Most marketers use safelists to send out their offers to the networking world and if they do so, they will also receive a large amount of email.
Having asked a few questions, different marketers have different strategies for deciding what to open and click for credits and what to discard unread.
Some people simply decide that they will click x number of safelist emails per day to collect credits and will delete the rest. Another group said that they looked for the most interesting subject lines.
What they all agreed on was that a long email where they had to scroll to get to the credit link was off-putting and some even said if they couldn’t see the credit link when they first opened the mail, they would delete the mail without bothering to scroll at all.
Now there isn’t much you can do about the first group. If your email is in a batch that the receiver decides to bin, then that’s hard luck.
However there ARE strategies you could consider to give your mail the best chance of being opened and your link the best chance of being clicked.
Firstly, the title. Many safelists will no longer allow you to put dollar or currency signs in the title of your mail. They want to stop the mails that make extravagant and unrealistic claims about how much money you can make by clicking their link and joining their program or buying their software. So, your title needs to be original and stand out. If there is an option to put the receivers name in the title, then do so. Look for an option like #FIRSTNAME# or [fname] in the mailing instructions. Make sure you use the correct bracket or character style for that safelist – easy to trip up if you send out the same mail to several lists.
Secondly, keep the email brief. I try to limit mine to about 5 short paragraphs. Big chunks of text will only get skimmed anyway. Try to make an impact with your first words. Ask a question or mention a problem that is common to internet , then answer it showing that your product or service solves that problem.
Once again, use the addressing option if there is one, and pay attention to any special rules. Email-Hog for example (great safelist, really responsive) doesn’t allow links in the email body, only the credit link. Others will use a naming convention like #CREDITLINK# for you to add the credit link a second time in the body of the mail.
Some mailers don’t have a separate box for you to put your target URL so don’t forget it!
Don’t pepper your email with links to other sites, keep to the point or you may lose your visitor. I add my Skype ID so they can come back with questions. I get the odd spammy Skype contact request but not too many. It shows that you are genuine and confident in your offering to want to help anyone that needs extra info. I do not put my email address in safelist mailings though, as that definitely leads to spam in my inbox.
If you would like to know what some of my favourite safelists are, then visit my Pinterest account. I have a couple of groups that have links to the most responsive ones and other websites of use to internet marketers. I also maintain a spreadsheet which tells me how often I can mail to each of the lists I belong to, with dates down the side so I can see exactly when I last mailed to each list and how many mails were sent. I open up a new sheet within the list for each calendar month with a few days overlap. I use Google Drive so my spreadsheet can stay open in a browser tab – it’s free and it’s part of your Google account.
Finally, track your mails. If you have a number of different mails that you are sending out to different lists, record which ones went to which lists and use a new tracking link for each mailing. Most mailers have their own stats which will tell you what percentage of your total mailing group opened and clicked on the link, so you can tally that with your tracking service.
