All direct marketers, if they are worth their salt, have gotten clobbered, and more than a few times, and if they haven't gotten clobbered recently, they are probably sitting on there laurels. Renting email lists is a wonderful way to get clobbered.

The key to being a good direct marketer is to consistently test, and a good rule of thumb is to dedicate 20% of your budget to testing. Why? Two reasons. If you don't test you won't grow, and sources burn out, so if you just stick with what works your returns will diminish over time.

Good email lists are fabulous resources. Often they are easy to geo-target and if they are treated gently and kindly, (not bombarded with advertising) they will give you fabulous ROI's. The key is to use common sense, imagine your target; would he spend time on this site and open the newsletters being sent him? I have worked on both sides of this business, on creating and selling opt-in lists, as well as renting lists as a marketer and following through on life time value etc. First, as always, it is easier to explain what not to do.

One franchise campaign I worked on bought leads from us, lots and lots of leads, from well over 50 sources (and 40% margins), and a very high percentage (almost 90%) of the leads that closed (person actually bought the franchise) came from one source: Entrepreneur Magazine. Go figure. And it was the only source that we lost money on. The advertiser could have saved sacks of money, as my aunt likes say, by just buying that one list. Lesson to be learned, buy quality email lists that your target is going to read, and don't let affiliate networks become your marketing department.

Be very wary of generalist opt-in lists created through co-registration. Many large list owners, Permission Data, for example, have very large lists that were created years ago. I am old enough to remember these opt-in (sometimes out) lists when they had 50% open rates and 20% click through rates! I am getting old. That was when people didn't get email, it was big deal. Times have changed. If the list owner does not have a relationship with the reader, be very careful. What does have a relationship mean? You have to call once a week at least. Weekly communication is crucial, and the quality of the communication is very important. Is it an email with a list of 10 free offers or a well written, quality newsletter that the reader is anxious to open?

You must ask the right questions, but before you do that, sign up for the list you want to use. Have an email that you use just for testing email lists, and see how much advertising the list is getting. The difference in lists can be tremendous. I worked with one list that as soon as the person opted in, they would receive 4 or 5 emails from a third party that had first dibs on the list. They got the virgin emails. If the user opened, they got more, and if they opened and clicked they were bombarded. That was a garbage list that should only be used for CPA (Cost per Action) deals, I would even be nervous about CPL (Cost per Lead) because of the low quality of user.

Good, high end lists may cost $100 (CPM) and upward, but they are taken care of. One drop a week for advertising, always the same day and always identified. The Motley Fool took very good care of their lists, and were quick to ax an advertiser if complaints were generated. The Fool used to always have open rates about 10% and very high click through rates on open.

One other important factor in email marketing is how many emails were actually sent. This has always been a point of contention, because unlike display campaigns, it is not transparent. Open rates (on HTML) and click through rates can be measured objectively, but not how many were actually sent. So when a good advertiser does a drop and the numbers don't look great, a common practice is so over send. No harm no foul, right? Not really. We are about numbers, and when the numbers are fake, we than extrapolate, compare, and eventually get burned.

Some of the big data providers, I won't name them to stay out of trouble, but you know who they are, will tell you that they can model you data, and come up with lists that mirror you demographic. For example, you have a list of Forex users, heavy traders, they go into their list, find the dupes, and than come up with demographic models that find more users like the dupe. Makes for a great meeting, and fun ideas, but why give these guys your list so they can mark the dupes than hammer the life out of them. Some of these companies have access to hundreds of millions of emails, and they can most likely find half your list in their database, and sell the list, with a wink, to your competitor. "Hey Howie, I got a deal for you, you know your competitors email list, want to drop to it?" Contract will say "email select, active trader" I wouldn't let them near my list unless it was total garbage to begin with.

Finally creatives. First, test you creative on your own list. Create an internal list of non-buyers, bench mark it with outside lists, and use it as a test. Put all your creatives through spam filters, watch the language. Remember this rule, subject line=open rate, email creative=click through rate, URL=deliverability. Your first questions to a list owner should be, what is the communication with list, advertising and content, what is the deliverability (you only pay for delivered email, make sure that is in the IO) and what are typical open rates and click through rates for content and for advertising. Run the numbers and see if it makes sense to test. Push them for cheap tests, if the list is that good, they should sell you a cheap test to wet your appetite. Just be very careful about ramping up. I savvy list owner will drop to his openers and clickers for the test, and when you sign the 50K IO he will throw in a lot of garbage. This is a tricky business, let me help you navigate you way to a positive ROI.



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

One of the most effective ways to market is online, and what's one of the best ways to do this? Emails! It's simple... the internet gives you the whole world to market to, literally. This makes your marketing accessible to most people in most countries, think of the opportunities! E-mails are turning into a major part of all online marketing.

The successful in the online world have been doing email marketing since the internet was around; here's why.
The availability of emails... With emails it is easy to reach any size number of people you see fit. Want to market to 100,000 people? Go for it. 1,000,000? You can! Realistically you will want to start with just hundreds, but the option to grow is unlimited!

It's cheap... Email marketing is by far the cheapest form of advertising. Most other forms you need materials and costs to publishers or Kinkos, ect. With emails, the material is all online and in your computer and in your head. You could literally do a campaign for no cost!

It's fast... In the old days people who wanted to market something had to mail people all over and then wait weeks to see if the ads worked or not. Or wait till the publication they were advertising in to come out. Now, the conveyance of your material is almost instant. One click of a button and your message is being sent out, to whoever you choose!

You can choose... Who you send your emails to. Think of finding a group of people that are looking for something and you have the power to advertise to them specifically and at that moment!

They work... Chances are if someone likes your offer and gives you their email address you will have an inroad to selling them something they want... For very low cost, and you can market to them as soon as you have a new product or new campaign, instantly!



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

If you're like most people I see with email lists, you can increase your subscriber rate significantly, right now, with the exact same amount of traffic you are currently getting.

Here are two simple ways to do it:

1. Fix your Headline and copy

I see a LOT of newsletter lists asking me to sign up by saying 'Sign up for my Newsletter' or 'Sign up for the XX Newsletter'. Boy does that sound boring! Why on earth would I give you my very limited attention and valuable email address when you haven't even told me what's so good about what you've got to say?

Here's a really great tip for creating compelling headlines I learned from Perry Marshall in his Google AdWords book:

- Go to Magazines.com and do a search for Cosmo Magazine. This might sound weird but Cosmo is a huge magazine that spends a fortune on getting the copy just right. You can look at other magazines too of course. Use the headlines on the cover of that magazine to help inspire ideas for YOUR headline. Maybe reword something to fit your niche.

Here's an example:

Right now I just found the headline - 8 New Love Truths You Must Learn
Let's relate that to our current topic - 8 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers You Must Learn Now

See - more compelling right? So use that on your newsletter headline, like:
Sign up now to receive our weekly tips, advice and info on Email Marketing. As a special bonus, you'll get the free report titled '8 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers You Must Learn Now'.

That was a really quick example that I did just this minute, I'm sure with some extra time you could come up with something REALLY compelling to increase your subscribers and tell them the real value in what you offer.

2. Add a Complementary Image

Add an image to your offer. People like to SEE what they are getting and there are plenty of skimmers out there who won't read all of your newsletter offer so you'll want to make it appealing with a graphic that fits.

The graphic might be a representation of what people will achieve through your newsletter - example: more time and freedom.

The graphic might also be a digital representation of the newsletter itself or the bonus - example: you have an ecover of a magazine or a graphic of a free CD to represent a free audio you're giving away

Let me give you a real life example:

I have a client who asked me to fix up her email opt-in copy for her newsletter. She had great traffic but not terribly impressive sign-ups to her email list. After tweaking her copy and adding a great image her sign-ups increased by 558%. So now almost 6 times MORE people are signing up for her newsletter with just a tweak that literally took no more than an hour of my time.


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

It's a well-known fact that you need to follow-up with a prospect at least seven times before they decide to buy.

Most people will not buy right away. You need to keep in touch, and slowly sell them the benefits of your offer, while removing any doubts and building a stronger relationship.

My observation shows that only a handful of companies employ any type of follow-up strategy at all. The rest of them move on to other prospects who are more likely to purchase right away.

Perhaps it's because traditional follow-up methods consume too much time and energy. Another problem is that with traditional methods it's hard to determine who will end up as a customer, and who is just wasting your time.

With these setbacks, traditional businesses only look for the person who is ready to buy NOW - not tomorrow, not next week, and certainly not next month. That may work for a while, but in the end it's the company that learns how to follow-up effectively that make's the lion's share of profits.

With auto-responders however, sending emails follow-ups is not only easy, but automated as well.

All a prospect needs to do is fill up their name and email address on your website contact form. Then, you can send them an automatic follow-up message for weeks or months, with almost no effort on your part.

With email autoresponders, you create predefined messages, at predefined intervals, to follow-up with prospects.

That way, you can plan in advance exactly what you want to say to prospects at different stages of the sales process.

Here's the best part: When you've done that successfully, you can follow-up with thousands of prospects at the same time, and the most interested will contact YOU for more information.

What about those who aren't interested?

The key is letting prospects "unsubscribe" themselves without much hassle.

All they need to do is click on the "Unsubscribe" link within your email itself, and they will never hear from you again.

I remember when I created my first automatic follow-up campaign, I was shocked when a lot of people unsubscribed after getting my first follow-up email. This increases after the second, third and forth emails, so on.

Initially I took it personally.

"Am I doing something wrong?", I used to think. I would try my best to make them happy and provide them with everything they needed, yet people still unsubscribed.

Later I realized that all it means is that those people aren't interested in that particular offer. That's all! It's not personal, it's just business.

If you're following up using traditional methods like a phone call, uninterested prospects may feel obliged to answer your call and perhaps even put up with you for a few minutes, but ultimately you're not going to get a sale from them.

With automatic follow-up emails, you actually filter out the bad leads automatically.

What it means is that they are no longer interested. Instead of getting hung up about it, just focus on the ones who are still subscribed. Send them more information, and the sale is yours.

I find it rather surprising that a lot of small businesses still aren't using some kind of autoresponder software to create automatic follow-up campaigns.

If you are like that, then you must get an autoresponder software as soon as possible.



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

One of the greatest marketing tools happens to be also the easiest to do. Many people forget about it with all this social media buzz (Facebook, Twitter and the like) but, email is still your best tool for your small business.

You've set up your small business' website and your even have got some traffic going to it. The sales just quite coming in yet. The problem is most people will find your site when they are ready to buy, most of them will see it in the research stage or even when they are just looking around. You need to keep in contact with them until they get to that point.

Monthly newsletters with good content, deals, and information keeps your name and URL in peoples minds. Maybe that one deal will get you that buy.

Their are a few companies that have made this even easier for you. MailChimp and CampainMonitor are the two that I recommend you use.

MailChimp is the one I'm going to talk about because its the easiest to use. They offer a free version if your list is under 500 subscribers, although they put a tiny logo in the bottom of every email.

One of the toughest problems people find in sending out a list is designing the email, MailChimp (and CampainMonitor) have a large selection of templates for your that you can edit and customize to be however you like.




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

Email marketing is a powerful tool to increase income and sell products. This new age sales method capitalizes on your target market. When you send out your email news broadcast, you might want to implement some of the techniques outlined below.

Make the email have value for your target market. If you are distributing or selling a product make sure that it resonates with what they want or need. You can also do this by giving valuables away or offers. When you provide offers your subscribers will see great value in your business and that is the most important element you want to create. Value. So when you are giving offers, try providing something that is either free or something that you are really good at. For example, if you are a subject matter expert in one area of your work, then you might want to give them a free ebook with your methodologies.

Another important facet to this is that make sure your email messages and offers are genuinely valuable. People can smell crap from a mile away. It is our sixth sense. So when you are providing any content for free, make sure its something you can stand behind. Speak simple to your market. You want to make it as easy as possible for your target market to take action. Using big technical words might make it harder for your readers to understand and hence hinder their desire to take action. You should rather keep your statements to two sentences with simple language and results. Also the usage of headings and list elements.




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

A good fragment of marketing is prepared through email marketing at the present time. You know, making take advantage of of autoresponders to transmit emails to your subscribers. It seems like the easiest, nearly all efficient entity to prepare in shape? Puzzle is, myself like many other marketers previously me found with the purpose of tons of emails were landing up taking part in the spam mail boxes, accidentally being apparent at the same time as spam before having veto individual read them on all!

It was a frustrating setting and I had to keep important my subscribers to check their mailboxes, especially the spam mail, to accompany somewhere my ensue up emails had landed. However, not extended since I bare a software with the purpose of helps transmit messages to your subscribers with no open through the channel of emails and the spam blockers. It offers plain-spoken approach of your messages straight to your subscriber's desktop, austere meaning and click functions on behalf of cool use, customizable messages to come to pass sent not in at the same time as and at what time you feel like, and even lets you know at what time natives comprise conventional your messages!

As soon as purchasing it, I realized this software was so austere and straightforward to take advantage of with the purpose of I might start distribution not in messages to my subscribers in seconds of installing it. In attendance was too a veto fuss, veto complications interface which made it so cool to simply type taking part in the messages and transmit them not in scarcely at the same time as in nature at the same time as marks a standard email. This software has known my marketing pains a boost and I doubt i'm using email marketing yet again.



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