Thursday, November 26, 2009

7 Steps for Improving Your Email Marketing

The success of your email marketing campaign is often based on a set of complex factors.  However, a number of these issues can be proactively managed to ensure an optimized response.  When developing your next email campaign, consider the following guidelines.
1. Your list.
Certainly one of the most important aspects of any email marketing campaign, your list is directly correlated to your success.  Are your names recent?  Have they agreed to be marketed to?  Have they shown an interest in products or services similar to your own?  Make sure that you are using a house list (names you collected on your own) or have been purchases from a reputable broker.

2. Your subject line.
Getting a user to open your message is paramount any email marketing campaign. The best way to determine the subject line that works best is to break your emails into three random yet equal groups.  Measure the response to each email and use the highest producing one as your control.  In follow up emails, try to beat the response rate of your control email.

3.  Your sender information.
What information appears on the sender line of your email?  Will your prospects recognize it?  Do they want to hear from you?  Often times, emails are deleted without ever being opened due to an indiscernible sender name.  Your sender name should be brief and easily understood.

4. Track your results.
Tracking allows you to determine who opened your message and clicked on a link or multiple links within your email.  By determining what worked and what didn’t, you can replicate success on your next email.  As described above, tracking is particularly important when testing subject lines, imbedded links, and other direct response vehicles.

5. Make sure your unsubscribe method is in place and working.
The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 requires that all email messages contain clear directions on how to opt-out from subsequent mailings. Provide an unsubscribe mechanism that allows those receiving your email to send you and email and indicate their desire to opt-out from receiving further emails from you or your business.  If recipients no longer want to hear from you, it’s in your best interest to remove them from your list.

6. Your images are correctly referenced and you've used alt tags in each image.
Improperly referencing your images can cause them to appear broken when you send your message - the dreaded red x. To insure the image is referenced correctly it must appear as, img src="http://www.yourdomain.com...." rather than, img src="/images/picture.jpg". Alt tags are another important part of your images. The new security features on almost every email client these days disables images automatically. Having alt tags in place allow your reader to identify the image and determine if it is safe to enable.

7.  Test, Test, Test!
No matter what your involvement with email marketing happens to be, it is essential that you follow the guidelines above for successful results.  In addition, the key is to test, test, test! After each email campaign, measure your opens, click-throughs, and purchases.  Document the specific date, time, list, subject line, and content used to produce your results.  Refer back to your documentation prior to your next campaign.

Email doesn't have to be a complex form of marketing.  There are many best practices you can follow and some simple rules that ensure effectively delivery, open and conversion. By following the simple rules presented in this article, you’ll not only deliver and effective email campaign, you’ll discover a consistent method for generation revenue for your business.
Best Wishes
Kathleen Oz
Legitimate Business Opportunities Online

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6 Eye Grabbing Subject Lines to Increase traffic to your online business blog

Your subject lines plays a crucial role in any email campaign ads whether you're using safelists, autoresponders, ezine solo ads or any opt-in list where email is involved. Your subject line will make or break your return on your investment so make sure you get their attention first. Here are six headlines that have worked for me in the past which I'm sure will work for you too. The technology will always change but peoples desire to succeed and curiousity will not. 1. Promote Your URL Here - Free! For whatever reasons, I've had so much success using this subject line when promoting free classified sites, safelists, and those viral ad boards. 2. Hi, My name is Paul This works simply because it raises prospects curiosity. I'm always a sucker for this subject line. Who's this Paul anyway? I've had succeess with this using ezine solo ads. 3. I need your help, please? There's something about being a human, always wanting to help another human being, It's hard to explain, it just works. 4. Bob, I haven't received your shipping address yet. What! my shipping address? why do you need my shipping address for. This particular subject line really piqued my interest. If you are sending post cards to your members or prospects, this will improve your sales especially if you personalize it. 5. How my site got listed #1 on Google, for free! This one made several sales from Trafficswarm traffic exchange program when I was promoting an affiliate program about search engine e-book. Even made more sales with ezine solo ads using the same subject line. 6. Paul, Please accept my sincerest apology. When I saw this subject line from an email, my first reaction was, "who/why/what are you sorry about?...huh?" Exactly it got my attention and my curiosity. The sender was apologizing for not sending that email sooner which was about a new traffic exchange program. Good grief. In conclusion, make your subject line so compelling that it's almost irresistible for your prospects not to open the email message. If you can hypnotize your readers with cleaver subject lines, you are half way to making a sale. Also when people can recognize where that email message came from, that will help getting your email message open as well. Don't use fake names, use your real name instead. Of course, I am not recommending that you use any of these headlines if they are not true in relation to the content of the e-mail message. If you rely on deception in e-mail marketing, all you will do is tarnish your reputation and your credibility. Best Wishes Kathleen Oz Business Opportunities

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free traffic, free website, free business, can I succeed

free business, free traffic, free website,
can I use all these to make dollars on the web.
list of all freebies are on the site.

Own a blog
Own a Safelist
Own a directory

Add ons.
Shout Boxes.
Games.
Chat Boards.

SEO Help.
Free Submissions.
Free Site Ranking.
Free Link Check.

and lots more.





About 6 months ago, I stumbled upon The Surf Craze (Auto Surf and Manual Surf) and I was surprised to see this kind of advertising, So I picked my self a small website or affiliate site and added it to as many surf sites as possible and I would spend hours with as many windows open as possible jumping from site to site trying to surf as many as possible in return for my site to be seen and receive hits (with out much success), then I seen this other site something about these safelists, So I jumped on board the safelist craze, I luckily found some of the better safelists and signed up to about 5 and I was bombarded by offers"make a million" "email 700 000 000 members spam free" "blast 2000 000 blogs" "your ad' seen by millions" after reading all these great emails I jumped on board a few and purchased a few websites, "I was going to be a millionaire in NO TIME, after all that was "Promised", so I started using all these great blasters and safelists (surfing was over now).
I am/was a couple hundred dollars down now and had nothing to show, apart from 100s of ebooks, a few blasters and some websites, so I purchased some scripts and set up multiple websites, BUT still no traffic from all these blasters and apparent "millions of emails sent".
So I stooped and thought what a crock and then came the "email blasters" I subscribed to 5-6 different email blasters (each one bragged a total 0f 2000 plus safelists and millions of combined members) I was spending hours upon hours signing up to safelists and confirming addresses, finding larger email boxes, This time I was set to make money (apparent Millions as promised) after all I was sending apparently close to a BILLION emails and blogs a day, BUT still no response.

So here I am today a little wiser and subscription free, promoting my new website based on all free products, sites, software, hosting, domain names, websites, add ons, scripts and of course a lot of free advertising, trying to see what I can do for free and only using freebies gathered from the net.


Of course traffic is building up and I may have to invest in an upgrade to handle the traffic, so I may have to dip into my pockets after all.

Conclusion:

Safelist Blasters:
End up getting spammed daily or more by Safelist Host.
Most email ends up in trash by auto cleaners.

Assorted "million email blasters"
Go to no-one and waste of cash.
Who are those millions of recipients?

Blog Blaster.
Claimed to reach 2 million blogs, but only reaches 500 max' per blast.
Most/all blogs require registration and confirmation anyway.

Classified Blaster.
Required the same as above.
Most/all Classifieds require registration.

Written by Jason Godwell.
Best Wishes
Kathleen Oz
Legitimate Business Opportunities Online
Business Opportunities Online

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Best Online Business Opportunities/Blog: The Last Word On The Plugin Profit Site

5 Affiliate Mistakes to Avoid that will Increase Your Sales

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money from home and affiliate programs provide anyone with internet access a chance to make a living on the internet. Affiliate programs are usually free or very cheap to join, easy to get started and typically pay commissions on a regular basis, so more and more people are turning to them as a means to start a home based business. However, there are a few mistakes affiliate marketers tend to make that hurts their business tremendously.

Avoiding some of these common mistakes made by affiliate marketers should quickly and easily improve your chances of making sales and increase your affiliate commissions. Here are five of the top mistakes made by affiliate marketers:

1) Not researching the affiliate program before your start promoting it

It really is amazing just how many affiliates grab the first affiliate program that comes there way or signup simply because it has a high commission rate or promote it just because every other marketer is promoting it. If the program does not compliment the overall theme of your site, you will find it difficult to convince your visitors and subscribers to purchase the product. Why would they want it if it does not have anything to do with the area you are targeting?

2) Not using your signature file correctly

Many affiliates add a signature file to all of their out-going email messages and forum posts but they do not do it correctly. Twenty lines of text full of affiliate links to a bunch of different products is not considered a good signature file! In fact, it can very easily be considered spam. Try keeping your signature file under five lines with an attention grabbing or intriguing first line and overdo it on the links.

3) Not writing your own ad copy

There's nothing worse than seeing the exact same advertisement all over the internet or in email messages from ten different marketers. How much perceived value will your message have when it arrives and the reader is seeing it for the tenth time? Take the time to tweak the ad to suit your target audience and subscribers before sending it out. Personalize it to make the ad your own so it doesn't even seem like an advertisement anymore.

4) Not paying for your own domain name and hosting account

Even novice internet users can tell a free hosted site when they see one. It's very unprofessional and suggests to your visitors that you haven't made any money online and probably don't know what you're doing. If you haven't even taken the small step towards setting up your business properly then how can your visitors trust you? Less than $10 a year for a domain name at GoDaddy.com and maybe $5 per month for a small hosting account won't break your bank account. In fact, it will probably help to add to your account in the long run.

5) Not capturing your leads before you send them on to the affiliate product site

If you spend your time and money marketing to get someone to click on one of your affiliate links then they leave the product site without purchasing, what have you gained? Nothing! You have just lost the time and money it took to get that one click-through in the first place. Set up a squeeze page so you can capture your lead's email address before you send them on to the product site. That way if they don't buy you can follow up with them later and try again (and again and again and again). This can be priceless!

Now that you know these five affiliate mistakes to avoid you should be able to make more sales and increase your affiliate commissions by a significant amount. So get out there and become the super affiliate marketer you always knew you could be!
Best Wishes
Kathleen Oz
Legitimate Business Opportunities Online

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10 Essential Steps You Need To Take To Succeed With any Affiliate Program

After you have joined an affiliate program, there are several crucial steps you will need to take in order to succeed. Without taking the steps outline below, your chances of succeeding will be limited. By simply following these guidelines, you will be able to increase your affiliate commissions and earn some money you can live on.

A lot of people fail with affiliate programs because they do not have the necessary affiliate program information.

Generally, the best way of succeeding with affiliate programs in to choose a niche; create a useful and content-rich and keyword-rich website on the specific topic of your niche, and add in your affiliate links and AdSense ads.

So what is the critical affiliate program information you will need to know, and the steps you need to take for you to succeed with your affiliate program?

1. Set your objective of how much you want to earn. You will need a goal to work towards. How much do you want to earn per month? It also helps to visualize what you want to achieve with this goal. Pay off your car? A holiday? You must start with an achievable amount, and gradually increase this amount.

2. Find a niche that suits you and your interests. Your business is a long term commitment, thus you will need to get involved with an affiliate program in a niche that interests you. The internet is full of affiliate program information; make an effort to do your research and find the best niche to suit your interests.

3. Select a lucrative niche. You will need to have affiliate program information about how profitable any opportunity you are interested in will do. Your goal is to make money, and you need to establish how profitable your business will be. The internet has information about profitable niches, and you will need to know these before you decide the best opportunity for you.

4. Another critical affiliate program information you will need to have is the reputation of the affiliate merchant. You need programs with good reputation and high quality products or services that will be easy to sell.

5. Create a useful, motivating, content-rich and keyword-rich website which search engines will pick. Offer some free tips and tools on your site; make your visitors want to come back to your site. This is very critical because more visitors to your site mean more sales and more money for you.

6. Place AdSense on your site. If you have a website with a lot of visitors, you can easily earn some money from AdSense.

7. Get Links. This is very important affiliate program information you will need to always remember. Linking to other sites will help improve the ranking of your site. One way links are more important that reciprocal links.

8. List your website in major and niche directories.

9. Write and distribute articles. This strategy extremely essential; and it is a cost effective way to market your affiliate program.

10. Be Patient! It normally takes a few months of consistent effort before you can start to see any benefits. Do not be discouraged, do not give up. Your efforts will start to show after about three months as search engines will start to send traffic to your website.

Outlined above is crucial affiliate program information you will need to know if you want to succeed and make some money as an affiliate. By simply following the recommendation above, you will see your affiliate growing gradually.

A lot of people fail because they do not have the important affiliate program information they need and the guidelines on how to succeed. As a result, they do not know how to earn any money or increase their affiliate checks. These steps can help you increase your earnings.
Best Wishes
Kathleen Oz
Legitimate Business Opportunities Online

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