Your Questions About Email Marketing Lists

Jere answers:

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either cold lists or current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to:

Sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,

Sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,

Adding advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers.

Jere answers:

Well, email marketing is just that. Marketing but using the email as the tool so send and display your campaign. A number of things should be taken into consideration when you decide to use/or do email .

1- You should write good ad copies for you campaigns and followup messages. If you are not a very talented writer. You should consider hiring a freelancer writer to do it. Basically the ad copy is responsible for 80% of the campaign’s success. BTW; The subject line should be appealing and eye catching to make the reader open your email.
2- To be successful in mail marketing you must have a reliable autoresponse and follow up system. So, it does not just turns to be a one shot deal. For that I suggest that you get an autoresponder. There are many software for this or you can join any of the free or paid autoresponders online.
You will need to write a number of newsletters and ads to set up your autoresponder so it can continue following up on you subscribers. Try to ad value and information to the messages, not just blunt ads
3- Create a optin form for prospect to subscribe. This is the right way to do it. By having them subscribe voluntarily to your list, you will avoid lots of problems.
4- NEVER SPAM! This is a very serious matter you should keep in mind. There are different ways and tools to send out your campaigns. But always follow ALL the can spam act rules and guidelines.
5- Sending tools and services – Your mission is to make a 1 shot ethical and professional approach with new prospects to have them join your subscribers list. But again; Always within the rules and the law. You can join free mail groups or safelists or buy solo ads in different sources on the web. These services are SPAM free because the subscriber join (opted-in) freely and/or are part of a mailing exchange. The last resort is to have you own sending software. But this can be a pain in the neck if you are not sure what you are doing as there is a fine line to step into the SPAM zone. LOL!
I suggest that you research more on this topic and review the CAN SPAM guidelines and laws.

Email marketing can be very profitable. But there is a lot of work to do and a lot of rules to follow.

Jere answers:

The best way to build a list is through placing a web form or opt in box on your website. This allows you to turn one time visitors into repeat contacts. This also ensures that your list is made up of people who are interested in what you have to offer.

Other methods of building a list can work as well, but you need to make sure that you are only emailing people who want to hear from you and know who you are. It may seem like a good idea to email people as a point of first contact, but remember that most people view email coming from people they don’t know as spam. You don’t want to be seen as a spammer, as it can negatively affect your reputation, deliverability, and even have legal ramifications.

If you are looking to build a list via a web form, there are email marketing services that can help you create the form, place it on your website, and help you maintain and send email to your list, either automatically as they sign up, or manually over time.

Hope this helps,
Nick Moore
AWeber Communications
http://www.aweber.com

Jere answers:

Resolution..
Send email only to those that want it. Spammers write to many people who don’t want their mail, so our anti-spam filters are designed to identify that behavior. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, use an opt-in method of subscription for your mailing list. Better yet, utilize a confirmed opt-in process where subscribers actively verify their intent to receive your mailings by clicking on a confirmation email before being added to your list.

Use email authentication such as DKIM. This will help us identify that the email is legitimately from you and, if you sign all your email, it will help us identify forgeries, too. In addition, using dedicated domains for different mail streams (e.g., transactional messages vs. Marketing emails) is also a recommended practice. DKIM.org is a good resource for information about DKIM.

Segregate your mail streams by IP addresses and/or domains since Yahoo! Mail keeps reputation data about each IP address and domain you send from.

Consistently manage your lists by paying attention to hard and soft bounces as well as inactive recipients. Persistent emails to these addresses are a surefire way to get your connections deferred. If your messages are being blocked, look closely at any SMTP Reply Codes our mail servers are returning to you and be sure you’re addressing the problem.
Don’t retry 5xx messages. If we reject a message with a 5xx error, we will not accept it anytime soon. Retrying the message wastes both our resources and makes you appear to have a dirty list.
Do retry 4xx messages. If we send a 4xx error, this is a temporary error and we encourage you to try sending the message at a later time.

Do refresh your list periodically. Consider removing or sending a reconfirmation email to inactive subscribers, i.e., users who have not opened or clicked on your emails for a period of time. Sending your mail to users who are not reading them, or who may even mark them as “spam,” will almost certainly hurt your delivery metrics and reputation.

Enroll in our feedback loop. If you are signing your emails with DKIM or DomainKeys, enroll for our Complaint Feedback Loop program so you can track your spam complaint rates and keep them in check. Need more information about the program? Visit out our feedback loop FAQs for more details.

Respect the user’s mailbox
If a customer entrusts an email address to you during a transaction or for a particular newsletter, they do not expect to receive unrelated messages, such as extraneous marketing emails, in the process. Adding email addresses to other lists without their explicit opt-in is a guaranteed way to lose a customer’s trust.
Honor the frequency of the list’s intent. If customers believe they are signing up for a monthly newsletter but they start receiving messages on a weekly basis, such a practice will likely prompt users to label your messages as spam.
Use a consistent “From:” header address. Your domain name is an important element of your brand. Using it consistently helps us and your recipients to distinguish your email from spam. Additionally, using a static From: address helps users who have set up filters to route messages to a specific folder.

Pay attention to your email’s content
Test your email’s look and feel with image placeholders. Many users won’t see images in your email by default.
Link to domains, not IP addresses. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that IP address links are dangerous.
Use standard ports. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that links containing ports are dangerous.
Don’t include HTML forms in emails. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that submitting forms in email can be dangerous.
Don’t include Javascript in emails. The javascript is stripped out and will not run.
Don’t include embedded objects in emails (like flash or ActiveX). The objects are stripped and will not run.

Honor unsubscribe requests as fast as you honor subscribe requests. When a user unsubscribes, they don’t want to receive that mail anymore. Promptly removing them from the list should help prevent users from marking your messages as spam in the future.

Be CAN-SPAM compliant. Regardless of where in the world you’re sending your mail, make sure that you adhere to the requirements stipulated by the CAN-SPAM Act.http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Read More http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN3435&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1337167439885&locale=en_US&y=PROD_MAIL_ML

Jere answers:

Using email to promote a blog doesn’t make a lot of sense, the expense of building and maintaining a legitimate email list would not be worth it to just get blog visitors.
FYI, Can-Spam regulations forbid you to just mail a promotion to some list of a million email addresses you found somewhere, you need to establish a relationship then ask them to subscribe to your email list, this process is often done in blogs.