Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Email Marketing – Get Your Email Read

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How many of the people on your email list actually open and read your emails? Most people get so many emails that, even though they have asked to receive your email newsletter, they may filter it off to a folder to be read “later” or–even worse–just delete it unread.

No matter how good your email message is, if no one opens your emails they won’t do you or your customers any good.

So how can you get them to open your email newsletters? Some email marketers resort to tacky gimmicks. They use subject lines such as “You have earned a commission,” or something else that is false just to get you to open the email. Well, that may work to get you to open it, but you are likely to read only far enough to discover that they have lied to you. And then you will look for the “unsubscribe” link to keep that unscrupulous huckster out of your email inbox.

People are becoming wise to stupid email tricks. Instead of trying to trick people into opening your emails, you will get much better results when you use ethical and effective methods of email marketing.

Here are a few tips to make your email marketing more successful::

  1. Craft a good subject line. In fact, you may spend more time on your subject line (at least per word!) than you do on the rest of the email. This is your headline, and like any headline if must grab the reader’s attention. Be creative but not deceitful. Promise a benefit (on which you will deliver), provoke your reader’s curiosity, ask a question or make a bold statement.
  2. Be consistent. This could mean always mailing on the same day, having the same format and style for all of your emails, or having starting each subject line with an identifier, such as your name or the name of your website or newsletter. For example, when I send out my IdeaLady Insider email newsletter, my name is in the “from” field and the subject is “IdeaLady Insider -“ followed by the title of that issue. Make sure that you are doing what you promised to do when subscribers joined your list.
  3. Always provide great content. When people know that you always send emails that are interesting and useful, they will make it a point to open and read them.
  4. Let your subscribers get to know you. Build a relationship by sharing yourself with them. That can mean sharing personal information (but watch out for over-sharing!) or it can mean having personal contact. You might make yourself available to them by answering questions via email or holding teleseminars where they can talk to you. When they feel that they know you they will want to read your messages.


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As you see your email open rates increase, you will also see increased sales from your email newsletters. Use email wisely to build relationships with prospects and they will become your customers.

Why Building Your Own List Is Important to Succeed Online

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email-list

Why you need an email list, and tips on building one. This post is by David Smith of Conversion Optimization company Invesp.

You’ve a great product which you want to sell online. So you created a stylish website with some great content, you’ve written a great sales letter covering all the reasons why one should buy the product , But still you are not getting sales?  Why, because you don’t have traffic. Your target audience doesn’t know about you. And to get traffic you have to buy it through PPC campaigns or by investing in SEO activities.

In early business stages, you may have to rely completely on search engines and PPC campaigns for traffic. But, if you want to be successful in long term you must have direct access to your customer base. And, there comes the importance of list building. It doesn’t matter what products/service you have to offer building your own list of potential customers and their contact details should be your top most priority from start.  Below are the few benefits of having your own list.

[Read more…]

Set Up an Aweber Email List

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Do you have an email list? Having a list of customers and prospects who want to hear from you is like money in the bank. When they sign up for your list, they give you permission to contact them and that keeps you in front of them and on their minds when they are ready to buy. An email list is a way to build and maintain relationships with customers. If you do not have one yet, you need to get started. Last week.

There are lots of email marketing companies where you can host your email list. I use Aweber because, in my opinion, they have the best features and benefits. You may think you do not need a lot of the bells-and-whistles offered by a service such as Aweber but, believe me, you do not want to outgrow your email list service. After you have built up a large list, moving to another, better provider is not something you want to do. That’s why you should start with the best and it is my opinion that Aweber is the best.

There is no reason to be intimidated by the idea of using a sophisticated system such as Aweber’s. They make it easy to use, and their online and telephone support is very helpful if you have questions. To show you how simple it can be (and some of the useful options available to you) in this tutorial you will see how to set up an email list on AWeber. [Read more…]

Is It Spam?

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In a recent article on email communication, we talked about email etiquette and how to avoid annoying recipients of your emails. The last point was not to send unsolicited email. But when is email ‘unsolicited’ and when is it actually OK to send unsolicited email? 

There are some gray areas, but here is one hard and fast rule: NEVER send a bulk email to a ‘hot list’ of 10,000 email addresses you bought from someone. It is never OK to send your ad via email to total strangers. It’s bad form, and I can’t believe it works. Frankly, if someone sent me a spam email offering to sell dollar bills for 50 cents, I wouldn’t take them up on it.

It is generally OK to send email to people you know and who know you. If necessary, remind them how you know each other. (Hi! We met at the ABC conference last week . . .)

When sending to someone you don’t know, personalize your message and let them know why you chose to contact them. For example, I get lots of questions from people who found my website and want more information. Or people who want to discuss doing a joint venture or other business.

It is OK to send email to people who have asked to receive it. This is called ‘permission marketing’. Let’s say you’re a travel agent who offers to send bulletins to preferred customers when you have a great price on air fares. When I give you my email address and ask you to send the bulletins, I’ve given you permission to email me. Don’t abuse it by sending messages several times a day (unless that’s what you told me to expect) or by sending a lot of unrelated messages. And never share your mailing list with someone else. That violates the privacy of your list members and violates their trust as well.

I sometimes send press releases to media contacts via their published email addresses for press release submission. Each email is individually addressed (although I use an automated process to do so) and it is something I believe they will find of interest. I only send to appropriate media, and I don’t bombard them with press releases day after day. And, if anyone asks not to receive future releases, they are immediately removed from my data base. Each of these elements helps to keep me from being perceived as a spammer or just an old-fashioned pest.

In summary, don’t send bulk email to people you don’t know who haven’t asked to receive it. When people have given you permission to email them, don’t abuse it.

And always be polite and considerate of your recipients. After all, many of them get dozens or hundreds of emails every day. Using a subject heading which accurately describes your message helps them sort their messages easily.

Email is an important marketing tool–use it wisely and well!

Email Communication

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Email is an invaluable tool for keeping in touch with customers, reaching out to prospective customers, sharing information with others in your industry and more. But you can damage your reputation and image by using email poorly. 

Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind before you press “send.”

DON’T SHOUT! Using all caps is considered bad form, like shouting at someone. All lower case is almost as bad. Your keyboard has a shift key, doesn’t it? Use it. Capitalize the first word of each sentence, proper names and, occasionally, an entire word for EMPHASIS.

Use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. Yes, email is less formal than other types of correspondence. But ‘gd riting gets ur msg acros’—and it leaves a good impression of you.  Sloppy spelling and punctuation also leave an impression, but not the one you want.

For most messages, stick with plain text. Everyone can read it. When you use HTML or other special formats, your recipient may just see garbage.

Only send attachments to people who are expecting them and have agreed to receive them. Many viruses are spread via attachments, so your attachment won’t automatically be welcomed, even by many of the people who know you. (I’ve gotten viruses from people I know and trust–they didn’t know they were infected.) Also, those with slow dial-up connections won’t appreciate the time it takes for large attachments to download.

WHEN SENDING THE SAME MESSAGE TO MULTIPLE RECIPIENTS, USE BCC: TO HIDE THE ADDRESS LIST. I know, I’m shouting. That’s because this annoys the heck out of me. I hate getting messages filled with dozens (or even hundreds) of addresses, and I hate having my address given out to all those people I don’t know. Most email programs have a bcc: feature, and it solves this problem.  (Bcc: stands for ‘blind carbon copy’—a holdover from the days of typewriters.)

When forwarding a message, delete any of the previous headers and text not required for clarity. Have you ever gotten one of those messages that seems like it has been to everyone on the Internet before getting to you, and all of the addresses and headers are in the message? After scrolling through page after page of garbage, you get to the lame joke that was forwarded.  Or, someone forwards a multi-page message with ‘I agree.’ at the bottom. Don’t include a lot of garbage in forwarded email.

Which reminds me, don’t forward every joke, warning, petition, etc. that hits your mailbox to everyone you know. It won’t be appreciated. Think before you send, and don’t send anything that might be considered offensive (which is just about anything, these days) or is probably not true. Check out warnings before forwarding them.

And, finally, don’t send unsolicited email. Does that mean you can never write to anyone who hasn’t written to you first?  Well, no, if it did there would never be any email sent. What it means is . . .well, let’s look at that in a future article.