Criteria such as Job Title, Business, Sports, Hobbies and so on are searched by keyword - so you need to carefully select the key words to search on. The more help you give us here the better. Think of every keyword that might describe the people you want on your list.

It may be that one of our standard lists fit what you need (they are based on the most likely and popular selections), however, if your requirement is non-standard, ask us how many names we have that fit your criteria before placing your order. If it is not enough - you may want to modify the criteria!

List selection is important as is testing different lists to see if your criteria are correct - and using the results to fine tune your picture of your typical customer.

Writing your email

A well written email can make the difference between an average response and an excellent response - so it is worth taking a little time to get it right.

Normally the Subject line would be the most important part of your email - as it is effectively your headline - however, a mailing with HTMail makes this slightly different. All HTMail subject lines begin with the line 'HTMail paid ad -' followed by your subject. This increases the readership significantly and ensures that your carefully written email does not get immediately consigned to the recycle bin.

However, the subject line is still important - a good headline following the 'HTMail paid ad -' can make a significant difference to response levels. The first line of body text in your email can also be very important, and you might consider using it as a headline in itself.

All emails that we send are personalised to the individual member, so you don't need to use any form of honorific at the start of your email text.

The layout of the email will be as shown below:

Subject Line: HTMail paid ad - Your subject text

Hi John,

The first line of your text starts here...

Your body text is here - make sure that you include the page address that you want visitors to go to! This text can be as long, or as short as you want - and (within reason) can say whatever you wish.

==============================================
Advertisers email: Your email address
Advertisers URL: Your (modified)URL
==============================================

This is a paid ad from HTMail.

HTMail code number below.

<HTMail>
K61TF5

This mailing was sent on (Date of mailing) and expires 10 days from that date.

Summary of Mailings for:
John Doe
Paid mailings sent 10
Paid email codes returned 6
Paid web page codes returned 4

The amount that we owe to you for these returned codes is $1.12

PLEASE NOTE: These figures may not include the most recent mailings.
If you disagree with these figures please let us know. However, please note that if a code is returned incorrectly or an email address cannot be recognised, our software cannot credit you.

TO UNSUBSCRIBE -
Send an email to info@htmail.com with the word RESIGN in the subject. Please mention the registered email address (i.e. the address at which you received this mailing) in the body text of the email. Thank you.

FOR INFORMATION ON RETURNING YOUR CODES -
Visit http://www.htmail.com/meminf.html

(The final section shown above provides information that the member needs to know, and covers such things as unsubscribing from the list.)

Assuming that you have decided that the purpose of your email is to interest the recipient in visiting your web site, what should you write?

The most important part of selling on the net is gaining trust. That should be your aim in both your email, and on your web site. If you sound like a scam, you will be treated like a scam.

Some of the highest responses that I have seen to email ads have come to those that adopt a personal approach, where the advertiser puts their own name up front - and talks to the reader as a friend - this can really work well if you have the skill to write well in this way. I believe that this is because these ads do gain trust quickly by making the writer more real.

A few general points on writing your email ad:

• Sell the benefit of visiting your site. What will they find out? What can they gain by visiting?
• Picture your customer - who are they? how old? where do they live? Then write to that one person!
• Gain your visitors trust - Your claims should be believable. Write factually, and tell the truth. Make sure your site looks professional.
• Don't tell the whole story in the first line! If your headline tells them the core of what's on offer - will anyone bother to read the detail that makes the offer exciting? Write an enticing first line not a summary.
• Your first sentence should be short. Don't tax your reader early on.
• Keep paragraphs short - long solid blocks of text will not get read.
• Focus your email. Don't ramble.
• Test, Test, Test!

One thing that should be thought about now rather than later is follow up. It is very likely that your mailing will generate enquiries for further information on your product or service. Do you have anything to send them? Prepare the text now. Have an email follow up ready in advance - it will make things easier later.

When preparing this follow up email remember that you are writing to someone who probably did not buy your product but was interested enough to give you their email address! You may want to include a simple survey in your response email to find out why?

OK, your email is written, follow up prepared - so now you are ready to place your order and send your mailing right? Well... probably not...

I keep saying 'Test, Test, Test'. Well now is the time to look at how we might test.

Testing

First test - Have someone else (or a number of someone else's) read your mailing, your response letter, and check over your web site. Make sure everything is as good as it can be before you mail.

Secondly - Write one or two alternative headline and first line combinations for your mailing.

Thirdly - Place two or three separate orders with HTMail using each of the three combinations - but initially to the same list specification (we can ensure that the mailings go to different people each time).

You may want to make copies of your target page, and target each separate mailing to a different page. That way you can use your own on-site logs to check the number of visitors (the hits on the page will normally be higher than the number we report - because ours take no account of people returning to your page). There are other advantages to using copy pages - (1) It means that our code link is not on your main public page (this may or may not be important to you). (2) You can test different versions of your web page.

These test orders should probably be limited to 50-100 people each time (smaller than 50 is unlikely to give results which are statistically accurate, 100 is better). We deliberately have no minimum order size to facilitate exactly this type of testing.

Study the reports on these mailings (the final report will be emailed to you after 10 days).

From the reports you should:

• Address the 'liked least' comments from your visitors - make any necessary changes.
• Take note of the 'liked best' comments - can you make it even better?
• Note any demographic trends from the report. Is your site much more popular with young people or males? If so, maybe you should adjust your list specification to maximize response.
• Note which of your mailings performs best. Select that headline.
• Follow up on any email addresses provided by members. Can you get any useful feedback?

Sending your mailing

When you send a mailing with HTMail the page address(es) in your ad will be modified slightly. This modification serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides the mechanism used to record click throughs to your page, and secondly, provides the response mechanism that our members use to give us their comments on your page ( take a look at how it works ).

Your mailing is normally sent within 24 hours of ordering, but be aware that we are based in the UK and work on Greenwich Mean Time - so there may be unusual delays!

The immediate response to your mailing will depend on the time zones of the recipients. Midday or early evening for the recipients will usually gain the fastest response.

You will normally get a few visitors immediately (within minutes of the mailing). These numbers will grow to a peak normally during the first 24 hours (sometimes 48 hours). After that there will be a decline - with a trickle continuing to come in right up to the 10 day limit. Be aware that on a large mailing lower capacity servers can be severely tested at peak (some advertisers have split up large mailings to allow for this).

It is important to ensure that the pages remain accessible for the full 10 days - otherwise we get complaints from members!

You can measure response to your mailing minute by minute with your on-line log (You don't have one? We can recommend various methods... just ask). In addition we provide online feedback and click through reports - so you can make changes to your page in response to comments during your mailing.

At the end of 10 days - we send your reports.

Reports

You can see a sample of our current reports if you wish. The full report is sent to you by email after your mailing as an HTML page.

The first report looks at the demographics of the list mailed - and compares it to the demographics of the list members that responded and visited your site. If there is a difference between the two of 5% or more it is probably significant (i.e. if 60% of the list mailed were female - but 65% of the respondents were female - then this is probably significant).

There are two things you can do about this - (1) Send your next mailing of the same email to an all female list - for a better overall response or (2) find out why the wording in your email was uninteresting to males!

The second report provides the members actual responses to your site. This includes their comments, and is probably the most helpful part of the response (if you want to know how to improve your business ask your customers.

The third part of the report provides the email addresses of those members who want either further information - or updates. These are the ones that need following up with your ready prepared text!

Aftermath

So your mailing is over, you've taken your orders, analysed your reports, followed up on the email addresses. Now what?

Well, even if the results exceed your expectations - they can still get better. You have now established the standard to beat (whether good or bad). Now we go back to testing!

You should have learned a lot about how people view your site and your products. Make use of that knowledge, with relevant changes to your product, pricing, web site and so on.

Next decide how to proceed.

From the response, and the reports - is the customer profile that you are mailing correct? If so, the first thing to consider is mailing exactly the same list again. It is common for people to say "liked the site, I'll be back", how often have you done the same yourself? And how often have you forgotten to go back - despite genuinely liking the site? If the general comments and response are good - why not try the same list again? It also provides an interesting opportunity to test within that list. Could you get a better response - or pull in some of the members mailed that did not visit - if you change the text of the email?

If the second mailing is also succesful - keep mailing until it ceases to be so!

Once you have fine tuned your mailing to the point that it is profitable - the only thing to do is mail more people! If you are fairly certain that a mailing now makes money - the more you mail the better. You may need to reconsider the list specification that you mail, and perhaps that will entail a further round of testing (really you should never stop testing). You will also eventually exhaust our lists. We have, however, provided you with some useful links to our competitors - and the fine tuning that you have achieved with us should help you to gain far better results when you use them! (By the way - if any of our competitors offer something better than us - we would love to know. We are never unwilling to learn how to improve.)

Achieving success with your Internet business is not easy when you don't have unlimited funds. It does take determination, and a willingness to try different things - but it can be done.

Our purpose is to help you to achieve that success.

Dave Broadway
January 2000

Copyright (c) HTMail Ltd 2000 http://www.htmail.com all rights reserved. You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include this copyright notice and links in full.

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