Monday, November 1, 2010

Newsletter Marketing and the Importance of Not Being a Spammer - Explained for Newbies

What is Newsletter marketing? It is a form of opt-in e-mail marketing, where each recipient of the newsletter has consented to receive it, usually by adding their email address to a list.

Newsletter marketing is one of the best know and most used e-commerce tools. It costs almost nothing to send an email, and once set up requires almost no labor. The effectiveness of online newsletter campaigns can be

easily measured and tracked to the real business value that every campaign delivers, and progressively optimised. Put that altogether and you have a fabulous marketing tool.

Indeed, life was perfect in newsletter marketing until the scourge of spamming came along.

SPAM/UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is something that everyone, whether savvy online or not, has heard of. The word SPAM was coined during the second world war as a nickname for the questionable quality of the

imported canned meat of the day. The term was used in a comedy during the United Kingdom's Monty python TV series in the 1970s when it became synonymous with boredom and repetition.

The cast of the series were seen on numerous occasions during the series wearing silly clothes and chanting the word repeatedly, until the scene faded and another sketch began. Much later, someone used the word in

connection with unwanted emails, and the term has stuck ever since.

Spam is certainly hated by all email users, but the chief difference in email marketing is that it should be based on the permission of the recipient. Permission-based marketing is generally defined as the ability of a person to

determine what they are included in or what they receive, and more importantly, their ability to opt-out at their own discretion.

Unrequested emails continue to plague of the Internet, and spamming is now illegal in many nations. As a defense, the software industry has created spam filters but they are make it hard now even to get solicited newsletter

emails through.

To help get over this you can use an email newsletter service provider. They provide an email authentication service which is the first big step to preserving email as we know it today. They look after the spam filters for you as

well as giving useful information about what you can do with your newsletters to get them through better.

Email marketing strives to reach as many people as possible with a great message, but an informal and not a terribly slick or packaged one. The essence of a good newsletter is really in the quality of the content and the

ability related sales copy each one contains to sell, without alienating your readers.

In short - to make your newsletters earn you money, you have to show the people on your "list" why they can't do without whatever it is that you are selling.

Of course, before you can gain the opportunity to send your email out to people you have to create a list of subscribers who have consented to accept your mailings. The trick is to get people to subscribe when they are

conducting their product research, and this has generated a whole army of so called "list building gurus". Each of them is selling an ebook, or a course with an intensity of sales copyrighting skills you will seldom find equaled

anywhere!

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