Last week I was visiting my Mom back in my home country
of Costa Rica. I now have a new level of respect for folks
who are successfully marketing from countries outside
of the “main stream”.

I sent out an email to you all (my email list subscribers)
and I received a 0.12% spam complaints according to Aweber.

Meaning a few folks hit the spam button vs. just hitting
the unsubscribe button.

That happens from time to time but never that high. So I
was thinking why and here is what I came up with and what
I’m doing to avoid it.

1. Costa Rica IP Address – This was a pain when I was trying
to access my accounts, get an affiliate link, etc.

Yes, making money online can be tough but if you’re in a
country other than the USA, UK, Canada, etc., it’s even
tougher! I have IM friends in Singapore, Pakistan, and India
and my hats go off to them.

If you’re in a country like the USA, you do have an advantage
so get to it.

If someone can make it in Pakistan where
they can’t even sign up for PayPal, your roadblocks in the
USA or Canada are nothing compared to the hoops they have
to go through.

2. iPad follies. I love my iPad. Maybe a little too much.
I was too lazy to whip out my laptop so I composed my email
using my iPad… well the Aweber HTML editor thingy didn’t
work very well generating a butt-ugly, spammy-looking email.

I did test it and I decided, well, it’s not too bad. It was.
It looked horrible.

It looked spammy so people hit the spam button. I should have either just used my laptop vs. iPad or just used the text only version inside of Aweber
when using the iPad.

3. URL shortners. Ah, when will I learn? Practice what you
preach should also apply here.

I didn’t heed my own advice AGAINST using URL shortners, you know, like Tiny URL.

They are conversion killers. And worse, a lot of them now
put up warning signs that you might be a spammer or a
scammer (seriously).

I was in a rush and I wanted to get my email out and let
my subscribers know about Rosalind Gardner’s special offer for
the Super Affiliate Handbook (a classic).

So I just used Google’s URL shortner service: http://goo.gl/

I do use it for Twitter but big mistake using it for
shortening long affiliate links.

Once my email went out and people clicked on it, not only
did they see a warning page, worse, Google told them the
link looked dangerous, scammy, so they disabled it!

Ouch. I suspect it was the Costa Rica IP address and the fact
the affiliate link was to an eBook sold on ClickBank that
was the double whammy for them to not just disable it
but to warn folks that I might be a scammer.

Here is a screenshot of the”warning” they got:

Ouch, again.

Avoid using URL shortners like the plague! Only on Twitter
and still be careful.

So there you have it. My little adventure trying to do
send a promotional email from Costa Rica.

I’m off to lick my wounds and recover.

We’ve all received those “oops” emails and if you’ve been in this business long enough to be a little (or a lot) jaded, you probably thought BS. They’re just doing that to sneak a second email by me. That does happen. It is a known strategy. I’ve never done it nor would I lie to my list like that so when it happens to me, I struggle with should I send the “oops” follow up email or not.

This just happened to me this week. I sent out an email promoting Marlon Sander’s “Marketing Dashboard” and I messed up the affiliate link. Yea, of all the things to screw up.

I received two email from subscribers about it, which is cool. But one was snarky, the tone being “how dare you be so lazy that you didn’t even bother to hyperlink the link – do you expect ME to copy and paste the link onto my browser”. Relax dude, I just messed up.

Anyway, I fixed the links and re-sent the email. But then I almost made a second mistake!

My mistake was simple but sales killer so I figured I would share it with you.

One simple but invisible space character caused this:

When I copied and pasted my affiliate link, I over shot my cursor by one space, creating a blank space. Aweber’s editor doesn’t like blank spaces and most HTML editors do this as well, so they added a special character to fill in the space. In this case it was “%20“. And that’s all it took to kill my link.

The end result was a dead link that took my subscriber here:

Therefore Aweber’s HTML editor added a character for the blank space changing the link from this:

http://www.getyoursales.com?p=alanp&w=3997

To this:

http://www.getyoursales.com?p=alanp&w=3997%20

That little blank space can be a little bugger if you’re not careful!

I always test my promotional emails out before queuing them up but that little space I missed. Luckly I clicked on the links to arrive at the 404-Error page and realized I must have messed up again. That’s when I discovered the trailing space mistake.

It avoided me sending an “oops” email with another “oops” email.

Always make sure you test your emails going out to your list. I’ve been doing this along time and I messed up so you can’t get in autopilot mode. Subscribers have little patience for these type of mistakes. Even if they don’t unsubscribe they won’t go further if you send them a dead link or a messed up link sending them to a 404-error page so you probably lost the sale opportunity for that campaign.

Nothing like killing a sale due an blank space character. Email formatting mistakes will cost you money so be triple careful and check, check, check before sending out that email.

I’ve written many posts and sent out many emails about the importance of list building but I just realized I haven’t really talked to you about what to do with that list you’ve been working so hard to build.

Although there has been a lot of chatter about how social media like Twitter and Facebook will be the final death blow to email marketing, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But there is another more looming factor that can kill your email marketing campaigns and it’s not Twitter, it’s YOU.

Do you continuously send out emails and it feels like no one is home? Sometimes it seems like you’re talking at a brick wall because you get no responses. You feel like your emails are not getting read. In fact, you have a low “open” rate and you wonder why you even bother sending emails. Is the problem you or them? More than likely it’s the way you’re marketing to your list. Take a look at these email mistakes and see if you’re making any of them.

1. Hello {!firstname} (the actual name goes here, not the word firstname.)
I’m sure you’ve received an email addressed that way. Yes, mistakes can happened but this never looks good. It means you’re too busy to test or you’re not sure what you’re doing. Always test your emails and send them to yourself first. I use Aweber to manage my email list and they make it so easy to send yourself a test email. Check them with an eagle eye and catch errors like the above plus an blatant grammatical errors. Be a professional email marketer.

2. Free, eliminate debt, offer, bonus, discount, won, deal, money, sign up now, guaranteed, work from home…
These are considered spam words or phrases and will likely get your email rerouted to the subscriber’s spam trap by their email provider. Most folks use third party email services like Gmail and Yahoo which have very aggressive spam filters (Yahoo especially). Get a list of current spam words with a quick Internet search (just Google “spam words”). Be creative and find other words to say what you want to say that aren’t considered spam.

3. “You Can Make $20,000 in 30 days!!”
Think of your email subject line like the headline for your sales letter. It’s very important and you need to want your reader to learn more about what you’re offering and you can only accomplish this if your subject line compels your reader to continue on to your actual email message. Your email subject line has to be believable. With so many emails to open every day, this sort of subject line will help people decide they definitely don’t want to open your email. Your emails need to build your credibility as someone who is trustworthy. Don’t destroy it by using subject lines and content that are unbelievable.

4. Long emails with huge paragraphs.
People are short on time and in a hurry. They don’t want to read long emails with big boring paragraphs. Remember, it’s about them, not you. Make your emails entertaining and short, and get to the point. Chop long paragraphs into small paragraphs to add white space and make it easier to read. If you make your email easier to read, the odds are better that they’ll actually read it and see your call to action.

5. Make every single email a product promotion.
People opted into your list to receive valuable information that you’ve promised to deliver via email. If your emails only contain promotion after promotion, they’ll stop reading your emails. They might not opt out right away, but that’s the next step. Of course you want to promote to your list, but not all the time. Send helpful info, free reports, etc. and they’re more likely to open and read your emails. Remember, people open emails with a “What’s In It For Me?” frame of mind.

Take some time and analyze what you’ve been sending out to your list of subscribers. A list, preferably a big list, can be the bread and butter for an Internet marketer. But you have to send quality emails or your emails won’t even be opened, let alone read. Focus on building a relationship not just a large list. I’ll take a small list of 1,000 subscribers that are responsive and actually enjoy receiving my emails than a list of 10,000 subscribers who don’t even bother to open my emails.

Remember the golden rule of email marketing: make your emails something you’d be happy to receive yourself.

For the past two years I’ve used one Gmail email address when I sign up to email lists, so I was bit surprised when my friend Scott Drake told me my email bounced back to him when he sent out an email for his most excellent upcoming giveaway: Memorial Day Giveaway (side note: you still have time to sign up as a contributor).

I went to check it out and sure thing the addy is dead as disco. I get this error message:

Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 The email account that you tried to reach is disabled

Not sure what’s going on and Google’s Gmail support isn’t very good so I have no clue what is going on. I use one main Gmail account (which still works fine) then I have the other Gmail addresses forwarded to my main Gmail account. So I actually haven’t logged into that newsletter email addy in a couple years since I just get the emails forwarded to my main account. So not sure if that’s part of the problem.

So now basically, I’ve been unsubscribed from many Internet marketing lists in one swoop. The funny things is that I’ve always meant to spend time cleaning up my email subscriptions and opt-out of crappy ones, etc. but never got around to it (aside from one at a time unsubscriptions to really bad lists). That’s now a moot point since Gmail has forced my hand to do some spring cleaning of my email list subscriptions.

At first I was bit freaked out but then a calming force came over me. I’m basically starting new. A lot of folks don’t bother building a relationship with their mailing list instead they just flog product after product anyway so how can that be a loss to me?

I used to think it was so important to see what everyone was mailing so I could learn from them but, since most Internet marketers send the same stuff using the same old tired lines it’s not that big of a learning tool as I thought.

As I made an inventory of lists I definitely will rush out to re-opt in, I only came up with around 10. Wow, only 10 out of the probably 50-100 lists I was on. Maybe even more.

This has really made me think. If this happened to one of my subscribers would they rush out to re-subscribe to my list with a new email address  or would they not even bother?

When I thought of the reason why I’m running out to re-subscribe to certain people’s lists vs. not giving a damn on the other ones–it comes down to a simple reason: value. Marketers like Lee McIntyre, Lynn Terry, Jim Cockrum, John Thornhill, and others. Their emails provide quality information and that is of great value to me. They provide free quality information that is worth more money than the stuff the others are flogging for $17, $27, $97 a pop.

Their promotions are always well researched and reviewed. Not just “hey buy this because I tell you and I’ll get a commission. I know that if I’m buying something they promote it will be a quality product.

That all adds up to value for me. And as a subscriber it’s important that I’m seeing a two way street. I’m getting valuable information/prodcuts you get a commisson or sale of your own products. That’s a win-win.

That is the email list I strive to run myself. Every time I send out an email to my list I’m going to think back to this day and I’ll ask myself: If this persons email address would suddenly die would they run out to re-subscribe to my list with a new email address? Or would they not even care/notice?