Recommended Email Marketing Resources

I get a lot of emails from people who want suggestions or recommendations on what tools or services to use in their email marketing. My recommended favorites are listed below

Also be sure to visit my page detailing my recommended list building tools

ARP Dedicated Hosting gives you the chance to have your own dedicated autoresponder that you control. With your own setup, you don't have to worry about restrictions on importing leads, or being required to send confirmation emails every time you import a list. You get your own copy of AutoResponsePlus installed on an optimized server, and scalable pricing so that your costs grow only as the size of your list does. This is one solution that many of my high volume clients use.

AutoResponsePlus For a solution that you upload and host on your own server, there is nothing else like ARP, which has every imaginable feature. As your email marketing business grows, you should seriously consider using a dedicated server with ARP installed. All of your initial mailings then take place from that URL. With your own server or VPS, this is a great choice for emailing to coreg leads. This is the top choice for many of my high volume clients.

Aweber is the hosted autoresponder solution used by many professionals. Founder Tom Kulzer is said to be the "father" of the sequential autoresponder. You subscribe on a monthly or annual basis, and all of your automated emailing needs are covered in one place. They have excellent relationships with the major ISPs, which ensures the highest possible delivery rates for email originating from their domain. They do *not*, however, allow you to upload purchased lists. Lots of people nonetheless like to run their double opt-in "warm" lists here.

BestBizCart Personally, I think this is the Cadillac of shopping cart software, and we also offer an "autoresponder only" account. You can upload 35% of your database capacity per day, and choose from one of eight opt-in confirmation messages, or use your own "custom" version (subject to admin approval).
BBC is my own "private label" autoresponder and shopping cart service.

GetResponse is the other "industrial strength" hosted autoresponder service. I have used Get Response Pro for quite some time, and been very pleased. Your account is heavily customizable, and their excellent relationship with major ISPs ensures a very high delivery rate for your email. They have recently introduced RSS publication of your autoresponder series and broadcasts, which promises to be a valuable tool. They have strict limitations on uploading of lists, though, and insist that you send out a confirmation email before your uploaded leads are added to your autoresponder series or mailing list. A great place to run a double opt-in "warm" list, however.

AdMinder gives you sophisticated ad tracking and results analysis at a very modest monthly fee. Without tracking and testing, you can't know which of your methods of advertising is effective. AdMinder can pretty much track any link that can be clicked. You send the links from your web page, email, banner, or PPC ad through a special URL that invisibly forwards them to the desired page, while keeping a record of the clicks. You can then compare one email series or ad against another, and "fine tune" your campaigns. This is an invaluable resource!

Ad Watcher is another terrific click tracking service, also available at a monthly fee. The package includes a sophisticated routine for detecting and alerting you to any possible "click fraud" related to your PPC advertising. It even warns people who are clicking your PPC links too often that they have been detected and that their activity is being monitored. Also does all the standard click-tracking functions, and keeps everything neatly organized for you so you can really zero in on which of your ads, banners, and campaigns are producing the best return on investment.

Clickalyzer is a tracking solution that you implement by putting one line of code on your own web site. Track and split-test nearly everything, including being able to track sales from affiliate links without the merchant needing to do anything. Analyze results on your own web site, and the results of your email and PPC campaigns. Improve your results by knowing what works and what does not, and cut out needless expense on campaigns that do not produce profits.

Delivery Monitor is a monthly service that helps you track the delivery of your emails to all the major ISPs. You can see whether specific ISPs are blocking your emails, or whether specific emails are getting blocked across the board. A wide variety of statistics are available to help you track your delivery, as well as zero in on what you need to do to improve it. Delivery monitoring should more than pay for itself. You can't make any sales if people do not get your message! You owe it to yourself to learn how your email sender reputation affects you.

The main drawback to these desktop mailers is limitations your ISP may place on your mail volume, and the fact you will be mailing from a shared IP address, which means you can't get "whitelisted" or take advantage of other "sender reputation" services that maximize email deliverability.

Group Mail is software that acts very much like an autoresponder, but resides on your desktop. You can email either through your own ISP, if they will allow it, or through a dedicated email server, depending on the size of your list, and frequency of mailing.

Mailoop is another desktop autoresponder and email publishing application. This is the product that Corey Rudl had developed, and used to distribute newsletters and mini-courses that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for him. It is designed to handle large lists, and completely automate your list management, as well as your subscription, unsubscription and scheduled mailing chores.

World Merge is the desktop mailer that many email marketing professionals consider the "cadillac" of such programs. It allows you to send personalized email messages at rates of up to 8000 per hour, and reads your database directly from many popular formats, as well as handling many of your list maintenance chores.

Advanced Email Marketing System Course is a compilation of 12 CDs (you get both the CDs and immediate access to an online version) that takes you step by step through Basic to Advanced email marketing techniques, including the "stealth loop system" that author Dave Vallieres uses to pull in monster profits even from a small list. He gives you the whole system in clear, easy-to-follow action steps.

Email Profit Formula is my own ebook that I give to Nitro List Builder clients to help get them off on the right foot in their email marketing. I also sell it separately at its own website, for those who may wish to learn before they invest in an opt-in mailing list. The book outlines what I call the "targeted direct email marketing" method for getting the most out of any mailing list. This method is the same used by many of the top producers in email marketing.

Email Secrets Explained is an 8 hour audio course from legendary marketer Jimmy D. Brown. He "spilled his guts" on these audios, revealing over 20 of his closely-guarded list-building tactics, and dozens of tips on how to get the most from any subscriber list. He shows you how to use e-courses, newsletters, and mailing lists to squeeze every bit of profit that you can from every email. Jimmy bills this as a "home study course", but it is more than that - it's like having an 8 hour private interview with a master of email marketing technique.

Insider Secrets to Email Marketing is the late Corey Rudl's excellent ebook in which he reveals many of the email marketing strategies that helped make him an internet marketing legend. He intended this to be a relatively advanced course, but the first few chapters provide a nice review of the basics for those who are already experienced, and a great introduction to email marketing for those who are total beginners. Regardless of your level of expertise, you are likely to learn something valuable here!

Pipeline Profits is a new video course that shows you step by step how to buy coregistration leads and then send them through your own pipeline for maximum profit. The developers of this course use the method to sell their own physical products, but it works just as well if you market as an affiliate, and sell either physical or digital products. They show you their mistakes as well as their successes, and give you samples taken straight from their own businesses and email marketing campaigns.

Article Underground is a huge bargain, but memberships are strictly limited. You get 400 PLR articles per month, each written around a carefully selected keyword phrase by a professional ghost writer. There are frequent video seminars on all aspects of online marketing, and a very active members forum. Best of all, you gain access to the "traffic secret weapon" - their network of 22 article announcement blogs, which give you backlinks to your website, and surges of traffic when you post.

InfoGoRound is a brand new membership site staffed by literally hundreds of authors who offer reprintable content in a variety of areas. No "resource box", credit or link is required when you republish these articles. You could use them to develop a newsletter, a mini-course, or even an ebook. Authors can earn credit against their membership fee by submitting articles, or you can cover your cost by recruiting other members through an affiliate link. I love this new program.

Keyword Avalanche is much more than just a monthly membership site. You get 300 private label articles each and every month, targeted to 10 to 20 niche markets, access to the private members forum where you'll get top-notch advice on how to use articles to build your lists and promote your web sites. You also get access to first-class keyword research tools, and frequent advice from some of the top article-marketing minds on the net. Membership is limited - if Keyword Avalanche is closed, put your name on the waiting list, so you will be notified of openings.

Instant Sales Letters is Yanik Silver's collection of winning sales letter templates for nearly every purpose. He has some that are specific to email marketing, too. These are "fill in the blank" templates that help you to structure a killer sales letter in a fraction of the time it would normally take you. As bonuses, you get lists of winning headlines, bullet phrases, and other material you can include in your emails. This is a great resource for winning ideas -- don't try to just "cut and paste" these into your autoresponder, but use them as a basis for some of the emails in your "warm up" series for cold lists, or to sell more products and services to your warm lists.

Nicheology is a membership site run by internet marketing legends Jimmy Brown and Ryan Diess. They limit membership, so you don't have to worry about the products they provide each month saturating the net. Keep in mind also that only a very small percentage of the membership of such sites actually uses the products. Jimmy and Ryan provide you with two brand new "diamond in the rough" e-books each month. You get a manuscript that you are free to modify, claim authorship to, and sell or give away. In addition, you get half a dozen "product profiles" that tell you about various additional niche markets they have discovered. If you want to give away free ebooks, and don't want to use the same tired volumes that are all over the net, this site is a great resource.

PLR Pro is a low-cost monthly membership site that delivers incredible value. They limit distribution of their content moreso than most other PLR sites, so you can be sure what you are getting is unique. Plus they give you access to their staff of writers, so you can order custom content to your specifications at a price so low that I can't repeat it here. If you need content for a web site, newsletter, or blog, this is the place to get it.

Nitro Marketing has a huge collection of some of the best marketing products you'll find anywhere. The list is so extensive, I couldn't begin to summarize it here. They have teamed with some of the true legends of direct and internet marketing on these products. Be sure to check out Joe Vitale's Hypnotic Selling Secrets, which is some of the best material you can get your hands on if you want to learn how to write compelling emails and website copy.

Make Your Site Sell is a classic amongst internet marketers. Author Ken Evoy has made an intensive study of what works and what doesn't in e-commerce. His premise is that selling on the Net is not the same as selling in the "bricks and mortar" world. Ken is credited with coining the phrase "pre-selling", which is the art of "warming up" your customer before they actually get to the sales page. This huge ebook is a "must have" for anybody interested in selling on the net, yet the price is little more than you'd spend for dinner in a good restaurant.

Make Your Words Sell picks up and expands upon the concepts outlined in Make Your Site Sell. This is considered the companion volume to MYSS, but goes into much greater detail, serving as an advanced course. The premise here is that fancy graphics and catchy URLs are not what sells products on the internet. Words are what sells products on the internet. If you're going to sell anything online, you need to learn the art of writing for the online world, since it is not the same as advertising offline. If my budget for education were less than $100, I would spend it first on Make Your Site Sell, and Make Your Words Sell.