Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » email lists

The Fine Line between Internet Marketing and Spam

Gary Knox — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:27:15 +0000

Business owners who make use of Internet marketing recognise there is a fine line between marketing and spam and organise their marketing campaigns to attain the utmost amount of exposure without running the danger of being viewed as spam. The definition of spam is open to interpretation but most people agree on the reality that spam is equivalent to junk mail you receive at your residence. Generally spam is unsolicited emails which are part of an advertising campaign. The term spam can also apply to message board postings which are posted entirely for advertising purposes.

Firstly consider the use of message boards for the purpose of Internet marketing. Message boards are in essence online meeting places for Internet users who share a particular interest to exchange ideas, ask or answer questions or just socialise. These message boards permit users to register and post messages. Most message boards have a set of guidelines which the users must abide by when making posts. These guidelines might vary widely with a few being very strict about acceptable content and others not being nearly as strict. It is crucial to follow these guidelines because failure to do so may result in the moderators deleting your account and other members not paying much attention to your posts.

Message boards are ideal for Internet marketing because they can supply a business owner with access to a specialised target audience. For example, if you are in the business of finding jobs for employees who wish to telecommute, you could join a message board devoted to working from home to find members who may be interested in your products. Here you may learn a good deal about the concerns of your target audience. You can also take the chance to post links to your website when appropriate and in accordance with the message board guidelines. This is reckoned to be smart Internet marketing. However, if you choose to reply to each and every post with a link to your website even when it is not relevant and do not offer comments of value to other members, they are likely to look at your posts as spam. This can be detrimental because these members may choose to avoid your website even if they have a demand for your services.

E-newsletters and email advertising are one field of Internet marketing which is most, in all probability, likely to be deemed spam if not done properly. Most Internet users do not appreciate unsolicited emails particularly when these emails do not refer to a subject that interests them. This is frequently the case when business owners buy email lists and send their advertisements to everybody on the list. This is not effective because you are not likely to reach a large proportion of your target audience. Additionally, receivers of the email may block your email address so future communications are automatically sent to a spam folder. Some recipients may even report you to their Internet service provider who may investigate the claim that you are a spammer. A better way to approach the concept of email marketing is to only send e-newsletters and advertisements to past customers who have specifically asked to receive such emails and potential customers who have requested additional information.

Creating Email Lists for Marketing Campaigns

Gary Knox — Mon, 16 May 2011 11:45:46 +0000

If you plan to do some Internet marketing to promote your business endeavor, you should seriously consider email marketing as at least one tier of your Internet marketing campaign. Many business owners shy away from email marketing because they believe all email marketing campaigns are purely spam. However, this is not true and not partaking in this type of marketing can cause your business to lose out on a great deal of business. By not appealing to potential customers via email, your business may lose a great deal of business to competitors who are using email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. However, the first step of an email marketing campaign should be creating an email distribution list.

Once you have made the decision to start using email marketing to promote your business you are likely facing the dilemma of compiling an email distribution list. This is essentially a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. One common way to gain a list of email addresses is to purchase a list from distributors. However, this method is not very effective at all and we do not recommend it. The problem with purchasing an email list if you have no way of knowing whether or not the members of the list would have any interest at all in your products or services. This is very important because while you want to reach a large audience with your email marketing you also want this audience to be members of your overall target audience.

When you purchase an email list you may be sending your email messages to some users who might be interested but this is largely coincidental and is not likely to be well received because the message was not solicited.

Internet users are very quick to delete materials they believe to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. In fact some Internet service providers include spam filters which may automatically delete your emails if your messages are deemed to be spam. These filters run complex algorithms on the subject heading and content of the message to determine whether or not it is spam and are quite adept at weeding out spam. Therefore you run the risk of having your email marketing effort turn out to be a complete waste if the majority of recipients never even read or receive the message.

A far better way to create an email distribution list for your email marketing campaign is to ask current customers as well as interested potential customers to register with your website to receive additional information and periodic updates about your products and services as well as other information which might be of interest to them. This provides you with a database of email addresses from current customers as well as potential customers who have a genuine interest in your products and services and who are interested in learning more about these products and services.

Once you have a list of interested customers or potential customers you can send emails or create e-newsletter for distribution to the members of your email list. These documents should contain a wealth of valuable information as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services. This information will be valued by the readers and may help to persuade them to try your products and services.

You might also want to include useful links to either your website as well as other websites which may be of interest to your readers. Your content should also contain a portion which urges the reader to take a specific action such as making a purchase or at least investigating a product further.

Have a Mailing List of Your Own

Gary Knox — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:03:19 +0000

No matter what type of email you send out, you’ll need a mailing list. The basic way to build a mailing list is by capturing name and email address information for everyone who buys or shows interest in your product.

An email list that YOU COLLECT YOURSELF is worth its weight in gold. This can be accomplished by using a list manager on your site. List managers also provide the HTML coding for the form on the Gateway pages. A list manager collects the email addresses that are gathered with the form. Thus, your email list is collected. This might take some time so there are methods to use until you get your own email list built.

One way to build a mailing list is to do ad swaps with other list owners. The way this works is, you (as company A) have an email list that you send newsletters to and another list owner (company B) has a list they send newsletters to. Company A and Company B place ads on one another’s mailing lists. Each of you is promoting the other’s list.

You can rent or buy targeted email lists. The list you develop using your own customers’ names is called your “house list.” Of course, when you’re first starting out, your house list is likely to be skimpy. To augment it, one way to go is rent or buy a mailing list. There are two ways to buy or rent a mailing list—approaching the company you want to rent from directly or using a list broker. Any company that emails information to its customers usually has a list manager, who handles inquiries and orders for the mailing list.

Another way to build an email list is to list your newsletter in all of the ezine directories.

Evaluating Your Email Marketing

Gary Knox — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:17:23 +0000

Email marketing can be a very effective way to reach a target audience around the world. However, your marketing efforts may not reach their full potential unless you invest some time, energy and money into evaluating your email marketing strategy. During this evaluation you may determine whether or not the email marketing is helping you to reach your goals. Likewise you can determine if the email marketing is having an adverse affect on your business. This article will discuss the importance of evaluating your email marketing and will also offer some useful advice on how to do this.

To say that evaluating your email marketing strategy on a regular basis is important is a tremendous understatement. Regularly evaluating your email marketing is not only important it is critical to the success of your business. Failure to evaluate your email marketing strategies can have adverse effects ranging from not producing results to causing you to lose customers to your competitors.

Consider an email marketing campaign which is not effective because it does not reach the members of the target audience. Some business owners make the fatal mistake of not taking care to ensure their email distribution list features recipients who are extremely interested in the products or services you offer. Business owners who take shortcuts by purchasing large email lists, often find their shortcut did not pay off because the recipients of their marketing emails are simply not interested in the products or services you offer. In this scenario the email marketing is likely to generate very few sales or website visits. However, reevaluating the email distribution list to include recipients who are interested in your products or services will likely result in significantly more sales and website visits.

Now consider a situation in which your email marketing is being construed as spam by the recipients. If you have taken precautions to ensure your emails are reaching members of your target audience but your emails seem like over the top sales pitches, the members of your email distribution list may view your emails as spam and not take your advertisements seriously. When this happens the member of your email distribution list may be more likely to seek out a competitor when they are in need of products or services rather than making a purchase from you.

Evaluating your email marketing efforts may be formal or informal in nature. If you have specific business goals in mind you might want to consider using whether or not you are on the way to meet this goal as an indication of whether or not the email marketing is working. You can evaluate your email marketing efforts by soliciting customer feedback. Asking customers for their opinions about the email marketing campaign and whether or not they were compelled to make a purchase because of the content, the advertising or some other element. Based on this information you should have a good indication of whether or not the email marketing is effective. If it is not effective you should consider making changes to create more interest in your products or services. The changes you make should reflect the feedback you receive though to ensure you are not making changes which will cause even less interest from the members of the target audience.