Email Marketing Error 101: I Got An Email From My Hero, And Was I Ever Disappointed

Ok, I admit it. I have a few heroes. Who doesnt

But what do you do when you find out one of your heroes cant spell, construct a sentence or sign his name

It all started when I ended up on the website of one of my heroes. He said he had a Blog so I assumed he was telling the truth. Since he only had posted the name of the Blog, without a link, I emailed him to ask him where this supposed Blog was.

I did not really know if I would get an email back but within about ten minutes I heard my little inbox chime and there it was.

An email from my hero.

Boy, was I excited! This guy had answered my email!

I wondered what it would say. Words of wisdom Would tiny pearls of enlightenment be attached

I was kind of giddy when I pressed open.

And there it was.

Four lines of something that barely made any sense.

It appeared to be two sentences however neither had a capital letter at the beginning. The word I was used twice, again without the use of a capital letter.

I checked the From field. It said the name of my hero. But how could I tell who sent this There was no signature with a name, web address, or anything. Just a big blank white space.

The cryptic message seemed to explain that there was no Blog and talked about some discussion group I had never heard of.

My heart sank.

-Where was the inspiration

-Where were the pearls of enlightenment

-Where did this guy go to school

I learned a lot that day.

-Even heroes can have terrible email manners

-Even heroes can miss out on email marketing opportunities by neglecting to use an email signature

-Even heroes can lose an admirer by quickly typing out gibberish to get a faithful fan out of their inbox.

Thanks hero, I am glad you emailed me. I realized you are a person just like me. You are no longer my idol.

My aunt is an English teacher. If you want some private tutoring, I can send her contact information to you. If you want to improve your marketing efforts try complete sentences in proper English and an email signature with at least your name, web address and contact information.

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Article Marketing - Managing Mailing Lists

~ Initial Shock ~

It can be a shock for many when they start publishing articles online, especially when using either an article submission service or article submission software.

You submit your article, and suddenly you are flooded with emails, firstly to actually subscribe to the various mailing lists to which your articles are published, and secondly when as often as not, you start receiving hundreds, if not thousands of emails from other authors on topics you have no interest in.

~ Why submit to mailing lists ~

Some people do actually read them, others feed the content onto their sites using various automatic methods. I actually opt to receive digests, and sometimes use the search functions in Gmail to find articles on a particular subject. It can be faster than using a tool or an article directory, especially if you use Gmail as your email client for article submissions.

There may even be some search engine benefit, but it is hard to determine the weighting applied. I have however had a Google Alert from an article listed in a Yahoo group in the past, so they do look at the content once in a while.

~ Initial Setup ~

I wouldnt think of using a primary email address, but you should use an email address you can check frequently for emails. Quite often you can receive notifications of your articles being used on particular websites.I strongly recommend Gmail for this purpose as it gives a lot of flexibility.

~ Step by Step ~

The following is based upon using the Article Marketer service, but applies to using most submission processes.

When you publish your first article using Article Marketer, you will initially receive a flood of emails requesting you to subscribe to mailing lists. These will be from both Yahoo and Topica mailing lists.

Article Marketer give you a window of 24 hrs to complete this signup process, before they start submitting your articles to these mailing lists. It is in your best interests to join every mailing list. This will maximise your article exposure, and also prevent emails bouncing in the future (Article Marketer will attempt to send your articles to lists you havent subscribed to).

~ Yahoo Groups ~

It takes around 30 seconds to sign up to each one, thus the whole process can be completed in 20 minutes. Sometimes the mangled word Captcha can catch you out, but it is a painless process.

You should carefull select your mailing options. If you dont want to receive lots of emails, select the appropriate option for every mailing list.

On Yahoo the options available are as follows:-

Individual emails - Receive individual messages.
Daily digest - Receive a daily compilation of many emails in one message.
Special notices - Receive only important email notices from the group moderator.
No email - Ill read messages on the web site.

Also ensure you select the same email address for every list.

~ Topica ~

For Topica, the mailing list options are not so obvious.

Chris Ellington, the owner of Article Marketer recently came to my rescue with the following great tip. (great customer service)

Heres how you can get digests or stop those emails altogether:
* Point your web browser at: http://lists.topica.com/my
* Youll be asked to log in with your user name and password.
* Make sure the My Lists tab is selected.
* Change the Delivery Method drop down list to your preference.

If you have forgotton your password, it is easy to get a new one resent, though sometimes it can end up in your bulk/spam folder.

~ Un-Sub-scrib-ing ~ (note I dont want to un-sub-scribe, thus the formatting)

If you want maximum exposure for your articles, un-sub-scrib-ing is a very poor option. You shouldnt do it. Manage your mailing lists with the excellent tools provided, but dont use the un-sub-scribe options.

If you do seriously wish to leave a mailing list, there are 2 very clear options.

There is normally a link in the bottom of every email that you click to unsubscribe
There is normally a special email address, seperate from the email address used to send messages, that you can send an email to.
You can log into your account on Topica, Yahoo and Google and change your subscription options easily. (whilst this article doesnt focus on Google, this applies to Google mailing lists too)

Replying to the mailing list with un-sub-scribe is old hat, and makes you look like an idiot, because the message ends up going out to the whole mailing list of possibly 1000s of people, and the person you are referring to might not even be reading the messages posted to the group. Using this keyword will not get you results on modern mailing list systems when sending email to the posting address. If you want to achieve this by email, you have to use the special email address assigned for this purpose.

If you really need to correspond with an author, make sure your email goes to their email address and not that of the mailing list.

Learn to manage your mailing list subscriptions before they manage you.

Andy Beard spends his time creating content sites(niche marketing), and writing about the techniques he uses.
He publishes his articles with the services of Article Marketer