Before we go through our preferred best methods of e-mail marketing, we first must make sure our e-mails will be opened by our potential customers. It is all about good manners. When you meet a new business associate for the first time, you give him or her a nice, firm handshake, make eye contact and introduce yourself. It is the same in an e-mail.

First you need an opt-in feature so you know the customer is genuinely interested.

This will ensure all of your leads are targeted because they have confirmed an interest in you when they signed up.

Second, we want to use indoor voices, no sudden ALL CAPITAL PARAGRAPHS WITH LOADS OF EXCLAMATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the equivalent of shouting at your customer.

Third, keep your e-mails short and sweet, more like bulletins so they are easy for the customer to read. Avoid spam words like ‘free’ and use a snappy subject line with the customer’s name in it so they know you are interested in them.

The following are great ways to successfully e-mail market in any field:

Affiliate Marketing – You have a business that lets you promote other people’s products and you are paid commission. It is great. As a facilitator, you basically let other people do the work and the slog and the hard sell for you, you just show the product, promote the brand and pick up the cash. There are a couple of great sites we can recommend but it depends on your particular niche as to what might be useful to you. Affiliates4u.com is a good forum to get started and to find out the best place to start.

Joint Ventures – Once you get to know your online niche a bit better, you can start to look at the market and see who you admire and who has ideas you want to steal. These are the people to approach with a joint venture. These people have something they can offer you, you have your product for them. Joint ventures come in many forms from simply sharing mail outs, recommending each other, promoting each other on Twitter, to building a joint product to cater to both your customers and then marketing it together through your client lists.

Solo Ads and Advertising – Internet advertising is the most effective way of advertising. Your niche group sees your message and the results are instant. Now, you can speak to your whole market directly by advertising according to what your customer is searching for. Everyone who sees the ad has an interest. So ads, are a top method of successful e-mail marketing, however, they are expensive and this makes them a more difficult option for smaller businesses.

Video Production – YouTube is expected to garner 50 percent of all Internet usage within five years. It already takes a massive chunk and its parent company, Google, lists YouTube videos highest in its search results. Some people believe page two of Google is a myth, because no one has ever searched past the first page. The higher your site listing on Google, the more traffic you get. You can get traffic by making promotional videos and posting them to your YouTube channel with a link to your website.

We love these methods because they are our tried and tested best methods and because they each help us to establish a connection with our customers, to show us as human beings in a company rather than machines on the Internet. The global marketing trade has massively changed over the past few years but every customer still likes to feel they can trust the person on the other end of the e-mail, just like a nice, firm handshake when you meet a new business contact.

Potential customers become actual customers once they get to know and trust you. A newsletter or a series of e-mails from you and a couple of good offers helps them to do just that. The key is to get them reading the newsletter. To convince them to open the e-mails, you need to give them something they want: A bonus!

A bonus is a great way of turning browsers into buyers. A bonus is a free mini product that says something about who you are and how you do business. A bonus shows that you put the customer first and that you aren’t out to steal their hard-earned money.

What Kind of Bonus Delivers All That?

The kind that is of high value to them and low cost to you. Often in the Internet marketing world, the best bonus is information-based. A great bonus offers either knowledge or time. A watch that cost $145 will sell for $25 two years later because a newer model has come out. Material products lose value quickly, but information becomes more precious because the more the customer understands it, the better they use it!

Some DOs and DON’Ts on Bonuses

When sending your bonus, make sure you avoid certain keywords that trigger spam alerts. That is why we say bonus or giveaway instead of free. Don’t put symbols in your e-mail repeatedly. They go straight to junk mail.

Use an auto responder that personalizes the e-mail so the customer’s name is in the subject heading and then repeated in the first line of the e-mail.

For example, the heading would read: “Joan, we have a bonus report for you!

The e-mail would then start: Hi Joan, thanks for signing up to our newsletter. Please find enclosed our bonus report on your chosen topic.”

So, what is a great bonus?

Solid information.

When sending your customer her first newsletter or e-mail course, give her free bonus of information. Examples are things like:

• A free five-page report on the topic signed up for
• A white paper on issues surrounding the topic
• A template for a sales pitch/website/mail out on the topic
• A half-hour business consultation within the topic
• Secrets and tip sheets on the topic

Notice all of the bonuses are based on the customer’s chosen topics.

This is what the customer wants. That is what the customer is interested in. That is not only how you help the customer, it is how he or she comes to trust you and, therefore, potentially to buy from you.

It’s got to be quick and compelling. It should be interesting and leave the person curious to know more about you.
If your subject line does its job, the reader “lets you in” so to speak and clicks on the subject line to read the rest of your e-mail.

Find Out Who’s Opening Your Emails on What Devices

The key question is, what devices are your recipients opening your e-mails on? Ask your ESP about e-mail client analysis to identify the percentage of your contacts who open your e-mails on Smartphones. Small screens mean short subject lines are more effective.

The best e-mail subject lines contain one or more of these elements:

1. Short subject lines

2. Controversial headlines

3. Numbers and counts

4. Actionable subject lines

5. Timely or urgent

Keep it short and simple. People only have so much time available and your e-mail isn’t their priority. Let people know what your e-mail is about upfront. Give them a benefit as to why they should open it. “The Truth About ___” subject lines are among the most successful.

Controversial “Four Foods NEVER to Eat” – I’ve heard that this is the most successful headline of all time for the fitness industry. Not sure who wrote it first, but Dan Kennedy reported that one of the most popular speakers on the 1990 prime’s ‘Success Tour’ was a guy who did an hour on: “The 10 Foods Never to Eat.”

People love to be told what not to do. You can use this in any industry. For example, if you’re an auto dealer, just change “foods” and “to eat” for, “cars” and “to buy.”

Other great headline examples:

• Exercise Tips To Ignore!
• 6 bits of exercise advice that will land you in the cemetery
• 4 bizarre ways patio furniture can kill you suddenly
• 6 things you probably don’t know about cat food

Be actionable. You can do this in your e-mail subject line – just be careful not to use those words that trigger spam. “Make your first scrapbook the easy way – this week,” “Fix your hair loss problem fast. Learn how…”

Ask questions. Sometimes, asking a question can prompt someone to open your e-mail. For example, you could say:

• How Can One Person Feed 1,000?
• How Do We Fill

1. Segmentation – you can deliver different messages to customers and readers tailored to their individual needs.

You can separate those who have bought from you onto one list, and those who are yet to buy onto another list. This is the most important segmentation.

You can further segment both your client list and your prospect list based on age, sex, location and income.

2. You can personalize every message – With e-mail you can write a message that addresses them by name in the title of the message, as a salutation, and several times in the body of the message.

3. Shelf life is longer than a tweet or Facebook ‘like’ – An e-mail remains in your customer’s inbox until they, either open or delete it (although most people will tend to open within the first 48 hours).

It is also simple for readers to forward your e-mail to everyone whom they think could benefit from reading it.

4. You don’t need to spend much – E-mail marketing is very inexpensive. You can host your e-mail list on your own computers or (a better option) use the services of a dedicated e-mail service such as aweber (which we use), GetResponse or others.

5. You control the design – All of the major services come with a variety of templates to get you started and, if you want to brand each e-mail with your own logo and company information, you can easily have a template customized for very little.

6. Statistics – with e-mail you are able to track click rates, open rates, bounces, subscribers, un-subscribes, social integration, activity on-site – you can view all of this and more.

You can even drill right down to an individual client and establish what they looked at so you know what messages and subjects they are interested in. This information used to take weeks and months to collect when posted mail was all that was available. Now you can have the same information in minutes.

7. E-mail is highly portable – your readers can view your e-mails on tablets, Smartphones or their desktop.

You can offer your subscribers the option to view a text-only version of the e-mail or full HTML designs.

8. You can build relationships inexpensively – you can send a welcome e-mail to new subscribers, wish them a happy birthday or give them a sneak peek of a new product or sale before you announce it publicly on the Internet.

Previously, sending such messages cost a lot of time and money in postage costs. Now it’s almost free.

9. Customer feedback - people will tell you things via e-mail that they won’t say in public or on the Internet, particularly if the issue is personal or price sensitive.

Using e-mail surveys or polls is an effective means of finding out what your customers and your prospects really think. Prospect surveys often reveal that your prospects haven’t bought from you because they didn’t understand your offer. You thought it was perfectly clear. They didn’t.

Now you have the opportunity to explain your offer again, in a new way …

We don’t like HTML e-mails because research has shown that a good number of people won’t open them. That defeats the whole purpose of sending an e-mail. Anything that cuts down the opening rate wastes your time and money.

However, once people do open your HTML e-mails, you have another chance to entertain, educate and entice them to buy from you.

So if you choose a few templates and test them, these are the questions you should ask:

1. Are Your Subscribers Opening Your E-mail?

Most e-mail marketing and newsletter providers include e-mail open rate tracking as part of the standard metrics package for your e-mail program.

Open rate numbers are not totally accurate due to the image pixel method of tracking e-mail opens (not all e-mail service providers load images automatically, so not all opens are automatically tracked).

If your e-mail is not being opened at a rate you feel is adequate, then you should examine the following elements of your e-mail template design:

Spam Content and Coding: Is your e-mail template well designed to get into your subscribers’ inboxes, or are you going to the spam or junk folder?

Before you assume that users don’t want to open your e-mail, be sure that they are actually receiving it.

Value of Your Content to Your Subscribers: Make sure your content is well written and the type of content your subscribers actually want, not what you think they want.

Quality of Your Database List: The quality of the names and addresses in your e-mail database may also be an issue. Make sure your list is up-to-date, fully opted-in, and optimally pruned and cleaned regularly.

Time and Date You Send E-mail: The day of week and the time of day that you send your e-mail can also impact how many subscribers open it. Knowing how to choose the best day to send e-mail can easily turn your e-mail campaign from good to great.

Open rate is the single most, important metric related to your e-mail marketing campaign. When dealing with your e-mail template design, you’ll want to keep the first two elements — content and coding — in mind as they relate to spam, deliverability and open-rate.

2. Are Your Subscribers Staying Subscribed?

Your e-mail template design and your e-mail program are successful if your subscribers neither unsubscribe from nor mark as spam your e-mail messages.

3. Are Subscribers Clicking from the E-mail to Your Landing Pages?

Similar to the idea that your e-mail is only successful if subscribers actually open it, your e-mail template design is ultimately only successful if users then click from the e-mail to your landing page.

If your e-mails are opened but no one is taking action from it, consider the following:

Are Links to Your Site Clear and Easy to Find? You might be surprised how many times people aren’t clicking through to your website simply because they don’t see or recognize your links.

While a slick design is nice, links that people recognize because they are blue and underlined can often be more effective. Worse, if your links in each e-mail are in the form of image-based buttons, users may never see them if their e-mail service provider does not load e-mail images.

Are There Enough Places in Your E-mail to Click? You may also simply not have enough places for a user to click from your e-mail to your site.

You don’t want too many links in your e-mail because it may make you appear to be spam to e-mail service providers. You also don’t want your subscribers to have to work too hard to find a link. You want them to be able to click through to your site as quickly as possible when they are inspired to do so.

Is Contact Information Clear? In case there is a problem with your site, make sure your company contact information is clear in your e-mail. Make sure you don’t lose any business by not making those options clear and visible in your e-mail template design.

4. Are Your Subscribers Buying the Offers You Promote?

What really matters the most to you is if users are buying the products or offers you promote.

If their response to offers or product promotions is not what you had hoped that it would be, consider the following:

Are Offers and Promotions Easy to Find? Are your offers and promotions above the fold or in an easy-to-see location in your e-mail? Do you reference them in the subject line?

Is your entire offer or promotion trapped in an image that many subscribers might not see? Make sure subscribers know where to look and can easily find the offers and promotions in your e-mails.

Is The Purchase Process Clear? Have you presented a great offer, but then the click-through to the landing page or to contact your company is hard to find?

Be sure subscribers can not only find your offers, they can also easily understand how to buy them. Your e-mail marketing is only successful if it increases customer loyalty, retention, activity, and revenue. You need to test different templates to find out which one is the best e-mail marketing template for you.

So, how do you get our potential customers to open the e-mail that tells them how your product or service can help improve their lives?

Offer a taste of it to them in the subject heading and prove it to them in the e-mail. It is really that simple. It really is that easy.

As long as you really do have a product or service that can help your customers, offering it to them using the right words to keep it clear and simple, with a catchy phrase guarantees they will take you up on your offer.

From that offer, you can establish a relationship and start to build some business if you include the three ingredients we listed below. The classic example of a perfect offer that is widely used in marketing circles (and spoken of in hushed terms): Dominoes Pizza offers to deliver your pizza in ’30 minutes or the pizza is free.’

Using this example, we can break down the perfect offer into three manageable bits:

1. Your credibility

The offer should reinforce your brand and encourage the potential customer to trust you enough to buy from you.

2. Something for nothing

The potential customer needs to feel like it is a good deal for them. They need to feel like they will be missing out if they don’t sign up and it needs to be easy for them to sign on the dotted line. You need to provide the metaphorical pen and paper to be ready as soon as they see the offer.

3. The soundbite

You need something that gets their attention – that makes them remember you over your competitors.

Let’s think about ‘Pizza delivered 30 minutes or Free’ as the perfect offer.

1. Credibility – Dominoes offers to deliver pizza in 30 minutes or less. The cost is low enough for the customer to take a chance and order, giving Dominoes a chance to make good on its claim.

2. Something for nothing - The customer is hungry and he is guaranteed to be fed in 30 minutes. If he has to wait longer, he gets a free pizza. Everyone loves something for free.

3. Soundbite – It is memorable, there’s a challenge or race against the clock and the word free is involved. Best of all, it is only six words long.

If your business has an offer, don’t sell it short, offer it. Simply check the three criteria above before sending it.

Offering customers a discounted isn’t really your best offer, however. It is cost cutting. Offering customers a benefit through a product also isn’t a great offer because they have to buy the product first. You might also be tempted to explain why your company is so great, what your USP is, why you can deliver better than the competition, but that is not your best offer either.

Your offer must be something the customer wants, something you can give to them and something it is easy for the customer to take. After that, they will trust you and maybe buy from you.

Don’t explain why you are the only one on the market that can really deliver hot, fresh pizza very quickly, that you deserve the business because you are an up-and-coming grassroots community project. Instead give them the offer: ‘Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free’