Hello.... If only that's all we had to write in an email to capture someone's attention.

I use email marketing everyday and so does everyone else, it seems. I know this because I appear to be on all their lists. I get thousands of unwanted emails daily, and I'm assuming everyone else gets them, too, because no one seems to pay that much attention to them anymore.

Occasionally, I do take the time to browse the headlines, mostly to get ideas, but I'm finding it harder and harder to stand out in that overcrowded field.

At one point - before I knew better - I joined an email blasting program. I could email over 1 million people daily in over 2,700 safelists. (And for those who don't know what safelists are, they are groups of people who have joined or "opted in" and agreed to receive emails in exchange for sending their own). However, in return for sending out those 1 million emails, I had to agree to receive, as well. In fact, I received so much email that I had to have a new email system (not free) to handle the volume - around 10,000 messages a day. It came equipped with its own email "potty". Every night at midnight, it automatically dumped all the messages (unread) in my inbox so I would never bounce emails because of a full box. I participated in this for a while with absolutely no success. Then it dawned on me that everyone else was doing the same thing (duh). We were all in this perpetual circle of sending and deleting email. My guess is that no one made money except the companies involved.

What I didn't know at the time was that there are two types of emails sent out to safelist members. One is a "credit" email that the recipient can read and receive credits. These credits will then be used to send out their own emails. The other type is a "standard" email that all the safelist members can use to send emails each day for free But there is no credit given for reading these, therefore, no one does. All the safelists in this email blaster were joined on my behalf as a free member and all the emails sent out were standard or non-credit emails. If only I had known this, I wouldn't have wasted my time on activities that don't produce results.

This is good information for the regular safelist users, as well. The credit mailers are the most read, of course, but I have found that you can get members to read the standard mailers if you are giving away something for free. I use this mailer to get people to give me their names and email information in exchange for something free. That's the only useful purpose I've personally found for the standard mailers.

Despite the fact that email marketing is difficult, it does work sometimes, but there is something better and you are reading this article because of it.  It's called Google Gadgets and I learned about it from a company called My Traffic Strategy.  It's a great alternative to email marketing!  Enjoy.

Susan Kimbrell
Work From Home Online