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I cannot, from hard experience, recommend email advertising
of any sort. It simply has not worked well for me, and I've
tried at least a dozen different ways. Here is what I found:
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1. Rented/bought email lists are
old.
At least half of the addresses will be bad for
one reason or another.
2. So-called "opt-in"
lists are 90% sellers!
They are not interested in
buying ANYTHING! I'm not sure why they put their names on that
list to begin with. They will simply email you with THEIR sales
message. What a waste of time!
3. Even if you think you will get
targeted potential customers, don't let some company do the
emailing for you. You'll never know for sure if they
mailed out anything at all! Or they may mail out a few only.
You'll never know!
4. Whatever you do, DO NOT USE one
of those email harvesting software programs.
I did
that once and I heard from all kinds of people who had no
interest at all in my product. I got a lot of "why did you
write to me?" and "please take me off your list"
letters. Also, there is a new product that will capture the
email of any person who visits your site. This is very sneaky,
and will not be appreciated by your site visitors.
5. Let's say you somehow send out
your email message to 1,000,000 email addresses.
By
the way, with a reputable dealer, you can figure on paying at
least $500-$2500 for a "targeted" list this large.With
even a clean list, you can figure on 250,000 bad addresses or
"bounce-backs".
Now we are left with 750,000. Out of that, you will be very
lucky indeed if 7500 read your email headline. Why only 1%? Many
Internet users use industrial-strength email filtering programs.
I've seen filtering programs with hundreds of
"marketing" words.
Now out of that 7500 who actually read your headline, perhaps
2500 would open the email and read the first few sentences. And
out of that, you might get 250 persons that finish your first
paragraph. About 125 will be interested enough to read your
sales message through to the end. And out of that, you might
have 12 or so click through to your site. You might get two
sales out of it. Was that worth even $500? I don't think so.
So what are viable alternatives? There are three ways you can
go that will build you a decent mailing list. These suggestions
work for me, and should work for you too:
1. Build your own email list.
This
is easily done by publishing an ezine. Your first step here is
to submit a announcement message to appropriate newsgroups,
message boards, and bulletin boards. This annoucement should
describe what types of articles you will publish, how often, how
the ezine will be run, and when the first issue will be sent
out. When you get a positive reply, be sure to ask if it is OK
to add the person to your subscriber list. Within a month, you
should have about 125 interested subscribers.
2. You should also write ezine
articles and then submit them to ezine article archives
like ezine-z.com. The beauty of this is that once your article
is accepted, it goes to the email box of everyone on the archive
mailing list. Granted, at least half of these are other sellers
like yourself. On the other hand, ezine owners are on the list
too, hoping to find quality articles for their newsletter. If
they are interested in your article, they will email you. This
is MUCH easier than buying a "tired" email list with
disinterested prospects. And MUCH BETTER than harvesting email
addresses and then sending your sales letter to VERY
disinterested recipients.
3. And finally, when you have at
least ten good useful articles written and published, put them
all in an ebook
and offer them for download on your
site! This makes it very convenient for your interested customer
and puts him in a nice buying mood. Chances are good that he
will click back to your site and buy one of your products!
One last thing. Writing ezine articles and publishing your
own ezine takes time and effort. Results for your efforts won't
come overnight. I know, since I have to tell myself to "be
patient" nearly every day! Best of luck with your
promotional campaign!
About the Author:
John Soares has
written numerous articles on web site selling and promotion.
Read his "Opt-In Email Advertising Will Get You Marginal
Results At Best!" at http://www.persuasive-web-writing-means-higher-web-sales.com/?powerhomebiz.html
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