email – Nicole Munoz Consulting

Top 10 Tips for Making an Offer through Email

Email is a powerful marketing tool. It allows you to build a rapport with your audience, keep your offerings in the front of their minds, and present them with special offers to help seal the deal. Here are ten tips that will help you get the best possible results from your email offers.

#1: Make it Worthwhile and Useful

Your reader’s time is valuable, so if you’re going to send him an offer through email, it’s important to make sure it’s worthwhile. And that means more than offering a substantial discount (although that is a good start). It means sending targeted offers that the reader can use. If you send offers that are of no interest to him personally, not only will he not take advantage of them, he might decide to unsubscribe.

#2: Use a Descriptive Subject Line

There are times when a vague or mysterious subject line can work, but it’s important to remember that you’re taking a risk that such an email might be deleted unread. So when you’re making an offer, it’s especially important to let the reader know in the subject line. You don’t necessarily have to lay out all of the details, but you want to let them know that there are savings waiting for them if they take the time to read your message.

#3: Create a Sense of Urgency

Any time you make an offer, you’ll get better results by creating a sense of urgency. Letting subscribers know that the offer is only good for a limited time or to a limited number of customers will give them an incentive to act now.

Remember to stick to any deadlines that you set – while an occasional extension of a popular offer can be a good thing, if you extend every offer you make subscribers will not take you seriously.

#4: Don’t Overwhelm the Reader

Emails containing offers should be fairly short and to the point. If you bury the offer at the end of a thousand-word article, it’s unlikely that your readers will make it that far. It’s also a good idea to avoid cramming multiple offers into a single email. One or two related offers should be the focus of your message. Add more than that, and it can lead to confusion and fatigue. Besides, giving each offer its own email gives you more opportunities to make contact with your subscribers.

#5: Target Your Offers

When you make an offer, it’s tempting to send it to your entire mailing list, but sometimes that’s not a good idea.

A better approach is to create relevant offers for customers who have shown interest in what you’re offering or similar products or services. This way you avoid wasting the reader’s time with offers for things that he can’t or won’t use.

#6: Lure Them in with Anticipation

If you have a big product launch coming up, it’s important to build anticipation and lure your subscribers in beforehand. The same is true for your best email offers. Let your subscribers know that something big is coming up, and they will pay attention. You can start out by simply telling them to be on the lookout for a great offer in the coming weeks. As the time draws near, you can let out more details. This will keep them interested and give them a reason to open every email you send to learn more.

#7: Make it Exclusive

Making exclusive offers is a great way to boost sales. An offer that isn’t available to just anyone has a way of making the recipient feel special and making him want to take advantage of grab it while it’s available. And if you make the offer available to subscribers only, it can also boost new opt-ins. Alternatively, you could make exclusive offers to subscribers who signed up for a specific course or bought a particular product.

#8: Tell a Story

While you don’t want to get too wordy in an offer email, telling a story is a good way to draw the reader in and avoid special offer fatigue.

You could tell how you came to create the product you’re offering or why you decided to put it on sale. You can even tell a funny story from your personal life if you can find a way to connect it to your offer.

#9: Focus on the Click

You put a lot of work into your sales page. It’s designed to tell the reader what your product can do for him or her and make him want to buy it. That means that there’s no need to try to make the sale in your offer email. Its purpose should be to capture the reader’s interest and make him want to visit your sales page.

That’s where the money is, after all.

#10: Follow Up

One of the most common mistakes marketers make when making an offer is failing to follow up. While it’s important not to wear an offer out, you’ll want to remind subscribers about the offer before it expires. That way, those who have put off making a purchase for one reason or another will have a chance to take advantage of the deal while it’s still good. And it’s just as important to follow up for those who did buy.

Sending them a simple thank-you email or asking for feedback will let them know that you appreciate their business and make them more likely to become repeat customers.

Email is an excellent medium for making special offers. Used wisely, email offers can increase your sales and help keep your subscribers happy.

Protect Yourself from Spam & Get Email You Want with Mailwasher

by Nicole Munoz

Mailwasher is a software program that you use on your on your desktop. It allows you to quickly sort and filter your email, ensuring that you never miss an email that you want to receive.

It works in conjunction with a variety of email programs including a variety of Window email programs, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and more.

Mailwasher is free for up to 1 email address and is reasonably priced if you want to add more addresses. You can download it at http://mailwasher.net.

Viewing Your Email

Mailwasher quickly downloads all the email into the software, so you can view senders and subject lines. Here’s an example of an inbox:

As you can see above, Mailwasher automatically marks some email as spam and will set to delete a message when they are blacklisted in Spamhaus or other blacklisting services. You’ll find these statuses are usually accurate, but you should always scan the email to ensure you don’t miss anything.

If you find email is set to automatically be deleted, you can change that senders “Status” to keep it from happening again. If this is a sender you want to receive email from, right click the message and a box will pop-up that looks like this:

If you click “Add to friends list”, the status will now be changed to “Friend” and the email won’t be marked for deletion.

Manage Your Friends

You can add your friends to your “Friends” list right away or you can train Mailwasher to recognize your friends as emails come in.

Method #1: As shown above, you can right click any message and choose “Add to friends list” and that will add that sender to your friends list.

Method #2: You can add the email address manually. On the far right side, click the green friends icon:

A list of your current friends will pop up:

Click “Add” to a new friend:

You can add an email address:

Or you can use the wildcard option to whitelist emails from a particular domain, for example.

In the above example, all emails from the domain favoritewebsite.com will be marked as coming from a friend.

You can remove users from your friend list anytime by unchecking the box beside the email address:

Manage Your Blacklist

You can also add people to your blacklist in a similar way. When you blacklist someone, the email will come into your Mailwasher inbox (in case you change your mind later), but will be marked as “Blacklisted” and will be set to automatically delete when you process your mail.

Method #1: You can blacklist senders as email comes in from them. Just right click on the message from the sender you want to blacklist.

Click “Add to Blacklist” and then Status will change to “Blacklisted” and will set to delete when you process your email.

Method #2: You can add email addresses or wildcards to be blacklisted as well. On the far right side, click the black blacklisted icon:

That will bring up a screen that includes senders on our blacklist.

Click “Add” and you can add an email address:

Or you can use the wildcard option to blacklist emails from a particular domain, for example.

In the above example, all emails from the domain spamwebsite.com will be marked as blacklisted and will be set to delete when you process your email.

You can remove users from your blacklist anytime by unchecking the box beside the email address:

Report Email as “Spam” or “Good”

If you want to report email as spam, you can use the far left column in your email preview that is called “Action”. Messages are reported to “First Alert”, which is the software maker’s own community spam filter.

“S” is for “Spam” and “G” is for “Good”. You can simply go through the list and click the icon. If you want to report these emails, click “Spam”.

Process Your Mail

Once you are finished with marking emails in your blacklist and friend list and you’re sure all the emails you have set for deletion are correct, you can process your email. Just click “Process” at the top and all the emails you set to be deleted, will be removed completely from your server.

Now you’ll only be left with emails that you want to receive and you can open your usual email program to download the emails.

Each time you use the software, the process gets faster and faster. Your friends will be marked as friends and a large part of the spam will already be marked as spam. It’s a handy way to ensure you don’t miss ANY email you want.

How to Hide Your Email Address from Spambots on Your Website

by Nicole Munoz

If you’ve ever put your email address on your website (or any website), you probably know that your address is easily picked up by robots designed to collect email address for spammers. This guide shows you a few ways you can protect your email address when you want to allow people to contact you online.

The first two options do not use an email address and your best protection will come through these two options. If you really want to use your email address, options #3 and 4 give you options to protect yourself from some spambots.

Option 1: Use a Form Script That Excludes the Email Address in Form Code

Many form scripts include the email address in the coding. Use a form script that hides your address.

You can use one of the options at:

http://www.willmaster.com/software/form-handlers/index.php

http://ostermiller.org/contactform/

The form results will be delivered by email, but the spambot cannot find your email address off of your website.

Option 2: Use a Ticket System

You can use a ticket system that requires customers to submit a form that is stored online and also delivered via email.

You can try the ticket systems at:

http://kayako.com

http://www.zendesk.com/

Option 3: Use an Obfuscator

An Obfuscator is a program that converts your email address into a code that isn’t readily picked up by simple spambots, but is still clickable for your visitors.

Here is one you can use at: http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/obfuscator.php

The second example, uses Javascript and may provide more protection. However, the code will not work for any of users that do not have javascript enabled.

Just copy and paste the code you want to use above and put it in your website where you want your email address to appear.

Option 4: Format Your Email Address in Ascii

You can convert your email address to Ascii format and it may block spambots from getting your address. Here’s an Ascii converter that you can use: http://www.golivecentral.com/pages/txttut/scramble.shtml and it allows your email address to be clickable on your website.

You just enter your email address and then copy and paste the code into your website:

Dan Kennedy’s NO BS Books

by Nicole Munoz

If you have any desire to be a success in marketing, then Dan Kennedy’s NO BS Books need to put at the top of your Must Read Books for 2009 list. One of the key things I took away from reading his books was that absolutely no marketing material should ever leave your office without a specific call to action. He had an example of what he called “yellow pages marketing”. Basically the concept is that your ad in the Yellow Pages should have an offer with a call to action. The call to action should be compelling and move Mr. Couch Potatoe to get up and visit that website, call that phone number, and best case, make that purchase!

We put our heads together and a few days after reading the books the Yellow Pages representative called us up about renewing our ad for 2009. We quickly redid our bland bullet point ad and put in an offer for a free gift if they visit a specific url on our church website. We did not put what the offer was as we need to have the ability to change the offer depending on the response rate. By telling people to visit our website, it gives us another opportunity to present our offer and also gives us an opportunity to try to get their email and even possibly their address so we can follow up with a real live visit. What is better than letting your leads come to you?

Insert Success Story Here Later 🙂

As the Stompernet Live 7 conference is coming up, it is time to make some more business cards before the trip. Following the idea that every piece of marketing material should have an offer.. we got really creative here! Don’t want to spoil the surprise so check back after the first weekend in March to see what we did!

Say what you mean and mean what you say

by Nicole Munoz

Seriously trying to not complain here but dealing with the US embassy can sometimes be frustrating! Expecting problems and trying to be as time efficient as possible I always try to send all the needed info as well as answer any questions I think will be asked ahead of time. Of course that would have to assume that someone would actually read the emails and that the person reading the emails would just not just assume that the sender is not following directions!

In anticipation for the 7th Stompernet Live conference, we need to get the passport for our new baby Ashley. We were able to get her certificate of birth abroad a few weeks ago in Nuevo Laredo on our car trip to the states. We did not have time to process the passport however as they don’t send it in the mail but rather require you to come back to pick it up later. Now back in Puebla, it is time to try to hurry to get the passport from the embassy in Mexico City. (New laws state we can enter into the US with a brith certificate only if by car but need a passport to enter by plane.) Unlike all of the consulates, to make an appointment, you must first fill out the application online and then EMAIL it to the embassy. After a real live person reviews it and approves you, only then are you allowed access to the online appointment setting system. Therein lies the problem.

Email 1

We have the certificate of birth abroad. It was given to us in Nuevo Laredo a few weeks ago. Here is the attached application.

Response 1

You need to get a certificate of birth abroad. Go fill out the application and then send another email.

Email 2

We already have the certificate of birth abroad.

Response 2

Go fill out the application and then attach it to this email.

Email 3

Here is the attached file. (Strongly resisted the urge to say something sarcastic like…. AGAIN!)

Response 3

Access to online appointment setting system.

The whole process was faster than expected and happily we were able to schedule in just three days. Could have been taken care of in ONE email if the person had actually read the first email though![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]