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3. Respond to your e-mail or to questions asked on form within 24 hours, if not sooner. When people go online looking for something, they usually send e-mail out to 5-6 companies. If your company is first to respond, and if you've taken time to answer questions professionally and thoughtfully, you'll have a jump over those other companies, many of which won't even answer e-mail at all.
4. Always provide a way to "opt-out" of your e-mail list. Make it very clear how your subscribers can choose not to receive newsletter or e-mail any longer, and then immediately unsubscribe them when they write to you. Remember: having permission to send e-mail in first place by only adding those who have contacted you and expressed an interest in your product, and giving those people a way to get off your mailing list, will differentiate you from millions of e-mail spammers that have given e-mail marketing such a bad name.
5. Take time in creating your subject line for your e-mail marketing campaign. Make sure it doesn't sound "spammy" in any way. Including your name or company name is a possibility, as well as describing focus of e-mail. With these new e-mail programs that combat spam, if you use a subject line like, "We've got GREAT news for you!" or "Hi, Friend!," you can expect e-mail to be deleted without ever making it to your potential customer.
How can you learn effective permission e-mail marketing strategies?
Stephen Mahaney attributes much of his online success to effective permission e-mail marketing. He's even gone so far as to write a course on subject, which I've personally reviewed. It offers a step-by-step approach on how to create an effective permission e-mail marketing list and how to market to that list. The course even comes packaged with a full version software program for merging each message with people on your list so they'll each get a personalized e-mail.
So, with Time Magazine pushing importance of e-mail marketing to forefront of marketing online, here's information about Stephen's "Business Guide to Permission Email Marketing" course and software: http://www.email-solutions.com/moreinfo/
How effective is permission e-mail marketing?
Traditionally, permission e-mail marketing campaigns result in a significantly higher response rate than traditional direct marketing or other forms of online advertising, such as banner ads. According to FindMoreBuyers.com, response rate for a typical permission e-mail marketing campaign is 4-12%, where as response rate for a banner ad is .5-1%. Quite a difference. http://findmorebuyers.com/page.cfm/205
According to Emarketer.com, DoubleClick projects that e-mail marketing budgets will increase by 17.0% in 2002, which is nearly twice rate of other types of online marketing, which are expected to gain 9.0%. TV, print and radio budgets are all expected to decrease. Not only that, DoubleClick reports that 61% of marketers plan to increase their e-mail marketing budget in 2002.
Forrester Research estimates that total spending for e-mail marketing services in United States will reach $2 billion by end of this year. http://www.emarketer.com/products/report.php ?email_mktg&PHPSESSID=f564eda06be98116905028b857b834c4
So, hit while iron is hot, and permission e-mail marketing is certainly "hot" right now! Learn how to use it effectively, and then watch those profits increase! http://www.email-solutions.com/moreinfo/
Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses. She also teaches 4-day hands on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).