How to Do an E-mail Interview in 9 Easy Steps
March 29, 2008
Need a fresh idea for your e-zine content? Do an interview!
One of the many benefits of being an e-zine publisher is that you’ll have no trouble finding experts who will take a few minutes to talk with you. People love free publicity and are generally delighted to get in front of your readers.
But don’t assume doing an interview requires an in-person meeting or even a phone date. While those are great, you can also just do an e-mail interview. Once you learn how to do these and realize how easy they are, you’ll do them all the time.
Here’s what to do:
Save Time By Creating Email Signature Templates
March 13, 2008
If you’re like me, there are certain types of email that you send out regularly that follow a set form (client follow up notes, meeting notes, email article submission, etc). These can be irritating to have to recreate from scratch every time, but the tried and true method of creating a seperate document-file template, then sending that out as an attachment, may not always be appropriate. For example, email-based article submissions generally accept only plain text in-message formatting and require rigorous adherence to detailed submission guidelines involving the placement of bylines, the structure and length of the article body and the arrangement and length of bio-boxes and other inclusions - any deviation from which will result in a refusal of submission. Aggravatingly enough, these submission requirements are often so completely different from one submission site to another that it is difficult if not impossible to keep them straight without an entire set of templates.
To get around these and other problems, consider using the signature option in your emailer program to create individual email “signatures templates” for these commonly sent and repetitive emails. Using the above example of an email article submission email, I might create a “signature template” that looks something like this:
5 Things You NEED to Know About Your AOL 9.0 Subscribers
February 29, 2008
In Fall 2003, America Online (AOL) released its brand new AOL Version 9. (Have you noticed all the TV ads?) AOL estimates that up to 50% of their users were using the new version by the end of December 2003.
The biggest new feature with AOL 9 is its aggressive method of reducing unsolicited e-mail (sp^m) for its users. Basically, AOL wants users to customize their own inboxes and view or receive only the messages that they choose.
While the crackdown is a noble endeavor, it puts legitimate e-mail publishers in the crossfire — people like us who have worked hard to ensure that everyone on our list has opted-in and given us permission to contact them repeatedly.
To make sure that your AOL subscribers are receiving YOUR e-mails, here are a few things you should know.
Whats on YOUR Subscriber Thank-You Page?
February 14, 2008
When I coach my clients on how to get more business from their e-zines, I’m delighted to see that they spend time on creating content that builds a relationship with their readers. But I see many of these publishers overlooking the very beginning of their valuable relationship with their subscribers. For example, the “thank-you” page. If I sign up for your e-zine at your site, where am I taken afterwards? I hope it’s not a page that only says something vague like “form received” or even worse, nothing, leaving me wondering whether my signup was successful. Create a thank-you page where new signups go to right after they complete the form. On this page, be sure to:
Remember, You’re Laying the Foundation
11 Extraordinary Ways To Expand Your Subscriber List
January 30, 2008
Here are 11 ways to expand your subscriber list:
1. Use a conversational writing tone. It makes a connection. Yet, don’t get lax on the grammar and spelling. Use personal pronouns (I, me, you and your). Limit the percentage of I’s to half or less of the yous.
2. Spread the knowledge even further by asking your readership to forward a copy of your ezine to family members, friends, colleagues, or co-workers. Create a “please forward this ezine to” line or two. Give them an incentive, offer a free but-not-free item. This can be challenging to design.
3. Do you give presentations with slides or a projection system? Add a paragraph about your ezine and how to get it on the test slide. A test slide is the slide you leave up there when they are seating themselves. Leave it displayed until a few minutes before your presentation and then turn it off. By turning it off, it creates a “loss feeling” and they will pay attention to it the next time you turn it on.
How To Use a Message Sequence to Increase Your Sales
January 17, 2008
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in over 3 years of web marketing, it is this: you *must* follow up with your visitors.
The statistics are very clear about this: the 1st contact produces 2% of sales, the 5th to12th contacts produce 80% of sales.
I knew about this for years but didn’t act on it. Then, about 8 months ago I wrote a 5 Day Email Course about my eBook (Ezine Writer) and offered it to my visitors.
The response was amazing - my sales almost doubled.
This is how it works:
When visitors leave the index page of my website, a popup appears inviting them to join my newsletter.
When they join, they also receive a free subscription to my 5 Day Email Course, which is delivered by sequential autoresponder.
But there’s an important detail here. You don’t want the popup appearing when your visitors click on the ‘order’ link - it distracts them and you could well miss a sale.
So the popup has to be designed so that it *doesn’t* appear when the order link is clicked.
Could This Be The End of Sp^am?
January 2, 2008
The war on sp^am has so far been waged on two fronts: legislation to make sp^am illegal and filters that prevent sp^am reaching its destination.
But neither approach has worked.
Even if US anti-sp^am laws succeeded, they would not stop sp^am that originates outside the US.
As for sp^am filters, the sp^ammers are constantly devising new ways to defeat them. The people who are really being affected by the filters are web marketers with legitimate optin lists - how many of your subscribers are receiving your newsletter?
But now, two researchers at IBM - Scott Fahlman and Mark Wegman - have come up with a completely different approach.
The idea is very simple.
Software located between your email client and your server would intercept all incoming email. The software would contain a ‘white list’ of email addresses that you want to receive email from.
Any incoming email that is not recognized by your ‘white list’ would be bounced back to the sender with a message directing the sender to a website where they could purchase a ‘charity stamp’ for a small fee - between 5 and 25 cents.
How Effective is Your Email? How Can You Tell?
December 19, 2007
Is your email getting to your list members? If so, how many of them are opening your message? If the email isn’t getting through, how many of your messages are “undeliverable” because of a bad email address? And how do you find out what these numbers are?
In order to test the effectiveness of an email campaign, you need to use html email. Although I have fought against it for several years, I consented to use it this one time in order to do the necessary tracking.
First, you need to prepare the email. I use the OnlineSuccessCart.com system, so I created the html email in my web creation program and pasted it into the broadcast window. Then I pressed the send button.
I sent a similiar announcement to each of my major lists. And the numbers started pouring in…
Emails sent: this is the total active on the list
Undeliverable: these email addresses bounced or had not completed the newly implemented AOL double opt-in process
Now I had a percentage of the total emails that were undeliverable. My numbers range in the 4-8% range, but I know a lot of Internet marketers who are fighting 25-30% of their lists who are undelivered. Undeliverables is the first figure you want to check.
Build Credibility With an Email Course
December 5, 2007
When you are an expert, you sometimes forget that others don’t know as much as you do. Not only do you understand your topic at a higher level, but you also know what’s important for a novice to know. By providing your insight to those at a basic level, you can save them time in learning and applying their newly acquired knowledge.
So how do you share your expert information with prospects and clients in order to showcase your expertise while providing them with desired knowledge? Why not offer a course via email?
Your course will consist of several lessons, delivered at pre-set intervals. You’ll compose the lessons once so that you’re ready to deliver them to anyone who signs up for the course.
Now won’t that be a bear to administer, you ask? Not if you use one of the online services that is designed to do this. This category of service is called a sequential autoresponder. There are several services to choose from.
Reach Out and Slap Someone
November 18, 2007
I got my first email account way too many years ago.
I was working for a large Chicago bank in the 1980s, when they introduced an electronic message service for internal communications. The only electronic mail that seemed to flow for the longest time were all those official HR notification of vacation time policies, etc., and of course, the ALL CAPS messages from the executive floor.
It took a brave soul to send out the first?”so, where should we go for lunch on Friday?” message.
It took a polite soul to create the first autoresponder message. It was nice of them to let people know that the reason their inquiry would not be answered immediately, and personally was because he (or she) was out of the office until XYZ date.
I’m still trying to figure out where the the personal and polite parts of autoresponse messages went. Sometime between then and now, the person who wrote that message left the building, but forgot to turn the machines off. Today, too many autoresponse messages are anything but personal, polite or informative.
