AWeber Email Marketing Tips

Really useful.
Thanks.

I like the idea of posting your privacy policy in your emails, a great suggestion for reassuring subscribers. Thanks!

Simple and easy to remember, but powerful information that helps build trust. Thanks Amanda

Hi Amanda,

re: the photo.

I tended to avoid this as I ‘assumed’ that spam filters would block the email, i.e. many corp email filters will block emails with images.

I’m sure you folks have done split testing on this, can you share please?

…and then maybe I’ll add my mugshot to my emails

Amanda, this is fine, but I can’t consider putting my photograph on all my emails that goes out.

Thank you for the piece and it’s helpful indeed!

We are headquartered in Kansas City, which is a pretty tight-knit, neighborly community. I have found that adding a photo (as you suggest) is one of the best ways to build trust. The people we email are likely to see us around town! As a result, they are less likely to consider our email to be Spam if they see our smiling faces…

Great Post, Amanda,

It is so important because transparency has become more and more important to subscribers.

Honesty, earnesty and sincerity are all powerful attraction qualities
that folks value.

Thanks!

Hi Amanda,

Great post! I’m really enjoying your tips.

I do put my picture in all my emails and I think it’s a great way for people to remember who you are. I once had someone tell me they were subscribed to my blog feed but I didn’t have a signature so they didn’t remember who I was. I think that gave me a wake up call to never assume people know you just because they subscribed! That’s why I add a signature and a pic to all my posts.

Another way to build trust that has been talked about here on your blog before is to tell subscribers in every email what list they are on and how they got there. I have a little paragraph at the bottom of all my emails that tells them what list they are on (since I have multiple lists), what email they used to sign up and what URL they signed up through. I think it builds trust to remind them they actually DID sign up!

To me building trust is being truly yourself, no hype, no stuffiness.

One of the ways I do that is by doing silly things like writing songs about internet marketing and playing them on my guitar. I recently created a song called ‘Dear Guru, Dear Guru’ which was a parody. I think most people would agree that no fly by night marketer would be that dedicated – lol!

Anway, before I write you a guest blog post here I’ll stop. Definitely a favorite topic of mine is trust and ethics in marketing. Thanks again

Through testing I have noticed that one way to show subscribers that we are trustworthy is through a well-elaborated sales letter or squeeze page – with relevant features and benefits. The legally required: Privacy, Terms of Use, Contact and so on, the follow up emails and the product(s) on offer. Obviously some methods can be more effective than others but the basics in my opinion tends to never change (at least up until now).

Making sure that your copy looks good in plain text is always a good idea too. Don’t rely on images to get the message across.

A lot of our older audience uses plain text for speed and for fear of viruses, so formatting it at 60 characters per inch, using lots of spaces between sections and using lines of dashes or equals signs to make divisions helps break up the blocks of text.

Having worked in a telephone sales office, I understand the need to find new leads and expand your customer base. I also appreciate the honest, straightforward practices being recommended here.

As a private citizen, so to speak, I am always curious as to how certain companies get my information in the first place. If I share my email address with a company that I am doing business with, it is annoying when they sell my information to third parties. Perhaps it’s in the mass of fine print that I have to agree to in order to do business online – usually a vague reference to sharing info with partners/affiliates. Usually, there is no way to opt out of this.

A business that is willing to earn cash by inconveniencing its customers is not one that I will support. In essence, they are being payed for my time – the time it takes to weed through unwanted advertisements clogging up my in-box. Not only is my time not theirs to sell, but they make a penny or two (at most) for one name on the list.

It would be very much appreciated if businesses would make this clear up front and give an easy way to opt out of having one’s information sold for marketing purposes. I would rather support businesses who respect me enough to be crystal clear about what they intend to do with my information and give me a choice in the matter. I might even agree to it simply because the the business was decent enough to ask me first. After all, if the business is polite enough to do that much, I’d be more inclined to believe that it would also exercise some discretion as to what kind of third parties I might actually be interested in hearing from rather than pimping me out indiscriminately.

A business that is willing to show this very basic respect will earn my trust, loyalty, and recommendation to others. This tiny bit of courtesy is worth more than any kind of discount.

Thank you for a great post. I am building a new blog up and shared your post with my readers.

I agree photos are great, especially with so many people sending videos out nowadays.

Great advice. I will definitely post a picture to my blog and email blasts; however, I am very security conscious. I will not put my entire mailing address anywhere on the web for non-purchase purposes, especially since it is ran from my personal home. Would a PO box suffice?

I think a physical address makes good business sense. In the not so distant past many people were taken to the cleaners by supporting a business operating out of a Post Office Box.

In short CAN-SPAM should outlaw the latter completely from email marketing, unless it is put side by side with the business’s physical address.