More Tips on Email Marketing.

Good morning, my friends. As long as people keep responding
to my posts positively, I'm going to keep writing them. If
you feel the frequency this week has been too much, I'll
try to show some restraint next week. Just want to do my
part to help you stay focused and to use your marketing
dollars wisely during these troubled times.

A question was sent in by a subscriber: "Is it better to
use an autoresponder service or to use your own software to
send email?"

A lot of people just starting out tend to use Outlook to
send mail to their list. This is a bad idea.

Never include your list of intended recipients in the CC;
field. When you do that you are sharing your list with all
of your recipients. This causes 3 problems for you: (1)
if a recipient accidentally hits Reply All when sending you
a message, everyone on the cc: list will receive it. That
will start an avalanche of email complaints. (2)
disreputable people can steal your mailing list. (3) your email is
sent without personalization ("Dear Steve...).

Some people have learned their lessons the hard way and
understand that the correct way to do this is to place your
mailing list in the BCC: field and to send the email to
yourself. This eliminates unintended list sharing and
complaints and list theft.

But this is not a good long-term solution.

Internet Service Providers (ISP) do not like to see their
home users or even their business users use their networks
for large email blasts. In my early days with Cox Cable I
would start doing a blast from my home office only to find
my Net service disconnected within an hour. Or they would
send me an email telling me that my account looked
compromised and was being used for bulk email. Then they
tried to upsell me to a business account.

You don't need these kinds of problems.

Lastly, there's the problem of getting blacklisted by other
ISPs and they will make it virtually impossible for your
recipients to ever receive your emails. Your messages will
start bouncing, and your response rate will drop to nil.

So what do you do?

Infacta makes a good tool called GroupMail. It's been
around for years and I believe is in Version 5.x right now
so it very mature. They are responsive when it comes to
support, too.

Basically, GroupMail allows you to maintain an email
list(or many lists for different groups). Then you write
your email and pick your database and click send. GroupMail
then personalizes each email (Dear Steve ....) and starts
pushing them out in small groups so as not to tick off the
ISPs.

It has many other features too numerous to mention but you
can read more about it here:

http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/groupmail.htm

It is better than using Outlook. Much better.

My preference though is to use an autoresponder service such as
GetResponse. Why?

First, autoresponder companies have one focus in life: to
manage and deliver email. They are experts in list grooming
(which keeps you safe and saves you time) and they use
multiple IP addresses to ensure your email is never
perceived as being s-p-a-m.

Now there are some downsides. Yes, you have to pay for the
service, but at $147/yr, it's about the same cost as a copy
of GroupMail, so that's a wash.

The big downside is that they insist on reviewing any
existing lists you have. They remove invalid email
addresses and those that have requested to not be sent
email. That keeps you safe. But when I moved to
GetResponse, my list of 5000 got whittled down to about
1000. But it is 1000 people who really want to hear from me!

The good news is my deliverability and responses are up.
When I tried to send my own campaigns, I was lucky if
40-60% received my email. Now I am probably 80-100%.

An autoeresponder services has the added benefits of being
able to schedule a series of email messages over a period
of time. They manage the bounces and the unsubscribe
requests. They provide you with tracking so you can see
email opens and forwards. These features are invaluable.
The three most used services are these:

GetResponse

AWeber

Constant Contact

Check them out and choose one. They will make your life
much easier.

You can purchase your own autoresponder software and run it
on your own server if you want to install PHP scripts and
MYSQL and lease a server. One of the most popular scripts
is Email Marketing Assistant. You can read a review here.

At the end of the day, you should put a stake in the ground
and choose an email marketing direction that makes sense for
you, but do make a choice and do start using email more.

Remember: email marketing is as much about using your list
to make short-term money as it is about building long-term
relationships with people. There are people on my lists who
have been there for 10 years. I have credibility with people
the longer they remain a subscriber.

Another question that popped up was should I maintain
multiple smaller lists or one big one? That depends upon
your subject matter expertise and your sales goals -- does
what you sell work across different groups or is it more
appropriate for a single group?

There are some gurus out there who believe that each email
should be laser focused to the interests of a specific
group. I used to write and send a dozen different emails
each week to a dozen different groups. That's a lot of
work.

And I realized over time, that despite the differences in
my smaller lists, most of what I talk about is of interest
across the lists, so now I tend to write one newsletter and
send it to everyone.

I expected a lot of unsubscribe requests but just the
opposite happened. My list is growing, I receive more
responses, and I am very encouraged by comments from
subscribers.

Should you get upset when someone unsubscribes. Frankly, I
don't even bother thinking about it anymore. GetResponse
handles that for me while I sleep! As long as I see new
subscribers signing up every week, I know something must be
working.

OK, enough rambling. Think about what I've talked about
this week. Drop me a line. Let me know how I can help. Feel
free to ask questions. That's what I'm here for!