Email Marketing Tip Scheduling and Planning your Campaign

Sticking to your Email Campaign
Viper Mailer our email marketing service product provides us with a broad look into our ever expanding client base allowing us to see and learn what is working for one client and sharing it here on the Logic Talk Blog.

We will share an all to important marketing tip that is made up of multiple parts that are the planning, creating, proofing and scheduling of your email marketing campaign.

This is a really educational lesson, important to the multitasking entrepreneur in today’s go go world who is busy running their entire business but to be sure that we help them keep in touch with their clients via their list of email contacts we have created an easy to follow message management planning concept sure to keep their campaign and sells moving forward.

Sharing your messages typically on a monthly bases should be fun, educational and most of all profitable, so these tactics will keep these on the go business operators in the game.

The Planning Stage
We have learned that regardless of the size of your business it is important to have a marketing plan beyond your first month or two of messages and we have advise on how you can accomplish this based on any business or organization you are operating. The whole purpose of your message is to keep you and your brand in front of your customers resulting in sells of course and this means you will need to have informative, educational, tips and techniques and special offers that are well thought out and even call to action.

Try building an annual calendar of rough topics sort of a series of events that represent each month for the year perhaps holiday period features, 10 tips on how to loss those last 10 pounds or you think of what your customers would like to know about the products or services they buy from you and add these thoughts to the calendar of events.

To add to this list of calendar topics you might consider creating an idea file that you can add topics and a few topic notes to from time to time because we all get busy and need to retain a written list that will help build on your future topics much easier. Also remember to not push your products and services in every other paragraph or even in every message because although like Logic we love what we do, what we build and what we sell however our customers more then likely do not feel this same passion so go easy and teach yourself how to flow ideas over the months while making subtle offerings to drive sells and grow your business.

Lastly for your planning stage by using the 12 months of topics calendar your messages should be able to flow from one month to the next because you planned out a series that will appeal to your customers and convey how in touch with what you are offering them you truly are. Be sure though if you are a company selling multiple products or services that you include information that appeals to your entire audience so that you do not exclude any customer type.

The Creating Stage
From the above topics on the annual calendar we realize that the topics will act as creative content hints to get your creative juices flowing and you can now begin adding information to your topics and begin building on the topics until they are each a solid page of information that your readers are going to enjoy receiving. As you get to add the content to your topics you might realize that one months topic goes better following other months so feel free to move these around until you have the mini series you feel best flows for your customers desires.

Images are very important to adding excitement and getting your customers to read your messages so you can begin to gather images that are relevant to each topic and get them organized to ease the message building process by creating a file folder even identify the images by adding the topic title to them on your computer. This way you have the right images and just move them right into your messages while you are building them each month. This will reduce delays and hassles and add more reorganizing to your campaign as well.

Proofing Stage
There is a very old saying in the construction industry that you need to measure twice and cut the board once, so in regards to email marketing campaigns proofreading is one part, word flow another part but for online marketing there are two other important functions that you should add to your monthly routine and it is to check links from your message to your web site that you are using to be sure that the links are working and the links are going to the landing page you intended them to take your customers to.

Lastly if you are using an email marketing service provider like Viper Mailer is one of, be sure to take advantage of the proffers option this option allows you to send out a proof copy of exactly what your customers are going to see and you can add several perhaps a co-worker or a family member that is sent a copy to approve and as an additional option you can request a choice of 3 Approval options and you are free to sign up for our fully functional free trial to see these options and all of the other great Viper Mailer features here Free email marketing.

The Scheduling Stage
We saved this for last but it is in no way the least important because we would like to see your campaign succeed so this portion of the tip is devoted to timing your campaign.

Like it or not we are all on a schedule from the morning paper being delivered to the route we take to work everyday and your campaign needs to be on a schedule because familiarity with your message will gain you greater sells resulting in the best (RIO) Return on Investment so to figure out when is the best time to send out your monthly message you might try to separate your list of contacts into several groups and then send the same messages out on different days and times of each month for the first and maybe second month depending on the results from the first month. Utilizing an email marketing service provider results tracking tools in your account will clearly show you which day and time of the month is best for your campaign.

Inside of your email marketing account there is also a really cool feature for those entrepreneur on the go or even traveling and it is the day and time scheduler that allows you to (after you have created the message for the month) the ability to schedule the day and time for your message to go out even while you are away. This feature will allow you to keep your messages right on schedule and one piece of advice is to be sure to include your own email address to the list of contacts so you get a receipt of sorts confirming your message went out and putting an exact copy of your offering in your hands in case you are called or emailed by a customer with questions.

Additional Help
We hope this tip will get you headed in the right direction increasing sells during an economic downturn and if you would like to learn more about email marketing tips and techniques please visit our education page where you do not have to sign up or even be a client of Viper Mailer to receive marketing help from us here Email Marketing Education

Friends of Logic share Part 5

Live working SEO natural search model
We are proud to report that we have applied a lot of (SEO/SEM) Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing expertize into driving a Viper Logic product, it is Viper Mailer an email marketing service to the top of the main 3 search engines and we have really climbed in the natural (SERP) Search Engine Results Page a long ways since we started promoting Viper Mailer on June 02, 2008.

The keyword Email Marketing is the number one SERP for the email marketing industry where a person performing a search for email campaign tools is most likely to purchase this type of business growth service product.

Viper Mailer still has a ways to go and we will not stop this drive until we are on page one under the natural search term “Email Marketing” because this keyword is the most sought after first page placement desired by the 76.5 million pages on a search engine working to be in the 10 places available on the first page of all 3 search engines.

Today on one search engine we are on page one and we are thankful to Microsoft and their MSN Live Search Engine that we are located on page 1 and the number 7 position. One down and two to go until we are on Yahoo and Google and their page number one as well for “Email Marketing”.

Viper Mailer Email Marketing Authority
Our next move to gain ground will appear within the web site itself so for our next report we will have applied a content strategy based on becoming the email marketing authority because we will begin to deliver the highest quality email marketing information through our “Education Center” and here is the email marketing authority education site section Email Marketing Education Authority.

Search results for August 01, 2008
Yahoo reports we are on Page 5 number 43. a loss of 13 but still a gain of 128.
We started at 171.
Google reports we are on Page 4 number 36. a gain of 22.
We started at 254.
MSN Live reports we are on Page 1 number 7 a gain of 1.
We started at 95.

Email Marketing Reports
Again we do report every two weeks to share how we are doing our work and what we discover in our efforts both the positive and the negative and this time we see we made a great movement on Google with a gain of 22 but lost ground on Yahoo with a loss of 13.

It is clear that the search engine bots or spiders that crawl the Internet continuously re-index sites on a regular bases and in doing this crawling they are going to cause each site to be re-indexed over time sometimes we will be up higher and sometimes we will be moved down or in fact possibly not listed under certain keyword phrases at all then just reappear.

What we all need to realize is that search engine spiders or bots have a job to keep the search engine they work for providing the best returns possible because people use a search engine and they trust the return results they receive for the request they made and search engine crawl often making sure that they are always retrieving the latest information for all topics. 

Two week reports archives
If you happened to have missed the beginning of any of our every two week progress reports you can visit them here.
Email Marketing 2.0 Part 1
Email Marketing 2.0 Part 2
Email Marketing 2.0 Part 3
Email Marketing 2.0 Part 4

Email Message image blocking work around

How to get your email messages through image blocking
This is an email service provider or email marketing provider tip to help you send out a message to a group of contacts for your business or organization and assure that the message gets first, recognized and second opened.

Image Blocking Defined
Image blocking is utilized by a lot of email programs like Microsoft Outlook and it can be configured to eliminates the images from appearing in the email software viewing pain area located in your email Inbox usually in the bottom third to half of the window below all of your Inbox emails.

Providing familiar text with your messages
These tips are for getting around the Image Blocking because as you might know any good email message that is going to receive results is going to need to be colorful which is fine with image blocking but this tip is also to be sure your recipients know who you are if they are using image blocking.

The From in your message and Subject Line are both very good places to start because they appear in the recipients Inbox and you stand a great chance of getting your message opened when the recipient scans through their new messages, so lets start with being sure your “From” is not your name but your company name unless you are known better then the company name is for example you are an insurance agent for a major name and your contacts know your name better then the company name then you should use your personal name.

Next the “Subject Line” is equally important because this is your chance to have your important message title read and sharply increase the open rate odds for your message. You should really try to say who you are and what you are offering in 35 to 50 characters.

To learn more about the “From” and “Subject Line” you can visit the Viper Mailer Education Center here Email Marketing Success and select number 14 for the “From” and Number 13 for the “Subject Line”.

How to place images in your messages
Now even though some recipients will have their image blocker operating in their email Inbox you are still going to want to include images in your message because research and experience show us at Viper Mailer that companies and organizations see higher open message rates and greater sales when images are used but we should caution the images need to be used sparingly and need to be about the subject of your offering to work best for your email campaign.

Never use and image that is large at the top of your message because if there is nothing to appear in the Inbox preview pain the recipient will only see an outlined box with a red X in the corner of it so, the best thing to do is to be sure your image is small enough to allow text to be seen and there should be text above, below or to the side with an explanation about who and what you are offering so your message can be opened and the images can then be viewed.

When you are utilizing a web based email marketing service provider like Viper Mailer there is an option when you upload an image into your message that allows you to add ALT Text and ALT Text is a piece of HTML code that you do not need to know how to program in HTML to do because email service providers offer this feature. All you would need to do is just type in what the image would be showing and it will appear in the blank box when the recipient has their Image Blocker on and receives your message providing a little extra help in getting them to open your message.

Email Marketing Sign Up
If you are not utilizing an email marketing company today you can open a full function FREE email marketing trial account here Email Marketing

Building an Email Contact List in Two Days

Learn how to get a jump start into email marketing
Once in a great while we are amazed at the tactics a client will utilize to jump start the collecting and building as of an Email Marketing contact list and we cannot wait to share how creative this client was at gathering 1000 contacts legally as opt-in clients.

How to build a solid email contact list legally
We are Viper Mailer an email marketing software service provider and we have an extensive email marketing Education Center here Email list building tools where we offer the usual ways to gather peoples first, last names and email addresses and how to keep the list legal by having the persons fill out an online form or in person card and mark a box that explains they agree to accept relevant offers from time to time (usually on a monthly bases) from the company or organization they are filling out the form for.

We generally have all of the email contact gathering methods covering the ways you can achieve collecting names but once in the while we learn of yet another creative way to gather data on people.

Please meet our Swap-meet client
We have a newer client who has been with us a few months and has taught us another way to gather data on people and has built his list up by over 1000 new fresh contacts in under two days by simply talking to a swapmeet organizer. We will share just how our client went from a few hundred contacts on a Friday to over 1200 in his account by a Tuesday afternoon. He also gained a new friend and associate with the swapmeet organizer and they continue to work on this dual promotion tactic on a monthly bases.

This client specializes in romantic lingerie and sells his products from his store front in a city in Los Angeles County where he had collected the two hundred email contacts from the foot traffic his store receives then he started utilizing our email marketing service but he wanted to move faster so he came up with the swapmeet idea.

To convince the swapmeet organizer to allow him to place and operate fill out forms and drop in boxes at the two entrances of the swapmeet he offered to give away two romantic weekend trips for two to Palm Springs, California including a romantic dinner for two during the winners stay.

The swapmeet organizer liked the lingerie products of course but he really liked that he had a couple of free prizes to offer to his swapmeet going audience and he realized this would look good and be helpful to getting these swapmeet goers coming back more often for a chance to win a romantic getaway and dinner that would lead to the swapmeet goers retuning more frequenting a real plus for the swapmeet vendors causing a real win win for the swapmeet organizer.

This chain of events has Logic thinking
What else will our clients be sharing with us because this contact gathering tactic caught us by surprise and has us trying to think of other ways our Viper Mailer email marketing product can help others get a jump on growing their sells and business. If you would like to see what all of the fuss is all about go ahead and give Viper Mailer a FREE fully functional try Email Marketing