Legit Email marketing, your thoughts and results please

To improve those conversions:

Sublists your list. Though you send your ezine to whole list, promotinal emails goes to the sublists based on their interest.

Another issue here is how clean is your list. If 20% of your list contans bounced email, you shouldn't take those 20% to count the conversions. Best solution is to delete your bounces once in a whle and keep your list clean.

.

It's not because of the list. It's because most of the people today fear of viruses and frauds. You need credibility.

Hi Mark:

That is the point, the email lists (even legit companies) are not going to give a trillion sales in return. If it were that easy to send out a million emails through ABCD Marketing (made up for an example) and you could get 100 sales, anyone would do it. If you had a 100.00 product and spent even 7500.00 for the campaign but received 10,000 in sales, plus 100 new customers people would not think twice.

That is why I am attempting to decipher if the numbers quoted in the start of the thread seem about right.

Enjoy the weekend.

Yap I agree. It's a good idea to offer something free. Help resolve their problem (on a small scale) for free. And possibly create a bit of credibility. After you've done that. You should be able to make sales.

LOL... keep on, dude.

You're just leaving it open for the rest of us who are prepared to invest time and resources into list management and leverage

Here's yet another instance of someone passing off an opinion as a fact.

How do you think the guru's pull off all of those million dollar launches??? It isn't from web 2.0 sites, bookmarking, articles, classified ad sites, or content sites. It's from their partners and themselves emailing their lists..

Hi Jay:

I understand being a writer/author/speaker about the content. I am sure you are superlative at what you do. My example was for exact averages. I need to see if it is worth paying a given company money to send out emails targeted to those that would be interested in the product.

Having never used the service before I don't know what to expect. I want to go in with a feeling that when it is all said and done even if I broke even with the sales of the product vs the cost of the email, I learned something and it may pan out because the customers that purchase the product may recommend it to others. Down the road additional monies could still be viable.

Thanks so much!

Hi Loren:

How about in your mind I ask you an analytical question please. First thank you for the reply.

Here we go. You and I have the same product, same cost, same reputation, same guarantee and same budget.

We both use ABCD Marketing to send out (for example) 1,000,000 emails. You are not having your ad looking to sell the customer. You want to get them to a site and cultivate a relationship with free material. You do this for several emails before attempting the offer of a sale.

I take the ABCD Marketing list and use the ad to promote the product the first time around.

At the end of a month how many more sales would you want than I to have been worth the extra time for additional emails being sent, adding free content to the site, and so on.

Thanks and enjoy the weekend.

Hi Mark:

Thank you for your post. Can you clarify something please. I am sorry for being confused.

Are you telling me regardless of pitfalls if I use the fictitious name I made up ABCD Marketing that with all the pitfalls of lists being old or outdated and they not having a relationship with the customers I should be able to at least have the sales dollars = the cost of the campaign?

Obviously I am used to marketing. The 2 books, the lectures, and the new writing/speaking course has afforded me an interesting amount of promotional knowledge but never (not even once) on the email marketing side.

As mentioned in one of the replies I would not have any revisionist history and feel fine if the campaign at least broke even. It would give me an new experience and there is always the chance with the quality of the product somebody that buys can recommend it to a friend, family member, or business associate and future sails can deride from word of mouth.

Thank you for your time and response.

Hi Craig,

If you are talking about renting a big list which is frequently
rented, blasted with offers, and generally abused... well -
I blew several thousand dollars at one point with that
sort of thing.

Bulk emailing somebody else's list is a crapshoot with email.

With direct mail there are standards that list owners typically
adhere to in order to preserve the responsiveness and value
of the lists.

Be very cautious of seeking easy exposure to a wide market
with what basically amounts to spamming. I have done
such things and been bitterly disappointed.

I guess I sort of misunderstood your question. It is one of
metrics and to a large extent price point. You really would
do well to study direct mail. Get Bill Myers' "Direct Mail
BootCamp" - and read the Gary Halbert letters too -
you can get seriously reamed renting lists. Joe Sugarman's
books are good too and will give you a stark dose of
reality.

It seems to me you are wanting to do a single-stage direct
response marketing promotion. These can be very risky -
you have to really be cagey about list selection, your
offer, and copywriting. It all matters.

Large "house lists" are the riskiest. The best direct response
lists are generally highly targeted and grouped around very
specific interests. Don't assume email is any different. They
can even F you over by allowing you to "test" a smaller
segment - what they won't tell you is they are pulling out
the recent buyers for a product like yours - and the test
will go well and you'll get greedy and rent the whole list...
and as Halbert said "get crucified".

These are shark-infested waters.

###

You also asked:

"You and I have the same product, same cost, same reputation, same guarantee and same budget."

And I ask you why you expect to have a reputation? Unless
you are a national brand or are mailing to your own list you
are going to be an unknown so in my opinion reputation is
not a factor.

The OFFER is the number 1 factor. "branding" is an opiate
people who don't know how to create profitable direct-response
feed their clients to keep getting money out of them. In the
greater scheme of customer retention and putting products
on store shelves it matters to some degree, but for a small
direct marketer it's a non-issue - of course if you are selling
an information product you should claim expertise in your copy,
but that is not a reputation, it's bragging - which has some
value but in the end the reader will go look at the order form
first and if he likes the offer he'll read the whole letter to
find out what's in it for him.

Hi Mark:

Thanks for reply. I may not have articulated my words correctly. I would never play to break even for the entire game or I would not have the books, lectures, and other assorted items successful. For the email segment only if I went with it the reason I could be content with breaking even is I have never ventured into the territory before and it would give me a new marketing experience. Since time is not a factor (the ad is written if I decide to go with the email campaign) they send out the emails, the learning of new information can be a valuable lesson.

What if it turns out I make a profit? I now have the knowledge that it can be one of a myriad of tools to promote. Never would I not have as positive of a mind set as you will find. I also have to be open to new exploration as long as it is not massive amounts of money lost in the river. I wouldn't invest thousands as a test campaign. I would consider the smallest trial package to see.

I hope that clarifies the difference between total mind set for all projects and mindset for 1 experimental segment.

Have a great day.

Hi Mark:

I made sure (as is proper to thank you a couple of times for your suggestions).

Let's please go with the premise that email marketing isn't the way to go. What methods would you recommend where I could pay and see results that you feel are advantageous? I try to cover the free approach for any product with (no order)
Website
Blog
Forum Posts
Free Ad Sites
Article Writing
Social Networking Sites
Video Sites
Author/Writing Sites
Yahoo/Google Groups

Thank you as always!

Hi Mark:

Thank you for the plethora of great information. It is appreciated!

The superlative news is by word of mouth (not even from contacting them) I have some colleges wanting proposals for the writing/speaking course on a large scale. I'm excited about the new venture and have always put heart/soul into the books and lectures.

May everything in your personal and business life be paramount.