I thought you might like this free trick of mine for creating additional splash (list building) pages for virtually ANY online niche…

After you’ve found a hot affiliate product that you want to promote, such as a Clickbank product, use the headline (and possibly the sub heading) from the product owner’s main sales page, as the ad copy to almost instantly create YOUR splash page!

Just MAKE SURE to get permission from the site owner before using their headline (ad copy). If you mention you’re an affiliate of theirs, they are almost *certain* to let you go ahead and grab their headline for use with your splash page since you’re promoting their product!

It’s been well proven that some of the most effective splash pages are little more than:

1) A headline offering a compelling benefit.

2) An optional subheading support the main headline.

3) An opt-in box (and privacy notice).

You’re getting both 1 and 2 above “done for you” by using the ad copy from the product owner’s sales page. Sound simple? It is! But like I said, it’s PROVEN to work, and that’s what’s important.

On the “backend”, after people have signed up for your list, it’s very easy to automatically
direct them to the corresponding product that you’re promoting as an affiliate (ie, the page
you “stole” your headline/ad copy from to create your splash page).

To build your page, I recommend an HTML editor such as Frontpage (which you can get for $20 on eBay), Dreamweaver, or the FREE Kompozer software.

And you’ll need an FTP software such as FileZilla (also FREE!) to upload your finished splash page.

Your autoresponder service (such as Aweber or GetResponse) will provide the opt in form code, that you simply copy and paste into your splash page to capture the e-mail addresses of your subscribers.

Of course you’ll need a good web host, and domain name as well, but these days you can hosting for $5 a month, and a “.info” domain for $2 per YEAR.

What I love about this trick is the simplicity of it – being able to set up splash pages in ANY niche in as little as 10 minutes each!

A good headline can take hours or even DAYS to write, and even longer to test for conversions. It’s said that a good headline can account for up to 80% of the success of a sales letter…

So by applying a proven headline from the product owner’s sales page to your own splash page, you’re ETHICALLY “piggy backing” on their hard work and testing, and using it to further build *your* e-mail list.

By the way, just as you should focus on multiple streams of *income*, you should also be focused on building your list in *multiple* ways. The more subscribers you have “funneling” into your autoresponder account from various methods, channels, and websites, the better!

Bryan Winters is the architect of the free list building website, 5iphon Hardcore, that gets you 5 *more* subscribers for every ONE you bring in.

Does your list give a damn what you say?

If you have a mailing list (or you’re about to start one), then you must read this before sending out another e-mail.

I can’t stress enough how important to your business this is and how crucial to your finances e-mail marketing can be (the big problem is most folks get it WRONG!).

This has just gone ‘live’ and right now you can grab a bargain like you wouldn’t believe. Make sure you take a look today!

P.S. Get the very cool “Funnel Spy” software script guaranteed to help boost your sign-ups and 3 more e-mail marketing tactics reports as bonuses!

DT, one of my subscribers, recently wrote to tell me how much he enjoys my e-mails.

“They are fun to read, and you do supply positive answers and details,” write DT. “So I buy from you when a topic you have fits my paradigms.”

But he was less enamored with the e-mails he is receiving from some of my fellow Internet marketers.

“They come across in a way that literally chases away their customers,” he complained.

DT said of one Internet marketer: “I have bought all of his books in the past so I joyfully joined his list just to get more of his great information.

“Unfortunately I found that most of his posts do not have good information but instead have him ranting about this and that.”

Of another famous Internet marketer, DT complained: “I have been on his list for 3 weeks, and about every day I get a sales letter, and that’s it. I do love sales letters, but not all the time.”

So what did DT do?

“I’ve quit both of their lists and I’ll probably never buy from either of them again,” he told me.

DT’s complaint is not unusual, by the way.

If you send sales messages too frequently…or if too many of your e-mails are pure product pitches vs. useful content…you are going to get complaints.

So how do you find the right frequency and balance between sales and content?

The number of e-mail marketing messages you can send to your list per month depends on several factors.

These factors include the timeliness of your content…value of your content…and the frequency with which you publish your e-newsletter.

Here’s a useful rule of thumb…

If your e-newsletter is published monthly, you can send e-mail marketing messages to the subscribers 2 or 3 times a week.

As an Internet marketer, the more e-mail marketing messages you broadcast to your subscriber list, the more money you make.

Say each time you send an e-mail marketing message to your list, it brings in (on average) $3,000 in revenues.

You send two e-mail marketing messages each week, making $6,000 a week in sales.

If your subscribers tolerate it, and you increase the frequency from 2 to 3 times a week, you’d make $9,000 instead of $6,000 a week and earn an extra $150,000 a year.

How do you know whether your subscribers are OK with the increased frequency or if you are ticking them off?

Keep an eye on your opt-out rate.

Each time you send an e-mail to your list, a small number of subscribers will opt out, asking to be removed from your e-list.

As a rule of thumb, aim for an opt-out rate of 0.1% or less, and certainly no more than 0.2% per e-mail.

If you have a list of 50,000 subscribers and your opt-out rate is 0.1%, you lose 50 subscribers every time you distribute another e-mail to your list.

Measure your opt-out rate so you know the average.

Then, when you increase your e-mail frequency, watch what happens to the opt-out rate.

If it stays the same, you know your subscribers don’t have a problem getting an extra e-mail from you each week.

So send those extra e-mails, and make more money from your Internet business.

Consultant Amy Africa says, “Most online marketers do not mail often enough to their e-list.”

But what if increasing frequency causes your opt-out rate to spike higher?

It means subscribers are telling you they don’t want to hear from you that often…and you should cut back to the old schedule.

What about the ratio of content to sales pitch?

In my monthly e-newsletter, I aim for 80/20—80% or more is pure content, and 20% or less is recommended products.

In my twice-weekly supplemental e-mails, approximately 50% are pure content, and the rest are sales promotions.

To shift the balance more in favor of content, which is what many subscribers prefer, here’s a little trick I use:

When possible, I write my e-mail marketing messages so they read like content e-mails.

Often I actually include content (ideas, tips) in the e-mail marketing message.

When you write your e-mail marketing messages with an educational tone, the reader perceives it as content—even though it is ultimately selling a product.

They are happy. And you make more sales.

One other suggestion…

When you get a complaint from a subscriber about too many e-mail marketing messages, look up the complainer in your shopping cart software.

99 out of 100 times you’ll find this is a person who has never bought a thing from you…and therefore, why do you care what he thinks—or whether he leaves you?

By the way, if your info-publishing niche is marketing, like mine is, your e-mail marketing messages themselves are educational for your readers—showing them how to write e-mail that sell.

In fact, one of my best-selling e-books, “The E-Mail Swipe File“, is a collection of about five dozen of my e-mail marketing messages.

Each chapter includes the full text of the e-mail message, the results it generated and my analysis of why it worked.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

According to an article in Target Marketing (12/11, p. 7), 56% of e-mail is sent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, distributed almost evenly among those 3 days.

Participants at a 12/8/11 Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) Roundtable reported some success e-mailing on other days, most notably Friday and Saturday.

I send 4 e-mails to my list weekly. Monday and Thursday are content messages. Tuesday and Friday are promotions.

As a rule of thumb, at least 50% of your e-mail messages should be content. If not, people unsubscribe.

If you’re looking for an EASY way to get floods of traffic to virtually any website or affiliate offer, I highly recommend you check out running solo ads.

A “solo ad” is where you pay a fee to have your e-mail ad sent out to somebody else’s opt in e-mail list (often called “e-zines” or online newsletters). Not all list owners offer solo advertising, but there are plenty that do—in virtually every niche you can imagine.

I’d like to share a few simple tricks to having success and making good (and quick!) money with solo ads:

1. Get references! When you’re checking out an e-mail list to potentially run your ad in, do a little background research before spending your hard-earned money. Ask for references—those who’ve recently run ads to that particular list—to see how the ad performed.

Also be sure to *sign up* for the e-zine to see what kind of content they send out to their subscribers. If they’re sending nothing but ads, your results probably aren’t going to be as good as with a list owner that sends *quality content* to his or her subscribers.

Ideally, do business with e-zine owners that send *value* out to their subscribers (not *just* ads).

2. Negotiate, and ask for special deals! Often, just by contacting a list owner and *asking*, you can get big discounts on running your solo ad to their list.

If not a discount, ask if and when they have special offers running…2 for 1 deals, etc.

3. Ask the list owner if they’ve run an ad for the product or service you’re promoting in the past couple months. If so, it probably means the product is popular (which can be a *good* sign), BUT, you’ll want to move on and find other lists that have not run the same offer recently There are *always* going to be solo ad opportunities, no matter how popular a product—there’s simply too many lists for this NOT to be true.

4. If you can’t afford a solo ad, consider running what is called a “top sponsor” ad if available. A top sponsor ad is typically a 6-10 line classified style ad that runs toward the top of an article or similar content being sent out to the list.

Solo ads are more expensive, because they’re sent out *alone*, without any accompanying content. But top sponsor ads can still bring in some great results on virtually any budget!

5. Consider promoting an e-mail capture page or website to build your *list* vs. promoting a product *directly*. Set up your page to automatically direct your new subscribers to your affiliate offer (or your own product) right after they subscribe. This way, as you send out solo ads to other peoples’ lists, you’re not only promoting products, you’re also building your OWN list in the process. This is an *ideal* way to take advantage of solo e-zine advertising.

6. Ask the list owner if they’re willing to write a *personal* endorsement of your product for you in exchange for a free copy. Subscribers on a given list have built a relationship with the list owner, and as a result place more value on their recommendation than an ad from an “outsider”. You could even write the endorsement style e-mail ad yourself, and simply have the list owner approve it if they’re willing to endorse your offer.

7. Test small! Don’t go out and spend $500 on a solo ad until you’ve learned the ropes. Often times, smaller lists are fresher and will perform better anyhow. Big lists aren’t always where it’s at, for a variety of reasons.

8. Keep a RECORD of which solo ads perform, and which do not. Also track details such as what particular product you promoted to each list, what ad was used, etc. This is a HUGE KEY to success with solo ads. As you’re starting out, you’ll essentially be testing solo ad providers (various lists) as you go along.

You’ll make a LOT more money in the long run by logging your results.

9. Well-targeted offers are key. Don’t be afraid to get the opinion of the list owner as to whether he or she thinks your product (and solo ad!) will perform well with their list.

Ask what other offers have done well, and use that as a basic guideline as well.

10. Don’t try to “sell the product” in your solo ad. Sign up for other e-zines in your target market and study the solo ads. Keep a “swipe file” of the ads that made YOU want to click the link to learn more. That’s the whole point of a solo ad—getting the CLICK.

The point of the subject line is getting the e-mail *opened*. Use the element of curiosity in BOTH cases to get subscribers to take action!

And don’t forget, a good FREE offer is hard to resist. If you’re capturing e-mails, offer an irresistible free offer in exchange for subscribing.

11. Ask for a *guaranteed* number of clicks. That way, you’ll minimally know that “x” amount of subscribers have clicked on the link in your e-mail ad for “x” amount of ad dollars paid. You can calculate your expense that way and use it to figure your expected profit.

Keep in mind that *residual income* offers are something to strongly consider, since instead of a one time commission, you could be paid month after month—meaning your ad dollars could go a long way!

12. To get started, here are some places where you can find e-zines to run solo ads in (no affiliate links used):

1) Google search results for solo ads

2) Directory Of Ezines

3) Solo ad requests at Warrior Forum

4) Safe-Swaps

5) Reed Floren’s Solo Ad Directory

13. Don’t let excitement get the best of you! It’s very tempting to take the “emotional” route and NOT follow the tips above. But trust me, there’s a *lot* of money to be made when you DO follow them diligently, and money to be LOST if you don’t.

Is it possible to make $1,000+ per month JUST running solo ads (if done right)? You bet it is!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this free guide and Happy New Year to all of you!

Bryan Winters is the architect of the free list building website, 5iphon Hardcore, that gets you 5 *more* subscribers for every ONE you bring in.

Crazy-busy people read their e-mail with their finger on the ‘delete’ key. Follow these guidelines to increase your e-mail prospecting success.

1. Eliminate Delete-Inducing Words

Get rid of all verbiage that activates the delete response. Here are some serious offenders: exciting, state-of-the-art, solution, partner, leading edge, passion, unique and one-stop shopping.

2. Keep Your Message Simple

Your e-mail needs to be less than 90 words. Use 2-sentence paragraphs so it can be scanned. Stick with common black fonts (no colors) and never include more than one link or attachment.

3. Align With Their Objectives

Research your prospect’s specific company, industry or position. Make sure your e-mail mentions an important business objective, strategic imperative, issue or challenge. Relevance is essential.

4. Focus on Immediate Priorities

Identify key business events that may be impact your prospect’s priorities and tie your message into that. Examples might be: relocations, mergers, management changes or new legislation.

5. Be an Invaluable Resource

Your product or service may be a commodity, but you’re not. In your e-mails, focus on the ideas, insights and information you can share that will be of value to your prospect in reaching their goals.

6. Craft Enticing Subject Lines

Your subject line determines if your message gets read. Avoid sales hype and focus on business issues such as: “Quick question re: outsourcing initiative” or “Reducing product launch time”.

7. Launch a Campaign

Do 8-12 touches (via e-mail and phone) over a 4-6 week time period, with each contact building off the previous one. Provide links to resources. Spotlight the value of changing from the status quo.

Your challenge? To quickly capture your prospect’s attention, pique their curiosity and prove your competence.

Visit Jill Konrath’s website, Snap Selling, for more free sales resources.

On more than one occasion, one of my readers has suggested to me that I publish two versions of my e-newsletter.

The first would be the regular edition I offer now—a monthly online newsletter with pure content, supplemented by additional e-mails mixing content and product offers.

The second would be an “advertising-free” edition. You’d get the monthly content e-newsletter, but none of the e-mail marketing messages between monthly issues.

Well, I’m never going to offer an option to get the e-zine only—advertising-free and without the supplemental e-mail marketing messages.

And if you’re an Internet marketer, neither should you.

Why not?

Think of it this way…

As an online information marketer—a “micro publisher”—you spend time and energy creating your e-zine.

Your time, ideas, and information are valuable to others. Or at least they should be. If your content isn’t valuable, why would you bother creating it…and why would your subscribers read it?

As with everyone else who works for a living, you—a content creator—need to earn money by charging for what you produce.

Electricians get paid to splice wires together. Plumbers bill you for fixing leaky pipes.

Why does the world seem to think content creators and owners of intellectual property should give away their creations for free?

As for me, I charge for my e-zine. Not money, mind you. But I do charge a fee.

And the “fee” I charge is that the subscribers agree to receive my e-mails. All my e-mails. Not necessarily to open or read them. But just to receive them.

Usually I send a 50/50 mix of sales messages and content messages.

But even the sales messages offer ideas, solutions, and resources I believe my readers will benefit from.

No one is forced to buy the information products I am recommending. You can go years without spending a dime with me…and still get my e-zine at no cost.

No one is forced to open or read the e-mails. If you are a subscriber to my e-zine, you can simply delete any or all of them.

No one is forced to receive my e-zine. I am not abusing anyone by sending it against their will.

The right to send my subscribers e-mail marketing messages is simply the price I charge for my publication.

If you wish to stop paying the subscription fee, you can unsubscribe with a single mouse click in about 3 seconds. No need to make a phone call or waste a stamp on a letter.

When you unsubscribe, you will no longer receive the e-mails.

But you won’t get my free e-zine either. You take all or none. That’s the deal—non-negotiable.

Amazingly, online subscribers argue with us Internet marketers about this issue from time to time—something they rarely do with a traditional publisher.

After all, if you called Newsweek and told them, “Send me the magazine, but take out the ads first,” what do you think they would do?

Yes, I could offer an “advertising-free” edition of my e-newsletter, but what would be the point? Or as we copywriters say, “What’s in it for me?”

Yes, as an Internet marketer, you can send too many e-mails or have a disproportionately high ratio of sales to content.

But your subscribers will tell you what they consider too much or just right.

For instance, I recently signed up for the e-list of an entertainer I like.

After I got 3 e-mails the first day, I decided his arrangement was not for me, and I opted out with a single click.

But I did not send him an e-mail with obscenities in it.

I did not petition him to put me on a special e-list…or change his publishing model.

I simply unsubscribed.

How do you know when you are sending too many e-mail marketing messages to your e-list?

Just pay attention to the opt-out rate, which is the percentage of subscribers who opt-out after you distribute an e-mail message to your list.

Each time you distribute your e-newsletter or an e-mail message to your subscriber list, a few will opt out. That’s okay.

But if too many are unsubscribing per e-mail—say, more than 2 out of every 1,000 subscribers on the list—you may be selling to your list too much, too hard, and too often.

Solution: cut back on frequency…make the content more educational, less hard-sell…add more content and do less selling…until the opt-out rate drops to below 0.2%.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

The other day, one of my online subscribers, CR, complained about the e-mail marketing of a famous Internet marketer.

“I unsubscribed from his list,” she told me haughtily. “As soon as I joined, I got e-mails from him once or twice every day and there’s no one I or anyone else needs to hear from that much.”

That begs the question: how frequently can you e-mail your online subscribers?

Or: how much e-mail is too much?

People have lots of opinions about this issue, which they support with arguments that are both passionate and logical.

The problem is: their opinions are wholly subjective.

The fact is: there’s an easy way to objectively and accurately determine the optimal e-mail frequency for your online subscribers.

How does it work?

Well, every time you send another e-mail blast to your list, a small portion of your subscribers will opt out of your list.

Why?

They decide that your content is no longer of value to them or you are doing too much selling or they don’t like your style or you are e-mailing them too often.

The “opt-out rate” is a Web metric that you can measure: the percentage of online subscribers who unsubscribe from your list per e-mail blast.

A 0.1% opt-out rate means that if you have 10,000 online subscribers, 10 unsubscribed after getting your most recent e-mail.

When your opt-out rate is around 0.1% or less, you can rest assured that you are not sending too many e-mails to your list too often.

If you were, the opt-out rate would be higher.

On the other hand, when your opt-out rate gets much above 0.2% to 0.4%, you are losing subscribers at too rapid a rate.

For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers and an opt-out rate of 1%, you lose 100 subscribers every time you send an e-mail to your list.

You should measure and keep track of your opt-out rates with every e-mail you send.

Adjust your e-mail frequency, ratio of sales pitches to content, message length, and topics until your opt-out rate hovers around 0.1% to 0.2% or less.

Now, watch what happens if you increase the e-mail frequency—for instance, go from one e-mail per week to two e-mails per week.

If you get a sharp upward spike in the opt-out rate—double or more—your subscribers are telling you they don’t want to hear from you that often.

And you should probably eliminate the extra e-mail.

On the other hand, if you add an extra e-mail per week and the opt-out rate does not rise significantly, you are safe in continuing at the higher frequency.

But should you?

Yes.

We have lots of preconceived notions about what our market wants—and doesn’t want.

And one of these preconceived notions is that people don’t want too much e-mail.

But when the opt-out rate is low, your subscribers are telling you they DO want to hear from you often via e-mail.

That’s important, because the more times you can reach out to your list with a valuable offer or content, the more money you make online.

My colleague Amy Africa, a top consultant in B2B e-marketing, says that one of the most common online marketing mistakes is not e-mailing your list frequently enough.

And by making that mistake, you are leaving money on the table.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

As more and more folks start their own online business, there’s going to be a glut of promotions and information on the Net. The best way to be outstanding is to continually outdo yourself in terms of quality. One of the best way is to provide an e-course series, yet so few people care to prepare such a series of lessons.

Let me just say all the work is done for you now! You can get 25 top-notch e-courses and newsletter series that are informative, professionally written and formatted for easy editing. Just simply edit the text to reflect you and your company and queue them into your autoresponder and you’re DONE!

Use these messages to provide high quality, useful information to your readers and attract new subscribers. The price is a measly $4.95, but the return on investment is going to be huge. Download your PLR Crash Course Package now!

HAVE A REASON TO MAIL YOUR CUSTOMERS

Here are some ideas that work well:

1) A big fat discount coupon. This can be just for specific products or a blanket store-wide discount. You can set a threshold price for store-wide sales so you don’t end up losing money on your lower profit items, i.e. 10% off orders over $50.

2) Buy one get one free. If you’re promoting a product with enough of a profit margin, buy-one-get-one sales are fantastic sellers. Even if you sell a product people wouldn’t necessarily need more than one of, you can offer buy one get one of equal or lesser value. If you can pull this off it’s a great sales tactic.

3) Buy one get one ½ off. Same basic principle as the buy one-get-one, you just keep more of the profit while still offering the customer a deal.

4) Buy one get a free widget. It works very well for anything that can be accessorized; it’s really one of my favorite promotions

WRITE A KILLER SUBJECT LINE

It’s all well and good to have a great offer for your subscribers, but they won’t know about it unless they open and read your e-mail, right? Subject lines aren’t just as important as content and design…they actually can be more important. Your customers probably subscribe to more than just your newsletter and they’re probably not waiting in anticipation for your next mailing. If your subject is bland, it doesn’t matter how well-written the content is or how amazing the images of your products look, because most of your customers will delete your e-mail without opening it. People are being sold to everywhere they go and it seems everyone is always having a sale so: “Big Sale at My Store” isn’t going to get you the open rate you want.

So what do you write? What will keep them from deleting your e-mail and in fact, coerce them to open and act upon it? How can people decide if they are interested based on what amounts to nothing? Over-communicating is just as bad. For instance “Three Day Buy One Get One Free Sale On Modern Art Tapestries Handmade and Imported from Belgium For Stunning Home Decor.” Too long and it looks like spam.

You want a bite-size hook, not some long boring exposition that will be truncated by your customers’ e-mail client anyway. So make your message clear and concise: adding a call to action doesn’t hurt either. Try “Three Day Buy One Get One Tapestry Sale”, or “Get a Rod with Your Tapestry Purchase”, or “All Tapestries 20% Off This Friday”. These all work.

Don’t use all caps, avoid extra punctuation, and don’t use more than one exclamation point if you must use any at all.

WHAT MAKES FOR GOOD DESIGN?

Now that you’ve gotten your customer to take a look at your content, you need to capture their eye with your design. There are a lot of different elements and considerations that go into design so I’m going to start with the most basic and technically the only necessary one – product pictures.

Your products need to be the focus. Whether you’re featuring just one or a whole menagerie, your images have to be crystal clear and sharp. In other words, your products need to pop.

You can use in-context images or just simple product pictures. One layout I’m fond of using is an in-context image at the top either to the right or left of my offer text, then three to six regular product images in columns underneath. I’ve also had success with nine regular images in three rows arranged by category. But the design that works best for me may not work as well for your products and/or customer base, so always be testing new layouts.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Scheduling is another very important factor in e-mail marketing success. Just as sales ebb and flow with the days of the week, so does e-mail response. There are a lot of different ideas and theories marketers have about the best day to mail but I firmly believe it varies by industry and customer type .This is just something you will have to test.

You need to get a feel for your customer base and how they like to do things. Look at your stats and figure out the day of the week and rough time you get the most orders. By rough time I mean morning, afternoon, or night and schedule your mailing to hit inboxes just before. That’s how you should begin and test from there. You should also test frequency of mailings. Your customer base, again, will dictate this.

If you put as much thought and care into designing your newsletters and e-mails as you do your website you will increase the value of your list and reap the benefits of repeat sales. Keep testing and digging deeper into the wants and needs of your customer base and you will create another income stream from within your existing business, it’s a wonderful thing.

1. Have a reason to e-mail your customers.
2. Create and test different types of sales – Buy one, get one, Single product, Free accessory, etc.
3. Write an eye-catching subject line to describe your sale and subscribers want to click.
4. Test different email design layouts.
5. Figure out your sales cycle and schedule your emails to go out right before your highest sales period.

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, July 15, 2011.

Annette Iafrate, an executive with Constant Contact, gives the following smart and sensible tips for improving e-mail marketing results:

1. Use your own permission-based list.

2. When people sign up, let them know what kind of e-mails they will receive from you and when they will get them.

3. Keep your list up-to-date by removing inactive subscribers or sending them a one-time e-mail asking them to confirm their interest.

4. Determine the optimal frequency by asking yourself how frequently your customers think about or use your product.

5. Keep your content fresh, useful, and relevant.

Source: Target Marketing magazine

Measuring open and click-through rates can show you just how successful your e-mail marketing campaigns are.

But on the flip side, there’s another metric you should measure: the “complaint rate.” And if it’s too high, you could be in trouble.

Complaint rate is the percentage of recipients receiving your e-mail who complain to their ISP that you are spamming them.

According to e-mail deliverability expert Kevin Senne, the complaint rate should not exceed 0.2%, meaning a maximum of 2 spam complaints per 1,000 e-mails broadcast.

Warning: a number of e-mail services will refuse to distribute e-mails to your list if your spam complaint rate exceeds 0.2% or even 0.1%.

To lower your complaint rate to acceptable levels:

1. Make your e-mail copy more content-heavy…and less sales-oriented.

2. Ask subscribers what they want to read in your e-mails and give it to them.

3. E-mail your list less frequently.

Source: The Marketing Report

In a Dilbert cartoon, the pointy-haired boss chastised Dilbert for forgetting to tell him about an important meeting.

When Dilbert replied that he had notified him by e-mail, the boss replied, “Well, obviously you chose an uninteresting subject line; otherwise I would have opened it.”

He concluded by telling Dilbert, “You’re a bad e-mail sender.”

What about you?

Are you a good e-mail sender or a bad e-mail sender?

Do people on your opt-in e-list actually look forward to getting your e-mails…and order the products you recommend in them?

Or do they view you as a spammer and unsubscribe in droves every time you broadcast to the list?

In my own start-up Internet marketing business, CTC Publishing, I’ve found 3 copywriting tactics that work particularly well in e-mails sent to our subscriber list.

These are: stories, content, and teaser.

A “story” e-mail is just that: an e-mail that tells an amusing story or anecdote.

For instance, to promote our PR course to my subscribers, I sent out an e-mail that told a humorous—and true—story.

It was about what happened when my then-7-year-old son dropped his new gigapet—the latest electronic fad at the time—in the toilet.

The copy read: “Alex took the gigapet with him to the bathroom…and promptly dropped it in the toilet.

“I quickly fished it out. But the water damaged the electronics, and the device was ruined.

“Upon seeing his digital pet was dead, Alex burst into tears.

“‘C-c-can we b-b-bury this one?’ he asked me tearfully.

“Being a soft-hearted dad, I immediately took him to the back yard—and with a shovel, we buried his dead electronic pet, using a brick for a headstone.”

I went on to reveal how I had gotten on the front page of the leisure section of a major NJ daily newspaper by sending out a press release on “Microchip Gardens”—the world’s first gigapet cemetery.

The e-mail was very profitable—and I learned that my list likes stories.

Second, content.

An e-mail marketing message that actually presents an idea, tip, advice, or other content can often work better than one that is merely a sales pitch for a product.

In an e-mail promoting a program I sell on how to write a non-fiction book and get it published, I revealed a secret that many aspiring authors do not know:

“Do you want to write a non-fiction book and get it published?

“Then don’t write the book—at least not yet.

“Publishers don’t want to read an unsolicited book manuscript from an unknown author.

“If you send it, they’ll either mail it back unread…or toss your book in the trash.

“What you need to do is write a book proposal.”

If the reader learns something useful just from reading the e-mail, he appreciates the value you are giving him…and clicks on the link to your site to learn more.

The third type of e-mail I’ve found to be extremely effective is the ultra-short teaser e-mail.

The lead talks about a benefit, a solution to a problem, or something else highly desired by the reader.

And the next paragraph promises to deliver this benefit or solution when the reader clicks on the hyperlink to the landing page. For example:

“A recent survey revealed that writers who earn more than $60,000 a year consistently do 22 things that writers who earn less money don’t.

“To get your hands on this list of 22 habits of highly profitable writers…and master dozens of additional strategies for earning six-figures as a freelance writer…click below now…”

This teaser e-mail generated a 2.5% click-through rate with a 10% conversion to orders for a $29 e-book.

Tell a story…give valuable free content…use a teaser.

These 3 approaches to e-mail copywriting have worked for me.

Perhaps they can work for you, too.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

An autoresponder service allows you to send messages automatically after a user opts in to your landing page or from any other platform that asks them for a name and e-mail.

When looking for an autoresponder service, consider the following:

1) A Friendly User Interface – A Graphical User Interface makes navigating through a program easy for a user by introducing buttons, bars and toolbars that represent themselves with images associated with their function. In times like these, learning curves are considered a liability. So eliminate that by learning on the fly, and nothing does that better than a GUI driven autoresponder service.

2) Flexible API – An API is an interface that allows software and web applications to communicate with each other. Your autoresponder service needs should have a flexible API so you can have them respond from virtually anywhere (landing pages from Facebook, Kajabi, WordPress etc). If an autoresponder service doesn’t have the ability to speak with Facebook or WordPress, you might have a hard time trying to integrate your autoresponders with any landing page.

3) Easy Management of Lists – You need to easily organize your lists for e-mail list segmentation. The ability to segment your email lists according to your subscribers’ background or preference is indispensable because it allows you to make target prospective customers with precision.

4) Diverse selection of E-mail Templates – An e-mail template not only makes a marketer’s message enticing to read, it also provides an opportunity to expose his brand more. However, an emphasis on aesthetics could mean bigger e-mail sizes, which may trigger spam filters on a lot of mail clients. A good autoresponder service has a wide selection of appealing e-mail templates to choose from, all of which are email client-friendly and don’t lead the message to the Spam box.

5) Excellent Reporting – Get an autoresponder service that can show you open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates. It should give you data that’s indicative of the overall performance of your campaign. More importantly, it gives you an idea as to which factors in your campaign are working and which aren’t, thus allowing you to make the changes necessary for it to perform better.

6) Customer Support – Last but not least, you need an autoresponder service that provides great customer support. There are things that an Internet marketer wants to do that aren’t covered by the help wizard or tutorial (or it does, but he/she just doesn’t grasp it). For times like that, he/she needs to turn to support for assistance and a guiding hand.

These are the basic features that every good autoresponder service should have. For more Internet marketing tips, visit Andy Jenkins Blog

Mailing list segmentation is the process of classifying e-mail addresses in your database according to common key characteristics. Segmenting a list allows an e-mail marketer to properly target subscribers with the right content and offers that are more likely to build relationships and lead to conversions later on.

Here are some ways to segment the thousands of e-mail addresses in your list:

1) By Interest Group – A topic or theme is inherent in every squeeze page. It’s the basis of everything in that page from the headline, the copy, the freebie that you’re giving away and the purpose of the campaign itself. Knowing what kind of rewards attract which kinds of people will allow you to segment your list according to specialized areas of interest. For instance, a marketer selling SEO tools can segment a mailing list of SEO professionals into on-page SEO and off-page SEO interest groups, allowing him to laser-target customers with the right content and offers.

2) Geography – Asking for ZIP codes in your squeeze page is an easy way to segment users by localities. If you’re using Google AdWords to drive traffic to squeeze pages, you can target them down to the city level to make sure that only people from locales that you want to target are drawn to your squeeze pages and mailing list.

3) Order Data – Tracking and filtering the orders of your customers can help you determine their buying habits in your online store. This means you can group e-mail addresses into people who favor certain products and target them with content and offers that are strongly relevant to their buying patterns. For example, if you can identify a subscriber group that frequently buys baby products form your store, shooting them an e-mail when you have a baby product promo will likely yield a nice sales spike.

4) Age – Asking for age before a user is allowed to download a report or view a video is a good way of making sure that your adult material doesn’t end up in the inboxes of minors. Seriously, age can be a good thing to know about subscribers especially if you’re targeting a certain demographic.

5) Gender – Asking for gender along with an e-mail address is not a very intrusive thing to do. It helps you segment your list and send specific content to gender groups. This works great for apparel and boutique online stores; it helps you avoid sending offers of boxer shorts to your lady subscribers.

6) Split Test Results – When an A/B split test yields a result of 70-30 or closer, it tells you that there’s a significant portion of your market that prefers to be communicated to in a certain way. A classic would be a test I did where one squeeze page was billed as “advanced Internet marketing tips” while the other one was labeled “basic Internet marketing tips”. More people went for the ‘advanced’ one but a good number went for the ‘basic’ one. This gave me the idea to create separate mailing lists for the two groups.

One group clearly felt that they were in a more advanced class than the other. Therefore, I should write distinct content and present distinct offers to each set of e-mail subscribers. Knowing how your audience sees itself is an underrated selling indicator, but if you can ‘read’ your market’s mind, you’ll have a better chance of building relationships and selling products to them.

Those are the most vital segmentation points that you should know as an e-mail marketer. For more Internet marketing tips, visit Andy Jenkins Blog

No matter how valuable an e-mail message is, if the subscriber chooses not to open it, then all the efforts pushed creating it go to waste.

One fundamental fact to remember about e-mail is that their subject lines can determine whether they should be opened or not. This is because it sets the subscriber’s expectation as to what he/she should see upon opening that e-mail.

Here are a few power tips to remember when writing that e-mail subject line:

1) Catch the reader’s attention – Like a newspaper’s headline, try to make your subject line catch as much attention without misleading your subscriber. Making it interesting enough to read entails more than just fancy words, go straight to the point.

2) Identify yourself – Introducing who you are in your subject line is a matter of courtesy. This also makes your email hard to ignore once you’ve built a good reputation toward your subscribers.

3) Make it Worthwhile and Specific – When making a subject line, make sure that it resonates with the subscriber’s interest and at the same time, fits the overall message of your e-mail. Again, never mislead a subscriber by making vague statements. One good example would be to have “useful tips on e-mail marketing” as your subject line, then have the entire message feature your helpful tips on e-mail marketing.

4) Don’t use Spam words – Use spam detector software for this purpose. While it’s true that the word ‘free’ is a powerful word that can trigger spam filters, if open rates are high enough and if you’ve got a good track record with your subscribers, it won’t get filtered. Also, there’s a ton of resources from the Internet that can shed some light on the most common spam words.

Here’s a nice resource on what spammy words and phrases to avoid.

5) Keep Testing – One test result isn’t enough to determine a subject line’s success. Keep testing on other variants of your subject line so you can determine which factors work best for a certain demographic.

6) Avoid SCREAMING TEXT – Using all caps in your subject line is often viewed as a desperate attempt to catch attention. This gives the impression to subscribers that you are screaming at them and it plants the seeds of doubt in a user’s mind about how credible you are. True professionals don’t need to scream; they just deliver calm, powerful messages.

7) Personalize it – If your mailing service has the feature of matching first names with e-mail addresses and incorporating them into subject lines, you’ll have an easier time with personalization. Studies have shown that seeing your name in the subject line makes you look longer at it. This means that you have that instant attention-grabbing edge, increasing the chances of a subscriber opening the e-mail.

For more Internet marketing tips, visit Andy Jenkins Blog

We don’t want to be too flashy when it comes to e-mail, nor do we want to be too plain. We want to have just the right stuff that our subscribers need in order for them to trust us. That said, what we say and how we say it are BIG factors in determining how our relationship with our subscribers turns out to be.

Without further ado, I present you with Power Tips on writing that e-mail:

1) Direct, compelling subject lines work best – Depending on the kind of business you have and the impression you want to create, make your e-mail subject lines catchy but still relevant to your e-mail’s message. Since you want to build trust with your subscriber by giving him valuable content, you can use words such as “useful tips” or “secret tricks” in your subject line.

2) Write practical and useful content – How To’s, a list of tricks, a guide on strategizing, or even a video demonstration are all great ways to build customer trust. This type of content enriches their knowledge, allowing them to relate perfectly to your messages when you pitch relevant offers.

3) Base your e-mails’ moods according to list segmentation – List segmentation refers to determining a single profile of each type of subscribers you have in various different lists, so you can connect with them at the same wavelength.

If a major segment concerns starting Internet marketers at the age of 16 or so, make e-mails that appeal to their youthful selves. If they’re older and more experienced than that, then be a little more sober without losing the persona you’re trying to project in your e-mails. You can also verify this through continuous testing.

4) Make your message short and concise – When it comes to e-mail, most people’s attention spans drastically go down. Long messages tend to disinterest or intimidate potential customers, which could ultimately result in their unsubscribing from your list. It’s important to hit them fast and hard with the information you want to share. Start with a solid outline and use bullet points to drive your message across.

5) DON’T YELL AT YOUR SUBSCRIBERS – Nothing says “spammer alert!” quite like screaming, all-caps text from the e-mail subject line right down to the body text. This is an eyesore and it cheapens the look of an e-mail, resulting in most users reporting a message as spam. Do yourself a favour and don’t even think about doing this in an attempt to grab some attention.

For more Internet marketing tips, visit Andy Jenkins Blog

Most companies believe that to increase sales, they must spend more on expensive advertising. While this can work, there is a better (and cheaper) way to increase sales. Simply improve your process for capturing and converting leads.

The first step is to find a way to attract leads to your website by offering something of value. This can be as simple as writing a free report and offering it to visitors in exchange for contact information.

Once you’ve captured the lead, the real work begins-the work of following up to convert that lead into a buyer. If you are not currently adding leads to a follow-up system, you may as well flush your marketing dollars down the toilet. Why? Because 80% of the people that visit your website are NOT ready to buy today. If you simply cherry-pick the 20% that are ready to buy, you miss out on a huge opportunity!

You see, the remaining 80% of leads will be ready to buy within a year, but only after they’ve been exposed to your message multiple times. By keeping in touch with those future buyers through systematic follow-up, you develop strong relationships. And because the majority of small businesses don’t follow-up, you’ll stand out from the competition and maximize your chances of being selected when leads are ready to buy. Just think about the impact that would have on your sales!

Marketing automation tools like Aweber give you the tools you need to capture leads online and follow-up automatically until your leads are ready to buy. The best part is, this automated follow-up boosts sales significantly without increasing your advertising budget.

An autoresponder allows users to schedule and send multiple e-mail messages in a sequence. This is helpful for Internet marketers who constantly have to maintain communication with their subscribers. One of the leading services that provide autoresponders is Aweber.

In the past 5 years, I’ve stayed with Aweber so I consider myself lucky that I don’t have to jump around several mailing services. Here’s why Aweber remains a personal favorite:

1) User-friendly Interface: Aweber doesn’t give users a hard time in the creation and management of its autoresponders through its user-friendly interface. The buttons and images represent their functions well, and if that’s not enough there’s a setup wizard that guides you through the entire process of creating your autoresponder. Basically, you won’t have to feel awkward when working with Aweber because you’ll find your way around it easily.

2) HTML Templates: There are 150 templates for Aweber’s autoresponders, and they’re still creating more. Its templates feature excellent color schemes that can match your company’s identity. If that’s not enough, you can also add your company logo and images to your messages.

3) Tracking and Reporting: Aweber can give you information about how well your autoresponders are performing. It gives you data on open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. It also presents the data in the form of a graph for trending.

4) Aweber gives you details on which e-mail clients your subscribers use to read your message. This allows you to adjust your autoresponders’ formats to their needs for a better business.

5) Automation: Aweber allows you to set a schedule for your autoresponders to follow. Besides scheduling the days to send them, it also gives you the option to choose what exact time you want them sent. This is important because time is a determining factor on human behavior (which translates into conversion and open rate differences).

6) Signup form customization: You can segment your list as it grows with Aweber’s fully customizable signup forms. Aweber allows you to incorporate more than 20 fields with drag-and-drop ease to your signup forms. If that’s not enough, you can create two variants of signup forms and test which one’s doing better than the other.

The Bottom Line

Aweber has been in the e-mail business since 1998 and is still a popular choice for Internet marketers. There’s no substitute for that kind of experience, making Aweber an excellent choice for anyone who wants to take e-mail marketing seriously.

Chances are, there is little doubt in your mind about the importance of follow-up in your marketing…you just need a few tips to get moving in the right direction. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you put your follow-up procedures in place.

1) Follow up immediately.

If a prospect expresses interest in your company, don’t let them slip through the cracks. Follow up right away to start building a relationship.

2) Manage the frequency of your follow-up.

Frequency is critical. If your follow-up is too sporadic, contacts may forget who you are. If you follow up too often, you risk being viewed as a pest. Avoid the urge to communicate with your prospects too often. Less is definitely more, or only say the essential stuff.

3) Manage expectations.

In order to avoid unkind thoughts and SPAM complaints, set e-mail expectations up front. Most complaints come when prospects are surprised—so tell subscribers exactly what you will be sending, when, and how it will benefit them.

4) Practice permission-based marketing.

Before you e-mail anyone, make sure you have permission to do so. This is as simple as including an “opt-in” button on your web form or other lead capture method. Once you have their permission, they are less likely to send you to the SPAM folder and more likely to respond to your messages.

5) Be persistent.

Remember, 80% of your prospects may not be ready to buy right now, but they will be ready within 2 years. Don’t give up on the opportunity to stay in touch with these prospects – through special offers, helpful tips and tricks, coupons, industry news, new product information, etc. You never know when one of these prospects will be ready to buy.

Put these principles to work in your follow-up marketing and you’ll start seeing much better response rates. There’s a goldmine of potential out there.