Email Marketing – Whats the Situation in April 2005? – Email-Marketing
Email Marketing - Whats the Situation in April 2005?
Email is still the King in Internet marketing. Many people consider it the most powerful promoting tool ever devised, and if this still hasn't really changed.Why is it so? The main reason must be the wide use of email. One study published by the US Department of Commerce established that using email made 84% of all Internet users' activity online, and that nearly half (45%) of the US population now uses email.Another reason must be that email ads produce by far the highest response rates among all the means of promotion available today. 2004 reports from advertising agencies show that average response rates on the Internet today are the following:
banner advertising - 0.025%IP messaging - 0.1%popUp advertising - 0.25 - 0.30%mail advertising - 2%
Mind it, these click-thrus are for email more than six times greater for email ads than for the next best method!As one eloquent marketer aptly put it:
[Email marketing is] immediate, inexpensive and in-your-face. It sells, promotes, brands, informs, reminds, creates buzz and best of all, it's cost effective.
If it's so good then why is it so bad? Marlon Sanders in his recent report speaks about "The Black Hole". His report is devoting to the improbably low percentage of his own emails reaching their intended receivers. Mind you, Marlon not only doesn't send any SPAM, his mails are also being metuculously checked for "spam-words", and he simply does everything he can to have his mails and ezines delivered. That's the large part of his job and he's very good in it.And what are the results of his efforts? The percentages he published for those most popular free email accounts are simply hair-rising. One well-known provider simply trashes 100% of Marlon mailings, others evidently are making their best to reach equally impressing result.Of course, SPAM is a nuisance and causes technical problems, viruses, phishing and other malicious activities are even more harmful. Those email provider are protecting people... But it is nevertheless a paranoia, where you are practically guaranteed that none of your emails sent to a free US account will reach the person, if you happened to use in its header one of the many words that those over-powerful Well-Doers Protecting People (Mostly From Themselves) don't particularly like. Such a word is for example "friend"...Of course I know it's hard to live without any friends, and it may cause irrational and aggressive behaviour... It's simply a little sad that not verybody is allowed to play their complexes as easilly as Netscape or Microsoft, and that people having friends can't call them that. Or that Marlon Sanders isn't allowed to send out his ezines as both he and their readers intend.So now, after SPAM, or whatever some powerful and friend-less bureaucrat is considering to be SPAM, is not less aboundant, those anti-spam measures are evidently responsible for most of the problems with email -- generally and specifically as a marketing tool.But don't despair! There's no problem in this world that a smart marketer couldn't use to his/her advantage. We are concentrating on the email so we won't discuss all those technical devices, trying to substitute email in some degree, that crop around. Some of them are new and others are just existing devices, like messengers, applied to marketing. There are however other ways to profit from The Big Brothers' powerful (in more than one way) complexes.Knowing what day should you send ads to those precious leads of yours will not make you rich as quickly as creating an new tools that would supplant the email and would become generally accepted would. To outsmart Netscape and the others you would need more. But you can, nevertheless, outsmart most other marketers.So what is that perfect day for sending ads? Still some time ago the common knowledge had it that it's Wednesday. And common knowledge was pitiully wrong: Wednesday is in fact the worse day for sending ads. It has been revealed by Mark Joyner in his famous "Secret Report", which only revealed that the best days are Friday and Sunday. With Friday offering more than twice as high results.If only marketing was so simple! Recently one young wolf has announced that it could have been that way, but now the best day is Tuesday. Still, no ad-tracking guru seems to have anything good to say for Wednesday, and we are at least left with three GOOD days, and one awfully BAD day. Knowing those facts should no doubt help you a lot.But wait, there's now even more interesting data on this particular issue! I recently met a study where they divided their mailing list in two parts: one were people with those free accounts that generously treat you like a mentally handicapped child, the other were people with paid or company-provided accounts. Then they compared the click-thrus for both groups for all days of the week. The result? Those free accounts gave the best results on weekends, while those better ones on working days. Pretty logical but nobody seems to have made it before.
Or at least has not told us about it.Now, the great trader Victor Sperandeo recommended that you always should try to understand the reasons and principles behind particular phenomena. (I guess he took it from Ayn Rand, but it's him who earned money on stocks every month for 30 years or so, so for me he's the bigger authority of those two.) If you succeed, you will be able to predict in some degree the future. Future in stock market, or future in email marketing. Or in anything for that matter.In my humble opinion one doesn't need to seek any other factors to explain the phenomenon we were just talking about. We only need two factors:
people with company-provied email accounts read their mails during their work hours (or at least on working days);people with free accounts from those well-willing Big Brothers read their mails during weekend.
A much more sophisticated study would of course be needed to establish WHY those people behave so, but my private hypotesis would be that they read emails -- ads included -- where they are bored. And those with company accounts are bored most during their work hours, and those with free accouts (but at the cost of their own freedom to send and receive whatever they want) are bored on weekends, they probably are not very popular socially and have no hobbies (another potential gold mine for smart marketers, please offer me a JV if you are to build an Empire on this invaluable discovery!).One thing is worth noting here: today, if you are allowed to legally send ads to paid or at least company-provided email accounts, you must be quite a marketer! Those people must be on your legal mailing list, so it's about back-selling and similar hyper-advanced stuff. The normal struggling marketer is simpy stuck with those Big Broder hand-out emails for a long, long time. But there ARE in fact some prctical ways to be allowed sendig to people's "real" i.e. better than those wretched free accounts.For instance, if you're an opt-in list admin you will have the right to send such ads to your members. And there are some services that explicitly allow that, usually not for free but it's not that expensive either. At least so far isn't. This may well be another useful thought you get from those ramblings. If it's not, at least you read a longish, almost-philosiphical marketing text... If you reached down to here you can't possibly say it wasn't at all interesting, can you?I was planning to say in this article something about list submmitters and blasters, but it will need to wait to some other time. Those devices must have quite an impact on the email marketing, and it would be worth some studying. Let me just say two things about blasters:
they are not totally useless as many people would make us believe -- my own tracking showed quite nice click-thru ratios from them;you would not have time to read this article if you were still stuck with manually sending your ads to all those opt-in lists.
Well, that's the situation in email marketing for today. Soon it may be radically different. Still, applying priciples, looking for deep causes, reading reports and articles while trying to figure out where the Guru is sincere and where he's just after your money. You can never go wrong with those things! In fact, you've got about 93% that they will always keep you one step
ahead of the greedy crowd. Which is what the marketing is all about, isn't it?Piotr Obminski is an Internet marketer based in Gdansk in Poland.
He's open for any honest and profitble JV.Some of his sites are:
http://ebiz-guru.com
http://net-profit-udder.com
http://e-liber.pl
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I Got to Play an April Fools Joke Before I was Born
I Got to Play an April Fools Joke Before I was Born
I will start this by saying that yes, I did miss being an April Fool, but only by a tiny margin. I was born just twenty minutes after midnight on April 2nd, and the events of the prior day in my home were quite interesting to say the least.To get the full story I must go back and remind everyone what medical tests were like in the 1970's, they were improving, but still far from the reliability, and accuracy that we take for granted today.There were already four children in the house, the oldest a boy, who was seventeen, and the youngest a girl age nine. Two of them from my father's first marriage, and two from one of my mother's previous marriages. I would be the second try for them to have a child in common. The first resulted in a miscarriage when my mother was just three months along.Since she'd already lost one child, the doctors were watching my mother closely to try to prevent this from happening again, thus they ran every test they had available at the time. My parents were told nothing but good news, there was no reason this baby wouldn't carry to term. To top if off, they said it was a boy and the due date was April 8th. Both of my parents were jubilant and all four kids were excited about gaining a new little brother. They quickly chose to name me after my grandfather, George.Now, we fast forward to April 1st, as my mother's due date is nearing. My parents were planning to attend a function at a local club where my father was a member. Before leaving, they decided they had the perfect opportunity to play an April Fool's joke on the kids, they would pretend my mother was in labor and they were really leaving to go to the hospital.The kids had heard them talking about the evening out in previous days so they weren't falling for it, they told them that they knew perfectly well it was April Fool's day and the baby wasn't even due yet. Trying to keep up the game, my mother still pretended to be having contractions, and they got in the car, and left the house.Then suddenly a big surprise did hit! My mother's water broke in the car on the way to town and my dad had to turn tail and race for the hospital. After getting my mother checked into the maternity ward, he tried calling the kids to let them know what had really happened. At this point, their brilliant April Fool's trick totally backfired. The kids still refused to believe him, they told him to go back to dinner and stop trying to fool them.My mother labored through the night and finally, I entered the world at twenty minutes past midnight on April 2nd. Here came another surprise, their chosen name of George wasn't going to work, I was a girl. They hadn't even pondered a girl's name since they were so sure the baby was going to be a boy, but that is a tale for another time.Once again, my father tried to call home and let the kids know about their new baby sister, but they still refused to believe him. They told him it was almost one in the morning, so April Fool's day was over, and on top of that, they knew the baby was going to be a boy, not a girl. They all said goodnight to him, hung up the phone and went back to bed.Realizing how badly their attempted joke had backfired, my father had to drive home, roust them all out of bed, grumbling and tired at two in the morning. Then he drove them all to the hospital so he could prove to them that it wasn't still an April Fool's joke.Needless to say, the story of my birth and this April Fool's trick was told many times in my family as I was growing up, and to this day my Dad says it was the best April Fool's joke he ever thought up.Verleen Wonderly is a published, freelance writer and has worked for the website http://www.dealofday.com since it's inception in 1999.
Native American Astrology: The Hawk (March 21 – April 19)
Native American Astrology: The Hawk (March 21 - April 19)
The Hawk is the first sign of the Native American astrology, it heralds spring and the end of winter. If you are born under this sign, you were born at the "Time of Awakening".Hawks have many of their own peculiarities and distinctions. For instance, if you're a hawk, the direction that best suits you is north east. The East wind carries good tidings for you and your traditional totem animal is the falcon (or more popularly now, the raven).The element that you're most closely connected to is fire. Hawks often possess a powerful and intense personality marked by a recurrent habit of spontaneous activity. This spills over into their love lives, where hawks are firey, passionate and spontaneous.Emotionally, Hawks have a tendency to be both fast and varied. Getting off to a "new start" is often a constant theme shared by those under this sign.Gracious, adventuresome and ready to try new things, Hawks make for fun friends. But watch out, behind their sunny smiles and pleasant manners lurk less desirable qualities like impatience, a boastful attitude, and a leaning toward egocentricity.Often aspiring towards leadership roles and chances to become initiated in small, powerful circles, in truth what Hawks truly seek is knowledge through experience.But, in order to have success in particular endeavors, or just in life in general, Hawks must learn to develop patience, sympathy and perseverance. They should also be sure to avoid intolerance, vanity and arrogance whenever possible.When it comes to relationships, Hawks work best with the Salmon (July 22 - August 21) or the Owl (November 23 - December 21) signs.Want to know your best days and times?Your best day is Tuesday. Daily, you're best hours fall between 3 and 5 am. Because you are much more of a morning person than many others, you should save your earnings for relaxation!Jennifer Gibbs is a successful freelance writer who lives in South Georgia with her husband and son. Be sure to check out her website at http://www.JenniferGibbs.com for more information, free articles and a chance to add her to your team.