Email Marketing How-to - 6 ways

You may not consider everything you just read to be
crucial information about email marketing.
Of all the ways to get website traffic and make money
online, nothing tops email marketing. Of course, email
marketing in itself means many things to many marketers.
After all, it can take on quite a wide variety of
formats.

Today I'll cover the various forms of email marketing
available to online businesses and reveal what works and
what doesn't. Here's what we'll discuss...

1. Unsolicited bulk email marketing
2. Opt-in email list rental
3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising
4. Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)
5. Email newsletter network advertising
6. Opt-in "series" email marketing

1. Unsolicited bulk email marketing

Let's jump right into that dangerous endeavor referred to
as UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or spam. Most of
you know my take on this. Sure, you can get some website
traffic using bulk email. (Though a response rate close
to the 10% rate some companies promise is not likely -
.01% is more likely.) You can tackle the rigors of
unsolicited bulk email marketing yourself (you'll need
lots of ISP connections because they'll be canceled
quickly!) or hire a company to do the dirty work for you.

But the fact is, since unsolicited bulk email angers a huge
percentage of recipients, your risks can be rather high.
Your domain will end up being blocked by many ISPs and you
could even face some legal battles. In my humble opinion,
unsolicited bulk email is not worth the trouble. Read on and
you'll find that bulk email marketing isn't really necessary
either.

2. Opt-in email list rental

A much "cleaner" version of bulk email marketing is "opt-in
email list rental." There are plenty of companies on the web
that will rent you email addresses that have opted in to
receive commercial email. Actually, in most cases they are
not really renting the addresses; that is, you never see the
addresses. Instead, they charge you a per email address fee
for mailing your message to a list under their management.
But does it work...?

As long the recipients are not being paid to read the
messages and they are genuinely interested in the offers
they signed up to receive, this strategy can be profitable.
The problem is that in most cases you'll pay from ten to
twenty cents per address and mailing to a list large enough
to get great results can get quite expensive. But if your
budget can handle it, you can generate some great targeted
traffic. I've tried a few list rentals myself, though not
recently. The best was from the site postmasterdirect.com
which has millions of addresses in a huge variety of
categories under management.

3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising

Now let's jump to a more reasonably priced email marketing
solution... "email newsletter classified and sponsorship
advertising". In my opinion this one still gives the best
bang for the buck, especially for small businesses with
modest advertising budgets.

Some people think I recommend ezine advertising because I
have an ezine and I'm trying to sell my own ad space. On
the contrary, I've been trying NOT to sell my ad space for
the last few years. That's why my own rates are fairly
high! I can run my own offers or affiliate offers and make
much more than I can selling the ad space. Many other ezine
editors are finding the same thing. While this has resulted
in rising ezine ad costs over the last few years, one fact
remains... ezine advertising is still one of the most
effective ways to get targeted traffic -- cheap.

Ezine advertising works best when you locate ezines that
your target market actually look forward to reading. And
that's not difficult to do... Just visit an ezine directory
and search for ezines in your niche market. Subscribe to a
bunch of free ezines and read them as they arrive. Look for
larger circulation ezines that have a good following. If
you like the content in any particular ezine, then hundreds
or thousands of other readers probably do too. Place a
classified ad and if your site and offer are up to snuff,
you'll make a profit nearly every time. If you can swing a
top sponsorship ad, that works about five times better than
a regular classified ad! Here are two solid ezine
directories you can scour and locate lots of ezines that
target your particular niche...

4. Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)

An even better way to utilize email newsletters to drive
traffic and sales is to purchase "email newsletter solo
mailings." I've been able to locate both text and html
solo mailing offers lately and some ezine publishers
really underprice these. (especially compared to list
rental costs.) I've found html email to be especially
effective, returning 4-5 times the cost of the ad in most
cases. Once again, the list should be tightly targeted to
your niche audience for best results. Use the same
directories above to locate ezines that reach your best
prospects and you'll undoubtedly find some that offer this
type of advertising.

5. Email newsletter network advertising

The next email marketing strategy which I've been using
quite a bit lately is "email newsletter network
advertising." In a nutshell, you pay email newsletter
management sites to run top sponsorship ads across their
network of newsletters. The traffic can be targeted to
just about any niche and it's faster that finding each of
the ezines yourself. Although this requires a larger
initial investment than running ads in individual ezines,
in the long run it is usually cheaper and it requires much
less effort. The best advertising resource I've ever found
on the web is an email newsletter network. It's one of the
proven, super-resources I share only with my
Make-A-Living-Online.com members!

6. Opt-in "series" email marketing

Finally, I'd like to cover one last email marketing
strategy which very few Internet businesses use, and use
properly. It's called "opt-in series email marketing."
This is a secret weapon many of the big name marketers
prefer not to talk about much. It works like this... You
offer an attractive and irresistible freebie at your site,
(in most cases this works best via a pop up or pop-under)
and when your visitors claim their freebie, they are
required to enter then name and email address. They then
are subscribed to your series of personalized, scheduled
email messages that you have pre-written. The best type
of series is one that offers free valuable help and
information about the subject they were looking for help
on in the first place.

A well-written email series will form relationships with
your best prospects, something that holds more value than
most online businesses realize. The best part of this
strategy is that once you do the setup work, everything
is completely automated and personalized.

There are a number of sites that offer follow-up email
autoresponder services. I use my Web Business Wizard
service for my own follow ups and it has worked wonders
for my business. When used properly, and with a bit of
originality and flare, this email marketing strategy
can be one of your top sales producers.

In closing... There you have it; six email marketing
strategies and the results they yield.
As your knowledge about email marketing continues
to grow, you will begin to see how email marketing fits
into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how
something relates to the rest of the world is important too.




Eugenijus Sakalauskas publisher
"List Building Newsletter"
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