Through e-mail, an internet user that is on the list will receive their updates through email. If a promotional material piques their interest they will go to the site to learn more or to purchase outright. For the website operators or owners, this is a chance to remind their list of their existence and parlor their wares.  With the numerous sites in the internet that offers the same products or services in one way or the other, the competition can get pretty tight and it is easy to be forgotten.

Back to my experimenting friend, he tried to find out which opt-in marketing strategies grabbed a person into begging for more. Some would send in very simple fashion, some would very outlandish while there are some that would just lie in between. The differences could easily be noticed and some have gotten the idea of an effective opt-in marketing strategy. He dubbed them effective because he felt like he just couldn’t wait to go their site and learn more, the more persuasive ones even got him halfway to reaching for his wallet and to his credit card before he realized this was only for an experiment.

Many companies and site present their promotional materials in a wide variety of concepts. Each has their own distinctive style and designs, but more than the outline and the presentation, the content and the articles are what keeps the attention of your potential customer locked on to your opt-in marketing medium. Creativity is the key here.

From talking to many satisfied opt-in list subscribers and forums, I have learned of what is essential in opt-in marketing and what makes the subscribers begging for more instead of lining up to unsubscribe.

Keep your promotional materials light, creative and original. Many people are stressed out as it is. Getting a stuffy business proposal rather than a light hearted e-mail may just agitate them more. A warm friendly smile or banter is always more welcome than a serious business meeting or proposal. While you do want your customers to take you and your products and services seriously, you also want to show them that you know how to have fun.

Splash some color in your emails as well as provide some photos and articles that can be related to you but show good news or good light hearted images as well. Provide a newsletter or promotional materials that will keep them in a light mood. Make your materials eye catching and grabbing that they wont be able to take their eyes of them. Pique their interests.

Have good content and article, even if it means investing in an experienced and professional copy writer to write them for you. An effective copy writer should be able to build trust between you and your customers. They should be able to establish your credibility in what they write. It must be informative but not too stuffy. Let go of the professional jargons and “talk“to your recipients.

A good article and content should be able to outline the benefits of your product and services and why they need what you are offering. But do not look to be overeager and too persuasive. It should be able to entertain as well as lead them to buying from you.

Your promotional materials should be clear. Don’t leave people guessing. You should lead them to you and not vice versa. Explain to them what they need to do in a manner that won’t be confusing. Try to anticipate also what your target client needs. Do your research and information gathering, many sites will be able to help you with that.

Provide clear and crisp images of what you are offering. If the people know what you have for them, they are more likely to beg for more. For example, if you are selling a car, provide them photos but only enough to encourage them to go to your site for more.

So if this happens, what do you do?

First of all, don’t panic. Usually, if you spend a few minutes looking at your data you can identify the problems pretty easily.

Determine Which Problem to Fix

Take a look at where your leads are coming from. If you are purchasing lists from other websites or publishers, make sure you segregate each source in your reporting so you can measure the quality of each list. You want to make sure you have a way of determining the quality of a list source before you merge the purchased group into your master list.

Also, if it has been around for a while, try segregating your opt-in list into three groups by age:

* Under 6 months
* 6 months to 1 year
* Over 1 year

It is normal for open and click through rates to be highest for the “Under 6 Month” category, and lowest for those who have been on your list for over a year. However, there should not be a significant drop off as people move from one category to the next.

Look for anomalies in the data. Here are a few things I look for when I’m troubleshooting a client’s campaign:

* Is there a significant drop-off behind the first mailing? If the first mailing that a recipient gets typically achieves a 35% open rate, but the second has a 7% open rate, then the problem is not with the list source, or the header information (subject line, “From” address, etc.) it is with the content of the newsletter itself. If the drop off is 35% to 29%, then one might consider that to be normal.
* Has there been a change in frequency? We all get busy, and one of the first activities that can get forgotten is the newsletter. Unfortunately, absence in the Email marketing realm does NOT make the heart grow fonder. In fact, a prolonged period of non-communication is one of the leading causes of opt-outs.
* Are your articles relevant to the demographic? It is a good idea to survey your house list periodically to test your assumptions about their levels of expertise and interest in different subjects.

Wake Up Your Sleepy Optin List

Look at how you approach the people who have subscribed to your list. Remember that with email newsletters the permission your subscribers have given you to send email to them is not permanent; they can opt out at any time if they lose confidence or interest in your newsletter.

More often than not, however, people don’t actually opt-out. They simply stop opening and reading your email. I call these “sleepy” subscribers. They are getting your messages, but since they are “asleep” they can’t read them. Although there’s no way to know for sure, I would guess that your “sleep” rate is probably about 4 to 5 times the size of your opt-out rate. So your opt-out rate is an indicator of your “sleep” rate.

It is vital to understand what your subscribers think of your publication. Again, surveys are a great way to get feedback on your program. You can also provide an open link on each newsletter that asks for general feedback. Very few people will take the time to provide feedback on a feedback form, but you can bet that those who do represent a large chunk of your audience. Take their feedback seriously, and learn from it.

Five Steps to Improve Your Performance

Following are five steps that have always lifted the performance of my campaigns.

* Get in touch immediately – From the moment someone signs up for your newsletter, they start to forget you. If you take three weeks to send something to them, then they won’t remember signing up and they will reject your email as spam. Make sure they get an issue of your newsletter (or an ebook, or a free report; something that is relevant to them and has value) immediately after they sign up.
* Make it personal and entertaining – Email marketing is a one-to-one communication, it is almost always best to keep the tone personal and entertaining. Try telling a few stories about yourself or your company. Let people get to “know” you, and feel like an “insider” with your company. This increases their personal equity in your brand.
* Make all emails “high-value” – Every time you send an email it should be valuable to the recipient, not just to you. Straight sales letters with no “meat” can dampen open rates for future mailings. Train your recipients to view each email you send as a valuable piece of information they cannot afford to miss.
* Test multiple article types – You can write all kinds of articles, and depending on your industry and demographics of your subscribers, they may prefer instructional and how-to articles; others may prefer current industry events, or breaking news. Test these out and see what works best.
* Test different formats – Try splitting your list and send half your recipients an HTML newsletter and the other half a “text-looking” email. Make sure that the “text-looking” email really does have HTML in it, or else you won’t be able to track the open rates!

Keep Your Chin UP

All newsletters can experience a blow to their response rates. If this happens to you, it is important to identify the problems and fix them before you lose too much of your list to opt-outs and list fatigue. Variety is the spice of life, and it can “wake up” a sleepy list by injecting some excitement. Make sure each communication you send is high value, and provides something new. And keep the lines of communication open so your subscribers can help you improve the quality of your content.

Here’s a scenario for you to consider. A visitor finds your site through one of the many ways that you have been carrying out to generate traffic, and finds just what they are looking for and is about to make a purchase. They are distracted while at their computer and leave the site.

Although the example above is hypothetical, the reality is that visitors may leave your site for a number of reasons without you making the most of your opportunity. That is unless you are using an autoresponder.

Capturing the email address of this visitor would have allowed you to contact them at a later date to potentially make the sale that you originally missed out on. Autoresponders are remarkable, flexible programs that do much more than just automatically answer your emails. I’ll outline below a number of ideas that you can use to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer.

1) Publish a newsletter.

High quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with those interested prospects that have signed up. This allows you to keep your autoresponder list updated about your products or services, and also build your reputation as an expert in your chosen business area.

2) Contact affiliates.

If you have an affiliate program you can easily contact your affiliates to inform them of any offers you may be running, or to provide them with promotional material that they can use to increase their commissions and your sales. You could provide any tips and advice that you feel would benefit your affiliates.

3) Promote advertising opportunities.

You may provide, or plan on providing advertising on your website, ezine or newsletter. You could setup your autoresponder to send out information about the cost of advertising, and how to find out more information. Of course you could also notify your list of any advertising discounts or offers that you may have.

4) Write reviews.

Write reviews on products and services that you found to be useful. Send this review out with your autoresponder along with your affiliate link to the product.

5) Provide email courses.

Provide valuable information in the form of email courses. These can be setup to send out each lesson at certain intervals. It is important not to solely provide a sales pitch but to provide quality content. You can then provide a paragraph at the end of the email course to entice the prospect to make a purchase of your product.

6) Distribute free reports.

Give your visitors a taste of the information that you provide, and the quality of your product and service. Again, do not make these out to be sales letters, or you stand to lose customers instead of gain.

7) Product tasters.

Provide your prospects samples of your product, whether it be an ebook, software, course, membership, etc. You can capture email addresses from your website this way, and follow-up to make the complete sale.

Provide hidden links to pages.

In exchange for a visitors email address, you could provide a link to an affiliate page containing promotional material. You can then gather a list of visitors that are interested in becoming your affiliates.

9) Order page autoresponder.

Provide a form on your order pages that allows visitors to be kept notified of special offers or discounts. This offers a great opportunity to create a mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers, and who are interested in any future products.

10) Distribute articles.

Allow visitors to sign up to your autoresponder in order to receive articles. There are many ezine publishers and webmasters looking for content, and this allows you to provide this content whilst including your bio and description of your service or product in a resource box.

Here I’ve provided ten examples of how autoresponders can be used creatively, but there are many more. Autoresponders are valuable to all internet marketers, and you should seriously consider using one if you do not already.

Be consistent throughout your email message. In other words, mention only a couple key issues surrounding the site page you are leading people to click on. Don’t cloud the email body with other sites, products and services. Keep the flow steady and tight, well focused.

Use good navigation on the website and test it BEFORE you send your email. Make sure you can click on the link. And make sure whatever you ask people to do there – be it sign up for an eZine, a report or purchase a new eBook or package – that this process can be done as directed.

6 Tips For Writing Emails For Your audience

1. Subjects given to the emails should impress & invite

2. Focus on keywords to get the attention of your readers.

3. Bulleted or numbered lists make the subject easier to understand.

4, Use plain layman language to present your ideas. Use less words, smaller words and words which that are simple to comprehend.

5. Avoid using puns or metaphors. They tend to leave the reader confused.

6. Try to grab your readers with the conclusion, then sum up at the end.

By giving your readers a well prepared targeted Email message you are writing for them see how they will reward you in return.

You finally realize that you need a good opt-in list. After reading countless articles and sought expert advices and have read many success stories of people creating a small fortune with opt-in lists you finally decide to have one of your own. Then it happens, you think you have known everything there is to know about opt-in lists and have followed their advices to the T and you still weren’t able to make a profit.

In fact, you may be losing money. You maybe hiring writers to help you out, or there are some expenses incurred, even if you have a big list, but only a very small percentage actually buys from you, your still losing profit. You’ll realize that after a few months when you see your statistics and sales figures.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dived straight right in. You chose a topic where you think could be quite popular and would earn you money. This just not the case. Just because you wrote people from the list doesn’t mean they are going to buy instantly.

Here I will offer more advice, for those who have started an opt-in list and have failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list.

1) Get your customers to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list would not make you an expert and a believable seller. Put many articles first before you start an opt-in list. Write about the topic you know and have started and used for your site. Try to put forums first to gain knowledge about your customers about their wants and needs and target those wants and needs.

Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advices and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you already, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what you’re business is all about.

If you find yourself confused by what you’ve read to this point, don’t despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.

The certain truth is, the money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust in you. They want a product or service that could be a good exchange for their money. People are not going to buy something out of your recommendation if they don’t know you.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it on forward. Invest your time, effort and money that you could sell as well as the buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list can use.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around.

3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is basically beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you in the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.

Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones.

Building a profitable opt-in list don’t just happen overnight. There are many preparations and effort to do. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

Now you can understand why there’s a growing interest in opt-in list. When people start looking for more information about opt-in lists, you’ll be in a position to meet their needs.

These days the most common kind of email follow up is the autoresponder kind. With this kind of email follow up you will use a special kind of software program, one that will take all of the hard work and wasted time out of having to send follow-ups. With an autoresponder service all you have to do is tell it what to say when someone sends you an email and it will do it to perfection every single time. This is the easiest and the fastest way to deal with email follow up.

There is only one drawback to an email follow up sent with an autoresponder service software program and that is that it is not at all personal. The same message will get sent to every single person that sends you an email to that address. That is why it is best to use these kinds of email follow ups simple as a first resort. It will let the clients and customers know that you will get back to them in a certain amount of time and that you did actually get their message in the first place. This is important to people so make sure to do it right.

Then when you have the time you can get back to them with a more personalized email follow up. This can be in response to their questions or problems or it can just be another email follow up letting them know that you have not yet solved the problem but you are working on it. If you have any sort of timeframe you will want to put it in this email follow up in order to put the persons mind at ease about what is going on.

There are all kinds of reasons for people to use an automatic email follow up and not automatic email follow ups. What you have to do is learn when which kind of email follow up is most appropriate and which ones are going to make people more mad at you! Different businesses require different kinds of responses so talk to some of your peers in business, what do they do and what works for them in terms of email follow up. You should also ask them what has proven disastrous, perhaps that way you will be able to avoid making the same mistakes as they did, that is always nice!

Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is available high and wide throughout the world. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in those countries. E-mails are very techno-savvy and also very effective and fast. This is the reason that we can now see e-mails developing as an indispensable media of marketing.

Over the years individuals and businesses have started realizing the advantages of e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing carries a lot of advantages along with it. Some of the benefits include:

Speed:

This is the main factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered advantageous over other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing along with it brings the advantage of high speed. E-mail marketing has a very high speed of information transfer. It just takes a second for the person to transfer information from his working place to the internet, where anyone can view it worldwide.

Reach:

Another factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered a good option is because of the fact that it has a better reach to the people worldwide than other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing knows no boundaries and this helps people to continue to conduct their marketing work on a large scale. The higher reach of e-mail marketing attracts more people towards it and thereby assists the whole marketing process.

Inexpensive:

E-mail marketing is comparatively cheaper than that of some other medias of marketing. Individuals and businesses do not have to incur any special or extra cost to market their product or point of view.  Being inexpensive, it suits many and thereby a lot of people resort to e-mail marketing for a large part of their online marketing efforts.

Effective:

E-mail marketing is very effective and a very popular form of marketing. The reason being, that they are very techno-savvy, very fast and still pretty cost effective. This whole package makes e-mail marketing very cheap and pretty attractive. This is the reason that e-mail marketing is effective and thus more approachable.

Personalized marketing:

E-mail marketing avails the opportunity to conduct personalized marketing. In this, people can send e-mails only to people whom they think would be interested in the topic of the message.

Thus we see why and how e-mail marketing has turned out to be an indispensable tool in marketing.

With your autoresponders you’ll be able to:

- Educate your visitors about your product
- Share the benefits of purchasing your product
- Increase your credibility
- Build up your visitors’ trust in you
- Continue to keep your marketing message on your visitors’ minds so that when your visitors are ready to purchase from you, they will.

Some profitable ways to use autoresponders:

1. Publish an ezine

Done right, your ezine will provide you with a powerful way to promote your products, special offers, and also your affiliate programs.

Your ezine can also provide you with an extra income, once it’s large enough for you to start selling ads to your readers and visitors.

Begin promoting your ezine by including your subscription form and also your link to your sign up page on all your pages.

Also use a “popover” to plug your ezine and direct your visitors to either fill out your subscription form or visit your sign up page.

In addition, get the word out about your ezine by submitting it to ezine directories and ezine announcement lists.

Because these submissions can be very tedious, it’s wise to use ezine promotion software to handle much of this time-consuming work for you.

That way you’ll be able to concentrate more on your ezine’s content and also on effectively marketing your business.

2. Offer a free email course.

The key to your winning course is your content.

Give your readers useful content, and they’ll view you as a credible source of information and your product’s value will increase in their eyes.

If your an article writer, you can use your articles as the basis of your course.

Because your articles are on topics of interest to your target audience, using them will enable you to create a course that both appeals to your visitors and provides them with information that they’ll find to be very useful.

Simply choose a few related articles that cover different aspects of what you would like to write about. Then use these articles as your guide for writing the different parts of your new course.

3. Follow up with people that take you up on your free download or trial.

Start the follow up process by asking your visitor to fill out your subscription box or form in order to access her free trial.

On your “thank you” page, let her know that she’ll need to confirm her subscription, and that after she does that she’ll get her link to start her trial in her welcome email.

Give your visitor a strong incentive for taking you up on your offer.

For example, if you were offering a trial of your article submission software, you could offer an ebook that shares how to write articles and properly promote them to article directories and announcement lists as your special bonus.

4. Offer an article announcement list.

Your list will help you to get your articles published more frequently by webmasters and ezine publishers that have audiences that are interested in what you write about.

Your list can also help you promote your affiliate program and get more new affiliate sign ups.

In your publishing guidelines, let your subscribers know that they can earn money by rebranding your articles with their affiliate links in your “About the Author” section.

Your subscribers will be more apt to publish your articles, and you’ll be able to get more new affiliates that have responsive subscribers and targeted traffic that they can promote your business to.

5. Offer a training course to your affiliates.

Savvy marketers know that to have a successful affiliate program, they need to invest in the success of their affiliates.

One powerful way to do this is to make a generic training course available to them by autoresponder.

Through your course, you’ll be able to provide your affiliates with valuable tips and strategies and elevate your profits by helping your new affiliates get started fast.

Make your course available on your affiliate sign up page/info page and also within your affiliates “control panel” where they check their stats.

If you run a two-tier affiliate program, your course can also be used as a smart promotional tool for your affiliates.

Just have your affiliates give your course away to their visitors or subscribers, and they’ll be able to increase their commissions by referring more new affiliates into their second tiers that will successfully promote your biz.

So what is the basic idea of the optin? Well you have heard of email marketing where you form a list of people that are interested in your product (or other similar things) enough to learn more but not yet interested in making a purchase. Well the optin tool is what forms this list. Then once the list is formed you send them emails that expose their need or a problem that they may or may not realize they have and offer your product as a solution. It’s sounds crazy and a bit cheesy, I know, but you would be amazed at how effective it is. The lists that you form are also valuable for other selling other products to that subset of customers as well.

Yeah, well all you need is a simple software tool that adds the optin box and then sorts and manages the lists that are formed. It then allows you to input the emails that you want sent out, in a specific order, and at a specific time interval, and then tracks the outcomes to help you evaluate what emails are good and which ones need more work. So what at first seems relatively simple becomes a complex and incredibly valuable tool for any serious internet marketer who is always looking for ways to increase his (or her) conversions on any or all of his products.

So why is the optin tool so effective? Well, that’s a great question and unfortunately not one that has a good complete answer. But i will take a stab at it by giving you some of my ideas that could explain the amazing effectiveness of the optin.

For one thing it allows the customer to delay making a decision on something that they haven’t totally thought through. Either they didn’t realize they needed it as bad as your are telling them they do or it was just a quick idea that they were checking out for the first time. Second the optin generally gives the bait of free information about strategy or how the product works or life in general. And you know that humans LOVE free stuff so this reels them right in and the rest is simply age old marketing tricks. So there are my two cents, but seriously — don’t let this opportunity escape!

The answer is:  by using a good choice of wording in the subject line.  The subject line is the field that appears on your screen somewhere below the “To” field when you are creating a new message.

On the recipient’s screen, the subject line is one of the only fields that the recipient can read without opening the message.  Typically, the other fields are “To,” “From,” “Date Received,” and “Date Sent.”

The Gatekeeper

The purpose of the subject line is to allow the reader to see at a glance what the message is regarding.  The subject line is vital!  It’s arguably the most important line you write in an email.  Why?

Because it serves as gatekeeper, determining whether the message is viewed by the recipient.  It doesn’t matter how wonderfully you’ve written the message, if that message isn’t opened and read.  The better job you do of crafting a subject line, the better chance you have of getting your message opened.  So, how do you write an effective subject line?

Leaving It Blank

Leaving the subject line blank isn’t an option because many people won’t open messages if they don’t contain a subject.  The recipient may not take the time to open a message if he/she doesn’t know what it’s about.  Also, the onslaught of vicious email viruses has caused people to be cautious, as well they should be.

Many programs will give you a warning box if you try to send a message without a subject line.  This protocol in many email programs is in place to warn you that leaving your subject line blank is not a good idea.

Avoid “Hi”

Typing the word “Hi” or the word “Greetings” in the subject line tells the recipient absolutely nothing.  This lack of information might be acceptable for email messages you’re sending to friends.  However, when you’re corresponding with customers and colleagues, remember to include a relevant subject line.

Keep in mind what to avoid when typing your subject line.  Then, you’ll be well on your way to sending emails that are opened and (hopefully!) read.