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.

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

Bounce

A high bounce rate can have a negative impact on your delivery rate. If your IP address is associated with too many ?unknown user? bounces at a particular ISP, you risk being blacklisted or blocked by that ISP. So, keeping your list clean of unknown users is an important step to your e-mail delivery success.

It seem to be impossible to eliminate bounces, but it is important to reduce their number. In this context, the following activities will help you to manage and reduce bounces.

• Use a Confirm Email Addresses. Send an auto-reply confirmation when a user subscribes, registers or makes a purchase. If that message bounces, you can attempt to correct it right from the start.
• Include a Subscription/Account Management Links in Your Emails: Make easy for your clients and subscribers to update their e-mail addresses by including a link in your e-mails to your Web site account/subscription management page.
• Use an email software to identify the cause of the bounceback. That way you’ll know who to remove and who to contact for further information.
• Use a bulk email server that tries to deliver the bouncing messages more than once.
• Use the Mail or Phone to Update Information: If you have the postal addresses or phone numbers for customers/subscribers with bad email addresses, contact them via mail or telephone.
• Remove the addresses that repeatedly prove bad.

Duplicates

It is unprofessional to email your customer multiple copies of the same message. Even though many duplicate addresses are the result of double entries by your customers, these people often become so irritated by receiving multiple messages that they unsubscribe from your list altogether.So, it’s very important to remove duplicates from your email list. To delete duplicates, sort your database. If the same e-mail address appears for different names, delete them automatically using your email software functions.

Unsubscribes

If your customers subscribed themselves to your email list, they should be able to go out without big efforts. In this context you need to make it easy to unsubscribe. You can do this using an email software that, when receiving an unsubscribing option, operates it automatically. The best way to send confirmation is via email. You can include there a short inquiry form (not required) about the reasons of the unsubscription. It’s important to have unsubscribing requests before you send out your next newsletter.

• advertise new products and services to existing customers
• promote brand knowledge and keep your company top-of-mind
• engage potential sales leads that sign up
• get suggestions and feedback about potential new offerings
• distribute updates on the latest events at your organization
• invite people to upcoming events.

Newsletter Software features include:

• Full graphical HTML editor for graphical emails.
• Text alternative for recipients with HTML turned off.
• Full tracking facility to record respondents that:
  • Open the email
  • Click through to a website
  • Click on different links
• The ability to create new lists depending upon what link a recipient clicked on.
• Double opt-in to meet best practice and full legal compliance.
• Number of different templates.
• Full campaign personalization and segmentation.
• Automated subscribe and unsubscribe management.
• Full bounce-back management.
• Ability to port data from other sources to build email list.

Send HTML and Plain Text E-Mail Simultaneously

In our days, this two-faced plain text/HTML trick is the standard used in most newer e-mail programs. The e-mail message includes both plain text for old programs and HTML for the newer programs. Of course, the message is more than twice as long as a result, but both recipients can read the message.

Do not abuse your customer

Too frequent emails is not a good strategy, it’s better to limit yourself to regular high quality unique content emails (once a month). In this way, your customers will expect your email newsletter (decreasing the chances you’ll get marked as spam) and if you’re doing a good job even look foreword to it. Give them a new content every time, don’t just change  some words around and expect them to be interested.

Don’t Look Like a Spammer

Be careful with what you write in the To:, From:, and Subject: fields. A big mistake is to hide or change your identity in the From: field. That could confuse your subscribers, believing that they are spammed. The Subject: field should  be correctly spelled, there you have to remind the user who you are.

Be attentive with the personalization 

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Autoresponder is an utility that automatically replies to e-mail messages with a pre-written response when that e-mail comes into a specific e-mail address. The Autoresponders can be used by individual persons and also by Web sites that need to respond to user e-mails automatically. An individual may use an autoresponder  to inform the sender that he is out of the office and will reply in one week; an enterprise may use an autoresponder in response to a newsletter subscription request  or subscription cancellation, to thank for posting a comment, voting.

How to Use Autoresponders

• Autoresponders can be used at your technical support email address to tell to your customer that you have received their message and will get back to them soon. These messages are very important because it assures your customers that their support request arrived at the destination.
• Autoresponders can be used to send forthcoming customers information like the price list of your products, your FAQ and other fixed information. People emailing that address will automatically receive that message in reply.
• Offering multi-part courses is one of several methods to attract visitors to your site. The autoresponder sends 2-3 chapters from the course or book to the customers, after that the message asks the customer to sign up for the rest of the paid course or book if they wish to continue. If the course is good, the autoresponder segments can be considered as an effective advertising of the product.
• For an online business to survive, it’s important for the owner to build an email list of the people who have readily given their names, expecting that they will be advised about things they are interested in. You can built this Opt- in-Mail list in several ways. So having an opt-in email list started you can follow up with them about your product offerings.
• Studied have shown that you need to present your product many times, before a potential customer decide to make a sale. Usually the people are not interested simply to ask for more information about your product, so you have to offer some incentives, like a free gift or service. Whatever the method, you have to get the potential customer into your autoresponder message sequence, then, in those messages, send your customer to your web site to make the sale.

The Autoresponder in a Bulk Email Marketing Campaign

An email software can use an autoresponder to allow users to get more information on a certain product, that you don’t want to detail in the newsletter body. The little secret about autoresponders is that you should let your subscribers understand that they receive an automatic generated message.  A phrase like please do not reply to this message will help to do this.

The autoresponders should be friendly and personalized messages. You know, how the people like to see and hear your their names. But don’t exaggerate use the name sparingly in your emails. Make it naturally by placing it in sentences that are more personal in nature.

Bulk Email Lists for Rent

The email list rental is a recognized and accepted practice in email marketing. Owners of address lists will send an email to their list on your behalf. In this case, the owner send the emails, so you never will see the list. The prices are among $20 and $40 per thousand unique email receivers. You pay the list owners per every emailing campaign. The list owners will not reveal the recipients to you.

But if you want to buy this list you can to talk directly to the list manager that works for the list owner. The problem is that the manager can try to sell you a bad list. Choosing an email list manager take into consideration his reputation, experience. Your list manager should be experienced in the email space. Five years’ email experience is a minimum. Be sure that your list meets all requirements before your data card hits the market.

If you want a targeted list, you should speak with a list broker. He will intermediate the transaction. The advantages are that:

• The broker knows more the list owners.
• The broker knows more about the list owners.
• The broker defend your interests.
• The broker is paid by the list owners.
• Choosing an email list manager.

Your email list broker have to be an experienced multi-channel list broker because the most productive marketing programs combine email, direct mail and telemarketing. Only an email list broker who knows the space inside and outside by arranging rentals every day can give you the guarantee to avoid low-quality lists and compliance violations.

Opt-in email lists

You can always buy or rent email lists, but this isn’t always the best strategy. Opt-in email lists (people who ask you to send them information) are the safest, the most effective, way for marketing purposes, and you have a guaranteed target audience.

Tricks to Build an Opt-in List

• Offer something in return. People don’t like to give their e-mail addresses. But if you offer them something in return (an informative newsletter, a free e-book, a free software) they will give you their email address easier.
• Make subscription easy for them. Be sure to have a link on each and every web page on your web site, offering visitors the chance to subscribe. Place your subscription box in the left top side of a web site. This is the area that a visitor looks at first.
• Don’t ask for too much information. Simply ask for their e-mail address, and nothing more, and you’ll see more subscribers.
• Give them a gift. This free gift could be a free e-book, a special screen saver, or information that they can use.
• Assure their privacy. One way to overpass the hesitation to give out information is to place a notice near your subscription fields “private”.
• Give more choices. Offer visitors different options: some maybe want to subscribe to a newsletter, others want to read your special articles, while others only want to hear about special product updates.

“Opt-In” Direct Email is the practice to send commercial email to recipients that have approved of commercial email. If you really want to try bulk email marketing but do not want to send unsolicited bulk email, consult a company that specializes in direct email.

These opt-in lists are targeted email lists which offer marketers a “politically correct” way to reach their target audience on the net. Not only will your offer be sent to a targeted list, you won’t have to worry about flames and ISP cancellation.

Although this targeted direct email marketing is more costly than unsolicited bulk email, it is considered to be more effective. It is quickly becoming one of the most powerful Internet marketing methods available.

Sending “Opt-in” Bulk Email

The term “Opt-in” means that the recipients have signed up to receive emails voluntarily, and implies that the Bulk Email is not Spam. This restriction does not allow when sending mail to Client’s mailboxes hosted on the Service Provider Network. Service Provider has measures  to prevent Bulk Email from being sent out from its servers, and any attempt to send such Bulk Email will be prevented and may result in interruption and/or termination of Client’s Email Services. Attempts to circumvent this Bulk Email restriction by breaking up bulk mailings over a period of time or by sending from multiple email accounts will itself be considered a violation of this policy.
Moreover, the Service Provider Network is not set up to process bounce messages for Bulk Email. Therefore, Client may not send Bulk Email from third-party networks using a return address that is hosted on the Service Provider Network, unless Client takes extreme care to prevent more than 100 bounce emails from arriving to the Service Provider Network as the result of sending Bulk Email from a third-party network.

Principles of Opt In Bulk Email

• People in your email list have agreed in a way to receive your newsletter.
• Your subscribers must be able to unsubscribe any time they want.
• Your subscribers need to be reminded how they got on your list.
• The email addresses and personal data of your subscribers are confidential.