Email marketing can be very effective as long as it is not viewed as spam. This is critical because when your email marketing is viewed as spam, it will not likely be read by the recipient and may not even reach the recipient if it is trapped by the Internet service providers spam filter.

For this reason it is critical for business owners to work hard to ensure the email marketing they use is not viewed as spam by either the recipient or the recipient’s Internet service provider. This article will take a look at email marketing and specifically how business owners can ensure their emails are not viewed as spam.

The distribution list for an email marketing campaign is one of the critical elements which can help to ensure the emails sent by the business owner are not viewed as spam. Before this can be accomplished it is important to understand exactly what spam is.

Spam is essentially email which is unsolicited and sent for the sole purpose of advertising or promoting a product or service. Internet users receive mass quantities of spam on a daily basis. For some Internet users this quantity of spam is a huge source of frustration.

Other Internet users have become so used to the amount of spam they receive that they barely even notice these emails. Neither of these scenarios bode well for business owners who are using email marketing campaigns to promote their products or services.

Internet users who are angered by these spam emails may react harshly and report your emails to their Internet service providers. Internet users who do not even notice spam are likely to either automatically delete your emails and may block your email address to prevent future emails from getting through to them.

Paying special attention to your email distribution list and only including recipients who had specifically asked for additional information will help to keep your emails from being viewed as spam.

One way to acquire email addresses for the purposes of orchestrating an email campaign is to ask interested customers to register with your website and specify whether or not they wish to receive future emails with additional information, advertisements or other useful tips.

This ensures the recipients of your emails are genuinely interested in your products and services and are not likely to view your emails as spam.

Another way to ensure your emails are not viewed as spam is to offer recipients the option of being removed from the distribution list with each email. This is important even when the recipients specifically asked to receive these emails because they are entitled to change their opinion at any time.

Offering the email recipients the opportunity to remove themselves from the email distribution list whenever they want is worthwhile because it allows recipients to have some control in the situation.

This is a stark contrast to spam in which the recipients feel as though they have no control over the situation and no way to stop the spam from bombarding their inboxes on a daily basis.

Finally, business owners can help to ensure their email marketing campaign is not viewed as spam by including quality content in the emails they send to the recipients on the email distribution list.

This may include providing feature articles, product reviews or a series of short useful tips which will likely be of interest to all who receive these emails. These emails may also include a soft sales pitch but this sales pitch should not be the focus of the emails.

Putting too much attention on the advertising is likely to lead the recipients to assume the email is nothing more than spam. Conversely, providing quality information which is useful to the recipient and subtly urging them to perform an action such as making a purchase or investigating the details of a product can make the email seem much more worthwhile and less like spam.

Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code.
He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses
at: http://www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com
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Email marketing can be an effective online marketing technique if you go about it correctly, and avoid all possibility of spamming. In fact, a recent study conducted by the DMA or Direct Marketing Association shows that in 2008 alone, the ROI of Emails amounted to $45.06 for every dollar spent. That’s a huge figure considering it is so easy to do.

However, you can only do this if you know how to get that email into the Inbox of your potential clients instead of getting it into their spam or junk folder. So, how can you achieve that and attain these high levels of income? Here are some of the things that can be done to improve the likelihood of your email marketing campaigns being as successful as possible.

1. Avoid Long Words
Avoid fancy titles and long words in your email. Many people often make such elementary errors such as using words like “breakthrough”, “phenomenon”, etc. Spam filters will immediately think your email is spam if you use such words. Unless you have really developed a product that is a true breakthrough, then steer clear of this type of language. Make your email simple, straight-forward and yet convincing.

2. Keep Clear of Cash
Avoid mentioning about cash in your email. Any excessive discussion about money will almost certainly result in the bulk of your mailing ending up in spam folder – and not many people bother to check their spam folder. However, this could be a problem if your topic is all about money, and in such cases you should figure out a way of presenting the topic discreetly, or of at least getting your email into the Inbox and opened. You know those “get rich” type of emails? Those are mostly sent to the spam folder, so make sure you avoid any word or phrase that could be construed in that way.

3. Mortgage Brokers have a Problem
If you are in the mortgage business you are going to have problems, because mortgage brokers have abused the email system so much in recent years that the word is synonymous with spamming. You may be a legitimate mortgage company but spam filters will frequently block mortgage pitches whether they are real or scam. If you want to use email marketing for your mortgage business, make sure you make your email subtle, such as subtly directing to people to your website for more information.

4. Don’t be too Urgent
Avoid the word “urgent” in your email. You’ve probably heard or read spam emails saying that “it’s urgent” and “don’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime”. However, most spam filters are set to trap that kind of language. Never use the word “urgent”, even if it relevant to what you have to say. Spam filters do not analyze your email for its meaning as search engine algorithms do, but simply look for certain words that have been pre-programmed into the software.

5. No Guarantees or Money Back
You should also avoid a few more phrases in email marketing, such as “money-back guarantee”, or the “check is in the mail“, because so many scam emails using the same phrases are being sent every day, and nobody will believe you anyway. Email marketing involves a high level of avoidance of certain words and phrases.

6. Offer Nothing Free!
Other terms to avoid include phrases such as “why pay more”, anything with Free” in it, and the dollar or pound sign is a definite no-no. Try to phrase your title, and the rest of your email, in such a way as not to focus on the financial benefits or gains, and not to use specifically emotive words or superlatives. Hence, the exclamation mark is a certain way to get your email directed to the spam folder.

7. KEEP UPPER CASE TO a Minimum
Email marketing is totally different from most other forms of marketing. Keep clear of hype and minimize upper case letters. You can Capitalize the First Letter of Each Main Word in your Subject Line where appropriate, but no more than that.

8. Use Opt-in Forms and First Names
In order to get your emails read, try using the first name of the person you are mailing. You can avoid being accused of spamming (but not the spam software) by using a double opt-in system with your opt-in forms if you are using them. By doing that you will also collect the first name of your prospects, and your autoresponder can then use that in the subject line. Using a person’s name is a powerful way of attracting their attention and getting your mail opened.

9. Avoid Images
Avoid images in your emails, because these can take an age to load, and after doing all the hard work and getting your email delivered and opened, you don’t want it closed again just as quickly. HTML images are frequently split into pieces to help them load quicker and if you don’t get your HTML right, a spam filter will often redirect your mail to where you don’t want it to go.

10 Offer Text
HTML might seem great to you, and look very attractive in your email system, using your browse and screen resolution. However, it can look completely different on somebody else’s computer, so never use HTML unless you also offer your mailing in an alternative text format. Many people, even some of the top online marketers, use only text, both in their own email marketing campaigns, and to receive mail.

If you apply these 10 tips, you will have a better chance of getting your email past the spam filters, and also having it opened. After that it is up to you, but you must grab the reader’s attention immediately they open your mail, and keep them reading. However, that is another topic.

Naz Daud is the founder of CityLocal.UK Business Franchises Business Franchise Opportunities
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Have you had problems getting any response from your email marketing campaign?

I have had some rather successful email marketing campaigns and I wanted to take a short minute to explain what I believe makes some email marketing campaigns more successful than others.

Email Marketing Tip #1

Use your own list! This sounds like a given, but to many new marketers out there, it is not.

Paid eMail Lists

There are many places where you can buy a email list of thousands if not millions of email addresses and these are not a good place to start.  You do not know how these email addresses were collected or if they are even real email addresses.  If you start with a list that is not your own, you have no idea if these email addresses are from buyers or sellers, or what they are looking for.

Most likely they will not know your email address and will not respond to an email from a suspicious email address that they do not know and are not familiar with.  When you are building your own list, the folks who register for your email marketing list will be able to set your email address as safe email so there spam filter does not block your message and this is something that you cannot control when you are using a paid or borrowed email marketing list.

If you start building your own email list you will know exactly what the people on your list are interested in because you know what they signed up for on your mailing list originally.  This knowledge can raise your response rates by almost 20%.  So make sure that you are “preaching to the choir” when you write your marketing email message to be sent.  If people signed up for information on web site traffic, make sure you put something in the title of your message about this, because you already “know” that they are interested in this.

Safelist Mailer

There are a whole new breed of “traffic exchange” type sites, that call themselves “Safe List” sites.  This means that they will let you send to a large list of email addresses that they have collected for free, in exchange you agree to receive the same emails from other members of the site.  To me this is nothing less than a bare bones traffic exchange with out the front end like most have.  You can get some results from these sites, but you must understand that these are not qualified leads at all, you will only be sending you message to other advertisers and this may not be the best method to getting some real results.

Start For Free

Building your own list is a must and we suggest that everybody start one today, if they don’t already have one.  If you are not sure how to do this, please contact me and I can help.  Don’t go out there and spend $20.00/month at getresponse or awebber there are many free solutions for email marketing these days and I suggest you start off with a free service to build your mailing list.

If you have a wordpress blog there is a great plugin to start building your list called “GTA AutoResponder” and I highly suggest using it as a free option to start building your own powerful email marketing list!

To Success,

Nick Simpson

Nick Simpson is a mentor and success coach to many, find him on youtube or visit his site directly for more free internet marketing tips and resources.

Webmaster Business Plan
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Viral email marketing is one of the most popular means of promoting your products or services. You can easily contact several thousands – or even millions – of individuals at one time and have them spreading your email message, promoting your business and generating income for you.

It is important that you understand the mechanics of viral email marketing to take advantage of its full potentials, and get the cash your business needs at a fraction of the usual time and effort.

What is Viral Email Marketing?

Viral marketing is one of the most efficient marketing tool innovated in the online industry. The term was coined after the idea of an information spreading quickly and effectively. In offline marketing industry, viral marketing is what is often referred to as “word-of-mouth” marketing strategy, which is considered by some marketing experts as the most effective type of marketing.

Viral email marketing is a branch of a variety of viral marketing tools and techniques that internet marketers can use these days. Although the benefits are quite appealing, there are certain techniques that online marketers need to follow closely in order to reap those benefits.

Since most people these days utilize their email to communicate on a daily basis, it is where viral email marketing is targeted. You can therefore appeal to every individual in your target market specifically, which when done correctly, have higher potential of generating sales.

If you were to recall the history of email marketing campaigns, it all started with Hotmail. They offered clients who availed of their service a free email account. For every online businessmen though, you can offer a variety of techniques to your prospects through their email that will enable you to utilize the power of this technology to spread the word about your marketing campaign.

Viral Email Marketing Techniques

The techniques you use in your viral email marketing campaign depends largely on your business goals. In most cases, the goals of an online marketer when sending out emails to the people in their mailing list is to inform them about a particular product or information. A subset to this goal is to compel them to forward the message or email to their friends in their email list, thus spreading the word about your line of products.

Why would your prospects forward the email they receive? The key here is to send them emails that are of some level of worth. If not, then it would probably take them a shorter amount of time to delete the email message than they would reading what the content of the mail is.

One effective way to increase readership is to carefully consider the information value or entertainment value you input in the content of your email message. Being informative does not necessarily mean your email message has to be dull. Learn how to infuse some creativity into it. With proper use of useful or amusing content, you will most likely compel people in your mailing list to read your emails and forward them to people who might benefit from them.

Prior to this stage though, you need to have had proper methods of building a large opt-in list. The methods you use must also be targeted, such that the people in your mailing list are most likely to respond to your viral email marketing campaign.

Subject Line of a Viral Email

Although this comes prior to the actual opening of your emails, this is incredibly important. The subject line is the first thing that a person sees whenever they open their inbox. There are only two options for them: to click on the mail you sent or not. Hence, it is important that you convince them to do the former. One technique is to keep your subject line interesting or provoke curiosity.

Using the “Open Me” or “Read Me” approach is fast becoming ineffective. Plus, it is a very lazy approach at convincing people to actually read the mail. Try to keep your subject line short but snappy for higher effectiveness.

Content of a Viral Email

You have three options in terms of how you build the content for your viral email marketing: sales letter, newsletter, or review format. Regardless of your choice of content format, you need to keep it brief yet ample in scope. Remember, people browsing the internet have short amount of patience and you need to feed them the information they need within the shortest time possible.

If you find that the message is too long but all parts are too relevant to omit, consider sending them in parts. This is also an effective way to rouse the reader’s interest.

Another way to convince them to click on the links you provided is by offering them a valuable and tangible object. It does not need to be a lucrative object but must be something of value or usefulness to them. This helps further an effective viral email marketing that produces real results.

Timing or Frequency in Sending Out Viral Emails

Here is another important component for an effective viral email marketing campaign. If you have set the schedule for the broadcast of your viral email messages using an autoresponder, make sure to limit the amount of emails you send the people in your mailing list.

Three times a week should be substantial to advance your viral email marketing, but there are always exceptions to the rule. The key is to be sensitive to the needs and desires of your audience, and to offer them the right amount of information at the right moments.

Overdoing it can result to annoyance on the part of your readers and cause them to opt-out of their subscription. Or worse, they could spread the word about their dissatisfaction, which could negatively affect your reputation.

After all, an effective viral email marketing campaign is built more around the powerful messages you send them, rather than the frequency of emails on their inbox.

Discover a breakthrough autoresponder to build multiple mailing lists, send follow up messages, and manage everything in house. Check it out at: http://www.memberspeed.com/Email_Marketing_AutoResponder_List_Manager/Software.html
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There are many benefits of spam checking your email marketing campaigns and if you are interested in being successful then you will not ignore these benefits. In fact, if you do ignore them it is quite possible that you will not have a very successful campaign because many of your emails will go undelivered because they will be marked as spam. That’s something many email marketers are unaware of and it is very important to know and understand. With spam being such a huge problem many ISPs are taking it upon themselves to reduce spam. As a result, they scan emails before delivering them for certain phrases, layout, and key terms. Those emails that meet any of the triggers will not be delivered because they will be marked as spam. Follow the tips outlined below to help create an email marketing campaign that will be successful and won’t be deemed as spam. 

Increase Deliverability of Emails
The biggest benefit of spam checkers is that they help you improve the chances of your emails being delivered. There are enough obstacles email marketers have to deal with when it comes to having their emails opened and read and adding the issue of ISPs blocking emails is somewhat frustrating. However, any savvy and smart email marketer will pay attention to what’s going on in the industry and have a spam checker evaluate all content before it is sent out. Emails, newsletters, and the like can all be “graded” to determine their level of spam. Content that passes can be sent out as is, however content that doesn’t will need to be changed enough so that it can meet the spam checker’s qualification of “no spam.

Improve Opinion of Products/Services
Another benefit of spam checkers is that they will help you improve the overall opinion of your products and services. The reason why is that when you use a spam checker you will have an idea of how your newsletter or marketing materials will be received. When your marketing materials pass as not being spam then this is the way the majority of your customers will respond to the marketing emails, too. Today, people are fed up with spam and anything that even closely resembles it will get deleted immediately if it isn’t blocked first by the ISP. So, follow the spam checker’s suggestions and send out a newsletter or other marketing email that is spam free!

Reduce Risks of Spamming
Spamming has many risks within itself and even if you don’t think you are spamming, your recipients might. This is a fine line and one that email marketers certainly have to walk along. What’s important is that when you use a spam checker to evaluate your content you will ensure that everything you send out is on the up and up. That’s really important and it will keep you out of trouble, which could include big fines and other problems!

Brought to you by Aaron Goldberg. Aaron is an advocate for Interspire, a provider of ecommerce shopping cart software, content management software, email marketing software, and other web software solutions.
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