The 3 Most Important Things You Must Do to Keep Your Opt-in List

Having an opt-in list is not just for sending subscribers your promotional newsletters or catalogs. Your opt-in list should be used to build a relationship with each and every person who joins your list, but you must do your part to
show respect to those who do decide to subscribe.

As with everything, there are numerous things you need to consider in order to avoid some complications associated with email marketing. While there are so many ways you can get people to subscribe to your list, there are also a few things you must do to avoid those same subscribers from wanting to be removed from your list.

On top of that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and/or your internet service provider or ISP . There are now quite a few laws and regulations in place that are designed to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spam and unwanted emails. The use of Email in business has become extremely popular because of the low cost and many company's have seized the opportunity by flooding people's email accounts with nwanted promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you don't need to worry about sending unwanted emails because people have chosen to subscribe to your list; they WANT to receive the newsletters and promotional materials from your company. They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves.

There are times when an email account has been provided by someone other than the real owner so don't forget to put an unsubscribe link in every email you send to your opt-in list. This will help to avoid any confusion and offer
an easy way for your subscribers to opt-out whenever they want.

It is important that you keep your list clean and manageable by using the many tools provided by either your software of choice or the email/autoresponder host (like <A class=LinkerWord href="http://www.aweber.com/?209794" target=_blank><A class=LinkerWord href="http://www.aweber.com/?209794" target=_blank><A class=LinkerWord href="http://www.aweber.com/?209794" target=_blank>Aweber</A></A></A>) you use for your opt-in list.

Don't worry, the investment you put into your email marketing campaigns is well worth it as you gain a much wider and far more targeted audience that will in turn increase your sales and bring in the profits you are looking for.

So now you need to ensure that both your business and yourself are protected from those potential problems associated with email marketing and stay in the good books with both the law and your ISP . Keep your operation legitimate and clean.  Your reputation as a legitimate business person and a legitimate website or blog depends on your being a straight and truthful
marketer.

Here are three things you MUST DO to keep your email marketing on track and out of trouble:

1) Take notice of those unsuccessful sends. These are the emails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are different reasons why emails bounce. It could be because the server was busy at the time of your send but can still be delivered later. Or it could be due to the recipients inbox being full. And then there are those emails labeled "undeliverable" that are going to bounce no matter what simply because of an invalid or misspelled email address or because an email address was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by flagging those accounts that bounce.  Erase email addresses from your list so that you have an accurate statistic and record as to how many are actually receiving your mail. You should also check the spellings of the email addresses in your database and watch for things like .con instead of .com or misspelled host names like hotmial instead of hotmail or even those addresses mixing up the @ sign possibly with the ! or #.

Another way to avoid misspelled or incorrect addresses on your list and ensure those that you are adding to your list ACTUALLY subscribed themselves, is to use the Double Opt-in method. This method sends a confirmation link out to anyone who subscribes and will not activate their subscription in your database until they personally have confirmed their
email address. Now you will have served two purposes...you have double checked the email address is legitimate and ensured that the person who subscribed truly does want to receive your emails.

2) Always provide "unsubscribe" methods and options on your website and include unsubscribe links in every one of your mailings. When someone on your list sends a request to be unsubscribed, always take it seriously and remove them immediately.  (If it's sent personally to my main contact email, I always email them back letting them know they have been unsubscribed
then save both theirs and my emails in case of further dispute) . If you don't take them off your list and you keep sending them your emails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Avoid any pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. You can't know who the person reading your email is and what may offend them. Keep your emails clean and family friendly at all times. Controversial issues should also be avoided. If you focus on the nature of your business and stay clear of anything that could potentially be considered harmful or offensive you should avoid any problems.

So, keep these 3 tips in mind when preparing your next email. Build a strong and healthy relationship with your readers, show them the respect they deserve and you'll find yourself growing a very successful opt-in list full of people truly wanting to read your emails and purchase what you have to offer.


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4 Miscellaneous Email Marketing Advices

Email is one of the most personal advertising medium ever invented.  Here are four of the many ways you can improve your email marketing results.

Spread the Word

Get others to sign up for your mailing lists with their consent.  Spread the word about your mailing list through word of mouth.  The beauty in this is that the list of emails will be self-screened and the database will only contain the people who are interested in your offers.  Make sure you have their consent beforehand.  You don’t want to risk losing reputation or SPAM penalties.

Persistence

Before the internet, they used to say it takes around 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad.  Today I would guess it to be over twice as high with the internet present.  Make sure you are reaching out to your clients at least once a month in emails or other medium.  Just because you emailed a list of people and had little or no response does not necessarily mean your audience isn’t interested in your product.  Experiment with different emails, get to know which email strategy works best, and keep using it to reach out to your audience.

They Want Useful Information

Emails should contain something that the customer wants.  It shouldn’t be just a summary of your company or your resume.  Focus on giving more than just what you sell.  Specific content, messages, and other targeted information that interests your customers are good to include.  For example, if you were selling makeup, you may want to include advice on how to apply the makeup or any makeup in general.

Make Sure Your Audience Reads Your Emails

Graphics, Flash animations, logos are often blocked by email filters.  Although they look impressive on an email, they will often lower your impression statistics.  I recommend using flat text with hyperlinks to your site.  Once they get to your site, you can show them as many graphics as you want.  Although some businesses have both a plain and a rich text edition of their email, for starters, stick to the plain text.

How to Give the People What They Want

If you went to your email inbox right now and counted up,  you would probably find that you subscribe to at least one if not several email newsletters published by a web site that you enjoy going to from time to time.  We like getting email newsletters in the same way we like to subscribe to magazines at home.  They are fun, informative, sometimes humorous and they give us perspective on a specialized field of knowledge.

So it might not surprise you to learn that the newsletter is one of the most successful forms of internet marketing there is.  In fact, it may even have surprised you that a newsletter is a form of internet marketing.  But it is a potent way for an online retailer to market his web site and online products or services to a focused customer audience.

A newsletter is also an outstanding way to sidestep the problem of failures of email delivery because customers will partner with you to make sure that newsletter gets into their email box.  This is a big difference from cold call emails you may have used to use where you send purely marketing emails to customers only to see them get trapped in spam filters and sink to the bottom of spam quarantine folders never to be seen again.  A newsletter is a marketing email that your customer wants to see. In fact, most times the customer made an effort to log onto your web site and find the newsletter subscription page to make sure they got on your mailing list.  This is a refreshing change to see customers working hard to let you market to them rather than buying software to dump your marketing emails into a spam folder.

The reason newsletters are so effective at avoiding email delivery problems is that customers almost always will take the time and effort to be sure to add the sending email address of the newsletter you create for them to their "white list" of preferred email contacts.  And because a newsletter can contain from ten to forty percent marketing material, it is like the customer is treating your marketing message like royalty and making sure it gets to them every week.  In fact, customers become so used to getting that newsletter that if it did fail to arrive, they would take the initiative to find out why.

You don’t have to be a high speed publisher to create a nice newsletter format to use each week.  You can buy templates for the newsletter format or use some of the default templates for newsletters that Microsoft Word comes with.   But you may want to enlist the aid of your most computer savvy employee to create the newsletter each week because it calls for some patient and artistic layout talents to make it look good.

You might think of your newsletter as a web page that you deliver to your customers.  It should have interesting and compelling content, just like your web pages do.  But there are also plenty of spaces for advertising and promotional pieces that can be used to drive the customer to the web site to make sales.  And because it is an e-document, links in the newsletter can immediately transport the customer to the point of purchase on your web site shopping card pages.

You can also use the articles you prepare for the newsletter to talk about your products and services in an informative way.  By generating interest through text discussion of what you sell, that creates desire to make a purchase as well.  You can even use the advertising space in your newsletter to sell to affiliates and partners who want to market to your customers.  In that way, the newsletter can be a direct revenue generator even before it serves to guide subscribers to the purchase experience.

You may need to take advantage of  the writers on your staff to create the content of your newsletter each week.  But don’t overlook content that is already at your disposal.  Articles, blog entries, discussions on message boards and letters you get asking questions about your products and services are natural article fill to use in your newsletter.