Email Marketing News and Tips

ESPs (Email Service Providers) are becoming more strict on who they allow you to send to.  Email addresses MUST be opted-in.  That means you must have permission from the recipient to receive an email from you.   Below are a few ideas to help build your email marketing list using social media.

1. Start with who you know

Export your lists of people you know and business colleagues who know you from your Linkedin, Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo accounts. Send everyone an email from you personally asking them to join your list. Link off to a hosted version of an opt-in form to collect them.  If you need assistance your email service provider can assist you.

2. Facebook

Almost everyone has a Facebook page.  If you don’t you should.  Send out an email to your fans and friends asking them to join your email list. Direct them to your hosted opt-in form and encourage them to sign up with some sort of incentive. If you have a Facebook Fan page you can put an opt-in form right on the page.

3. Twitter

Tweet to your Twitter list some sort of an offer for joining your opt-in list.  Forward them to your opt-in form using a Boomerang Hot Link to save space.

4. Blogging?

You can easily include an opt-in form on your blog.  Contact your Email Service Provider to learn how.

5. Comment on blogs and discussion boards

Offer helpful comments on blogs or discussions boards that your prospects might visit.  Make sure to include a link to your site where your opt-in form is hosted.

I think that one of the great benefits of the web is that anyone can become a published author. Since I first started creating web pages in the early 90's I have technically been a publisher. I put up photos and articles that people would mail in just for fun. Then came 'web 2.0' where anyone could use a content management system to quickly create websites. This opened the door to blogs as we know them to exist today. Anyone can now update their online journal even from a phone. As the interfaces become... Continue reading

Email marketing can help you convert visitors into customers, build long term relationships with those customers and introduce new profit streams into your business. But none of these benefits are possible if you commit one of the "seven deadly sins" of email marketing. What are these deadly sins? They are mistakes that many email marketers make either out of lack of knowledge or the wrong perspective on email marketing. Let's take a closer look so you know what to avoid. 1. You don't ask permission to... Continue reading

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Every email marketer knows that having a large list is a key to making the most out of email marketing. Think about it this way: if you expect a 10% response rate on your email marketing messages, and your list has 100 people you'll get 10 people on your list taking action. If you've grown your list to 500 people, with the same response rate you're looking at 50 people taking action. And the numbers just keep getting larger the more that you grow your list. Whether that action is making a purchase, calling... Continue reading

I recently had a customer come to me asking how he could do away with the "click button to display images" prompt. The customer was sending out an email and as you know, most, if not all, email programs these days block images by default. He was looking for a way to bypass this and have the images appear automatically. Specifically, he asked if this could be done via the use of background images. To his dismay, I informed him that background images would also fall victim to this block and in addition, that... Continue reading

As viral videos from places such as YouTube.com or Break.com become more and more important to the Internet and to your customers, a lot of email marketers are probably wondering how they can incorporate video into email marketing campaigns. Let's explore. Constrainted by Old Technologies Unfortunately, email marketing is still constrained by the older HTML technology being used in email readers such as Thunderbird and Outlook. This technology also constrains ISP email software such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail... Continue reading

One of your businesses' most valuable marketing assets is the email distribution list. This list can be an aggregate of existing customers, past customers and prospects. To build your list, you will need to put certain programs in place. Some options are to set up incentives for people to complete a form or voucher, or sign up online and share their information. The following four examples are proven incentives to building your list. Discounts or vouchers Free downloads such as a e-books or guides to a... Continue reading

Do you ever wonder if Facebook is anything but a time vacuum? Have you ever suddenly looked down and realized you have wasted 30 minutes flipping through a high school friend's recent photo album that you have not spoken to in 10 years? A more positive use would be attaching your business Blog to Facebook through an RSS feed. This will allow all content that you share on your Blog to be instantly updated to your Facebook users, helping better promote your business. If you think it sounds like a daunting... Continue reading

Email marketing can be an effective tool to keep in touch with your list members each month with a newsletter, but one of the best ways to use email is to run promotions. Promotional emails can help you announce a new product, sell a product or get sign-ups for an event. While your newsletter is designed to inform them and build trust, your promotional emails are there to build on that trust and get them to take a specific action. Business owners normally fall into one of two categories - they either shy... Continue reading