Calling Out Anyone Who Has Had Success with Email Marketing???

[finesse7]

Fellow Marketing Genius,

I have a question for "everyone" who has an experience with Email Marketing!

I've tested a few companies and some are responsive and some are ghosts. The Question of the day is...

Have you had any success with email marketing?

Who have you tried?

Who do you highly recommend?

Who do you NOT recommend?

Any experience and feedback will be greatly appreicated by myself and all the other interested people who have never used this form of marketing to expand their business.

Thanks All,

Bryan Dulaney

[Chris Douthit]

Hi Bryan, I recommend you check out the following thread.

http://www.jvnotifypro.com/community/index.php/topic,676.0.html

[finesse7]

Thanks for the reply,

It seems as though in that post everyone is talking about autoresponders and although that is an important aspect of Email Marketing. It only hits the surface level.

I fully understand having an autoresonder and in deed have about 25 setup at least.

My real question is: Buying Email Leads from authoritative sources?

Has anyone had any success with that?

[citrus]

Hi Bryan,

I would personally never buy leads from any source because a lead that's bought is never as good as a lead that's acquired through your own optin form. I think most of the major autoresponder companies including Aweber, which I use, don't allow importing leads, so I'd have to go through the hassle of getting an autoresponder that does.

As for the companies which you have tested, were those companies selling leads, or did you try companies such as Rent-a-list or ezines that provided solo ads? I'm actually curious about those...I'd like to know if anyone has had good experiences which them and which ones.

[Stephon Rudd]

Bryan,

I agree, don't buy leads. Most of that is a junk list anyway.

You'll either get flagged as a spammer or you'll have an incredible opt out ratio. However, if you're looking to get word out to a lot of "buying" prospects then you really want to look into ezine advertising.

You want to do solo ezine advertisment in the targeted ezine publications. And this is very important, DON'T go for the largest list.

I know that sounds strange but trust me on that one. You want to stay under 100,000 because, most list above 100K are filled with unverified (and therefore, unqualified) prospects. Smaller lists are maintained better. You might email a 500,000 ezine and only make 15 sales while emailing a 55,000 list my get you 100 or more over time.

You can find a list of top ezines at www.ezine-dir.com for free. But, if you want a much more effective solution, I suggest you find $197 for a lifetime membership at www.DirectoryOfEzines.com. This is a very respected site and you can really find the best ezines listed by subject matter, list size, ad costs and so on.

Also, when it comes to ezine advertising, never by the classifieds. You'll just waste your money. The only advertising you want to buy are solo ads.

Typical conversion rates from solo ads are between 5-10 sales per mailing for a good product and you'll pay only $50 (a lot of times) to email up to 90,000 people. If your product is $50 and you receive 90% of your profits then you can make you money and then some in no time.

But, off the top of my head, some good ezines to go with for home business: BizOpEzine (80,000), Online Business Opportunities Newsletter (62,000 sub), Affiliate Junction (61,408 sub), DEMC E-Magazine (48,000 sub).

These are good ones. You can google them to find their web addresses.

Hope this helps...

By the way, I am NOT an affiliate of any of these companies and I'm not making any money off of these sites.

Stephon

[finesse7]

Hey Thanks for all the great advice & tips!

I was looking for the Directory of Ezines site!

[Dave Casteel]

Hey Fellas, Stephons advice I just proved true, I purchased a three email blast to run three days in a row, emails were written by a member here of whom I'm a subscriber, that just to say I feel the emails were well written and written just for a consecutive mailing but I shopped for the most names for least price and fastest campaign start, thinking it's just numbers, surly I'll at least make my money back... of 453000 subscribers for $225 I got zip.... should have re-watched the video on this one he warned me with the same advice Stephon gave. That was solo ads only, I got reasonable service and they did the mailing quick, other sites were a little more grey area about when the blast would start, like weeks to a month, well in a hurry in hopes of making Christmas money I jumped... ouch! I also bought views at Traffic Witch with the same results... not sure I set that one up right and certainly didn't send then to my site for capture... aha now I get it... I'm learning... Dave

[Stephon Rudd]

Nice to meet you Dave,

Yeah, don't traffic either unless you're just going for high Alexa rankings.

I found out this one the hard way. Plus, most of the traffic they send (most of the companies) are robots which aren't even tracked by google or alexa anyway. Here's how buying traffic works.

Some pour unspecting soul looks for picnic baskets or some other foolishness in the search engine. First page results show a few promising sites. She clicks on the one that looks like it's more targeted towards her need only, what she didn't know was, that link was old (yet still indexed by the search engine but never updated).

The previous owner of the site stop paying the bill so a url buying company purchase the link because it has high traffic. But they don't put a real PAGE up there. Instead, they just run PPC ads with a timed redirect or a pop-up (sometimes an instant redirect). She then either sees the PPC page for 5 seconds or she never see it at all but, instead, goes to your page selling a home based business opportunity.

What's the problem here?

She wants picnic baskets. Not a second income. She hits the back key instantly and that counts as 1 visitor for you AND the company who sold you the traffic.

But there are no sales.

Because untargeted (or even targeted a lot of times) redirect traffic doesn't make that many sales.

Now, having SAID that, there are companies out there that produce better sent traffic totals. A company called www.ReVisitors.com. The owner of the site is Steve and he responds to ALL email inquiries personally and quickly. I actually used his service for my previous site and it helped me get 15 signups and that was only by purchasing a small sent traffic quota.

Again, it's not the best way to sell a product. But it IS the best way to build up your rankings literally overnight with google, yahoo and alexa.com.

Believe me when I say this...using their services, I've brought my previous site from no ranking to ranked 5 million in the world within 3 days of using their sent traffic.

A month later, I was ranked 1.2 million in the world and 356,475 in the US and my growth was at a crazy 4127% in that months time. It's kind of my secret weapon for building up the sites rankings and having the google bots index more and more of my pages.

To be honest, I don't know WHAT Steve did to make all that happen, but he has the best services by far for sent traffic. It helped land my new company some really high profile alliances with fortune 500 companies and the success helped me get funding for my current project.

Now, I'm an affiliate of this company but I'm not putting it in this forum.

It's unethical.

So, at any rate, you have my free input on that one.


Stephon

[Dave Casteel]

Stephon, that was an enlightening reply, thank you very much. To All Our Success, Dave

[DarrenChow]

Buying leads doesn't really work for me. I tried co-reg once, and I think I made 1 sale out of over 400 leads. Of course, the product may have something to do with it. I have more success with PPC. By building a list from scratch, I can convert at about 1 in every 100 leads or so.

Lesson here is that targeted traffic + good relationships work

Problem with most email leads is that they are not targeted, and it's very hard to build a relationship with them. They will probably hate you for sending them spam mails.

[charleskirkland]

Hi Bryan

Buying leads is a great way to build a list.

But the problem is they have to be treated different from you normal leads. coregs leads don't have the relationship starting off so they need to be soft sold until they really get to know you.

Just watch out as coreg is dirty business for the most part and you need to make sure you are doing opt-in and not opt-out sign ups.

Plus you will need a real time follow up system in place. With GR you are fine but they are slow in there lead gen.

Also make the target ad as specific as you can. Since you are paying for every lead make sure they are going to be the right fit for you.

Also look at PPC. This is were I get my best sign ups from. My Avg Cost per conversion is .32
Check out this image.

http://www.seocodebreaker.com/images/ppcsignups.JPG

I'm getting sign ups all day for .32 of this campaign with adwords. It took a lot of testing and tweaking to get them down to this number.

This is going after some very wide terms of the CTR is low, but this type of setup works best.

Thanks
Charles

[Mark Sullivan]

Hi Bryan,

So I know this is a month after the thread, but I had to respond.

I see the others suggestions and though they fall into the mainstream opinion it's generally only based on 'personal experience'.

Yes, mailing services and buying leads to mail to can be a very discouraging process. Plus break the bank account.

I've been in the leads business and supplying mailers business for about 7 years now. You do have to be very careful on what you buy from whom. And even then when you're sending mass email on any level, it can get you into trouble.

However, a google slap, is also getting into 'trouble' --- but that doesn't ruin a business. There's a perception that getting a complaint will completely ruin a person's business. False.

-- The run of the mill coregistration leads out there are bad ... unless you're a mailer with the mentality that you'll mail to the list, deal with the problems and then you'll end up with a deliverable clean list

-- Mailing services out there are a dime a dozen. You have to be careful. But this is all about dealing with the right company who backs up their services.

-- It's a combination of buying the right data and service -- then once you've done that you have a marketing machine that'll pull money in for you day in and day out.


I do understand the concerns most have about email marketing, but don't let others personal experience steer you away from a very lucrative marketing medium.

I could literally go on and on .. there's some much to share.

Take care,

Mark

[Barry Weiss]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the post.

You are correct that the proper email list and creative for a product that has high benefit can be successful.

I am familiar with the list management and brokerage business and can tell you that a quality responsive email list is not only expensive but the list owner will NEVER sell you the names. They will take your creative and mail it to their list. You get to keep the leads or orders that the mailing generates.

Email can work in this environment because the email addresses are from responders or customers or at least enhanced double opt ins. If you mail to a segment that has an affinity to your product, you can do well.

If you buy a spam list then you get what you pay for.

[Mark Sullivan]

Hey Barry,

Thanks for the conversation.

You know, I see what you're talking about, but it then becomes a subjective opinion on what is determined as a 'quality list'.

We have clients who buy lists from us and mail to those lists and have been doing this for over 2 years. They keep buying, because it keeps producing.

Sure you can pay top dollar for a company that'll mail your creative for you to their targeted list ... this is good, however expensive. And a one time shot at the list.

It really does come down to whether the marketer is going to send mail consistently and treat it as a business. Then this will work incredibly well for them, usually. However if someone wants the get-rich-quick, then chances are that won't happen. It does happen, but not a lot.

Click send on the mailing and within 10 minutes you can see order or signups!

Anyway, thanks again,

Mark

[Barry Weiss]

Hi Mark, thanks for the comment.

In looking at any potential list you need to know several things at the very least.

1. The source of the names
2. The recency of the names, the newest ones are usually the best, especially if the list names were the result of a call to action.
3. Demographics and any other information that identifies the list as a potential match up or close match up with your customer or target profile.
4. What companies or industries have used the list and which ones used it in continuation (repeated it after testing).
5. What types of offers were successful.
6. What type of offer generated the names in the list.

If you can get this information you at least stand a good shot.

Just like building you own list, targeting is half the key. The strength of your offer and copy is the other half.

In addition, many mailings do not make money initially but rely on future revenue to turn a profit. If you only have one product and make only one sale and never try to obtain another, then it is very very difficult to make direct mail or email work. There are some exceptions but the types of products we promote are probably not.

The idea of life time value is very important and that is why it is important to have back end products, up sells and cross sells and promote an excellent customer experience because, often times, new customer acquisition costs more than the margin or commission of the product for the first sale. However, over the life time of the customer the up front costs are more than paid back and the customer would have a good ROI.