Wow! Technically we are in a recession however you would be forgiven for not realising it if your business is online. According to Neilsen Online Marketing Intelligence 2009 - the average time spent online is now 13 hours a week!

More time online has also translated into more money is being spent online. Businesses are dedicating more budget to email marketing - source and working out how to tie in their email marketing with social media.

The Internet Bureau’s latest email newsletter said “75% of the global online population is now engaged in online social behaviours and social media is growing in NZ. 200,000 newly active social networking accounts were recorded between October 2008 (1.7 million) and February 2009 (1.9 million), according to MSN’s PR agency, Talkies Group.”

What social media tools are you using for your business? A Facebook and Twitter account are now considered the norm for business. Participation in discussion forums is also increasing in popularity with PropertyTalk.com experiencing a 30 percent increase in visitor traffic and a higher volume of discussion threads in 2009.

Twitter works perfectly for directing visitors to discussion forums and blogs and this approach is being integrated with email. Facebook is now being used by non-online businesses and email is being utilised as the channel.

To get more out of your email marketing with social media watch out for our new Business Blogs website - due for release in July 09. There will be at least a couple of dedicated blogs on Social Media and how you can use it effectively with your email marketing.

One of the compliance requirements of the Financial Advisors Act 2008 (The Act) is the delivery of a Disclosure Statement (DS) prior to providing your services.

From The Act:

22. Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

The process of recording the delivery of the DS can be a cost and time burden on your business. You may also find yourself often asking the question: “Did I send that person my DS?”

The Act states that delivery of the DS can include electronic delivery and this provides you with an opportunity to deliver, track and record the event automatically and by doing so reduce the time and cost to your business in complying with this requirement.

Clause from the Financial Advisors Act 2008:

24. How disclosure must be made by authorised financial adviser

(1) Disclosure by an authorised financial adviser must be made in a disclosure statement.

(2) The disclosure statement must—

(a) be in writing; and

(b) state when it was prepared; and

(c) state the name, address, and business telephone number of the financial adviser; and

(d) be either received by the client, or delivered or sent to the client, at the client’s last known address or an address (including an electronic address)

Mobilize Mail has an automated solution for you. Our solution will enable you to deliver, track, and record the delivery of your Disclosure Statement. Every Mobilize Mail account has a document library facility where you can store your documents e.g. pdf. There is no fee for uploading and storing your documents in the document library in your account. For compliance with The Act we currently have clients that are using their document library facility to store their Disclosure Statement and delivering it automatically via an auto responder message.

To deliver the DS to a client a standard auto responder (auto email message) is created. The email message can be plain text or HTML utilizing your email template to show your business brand, links to your website etc. The email message can also be personalized e.g. Hello [first name].

Within the email message content is a clickable link to the DS. The link is tracked so a click on the link produces a measurement of the event and you now have a historical record of delivering the DS email message and your client’s click on the document itself.

Do You Need to Deliver a Disclosure Statement?

Here are the clauses from The Act that identify what services and products require the delivery of the
DS:

What is financial adviser service

A person (A) performs a financial adviser service if, in the course of business, A—

(a) gives financial advice; or

(b) makes an investment transaction; or

(c) provides a financial planning service.

category 1 product means—

(a) a security (other than a security that is a category 2 product); or
(b) any estate or interest in land; or
(c) a futures contract; or
(d) any other product specified by the regulations

category 2 product means—

(a) a call debt security; or
(b) a bank term deposit; or
(c) an insurance product excluding a life insurance policy issued after 31 December 2008; or
(d) a consumer credit contract as defined in section 11 of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003; or
(e) any other product specified by the regulations

22 Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

* Subject to section 26, a financial adviser who performs a financial adviser service must make disclosure, in accordance with this Act and the regulations, to the person for whom the financial adviser service is performed before (or, if not practicable before, as soon as practicable after) performing the financial adviser service.

Remove the stress, added time and cost to your business for compliance by setting up this automated solution for your business. Complete our Quote Form - or contact Donna directly.

Source: Go to Financial Advisors Act 2008

Most of us probably know about the “SPAM” problem by now and attempts to deal with it through the Unsolicited Electronic Message Act. SPAM clogs up the Internet, disrupts email delivery, reduces business productivity, raises Internet access fees, irritates recipients, and erodes people’s confidence in using email. None of us want to receive it, but are we inadvertent perpetrators? Here are the key criteria to find out…

A closer look at “consent” - the key issue with spam

Is all unsolicited commercial email branded as SPAM? It’s not quite that simple… it’s ok as long as you have some kind of consent (that hasn’t been withdrawn by an unsubscribe facility or otherwise):

Explicit consent
i.e. direct indication from the person you wish to contact that it is ok to send a message, such as filling in a paper form, ticking a box on a website, or a conversation by phone or face-to-face.

Deemed consent
i.e. the recipient has published their electronic address, e.g. on their website, without accompanying statement that they don’t want to receive unsolicited electronic messages. The message must also be relevant to the business, role, functions, or duties of the recipient.

Inferred consent
i.e. where your existing relationship with the recipient means there is a reasonable expectation of messages being sent, and the message is relevant to the business, role, functions, or duties of the recipient.

So, in simple terms, if you have a relevant business relationship with recipients on your list, you should be ok, but if they don’t know you, you’ll need either explicit or deemed consent.

Two more basic requirements to be clear of the law

If you have consent in one of the above forms, you’ll be safe from the law, as long as your email:

clearly identifies the sender and contact information

includes an unsubscribe facility (that actually works)

Further info related to the anti-spam law

A legal firm’s simple and helpful guide
Dept of Internal Affairs info
Reporting deliberate spamming

Practical help with getting your legit email newsletters through anti-spam filters

10 ways to get listed as a spammer
Improving your emailing practices to reduce spamming risk

A study conducted by Return Path in 2004 revealed that 60.1% of people deleted un-read messages from unknown senders. Even more disturbing 23.4% hit their “report this email as SPAM” button provided by the ISP and email subscriptions that they were subscribed to were also included.

In this article I will present 10 of the most effective ways to get your business marked as a SPAMMER. From my experience many companies have no real understanding of the risk they place on their businesses when sending emails without prior permission, contain poor quality content and are sent too often.

If your business’s mail server is marked as an originator of SPAM email be it newsletters or general communication will not be delivered. Can your business afford to have a large amount email blocked?

Send non relevant content

According to a 2004 DoubleClick study, 72% of people believe that hitting the “report this email as SPAM” button in their email client is the best way to unsubscribe from a mail list!

Why do they want to unsubscribe? A major reason for un-subscribing is the email content is not relevant to the recipient anymore or the content is vastly different from what the recipient subscribed to in the first instant. The first reason is uncontrollable as the recipient has had a change of heart, however the second reason is controllable and so the aim is to ensure these people do not click on that “unsubscribe” (‘report this email as SPAM’) button. Ignorance is bliss in some cases but with this issue where it doesn’t take too many people reporting you – for your IP address to be blacklisted by an ISP – ignorance is a headache!

Don’t honor an unsubscribe request

This is an extremely effective way of annoying people and forcing them to report you as a spammer. What other option do they have to get rid of your emails if you cannot or will not remove them from your mail list? Just put yourself in their shoes, wouldn’t it really annoy you if your requests to unsubscribe were being ignored and so you continued to receive the unwanted emails?

Send your email campaign via your email client

Most people who send email from their mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird are connected to the internet through their ISP such as Paradise. There is nothing wrong with that – only many real spammers can use the same ISP as you to send their SPAM. This means that there is a good chance that you and the spammer are using the same ISP mail servers and that the mail server’s IP address has been blacklisted. So when an ISP receives your email all they see is that your email is coming from the same source (mail server) as the spammers.

Therefore there is a very good chance that your emails are ending up in the trash bin like the spammers emails or worse your brand gets associated as a SPAMMER.

Don’t control how many emails you send to the same domain

Imagine sending out your monthly newsletter to 500 subscribers via your Microsoft Outlook email client and that maybe 30% of the email addresses of your subscribers are hotmail or yahoo accounts. Let’s also say it takes five minutes to mail out the 500 emails – that means in maybe less than 5 minutes hotmail has received from your email client 150 emails.

This may not seem a bad move but wait for it! There is a very good chance that hotmail’s mail servers may consider that you are sending SPAM due to the large number of emails being received in a short time frame and so it is fair to say that if it was your business’s mail server receiving a large number of emails in a short time frame that it too may think it was being spammed?

Don’t provide an unsubscribe link within your campaign emails

Imagine you subscribed to receive a weekly email from a business and over time the content becomes less relevant so you decide to unsubscribe from the list. You assume that removing yourself from the list would be as easy as when you subscribed – by clicking a link within an email. However you cannot find the ‘unsubscribe’ link and with limited time to spare you click the “report this as SPAM” button provided by your very thought full ISP. It’s easy to find, quick and it works! Once you click on that button the emails never arrive in your inbox again! Problem solved for the recipient however the business sending the email has just been reported to the recipient’s ISP again for sending SPAM and they may be blacklisted straightaway or they may have one or two lives left. Unlike a cat it is unlikely that a business gets nine lives.

Use a Rental mailing list

To increase your chances of being blacklisted and classed as a spammer how about paying for the use of one of the large mailing lists you see on offer? The list you pay for will more than likely contain 10-30% invalid email addresses and also contain a few spam trap addresses (see glossary).

This is almost a guaranteed way to get your company listed as a spammer and the delivery success rate will also be quite low. Is it worth the risk?

Harvesting emails without permission

Here is another fantastic way to get reported as a spammer!

Build a mailing list from selecting email addresses from Directories, your suppliers marketing brochures and the like. Then send the newly created mailing list an email with your content, do not bother with providing an ‘opt-in’ subscribe/unsubscribe button for future email communication you will be mailing out.

It is now time to bombard the mailing list every week/month and ignore all requests to remove anyone from the list. I will almost guarantee 100% that you will be listed as a spammer in less than 3 months and lose any credibility you had or could have had with them and anyone they chose to talk to about your business.

Fail to run a Monthly email campaign using your mailing list

Creating a mailing list of opt-in subscribers and setting the expectation that you will be in communication with them on a weekly or monthly basis is a great way to go as long as you honour that expectation. Failing to communicate on a regular basis may result in subscribers forgetting that you exist, and that they subscribed to your communication. The nasty outcome may be that your subscribers ‘unsubscribe’ the next time they get your communication and even worse it may be from the ‘report as SPAM’ button.

Ignore complaints from your subscribers

No one likes being ignored when they are talking on the phone, or in person and the same applies when communicating via email.

So ignoring a subscriber’s request to unsubscribe or not responding to any question they may have sent you is another way of forcing a subscriber to use the only effective means of removing themselves from your list – that is to mark your emails as SPAM.

Send poorly formatted content

On average each person who subscribes to a mailing list which focuses on a particular interest will over time subscribe to another four or five mailing lists offering similar content.

This suggests that your email has to fight for attention with other emails of a similar ilk. Poorly formatted or just plain ugly email content or presentation will increase your chances of large unsubscribe requests. Why should they endure your poorly formatted content when they have four or more other emails fighting for their attention?

Another good way to get your email rejected or sent straight to the person’s trash folder is to contain spam-like words within your content. You will be surprised what words or phases are now considered as spam.

Examples: million, millionaire, free, independent, more than one watch brand mentioned in the same email, work from home, free course, no money down etc…

Summary

History reveals people are receiving more and more email in their in-box and a lot of it is unsolicited. Removing email from unknown senders is one way to keep on top of the in-box. If you send irrelevant content in your communication then your subscribers will be quick to unsubscribe and the fastest way for them to do so may be the ‘report this email as SPAM’ button provided from their trusted ISP.

Do not rent a mailing list and clearly select the content and presentation style of your email communication. Finally, stay in regular contact with your valued subscribers.

Next Steps

If you would like to receive my free article on “how to improve your email practices” then please send me an email. (I promise I will not send you anymore emails after that!).

Glossary

ISP

An Internet service provider (ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that offers access to the Internet and related services.

Internet hosting services run servers, provide managed hosting, and include the Internet connection. For example Paradise is an ISP.

Definition sourced from Wiki ->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISP

Blacklisted

In computing, a blacklist is an access control mechanism that allows access to everybody, except members of the blacklist. The opposite is a white-list, which means, allow nobody, except members of the white list.

An e-mail spam filter may keep a blacklist of addresses, any mail from which would be prevented from reaching its intended destination.

Definition sourced from Wiki ->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisted

Spam Trap Addresses

Some companies provide a service to ISP and large companies where they host thousands of email addresses that are set up to collect spam – they do not belong to a real person, and they have never been registered for real lists. So if you email ends up in a spam trap address there is a 99.9% chance that the email came from a spammer. Some mailing lists that you can rent contain these spam traps.

Contact us today! info@mobilizemail.com www.mobilizemail.com

Earlier in the year we updated our 2008 article titled - New Year’s Resolution - Grow Your Mailing List. How did you get on - did you manage to deploy our key techniques? If so, right now you’d be witnessing new people joining your mailing list on a regular basis and you’d be getting the benefits from reaching more people every time you mail out.

There is another key technique you can use to grow your mailing list/database - inserting standard and custom tags in your emails. Are you aware that there is a fully functioning TAG library in your account?

You can access the TAG Library by clicking on the link that is visible just above your HTML editor - in your create message area of your account.

Key Tags For Your Email Template = Forward, Subscribe, Feedback

A good starting point for utilising the TAGS in your account is to add three standard tags to your email template. These tags assist your existing mailing list subscribers by encouraging them to provide you with ‘FEEDBACK’ or ‘FORWARD’ your message to a friend. All generic email templates can also benefit from having a ‘SUBSCRIBE’ tag too. An ideal position for these tags is on your email template menu bar.

While the feedback tag is not as well used as the ‘forward’ and ’subscribe’ standard tags - I suggest it is also utilised. While the focus is to push information out to your mailing list/database, getting information back can provide your business with valuable insight. To get tags put into your email template - please send an email to support@mobilizemail.com (special rate - we will update your template with tags for just $45).

The ‘forward to a friend’ tag when clicked allows the person to enter in the address of the person they wish to send the message to. The message is then sent to that ‘friend’ in exactly the original format so it renders well. Clicking ‘forward’ on your email client often distorts the presentation of the message when it is viewed as a ‘fwd:’ message. When you log into your mobilize mail account the last email campaign statistics on your home page will present the ‘forward’ tag statistics for every message that tag is included. The same applies for the ‘Feedback’ and ‘Subscribe’ tags just like your current measurement where you can view the ‘open’ and ‘unsubscribe’ statistics.

You can start growing your mailing list now with these standard tags in your email template… contact us. Our next blog post on tags will detail use of tags for customising your email messages.

The good news is 52 percent of your website visitors actively respond to online advertising – according to a recent study by iProspect.

The study also suggests there is a close relationship between online advertising and search engine marketing where iProspect says:

“Internet users initially respond to online display advertising as follows:

       
1. 31% respond by directly clicking on an ad.
2. 27% respond by searching for the product, brand, or company by launching a search on a search engine.
3. 21% respond by typing the company web address into their browser and directly navigating to the website.
4. 9% respond by investigating the product, brand, or company through social media venues.”

 

Reading between the lines this information tells us that we will more than likely get a greater response to our online advertising with a website that ranks well with search engines.

Nearly half of direct clicking of an online advert triggers a follow up internet search on the business. How does your company perform on a Google search? Does it come up on either the first or second page using key words that describe your business?

There are strategies you can take to improve your website search ranking results including SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), active participation on social media sites including discussion forums, and paid search engine marketing.

The iPropsect study also revealed that 33 percent of online adverting response is converted to actual sales. Of course this is not true for all online campaigns – greater success would come from marketing your service or product to a targeted audience.

Email marketing can also provide an effective online advertising medium with small static banners, and the highly effective text banners strategically placed in your emails.  Suppliers to your business may be willing to advertise in your emails - essentially paying your email marketing costs!   Or if you are part of a referral network equally all network partners would benefit from marketing to different databases.

For more information on banner advertising in your emails Contact us for more information on banner advertising in your emails.

I recommend MOBILIZE MAIL

I have been using the services of Mobilize Mail for nearly 18 months, both for my own business NEW ZEALAND FOR YOU, and also through my involvement in two other property marketing firms. From my first meeting with Donna Richardson of Mobilize Mail, I was very impressed with her enthusiasm, her knowledge and her commitment to her clients. Donna immediately saw what we were trying to achieve in communicating effectively with our database using regular newsletters. She came up with a strategy that fitted our budget and one we felt would enable us to grow the business, and to generate sales.

Database marketing via e-mail was something I had tried on my own account previously, however I was keen to project a more professional and consistent approach. Plus I wanted to ensure that as many recipients as possible received and opened the newsletters I sent. I am aware of the pitfalls of taking a D.I.Y. approach, when it makes more sense to use the services of experts. I have found that Mobilize Mail are definitely experts in their field, and have been a big help to me in my business. They know all about anti-SPAM legislation, and Mobilize Mail works hard to ensure their clients operate within the new regulations.

Donna and her team, led by Marc Krisjanous, have proved to be very helpful and efficient. At the beginning it was something of a learning curve, however Marc and Donna were there to talk me through the various issues. They have designed templates for us to use, plus handled the time consuming aspect of loading my database onto the Mobilize Mail system. I now use the template and insert my own text and images, and then send the newsletters to my database.

The Mobilize Mail system is Web-based, and this means I have access to the system from anywhere with Internet access. There are excellent statistics provided by Mobilize Mail as regards which recipients receive my newsletters, which pages they click onto, plus a whole host of other statistical data – all provided as part of the service. Each time I send out a new newsletter, I can tell how many people have received that message, what particular page(s) they click onto and view on my website, etc etc.

In my opinion, the fees charged by Mobilize Mail are very reasonable for the value they add to my business. I find that Mobilize Mail is a cost-effective way for me to maintain contact with my clients on a regular basis. I frequently receive positive feedback from clients who tell me they enjoy receiving, and reading, my newsletters. Obviously not all clients are ready to purchase a property, however I find the newsletters a great way to keep my New Zealand For You business in front of potential property buyers.

I have no hesitation in recommending Mobilize Mail to any firms looking to communicate with their clients on a consistent, professional manner. Donna, and Marc and the team are great to deal with, and very helpful at all times.

Cheers NOEL

NOEL AVENELL
NEW ZEALAND FOR YOU

Recent research on business email marketing has revealed the five practices that can end any chance of email marketing success. We suggest you keep this list handy when you are email marketing so you can avoid making these easy-to-do mistakes that can sever any chance of successfully using email to market your business.

Avoid these common mistakes:

1. Use a “Do Not Reply” email address as the email sender. Our latest research shows that up to 20% of your subscribers will click the reply button to your email message. The usual reason is that they want to ask you something regarding the email you just sent them or even better they want to place an order with you because your email did its job. By electing a noreply@yourbusiness.com email address you are in fact giving your subscribers the perception that you do not want to hear from them. Even worse, if the email address is not monitored, you may lose a sale or even worse lose a subscriber.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Ensure your ‘From/Sender’ address is regularly monitored for email replies from your subscribers.

2. Send your subscribers content that is only of interest to you. Who still enjoys receiving emails from businesses stating how fantastic they are and how bad their competitors are? Subscribers are inundated with email every day and their patience wears thin when they open your email and see your sales.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends…
   Email messages that are ‘targeted’ - where the content is directly relevant to the subscriber/email recipient.

3. SPAM your subscribers. If stated that you would only send one email per month and you are sending at least one message per week you are spamming your subscribers by not sticking to your agreement. Increasing the frequency of your emails without asking permission from your subscribers is one of the worst actions you can take.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Seek permission from your subscribers prior to increasing the frequency of your messages.

4. Send your email without testing it first. Email presentation changes with each email application e.g. an email message looking great in Outlook 2003 does not (and normally will not) mean it will look great in other desktop email clients such as Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, Apple Mail nor will it look the same in the web based email clients such as Yahoo!, Gmail and HotMail.Therefore sending your email without testing it first may result in your subscribers receiving a message that is not your best and this may reflect poorly on your business and brand.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends…
   Test your email message by sending it to as many mail clients as you can BEFORE you send the message to your subscribers.

5. Send your business newsletters via your desktop email application. A sure fire way of getting marked as a spammer is to use your desktop application such as Outlook to send your newsletter to all your subscribers at once. Why? Because most desktop email applications will send your email via your Internet Service Providers mail servers which many, at any given time, are blacklisted. This means there could be a very good chance that 30% to 50% of your emails are not getting to your subscribers!

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Use an ESP - email service provider to deliver your bulk email. Check out our case study of what happens when you send your email via your ISP Click here

If you are interested in how Mobilize Mail can help your business please check out our Feature Tour - click here.

Email sign-up web pages have often been overlooked when businesses are looking for ways to improve their interaction with customers and prospects. Your email sign-up web page is just as important as your web site home page in attracting people.

With that in mind we have provided some tips that you can implement right now.

1) Add testimonials to your sign-up page. Most people will read testimonials from people who have already dealt with your business so why not add some of the key testimonials to your sign-up page. If you have positive feedback from your email campaigns add those comments to your sign-up page as well.

2) Show how your email campaigns have benefited your current subscribers. If you have the data add statements such as "Our subscribers on average save $300.00 per year on purchases by taking advantage of discounts offered only to email subscribers." - this is of course if you provide exclusive discount benefits to your email subscribers only. Or if you don’t offer exclusive discounting what about "Our newsletter articles helped subscribers sell their home 30% faster".

3) Display the current subscriber count of your mailing list(s). People always want to feel like they are not missing out on something so if you can say something like "Over 5000 people have benefited from their email subscription with us. Why don’t you join them?" that is a powerful incentive for people to join and not miss out.

4) Use your company branding on your sign-up page. If you have a professional looking web site and use a third party provider to host your sign-up page don’t neglect to have the professionalism extend to your sign-up page as well. There is nothing worse than visiting a professionally crafted web site only to be directed to a dodgy looking text based sign-up page provided by some bulk email marketing service. With Mobilize Mail your sign-up web pages can handle all your web site branding assets such as CSS, images, Flash and JavaScript requirements.

5) Provide detail on what your subscribers are going to receive and the frequency of the emails. No one likes signing up for a to a companies "monthly" newsletter only to be spammed every 7 days by the business and their "partner companies" with useless garbage they did not expect to receive. State the email frequency on the sign-up page such as weekly, fortnightly or monthly and don’t forget to stick to that frequency! Another great idea is to provide a web version link to an existing email message so people can see the type of content and style they will be receiving.

In summary your email sign-up page is an important part of your web site so it should be designed to get the maximum amount of signups by having a professional look and feel and provide incitements such as testimonials or benefits to being on the mailing list.

Click here to learn more about how we can help you with your email marketing…

The survival of magazines is online says eMarketer. 2008 saw many magazines fold and overall revenue from advertising drop by 7.1 percent. While this information is for the American market – it’s hard not to see a similar pattern here in New Zealand. We have more consumer oriented magazines per capita than any other nation. As spending tightens the purchase of magazines follows suit.

ACP Media Magazines

“The shift in print advertising revenues to other media, particularly the Internet, will continue to thin the ranks of publications, and 2009 will be a year of survival for only the fittest publishers.”
Source

With print advertising revenue falling the print magazine market is being hit twofold. Less magazine purchases and less advertising spend. The magazines that are offering an online service will more than likely be the survivors in tough trading times. Consumers can access the magazine website and get the online magazine for a small subscription fee, and the advertisers potentially receive 24 x 7 coverage of their campaigns providing more bang for their buck.

Email marketing ties in nicely with the online magazine, where a template branded in the style of the magazine can deliver a snapshot of the latest articles and news to drive the recipients to the website.

Mobilize Mail provides customised email marketing integration services for automated email content filled messages – click here to read more