Recently I had the opportunity to share some Internet marketing resources with local business owners. What I learned from them concerned me so much that I felt it was extremely important to write about it here so that the information would help as many people as possible.

It seems that some of these small business owners are still using Outlook to send out commercial email campaigns (email blasts). They are chopping up their email lists into small 30 person chunks so they can “fly under the radar” and still send out 200 emails without getting slapped by their Internet Service Providers (ISP) as spammers.

If these smart business savvy business owners are still using Outlook to send out email campaigns, then I am sure there is still a large number of people out there who are doing the same thing. There are many issues that surround this topic and there are several problems with running an email campaign this way.

Before we get into the reasons why using Outlook to run email campaigns is a bad idea and before I share the solution I recommend to avoid the threat of penalty, let’s take a look at what the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has to say about commercial email and the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act.

What the Law Requires

Here’s a rundown of the law’s main provisions:

* It bans false or misleading header information. Your 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.

Penalties

Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.

Additional fines are provided for commercial emailers who not only violate the rules described above, but also:

* “harvest” email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email
* Generate email addresses using a “dictionary attack” – combining names, letters, or numbers into multiple permutations
* Use scripts or other automated ways to register for multiple email or user accounts to send commercial email
* Relay emails through a computer or network without permission – for example, by taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without authorization.

The law allows the DOJ to seek criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for commercial emailers who do – or conspire to:

* Use another computer without authorization and send commercial email from or through it
* Use a computer to relay or retransmit multiple commercial email messages to deceive or mislead recipients or an Internet access service about the origin of the message
* Falsify header information in multiple email messages and initiate the transmission of such messages
* Register for multiple email accounts or domain names using information that falsifies the identity of the actual registrant
* Falsely represent themselves as owners of multiple Internet Protocol addresses that are used to send commercial email messages.

Source: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

Now, it seems pretty easy to understand that there can be some serious penalties for anyone who does not adhere to these rules and regulations. Not only that, but there are some serious administrative hassles to just to make sure you are compliant. So how do you avoid penalty and administrative hassle?

That’s a good question, but a better question is how do I avoid the possibility of penalty and the administrative hassle, and how do I get valuable analytics on my email campaign that will help me target customer better and spend my money wisely?

To answer this question you need to leverage the solid infrastructure of a system that has been specifically designed and built to handle mass mailing of commercial email campaigns. You need to subscribe to a service that offers built in spam prevention processes to easily handle the administrative duties of complying with the CAN-SPAM Act. You need use a service that will help you verify that people want to be on your list, will help you easily remove people from your list when they no longer want to hear from you, and will give you information about email bounce rates, email open rates, link click through rates, and much much more.

I know what your thinking, “That’s all fine and good, but how much will it cost me to have a service like that”. Well, simply put, for as little as $20 a month you can get access to a solid, trusted, industry leading service that offers everything you need to run a successful email campaign. And, yes I know that sounds like a commercial, but the reality is that these words are extremely important. There are other services out there that fill the demand of the email marketer market, but they don’t go far enough to truly provide a service according to industry best practices.

So, let’s recap quickly. Outlook email blasts can get you labeled as a spammer, expose you to financial penalties, and will cost you time and money trying to adhere to the CAN-SPAM Act’s rules and regulations. A legitimate service that offers professional email campaign management, email campaign reporting, and adheres to the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act costs you only $20 a month.

Now you tell me, what is it worth to you to know your emails will have a better chance of reaching your customers, you will have better insight into the success of your emailing efforts, and most of all you avoid the pain of being caught in the legal troubles that have been put in place to stop real spammers?

Read more about the solution that I recommend.

http://OpenSourceMarketer.com/recommends/autoresponder

Keep reaching for success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Summary: Learn why you should test, test, test everything in Internet marketing to find out what works.

There are a ton of “proven techniques” that are promoted in the Internet marketing arena. But, no matter what you might read or who you might listen to one thing is certain. Testing your marketing methods is something that must be done on a regular basis.

Here’s the deal. We can’t assume that what works for one group of prospects will work for another group. We can’t assume that because it has been “proven” that it will work for us. We can’t assume that what has worked for us in the past will work for us in the future.

I know what you are thinking, “If I can’t depend on these things, then what can I do”. Well, here it is in three simple words; test, test, test.

Testing of your marketing methods should simply be a part of the way we do business. We should want to know if option A produces more results than option B. We should want to know if we are getting traffic from those paid clicks or if we are just paying out money for no reason. We should have some form of insight into what is going on in our marketing efforts and how we can improve their results. We should, test everything.

So how do we do this testing?

One method is split testing. Let’ take newsletter sign up forms as an example. Split testing a sign up form is a simple way to know if one form gets better results than another form. Let’s say your two forms are exactly alike in all respects, except one form is placed within the home page of your site and the other form is included in a popup on that same page.

Over a period of time, say a week or even a month, you see that more people sign up through the pop up form than through the inline form on the page. Now you know that the pop up form is the way to go.

Now that you know which form works better by placement, now you can create two similar pop up forms that rotate out and you can begin to refine the form for even better results. You can continue to do this for as long as you like, though there may come a time when you say, “That’s good enough for now”. When that happens leave it for a while, but don’t forget to come back and review your results regularly to make sure that you are still getting the response rate you are looking for.

You might be thinking, “I don’t want to spend a lot of time split testing”. I understand how you feel. I felt the same way until I saw my newsletter subscription rate double because of some simple split testing. Before the split testing I had no real insight into how to improve my processes. It was all mainly guess work. I got tired of driving blind and I am sure you feel the same way.

If you are interested in improving your results, and I know you are, then here is what I recommend. Use a service that provides you the ability to split test whatever it is that you are working on. Now, in some cases you can easily split test on your own without needing a service, but if you like to be shielded from the technical side of the process, then look for a service that can give you quick and easy split testing tools.

To split test the Open Source Marketer newsletter sign up forms I used AWeber. They offer me the ability to create split tests for newsletter sign up forms and all I had to do is put the code on my website. Aweber handles the form rotation and tracking for me. I get to login, review my results, and make decisions about a or b. Then I can refine the test and the forms get updated on my site automatically. I get the benefit without the hassle.

There are also services out there that will let you split test web sites, web pages, graphics, ads, etc. Everything and anything can be split tested and should be. So remember, all the “proven techniques” in the world aren’t worth a dime if you can’t point to one of them and say this worked for me better than that worked for me.

Testing is essential to getting results and should be just another part of how we do business. So, stop and think for a second, what can you split test today that will increase your chances of success? Now, get out there and test it.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Summary: Learn how you can leverage ClickBank to supplement your business online.

Do you want to start selling products online? Do you wish you had a product to sell now? Do you think you have to wait until you’ve created your own product to start selling? Well think again.

You might not realize it, but there is a whole market of existing products on ClickBank just waiting for you to promote them. It’s really simple. ClickBank is like a broker between content producers (sellers) and affiliate marketers (you). ClickBank enables you to sell digital products online by leveraging the power of affiliate marketing without even having a product of your own.

In fact, there are thousands of available products listed and best of all ClickBank takes care of the affiliate payment processing for you. All you have to do is pick a product and promote it.

ClickBank allows you to sell up to 99 products using one account. However, there is one thing to consider when using ClickBank.They do take care of payment processing for your products and they pay your affiliates their commissions, but ClickBank only provides you the ability to use one sales page to promote products.

To have multiple sales pages for multiple products using one ClickBank account you must purchase a third-party software package. The third-party tool we recommend is EasyClickMate.

In case you have never heard of EasyClickMate, here is a brief overview of the product.

EasyClickMate is a server installed software package that redirects affiliate links to the appropriate sales page for your product.

From that sales page buyers are directed to ClickBank where they make their purchase. From there ClickBank sends the buyer to your EasyClickMate server which then delivers them to the proper thank you page to download their product.

Each time an affiliate directs someone to your product page EasyClickMate records a hit. If someone clicks through from your sales page for that hit and makes a purchase then a sale is recorded for that affiliate .

This gives you the advantage of knowing which affiliates are promoting your products and with some split testing you can tell which promotional tools are more effective and you can tell which affiliates you might need to spend more time with.

Best of all you get stats on your sales, on your sales page hits, and your affiliate get an automatic e-mail when a purchase is made from their affiliate links. This type of the affiliate encouragement is invaluable.

Just think, each time an affiliate makes a sale, they get an e-mail telling them that a sale has been made. This will encourage them to do more to promote your product if they know that they’re making sales.

EasyClickMate was easy to set up and configure. The users guide was extremely clear on how to set up and use the system. If you are familiar with how to set up PHP software using a MySQL database then you will have no problem installing and configuring the system. In fact, you can probably finish the installation and be using the system with an existing ClickBank account in about 30 minutes.

EasyClickMate also provides affiliate sign-up forms, e-mail notification each time an affiliates makes a sale, and an alternate payment sources in case ClickBank is down. For example, I send buyers to a PayPal screen if ClickBank is down. This helps to save a sale that might have been lost to a dead link.

The great thing about EasyClickMate is you have a central place to manage your affiliate accounts. You can use EasyClickMate from several sites, provide affiliates with links, and track everything through one central administration.

EasyClickMate even has an automated subscription feature that allows you to automatically add e-mail addresses to an existing mailinglist. For example, I use Aweber as my autoresponder service and when someone buys a product from me an e-mail is automatically sent to an existing mailing list that is set up just for that product. When a customer completes the purchase process as normal, they are redirected to their download link. Simultaneously they are sent an e-mail asking them to verify that they would like to be added to my mailing list.

This requires no additional interaction from the customer other than confirm that they want to receive your newsletter. Best of all, the process is completely automated for you so you don’t have to manually add them to your mailing list.

So, whether you have an existing product to sell or you are simply promoting products from the ClickBank market place, it’s easy to see that a tool like EasyClickMate can come in handy.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

I originally posted the idea in the Open Source Marketer Community Forum, but I thought it was worth posting on the blog as well. Basically, the idea is to put your product offer or advertisement at the end of someone’s autoresponder signup process.

If your not familiar with the autoresponder signup process, let me explain. A professional autoresponder service provides the ability to create mailing list signup forms that can be copied onto blogs, webpages and the like.

The form is often used in combination with a free offer to entice visitors to join a mailing list. When someone enters their name and email address into the form, they are presented with a webpage telling them to check their email for a confirmation link.

The visitor checks their email, clicks the confirmation link, and they are presented with another webpage that confirms that they have completed the opt-in process.

This is what’s known as a double opt-in signup because it requires the interested visitor to hand over their name and email address (opt-in number one) and then click a link in their email to confirm they want to receive email from the list owner (opt-in number two).

When you sign up for a newsletter or mailing list you usually see these standard set of notices. After completing the signup form, you see a page that tells you to check your email, and you get a page that confirms your opt-in status when you click the confirmation link in your email. It happens like clock work.

However, most new marketers (heck even experienced ones) leave money on the table by not customizing these notification pages. They just use the default pages that are provided by the autoresponder service and they miss out on opportunities to further promote their own or related products and services.

What they should be doing is putting a one time offer on that final confirmation page to capture a sale from someone who was interested enough to double opt-in to their mailing list.

Here’s where you come in. Since that list owner is not fully using their autoresponder series to it’s fullest potentional, why not contact that list owner and ask to put your custom offer or message on that confirmation page?

Then your message will be seen by every person who double opts in to their list. Depending on the offer and the message you provide you might be able to get in front of a lot of people and not directly complete with the list owner.

If the list owner is interested in affiliate marketing, then you could offer them a percentage of sale. Or you might do well to negotiate a flat monthly fee or a per visitor fee. The right mix will depend on their past opt-in numbers and the conversion rate on your product or service.

This is just an idea and worth a think about, considering how many people don’t use that space today. Who knows, you might be able to get advertising space that is cheaper per visitor than Pay Per Click advertising.

Looking for an edge,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Well, if she goes through my coat pockets, she should also go through my online affiliate accounts as well because just the other day I found money in one account I had forgotten about.

Several months ago I set up a one page website that offers to deliver inspirational messages via email. The site contains just one call to action and an email sign up form. The inspirational messages are delivered using autoresponder software and it has been on auto-pilot adding one or two new subscribers a month for the past several months. At the bottom of every automatically delivered email there is a simple text link promotion for an affiliate product. As new subscribers sign up for the free service they are effectively starting a chain of emails that will provide them with daily inspirational messages and a single offer for a product promotion.

This is a fantastic way to set up an automated sales force, but there are a few things to consider.

The balance is to not make a pushy offer because it will over power the positive effect of the inspirational message. You want your audience to look forward to your emails or they won’t open them. By not being pushy, but consistently providing an offer with every email I am playing on the nature of curiosity that we all have. Eventually, they are going to be curious about what’s behind that link and then they will check out the offer. If it is something they are interested in then they will check it out sooner than later.

It is also important to try and match the offer as closely to their interests as possible. The more relevant the offer is to the list member who is seeking inspirational messages, the more likely they are to take action. I have been using promotions from AzoogleAds with much success. You could use any affiliate network that has ad inventory to match your target audience.

I picked offers from AzoogleAds because I like what they are promoting and their reporting is easy to use and understand. They also offer a good selection of ad formats and creatives. That also helps me match ads to my list because an image ad is not always appropriate in every situation and sometimes a text link just doesn’t get noticed. So, I like to have choices when I am presenting an offer.

But basically that’s it. Aside from a few small promotional links on other sites I have not had to do that much promotion of the site. I did pick the domain name based on a few keywords and I have been sure to use keyword specific phrases on the homepage. This in combination with using stumbleupon and other social sites to promote the site has served well. And since the whole thing is on auto-pilot I am not pressed to manage it constantly, which of course is why I forgot about the affiliate revenue.

Maybe I should investigate some affiliate management software and report what I find. I know there has to be other affiliates out there with this same problem. Of course it is a good problem to have.

If you know of any good affiliate tracking software out there send me a message and tell me about it.

Forgetting to remember,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com