Keep your subject lines short: 5 to 10 words at most.
Make your subject lines accurate and relevant to the content of the e-mail.
Do not use a sensationalized subject line.
A key measure of the effectiveness of your subject lines is your open rate. If it is low then consider whether your list has been damaged by abuse. A damaged list will have a low open rate. If the list is not danaged then consider doing some split testing to improve the open rate.
Be careful with your subject lines from the perspective of SPAM. SPAM filters will prevent mails with inappropriate subject lines from ever reaching the intended recipient.
Always send a link to the page where the file can be downloaded. Send this link by e-mail. This will require the subscriber to provide you with a valid e-mail address. Some people think it is better if they provide the downlaod link on the confirmation page. This is easier but if potential sunscribers learn that they do not have to give a valid e-mail address to receive the free download then you may end up with more than a few phony e-mail addresses.
Time your newsletter delivery to the pattern of your audience. If you are sending it to a working audience then mid-week is best. Mondays are often busy and Friday is too close to the weekend. A working crowd will give more attention to your mail if sent mid-week.
If your product or service is related to weekend activilty (golf for example) then it may be best to send your message out on Thursday or Friday. If you send out a message about your new putter on a Thursday then you can follow up with a high-value article on how to improve your putting on Friday or on the Friday of the following week.
Do not send out material to frequently.
If you say that you publish once per month then you better publish once per month.
If you state that you will publish in the first week of the month then publish on time.
The timing of a series of autoresponders is an important part of the success of a series. If you send the series at too high a rate then you will overload people and this is not appreciated. If you send it with too much time between parts of the series then people may forget about you and your series will be less effective.
Send a sufficient amount of material with each instalment. If you limit the content to about a page then to send a part of the series every 2 days or so will be fine. Remember you want to be present and accounted for but not in their face. Provide material that they are looking forward to receiving and present it in a timely manner and it will build the relationship properly.
You should also consider series that are seasonal if your potential clients or your business is seasonl or consider a series as your business heads in to a particularly good holiday.
If your business is activity based (summer activity or kayaking activities for example) then consider not only the season but also the relationship of your material delivery to the weekend.
Always put a place for a first name in your subscriber forms.
Get a frist name so that you can personalize any material. Personalized material gets signficantly more attention.
Whenever you can add that personal touch. Remember that people have given you their permission to communcate with them by e-mail. It is your job to develop the relationship and personalization is one way to do this.
This is a question that comes up often. Should you use a single opt in or a double opt in? the best answer relates to understanding the situation. If you are offering a free report and want to build a strang relationship with that particular list then I would vote for a double op in. A double opt in also prevents the jokers from adding people to your list without the person's consent. The double optin mechanism will prevent this from happening. Overall, you will have a more robust list if you use a double opt in process as compared with a single opt in list.
If you need to work to maximise the list subscribers and are willing to have a lower open rate and a high unsubscribe rate then a single opt in will be adequate.
There is a big advantage to using an HTML e-mail format when compared with plain text. The big advantage is that if you put links in your e-mail messages (and you should) then your tracking software can see which links are clicked on. You can then gauge interest in sections of your material by observing the clcik through rate of these links.
Suppose for example you introduce 2 new products and have created new product pages for each of these products on your website. You then send out an HTML newsletter showing these new products with links to the product pages. you could even set up another set of links with a bundled deal using these new product in some bundled arrangement. By observing the click through rate fro each of the links you can understand the attractivness of each of the various offers and make adjustments as is appropriate. It is a very powerful way to market.
If you are going to do e-mail marketing then you have to measure your open rates. Open rates can rise or fall depending on the abuse level of your list, your subject line and the time of day or day of the week that it is sent. You may even see different open rates for men versus women. Do you need a different subject line for each group? Ask questions to help improve your open rate and do not be concerned about experimenting.
The simple fact of the matter is that this is something you have to monitor and you have to make adjustments if you feel the open rate is too low. Be willing to do some split testing the define the better of two (or three) subject lines. The best marketers in the world do this and their success is not an accident.
SPAM filter are getting more and more sophisticated. This is good news but it also can make it harder for your legitimate mails to find their way through the SPAM filter. There are some things that you can do to help you message get through.
Do not use SPAM words in the subject. Words such as "Free" or "You Have Won!" are sure to get filtered out.
Do not use SPAMers terms in the body of the email.
Use a SPAM checker program before you send out the material to your list the service we use rates every message on a scale of 0-5. If you are too close to 5 then you better make some adjustments to drop the socre below 2.5 or 2.0.
Use you own judgement. If you subject lines look like the boring lines you see from the big national stores like Dell or Home Depot then consider yourself in good company.
If you are going to spend the time setting up a niche focused site and then spend the time and money on setting up a PPC ad campaign to bring targeted traffic to your site then you need to also set up a subscription form and provide some value-added material to increase the subscription rate.
If a person comes to your site you have already paid for the click. If the person leaves without your ability to contact him again then it may be an opportunity lost. The person may have been seconds away from finding just what he needed. He may have run out of time even though he was very interested in the site. If he cannot find his way back to your site then it is a lost opportunity.
If you gain permission to contact him again then you still have the opportunity to provide a service or make a sale.
