Archives for July, 2007
Email Marketing Software
Email marketing today become one of the most effective and affordable marketing tool. Recent statistics show that email marketing campaigns are often more successful than traditional ones. They also cost much less than traditional advertising campaigns and are more successful. For this, you need nothing else than a computer, Internet connection and a reasonable email marketing software package.
Direct Email marketing gained a large accessibility because of its remarkable benefits:
Cheap - Email Marketing Software is a low cost tool for get new customers and maintain relation with them. There isn’t any other substantial cost except for cost of Bulk Email Marketing software and Internet connection.
Flexibility - You can communicate with your consumers any time you want from your home or office. Further you can schedule the time when your customer should receive the mail. Also you can update and change the email’s content easily.
Measurable - Email Marketing Software allows marketers to measure the results and quantify the Return on Investment.
Liberty - E-mail marketing allows the consumer the liberty to response at their convenience. It also gives them complete freedom in choosing to respond if they want to.
Benefits Of Email Marketing Software
One of the easiest ways to set up your email marketing campaign is by using email marketing software. Many people assume that they need to be Web savvy or programming literate to run a successful email marketing campaign. This is not the case however. Most software programs are very basic so that even a computer novice can figure them out successfully.
There are a lot of software packages currently available on the Web. Each of these provides various features:
Mailers and Finders - These tools send out emails and help you to collect potential customers by collecting email addresses.
Autoresponders - Autoresponders automatically answers email requests for you. You can set them up to market your product and services.
Subscriber - This software can automatically subscribe people that visit your site to your mailing lists.
Verifiers and Managers - These programs verify email address lists and also organize email address lists and remove bad addresses.
Reporting and Tracking - These programs allow you to track statistics, for instance: the number of customers that open and click through your emails. Also you can create every week or month reports that let you know if your marketing campaign is successful.
If you plan to succeed in today?s technologically advanced marketplace, it is vital you have the right tools in place. Email marketing software will help ensure that you have the right tools to market your products and services to global customers effectively and efficiently.
With an email marketing software you can:
- manage the emailing list
- build a newsletter
- send bulk emails
- instant feedback
Manage the Emailing List
The mailing lists can be a useful tool in promoting your web site and products. An email marketing software will help you not only configure one or more emailing lists but also manages subscriptions and unsubscriptions, user profile details, bouncebacks. In this way your work become easier.
Build a Newsletter
An email marketing software can help you to create visually stunning newsletters, promotional emails and flyers in no more than 10 minutes.
Send bulk emails
With an email marketing software, you can send a mass of e-mails just pushing one button. For this you need to activate the receiver list, copy the body message and send the newsletters.
Instant feedback
It’s impossible to subscribe manually every person who wants to receive your newsletter and then to write a thank you message. In this case an email marketing software can help you. You can use autoresponders, automatic subscription and unsubscription. Also, you can operate every change in subscribers profiles.
Personalized and Non-Personalized Email
Sometimes, you need to send a marketing email or distribute a newsletter, you just need to send the same email to several contacts, but at the same time you would like to personalize that message, so it doesn’t look like an automated bulk email.
There are two methods to send bulk email to multiple recipients - personalized and non-personalized.
Personalized Email
Personalized messages are sent independently of each other and are indistinguishable from regular non-bulk email.
The huge advantage of personalized email is that every message may be individually crafted for the recipient. It is not just the ability to insert the recipient’s name - it is full control over the message content.
People generally feel better when they receive personalized messages, especially when they’re greeted with their name, not with “Dear Customer”, and it is nice to personalize messages to show respect to your recipients.
Personalized email marketing messages are more likely to be opened than general emails (the statistics show that personalized emails received 47% higher open rates and 90% higher click through rates than emails that were not personalized).
Using personalized email marketing enhances your corporate reputation. It is the contrary of spam.
Non-Personalized Email
Non-personalized method allows to send the same message to the list of addresses. According to bulk email speed tests, non-personalized email may be sent 15 to 250 times faster than personalized email.
The gain in speed is more dramatic when you have a slow modem connection, but even at fastest connection speeds, non-personalized mailing is still 15 times faster than personalized one.
Spam filters may throw away all non-personalized messages, and therefore it is safer to use personalized message.
We recommend using personalized messages whenever possible. Even if it takes 2-3 hours to send, it is worth it.
Bulk Email List Management
All e-mail management services provide a complete profile and action history on your list members, including messages sent, opened, click-through rates and action tracking. The maintenance of your database can be released without problems uploading and downloading your existing database from a variety of file types (SQL, Excel, Access and more) and copy data between lists. Email list management features include:
Build and permanently enriching the email list
- Add a Sign-Up Form on each page of your site.
- Include a ?Send to a Friend” options.
- Send post cards to customers encouraging them to subscribe to email.
- Optimize Your Site for Search Engine Placement.
- Offer Opt-In Incentives.
Upload your custom data. Whether your list is in Excel?, MS Outlook?, ACT!?, Palm? or any other text-based format, the Email List Management will help you get your data uploaded quickly into your account.
Keep your email lists clean The visitors to web sites are protecting themselves by using temporary or false e-mail addresses. Fake email addresses cause problems as they quickly fill up your database.
- Delete unsubscribers.
- Delete bounces. But make sure its a hard bounce.
- Try to avoid free email accounts. Its a little hard to implement.
- Don’t buy email lists.
Unsubscribes processing ? Every email sent need to have unsubscribe instructions. Don’t send emails to recipients who have opted not to receive emails from you.
De-duplicate your e-mail list. Do not email someone twice in the same campaign.
Create List Filters. Perhaps you want to send a special issue just to clients in a specific region, or maybe you prefer to send separate versions of newsletter to different subscriber segments, in these cases can create multiple filters.
Manage bounces. You can specify the interval (in days) to wait before trying to re-send to a bounced email address. For example, if the interval is 2 days, the message will be sent again to the email address in 2 days. If the email bounces the second time, the address will be moved to the bounced list.
Managing spam accusations, that with mass email are almost inevitable.
If the contact list is bigger and bigger, it’s a good sign: your business is growing stronger and you’re making more money. But in the same time you can not continue to trust exclusively on your email clients’ options to send mass email. You need an email marketing software.
Bulk Email Tracking Software
E-mail tracking is a method for monitoring your email delivery to your intended recipient. It is useful when the sender wants to know if the recipient actually received the e-mail, or if they clicked the links.
There are two tracking methods. The first way requires a software installation in the user’s machine. When messages are sent, only the unique GIF names are downloaded from the tracker’s servers. The second method is to route the message through the tracker’s server by adding a suffix to the address. This method works with any computer and any e-mail client or Web browser.
In the Email Tracking Report you may viewing the stats:
- Opens - let you know how many recipient opens your email message. In order to get true statistics, count opens only once. For example, there are people that don’t read their newsletter in the body message but prefer to open it in a preview window, or enlarge it into a full size window.
- Click Thru - let you know how many recipients click the link on your email message to your website. The effectiveness of this click is not so big. Only 5% of those who access the link buy a product. Some users click through by mistake, and don’t read any content, while others clicked the link mechanically All these are uncountable actions.
- Sales - allows to know how many recipients finally make the purchase originated from your email message. To do this you need to insert a tracking code into your order confirmation page .
- Bounce Back - allows to know how many “bad” email address are in your list and got bounced back from the server . You can set the email software to remove the bouncing addresses automatically after a number of consecutive bounces, because there are not reason to send emails to bad addresses.
E-mail marketing and tracking
Some e-mail marketing tools include tracking as a feature. When you send a tracked e-mail message as a simple text message or a graphical html message, the e-mail marketing system may embed a tiny, invisible tracking image within the content of the message. When the recipient opens the message, the tracking image is referenced. When they click a link, another tracking code is activated. In each case a separate tracking event is recorded by the system. These response events are collected every time in a database, authorized the e-mail marketing software to report metrics such as open-rate and click-through rates.
Read-receipts
Some e-mail applications, employ a read-receipt tracking mechanism. Email read receipts are feature of the messaging system and need to be requested by the message sender and confirmed by the message recipient. They are used to verify if an important message has been read.
However, it doesn’t mean you will get an email in return. Not all e-mail applications support the read receipt option, in addition your recipients are not forced to click the notification button . Many of them may consider this system inconvenient, invasive.
Private: Manage Spam Accusations
You worked hard to build your opt in, targeted, bulk email list. You request double confirmation at subscription. You have an easy unsubscribing method and still… you run the risk of spam accusation.
Why?
- There are people that subscribe to your newsletter and then quickly forget about it.
- There are people that subscribe their friends or …enemies for newsletters, without asking permission.
- There are people that, wishing to unsubscribe your newsletter, accidentally or not, hit ?This is SPAM? button.
- There are people that use your free content in spam emails, and people that won’t believe you don’t have anything to do with the spammer.
- If you don’t keep your list clean of bounces, your ISP server may get confused about your tactics.
Sometimes people are so bitter to catch the spammer that they go on carelessly accusing innocent persons.
What is there to do about it?
- Validate subscriptions after a double opt in request.
- Request confirmation from subscribers that they have read your privacy policy and agreed with it.
- Don’t lie about your identity, don’t lie about the subject of your message, don’t send unrequested email, honour unsubscription requests immediately.
- Keep your list clean of bounces.
- Get listed on ISP’s white lists.
- When you receive a spam accusation, do your own research to see what really happened.
- Don’t freak out. Can Spam Law is not meant to nail you, you can use it to prove your good faith.
- Ultimately, if there’s no way to prove you weren’t spamming, prove at least that you follow some basic rules:
- don’t lie in the ‘Subject’ field about the message’s topic;
- allow people to opt-out;
- don’t use return false addresses.
One important detail is that the 2003 Can Spam Law does not classify spamming as an illegal practice. You can send unsolicited bulk email as long as you observe the forementioned rules. Ultimately, think geographicaly: what is illegal in some states (or countries) is not outlawed by others.