Email Marketing Tips Blog

I may not be the biggest physical fitness nut out there, but there are two things I exercise – without fail – almost every day. The first is my wrist, as I whip out my credit card for the latest must-have item. (Luckily, I have a husband who understands how much money I am saving him – ha ha!).

The second is my delete finger.

Recently, Simon Grabowski (the tall, dark, handsome leader of GetResponse) forwarded an email to me which demonstrated everything you should NOT do when writing an email. This got me thinking … what you should NOT do – unless you want your marketing message to languish in the black hole of undeliverability and deleted messages across the globe!

So, here’s my top 10 ways to get your message undelivered or deleted.

• Offer to enlarge or enhance my penis. First of all, last time I checked, I didn’t have one. Secondly, I am more concerned about reducing my body parts, not enlarging them. Thanks for reminding me – delete!
• Write “Personal” in the subject line when it’s actually a personal email to your entire list of 400,000. Trick me once – shame on me. Trick me twice – delete!
• Use all Caps. C’mon….did you ever try to read anything in all caps? At least you saved me time because as soon as I see that I immediately – delete!
• End each sentence with at least 7 exclamation points!!!!!!! After extensive research (actually, I was cruising the Internet while watching Oprah), I have determined that the number of exclamation points used are inversely proportional to the substance of the email. Too many of them – delete!
• Whether you are the brother-in-law of your country’s dictator or the barrister of Mr. Magoo’s millions, please understand I cannot pay any fees or percentages into your bank account until I have received and deposited the funds in my Swiss Bank Account and left the country for a tax haven. In order to cement our trust, I will be pleased to provide my voice mail number, hotmail account, and P.O. Box. If this is not acceptable to immediately forward me a truck full of unmarked hundreds – delete!
• Don’t copy and paste affiliate promotions. Do you really expect me to believe that you – and 78 other marketers “twisted John Doe’s arm” into getting me a great deal? How about you fax me a copy of the emergency room admittance to fix Mr. Doe’s arm? Listen, if you can’t take the time to do your own impartial review, you won’t earn my respect nor my money – delete!
• Ask me to verify my bank account, social security number, ebay password, hip measurement or age. Don’t you think I know enough to see that the hyperlink to www.paypal.com is actually going to www.IloveToRipPeopleOff.com ? Don’t insult my intelligence – delete!
• Send me an obvious spam message with the note, “If you don’t want any more messages from us, please reply to this email.” Yeah…right – delete!
• Your email comes from “HookUp Tonight”, “CamGirrl”, “Drink Survey”, or “Leslie the Lesbian” (I am not making these up….they are in my spam folder as we speak!) – delete!
• You didn’t pass first grade spelling and think you’ll make it through my spam box because you write Viiaagra and 4ex. Or you put X@@*#Y, ~~~~~~~~~, and other cutsie characters in the subject line thinking I will be curious and open your spam. It’s just not gonna happen – delete!

As great marketers, we want to stand out from the crowd. But this is not the way to get yourself noticed!

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse

Have you ever thought of email marketing in the realm of hard goods costing thousands of dollars?

For many people, they use (or receive) emails promoting information products or lower priced goods and services. And, most people think of emails encouraging a click through to an online store where the purchase is made without leaving your computer.

But the power of email marketing can be seen in a case study I recently read at Marketing Sherpa. Not only was email used to launch a high-end product (retailing in the $2000-$8600 range), but the email campaign had to convince prospects to visit a bricks-and-mortar location rather than an online store.

Trek Bicycle Corp. had previously used email to promote clothing and accessories for their bike line through their online store. But this was a whole other ballgame. In this case, they were promoting a four-figure bike which could be only purchased by walk-in traffic.

I took away several important points from this case study. These can be applied to your audience no matter WHAT price point you offer and what products or services you provide.

• Test, test, test your email marketing campaigns. The team at Trek Bicycle had to continue testing until they got the package right. Don’t waste time or money by guessing. Always test.
• Create an email marketing sublist. For instance, I may be on the newsletter list at your gardening site. But my passion is antique roses. By creating a sublist of antique rose enthusiasts, you can speak directly to our desire for information and the latest antique rose products for sale. Because the message is not diluted by talk of herbs, landscaping, etc., conversion for your antique rose products will probably be higher than your general email population.
• Incorporate pictures. Images grab your attention and illustrate your points. Even if I don’t have time to spend reading your newsletter at the moment, your pictures should create enough curiosity that I will (at a minimum) save your email to read later.
• Drive your prospects to a minisite specifically about the subject in question. Don’t distract them by sending them to your general website. Include an FAQ page and a blog where prospects can get more detailed info and interact with other customers.
• Add an opt-in box on your minisite. Even though the majority of people will arrive through the link in your email, some people may arrive through organic search. You won’t miss out on the opportunity of them signing up for your list if you include an opt-in box on every page of your minisite.

To Your Continued Email Marketing Success!

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse

From the “Dark Side”

Professional email marketers not only avoid, but openly criticize, the following list-building ideas. Choosing any of the below solutions is the best and quickest way to lose time and money.

And we won’t even mention your reputation!

Still, it’s worthwhile to specifically state what should definitely NEVER be considered as email marketing.

• Harvest 32,433,771 email addresses from the web using email harvesting software.
• Get a quick boost of an extra 12,309,448 email addresses by grabbing emails from newsgroups, too.
• Rent a server farm in Russia and spam the heck out of the 44,743,219 email addresses you harvested in the previous two steps, asking these millions to join your legitimate newsletter. (This insidious practice is also known as “list washing”).
• Use a “viral marketing” strategy. Literally. Hire a h4rdc0r3 programmer to code an email virus. The virus should spread silently and add victims’ entire Outlook address books to your mailing list, but it shouldn’t do any serious damage (no profit in that).
• If you get busted because of the previous idea, blame it on Microsoft for creating insecure software. Send out a shocking press release. Give interviews to the press. Use the resulting free publicity to build an even bigger list.
• Pay people for signing up for your newsletter. “My newsletter is so good that I’m gonna pay you for joining it!”
• Promise to pay people for signing up. Promise to pay even more for signing up their friends, relatives and business associates. Then never send them a check. Why would you.. they’re already signed up. Next!
• Pay (or promise to pay) your potential subscribers for confirming their email address.
• Trust these Google ads and get a really huge list really fast!
• Create a fake MySpace profile. Be interesting and add nice photos. If you don’t look good enough, use a photo of someone that looks better. Add your newsletter subscription form to your profile (MySpace allows HTML code). Put the following in screaming bold red: “If you are truly a friend of mine, you’ll sign up for my newsletter, or else I will delete you and post nasty comments”. The remaining piece of the puzzle is to add friends. Download a MySpace friend bot and add thousands automatically. This is a powerful tactic. It not only builds your list, but it also makes you famous.
• Buy an opt-in permission-based list. Yes. Permission-based. The previous owner gave you the permission to mail it.
• Hassle your subscribers to sign up for your newsletter, add them to 7 other lists. After all, they already are “your” subscribers.
• Use pre-checked opt-in checkboxes in the subscription form. Surely, they should want to subscribe, so make it difficult for them not to…
• … or better yet, make it impossible not to subscribe. Simply deactivate the pre-checked opt-in box, and make it impossible to uncheck it.
• Put everyone who’s ever contacted you for any reason on your mailing list. After all, these contacts belong to you, so you have every right to mail them.
• Start a FFA (Free-For-All) links page and build a mailing list of addresses from those who added a link on that page. Don’t add their free link until they give you the addresses of their 3 friends. Then ask for 3 more. Nothing like word of mouth!
• When confirming subscriptions, offer a “free bonus” or another incentive for clicking on the confirmation address. (It’s scary, but marketers actually think that this is a good idea.)

Okay, okay. Quit writing!!!

In case it’s not crystal clear, using any of these techniques might make you and Jeremy Jaynes cellmates for the next NINE YEARS in Spam Jail!!! Believe me, this is not the kind of fame you want!

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse