Find Out When That Email You Sent Was Read

By Alex Magdaleno

Think someone is ignoring your emails? Now you can know for sure.

Your inbox will never look the same after this.

A San Francisco-based startup called Streak has developed a free Google Chrome browser extension that's changing the email game: the extension lets email senders see when recipients open an email.

Using the extension with a Gmail account, senders will be notified when someone opened their email and who opened the email.

If that's not useful — or for some, disturbing — enough, Streak will also tell you where the email was opened. The extension will put the email on a map, giving the user real-time location updates about the recipients.

An eye icon will appear when a user views an email sent with Streak. When the recipient opens the email, the eye icon will turn green, signaling the sender that their email has been read. The recipient doesn't need to have Streak installed for the email sender to be notified that the email was opened.

The sent email will not notify the recipient that their email is being tracked. Streak isn't the first service to perform this function; Bananatag also notifies a user when their email has been read, but requires a monthly fee to send more than 5 emails, and doesn't give you locations.

Streak was designed for customer relationship management, and also features tools for sales, support, hiring, scheduling emails and sharing emails company-wide. It also works with Gmail in the Safari browser, as well as Google Apps accounts for businesses.

Streak is free while in beta; the developers plan to maintain a free version of the extension as it continues in development.

How To Build An Email List 10x Faster

Chris Guthrie hosted a webinar with his friend Spencer Haws and they outlined real life stats from their various methods of email list building through their blog. We also showed off a brand new

piece of software that increased our opt in rates up to 10x higher than other methods we've been using on our blogs:

Watch The Replay Here

https://s3.amazonaws.com/mmotiwebinars/emailmarketingwebinar.mp4

You can get the new software here for sale:

Get Welcome Splash Here:

http://welcomesplash.com/webinar/

Welcome Splash is a powerful method for building a list that even the President's marketing team is using to build an email list through the White House website.

5 Phases to Email Marketing

by Chris Stirling

When using email marketing to sell a product or
service you can’t just start selling to your
readers in the first email. The reason is the odds
of the reader knowing who you are or what you are
all about are pretty low, even if they subscribed
to your newsletter from a form on your website.
People do not purchase from those they do not know.
So the key to a successful email marketing campaign
is “warming up” your readers to the sell.

The "warming up" process can be broken down into
five distinct phases. It's a good idea to keep
these in mind as you work to warm up your lists.

Phase 1 -- "Cold Readers"
These are folks who have just filled out the form
on your website, or whose details you have received
via co-registration.

You know nothing about them, and they know nothing
about you, so at this phase, your primary job is to
introduce yourself, and begin to establish yourself
as a source of credible and useful
*free* information.

I emphasized the word *free* in that, because "cold"
leads are very unlikely to buy anything from you, no
matter what you do.


PHASE 2 -- "Curious Readers"
At this phase, people may have opened one or two of
your emails and have at least decided to stay on
your list long enough to find out what you're about
and what they can gain by reading your emails.

Another way of thinking of this group is that they
are the ones who are actually opening and reading
your emails, whether they open the first or the
tenth that you send them.

Your job with this group remains essentially the
same as was true at Phase 1 ... you are still in
the process of "warming them up" to the idea that
you are credible and trustworthy.

Again, not a time to be trying to sell them things,
because few of them will buy, anyway.

PHASE 3 -- "Interested Readers"
These are the folks who have opened and read
several of your emails, and now continue to read
them. Perhaps they have "moved" themselves from your
"cold" list by opting-in to one or your newsletters
or free mini-courses.

By doing so, they have "told" you that they are
interested in what you have to say, willing to read
more of your emails, and may, in due time, buy
something on the basis of your suggestion.

One way to know who your "interested" prospects are
is to offer a free ebook or mini-course and make
them "register" for it by opting in to a second
autoresponder.

Another is to run a survey form on your site,
invite them to participate, and capture their
contact information when they do so.

The point is they have taken some *action* based
upon your previous emails, and have told you by
that action that they are interested in what you
have tosay and willing to read what you write
to them.


PHASE 4 -- "Excited Readers"
These are folks who are almost ready to buy. They
may have written you asking for more information,
or visited your sales page several times. Maybe they
are thinking about joining your business opportunity,
but for some reason not quite ready to sign up and
pay their money. They need some sort of "push" or
"nudge" to get them to take action.

Maybe they need a "special offer" of some kind, or
simply a personal follow-up email or phone call from
you. Whatever it is, these are your *HOT* prospects.

PHASE 5 -- "Customer"
The final phase is, of course, obvious. These are
the folks who have bought your product, joined your
opportunity, or bought something that you promote
as an affiliate.

In the long run, these are the folks who will make
you the most money, because it will become easier
and easier for them to act on your recommendations,
as long as you don't betray their trust by endorsing
poor quality products or programs.

You need to think of these folks as *friends*,
because that is what they really are. They have now
given you permission to send them follow-up offers
and program endorsements.

Even though they may represent only a tiny percentage
of the entire population of your list, these people
are your long term gold mine group.

Treat them with respect, they have warmed up to you
and what You have to offer. Maintain a high level of
integrity and they will continue to follow you for
years to come

Copyright © 2008 Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com

About the Author
Chris Stirling is the owner of
Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com
His website is geared for people who are interested in finding
an online work at home opportunity.

How To Create and Send HTML Email

by Herman Drost

Until recently text-based email was the most
popular way to communicate, however with the advent
of html email you can now create and send beautiful
graphics, create clickable links and use
interactive forms.

HTML email can have the same appearance as a web
page. You can include your favorite photos, create
colorful newsletters or charts for your friends or
business associates.

It's now often used as a valuable tool in email
marketing campaigns.

HTML email has now surpassed text-based email
in popularity.

Read this survey on email format preferences and
and programs.

Let's first point out the pros and cons of sending
html email before we get into how to create it.

Pros of Using HTML Email

Visually appealing
Able to include graphics, icons, clickable links,
different fonts, interactive forms.
Increased interactivity with your customers.
Mostly used by advertisers, however more consumers
are using html email as they switch to
faster connections.
Ads can be more effective in HTML
Most of the popular email clients now support
html email
(ie Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape
Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, Web TV).

Cons of Using HTML Email

Slow loading due to downloading of graphics
Takes up more space in your email client
Not all computers support html email
Users may not have the required bandwidth or may
have download quotas set by their ISPs.
Hackers can send viruses, trojan horses embedded in
html email.
Users may turn off the option to receive html email,
or use filters to quarantine it.

How to create a simple html email

1. Open your favorite html editor ie FrontPage,
Dreamweaver (you can also use MS Word 97 or 2000,
but it tends to bloat the code a little) to create
your email.

2. Always use absolute URLS for your graphics
(ie http://www.addme.com/images/addme.gif).

3. Graphics (ie images, icons, fancy fonts) must be
stored on a web server to correctly appear in email
software - you could save it as an attachment,
however most folks will not open the attachment
especially (and delete it) if it's from someone they
don't know.

If you don't want to use graphics, you can use
colored tables for different sections
(ie header, masthead, contact information
and footers).

4. Name and save the page you have created
(ie html-email.htm).

5. Open your Email Software - in outlook express
(since it's the most popular) go to
create mail -
insert -
text from file -
scroll to your saved html page.
You are now ready to send your html email.

6. Email a test to yourself before your send it to
your subscriber list. You may want to send it to
your friends who have different email programs so
you can be sure most of your subscribers can read it
on their computers.

7. Once you have created an attractive html page or
newsletter, save it as a template. Now you can just
open the template whenever you want to send html
mail and most of the work will be done for you.

HTML email is still rather new, but it is a great
marketing tool if used properly. The key is to
test, test, test to see if your subscribers prefer
it over text based email. If you are unsure your
subscribers can read html email, then offer both
text-based email and html email, to cater to
both audiences.


About the Author
Herman Drost is the author of the NEW ebook
"101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your
Web Site"
isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion