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Why internet marketers have email deliverability problems

October 7, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment 

There is a tendency in high end marketing circles to get inspired about spending about $1000+ /month for email autoresponder services. Usual selling point of these services is higher (albeit unproved) deliverability of emails and better tracking. I personally think that "tracking" is a great marketing trick as it is relatively easy to convince any business owner that his business is not that great (or not as great as could be) because he does not have enough tracking bells and whistles.

Last week I personally been through 3 sales pitches based on this. But that's another story.

It is a bit of a problem indeed if you have 5,000-10,000 emails list and only half of them reach destination during your next affiliate pimping campaign.

Now here's what happening. I use gmail and getting pretty much zero spams per day. One of my lists has about 30% of email from gmail. Once in a while during the coffee break I check my spam folder.

And here's the picture.

Besides exciting viagra, porn, casinos and replica offers - I see oh-so familiar names of internet marketers I subscribed to.

My gmail spam folder pack leaders are Mike Filsaime and second close is David Bass. Why are they in spam folder if I never reported them as spammers and even subscribed to their newsletters?

Both of these guys have zillion names emails lists which they use on a daily basis. There is a high probability that when certain percentage of people see familiar push "you gotta check it now! click here! amazing! free! hurry! ...how this guy made millions! etc..." hype - the normal reaction is to click "spam" button. Gmail uses "human" filters to distinguish spam. In other words if certain number of "unconnected" humans report same email as spam - no one else (from gmail users) will get it to their inbox. It will go to spam folder of everyone else automatically.

So it's not a problem with Aweber, GetResponse or your favorite inexpensive autoresponder. It's the way people treat your emails. And guys with huge lists are likely to trigger more absolute spam reports than guys with smaller tightly targeted lists.

Here's your $1000 deliverability problem.

Just get Aweber, stop spamming, erase hype keywords from your dictionary, treat your list like humans and sleep well!


Filed Under: Marketing on Internet and Beyond
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Aweber vs 1ShoppingCart vs GetResponse - autoresponders comparison

September 30, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment 

I was searching for the best autoresponder to use for business and as many of us do - went to Google to search for unbiased opinions, reviews and experiences. The quest was a bit time consuming - Google still has a work to do eliminating useless spam and zero-value pages from their index. Until they do - we - the searchers has to do it ourselves. So I did it and filtered through the content of all these results to make the final choice.

My research might save you time if you're after similar task.

I already have basic shopping cart account with 1ShoppingCart and they also offer autoresponder at extra monthly cost. Another contender is AWeber. I also found quite a few people using GetResponse. I wanted to find which one is the best and whether I might be missing other choices in this area.

Choosing the right autoresponder is VERY important as the task of moving away from it later on could mean serious loss of established business (old list members refuse to re-optin).

I decided to search for reasonably fresh pages - dated less than 1 yr old. I wanted to find decent  reviews/comparisons/articles regarding choosing the right autoresponder.

So here I just list the reasonably decent posts I found and at the end summarize my choice.


Conclusions + Bottom line:

  • Switching from one autoresponder to another one is bad - choose one carefully and stick with it.
  • Stay away from "free" solutions. What you pay is what you get.
  • I've known marketers who use solutions that cost almost 100x times more than AWeber but have yet to see independent trustworthy report of their real benefits.
  • 1ShoppingCart is great integrated solution for everything e-commerce. It is an excellent shopping cart, it's premium version includes affiliate marketing features, digital downloadable products delivery and autoresponder as well. If you want all-in-one for everything (ecommerce+autoresponder) this might work well.
    There were number of people though who expressed criticism toward 1SC autoresponder's features and capabilities in favor of Aweber.

Overall winner of all autoresponders: www.Aweber.com




Filed Under: Webmaster Toolbox
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Tips for Affiliate Marketers

July 12, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Here are few tips to help you started with affiliate marketing.

    If you already up and running this direction - you might get a few gems out of this article.
  • Good idea is not necessarily a good business! Test the market before investing lots of time and money to create a product. To test the market:
    • Open Google Adwords account
    • Sign up for affiliate programs at ClickBank or Commission Junction programs for free.
    • Find existing products that targets the same (or closely related markets) to the product/service that you are planning to create.
    • Create simple landing page on your website promoting existing affiliate product or service. Alternatively, instead of trying to sell anything you can send visitors to fill-in your online survey about their needs and wants or simply offer them page full of useful information + ability to opt-in to receive more information. Aweber has all tools to manage your email and opt-in needs. Once people opted in - you will be able to market them your or other products repeatedly without paying anything to Google.
    • Spend $50 - $100 worth on Adwords sending targeted traffic to your landing page.
    • See how many visitors you got and how many converted to buyers/customers. If after spending $100 on ads you won't get any customers - this might not be a good niche. This also could mean that approach to convert visitors to buyers might need to be changed.
  • If you create a useful (or so you think) informational product that no one seems to buy - offer it at no charge, but through an opt-in box on your site. This way you will grow database of people who are interested in this market and later on you can offer them other affiliate products and make your money worth and more.
  • When sending emails to your opt-in list approach them like a friend, not like salesman. This could increase trust and conversions.
  • Offering something cheaper than your competitors not necessarily will make you more successful. Opposite quite often is true - clever, innovative, agressive marketing with high price tag product could work wonders in the right niches.
  • Video sales letters converts better than regular online text salesletters.
  • Use competitive intelligence to help your business. Spy on your competition or other successful affiliate marketers with DomainTools. Domain tools paid account ($15/mo, $149/yr) allows you to list all domains hosted under same IP address. So if you know website name of successful affiliate marketer - you can see what other "cards he has under his sleeve" by peeking at his other domains. TIP: Alternatively you may use live.com query to find all domain under IP address, type this at live.com search box: ip:123.45.6.78
  • Some internet marketing gurus are raving about Spyfu.com service using which you can spy on other websites (presumably your competitors), see what keywords they are bidding on and what their daily ad budget. I checked their site against domains that I personally manage and have to say this: - They don't get even close to the daily budget I am spending on Adwords. That's understandable - only Google knows that - they obviously has no and cannot have any clue about it. This factor may or may not be important for your needs. - They do report organic rankings ok - anyone could get this just by Googling. - They do report pay per click competitors ok - same - anyone could get this just by Googling. - They does not report our most moneymaking keywords, although I don't have paid account with them and haven't seen all keywords that they could report. - They doing great job marketing their service! Something we all can learn from.
  • If you use Aweber to market to your list - do not leave "thank you" page as it's default. You're leaving money on the table. "Thank you" page could redirect opted-in visitor to another sales letter and/or be as simple as affiliate link itself for relevant products.
  • "Old" domain names are as good as old quality aged wine. If you own one or could afford to purchase one (especially rather generically looking name) - this will definitely help to quickly gain trust at Google, compare to brand new registered domains.
  • Every portal must have privacy policy, contact us and about us page. This is useful for visitors and good for search engines to see that you're serious to do online business up to standards. Having sitemap is a must for quicker indexing and ranking. Having separate link to sitemap from your main page is a good idea.
  • Do you have the list? How often do you mail them? Marketing experts suggest to create at least 52 separate email messages (you may outsource their creation to rentacoder, elance or other outsourcing places). If you have account with Aweber or other email marketing service - upload these messages over there and let your messages to be sent to your list at least once a week. This way you'll be set for the whole year, without touching anything else. Of course, if you discovered new product or service within affiliate space that is worth promoting to your list - just create one extra message and send it out to your list. Other 52 - will keep your list "in touch" with your business year round and will be your automated generator of residual income.
Good luck with your online ventures!

Filed Under: Marketing on Internet and Beyond
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