Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Email Marketing

How to Make Your Ezines Sell Product…And Improve Your Web Site Marketing

By Charlie Cook   |   February 12, 2007

How can you improve your web site marketing with your emails?

A client, I’ll call Sarah wrote me today with a online marketing puzzler. She’d done a controlled test with two different promotional emails (both written by professional copywriters) and two different sales pages for the same product. Her results showed a clear winner, actually a combination of one copywriter’s email and the other’s sales page, and wanted to make sense of the data.

When I printed both emails and landing pages out the answer was obvious. One copywriter was off the mark with his promotional email, it was to obscure. The other copywriter’s email was stacked full of benefits, basically saying I’m so and so and I suggest you buy this product – when matched with the other copywriter’s sales page which took the same tack, my client had a winning combination.

What was unique about the email / landing page combination that worked to bring in the most online sales?

With one pair there was a synergy, both reinforced the other, just what a promo and landing page need to do to make your web site marketing work.

When you create a smooth path for the reader to follow where the language and style of the promo and the landing page match each other, you get more sales. When there is a disconnect between the two, people get understandably confused and don’t buy.

Makes sense doesn’t it?

Do your promotional emails and sales pages and or landing pages reinforce each other or fight each other? If you want to improve your website marketing and grow your online business, make sure they’re working together to create a synergy that helps move prospects to client status.
–

Charlie Cook
Web Site Marketing That Works

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Why Do My Emails End Up in People’s Junk Mail?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 25, 2006

“My outbound e-mails keep going to people’s junk mail folders. Any idea why?”
– Tina

Spam filters block emails for a lot of reasons. The result is, as you’ve found out, that many of your legitimate emails don’t get through but lots of spam still does. Here are three ways your email could be getting caught in spam filters.

1. Bad words, like here, now, etc.
Use to many of these and the spam filters block your email. Here’s a list of many words to avoid >>

One preventative measure to take is to check to see if any of the words in your email might trigger a spam filter and than edit accordingly, though it’s not clear that all spam filters will block your email if it uses an “offending word once or twice”.

Here’s the link to one free spam checker you can use as a guide >>

2. Use of characters or unusual spellings that the spam filters think you could be using to avoid them. For example trying to slip sales by as ‘s.ales’.

3. Your mail server. Unless you’re using a service that regularly makes sure they are on the white list of approved bulk email senders, you’re email can get blocked even though it’s legitimate. Here’s the link to the email broadcast service I use >>

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Works

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

HTML or Text Newsletter for Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   June 16, 2005

“Which is the best format to send my marketing newsletter?”

Both newsletter formats have their strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of the pluses and minuses of each:

HTML Newsletters
+ Offer more control over the look and feel of what readers get.
+ Its possible to include live links and images.
+ Formatted type is easier on readers eyes.
+ Its possible to get better statistics on the number of people who opened the email.

– You’ll need to create an HTML page, though with a template this shoudn’t take more than 10-15 minutes.
– Odd things can happen to HTML sent through email systems. The HTML page which looks great on your computer may not arrive on your readers’ computers looking exactly the same.
– Mail merge functions, where the software is supposed to integrate the reader’s name, don’t work as well and HTML newsletters may arrive addressed to <$firstname$> instead the reader’s name.

Text Newsletters
+ Just, write, format to 60 characters width, check for spam words and send.
+ Mail merge functions work consistenly so its easier to personalize mailings.

– Harder to read plain text email.
– Not as distincive or professional looking.

Which to use?

One compromise solution is to use both, an HTML version early in the week followed by a text version.
Which do you prefer?
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

What’s My Biggest Ezine Headache and How To Avoid It?

By Charlie Cook   |   May 17, 2005

Once or twice a year I send out a marketing ezine that doesn’t arrive the way it should. Here’s how I make this mistake and how you can avoid it.

When you use text from an MS Word document and paste it into an email, hyphens, quotes, apostrophes and characters other than numerical or alphabetical ones look fine, but watch out. When you send the email to someone, these hyphens, quotes, apostrophes all get turned into /s or ?marks or other unusual and unintended characters. Even though you wrote the best newsletter in the world, it looks silly when it arrives.

Try it. Send yourself an email with hyphens, quotes, apostrophes and see what it looks like when you get it. The email you thought was letter perfect will arrive a mess.

The same thing happens when you send an HTML newsletter, hyphens, quotes, apostrophes turn into odd characters. Even if you preview your HTML newsletter in a browser window you won’t catch this problem. The unintended transformation happens when the ezine is sent.

Avoiding this techno goof is easy. I just paste my completed ezine into a text only editor and then go through it and replace each hyphen, quote and apostrophe with the text editor’s version. Then when I paste the finished version into my ezine broadcast system or use it to create an HTML email so my readers get the what I want them to get, a professional looking marketing newsletter. – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How Is The Free Marketing Ezine “More Business” Valued At Over $300 a year?

By Charlie Cook   |   May 12, 2005

How is the free marketing ezine worth over $300 a year?

Currently the 87 million dollar a year publishing company Thomson Gale is now selling seven of my articles, the same ones you get weekly for free, for $5.95 each on Amazon.com.

If each of my weekly marketing articles is worth $5.95 then your annual subscription to my free marketing ezine, “More Business” is worth over three hundred dollars, not to mention the value of the free marketing guide “7 Steps to Attract More Clients and Grow Your Business”. Actually the ezine and free marketing guide are worth tens of thousands of dollars or more a year to those of you who apply the ideas.

Without my permission and without the knowledge of the original publication that printed these articles, Thomson Gale is now distributing articles for which I own the copyright on Amazon.com. Here’s a link to the screen shots in a pdf file. Or you can just search for Charlie Cook on Amazon.com (look at the bottom of the listings for my articles).

No, you don’t need to write me a check for $300 to keep your subscription active. At least for now “More Business” is sent to you every week for free to help you grow your business. Of course if you want to get serious about taking your business to the next level you’ll want to read my best selling marketing tools , including “More Sales with Less Selling “, all of which are a steal at their current prices.

And please don’t pay Thomson Gale to buy my copyrighted articles, which they’ve promised to remove from Amazon in a couple of weeks. – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Why Do You Put the Period in S.ales in Your Marketing Newsletter?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 15, 2005

“Why do you put the period in S.ales or the zero in pr0fits in your ezines?” – Greg Timpany

The spam filters block email newsletters that include words such as:
– sales
– profits
– here
– wife
– questions
– check
– investments
and many more and probably never thought would be included.

For additional information on the topic read:
– Spam Filters Out of Control
– Avoiding Getting Your Newsletter Caught in Spam Filters (includes a more complete list of words that can get your ezine blocked by spam filters).
– Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How To Write Creative Marketing Newsletters?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 11, 2005

“How do I keep the ideas coming so I can continue writing creative newsletters?” – W.L.

My best source of ideas are my prospects and clients. Prospects send me questions, clients describe their concerns and problems. Each marketing question or problem posed provides the topic for a potential marketing article. Each time I get an inquiry or after talking to a client, I jot down any marketing ideas. Then when I sit down each Wednesday morning to write I have more than enough ideas to use. I may get a question about web site marketing or internet marketing, small business marketing strategy, writing a marketing plan, business networking or increasing sales with their web site. Each has the potential to become a marketing article or in this case the topic of a marketing blog. – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Spam Filters Are Out of Control

By Charlie Cook   |   February 28, 2005

Each week before I send out my ezine I check it to see which words can get it diverted by a spam filter. This week I found the following words were ones if left in correctly spelled would cause it to be blocked. They included:

– check
– money
– now
– performance
– phone
– sales
– win

Use this link to view a more comprehensive list of words that can get your emails blocked by spam filters. – Charlie Cook

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Newer Posts »