When it comes to finding a good  email campaign manager you can either hire an outside firm to oversee your email marketing efforts, or get someone from your company.  The option you choose will depend on your budget, your needs, and the desired results…. but mostly your budget.

Which ever method you choose when it comes to having someone manage your campaign, the steps needed to establish an effective campaign will be the same.

Here is a list of some of the things you need to consider when putting together your email marketing campaign:

1.  First things first, what do you hope to accomplish with this campaign? What outcomes do you need to achieve in order to consider the campaign a success?  This may sound like a dumb question but if you don’t have a clear idea of your ultimate goal than you don’t know the best way to structure your campaign.

For example, is your goal to get more customers into your store or to your website?  Or is your goal to provide your existing customers with some sort of customer appreciation perk?  Identify the goal of your campaign so that you can structure your email messages accordingly.

2.  Carefully consider what you are going to put in the ’subject’ line.  This is a very important element and a good subject line can be the difference between your email being read or being sent to the spam folder.  Your subject should be short and to the point but also intriguing and pique your readers curiosity.

When you create your email make sure that the opening is personal. Use the name of the individual you are sending the email to, this can easily be done with certain automated methods.

3.  Remember that most people receive dozens of emails a day and don’t have time to read them all.  If they open your email that is a big step.  In order to get them to read the whole message make sure to keep your email short and sweet.  Focus your message on your customer and their needs and wants not on you or your company.  In most cases people will only skim the email message so only put in the important points. Don’t make your message too long or your customer will lose interest and stop reading.

4. Don’t get too fancy with font styles and graphics.  Remember, there are a lot of different types of computers and all ages of monitors out there and if you get too high tech some of your customers may not be able to read it.  Different font styles can also be difficult to read sometimes.  Just keep your message short, professional yet friendly, and to the point.

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After losing a 5,000 member list because I was trying to save some
money and used a cheap service, I switched to Aweber. Aweber is one
of the most reliable services for email deliverable and list building. They
have affordable plans and your most precious asset is safe with Aweber!
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5. And of course, if you have the budget and / or you just don’t have time to do it yourself, you could always hire a professional to organize your email campaigns for you.  In many cases this will be the best option since they are experienced and can make sure your messages are written in an effective way to maximize not only your open rate but your desired results as well.

When it comes to setting up an effective email marketing campaign, just remember that there are a few simple things to keep in mind.  If you are able to hire a professional  email campaign manager than by all means, so do. If not, don’t let that keep you from setting up your own campaign so you can benefit from the enormous potential of email marketing.

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Email marketing is an extremely efficient and effective method of increasing your sales and your customer base, but as with so many other marketing tools, if you don’t know what you’re doing it can actually cause more harm than good.  Don’t ever forget that you are marketing to other companies and not individuals so your messages need to be tailored to your actual audience. When your company is trying to establish a business to business email marketing strategy, there are significant differences in your approach then if you were working on a business to consumer campaign.

Here are a few of the major points you need to consider in order to create a  more effective and profitable email marketing campaign:

1. Keep it simple. If you were to meet with a prospect in person you would make sure that your pitch were straight to the point. When sending B2B emails you want to achieve the same no nonsense tone.  Their time is valuable and you want to prove to them that you appreciate that fact by getting right down to business in your email, just as you would if you were talking to them in person.

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After losing a 5,000 member list because I was trying to save some
money and used a cheap service, I switched to Aweber. Aweber is one
of the most reliable services for email deliverable and list building. They
have affordable plans and your most precious asset is safe with Aweber!
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2. Don’t forget the “WIIFM” (what’s in it for me) approach to your email messages.  Make sure that you clearly articulate what advantages your company can provide to their company and why it just makes sense for them to do business with you.  You have to structure your email message in such as way as to set yourself apart from the competition.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask them for their business. If you don’t have a clear call to action such as ‘click here  now’, for example, they may not do anything.  It’s one of the most common mistakes marketers make, they don’t ask the prospect to actually take action, they fail to ask for the sale.  Don’t make this mistake.

4. To optimize the effectiveness of your email campaign make sure you take the time to learn more about your prospects business and what you can do to help them.  This information can prove extremely helpful when you are composing your email message. By being able to add specific points to your email that would only apply to their particular business you are letting them know that you’ve taken the time to learn about their company and their needs which will help you build trust with them.

5.  Remember, this is a business that has their own marketing campaigns and they are familiar with all the tricks.  Don’t try too hard to ’sell’ them.  Keep your message short and on point and then follow up with a firm and clear call to action.

6. Track your results. You want to keep track of open rates as well as an increase in sales and/ or customers. It’s important for you to know which campaigns work and which ones didn’t.  This information will allow you to tweak the ones that work and reuse them and start from scratch on some of the less effective campaigns.

Email marketing can be a huge benefit to any business building strategy.  Take the time to research your market before you implement your business to business email marketing plan.  This added step will allow you to make more money and increase your customer base for a very small investment.

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Promoting your small online business is a challenging mission, particularly if you do not have any ideas about the best methods to use. Amidst the so called “new” marketing techniques that currently swamp the Internet, you will sometimes find yourself confused in trying to decipher which processes work most effectively and which will just waste your valuable time and effort. To be successful with your business promotion online, you need to utilize the most effective marketing tools as much as possible to attract visitors. More importantly, you should concentrate your efforts in mastering the most suitable techniques for your company.

Here are three of the most effective small business marketing strategies that can be implemented by almost any small business.

1. Email List building – This method is one of the marketing strategies that must be implemented in every small business promotion campaign. Many online marketers do not understand the importance of building a quality targeted email list, or the best way to achieve it. You must gain your prospects’ trust and capture their contact information in order to build a list. Through this list, you can advertise your site or product to your prospects and later on turn them into paying customers. According to many of the famous online Gurus and Blogs that I have studied, research shows that people will keep ignoring your advert until they have seen it at least seven times.

2. Article marketing – This technique is also essential in online marketing, not only because it is free but because it is very effective too. Online users very often search for information from article directory sites because unlike a book or magazine they do not have to pay for the information. Be sure to write good quality articles and people will keep coming to your site for reference.

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After losing a 5,000 member list because I was trying to save some
money and used a cheap service, I switched to Aweber. Aweber is one
of the most reliable services for email deliverable and list building. They
have affordable plans and your most precious asset is safe with Aweber!
================================================

3. Forums – If you want to get the attention of search engines, you must join forums related to your business and participate in them. You have to make sure you always leave a link to your website in your signature, and search engines will very often index your site through forum discussions, sometimes in only a few hours if the forum is a popular one. This will give you more website traffic and higher search engine placement.

John Osgood writes about and teaches small business owners how to market their companies and products online for a zero to small cost. John maintains the strict policy of building a relationship and not “HAMMERING” his subscribers with constant email offers!

His 5-day e-course for Small Business owners who want to build a huge email list can be downloaded here: Head over to http://www.smallbusinesslistbuilding.com to get your FREE copy now!

There also many other resources for the Small Business owner including Podcasts and a blog which you can check out by going to: http://www.smallbusinesslistbuilding.com/blog

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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.

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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.

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:

CNN	Microsoft
Oprah, CNet	bellagio.com
IRS.gov	weather.com
ign.com	maxim.com
tgifridays.com	olivegarden.com
pbs.org	visitpa.com
Whitehouse.gov

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.

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.

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When you’re just starting out in internet marketing, you don’t really think about having a system that will communicate with your leads automatically. You are thinking about how to get your leads and probably even focusing on some one-on-one attention with them all. But as you go on, your list builds and you realize that you can’t keep up with all of them, you then know that choosing one of the many email auto responders is a necessity. Autoresponders are also referred to as “email responder”, “mailbot”, or “autobot”. But they all do basically the same thing. They allow you to obtain and communicate with your potential customers and customers on a regular basis.

Email autoresponders allow you to send information to a large mass of recipients at the pre-scheduled intervals that you decide on. Their common key features allow you to:

1. Get automatic insertion of leads into your data base once the opt-in form has been filled out. The forms that you create can be customized according to the type of information you want from your customers. Keep in mind that the less information you ask from them, the more likely they are to fill out the form. The form graphics themselves can be customized on some autoresponders so you can change the color of the outline or even the text on the SUBMIT button. Once your form is created and placed on your web content, when someone fills it out, they will automatically be placed in the list that you have specified when creating your form. So, if this form is destined for your “business clients”, then, once someone fills out the form, he/she will be automatically be placed in that group of contacts.

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Aweber is the Choice of All Successful Internet Marketers
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2. Automatically deliver information at the times you have programmed. Once you have obtained your lead, they will be connected to the email series that you have programed them to receive. As soon as this person has opted into your form, he/she will automatically receive a Welcome email from you which you have already created. In the case of double opt in email auto responders, you will first send the opt-in a “permission confirmation” email which asks them to verify that they are indeed asking you for information.

3. Record your exchange of communication. Each contact will have a record that indicates the emails that were sent to and from this person.

4. Have the ability to instantly create and send your “blast” messages to the recipients of choice. If something comes up that you feel is important to your subscibers and it is not in the programmed messages, you can still let them all know about it at the same time. This is called a blast email. You can write it once and “blast” it to your whole list.

4. Create many specific lists and organize leads. Autoresponders also can be extremely useful with the administrative functions as they are very organized. You can formulate multiple lists to maintain a record of leads and even organize data according to last message number, country, e-mail, status, and etc. just by clicking a button.

Email auto responders, such as Aweber autoresponders,  are the tools that you can’t afford to not have to succeed in internet marketing.

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