Below are some of the various email marketing related categories that are filled with information that can help you:

Email Content – Email content is very important. The wrong email content or content with no messaging can cause your subscribers to leave and unsubscribe to your newsletter.

Email Design – You have just a few seconds to hold that email recipients attention so you have to make sure that you have the design to hold their attention and cause them to really interact with your email.

Email Marketing – Email marketing comes in many different shapes and sizes so it is very important to learn and educate yourself on what is available to you. This section outlines some of the different approaches you can take with your email campaign.

Email Marketing Basics – Maybe all you want is the basic marketing information to help your campaign get off the ground. This section will show you some of the very basic efforts that can really make a difference.

Email Newsletters – Email newsletters are a great way to get your information out to people that are subscribed to your list. Through trial and error you will figure out strategy on frequency and topic.

Email Providers – When it comes to time to start sending out your email campaign you will want to find an email provider that is right for you. We have helped you sort through some of the better ones.

FTC Spam Laws – Spam laws have gotten very strict over the years and you will want to abide by all FTC spam laws so that your account does not get shut off.

List Rental – Many people purchase or rent lists for their email campaigns. Come hear some of our thoughts regarding this topic and see if it is right for you.

Open and Click Rates – As part of your email marketing campaign you will most likely be interested in these numbers so that you know what you have to change and tweak down the road.

Opt-In Techniques – Opt-In email marketing is one of the safest ways to build your list. This ensures that you are not spamming anyone with information they might not or be interested in.

Subject Lines – Your subject lines will be very import to the overall success of your emails. The right subject line could drastically increase your email open rate.

Different things could impact your email newsletters in different ways. If they are complex in code that could trigger many items to not show up on a cell phone. It is difficult to change your whole planned campaign but there are some changes and tweaks you can do in order for mobile viewers to be able to read your newsletter. Image heavy newsletters often times have the most difficulty to be viewed correctly. Newsletters that have more text and less graphics have a better opportunity of being read when someone is on the go. That doesn’t mean that you want your email campaign to sacrifice your companies branding but it is important to keep any eye for what type of graphics you are planning on applying to your email campaigns.

Each registrant of the MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2009 will also be give an all access pass to many MarketingProfs tools to help you get the job done once the conference is over. All registrants will also receive a free premium membership to all of MarketingProfs how-to articles, case studies, research reports and online seminars for a 12 month period. Registrants also have the ability to get some one-on-one time with an online marketing expert in areas of social media, SEO, usability and also email marketing. By introducing many other elements into your email marketing program you could help boost the overall effectiveness of your email efforts. This conference will also have endless amounts of opportunities for personal and business networking. Each break time is meticulously planned to maximize the amount of time you can have to network with other like minded individuals at the conference.

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Whether you are selling products online or offering a service you must find a way to consistently place yourself and your business in the eyes of your audience. If a website visitor leaves behind their email address it is because they want to hear from you again. Which means simply, send them stuff! sales cycle are not what they used to be. From the time someone first comes to your website or speaks with you until they time they are ready to actually purchase something it is important to keep in contact. If already perform a regularly scheduled email marketing campaign than you are one step ahead of the game. During that potential clients thought process you will repeatedly land in their inbox with a friendly newsletter reminding them that you are still around. Chances are that potential client or customer will search around for other online businesses before they pull the trigger with yours and there is a great deal of room for distraction out there. Email marketing could help you reduce that sales cycle if done right. Even if it is only once per month it is better than not sending your email subscribers anything.

If you are new to email marketing try testing different things to see what works best. It is important to change things up a bit sometimes. Don’t be scared if your email marketing campaign doesn’t actually sell something. If you want your email marketing to truly have a great effect on your business try thinking outside of the box and putting not your typical type of information. I heard of a online diamond retailer recently who had chose to not offer any promotion at all in their email and it lead to more inquiry and sales than if they offered a sale. Not everything you do has to always scream sale. Taking a personal approach has its benefits also. Taking a personal approach lets your audience know that you care about more than just making a sale. Try offering a funny story or a funny video of something that happened at your business. You can even mix it up. Put together a strategy for 6 months mixing in some non promotional type emails with promotional and see how it works out. Try really mixing it up so people are not sure what to expect in your email. Make them guess a little.

People are not just going to land on your site and give you their email address. You have to lead them down the path. No matter what you want you offer on your website you want to lead them down the path to what ever effort you want them act on. You should always have an email newsletter sign up form on every page of your site. If one of your main focuses is to get that email than you must make it clear and visible. The worst thing you can do is have an email subscriber field on one page of your site. Most website traffic will not try to find the page. If they are already on a page than they will subscribe only if it is convenient for them. Make it as convenient as possible. Getting that email is very important so that you can stay in touch with that person. If they showed interest by subscribing once than they will want more information from you as you have it. Don’t make the web site visitor hunt for the page to submit their email. If you are launching a new website tell the web designer that you would like an email field located on your website in a prominent location on every page of your new website. If you are launching a service based business this will be extremely important to have so that people don’t have to hunt around and navigate away from a page that might have a service they are interested in hiring you for.

If you collect emails try pulling them apart as to what purchases people have made. If you are a service provider try separating emails as to what service people purchase and try sending out emails catered towards those services. When ever you can drill down and target an email recipient with a specific type of service you are more likely to turn that recipient into a conversion. Email marketing is like anything and it requires tweaks and changes and testing new things. Put together a plan of attack for your email marketing campaign. Even if you only plan on doing a quarterly email take the time to plan out all your content and what you will be putting in your email. If you plan on doing a monthly email or a weekly you should definitely plan out your email content. One way that makes things easier with any email marketing campaign is by using a blog to create content for your newsletter. By writing in a blog every single day you are able to create a great deal of content for yourself which can be then used for content in your email marketing newsletter.

Try changing your approach to see if things get better. There is a good chance your content and approach might be getting stale. it might be time to give it an overhaul or just a big change. Maybe it is time to change the design and images to give it a new fresh look. Change is good and should be embraced. if you want your company to grow you will have to continue to make changes and tweaks as you move forward. try adding new calls to action in your email. Get people to want to click on links. Entice them to be curious. You don’t want to send the same type of email over and over. Try playing with different subject lines as well. The subject line is probably more important than the actual email. It is the first thing that your email recipient sees and it will determine whether they want to click on and open your email or hit the delete button. Try as many different things as you can. Be clever but not sneaky. You don’t want to trick someone with your subject line and have them be upset once they open the newsletter because then you can very easily get a spam complaint and too many of those your account runs the risk of getting shut off.

1. Ask: If you own a local business that generates any type of foot traffic when a person makes a purchase just ask for it. You can be nice and polite as them if they would like to give up their email address in order to receive specials in the future and be notified when any new products hit the store. If they don’t want to give it to you they will let you know. Many will not mind.

2. Email Form on Website: if you have a website you should have a clear location where someone can submit their information in order to be put on an email newsletter list. Some visitors will not hesitate to give you their email address. It should be conveniently placed on each page of your site so that they can submit their information easily.

3. Ask over Phone: If you own a service based business that requires spending a great deal of time on the phone speaking with prospects and clients ask each and every single person you communicate with for their permission to be placed on your company newsletter. Most will be more than happy to get more information from you, especially if they called you looking for information.

If you have been collecting emails and have something new for your business you would like to announce launching a strategic email marketing campaign is a great way to get in front of your audience very quickly. Email newsletters can carry your store or businesses branding message right through your email marketing campaign. If you have a new product or service being introduced to your business launching an email campaign is a quick an easy way to let people know. Most email distribution companies allow for very low cost if you have under 500 emails in your initial list. if you are a smaller business with maybe less than a hundred some even let you set up a free account until you surpass the the 100 email mark.

Email marketing is one component of getting your announcement and word out in front of people. You have to remember that spreading your message online takes many different components working together at the same time. Online PR is another great way to spread the message but all efforts maximize their potential if working together.

Putting yourself in the shoes of your email recipients will be vital. Don’t assume anything. Assumptions don’t always lead to anything. You have to follow your analytics information and see whats working. Most people have very busy and long Mondays and if you know your audience might be a bit busier than other industries than sending out an email marketing campaign or newsletter on that day might not be a wise choice. Statistics show that most emails are opening during the day roughly during work time hours. If you are sending B2B newsletters this will be your ideal time. Often times people like to clean out their emails in the morning so getting them in their earlier might make sense. B2C is a bit different because people will make purchases at home at all hours of the night. Take into consideration the demographic your are marketing to if you selling directly to the public. If it is a younger crowd they might read your email late at night. If it is an older person that email screen might not stay open past a certain time in the evening. if you are targeting moms than it might not get a look for a few days so be conscience of what you are sending. If it is a 2 day coupon to a busy demographic there is a good chance it might get opened after the expiration date.

Don’t forget to test and try different days and times and always schedule out your email marketing campaigns for the most effectiveness. Try changing everything from frequency to subject lines every few months and make an analysis of what you find.

If you trick your email recipients you can guarantee yourself getting some spam complaints and eventually having your email account shut off by the company that you use. It is perfectly fine to experiment with various subject line. It actually encouraged to experiment with different subject lines in order to find an approach that works best or maybe better than your other approaches. Too much of one thing is never a good thing and that rule applies to your online marketing as well. You want to test and keep things fresh at all times. Email marketing is no exception to this rule. Trying different things will yield different results which could either go both ways but it is important to bring in new directions into your email marketing campaigns. The subject line is your first impression so it is important to get it right. If you always use the same subject line it could eventually be a a boy who cried wolf situation where your recipients just do not respond to your emails like they used.

Some people quickly forget that one of the easiest and best ways to collect anything is to simply ask. if you are a service based business and you speak with many prospects over the phone ask them if you can put their email address on your distribution list. They will either say yes or no, its that simple. most potential customers will not yell at you and most will be more than happy. If you conduct your email campaigns the right way and you don’t use spammy type approaches than you should not have any problems with your email recipients reporting you for spam or hitting the spam complaint button. Too many of these and your account could be gone before it even started.

How about your website? Do you have somewhere prominently displayed on your website where website visitors can submit their email address to receive your newsletter? Have it visible for everyone to see right there when they land on your website. Make sure it is in the same location on every page also. This is important so a website visitor does not have to back track to find the page where they can sign up for your newsletter.

When you read over you email ask yourself if you would enjoy reading your email. If you do not enjoy reading your own email than how is anyone else supposed to? Does your company or brand have a unique message or image? Do you carry that message and image through to your email marketing campaign? Each email is like a new ad, you should have something that pulls that reader in and urges them to keep reading and maybe even persuading a recipient to revisit your website and take a look at your services or products. Personality also gets people talking and chatter is something you want in your industry. Chatter will get people visiting your website and exploring their own curiosity which can develop into some new business. Personality in your emails allows you to connect with your readers. You don’t want your recipients to feel like they are reading an owners manual. You need to get them to feel the story you are trying to tell them. There is nothing wrong with making your email witty, fun and personable. All these efforts

Always make sure to have a call to action on your email you send out. Your goal is to get the recipient to respond and do something on the other end. Your email should give them that nudge to take the initial step. A call to action could come in many forms. Could be a limited time promotion or a limited edition product. Something that will get people to react quicker than just tucking away the email for a rainy day. Email marketing is most likely not going away anytime soon. Its been around since the beginning of the internet days and will most likely be here for the long haul. You should always have a strategy in mind when launching you email marketing campaign. Find out what your goal for the campaign is before it goes out. there is no right or wrong answer but there are components that should always be included depending on what your goal is.

For any growing business online your reputation is sometimes all you have. Online users get more and more savvy by the day and they know how to pin point a bad apple through various online searches. Many users will not make a purchase or sign on a vendor until they have done some searches online to see if any bad or negative press exists. StepRep is a new online product that can help you track your online press and manage it from one location. By using your Google log in StepRep can monitor what your online community is saying about you. What is unique about this product is that it is capable of tracking your social networks as well. If you some ranting about you on Twitter in a not so friendly manner StepRep will help you isolate that and trigger a campaign to fix it. Often times by the time something makes it to you is already too late. it has run it’s course and too many eyeballs have seen it.

If online shoppers find that others have been complaining about your service or product they will most likely head in the other direction. The internet has made it easy for people who might have not had a voice at one time to now have a loud one. Whistle blowing website are everywhere and very easy to use. Most of these sites are very large and powerful and rank very quickly for your name. To stop any negative press from anchoring itself into a search engine result for your name you must be able to counter act it very quickly. StepRep helps with that step. If you let negative information sit for too many months chances are it will require twice as much work to actually move it. Negative press must be fought right away and the only way to do this is to have constant supervision over your business or personal name.

Your email marketing campaign doesn’t always have to be selling something or pushing a product. it really depends on what kind of business you have. I have seen some companies that have very strong customer loyalty that can virtually put anything into the email marketing campaign and it would be a success. Take a look at your email list and ask yourself do your customers enjoy everything about your company? Are you store that launches a new product and gets people camping out in front of your door 24 hours before so they are the first ones in the store? Or do you have a B2B business that could careless about your business and just wants information? Once you answer these questions you can figure out what kind of items you would like to include in your email marketing campaign. Some companies just want to brand their company in emails and some just constantly push a product for purchase. You have to be careful when trying to sell too much because you can quickly see your email list unsubscribing to your emails.

It is no shocker that more and more customers are tightening up their budgets. This means that when they do spend it will only be with someone they feel very comfortable with and trust. If you collect email addresses as part of your business model you can stay in touch with these people through a simple email marketing campaign and build that trust. Even if you are not selling or offering anything the process of staying on people’s radars is important to any growing brand or business online. In today’s economy all businesses need to be aggressive in branding and communication. Email marketing is one of the oldest forms on online marketing and has gone through many transformations but there is a reason why it is still around, because it works. many different online marketing tools have come and gone over the years but email marketing has continued to grow in power. In today’s market place you have to be visible in every corner.

When you get to a point in your business that you start collecting email address making different lists might be a smart idea from the beginning instead of down the road when your list is so large you have a hard time even looking at it. Dividing up your email marketing list in different characteristics will allow you to really target your email marketing campaigns down the road.

There are many ways you can divide up the list.

Inquiries: Anyone that has ever inquired about your services and products in one list can allow you to send special first sign up or product purchase offers to get that person to make a purchase or start up another purchasing conversation.

Products: You could separate your list into purchasing habits and which products people buy. This will allow you to market specific products depending on purchasing habits of your current customers.

Geographically: Depending on what type of products you sell and where if you notice that a certain number of people are buying a specific product in a geographical area you can then market products related to that area that might likely use or enjoy.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with your list in order to maximize your email marketing efforts. If you are a business that collects emails frequently this will be very important to do early in the game.

1. Did you recently buy a list from a list broker?

From our experiences we have realized that purchasing a few hundred thousand emails and dropping them into your email marketing providers database and just firing off advertisements tends to piss people off. You might not offend everyone but you will get some people wondering why on earth they are getting your email when they never wanted it in the first place. This can quickly get some to roll across the spam button and hit submit.

2. is your content stale?

You might just find out that your recipients are getting sick of your material. If you have peddling the same stuff for many years people right now have less patience for anything so they might just not want your emails anymore. Try giving them a fresh new look or take your email marketing campaign in a whole new direction. Instead of selling try offering help to solve a problem or solutions to problems in that industry that people might find very useful.

3. are you always selling?

Sometime if you sell sell sell people just get a bad taste in their mouth. It might take them a few months to hit the spam button but eventually they will hit it. The hard sell is good but when the economy has hit rock bottom all that selling could very well back fire.