Last week I sent out two emails to my main list (if you haven’t subscribed, use the box on the right to join) on how to get better email deliverability. I thought I would post those same tips here on my blog for the benefit of people who might have missed it.

Email service providers are getting more rigid with rules and getting into the inbox of your prospects and customers is getting more difficult each day.

Here is a short list of tips that will help with getting better deliverability.

1. If your email messages are going to the spam folder, encourage your readers to click the “Not Spam” button to get back into the inbox (in fact, if you are seeing this very email in your spam folder, please click “not spam”).

2. Ask your readers to mark your messages as important for better deliverability.

3. Remove subscribers who are not opening your messages after a long period of time (i.e. one year).

4. Ask readers to reply to your initial emails so that email providers see a “conversation” occurring (conversations don’t look like spam)… heck even reply to this email to help me out. 😉

5. Add an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) to your domain records for better deliverability.

6. Use curiousity laden subject lines to get better open rates (opens indicate engagement).

7. Ask subscribers to white-list your email address by adding it to their contact list.

8. Ask readers to unsubscribe if they are no longer interested in receiving your emails. Seriously. Why keep people on your list if they are not interested in engaging with your emails? Not interested in hearing from me anymore, hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.

9. Reach prospects using other communication channels. When your readers are seeing you via multiple channels, they are more likely to open your emails. So go ahead and join me on Facebook 😛 http://facebook.com/gauherchaudhry

10. Use an email service provider that has excellent deliverability rates. If you’re using a cheapo service, or worse, your own IP, you’ll have deliverability issues.

11. Make sure your domain is not on any blacklists. This can hurt your deliverability if you have links in your emails using a blacklisted domain.

12. Avoid using generic style email address such as admin@ or support@ addresses in your from field.

13. Don’t over do it using images in your emails. Too many images can trigger spam filters on all the major email providers.

14. Ask readers to “turn on” images if you’re sending images in your email messages. It might not help deliverability, but it will give you and your email provider more accurate open rates.

Hope these help.

Gauher

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by legendary Internet marketer Ken McCarthy on the topic of marketing in the trenches. We talked about the state of Internet marketing and the upcoming Digital Sumo 2016 Live Event.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Feel free to leave your comments below.

The number one rule of marketing online is to make sure you’re measuring your numbers. You simply can’t manage what you’re not measuring. Please watch the video below to see how we track almost every single one of our email marketing funnels. Make the video full screen for the full effect.

Click here to download the spreadsheet

Thanks
Gauher

One of the best methods for driving sales (especially for high-ticket items) is the use of live webinars.

Not only do they allow you to demonstrate your products or services, present your engaging content, they also help facilitate trust with your attendees.

For the longest time, marketers were using teleconferences to sell their products and services before webinars changed the game.

When I first started using webinars almost a decade ago, it was very easy to get registrants and webinar show up rates of close to 80% weren’t uncommon.

But that was then and this now.

Things have changed dramatically and with cheap alternatives and autowebinar software scripts selling like hot-cakes, almost everyone and their grandma is running a webinar.

Your prospect only has so much time in the day and with plenty of webinars to choose from, you’re just another voice shouting in the crowd for their attention.

Once you get past the struggle of getting their attention and then getting them to register, you are now left with the difficult task of getting them to actually show up.

A decent show up rate to a webinar these days is roughly 20%. If you are getting a show-up rate higher then this, you are doing great.

Does this mean that webinars are dead?

Hardly.

But the game has changed and marketers who start creating a more sophisticated webinar funnel will definitely see way more success then those who don’t.

I’m referring to the:

1. Post-Webinar sequence (traffic, ads, pitch page, self-liquidating offer, post webinar emails, etc.)

2. Webinar sequence (presentation, content, story-telling and close)

3. Post-Webinar sequence (replay, follow-up emails, close emails, retargeting, etc.)

4. Automated-Webinar sequence (technology, script, etc.)

There are a lot more moving pieces to a successful webinar then there were years ago.

Your audience is more sophisticated now and by incorporating more of the crucial pieces to the entire sequence, it’s still quite possible to make six-figures on a single live webinar.

What’s your opinion on webinars? Over-used? Over-hyped? Too many?

Share your comments.

As the internet changes and evolves, do you ever ask yourself why certain sites succeed while others fail?

Obviously, sites in business that get sales prevail while sites with lack of sales fail.

Of course that’s a broad over-simplification but here’s a revealing fact to the initial question:

Website reviews and testimonials are driving top sales online because of this one thing…

TRUST.

Yes, sites with trust are succeeding at much higher rates than sites that lack important credibility factors. 

So you could say, trust plus good reviews brings sales but let me back that up with a good example you can easily relate to.

From early on, Amazon.com has crystallized a measurable trust mechanism for their site visitors. A system where people can gauge purchase decisions, based on real buyer feedback of previous customers and their opinions.

When Amazon delivered this platform, it became the standard of the internet as a legitimate trustworthy product review system.

Again, trust plus good reviews brings sales and many happy customers too. While Amazon for sure knows what they’re doing to create unparalleled success, we can all take a lesson from them.

Looking further, they pioneered their platform into a dynamic system that drives a constant flow of new incoming product reviews.

But here’s the real secret behind this that makes it tick…

They delivered a powerful psychological “brain hack” that transfers-over to site visitors extremely well in qualifying credibility that went viral.

What is it?

Social Proof.

Yes, social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials is what has made Amazon soar in credibility when they began growing and amassing product testimonials and reviews.

This review delivery system is responsible for building an unstoppable online business model that can boost any online business.

However, to have this level of sophistication powering reviews has only been available to high-level sites leaving millions of smaller sites in the dust with much less credibility reach.

Let me clarify that I’m not talking about random, unofficial, or unverified reviews which no one pays attention to these days.

In this post I’m referring to verified reviews and testimonials that breed real trust on the same level as the huge sites that attract big sales by showing them.

And that’s why I wanted to share this important information here with my readers.

Because what I want to tell you about is how small business sites can now start to benefit from a new upper-echelon powered testimonial platform. And it’s one that works on the same line of the big leagues – but with a twist.

In fact, there hasn’t been anything else like it available with such ground-level access which is why I feel this is great news for small business websites.

Developed by a credible online marketer and good friend, Brad Callen, ReviewTrust was created to bridge this gap in the marketplace.

So how does it work?

What Brad Callen’s team was able to do was boil it down to one, single strip of code you add to your site. Once implemented, ReviewTrust will start to auto-gather testimonials and populate your site with trust and credibility as sales come in.

Now here’s the twist… Each of your customers will receive a follow-up gift incentive that you designate and this has been shown to spark reviews based on your product’s acceptance and likability.

This extra buyer-incentive really drives customers to respond and the platform takes over from there.  You never have to lift a finger to contact people to beg for reviews ever.

They just flow in and your site grows with social proof in the form of, verified product testimonials.

Auto-building your business with credibility like this is an attractive feature harnessing the power of real review trust from your customers.

It for sure raises the credibility bar as it’s the kind that can vastly improve sales conversions for products and services alike.

They tested 4 businesses in 4 niches to track the effectiveness of this new software platform and the results were nothing less than astounding.

I was impressed to see how they did this and were able to hit as high as 156.4% sales increase in their top conversion statistics.

From each site they tested they were able to jump-start conversion rates where there were less sales and boost the conversion rates on sites that were already getting sales.

Another impressive point is they didn’t change or add any sales copy, redo any site designing or even add any new traffic to get the results.

I think the reason this works so well is because it passes along a level of credibility that buyer-radar is always looking for.

People want credible verification now more than ever before they decide to buy products online, which is why social proof in product reviews is so important.

And this is where ReviewTrust offers a break-through solution allowing you to collect and display real verified testimonials on a much higher level than ever before now accessible to small online businesses.

If you want to get more information, click here to check out ReviewTrust.

Comments?

Gauher Chaudhry