How to Select an Email Marketing Service

Best way to learn which email service provider will fit your needs
When the product comes down to being the best marketing tool email marketing is the best return on your money however when selecting an email service provider there are things to consider.

When it comes to price though this is an “all things considered equal” because for email marketing the pricing really is very much the same when measuring services by comparing one to another, not to mention that email marketing as a service is the lowest cost piece of any marketing budget there is for any company or organization regardless of their size.

Special note on how messages get sent out to your list:
Email Marketing Service Porviders send out your messages from their advanced servers through their system but what and when the message is sent out is up to you and within your account.

What features to look for in an email marketing company

Free Trail Offer Email Marketing
Here is one important thing to consider right off of the top and that is that any good email marketing service offers a free sign up fully functional trial offer to you without having to spend any money.

A free trial should work just like full accounts
This will get you in and operating a free trial account and it is the same as having a full account only it is limited by the number of messages you can send out during the trial.

How to set up and run a free email marketing campaign
This is really good news now you can upload a few, usually 20 of your contacts, then select one of the email marketing services free colorful graphic templates, build a full message on one of their templates with your logo, a message header, some content and add some links to your own site.

If you are wanting more you can upload your own branded HTML template and once it is uploaded you can work onit without having any HTML coding skills their system will treat your template the same way they treat their own free templates using a built in HTML converter so your message building acts more like a word document.

Add proffers to see how proofing protects your message quality
Next you can add yourself and other co-workers within your company or organization as proffers, even select the types of proofing you would like them to perform from several options this way you can see what your message looks like and performs like as proofs that are sent out before your actual list of contacts ever see your message.

Try the select the day and time feature for your message to go out
Then to try it out select a day and a time you want the automated system to send out your message and be sure to add your own email address to your account manager so you have another copy in front of you for when you get a call from some of your 20 contacts and so you will know when and if your message went out as you selected and how the message looks again.

Time to track your email messages
Here is a really great part of an email marketing service providers features the tracking system when your messages went out and even you received one you can now log back into your account say later in the day or even the next morning and access the tracking where you can see how many of your 20 recipients opened their messages.

Then see if any messages did not get delivered or need resent and finally you can see how many of your 20 contacts clicked on the links to your site from inside the sent messages as well you will know if they forwarded the messages to others even if one of your 20 contact opted Out to never receive a message again from the list.

Email Marketing Sign Up Trial and Account
Ok we hope that our explanation helped you understand what any email marketing company should be offering you and Viper Mailer offers all of these tools and features in our free trial offers because we want you to following the free trial offer go ahead and sign up for a full account here Email Marketing Free Trial Offer

After a trial sign up you can advance to a paid full account allowing you can send from up to 1000 messages to 1,000,000 messages or more from your very own account all while managing your contacts.

As a full account you will also be able to request a software code for your site where you or your webmaster can add our code build a sign up box and people arriving at your site from now on will have an opportunity to sign up on your site and automatically be added to your Viper Mailer email marketing account then be waiting to receive future messages from you when you build and send them out.

Email Marketing Tip Extending Online Presence

Getting the most exposure from your email messages
We would like to share how to utilize Email Marketing toward building on your (SEO) Search Engine Optimization (the way search engines find your site on the Internet) because today the building of a site for the Internet is one thing but getting the site to be popular is a whole other job and in fact depending on your sites topic, product or service this can be a full time job and we all need to use any and every tactic we can to get our sites popular and to also keep them ranked high enough in the (SERP) Search Engine Result Page (how the search engine returns the results and where your site ranks for your site main keywords) to do us any good at all.

Email Marketing can build on your sites popularity
What we are going to share is five ways to interact with your site from where to get the software code to add these sign ups into your email marketing account instantaneously, gaining email sign ups through your sites landing pages, how to use your email messages to build on your site ranking, how to work with other sites to help each other build email contact sign ups and stay CAN-SPAM compliant and how to optimize your sites email sign up page.

Where to get email sign up web site software code
Ok if you are going to be a professional marketer then you need to sign up for an email marketing account with Viper Mailer the Authority in email marketing advancements because when you open an account you will be able to request or download a little piece of software code that you or your webmaster can place in your site for each page that you have built a sign up box for requesting the signing up persons email address first and last name though you might be gathering additional information like their real mailing address, phone number and other information.

One smart feature you should always include with your sign up box is a little message that explains what you would like to do with the information like we will be sending you our latest releases or we will be sending special offers pertaining to our product or service from time to time.

What this software code will do is automatically add the person signing up to your email marketing account so they will begin receiving offers each time to build one and all of the automation reduces labor and keeps your contact list fresh and up to date. Sign up today for Viper Mailer and request your software code Email Marketing sign up

Gaining landing page sign ups
There is a very important message to convey here about which page your site visitors arrive on to access your site and it is not always the home page in fact depending on your site layout and site page optimization you might be receiving a lot of traffic to what we call a landing page and here is a great example even though in this case we do not have a n email message sign up form on these pages they are still great to show you how a landing page (a page with a site that is not the home page itself) is more popular then the home page.

Landing page example:
We operate a site a very popular weather and live cam site for Palm Springs, California Palm Springs Weather Home Page and within the site we offer an extended weather forecast page that is optimized for search engines to locate for Palm Springs Weather Forecast so the forecast page here Palm Springs Weather Forecast receives a lot of traffic sometimes more the home page and you would want to have a sign up form on this page as well as the home page but you do not need to have a sign up form on every page of your site unless you want to and you have the space for it.

Email message search engine rank building
Here is a really nifty tactic that will help you not only gain and build your business from sending out email messages and offers to your clients via your Viper Mailer email marketing account but you should have a page on your site where you can place these sent for new and returning site visitors to see, read and act upon.

Next these email messages will also help you add search engine keywords and site content to build your sites popularity with the search engines because search engines are always crawl the Internet re-indexing site pages like yours, and the site can gain rankings and popularity greatly from these email message placements.

How to share sign ups with other site owners
Starting with a little caution here for two things you do not want you to do here and then we will share email campaign sign ups how to trade with other site owners. First the two do not does:
1 Do not offer this site email sign up opportunity with a direct competitor for the obvious reasons.
2 Be sure not to have people signing up on your site or the other site owners that is not related because a person signing up for industrial lighting will not have interest in doll collecting and visa versa.

Now lets find sites that match your site realizing you need people that ultimately will buy from you and buy from the sites you partner with because all parties need to win for this portion of the plan to work at its optimum. Ok Logic operates Viper Mailer an email marketing web based service so who’s sites we would look for example to partner with are PR firms, marketing companies, tech writers, proofreaders and business groups or associations because our clients are mostly businesses or non profit organizations where their sign ups would match our sign ups.

One great way to find your competition and for sure your online competition as well as to find your site sign up partners is to search your favorite search engine using the keywords that best match your business because even though you are going to find your competitors when you do these searches you will also find relative sites that are not competing with you and your site where you can contact these site owners and explain the benefits of helping each other. Some people are not going to be interested but if you stick to this practice you will find people like to help and be helped. 

How to optimize your email sign up page
This portion the final portion of our “FREE Email Marketing Tips” will greatly get people searching the Internet to find your sign up form no matter what page or pages they are on (except do not apply this for your main page or home page it could effect your current page standing with the search engines) and this might require you to work with your webmaster to incorporate into your form page is to optimize the title, keywords and description to read so it is easily understood by your site visitors that looking for what you are offering like hair care would use “Free Hair Care Tips” or a light bulb manufacturer might use “Light bulb Installation Help”

For more email marketing tips and learning please visit our Education Center Free Email Marketing Help

Email Marketing Tip Email Surveys

Should email surveys be a part of your email campaign
This tip is brought to you by Viper Mailer’s CEO Logic the Email Marketing Authority for your business growth and we have selected surveys as the topic of this tip so we dive into surveys because we have done research into the time the typical person has to spend on receiving and taking action for each email arriving into their Inbox.

The required time a person would need to spend taking a survey accurately is what we are sharing today and a little discussion about knowning your customers likes and dislikes well enough to ask them to participate in a survey is equally important. This article is not to say surveys are bad because they are not, in fact in the right situation they can be informative and profitable to any group, business or organization especially non-profits.

What is a survey
I think most of use have taken a survey usually a paper survey sent to us by an organization, magazine renewal or even the Census Bureau so we are not going to waste your time writing for you to read about surveys other then to mention the typical types of surveys which are Customer Satisfaction, Marketing Research, Opinion Polls, Sampling Statistical, Quantitative, Questionnaire even Paid Surveys and they come in many forms of information requests like Multiple Choice, Ranking on a Scale, Open Ended where the recipient writes in their thoughts or answer and Closed End where they might have a set number of statements that best pre-answer how the customer is feeling and check a choice.

How do surveys get to us
Today we all have email and the Internet so we realize that surveys are being sent to us from companies and groups requesting us to participate in a questioner or survey from online via web sites, email and offline via telephone snail mail. 

What is an Email Survey
Our story is focused on just one of these surveys and it is in the form of email surveys that arrive in our Inbox from known and unknown sources for topics that are as diverse as any other type of SPAM we also receive in our Inbox each day

Email surveys are not the answer and in the Email Marketing Industry these are more then likely to fade away as many email marketing services that also tried RSS Feed via email messages found out in 2006 and 2007. RSS Feed Defined here What is RSS Feed and hey even this Logic Talk Blog offers you to sign up right here on our own forum (no takers to date) and we view these RSS Feeds (though voluntary through sign up because they are pushed on us all) to be very intrusive as a way to put news, blog updates and pod cast information out to people to receive information and in our opinion this has failed to really catch on with the masses though RSS Feed was market hyped to no end early on.

Just ask others around you, not if they know about RSS Feed but if they subscribe and happily receive these feeds and you will understand what our opinion are all about or you will find they love RSS Feed and can not live without it.

Surveys can be good for some business types but not all
To build a survey is not imposable to create one at all however you must ask the right questions and the answers you provide for your questions need to be on target to the recipient to select from however as a special note the Q and A needs to be held tight so you do not receive to many variable answers leaving your whole reason for applying surveys to your email marketing campaign more confusing then before you started.

All of the above being pointed out we also know that some of the reasons for offering surveys are generally because the email campaign offers, the click through rate for a call to action campaign or the in store sells are down resulting in your wanting to try new things which is smart but in this case applying new services offered to you may not be the correct answer.

What more then likely needs to take place first if you are already utilizing email marketing is to become very educated into the world of email marketing and if you apply our 19 steps to building a successful email marketing campaign (link below) and this blogs email campaign tips more then liekly your call to action requests will lead to a gain in your overall business sells.

Next to apply surveys to your email campaign which there is little harm in applying just watchout for Opt-Out increases (customers leaving your contact list) it is really critical that you know your audience well enough to ask them to take the necessary time out of their busy schedule and to ask that they be truthful and objective providing you, your company or organization with well thought out answers to help you in building on your operations, offers and affectivity like customer support can gain customer insight for you of your customer base, resulting in growing your overall customer satisfaction ratio and sells.

The reason Viper Mailer is the email marketing authority for your business or organization is in part to because we resist offering unproven features or services like Email Surveys just like we elected to not offer RSS Feed email services because as the authority we want to be sure that what we do offer we are the authority in.

We want to focus on providing the best email marketing reports, additional features, simplified campaign builder functionality and effective training tips and techniques that will drive the ultimate results you are looking for and that is the power of sells through call to action.

To learn more from Logic, CEO of Viper Mailer here are some outside resources:
Email Marketing Knol Email Marketing Knol

Email Marketing Blog Email Marketing Blog

Email marketing Help Email Marketing Tips and Techniques

Email Marketing Tip Keeping Your Message Short and Memorable

Business owners have a lot to say sometimes to much
This Email Marketing tip is intended to get your messages to your customers with the best results possible and this starts by being organized with your selection of content and to utilize the power of topic keywords and leading the customer to click on the hyperlinks built into your message. We are also going to share the power of professional templates because a good presentation to whatever your important message is about needs to use color to draw the recipient in. 

Keeping your message short requires a little planning
Creating a message that says it all with few words may sound easy because you will not need to write much but it actually takes a little more effort in the planning and making some notes we referrer to this practice as pre-staging.

A Viper Mailer working example
Lets say you are an electrical supply company and you sell all of the supplies that an electrician or contractor would need for any electrical job they come across. Your business has been running for a few years and you were very smart and began collecting email addresses when you began your business by having your sells staff request customer contact information including their email address and offering on that form that you be permitted to send offers on electrical contracting from time to time. You collected them when the electricians or contractors checked out of your store.

Now you have your email contact list and you want to put them to work so you sign up with an email marketing service like Viper Mailer where you can utilize their contact management account system, colorful graphic templates and result tracking reports and now you want to begin sending out a monthly message to your customers because you know that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”.

Over the months you have thought about what you want to say in your first message and you have been jotting down little notes on the topics and the offers you are going to be making in your first, second and even third message to your customers.

You have been to the Email Marketing Authority Education Center at Viper Mailer where you learned among other important tips and techniques one that you could relate to about saying a lot with few words make what you say memorable here Email Marketing Educational Tips Number 10 because you know these electricians and contractors are busy just like you are so you have learned to have a fantastic Subject Line and recognizable sender From Address along with a branded logo header at the top of your message with your company logo prominently displayed and all of these three things will greatly get your message recognized and more then likely opened because these customers know who you are.

Now it is time to begin writing your message and since you are in the electrical supply business you have one additional offering like did you know we offer a lubricant for pulling electrical wiring through a 90 degree bend in a conduit that can save the risk of broken wires and reduce the time needed to complete the job and we are running a special on this lubricant for the entire month because we value you and your business.

That is a great offer but rewritten it might get better results.
Message Subject Line could be Electrical Tips of the month
Lubricant Special will slip more money into your wallet click here to learn more.

What we have done is prepared the message with a great subject line for offering multiple products and the electrical supply company has a lot of products and a diverse amount of customer so they might want to offer 3 or 4 specials hyperlinks or 2 or 3 specials with hyperlinks to a web site page of how to or did you know types of helpful tips featuring the products they offer being used in their tips and presentations.

Hyperlinks are only part of the answer to keeping you messages short because the other is just as important it is the selection of shortly written statements the use of bullets and well thought out titles for your statements.

If you take a little extra time in beginning then when you start your message it will flow with great structure and results. Just a reminder that the use of a few pictures help but only a few because the recipient might have image blocker on for their emails and they would only receive boxes with a red “X” in them and then your wording as well the use of two many images can restrict your message from getting through because of the emails size might be too large.

Colorful Graphic Templates provide a great presentation
Fortunately when you utilize an email marketing service like Viper Mailer you can select a free colorful graphic template from the many we have to choose from because color like images get a lot of attention when the recipient receives your message in their email box through the viewing pain that area of about 3 inches below your Inbox from and subject lines. Using a color consistently over the months and years will clearly help you brand your company and place your business deeper into the customer’s awareness of your brand and offerings.

The use of a professional template you are afforded two chooses, either utilize one from the email marketing service provider or have your webmaster create one in HTML that you upload into your email marketing account because graphic colorful templates express organization, branding and structure to your message and set you apart from other messages in the customers email Inbox.