Quality Email Marketing Resources?

[bestech2]

I bought a 5,000 email address mailing sales campaign to sell lawyers advertising on one of my sites.

The results were poor- losing time and money. Since, I found a company that sells an entire database of addresses. I'd like to run my own marketing campaign but don't know the ins and outs of what it takes to send bulk emails without spamming.

Does anyone know any good resources to either learn what to do or not to do, pros to hire, etc. to aid in structuring my email campaigns....?

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums bestech2! :hi:

IMO, the second you 'bought' another list of email addresses, you are engaging in spam email. Did all those addresses agree to receive email from "you"? If not, then that is spam in and of itself.

Sorry I can't help you as I don't like bulk email address sellers or those type of lists. :)

Good luck to you!

[bestech2]

Thank you for the response. My situation is this- my company does internet marketing for law firms. We've been very successful with se placement, site design, and online advertising for our clients for 3 1/2 years and now have developed several legal referral sites that we used to deliver additional client inquiries for our clients.

For example Before Yahoo! switched over to Google primary results- it showed sites accepted to a National category that covered all US states ahead of sites that were in a state or city category for instance.

Since searches generally are much larger for generic key search terms such as- lawyer- attorney- law firm- as opposed to criminal defense lawyer- new york lawyer or new york law firm- we developed National referral sites that gained acceptance into the category that came up first for the more searched terms.

Now we have expanded the practice areas and regions and want to sell advertising on the sites to lawyers Nationwide but we need to learn how to reach them.

I see my competitors sending out emails and making sales on their sites. Does anyone have any suggestions/tips on how we can most effectively, cost effectively, and expediently utilize email marketing to reach these thousands and thousands of potential law firm advertisers?

By the way, the 5000 emails we sent out were double opt-in from lawmarketing.com

[ihelpyou]

Those 5000 seem fine to me from that law site.

But when you start throwing out an unpersonalized and very bulk form letter to people, many will see it as spam. The only way to do it properly and get MORE advertisers is to personalize "each" letter sent. Find out the name of the lawyer and use it in the greeting, etc. Otherwise, you are simply one of many bulk spam emailers on the planet. Hope this helps you. :)

[bestech2]

Understood,...but I can personalize each email and send only to lawyers that I know are interested in advertising such as that I offer.

So I'm back to my original question- I simply want to know how to do it in-house and save the thousands of dollars I'd otherwise spend having companies like legal Opt In to Mail them for me.

I also don't understand the broad usage of "spam." Sure, I know the definition- but I am in the internet marketing business. Whether or not I asked to receive email from an advertiser, if they have a product/service that is within my business interests, I want to receive it and never consider it spam! I have bought and profited from many such solicitations.

Similarly, if I send my sales solicits to law firms that I know are advertising on other competetive sites and are trying to find quality online ad exposure- how can my ads be considered spam just because we sent them directly from our company?

If I were sending out a million emails telling people they can find a lawyer at my site for free- that would be spamming IMO.

I certainly don't want to spam anyone. But there is a right and wrong way to use email advertising and I simply want to learn and get help doing it in-house the right way to save money and increase profits. I feel like we've gotten far away from my question.

Does anyone have resources that would aide in how to set up non-spam (in-house) email campaigns and run them effectively?

[ihelpyou]

That answer is NO. The type of bulk email you are suggesting is Always spam and there are laws in many states stating this as a fact!

You are missing the point entirely. Here is what I would do if I were you:

Look up ALL the lawyers you wish to target. You can even use this list of emails you bought.

Send them "this" letter first. It does not have to be personalized.

"Hi,

I have a lawyer site that is getting highly targeted visitors looking for a lawyer in their area. I am writing you to "ask" you if you might be interested in getting your business name and location "out there" to the public in an inexpensive way.

If you are interested, please reply back to this message and I will give you the details including the url.

I appreciate your time and your consideration.

Sincerely,
Doug Heil



There ya go. You are NOT listing Any url and you are Not advertising thru email on the first contact. You are asking for permission "first". This way, you will receive only replies from lawyers who are interested, AND you are Not spamming.

Hope this helps.

[bestech2]

That DOES help very much! Thank you for explaining that so clearly.

Now in order to send out the first emails "asking" to the list I buy, is there recommended software/hardware/procedures that will allow me to send out a lot of them.

I'm told there are restrictions on servers etc... We use Road Runner. Can I send the emails out through a regular email account or do I need I need something special?

Again, thank you very much for writing that short letter as an example and helping me understand the facts of it. I had no idea there were laws! I thought people simply couldn't use servers in they were "spamming".

The information you gave me along with info pertaining to the question just asked must be posted somewhere- for exapmle a resource site to learn how to properly do email marketing- and effectively. They probably have great software tools, a wealth of info and probably have ebooks on the subject. I would like to know if anyone can recommend any such site that they may be aware of. Preferable someone experienced with email marketing themselves.

Thank you! You've been very helpful!

[Webmaster T]

How indepth was your investigation of the list of 5,000? A good way to verify the list is to tell the provider you plan on naming them as source if they don't agree to that then it "aint' so squeaky clean" that you can do an email blast, and IMO, it better be personalized to the hilt to avoid the S word!:)

When using a list IMO, being able to name the "source" of the list is important. This provides legitimacy and if the source is known to the recipient the offer should receive more attention and consideration. There are opt-in services that will send your offer. I'm sure if still around they have a nice list of lawyers. I'd try googling opt-in or optin email services (http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22opt-in+email+lists%22&meta=).

If it is a list where the recipients have said I want offers for products for lawyers then I would go slow, do proper professional followup and integrate telephone and snail mail. Snail mail should help get you by the "gatekeepers" for closing on the phone (if necessary).

If it was going to be ongoing I'd set up autoresponders to do some followup and delivery of more indepth information about the offer. 4-5 followup autoresponses, over 2-3 months each containing a better offer(?) with automatic opt-out. I suggest opt-outs be handled by a human/salesman first by email thanking them for considering the offer, each time you fatten the offer (if you aren't fully booked) then snailmail using letterhead and copy that is "important looking". Last ditch close by phone contact thanking them "personally" for considering your offer, mentioning the snailmail if you don't get by the "gatekeeper thank her/him for considering your offer. At the very least you shouldn't be branded a "Spammer" by the more phenatical out there.

I would use the autoresponder to get them to opt-in to your program providing a "squeaky clean list", if you're on Unix look into majorDomo for list management. If you have a newsletter that should be used to entice the opt-in and aid in building your own list. I would also consider a small site/ezine for building the list and keeping your offer in front of those who opt-in.

<shameless plug>

You may find this interesting I got some people I would recommend to contribute some articles on Email Marketing (http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/email/).

Some of the resources below the article are dead links (one of these days I'll run Tmeister on my own site and cull those) but the articles on the page in the link are fine and timeless, though gettin' a little long in the tooth.;)

</shameless plug>:

<added after considering this further>

An ezine/newsletter could be easily built by soliciting articles from those you wish to sell to. Lawyers with sites are constantly adding content from cases. This may result in building relations with the potential advertisers and provide better profiling and branding for the lawyers and law firms. Many new free publications are advertorials, just a suggestion as a way to go.:D

</added after considering this further>

[bestech2]

Thank you very much T.....I'll check out the resources today!

Dave

[Dan0]

Postal mail would probably be much more effective. I see a lot of web-based businesses that think they have to do all of their marketing online. Postcards are cheap - combined with a good offer, they are very effective.

If you want to go for an online marketing effort, you can probably reach the "LawMarketing.com" subscribers more effectively by publishing articles in their newsletter - even if you have to pay for it.

Give 'em an article on evaluating online advertising options, put a link in your bio, and your response will probably be much greater than any ad you could email.

[amica_webmaster]

It's not a matter of e-mail OR traditional mail. Serious traditional marketers will tell you that they expect a prospect will require 10 impressions to become aware of a new offering. An impression may be an e-mail, a conventional mailing, an ad impression (seeing a banner, a TV ad, a radio spot), phone call, a store display and so on. Very few people will even take notice of the first impression, let alone act on it.

E-mail lists might not be the most effective way to reach readers by e-mail. Have you looked into placing ads in good law-related electronic newsletters? You might increase the number of people who actually read the ad, and if you choose the newsletter well, you'd probably have more credibility with the readers.

Meta

[Kal]

hi Bestech :hi:

We use Constant Contact (http://www.roving.com) for our newsletter campaigns and they also manage email campaigns and sell opt-in email addresses on a range of subjects. The quality of HTML emails is brilliant and you can choose designs from a range of templates and colors. You fill out the content yourself and they take care of the delivery using their system. They also can help with the design if you need that.

The only downside is that a few spammers have abused the system in the past, meaning that CC is on the spam list of a few ISPs and SPEWS etc. So perhaps 5 or 10% of your emails may end up accidently blocked. Hope this helps!