How to Develop an Email Marketing Plan

Believe it or not, it can be easy to write a good email marketing plan. It shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to write a strong email marketing plan that will help guide your efforts and get clear on the results you want.

Planning is not in my nature. I used to view it as something that got in the way of action.

How to Pick a Winning Email List

Your email campaign will fly or die based largely on the audience you select. In most email campaign endeavors the search for the right list is where the quest for results begins. To find the perfect list you will need to do some research. You can start with the information in the Resources section of this book.

Here’s the bad news – there are no “perfect lists.”

How to Track Your Email Marketing Results

One of the greatest attributes of web advertising is its ability to be tracked. Without tracking its difficult to tell how many visitors are responding to your newsletter advertisements unless they order from you and tell you where they saw you.

Wouldn’t you like to know how many people clicked on your offer even if they don’t order?

This information is important.

Tips and Techniques for Publishing Email Surveys

Why send out a survey? You could learn about your current customers. Or you might find out what’s most important to your potential customers. One sentence here about why you should survey, something to the effect of: They offer a way to keep in touch with your audience or collect information, even when you’re not pitching a sale.

Offer a Reward

Follow the copy writing tools and always make an incentive for your audience to complete the survey.

Email Ethics : The Basics of Permission Marketing

Our spam-ridden online world has spurred a lot of talk about permission-based email lists or opt-in email lists. What does the term “ permission-based ” really mean? How can you build a permission-based email list? How do you use email to communicate with your subscribers respectfully?

What is a Permission-Based Email List?

The answer to this question might sound obvious. You might even be able to guess what it means.

You Might Be a Spammer If…

It’s funny to me how so many spammers are in denial and don’t actually think of themselves as spammers. So I thought I’d put together a little list of activities to help determine if you are a spammer.

Before I start, I will say there are shades of grey in the world of email marketing. Sometimes, what is spam to one person might be seen as convenient and appropriate by another.

What Happens to Spammers? [ A Look Inside Spam Penalties ]

Here’s a question I wondered about for a long time. Many of us have become familiar with the oodles of spam that makes its way to our inbox on a daily basis. The inconvenience of deleting each and every irrelevant and sometimes crude offer is a major annoyance. It’s enough to make you wonder…

“Do spammers ever get punished?”

I’m happy to report that they do.

Text or HTML : How to Pick the Best Email Format for You

When you send out an email, you are delivering it to people with a number of different computer systems, networks and email browser configurations. You want to ensure that your email piece is selected so it can be viewed properly by your target. This is why formatting your message properly is so important.

Your recipients might see your email message differently on their computers than you do.

How to Build Your Own Opt-in Email List

As an email marketer you’ll find you can spend considerable sums of money on list rentals. You might be thinking to yourself, “I wish there was a less-expensive way to market via email.” There is. With few exceptions, all the major companies I’ve worked with have started their email efforts by renting lists and over time transitioned their efforts to building their own permission-based house list.

How to Create an Email Link That Automatically Adds a Subject

I’m always surprised at the subject lines people come up with when asked to send a blank email to an autoresponder. Why not save them the trouble? This HTML script will automatically complete the subject line for the respondent as soon as they click on it:

mailto:infopack@xyzcorp.com?subject=Please_Send_Info_Pack

The email address at the beginning of the string is the autoresponder’s address. The string that begins “subject=” is the subject line that the message will automatically address itself with.