A Beginners Guide to ISP Inbox Delivery

We’ve discussed blacklisting, I wanted to spend some time looking at where the rubber hits the road for email delivery: the ISP inbox. Let’s be very clear about this for consumer facing campaigns there are 4 major ISP’s that manage the majority of consumer inboxes. • MSN/Hotmail • Yahoo Mail • AIM Mail • Gmail What Does this Mean? Basically unless each of these mail platforms relays your message to the primary folder, your email campaign is far from optimized. What Causes mail to be delivered to a bulk/spam Folder? All of these ISP’s allow their users to report spam with a “report spam” button. The ISP uses this feedback to create a profile for your mail. If users are reporting your mail as spam you will run into problems. What Can I do to make sure I do not create ISP Spam complaints? AOL recommends keeping spam complaints below 1-3 percent of traffic, depending on volume. This figure is unique to AOL's user base; it's too generous when applied as a general standard. Be at or below the range of one complaint per 6,000 to 8,000 messages, or 0.013 percent. Minimize Complaints Minimizing complaints always starts with practices used to collect e-mail addresses. It should be obvious by now sending unsolicited e-mail only gets you in trouble. Mailing lists with the lowest complaint rates are either confirmed opt-in or properly managed single opt-in. If you have a solid permission-based list but still find incoming complaints are higher than the optimal rate or are rising, consider the following: • Brand your subject lines. Mail systems with spam complaint buttons offer it at the inbox level. A recipient need only to scan subject lines and decide which messages not to delete immediately. A subject line such as "Exciting offers for you, Bob!" will surely be marked as spam. Consider using your company or newsletter name in brackets at the beginning of your subject lines. • Consider including unsubscribe instructions at the top of your e-mail, in addition to the footer. Some users use the "report spam" button as an unsubscribe method and won't scroll through an entire message to find that link. • Include instructions for users to whitelist your domain. This prevents a user-based filter from mistaking your message for spam and either diverting it to the spam folder or prefixing "[SPAM]" to the subject of the message. • Provide a preference update page. Disclose how your organization will use a subscriber's e-mail addresses, and how often. Allow subscribers to select preferences on the opt-in form, and link from e-mail to a preference or profile update page. • Avoid spammy looking content. Try not to use garish, bold fonts; large, red letters, and the like. Avoid images with poor compression quality. A clean, readable design isn't as likely to be mistaken for spam. • Don't over e-mail. If recipients expect to receive a few informational e-mail messages each month from your company, don't suddenly start sending two or three each week. • Don't send unexpected e-mail. If subscribers opted in to receive your "Trends & Tips" newsletter, don't send them your hard-sell e-commerce messages, unless they clearly requested them. • Include opt-in information. If possible, add to your e-mail admin area information, such as the subscriber's e-mail address, date of opt-in, and how she potentially subscribed (product registration, white paper download form, sweepstakes entry, etc). With many subscribers receiving dozens of commercial e-mail messages daily, it's easy to forget signing up for your newsletter -- and then to file a complaint. What Can I do to test my ISP deliverability? We recommend you use a service like EmailReach. Their trial is free and let’s you know where you stand in about 5 minutes. http://www.emailreach.com/default.aspx Following these guidelines should help you to avoid being bulk foldered by the main ISP’s.

8 Advantages Of Using An Email Marketing Software

If you decided to use email marketing to promote your business, then let me congratulate you on this very wise decision. You might have read over the internet the buzz created by this type of marketing, and I’m sure you have already learned that “The money is in your list” – this is 100% true. Even though email marketing is a very powerful way to transform leads into hungry buyers many people are discouraged to use this technique because of the time they need to invest in it. A recent study has showed that about 75 % of people who use email marketing need between 15 and 50 hours per week to handle it. If you’re like me, then you’re a very busy person who can’t afford to spend that much time just on email marketing. So this is why I decided to make a list of the great advantages brought by Mailloop 7.0. , the best email marketing software on the net. 1. You get an opt-in form template which comes with full instructions so you can easily add it to your site. 2. It automatically stores every email saving you precious time and headaches. 3. It e-mails new subscribers a welcome message just moments after opting in. No more preparing and sending e-mails to hundreds, even thousands of subscribers manually. 4. Mailloop gives you attractive looking templates to use for your newsletter so that it looks friendlier to your subscribers. 5. It keeps your e-mail safe from spam complaints, blacklists or filters so that it doesn’t get trashed. 6. You can schedule your promotions so that you can go on your vacation without worrying about interrupting campaigns. 7. You can use as many autoresponders as you need, create as many campaigns, write as many emails as you wish … the sky’s the limit. 8. Manage all of this from a complete user-friendly control panel.

Affiliate Network - Do I Need One?

The affiliate has a choice. They can either work with multiple merchants, or they can work with an affiliate network. So why should a marketer want to work with an Affiliate Network? I remember a friend told me a story awhile back. He had built a small website and had signed up to become an affiliate at a stack of different affiliate programs related to the topic of that site. A few weeks after he had set up the site including links and banners from multiple affiliate programs, he turned his attention to other business interests and lost interest in the site. A few months later, he noticed that a few checks had started arriving from the affiliate programs he had joined up with. Not large checks, but amounts for a few dollars here and there. That was his first problem – as he was living outside of the USA, lots of small amounts result in lots of bank charges. (Which makes me ask - Why can’t all countries allow affiliates to bank checks at NO CHARGE?) Nevertheless, the checks continued to come in, and although some of them were posted on his wall as they were so small he couldn't bank them, he wasn't complaining as he was making money he hadn't expected. It turned out that his site had ranked high up on specific keywords in a major search engine, and he was receiving a fair amount of targeted traffic for free. A few months after that he decided to log into all the affiliate accounts he had registered with, and noticed that some of them had not paid him as the amounts were too small, some of them hadn't paid although they should have, and some even showed that they had sent him amounts that he didn't recall receiving checks or EFT or paypal or any other payments for! So how does working with an affiliate network prevent this from happening, and is this the only reason to work with an affiliate network? A good affiliate network has a number of different offers which the affiliates can promote, and nearly all the affiliate networks consolidate the amounts the affiliates earn from the various campaigns. This means that the affiliates receive a CONSOLIDATED payment rather than many smaller ones. It also makes reconciling the payments easier, as you simply log into one affiliate network, and can see a summary of each of the campaigns you have promoted, how much you have earned from them, a summary of how much you have earned overall, and how much the affiliate network has paid you to date. Also, once you work with one campaign in an affiliate network, the other campaigns work in a similar if not identical way – the tracking is the same method, the place you pull the creatives from is the same, the way you check your stats is the same – and nearly always, all of this can be achieved by logging into one backend site rather than many different sites. So now you are working with one log-in, where you can really get to understand the system. However, even with the best of affiliate networks, things go wrong – but with an affiliate network, you would be allocated an affiliate manager, who will help you sort out any issues you encounter. Not 50 different affiliate managers – one for each campaign you are running, as would be the case if each merchant was a standalone merchant with their own affiliate program – but one affiliate manager for all the campaigns. And by building up a relationship with your affiliate manager, when you do need answers, you have one person to turn to. Of course, once you become a professional super whaling affiliate (the type that lies on the beach while the money pours in – HAS ANYONE REALLY ACHIEVED THIS? Watch this space for a future story about the affiliate beach goers!), you'll need specific campaigns to promote, and that is why, even the best of affiliates belong to multiple affiliate programs and affiliate networks. But this presents even more problems. So my advice when starting out is to choose one or 2 affiliate networks, become familiar with their system, build up a relationship with the affiliate manager, test out the different campaigns they have, and let them help you achieve the success and results you want to achieve.

Affiliate Profit: Are you losing money?

Dear Affiliate, I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn't pay attention to it! Let me explain... When you joined affiliate programs you probably considered the following factors: - The commission - The conversion rate The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don't manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them: - Price: A high price means a higher affiliate commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn't be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied affiliates is what you should look for. - Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money! This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers' expectations or going beyond what they could expect! - Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don't associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top. How much money are you losing today? The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick. The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less? There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program! A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates. If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money! What are good, medium and poor refund rates? Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale: 2% or less: Excellent 3% - 5%: Good 6% - 10%: Medium 11% - 15%: Poor 16% - 20%: Very Poor 21% or higher: Run away! With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote. What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program? There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program: 1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760! You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program. 2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program. The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs. The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank? As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money affiliates can lose when promoting these programs: - SurveyScout: 16.2% refund rate! - Survey Platinum: 20.9% refund rate! - My Consumer Survey: 35.2% refund rate! To get into the details, on November 29th 2005 figures were as following: SurveyScout Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $19.69 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 19.69) / 23.50 = 16.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,969 because 16 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Survey Platinum Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $18.58 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 18.58) / 23.50 = 20.9% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,858 because 21 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! My Consumer Survey Affiliate Commission: $40.84 Average $Earned/Sale: $26.43 Refund Rate: (40.84 - 26.43) / 40.84 = 35.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $4,084. In fact you will get only $2,643 because 35 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Remark: My Consumer Survey has a poorly designed site and a high price for buyers. We estimate its conversion rate to be significantly lower than other paid surveys programs. Despite its high commission, affiliates will lose the most money with this program. We learn three lessons about these paid surveys affiliate programs: - A lot of customers are dissatisfied. - Affiliates lose big money. - The quality of these programs is very questionable. What should you do to stop the bleeding? You have no influence on the quality of the affiliate programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation! Giving your top recommendation to a very professional affiliate program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible. In the field of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs, the most professional program available today is MaximumPaidSurveys.com. Maximum Paid Surveys is a premium database of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs. It delivers a superior value to both registered users and affiliate partners due to its very high quality. How to identify quality in affiliate programs? Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can't define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in affiliate programs? The most qualitative affiliate programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to affiliates: 1. Value to customers – It includes: - Rich content - Good looking website - State-of-the-art organization - Friendly functionality - Affordable Price for most visitors - Detailed documentation - Bonuses strengthening the main offer - Timely Customer Support 2. Value to affiliates – It includes: - High conversion rate - High commission - Low refund rate - Commission paid on time - Good affiliate support

Affiliate Marketing Online: Super Affiliates Reaping The Rewards Of Success

Getting ahead in the affiliate marketing industry is not as difficult as some may assume. Depending on the aspirations or the purpose behind a person joining the affiliate programs, there are ways in which anybody can earn anything from a small subsidiary salary to a major income. Personal website owners everywhere have been able to host advertising in exchange for a few dollars here and there, whilst large businesses have been able to generate huge sums by representing other sites through their own. It is an advertising medium that has no barriers and no boundaries. People with vast Internet experience and huge budgets are just as accepted as those who know nothing about computers and have a very limited financial backing. Companies may prefer to be represented by people who are likely to draw in huge numbers of new customers, but in truth any advertising that they can achieve they are more than willing to exploit, especially when it is free. For a person new to the industry, the first thing that must be done is choosing a company, or even a range of companies for your site to represent. There are hundreds of sites that offer affiliates the chance to sign up directly through them, as well as a number of affiliate program sites that represent a number of clients, ordinarily from the same industry or the same Mother Company. Larger industries with the potential for extra growth or a huge turnover of business and custom are possibly the most likely to flourish for a new affiliate. The online gaming industry is one of a few that are experiencing huge gains, turning over billions of dollars every year. With worldwide appeal and an ever-increasing clientele the sports betting industry is one of the largest of those contained under the wider banner of online gaming. Sports betting is and always has been a popular pursuit for people all over the world, therefore its attraction is not limited to individual nations or regions. This makes it the ideal market in which to start your own affiliate business. Like many of the gaming industries affiliate programs, sports betting offers their affiliates a percentage of a players money that has been generated for the site. Money is generated essentially when they lose a bet, therefore each time they don't win, the affiliate does. With affiliates picking anywhere up to 35% of a player's money that has signed up through their site, it is not hard to see how the money can easily start pouring in once you gain a few clients. Unlike in most industries the affiliates are not quite as cut-throat in their competition for new customers, therefore it is not hard for newcomers to corner their own market. But to become a successful affiliate you must first entice a steady flow of traffic through your own site. Without human traffic you can never expect to achieve the vital clicks on your links and the subsequent windfalls. Therefore as with all sites it may be in your best interests to increase your own visibility, through advertising, forum addresses or special search engine orientated articles within the site. However you choose to market yourself is entirely up to the affiliate, but with time and careful planning an affiliate can generate significant traffic to their own site and then start reaping the rewards for themselves.

Affiliate Marketing Is Revenue Sharing

One of the most popular and undeniable methods of earning money online is the setting up of an affiliate marketing business. Anyone who is determined, resourceful, and willing to learn can become successful in affiliate marketing. But how can affiliate marketing result to earning money? First, the business of affiliate marketing can be described as a joint effort of two businesses. That is, affiliate marketing is basically a relationship between two businesses in which, the common purpose is to increase visitor traffic. One business is called the Advertiser, and the other is called the Publisher or the Affiliate. The financial relationship of the Advertiser and the Publisher is based on revenue sharing. The Advertiser will place ads in the website of the Publisher. These ads are links towards the website of the Advertiser. And when a visitor clicks on the link, the Advertiser will pay the Publisher. The payment or compensation given to the Publisher will be based on any of these arrangements. Cost Per Click In “cost per click” or CPC, the Advertiser has arranged to pay the Publisher or Affiliate each time a visitor ends up in the Advertiser’s website from the link in the Publisher’s website. What actually happens is that the Publisher has articles or products that have attracted Internet users. And while the Internet user is in the website of the Publisher, this Internet user will be aware of the existence of the Advertiser’s website. In the ads or banner of the Advertiser, there will be one or two sentences that will entice the Internet user to visit the Advertiser’s website. Of course, the Advertiser may have several Publishers and it will have a system that will identify which Publisher has referred the visitor. Cost Per Lead In “cost per lead” or CPL, the visitor that was referred by the Publisher must sign-up or fill-up a form before the Publisher is entitled to a commission or compensation. When the visitor signs-up, he becomes a lead for the Advertiser to more target clients. Since a lead is more valuable than a simple visitor, the compensation given to the Publisher for each lead is relatively higher than the pay for each visitor. Cost Per Acquisition In “cost per acquisition” or CPA, the visitor that was referred by the Publisher decides to purchase the products or services from the website of the Advertiser. The visitor becomes a paying customer. When there is a paying customer, the Advertiser earns income. And when the Advertiser earns income, a part of it is shared with the Publisher in the form of a commission.

Affiliate Marketing In E-Zines

Affiliate marketing is all about promoting the product. But it is not cold or hard selling. The affiliate lures the Internet user to visit his website by offering information and even free online courses. The visitor of the affiliate’s website will find the free information and will even enroll in the free online course. And while reading the informative articles, the visitor will slowly be convinced of the value of certain products.
And when the visitor realizes the value of certain products, he will most likely click the banner that links to the website of the merchant who manufactures the product or who officially sells the product. The affiliate does not do the direct selling. The affiliate simply sets the mind of the visitor, who is the target client, so that this visitor will be easier to convince to proceed to the purchase or order form of the merchant’s website.
Thus, for an affiliate marketing business to be successful, the promotional strategies carried out by the affiliate should also be successful. One that will contribute to the success of such promotion is the utilization of e-zines. An e-zine is basically a newsletter which is emailed to the subscribers of the e-zine. This newsletter contains the types of information that the subscriber has already expressed a willingness to read about. And when an ad is placed together with such information, the subscriber will be made aware of the presence of the products promoted by the affiliate.
There are two types of e-zine ads that an affiliate can pay for. The first type is similar to a banner ad. It contains a couple of sentences composed of well-chosen words that will entice the reader to visit the website of the affiliate. An affiliate can easily write such an e-zine ad since he already has promotional materials for the products.
The second type of e-zine ad is called the solo ad. In such e-zine ad type, the newsletter being mailed to the subscriber contains only the advertisement of the affiliate and nothing more. Usually, such a solo ad is mailed separately from the regular newsletter. For example, if the newsletter is sent every Tuesday of the week, the solo ad is sent on a Thursday or a Friday. There is no limit to the number of words placed in a solo ad. But the affiliate must keep in mind that such a solo ad is sent through email. Therefore, the solo ad should not be too long that reading it will take up so much time that the subscriber is not willing to sacrifice. The usually suggested number of words is 500.
With e-zine ads, the opportunities of earning more increase. And the affiliate moves closer towards that goal of affiliate marketing success.