I’m a subscriber of many marketers’ email lists so I can keep track of the latest developments across the web or because they send out some amazing content.

Here’s the thing, some marketers send out emails that have messages that look like this to try and get past the spam filters:

Grab your f.ree report…

Your f/ree report is ready…

Start making making m.oney…

They may even include a symbol instead of a word in an attempt to fool the spam filters (I doubt that it actually does and is probably more likely to get your message filtered). I’m sure that you’ve come across a similar emails by now, honestly, I bet they don’t leave you with a good impression no matter who it was from.

Here is my problem with this, firstly, the emails look extremely unprofessional, and secondly, ESP’s like AWeber have built in tools to test your spam score before you send your messages.

I understand how important it is to get your message in front of your customers but if you are sending a message with f.ree or m.oney in the subject line and email body text, then your message may just get past the spam filters but it is going to look like spam to your subscribers all the same.

It does not take that much time to think of alternative words to use in place of words that may trigger the spam filters, sending your message to the spam folder; try using ‘no cost’ instead of ‘free’; you get the picture.

Another trend I have seen is affiliate marketers grabbing the pre-written emails for an affiliate product and sending it our without making any alterations even when the message includes the use of misspellings.

If you are an affiliate marketer, take the time to customise the message and attach your own personal flair. If your subscribers are on the email lists of many marketers you’d be surprised how many of the same message they will get on the launch day of a big product, all with the exact same message.

Remember, every time you send out an email on behalf of your company or an affiliate promotion, it is your reputation and your credibility that you may be damaging by misspelling words or adding extra symbols to try to game the spam filters.

If you would like to test your emails for their spam scores before you send them then I recommend you grab an account with AWeber.

To your email promotion success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you want to learn of the art of writing emails that sell I recommend you take a copywriting course. One of the best courses on the Internet for these economically strapped times is Five Minute Copywriting by Robert Plank.

photo credit: Nancy Wombat

So, how do you use Gmail to get people onto your subscriber list?

Gmail has a very powerful feature that allows you to add a signature to all your out-going emails. The reason this feature is so great is because you can change it to suit your needs, making customisation super easy.

All you need to do is log-in to your Gmail account and click at the top where it says ‘settings’.

Scroll down to the area that says ‘signature’.

I’ve put in a sample signature for you to look at but I’m sure you can come up with something far more captivating. I recommend that you stick to a standard signature and not write a signature that is full of hype words or sales speak.

I recommend that your signature links out to a lead capture page where you can capture name and email address in your preferred email service provider (AWeber, Get Response, iContact, etc).

Why don’t you give it a try and see what you can come up with!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

I’m sure by now you’ve trialed various ESPs and you would have no doubt experienced the frustration of having to change your blog opt in web forms, resize text, format fonts, etc.

Let’s say you are using Get Response and you decide to change to AWeber, imaging being able to simply cut and paste your new web form code and that’s it, your blog opt-in form stays exactly the same, just with a different ESP collecting your registrants information.

Well, this has been made amazingly simple with a plugin called Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder.

Download the plugin, use your FTP client to upload it to your plugins folder, activate the plugin and start styling your optin form, just the way you want it!

Visit the Optin Form Adder page for more details and follow the step-by-step instructions of how to set up the form.

If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see that I am using the Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder for my newsletter (why not sign-up while you are taking a look and get posts like this delivered to your inbox).

I’ve trialed the Optin Form Adder with Get Response and AWeber and both worked fine. I’m sure the form will work just as easily with the other major email service providers on the market.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte

Have you purchased a website from a company who promised you that ‘your website will make you money while you sleep‘. Now while this is true in some cases, for others, this statement makes a cold chill run down their spine because, even after parting with hundreds (even thousands) of pounds on a new shiney website, they are still yet to generate one web based sale.

Before I discuss this further, I want you to bear with me for a minute or two as I invite you into my private world. I count myself to be very lucky as I run Foxley Marketing Solutions and my many other websites from my home office. This allows me to spend much more time with my family, and with a six-year old daughter, I want to be on hand and actively involved in her day-to-day life.

The summer holiday is coming to an end but in the last few week I’ve been able spend more time on with my family on the many day trips and fun days out while my automated systems work for me.

In the last week alone we went to the cinema to watch a new kid’s film, Shorts. We followed this with a day trip to Matlock Bath, The National Forest Maize Maze in Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire and, yesterday, we went to the Monkey Forest in Trentham, Staffordshire.

We had some great times and you can see some of our photos below. If you get the chance to visit the places mentioned then I recommend that you do!

Do you send out emails with the following?

donotreply @ yourcompany.com

If you do, then you may be missing out on the opportunity to have your customers ask you a direct question that could lead to additional sales. At the very least, you will be reducing the opprotunity for conversation and this is counter-productive to building customer relationships.

I am personally on the list of 100s of marketers and companies and I am surprised at the number of donotreply emails I do get in a day.

Let me explain exactly why I do not like this from a customers point of view.

A company sends an email to me (from a do-not-reply email address) about their latest product that I may be interested in.

I am interested but I have a question, but instead of hitting ‘reply’ and sending the question in the easiest and quickest way available to me (the customer), I have to visit their website and find the ‘contact us‘ link and submit the question in this way.

I may be interested in the product but if I am in the middle of things, we have to work right, so I put this on my ‘do later list’. As the day goes on this ‘email’ will get buried under newer emails as they arrive meaning I will probably forget about it as other companies catch my attention.

The company, by using a do-not-reply email address, has essentially shut off communication with the very people they are contacting and are possibly losing sales (as is often the case when it comes to me).

Flipping this on it’s head, lets say the company sent the same email but used a contact @ yourcompany.com or even yourname @ yourcompany.com email address then it makes them appear more open to communication.

You can take this one step further and add this simple bit of text towards the bottom of your emails:

If you have any questions then simply hit the reply button and well get back to you as soon as possible.

I’m sure you can come up with something even more inspiring than the example I gave, but as you can see, this simple bit of text will open up the ability to answer questions in the most convient way to your customer.

A customer may be one step away from purchasing your product but has ‘one quick question’ about a returns policy and by NOT using a ‘do-not-reply’ email address  you are allowing your customer to ask a question quickly, for you to respond quickly and to make a sale you may have, otherwise, lost.

If you use a dedicated email service provider such as AWeber you will have to include a reply @ address so that your customers can contact you easily, the way you should want it to be! Ty to use something like, contact or yourname instead of donotreply for greater customer interaction.

If you are still deciding whether email marketing is for you and your business then why not take AWeber for a Test Drive, you won’t fail to be impressed with their service.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: idogcow

Quick Note: This post is about link masking. I use the term ‘cloaking‘ throughout this post because this term is more often used when people are, in actuality, discussing link masking. Link masking is hiding your affiliate link from the viewer to prevent your commissions from being stolen or to increase your click-through rates, whereas, link cloaking is a way of trying to manipulate the search engines. You can read what Google say about link cloaking by visiting here.

In today’s post I want to show you 3 ways to protect your affiliate commissions. Keep reading to learn how to cloak your affiliate URL by using a URL shortening service, by forwarding a domain name and by using dedicated software.

If you are not sure what an affiliate URL looks like then head on over to Clickbank, PayDotCom and E-Junkie register for your own affiliate account (it’s free) and you will be able to take a look at the different URLs they provide.

Having your affiliate commission hijacked can be seriously frustrating, especially when you think of all the time that can go into finding a product to promote, joining the affiliate program, confirming your registration, selecting affiliate links and / or banners to promote, and then writing a lengthy blog post or email about the product.

Some people just don’t seem to like the idea of the referrer (the affiliate) making a percentage of the sale. This seems ludicrous to me, especially if the blog post or email was informative and I would not have come across the product myself. As a purchaser, the product will be the same price whether you go through an affiliate link or not so why not show your appreciation to the affiliate for letting you know about the product.

Luckily there are a few ways you can protect your affiliate URL.

1. Use a URL shortening service.

This is by far the quickest way and literally takes a minute to do. All you need to do is visit a free URL shortening service such as TinyURL.

Now copy your affiliate link by selecting the text (holding the left mouse button and dragging it over the text you wish to copy).

Example of highlighting a link!

Now click the right mouse button and select copy.

Ctrl + C to copy or right click (mouse) and select copy

Click inside the URL shortening box at TinyURL and now right click again and select paste.

Right click (mouse) and select paste or press Ctrl + V

All you need to do now is click the Make TinyURL! button.

Click the 'Make TinyURL' button

Now you will have a new TinyURL that, when clicked, will go to your affiliate site.

You now have your new TinyURL and cloaked affiliate link

Select your new URL and use this in your promotions.

This method is not the prettiest method out there but it is very affective. Additionally, sites such as Twitter will shorten most URLs into TinyURLs for you, saving you the trouble of going through the steps above.

Other services that allow to shorten your URL are:

SnipURL

and

BudURL

BudURL is one of the best URL shortening services on the web as it also gives you tracking stats (clickthroughs).

2. Domain name forwarding.

I like this method as it gives you a very nice looking URL to promote. Firstly you’ll need to register a domain name that you will use to cloak your affiliate URL.

For example, I went to GoDaddy and purchased a domain I will use to cloak my affiliate link. I purchased www.Daves-Online-Videos.com and I will forward this through my affiliate URL to point directly to www.DavesOnlineVideos.com, thus cloaking my affiliate link.

When purchasing a domain be sure to purchase one that closely resembles the product your are promoting (be sure to read the affiliate programme terms and conditions).

You can find a wealth of instructions in the main area that will show you how to forward a domain and it really only takes five minutes to set up.

I think you’ll agree that this is much better than having a shortened URL.

3. Specialised software.

Lastly, if you have your very own hosting account you can purchase specialized software that will allow you to have your very own professional looking cloaked URLs. How nice is the URL below!

www.KarlMFoxley.com/recommends/DavesOnlineVideos

If you don’t have you very own hosting I highly recommend HostMonster.

The two sites I have found are PHPLinkCloaker and PowerlinkGenerator. Now I cannot vouch for the first one but it is ludicrously cheap at $9.95. You can find out more by visiting the site.

PHP Link Cloaker - Affiliate Link Cloaking Software

PHPLinkCloaker

The second one is called PowerlinkGenerator and is by Mike Filsaime. I use this software myself and it is an invaluable tool in my marketing. PowerLinkGenerator allows you to track your URL clickthrough rates and keep track of all your affiliate information.

Powerlink Generator - Affiliate Link URL Cloaking

PowerlinkGenerator

It can become a nightmare to remember every affiliate program you’ve joined and the method of payment that they use, PowerLinkGenerator allows you to store all this info. This one costs $97 but being a Mike Filsaime product you know that it is very powerful and of very high quality. Visit the site and compare the two and see which one will benefit your needs the most.

Both sites offer extensive tutorial information to help you set up the software so you can get started immediately.

I hope this post has been informative.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

You can see on the right of the blog pages that I have an AWeber form for the Website Promotion Success 7 Day Mini-Course. I am comfortable playing around with scripts and code so I used the text widget to embed the code for my web form. A lot of people just aren’t comfortable with this method and would like an even easier solution, and, here it is!

I was searching through the WordPress Plugins Directory when I came across a plugin by Jame Collins and Glenn Nicholas (of OM4). The plugin is called ‘AWeber Integration‘ and is easy to install, just upload to your plugins directory and click on activate in your WP admin area. If you are unsure how to do this then give us a call as we are only happy to help with WordPress and plugin installations at very reasonable rates.

The instructions are easy to follow and you’ll have a nice looking web-form ready to capture leads, name and email, within minutes. This is what the plugin authors say:

This plugin provides a simple way to add one or more AWeber form(s) to your sidebar and optionally enable AWeber email web analytics for your website.

It gives you access to a new “AWeber Mailing List” sidebar widget, that lets you enter the subscription form’s details. These details are used to automatically display your AWeber email subscription form.

The settings page lets you enter your AWeber account id. Once entered, the AWeber web email analytics tracking code will be automatically enabled on all pages in your website. No manual page or template editing is required.

Source: WordPress AWeber Integration Plugin

What I really like about the look of this plugin is the fact that the authors haven’t tried to embed a link pointing back to their website as many other plugin owners do (you then have to pay for an upgraded version to have the link removed).

Be sure to get an AWeber account even if you don’t have a WordPress blog and cannot use this plugin, the service really is invaluable and will help you grow your business through lead capture and email marketing.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Here are the links again:

AWeber

AWeber Integration

Generally, when you send an email you can increase the responsiveness of the recipient by including their name. You can use AWeber to add the recipients name in the subject line and within the email body text. I’ve mentioned before that you should vary the use of personalisation in the subject line for the obvious reason that if a friend was to send you an email the subject line would probably look more like:

‘Hey, look at this’

‘I was thinking of you!’

‘How’s it going?’

This may increase the responsiveness of an email campaign, but like everything, be sure to test and measure.

Returning to the point of this post, below you will see a screen shot showing how to create a personalisation tag within an email using AWeber.

As you can see, you simply select the {!name} tag and insert it into your post for AWeber to automatically include each of your subscribers’ names into the email they receive.

But what if you have subscribers who have entered their names like this?

dave, kelly foxley, karl

This is easily corrected by using the tag {!name_fix}. The names will now look how they should when the recipient receives the email:

Dave, Kelly Foxley, Karl

You can see this in action by looking at the screenshot below:

1. The recipient’s name is included and fixed so that it reads as it should, in this case, Karl.

It doesn’t matter how many people you have on your email subscriber list, AWeber will personalise every email you send out saving you all the hassle of doing this manually or by performing a mail merge.

You can get started building a relationship with your prospects today by visiting AWeber and signing up for an account.

Are you on our newsletter subscriber list yet? You don’t know what you are missing!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Other dedicated ESP’s offer this feature, to research the one that will work best for you and your company I recommend you take a look at what each one has to offer:

iContact

Get Response

Stream Send

Constant Contact

How are you managing your email marketing campaigns? Does your email service provider have this feature? If not, then you need to give AWeber a serious consideration because Send Windows is a game changer.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

When you have a business website one of the first things you’ll want to know is how well you website is performing. Statistical data such as visitor count, bounce rates, how your website is found (referral links) etc, will help you constantly tweak your website until you are happy with it’s performance. You can use Google Analytics for website visitor tracking (free).

The same analysis is often overlooked when it comes to our email marketing efforts. Analysis is easy if you are using an email service provider that includes statistical data as a standard feature collected in easy to read email marketing reports.

Why is this important?

Having statistical data to hand is important for testing and measuring your email campaigns for a vast range of reasons but here are just a few of the most important. The first thing you’ll want to know is your open rates. Knowing your open rates is an ideal way of testing the effectiveness of your email subject lines. Sending out small test emails to a small portion of your email subscriber database will allow you to see which email (with different subject lines) grabbed your subscribers attention and got them to open your email.

The next important tracking feature you’ll want to analyse is the click-through rates. Let’s say you’ve picked a winning subject line using the data you received from tracking your open rates, you’ll also want to test how successful your email copy is at getting people to click-through to your website (or affiliate website). Again, test this with a small portion of your email subscriber database and use the data to merge your successful subject line with your successful body text (copy). Now send your winning email to your entire database.

The following services provide tracking and statistical data so be sure to use one of these to handle your campaign

• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• iContact
• Get Response
• Stream Send

The email service providers (ESP) above all provide the tracking and statistical data you’ll ever need. Another great feature is the automatic removal of people who opt-out of your email lists and also those email addresses that bounce your email (undelivered email due to bad email addresses).

Another very important tracking feature is the ‘spam complaints’ feature. People may report your email as spam for using misleading subject lines. Be sure to always make your email body text match your email subject line, this way your subscribers’ expectations are met and that they trust your emails to deliver a consistent message; this will also save your subscriber database by decreasing opt-outs.

There are many more features that you will want to get familiar with but be sure to take the time to test one of the services above and find the solution that best fits your business.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. The email service providers above offer free trial periods so you’ll be able to test drive all the features before you decide which company you will go with.

Here are the links again: AWeber, Constant Contact, iContact, Get Response, and Stream Send.

*Screenshot above shows AWeber’s advanced tracking features.