Increasingly, ISPs offer feedback loops.  This information is invaluable, but requires a significant investment of time and effort to analyze and respond to.  This is another time when as a marketer a DIY and DIA (Do It Yourself, Do It All) attitude works against you.

It’s much wiser to let a professional email service provider handle the work for you.

Here’s what they’ll do:  when a user notifies an ISP that they consider one of your messages to be spam, your email service provider will receive a notification.  This is extremely valuable for two reasons.  The first is that they will automatically unsubscribe people who no longer want email. Spam, by definition, is ‘unwanted.’  By removing non-interested recipients from your list, your email service provider helps you take an important ‘first step’ towards maintaining your reputation as a legitimate marketer.

Now imagine doing all this work yourself on a regularly basis.  It is far better for you to focus on your professional strengths and let your email service provider shoulder the burden for this task.  Not all companies tap into the feedback loops.  Be sure that when you hire a professional email company, ISP feedback is on their list of services.

Your subscription box does not have to be front and center on your home page, but it should be in a prominent spot.  The human eye is naturally drawn to the left top side of a webs page, so that is an ideal place to put a small box with a banner that says, ‘Download this eye-opening report’ or ‘Subscribe to our monthly teleseminar or ‘Fill in your contact information to receive weekly discounts.’

Another option is to have a pop-under that appears before they leave, asking if they would like to subscribe to your quality content. Pop-under windows are less intrusive than the pop-up windows and are believed to be even more effective.  Pop-up windows  load over your web page and must be addressed immediately by your site visitor.  Pop-under windows quietly load under your web page. Visitors won’t be exposed to the pop-under window and message until they’re finished at your site and close the window.

There’s safety in numbers.  Be sure that every page of your web site has a link visitors can click if they wish to become an opt-in subscriber.  This is an important ‘back up’ to the message on your home page.  A visitor could plan to opt-in for your newsletter or free report, but then forget about the offer while clicking on other site pages.

A small, attractive link or opt-in box on each page will help your mailing list grow exponentially…along with your sales.

• “When you hire a babysitter from the Widget Employment Agency, you get a nanny, a housekeeper, AND an accomplished cook for one low daily rate.”

• “Purchase a 3-piece Widget Weekender Set and we’ll include an overnight bag, luggage tags AND a leather passport case.  All YOU need to bring is your tickets!”

Sometimes people are looking for a magic pill to do everything.  Other times what they want is a magic pill that will do one thing NOW.  Alka-Seltzer, for example, promises instantaneous relief for heartburn sufferers while NetFlicks offers movies when you want them without going to the store.

If you can’t promise instant results with your product, then offer fast results. For example:  “When you order online, we’ll ship your Widget Herb Garden to you via overnight mail so you can have a rosemary, basil, and oregano in time for Sunday dinner.”

There’s a flipside to this strategy…a reverse psycholgical tactic:  admit to your customer that there is no magic pill:

“Dear Friend, I’m sorry to say there’s no magic pill for repairing bad credit after bankruptcy.  You can’t just read my book and expect the banks to welcome you again with open arms. “But you CAN expect to get the tools you need to take the steps you MUST in order to…”

Get the picture?

As in-boxes fill up with more and more garbage, it’s becoming common for people to simply overlook wanted mail and inadvertently delete it or market it as spam. This happens frequently.  Studies conducted by ReturnPath and Mail.com show that opt-in subscriptions are erroneously blocked as spam at rates of 17% to 38%.  In other words, more than one in three of your messages may never reach their intended targets, even if the intended recipient is very interested in receiving your message, even if their life (or livelihood) depends upon receiving that message.

Unless you take precautions, your carefully crafted email message will find itself dumped into a ‘junk’ folder where it will be ignored and ultimately deleted along with sham offers and bogus ‘you may have already won’ notifications.

So it’s easy to see that if your recipients have their email client’s preview pane turned on — and most do — what is displayed there is just as important as the subject line. If the top of your email marketing message, the part that is most likely to be shown in the preview pane, is well designed, you can build on the interest built with the Subject or even reverse the recipient’s decision to delete your message.

The preview pane should be filled with the unique selling point of your campaign, with your most intriguing benefit or your best offer instead.  A key error many marketers make is to place unsubscribe instructions, unnecessary and long introductory copy, disclaimers, etc. at the top of their message.  These elements should be moved down the page, possibly to the bottom of the message, but at least out of the typical preview pane.