1. Always have the email come from the same person at your end. It helps to create a sense of rapport and stability.
2. Never use a subject or title line that is misleading; always make it descriptive of what is in the body of the email.
3. On the other hand, keep it snappy. Instead of “Your November Newsletter”, use the title of one of the more important articles in your newsletter.
4. Make it clear that it is okay to forward the email to others, if the subscriber likes. This form of viral marketing can grow your subscriber list over time.
5. Always include links to your product pages in the body of the email.
6. Also include an easy opt-out link at the bottom of the communication.
7. Be sure to solicit responses and comments. People love to share their thoughts.
8. Formatting is especially important in plain text messages. Keep the attention going by using bulleted lists instead of lengthy paragraphs.
9. Stay away from using all capital letters or italicizing words, as they can be harder to view on a computer screen.
10. Watch the use of color in your emails, especially with text; lighter colors tend to be hard to read, especially on a white background.
11. Use fonts that are similar to those used in most email clients; it will make it easier to arrange the text to best advantage, especially for plain text emails.
12. Include some incentive to visit your website, such as promoting a new product or noting a new blog entry.
13. Don’t forget to include a special offer or a discount from time to time.
14. Always thank the subscribers for their time and support.
15. Before you send the emails to clients, send them to an email address of your own, with one in HTML and another in plain text. That way, you know exactly what the subscriber will see.
16. Don’t be afraid to try something different now and then. Vary texts, layouts, and other elements to see what subscribers respond to best.
17. Keep the text of the email focused; rambling will lose your audience, just as wandering text on your website will drive visitors away.
18. Use a reliable program to blast mail to your subscriber list; most allow you to review a report of successful deliveries once the job is complete.
19. Review the reports regularly, and compare them to spikes in your web site traffic, and the responses you get about specifics of the emails.
20. Used software to tabulate and categorize the responses. It will make it much easier to process them and turn them into usable data.
21. Assess the percentage of response you get. The industry standard is between five and fifteen percent. If you are getting less than that, it is time to rethink your approach.
22. If a response serves as the inspiration for an article in the next newsletter, ask the subscriber if it is okay to mention them by first name and initial. This is enough to maintain anonymity, while still recognizing their contribution.
23. Ask subscribers to submit some of their own copy once or twice a year. You may be surprised with the quality of what you receive. Reward the best one with a free ebook or other product.
24. Send out special holiday emails along with your regular weekly communications.
25. Listen to the feedback from your subscribers. It will help you refine the mailings as you go along.

This article is for you, if you have a good size contact list and you’ve wondered how to create business opportunities. Or even if you are just thinking about starting email marketing as part of your business marketing action plan. Are you in between? Then, this article is for you are well.

Email is a wonderful business tool that, if used properly, will enhance your sales and marketing efforts significantly. Try these methods to get the most out of email communications:

1. Use permission lists only.
2. If you buy a list, make sure it is qualified – that is, those email addresses are valid and they belong to people who have opted in to receive emails on products and/or services like yours.
3. Ideally, build your own list.
4. Include an opt-in page on your web site, so people can sign up to receive email communications from you.
5. As an incentive, offer customers something free in exchange for signing up – a one time discount code, or a free ebook.
6. Make it easy to opt out or update an email address.
7. Only ask for the information you need – too many questions puts people off.
8. Adopt a formal policy about how the data will be used, and make sure each subscriber has to read those terms before opting in.
9. Honor those terms, no matter what.
10. Put a cap on the number of emails you send each subscriber – once a week is likely to be welcomed, but three times a week may cause people to opt out.
11. Set up your system to flag addresses after so many failed delivery attempts; this will make it easier to keep your email list clean and up to date.
12. Avoid attachments; many people won’t open them.
13. Go for something that will work in the body of an email.
14. Offer plain text as well as HTML to accommodate different loading speeds.
15. Set up a reply email, so your subscribers can reach you when they want to respond to the email.
16. Consider using a newsletter format for your email communications.
17. Subscribe to a few email newsletters, so you can see how others are using the medium.
18. Make notes on what type of newsletter formats seem to grab your attention.
19. Ask others for their opinion of which newsletters they like, and why.
20. Don’t send email communications when there is nothing new to say. Repetition will only cost you subscribers.
21. Make the content of the email interesting.
22. Avoid the appearance of being spam, by not using all capital letters in the title for the email, or announcing “Free” in the title line.
23. Do always make sure the subscriber’s name appears in the “To” field. It’s more personal.
24. Look into using email programs that automatically include the subscriber’s name in the body of the email.
25. Keep it short and sweet. Rambling emails, even if they are newsletters, are likely to be closed and deleted without being read.

P.S.: Contact us if you have been thinking about using email as one of your marketing tools but don’t know where to start. We work with many of the popular email marketing clients including:        1 Shopping Cart, Aweber, Constant Contact, iContact, Campaigner, and more. Check out some of the email/newsletter templates that we’ve designed for some of our clients. Keep an eye out for Part 2, 25 More Tips to Using Email Marketing Successfully.

Here are five simple ways that your website could be losing you business:

1. Slow Page Loads: People get really frustrated when pages take long to load. If you have this problem then check the size of your images and ensure that their sizes are optimized to load quicker while still maintaining the integrity of these images. Find ways to optimize your pages as well, also contact your web hosting company about this issue if everything you’ve tried hasn’t resolved the issue.
2. Dead/Broken Links: No one likes to click on a link and it goes to a “not found” page. Use a good broken links checker regularly to ensure that all your links are valid. A great tool to use for checking links is the W3C links checker.
3. Inactive Contact Forms: Imagine someone who is really interested in your products and/or services and then they’d taken the time to complete your contact form, click on the send button and NOTHING HAPPENS! Many people would immediately move on to the next person.
4. Poor Navigation: It’s important to give visitors to your website many ways to navigate through your web pages. It comes highly recommended from the usability point, to have more than one way to click through pages.
5. Visible Contact: Not every potential client wants to use your contact form. So create other options for they to contact you via. Some people like to send emails and some like to speak to a person. Adding an email address link and telephone number can make a difference.

Taking into consideration the mentioned above points can makes a huge difference in whether you gain more business or not.

In web design, there is the tendency to sometimes get carried away by all the many fancy techniques and shiny things syndrome. So, I’ve been pondering on my style and how to tweak it so my clients can get their message across concisely and really quickly thus capturing their audience, get great conversions and repeat business.

My first test came today, I had to create a business card size ad for my business that’s going to be placed in the Women Biz Owner’s October 2009 Convention booklet. So I thought…simple, clear and direct. What do you think? Is the design simple and is the message clear?

E-Mail Links From Your Page

This is what’s known as a mailto: command. It follows the same coding scheme as a hypertext link format. What this format does is place blue wording on the screen that people can click to send you an e-mail.

Here’s the format:

<A HREF=”mailto:info@aivirtualsolutions.com”>Click Here To Email Me</A>

You will notice it is the same format as a hypertext link except in the email link you write “mailto:” in place of the http:// and your e-mail address in place of the page address. Yes, you still need the </A> tag at the end. Please notice there is NO SPACE between the colon and the e-mail address.

Here’s what you get using the “mailto:” command above:

Click Here To Email AI Virtual Solutions

When you click on blue link above you will get an e-mail dialogue box addressed to AI Virtual Solutions. The same format will work for you; however, you will want to place your e-mail address in place of AI Virtual Solutions following the format above.

Please Make Note:   If the person only has a web based email account, and hasn’t configured an email program on their computer (e.g. if you use Hotmail or Gmail instead of Microsoft Outlook) then it will open their email program (such as Microsoft Outlook) for the first time and try to walk them through setting it up.

Reference:  http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478171

Activating an Image

Okay, this gets a little fancy.  In a previous blog post, we showed you how to create a hypertext link. What it did was create blue words on your page so someone could click on them and then jump to another page or website. Well, here we’re going to set it up so an image becomes clickable or “active.” The viewer would click on the image, instead of on the hyperlinked words, to make the hypertext link. Here’s the format:

<A HREF=”http://www.aivirtualsolutions.com”><IMG SRC=”homepage.gif” ALT=”Home”></A>

Look at it again. See what happened? I placed an image tag where I would normally have placed words. However, in case the image isn’t visible for any reason I’ve added some alternate text stating where the link goes.

Here’s what you get with that format. Lay your pointer on the image, but don’t click. You’ll see the entire image is active:

There you will see a border around your image, which is what happens when you activate an image. It attempts to turn blue, or whatever color the page is set to, like the wording it’s replacing, so it places what’s known as a “border” around the image.

You’ll truly impress your friends with this one.

Resources:  http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478181

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit, are simple; yet profitable when wanting to drive traffic to your website. These websites will aid you in establishing your brand and encourage traffic to your website. There has been an increased trend with internet based business owners; therefore, implementing a strong marketing platform will improve your website’s traffic and your client base.

Use Blogging. Blogging is another website in the form of social media. A blog combines commentary, images, and/or links to your website. A blog allows you the opportunity to keep an online “diary” of your thoughts, progress, events and articles that pertain to your website and business. Additionally, your blog encourages user participation and allows your readers to comment on the information posted in your blog. Furthermore, several social bookmarking sites will allow you to link your blog to your social bookmarking account; which will increase your targeted audience. READ MORE

I purchased 2 ShareO licenses for both myself and my VA and we used it for two months to manage my emails and have had many issues. Our emails weren’t syncing, attachments were getting corrupt, etc. I got fed up with these issues and have migrated to Google mail. I have a Virtual Assistant business and  99.98% of my communication is done via email, I needed something that would WORK!

In the first month, my assistant wasn’t getting new emails, we were also getting multiple folders issues where we could end up with 3 0r 4 of the same folder. In the end I realized as my inbox continued to get fuller, that we weren’t seeing the same things. Basically we were not seamlessly synced!

I just asked for a refund and didn’t get one. They would rather hang on to my $69.90 than do the right thing! So now there is the question of standing behind your policies and customer satisfaction. But who am I to say anything?, I don’t also run a business.

NOTE: When I spoke with Don, I said that I had had tech support for 2 months. I was trying to say that I had had support from their tech department. We dealt with tech support in a 2-3 weeks period.

I had a livechat with ShareO sales support team member, Marlow. Below is our full conversation:

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Marlow‘

Chat InformationYour Issue ID for this chat is LTK146042066807X

Marlow: Hello.  How may I assist you?

agnes: hi, I purchased 2 shareo licenses for both myself and my assistant and we’ve had issues with email management and I now just starting using gmail for email management purposes. I made my purchase in Feb and my assistant’s in march. I would appreciate a refund as we weren’t able to work with shareo for outlook.
Marlow: Have you contacted our tech support via LiveChat?

Marlow: According to our money-back policy we only give a refund if our technicians are not able to make our software work on your computer during 14-day money back performance guarantee period.

agnes: yes, your tech support guy helped on several occassions, with my assistant and finally with myself. he accessed my computer, did some such and also my assistant’s but we still weren’t synced and I still ended up doing my emails.

Marlow: Ok. Our technicians can solve your issue.

Marlow: I will transfer you to them.

Chat InformationPlease wait while I transfer the chat to ‘Don‘.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Don‘

Chat InformationYour Issue ID for this chat is LTK146042066807X

Don: Hello.

agnes: Hi Don, I don’t want any more technical help. I’ve imported all my emails, calendar, contact to gmail. I just want to get a refund. Another technical guy has tried to help but we still have issues.

agnes: Marlow was too quick to transfer me…

Don: Please note that refund is not possible if you refuse our tech support. Sorry, it is our sales policy. You can check our money back policy at: http://www.4team.biz/TRIAL_moneyback_policy.asp

agnes: I’ve had technical help for 2 months. Many online chats and remote access on both my assistant’s and my computers. I patiently did all this. Its taking time away from my work. I do all my work via email.

agnes: I’m sure there are records of all our communications

Don: Ok, in that case I will transfer you back to Marlow if that’s OK with you and you can proceed with your refund request.

Don: Yes, there are.

agnes: thanks

Don: One moment please.

Chat InformationPlease wait while I transfer the chat to ‘Marlow‘.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Marlow‘

Chat InformationYour Issue ID for this chat is LTK146042066807X

Marlow: Hello, again.

agnes: Marlow, you were too quick to transfer me.

Marlow: Yes, we have records of these communications. However our tech support department states that all issues were solved.

agnes: I have communicated with your tech support on many occassions. I work virtually, so I need my email management to work perfectly.

Marlow: We can not issue a refund if you refuse our support.

Marlow: This is our refund policy.

agnes: I’ve already had your support. Chats and remote access on our computers.

Marlow: Yes and all issues were solved.

agnes: I reloaded new versions and such as well.

Marlow: Now you have encountered other issues. Please let our tech support to solve them.

agnes: its the same issues, not new.

Marlow: They can make ShareO work on your computers.

Marlow: If they will not be able to solve your issues, we will issue a refund.

agnes: I’ve used shareo for 2 months and now gone to google mail. it takes time trying to continue to do this. my whole work is dopendent on email.

agnes: It’s feels like you are strong arming me.

Marlow: Refund is possible only if you visit our technical support and they are unable to fix the issues you have encountered.

agnes: I’ve already done that many times. when should I say no more.

Marlow: Refund is not possible in such case.

Marlow: Do you have any more questions for me?

agnes: Your tech support has tried many things…nothing has worked. Now I’m using google mail.

agnes: why are refunds not possible??? I’ve being very patient and dealt with tech support. Now you tell me that I can’t get a refund when I can’t use your product.

Marlow: Our technicians can make our product work, but you refuse our support.

Marlow: In such case refund is not possible.

Marlow: You can check our refund policy at: http://www.4team.biz/TRIAL_moneyback_policy.asp

agnes: I didin’t refuse your support, I’ve already used your support and now migrated to google mail.

Marlow: You are now refusing our support.

agnes: You are trying to strong arm me.

Marlow: You should have contacted our support before you moved to google mail.

agnes: I have already started using google mail.

agnes: I no longer had the luxury of time to continue with my daily email issues.

agnes: I’m waiting.

Marlow: Each time you have contacted our tech support, your issues were solved.

Marlow: We can solve issues this time as well.

agnes: No one contacted me to ask if the problems were resolved.

Marlow: You should have contacted, if they were not solved.

agnes: All i need now is my refund for both licenses.

Marlow: Have you checked our refund policy?

Marlow: It is written in bold: We will only refund your money if our technicians are not able to make our software work on your computer during 14-day money back performance guarantee period. There is no refund after that.

Marlow: Do you have any more questions for me?

agnes: I will be posting this conversation on my blog as a review of your product and customer service. Thanks. Agnes Ikotun

Marlow: I do regret for inconveniences. My pleasure to help. Goodbye.

agnes: Enough said!

Chat InformationChat session has been terminated by the site operator.

I hope this review helps other people deciding to use ShareO.

Note to Corporation 4 Team (ShareO):  I also welcome your comments.