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Organisations such as the BPA have been providing auditing services for magazines and event audiences for many years. Providing advertisers with independent evidence that your audience are who you claim them to be is an effective point of differentiation and extremely helpful when selling your proposition to would-be advertisers. Associating your offering with a credible auditing organisation conveys images of trust, essential for first time advertisers unsure of your corporate reputation and credibility.

Email newsletters are fast becoming an integral part of many organisation’s offering to advertisers. With low unit costs, infinite scalability and massive flexibility, sponsors are paying to appear on everything from regular "event updates" through to information-packed newsletters. Historically, the draw back with using email as a channel was that it was not auditable- a significant hurdle when attracting new sponsors.

Whilst the business case for auditing is clear, the rapid emergence of email newsletters mean that organisations faced some headaches- can you audit an email newsletter?

The answer is yes, and Adestra have been working with a number of publishers to implement auditing on their email newsletters.

Overview

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At the recent Online Marketing Show, Adestra ran an email clinic. Attendees spent time with an Adestra expert who provided feedback and useful advice about how they could improve their campaigns.

Main Lessons

Data, data and more data is the main factor holding back B2B and B2C email marketers

Here are the ten most important tips to ensure you’re able to get the maximum return on your investment in permission-based email marketing.

1. Only send emails to persons who have requested them.

2. Only include content relevant to the type of content the person has requested.

3. Be consistent with your sending frequency. Pick a schedule, whether it is weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly and as often as you can stick to that schedule.

4. In most cases it is best to send business to business emails Tuesday through Thursday. We’ve found that the best times of the day to send are just after the start of the day around 9:30am or just after lunch around 1:30pm. It is best to avoid sending business to business emails after 4pm or on weekends.

5. In most cases it is best to send business to consumer emails either between 5pm and 8pm Tuesday through Thursday or between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

6. To improve deliverability add a message at the top of your emails that says something like: “To ensure receipt of our emails, please add something@yourcompany.com to your Address Book.”

According to a study by the Winterberry Group, email marketing brings in $15.50 per dollar spent. This is about 17% more than direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns. In short, email marketing matters and if you’re not sending out at least monthly email newsletters to your subscriber base, you should be. The true cost comes from acquiring the prospects and clients, not the three or four hours needed to create a monthly newsletter.

Many organizations, once they have spent the thousands of dollars acquiring their clients, fail to market to their existing base. I’ve met quite a few marketing managers who would rather continue spending $200 a pop for new qualified prospects rather than $0.01 per person to build the relationship with their existing clients and recommend new products or encourage re-orders. I’ve found that sending relevant email communications to persons who have requested to receive them is the single most effective way of cultivating the type of relationship needed to turn your prospects into customers and your customers into lifetime product evangelizers.

In this article I will give you several tips that can help you in improving your open and click-thru rates.

1) Open rate

In order to your email campaign be successful the first necessary thing is that people open and read your email newsletter. Online publishing is very similar to traditional publishing. When you buy a daily newspaper, you probably don’t read everything. You don’t have that much of free time and not every subject is equally interesting for you. If you are a sports fan you will read the sport section but you might skip an article about latest movies . In most cases you will decide what you are going to read upon subject titles.

Same thing with email newsletters. One of the two most important factors that influence whether or not your subscriber will open your email newsletter will be your subject line. In order to have good open rates and click-thru rates you have to know your audience. Your message has to be well targeted.

There are several rules you have to follow in order to make effective subject lines.

Subject lines

Successful online business can’t be led without email marketing. Many people know that it is very important to have a web site but having a web site is only one step in creating successful online presence. You have to stay in touch with your clients and prospects. You need to have a two way communication with your clients and prospects and best way to do this is to have an email newsletter. To send emails to your customer you need the right email marketing software.

Choosing your email marketing software is one of the most important steps you have to take in e-business. What are those necessary steps in choosing email marketing software?

Free or fee-based

The first thing you will have to decide in choosing software for your email campaigns will be whether you want to use free or fee based software. Some people may say: "There is much free software on the Internet. Why would I pay for email marketing software?" This is because some people still don’t have a habit to buy things on the Internet, especially non-tangible items such are software and services. Many people still don’t realize the power of email marketing so they think that can be satisfied with a free service.

A responsive opt in list is an unbelievably powerful money-maker on the internet. With responsive opt in list you can guarantee yourself a steady income. A responsive opt in list will make money through you advertising other people’s products, through affiliate sales and of course through sales of your own. However, responsive opt in lists are not found commonly on the internet, primarily because owners of opt in lists do not put the time into building strong relationships with their list members. Strong relationships with your list members are essential because they will begin to trust you and will seriously consider what you have to say. Other webmasters will notice the great response rate of your list and will beg to be able to advertise with a solo mailing. Of course if your list is in high demand for advertising, you can push the price of ad space up, which will lead to additional profits. Here are some great ways to build great relationships with your list members without you spending hours of your time.

1. Ask visitors to subscribe to your e-zine. It’s a good idea to also give them a freebie when they subscribe.

2. Have them sign-up to get access to download a free ebook. The subject of the ebook should be related to your target audience.

3. Give your visitors a free membership inside your member’s only web site. Have them sign-up to receive a user name and password.

4. Hold a free contest or sweepstakes at your web site. Ask them to give you their contact information to enter.

5. Offer your visitors free consulting via e-mail. Have them fill out a web form to e-mail you with their questions.

6. Hold an interactive poll on your web site. Ask your visitors to e-mail you their vote or opinion.

7. Ask your visitors to sign-up for a chance to get a web site award. Have them e-mail you their contact and web site information.

8. Have visitors fill out a survey on your web site. Give them a free gift as an incentive to complete the form.

9. Offer a free online service from your web site. Have visitors fill out their contact information to sign-up to the free service.

What if you could send out all the information that your potential customers have requested without checking your email or answering a phone? While this may seem impossible, it is becoming more and more popular among the most successful Internet marketing gurus. This is all due to what is called an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an automatic method of responding to emails sent by existing or potential customers and is an must for any Internet business. Time is money and answering emails personally take a lot of valuable time for both you and the customer. Not only do autorespnders allow you to spend the time elsewhere in your business, but it gives the customer access to the information almost immediately.

Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders, they can be of value to virtually any type of business. Some choose to use the autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions about a product or service. Others use them to provide information about pricing or product information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to welcome new members to a website or group as well as thank them after a visit.

Unless you use the Internet only for surfing and never use your email address you’ve probably received something that is called spam.

There are different definitions for spam but I will say that spam is unsolicited email commercial. Many people harvest other people’s email addresses on email and web forums and send them info that they didn’t request. This is very frustrating because you loose your precious time deleting those unwanted messages. In this article I will explain how NOT to appear like a spammer.

Opt-in

If you have an email newsletter it is very important that you don’t appear like a spammer. If you want to stay long in email publishing business your newsletters have to be based on opt-in method. It means that a subscriber chose to receive your newsletter and that you have their permission to send them your newsletter. It is called Permission Marketing. I would suggest that your list be double opt-in. Now what is double opt-in? Double opt-in means that your subscribers have to confirm their request to join your list. Confirmation is done by replying to the message that you send to everyone who had initiated subscription. Beside replying, people can confirm their request by clicking on a certain link. This ensures that one person can’t subscribe another person against his or her will. Also, never buy so called opt-in lists and also never sell or rent your members base.