Effective Email Marketing
This can be a controversial subject. Some people will swear by email marketing and others will tell you it is all spam no matter how you put it. This article will give you some ideas on starting, maintaining and properly using emails to promote your sites.
COLLECT EMAILS
Getting a good email list going is not an easy task – especially for an adult site. The last thing a lot of guys want is emails getting sent to them that their wives can find. So I often suggest to people via my opt-in box a few places they can get a free email account like hotmail or Google Mail etc.
I don’t own a paysite so I can’t harvest emails from the pages of a paysite. Instead I make a link on all of my TGP galleries and even my free sites that take people to a page where they can see what the email newsletter is and sign-up for it. I have also put the actual opt-in boxes on the pages before, but I found that often ends up being a burden because it may get misread by a script and end up causing your site/gallery to be rejected. There area lot of email scripts and mailing programs out there that you can use. Some are free and many of them cost anything from $10-$1000’s of dollars. Before you run off and invest in an expensive email script I would suggest that you try some of the cheap and free ones to see if this is something you want to work in and pursue. Doing a search in Google or checking out http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ is a great place to start for both database management scripts and bulk emailing clients.
I would strongly recommend that you do not buy lists or harvest emails from forums or news groups or wherever you may think of getting them from. If you buy a list you have no idea where these email addresses have come from and if you harvest you are just playing with fire because you are going to be sending emails to people that didn’t ask for them.
The best thing I have learned it so be honest with the surfer and let them know what you have to offer them, when they will get it and what it will be. A good collection page will have a short description of what the email newsletter will contain and it will tell them how often they will receive it. It will remind them that you will now sell or give away their email address and it includes a sample email on the page so they can see what they are going to get without having to subscribe to the list.
DOUBLE OPT-IN
This is the only real way you should put together an email list. A double opt-in list is one where someone willfully enters their email to join the list, they are then emailed a confirmation link and they click it to confirm that they have in fact agreed to join the mailing list. While it is not a bulletproof system it will give you some ammunition if someone tries to tell you that they have never joined you list. Also many sponsors will only allow you to use your email list to promote them if you follow their rules and often times one of those rules is that you have to a double opt-in list.
MAKE A GOOD EMAIL NEWSLETTER
I suggest working to get a certain theme to your emails. Think of your emails as a sort of newsletter or even small paper. If you develop a nice theme to the emails people will start to recognize them and they won’t just accidentally delete it. Something you don’t want to do is overwhelm the reader with information. Most people, even though they have subscribed to your email, will only give you a few seconds to catch their attention. If you email is long and has a ton of different links and ads you run the risk of burying your readers in information in which case the chances are that they will just delete your email instead of clicking something.
The better way to do this is to write a nice, concise email that has a few links to your ads for that week. The value of the links goes down the further down the list you get. The top link will get the most attention with each lower link getting less and less attention. So put you best link first and list them by priority. I personally put a paysite first then a second paysite or product next and my third link is usually to any new free sites I may have put up that week or to a blog I have or something like that. This way I get two chances to sell them on a paysite (or product) and if they don’t go for that I can always hit them with a free site and maybe they will click I sponsor link there.
I never include any type of adult pictures in the email. The last thing I want is some guy opening his email at work and having a co-worker looking over just in time to catch a glimpse of double anal.
Another thing I suggest is trying to send the emails on the same day. If you send it out every Monday eventually people will get used to that and will look forward to seeing what you have for them. Don’t bludgeon your readers by sending out three emails a day six days a week. All you will end up doing is getting them to remove themselves from your list.
SPONSOR IT
Something you may want to do once you have a nice list is to sell a spot on the email list to someone. For example at the top of the email you can put, “Today’s newsletter brought to you by (insert name).” or something along those lines.
FOLLOW THE RULES
Recent laws have been passed that require any email that could contain sexually explicit material to have a warning in the header. Most commonly this would mean you have to have the words “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT” in the subject line of the email. Go here http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm to read about the can-spam act and make sure you follow the rules.
Many sponsors simply don’t want email traffic. Don’t make the mistake of sending it to them. It will only get your account canceled. Those that do allow email traffic typically have rules so make sure you follow them. If there is ever a doubt just ask the sponsor and they will tell you what you need to know.
Make sure to allow people to opt-out of the email list. Include an opt-out link in every email you send so that anyone that wants to leave the list can do so with ease.
Email marketing can be time consuming and can take some effort to master, but if you get a good list together and figure out how to use it, there are few better ways to get instant traffic to a site or to get instant feedback on something. Done properly email marketing can make you some very nice money.
Reader Comments: (1 posts)
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LadyUnicorn says: I've only been an adult webmaster since January and this has been by far the best adult webmaster si |
April 5th, 2008 at 4:49am EST Rating:  |
