www.bizweb2000.com - Read Jim's free web-based guide at
www.make-a-living-online.com - it reveals how he makes six figures a year
online in his part time, and how you can do the same...
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