Online marketing solutions

The Internet has truly been the best thing that has happened for anyone involved in e-mail marketing strategies and e-mail marketing campaigns. With the emergence of the Worldwide Web and a constant growth and expansion of our state of the art technology, a more innovative, creative and more accurate e-marketing keeps evolving, with every campaign and new market segment opportunity found.

No longer for the young, the geeks, or the techies, technology has integrated itself into all our daily lives.  People rely more and more on e-mail and the internet as a source of information and survival.  No longer a luxury, the Internet is a real necessity, essential in everyone’s life. Using the Internet and e-mail to market, generates more sales than the older traditional ways of print, snail mail promotions, and announcements. Nevertheless, any good marketing campaign requires skills and tools to create successful and profitable results.

Whether you are a minor or major player, small or medium business, e-mail marketing has a great appeal to all and is constantly gaining popularity.  E-mail marketing is still the most cost effect tool a marketer has at their disposal allowing for lower costs while resulting in higher conversion rates.  So, how does one effectively use e-mail marketing to market?

Building an E-Mail Marketing Address List
Whatever your profession, an e-mail list plays a very integral role.  Your list will be the heartbeat of your strategies.  Building an accurate list, based on accurate demographics, along with researched behavioral data, will enable you to communicate market your clients, with relevant and interesting information pertaining to their interest, age, gender, and lifestyle.  Whether someone is buying your products, wanting further information on your company, or is visiting your website, you need to build a finely tuned e-mail marketing subscriber list.

Good Content or Just Another Sales Pitch?

Content – Every direct e-mail marketing campaign needs good copy.  Remember, your client may never meet you.  Your content will always reflect your voice, whether it is personal or just another sales pitch.  Their responses and decisions will be solely based on what they see, read, and perceive.  Realistically, both content and a good sales pitch are needed.  Without good copy, no one will read past your first paragraph.

Sales Pitch – Without a good pitch, you may never see any click through results.  But as we have said above, your content needs to be relevant and targeted to a specific audience.  Once size does not fit all.  Demographics and behavioral research proves this out over and over again.  While focusing on relevant and dynamic content, the average user is scanning their inbox using only seconds when deciding to read, keep, or trash their e-mail.  Use that window of opportunity wisely.

Building Relationships
Digital relationships are very fragile and need to be nurtured. Your clients and prospects are constantly being bombarded with aggressive email marketers looking to entice and lure them away, as they build their own successful email address lists.  This action calls for a smart strategy on your part, making sure that you are sending the right message to the right audience.  Bring your campaigns to a personal and dynamic level.  Let your audience know that they are important and their choices and opinions are respected and noted.  Do not give them an excuse to leave.  Loyalty is built slowly and consistency.  Trust does not come overnight.

Create a Secure Environment

Identify Theft is a very real threat.  With a majority of people giving out their personal information online, there is a need to be concerned.  In a report put out by e-marketer.com in March 2010, it was stated:   “Overall, consumers expressed the most concern about conducting financial transactions online, including banking and bill pay. E-mail was a greater concern than online shopping, perhaps because of the wealth of personal data contained in e-mail accounts.”

Never forget that you are marketing to real people, with lives, families, jobs, and responsibilities.  Respect their time and intelligence.  Send campaigns out that are relevant, valuable, and worth reading.  Make your communications worth waiting for and greatly anticipated.

Using effective and powerful tools, does not guarantee success.  Tools cannot do anything by themselves.  As a captain needs to steer his ship, keeping it on course with precise and accurate instruments, an e-mail campaign needs to be kept on course with good strategy, great content, and the right targets to bring in a successful ROI.

What is Email Harvesting? Email harvesting is the process Where your email address lists are obtained, without your permission or knowledge.  They are used in various bulk and direct email marketing campaigns, usually labeled as spam.  Through spiders, spammers have obtained programs which look through web pages for email addresses, as well.

How does this affect you?

Email address harvesting is not a good thing.  Once your client’s email address is stolen and is now in the hands of a spammer,  your client will get flooded with spam and trash – almost immediately.

You could even be held liable, especially if your email address is displayed somewhere in that spammer’s email.  Your client will think it is from you and soon you may be trashed, and spammed.  The implications and results will be chilling.  Imagine  having to cancel and create a brand  new business email address?  Think of all the clients, associates, and prospects who are already signed up and linked with an email address taken years to build!

Why are they doing this?
Their one goal – to sell something or to conduct some illegal activity benefiting them with some monetary gain, all at your expense.  You have inadvertently become a target of their bad intentions now that they have your your email address list.  Some, just collect email address lists and sell them to marketing companies.  Pretty upsetting don’t you agree?

Reunion.com – Reunion.com dupes new members into signing up by sending them an email that pretends to be from an acquaintance who’s been looking for them (on Reunion.com, naturally). After signing up, the site extracts your contacts and immediately begins spamming them to join by sending out a similar email.

More and more companies have been considering engaging in marketing campaigns that involve “address book scraping, (address book harvesting)”  in which a user is asked to import his contacts (i.e., the e-mail addresses he has stored in his e-mail account address book) into his social networking Web site or other online service so that a message can be sent to those contacts inviting them to join the social network or to participate in a joint offering of the company and its partner.  In some cases, the user is asked to provide the username and password for his e-mail account so that the import can be done transparently.  Read Full Article

Legitimate sites use deceptive email marketing tactics as well.
Upon my research, I came across an article about a site known worldwide called “Classmates.com” which promises to hook you up with former classmates who just might be looking for you, if you upgrade to their gold membership.

Classmates.com Agrees to $9.5 Million False Advertising Settlement
Classmates.com — the website that promises to reunite people with their mullet-haired friends of youth — has agreed to pay out a $9.5 million settlement for a lawsuit dating back to 2008 accusing the company of “false advertising” through “deceptive” marketing e-mails.

OK – You  have convinced me – What should I do?
First, for those of you who want all the technical ways to protect your email lists online, please see:  Effect Methods of Protection.

As for me, I am a simple kind of gal living by the rules of  “make it simple – PLEASE!”.  After my research in this topic, one thing is for sure.  I will never import my address list anywhere, on any website, EVER AGAIN!

If you know a better way, please share.

Whether you create targeted direct email campaigns or are the recipient of them, there is one point on which we can all agree, we want and demand our freedom of choice.  This passion for options and choosing is instilled within all of us.  That is why the opt-in plays such an integral part of our HTML or e-newsletter email campaigns.

Opt-In Email Marketing is a powerful marketing tool when we want to reach a very specific and centered audience of possible purchasers.  If understood and implemented correctly, you will be building a top quality client base to interact with, while rewarding them with valuable offers and service.

The Right Attitude Attracts the Right Client

What are your goals when you send out your e-campaigns and e-newsletters?  Your two primary goals need to focus on building your opt-in subscriber list which in turn, is building a solid client database.  This will be the most valuable resource you will own, as this list will represent those clients that are waiting for and anticipating your email on a somewhat regular basis.  These are not lists bought and rented; they are yours and yours alone.  Clients that opt-in are exhibiting trust and a willingness to see what you are offering.  A client base built on opt-ins opens up the door for honest and open communication and a future list of loyal subscribers and buyers.

What’s in it For Me? – Where’s the Beef?
Do you remember that great TV commercial by Wendy’s?  People advertise value, but what they receive is not what was promised.  Going into a restaurant anticipating a large and juicy hamburger, then receiving one that can hardly be seen, creates distrust while pushing away a possible loyal patron.  What a great parallel example to your e-mail campaigns.  What valuable offer have you promised your recipients?  When your e-mail is opened, will they be disappointed having expected much more?

According to MarketingSherpa, “consumers want special treatment. They are giving up their precious time in exchange for the benefit of content – so that content should convey some real benefits.”  In a sampling of over 1,400 nationally representative consumers, most wanted to opt in if there was a worthwhile exchange.”

Value Added Tips

•    Sell to help – not just to make money: Your service or product should answer a need.
•    Offer valuable information or tips your recipients can use
•    “How To” instructional type tips are very well received
•    Offer discounts to first time subscribers
•    Offer special sales and discounts to repeat buyers
•    Create interesting content that appeals to your entire target audience
•    Always encourage feedback.  This creates an ongoing dialogue with your customers.
•    Follow up is a Must!  Once a sale happens, that is just the beginning.  Communicate with your client.  Let them now they are valuable and you are standing behind your product or service.  We all appreciate the personal touch.  You can’t communicate with an office or building.  Let them know that you are a real person and can be trusted.

Lastly, use all communication and feedback received to help you continue gathering a more accurate and detailed personal demographic profile for your email database.  This gives you the ability to create a more targeted future campaign, helping you become more successful; one campaign at a time.

Using these techniques effectively will increase your sales and opt in subscribers.  With the power of the internet and viral marketing, word of mouth will spread quickly from one happy customer to another.

What are you waiting for?  Get out there and build some long term trusted relationships right now.

Let’s face it. We are in a tough economy and the light still is not shinning at the end of the tunnel. Our survival mode needs to kick in and our wallets must tighten.  Take this time and be resourceful. It should be our way of life. Concentrating on what works is one of the survival keys of life.

As email marketing software continues to be a successful path for all business email marketing, obtaining a large-scale, well-developed email list is worth its weight in gold.

So, why wait to build your own email address list? Any business knows that it takes a great amount of time to build up a formidable database of clients. Why spend all that time and energy when you can buy or rent a massive email address list ready-made? That is a good question. The answer is not black and white. Whether you are using lists for bulk email, direct mail, or e-newsletter campaigns, you will need to know the positives and negatives between the two, making your own conclusions.

Renting an Email Address List

Renting an email address list can be very cost-effective. For a fee, you are taking advantage of someone else’s hard earned email list building. Normally, these lists are credible and the people on the lists have given their permission to receive third-party mail. These emails are carefully monitored and the providers are normally not considered or guilty of spamming. Whether obtained from email campaigns, direct bulk email marketing, or an email newsletter subscriptions, these email address lists are a valuable source of sales and leads.

The negative to renting is that this precious email list never is yours. You never see or have access to it. You rely on the seller’s word that he is not a spammer and that his list is genuine. You create the email marketing campaign, and the owner sends out the email. You simply trust his word. At the end of the day are you sure that your direct mass mailings are going to a targeted receptive list? OR – are junked and spammed?

Buying an Email Address List. Once bought, you have full control over your list sending out your own promotions, whenever you want. If the owner of the list respects and preserves it, it is not just sold to the highest bidder – but are you sure? There is no guarantee. Before you shell out the big bucks, read on.

1. You may not be the sole owner of the list. How many other people have bought this list?

2. A list that is not built by your market niche may not be targeting the correct consumers.

3. If a list is being used and misused by others, you are in danger of being spammed or worse, you could end up on black lists.

4. You may receive little or no responses from annoyed recipients.

If people are not careful with these lists, recipients are bombarded with bulk mail that they don’t want coming at them from many different sources. Bottom Line – recipient responses collapse, making this purchased address list of little or no value for your business. OR, their happy little spam and delete fingers go right into action.

In conclusion: Whether you are a new business, or reviving the old, having a well developed and monitored email address list is crucial. Reaching out to the right audience with the right message and product is invaluable as the path to growing your revenues and increasing quality sales leads.