Commercial e-mail returned a whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the DMA’s just-released Power of Direct economic-impact study—an effort the trade organization publishes every year at its annual fall conference.

For comparison’s sake, the second highest marketing ROI came from Internet search advertising, which returned a healthy $21.85 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the study, done by financial-analysis-and-forecasting firm Global Insight on behalf of the DMA.

Meanwhile, non-catalog direct mail returned $15.22 for every dollar spent in 2009 while catalogs returned $7.32, according to the study.

Your optimal send time depends on a lot of factors, such as your industry, segmentation, subscribers’ preferences, and the nature of your message. Testing is a must, so here are four test ideas that have helped other marketers find better send times based on a variety of factors.

Read this article in http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31615

When designing HTML email campaigns with images it’s imperative to test your emails in different email clients, such as Apple Mail, Entourage, Eudora, Thunderbird, and online email services, such as Yahoo!, Google Mail and Hotmail, to make sure they look good with images turned off.

Sending and email composed of just images may lower the deliverability of your campaigns. Some ISPs still employ email spam filters which flag any emails with high image-to-text ratios. So talk to your designers to make sure they design your email campaigns in such a way that the message still gets across, even if the images are not displayed.

More info about this article in http://www.yourezinecoach.com

Because the primary purpose of your newsletter is to establish your credibility, expertise and to create that relationship – we keep returning to this relationship thing all the time, don’t we? Do not think of your ezine primarily as an advertisement for your services or products.

In your ezine, you must provide useful content to your subscribers.

By all means, promote your products and services in your ezine, but do not make it the most prominent part of the newsletter. Here it should be in the background, and shouldn’t take up more than about a quarter of the space.

For example, at the bottom of the newsletter you can have a section titled “About Me”, and here you can provide a brief summary of your business, and also mention that you are the author of such-and-such book, or creator of a product. Provide a link to your site where there’s more information.

Now, the most money you’re going to make is through so-called promo-emails, or some people call them solo mailings. While your ezine may have several articles, reviews, comments, recommendations, etc., in a promo email you will concentrate on promoting just one particular thing: it could be a new product you developed, a new type of service that you offer, or something like that.

Typically, your promo emails will be much shorter than your regular ezine. In case you’re sending your ezine in HTML format you may want to experiment and send the promo emails as plain text. Be sure to split-test this.

BTW, for those who are not familiar with the term, split-testing is when you send one version of your email to a subset of your list and another, different version, to a different group of the same size. You compare the results, and from then on use the format witch produced the highest response.

These promotional emails will usually have response rates that are several times higher than a response from your ezine.

More info about this article in http://www.yourezinecoach.com

Once upon a time, Internet users condemned unsolicited commercial email, or spam, because it violated a code of behavior known as “Netiquette.” That word is rarely used today, in part because of the rapid growth and commercialization of the Internet. But just because the Net has become commercial doesn’t mean spam is all right. Here are ten compelling reasons why businesspeople should not spam:

1. You’ll get flamed
   Some businesspeople have pretty thick skins and don’t mind the occasional insult. But for most of us it can be pretty unnerving to receive a torrent of abuse, which can range from vicious profanity to death threats.
2. Technological retaliation
   The Internet is home to some pretty sophisticated people, who know how to shut down your mail server, your Web site, or maybe even your ISP. Also, they can play havoc with your phone service, toll-free lines and fax machine.
3. Loss of Internet services
   It’s almost certain that spamming is against the policies of your ISP. If your ISP finds out you’re spamming, chances are they’ll terminate your Internet access and remove your Web site. This may be the case even if you didn’t send your spam via their system.
4. It’s unethical
   Every other advertising method pays its freight. Direct mail, radio and TV advertising, magazine and newspaper advertising, telemarketing, Web advertising, opt-in email – - in every case, the advertiser pays the cost of distributing the message. But spammers attempt to take a free ride at someone else’s expense — including the recipient, who has to pay for Internet access. When you spam, you are in effect stealing someone else’s computing resources.
5. Legal problems
   Because spamming involves hijacking someone else’s resources, ISPs have been able to make good legal cases against spammers for abuse of their networks. In addition, several U.S. states now have anti-spam laws that can result in significant judgments against spammers.
6. Damage to your company’s reputation
   Unsolicited commercial email is widely hated by Internet users. If your company becomes known as one that uses this method, it could result in damaging publicity. How often do you hear about spam coming from the successful Internet companies — Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, CDNow?
7. Danger of getting ripped off
   Most of the companies that offer to send out bulk email are fly-by-night operations. In many cases, they will take your money and promise to send out your ad — but you’ll receive no verification that the ad was ever sent out. When you call the company to find out how things went, you’ll get that familiar message: “The number you have called is no longer in service.”
8. It antagonizes the market
   Spam is a big problem on the Internet and reflects badly on online marketing in general. If you buy into this abusive practice, you’re contributing to the bad impression many users have of marketers — including the many people who are trying to make email marketing respectable by using opt-in methods.
9. It doesn’t work
   The only ones who really make money with spam are the spam providers themselves — the people who take advertisers’ money and send out the bulk email. I don’t know of any successful Internet business that has used spam successfully and made it a part of their marketing mix.

10.  Permission-based marketing does work
Marketers who are incorporating ethical email strategies into their Internet marketing efforts are enjoying success. Email is a great way to reach out proactively to your audience on the Internet. Internet users are glad to receive commercial email and ezines targeted to their interests — as long as they are not placed on lists without their permission.

More info about this article in  www.emailresults.com

A solid emailing rests on three “legs”: offer, list and creative. If you’ve been involved in traditional direct mail marketing (the postal variety), these three elements should ring a bell, as they apply in both media.

1. Offer

Basically, your offer means, What are you going to give them and what are they going to give you?

In the most basic kind of offer, you are going to give them a product and they are going to give you money. You can make an offer more compelling by giving the customer a better deal, “Save $43.00,” for example, or “Buy one, get one free.”

An offer doesn’t have to involve the exchange of money. You might offer a free gift in exchange for marketing data; perhaps the user can download a free software program in exchange for providing personal information or filling out a survey form. Or you might offer a free newsletter. In this case, the user might not have to give anything in return; it’s enough for them to let you into their inbox every week or every month.

The offer is critical to the success of your email effort. You need to be crystal-clear about what your offer is, and you need to be crystal-clear in communicating it to your recipient.

2. List

You might have a great offer, but if you send it to the wrong list it will flop. On the Internet, list buying is trickier than in the world of direct mail, where you can examine a standard-format rate card, look over demographic data, or get help from an experienced list broker or consultant. The email list business has few standards, and it can be hard to be sure who you are dealing with.

Stay away from the spammers — the bulk emailers who will sell you an email list on CD-ROM or offer to send your ad out to a half-million people for $500. Spamming will cause you nothing but trouble.

Find a reliable opt-in email list owner or broker. Make sure you’re dealing with a legitimate company with a good track record. Talk with them directly on the phone. Find out how each list was compiled. Make sure recipients were added to the list only with their explicit permission.

Find out all you can about the audience. Does the list owner have demographic information or survey data from list recipients? If you’re buying advertising in an email newsletter (e-zine), what is the topic and target audience of the newsletter? Make sure that the list’s recipients are the right market for your offer.

3. Creative

In advertising, “creative” refers to the concept, copy and design of an advertising piece. Most email advertising is sent out in plain text, so you can’t do much with design. But good strategy and copywriting can make a big difference.

Focus your copy around your offer. In email, we recommend copy that’s brief, straightforward and to-the-point. Make it interesting, compelling and personal. But no hyperbole, no hard-sell.

Make the offer clear. Include a call to action — in other words, tell them what you want them to do and ask them to do it. Make it easy for people to respond. Most email promotional messages will direct the user to a Web page, where they can find out more details, fill out a form or send in an order.

Give special attention to your subject line. Avoid subject lines that scream out “This is an ad!” Make it something simple, unassuming and short, while implying a benefit — maybe something like, “Discount tickets?” or “New opera recording.” Avoid deceptive “gotcha” subject lines that trick the recipient into opening the email.

Give careful attention to these three elements of an emailing. If your effort falls short in any one of these three areas — offer, list or creative — you can expect a poor response.

More info about this article in www.emailresults.com

Anti-spam advocates argue that spamming is unethical and that it robs users and Internet service providers of valuable computing resources. Whether you agree with this ethical argument or not, you’ll have to agree that spamming is a risky proposition.

Spamming is widely hated among Internet users, and those who hate the practice can do real harm to your business. Getting labeled as a spammer can do much more than subject you to a deluge of unpleasant flame mail.

Some Net users are capable of technological retaliation, such as sending e-mail bombs — large e-mail messages that can clog or even shut down an e-mail server. One company naively hired a bulk e-mailer to send out an ad for them. The company received thousands of complaints. Someone set up a robot that called their toll-free number over and over for three days.

Spamming can also get you in trouble with your ISP. Most service providers prohibit unsolicited commercial e-mail on their systems and will shut down your account — or even remove your Web site — if they find out you’ve been involved in the practice.

As an email marketing consultant, I recommend that online marketers seek out low-risk methods for using email. I’ve formulated an Email Marketing Hierarchy of Risk, which lays out email marketing methods in a spectrum from highest-risk to lowest-risk, like so:

Highest Risk

Rented spam list
Homemade spam list
Targeted spam list
One-time unsolicited invitation
One-to-one cold canvass
Rented opt-in list
In-house opt-in list

Lowest Risk

The highest risk comes from engaging the services of a bulk e-mail company, which will send your ad out to a blind list of recipients, many of whom will object to receiving your message. Building your own spam list or a so-called “targeted” list are also high-risk activities. Somewhat less risky is sending out a one-time invitation for people to join a standing list. And a personal message sent one at a time to a carefully vetted group of recipients might not be unwelcome — if the message is carefully crafted, short and tactful.

Least risky on my hierarchy is the opt-in list, whether “rented” or developed in-house. This is a list of recipients who have actively requested to be on a list. Opt-in recipients will welcome e-mail from you, as long as it is relevant to their needs, and as long as you don’t mail so often it becomes an annoyance.

More info about this article in www.emailresults.com