Understand this… I'm a cheapskate. And I hated the idea of paying an email hosting service when I could instead push a few buttons on my own email marketing software and do virtually the same for free.

Or so I thought. Boy was I wrong. And I've been wrong for a long long time (13 years to be exact).

The reality is in-house email is FAR from free. Sending out my own emails has easily cost me tens of thousands of dollars in profit because my emails have a hard time getting delivered. And it's getting worse week by week.

The good news is having the pros do it all for you might be cheaper than doing all of the work of sending bulk email out yourself.

Here are my top 5 reasons for switching from in-house email to sending business email via a bulk email service provider:

Higher delivery rates – When you send out your own business emails, you have 0% chance of getting all of your emails delivered. In fact, you have almost 0% chance of having just half of your emails delivered. That's how bad it is nowadays.

Why?

The big reason is spam. Your recipients are setup to be super aggressive in their spam-fighting efforts… making it hard for legitimate business emails to get delivered.

But some bulk email service providers have entire teams who's only job is to "negotiate" with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to get your emails delivered. It's like having a team of full-time "mediators" working for you (silently behind the scenes) for less than the price of a small coffee. You just can't beat it.

I've seen this first hand… I help several internet marketers. And I get to peek over their shoulder and see their email reports. And many of these IMers see near 100% open rates when using a quality email service provider.

This benefit alone is worth switching to a professional email hosting service… but there are many more advantages:

Higher response – I'm a big fan of testing.

And my new email service provider gives me the fast and easy option to split test different email messages and report back to me which one generated higher response.

I KNOW I've missed out on higher response because I wasn't split testing my email messages in the past. Never again.

With split testing, I can test two different subject lines and see which one gets higher response.

Even better, my new email service provider offers me AMAZING reports that tell me in a glance which emails are most responsive (and most important, which ones are not). Armed with this information, I can make quick tweaks and boost response… take a look at this one example:

In a glance, I see which tested email put more money in my pocket. Armed with this data, I take the winning email design and put it into my followup autoresponder for the highest response – it's the ultimate "set it and forget it" tactic.

And take a look at this report:

This report is GOLD… because in just a glance, I can see when most of subscribers open their emails… and with my new bulk email service, I can schedule followup emails to be sent at the best day and time of the week.

My new ESP has dozens and dozens of reports just like this… ultimately helping me tweak my bulk emails to make more money.

Your web hosting company HATES spam – There's nothing worse than getting an email from your web hosting provider with this bad news…

"You're about to have your website shut down because of spam complaints."

That happened to me. And I don't spam. (In fact I hate spam more than anyone.)

Here's the issue. I send out emails to thousands of passionate marketing junkies each and every week. These same marketing junkies doubled opted into registering for my FREE weekly marketing updates and alerts. And these emails are right to the point – often just a few sentences in length pointing to a new blog post…

… But every so often, one of these subscribers clicks on the wrong button and tags my email as spam (instead of unsubscribing). And just one single spam complaint (no matter how many emails are sent out) freak out our hosting providers. And when hosting providers freak out, they turn off our entire website (often without notice).

Even if you spend hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars per month on web hosting, web-hosting techies have been trained to "shoot first and ask questions later" in order to thwart spammers. They know a click on a "this is spam" link doesn't necessarily mean your email is spam. But the truth is your web hosting company would prefer you outsource your business emails. That's the real truth. Dealing with spam issues is a huge thorn in the side for web hosting providers.

Hand's-free email cleaning – If you want to get your bulk emails delivered, you MUST keep on top of bad email addresses. If you fail to maintain a clean email list, you'll ultimately pay the price…

… When you send emails that do not get delivered, these "bounce" and return back to you undelivered.

There are a variety of reasons for a bounce… everything from a misspelled email address to a subscriber who changed their email address (and didn't alert you about it). It's just like snail mail, except when you continually send bounced emails, you actually run the risk of being having your email account tagged (and put on a worldwide blacklist).

Handling bounced email is a HUGE chore. It's worse than root canal. I just spent the last two days removing 250 bounced email addresses from my email system by hand… one by one. I'll NEVER do this again.

Good email service providers automatically keep your emails up to date and bounce free. And a clean list helps helps get a high percentage of your emails delivered.

Filter out tire kickers – Now that I'm sending bulk email though a paid email service provider (and being a self-confessed cheapskate), I want to eliminate those who don't read my email.

Sure, it's great to boast that I've got a big list. This is great for the ego. But the reality is over 90% of these subscribers won't ever buy my stuff. Even worse, most of these tire kickers won't even open my emails.

But get this… my new email hosting service gives me the option to delete subscribers who never look at my emails. This is an AMAZING cost-cutting advantage that takes seconds to pull off. In just three mouseclicks, I'm able to eliminate anyone on my email list who doesn't open my emails… there's no reason for me to pay to have my "pearls of wisdom" delivered to la la land.

The bottom line is I'm actually excited to pay to have my emails delivered for the first time since I ventured online in 1997.  For about a penny per subscriber per month, I'm able to email just like the pros do… boosting my response… seeing higher delivery rates… and not having to manually handle bounced emails.

Click here to see which email service provider I made the switch to (and I highly recommend)…

Of course, that could be disappointing, but if that happens to you, you should fret not. There are tons of different sites that can give you free information on the topic and you might be surprised how helpful these tips can be. One example, of course, is this blog.

As most regular readers will know, the general idea of this blog is to help people in their marketing ventures. Most regular visitors would also know how much I encourage people to get to email marketing, reason why I am offering free list building tips every so often. So, if you got here after searching for such tips online, well, you're in luck, as I have a good number of tips ready to dish out today!

But first, it must be established that list building is no easy feat. You will need to exert some effort to make it really happen, so don't expect that all you need to do is sign up for a couple of things and then you'll start receiving checks in no time. You will need to do a couple of things, like the following, so pay close attention.

Free list building tips:

1. Research! A lot of free information is available online, so make sure you get hold of them. You might need to do some digging, though, as most of these posts are already buried somewhere especially with SEO only targeting potential buyers.

2. Be organized. Set goals, arrange things in proper order, and make a to-do list. This will help a lot in your quest to building a list for your business.

3. Read. Some people tend to just click, click, and click. Well, this shouldn't be your case, because by not reading carefully, you might miss vital information that might be useful in your venture.

4. Interact. The very reason you have a list is so that you can better connect to your readers, clients, and followers. So, make sure to actually reach out and talk to the people you send mail to.

5. Follow instructions. The sad part about some people is that they think they can modify a thing or two about certain techniques in internet marketing. Well, of course, you can, but not when you're still starting out and still learning. So, to avoid any mishaps, follow directions and instructions, especially when it comes to list building tips.

Learn how to make money online by turning 5 Hours a Week into £5,000 a month in extra income Get the Free Info www.SimonStepsys.biz

Why is Click-Through Important?
You've mastered getting your email into the inbox, and you've found subject lines and an email list that will respond to and open your emails. Congratulations! You've made great progress. What's the next step? It's to get the people who have opened your email to actually click-through your email to your product. After all, the entire purpose of your email is to drive traffic to your website or landing page.

You'd be surprised how a few small changes can really optimize the click-through rate to your website. Here, Comm100 will break down the lucky seven things that you can do to help ensure that your click-through rate is just about as good as it possibly could be.

1. Make Sure that Your Links Look Like Links
It's very easy to begin to think that your links should look neat and stylized, especially if you have a tightly controlled brand style on your website. However, your links will get clicked the most if they look like links and people can easily identify them as links. At a minimum, every link in your email should be underlined, like a standard link, so that it is easily identifiable to the user visually as a link. Though it may be outside of the scope of your brand guidelines, consider making the links in your email the standard blue link color. What's the reason for this? Some emails will strip out your style scripts anyway. Making your links standard blue will make them obvious links to users in any context.

2. Make Sure There is a Link Above the Fold
This is the same rule as applies with landing pages. In the case of an email, however, "Above the Fold" actually means within the first inch and a half of the email. Over half of all people who read (or just scan) your email will do so in a horizontally-oriented email preview pane. That means that you have less than two inches of space to convince them to click something. If you fill up the top inch and a half or two inches of your email with an image and text and no obvious links, you may miss your entire opportunity to get a user to click through to your website or landing page. Even if it means less use of image and a harder selling text style, make sure you get at least one obvious link in the top inch and a half of your email. Otherwise, many users will never even see a link to click!

3. Don't Trap Links in Images
Comm100 has talked previously about how using images to convey important messages in email means that many of your readers will never see the message that you want to convey. This rule applies to "click-through buttons" as well. It's true that, in a normal web environment, using a graphic button to tell somebody to "enter" or "click" or "submit: is the most effective way to get a response. This is not true in email. If you use a graphic button, half of your users will only see the button's alt or title text. Alt and title text is not as compelling as a large font, brightly colored text link. Instead of graphic buttons, use either large font text links or create an html button. A good coder can create an html button that is both visually appealing and always visible in your email (whereas a graphic won't be!).

4. TELL People to Click
Comm100 has already talked about making sure that your links are not too visually subtle, but this is true for the text you choose to use around your links as well. Again, this isn't a webpage and you have limited time to get somebody to click. So, rather than using subtle text strings, make sure you are using call to action and order text such as "Click here to…" or "Click this link." The one thing that you want to be careful of is that you don't do this too much, because spam filters don't like emails that have dozens of large, bolded, "click here" links. But you want at least a couple of links that obviously tell your users where and what to click.

5. Use Alt and Title Text Effectively
Just in case you've had a brain freeze moment, alt and title text are the text snippets that appear underneath images and that are seen either when the image doesn't load or when a user holds their mouse over the image. You should use both alt and title text fields since different browsers read them differently. The important part of what Comm100 just said that you need to remember is that alt and title tags appear when images don't load! So not only should those text fields repeat any messages in those images, but they should also be used to also say "Click here for this offer" or "Click for more information." Every alt or title text field is an opportunity to encourage a click-through.

6. Use LOTS of Links
There is also just a piece of simple math that goes into optimizing your click-through rate. It goes like this: The more opportunities that you give users to click, the more likely that they are to click. If a user has to read through several paragraphs of text to get to a link, they may not get that far. Or they may not care by the time they get to the link. Every text block that you include in an email should include one link. And every image should be a link. It's just math! More links means more opportunities for a user to click, which means more click-throughs.

7. Double Check Your Text Version
Remember that you should always be sending a corresponding text version with your html email. And remember that that text version will wipe out all of your html links. Make sure that you go through your text version and manually put in the url that users need to visit. It should sound like this "Visit this url (insert full url) to see this product." If your url is very long and complicated, you may want to consider setting up a shorter url and then redirecting it to the more complicated url after a user types it in.

Those seven tips will, without fail, improve your click-through rate. Just be sure to check your email in a pre-send spam rater to make sure that you haven't gone overboard with any of these techniques. It's true that in some cases your email won't look as pretty when you're following these rules, but Comm100 can assure you that, from a click-through perspective, it will perform better!

Even before you get ready to optimize your click-through rate, the first step in generating a successful email campaign is to choose an email provider who meets your needs. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary summary of click-through optimization tips, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It's both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground and then testing ways to improve your click-through rate!

-
About the Author:
Comm100 Network Corporation provides open source and free hosted customer support software for small and medium businesses. Comm100 fully integrates multiple communication channels, including Live Chat, Newsletter, Forum, Knowledge Base and Email Ticket. All Comm100 products are delivered as FREE SaaS/Hosted applications and completely FREE. For further information about Comm100, please visit: http://www.comm100.com/.
Article Source

1. Make Sure Your Message Gets Through

Increased efforts by the major email systems have included mechanisms to trap unsolicited emails from getting through to the recipient's inboxes. Be certain that you use a double opt-in method to ensure that you are 'white listed' in your recipient's email system. Also, be careful with the use of such words as 'Free', 'Save', 'Discount' etc in both your subject line as well as email text.

2. Personalize Your Message

Increase the click thru and read rates by using the recipient's first name, as in "Dear John" rather than "Hi, there!". This makes your subscribers feel as though they already have a relationship with you. Just doing this little thing can improve reading and click thru rates by as much as 650%.

3. Use Text Rather than HTML

Numerous studies have shown that most Internet users respond better to plain text links rather than clicking on an image to take a desired actions. For this reason, always use bold, blue, and underlined text links to obtain more conversions and sales.

4. Use a Third Party Autoresponder Service

By following the rules of on of the better autoresponder services, you will be forced to adhere to more stringent ANTI-SPAM rules and that means a direct advantage in your read and click thru rates. Besides, it will make life much easier in setting up a nice marketing series so that you can manage the process much more effectively.

5. Send on Tuesdays and Wednesdays

Many studies have shown that the best days to perform a mail out are on Tuesday or Wednesday. People just seem to be more receptive to communications on those days.

6. One Message is Not Enough

By using a good autoresponder service, you can plan an effectively way to automatically follow-up with your subscribers to provide them with information on your products and services. Many studies have shown that the average person is not motivated to purchase until after the 6th or 7th contact with a company. You can establish the messages as well as the interval between messages and this will help your build trust with your subscriber.

7. Build a Brand Through Consistency

Always pay particular attention to the look and feel of your email message to ensure that they come across as professional rather than something that was thrown together in a hurry. Keep your look and feel consistent across all your emails. If you are doing a newsletter, creating a template with your company logo really helps in this regard.

8. Create the Expectation

When you are sending a regular email to your subscribers, be sure to do so on a regular internal and stick to it. Your customers will come to "expect" your email with anticipation and you surely don't want to disappoint them.

9. You Get 1/2 Second of Their Attention

When your subscriber opens your email, you have about 1/2 second to grab their attention before they delete your message and go on to other tasks. In your subject line, be sure to specify a benefit that the customer can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using "My Company Email Newsletter", you might say, "MyCompany Newsletter: 10 Tips for customer Satisfaction".

10. Appeal to the Preview Pane

Many email systems, such as MS Outlook, now have a preview pane in which the subscriber can see the lead-in text of each email before they open it. Be certain that you have some very interesting content in the first couple of lines of your emails.

11. Test Your Links

Try doing a split test of several emails to determine which links appeal the most to subscribers. Try out different color links as well as link placement in a couple of emails and then check the statistics (from the autoresponder service) to determine which type link and which placement achieved the best results.

12. Try An Ethical Bribe

To get a higher subscription rate to your newsletter, offer them an "Ethical bribe" to sign up. Give subscribers a free ebook on the subject or a good discount coupon just for signing up. Everybody like something for nothing!

13. Email Mini-Courses

By providing free information to your subscribers you can more easily establish your credibility and collect more names to your email list. Why not create a small "Mini-Course" of several (5-10) emails on a topic of interest and schedule them to be delivered one to two days apart. That way, just when thoughts of your company have diminished in the mind of the subscriber – here comes another lesson in your mini course. Be sure to make the content informative and not too hard sell.

14. Comply with the SPAM Laws

The last thing that you want to be accused of is being a "spammer" – one who generates a bunch of unsolicited emails. Be sure that you know the rules and that you provide subscribers with the capability to unsubscribe at the bottom of each email. This will keep your list clean and you know that your subscribers really do "want" your information and a relationship with your company.

15. Be Sure to Always Sign Your Emails

Your signature box at the close of the email is your best way to attract more traffic to your site. Be sure to include your personal information, company details, and even a link back to your main website. It might look like this:

Regards,

Joe Schmoe

President

My Company, LLC

Visit our website at: MyCompany.com

When you put these 15 tips into practice in your email marketing program, you will enjoy increased readership, company branding and you will attract more subscribers! This is the very best of small business email marketing.

Resources Don Seibert is a retired business executive who, as an Expert Author, writes timely articles, books, and blogs on issues concerning using the Internet in a small business. Having retired twice, Don is host of http://www.LocalBizIdeas.com. Visit the site for a complete discussion of how to attract more customers to your business using the power of the Internet.

Don and his business partner, Rich Lamkin, have recently published a popular book entitled "Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies"

What is "Hitting the Inbox"?

One of the greatest problems facing email marketers is making sure that your email goes to the user's inbox instead of the spam folder. When everything is driven by whether a user opens an email, that means that the user needs to actually SEE the email first. In truth, how many of us check our spam or junk folders regularly?

Getting your marketing email to actually go into the inbox is one of the most complicated parts of email marketing (and the part that fails the most often). Here are ten tips to keep your email from ending up in the junk folder.

1. Get on the Hotmail and Yahoo! White Lists

Hotmail and Yahoo! both keep lists of approved senders. Once you're on that list, you'll almost always go into the inbox. If you send a particularly spammy email, however, you can be removed from the list. The process can be frustrating and take a long time, but it's well worth it.

2. If You're Using Your Own Server, Make Sure it "Drips" the Messages

Spam filters at most email providers look to see how many messages you're sending at a time. If you're sending to a large list, even if you have a fast and efficient email sending server, have the server "drip" the messages out slowly. You really don't want more than a couple thousand to hit any one email provider per hour if you're playing it safely.

3. Break Large Lists Into Smaller Ones

There are many reasons to break large email lists into smaller ones, but the best reason is that doing so will mean that the spam complaints that you receive when you send your email won't be in one huge mass. It is inevitable that even loyal subscribers sometimes mark you as spam. If you send your large list in smaller segments, the email provider (Hotmail, MSN, etc.) will see less spam complaints bundled together at one time.

4. "Clean" Your Email List Frequently

Most, if not all, email providers' spam filters penalize your domain or IP with a higher spam score (meaning you are more likely to end up in the junk folder) if they see that you are sending emails to bad email accounts. A bad email account is an address that doesn't exist, has been disabled or has a full inbox. These addresses should be cleaned (or "pruned") from your email list regularly to avoid this. If you allow them to add up on your list, you will eventually be flagged as a spam provider.

5. Provide a Clear Unsubscribe Link

Nobody likes it when somebody unsubscribes from their email list. However, providing a clear way to unsubscribe (and then honoring that unsub quickly) means that users are less likely to get frustrated and just mark you as spam. The number one criterion for ending up in the junk box is the number of spam complaints that you receive, so avoiding them at all costs is critical.

6. Encourage Your Customers to Add You as a Friend or Contact

Once a user has added you to his or her contact list, friend list or address book, you will always end up in their inbox. Use every opportunity to encourage those on your email list to add you as a contact. Comm100 suggests doing it in the email sign up conformation email, on the confirmation page and during most customer service transactions. A typical way to ask customers to do this is to say, "Ensure that you continue to receive the quality information from us that you enjoy by adding us to your contact list."

7. Test Your Email to Seed Addresses BEFORE You Send to the Main List

Before you send your entire email list the message you've worked so hard on, send a test message to each of the big email providers (Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, AOL and one generic office address that is viewed in an Outlook client). Send the test email using the exact same server and information that you'll use with your main list. If you end up in the junk box on the test send, then you'll end up in the junk box on your main send. The pre-send test means that you can try different subject lines and email content to try to figure out what sent you to spam.

8. Don't Have Sloppy HTML Code

Spam filters check for bad html code, particularly if it looks like the code was done in Microsoft Word and then thrown into an email. Use a professional coder (preferably one who has done email templates before and knows the best way to make them resolve properly in an inbox) or a template provided by your email sending partner.

9. Don't Use "The Big Image"

Sending an email that's all one big image file is a bad idea for many reasons. Foremost among those reasons is that spam filters look for those types of image-based emails. Big image files often carry hidden messages that would normally get caught in spam filters (words like "free"), so, when a spam filter can't read any real text in an email and only sees an image, it assumes the worst.

10. Don't Write Text that Sounds Like a Spammer!

This one should be obvious! The more "spam-like" text and phrases your email uses, the less likely it is to end up in the inbox. There are a number of free software solutions to check the "spam score" of an email before you send it, but there are also basic rules.

Don't use the word "free" too many times.
Don't use ALL CAPS.
Don't use lots of colored fonts.
Only use one exclamation point at a time!
Stay away from words you'd see in spam:  drugs, porn, guaranteed winner.

If you've seen it used in a spam message that you received, don't use it in your own email message!

Even if you do all of these things and do them perfectly, you may still end up in the junk box. Email spam filter criteria change almost daily and can be impacted by things that you have no control over. However, if you, as a habit, send good email that your clients want, you'll get into the inbox more often than not. Be sure to follow the above guidelines because, once an email provider thinks that your email is spam, it is very hard to get back into the inbox!

One of the first steps to getting into the inbox is to choose a quality email partner. Comm100, who provided you with this spam tip list, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It's both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground and into the inbox!

-
About the Author:
Comm100 Network Corporation
provides open source and free hosted customer support software for small and medium businesses. Comm100 fully integrates multiple communication channels, including Live Chat, Newsletter, Forum, Knowledge Base and Ticket System. All Comm100 products are delivered as FREE SaaS/Hosted applications and completely FREE.
For more information about how to improve customer service quality and efficiency with Comm100 software, you can visit: http://www.comm100.com

Article Source

Once you got that out of the way, you may now be wondering how to build email list for your own products. To help you accomplish that, here are some easy tips how you can build your email list.

1. Sign-up form. Of course, you first need a sign up form for your newsletter on your website. As your website will be your online headquarters, it would be the most perfect place to promote and advertise your e-mail list. Just don't forget to place it somewhere it will be easily noticed and if you can, put it in almost all of your site's pages, to make sure that people won't miss it in case they want to sing up.

2. Offer a gift. Gifts are always a good motivation for people to do something, so if you have something related to what you're selling that you can afford to give away for free, like a mini e-course or an affiliate eBook, by all means, offer it to your potential newsletter subscribers.

3. Tell them why they need to subscribe to you. With the millions of free information people can easily get hold of nowadays, you would need to convince your readers and visitors why they need to sign up with your newsletter. Make sure to make it compelling, though, to assure the high rates of opt-ins on your email list.

4. Make sure to provide quality information. Again, as people can now easily get info online for free, you would need to provide something of high quality to stand out and be worthy of the time and vital info your subscribers have given you. One great way how to build email lists of quality is to avoid giving generic tips that can be easily found somewhere else online and make sure to be straight to the point and concise. This way, not only will you develop a great relationship with your subscribers, but you can also get more readers as your quality services will surely travel by word of mouth.

Although, these are only some of the more basic tips in how to build email list, it can still prove useful especially if done correctly. So, make sure to keep these in mind so you can be better equipped and ready for your email marketing venture.

-
About the Author:
How to make 5 Figures in 10 Days. Free Marketing Tips Get the Free Report www.Free-Marketing-Tips.org
Article Source

That’s why one of the biggest challenges in email marketing (just like direct mail) is figuring out

How to Get Your Email Opened!

You have two snippets of text to work with: your name and your subject line.

Personally, I believe the most valuable of the two is your name.

Here’s why…

If you deliver valuable content to your readers… and you develop a relationship with them… they will actually WANT to read everything you send them.

They will open your emails and read them because they know you, like you, and trust you. And they trust you will continue to deliver the kinds of content you’ve developed a REPUTATION for delivering.

Now, a name can be an asset or a liability. If you abuse your reader’s trust… and you abuse it repeatedly… she will unsubscribe. Or worse, she will bad-mouth you in public forums whenever the subject of email marketing comes up!

So, as much as possible, build trust. Become known for delivering value. Treat your name as an asset. Build relationship equity. If you are in this for the long-term (and you’re not just “churning and burning” your prospects), then this strategy will be very effective for you.

And this brings me to

Email Subject Lines

What subject lines work best? What should you avoid?

Well, I can’t speak for all markets, but I can tell you some things that have worked well for me.

1. Be provocative.

Whenever I put some emotion into my subject lines or write something unexpected, my emails get more attention.

Example: “3 Signs You Should NOT Be a Copywriter”

Since I am a copywriter… and I have an ebook about how to get clients as a copywriter… this is definitely an unexpected subject line. As a result, it got a high open rate.

2. Make it look personal.

A quick caveat: Deceptive subject lines are illegal. So do not try to trick your readers. That’s a no-no.

Still, I think making email look personal is a good strategy for getting emails opened — so long as the strategy is not over-used.

Example: “re: copywriting clients”

When I used this subject line, a reader told me re: means “reply,” and as such was deceptive because the email wasn’t a reply.

I’d never heard this before. I always thought re: meant “regarding.” It is used all the time in print letters. “Re: Your Recent Purchase” or whatever.

No matter whether you choose to use Re: or not, the principle still holds. Personal emails get opened more often. You could just use lower case letters and that might be enough. Or you might say something like “hey, need your advice” if you’re conducting a survey.

3. Use the word “Download.”

This may sound weird, but in test after test, anytime I start a subject line with the word “Download,” I get a ton of opens.

Example: “Download Ben Settle & Ryan Healy Interview”

If you have a PDF report, audio recording, or video to offer your list, use the word Download. If your experience is anything like mine, it will improve your open rates.

4. Mix things up.

In #2, I suggest making your emails look personal. The trick is to avoid over-using this strategy.

Most of the time, I like to use clear subject lines with Initial Caps.

Example: “How to Write with Authority”

Simple. Straightforward. And it works.

But over time using the same subject line format can cause your readers to become blinded by familiarity. Which is why I like to change things up every now and again.

That’s when I will use lower case letters or ask a question or throw in some symbols.

Example: “am I crazy for doing this?”

If I’ve been sending out emails such as the first example (How to…) and then I send out something like this, it will get much more attention.

5. Issue a command.

Instead of trying to gain your reader’s interest, it’s good to occasionally issue a command. Again, this works well only if you don’t over-use it.

Example: “urgent message (open immediately)”

Obviously, I can only say something like this a few times a year. Not everything is urgent. But when something is genuinely urgent, issuing a command is often better than using a promise-based subject line.

And if you don’t have something urgent, you can still issue a command. For instance, one of my most-read blog posts simply said, “You Have to Read This Now.”

I gave no indication as to WHY my reader needed to read this… or even WHAT he was going to read about. And yet it still commands (demands?) the reader to take the action you request.

6. Tell a story about yourself.

Anytime I use a story about myself, I get higher open rates. Of course, it has to be interesting and relevant to my readers.

Example 1: “33 Things I Learned in 2006″

Example 2: “How I Achieved a 7.14% Conversion Rate”

Everybody loves a good story.

By inserting yourself into the subject line with the word “I” you naturally tap into your reader’s curiosity — and his desire to read a good story.

Notice that there are two things at work here. I’m promising a story and a learning opporunity at the same time.

7. Make a compelling offer.

Back in May 2008, I ran a special offer centered around my birthday. I sold a copy of a physical book for $7. And that price included shipping.

This offer sold 85 books and generated a couple upsells on the back end. The two subject lines I used were:

Example 1: “My Birthday Is This Week — Here’s a Gift for You”

Example 2: “Save a Back: Buy a Book”

The trick is to make your offer compelling. That’s the first goal. Then, if possible, make it fun. Give a reason WHY you’re making the offer (i.e., it’s your birthday).

Win 1,000 Gallons of Gas?

Now, most corporate email is boring and completely fails as a direct response medium. But today I was pleasantly surprised by an email USAA sent to me.

Subject: Enter the 1,000 Gallons of Gas Sweepstakes.

Here they have combined two of the elements I discussed above. They are issuing a command (“Enter”) and making a compelling offer (a chance to win 1,000 gallons of gas).

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

As far as corporate emails go, this one is really good.

They’ve got a clear, compelling offer. They’ve got a deadline. And they’ve got a call to action.

What’s more, they’re tapping into the internal conversation many Americans have had about high gas prices.

Not bad!

The bottom line: Email marketing can be both powerful and profitable if you do it right.

There's no reason for you to struggle with sending out the best email broadcast. If you're ready to get more prospect via email now, you might want to grab these broadcast email marketing tips, techniques and methods.

These three elements create any call to action, and they have been reduced down to their most important parts to help you create one.

From attention to action, structuring your call to action well is essential for delivering optimal results.

The narrative: developing interest and engaging in conversations

The first part of any call to action is the story. By delivering a story, you turn recipients into long-term relationships or customers, all by building a story that captures their attention, and keeps them interested.

Furthermore, stories are key in word of mouth marketing. When the story is share-worthy or valuable it will spread and get your recipients talking about and to you.

The decision: benefits and effective writing

After developing a story, you need to progress from narrative to active decision. Introduce a benefit into your story, and ensure it is something that the recipients can relate to.

Let them know that it solves a problem, that it is easily available, that it is valuable to them, whatever the type of content or story.

If your decision-making writing is effective enough, you can easily convince recipients to read on, look at what is available, and take the steps you would like them to take.

Taking action: conversion; after the click

Your recipients know what they want, know why they want it, and want to know how to get it from you.

The goal of the action section is to guide your recipients through the conversion process, and inspire them to do what your email wants to achieve: increasing customer retention, cross- and up-selling, capturing relevant data, creating word of mouth, whatever.

After your 'decision' text has done the persuasion and “selling” for you, it’s a matter or providing what you promised and what you hope to achieve after the click…

I am an interactive marketing and social media journalist and blogger. I write about interactive marketing, email marketing, social media marketing and viral marketing on www.socialemailmarketing.eu, pay me a visit! I'm also a member of the global peer-to-peer social media marketing network Social Marketing Forum which you really should join!

Here are 5 tips you can put to use immediately when compiling and promoting to the list of email addresses you use to build your business.

Maintain Targeted List

Stay focused on a particular niche when compiling a list of email addresses since this will make your promotional messages more relevant and effective. Remember that the size of your list is not as important as the response rate you get when contacting them. If you have people on your list that display little interest in what you promote you are only wasting time and effort on them.

Offer Relevant Giveaway

Whether it is the free giveaway you offer people on your squeeze page or perhaps thank you 'gifts' you may send out periodically keep them relevant to the niche. By doing so these 'gifts' will be better appreciated by list members.

Develop Relationship

Do not make every email you send out an attempt to promote something to list members. It is important that you develop some type of 'casual' relationship with list members. By constantly 'beating them over the head' with relentless promotions they are likely to tire of this and unsubscribe from the list. A safe 'rule of thumb' you can use is to keep your promotional efforts down to 25 percent of any emails you send out. By doing this it will likely give you a higher sales conversation rate when you do promote something to list members.

Offer Useful Information

You already know what is of interest to your list members since they responded to your squeeze page offer to join the list. Based upon this interest supply your email list with information they may found useful or interesting. This will work wonders in developing a trusting relationship with your list members.

Use Auto-Responder Service

Using a reputable auto-responder service will help you manage your email based marketing campaign much more efficiently and effectively. This will help minimize or eliminate errors and allow you the time to tend to other aspects of your business.

When working online you should always be looking for ways to increase your marketing effectiveness. Successfully marketing on the internet requires continuous testing and tweaking in regards to how you operate your business. Your email based marketing efforts are one of the best areas to focus your attention for such improvements. Promoting to your list can be the most effective and efficient way to quickly grow your business. The tips we discussed here today address 5 areas of your list building and promotional efforts where improvements can be made. If change is needed and applied correctly you could dramatically increase the profits from your email based marketing campaign literally overnight.

TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For more tips about improving your marketing effectiveness online and to receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques visit: http://affiliatequickstart.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=TJ_Philpott

1. The Headline : The headline is the most important part of your Squeeze page, you need to grab your visitors attention with it! A very well working headline format uses questions (How to… ), but making a promise works well too!

2. Benefits : You need to make clear why your visitor need to subscribe to your list, try to write about the result or the benefit of subscribing to your newsletter! You should give away a free gift, like a free report, software or anything else!

3. We Don't Spam : Make clear that you will never share the informations collected from your subscriber, make clear too that they can opt out whenever they want!

4. Limitations : Set a limit, things like "Be one of the first 100 subscribing to my list to get this e-book for FREE" can increase your convertions dramatically. Another way is to set a countdown :" Subscribe in the next 90 seconds to recive my Special Report for Free"! (There are simple to install scripts aviable for free)

5. Your Photo : Insert your signature (Name, Company) at the end of your Squeeze Page, don't forget to insert your picture, this builds up trust to your visitors!

Using these simple but important email marketing tips will surely increase your convertion rates, and will help you to build your list real fast!

Warning : Not using these simple methods to build effective squeeze pages will result in a small, slow growing opt-in list.