Opt in email marketing

Hi.

This post is intended more as a warning about opt in email markeing. It does, however give some great tips and tricks :)

I've had bad experience with the opt in email marketing in the past. The ones to avoid are definetely the ones you can't verify the message was sent at all. Because 99% of the time it isn't. I once subscribed to a 10 million subscribers opt in list. I was very happy as I fell victim to the ad - email 10 million daily, they said. No spam, no returning mail... Send an ad with a click of a button. I bought it in a few days (after emailing the site moderator and getting a response).

Well, I posted and ad and waited the whole night. I put one of my affiliate links in and thought... if only 1% open the mail and only 10% click on the link and only 1% buys, that's 100 sales with a click of a button. With that product I got about a $20 commission - I should get $2000 in a few days. That's perfect.

It took me an hour to write the ad, so I knew it was good. Even if only half of that is true - a $1000 a day isn't bad at all. It was hard to sleep as I was nervous. I even went to the trip for the weekend (I also knew that during the weekends there are more sales generated online) and I couldn't access my computer. When I came home, I ran, booted the comp, and went to my affiliate network. ZERO sales. WHAT? I went to my email account and there were about a hundred mails waiting for me - from other opt in email marketers.

"How in the world didn't I see that comming?", I thought and laughed a bit with a bitter taste in my mouth. DUH, I was trying to sell to people trying to sell to me. Damn...

That taught me a crucial lession. Always think those "too good to be true deals through". And get some advice from people that were there before (e.g. from forums, chat rooms, blogs ;) etc.).

Later I tested better tactics and managed to get a sale ($55 commission) so I had about 20$ profit. After that I mainly used it to get traffic to my sites (about 5-20 visits per email. Sometimes more, but that's it). If you are already on such a list, consider the following:

• Use words such as "validation" in your subject
• Start your subject with "Re:"
• Sometimes put your URL in the subject
• A good one that even got me 10 new subscribers and almost 100 visitors was: "Re: hello, what was that link again?". Another one pulled well too: "Re: hi, your link didn't work". Try it, it might still work although it became quite popular.
• Another important thing is your email content. With those subjects I started my mails somewhat like this: "WARNING: you are exactly where they want you to be. They don't want you to succeed, but to stay where you are so they can get even more rich. Read though this mail and see what you can do about it." Play a bit and see what pulls the best.
• Words like free, cash, pay, million, $$$ and so on get filtered by spam filters so only a fraction of people will actually get the mail. Try fr'ee or fr.ee instead.
• opt in email marketing is meant for marketers. So the only thing they are interested in is free traffic, make money online, affiliate programs etc. Everything else will get only a minor response if at all. Unfortunately this system has been so abused that almost no messages get read anymore. Even I automatically delete all the mails from the "opt in" service.

I wouldn't recommend buying such programs. Use the money for other purposes instead. The only good way to mass email market is through e-zines, newsletters etc. But be sure you are on the list, that the content is good (not only ads as those don't get read also) and that you actually see the ads in your mails. Usually they put an ad on the top of the mail: "the sponsored ad" they call it.

Some opt in email marketing sollutions might be OK - if you know of one, post a comment here (no BS, please) and share your experience.

• Another one that pulled wel was: "Everyone likes this: you have a post card waiting ;)" was the subject and in the mail content, I wrote: "Hi, I've arranged for a special audio post card for you. Turn on your speakers and especially check out paragraph two - it'll blow your mind: http://hypnoticmindtraining.com/postcard.html ". This is great and the product I referred to is also great. A win-win situation.

Conclusion: opt in email marketing is in my opinion a bit of a waste of time and money. However there are some great programs out there for sure, so don't loose hope. Be sure to thoroughly check them all out before subscribing. Some people I've heard of have done very well with opt in email marketing.