Every so often, email marketing gets a bad rap; perhaps its small business owners getting all whipped about social media marketing as the “next great marketing platform” and thinking that email marketing is dead.
But, one thing is certain. Email marketing works. However, like any marketing platform, it has rules and regulations that must be followed for optimal success.

One of the most basic premises underlying a successful email campaign is a strategy dubbed by marketing extraordinaire, Seth Godin, called “Permission Marketing.”  In a nutshell, you can ONLY email folks who have given you absolute permission to email them. Basicallyyou’re your prospects haven’t opted into a form on your website, you shouldn’t be emailing them.

So, in today’s strict email environment, how can you entice prospects to sign up for you list?

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A friend of mine vowed that he would never rant nor complain about anything at his blog, and while I admire him for being able to do that, this friend is not in marketing.

And these days, sadly, it seems there is so much to rant about when it comes to some of the smarmy tactics that some people who are marketing online are doing. Even worse, most of these people are teaching others how to market their business.

The latest seems to be a rash of smarmy and bogus subject lines. Now I’ll be the first to advise you that you should strive to have a provocative, creative and compelling subject line whenever you send out your ezines and email promotions but I feel that some of these folks have stepped way over the line.

It gets worse….

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If you’ve spent much time marketing anything online, you’ve probably heard the mantra “The money is in the list”. And that’s usually true, especially if you’re consciously building a list of targeted subscribers – people who want and need the types of services or products you provide.

One thing clients often say is “How can I be sure my list is targeted? I can’t control who signs up!”

So before we get into the ways to integrate your list building efforts, here are a few tips to ensure that all those new signups are really targeted to what you offer:

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Just today alone I’ve received a number of hyped up email sales letters with broken links in them. Then shortly after have received the inevitable corrected link email, most carrying subject lines like “Sorry, broken link fixed” or “Oops, broken link now fixed.”

It seems like I get at least one of those every single day. Usually more. (I’m on a LOT of marketing lists.)

I’ve written about this before wondering if this is just a ploy to send out the same email notification more than once just to get my attention. I don’t know. If it is, it stinks, and it pisses me off.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, however, let’s just assume this is an honest mistake. I know I’ve done it, will likely do it again, especially after saying what I’m about to say.

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It happens to me over and over again. I sign up for someone’s list, then I discover several of their emails in my junk folder. Why? Because they use a different email FROM address every time they send to me.

It does no good to ask your readers to whitelist your email address if you change it all the time. Your one goal for effective eMail marketing is to get your messages delivered and, while there are a lot of factors that effect deliverability, you improve your chances when you use the same FROM address for everything you send whether that’s eZines, Announcements or sales messages.

Tell your readers what email address you’ll be sending from — ask them to whitelist it — then use that address. Consistently.

One of the systems I help my clients to implement is a schedule for getting on track with their ezine (electronic newsletter) as it’s so important that you have a systematic stay-in-touch strategy in place and a regular ezine is the perfect medium for achieving this!

However, the downside, and where so many solopreneurs fail, is that they don’t get into a regular publishing schedule and they start to lose their connection with their subscribers.

Today I’d like to share with you my top 10 tips for publishing a successful ezine and building that all-important know, like, and trust factor.

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It takes many contacts with people on your list before they start to know, like and trust you enough to buy something from you. People rarely buy until after at least the 5th contact you’ve made with them, but most of us give up after the 3rd contact. It may take many more contacts beyond 5, and most marketers just give up too soon.

I get the question all the time, “when should I take someone off my list if they haven’t bought something yet?” and my answer to that is, “only when they ask to be taken off your list.” Because you just never know when they WILL be ready to buy. And that may be tomorrow, next week, or next year.

But you also need more than one channel to reach your prospects. So choose 3 to 6 marketing tactics that you’ll enjoy doing on a regular basis so that you can touch people in a variety of ways.

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I don’t know about you all, but I’ve had enough with receiving emails with subject lines of “this one will work”, “the secret pill”, “do this and thrive”, “are you good enough”, “you’re an idiot if you don’t do this”, etc. While helping my Mum settle into her new home, I’ve been checking emails a lot less than usual and so am seeing more of the above types of subject lines all clustered together.

The above all came in within the last 2 days (and I’ve been unsubscribing at a record pace).

It’s really very simple. You want to succeed?

Create simple systems which support your goals and then consistently implement. Period.

I know it sounds boring, not nearly as exciting as what others are promoting, but this is a heck of a lot more effective. Promise!

Have you been thinking about sending a survey to your list, but not quite sure how to go about it?

Unsure of the types of questions to ask or even what you’ll get from the survey?

Not sure how to ask people to fill out your survey when you know how busy they are?

Great News! I’ve put together a step-by-step guide to creating surveys using Survey Monkey – we even walk through a sample survey and have screenshots to guide you every step of the way!

This digital guide isn’t meant to languish in your computer’s hard drive forever – it’s designed to have you sending out a survey TODAY!

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Knowing how often to send emails to your mailing list is a big dilemma that many solopreneurs face.  You don’t want to bombard your subscribers with emails, but neither do you want them to forget you.  One of my own subscribers recently emailed me to ask me about how often you should send emails to your subscriber.

Here’s an excerpt of what she said:

“Your article piqued my interest today, and offered solid advice. It is interesting to note that I just attended a teleseminar where it was said that emailing your list daily was imperative and that every email needed to be full of outstanding content. Since I am shortly beginning my first online business, I felt overwhelmed by that directive to insure my online success.

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