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Organisations such as the BPA have been providing auditing services for magazines and event audiences for many years. Providing advertisers with independent evidence that your audience are who you claim them to be is an effective point of differentiation and extremely helpful when selling your proposition to would-be advertisers. Associating your offering with a credible auditing organisation conveys images of trust, essential for first time advertisers unsure of your corporate reputation and credibility.

Email newsletters are fast becoming an integral part of many organisation’s offering to advertisers. With low unit costs, infinite scalability and massive flexibility, sponsors are paying to appear on everything from regular “event updates” through to information-packed newsletters. Historically, the draw back with using email as a channel was that it was not auditable- a significant hurdle when attracting new sponsors.

Whilst the business case for auditing is clear, the rapid emergence of email newsletters mean that organisations faced some headaches- can you audit an email newsletter?

The answer is yes, and Adestra have been working with a number of publishers to implement auditing on their email newsletters.

Overview

Every time an email is broadcast, it is distributed through an email mail server. On sending, Adestra record who the email is to be sent to, and with which communication. Using our technology, each email address we broadcast to is individually tracked allowing us to match all replies.

From automated bounced addresses through to individual responses, Adestra’s mail logs contain all information about the broadcast. This information is then analysed by your auditors who will verify your audience and provide you with a statement in the usual way.Getting started

* You must be using a reputable email service provider to broadcast your messages.
* The email service provider broadcasts your email messages ensuring all information about the sending is recorded for easy access by the auditor
* The email service provider presents the email broadcast ‘logs’ to the auditor
* The auditor analyses the information
* Auditor validates your audience statements

More information about our email marketing broadcast services

Adestra provide welcome tactical advice and input on our client’s email marketing program. For more information about how we can work together with you to improve your email marketing, please visit www.adestra.co.uk/email_marketing and ask us about our email marketing services

Paul Crabtree is presently Marketing Director of Adestra (http://www.adestra.com), a UK based digital marketing agency that specialise in inbound and outbound email, fax and SMS broadcast solutions. Adestra’s client portfolio includes many UK based publishers including Janes Information Group, Informa, Lexis Nexis, OUP, Blackwells and others.

Previous to this role, Paul was responsible for heading-up online marketing for Informa Telecoms’ publishing division working on a portfolio of reports, newsletters, ad-led vehicles and the industry portal telecoms.com.

Paul will draw on his 5 years of focused experience in working in online marketing for publishers.

At the recent Online Marketing Show, Adestra ran an email clinic. Attendees spent time with an Adestra expert who provided feedback and useful advice about how they could improve their campaigns.

Main Lessons

Data, data and more data is the main factor holding back B2B and B2C email marketers

# Data Management:

Many marketers are only capturing email address and failing to use follow-up communications to capture further information. From demographics to coherent reporting lines to feed back recipient behaviour, marketers’ databases are limited to contain only the information from the first contact.

# Reporting:

drowning in simple metrics such as clicks and opens, many marketers are unable to use the results of their campaigns in strategic decision making or for calculating return on investment (ROI). Many marketers are finding that their senior management perceive email as a cheap channel and not a traditional, measurable direct marketing channel. Only being able to provide limited reporting feeds this view.

# Tracking technology:

many marketers do not use robust tracking systems, finding them technologically complicated. Costly web analytics packages are being deployed in some cases, but on the whole, many marketers are ignoring simple tactics such as duplicating a product marketing page and tracking orders through it.

Steve Denner, Director of Adestra commented “After a long day and many conversations with many email marketers, almost everyone I’ve met uses email marketing intelligently. However, it is really refreshing that these marketers recognise there are ways in which they can improve their marketing further and I’m glad that Adestra have been able to provide some practical and helpful advice to help them do this.”

This confirms the empirical findings of a recent Adestra survey

Adestra have conducted a detailed survey of 65 UK based marketers to investigate what they believe are the main challenges facing them within their email marketing. Both B2B and B2C companies participated including companies such as Ford Motor Company, Coors Brewers, Prudential, Investec Asset Management, RAC, Future Publishing Ltd, Cotton Traders and Reed Business Information.

Main Findings

* 34% of B2B and 29% of B2C marketers in the sample agree that the growing, cleaning, and management of their email contact database is the aspect of their email marketing program that they could improve most
* When considering what ‘hot topics’ marketers wanted to learn more about to improve their email marketing, both B2B and B2C marketers voted for the same aspects:

o Deliverability: ensuring messages get to inboxes
o Message design: optimised design and lay-out of messages
o The future for email: new emerging technologies within email marketing e.g. rich media
* B2B marketers want to learn more about best practice lead generation email programs whereas B2C marketers prefer to discover more about eZine newsletters.
* 4 out of 5 respondents in the sample plan to use email marketing more in 2006.

Reviewing the survey results, Paul Crabtree Marketing Director of Adestra, commented

“Interestingly, both B2B and B2C marketers are facing similar challenges despite using email marketing in different ways. They want to learn more about issues such as deliverability and spam and most recognise that there are faults within their existing programs, especially in the way they manage their email contact database”

He continued “With 80% of the UK marketers in the sample planning to use email marketing more in 2006, and the willingness of the sample to accept that there are numerous ways in which they could improve their email marketing program, I urge marketers to consider working with email marketing specialists such as Adestra to use their expertise when developing their email programs”

Learn from other marketers

Working within email marketing for over 5 years, Adestra’s email experts have real-life experience of working with B2B and B2C players alike including publishers, event organisers, travel/ tourism providers, charities and many more- a unique opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others!

Contact us

We would welcome the chance to discuss your email marketing objectives and plans, and would encourage you to contact us.

Free email marketing white paper

Adestra have produced a white paper on the challenges that today’s UK email marketers are facing when trying to implement their email marketing program

The research is based upon a survey of 65 marketers before the show, discussions with over 170 contacts during the show and our ongoing dialogues with our clients. It includes Adestra’s suggestions on how you can overcome challenges including:

* Improving data management: email contacts and feedback loops
* Find relevant case studies to learn from
* Sifting all the data from your email campaigns to find actionable information
* Overcoming the office politics associated with email marketing

To receive a free copy of this white paper, please go to www.adestra.co.uk/email_marketing.

Paul Crabtree is presently Marketing Director of Adestra (http://www.adestra.com), a UK based digital marketing agency that specialise in inbound and outbound email, fax and SMS broadcast solutions. Adestra’s client portfolio includes many UK based publishers including Janes Information Group, Informa, Lexis Nexis, OUP, Blackwells and others.

Previous to this role, Paul was responsible for heading-up online marketing for Informa Telecoms’ publishing division working on a portfolio of reports, newsletters, ad-led vehicles and the industry portal telecoms.com.

Paul will draw on his 5 years of focused experience in working in online marketing for publishers.

Here are the ten most important tips to ensure you’re able to get the maximum return on your investment in permission-based email marketing.

1. Only send emails to persons who have requested them.

2. Only include content relevant to the type of content the person has requested.

3. Be consistent with your sending frequency. Pick a schedule, whether it is weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly and as often as you can stick to that schedule.

4. In most cases it is best to send business to business emails Tuesday through Thursday. We’ve found that the best times of the day to send are just after the start of the day around 9:30am or just after lunch around 1:30pm. It is best to avoid sending business to business emails after 4pm or on weekends.

5. In most cases it is best to send business to consumer emails either between 5pm and 8pm Tuesday through Thursday or between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

6. To improve deliverability add a message at the top of your emails that says something like: “To ensure receipt of our emails, please add something@yourcompany.com to your Address Book.”

7. Make the From Name for your messages either your company name or the name of a person at your company. Once you choose a From Name, keep it consistent. During the split second decision subscribers make whether to open your email, the most important factor in their decision is whether the From Name is familiar to them.

8. Be sure to include both a plain text and an HTML version of your newsletter. IntelliContact Pro will automatically detect which subscribers can view the HTML message and which can only see the plain text message. If you don’t include a plain text message, around 5% of your recipients will see a message with nothing in it.

9. Don’t use all caps or multiple exclamation marks within your subject line or body. Doing this will trigger spam filters. See our Best Practices Whitepaper for additional words to avoid.

10. Build your list at every opportunity you have. If you have a retail location, add a point-of-sale sign up form. At conferences or events, ask everyone you speak with if you may add them to your list after you exchange business cards. Finally, add your newsletter sign-up form to every page on your web site. You can use the sign-up form generator within IntelliContact Pro to automatically generate the code you need.

We hope these tips have been helpful!

Ryan Allis is a nationally recognized expert on email marketing. Ryan is the CEO of Broadwick Corp, providers of the email marketing software IntelliContact Pro. For additional information on email marketing software, visit http://www.email-marketing-software-resource.com.

According to a study by the Winterberry Group, email marketing brings in $15.50 per dollar spent. This is about 17% more than direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns. In short, email marketing matters and if you’re not sending out at least monthly email newsletters to your subscriber base, you should be. The true cost comes from acquiring the prospects and clients, not the three or four hours needed to create a monthly newsletter.

Many organizations, once they have spent the thousands of dollars acquiring their clients, fail to market to their existing base. I’ve met quite a few marketing managers who would rather continue spending $200 a pop for new qualified prospects rather than $0.01 per person to build the relationship with their existing clients and recommend new products or encourage re-orders. I’ve found that sending relevant email communications to persons who have requested to receive them is the single most effective way of cultivating the type of relationship needed to turn your prospects into customers and your customers into lifetime product evangelizers.

As a reader of this article, chance has it that your organization is one that already sends out a newsletter, or at least is considering doing so soon. Once you began sending your own newsletter, however, it is important to follow two important rules that will increase your likelihood of achieving your marketing goals, whether they are to increase repeat orders, convert a higher ratio of prospects, or obtain top-of-mind brand awareness.

The first and most important rule is to only send relevant content to persons who have requested it. What does this mean? Well, let’s say you are a travel and adventure planning company. If someone has subscribed to your Kayaking Monthly Newsletter, don’t move them over to your European Vacations list and send them an article on Dining in Tuscany. In most cases, you will very quickly lose any prospect or reduce the lifetime value of your relationship with an existing client. If the person also subscribed to it, it would be okay to send him or her a monthly company newsletter that from time to time had information on other topics, but don’t mix newsletter bases just to increase mailing volumes.

It is important to note that just setting up an interest segment and adding it to your sign up form doesn’t require you to create a monthly newsletter on that topic, but once you get a few dozen to a couple hundred people interested in that area (depending the value of the product or service you are providing), it will likely pay to have quality content developed on that topic for distribution in interest specific newsletters. This can be easily done within the IntelliContact Pro email marketing software by either creating a list specifically for persons interested in a topic or creating a segment of persons with a specific interest.

The second rule is to be consistent with your sending frequency. Depending on your type of business and your subscriber interest level, the right volume for you could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Once you find the frequency that is right for your organization (and this could vary newsletter to newsletter), stick with it. We see a lot of companies whose email strategy can only be defined as “ad hoc.” Rather than blasting out a promotion whenever sales are lagging, we recommend having an emailing schedule for each newsletter and sticking to it, whether it be every Saturday, every other Wednesday, or on the 15th of each month. As an example our company newsletter, the Permission-Based Email Marketing Monthly goes out on the 28th of each month.

What type of results can you expect from regularly sending out regular email newsletters? Here are two examples from users of IntelliContact Pro the email marketing software my company Broadwick provides. Biotage is a company based on Massachusetts that provides DNA sequencing instrumentation. They send out event notifications and company updates to 20,000 or so subscribers each month. David Shultis, Marketing Communications Manager of Biotage, notes, “We’ve seen open rates at around the 38-42% mark for our large mailings. There has also been a ‘pass-along’ quality of our emails, as we’ve noticed new names that were not originally on our mailing lists responding to offers.” Another IntelliContact Pro user, Julie Ibrahim, Vice President of the Tiger Sports Shop says “The monthly newsletter keeps us and our inn at the forefront in the minds of our past and potential guests. Thus with the continuous news from us and our region, we are kept in mind, with no sales effort or pressure.” If your organization wants to see marketing results like these, it may be time to start or expand your usage of permission-based email marketing.

If you stick with sending relevant, high quality content-rich emails on a consistent basis to persons who have requested to receive your emails, you will increase your prospect to customer conversion rates and customer lifetime value at a fraction of the of the cost of traditional methods and take advantage of the best type of marketing possible-free marketing through authentic customer word-of-month.

Ryan Allis is an internationally recognized expert on email marketing. Ryan is the CEO of Broadwick Corp, providers of the email marketing software IntelliContact Pro. For additional information on email marketing software, visit http://www.email-marketing-software-resource.com.

In this article I will give you several tips that can help you in improving your open and click-thru rates.

1) Open rate

In order to your email campaign be successful the first necessary thing is that people open and read your email newsletter. Online publishing is very similar to traditional publishing. When you buy a daily newspaper, you probably don’t read everything. You don’t have that much of free time and not every subject is equally interesting for you. If you are a sports fan you will read the sport section but you might skip an article about latest movies . In most cases you will decide what you are going to read upon subject titles.

Same thing with email newsletters. One of the two most important factors that influence whether or not your subscriber will open your email newsletter will be your subject line. In order to have good open rates and click-thru rates you have to know your audience. Your message has to be well targeted.

There are several rules you have to follow in order to make effective subject lines.

Subject lines

Your subject lines should be short and snappy to get attention of your subscribers. Many people receive dozens of emails every day and some other people that have web sites and often make posts on different places like web forums, discussion lists, publish articles, can get more than 100 emails per day. So your message will have a very big competition in your subscriber’s inbox. That’s why your subject line has to grab attention of your subscriber. This doesn’t mean that you have to use usual spam techniques. On the contrary. Avoid using words FREE, GUARANTEED, Make Money Fast, Limited Offer and other get-rich-quick schemes words. Not just because of your subscribers. If you use these words it is most likely that your emails will never even reach them. Their ISP will take care of that with their spam filters. Also don’t capitalize every letter and don’t put several times exclamation. You don’t need to shout, people will “hear” you if you know how to “tell” them your message.

So your subject line has to be short and snappy, best thing is that you include one title from your articles in your subject line. It can be some breaking news or exlusive interview. People like to read breaking news or exclusive interviews that can’t be found anywhere else. Also, people often read how-to articles (for example - How To Choose The Right Email Marketing Software) or so called “number” articles (for example - 7 Tips For E-publishers On A Shoestring Budget).

Good thing is that you put your newsletter name in brackets, at the beginning of your subject line in order to be easily recognized from other emails in inbox.

Please bear in mind, that your subject line has to be consistent. What do I mean by that? Of course that you will change the title in your subject line but you have to find the best subject form and stick to it. For example:

[NewslettterName] Your Subject Title, Issue #x, Date

Don’t forget, in order to make effective ads and this apply to subject lines, as well you have to remember 3 words - test, test, test! You have to experiment with different models and find out which work best for you.

From field

Beside Subject line, From field is another info that your recipients will see in their inbox. People have to trust you in order to decide to read your emails. You don’t open your doors to every person who knocks, don’t you?

If you are well-known person, trusted expert in your industry, for example some reputable Internet consultant and you are the only person that is involved in creation and publishing of the newsletter put your name in From field. If several people are involved in that process and if it is a corporate newsletter, use your company name.

Most important thing with From fields is that you don’t experiment with it. Choose one From field and stick to that. It is very un-professional that you often change your From field and beside that, in that case, your open rate will decline.

Useful tip is that you ask your subscribers to make a filter rule for your email newsletter, based on your email address, From field or some part of your Subject line. For example, they can put [YourNewsletterName] in a filter rule for your newsletter or your From field name so every time they get the email newsletter that matches that rule it will be moved to a specially designed folder, for example YourNewsletterName. So this way your newsletter won’t end in their Bulk folder. That is also one of the reasons why you should be consistent with your From field and subject line.

2) Click-Thru Rates

Clicks come once your email newsletter is opened. With good open rate you have finished only one part of the job. Now, your newsletter has to be well designed with appropriate content and concept, and most important, well targeted in order to have a decent click-thru ratio (CTR). You have to know your audience. You can increase your CTR if you put your most important articles and ads at the top of your email newsletters. Don’t write too long articles. It is better to write articles where you will list several tips. Also, don’t overload your newsletter with ads. People want to read useful things and not lots of ads.

Also, you know that a picture is worth more than 1000 words, so it is good that if you publish a HTML newsletter that you include photos that will be relevant to your articles and that are clickable. Click-Thru rates get higher if you give some value-added services to your subscribers. You have to make a good relationship with them. Treat them well, write useful articles, give exclusive discounts to your subscribers and they will show their appreciation.

Different types of email newsletters have different click-thru ratio. Click-Thru ratio is important, but it is not the most important. Just because many people click on your follow-up article or offer doesn’t mean that they will actually buy your software or service. In some cases, lower CTR can get you more sales than some good CTR. Think about that next time you start your email campaign.

Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com

Successful online business can’t be led without email marketing. Many people know that it is very important to have a web site but having a web site is only one step in creating successful online presence. You have to stay in touch with your clients and prospects. You need to have a two way communication with your clients and prospects and best way to do this is to have an email newsletter. To send emails to your customer you need the right email marketing software.

Choosing your email marketing software is one of the most important steps you have to take in e-business. What are those necessary steps in choosing email marketing software?

Free or fee-based

The first thing you will have to decide in choosing software for your email campaigns will be whether you want to use free or fee based software. Some people may say: “There is much free software on the Internet. Why would I pay for email marketing software?” This is because some people still don’t have a habit to buy things on the Internet, especially non-tangible items such are software and services. Many people still don’t realize the power of email marketing so they think that can be satisfied with a free service.

One of the most famous contemporary economists, a Nobel Prize winner Mr. Milton Friedman said that there is no such thing like free launch. And there is another statement that says “You get what you pay for”. I usually agree with these two statements. These have been proven on many examples, especially on the Internet.

You can choose to use free software for email marketing but you will be limited for some more advanced options. Some big portals offer free services for creating groups. This is OK, but in this case you will send your email messages without many important features like personalization, email tracking, sending SMS, using CSV files etc. I don’t have to mention that many “free” email marketing software providers will include their ads in your email newsletter. I guess that you don’t want that in your business email communication.

Some other free software like the free version of Group Mail will have limitation on the number of subscribers per one session. In this case you will be able to send your email newsletter to 100 subscribers at once and in paid version to unlimited number of subscribers and create unlimited number of lists.

It is recommended that you use fee-based email marketing software for your business email campaigns. However, you always have to look for a provider who offers a free trial, as well.

Important features

You have to check if your email service provider offers these several important features.

1) Personalization - personalization is one of the most important things that email marketing software has to provide. With good personalization you will have better open rates and click-thru rates. Some more advanced email marketing software like Group Mail paid version offers if-then personalization for users who want to get the maximum personalization.

2) Monitoring - email marketing is popular and useful because results can be measured very effectively. You have to ask your email service provider if their product offers ability for detailed reports for open rates, click-thru rates, deliverability?If their main product doesn’t offer that it is important that they offer additional service that can be easily integrated with their main product.

3) Scalability - one of the main features of modern software is scalability. At this moment you might need software that will be able to send 1,000 emails at once but in 3 years your membership base can be 5,000. Will your software be able to handle that?

4) Creating HTML newsletters - HTML newsletters have better response rates than email newsletters in plain-text format so this is also another thing you have to consider in choosing your email marketing software. Without sending your email newsletter in HTML you won’t be able to do email tracking.

5) Integration with existing applications and databases - your email marketing software has to offer you ability to import data from existing applications and databases like SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Access, FoxPro and Excel. Also, it is very useful that it can be integrated with popular email clients like MS Outlook.

6) International Character Support - Online businesses have to have a global focus so it is useful that email marketing software provides support for International Characters.

7) Plug-ins and updates - it is very important that the email service provider constantly works on creating useful plug-ins and updates in order to make your work easier and more effective.

Technical support -If you are an average Internet user without technical knowledge you will probably want to get support for your software. How good is your email service provider when it comes to technical support?

Desktop email software vs. Hosted ASP

Now when you know do you want free or fee-based software and what to look in your email marketing software you have to decide do you want to have desktop email marketing software or so called Hosted ASP. Both types have limitations and advantages. You have to choose the best option for you.

Desktop email software like Group Mail Plus, one of the leading desktop email marketing software, has several very big advantages. The most important is that details of your subscribers are kept private and secure on your own computer. Dot com crash is not so far behind us. Imagine that you have several thousand clients and use web based service from a company that will later go out of business. You can only imagine how that could affect your business and credibility! With Group Mail Plus you can manage an unlimited number of groups with unlimited number of recipients in each. You will have a larger initial investment than with Hosted ASP which charge a monthly fee, but you will a full control of your email campaigns and after some time of using your software you will repay it.

With Hosted ASP you will usually have a lower initial investment. You don’t have to buy hardware and software. However, price is usually determined by the number of emails you send so you will pay more how your membership base gets bigger so this option will be much more expensive than a desktop email marketing software option in the long run.

You can see that choosing the right email marketing software is very important. You have to bear in mind that the biggest investment is one that it is paid - twice. So, choose your email marketing software wisely.

Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com

A responsive opt in list is an unbelievably powerful money-maker on the internet. With responsive opt in list you can guarantee yourself a steady income. A responsive opt in list will make money through you advertising other people’s products, through affiliate sales and of course through sales of your own. However, responsive opt in lists are not found commonly on the internet, primarily because owners of opt in lists do not put the time into building strong relationships with their list members. Strong relationships with your list members are essential because they will begin to trust you and will seriously consider what you have to say. Other webmasters will notice the great response rate of your list and will beg to be able to advertise with a solo mailing. Of course if your list is in high demand for advertising, you can push the price of ad space up, which will lead to additional profits. Here are some great ways to build great relationships with your list members without you spending hours of your time.

– When you capture list members’ email addresses be sure to capture their first name too. This way you will be able to personalise all your messages with your list member’s name. Not only will this increase the chance of your list member reading the message, it will also make him or her feel like they are being addressed personally. No one likes to be the recipient of a bulk email, so write the email as if you are talking to one person in a conversational style. This will make each and every one of your list members feel like the email is for their reading and no one else’s.

– By using the power of autoresponders send a free 7 day course on whatever your internet business is based around. A good free autoresponder can be found at http://www.getresponse.com. You can be sure that your list members will be interested in what your course has to offer, and if your course is helpful and well written then they will acknowledge you as an expert in your field and will put trust in you. If you haven’t the time to write your own course, there are plenty of prewritten courses which you can use as your own for free.

– Give your list members random free downloads and special gifts. Surprise gifts are a great way to quickly get on the good side of your list members. Make sure the gifts are relevant to the subject of your website otherwise you can’t be sure that your list members will be interested in them. If the downloads are good then your list members will never opt out (remove themselves from your list), and they will get to know that all the products that you offer them are worthwhile and useful.

– Make your list members feel like they are unique and not just another member on your list. This is a very simple technique that you can use to make members on your list extremely happy and responsive. For example, you could take statistics from your site and tell the 1000th list member that they were the 1000th sign up to your list and then you could give them a free bonus. You could use all kinds of statistics like: 100th download, top downloader, top purchaser etc? This will make these individuals feel extremely pleased and will become extremely responsive.

– Be careful about the types of products you recommend. Although you may be tempted to advertise the product which gives 75% commission this may not be the best product for the people on your list and this should always be your top priority. Be sure to try products yourself before you recommend them so that you know they are very useful and work properly. If you recommend a steady stream of good, useful products to your list members then they will recognise this and will trust you more. The same goes for selling ad space in your emails. Make sure they are relevant ads and that anyone who clicks on them will not be disappointed.

Just remember that your list members are real people and not just email addresses that don’t have thoughts and opinions. Long and good relationships with your opt in list members will lead them to become responsive and will mean more profits for you.

For more information on this subject or about making money online go to http://www.info-ebooks.co.uk

100s of free ebooks and software products are also available at this address. Gain free access to these by sending a blank email to:

infoebooks@freeautobot.com

Thank you for reading

William Johnston(will@info-ebooks.co.uk)

1. Ask visitors to subscribe to your e-zine. It’s agood idea to also give them a freebie when theysubscribe.

2. Have them sign-up to get access to downloada free ebook. The subject of the ebook shouldbe related to your target audience.

3. Give your visitors a free membership insideyour member’s only web site. Have them sign-upto receive a user name and password.

4. Hold a free contest or sweepstakes at yourweb site. Ask them to give you their contactinformation to enter.

5. Offer your visitors free consulting via e-mail.Have them fill out a web form to e-mail you withtheir questions.

6. Hold an interactive poll on your web site. Askyour visitors to e-mail you their vote or opinion.

7. Ask your visitors to sign-up for a chance toget a web site award. Have them e-mail you theircontact and web site information.

8. Have visitors fill out a survey on your web site.Give them a free gift as an incentive to completethe form.

9. Offer a free online service from your web site.Have visitors fill out their contact information tosign-up to the free service.

10. Ask visitors to sign your guest book. Tellthem they will get a free gift in return.

11. Offer a free affiliate program for your visitors.They will have to sign-up in order to receivemarketing materials and commissions.

12. Allow visitors to submit a free classified adon your web site. Require them to give a valide-mail address in order to post an ad.

13. Give people who visit your web site a freecourse sent via autoresponder. Just ask them tofill out their contact information to receive the freecourse.

14. Offer your visitors free software to download.Have them sign-up to get an access code to unlockthe software.

Lise Godin is a student at Success Universtiy. http://lise.successuniversity.com/slim

They have assembled over 50 of the most amazing minds on the planet to bring you the most advanced online courses on SUCCESS ever assembled. Now you can even Earn While You Learn with their Business Opportunity.For a Special Offer go to:http://lise.successuniversity.com/slim

What if you could send out all the information that your potential customers have requested without checking your email or answering a phone? While this may seem impossible, it is becoming more and more popular among the most successful Internet marketing gurus. This is all due to what is called an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an automatic method of responding to emails sent by existing or potential customers and is an must for any Internet business. Time is money and answering emails personally take a lot of valuable time for both you and the customer. Not only do autorespnders allow you to spend the time elsewhere in your business, but it gives the customer access to the information almost immediately.

Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders, they can be of value to virtually any type of business. Some choose to use the autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions about a product or service. Others use them to provide information about pricing or product information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to welcome new members to a website or group as well as thank them after a visit.

One might ask what would be the advantage of using autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the information on the site. An important feature of autoresponders is that they send you an email notification each time a response is sent out. This allows you to track the success of your promotions as well as have the email addresses of potential customers at your fingertips so that you can easily send out updated and new information to them.

It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as personal as possible and send out follow-ups to potential customers since it has been proven that persistence pays off. It could take up to seven contacts before a final sale is conducted. Generally speaking an advertisement should be short and to the point. However, in this case, the customer has asked to see this specific information and therefore an effective autoresponder should allow you to place as much text on the page as you desire. The autoresponder that you choose should provide automatic updates to customers free of charge.

The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that will not cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free autoresponders online from several sources. The automatic responses will be a welcome addition to your marketing strategy and will help to automatically increase traffic to your site all while you do nothing. Be sure that the one you choose includes all the extras that will send you site to the top and your profits through the roof.

Unless you use the Internet only for surfing and never use your email address you’ve probably received something that is called spam.

There are different definitions for spam but I will say that spam is unsolicited email commercial. Many people harvest otherpeople’s email addresses on email and web forums and send theminfo that they didn’t request. This is very frustrating because you loose your precious time deleting those unwanted messages.In this article I will explain how NOT to appear like a spammer.

Opt-in

If you have an email newsletter it is very important that youdon’t appear like a spammer. If you want to stay long inemail publishing business your newsletters have to be based onopt-in method. It means that a subscriber chose to receive yournewsletter and that you have their permission to send them yournewsletter. It is called Permission Marketing. I would suggestthat your list be double opt-in. Now what is double opt-in?Double opt-in means that your subscribers have to confirmtheir request to join your list. Confirmation is done byreplying to the message that you send to everyone who hadinitiated subscription. Beside replying, people can confirmtheir request by clicking on a certain link. This ensures thatone person can’t subscribe another person against his or herwill. Also, never buy so called opt-in lists and also never sell or rent your members base.

Welcome message

I would suggest you that you ask your new subscribers to saveyour welcome message. There you can put the necessary infoabout your list and list management: list description,subscribe/unsubscribe address, digest address, owner’s emailaddress, list rules…

This is important because of the following. Many people promotetheir newsletter for some time, until they get enoughsubscribers and then publish the first issue. However, it ismost likely that someone who had subscribed to your list severalmonths ago forgot that he or she actually requested to be amember of your list. And then, they can accuse you that you are aspammer. If they save a welcome message they can see that they required to be your subscribers.

Subject line

Subject line is very important in email newsletters. Beside,From field it is the most important thing for someone to decide whether to open your newsletter or not. I would suggest that your subject line consists a title of your article, issue number and date. If your From or To field doesn’t consist your list name than you should put your list name in Subject line, too. Preferably in brackets. If you have your subscriber’s first name in your database you should definitely put their name as the first thing in the Subject line. Then it is more likely that they will open your newsletter. Never use spam techniques like putting Re: at the beginning of your Subject line so that people think that they sent you an email and you are sending them your reply. Nobody is fool.

Filtration

Many people use email programs with powerful email filter options. Many people set their filters to delete messages with get-rich-quick-schemes, porn and similar content so it is wise that you don’t put that kind of text in your messages if you want that people read it. Also, don’t capitalize your words like FREE, MAKE MONEY, GUARANTEED… I wouldn’t suggest that you use this or similar words in the first place beacuse these words are often used by spammers.

If you have an option that in To field be your subscriber’semail address and not, for example your list name, that would be ideal because some mail washer programs automatically flag messages which don’t have a recipientemail address as possible SPAM.

List management

Always provide very clear information regarding list managementin your newsletter. Very important thing is that your listmanagement provides very easy way of unsubscribing. For example,some email newsletters have at the very bottom an uniqueunsubscribe address for every subscriber. It can be something likeleave-yourlistname-111327893L@yourlistserver.com This way, yoursubscribers can unsubscribe only with one click and they don’thave to worry if they sent unsubscription request from addresswhich is in your subscriber list. Good list management is, also,useful because you won’t loose your time explaining to yoursubscribers how to do something, for example unsubscribe or setreceiving messages in digest mode.