by Alex Petrovic

One of the most critical aspects of taking a long term view of online business is email marketing. As the successor to direct mailing, email marketing is a terrific way to establish trust and rapport, as well as have subscribers be exposed to advertisement. One of those sayings that everyone in the internet marketing world knows is "The money is in the list."

While there is no doubt that an email marketing list is a powerful tool that can attract a potentially great return, too many marketers lose track of the fact that email marketing is marketing. In other words, the things that make a sales page successful are the same things that make a mail campaign successful. Of these things, good copy is the single most crucial aspect of the formula.

We've all subscribed to lists where someone simply includes a blind link with no copy whatsoever. This is the absolute worst example of the problem, but any email that says nothing but "BUY THIS!!" fits into this category of poor marketing.

One step up, but still very bad, is the marketer who bombards his or her list with copy that is completely bland and lifeless. An email that says nothing but "Hi, this is Bob again. Buy this, it is great!" is a great tool to lose subscribers - to make money, not so much.
To have a successful email marketing campaign, remember who your subscribers are, keep them interested, and make offers sound interesting.

Who Your Subscribers Are

Chances are, they are not people who signed up to a registration form that said, "Put your email here and I will bombard you with incessant advertisements." It is more likely, they were told they would get tips, news, information, anything but advertising. Every niche has different tolerances for how much free stuff versus how much advertising they will put up with, but no niche will accept nothing but advertisements. Whatever you offer for people to sign up - deliver!

Keep Them Interested

The simple truth is that we all want nothing pointless entering our inboxes. Your subscribers are no different. Each time a subscriber opens one of your messages and finds boring and pointless content, there is a chance he or she will unsubscribe. Even openly insulting your subscribers is better than boring them, at least that way they might remain subscribed to see what outrageous thing you say in the next message.

Make Offers Sound Interesting

This is where good copy comes in. When you do make an offer, use the same verbal techniques you employ in a great sales page. Each time someone encounters an interesting, compelling twist on an offer, the effect is cumulative with previous interesting, compelling exposures. Maintaining high quality copy hooks would be clients and keeps them hooked. 

Author bio:

Alex Petrovic, Advanced SEO strategist - Dejan SEO company.
Main activity – Link building team leader.
Personal twitter account: http://twitter.com/Alex_DejanSEO
Company twitter account: http://twitter.com/dejanseo

1. Try using your business name in the subject e.g. “YourCompanName Father’s Day Specials”
2. Try using the contacts name in the subject line e.g."Hi %%First Name%% - Check out ...”
3. Make the email personalised!!! e.g. in the body of the email “Hi %%First Name%%,”

When sending an 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.

To make your subscribe forms or enquiry forms a bit more graphical you can simply change one line of code to use an image instead of the default style button.

Find: <input type="submit" value="Subscribe" />
Replace with: <input type="image" src="/images/submit.jpg" BORDER="0" value="Subscribe" />

Definitions:
src= source url of the image
BORDER= this gets rid of the blue link border around the image
value= calls the action of processing the form