Email marketing is one of the most efficient ways you can get your marketing message out to many people. It can be inexpensive, effective, and highly automated (if you use tools like autoresponders). Unlike traditional direct mail, email messages are much easier to test. You can get immediate feedback on whether the message you have chosen is working or not on the audience you have chosen. Don't spend valuable time or resources sending the wrong message to the wrong people.

As wonderful as email marketing can be, it's important to remember, that it can also be dangerous if you don't do it correctly. An article in InfoWorld summarized the situation well:

If you have not already read the Marketing Guidelines and the Advertising & Anti-Spam Policy, please do so now so that you understand the idea of PERMISSION MARKETING and why effective email marketing requires two steps-one to get permission, and another to provide information.

The Goals of Email

Remember that online, your eCosway website is where the real convincing is done. Don't try to explain the details of eCosway in an introductory email! People are often in a hurry when they read email. Let them go to the website where pictures and hyperlinks will keep them interested in understanding the whole program. The purpose of email should be to get prospect motivated enough to take the next step. You want to create:

With a FIRST-STEP email, your goal is to GET PERMISSION TO PITCH.
(You must use GENERIC email to accomplish this.)

With a SECOND-STEP email, your goal is to GET PEOPLE TO YOUR WEBSITE.

You Must Have "Permission to Pitch" (preferably in writing) before
you ever introduce eCosway to a prospect.

Because it's so inexpensive to send massive amounts of email, a lot of people think they should send unsolicited email to anybody and everybody whose email address they can get their hands on in any manner. All over the Internet, you can find people advertising millions of email addresses for $99 or less or even giving away the email addresses for free if you buy their product. It's very tempting to do this, but you can ruin your eCosway business if you approach email marketing in this manner. This is called spamming and it's a real big problem on the Internet.

A word about spam and spamming
eCosway has a anti-spam policy which spells out explicitly what is allowed and what is not allowed when it comes to sending out unsolicited email. If you haven't already read our Advertising and Anti-Spam policy, please do so now. Click here to read it.

It may sound complicated, but it's actually very simple.

DON'T SEND send people any email:

• Using the name eCosway, Cosway, or any of our trademarks
• Telling them about the eCosway shopping mall or business opportunity
• Giving them a link to any website (yours or ours) that mentions or links to eCosway

GETTING PERMISSION TO PITCH

As long as you get permission to send it first, commercial email is not considered spamming.

Getting permission may or may not be easy, depending on how well you establish trust, relationship and rapport and how good your offer is. People on the Internet are generally smart, savvy, and suspicious. If you want them to give you permission to pitch:

• Don't try silly tricks or manipulation tactics. This is more likely to annoy people than to get them to sign up with you in eCosway.
• Don't do anything unprofessional. People don't want to waste their time with or trust their future to someone who obviously doesn't know what he or she is doing.
• Offer them something of value for their time, effort and attention.
• Don't ask for too much all at once. As you build trust and rapport, you can ask people for more information or for a bigger commitment.

In general, people don't like to give out their personal information on the Internet. At first (when they are new to the Internet), people might give out their email addresses quite easily, but once they start getting a lot of unsolicited (spam) email flooding their email box, they usually either stop giving out their email addresses altogether, or they get a second (free) email address that they give out freely, but check rarely (because they know it is likely to contain mostly junk email).

If you want to make sure that people give you a "real" address, you have to make sure that they think they will be receiving something of value in their inbox.

This is the information that you will want to get from your prospects, in the order that they will be most likely to give it to you:

• Email address
• First Name
• Last name
• Area of Interest
• Mailing Address
• Phone number
• Referrals

HOW DO YOU GET PEOPLE TO GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO SEND EMAIL?

There are a few ways to do this:

• Use signature files when you send personal email
• Send generic email messages to opt-in email lists
• Place ads in free classified areas, ezines, etc.

See the section on Online Advertising to learn how to do these things

Whenever someone responds to an ad or a generic "pitch" email and asks for more information, you now have permission to send an email containing your eCosway address.

• Make people want to read your email -- Start off with a headline that promises an irresistible benefit, then make it easy to keep reading by using subheadings, short paragraphs, and bullet points.
• Make sure your email is formatted to be read in multiple formats.
• Make sure you don't use words that will get your email filtered or deleted.
• Make sure that all of your hyperlinks are "active."
• Make sure that you don't do anything unprofessional or offensive.

GETTING YOUR EMAIL NOTICED AND READ
Most people who open your email will not thoroughly read every detail. They are not looking for a good reason to contact you! It's much more likely that they are hurrying through their email with one finger on the delete key. They skim each email looking for a reason to delete it so they can free up their time and their lives for only the most important things.

Headlines are very important because they get the reader's attention and "set the mood." An excellent book on advertising and on the importance of writing good headlines, is an industry classic called, Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. He explains that the headline is by far the most important thing in any piece written to persuade. "The best of salesmanship has no chance whatever unless we get a hearing… It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five or ten times over."

If you intend to write your own email and or your own ads and headlines, this is an excellent book to read. Fortunately, you can get the entire book for free on the Internet. Just go to this link: Scientific Advertising By Claude C. Hopkins, https://www.loska.com/hopkins/one.html

The subject line is the first headline in an email. It can be repeated or expanded in bold letters at the beginning of your email.

MAKING EMAIL EASY TO READ
Once you get attention with a headline, it's important to keep the reader's fleeting attention focused. Remember that most people will skim (not read) an email unless they find it really compelling. When people skim, they read the headline, the subheadings, and the bullets. Make sure that these tell a good compelling story all by themselves. They should read like a story within the story. All other body copy should just expand or support the ideas contained in the headline, subheads, and bullets.

FORMATING YOUR EMAIL
It is very important that you format email properly because when it gets opened by different people using different email systems, it ends up looking completely different from the way you originally designed it. There are few things you can do to make sure that your email doesn't end up looking really strange.

• The first is to limit the length of your lines to 60 characters or less. The way you do this is to press the "enter" key to put a "hard carriage return" at the end of each line rather than relying on the word wrap feature found in most word processing programs to decide when to start the next line.
• The second is to use a "fixed pitch font" like Courier in 10 points. Some mail programs use "fixed pitch fonts" and other programs use "proportional space fonts." Fixed pitch fonts make all characters in a paragraph line up perfectly with the characters above and below. With proportional space fonts, some letters take up more space than others and things like capital letters take up extra space. If you write the email in proportional and it gets read in fixed, it might look funny. On the other hand, if you write in a fixed font and it gets read in a proportional it should still be ok. If you also keep your line length to 60 characters, you should have no problem.
• The third is to "cut and paste" from a word processing program rather than writing your email in an email program itself. Sometimes letters or symbols written in one program end up scrambled when read in another. Have you ever received an email with a bunch of question marks or "Us" in it? That often happens when a person writes the email in his or her email program using a font that can't be read by yours. To avoid this, stick with simple fonts like Courier, avoid using a lot of symbols, and use the "cut and paste" method to insert text into your email program. (Do not convert to a text format like ASCII before doing this, just cut and paste directly.)

A really good (free) utility that will help you format your email can be found at:
https://www.jbmckee.com/formatit

WORDS TO AVOID
Most ISPs and many email programs use filtering devices to get rid of spam before it hits people's inboxes. Some things that have proven to get email bounced are:

The word, "ADV:" in the subject line
The word, "FREE" in all caps anywhere in the email
The word "sales" (ie: sales@anydomain) in the reply address.
The words, "extra income" anywhere in the email.
The words, "for free" or "for free!" anywhere in the email .
The words, "this email is sent in compliance with" anywhere in the email.

These have reportedly been used by popular email programs to filter spam. There are probably many more keywords that will get your email deleted before it reaches the intended recipient.

ACTIVE HYPERLINKS

It is really important that any hyperlinks you use are "active." A hyperlink is something that when it is "clicked on", it takes you somewhere else. The hyperlink might be a word, a sentence, or even a picture. When it is clicked on, it might lead to another place in the same document, to a different document, to a website, or to an email program with the "to" line already filled out. When you use email for marketing, you rely heavily on hyperlinks to help your readers take action. People will be clicking on a hyperlink in order to email you, to visit your website, or to trigger your autoresponder. To make sure that your hyperlinks are active or "clickable",

• Be sure to put http: in front of any web address so it looks like this:
  https://www.yoursite.com
  
  

• Be sure to put mail to: in front of any email address so it looks like this: mailto:yourname@isp.com

If you just put www.yoursite.com, or yourname@isp.com, some programs will not consider these to be hyperlinks and the person will have to manually type or cut and paste the address into their browser or email program.

MAKE YOUR EMAIL PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL
The best thing email you can send is both personal and professional. Making it personal will get it read, keeping it professional will keep it from being deleted!

An email has the greatest chance of being read if the recipients actual email address is in the "to" line and his or her name appears in the email itself. This can be accomplished in several ways:

• Write each email separately
• Use email software that does this type of personalizing
• Use an email service that does this type of personalizing

Worst Case: If you just take a bunch of email addresses and put them all in the "to" or "CC" fields, each person on the list will receive an email that shows every single address on the list! This not only looks extremely unprofessional, but it can get your message filtered by a lot of programs, and it is sure to generate spam complaints because it "proves" that you are sending bulk email. It also angers a lot of the recipients who realize that their email address has just revealed to everyone on the list (which is likely to cause them to receive even more spam.) This is the worst thing you can do when sending email.

Not too bad: If you take a bunch of email addresses and put them in the "BCC" field, each recipient will only see the first name on the list. If you choose to use this method, make sure that you put one of your own email addresses as the first one on the list so that you do not reveal someone else's address to everyone. This method is not bad, but it is also not great because the email is not personalized. People still realize that you are sending bulk email because it is obviously not addressed to them individually.

If the email is broad in scope, this is at least not insulting. However, if the email says something like "I visited your site" or "I noticed your ad" and the person who receives it does not see their own address in the "to" field, they can feel tricked and manipulated because they know you are sending the email to lots of people, but you are trying to make it look like you are specifically interested in them. This does not establish trust and rapport!

Good: If you use an email program that inserts each email address individually into the "to" field, each person on the list will only see their own address. They will have no way of knowing that you have sent the email to lots of people.

Click Here For Resources That Will Allow You to Personalize Your Email.

BEING PROFESSIONAL
What would you think if you received an email that started like this:

Dear nbs_239,

Or this…

Dear <firstname>,

Or this…

Dear ,

You would probably think that the sender didn't know what he or she was doing wouldn't you? These are all cases where someone used some kind of a program to personalize outgoing email according to certain "fields" in a database. In the first case, the program obviously assumed that nbs_239 was someone's first name because it took it from an email address. In the second case, one of the entries didn't have a first name so the system just inserted the field name. In the third case, one of the entries didn't have a first name and the system just left a blank space there.

If you go to all the trouble of using an email merging system to personalize email, make sure that you also go to the trouble to fix problems like these. Make sure that your system will only put a real name (not an email address name) after the word "Dear."

Another way to fix the problem is never to use the word dear, but to replace it with something that wouldn't look funny without a name after it. "Hi" or "Hello" work nicely since they look good with or without a name following them.

Dear John, looks fine, but
Dear (blank) looks funny!

Hello John, looks fine, and
Hello (blank) looks fine too.

Make sure that anything you send out is grammatically correct and spell checked.

If you use a translator to send emails in a foreign language, try translating from your language into the other first, and then use the same translating software to translate what you just translated back into your own language. This will give you an idea of how your message was interpreted by the software. An even better approach of course would be to get a native speaker of the language to read any translation before you send it out.

It's a good idea to test any email message before wasting precious time and money sending it to a list. You can set up a "test" list by signing up for one free account from each of the popular web-based email services. Then you can either set up Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora (the three most popular email programs) on your own computer, or you can find a few friends who use these programs and ask them if they would mind receive a few test messages from you. Put all of your own email addresses and the addresses of the friends who have volunteered to help you into a "test list" and always send your messages to that list first. Make sure your email gets delivered (not filtered out) and that it "looks good" in each of the programs before you send it out to your main list.

The subject line in the email does the same job that a headline does in print advertising. In print advertising, the headline of an ad contributes to about 80% of the success of the ad. Why? Because it's what the reader uses to determine if he even wants to read the ad. In our hurry-up world, people don't have the time to completely read a newspaper or magazine. They look for clues to find out what they would be interested in reading.

Recent research has shown the following:

• In these days of rushed people and shortened attention spans, stating the substance of your message is a good bet for attracting positive attention.
• "RE:" in the subject line helps increase the opening of the email. This is because the recipient thinks that this is a response to something he has already sent out. Do this whenever you truly are responding to someone's email. DO NOT just put "RE:" on every email you send out. If the recipient opens it up and realizes you've tricked him, he probably won't consider your offer.
• Don't trick the reader. The subject line must accurately reflect what is in the body of the email. We've already talked about what happens when you trick people.
• Include the person's name in the subject line if you can.
• Keep it short. Some experts say no more than 25 characters, but the most important thing is that your subject line gets the reader to read the rest of the email.

The key is to test, test and test again. Ask your friends which subject line grabs them.

Click here for 101 subject lines you can use

Remember that you're not trying to sell anything at this time. Your purpose with this email is to get them excited enough about your product or service so that they want to find out more about it by going to your web page. You get people excited about products or services when you show how the product will specifically help them. You do this by telling them about the benefits of the product or service, not the features.

What's the difference between features and benefits? Features are information about the product. For example, if someone were selling a website, they might say that it comes without other people's advertising banners or that you get 30 megabytes of web space. Benefits are what the product can do for the customer. The benefits of the website might be that you can have a clean website that concentrates only on your product so you can sell more product or that you have enough web space that you can have a large number of products with dazzling graphics.

Click here for email scripts you can use.

These tips will get you started. If you want to learn more about how to write a good email ad, use the google.com search engine and enter the search term "copywriting tutorial" to find some great websites.

The secret to great results in email marketing is consistent follow up

One of the keys to getting people to take action is to present them with your offer of the product or the business opportunity a number of times. This is such a well-researched observation that it even has a name. It's called "The Rule of Seven." Simply stated, it says that a prospect must see your message at least seven times before he acts on it.

You need to follow up with prospects once they are in your "pipeline". This might seem difficult to do because following up requires that you keep track of everyone and consistently stick with a system day in and day out over a long period of time.

Fortunately, thanks to the technology on the Internet, you can set up a follow up system that is completely automated. Why not let a machine do the work for you? With autoresponders, you'll be able to follow up with people while you're sleeping!

Click here to find out about how to get and use autoresponders.

It's not recommended that you use email programs like Outlook or Outlook express for email marketing. They're not designed to handle the large number of emails that you need to send out for an effective campaign. There are other software programs that are much more appropriate for this type of mailing.

Use the search term "bulk email software" in the google.com search engine to find software that will handle your email marketing. Some of the companies offer a free trial of the software so you can try it before you buy it. This is highly recommended.

Here's a final tip for email software. Some email software acts as an email server. This means that the processing required to send the email is done on your computer and not your ISP's server. If your email software does not act as an email server, make sure that when you sign up with an ISP that they will allow you to send bulk email to opt-in lists. Then when you are ready to send out your email, notify the ISP and let them know about how many emails you have to send out and coordinate with him when the best time would be for you to send them.

This does two things. It puts less of a demand on the ISP's server and it shows the ISP that you are not a spammer. You don't ever want your ISP to think you're a spammer and it's possible they might think you are if you start sending large amounts of email and affect the performance of their system.

Click here for resources that allow you to send professional email.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of building your eCosway business. By following the guidelines in this section, you'll avoid most of the mistakes that so many people make when they first start.

Remember that the Internet is constantly changing. If you want to get the most out of your email marketing efforts, subscribe to some email marketing newsletters. You can find them by entering the search terms "email marketing" or "email marketing newsletter" into the google.com search engine. Not only will you be able to subscribe to some free newsletters which can contain some extremely valuable and timely information, but the websites of the companies you'll find with the above search terms sometimes have archives which contain a lot of timeless information. Get acquainted with the information on these sites and your email marketing efforts will prosper.