The Truth of Email/Zip Submits
Email and Zip submits have a nasty reputation within the industry, and rightfully so. The way they work is you click on an offer and place your email address or zip code to recieve your FREE product. Of course the product is never free and you have to fill out an ungodly number of pages to have the CHANCE to recieve that offer. In most cases you end up spending more money than theat particular product is worth! Futhermore the information you place in the fields is passed around from one marketing agency to another. You can expect a healthy number of spam emails in the future.
An example of an Email Submit is located here.
While these email submits can be very misleading, the truth of the matter is they proved very profitable from a marketers stand point. When email/zip submits first came out, all the user had to do was click fill out the first page (the email address or their zip code) and the marketer got paid anywhere from $1 - $2 a lead. Not a bad deal!. Eventually the market became much more saturated with these offers and the advertisers requested that 2-3 pages of information be filled out before you’d get paid.
I promoted these email submits up until about a year ago. While many people bashed them, I was able to make a serious amount of bank hawking the newest FREE (fill in the blank). In fact the way I went about winning that Lamo ( for a few days) and the Vegas trip was about 60-70% email/zip submits. Looking back it proably wasn’t the greatest offer in value to my users. I also ran into a bit of legal trouble through some of the offers I promoted as well. I heard stories within the industry about the advertiser receving hundreds of thousands of leads only to give away one free ipod, for example.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
Bot Clicks
A problem I am getting more and more of is “bot clicking”. Bot clicking is when a robot goes in and clicks on your link to make it look like an actual user clicked on your campaign. The purpose of bot clickers is for an outside source to monitor your traffic after you’ve been labeled as SPAM by a few users on the network. This has been going on for a few years now and explains why the statistics on my CTR and the CTR on the ad campaign don’t match up. Major ISPs actually have active bot networks out there that make these “hidden” clicks on your offers.
How to fix?
The best way is to keep an active monitor of the IPs that are clicking on your campaign. Bot networks operate in Ip ranges. I have ranges of known “bot clickers” that I block through my CMS. If your CMS doesn’t have the ability to block certain Ip ranges registering as clicks you need to block manually. They can be a pain in the ass to deal with if not taken cared of.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Email news, ISP News, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
The Myth of CPC
I wanted to talk a little bit about the myth of CPC (Cost Per Click) as related to email marketing. The theory is that you can make more money on CPC, if traffic is solid, than you would getting paid on a per lead or CPA (Cost Per Action) basis. In my experience this isn’t true.
I’ve been in the affiliate marketing business for quite some time now and have seen first hand the problems of CPC. For example, Offer A on XYZ network is paying out 20 cents a unique click on a mortgage loan application (CPC). Offer B on the same network is paying out $20 a lead on the mortage loan application (CPA). (These numbers do not reflect an actual campaign, just an easy to follow example!). So,
Offer A: .20 a unique click
Offer B: $20 a lead
Which one to choose? These days I always go with the CPA, $20 a lead. In most cases, the CPC might actually earn more but in reality you will always lose. The reason is because the advertiser and/or affiliate network is ALWAYS looking at conversion numbers. If your traffic isn’t converting to their liking they will reduce your CPC amount to reflect what THEY think should be an ideal payout. Furthermore, if your traffic is great and they are happy, you probably could have made more mailing the CPA offer in the first place. You have to remember that on the advertiser side they are always fighting different forms of fraud, click fraud representing a huge portion of their prevention efforts. Suffice to say, it hurts the legit marketer mailing CPC when the issues are beyond their control.
In conclusion always go with CPA. I reserve the right to change my mind, however. If anyone can show me tangible proof that in the longrun CPC outperforms CPA, by all means fire away! I will update this post with evidence, only the tried and true facts though. Until then, Happy Marketing!
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
Explosive Growth
One of the trends I’ve noticed in the different industries I’ve been part of is that growth occurs in waves, not steadily. It’s true that the actions you take on a daily, consistant basis affect your growth negatively or positvely. However, growth itself comes in small and large spurts.
I remember during my highschool years, when I first got into internet marketing, I was able to support myself with one or two great months out of the year. It’s true I still lived with my parents, but I still had bills in excess of $1,000/month plus other expenses that teens spent their money on. During the wild west of email marketing in 2000-2003 anything went. I would find various methods of inboxing ISPs, mostly AOL, and when those loopholes would close I’d move on. This explained the inconsistancy from month to month in my early days. As I got smarter , I began reinvesting all profits back into the company instead of buying the next hot toy. My dreams as a kid was to have the hottest car in the school parking lot to impress the ladies. Well, my senior year of highschool I bought a BMW Z3 for 23K cash. It was a real sick car but not the panty dropper I thought it was. I was still a dork with no social skills.
Anyways, enough of my teen years and back to the point of this post! When you are struggling, don’t be discouraged. Building a business takes time and effort. If you believe in the work you are doing, you will be rewarded. Explosive growth appears in waves. It could be an important contact you made, a presentation to an organization, or some new technology that you have mastered that triggers your growth. Keep up the work and you will experience explosive growth. It’s what you do after those first waves of success hit you that will make or break your company.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | 2 Comments »
Choosing Newsletter Software
One of the biggest drawbacks in getting into email marketing is knowing what software is ideal for your solution. In affiliate marketing, I needed a platform that could deliver at a high rate of speed and could optimize high volume mailings. I decided the best route to go is setting up my own mailing system to cater to my needs. Deliverability was a huge issue because I had to setup all my antispam measures, whitelisting, and mail settings myself. To say the very least, it was a very difficult treading. However, the experience was a valuable lesson in the ins and outs of email marketing.
When I decided to start Austin Inbox, I wanted to see what my competition had to offer for their newsletter solutions. This was a huge part of my research into the market. I learned a tremendous amount of information about the industry which helped me decide on the features for our solution. While I am a little biased in terms of the solution to use, I believe ours will be the best!, I’ll give an unbiased review of the solutions I tested.
Constant Contact - Probably the most widely used solution out there. I really got to understand this software after helping setup this email marketing solution for a company I worked for at the beginning of the year. Pros: One of the cheapest around, access to unlimited mailings (pricing is based on # of contacts), very easy to use, well designed templates, they can customize just about anything for you, well defined community of users. Cons: Deliverability starts to be come an issue after growing your list based 5k, Doesn’t do a great job of helping you get the best ROI on your list, aggressive sales team will call alot during free trial period and after.
iContact - iContact is another popular newsletter choice for small businesses. They have advertising everywhere these days. I didn’t do much research on their support as i was able to accomplish everything I needed without their help. Pros: Many templates to choose from, cheap, handles higher volume great, great community, customizeable features, easy to use. Cons: Stock templates don’t have as clean of look as Constant Contact’s, small storage of files.
MyEmma - I had heard a little bit about these guys from SEO/PPC events I attended but had never looked into their product. Out of all the solutions I have used, MyEmma has the most helpful/friendly support. Pros: Outstanding support, cheap customized templates, optimized for great ROI on list. Cons: Pricing is based on number of emails sent, layout a bit girly for my tastes, not a big fan of stock templates, no free trial.
EliteMail - I wasn’t able to do huge volumes of testing with EliteMail. Their free trial, however, is great. Allow for up to 1,000 emails over a month and unlimited image hosting. I still need to do more testing to get a real accurate measure of this solution. here’s what i came up with. Pros: Low cost, unlimited image hosting, easy to use. Cons: Not a big fan of their stock templates, low cost but not if your doing many campaigns a bunch (pricing based on emails delivered).
MailChimp - MailChimp is one of the big up and commers in the industry. They do a great job of integrating their technology with other forms of online marketing to help grow your database of users. Also, in doing my research for my lastest presentation, I was able to pull valuable charts and graphs related to statistics in the email marketing industry for free. Pros: Pricing based on # of contacts, great custom features, helpful learning center, excellent to use in conjunction with blogs and other forms of online marketing. Cons: Stock Templates aren’t as clean as some of the other solutions out there, add-ons a bit pricey.
Bronto - Bronto was one of the more impressive email marketing solutions I tested for one reason, their stat tracking. Hands down the best statitsics reporting in the industry. They have so many features in place to really optimize your mailing experience to get the best ROI possible. The only thing holding Bronto back is their pricing. They are one of the more expensive solutions out there and sell themselves as a higher end email marketing solution. Pros: Reporting, superb customer support, great deliverability for higher volume. Cons: Expensive.
I left off a few other solutions because I ddin’t feel like I recieved an accurate portrayal of the product. I will probably update this list sometime down the road with more reviews. The great thing about the email newsletter solutions out there is that almost all of them have some sort of free trial or demo. I highly reccomend you take advanatge and test them out for yourself. What works for me might not necessarily be the best option for you. Along the way you’ll be able to educate yourself to make an intelligent decision.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | 3 Comments »
All About Autoresponders
What are autoresponders?
Autoresponders in a nutshell are email responce programs. Any email sent to you that gets an automatic reply is an autoresponder. For example, when you send in a ticket for a support or sales inquiry to an ecommerce website, the bot that sends you an email saying that your ticket is recieved is an autoresponder. Pretty simple.
Other uses
- Auto reply when you subscribe to a newsletter
- Auto reply when you unsubscribe, confirming your opt-out
- Used as a FAQ when people write in questions
- Build campaigns and have them sent out automatically over time
Benefits
The benefits are endless, but the main one would be saving time. Developing a solid campign that can go out automatically without you having to monitor frees up your time to work on other marketing efforts. the questions and requests that cannot be anwsered via autoresponder can be anwsered by your reply. this weeds out alot of the common frequently asked questions.
How to setup
Most newsletter software systems, well ALL that i’ve seen, have a feature that allows you to setup an autoresponder. You can set up different autoresponders for replies and campaigns. I am going to talk about how to setup your autoresponder for email campaigns.
- Create a normal newsletter campaign - Develop your message as if you were going to deliver it now. Save as a draft or template.
- Develop additional campigns - After your finished with the first campaign, create the follow up messages you want your consumers to recieve and set them in equal intervals apart. For example if you have a 5 week program, set the autoresponder to send one campaign a week for 5 weeks. Refrence your calander to make sure you have the timing down right.
- Test and verify - Make sure that all your links work and content is to your liking. This is the most important step. A bad setup hurts your credability as a marketer
- Schedule and monitor ever so slighty - Are people clicking and opening your message? Monitor your statistics and make changes accordingly. Notice the trends.
Autoresponders are a great tool to use in conjunction with your email marketing plan. They ehance the quality of your newsletter and cut down on time for FAQ, support requests, and developing campaigns. If you aren’t using them already you should be!
Cheers and happy marketing.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | 1 Comment »
Structuring Your HTML Campaigns
Question: I was wondering if you could elaborate on your process of developing html emails. I am good with tables and what not but I still have a hard time developing emails that look very sleek.
The process of developing highly effective, appealing HTML campaigns is an art in itself. As with designing webpages, the development of email creatives takes skill. They are comparable and a solid webdesigner should be able to develop well designed email creatives. Like a webpage, HTML messages can display images, graphics, colorful fonts, etc. Load up your favorite design software, Dreamweaver, Front Page, etc and start playing around. The key here is testing. You don’t want to overload the user with a multitude of images and graphics that take away from the purpose of the email campaign. The ability to track just about everything is why I love email marketing so much. You can hone and test to see which campaigns work best.
Personally, I go a different route when sending out my newsletters. Instead of having to create a new design for EVERY single email drop, I prefer my designers to create HTML templates. Templates are great because they are easily modified and can be used over and over again. At AustinInbox, we have on file numerous template structures that make it easy for the novie user to modify. The biggest benefit is that it cuts down on time and we can use the higher performing templates more effectively.
The drawbacks of using HTML vs. text messages include image blocking and load times. As mentioned in previous posts, most of the bigger ISPs and email clients like Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and Gmail automatically block images. A good designer, however, can get by most of the image blocking and still develop sleek, appealing emails. Load times can be an issue as well, especially if you are targeting foreign users who don’t have access to the fast internet speeds we enjoy in the U.S. Know your audience and always test the campaigns. If the load times are slow, get rid of unnecessary images and modify until you are satisfied.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | No Comments »
How to Handle Complainers
No matter how meticulious you are on your privacy policy, unsubscribe, and confirmation email, you will eventually have a few complainers. Have no fear, ISPs know this as well. All complaints are not created equal. They range from the user who thinks he mistakingly signed up to your newsletter to bonafide lawsuits. I had the experience of dealing with the worst of these type of complaints so I want to discuss what to do when you recieve them.
The first thing to check is your unsubscribe information. Do you have an active, working unsubscribe and is your mailing system removing users when they click on the unsubscribe button? It’s always good to do frequent checks, since an invalid remove link is aganist the law and can result in a huge fine. Additionally, you need to make sure your physical address remove is posted correctly. By physical remove I mean an active postal address. it should look something like this:
To unsubscribe from all future newsletters please click (unsubscribe link here), or write to:
Unsubscribe ME
2983 Mystreet
Austin, TX 78759
Yes, and believe it or not, people DO pay the postage fee to send a letter for unsubscribe removal. At my peak I would get about 2 to 3 of these a month.
If your unsubscribe message is doing its job then you need to access the level of threat the complainer is. Alot of times I will recieve messages like:
Screw you spammer!
I’ll k*ll you, remove me
I did not sign up to this spam!
When I do recieve these types of complaints I remove immediantly. Do not waste your time replying back to these guys. It will only waste both parties time and start a never ending flame war of who is wrong or who is right. It is possible that someone else using their email information signed up to your newsletter or offers. Move on and live to fight another day.
Now for the more serious issues. Their could be a time during your email marketing career when you face the worst of complaints, a lawsuit. This is Amercia, anybody can sue anyone for anything. This is why it is so important to make sure your privacy policy is clear and that you save ALL user subscribe information. By subscribe information I mean, first/last name, addresss, website signed up to, ip, and timestamp. This has happened to me in what was a clear extorition attempt. It’s highly unlikely that any lawsuit of this matter would go to court unless you are clearly violating the law. If you do recieve a threat or a lawsuit, find out what the other party wants and try as best as you can to come to a win/win situation.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | No Comments »
Protecting your Email Box from Unwanted Spam
People complain all the time about the legitamacy of email marketing. How can I get rid of all this spam? Every email account I have is filled with spam, what do I do? These are very common questions I get when explaining how to avoid getting the masses of unwanted emails that flood are box. Make no mistake, most of what the user is recieveing is pure spam. Here is the best tried and true way to avoid getting those spam messages.
Create two email accounts. One for all your online ecommerce purchases and online activity, one for your personal day to day emails from bosses, co-workers, friends and family.
This is the #1 way to curb your enthusiasm for spam! Let me explain.
When you purchase services or goods on the internet, almost always your email will be used for verification purposes. Confirming the email verifies that your email address is a valid address to the website. However, when you purchased your product, did you look at their privacy policy? Was there any verbage that states that you might be recieveing 3rd party offers or be automatically signed up for a newsletter? Ah, ha! Here’s where you run into trouble. The privacy policy of the website states the intention of what your data will be used for. The policy must be clear in order to be Can-Spam compliant. If the privacy policy states that you might be recieveing 3rd party offers, you can almost guarantee that you will be recieving a load of junk mail. Even worse, much of the time these lists get passed around to other email marketers. You can see how over time that just signing up to one of these sites can overload your box with junk.
Additionally, the spam problem is not limited to eccomerece sites. Using your email to sign up to forums, message boards, dating sites, social networking sites, or any website that requires you to register via email can cotribute to the spam problem. These websites are just liek ecommerce sites in that sometimes your email can be passed around. I’ve even seen high quality fortune 500 companies show up on some email lists. These email lists weren’t opted in to the email marketing company. They were aquired as purchased data! So be very careful when registering your email anywhere.
The Solution
The solution is simple. Do not signup for anything with your personal email. Your personal email is used for one purpose, communication. There is no way for other marketers or spammers to get a hold of your email if you don’t give it out. Also, if you happen to slip up and start receving spam messages, have no fear. these days the unsubscribe button is an affective way to opt-out. Even more so than an ISP’s “This is spam” button. The unsubscribe process is automatic, handled by a machine, not a human. When you unsubscribe, your email is automatically removed from the database. Thus the next email blast which gets sent out will not include your email.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | 2 Comments »
Froms and Randomization
Froms are a key in establishing creditability in the email space. Just like a letter in the mail, froms establish credability and trust. In email marketing there are two different froms to be aware of, the domain from and the display form. For example:
“John Henderson” jhenderson@myspeicaldomainsite.com
The name “John Henderson” is the from that will show up when the user decides to delete or open your message. It’s very important when sending a campaign built on trust and user history that this name remains the same. “John Henderson” can be changed to anything you want, it’s dynamic.
jhenderson@myspeicaldomainsite.com on the other hand, is the actual from address that will be recieveing bounces and replys. Always, ALWAYS! make sure this is an active address. Not only will you lose out on potential sales and inquirys but you could face legal issues for not being Can-Spam compliant. (Read more about Can-Spam here). When sending out a campign blast you can choose to only use one from. You don’t have to include the “John Henderson” part if you so choose. The email crawler will just read the from as jhenderson@myspeicaldomainsite.com
When it comes to from randomization, I do not reccomend creating a bunch of from names and rotating through. This is a very common spammer tactic and you can be flagged for spam very easily. For higher volume delivery, I do reccomend having a few domains to rotate through in the from message. By higher volume I mean list sizes above the 100,000 database threshold. Randomizing domains can help with deliverability because you are able to avoid some ISP mailing limits by rotating. Again, this is for higher volume delivery only. In most instances you want to keep the same domain and from in ALL of your campaign drops.
Filed under: Inbox Truth | No Comments »