1. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano - but when I started to play!”

This is *the* most popular headline of all time. It has been used in direct marketing to sell millions of dollars worth of products, but what is it about this headline that makes people keep reading?

I think it’s the anticipation. As a reader you ask yourself “well, what happened when he sat down at the piano? Did they like what he played? What song did he play?”. This makes you want to keep reading to see exactly what “they” did when “he” started to play the piano.

Can you use anticipation to build curiosity in your headline?

2. They grinned when the waiter spoke to me in French - but their laughter changed to amazement at my reply.

Again, the use of anticipation. “What was her reply?” you ask yourself. “If they didn’t think she could speak French, then what country was she from?”. When I see this headline I picture a group of mature aged women sitting around at a fancy restaurant with a waiter by the side of the lady who replied in French.

How can you use visual imagery to create a killer headline for your web site?

3. Do you make these mistakes in English?

When I was writing our most recent newsletter I decided to give this headline a try. “Do You Make These Mistakes When Attracting New Clients?” is the headline I chose. The headline is followed by a paragraph about our http://www.interspire.com/strategies.

I think when you see this headline you immediately ask yourself “What mistakes is he talking about? What if they are costing me and my business money?”

This headline is easy to flip and use for business. Can you flip it?

4. Can You Spot These 10 Decorating Sins?

Similar to headline #3, this headline provokes thoughts of embarrassment. Obviously this headline would’ve been used in craft magazines targeted to female homemakers, but what you do you think the inner monologue of a reader would have been when she saw this headline?

“Decorating sins? I’ve spent so much time decorating the family home. I hope I haven’t committed any of these decorating sins. Let me read on just to make sure.”

What “sins” might your potential customers be committing? Can you use this headline on your web site or in an article?

5. How a “fool stunt” made me a star salesman

The “How” headline pulls really well because it sounds more like the introduction to a story rather than a headline. People love reading stories and when I see a headline like this I say to myself “Hmmm, a story. I don’t really like salesmen but I wonder what the stunt was that made him a star”.

How can you use the “How” headline to make your ad or web page sound like a story? Being a PHP developer, I might use it like this: “How crashing a web server made me a star web developer”.

6. How a strange accident saved me from baldness

The same as headline #5. I think to myself “How can an accident save this guy from going bald? Is he crazy? This sounds like an interesting read, let me skim over the article”.

7. Who else wants a screen star figure?

The “who else wants” headline implies the theory of social proof. “Who else” means that other people already have what’s in question (in this case it’s a “star figure”). This headline also implies that just by reading the content of the article, you too can have a star figure. This gives the copywriter plenty of time to “warm you up” in the body of the article so that you’re ready for the sales pitch a few paragraphs after the headline.

Make this your next headline: Who else wants [insert the benefit of your product here]?

8. Who else wants a lighter cake - in half the mixing time?

The same as #7 with a clear benefit – half the mixing time. Implies social proof and if that doesn’t work the benefit acts as backup.

9. Free to brides - $2 to others

Headlines with “free” in the title don’t really work anymore, but you could flip this headline in another way. This headline is strictly targeted to brides, making them sound in a class of their own, as opposed to “others” who have to pay $2 for whatever the article is promising the bride for free.

10. Free to high school teachers - $6 to others

The exact same format as headline #9. Use this headline and just plug in words relating to your industry:

[Low price] to [your target audience] – [High price] to others

11. Announcing the new Ford cars for (year)

“Announcing” is an authoritative word and immediately removes the visitor’s skepticism that the headline could be for an advertisement. “New” also piques the interest of a lot of people as in most cultures it’s generally acknowledged that the people with the newest [product] are trendsetting individuals and not followers.

12. Are You Ashamed of Smells In Your Home?

This is a binary response headline. You either answer yes or no. If you answer yes, then the headline gets your attention and you continue reading. The trick with this type of headline is to make it a question that the majority of your readers will answer yes to.

Which question will the majority of your web site visitors answer “yes” to?

Conclusion

You’ve just read my thoughts on 12 of the top 101 headlines of all time. Next time you’re adding a page to your web site or writing an article, why don’t you try incorporating one of the headlines mentioned above? You never know which one will trigger your customers into a buying frenzy

For every email you send you’ve got room for no more than 50 characters in your subject line, and today I’m going to share with you 10 tips that we use to increase the open rates of our email campaigns.

1. 
   

   Test the subject line – Take a look at email campaigns you’ve sent in the past. Which subject lines worked the best and gave you the highest open and conversion rates? You might find that for a particular topic there’s a general trend or subject style that resulted in higher open rates.

   
   



2. 
   

   The subject of importance – Try and put as much important and relevant information into your subject lines as possible. For example, if you’re sending out an email about a special offer make sure the product name and details on the offer appear in the subject line in a clear and concise format such as “$40 off ACME Widget Until - Today Only”.

   
   


3. 
   

   Personalize the subject line – If you have details about your subscribers then use them in your subject line to get their attention. A subject line containing the subscribers first name ALWAYS out pulls one that doesn’t.
   
   



4. 
   

   Avoid spam keywords – Most email servers automatically filter out any emails that contain spam keywords in their subject line – Words such as free, stock, ebay, password, mortgage, etc all trigger spam detection software so keep them out of your subject lines at all times.
   
   



5. 
   

   Trigger curiosity – The best way to improve your open rates is to pique the interest of your subscribers. A compelling headline that entices them to open and read the contents of your email can do wonders for your conversion rate. I’ve been thinking about headlines that trigger curiosity, and if you can work this one into your email campaign I’d like to hear the response rate: “Hi [First Name] - I have a question for you.”.
   
   



6. 
   

   Make the offer clear – If you’re making a special offer to your subscriber then be upfront and include it as part of your subject line. People love bargains and special offers so let them know about it before anything else.
   
   



7. 
   

   Emphasize the benefits – We use this technique for our newsletters. We always use the format of “Interspire Newsletter – [Benefit]“. In our case, benefit is always the title of an article contained in the newsletter, such as “Interspire Newsletter – 10 Tips for Better Subject Lines”. It works every time
   
   



8. 
   

   Copy what works – Why not take some of these and use them in the subject line of your next email campaign?
   
   



9. 
   

   Easy identification – Make sure your subscribers know the email is coming from you. Deceptive subject lines can confuse people so always try and including your company name in the subject line. Also, make sure you set the “From” attribute of your email to include your name and your companies name, such as “From: John Smith <john@acme.com>”.
   
   



10. 
    

    Exclaim nothing – Avoid using excessive punctuation at the end of your subject lines. Google bans punctuation from AdWords ad’s for a reason – too much hype can annoy and confuse people.

    
    

Well there you have it - 10 tips for better subject lines in your next email marketing campaign. If you have any tips you’d like to share feel free to post a comment below.

If you’re unsure what your domain’s IP address is, simply open up a command prompt in windows (start menu -> run -> cmd.exe) and type in ping www.domain.com. You should see something like this:

Pinging www.domain.com [203.213.97.61] with 32 bytes of data:

Your IP address is contained inside the brackets (in this case the IP address is 203.213.97.61).

Once you’ve obtained your IP address you can start checking it against the different black list databases. I’ve supplied some of the more popular ones below:

http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/

http://www.mail-abuse.com/cgi-bin/lookup

http://www.spambag.org/query.html

You can find a more comprehensive list by clicking on the link below:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam/Blacklists/

If you’re IP address isn’t found on any of the lists, then great. If it is you can try to contact your ISP and find out if you can get a new IP address. You can also try contacting the owner of the blacklist site to get your IP address removed from their database.

Watch your attachments

Many people don’t realize that the type of attachment you send with your email can cause different spam filters to block your email and even go so far as reporting your I.P to a black list database.

You should avoid using script or any type of attachment besides PDF. Many corporate mailboxes as well as virus filters block attachments that end in .exe, .avi, .swf, .zip, etc.

Make sure your server is configured for reverse DNS lookup

Reverse DNS lookup, originally designed as a network troubleshooting tool, has become an import tool in the fight against spam. When an Internet mail server receives an email it receives an “SMTP” greeting. This SMTP greeting is how the 2 servers communicate with each other when sending and receiving emails.

In this SMTP greeting, the sending server identifies itself as mail.domain.com with an IP address of 10.1.1.1 (for example). The receiving server can now do a reverse DNS lookup, to see if the IP address actually matches the domain name. A lot of spam servers won’t match and so the receiving server can mark this as one failed test on a list of many to indicate if the email is indeed spam or not.

Most reputable hosting companies should already have this configured, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. If your server is not configured for reverse DNS lookup, then be very wary of sending legitimate bulk email from that server.

Don’t send bulk emails using the BCC field

Some of us using our favorite email client (such as Microsoft Outlook) tend to send mass emails using the BCC field. That’s okay if you’re forwarding something of interest to your friends or co-workers, but don’t ever do this when sending your newsletters.

Using a BCC field is another trigger for spam filters that you want to stay away from. Instead, your email program should send just one email to one subscriber at a. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s a good idea to send your newsletter to 200 subscribers using the “CC” and “BCC” fields.

Keep your lists as clean as possible

Honor all unsubscribe requests (your email marketing software should generate an unsubscribe link for all emails you send) and process bounced emails frequently. Sending to email addresses that have bounced repeatedly can result in a blacklisted IP address. You want to make sure that each bulk email you send does go out to legitimate, working email addresses.

You should also make sure your abuse@ and postmaster@ emails are valid and working. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has recommended these email addresses for complaint spam reporting and you may receive emails from users or ISP’s if they have a complaint or spam report about your mailings.

Let your subscribers know when your emails are coming

If you offer a subscription to your newsletter from your web site then tell each and every subscriber exactly when to expect your newsletter. For example:

“We send our newsletter once a month, usually around the 20^th, so make sure you keep an eye out for our next issue!”

Also, if someone has subscribed for your newsletter and only your newsletter, don’t go sending them special offers and other unrelated emails unless you’ve told them to expect to receive them. For example:

“When you join our mailing list we may occasionally send you special offers for our products and services, but don’t worry – every email includes an unsubscribe link if you change your mind.”

Use double opt-in lists

I’ve mentioned this in my previous article but once again to make your mailing list as clean as possible always use double opt-in strategies. That is, when someone signs up they should receive an email which contains a link they must click to verify that they do indeed want to be on your mailing list. This stops illegitimate email addresses from being added to your mailing list.

Let subscribers update their details

If I switch jobs or change my email address, I should be able to come to your web site and change my newsletter subscription from me@oldjob.com to me@newjob.com using a simple “modify details” form. By allowing your subscribers to do this, you reduce the number of bounced emails and keep your subscribers active much longer.

Conclusion

Improving email deliverability is one of the toughest tasks for any email marketer. While this list is by no means complete it can dramatically help to improve your email deliverability and hopefully your click thru rate and bottom line. Until next time, best of luck in your e-marketing efforts!

A few days later, John receives another email that goes something like this:

“Hey John, I know you’re quite busy, especially with the holiday period coming to an end, but I just wanted to get in touch with you to let you know we’ve got a special coming up for that ‘How to win at poker’ handbook you’ve always wanted.”

John’s forgotten that he’d been looking to buy a book like this and this email reminds him that he needs to improve his game. John adds buying the handbook to his “To Do” list and goes about his daily business.

Another few days later, John receives another email; again, reminding him that the special is about to end alongside another juicy tip that’s in the book. John realizes he doesn’t have much time now, and goes off to purchase your “How to win at poker” handbook.

Every email sent to John was automated. You didn’t have to wait for him to subscribe, you didn’t have to personally address John, nor did you have to send him an email every few days.

The example above shows how a series of auto responder emails can be used as a powerful “hands off” marketing tool for your web site.

Now, take a few minutes and think to yourself, “How can I use auto responders on my web site?”

No, seriously. Stop and think. This simple exercise could easily add another stream of revenue to your web site that you didn’t know existed.

But I don’t sell anything online!

Auto responders can work for ANY business. You don’t need to be selling something online for them to work. For example, let’s pretend you have a hair styling business. You cater towards young men looking for a modern, attractive hair style. Part of your service includes helping them select a hair style that greatly enhances their facial features and gets them the compliments they’re after from the ladies.

On your website, you setup a simple form, something like: “Guys, get the hair style that’ll get you noticed. Free email report shows you how.”

Once John’s filled in the form, he gets an email with a summary of tips about the type of hair style suited for men with different features. It also mentions that you’re an expert in this field and your salon regularly helps men go from dud to stud in less than an hour.

A few days later, John receives yet another tip — this time on how washing his hair with a different shampoo can lead to different results. John starts to see how much of an expert you are, but also how much he’d rather just pay someone to take care of all this for him. He hasn’t got much time now since he’s started killing those poker sites. And so off he goes to call and make an appointment at your salon.

What else should I know?

The content in your auto responders need to be useful. Whilst including marketing hype purely about your product and services can work if there is a strong interest, you’ll usually need to provide relevant tips and information to keep your subscriber engaged and ready to pull out their wallet when need be.

You should opt to use autoresponder software that offers personalization, which includes the ability to address John by his first name, as that greatly increases response rates.

Finally, you should TEST your auto responders. Make sure they aren’t trapped by spam filters, make sure the subscribers are receiving the auto responders in the order they’re meant to be and so forth.

Armed with this new knowledge, you should be able to add an additional stream of revenue that could do some serious boosting to your profits. Some online businesses use this single marketing strategy as the sole way of getting new clients. They do this because it works!

Now, have you decided how you’re going to use auto responders for your business?

Why Choose an E-Newsletter?

Make sure you know what an e-newsletter is, and type of content belongs in it before you decide to choose one as a means of marketing.

Readers don’t want to see information in an e-newsletter that they can find on your website, so make sure your newsletter offers the reader a reason to read. Include current information and updates on your company or any future developments and projects that are being planned (give them a sneak preview), advertise discounts for new products just for subscribing and include articles relating to your field of expertise.

The “Personal” Touch

Effective newsletters should always contain a personal touch, mainly to appear in-touch with your reader and his/her needs.

It is important to let your personality dominate the newsletter so that it doesn’t present itself as yet another mediocre sales blur. Make sure you capture the first name of your reader so that you can address them by it. There’s nothing worse than getting a “Hi there” when you should really be getting a “Hi John”.

Create a feeling of community to let your readers know that their opinions and views really do count. Correspondingly, encourage readers to be an active member of yout community by allowing them to contribute with feedback on featured articles and even make contributions to your newsletter themselves.

It is imperative that you study who your target audience is. Find out what topics will interest your readers by placing surveys on your site or in your newsletters and follow up with related information in future editions. Encourage readers to send your newsletters to friends who may be interested by using a ’send this newsletter to a friend’ feature.

Your newsletter will attract people who possess similar demographics to your existing subscribers. It’s important to research and outline who your members are and what they want - regardless of whether your subscriber list is small or large - that way you can optimize your newsletter to be both useful and relevant to your audience.

Don’t Over-Do the Sales Pitch

E-newsletters are great resources for cross selling and up-selling your products and services, yet while most newsletters contain some advertising, be careful not to go overboard.

This becomes even more prominent if you plan to include third part advertisements. Readers almost certainly don’t subscribe to newsletters to receive what they will essentially consider as junk mail. If you over-do the advertising then your newsletter is no more than Spam, and the unsubscribe link is sure to ensue.

Look and Feel

It’s a good idea to extend your branding efforts to your newsletter. If customers associate your website with a good product or service and subscribed to your newsletter through your site, then it would be beneficial to keep your branding efforts prominent in your newsletters too.

For members that have not yet transacted with you, your newsletter is definitely a good way of subtly introducing them to your brand. Additionally, make sure your newsletter is easy to navigate and contains no broken links.

Present your information in small paragraphs with links to more information if necessary. That way, you can place more detailed information on your site and readers can click on the relevant links that catch their attention to read more.

Legitimate Email Marketing - the Respected Alternative

There are a few steps that you will need to follow to ensure your newsletter does not seem invasive. You need to accommodate for subscribers who are wary about receiving newsletters by providing them with an unsubscribe link.

Unsubscribe link - It’s important that your subscribers don’t feel like you’re making it difficult for them to unsubscribe. If you do hide your unsubscribe link or act evasively about presenting a clear unsubscribe link, then you are portraying yourself as sly and ambiguous - a good way to lose subscribers.

At the same time, you should ensure that the unsubscribe request is actually honored and the subscribers is taken off the list immediately.

Multiple lists - If your subscribers belong to different lists, it is important that you specify which list they belong to and make sure you do not email the same subscribers repeatedly about unrelated products.

It’s also important that you take the time to offer tailored e-newsletters to specific lists so that you present readers with more customized information. It’s important to remember that people sign up to for newsletter because of the value perception — more commonly known as “what’s in it for me?”.

If the information in your newsletter tries to cater to too many different subscriber lists then the line between being informative and junk mail becomes very blurred.

Conclusion

Most businesses have an e-newsletter — regardless of whether they are a one-person business or a large corporation. Unlike posted newsletters, print publications and other hard copy methods, e-newsletters add a lot more dimension to your marketing efforts, including cost-effectiveness, timely sending, dynamic design, content, presentation and easy feedback.

Newsletters help your company touch base with both existing and potential customers — they are not designed for long drawn out articles, but rather short, informative snippets of information that make some level of impact.

Sharpen your e-newsletter for your readers and make sure you keep optimizing it for both present and future subscribers by enhancing the sense of community and personalization. The positive difference that an effective newsletter can make, will do wonders for your business.

The right selection of words

Many spam filters work by analyzing the email based on its content and the words used. Many words — such as free, sex and so forth — are very heavy spam trigger keywords. Your priority should be to avoid such words while keeping your newsletter as professional as possible.

Later in this article I will show you a technique that I use to help me detect words that could trigger spam filters that I may have missed.

Pay attention to your formatting

When formatting your email, keep it simple and professional. Excessive use of different colors, fonts, sizes, images and so forth will result in a higher spam filtering rate. Keep your email as clean as possible, and try to stick to a maximum of 2 or 3 different font types and sizes. Overly large sized fonts will surely add to an email being flagged as spam, as will too many images (or not enough text).

Try and use a short and simple stylesheet rather than using font tags excessively. Most spam filters don’t appreciate a multitude of font tags and inline formatting, and the more primitive filters can’t detect stylesheets so they will not penalize as easily.

Consistency is king

Use a template if you plan on sending newsletters consistently. This will make sure that all your newsletters look and feel the same. It will also add a touch of professionalism and branding to your newsletters.

Whilst not directly affecting spam filters, this will enable your readers to distinguish your newsletter instantly, thus not reporting it as spam accidentally. Some spam filters work by querying a spam server, whereas others report individual emails as spam. If your email gets reported as spam, then more than likely multiple spam filters will flag your email.

Being consistent with your timing of the newsletter also helps. For example, if you send a newsletter once per month (I personally don’t recommend you send out any more than this, unless you’ve got something really interesting to say), then aim to send it out at the same time, on the same day each month.

Once again, your potential readers will learn to expect your email, adding professionalism and often improving open rates, also reducing accidental spam flagging as well.

Always use Double Opt-in

Always make your mailing lists double opt-in. This means that when a user subscribes to your mailing list, they will be sent an email with a link that they must click on to confirm their subscription.

This is very important because many people can accidentally enter an incorrect email address, or even the email address of someone else on purpose. When that person receives a newsletter they did not subscribe to, they will assume they have been spammed, and your newsletter (and possibly your web server) will be reported as spam.

Unsubscribe and Contact Information

Every newsletter you send out should contain a way for the reader to unsubscribe. Not doing so is illegal in some countries and is an instant sign of spamming. You should also display your contact information (Phone, Fax and Address) clearly, as this greatly increases confidence in your email and your company, as well as conforms to spam laws in the United States. Contact information also allows a potential customer to contact you if need be.

Test,Test, Test

The key to avoiding spam filters is testing. The first method of testing I use is to send the newsletter to multiple email accounts with existing spam filters. For example, I have a Gmail (http://www.gmail.com) account and a Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com) account that I make sure I send my newsletter to. If the newsletter ends up in the junk folder, then I’ve got some work to do.

I also have a couple of email accounts with different web hosts that have spam filters in place. In particular, they mostly use spam assassin — a popular piece of spam filtering software. Spam assassin is useful because every email that it flags as spam is given a report and a list of why that email was considered spam.

I also have a local spam filtering application called No Spam Today! for Workstations, that runs a local copy of spam assassin on my PC. It acts as a very close replica to the same software used on thousands of servers world-wide. By sending myself copies of the newsletter No Spam Today! — using the spam assassin checking techniques — gives me feedback as to why my email may have been flagged. If I’ve used words or formatting that I shouldn’t have, or if I’ve included too many images, etc.

Conclusion

Avoiding spam filters when sending out legitimate newsletters can be a time consuming effort. However, as your mailing list grows, it can also be a very beneficial exercise. I’ve watched open rates of just 2 to 3% soar to a massive 50% and over, simply by applying the techniques described in this article.

In conclusion, I hope that you’ve found the above tips useful and I wish you luck with your email marketing endeavors!

2. Maximizing Click-Thru Rates

Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link — such as this — as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

3. The Power of Personalization

If you were standing in a crowded mall, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalization can and should be used in your emails. In-fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription

If you want to grow your mailing list, then there are 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed — courteously — from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation

Don’t get accused of spamming — always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday = Increased Response

Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email Communication

An auto responder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Auto responders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 auto responders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becoming a paid member of your site.

Auto responders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

8. Consistency is the Key

If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

Create a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

9. On Time, Every Time

When sending a regular email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. The Half-a-Second Subject Line

When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

11. The Free Bonus Hook-In

Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup for your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an auto responder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe to your newsletter.

12. The Preview Pane

Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

13. Link-Click Testing

When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

14. Email-Based Learning

Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of auto responders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc.

15. Always Sign on the Dotted Line

Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products. Here’s a sample signature.