E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing has historically been one of the most effective online marketing methods available to reach a highly qualified and relevant group of potential customers. It’s also the most cost effective way to build customer loyalty. Because of its proven record of results and inexpensive distribution, the use of e-mail marketing is ever-expanding, as well as the number of e-mail marketing providers. With so many inexperienced providers and spamming companies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to launch a successful campaign. New laws, regulations (see CAN-SPAM ACT), and smarter Spam filters (more than 20% of e-mails get blocked), make it difficult to reach your target customers.

Before Inet-Optimizer executes the delivery of an email marketing campaign, a comprehensive live sampling test is conducted to ensure the highest deliverability rate and the functionality of the links.

Inet-Optimizer is at the forefront of e-mail marketing and discovering new methods to reach new potential customers and building brand equity.

The three forms of e-mail advertising are “blind spamming”, “opt-in e-mail marketing” and the development of a customer retention and loyalty program.

Blind spamming is the process of sending a mass of e-mails to unknown customers, in the faint hope that they will open the e-mail. Often this results in bounced e-mails from ISPs who learn to recognize mass spammers. If an e-mail does get through, it is often quickly deleted by the customer who doesn’t want unsolicited e-mails.

On the other hand, responsible opt-in e-mail marketing will target a mass segment of potential customers who have elected to receive e-mails from a trusted provider like Inet-Optimizer. These are customers who are willing to receive offers via e-mail, and will review the products and services that our customers offer.

A customer relationship and loyalty program is highly effective for building and sustaining customer relationships. This form of marketing communication is best used by providing your customer with content specific emails that are relevant to them and on a frequency that they choose. Some examples of this form of marketing communication are through the use of newsletters, (e-zines), surveys, alerts, new product offerings, customer only discount opportunities, etc.

70% of all American Internet users have made purchases online as a result of receiving opt-in e-mail marketing advertisements

Opt-in e-mail is one of the most effective Internet marketing methods because the customers want to hear from you. They have elected to sign up and receive e-mails from companies just like yours. And when you have a list of willing customers, the sales conversion rate, and cost per impression is unparalleled. These are just a few of the many benefits of opt-in e-mail:

• Personalized messages/promotions for specific customer segments
• Forge loyalty and good customer relations through steady communication
• Absolutely no printing or postage costs
• Increased website traffic and better awareness of other sales and products from your company
• Enhance your own customer database by utilizing our extensive selection of e-mail prospecting lists
• Improve your response rates and increase revenue through custom surveys
• Observable, traceable results within hours
• Shop in e-mail

Inet-Optimizer offers a program, which provides our customers with a wealth of mass e-mail marketing tools.  With our program, you can be sure that your e-mail campaign is acquiring the amount of unique visitors and responses that you desire. The program allows you to determine the amount of unique hits that you would like to receive per e-mail marketing campaign, that is, you can actually purchase the amount of unique visitors to your site!  Its fast, its easy, and it works, as long as it's done properly.

Opt-In e-mail marketing is the method of choice for the most successful online businesses. There is a right way and wrong way to market your business via e-mail.

There are many variables in constructing a successful e-mail marketing campaign. Some of those variables are:

• Target Segmented Opt-In-Lists
• Creative – 82% prefer HTML for its readability, ease of scanning and appeal factor
• Copy – relevant and optimized with anchor text links
• Concept – offer/target message
• Frequency – 2X monthly minimum, depends upon campaign objective
• Delivery time and day
• Viral marketing techniques
• Tracking and monitoring

We can’t enforce enough the importance of the subject line and therefore, needed to further explain it to you. Forty-one percent of e-mail recipient’s delete e-mails based on the subject line not being relevant or enticing enough to open it. You have an average of 50 characters to persuade the reader to open the e-mail. When crafting the subject line, you need to place the most important words at the beginning to safeguard against truncation. To be successful in any marketing campaign you must constantly test, test and more testing. The subject line is one of those areas that require constant testing. Some of the other areas of an e-mail campaign that require testing are:

• Design & layout
• Offer
• Copy length
• Delivery time and day
• Frequency
• Etc…

Inet-Optimizer’s e-mail marketing campaign has instant, traceable results. Inet-Optimizer will provide you with a real-time tracking link for your e-mail marketing campaign that will display the delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates and bounce backs. We do all the work, and all you have to do is reap the rewards of Inet-Optimizer’s online marketing experience.

Establish integrity, be consistent and become an authority on your subject. Attract potential new customer and build customer loyalty while building brand awareness. Your e-mail marketing campaign will become part of your communication strategy, ultimately, influencing customer purchasing behavior. You can consult with an email marketing expert today, read the Can-Spam Act, or go to additional Internet marketing solutions to grow your business.

 CAN-SPAM ACT from the Federal Trade Commission
The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial E-mailers
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial e-mail, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask e-mailers to stop spamming them.
The law, which became effective January 1, 2004, covers e-mail whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site. A "transactional or relationship message" – e-mail that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation's consumer protection agency, is authorized to enforce the CAN-SPAM Act. CAN-SPAM also gives the Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to enforce its criminal sanctions. Other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against organizations under their jurisdiction, and companies that provide Internet access may sue violators, as well.

What the Law Requires
Here's a rundown of the law's main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information. Your e-mail's "From," "To," and routing information – including the originating domain name and e-mail address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the e-mail.
• 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 e-mail give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return e-mail address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future e-mail messages to that e-mail 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 e-mail. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending e-mail to the requestor's e-mail address. You cannot help another entity send e-mail to that address, or have another entity send e-mail on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the e-mail addresses of people who choose not to receive your e-mail, 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 e-mail 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 e-mail 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 e-mail also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.
Additional fines are provided for commercial e-mailers who not only violate the rules described above, but also:

• "harvest" e-mail addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of e-mail addresses for the purpose of sending e-mail
• generate e-mail addresses using a "dictionary attack" – combining names, letters, or numbers into multiple permutations
• use scripts or other automated ways to register for multiple e-mail or user accounts to send commercial e-mail
• relay e-mails 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 e-mailers who do – or conspire to:

• use another computer without authorization and send commercial e-mail from or through it
• use a computer to relay or retransmit multiple commercial e-mail messages to deceive or mislead recipients or an Internet access service about the origin of the message
• falsify header information in multiple e-mail messages and initiate the transmission of such messages
• register for multiple e-mail 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 e-mail messages.

Additional Rules
The FTC will issue additional rules under the CAN-SPAM Act involving the required labeling of sexually explicit commercial e-mail and the criteria for determining "the primary purpose" of a commercial e-mail. Look for the rule covering the labeling of sexually explicit material in April 2004; "the primary purpose" rulemaking will be complete by the end of 2004. The Act also instructs the FTC to report to Congress in summer 2004 on a National Do Not E-Mail Registry, and issue reports in the next two years on the labeling of all commercial e-mail, the creation of a "bounty system" to promote enforcement of the law, and the effectiveness and enforcement of the CAN-SPAM Act.
See the FTC Web site at www.ftc.gov/spam for updates on implementation of the CAN-SPAM Act.
The FTC maintains a consumer complaint database of violations of the laws that the FTC enforces. Consumers can submit complaints online at www.ftc.gov and forward unwanted commercial e-mail to the FTC at spam@uce.gov