The use of a good email marketing autoresponder system affords you a tremendous opportunity to communicate with your potential clients in a way that virtually guarantees future sales.

The key to making any kind of sale is trust. At the most basic level, a potential customer has to trust that you will give them what you say you will give them. Beyond that, they have to trust that the product or service you provide them will be high quality. They have to be able to believe that you understand their needs, and are offering them a suitable solution.

Broken down like that, it sounds like it should be very simple to win a sale. However, people are not as trusting as they once were. More and more people have had the experience of being ripped off in one way or another. Particularly when you are dealing with clients over the Internet, it can be difficult to win the kind of personal confidence that is needed to secure a sale. Ultimately, the client has to feel secure before they will take a risk on you. And it is your job to help them feel that way.

The surest way to build that kind of confidence is to trade on your reputation. For example, I find it easier to order from Amazon than from XYZ Online Shop because Amazon has more to gain by maintaining its reputation than by ripping me off. This is essentially what we mean when we talk about authority.  You are an authority when your reputation is worth more than the individual product you sell.

One of the surest ways to establish yourself as an authority is to teach people something they didn’t know before. The more you are able to teach someone, the more knowledgable they assume you are.

Now you can simply put up a lot of useful information on your web site, but that has some drawbacks. For starters, it creates a situation where the client has to seek out the information on their own. The feeling this produces is often closer to being self-taught. One of the ways that companies have gotten around this is by starting blogs.

Because a weblog is time-sensitive and tends to be a little more informal than a traditional static web page, it tends to be more successful for building up your authority with your subscribers. It creates the feeling of a relationship in which you are providing excellent information and they are waiting for more. This is effective, but it is also a lot of work!

A blog is a commitment that only retains its effectiveness through long-term updating. That means creating more and more content. You also never get to assume that a particular visitor has been exposed to your previous work, but you’ll lose long-time subscribers if you rehash too much old information. So a lot of bloggers end up somewhere in the gray area, never really establishing as much authority as they may deserve, simply because they lose the ability to guage their audiences.

With email autoresponders, all of these problems are solved. There is no continued commitment to produce content, because every new subscriber will receive the same sequence of messages. All you need to do is keep your information up-to-date through minor editing. You also have much tighter control over the progress of each subscriber, because you get to design the sequence of messages to offer stages of learning. And unlike a static web site, an autoresponder series can give the recipient the feeling that they are being personally tutored. They receive a personalized message from you every so often, that is custom-tailored to their current knowledge level, and that they can respond to for extra help.

If your autoresponder series makes sense and shows your recipients how to gain the maximum benefit out of your product or service, you will not only have established yourself as an authority. You will have also convinced them that your product is truly useful. And what do you do when a truly useful product is supported by a knowledgable authority? You buy it.

I recently noticed an advertisement for an email marketing solution… The ad copy went something like this:

“Flash improves your email marketing campaigns effectiveness”

I am not sure who on earth came up with that – OR – if it was automatically generated, but it most definitely does not.  On that topic, here are a couple of things you should avoid when creating your email campaigns.

• Flash
  You will experience compatibility issues along with security warning issues.  If you want to include a movie you can include a screen capture of the movie and then have the movie launch in their browser once they click on the image.
• Javascript
  You will experience compatibility issues along with security warning issues.
• Forms
  I realize some people may disagree with this – but forms are not fully compatible and they can trigger some security warnings.
• Background Images
  Background images are very tricky if you wish to get maximum compatibility.  Outside of placing a background image in the body tag you will experience a number of issues.
• Setting a background color without using a wrapping div
  Many web based email clients will not show your body background color.  Thus if you are requiring a background color we suggest to also include a wrapping div around your content that is also set to have the same background color that your body tag has.

These are just a couple of the things you should keep in mind when creating your next email campaign.

This is part of a series of email design articles.  Subscribe to our blog to be notified as we release additional email design tips.

A while back we released a feature that allows certain ActiveCampaign products to authenticate users with an external login source. This feature is currently supported in KnowledgeBuilder 3.x and SupportTrio 2.x, and will soon be included in every ActiveCampaign product.

I wanted to share how dead simple it is to get started creating a new login source using your own authentication system. We’ve included some of the more popular applications like Joomla, PHPBB3, and vBulletin, as default external login sources, which can be enabled at any time.

But you may have your own custom authentication system that you’d like to use. In order to do this, you’ll need familiarity with editing PHP files, as well as a programmatic understanding of how to use PHP to speak to your authentication system.

To get started, open up the ac_global/loginsource/ directory contained within your KnowledgeBuilder 3.x or SupportTrio 2.x installation:

You’ll see a number of individual .php files, each corresponding to a separate login source configuration. For this example, I’ve added the last file, zencart.php, as we will be creating an external login source for Zen Cart.

Set up .php file

Once you create the new .php file in this directory, edit the contents of the file with this:

<?php

$loginident = "zencart";
$loginvars = "host,dbname,user,pass";

?>

Here we specify the name of our new external login source (the $loginident variable), as well as the settings you’d like to specify when setting up this login source (the $loginvars variable).

The $loginident variable will correspond with the name you see listed under the available login sources within the application:

The $loginvars variable will correspond with the available fields that allow you to input specific information pertaining to this login source:

Once you have included those two variables in the new .php file, you should be able to access the login source directly within the application:

Enable and further configure .php file

Once you’ve saved your new login source settings, using the above application pages, you are ready to configure the .php file to speak to your authentication system.

The easiest way to set up the rest of the .php file is to copy an existing source. For example, if you open vbulletin.php, you’ll see the necessary functions that need to reside within the class:

class vBulletinLoginSource extends AC_LoginSource {
....
}

Modify names to match your new login source. For example, vBulletinLoginSource would become zencartLoginSource.

Keep the five core functions in place:

Modify these functions to extract and authenticate a given username/password combination. For more information on what each of these functions should return, please view our detailed help documentation article.

We can also set this up for you, if you provide us the database structure that houses your external user credentials, as well as any specific PHP authentication/validation functions.

Testing out your new login source

If you feel confident that you’ve modified the .php file correctly, the only thing left is to test it out!

Make sure you’ve enabled your new login source, set User Type to Public or Admin, and promote it to be the first login source the system tries to use for authentication:

Then, log out of the application, and try logging in as a user from your external system. If everything is working, you should be able to log straight in to the application as normal!

Our minds construct narratives in order to interpret experience in a meaningful way.  If you ask three people to describe the details surrounding an event they shared together you are likely to get three very different stories.  Let’s assume that everyone is being truthful and presenting events faithfully to the best of their recollection.   You’ll find that each narration contains different and sometimes conflicting details about what really occurred. What’s more is that each person will be convinced that their representation of reality best describes what really happened.  Yet the details found in each story suggest otherwise.   Its not possible to accept all three stories as an accurate depiction of reality because they are conflicting accounts.  The truth lies somewhere in the middle.  Eyewitness accounts are never considered reliable because our minds fabricate stories that give events in our life meaning.   False memories are created in order to fill in the blanks for the details that we can not remember.  Stories are a way for our minds to put data that is collected through our senses into a context that is both useful and based on our previous experiences.  That is why storytelling has always been an essential part of what it means to be human.

Even before the written word we used speech to tell stories in order to communicate and pass along history.   As oral traditions developed the stories that were told would evolve as they were passed from speaker to speaker until what began as a factual depiction of an event, as told by the original storyteller, took on mythological proportions.  These myths relied on dramatic exaggerations and were conveyed using  language that was steeped in symbolism and meaning.  The stories that evolved as a result bared little resemblance to the factual accounts they were based on.   The world’s first print culture grew out of East Asia, in China and in Korea, where woodblock printing created the world’s first print society.  The Gutenberg printing press would later revolutionize the written word in a way that is comparable to the way the Internet has today.  What’s changed today is the medium for telling stories and not the need people have for stories to be told to them.   These stories are necessary in order to provide life with meaning.  Think about the movies, books, and TV series that attract an audience.   They have characters that people can relate to and the audience cares about them enough to want to follow along through their experiences.  When it comes time for people to create their own stories out of their personal realities they can turn to the experiences found in these stories to add richness to their lives.  How do you attract people to your website?   How do you get people to care about what you tell them in your newsletter?  Its easy.  You tell them a story.

You can easily purchase a template for your website that makes it look professional.    Likewise you can also purchase email templates that will assure that all of your newsletters look professional.  However, just like in any superficial relationship, the novelty will wear thin and it won’t be long until you lose their attention for good.   That’s because it’s the content that you are using that allows you to tell your story to your audience.    A good product or a worthwhile service is useless if no one ever knows about it.   The way you interact with your customers becomes a part of the information that is collected and later recounted in the form of a story.  This story gets told when someone talks about what you are doing to other people.   The more you relate with your customers the longer they become engaged.  The longer you can count on your story lasting with them.   Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that was so good that you never wanted it to end?   Every moment offered you something new that you could relate to in your own life and you began living vicariously through the characters in the story.

Focusing on benefits,  or how a feature is useful, is a part of telling a story that your customer wants to hear.  A list of features is not compelling but talking about why those features are useful is.  A list of people that use your product is not as interesting as the names of the people that use it.   Even better than a list of names are testimonials and case studies that tell a story about you coming from another customer.  If you send out a bunch of mailings to a ton of people and its not obvious why you are sending them then you are telling a bad story to your customers.   It’s a story about how you are wasting their time.  The newsletters that you send should have a purpose that is obvious to your subscribers.  How do you run your business?  Are you simply trying to reach as many people as you can in the hope that someone will buy into what you are selling? If that is the only story you are telling your customers then you are telling a bad story because you are treating them like a number.  People care about other people and not numbers.  Or, on the other hand, do you demonstrate integrity by creating worthwhile products or services that are useful to people?  If you take that approach and you are able to effectively communicate it to your customers then you will win over more people.  The story your customers will tell other people will be about how you provided them with something that was useful and worthwhile.  Your subscriber lists will increase in quality and you will convert more of your list into actual sales.

Narratives are a natural part of how the mind interprets experiences.   Providing content that is compelling to your audience builds relationships and allows them to connect with you.  You are always telling a story with everything you do. Even if you are not consciously trying to tell a story you are.  If you are not paying attention to the content that you are using then the message you are sending is just a very bad one.  Taking control over your message gives you the opportunity to make yourself interesting. What kind of story do you want your customers to tell about you?

While we are still working on 1-2-All 5.0 – we would like to share a couple of the changes and improvements that will be delivered in this next version.  This is our largest product update to date (across our entire product line) so there is a lot of information to cover.  This post is just a preview of some of the exciting new features & changes that will soon be available…

Multi-List Management

Prior to 1-2-All 5.0 every action was typically specific to a list.  With 5.0 we are dramatically switching the process so that all options can affect multiple lists (if you should choose to do so.)  When you log in you will no longer be forced to select a list before starting to import, send, etc..  This sounds like a minor change, however after using the new version you will find a lot of time saved and an increase in general usability from this adjustment.

Subscriber Filtering

1-2-All has had decent subscriber filtering (allows you to segment your list into specific conditional groups) but with 5.0 you will be able to take filtering to an entirely new level.  In addition to filtering based off subscriber data you will be able to filter off nearly any action the subscriber has taken.  Thus you can filter your list down to users who unsubscribed from one list, subscribed to another, read a specific campaign, and clicked on a specific link on a specific day.  Combine that with our advanced and/or grouping options along with being able to apply filters (as always) to any type of campaign and mailing that is being sent out – including auto responders.

Subscriber & List Actions

An existing feature that you may have overlooked in the past are subscriber & list actions.  Currently you can set specific things to happen based on certain actions the subscriber takes.  For instance when a subscriber unsubscribes from one list you may want to automatically remove them from other lists as well.  We are building this existing feature into something much more comprehensive.  Currently actions are based on subscriptions/unsubscriptions.  With 5.0 you will be able to set specific changes/actions based on any action the subscriber takes.  This includes subscribe/unsubscribe, reads/link tracking, forwarding mailings to friends, and more!

Advanced Message Options

Personalizing each mailing you send has always been an important feature.  We are taking this to a new level by offering dynamic variables and conditional content.

Dynamic variables mean that you can take a current personalization tag (such as %TODAY%) and alter it dynamically (such as %TODAY+2%.)

Conditional content will allow you to show certain parts of the message depending on the subscribers details.  Much like sending filters but for content.  You can think of this as if you were able to add if/else statements throughout the content of your mailings.

Reporting

I am quite excited about the new reporting options that will be available in version 5.0.  We have an extensive list of new reports along with individual report options.   These are significant enhancements in the way that you can analyze campaigns, past mailings, list reports, user reports, and more…  This is a major section to discuss so we will be releasing more information about this soon.

In addition to the large number of new internal reports you will also find many options to export data (for external analysis) along with Google Analytics integration.

User Management

New user management options will simplify the way permissions are set along with making it much easier to resell 1-2-All as a hosted solution.  The basic ideas of “accounts” and “users” remain the same but we will be introducing new user group options along with a number of new user/account limits/settings

Integration & Public Options

Subscription forms are getting a make over with new style options along with new “completion” options.  You will now be able to redirect to different URL’s, show a custom message, or let it go to the defaults.  You will also have multiple integration options for each subscription form.  Such as embedding it into your current site, popup, link to it, etc..

Database sync (for bringing in subscribers from external databases) now supports MySQL, MSSQL, and PostgreSQL.  We have added a number of new options for each sync and you can even write custom SQL queries.

The public section of 1-2-All has always been an odd issue for many clients.  While they would like the public section, many users want to restrict it down to a list or user account.  We have solved this dilemma.  There is now a general public section, list specific public section,  and an account/user specific section.  Each type of section can be enabled or disabled and everything is SEO friendly.

Sending Methods

You will find new sending settings.  We are doing away with some of the more complex settings and replacing them with easier to use options.  Functionality will not be lost by doing this.  You will now be able to set a specific number of emails to send per hour without having to specify how many messages to send before doing pauses.

1-2-All currently supports multiple sending methods – such as rotating through multiple SMTP servers when sending.   1-2-All 5.0 will also let you choose which sending methods/SMTP servers are used for each account.  That allows you to have different sending methods for each account/user if needed.

Templates

We are including a large number of free email templates that will be pre-loaded into 1-2-All 5.0.  New options will include highly requested features such as system wide templates, easier options to add purchased templates, and more.

Our new template system along with our new editing and message creation options will allow you to lock parts of the template.  Ensuring that your client does not accidentally disrupt the general design and only changes what is needed to be changed.

Add-Ons

As we extended and updated every other section of the software – we have done the same with the 1-2-All add-ons.

A/B Split has been revamped and will prove to be quite exciting compared to the current version.  The update will allow truly advanced split testing and will be included for free as part of the 1-2-All product.

AutoRemind is more integrated then ever. EmailCheck has new integration areas and will soon have new reports shown when you run it. ActiveRSS will support easier custom templates.  We also have a couple of new add-ons (that have been requested by numerous clients) that will be announced during the beta.

Extendability

While we worked on planning and developing 5.0  we have kept extendability on our minds.  We will be doing this with multiple methods.  Firstly we will be releasing 1-2-All with 99% of the files unencoded. This will allow a great number of changes.

We are re-working how language files can be translated.  The changes will allow you quickly be able to translate a section (such as the public section) without having to sift through the text for the admin section.

With the release of 1-2-All 5.0 beta we will begin to release API documentation as well.

New Support Documentation

As the product advances we are committed to making sure everything is user friendly and easy to use.  There are always times where a little more assistance/help docs are required.  You will find in-line help documentation (that is unbranded) throughout the software.  We will also be releasing quick start guides (both branded and non-branded for the resellers) along with an extensive collection of articles and video walk-throughs.

More to come….

This post is only scratching at the surface of what is to come with 1-2-All 5.0. We will be posting more specifics on each area along with new screen shots in the near future.  There are a lot of new items and changes that we will be discussing in great detail.

Please note that while we are nearing a beta we do not have a set date at this time.  We choose not to specify an exact release date as we would much rather prefer to ensure the product is complete and stable before releasing.  We do however expect the beta to be released sometime in Quarter 1 of this year.  Please subscribe to our blog or newsletter to be kept up to date with this.

Conclusions drawn from analyzing survey data are only acceptable to the degree to which they are determined valid.  Validity is used to determine whether research measures what it intended to measure and to approximate the truthfulness of the results. Researchers often use their own definition when it comes to what is considered valid.  In quantitative research testing for validity and reliability is a given.  However some qualitative researchers have gone so far as to suggest that validity does not apply to their research even as they acknowledge the need for some qualifying checks or measures in their work.  This is wrong.   To disregard validity is to put the trustworthiness of your work in question and to call into question others confidence in its results.   Even when qualitative measures are used in research they need to be looked at using measures of reliability and validity in order to sustain the trustworthiness of the results.  Validity and reliability make the difference between “good” and “bad” research reports. Quality research depends on a commitment to testing and increasing the validity as well as the reliability of your research results.

Any research worth its weight is concerned with whether what is being measured is what is intended to be measured and considers the ways in which observations are influenced by the circumstances in which they are made.   The basis of how our conclusions are made play an important role in addressing the broader substantive issues of any given study. For this reason we are going to look at various validity types that have been formulated as a part of legitimate research methodology.

Face Validity

This is the least scientific method of validity as it is not quantified using statistical methods.  This is not validity in a technical sense of the term.  It is concerned with whether it seems like we measure what we claim.  Here we look at how valid a measure appears on the surface and make subjective judgments based off of that.  For example,  if you give a survey that appears to be valid to the respondent and the questions are selected because they look valid to the administer.   The administer asks a group of random people, untrained observers,  if the questions appear valid to them.  In research its never sufficient to rely on face judgments alone and more quantifiable methods of validity are necessary in order to draw acceptable conclusions.  There are many instruments of measurement to consider so face validity is useful in cases where you need to distinguish one approach over another.  Face validity should never be trusted on its own merits.

Content Validity

This is also a subjective measure but unlike face validity we ask whether the content of a measure covers the full domain of the content. If a researcher wanted to measure introversion they would have to first decide what constitutes a relevant domain of content for that trait.  This is considered a subjective form of measurement because it still relies on people’s perception for measuring constructs that would otherwise be difficult to measure.   Where it distinguishes itself is through its use of experts in the field or individuals belonging to a target population.  This study can be made more objective through the use of rigorous statistical tests.  For example you could have a content validity study that informs researchers how items used in a survey represent their content domain, how clear they are, and the extent to which they maintain the theoretical factor structure assessed by the factor analysis.

Construct Validity

A construct represents a collection of behaviors that are associated in a meaningful way to create an image or an idea invented for a research purpose.  Depression is a construct that represents a personality trait which manifests itself in behaviors such as over sleeping, loss of appetite, difficulty concentrating, etc.  The existence of a construct is manifest by observing the collection of related indicators.  Any one sign may be associated with several constructs.  A person with difficulty concentrating may have A.D.D. but not depression.  Construct validity is the degree to which inferences can be made from operationalizations(connecting concepts to observations) in your study to the constructs on which those operationalizations are based.  To establish construct validity you must first provide evidence that your data supports the theoretical structure.  You must also show that you control the operationalization of the construct, in other words, show that your theory has some correspondence with reality.

• Convergent Validity - the degree to which an operation is similar to other operations it should theoretically be similar to.
• Discriminative Validity - if a scale adequately differentiates itself or does not differentiate between groups that should differ or not differ based on theoretical reasons or previous research.
• Nomological Network - representation of the constructs of interest in a study, their observable manifestations, and the interrelationships among and between these.  According to Cronbach and Meehl,  a nomological network has to be developed for a measure in order for it to have construct validity
• Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix - six major considerations when examining Construct Validity according to Campbell and Fiske.  This includes evaluations of the convergent validity and discriminative validity.  The others are trait method unit, multi-method/trait, truley different methodology, and trait characteristics.

Internal Validity

This refers to the extent to which the independent variable can accurately be stated to produce the observed effect.  If the effect of the dependent variable is only due to the independent variable(s) then internal validity is achieved. This is the degree to which a result can be manipulated.

Statistical Conclusion Validity

A determination of whether a relationship or co-variation exists between cause and effect variables.   Requires ensuring adequate sampling procedures,  appropriate statistical tests, and reliable measurement procedures. This is the degree to which a conclusion is credible or believable.

External Validity

This refers to the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized beyond the sample. Which is to say that you can apply your findings to other people and settings.   Think of this as the degree to which a result can be generalized.

Criterion-Related Validity

Can alternately be referred to as Instrumental Validity. The accuracy of a measure is demonstrated by comparing it with a measure that has been demonstrated to be valid.  In other words, correlations with other measures that have known validity. For this to work you must know that the criterion has been measured well.  And be aware that appropriate criteria do not always exist.  What you are doing is checking the performance of your operationalization against a criteria.  The criteria you use as a standard of judgment accounts for the different approaches you would use:

• Predictive Validity - operationalization’s ability to predict what it is theoretically able to predict.  The extent to which a measure predicts expected outcomes.
• Concurrent Validity - operationalization’s ability to distinguish between groups it theoretically should be able to.  This is where a test correlates well with a measure that has been previously validated.

When we look at validity in survey data we are asking whether the data represents what we think it should represent.  We depend on the respondent’s mind set and attitude in order to give us valid data.  In other words we depend on them to answer all questions honestly and conscientiously.  We also depend on whether they are able to answer the questions that we ask.  When questions are asked that the respondent can not comprehend or understand then the data does not tell us what we think it does.

While all ISPs score a sender’s reputation by giving different weight to various factors you can be assured that all major ISPs are using some type of equation to determine your reputation.   How they calculate your sender reputation score determines whether your mailing is received in the inbox, the junk mail folder, or even delivered at all.

Email Filters

Its important to familiarize yourself with the following individual filtering methods.  In the past ISPs would block emails based solely on one of these filters but as weaknesses in this approach became inherent they can no longer rely on any one method.  Each of the following filtering methods play a role in your ISPs’ delivery decision:

• Content Filtering – Uses the email subject line and the body content to come up with a spam count score.  One of the most popular spam filtering packages is SpamAssassin which is used in EmailCheck.
• List Quality Filtering – A lot of spam lists particularly paid subscriber lists contain a lot of bogus email which results in high bounce rates.   ISPs use this to detect which lists contain bounces that exceed a certain quantity and then disallow all emails from this IP address or sending domain.
• Volume Filtering – Because spammers send bulk emails without regard to accuracy or volume this checks the number of simultaneous connections that are opened (known as threads) at any one time with your ISP.  The server may then reject all messages based on the number of open connections.  1-2-All Email Marketing uses a single thread sending method.
• IP Address Filtering – When an IP address is added to this filtering list the process is known as “blacklisting.”   Once blacklisted all emails from a particular IP address are disallowed.
• Domain and URL Filtering – Checks the email domain used to send a mailing as well as any URLs included in the message.

Legal Compliance

You need to be aware of regional laws aimed at curbing spam.   In order to ensure that your mailings are permission based it is good policy to ensure that an opt-in mechanism is in place before you begin email marketing.

Can Spam Act

• ensure that all mailings contain a functional unsubscribe mechanism
• all unsubscribe requests must be honored within 10 days
• commercial mailings must include the physical location of the sender
• criminal charges for fraudulent sender or deceptive subject lines

European Union E-Privacy Directive

Canada PIPEDA

Australia Spam Act of 2003

Whitelisting and Feedback Loops

Some ISPs provide whitelisting and compaint feedback loops as methods for improving deliverability.  Those that do typically require senders to have explicit opt in permissions for subscribers.

• Whitelists -The opposite of a blacklist where the ISP receives requests from legitimate companies to be added to a list of pre-authorized e-mail addresses from which mailings can be delivered regardless of spam filters
• Feedback Loops – A reporting mechanism whereby an ISP provides the sender with data including unsubscribes and spam complaints.

Spam Complaints

Most people have seen a “Report Spam” button on their email client.   When this is clicked on a spam complaint is logged at the ISP level or it is also relayed back to the sender if they are a part of a feedback loop.  If you receive too many spam complaints then you will damage your sender reputation.   A good way to reduce your spam complaints is to ensure that all of your subscribers are opt-in.

Spam complaints do not track the reason why recipients make a spam complaint.   It is possible that even if subscribers opt-in to your list they may forget they are subscribed or no longer find your mailing relevant.  If you receive a high number of spam complaints on a list where your subscribers have opt-in to then this is usually a good indicator that your mailings are either irrelevant or sent to frequently.

Many people find the idea of building up a mailing list quite daunting. However, when you have built a successful web site with a steady stream of visitors, it is much easier than you might imagine to convert those visitors into mailing list subscribers. You only need to understand the reasons why people are visiting your site to begin with, and offer your newsletter to them as a way to get more of what you already know they’re looking for.

This means tailoring the content of your content to the audience of your site. Of course, the content you’ll want to include will vary widely depending on the type of business you run. Whatever your type of business, try to make sure that your newsletters are not simply ads for your products and services. Make sure to include useful information that is relevant for your customers. Remember, the best way to sell a product to someone is to teach them how to use it.

In addition to this, you need to make sure that visitors know about your mailing list and can sign up easily. This is why so many site owners are experiencing excellent results with pop-up windows. You simply add a pop-up on your site that displays for new visitors or for visitors who have not signed up for your mailing list already, and include a sign-up form and just a line or two about why signing up would be a good idea for them.

A great way to improve your sign-up rate is to offer something special to your users who do subscribe. What you offer should depend on what type of product or service you provide, but might include a free report on some relevant topic, or even a free e-mail course sent out over the course of a week or a month. Offering discounts or time-limited specials for newsletter subscribers is another very effective way of enticing people to sign up and maintaining great relationships with the subscribers you already have.

Of course, you will want to make sure that a sign-up form for your mailing list is visible on every page of your website. This not only makes it easier for people to find the sign-up form if they are looking for it, but also helps to build familiarity with the idea of joining your mailing list. The more pages your visitor views, and the more times he or she sees the sign-up form, the more comfortable and positive they will feel about the idea of signing up for your newsletter. This will tend to increase your sign-ups across the board.

Finally, word of mouth advertising is always the most effective form of advertising, so make sure to include a “Forward To Friend” link in every e-mail. Of course your subscribers could simply hit the “forward” button in their e-mail client, but adding in a special link for this purpose serves two functions. First, it allows you to track how many people are forwarding the message along. And second, it provides a subtle reminder to the reader that the newsletter can and should be shared with others who may find it valuable.

One of the keys to success in e-mail marketing is to reduce the number of spam complaints that you receive. Spam complaints can hurt your sender reputation with your ISP or hosting provider. They can even cause you to be blacklisted and  prevent your messages from being delivered to millions of users of popular web e-mail providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo mail. In spite of these potentially very significant consequences, many businesses that rely on e-mail marketing as a major part of their advertising efforts fail to understand the steps that you can take to prevent spam complaints from being submitted. Consequently, they suffer from low email marketing delivery rates.

The first and most important step you can take is to include an unsubscribe link in every message. Beyond this, the unsubscribe link should be two things: obvious and painless. It may seem counter intuitive to place a large and readily apparent unsubscribe link in your messages, but the fact is that people who enjoy your messages will ignore it anyway, and people who want to unsubscribe will do so quietly without causing you any grief. You also want a completely painless unsubscribe process. Ideally, a single click and it’s all done. The less complicated or frustrating this process is, the fewer spam complaints you are likely to get.

Another thing to keep in mind when you are sending out mailings is that the large mail providers use system-wide filters. This means that if a certain number of Hotmail users flag your messages as spam, it becomes more likely that your messages will be automatically routed to Hotmail users’ spam boxes. Most people never check their spam box for legitimate mail they might have missed, so your mailings will simply never be seen. This is why it’s very important to make your messages appear as legitimate as possible to your recipients.

The simplest way to do this is to optimize your subject headings. Each message’s subject line should make it exactly clear what the message contains, and in a professional manner. For our own newsletter, for example, we start each message’s subject with the text “ActiveCampaign News:” followed by a description of the individual newsletter, such as “Products Updates & New Services.” This makes it clear that you are receiving a newsletter from ActiveCampaign, and makes the recipient aware of the message’s purpose right away. There is much less chance that this will be mistaken for spam than if the message were titled something like “Great New Products!”

You can also help people to recognize your messages by using clear and predictable sender information, such as your company name, e-mail list name, or personal name, depending on what subscribers to your particular list would be likely to expect. Our company newsletter is addressed from “Company Name, Inc.” and is sent from the e-mail address info@ourdomainname.com, exactly as one might expect. If you maintain a mailing list called the “Dog Breeding Newsletter,” you would probably be better off using the list name as a From header rather than “XYZ Kennel” or “xyzkennel@somedomain.com”

Finally, you can avert many problems by simply reading and promptly replying to any complaints are requests that you receive by e-mail. If someone writes to you to ask that they be unsubscribed, it will be much better to simply remove them from the list rather than send them an unsubscribe link. You may also be able to retain a reader who otherwise may have unsubscribed by responding to concerns about mailing frequency, content, or other issues that may arise. By being responsive to your readers, you will build up profitable long-term relationships and benefit from their word of mouth.

In general you can expect about 10% of your mailings are going to be reported as bounces. If your bounce rates are considerably higher than this then there are a few things you may want to look at. It could be that your mail server is rejecting mailings from being sent due to the content in your messages or you have been blacklisted. Another explanation for why your email delivery failure may be high is that the mail server you are using is either temporarily down or it is unreachable. High bounce rates impact your campaign not only because the sender’s reputation suffers but the delivery rate to valid email addresses is slowed. For this reason it is very important to keep your subscriber lists clean.

Bounces generally fall into one of two categories, hard bounces and soft bounces. What is typically referred to as a hard bounce is a mailing that was returned by a recipient mail server. This could be because the address is either invalid or the domain name doesn’t exist or is not recognized.

Examples of hard bounces which are defined by bounce codes in Email Marketing include:

5.0.0 – Hard – Address does not exist
5.1.1 – Hard – Bad destination mailbox address
5.1.6 – Hard – Mailbox has moved
5.1.7 – Hard – Bad sender’s mailbox address syntax
5.1.8 – Hard – Bad sender’s system address
5.3.2 Hard System not accepting network messages
5.2.3 Hard Message length exceeds administrative limit

In general a soft bounce is returned because of a temporary problem having to do with the email address or the recipient’s email server. For example, even if the email address you are sending to is valid the message could still bounce if the recipient’s mailbox is full.

Examples of soft bounces which are defined by bounce codes in Email Marketing include:

5.2.0 Soft Other or undefined mailbox status
5.3.1 Soft Mail system full
5.5.3 Soft Too many recipients

You can reduce the number of bounces in your lists by including unsubscription links in your mailings, you can have Email Marketing add an unsubscribe link to your mailings automatically or through a personalization tag. Another thing you can do is add an update profile link to your mailing, Email Marketing includes an update your profile personalization tag which you can also easily insert into your mailing. Another way to decrease bounces is to have addresses removed through setting up bounce management. In Email Marketing you can set up a cron job, cron_bounce.php that will cycle through your list and remove hard and soft bounces after a set number of times. Unless you set up this cron job you will need to manually run the bounce check until Email Marketing cycles through all your mailings and removes addresses after they bounce a set number of times. Bounces will not show up in statistics unless bounce management is set up using a POP account for bounces and if no bounce management is selected all bounces will be sent to the From sender’s address.

Another good idea is to include custom fields for phone or address so that you can use the phone or mail to update the address of those subscribers that bounce. Follow this link for more email marketing tips.