Even though people have agreed to receive your company's e-mail, it still may not reach its destination. The sad fact is that often over 30% of messages never reach recipients because they are interpreted as spam.
People are sick and tired of receiving unwanted e-mail. Because of this, some Internet providers like Earthlink and AOL are adding strong filters to their e-mail services that block e-mail it suspects might be spam. In other cases, individuals are downloading programs such as Spam Arrest, to further filter out spam. Simply sending an HTML e-mail could cause your e-mail to be blocked. Some programs interpret any e-mail with images as spam.
The common belief is that if you get "white listed" with an Internet Service Provider and don't use spam triggering words or phrases, your e-mail should go through without problems. Unfortunately, that is not true. Because of the many different categories of filters being used, there is no one perfect solution.
Laurie Beasley, of Beasley Direct Marketing offers these tips on how to avoid the spam filters and get your e-mail delivered:
1.Clean up your e-mail lists by removing bounces, correct address typos, update addresses, and reduce unnecessary volume demands by removing those who don't open your e-mails or by breaking up large lists. 2.Avoid the use of CAPS in the subject line 3.Avoid the words free, promise you, no fee, no obligation, money-back guarantee, special, promotion, call now, call today. 4.Avoid Click Here (use visit, select, or go to, instead) 5.Don't mention toll free numbers. Just use the number, without the deadly "toll free." 6.Don't use "Register Today" (However, "Register Now" seems to be OK. Spam filters are sensitive to the word "Today.") 7.Avoid these top ten words: diet, free, spam, income, instant(ly), profit(s), subscribe, amaz(ed)(ing), guarantee(d), and $$$/money/dollar(s)
Along with avoiding the spam filters, business owners need to make sure that the list they use is truly a reflection of their target audience. Don't get in the habit of collecting cards at a networking meeting and then just dumping them into your e-mail database. Get permission from every person that gives you a card, to allow their e-mail address to go into your database. And then make sure that every mass e-mail you send out has an unsubscribe link in it.
To keep your e-mail list current, make sure you send messages to your list at least every 90 days. If you wait too long, your list will have many bounces due to people changing addresses or simply forgetting who you are and assuming you are spam. Stay in front of your audience and keep their interest by giving them valuable content. Don't keep trying to sell them something every time your send out an e-mail. If you do, you'll become an annoyance and people will no longer want to receive e-mail from you.
For the small business owner, e-mail is a great choice for marketing, but it's not without challenges. Junk mail delivered to your home address is simply thrown in the trash without much thought. However, junk e-mail has an emotional component. People get angry from unsolicited e-mail. So make sure the e-mail you send out is a positive reflection of your company and not considered junk.
Having your own website to promote your affiliate products is a good option. But it is not necessary. There are many methods available that can be used to do your affiliate marketing business. The list is long, but the most important methods are email marketing, writing articles to e-groups, joining online discussions etc. Let us discuss some important methods that can be used to promote your affiliate products without having your own website.
Email Marketing
In this method you can promote your affiliate links and you do not need your own website. People can click on your affiliate links present in your emails and can go directly to the merchant website to purchase the products.
Your email should contain the introduction about the product you are promoting and your affiliate links. Try to make your emails interesting and brief.
Try to expand your contact list. Use as many methods as you can to grab the email addresses of new people. Use online forums, chat forums etc to make new friends. Your email list must contain a few hundred contacts, at least. But do not spam. Do not send emails to the people who do not know about you or who do not want to receive your emails. Otherwise they will just block your emails and you will lose your contacts. As I said, your emails should be interesting to get the readers attention.
Offline Promotion
You can use the offline methods of promotion, like the classified ads, flyers etc. The best choice is the classified ads because its exposure is largest.
Writing free e-books
It is similar to email marketing. But in this method you will write the informative and interesting e-books and will send to the people via their email address. These e-books should be easy to read and helpful for their readers. The topics should be related to your affiliate products so that you can recommend the products in the body of e-books. Alternatively you can add a brief note about your affiliate products and affiliate links for promotion. If the readers like your e-book, they may visit the merchant website and make a purchase.
Writing in Forums
Search for some forums, at least three, that are related to your product and have high page rank. Register on these forums and start some discussion in the forum where maximum people are involved. Just post your questions there or answer some questions of other members. But do not add any promotion text in the body of your posts. You are allowed to put your signature at the end of your post. Here you can write your name and your affiliate links.
When you become an active member of this forum then you may get some traffic from these forums to your merchant website through your affiliate links. This will ultimately result in more sales of the products you are promoting.
Writing Articles
You can write articles and publish them in the free article directories. You can embed your affiliate links in the text of your articles. If your articles are well formatted, informative and the article directory has large traffic then you can expect some good traffic to your affiliate links. And you know that more traffic on your affiliate links will result in more sales through your affiliate links.
Conclusion
The use of a website to promote your affiliate products is a good idea but it is not necessary. You can use the alternate methods to promote your affiliate products and links. The most popular among these methods are email marketing, writing to forums, article writing and offline promotion like classified ads. The main idea is that instead of promoting your website you will directly promote your affiliate links and people will directly go to the merchant website by clicking your affiliate links to purchase the products. This way you do not have to pay extra for your website creation and maintenance.
Both Michelle Howe & Ginfog are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Michelle Howe has sinced written about articles on various topics from Karaoke Music, Email Marketing and Web Development. Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert in online copywriting and author of the popular book, Turn Browsers into Buyers. Visit her website at