E-newsletter Publishing

One of the world’s most respected email and direct marketing service providers, VerticalResponse, now offers flat-rate unlimited email sending service options by monthly subscription. This was announced on October 28.

Until this announcement, if you wanted to email your list of 6,000 opt-in subscribers it would have cost you $72 per send. Switching to one of VerticalResponse’s new unlimited email plans, you will be paying $72 per month and will be able to send unlimited emails to a list of up to 8,000 contacts. For some email marketers, this could mean a dramatic drop in per-email-cost.

VerticalResponse joins other Email Service Providers who offer unlimited sending options:

• GetResponse offers unlimited auto-responders and unlimited emails for up to 10,000 contacts for only $17.95 per month
• MadMimi offers unlimited email newsletters and messages for up to 5,000 subscribers for $12 per month
• KickStartCart is more than an Email Service Provider, because it offers a shopping cart, digital product delivery, affiliate program and more.

If you’re overwhelmed with all this choice, contact me and we can discuss your email marketing needs. I offer a free 20-min telephone consultation.

Alternatively, read my article: Learn How to Pick the Right Email Publishing System Provider.

Unlimited emails deal really works for email marketers who send either weekly or biweekly email newsletters, or regular email promotional offers.

Are you one of them?

Consumers in the 18-to-34 age bracket are more likely to respond to marketing messages received by email than to advertising they see while using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, etc. according to new research published in a white paper from Ball State University and ExactTarget.

ExactTarget, Inc. is a leading provider of on-demand email marketing software solutions. The Center for Media Design at Ball State University is a research and development facility focused on the creation, testing, and practical application of digital technologies.

Among other findings: the best time to send email newsletters is in the morning when recipients receive fewer messages, spend more time with each individual email, up to 13 minutes on average. Shorter, promotional email messages have a better chance of response in the afternoon and evening, when the time spent on emails drops down to 2 minutes or less, on average.

There’s a lot of other fascinating data available in this report which you can download for free from ExactTarget.

What is your experience? Please comment - I’m looking forward to your thoughts.

First, let’s talk about your ezine, or e-newsletter. If you intend to publish an informative ezine, do not expect much direct sales from it. Why is this?

Because the primary purpose of your newsletter is to establish your credibility, expertise and to create that relationship - we keep returning to this relationship thing all the time, don’t we? Do not think of your ezine primarily as an advertisement for your services or products.

In your ezine, you must provide useful content to your subscribers. 

By all means, promote your products and services in your ezine, but do not make it the most prominent part of the newsletter. Here it should be in the background, and shouldn’t take up more than about a quarter of the space.

For example, at the bottom of the newsletter you can have a section titled “About Me”, and here you can provide a brief summary of your business, and also mention that you are the author of such-and-such book, or creator of a product. Provide a link to your site where there’s more information.

Now, the most money you’re going to make is through so-called promo-emails, or some people call them solo mailings. While your ezine may have several articles, reviews, comments, recommendations, etc., in a promo email you will concentrate on promoting just one particular thing: it could be a new product you developed, a new type of service that you offer, or something like that.

Typically, your promo emails will be much shorter than your regular ezine. In case you’re sending your ezine in HTML format you may want to experiment and send the promo emails as plain text. Be sure to split-test this.

BTW, for those who are not familiar with the term, split-testing is when you send one version of your email to a subset of your list and another, different version, to a different group of the same size. You compare the results, and from then on use the format witch produced the highest response.

These promotional emails will usually have response rates that are several times higher than a response from your ezine.

Although this one seems obvious, unfortunately the situation is far from being clear and simple.

It is one thing to follow the law and obey all the rules, but ultimately spam is in the eyes of the beholder! This means it is your audience, your subscribers who are the judge and jury and executioner who have the last word on the issue of spam.

In this case, power truly is in the hands of the people!

These days, it’s not so much the content of your emails that’s going to trigger spam filters, it’s your reputation as a sender. That’s why it’s imperative to keep your name and web site domain clean.

Don’t be tempted to send emails to a list you obtained from a friend, and send an email “blast” to them. This will definitely land you in the dog house.

To avoid being labeled as a spammer: deliver content that you promised. That means content that is relevant to your audience.

If you say “sign up for my ezine to learn how to get rid of fear of dentists” don’t send them articles on effective anaesthetic procedures your dentist just introduced, or if you provide reviews of fine-art books in your e-newsletter, then don’t talk about music or architecture.

Sending relevant content will improve your reputation and your response rate!

The Can-SPAM act is in force in the US (other laws in other countries, but if your Email Service Provider is doing business in the US, and/or your email subscribers reside in the US, than your email marketing also must be CAN-SPAM compliant!)

In short:

• Subject lines must clearly and conspicuously identify advertisement or solicitation. In other words, the subject line must be indicative of the actual content of your email.
• A valid electronic return address working for at least 30 days
• A postal address (P.O. box is OK) must appear – add a phone number as a best practice
• Must provide an opt-out mechanism for subscribers. Instructions for opting out must be clear and conspicuous and honoured within 10 business days.
• Don’t falsify or obscure the real sender.
• Don’t “harvest” email addresses from the Internet.

This last Monday, I was having a coffee at the Williams Coffee Bar on Trafalgar and Dundas, in Oakville, writing an article for this week’s ezine, when an email came in from “Writing That Works” announcing the APEX 2008 Awards.

I eagerly opened it, because this year I entered my biweekly ezine, Contacts2Clients, in the competition.

As I was reading through the list of winners I felt like I was 18 again. I remember, a long time ago when I was going through the list of students who made it through the entrance exams to university - going one line at a time, hoping to find my name on the list.

Unlike the university list, the APEX awards list was much shorter, however my name was last, because they sorted it by business name, and Your Ezine Coach, as you can imagine, comes pretty close to the end of the list.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I’m now an award-winning e-newsletter publisher!

If you’re publishing an e-newsletter, I’d highly recommend you enter the competition for 2009.

To celebrate this honour, I am giving away five (5) free Email Service Account set up, worth $199 each to 5 people who sign up for any monthly email production package or coaching.

You’ll have to call me or email me to set it up. You will also receive this added bonus - free Massive List Building Platinum Package - a value of $37.

Call me at 1-905-844-4247 (Mon-Fri 10am-4pm EST) to get your spot.

You can avoid being labeled as a spammer if you aks yourself the following questions:

Do I Have Permission to Send Email?

On your web site collect visitors’ email address and first name, in exchange for a free report (white paper/worksheet/check list/Q&A/10 Top Tips). Use a double opt-in process, so you can have a clean list of people who:

• are really interested
• have white-listed your email address (helps deliverability)
• provided a live email address.

On or near your sign up form, have a link to your privacy policy, better yet, have a one sentence summary of the policy displayed on the form.

If you intend to collect more than email and first name, you will get fewer people signing up. As a general rule, the more “required” fields on a sign up form, the lower the sign up rate. You may ask questions that may not be considered private, such as “When are you planning to buy xyz?”

On the sign up form, tell your prospects exactly what to expect, i.e. a special report in PDF immediately after confirming the email address, then a weekly/biweekly/monthly newsletter with such and such content. Be as detailed as you can. Providing a sample of the newsletter may also help to clearly define expectations of the kind of content they can expect.

Do I Follow Email Deliverability Best Practices?

Use a reputable Email Service Provider (ESP). Don’t fall into the trap of doing the email sending in-house. Aweber, GetResponse and other ESPs do this all day, and they make sure your emails get delivered.

Your ESP will also provide you with custom sign up forms (even unblockable pop-ups), and will provide your subscribers the ability to manage their own subscription (change email address, unsubscribe, change preferences/lists, etc.)

An ESP can provide data on how many emails were delivered, opened, how many subscribers clicked on any links in your email, etc.

Is the Email I am Sending Relevant?

With people’s inboxes bursting with junk, spam, and regular email, being compliant with the law is not a guarantee that your emails won’t be labelled as spam.

These days, spam is in the eyes of the beholder, in other words, even your double opt-in, confirmed subscribers may click the dreaded spam button if they feel that their expectations were not being met. To avoid this, state your publishing policy up front, provide samples, then once they subscribe, provide the content that is in line with their expectations.

Don’t copy what others are doing. Try to find your own style, your own voice. Again, you’re creating a relationship with your audience, and how can you do that if you’re copying someone else’s style?

The only way you can create that relationship is if you’re true to yourself, if you are who you are and you come across that way in everything you do, which includes your web site, your blog, your business card, and of course, your e-newsletter.

Don’t buy or rent email lists, unless you know 110% that the company who offers such lists is kosher. If anyone offers you a list of 1 million emails for $99, or whatever price, run like crazy from them.

Same applies to joining online list services, such as YourLuckyList, The List Machine and ListDotCom. Although they promise you access to thousands of “subscribers” I have a feeling that those thousands of people are there for the same reason you are - to offer their stuff to you - so they won’t be so responsive to your offers. That’s just my experience, you’re free to give them a try - let me know how you do, please.

My philosophy behind email marketing is - relationships - and the only way to build a relationship is if you build your own list. But, you see, building your own list doesn’t necessarily mean you have to build it yourself, alone. You can team up with others, for example with someone who offers a service or product which is complimentary to yours, and do some kind of join venture with them.

Programs such as Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird or online email services such as Yahoo, or Hotmail are not to be used. They may be free to use, but will not give you all the options you might like to have, and besides, may also be unlawful, depending on your country’s anti-spam laws, if any.

Most Internet Service Providers, and most online email services limit the number of recipients that you can use in any single email message. Usually that number is around 20, or so, and it varies widely from ISP to ISP. This means that, depending on the size of your list, it may take you several sends to complete the “blast”. Although this may be acceptable if you have a list of 50 or so people, anything beyond that will be impractical.

If you’re using your own email program to send your e-newsletter you don’t, for the most part, have no idea what happens to your beautiful creation once it leaves your computer. You don’t really know if your audience receives your messages, if they open them, if they click on any links that are included in the content, etc.

If you’re really strapped for cash, and have a small list I can recommend this new Email Service Provider called MadMimi. Their service is free for lists under 100 subscribers.

Last word on using your own email program: if you have to use it, please, remember to use the BCC: field for your recipients. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it simply means your recipients will not see each other’s names and email addresses.