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.

If you’re developing web pages, blogs or landing pages for your products or services, do you know how your beautiful pages look on other browsers and platforms? For example, I use Mac and my main browser is FireFox, and sometimes I use Apple’s own Safari. I also have a PC laptop for checking how my emails render on some PC email programs.

I just found about this web site which provides screen shots of any web page as seen through some 50 different browsers, on 4 different operating systems (PC, Mac, Linux and BSD). Take a look at http://browsershots.org/

Let me know how it worked for you! Please comment here.

There’s an interesting discussion on the BlogSquad’s blog about how domains are handled by TypePad vs. WordPress.

A TypePad link to Denise’s blogpost “Tom Antion Reveals The Secrets of HIS Success to The Blog Squad” is http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reve.html

On a WordPress blog this would be
http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

Now, which link has more keywords?

tom-antion-reve.html <-- this truncated post title
or
tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html <-- the full title

And, btw, you can edit these links, if you wish, to get rid of extra words such as "to, and, the" etc.

Another example, from my own blogsite
http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/how-to-make-money-with-email-marketing-send-email-promotions.html is also the permalink to this blog post.

On TypePad permalinks are in the form of: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/145459/32319900

Ask yourself this: do I want to build links to TypePad and building their Google Page Rank, or my own domain?

I don’t like dealing in absolutes, so I won’t say WP is better than TP, but in this particular area it shines.

What do you think?

P.S.
By commenting on this blogpost, I accidentally discovered another weak spot in TypePad, and it has to do with displaying long links in posts. Take a look at how long URLs are displayed here, in my post, then compare the same in TypePad.

Surfing the blogosphere I run into this cute button. I highly respect Aweber for being one of the top-rated Email Service Providers.

Here’s why I like AWeber:

• Robust list-management features
• Absolutely the highest CAN-SPAM compliance
• Very high deliverability rates
• Unlimited auto-responders
• Unlimited follow ups and broadcasts
• Low monthly fee for up to 10,000 contacts, upgradable to bigger lists for a nominal fee.
• Online archive of all or selected broadcasts
• RSS delivery of your e-newsletter
• Provides several ways for your contacts to subscribe: by email, sign up forms (standard and several un-blockable pop ups), manual add, and list import.

In December 2005 HTML email templates were introduced, however, even after the Fall 2006 upgrades to the graphical HTML editor creating an HTML email is still not as user-friendly as Constant Contact’s mail wizard, for example. However, for those who’d like to use their own custom-designed email templates, AWeber offers much greater flexibility and ease of use.

I read an answer from Boris on Linkedin which really impressed me so I contacted him to see if he could help me understand how e-mail marketing might help my book and marketing printing business. He offered to consult with me and spent over an hour with me on the phone giving me many tips and insights. He is very knowledgeable about his business.

Boris’ Top qualities: Personable, On Time, Creative

Lisa Kline, Diversified Printers Inc.

Note: This testimonial was originally published as a recommendation on Linkedin

Please leave your own comment - Thanks!

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.