Email Issues for Designers and Wholesalers - Part 1
SECTION A
Click HERE to see SECTION B
The Text Tidy Tool is available HERE.
Overview of the Issue
Email is one of the main marketing advantages to operating in the
21 century, and one that should not be overlooked.
Cost - Email is cheap
Time -
Email will reach its destination
across the world in a few seconds as opposed to days or even weeks
with the postal service.
Convenience - Email can be sent to groups of people at the same
time.
Informal - Email messages tend to be less formal, are also
usually shorter and more to the point.
Easy to reference -
The text of a previous email message
can easily be included as part of a reply to that message. Thus,
email correspondents are able to keep the replies in context for
each message. Including this context is not only polite, but also
makes an email message more accurate and understandable.
For most Designers and Wholesalers, email falls into two categories
(this Membership site does NOT deal with online Retail issues):
Category 1) Email that is a communication between a
Designer or Wholesaler and
a Customer and is independent from email regarding a
transaction.
Examples of this would be a Customer
contacting a Designer with a question, such as asking about a the
availability of a design, what shops or distributors carry your line (These inquiries are great for
putting together a Web Site FAQ or for providing topics for your email
marketing campaigns)
Category 2) Informative/Marketing emails sent by a
Designer or Wholesaler, such as Newsletters, NEW Product
Announcements, or Technique Information.
This correspondence is instigated by the
Designer or Wholesaler and is not in direct response to questions or contact from
the Customer. These emails would be part of a carefully planned
Marketing Campaign. Answers to Customer question asked in the first
category provide an excellent source for topics, btw!
Background on the Issue
According to a recent Time Magazine article, over 70% of all
email sent is deleted at the server by some ISPs. YIKES!
As a result of the increase in SPAM
(unsolicited junk email), Congress
passed the Can-Spam Act which went into effect on January 1, 2004.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm
The main points of the Can-Spam Act are as follows:
It bans false or misleading header information.
An email's "From," "To," and routing information – including the
originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and
identify the person who initiated the email.
It prohibits deceptive
subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the
recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
It requires that your email
give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a
return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism
that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages
to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may
create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of
certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end
any commercial messages from the sender.
Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out
requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email.
When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business
days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You
cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have
another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally,
it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of
people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a
mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity
can comply with the law.
It requires that commercial
email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's
valid physical postal address. Your message must contain
clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or
solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more
commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical
postal address.
Please note, I am NOT a lawyer nor do I play one on TV. The above
points are quoted directly from the FTC website.
Analysis of
the Issue One of the most frustrating and
significant problems with the Can-Spam Act is that YOU can be
affected by someone else's *crimes* without having done anything!
How is this? Well, every email sent is identified as coming from a
specific IP address (IP simply means *Internet Protocol*, so don't
worry about remembering it! *smile*). Each individual computer has
an IP address... So, how, if your computer has a unique address ,
can you be adversely affected by someone else Spamming? The key is
that not only does each individual computer have an IP address, each
computer/server that a website is hosted on also has an IP address.
Most web sites are hosted on servers which are specialized computers
containing many web sites, all sharing the same IP address. For
instance, I host a number of different websites on the same server.
This means that to someone looking at IP addresses, my Marketing
Edge Blog:
http://marketingedgeforyarnandthread.com/ this website:
http://yarnandthreaddesigners.com/
and my Retailers' Membership
site:
http://yarnandthreadretailers.com/ ALL have the same IP address!
If I were to SPAM someone from the Blog, and I was Blacklisted
for it (a result that is becoming more and more common), the other
two sites would also be blacklisted! Now this is especially
chilling to those of us trying to do business online and who are
following the rules, because we can be affected by someone who just
happens to be hosted on the same server that our website is on! YIKES!!!!
As you can see, the potential is there for all categories of
Designer or Wholesaler email to be affected. Because of the dynamics involved for
each type of email, the solutions vary slightly for each category. In Part 1 of this series, we will be dealing with the
second
category we identified: Category 2) Informative/Marketing emails sent by a
Designer or Wholesaler
Solution to the
Issue for Category 2) Informative/Marketing
emails sent by a Designer or Wholesaler Not
surprisingly, the problems created by the Can-Spam Act (necessary though
it may have been!) have resulted in a whole mini-industry of
companies dedicated to helping you solve these problems. ;-)
If you remember, one of the requirements of the
Can-Spam Act requires that your email give recipients an
opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another
Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you
not to send future email messages to that email address, and you
must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow
a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must
include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.
Well amazingly enough, there are two very good
companies that offer that option to you along with several even more
valuable services. These companies are
called *Auto-Responder* companies. The two that I recommend are:
AWeber
GetResponse
How it Works
Now, in a nutshell, this how an Auto-responder
service works: What YOU do as Subscriber
to the service:
The Service allows you to create/build a mailing list
of email addresses.
You are able to
set it up so that you can send the same message to everybody on your
list at the same time
You can
divide and combine lists as needed, with some pre-planning on your
part
You can create email
messages ahead of time and have them sent off on any schedule that
you decide
You can send email messages as text
formatted messages (probably the recommended way due to readers
preferences) or as HTML messages. Click
HERE for more about the text email format.
What the
Auto-Responder Service does for you:
They work with ALL of the big name, difficult ISPs (such as AOL) and
keep them happy, which allows the A-R Service to insure 99.34% email
deliverability, fast...
They set-up
your emails so that those on your email lists can Opt-out with one
click of the mouse, allowing you work within the requirements of the
Can-Spam Act.
They make it easy for
you to build your list without worrying about getting into trouble
or having to answer accusations of Spamming.
They provide templates and tools to help you create Sign Up forms,
email follow up sequences, and more. What
this means in the Real World
It is necessary for you to start fresh with your
email list.
This is scary because the likelihood is that you will
lose many of your current email list members.
However, predictions
are that without switching over to an Opt-in and Confirmed list at
this point,
you are likely to lose your entire list in the next couple of years
anyway, as the email laws change. It is
my professional opinion that our best chance for long term success
is to make the switch now and rebuild our lists as quickly as
possible. In this way, when the laws do change, we have strong odds
that our lists will already be compliant. Obviously, there is no
guarantee that this will work, but I think it is a worthwhile
gamble.
These strategies depend on what is often called a
*Double Opt-in* list , which is more accurately, an *Opt-in and
Confirm* list. An *Opt-in and Confirm*
(*Double Opt-In* List)
list involves several steps:
Opt-in
and Confirm means that the folks on your email list have signed
themselves up to join your list (opt-in).
At the time each person signs up, a
*confirmation* email is immediately sent to them (don't worry, this
process is fully automated) which confirms that they do indeed
wish to join you list.
The person who signed up MUST click on a
link in that *confirmation* email in order to be added to your list.
If they don't click the link, they are NOT
added to your list. One thing to keep in
mind with these Auto-responder services is that they are primarily
focusing their marketing on the Auto-responder side of things.
Certainly that aspect is pretty darn
convenient, but the reality is there are a number of software
packages available that will allow you to do the same thing
yourself, without paying a monthly fee.
However, that software sits on your server and
uses your website's IP address, so if your IP has been blacklisted
or is blacklisted later on,
your email won't get thru. You'll be able to send out
undeliverable emails automatically on any schedule you set... but
the email will still be... UNDELIVERABLE!
The hard cold fact is that you are paying
AWeber
and
GetResponse for the use of their good working relationship with
AOL, MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo, and any other ISP you can name.
If one of their subscribers is accused of
spamming,
AWeber and
GetResponse can PROVE that that person has NOT
been spamming, because they can show the *Opt-in and Confirm*
records. This means that you won't be
blacklisted due to someone else's actions!
This is especially important if, as in our market
segment, you have a LOT of AOL members. Many unknowledgeable AOL
clients don't distinguish between Spam and Trash and you can easily
be falsely accused of spamming! Now you
might be unwilling to pay the $19.95 or less that they charge per
month... I know that I am cheap... but the fact of the matter is,
you need to spend the $$ now, in order to build a bullet-proof list so
that
later on, when most of your customers are signed up with email, you
can use this instead of snail mail... and more importantly, when the Spam laws change
again, you aren't forced to start over from scratch...
Savvy internet marketers like to say *The Money
is in the List*.
We will be developing a number of List
Marketing strategies tailored to each Retailer's individual
circumstances, but the *List* MUST be an *Opt-in and Confirmed* List!
Click here to get to AWeber.
Click here to get to GetResponse.
Both companies have good documentation.
Click HERE to see SECTION B
Included in Section B:
Learning to Use the Service
Tink Tweaks
Strategies for Improving Your Sign Up Rate
Achieving Long Term Success with Your List
How to Organize This!
FREE 46 page eBook *Email Secrets Exposed* - Written by an
Internet Marketer, this book has a lot of useful strategies for
those of us who are *Marketing on the Internet*! It is in PDF format
and can be easily printed.
A Further Note About Autoresponders!
It is possible to send messages thru an Autoresponder Service as either plain text format or as html. Many
folks set their email text only, NOT to accept html, so this
would need testing in order to decide if it is a viable option for
any particular list. You sure don't want to send an email that won't
be opened! PCs running Windows come with
a handy, dandy little program called Notepad. I have
Notepad installed with an icon on my desktop so that I
can access it quickly and I do use it often for a variety of things.
I also use a WONDERFUL free software program
called NoteTab Light. I use if for cutting and pasting
and organizing. You can get it here, for FREE!
http://www.notetab.com/ntl.php
NoteTab Light is one of the best programs I have found
lately. I can open multiple documents in different tabs and work
back and forth easily. It is well worth the time to play with it. I
do know a lot of folks who have paid the $$ and upgraded to the Pro
version but I haven't felt the need so far.
The two problems with both Notepad
and NoteTab Light are that:
1) neither has a Spell Check feature (This is
important to me because I am a LOUSY typist and what I don't
misspell, I often type incorrectly!) 2)
Neither program can easily format a message to have a set number of
characters in a line. This is an issue because email messages sent
in text need to have a character per line limit set in order to look
good. This simply means that if a line of text has more than 60
character/letters and spaces, then it is likely have awkward line
breaks and be hard to read... not a good thing!
I have wrestled with these problems in the past,
but now, I have found a cool little program called Text Tidy Tool.
I now create my messages in my Word Processing program and use the
spell checker (which neither NoteTab Light or
Notepad have) and once I know it is correct, I copy and
paste the text into Text Tidy Tool and VOILA! the
lines are a nice, tidy 60 (or whatever number I have set between 40
and 60). I have greatly improved the odds that my messages are
accurate (and I can catch my numerous typing errors painlessly) and
they look good... and since the email being sent is how you will
make an impression on your customers, this is quite a relief!
Here is information about Text Tidy Tool:
|
One of the time-saving tricks I have found is to use
simple little software programs that do only one thing,
but do it REALLY well. Text Tidy Tool is
a good example of this strategy. For the most accurate and effective presentation, text
emails need to be limited in width, usually about 60
characters per line, maximum width.
The Text Tidy Tool is a fast and easy
way to do this.
Here is a screen shot to show just how easy and
simple Text Tidy Tool is to operate!
How the Text Tidy Tool works:
Set the desired width (between
40 - 60 characters per line)
Cut and paste your text into the box
Click the *Run the Tidy Tool*
button
Select the Tidied Text, just
by clicking on the *Select Tidied Text* button
Hit the *Copy* button and paste where ever you want it
to go, such as in an Autoresponder Message.
The Text Tidy Tool
is only $9.95.
To purchase it with an INSTANT DOWNLOAD, click on the
Button below.
Directly after completing your purchase, you will be
brought back to this site to a special page with the
Download Link.
Is the Text Tidy Tool
absolutely necessary to your marketing success? Nope...
but it can be a real time saver!
Sorry, this is for PCs only!
As always, if you have any questions or problems, please
don't hesitate to contact me using the contact info at
the bottom of this page! |
Click HERE to see
SECTION B
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