We’ve accumulated a vast store of know how here at Overcome Everything Inc. by trial and error over
the past few years. Along the way we’ve built a hyper responsive subscriber list of almost 200,000.
Here are some of the things we learned that almost nobody is told when they are starting out (that
we wish we’d known):
1) Not all autoresponders are created equal. For email marketers deliverability should be the single
biggest factor considered when choosing an autoresponder. More emails in your subsribers inboxes
translates into more money in your pocket. Sure there are other factors to consider but none of them
matter if your messages are not getting through. Autoresponder deliverability varies as widely as
car insurance rates. Depending on who you go with they can get you anywhere from 30% to 90%
deliverability. Of course much of this is dependent on the quality of your list and how well you
have maintained it. See some autoresponder companies cater to shall we say “shady” email marketers.
These folks probably have higher than normal spam complaints and unsubscribes. Their reputation will
affect your deliverability. If you have a super clean double opt in list don’t settle for anything
less than the very best. Shop around, do test mailings to segments of your list through different
autoresponder services before you settle on a final email marketing solution.
2) You will not have a fully accurate feel for an autoresponder service for at least a month. Here
is what I mean by that- At Overcome Everything Inc. we have experimented with many different
autoresponder services for our email marketing and with most of them we’ve experienced higher than
normal deliverability at first. Open and click stats that make your eyes bug out. But almost without
fail after a month or two those amazing numbers drop off a little and stabilize at a lower more
realistic number. We don’t know why this is but it doesn’t appear to be Autoresponder specific. The
main thing to remember is don’t be disappointed when your initially stats drop off a little. It’s
normal.
3) If you mail for affiliates you MUST have a disclaimer stating you may receive compensation if
products or services are purchased as a result of your subscriber clicking links in the email. You probably notice this a lot more after the big buzz not too long ago about the “new” FTC rules.
There were not really any “new” rules, just more focus on enforcement of existing rules and updated
interpertations of those rules to fit the online world. Many folks cried and whined that putting
such a disclaimer in their messages would reduce sales. Turns out it hasn’t changed much at all.
People are used to seeing these disclaimers already and most of them don’t care. If they want the
product you are promoting they are going to buy regardless of if you get a cut or not. No one wants
to receive warning letters from the FTC, so just make sure you put that disclaimer in your affiliate
mailing messages.
4) Your list is like a plant and must be cultivated on a daily basis or it will whither. This is a
common mistake that companies with HUGE email lists make all the time. I’m on the email lists for
many different businesses and some of them contact me several days per week with coupon offers,
advice etc. and I like hearing from them. Who doesn’t want a 20% off coupon for auto parts right?
Then there are the businesses who clearly don’t value their list as an asset or they need to hire a
new email marketing manager. They might contact me once or twice a month. I often don’t remember who they are or why I want to read their message. It’s often a hard selling email with no perceived
benefit to me. Mailing so infrequently also allows their IP address to grow “cold”. Basically this
means that the major ISP’s get used to seeing daily broadcasts going out to hundreds of thousands of
people from a given IP address and if there are not a ton of spam complaints then they usually don’t
block or throttle that IP. But if suddenly out of the blue (once or twice a month in ISP time
frames) a mailing gets blasted out to 200,000 people the ISP goes Wait a minute! What is going on
here? They may trickle out your messages and keep a close eye on spam compaints. They may even
completely block your IP.
5) If you are not split testing your emails you are leaving money on the table. Do you know if your
list responds better to a message with a template or do you get more clicks with a plain jane email?
If you don’t know the answer might suprise you. You are looking for more clicks and opens. Find out
what those triggers are for your list! Split testing emails can be as simple as two different
subject lines. You can use those different subject lines on the same email. Remember to only split
test one element at a time (headline, email template and so on) otherwise you will not know which
element made the difference in clicks. And there will ALWAYS be a difference. Make sure your
autoresponder has the ability to split test emails and accurately report the results of your email
marketing efforts.
