I would like to know what are the industry standards for open rates, clickthrough rates, ect for a good buyers list in the gambling, gaming niche. For example how much could someone reasonably expect to make per year per email on the list??

The average open rate for email campaigns in your industry is just under 15%. Based upon 2009 DMA case studies, you should generate just under $40 for every $1 spent on a properly run Email Marketing effort.

That being said, you will not receive this type of return without utilizing an email service provider with a stellar sending reputation, which will allow for inbox delivery of your messages. Furthermore, beyond simple delivery, there is a lot that goes into a properly run program. Your goal in this process is to preserve your open rates over time by providing relevant information that inspires continued opens.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend all day explaining email marketing, but I have been an independent consultant for roughly 6 years and have used virtually every email service provider out there and have landed on one that I absolutely love. I will email you my rep’s contact information. He will be able to help you further and provide you with the information you are looking for.

Tell him that the "other clay" sent you and he may set you up with a discount as well.

Actually, it looks like you don’t accept email, so if you want to email me through my profile, I will respond with his contact information.

For starters, and just to make sure we’re all on the same page, what is email marketing solutions? In a nutshell, it’s exactly what it sounds like: communicating with your customers via email. But there’s a key difference between legitimate email marketing solutions and the pesky spam messages that end up in your junk folder. The difference is that email marketing solutions is opt-in, or permission-based. This means that the people who are receiving your email messages have, at some point, signed up to hear from you. This is one of the key reasons why email marketing solutions is so effective.

But that’s not what I want to focus on today. In fact, now that we’ve gotten the basic stuff out of the way, I want to introduce you to a completely new way to look at email marketing solutions. Yes, email marketing solutions will help you communicate with your customers and leads, and yes, it’s an inexpensive and efficient method of marketing. But you probably already know that. You also likely know that you can use email marketing solutions for many methods of communication, including e-newsletters, e-flyers, e-coupons and promotions, press releases, postcards, event invitations (or e-vites), thank you notes, and so much more. But did you know email marketing solutions has another major functionality?

Email marketing solutions can help you get to know your customers. Just when you thought that Market Research and intricate customer profiling tools were reserved for big companies with huge budgets, here comes this nifty, easy-to-use and inexpensive online tool. Email marketing solutions is like a window into the actions, preferences and behaviors of your customers and leads.

So, the big question is: How? And, as cliché as it sounds, I’m happy to say it’s easy as pie (actually, since I don’t really bake, if you’re anything like me this is going to be much, much easier than pie!) Here are the simple steps you can follow to get to know your customers via email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Take Good Care of Your Contact List

When you ask customers or prospects to sign up for your email marketing solutions subscriber list, the one key piece of information you must collect is their email address. If you want to make the most of email marketing solutions, make sure you also ask for their first and last name, and other information that may be pertinent to your business. For example, if you run a sporting memorabilia store, you may want to ask for the customer’s favorite sports team(s). This way, later you’ll be able to send out targeted messages promoting merchandise from the selected sports team(s). The simple step of asking for pertinent information when the customer signs up will later help you send messages targeted to the exact interest of each customer. If you keep the information you collect in a simple Excel file, you’ll later be able to automatically upload it to your Email Marketing solutions software.

Now, you may be thinking: does targeting my customers’ interests mean I’ll have to manually sift through each customer record and separate customers by interest group? The answers is no, not if you are using a first-class email marketing solutions software package.

Step 2: Make Good Use of Interest Groups

An interest group is a group of email subscribers who share something in common. This may be a group of people who live in the same area, wear the same shoe size, purchase from your store with the same frequency, etc. In email marketing solutions, you can segment customers any way you want, or any way that makes sense for your business. By separating customers into interest groups, you can automatically send out email marketing solutions messages to one or more specific group(s) of people. For example, if you have segmented your customers by birthday month, you can send out a Happy Birthday email message specifically to the customers whose birthdays fall on the current month. You can even include a coupon for a freebie or a special discount on the customer’s birthday.

One really cool thing about that is that the top email marketing solutions programs can auto-fill information on an email message. So, for example, if Annie’s birthday is on April 2 and you want to send a coupon that can only be used on her birthday, the best email marketing solutions software packages include a feature that can auto-fill information, such as, “This coupon is only valid on April 2.”

Now there are 2 key ways you would know Annie’s birthday is on April 2, or Tommy likes the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first way is the one described in Step 1: you had the foresight to ask for this pertinent information when the customer signed up for your email marketing solutions list. So, what if you already have a list, but you never asked for customer information at sign-up? Can you still use email marketing solutions to get to know your customers? The answer is yes, of course.

Step 3: Make Good Use of Links In Your Email Messages

Another great way to get to know your customers through email marketing solutions is include pertinent links in your email messages. The best email marketing solutions programs provide you with detailed link click reports. This means that you will be able to see which customers clicked on each link contained in your email marketing solutions campaign. How does that help you get to know their interests and preferences? Easy! Once you have chosen how to segment your customers (by shoe size, birthday month, life stage, etc, etc..), create some email content targeted to that interest group. The simplest and most straightforward method is to say something like: “Want to receive emails about stuff that’s important to you? Tell us what’s important to you”. You can then include links to options like “traveling, my kids, work, etc..” Make sure these links take the reader somewhere, even if it’s a simple ‘Thank You’ page. And, you don’t even have to be so direct. Say you run a music store. You can include links to your product pages with link text like “See what’s new in classical music” or “Click here to browse through our hard rock music selection.”

Once the email has been sent, your email marketing solutions software will show you a detailed link click report. You will see which customers are fans of classical music, and which are fans of hard rock. Then (here comes my favorite part), if you are using a top-notch email marketing solutions program, you will be able to automatically turn these report results into interest groups. This means that with the simple click of a button, you will instantly have a classical music interest group, and a hard rock interest group. Next time, you can send each group emails with more of the albums that you know will interest them. And, you were able to get to know your customers that well simply by including a few pertinent links in your email marketing solutions campaign.

With these 3 simple steps, you too can get to know your customers using the simple, inexpensive and highly effective tool known as email marketing solutions.

Rudy Barell
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/how-email-marketing-solutions-help-you-know-your-customers-1209005.html

Technology with its advent has taken a toll even in the field of marketing at last. E-mail also known as electronic mail, is now turning out as an indispensable medium of marketing on internet.

Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is spread whole and wide over the whole word. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in the country. E-mails are very techno-savvy and more effective and fast. This is the reason that we can now see e-mails developing as an indispensable media of marketing.

Over the years people and corporate houses have started realizing the advantages of e-mail marketing. It carries a lot of advantages along with it. Some of the benefits are:

a) Speed

This is the main factor as to why it is considered better and over the other Medias of marketing. E-mail It has a very high speed of information transfer. It just takes a second for the person to transfer information from his working place to the internet worldwide, where everyone can view it worldwide.

b) Reach

One another factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered a better option is because of the fact that it has a better reach to the people worldwide than the other medias of marketing. It knows no boundaries and this helps the people to continue or conduct their marketing work in larger scale. The higher reach of e-mail attracts more people towards it and thereby assists the whole marketing process.

c) Inexpensive

E-mail is comparatively much and more cheap than that of the other medias of marketing. The people do not have to incur any special or extra cost to market their product or point of view. Being inexpensive it suits the people and they thereby resort to e-mail than the other Medias.

d) Effective

It is very effective than the other medias of marketing. The reason being, that they are very techno-savvy, very fast and still pretty cost effective. This whole package makes it very cheap and pretty attractive. This is the reason that e-mail is pretty effective and thus more approachable.

e) Personalized marketing

E-mail avails the people the opportunity to avail and conduct personalized marketing. In this the people can send mails only to people whom they think that they would be interested in it. In this the mails will only be forwarded to people on whom the concern is interested.

Thus we see that why and how e-mail marketing has turned out to be an indispensable tool in marketing.

Jo Han Mok
http://www.articlesbase.com/email-articles/why-i-always-emphasize-on-email-marketing-246762.html

Email marketing programs are perfect for the plethora of niche markets that is your current client base. As an owner and operator of an outdoor adventure store or extreme sporting outlet, using the many features included in online email marketing programs will raise your profit margins by helping you stay in contact with first time buyers, converting them into “regulars”. This is especially useful at the beginning of varying sporting seasons, as well as right before certain events or sport competitions. The top-ranked online email marketing programs allow you to diversify your contact list and organize your email sending in any way, shape or form that suits your business needs.

The best email marketing programs solutions provide you with a comprehensive list manager, which allows you to segment your audiences in any way possible. You will be able to segment your audience by state, city, hobby, the sales staff they are associated with, and anything else you can think of. Any form of organization that you can dream up is possible with email marketing.

Also, the best email marketing programs offer you comprehensive data/metrics tracker free of charge. This will allow you get real time information on who has opened your emails; which one of your subscribers has clicked on the promotions or product offers within your email; and which ones have forwarded this information on to their friends. This information is key in helping you reach your audiences better. After you learn this information, you can send them exactly the promotion they are after or product/sporting good they are interested in. This feature usually comes standard with the ability to export the data, so you can use it in conjunction with the list manager to segment your audiences by their likes and interests. This way, your marketing strategy can become more focused, and therefore give you greater success within your various markets.

Timing is important when sending out your campaigns. It is crucial that you are well aware of the events that are pertinent to your customers, so that you know when to send out the email campaigns. Add in the fact that you can set up the campaigns to go out up to a year in advance, and your email marketing programs strategy is set up to deliver customers that are constantly returning to your store location. By providing newsletters for upcoming extreme sport competitions that your customers will be interested in, at intervals before the event, as well as promotions for the products they might need, you will be practically driving them back to your store yourself, and increasing your store’s value in their minds. For seasonal activities like camping and kayaking, offering end of season or pre-season discounts will also bring them flocking.

The functions of online email marketing programs software will increase your sales by helping you to directly market to your audiences, turning one-time buyers into frequent customers. As an owner and operator of outdoor an adventure store or extreme sporting outlet, you are required to cater to a variety of niche markets, and that means getting to know what they want and need. Using the list managers in conjunction with the tracking metrics offered by Email Marketing programs, and doing so in a timely manner, will increase your overall sales on a continuing basis. With greater sales comes a greater opportunity for expansion and growth. Use email marketing programs to turn your business into an extreme sport.

Rudy Barell
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/email-marketing-programs-for-the-outdoor-adventure-store-791447.html