… Especially when the answer is such a huge, unequivocal "YES!"

Without a doubt, email is definitely one of the major benefits of
selling online. It allows you to offer FAR more personalized service
than you’re normally capable of providing in a purely offline setting.

"WHAT? How can you be more personal through email as opposed to when
you’re selling to people face to face?"

… Is that what you’re thinking?

Here’s what I mean… When you have an offline business — without any
sort of online presence to back it up — your only chance to connect
with your visitors is when they come into your store.

But when you sell online, you can use email to communicate with your
customers regularly — whether they’re at work, in a coffee shop with
their laptop, or in the comfort of their own home.

Here are just a few reasons why you need to start building an opt-in
email list, if you’re serious about making money online:

Email Advantage #1:
You can help would-be customers get over the "buying hurdle"

Research shows it takes an average of FOUR TO SEVEN points of contact
to make a sale – and chances are good you’ll never make it to the
second point of contact if you don’t have a way to reach your visitors
after they’ve left your site.

Think about how many web sites you visit in an hour of surfing the Internet…

Do you remember the salescopy and products from each of those sites?
Could you find a particular site again if you wanted to re-check their
information?

Even if you Googled it, there’s no guarantee that exact URL would show up in your keyword results.

In most cases, visitors come to your site, they look around, then they
leave, and they’re gone forever.

But simply by collecting their first name, last name, and email
address, you can stay firmly on their radar and expose them to your
products time and time again – all at nearly no cost to you!

Email Advantage #2:
Your email list is made of people who WANT to hear from you

When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you’ll
be using it to send them information they actually WANT to receive.

These are highly targeted leads!

They’ve visited your site, or they’ve gone into your offline shop, and
they’ve decided that they like what they see enough to give you their
email address. They’re actually inviting you to sell to them.

Email Advantage #3:
You can turn one-time customers into lifelong repeat buyers

Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over
again, so you can build genuine relationships with them.

Why is this so important?

… Because studies show that 36% of your customers will buy from you AGAIN if you present them with a good follow-up offer!

Imagine how your bank account will grow if you use email to turn
one-time customers into lifelong repeat buyers.

Not only that, by forming a strong relationship with your customers,
you can get to know their needs and wants extremely well, so you can
give them first-class service.

Plus, you can discover what OTHER products they’re looking for, so you
know you’re presenting them with follow-up offers they’re sure to act
on!

Email Advantage #4:
You can track your marketing efforts, so you know exactly what works — and what doesn’t

Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to
evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours of
launching them.

If there’s a weak link in the chain, you can find out EXACTLY where it
is. Maybe your subject line didn’t compel people to open your email. Or
maybe the email itself didn’t persuade people to click through to the
sales page. Or maybe the subject line and email worked fine, but the
sales page failed to convert.

With the right email software, you can test ALL of these different
elements — so you can capitalize on the ones that are successful,
while working on the ones that need improvement.

100% of the guesswork is eliminated!

… Of course, in order to get meaningful test results, you need to be
using good email software that offers advanced tracking features — but
makes it easy for you to use them.

A great email marketing service you should check out is iContact.com.

This online service provider provides all the advanced tracking
features you need — plus, it’s dead easy to use and costs only $10 a
month, which is super cheap for this kind of service.

Not only that, when you use iContact, you have access to…

• Automatic whitelisting, so your messages are always guaranteed to land in your subscribers’ inboxes.

• A built-in WYSIWIG editor, so you don’t have to mess around with raw HTML code
• More than 300 templates, so your emails look professional AND original — even if you don’t know the first thing about design
• Spamchecking — to make sure your emails won’t get accidentally blocked by spam filters
• A public newsletter archive — so you can build a library of past issues and invite your subscribers to check them out
• Over 25 email marketing articles and resources, so you know how to maximize the effectiveness of your emails

… And that’s just scratching the surface.

If you’re thinking about getting started with email, then definitely give iContact a try.

And — great news — we got in touch with the good people at iContact
and worked out a deal in which you can use their email marketing
service for a FREE 15-day test drive, simply by clicking here:

http://imc.icontact.com

Be sure to check it out!
]]> http://www.InternetMarketing.com/blog/email-list/feed/ 16 http://www.InternetMarketing.com/blog/overcoming-inbox-overload/ http://www.InternetMarketing.com/blog/overcoming-inbox-overload/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:45:05 +0000 Chuck Mathews http://blog.marketingtips.com/overcoming-inbox-overload/email-list-marketing ]]>

 Inbox Overload. It’s every email marketer’s biggest nightmare — the fear that all your
best email marketing efforts are being ignored by people overwhelmed by
the sheer amount of junk that ends up in their inbox every day. 

Well, I don’t mean to scare you but… you’ve got good reason to be worried!

With so many emails bombarding them on a daily basis, people are
becoming increasingly picky about the ones they choose to read. They’re
quicker to hit the "unsubscribe" button when an email or newsletter
fails to interest them, and they’re spending less time reading the ones
to which they do remain subscribed.

On top of that, in our increasingly Web-savvy world, most people
have at least three different email addresses on the go — and when they
sign up for a newsletter in order to get some exciting freebie (such as
a free report or an eBook), they often arrange to have the newsletters
sent to one of their back-up email addresses, where the newsletters can
languish unseen for weeks or even months on end.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom! Email is still a highly effective marketing tool… if you use it right.

Here are three crucial steps you need to take to ensure YOUR emails
remain on your subscribers’ "must-read" list… instead up ending up in
their junk folder.

1. Make sure your content is VALUABLE

With so many newsletters to choose from these days, people are going
to sign up only for the ones that promise the most useful and/or
entertaining information — and then deliver on that promise.

Don’t think you can just sit back and offer your readers outdated
information or the same useless stuff they can easily find simply by
doing a search on Google. If you want them to open your newsletters,
you have to make it worth their while!

2. Make sure your content is INTERESTING

Your newsletter could contain the formula for how to turn lead into
gold… But if you write in a dry boring tone, and don’t put any effort
into making your content engaging, then people are going to tune out
long before they get to the really good stuff.

3. Make sure your content is WELL-WRITTEN

Another thing that will turn off your potential customers is poor
writing that’s full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar. If your
writing skills are shaky, run your newsletter content through a
spell-check program that looks at grammar, too.

You may even decide to hire a professional writer to develop your
content for you. You can find professional writers who don’t charge an
arm and a leg for their services at online freelance sites such as elance.com.

4. Make sure your content is TIMELY

You want your readers eagerly open your emails as soon as they land in their inbox? Then make sure you include information that’s relevant RIGHT NOW.

Sign for Google Alerts on topics related to your industry, so you
can keep on top of what’s currently hot with your readers — then
address those hot topics in your newsletters. If you want your readers
to see you as the ultimate "go-to" source for the latest tips and info,
then you have to make sure you GIVE them what they want!

… And last, but absolutely not least…

5. Make sure your content GRABS THEIR ATTENTION

Believe it or not, the MOST important part of every email you send is
NOT your headline… or your call to action… or the hottest late-breaking
news you know your readers simply can’t live without.

Nope… The most important part of your email is your SUBJECT LINE.

If that short line of text doesn’t stand out from all the other
subject lines in your subscribers’ inboxes and convince them they need
to open your newsletter RIGHT THIS SECOND to see what it contains, then
chances are good they are going to pass it by in favor of something
more interesting — and possibly never get around to reading it at all.

So make sure you put a lot of careful thought and effort into
crafting a subject line that really ignites your readers’ curiousity…
Because if they don’t bother to open your email, then it doesn’t matter
how great your content is — they’ll probably never read it.

As you can see, these days you definitely have to put a little more
effort into making sure your emails and newsletters remain a useful
communication tool with your target audience. Gone are the days when
people would happily overlook poor writing and shoddy grammar in an
email or newsletter, in order to learn more about a topic that
interests them.

However, make no mistake — that effort is definitely WORTH it! Email
is still by far the most effective way to build a strong relationship
with your customer base… and done right you can use it to easily grow
your profits by 30% or more!

In closing, let’s take a quick look at the opposite side of the coin…

How do YOU feel about the volume of email flooding your inbox these days? Is inbox overload getting you down? How do you separate the quality emails from all the
junk — and how can you apply the lessons learned from your OWN behavior
to your email marketing efforts in order to make them more effective?

Leave us a comment and tell us what you think!

The "bounceback" message usually contains the original email you sent, as well as an explanation as to why the message was rejected.

There are two types of bouncebacks you need to know about:

Type #1: Hard Bouncebacks

A hard bounceback occurs when you send a message to an email account that no longer exists. The account has been closed for some reason, so the mail server that hosted the account will send your message back, notifying you of this change.

Hard bouncebacks are particularly common when you send mail to free email accounts with providers such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo. That’s because many people use these free accounts as a secondary or disposable account for random newsletter subscriptions and such.

When the volume of email to their free account gets too high, people often shut it down, create a new one, and move on.

But unfortunately — if they forget to send you their new address — you’re stuck with an email address that no longer exists!

Type #2: Soft Bouncebacks

A soft bounceback occurs when you send an email to an account that is still valid but is temporarily unable to receive email. The most common cause of soft bouncebacks is when an email account is too full or the server that hosts the account is temporarily down.

Why You need to Manage Your Bouncebacks

Because soft bouncebacks are generated when an email account is still valid, you don’t need to remove them from your email list. Where you want to focus your attention is on hard bouncebacks.

In order to maintain the highest deliverability, you need to constantly remove hard bouncebacks from your email list.

If you continue to send email to addresses that are no longer valid, the ISPs (Internet service providers) that previously hosted those addresses may consider you a spammer — and block ALL the email you send to any other email accounts they host.

For example, let’s say I have 1000 @yahoo.com addresses on my email list and over a period of 6 months 100 of those email accounts are closed and become invalid.

If I still continue to send email to those invalid accounts, Yahoo will assume that I’m a spammer sending unsolicited email to random accounts — and they will block any emails I send to the 900 remaining valid accounts.

Ouch!

The process of managing your bouncebacks is called "list hygiene." In order to get the highest amount of email delivered to your subscribers, you want to stay on top of your list hygiene and remove email addresses from your list as soon as you get a hard bounceback after sending to them.

Automate the Process

As your list grows, you’ll want to invest in some software that will help you categorize and manage your bouncebacks.

Most email software packages or services provide this feature. If yours doesn’t, then it’s probably time to upgrade!

Don’t Forget to Follow up and Get the New Address!

If you do get a hard bounceback from a previous customer, be sure to follow up with them via phone or even snail mail to get their updated information.

All your customers are valuable and you don’t want to lose a single one from your list! The time you invest getting their updated email address is typically time well spent.

Remember, this is just one step in maintaining a clean email list that gets the best deliverability. For an in-depth look at how to get the absolute highest deliverability and response from all of your email campaigns, click here to continue: www.marketingtips.com/emailsecrets

Happy Emailing!

Derek