Options

The range of choices that you can buy or rent from e-mail list companies is almost limitless.  Whatever your business you should be able to find a list that targets the demographic that you wish to target.  E-mail list companies have compiled lists that range from a persons occupation, age, hobbies, special interests, just to name a few.  You can also target people based on their location down to the city they live in.  This is a great way to get a new business in the area off the ground or introduce newcomers to the area to your business.

Business to Business

You can also use targeted e-mail lists to solicit other businesses.  Doing a business-to-business targeted campaign is an inexpensive way to make business contacts or offer the services of your business to others.  You should remember that the business world is global and just because you might be a small business owner in a small town in the United States does not mean that you cannot do business with businesses from around the world.  This in turn can increase your revenue beyond what you make from your non-business customers.

Choose Wisely

As with other e-mail services when you buy a targeted e-mail list you do not actually get the list in your hands.  The e-mail list company owns the list and it is them who you are hiring to send out the targeted e-mail campaign.  Therefore, it is important for you to do your homework.  Make sure you ask them how successful their delivery rates are.  If they cannot supply any data that backs up the claim of high delivery rates then there is a good chance that they might not be a good choice to work with. Another important factor to ask any e-mail list company is if they are CAN SPAM LAW compliant, you do not want to run the risk of violated any laws, which will be a black eye on your company.

As important as delivery rates and avoiding violating any laws are the e-mail list company that you choose to deliver your e-mail marketing plan should also be able to give you a detailed report with 72 hours of initiating the campaign along with a follow up report at the one week mark that details the click through rate of the e-mail.

It is up to you to work with the e-mail list company to ensure that the target list is a reflection of the consumers that you want to market to.  Do not be afraid to ask for their input on your campaign.  They do it for a living and any input they may have could go along way into making your business a success.

Do Your Homework

The first thing that you need to do when contemplating whether to rent an email list is to do your homework. Make sure that you do not choose the first email list company that comes up when you do a web search for one. There are things to consider about the company before you move forward.

Ask if the company can help you put together your marketing campaign. See if they have copywriters and marketing designers that are capable of sending out your email in different formats. You will also want to know if they can help you target your email marketing campaign by sorting the list by the demographic that you want to reach, geographic area, recipient income level, or occupation. Companies that operate above board should be able to do this for you. In your marketing campaign you should also offer that opportunity for the recipient to follow you on Facebook, that way if they do not want to use your business right away you can remain in touch with them if they choose that option.

The company that you select should also be well versed in proper opt out formats, be able to configure your email marketing campaign so when its delivered it is not automatically directed to the recipients trash box by a spam filter. You should ask them about their success rate with similar marketing campaigns and their pervious click through rates. This will give you an idea of how successful they have been with like campaigns and do not to afraid to ask for references; after all, it is your money and business that is on the line. In addition, make sure that the company that you choose is compliant with the CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003.

Why Rental?

It is called a rental because the email list company retains physical custody of the list and does the sending of the email marketing campaign for you. The company should be able to give you a detailed report of the success of the delivery within three days of the initial mailing and an update in another week to ten days. The usual cost for renting an email list is broken down per thousand and can range from $80 to $150 per thousand emails.

Opting to use a rental email list can be a cost effective way of making your business known to many people that you otherwise might not have reached. However, you must make sure that you select a company that takes your marketing campaign as seriously as you do. By doing so you will find that your business is certain to receive an influx of new business and will generate new revenue streams that will ensure the profitability of your business.

When using an email list service, you really need to focus on getting the maximum amount of quality contacts, not just the sending out the most emails. Spam marketing will not help your business make sales or grow. Instead, it will just give you a bad reputation.

Yes, You CAN-SPAM
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 made some very clear guidelines about sending out unsolicited emails. The first one is that you need to make it very clear about who you are in the email. Following this part of the law should be easy. After all, if you don’t mention who you are, then you are wasting the email list service because the recipients won’t make it to your site, buy your product, or whatever you want from them.

The CAN-SPAM law also says that you need to include your physical address as well as other contact information. These are things you should be doing anyway when using an email list service. Since the recipients won’t really have an idea who you are, you will want to appear professional. Plus, a physical address will help them gain trust in you.

Only Send Emails Once
When using an email list service, you should never bombard the recipients of your emails. If a recipient doesn’t respond, don’t bother sending another email. It will just make your company name synonymous with spam. If you do choose to send out emails more than once to unresponsive recipients, then make sure to include an opt-out option.

To help you track recipients, make sure you choose an email list service which will tell you the click-through rate of your campaign.

Send Out Small Email Batches
Even if your email list service gives you a list of thousands of addresses, you should never send out large batches of emails at once. The obvious reason for this is that you will get labeled as spam and probably deleted before the recipients even finish reading your title.

Many email list service providers will actually eliminate you from their service if they find out that you were spamming. This is because they also need to protect their business. If spam recipients find out that their email list service is responsible for giving out their addresses, their business could be jeopardized.

A good email list service will probably have it in their terms that you cannot spam. If they catch you spamming, they can terminate your account without giving a refund.

How Renting Works

When you come to the conclusion that you what to send out a mass mailing and you need an e-mail list renting a list can be a more affordable alternative than buying a list. When you rent a list you are using a list that a third-party has put together from people who have opted in to receive e-mails from them.

By having a list of addresses from the third-party of people that have already opted in to receive e-mail’s from them you know that your e-mail is more likely to be delivered to an active e-mail address and once received, read.

When you rent an e-mail list you do not get to see the list of addresses that your e-mail will go to, but you will have the option of renting a list that is targeted to the demographic that you are looking to market.

Price

The price of renting an-email list varies on the type of list that you want to rent. If you are looking to target a certain consumer base lists can be rented from around $80 to $175 per thousand addresses. Lists that are not so target specific can be found from $60 to $140 per thousand addresses. Just remember that when renting an e-mail list it is a one time deal.

However, when you rent an e-mail list the renter of the list will do most of the work for you. All you have to do is supply the mailing that you want sent out to your targeted list and they send it out.

Things to Consider

Upon deciding that you want to rent an e-mail list there are some things that you should consider when choosing a provider. First, make sure the company you select to rent a list from only forms that list from consumers who have chosen to opt in to receiving e-mails from them, if the list has been collected by using disreputable means you could be in violation of the CAN SPAM Act, which would harm your company’s reputation.

Second, check with the provider to see if they can give you an estimate on how many mailings it will take to receive 100 clicks. Then ask if you can do a trial run at a decreased rate to see how effective their marketing strategy is. You will find that some companies are willing to give you a cut-rate for a sampling of their ability.

Third, ask the provider if they offer any services that will help you come up with a marketing strategy that will help ensure that you get the most out of your mass mailing.

Make it Work

Do not just go with the first company you com across, like any other decision you make when dealing with your company make sure that you find as much as you can about the entire e-mail list community before moving forward. By doing your homework when choosing the right provider to help you with your marketing campaign you will find that renting an e-mail list will bring you a wider consumer base that will help your business become successful.

What many people don’t realize about a customer email list database is that it is actually a database of behavior. An email list database can be used to gauge the way that customers are acting. Since new studies are showing that the unconscious mind is responsible for about 95% of all our actions, including purchases, an email list database is a better way to understand our customers than through surveys.

There are many ways to understand customers’ behavior with an email list database of customers. For example, consider that you sell related products such as fabric, thread and needles. If there is a group of customers which is buying fabric and thread but not needles, you can assume they are buying them somewhere else. Once you know this, you can target that specific group for needles or a package containing all three products.

It is important that you look at the habits of the names on your email list database. Frequency of site visits or sales are very important in terms of habit. For example, you will want to see how often names on the list visit your site after they get a newsletter (or product offer, or whatever you send out). You might notice that some names in the email list database come every month, even if you send out weekly emails. Others might only visit when the emails mention sales. In order to maximize on these habits, you need to make sure that they also get into the habit of buying while they visit.

Another important aspect of analyzing an email list database is to understand the role of the recipient. Generally, customers can be broken down into these groups:

• Buyer
• Decision maker
• Recommender
• User

In order to effectively use an email list database, you must understand the role of the recipient. For example, if you sell toys, a TV ad might have been the recommender, a child is the user but the child’s mother decides to buy and makes the actual purchase.

Once you have analyzed the email list database on this level, then you employ the creative aspects. It is always much easier to communicate to a group of people that you “know” rather than just names selected randomly from an email list database. Communication is the key to getting potential sales to your site and having them follow through on their purchases.

One physician email list allows its owner to contact thousands of professionals with just a click of the button. However, we all know that emails can easily get lost in a jumble of spam. That is why it is important to know how to make the most of a physician email list.

Even though many companies promise lists of thousands of physician emails, this isn’t enough. A successful marketing campaign relies on targeting a specific audience. You will want to make sure that you can choose a physician email list, which is based on targeted parameters. A valuable physician email list for your marketing campaign is one that can be filtered by specialty, location, the place the physician did residency, and much more.

If you have a large target audience, you will want to consider breaking it down into different demographics and targeting to them separately. If you send the same email to a cardiologist and pediatrician from the physician email list, you can be sure that your email will end up in the dreaded spam folder. Instead, use the filter options to break the physician email list into groups and send each group a separate, targeted email.

Email marketing doesn’t have as high conversion ratio as many other forms of marketing. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be effective. The reason that many physician email list marketing doesn’t succeed is because the emails simply weren’t personable enough.

Whenever sending out an email, you need to make sure that it captures the readers’ attention from the first moment. This means before they even open the email! You will want to make sure that even your sender address seems personable as well as the subject message. It might take longer to write many versions of the same email campaign but it will be worth it. You will get better results from your physician email list by writing 100 personalized emails than 1000 spam-like emails.

One of the most important aspects of marketing is to reinforce your product. But how does one do that with email? You will need to be creative in finding ways to follow up using the physician email list. You might want to consider linking to a blog, sending out weekly newsletters, or other ways of updating. If you are providing valuable information to the recipients of the physicians email list, you can be sure that your message will get through.

Is the List New or Old

Email list brokers should be constantly updating their databases in order to supply the most accurate data they can. As we already know, some people change their email addresses more frequently than others do so the lists that you purchase will probably not be 100 percent accurate but they should be able to provide you with lists that make your mass emailing over 90 percent deliverable. By ensuring that the lists you are purchasing are the most up to date you will find that your mass emailing will become effective.

Make Sure You Know What You Are Getting

It is important that when you are using email lists that you especially avoid lists known as “junk lists”; these lists contain email addresses that are gleaned from different web sites. You will most likely find these types of lists sold on a CD-ROM at a cut-rate price. These types of lists are illegal because they do not consist of opt-in records and they are sometimes compiled through nefarious means.

You know that you are dealing with a reputable email broker because you will not receive any information on the email list that you are using. The email broker will send your company’s email marketing campaign for you. They will also track the number of times that the email is opened along with the click through rate.

One more important point to remember is that you are not buying the email list from the email broker but merely renting it. This can be done in a number of ways. You can choose to rent the list for a one time marketing campaign or you can choose to rent the list for a longer period of time giving you and your business more options for your marking campaign.

Choosing the Right List and Right Broker

There is almost a limitless number of email mailing lists on the market from which you can choose. This is where a good email list broker can come in handy. An email list broker will be able to narrow your choices by knowing what your target demographic is and what you hope to accomplish with your marketing campaign. Like hiring anybody else to do business with, make sure you do your homework and do not just choose the first email list broker you come upon. Find out if they have experience doing the type of marketing campaign that you are wanting along with their success rate and ask them to provide references of business that they have previously worked with.

As you can see by just following a few simple steps and rationales, you will be able to find an email list broker that will be able to provide the most assistance to you and you company during your email marketing campaign. By talking the time to do a little homework about email list brokers you will find that your email marketing campaign will have a greater chance of succeeding and bringing the results that you are looking for.

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 you what IRS officials look for and if you are at risk of being audited.”

See how that’s done? The information used for that example is false, because I made it up. If this were an actual ad you would need to briefly research some accurate and truthful statistics and details so you could use them in your message.

This technique is by far one of the most effective strategies I’ve seen used in email marketing.

So give it a shot. Think about your product, service or information and what it helps your customer to avoid. Gather some facts and statistics and present your info with your product as the solution. This works especially well when promoting seminars and workshops.

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 and will not be in business mode yet. They may have a number of things to do on this day and are not quite interested in offers or solicitations.

On Friday, they are interested in wrapping things up. If someone starts something on a Friday, it may be forgotten over the weekend.

So we are left with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as the best days.

You will want to avoid holidays or any major vacation times.

Does Time of Day Matter?

You want your message to reach your audience at a time when they are going to be most receptive. Deeper research has given me feedback from advertisers and list companies who say that even the time of day can play a role.

Many see it as important for your message to pop up, while the audience is at their computer. That polite “bing” elicits a Pavlovian response in most of us to quickly see what new and interesting mail has arrived. Perhaps it’s an order? Maybe it’s a note from a coworker. We are receptive and immediately ready to see who’s trying to contact us. This timing is ideal.

The majority of marketers try to ensure their email is not just sitting stagnate in the recipient’s inbox first thing in the morning, especially after a holiday. The reason is simple. People tend to have a morning ritual of “cleaning” their inbox from any spam that arrived overnight. You don’t want them to see your message when they are in a deleting frenzy, trying to find anything they can “clean up.”

Rather, you want your message to pop up while they are in the middle of a workday. This increases the chances that the recipient will stop and take a moment to read it.

What Are the Best Times to Send Email?

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.

and

1:00 – 1:30 p.m.

I urge you not to place too much emphasis on this area. It’s often very difficult to ensure the precise time your message goes out. And even if the message is launched at precisely 10 a.m. in one time zone, there are other time zones to consider.

It is good to have an idea of the general behavior of your audience before sending a message at an inappropriate time.

Does Time of Year Matter?

According to list brokers and publishers I’ve spoken with, the time of year does matter. You don’t want to catch someone just after a vacation when they have 200 waiting messages and are looking for stuff they can delete quickly. Most people seem to vacation during the summer months, especially July and August. Try to avoid that time.

Putting it in Perspective…

Don’t wait for the perfect time or you will never launch your email campaign. As you’ve probably experienced there are times during the week, month or year when you are extremely busy and not as receptive to offers or messages. Do your best to pick a time when your clients will be most likely to act, but don’t obsess about the launch time.

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 contained in an upcoming paragraph. This helps identify areas of a subject your audience may not know and further enhance their need to continue reading your information.

It’s a great technique to continue bringing your readers back. Give it a whirl.