Testing on the go.

! Testing on the go. How fast do you want to see results? Instead of waiting weeks
for responses and test results – you’ll have them in hours. Now, you can make
smarter decisions sooner.

! Quick to create. You could whip out an email in just an hour or two as opposed
to weeks in the “offline” world.

! High response rates. It’s not unusual for email campaigns to get 5%, 10%, 15%,
even 50% response rates. Something that’s almost unheard of in direct mail.

The Truth About “Opt-in” and “Permission” Email Marketing

If you’ve been on the Net for anytime, I’m sure you’ve heard of spam. That’s the name
for unsolicited commercial email. Mostly the kind of “get rich quick” and “send me a
dollar” pyramid schemes that find their way into your inbox. Many short-term minded
marketers feel that since email is practically free they can send out thousands and
thousands of emails hoping for a handful of sales while dealing with the risks involved. I
don’t think that’s a good idea.

You see, there is a big difference between permission email marketing and spamming.
I’m not talking about using software that can harvest emails addresses from the Web or
even those CD-roms with “10 million email addresses” floating around. The fact is,
without getting permission you are just sending out spam and that will land you in some
big trouble. I’ve seen sites shutdown, ISP’s cancelled and people basically being
“blackballed” from the Internet community. Trust me, it’s not pretty.

In fact, there is new legislation pending that will make spamming illegal. So not only will
you have all kinds of angry prospects – but you could also end up with severe penalties
against you.

Why would you want to put yourself through any of that?

There’s no point because getting permission is easy once you start using the strategies I’ll
tell you about in a moment, plus it produces better results.

I’ve reprinted an excellent article by Jim Daniels explaining the importance of only using
opt-in email marketing:

Million Dollar Emails

What kind of trouble?

A. Since a large number of internet citizens DO NOT approve of unsolicited email
and WILL complain to your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
B. Many ISP’s will discontinue your account when they get complaints from angry
recipients of your unsolicited bulk email.
Does sending your ad to thousands of unsuspecting addresses really work
anyway? Do you really get any genuinely interested leads mixed in with all those
flames? Sure you can. Are they enough to offset all the negative factors of bulk
email? NO.

But hey, it's your business and it's your decision. If you want to play it safe
though, you should consider the next type of direct email marketing.

2. "Opt-In" Direct Email
"Opt-In" Direct Email is the practice sending commercial email to recipients that
HAVE approved of commercial email. If you really want to try bulk email
marketing but aren’t up to the rigors of unsolicited bulk email, consider hiring a
company that specializes in direct email.

In addition to advertising in targeted ezines such as my BizWeb Gazette, you can
also "rent" Opt-In Direct Email lists. These opt-in lists are targeted email lists
which offer marketers a "politically correct" way to reach their target audience on
the net. Not only will your offer be sent to a targeted list, you won't have to worry
about flames and ISP cancellation. All recipients have "opted in" to receive offers
like yours.

Although this targeted direct email marketing can be more costly than unsolicited
bulk email marketing, it is far more effective. Here are some excellent resources
for targeted Opt-In lists:

* www.memail.com
* www.advertising.com
* www.bulletmail.com
* www.targ-it.com
* www.e-target.com
* www.hitmail.com
* www.postmasterdirect.com
* www.copywriter.com/list (The Direct Email List Source)

7 Ways to Collect Email

Your email campaign starts with a strong list. Without a good list of people who “opt-in”
you aren’t going to be able to make email marketing work for you.

Here are 7 little-used ways to collect email addresses:

1. Pop-ups
One of the most underused and highly effective ways to capture emails is to create a
pop-up window on your web site. This can be a pop-up on entry or exit – they are
both effective. When we started using this on www.instantsalesletters.com we saw a
500% increase in opt-in subscribers.

2. Subscriber box
You should prominently provide a email subscriber box on each of your site’s web

pages. This will significantly increase your sign-ups.

3. Postcard
If your customer list is mainly offline you can send out a postcard and offer an
incentive for them to send back their email address.

4. Contests
Contests are a great way to capture opt-in email addresses because most people will
have to give you their correct address so they can be informed when they win.

5. Advertise Your Autoresponder Address
Many people will run ads advertising their web site. A smarter way is to run ads or
promotions and use an autoresponder email address – this way you will capture all
email information from interested prospects. The autoresponder will be set-up to
automatically deliver your promotion to people that request it. (A complete source of
autoresponder information is at: www.autorespondermagic.com)

6. Capture Using Simple Forms
Most offline stores and businesses completely miss an opportunity to capture the
email addresses of their customers. A super example of someone doing this right is
the California Tortilla example in this ebook. Any time a customer or prospect phones
you, walks in or does business with you is an opportunity to capture their email
address.

7. Give Aways (free ebooks, software, etc.)
Give aways or “bribes” are highly effective means of capturing emails. You need to
provide people with an incentive to give you their email address. People are
becoming more hesitant to hand out their email addresses for fear of rampant
spamming – but if your incentive is big enough you’ll get lots of emails to build your
list.

Bulk Email vs. Opt-in Email

By Jim Daniels

A faithful reader and customer wrote me a letter this past week. In it, he
described his frustrating situation. As he was not the first to write about this
particular dilemma, I felt I should address it.

Being new to internet marketing, with a limited marketing budget, this fellow had
been utilizing many low cost advertising resources. These consisted mostly of
free classified sites and newsgroups. As most marketers know, this form of
advertising can be very time consuming and the results somewhat discouraging.

His question went something like this...

"Instead of making sales and getting leads, I seem to be getting more and more
unsolicited email. Most of the offers tell me bulk email works much better than
other forms of internet marketing. I'm thinking of trying it, are there any reasons
why I shouldn't?"

Okay, just the facts...

There are basically two types of direct email marketing.

1. "Unsolicited Bulk Email"
2. "Opt-in" Direct Email
1. "Unsolicited Bulk Email"
This is the practice of transmitting mass quantities of email to large lists of
"unqualified" email addresses.

This practice in itself is a very controversial subject. You must be very careful
when considering using bulk email to market your wares on the internet.

Why? Let's just say your reputation is at stake.

Unsolicited bulk email is frowned upon by many internet citizens. You may have
heard this practice of sending unsolicited bulk email referred to as "spamming."
(Yes, the name comes from the famous comedy skit "Spam! Spam! Spam!" by
Monty Python.) In the online world, spamming means sending unsolicited email
directly to a list of unsuspecting email addresses or newsgroups.

Just why is bulk email so popular? Simple. It’s far cheaper than traditional bulk
postage mail. The costs associated with traditional bulk mailing can cut deeply
into potential profits immediately. Postage costs alone can break the bank. Bulk
email is very cheap.

So why not try it?

The simple fact is, unsolicited bulk email is considered bad "netiquette" by many
netizens. If you send unsolicited email to addresses that do not want commercial
email, you can get into more trouble than you would expect.

Million Email (Introduction)

IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn::
Email Statistics

•
Jupiter Communications reports that email marketing will become a $7.3 billion
business by 2005.
•
Over 50% of consumers will be communicating via email by 2001 according to
Forrester Research. eMarketer reports that by year-end 2001, there will be 111
million email users.
•
Email volume has already eclipsed postal mail.
Obviously with startling statistics like this – email should be a major part of your online
and offline marketing strategies.

Using Email

The power of email marketing is truly the “killer app” of the Internet. It is totally
revolutionizing direct marketing.

Just by sending out a simple email – you have the power to create cash on demand.
Imagine, anytime you need more money, you just hit SEND!

Click…Send…Make Money!

Frankly, I didn’t believe it either until I witnessed results like these from my own email
marketing campaigns:

•
$9,188.00 in profits in 72 hours
•
$15,558.81 in less than 3 weeks
•
$15,400.00 in 14 days
No wonder I love email marketing and who wouldn’t when you consider all these
incredible benefits:

! Instant Results. Minutes after sending out your email campaign you can start
seeing responses and orders.

! Low cost. No printing, no postage, no mail house charges. Email is nearly free to
send out!

Managing Your List

Once you’ve gathered your email list, you need to have a simple way to manage it and
also send out messages. There are several options:

1. Web-based (server side software)
The first option is using a web-based list server service. List servers are good because
you send one email message to your list server and then it broadcasts to your entire list.
They also will automatically handle remove requests, subscribers and bad emails
(bounces or undeliverables).

There are some free options, but you’ll get advertisements (not from you) going with
your email message.

Here are a few options for when you are just started out:

http://www.listbot.com
http://www.topica.com
http://www.egroups.com

Then when your list becomes bigger you may want to go with a more professional choice
like:

http://www.sparklist.com

2. Software on your computer (client side software)
The second option is buying software (a one-time investment) and sending out your own
emails. Also, these software packages let you do personalization of email (with email
merge) so it looks like a personal message. The downfall is that if you have a big list it
takes quite a long time to get out all the emails from your computer.

Here are a few options:

Mail King

http://www.mailking.com

Group Mail

http://www.SellShareware.com/ProgramInfo.asp?AfID=4841&PrID=34362

Tips for Creating Your Email

Formatting Your Email

It’s absolutely critical that you format your emails to 65 characters or less per line (I
prefer 60 or less). You see, everyone’s email programs are different so that’s why
sometimes you’ll see emails you receive look all screwy like this:

Blah, blah, blah, blah,
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Blah,
Blah, blah, blah…
.


That’s a dead giveaway that you don’t know what you’re doing.


So the secret is to make your messages 65 characters or less and use a hard return (that
means hit the ‘Enter’ key when you get to 65 characters). I will create my messages using
MS Word for spell checking and so I can get a word count.


Also, use a fixed width font like Courier New at 10 point when writing.


Then after I’ve edited the email several times I’ll save that file as .TXT file (it’s one of
the options under FileSave As)
.


Then I will open up that .TXT file (text only) and set up a guide to use so I know where
65 character occurs. A text only file will open in your default text-editing program
something like WordPad or NotePad.

Here’s what my guide looks

Here’s what my guide looks like:


* *
*


---------1---------2---------3---------4---------5---------6----
-


I’ve reprinted another important article from Jim Daniels below giving you some pointers
to making your email look good:

Are Your Email Messages Good Looking?

"Good looks" are very important in an email message. This is often overlooked
by many email users. It is a fact that an email's content is diluted greatly if the
message itself is "not good looking".

Have you ever received an email message that looks something like this...
Thank you for requesting more information about our services! We here at ABC
Company would like to present a special offer to all of our cherished customers.
There are two main reasons why email messages turn out looking like this.

Although the reasons are quite simple, many email users don't understand them.
Reason number one is called line length. When composing email, most people
just type and type without using a hard carriage return. If it looks fine when you're
done, your email program probably automatically wraps the words in a nice
legible format. This word wrap is usually done based on a line length of
anywhere from 70 to 80 characters.

Well, lets say I receive your message, but my email program doesn't have the
capability of automatically wrapping incoming messages. Since you performed
no hard "end of line" carriage returns when typing your message, my email
software thinks it's one long sentence. Now your nice, easy to read message
looks like that example above.

O.K. So how do you avoid this problem? Simple! When composing email
messages, use a hard carriage return before you get to the end of each line. I
have found that a maximum line length of 64 works to alleviate this problem
almost completely! Of course, you'll always run into an instance occasionally,
depending on your recipients settings, but this should do the trick 95% of the
time!
Another reason people encounter "funny looking" email messages is called
proportional character fonts. Like I mentioned earlier, all email programs are
different. Therefore the fonts used by each program varies widely. Basically,
there are fixed pitch fonts like Courier (found on Eudora) and there are
proportional spaced fonts (like AOL and Compuserve email).

With fixed-pitch fonts, all characters in a paragraph will line up directly above
each other. With a proportional-spaced font, CAPS, space bars and other
keystrokes are wider, so each line is a different length. The bottom line is this. If
you create a message using one type of font and send it to an email recipient
using the other, the message will not look the same when they receive it!

Once again, the solution is simple! By using a hard carriage return before the end
of the line you can keep these problems caused by the difference in email
programs to a bare minimum. If you plan on sending the same message to
multiple recipients, or attempt any drawings, consider testing the message with a
friend on another service.

There is a third way for your email messages to look bad. Although it is far less
likely to happen, you should be aware of it. Many word processing or text editor
programs allow you to save a file as another format. (Such as ascii.) It may look
great to you, but when sent via the internet it can become scrambled.

You may have received one of these messages at one time or another. They are
easily recognized by the repeated "U" characters in the text. To avoid this
problem, simply use the cut/paste or copy/paste method to extract text from a
document in other programs.

The last thing you want is an email message with great content, being dismissed
simply because it wasn't "good looking" enough!

Warning: Your Email is Invisible

by Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop.Com

What I'm about to show you will increase the number of people that read your email
significantly. (I'm talking about legitimate opt-in or one-to-one emails here, not spam.)

Many email clients will allow you to filter out "junk" based on a set of rules. For example,
anything that starts with "ADV:" or includes such text as "this email is sent in compliance
with..." can be filtered out and sent directly to your trash file.

If you're like me and get tons of email every day, this can be quite useful. I just don't
have time to read about every time some South American pharmacy is running a special
on Viagra.

The problem is that these rules are not always accurate. That is, sometimes these "junk
email" rules filter out important email as well.

Surprisingly, these rules are not very forgiving at times. If I were to write such rules I
would do so under the assumption that it is better to let some spam slip through than to
erroneously filter out something important. But, we're not so lucky. Many of the junk
filtering rules are valid, but others are not.

You should comb through any of the automated follow up emails or newsletters you
send out and remove anything that might trigger a spam filter. Since some of these
rules are quite arcane, it is probably best to send the email to yourself and receive
it with a client that has junk-filtering rules turned on. I've found that the Outlook junk
filtering rules are the harshest, so you might try that. If the email is not filtered, you're
probably OK. If it is, play with it until the email is accepted.

Here are some things to look for that you may not expect. The following will trigger junk
email filters in Outlook and keep your email from being read:

"FREE"

When in ALL CAPS anywhere in your email. You shouldn't use ALL CAPS for anything
anyway, though, if you can avoid it.

"sales@anydomain"

If this is in the from address. Believe it or not!

"extra income"

When found anywhere in the message.

"for free?" or "for free!"

When found anywhere in the message. This one is really silly. I can think of quite a few
uses for this phrase outside of junk email...

Of course, there are quite a few other rules that will trigger junk email filters, but these
are ones that could easily trip you up. Just remember to test the mail yourself to make
sure. Doing this will significantly increase the number of people that actually read the
mail you send them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Article by Mark Joyner, of 1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics. Mark
is also the CEO of Aesop Marketing Corporation. 1001 KIMT is an absolute
*must have* for anyone serious about Internet marketing. No other course
out there even comes close. It will dramatically boost the results of any
campaign in a very real and measurable way. They are offering a special right now
where it comes with a bonus database of over 6,000 media contacts (including
email and FAX numbers).

http://www.roibot.com/kt.cgi?R1100

Important Particulars

There are few more important things you need to be aware of when using permission
email without getting in trouble for spamming (sending unsolicited emails).

1. Always give people an option of being removed from your list. Usually the
service provider you use will do this automatically for you. Most services have a
link at the bottom of your email that says:
“To stop additional follow up messages click below:

http://www.aweber.com/?25404r.php?i=affaweber&e=email@isp.com”

This link then automatically removes those people from your database. This is an
important feature.

2. You also want to remind people how they got on your list. Many people are
forgetful and don’t always remember all the places they signed up. So be sure to
add a little line about how they got on your list.
3. Making your links ‘clickable’. In order to make it easy for people to go straight
from your email to your web site you need to make your links ‘clickable’. Here’s
how a link should be written in your email: http://www.yoursite.com
Most email programs will recognize this as a link. And if you want to make an
email link you should write it as: mailto:emailaddress@isp.com
You might also want to use an HTML link like this if you have a lot of AOL users:



Getting Your Emails Opened and Read

According to eMarketer, Americans get an average of 15.2 email messages a day and that
number continues to rise. That means that unless your email is compelling – your
message wind up in the trash faster than you can blink!

Here is a quick email I recently got – do you think it received more than a split-second
look before I trashed it?

* *
*
Subject: The future is now!


Hello carlos2576(2)! This message is in reply to your message as sent
to me from your address yanik@surefiremarketing.com (Your message
resides in my archives)


We would like to take this opportunity to make you an offer in
return..
.


This is for National & International Entrepreneurs and Professionals


We Need Elite Leaders Now! Our Hi-Tech and Hi-Touch Strategies
along with our strategic alliances with a Technology and Global
Marketing company, proprietary software, and many other 21st century,
patent pending technologies, have positioned us for the ever expanding
global market.


---snip--
-


Disclaimer Your original emails reside in my archives.


Under Bill S.1618 TITLE III passed by the 105th U.S. Congress this
message can't be considered Spam as long as I include a way to be
removed.


To be removed automatically from future mailings, simply click on the
link provided below. Failure to do this will not remove your address.


Do Not incriminate your self by reporting a faulty Spam complaint if
you have not attempted to get removed first.


remove1533@xyz002.com?Subject=Remove_from_126lsp-183107


* *
*


I mean come on! This went into my trash folder without a second thought. This kind of
marketing is blatantly spam and will do nothing but get your ISP cancelled and land you
in a heap of trouble.

But, let’s say you are a legitimate marketer there may be a few overlooked things you’re
doing with your emails that aren’t getting them opened, Mark Joyner and master
copywriter, Russ Phelps give you some advice in this area: