List Profit Email Marketing Blog

This week’s tip is a real-world “lesson from the trenches”.

A while back, it suddenly came to my attention that there was a massive delivery failure on the email server at my (now former!) web host, and for several weeks, delivery of my newsletters and mini-courses was spotty, at best.

Most of the people on several of my lists appearred not to have received any of my messages!

I cleared all the “failures” and sent out a broadcast to one of my lists … 100% delivery failure … a bounce, in my experience, of epic proportions!

To remedy the situation, I moved the entire list to my own dedicated server, which is where it should have been in the first place. This whole fiasco is, in itself, a “List Profit Tip” for all.

I still don’t know for sure if there was a server failure on a mechanical basis, or if someone with whom I shared that IP got himself (and everybody else on that shared IP) blacklisted. The other possibility is that an internet RDNS server or router went out somewhere, and hasn’t been detected and fixed.

What I DO know is what I’ve reminded some of you of before, and discussed in my own email marketing ebook… watch your “undeliverables”.

If they suddenly shoot through the roof, either you have been blacklisted, or someone with whom you share your IP has been, or there has been some other sort of massive failure.

I checked, and none of my domains shows up on any black lists, so I am left to conclude that it must have been the shared IP, or a mechanical server failure at my host or elsewhere.

In any case, it would have been a disaster for my business, had I not noticed it and remedied the situation fairly quickly.

DO learn from my experience! MONITOR your email campaigns, and be prepared for strange things to happen. When they do, get into high gear and get them fixed.

At http://bestbizcart.com I run anywhere from 0% on up to around 3% “undeliverables” on my newsletters and broadcasts to my “warm” lists and customer and affiliate lists.

I was running similarly low rates at my former web host, until they suddenly shot up to 66% over a two week period. If you learn nothing else from this, be advised that there is tremendous value in going with an autoresponder service that goes to the time, effort, and expense of making sure that the email you send using their service *gets delivered*

If you’re going to host your own list, then do it using your own dedicated server, and a dedicated IP address that you completely control, and closely watch your email delivery rates.

Technorati Tags: email delivery rates

As I’m sure you know, I’m a big fan of co-registration leads as a way to build your list quickly. After all, I am in that business.

But there are other methods you should be looking at, both for building your double opt-in lists when your “cold” leads visit your website, and for capturing email addresses from your other visitors.

By the way, before I go on, I should mention that more than a few marketing gurus are referring to this as “the year of the list”. More and more folks are catching on that having a large, cultivated audience for your offers is where the real money is.

Anyway … back to “squeezing and popping” your visitors.

Before you decide I’m completely nuts, let me explain.

Squeeze pages are those pages that some people put up as the “front door” to their site, newsletter, free ebook, or free mini-course.

The page “squeezes” the visitor by requiring that they give their email address to gain access to the site.

Some people just let you in regardless of what address you put down, and some really “squeeze” you by telling you they will deliver the freebie via email, forcing you to give them a valid address.

Sounds like it would put off a lot of visitors … but guess what … the ones who *do* fill out the form are telling you point blank that they want what you have.  Your opt-in rates may be lower, but those who join your list will be much more qualified and interested prospects.

Conversion rates for later selling to those people are much, much higher than for standard website visitors.

You’re not really losing anything, because the folks you want to communicate with are the ones who are willing to tell you who they are, and not just remain anonymous “tire kickers” who have no intention of seriously looking at your product or service.

The other very effective method of gaining subscribers is to use simple opt-in form popups on your web page. You’ve all seen them … in fact you probably subscribed to my newsletter from one of my popups.

This year, however, there is a new kind of popup that is more eye-catching, and more effective than ever before, AND it can’t be blocked, because it is embedded into your web page. Whether it’s DHTML or java, these things WORK.

OK … we’re wasting time … you need to take a look at what’s out there …

==> http://listprofit.com/tools/index.html is the page you need to visit.

And I promise not to squeeze you, as tempted as I am to do so.

Technorati Tags: Squeeze pages, opt-in rates, opt-in form popups