Email Marketing

What Email Marketing Can Do For You

What Email Marketing Can Do For You

Which type of company are you?

Some companies play a percentage game, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail to hundreds and thousands of addresses with the hope of getting a “sale”, not with the hope of getting repeat business.  They aren’t looking for a long time business relationship with their customers; they just want to sell in quantity – but not our customers!

Some companies mail  solicited e-mail on occasion, without understanding the realationship or value an email list should have with their business.

Some companies send solicited e-mail to keep an ongoing business relationship with their customers so that their customers remember them and recommend them when it comes time to buy their product or service. These companies know what an email marketing list can do for their business.

What can an email marketing mailing list do for you?

Email communication is an excellent tool to use to distribute important information to your web site guests and clients.

Publishing a newsletter (e-zine); –

* 1. Establishes trust between you and your clients. Publishing a newsletter helps you establish you as a reputable internet business and over time inspire trust.
* 2. Brings web visitors back – when someone signs up for your newsletter, the mailing itself will serve as a reminder to them to revisit your site again and again, eventually turning your newsletter subscribers into paying customers.
* 3. Establishes YOU as an EXPERT.  By publishing a newsletter and writing your own articles (or talking about one of your products or giving helpful hits) subscribers will come to see you as an expert in your own field.
* 4. Builds Brand Loyalty. The familiarity they feel from reading your newsletter will reinforce brand loyalty to your site, turning many of your current subscribers who are prospects into future customers.
* 5. Keeps current and potential customers Up-To-Date- on new products and services. Web sites change but your newsletter allows you to share this important information with your current and potential customers, and bring them back for a new sale. Nothing is worse than having a client tell you he went to one of your competitors because he didn’t know you offered that same service or product.
* 6. Builds relationships- and allows you to build an opted-in email marketing list. Relationship marketing is important on the Web and publishing your own newsletter will help you do just that. The truth is most people would rather spend money with someone they like and trust rather than spend money with someone they don’t know.
* 7. Keeps your web site fresh in the visitor’s minds. This technique of “reminding” someone about your site is important; it really helps to keep a constant flow of traffic returning to your web site.
* 8. Allows you to measure your marketing success. Most companies find the need to advertise in the yellow pages and other places, in addition to having a company Web Site. You may have found most types of traditional advertising is difficult to measure – did you ever wonder how effective your adverting really is? With email marketing, however, there are specific reports and information available to you that can easily measure your marketing efforts.

Success of e-mail campaigns can be measured using the number of emails sent and seeing the number of emails opened, email bounces, unsubscribes and click throughs.  You can tell who opened your email, which links in your email motivate the most clicks, who forward your e-mail to someone else and hundreds of other reports produced as needed.  All this useful information can be used to send highly targeted campaigns to individuals most likely to respond to your offers.

How can this help you?

With email marketing your business has an opportunity to reach out to customers and prospects, increasing customer retention in ways that were not possible a few short years ago. Whether you do it yourself or use Dundee Internet Services, Inc, www.mailinglistservices.com,  e-mail should be a big part of your customer relationships efforts.

The possibilities are endless

Dundee Internet Services, Inc – Opportunities Delivered from one to millions

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Worse Email Practices for List Management

Worse Email Practices for List Management

In the real world an email address is worth money to someone, if not to spammers then to marketers, and certainly to the list owner who keeps track of their subscriber’s demographics for targeted email campaigns.   Because of their value, email addresses maybe resold several times.

Selling email addresses is big business, and you’ll notice most of the email addresses for sale are touted as being opted-in.  However, when mailed to, you may find a good number of these purchased opted-in lists contain a large number of undeliverable addresses.  Without actually having control of your own email list collection procedure, which should include a confirmation process, purchased addresses could be harvested from web sites or gleaned out of mail servers.  They could be computer generated, or have spam traps waiting.  AND besides being unreliable, unverified and untargeted, the good addresses among the bad are probably filled with addresses that have been heavily marketed to, turning your response rate to zip.

Purchased lists can get you in trouble; they can blacklist your server or get you ousted from your ESP.  They can turn you into a spammer. And you rarely have any way to find out where these purchased addresses came from or how they were acquired.

Using a purchased list is one of the worse mistakes marketers can make.  However renting a list is usually not, but there are issues using rented lists too.  List rental is an acknowledged practice in email marketing. For a fee, legitimate owners of rental addresses send an email to their list on your behalf.  They have all the stats and handle all the list mechanics.  You do not see the addresses on the list the rental list owner is sending to and you pay for each name used.  Do you get a guaranteed delivery rate?   Is the list current and are the addresses pertinent to your message?  There are so many more questions to think about.  To keep list rental issues in check, use a recognized list broker to contract a reliable list rental company.

Dundee Internet Services is not a list broker; we are an ESP, an email list hosting provider.  Using our years of list hosting experience while working with hundreds and hundreds of list owners, we complied this short list of what not to do when email marketing – Bad Email List Practices for Poor Results

* USE purchased email lists.  There no guarantee how the names were really obtained or if they are really have been confirmed; and you certainly don’t have permission to mail to the address.
* MAIL to your list from a different domain or company name without explanation.  (When you merge with another company or buy another company, do not email to your list from the new company address and assume all the recipients know who you are.   And do not mail to the new company list from your old address and make the same assumption.  Make a smooth transition from the old to the new by having the original owner email an explanation about the changes because of the merger or purchase.)
* DO NOT use sanity checks on your web site sign up addresses.   (Check to ensure the submitted address is technically correct and is a valid email address.  Do not assume that people will put in the correct address:  alice@enter.aol)
* DO NOT confirm addresses  ( Use closed loop confirmations or confirmed opted-ins.  When someone joins your list, confirm their email address to make sure it’s correct and they signed up for something they want.)
* DO NOT have a privacy policy or stick to the one you have.
* ASSUME you have permission from everyone to put them on all the lists you own, not just the one they opted-in too.
* DO NOT removed bad or opted out addresses in a timely manner.
* DO NOT track opens or click-throughs or use any type of user feedback.  (When you use tracking and feedback you will know when your mailings aren’t getting the expected response in a certain amount of time: the addresses may not be cost effective to keep the addresses on your list.)
* LIE to your ESP about list origins.
* USE SPAM-like or misleading subjects.
* USE SPAMMY content to trigger anti-spam filters.
* DO NOT act on complaints
* DO NOT comply with the Cann Spam Act or other laws.
* DO NOT collect demographics to use for target mailing.
* JUMP from ESP to ESP

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How to Bring in More Sales Using E-mail Marketing

How to Bring in More Sales Using E-mail Marketing

How to Bring In More Sales  From Your Customer Database  With Permission-Based Email Marketing Campaigns

Everyone knows it is always easier to sell to your existing customers than to your potential customers. However, existing customer relationships may not automatically translate into increased sales without effective regular communications, i.e. constant contact, between you and your customers. Dundee Internet Services knows how to build ongoing relationships with your customers that will help you pull in the orders.   Here’s how:

  1. Use the most effective customizable and analytical program available.
  2.  Apply ethical and sound marketing principles to ensure the greatest success of your email marketing campaigns.
  3.  Connect with your customers to make them feel valued.
  4. Always ask for an email address and permission to send them email.
  5.  Publish your privacy policy to assure your customers that you are not selling their data to third parties.
  6.  Respond to their questions and inquiries–acknowledge each person’s importance to you.
  7.  Follow up with more information.
  8.  Grab their interest with rich, high quality content.

Newsletters: Build trust and credibility with newsletters that are professionally written and formatted in a consistent, recognizable style.
Promotional specials and coupons: Designed to maximize the impact of your newsletter sales messages.

Landing pages: Designed and managed to complete more sales.
Learn more about what’s important to your customers. Knowing details about your customer will give your customized sales messages greater Impact. We can create offers specific to your customer, based on their buying history and profiles.

Methods to gather these details include:

  1. Create a member profile page for your customers so they can continually provide useful information about themselves.
  2.  Use survey’s to understand their buying decisions.
  3.  Use mail merge to customized one-on-one marketing.
  4.  Pay immediate attention to your customers’ needs.

Automated mailings can be triggered by specific user actions, so your customers can receive personalized messages when:

  1. They subscribe to your mailing list
  2. They purchase a product
  3. They abandon a shopping cart: What happened? Can we offer you something to complete the order?
  4.  They click on a link within your newsletter
  5.  Is it is time for a re-purchase reminder (with or without a coupon incentive)

AND what about testing, tracking and timing? Dundee Internet Services, Inc uses the most effective customizable and analytical programs available, applying sound marketing principles to ensure the greatest success of your full scale email sales and marketing campaign.

  1. How effective are your sales messages? We can find out … then fine tune!
  2.  How many people are opening your messages?
  3.  How many people click on the offers?
  4.  How many people forward your messages to a friend?
  5.  Which offers resulted in a purchase?
  6.  What time of day/day of the week results in the most sales?
  7.  A/B testing: does Offer ‘A’ or Offer ‘B’ perform better?

Enlist Dundee Internet Services to handle it all!  Results delivered from one to millions!
Ready to Get Started? Call us today (Toll Free 888-222-8485) or email info@dundee.net

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