Advertising is often referred to as a hurt ‘em and heal ‘em business. This is true. Some of the best messages work by first highlighting a potential situation that the customer will want to avoid. By setting the stage for the customer using statistics and a real life situation they will want to avoid, you can capture their attention. After the subject line and a short intro paragraph, you then proceed to reveal the solution (your product). Here is an example… “This year, more than 200,000 companies will be audited at an average cost of $1,500 in legal fees. The IRS is cracking down and unfortunately many honest business owners are getting steep penalties for overlooking some minor tax requirements. XYZ corp. offers a free 20-minute analysis that will tell

When is the best time to send your email? Great question. In fact the time you decide to launch your campaign can have an impact on the overall results of your email campaign. This detail may not be as important as the audience you select, the subject line, or the list you are using, but it is a factor. But if you are working to get the maximum results and put everything in your favor then these are commonly accepted as the BEST times to launch your campaign. The best days (in no particular order): Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays What’s wrong with the rest of the days? For business email, your audience is generally out of the office on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, your recipients are recovering from the weekend

Your email message is generally a one-way monologue from you to the advertiser. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t solicit “audience participation” with well-positioned questions. Why would we do that? In this course you’re learning how to break up your copy to make it more attractive and readable. You can do this by occasionally reaching out to your audience with questions to grab their attention. Do you see how that could be important? Using effectively placed questions gives a warmer touch and a more conversational feel to your message. It also re-centers the reader and draws them back into your copy. Can questions also be used to highlight an upcoming topic? Well, yes they can. By positioning a question on a line by itself you can highlight the information

The manner in which the copy is laid out will contribute largely to the audience’s desire to read it. Upon opening the email there are a few things that people notice immediately, regardless of whether it’s text or HTML: Is the copy neat and well laid out? What hyperlinks are immediately visible? Does this look interesting? What’s in this for me? How long will it take me to read this? To get started writing winning text emails, you’ll need a good text editor. Notepad Makes a Great Text Editor Notepad is a great text editor and everyone with a PC has Notepad preloaded on their computer. The primary reason for using Notepad to edit your message is because it offers only the formatting features supported by text emails. Most word

Most email campaigns have hyperlinks that the advertiser wants people to click. How can you increase click rate? If you are using an HTML email, you can hyperlink words. Compare the following… Sample A: Opinion Form – Click Here or Sample B: Your Opinion Counts – Click Here! Sample A: Click Here for More Information or Sample B: Increase Sales Up to 300% – Click Here! How you decide to phrase your hyperlinks can impact your click through rate. Pay special attention to how you do this. Your hyperlinks will grab the eye and are often the first thing read on a page, so be sure to say something with your hyperlinks. In a text email you will need to show the actual link, but you are able to name

Most email marketers seek a substantial return after just one blast. But do repeat advertisements to the same group have any benefits? Does frequency have any place in email marketing? Yes. The term frequency refers to how many times you reach an audience with a message. It’s strange, but many clients I work with run advertisements month after month in the same magazine, but wouldn’t think of emailing an offer to the same person twice. You do need to be careful of how frequently you contact someone about something, to avoid being irritating, but frequency does have its place in email. I’ve seen follow up messages that get three times the response rate as an initial message. You have to be careful. Be sure to offer some new information. Use

HTML email messages are gaining popularity, especially in newsletters. As more recipients are able to properly support this email type, there are fewer compatibility issues. Here are some techniques that can help to improve the way your HTML messages appear. File Size To ensure your email gets the most exposure and doesn’t seize up your audience’s email client, you’ll want to limit the total file size of the page to 50K. This means you should limit the message length and the number of graphics you use. By keeping it “lighter,” it loads faster and more people will read it. Hosting Images People often think that when they send an HTML image that has embedded images, that they are actually sending the images with the email. This is incorrect. In fact,

Are you tired of annoying pop-ups? Are you sick of junk email? Has your computer been taken over by a spyware program that’s messing up your life? Fear not, help is on the way. (How’s that for cheesy openers?) Do you find it ironic that a site devoted to web marketing would also have ad busting technology? It’s not really. I like to believe that ad busting technology gets rid of unwanted irrelevant ads. We are advocates of targeted, relevant and responsible web advertising. Just like you… we hate spam and spammers we hate pop-ups we really don’t like programs installing themselves on our PCs! The following tools and techniques for blocking spam and stopping pop ups work well. I’ve used them myself. Stopping Pop Ups Pop ups are everywhere

Would you like to learn how to make your marketing message take on a life of its own and spread like wildfire… for free? In this issue, as you may have guessed from the title, we will be discussing viral marketing. This is a unique breakthrough component that can be added to just about any online campaign to get it to spread far beyond the limits of traditional marketing messages. You can save money and increase your results and did I mention it can be done for free? What is viral marketing? The term viral marketing has come to refer to advertising campaigns that utilize their audience to spread the marketing message. It’s called viral marketing because it utilizes people as the “hosts” to carry the message in much the

Ready for a few profit-making ideas? Great! Before we jump in, just let me quickly welcome to the first issue of the Digital Harvester presented by Digital Harvest Media with contributions from Hype Communications. I’m glad you’re here! Okay… Today’s topic: “How To Turn Junk Mail Into Gold” Everyday, millions of emails shoot accross the Internet promoting everything from Software to Seminars. Advertisers from a wide variety of companies collectively spend millions of dollars to get their message into your inbox. After the blast happens, the very next thing that marketer wants to know is, did you open their message or did you delete it without reading it? Let me ask you something… Have you ever received an email solicitation that you decided to open and read to the very