Basic Rules of Email Marketing

If you are receiving this course, you are probably interested in learning how to earn income from marketing your products or services online. And you may have heard that one of the most important tools for generating interest, creating brand identity, and increasing your sales is through email marketing.
What you have heard is true. After all, very few people buy from a web site the first time they visit it (unless you have an extraordinary product, price, and a highly convincing web site). But even with all of those, most people visit your site first to “check you out”, and see what you have to offer. So your web site should be designed not only for sales, but to get email addresses.
Once you have a list (we’ll discuss this in more detail in lesson number two), then you will want to use emails to continue to create interest, and bring them back to your site.
This is the whole principle that email marketing pivots upon: create an email list, keep expanding it, and use it to bring customers back to your web site, where you convince them that your product, your service, and your value are outstanding. Your web site is where you will make the sale; the email is what will bring customers there.
But email marketing must be done correctly for it to work well, and there are some basic rules governing it. If done incorrectly, or if you ignore the basic rules of email marketing (at your own peril!), then you can actually drive others away from your list, and the “unsubscribe” button will be clicked on all too often. To avoid this, follow these basic rules, and you’ll see your lists expand, and have happier clients.
Email Rule Number One: Never, Ever, Ever, SPAM
If you believe that SPAM is a nice, aggressive marketing technique, then you are ignoring important studies about online marketing behavior. Simply put, SPAM (unsolicited email) is a waste of time and valuable marketing dollars, and creates a negative perception of your business.
You should be aware that SPAM is also illegal in over 18 states (as in if you are caught in California and Washington, to name two, they can bar you from your server and fine you large amounts). In addition, legislation is before Congress to create federal anti-spam legislation. And if you get added to a SPAM “blacklist”, your email address will be automatically filtered from major ISP servers, and your mails will never get delivered. Plus your ISP will terminate your service…you get the drift.
But most importantly for the marketer, SPAM doesn’t accomplish what you want: target interested consumers. Response rates to your emails are much, much higher if you are sending emails to people who have indicated that they want to receive your information.

Autoresponder Features To Look For

There are important features to look for when choosing your autoresponder program or service. These include:
Allowed length: be sure to check whether the service limits how long sales letters can be.
Response time: how long do customers wait for an answer when they visit your site for information? They should be receiving an email from your service immediately.
Options: you should be able to choose between HTML and plain-text versions of emails, and subscribers should be able to "opt-out" or unsubscribe if they don't want to receive further emails.
Daily Reports: since your autoresponder emails are part of your marketing program, you'll want to know how successful it is (and which ones are working!) by being able to view stats on subscribers, unsubscribe requests and other information. This information will help you target your marketing efforts, and drop or change the emails that don't generate a good response rate.
Flexibility: make sure that you can change or personalize your emails, free of charge. You will want the option of making changes to emails, since most marketers like to "tweak" their copy from time to time.

Making Autoresponders Part of Your Marketing plan

Autoresponder emails can be an integral part of any business CRM (Customer Relationship Management plan) notes Smith: "Smart businesses today are using emails, because of the push to downsize, with less manpower to accomplish things. Autoresponders let you contact your customers, but without paying for human manpower, and can literally add fuel to a good web site in gathering sales."
Temple agrees that autoresponders are an important part of online marketing, but adds that they don't replace other methods. "They're an addition, not really a replacement. Each sale does generally require a "human touch," however there are some times that the autoresponders will close a deal by itself. They are our "automated follow-up" mechanism, and do that extremely well."
Temple shares how he uses email autoresponders in his personal marketing approach:
1) Drive qualified hits to the site.2) Convince a prospective customer to sign up for a free trial account.3) Send out auto-responder messages frequently.4) Personal follow up by telephone / email as soon as reasonably possible.
Email autoresponders are an integral part of the follow-up process in this marketing plan.
Jerry Powell of Ready-Set Internet believes that autoresponders are a useful tool when used correctly as part of a balanced marketing plan. He does advise caution when first learning to use them, though: "I bring in new customers with other marketing methods and use the autoresponder to get the info to them quickly. You do need to make sure that you set up your autoresponder to prevent inadvertently Spamming people. IT HAPPENS! Sometimes autoresonders can hurt you too, so you need to be careful when using them. "
At the same time, Powell sees the value of autoresponders, and uses them because they support his marketing efforts online. "Autoresponders are a tool that automates follow-up with your customers," he states. "In fact, I believe that autoresponders are one of the top three tools needed to run an effective campaign. They are also one of the top tools you need for customer service support."