Think of banner ads as the spice in your affiliate diet. Sprinkle them around, but for a heartier helping of sales, you’ll need something more solid! Learn to give your visitors longer, more descriptive pre-sales text. Revamp your affiliate advertising using these simple steps:
- Pull the Reader in
- Introduce the Product
- Explain the Product’s Significance
- Tell the Reader to Make a Purchase

Pull the Reader in

To convince your audience that your text is worth reading, make your first sentence or two very interesting. Make a bold statement, say something seemingly ridiculous, or appeal to your prospect’s emotional side. Then, tie this grabber in with the rest of your copy.

Introduce the Product

What is the product you’re advertising? What does it do? Directly after your grabber, give a compact explanation of your product. Keep this explanation short, while still being very clear. This should still be a very short section of your text.

Explain the Product’s Significance

What will it do for me?

By writing your own copy, you can directly target your unique audience. Make the most of this opportunity! Clearly explain how your readers will benefit from this product.

No one knows your audience like you do. Suggest a variety of product uses just for them, and give examples. This is the time for details – make this section long and rich.

Tell the Reader to Make a Purchase

You’ve come so far – you’ve laid out exactly what the product is and how it will help your unique audience. Now, seal the deal – tell your readers to purchase the product! Include your affiliate link in this section.

This step may sound strange, but it’s necessary. Often, people hear about a product and are genuinely interested, but fail to actually make a purchase. A clear call to a simple action cuts down on buyer ambivalence. Don’t be pushy – just change your verb tenses to the imperative. Instead of:

“If you think that you fit this profile, you might want to think about buying this product.”

Say: “Click here to order an account today.”

Drive Sales – Use Long Copy

If you don’t feel ready to write long copy yourself, ask your affiliate program manager for help! Many companies release well-written articles by respected authors that you can reprint free of charge.

The novelty of the Web is wearing off. People online now are busy. Surfers won’t make a purchase unless you make a great case for what they’ll get out of it. And you’re not going to do that with just a banner ad.

Source: Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.

With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up.

Myth 1: My List Size Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Some addresses entered into your form will not confirm — that much is true. The percentage of addresses that don’t confirm depends on many factors, including the quality of your traffic and how effective your thank-you page, confirmation message and incentive for confirming are.

Percentages aside, there are compelling reasons that having fewer addresses on your list is a good thing.

Sometimes Less is Better

I know. You may be asking, “How can a decreased list size be a good thing?” Well, let’s consider:

5-20% of all web form submissions are undeliverable right off the bat.

This means that of your total list size you can cut that by 5-20% because these email addresses are simply dead. Remember these are not temporary undeliverable but permanent dead addresses.

Now, add on the bogus and malicious sign ups that undoubtedly will happen. For example, someone comes to your website and decides to put in bob@aol.com. Well, bob@aol.com was once a real email address and because you were not using confirmed opt-in you are now classified as an unintentional spammer.

A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm found that only 68% of users always enter a valid email address.

So, nearly a third of respondents knowingly enter bogus email addresses.

- Source

ISPs do not differentiate between unintentional spammers or actual spammers. The potential for you to be blocked or even worse, blacklisted, remains the same.

Less Can Be More Too

A study done by AWeber shows that using confirmed opt-in also reduces unsubscribes and complaints. This means that you keep more of your subscribers (the ones that actually want your email).

Read more about that here.

Myth 2: My Mailing List Is Different! I Don’t Need Confirmed Opt-In.

Let’s be clear, confirmed opt-in is for all businesses, plain and simple. Anyone collecting subscribers and in turn sending email needs to confirm that those people intended to sign up to your mailing list and want to receive your email.

In this age of email regulations and massive volumes of spam email, deliverability can be an issue. Why increase your chances of not getting delivered by putting yourself at risk.

Myth 3: No One Else Uses Confirmed Opt-In. Why Should I?

This is simply not accurate. Our own campaigns here at AWeber use confirmed opt-in for all email marketing activities. When someone signs up for a Test Drive of AWeber, they must confirm.

After setting up an account, if they want to receive our customer training email course, they must confirm. The same goes for our affiliates and their email training. Even when someone subscribes to our blog, they must confirm.

Ok, but AWeber must practice what they preach, who else?

If you want to sign up for the mailing lists of these organizations you will need to first confirm:

The list goes on and on!

Myth 4: Subscribers In My Market Don’t Know How To Confirm.

The simple solution is to tell them. The first page after someone fills in an opt-in form, commonly called a “thank you page” should tell the visitor exactly what to do next. Often this is done most effectively with a picture showing visitors what the confirmation email will look like.

An excellent example is our test drive sign up video on the thank you page showing visitors what to do.

One variation of this myth is:

“Subscribers in my market don’t know how to click an email link.”

Honestly, if they can’t click a link then you probably should be marketing your business offline. If someone can find your website online I guarantee they can click a link.

Myth 5: My Sales Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Have you tested this assumption? The answer is always, “No, but I just assume” or “No, my colleague told me it would hurt sales”.

It’s best not to assume anything, but rather to seek out your own answers by testing and observing your own campaigns. We have found from our own testing that while the raw number of email addresses on our list declined when we switched to confirmed opt-in, sales did not.

This means that the people who did confirm were the ones that truly wanted the information that they had to offer and the ones that didn’t were not left to bloat the mailing list.

Grow Your Business Without Risk

Will your results be exactly the same as AWeber or even anyone else? This can only be determined by proper testing and measuring.

Use confirmed opt-in as an opportunity to make sure that your lists are 100% clean and that you know without a doubt that 100% of the people receiving your mail have specifically requested it themselves.

Spend your time and energy building your business with subscribers who want to hear from you rather than dealing with issues created by people who don’t want to hear from you.

Posted by Sean Cohen

In 1936, long before the rise of the personal computer, Hormel Foods created SPAM. In 2002, the company will produce it’s six billionth can of the processed food product. But that mark was passed long ago in the world of Internet spam.

• Who Cooked This!? (How did it all start?)
• Why Does Bad Spam Happen to Good People?
• Stop The Flood to Your Inbox
• Stay Off Spammed Lists in the Future
• Think You’re Not a Spammer? Be Sure.
• The Final Blow

Who Cooked This!? (How did it all start?)

The modern meaning of the word “spam” has nothing to do with spiced ham. In the early 1990’s, a skit by British comedy group Monty Python led to the word’s common usage. “The SPAM Skit” follows a couple struggling to order dinner from a menu consisting entirely of Hormel’s canned ham.

Repetition is key to the skit’s hilarity. The actors cram the word “SPAM” into the 2.5 minute skit more than 104 times! This flood prompted Usenet readers to call unwanted newsgroup postings “spam.” The name stuck.

Spammers soon focused on e-mail, and the terminology moved with them. Today, the word has come out of technical obscurity. Now, “spam” is the common term for “Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail”, or “UCE.”

Why Does Bad Spam Happen to Good People?

Chances are, you’ve been spammed before. Somehow, your e-mail address has found it’s way into the hands of a spammer, and your inbox is suffering the consequences. How does this happen? There are several possibilities.

Backstabbing Businesses
Businesses often keep lists of their customers’ e-mail addresses. This is a completely legitimate practice and, usually, nothing bad comes of it. Sometimes though, the temptation to make a quick buck is too great, and these lists are sold or rented to outside advertisers. The result? A lot of unsolicited e-mail, and a serious breach of trust.

Random Address Generation

Computer programs called random address generators simply “guess” e-mail addresses. Over 100 million hotmail addresses exist – howhard could it be to guess some of them? Unfortunately for many unsuspecting netizens – not too hard. Many spammers also guess at

“standard” addresses, like “support@yourdomain.com”,

“info@yourdomain.com”, and “billing@yourdomain.com.”

Web Spiders

Today’s most insidious list-gathering tools are web spiders. All of the major search engines spider the web, saving information about each page. Spammers use tools that also spider the web, but save any e-mail address they come across. Your personal web page lists your e-mail address? Prepare for an onslaught!

Chat Room Harvesting

ISP’s offer vastly popular chat rooms where users are known only by their screen names. Of course, spammers know that your screen name is the first part of your e-mail address. Why waste time guessing e-mail addresses when a few hours of lurking in a chat room can net a list of actively-used addresses?

The Poor Man’s Bad Marketing Idea

It didn’t work for the phone companies, and it won’t work for e-mail marketers. But, some spammers still keep their own friends-and-family-style e-mail lists. Compiled from the addresses of other known spammers, and people or businesses that the owner has come across in the past, these lists are still illegitimate. Why? Only you can give someone permission to send you e-mail. A friend-of-a-friend’s permission won’t cut it.

Stop The Flood to Your Inbox

Already drowning in spam? Try using your e-mail client’s filters – many provide a way to block specific e-mail addresses. Each time you’re spammed, block the sender’s address. Spammers skip from address to address, and you may be on many lists, but this method will at least slow the flow.

Also, use more than one e-mail address, and keep one “clean.” Many netizens find that this technique turns the spam flood into a trickle. Use one address for only spam-safe activities like e-mailing your friends, or signing on with trustworthy businesses. Never use your clean address on the web! Get a free address to use on the web and in chat rooms.

If nothing else helps, consider changing screen names, or opening an entirely new e-mail account. When you do, you’ll start with a clean, spam-free slate. This time, protect your e-mail address!

Stay Off Spammed Lists in the Future

Want to surf the web without getting sucked into the spam-flood? Prevention is your best policy. Don’t use an easy-to-guess e-mail address. Keep your address clean by not using it for spam-centric activities. Don’t post it on any web pages, and don’t use it in chat rooms or newsgroups.

Before giving your clean e-mail address to a business, check the company out. Are sections of its user agreement dedicated to anti-spam rules? Does a privacy policy explain exactly what will be done with your address? The most considerate companies also post an anti-spam policy written in plain English, so you can be absolutely sure of what you’re getting into.

Think You’re Not a Spammer? Be Sure.

Many a first-time marketer has inadvertently spammed his audience. The first several hundred complaints and some nasty phone messages usually stop him in his tracks. But by then, the spammer may be faced with cleanup bills from his ISP, and a bad reputation that it’s not easy to overcome.

The best way to avoid this situation is to have a clear understanding of what spam is: If anyone who receives your mass e-mails did not specifically ask to hear from you, then you are spamming them.

Stick with your gut. Don’t buy a million addresses for $10, no matter how much the seller swears by them! If something sounds fishy, just say no. You’ll save yourself a lot in the end.

The Final Blow

The online world is turning the tide on spam. In the end, people will stop sending spam because it stops working. Do your part: never buy from a spammer. When your business seeks out technology companies with which to work, only choose those with a staunch anti-spam stance.

Spam has a long history in both the food and e-mail sectors. This year, Hormel Foods opened a real-world museum dedicated to SPAM. While the museum does feature the Monty Python SPAM Skit, there’s no word yet on an unsolicited commercial e-mail exhibit. But, if all upstanding netizens work together, Hormel’s ham in a can will far outlive the Internet plague that is UCE.

Source:  Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up – don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?

Source Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

If you have spent anytime at all on my site, you will know that faith is something important to me. As such, I often find and/or receive stories, and the messages they contain, that are very inspiring. However, in this particular case, not only is there a very inspirational message, but there is an underlying message for anyone that is involved in marketing of their products/services.

While I can’t take credit for the story below, I am sure you will enjoy it.

Life will inevitably present challenges to us and depending on a number of factors they may or may not be easier to handle. Attitude, and your approach to any of life’s challenges will always make the biggest difference in our handling of that challenge.

As in life, business is no different. There will be times of great prosperity and times of challenge in business. When it comes to the success of our marketing efforts the simplest of changes can often make a significant difference in the results of our marketing and our ability to attract more clients.

Please read the inspirational story below and look for the marketing tip that is included.

—————–
Faith Is About Being OK

“A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story:
Be thankful for what you have.. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.

“Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out.”
—————–

So, did you see the profound difference in the two marketing messages?

If you saw the important tip in story, my question is: What was so significant about what the man wrote?

Why did the second message move people to action?

Leave a comment below letting me know what you think was the important marketing message in the story. Or, for those that have questions please feel free to ask questions and I will be sure to respond.

To Your Success!

Today, Aweber announced the release of the Aweber API. This release will now all you as an Aweber user to easily integrate your online products and services into Aweber Email marketing software. The time savings and additional value for your business are limitless.

As small business owners that are already utilizing the power of Aweber, you will benefit simply because now there is an easy way to integrate Aweber into much of what you are already doing.

Read on for more information about the new API, what you should expect to see as an Aweber end user, and don’t miss out of the introduction to the first official app – a WordPress plugin!

What is an API?

Ok, I realize that there are many of you at this point asking: What is an Aweber API?

The term API is one of those geek speak things that gets thrown around like everyone should know exactly what it means.

API is short for “Application Programming Interface,” which may not sound very helpful, but in actuality provides a pretty good description of what it the API does for you. Well, for developers anyway. The Aweber API is a tool for developers to make applications (apps) that work with Aweber in a seamless manner. One of the more common places that you may have witnessed the benefits of an API, is with the iPhone. The countless “aps” that are available for the iPhone are the result of the iPhone API.

As I mentioned above, most professionals and small business owners will not interact directly with the API. They will however be the beneficiaries of the large number of applications that will now work in a seamless manner with Aweber.

Introducing the AWeber Web Form Widget for WordPress

As a direct result of the above discussion let me introduce you to the very first app: the AWeber Web Form Widget for WordPress.

For any of you who are already fans of WordPress.org and Aweber, this will allow you to connect your WordPress website with your AWeber account, giving you a very powerful list building tool. Now you can place AWeber forms on your WordPress.org site with just a few clicks, and without having to copy any code.

For users of the self-hosted version of WordPress, you can easily drag and drop web forms that you have created in your AWeber account into your WordPress blog, without having to log into your AWeber account or copy and paste anything. All you need is an AWeber account and a completed web form.

How do I use other apps?

For the more advanced users in the group, AWeber’s API (and APIs in general) you don’t need to work directly with the API itself to take advantage of the applications that developers create for it. Once an application has been created by a developer, you will simply install the app and then authorize that application to connect with your Aweber account. If you are a user/fan of Facebook and/or Twitter then you’ll find the process familiar.

Now Comes the App Showcase

For current Aweber users one of the immediate changes you will see in your AWeber account is the “My Apps” link in the upper right corner of your account.

Once you have authorized apps to your account they will be listed in this section. From you will be able to manage the connections to your account. However, the main attraction on this page will be the App Showcase. For the time being Aweber, will be highlighting apps created by the developers at AWeber, but in time independent developer apps will be created and you will see the most popular and useful of those apps listed here.

API Version One

With this being the first version of the Aweber API there will most certainly be features that are not included that will be added as more developers begin to engage with the API. Aweber, has already stated that there are plans in place for expanded versions of the API in the future, aimed at improving your ability to integrate your AWeber account with other sites and services even further.

Developers

If you or someone you know is a developer, interested in creating an application to work with AWeber’s API, just visit AWeber Labs, the official home of and hub for the AWeber API. There, you’ll find instructions on how to create and register applications to work with AWeber.

For more information Click Here to go there now!

If you believe much of what we read with regards to Sales, Marketing, Social Media, and Business in general, there has just been a “major breakthrough” that will allow you to instantly generate massive quantities of cash flow!

I am just a susceptible to being lured in by these types of headlines as anyone else, but the truth of the matter remains the same. Often, after beginning to read the content following one of these get rich quick headlines, I will come to my senses at which point it the remainder of what I will read becomes very predictable and in some cases humorous.

They all promise massive results overnight, with little to no effort and in more cases than not, they are talking about increasing cash flow to the point of ridiculous.

We all have (at least everyone I have ever met) this weakness whereby we are looking for “Success” without the effort that is required to truly achieve success. If you haven’t read it my article, “Outliers: The Story of Success by is Malcolm Gladwell”, it addresses this very topic.

Keep in mind: “The Magic Formula”, “The Silver Bullet”, “The Secret to ……..”, “The Latest Breakthrough”, and any other radical promise that you have seen, are all FALSE. There never has been, never will be any shortcuts to success and riches.

I firmly believe this is based on the universal fact that if we don’t truly earn things, we simply do not have the same appreciation for what we have gained. In support of this belief, I can point to countless winners of lotteries that within 5 years of winning large sums of money they are broke.

When it comes to growing your business, attracting more of your ideal clients, leveraging social media to improve your marketing and all of the other areas where I help clients, I will tell you upfront, I don’t have any magic formulas. Yes, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Digg, Delicious, Blogging, YouTube and the countless other resources that are now available, have forever changed the landscape of marketing.

What these tools have really done, is allow the small business owner, with a limited budget the ability to attract clients that they would have never found in years gone by. What these tools have NOT done, is remove the need for hard work and effort.

While results are inevitable, they all take effort, education, persistence and time. The good news is that there are almost always things that can be focused on in your marketing that will allow you to see some quick results. With a long history of weight training and running, one of my favorite analogies is the guy that has done zero weight training, walks into the gym and expects results tomorrow. Not going to happen.

Marketing and weight training are much the same in that you should start seeing some results within the first few weeks. However, the real benefits won’t show up for months to come. And, with continued effort the benefits are compounded over months and years.

When it comes to attracting more of your ideal clients, I have discovered there are a number of strategies that with study, planning, and the work required for implementation, they get consistent results.

These strategies increase your business visibility, put your message in front of more of your ideal prospects, and increase your credibility which ultimately attracts more of your ideal clients.

While I have seen people double their business in less than 12 months, others have attracted more of their ideal clients thereby increasing their profit margins, but ultimately all are having more fun with their business as a direct result of increased confidence.

Persistence is the magic ingredient when it comes to marketing your business, increase your cash flow and ultimately the Success that we all so desperately want.

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Posted by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Ok, so here is what I am thinking.

There are a ton of you that have found little tips and tricks that have been huge in helping you dominate the world of social media. And, I would like to hear from you.

More importantly, I would like this post to be a collaboration of some of the GREATEST tips and tricks available when it comes to social media.

Maybe, just maybe you are on the other side of this discussion and have a challenge with social media that you just can’t solve. Then please take a moment to let us know that that is.

For all of you social media gurus, if you see a question from someone that is trying to create a brighter future for their life, let’s do what we can to help them.

Disclaimer: If you are going to post anything with an affiliate link, I don’t mind. Provided that you provide some good quality content to go with it and a testimonial as to how and why you are making said recommendation.

Thanks in advance for your participation!!

Outliers : The Story of Success, published in 2008, is Malcolm Gladwell’s third consecutive best-selling book.

In Outliers, Gladwell examines a broad range of factors that have contributed to substantial success of people that you may or may not be able to relate to: Bill Gates, Canadian ice hockey players, Robert Oppenheimer and an exceptionally intelligent, Christopher Langan .

However, before we get too far into the details of the book, let’s take a moment to clarify the definition of an “Outlier”. According to our friend Merriam-Webster:

An outlier is:

-  a person whose residence and place of business are at a distance

- something (as a geological feature) that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body

- a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

The last of which applies to what we will be discussing as a it pertains to Malcolm Gladwell’s book. In Outliers, Malcolm goes on to take an in-depth look at the question:

Why is it that some people seem to excel to great levels when other with similar opportunities struggle through life?

Early in the book Malcolm sets the stage based on the biblical parable of the talents, or “The Matthew Effect”, from a verse in the Gospel of Matthew (13:12), which observes that “for whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

Some Key points from the book:

- While hard work is critical to success, there are often other factors playing significant roles in success.

- Successful people were often lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

- 10,000 hours of time spent sharpening ones skills seems to be a rule of thumb.

Malcolm, in a very direct manner confronts the myth that successful people are self-made. He gives overwhelming evidence that they “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”  According to Malcolm Gladwell, great men and women are simply beneficiaries of time, culture, place, collaboration and specialization.

For those people who take the “glass is half-full approach to life”, you may very well find Outliers to be a bit depressing. After all how many of us are born in the right place, at the right time and have all the stars align just the way that we need them to achieve our dreams of success?

The optimist in me takes the stories from Outliers and determines that with hard work, being open to new opportunities and not being afraid to take risks, success is more a matter of my doing versus something that just happens to me.

The bottom line is that the stories expressed in Outliers are not going to require any type of analytical thinking on your part, or for that matter tell you anything that you probably don’t already know. The genius in what Malcolm Gladwell has accomplished in Outliers is that he has a style of writing that nudges you to look at life in ways that perhaps you never would have on your own.

To the average small business owner or entrepreneur, the path to success may seem overwhelmingly intimidating and in some cases unattainable. Malcolm’s books represent a collection of bird’s eye views, bringing the small business owners of the world above the noise for a glimpse of hope: Thereby providing a new way to think about his journey to success.

For those of you who are in the trenches fighting with all your strength and losing sight of your goals Outliers may be just the help you need. Everyone can benefit from a new glimmer of hope to provide you with a fresh perspective on things before you have a chance to throw in the towel.

What are you doing to create a better future for yourself?

What pieces to the puzzle are you missing?

So, you’ve read Outliers: What is your spin on the book?

Take a moment to leave a comment below: