By Jim Daniels of BizWeb2000
[March 13th, 2002]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

Of all the ways to get website traffic and make money online, nothing tops email marketing. Every single day my websites receive thousands of visitors via my email marketing strategies.

Of course, email marketing in itself means many things to many marketers. After all, it can take on quite a wide variety of formats.

In this article I'll cover the various forms of email marketing available to online businesses and reveal what works and what doesn't. Here's what we'll discuss...

1. Unsolicited bulk email marketing
2. Opt-in email list rental
3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising
4. Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)
5. Email newsletter network advertising
6. Opt-in "series" email marketing

1. Unsolicited bulk email marketing

Let's jump right into that dangerous endeavor referred to as UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). Most of you know my take on this. Sure, you can get some website traffic using bulk email. (Though a response rate close to the 10% rate some companies promise is not likely - .01% is more likely.) You can tackle the rigors of unsolicited bulk email marketing yourself (you'll need lots of ISP connections because they'll be canceled quickly!) or hire a company to do the dirty work for you.

But the fact is, since unsolicited bulk email angers a huge percentage of recipients, your risks can be rather high. Your domain will end up being blocked by many ISPs and you could even face some legal battles. In my humble opinion, unsolicited bulk email is not worth the trouble. Read on and you'll find that bulk email marketing isn't really necessary either.

2. Opt-in email list rental

A much "cleaner" version of bulk email marketing is "opt-in email list rental." There are plenty of companies on the web that will rent you email addresses that have opted in to receive commercial email. Actually, in most cases they are not really renting the addresses; that is, you never see the addresses. Instead, they charge you a per email address fee for mailing your message to a list under their management. But does it work...?

As long the recipients are not being paid to read the messages and they are genuinely interested in the offers they signed up to receive, this strategy can be profitable. The problem is that in most cases you'll pay from ten to twenty cents per address and mailing to a list large enough to get great results can get quite expensive. But if your budget can handle it, you can generate some great targeted traffic.

I've tried a few opt-in list rentals myself, though not recently. The best was from the site postmasterdirect.com which has millions of addresses in a huge variety of categories under management. You can find many more websites offering this type of service by searching for "opt-in list rental" at your favorite search engine.

3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising

Now let's jump to a more reasonably priced email marketing solution... "email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising". In my opinion this one still gives the best bang for the buck, especially for small businesses with modest advertising budgets.

Some people think I recommend ezine advertising because I have an ezine and I'm trying to sell my own ad space. On the contrary, I've been trying NOT to sell my ad space for the last few years. That's why my own rates are fairly high! I can run my own offers or affiliate offers and make much more than I can selling the ad space. Many other ezine editors are finding the same thing. While this has resulted in rising ezine ad costs over the last few years, one fact remains... ezine advertising is still one of the most effective ways to get targeted traffic -- cheap.

Ezine advertising works best when you locate ezines that your target market actually look forward to reading. And that's not difficult to do... Just visit an ezine directory and search for ezines in your niche market. Subscribe to a bunch of free ezines and read them as they arrive. Look for larger circulation ezines that have a good following. If you like the content in any particular ezine, then hundreds or thousands of other readers probably do too. Place a classified ad and if your site and offer are up to snuff, you'll make a profit nearly every time.

If you can afford a top sponsorship ad, that works about five times better than a regular classified ad! Here are three great ezine directories you can scour and locate lots of ezines that target your particular niche...

Direct Email List Source:

MarketersMarket.com
Ezine Hub
WebScout

More: The best way to use email newsletters...

Article by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Here's a special invitation to Jim's new and unique free web-based guide that reveals how Jim earns six figures a year online in his part time, and how simple it is for others to do the same.