When it comes to e-mail marketing, there’s one list you always want to have in the back of your mind:  the list of forbidden spam words.

We all have e-mail In-boxes, and along with those In-boxes come the ever-helpful spam filter, blocking irrelevant, annoying e-mails advertising cheap financial advice, ridiculous sweepstakes and Viagra. But occasionally, it will filter out worthwhile e-mails containing information relevant to the user – such as your e-Newsletters.

Why does it happen? More often than not, your email was blocked because it used one of the taboo words your client’s spam filter has blacklisted. The appearance of any of these words – particularly in a subject line – can doom your e-mail to a cold, lonely grave.

So how can we recognize these evil words and vaporize them before they cause us any trouble?

Some of those words include:

 Cheap                  Cash Bonus              100% Free        Affordable      Apply Now
Free Offer              Guarantee                Home Based     Increase Sales  Incredible Deal
Limited Time Offer   Make $                  Save $              Prices            Opportunity
Order Now             Refinance                 Weight Loss     Stop Snoring  Reverses Aging
Thousands             Remove                    Promise You    Mortgage Rates 

 As you can see, many of the words or phrases are obvious. Anytime someone sees or hears the words “100% free,” warning bells should go off. But there are also some seemingly innocuous words among the mix. Words like “prices,” “mortgage rates” and “opportunity” could be used in a worthwhile context, but still be seen as a red flag by spam filters.

For some more words that are banned, WordPress.org keeps a list. The point is, lists like the above are helpful, but they’re still not a surefire guarantee that your e-mail is certain to reach its recipient.  As Stephanie Miller of Deliverability.com states, “it isn’t really about a list of words, per se, it’s how the filters see constantly evolving combinations of words being used.”

The key is to develop marketing copy that is original and creative, without resorting to tired clichés or generic catchphrases. This is where an experienced marketing firm can be an invaluable asset. If your e-mail comes with a subject line that’s so creative it’s never been done before, chances are it will whiz right by the spam police before they even get a chance to glance at their radar gun. 

You can also gauge the deliverability of your e-mails. Before distributing them to your clients, try sending one to yourself, your friends and employees who may be using different e-mail service providers to see if they receive them.

You don’t want to be labeled as a “spammer.” With a little due diligence and creative partner like corecubed, your e-mail communication will be able to steer clear of bouncers and be the life of the Inbox.

Your Web site should be more than just an information repository about your company and the services it provides. Information on the Internet is not meant to just flow one way. The site can and should provide the user with important information, but it can also be a tool by which they submit information to help  you in your marketing efforts.

In other words, if your Web site can get the prospective client to willingly fork over contact information – name, company, e-mail, phone number, etc. – then you have a potential new lead. This can be done through a variety of methods, whether for obtaining a free white paper, or asking getting email addresses to sign up for an eNewsletter. The key is that the user does it of his own volition.

So what’s the key? How can you turn your Web site into a lead generating machine?

It helps to remember the following:

1) Site traffic and leads are NOT the same thing. Your site can get 5 million hits a day, but if you’re not obtaining contact info, you’re not obtaining leads. Your site should have some mechanism built in where the users are prompted to input their information into a form, or its all for naught. Brandon Cornett, a writer for ISEdb.com, puts it this way.

“Let’s imagine you have a lemonade stand beside a busy highway,” he writes in an article for ISEdb.com. “But your stand is located on a narrow shoulder of the road where there’s not enough room for cars to pull over. All day long, cars whiz by you at 45 miles per hour, but nobody stops. You have an endless supply of traffic, but your lemonade stand is a failure because nobody stops.”

“If your Web site has plenty of traffic but no form of lead generation, then most of your traffic will pass right by … like those cars passing the lemonade stand.”
2) Not all leads are good leads. For every five people who give you their phone number, there’s a good bet that only one of them are worthwhile, legitimate leads. It’s important to be able to identify the diamonds in the rough before throwing “the rough” by the wayside.

Don’t waste time following up on leads that obviously aren’t feasible. If you only serve your local community, then it’s probably not a good idea to spend money pursuing a customer in Beijing.

Know who your customer base is, and take time to review each lead and determine how it fits into that profile before pursuing it.

3) Make your site educational, not just advertorial. People aren’t going to fork over their e-mail address if they think you’re just going to pelt them with advertisements. You have to provide value. Free online publications, such as white papers, case studies, e-books and other materials work really well.

“Don’t just sell – educate,” writes Bob DeStefano in an article for Industrial Distribution. “Compliment your product and service information with valuable educational information that helps your customers do their jobs better. Pack your site with ‘how to’ articles, best practices guides, training videos and other educational content. This will turn your Web site into more of a resource center that your customers and prospects will trust and visit on a regular basis.”

The key is that your site visitors know that this information comes at a price: their contact info.
corecubed is really great at helping clients win new leads via business Web sites. Call us or email us today to find out how!

If you’re a tech-savvy 21st century business professional (and chances are you fit that description, since you’re reading this blog), you probably open your Inbox several times a day. A dozen maybe? We all check our e-mail more than we care to admit. And some are absolutely addicted to checking email.

And who can blame us? As Internet usage continues to expand, more and more people are pointing to e-mail as their preferred choice of communication. It’s easy to use, it’s fast and you don’t get that stomach-turning taste in your mouth from licking envelopes and stamps.

What’s more, there’s rarely ever a time when the Internet is beyond our reach. Wireless Internet has become much more prevalent than it was five – or even two – years ago. Devices like BlackBerrys, iPhones and PDAs mean our Inboxes are never more than a click away, even when we’re out on the street or at the hairdresser.

e-mail communication is cost-effective and reaches consumers and business professionals directly. BtoBonline.com reports that “spending on e-mail marketing in the U.S. will grow steadily to $2 billion by 2014, almost an 11 percent compound annual growth rate.”

If your business is not taking advantage of e-mail marketing, then it’s time to try it.

The most common form of e-mail marketing is the e-newsletter. An e-newsletter is exactly what the name implies: a newsletter that regularly appears in the reader’s Inbox. It may be distributed weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or over any period of time that the marketer specifies.

eNewsletter distribution is very cost-effective compared with direct mailings. If you’re interested in getting involved with e-newsletter marketing, here are some valuable tips:

• Place a link on your home page where users can subscribe. Services like Constant Contact offer a choice of pre-formatted boxes and links where your site visitors can sign up for your e-newsletter. These links can be added to your company’s home page. When they use the link, they’re taken to a form template where they enter their contact information, which is automatically added to your database.

• Pay attention to your subject line. The subject line of an e-mail is often the deciding factor for whether or not that e-mail gets opened. The subject line should pique the reader’s interest, while at the same time not coming off like the headline for an ad in the Sunday morning paper. MailChimp.com compared subject lines with very high and very low open rates..

• It’s not all about ads. eNewsletters should contain a mixture of advertising and informative articles – about 50/50. It should never be 100 percent advertising, or you’ll quickly find your subscribers opting out. For example, an e-newsletter distributed by a dental office might feature reviews of toothpaste, tips on cutting back on plaque or a glossary of dental terms, in addition to testimonials from clients. Articles on other sites can be referenced as long as you credit those sites and provide a link. For some good examples of eNewsletters and valuable reader content take a look at my company’s newsletter archive.  corecubed has been distributing these monthly for almost 10 years.

• Conduct analytics to evaluate progress. Most online e-newsletter distribution providers offer services that gauge the effectiveness of your mailings. Metrics such as open rates, click-throughs, opt-outs, forwards, etc. are all quantified and placed in an easy-to-read report so that the marketer can determine whether his efforts are successful. If open rates are down and opt-outs are up, it might be time to change the e-newsletter’s format or content. Either way, you won’t know unless you’re on top of the metrics.

corecubed specializes in providing monthly marketing communications with a specialization in the home care industry.  We have had such great success with email and eNewsletter marketing ourselves, we wanted to extend that to our clients.  In fact, we just launched a home care targeted eNewsletter called careconnect, which can be used by agencies to target valuable referral sources and build new relationships.  Is your agency communicating via email?