Up to that point where someone actually buys something, it’s all been theory and conjecture. The acid test comes when the prospect becomes a customer.

Lots of marketers get it wrong and fail to convert. Even those with some serious experience can go bust with a marketing campaign. The following example might illustrate that point.

Just after the holidays respected marketer send an email to his list voicing a compliant. His gripe was about getting email promotions from other marketers right before Christmas. He noted that some of these were billed as being Christmas gifts or Christmas Specials from the promoters.

The marketer was so incensed by this apparent lack of marketing decorum that he opted out from future mailings from those marketers – obviously bad news for those marketers. This negative reaction raises an interesting point about email marketing in general.

Consider for a moment how many Christmas oriented television and radio ads you might hear in December. As Christmas approaches the advertising to which we are exposed is simply relentless across all broadcast and print media. It would be fair to say that we are supersaturated with Christmas ads at that time of year.

With that thought in mind, it might not seem so odd that email advertising follows the same trend. That being the case, then why would an experienced marketer have had such a negative reaction to receiving email ads right before Christmas? Does this point to something unique about email advertising?

There is a tremendous amount of evidence that points to the fact that email marketing is a unique format. It is in many ways much more personal than other forms of advertising. In that regard it would be wise to craft messages to prospective customers with much more care and thoughtfulness as to how those messages will be received.

Good copy writers already know that successful advertising copy is that which makes a connection and reaches people on a personal level. The really good ads have a staying power that is almost magical. They can be so influential as to become iconic pieces of popular culture. Advertising really does deal some very basic and primal aspects of human behavior – which can evoke a very positive or equally negative reaction.

Email marketing is indeed a very direct for of advertising. Unlike the so called printed junk mail which people physically received in actual mailboxes, direct email ads appear in your in box, inside your home right on your computer. Because of spam laws much of the direct email promotions people receive are from opt in lists, which means that someone has agreed to receive it.

Opting in might only takes a few seconds to accomplish but it’s more than simply a thoughtless act. When someone opts “in” to a list they are creating the potential for a marketer to create a relationship. Opting in is in fact an act of faith or trust.

Creating and maintaining trust online is perhaps the single biggest challenge for any marketer, regardless of how they deliver their advertising. It’s pretty clear from the reaction of this marketer noted previously that, trust can be fragile thing.

Creating enough trust to get someone to opt-in to a mailing list is clearly the first step. Moving them from prospect to buyer is an exercise in building on that trust. It is a process of building a bond with people you’ve never met; something you can only do by understanding them.

If a marketer sends an email message directly to someone’s in box, they are entering a special private world. The in box might well be the most important and special place in all of marketing off line or on. It is a protected inner sanctum where the nature of the relationship between marketer and prospect can be nurtured and developed or, ended instantly.

Putting marketing rubber on the road to so speak is all about understanding what motivates and moves your customers. Get it right and conversions will follow, get it wrong and as illustrated, click, you’re gone.

Marvin Double is a writer and internet marketer with over 35 years of business experience off line. His company Monkeeze Marketing provides information, content and resources to the internet marketing community. You can find the company blog at Monkeeze Marketing Blog

Another point people don’t seem to realize is that an autoresponder can get your email past all those spam filters, I use aweber.com, and as they have a very good reputation the ISP’s etc out there know that email coming from their severs isn’t spam.

Anyway, I will go into this in alot more detail at a later date, for now please read what Greg Mee has to say on the subject in his article.

Thanks for the article Greg!

Neil

Autoresponders for affiliates

One of the most important areas of marketing, online or off, and this includes affiliate marketing, is in following up with your clients and prospects. Once you have their contact information you should stay in touch, sending something to them just often enough that they remember who you are, but not so often that they’re annoyed.

Of course, how often this is will vary. Once you’ve bought a house and finished the deal you probably won’t want to hear from your realtor about all the new houses on the market.

If you’re an electronics or video game junkie then you might be interested in receiving something every few days, especially if it’s regarding sales and deals.

The problem with following up is that it’s something of a pain to do manually, especially as your contact list gets large. Imagine the realtor with 1000 names on his contact list sending a Christmas card to everyone on that list.

And then came the autoresponder. This little software email widget is a godsend to anyone with a large list of names. Especially affiliates. First, just so we’re all on the same page here, let’s define a couple of terms.

Autoresponder – this is an email robot. It has no brains whatsoever. You send an email to the autoreponder address and it immediately sends one back to the address you gave it. Simple as that.

Sequential autoresponder – This is the same thing, except that it will send a series of emails instead of just one. It doesn’t have any brains, either.

The sequential autoresponder (and we’ll just call it an autoresponder and skip the first definition) takes a series of emails, that you (or your staff) write up, and sends them in a sequence that you determine. Remember that I said it doesn’t have any brains? That means that you have to determine the sequence that’s best for your business. Every day, week, month, whatever. You also have to write all of your own affiliate emails and manually load each one into the system.

A “book of the day” sequence will be far more frequent than a “how to buy your new home” or “New Cars from Ferrari” sequence.

As an affiliate marketer you’ll want to come up with a series of emails to promote whichever affiliate program you’re working with. If you’re affiliated with Amazon.com, for example, you might make a series of emails on science fiction books and call it your “SF Book of the Day.” Whenever anyone signs up for your list they will get the “SF Book of the Day” until the pre-loaded emails run out. Whether you have 4 or 400 emails in that sequence then they’ll eventually get them all.

Of course, since you’re an Amazon affiliate, each of those emails has your Amazon affiliate link embedded in the text.

Each of those affiliate autoresponder emails should be more than just sell, sell, sell. At the very least, you should do a short review of each of the books in your Book of the Day sequence.

I’m sure you’ve signed up for a few newsletters from various marketers. Most of the emails sent to those lists are from their autoresponders, except for those few that announce something launching right now.

Try to write every email in such a way that your reader will look forward to the next one. We’ve all been on lists that we quickly unsubscribed from, because of the hard sell or lack of interesting content. Your reader wants to know what’s in it for him as much as you do when you read your own email, so write accordingly.

And get your autoresponder going now!

Unixtools.com has articles and tutorials to make the unix user’s life esier, plus some easy php tricks to make your website management more efficient.

Syed Hussain covers som of the advantages of building your own opt-in list.

Thanks Syed.

Neil

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List building for affiliates

Importance of Opt-in List Building for Affiliates

List building is an important part of any online business. This article spells out the main reasons and major benefits of building a huge opt-in list of subscribers for affiliate marketers.

The best lists are those which are opt-in lists which means the people have themselves opted to be in your list. This kind of list can be more responsive than buying leads outside or making someone else build list for you.

You can build and grow your opt-in list in a variety of ways. One of the best methods of doing so is by offering something of value in return for the customer’s email id and name.

You can create a mini e-course related to the affiliate product you are promoting. Or you can offer an ebook or some other download if people join your email list.

By offering such incentives to people, you can get a lot of opt-in subscribers if your offer is really good.

The main advantages of list building for affiliate marketers are:

1. You can promote your affiliate product to your list many times instead of being able to promote just once. When you spend money on advertising and directly send people to the merchant site, you are missing out on a big opportunity.

If people do not buy when they visit the merchant site then your advertising dollars have gone waste. However if you had captured their contact information, then you could have emailed them multiple times promoting your product.

So even if they do not buy the first or the second time, you still have a chance to make the sale as you can keep promoting to them through email marketing.

2. Another advantage of list building is you can gain the trust of the people. Many people might be hesitant to buy something online because of so many scams prevalent on internet.

Therefore it is important to build their trust so that they no longer feel hesitation in purchasing the product you recommend to them.

When you build list and email them with some very useful and high quality information on the topic of their interest, the people might soon start trusting you more and more as you have provided them with good information free of cost. Then you can subtly recommend any affiliate product you are promoting.

3. The third advantage of list building is you have a chance of making repeat sales. If someone has purchased the product you are promoting and you have got a nice affiliate commission from the sale, it doesn’t have to stop there. You can market other high quality related products in the future and if they buy, you get more and more commissions.

So you now realize how beneficial it can be in the long run to build a list of opt-in subscribers by offering them some mini-course or e-book etc. If you want to learn how to create good quality mini-courses in just 1 day, click here – create e-course in 1 day

Additional Resources

Making a six-figure income from affiliate marketing. Lazy super-affiliate reveals his secrets!

How to earn $50 or more daily through internet marketing

Kelly Chen covers some great points about email marketing that you should take note of, I will be adding a few post covering this subject as your own email list can make you a fortune, I will also tell you how to get your email past the filters and read by your subscribers.

Neil

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Beginners Tips to Legal Bulk Emailing 

In the past bulk email was seen as spam. That is partially correct.

Because bulk email simply means ‘email sent en mass’ at one click of a button, usually sent directly by a web server’s email system.

(Anything that is unwanted/unsolicited email, sent in bulk or not, is considered spam.

A postcard either from a friend or a total stranger, on the other hand, is technically difficult to be considered as spam although there are many email filtering software you can choose from to use and control the quanitity of unwanted emails you may be receiving.)

Bulk emails can also be sent from autoresponder services like GetResponse.com or Aweber.com

Certain autoresponder services may allow you the added benefit of tracking your emails to see if emails you’ve sent have been opened and read, etc. The more advanced type of autoresponders may be one that allows you to send full newsletter-formatted (HTML/FLASH) emails or even ‘video emails’.

Email marketing gurus encourages all bulk emailers to use “permission marketing” or “double opt-in” procedures. This means a subscriber has to confirm he/she wants to receive a marketer’s email by way of clicking on a confirmation link sent by the marketer/bulk emailer.

One of the best ways to start bulk email is to collect email addresses by using an opt-in form that gives away something valuable for free (commonly known as a ‘freebie’).

Your freebie can be a sample pack of mud spa or even an informational ebook you know people would want to download in exchange for revealing their contact emails and first name, for example.

Near your opt-in form, have an anti-spam and privacy policy or statement link, explaining the use of information collected.

It may also help if you include ‘white-listing’ instructions, so as to prevent the possibility that your email gets accidentally sent to a subscriber’s TRASH folder.

When sending bulk emails, do not use deceptive or misleading subject lines. This is against the law no matter where you may be sending bulk emails from.

And most importantly, your bulk email must not only give your subscribers an option to “remove themselves from your emailing list” (to opt-out or unsubscribe).

You can read more about the The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

Another way to build your list so you can send bulk emails (site updates for example) is to build your own membership site or wordpress blog. People who want to be on your ‘bulk email list’ become your members or subscribers till they opt-out.

Getting people to want to receive your bulk email (it’s actually a SINGLE email at a time, weekly.bi-monthly or monthly intervals) from you may be easy.

But keeping an on-going relationship with your opt-in subscribers means you have to keep them interested in whatever you have to offer long enough (at least for a single sale), and this is harder but not impossible to achieve. It’s a long-term relationship (and repeat sales) you want.

I like writing practical articles for singles, couples and IMVU/MySpace homepage owners, go-carting, beading, polymer-claying and swearing at bad tv news when I am not shooting aliens online. I also enjoy creating video tutorials about image/video editing & animation, and trying out new games and software.

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