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12 Guidelines for Success
1. Set several goals for yourself, ranging from small to really BIG. Write your goals down, along with the specific dates you intend to reach them by. The great thing about goals is -- if you don't reach them by the date you set -- you can always...
Affiliate Program Commissions - The Higher the Better
A good way to tell if the affiliate program you belong to is serious about their affiliate program commissions is the percentage they are paying you. If someone is offering you 10% commission, and they are keeping the rest, then you need to ask...
Direct Response Marketing
As marketing dollars dry up, targeted advertising is gaining. How do you run your direct response program? IMAGINE THIS: YOU OPEN AN ACCOUNT IN A MAJOR search engine by charging $10 to your credit card. You then place highly focused ads in the...
Make your e-commerce website more than an electronic catalog
Everyday thousands of people are purchasing products on-line from the comfort of their homes. This “arm chair” shopping has become the most popular way for thousands and thousands of consumers to purchase everything from vitamins to luxury...
RSS... And The 10 MOST Powerful Reasons WHY You Should Be Using It
Copyright 2005 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved. RSS(Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is widely becoming a VERY powerful marketing tool on the NET and for Internet marketers around the world, the question is... ... "Are you using RSS...
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Email Marketing Campaigns - Robots, Humans And Shoes Slashed Whilst Lions Roared
Copyright 2005 Elaine Currie
When you are planning an email marketing campaign, there are two
important issues to be addressed. The first issue is ensuring
that your email marketing campaign gets delivered and the second
is persuading the recipients of the email marketing campaign to
open the emails and read them.
Email Marketing Campaigns - Robots
Despite the scare headlines about the death of email marketing,
it is alive and well and email marketing campaigns are still
fighting a running battle with their arch-enemies - the
filterbots. These are the poorly trained robots that filter out
legitimate marketing emails and correspondence from your
relatives but persistently deliver enormous amounts of rubbish
right into your mailbox.
You have probably had the experience of signing up for an email
marketing campaign - you know, the sort that offers a useful
training course or a series of interesting articles - and then
finding that you only get about half or two thirds of the
promised emails. Sometimes a ten part email campaign
mysteriously disappears after part seven or you receive all of
the email marketing campaign except parts 1, 5 and 9. It always
seems random but we are told that the filterbots are trained to
seize mail containing certain words, symbols or combinations of
words and symbols.
The really infuriating thing about the bots is that they seem to
be unable to distinguish the difference between a junk email
marketing campaign and email from a contact in your personal
address book. How dare these bots decide on your behalf that you
will not receive email from your excitable friend who uses
double and triple exclamation marks in correspondence! Ok,
multiple exclamation marks are vulgar but being eaten by robots
seems rather a harsh punishment for a mere lapse of taste. The
filterbots, although not particularly intelligent, are cunning:
they leave no evidence, they devour every scrap of the mail they
steal, so you can't prove they have committed the theft. You
can't fight the bots so you need to weave a cloak of
invisibility for your email marketing campaigns.
Anyone doing research in the hope of creating a successful email
marketing campaign will come across advice on how to get past
the filterbots and will discover in advance that certain words
and phrases must be avoided. These dangerous words include
"money back", "100% satisfied", "money-back guarantee" and
"order today". So whilst the author of an email marketing
campaign will have this advance warning, such matters will not
have come to the attention of your Granny. Granny will wonder
why you didn't reply to her email asking for your advice on her
proposed stair lift purchase even though she told you in her
email that the company offers a guarantee and she wanted to send
off her order today. If Granny is deaf, she won't be able to
sort this out with you by phone, and the filterbots will have
created a terrible rift in your relationship.
Email Marketing Campaigns - Humans
Armed with your knowledge of the bots' weakness for certain
fodder, you can make sure your email marketing campaign contains
no tempting words that would turn your campaign into a series of
tasty bot snacks. So, you've done your research, you know the
words to avoid and you have found a neat tool that will read
your email and tell you if you have accidentally used a "bad"
word in your email marketing campaign. The next thing to
consider is getting the emails read by the recipients. Having
gone to a lot of trouble to plan you email marketing campaign
and robot-proof it, you want to give the emails the best
possible chance of being read. With one eye on the banned word
list, you need to think of the human beings who will receive
your email and create subject lines that will make them want to
read each email. A tall order but not impossible. There are
things you should do and things to definitely avoid. Your email
subject heading should (a) stand out, (b) engage the recipient's
interest, (c) relate closely to the body of the message and (d)
not look like hype.
To make your email marketing campaign stand out, you can indent
the subject by using ">>>>>>>>" or "__________" or "********"
but don't be tempted to use exclamation marks or all capital
letters. These will catch the human eye but they will also
attract the scrutiny of the filterbots who will most likely gulp
the email down without even bothering to look further than the
subject line. Don't be tempted to put L@@K in the subject
heading of a business
email, that sort of thing is fine if you
are writing to a friend but it does not convey a professional
image.
To engage the recipient's interest in your email marketing
campaign you can employ one of the following techniques: (a)
state a powerful benefit - "xxxxxxx Satisfies Your Need for xxx"
(b) pique curiosity - "xxxxxxxx Has Uncovered the Secrets of
Success" (c) write your subject line with a news angle -
"xxxxxxxx Launches xxxxxxxx For Those Who Want to xxxxxxxxxxx
Fast!" (d) offer Immediate Gratification - "With xxxxxxxxxxx,
you can start xxxxxxxxxx before the sun goes down tonight"
The subject line of your email must be relevant to the body of
the message. If you want to annoy people and ensure they never
open another email from your marketing campaign, pick an
important sounding subject line - eg "Urgent - Re Your Account"
for an email that has nothing to do with any account held by the
recipient. People do not like to be misled or tricked and will
not forgive you if they think you are trying to fool them. Using
an irrelevant title to get someone to open an email is
tantamount to lying to them. People will remember this behaviour
and might even block all future emails from you. Words such as
": time-sensitive, only 3 days left, powerful, offer about to
expire, exclusive, limited, secret" are known to attract
attention but should only be used in appropriate circumstances,
ie when they relate to the contents of the email.
Create an email marketing campaign subject line that doesn't
look like hype. This has to be the hardest one of all as it is
subjective. What looks like hype to one person will look like a
reasonable proposition to another. A perfectly genuine statement
will be suspected hype to an overly cynical person. The first
thing to do is to avoid anything that you personally think looks
like hype. Ask yourself if it would convince you if it turned up
in your mailbox or if you would immediately hit the delete
button - if you can't even convince yourself, you will be
causing a similar reaction in other people. Never make
over-inflated claims in the subject line, make sure you can back
up any statements you make. If you can do this and still create
an alluring title for your email, you will have a good chance of
getting your email marketing campaign read if it gets past the
filterbots.
Email Marketing Campaigns - "Shoes Slashed Whilst Lions Roared"
"Shoes Slashed Whilst Lions Roar" is my favourite email subject
line of all time. I believe this is an example of a near enough
perfect subject line for an email marketing campaign. It has all
the elements: the words stand out from the run of the mill
titles, it engages the recipient's interest, it relates closely
to the body of the message and it does not look like hype.
This subject line was used in an email marketing campaign run by
a mail order company I had previously used for purchasing
online. I might or might not bother to read emails from the
company depending upon how busy I was. I couldn't resist opening
this email because the title intrigued me. Although it was easy
to guess that the "Shoes Slashed" would relate to reduced prices
on footwear, I couldn't figure out where roaring lions would
come into a clothing and footwear catalogue, so I simply had to
read the email. The email carried details of special offers on
footwear (as anticipated) and English Lions Rugby shirts, which
were apparently a roaring success. The dramatic sounding subject
line was, in fact, directly relevant to the body of the mail and
nothing about it bears the tell-tale mark of hype.
Email Marketing Campaigns - Final Word About The Beginning
The first mails in your email marketing campaign are the most
important so should be especially carefully crafted from the
aspects of both bot-proofing and engaging human interest. If you
can get the first couple of emails delivered and read, people
who are interested in what you have to say will recognise your
name and will want to read any further emails from you that
arrive in their mailbox. It is also a good idea to suggest in
the first couple of emails that the recipients should add you to
their "white list" to ensure they don't miss future important
mail. All this might not make your email marketing campaigns
100% filterbot proof but it is the best mere humans can do in
this particular battle.
About the author:
Elaine Currie has a Work At Home Directory at her Plug-In Profit
Site to help everyone who wants to work at home:
http://www.huntingvenus.com
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