Email 101

[TurboAngel]

Thanks great info!

[DamianJ]

Oh, I got 99% on an open rate once. On Christmas day.

How?

Advent calendar. I asked people to sign up for a DAILY nude pic in December. An advent cal. Every day for a month they would get a hot nude pic.

Around 30% of my list agreed. And the response rates were crazy. And really, on Christmas day it had a 99% open rate.

Bit early, I know, but heck, something to plan for.

[DamianJ]

While this is sticky, any questions?

[martinsc]

great read

[Sid70]

do you know this guy ?

Thanks for the info, mang. I bet there is a ton of legal info lays behind it all too.

[bdld]

rather than newsletters, i prefer rss feeds and updates via twitter

[Davy]

Great article!

After you run this campaign for a couple of years you will see something interesting happen. Sales of up to 1:200 from the newsletters.

Why do you say it takes YEARS for people to react?
Say they read your emails every week and have come to trust you. The signal that will make them sign up is still the content you show them. If they receive this signal after a few days or weeks, then they'll sign up. IMHO, if it took your years to send them the right signal, then you must be doing something wrong.

[fatfoo]

All are just shouting CAN I FUCK YOU. I suggest, politely, this may not be the best approach.

This could be true. But, think about the numbers theory.

Let's say somebody says, "I want to fuck you" to 100 women. One of them may agree.

[ArsewithClass]

There's no point running into a singles bar and running up to every girl in there, one at a time and shouting in their face CAN I FUCK YOU? Really, I've tried.

do you know this guy ?

This could be true. But, think about the numbers theory.

Let's say somebody says, "I want to fuck you" to 100 women. One of them may agree.

Exactly. But most of all Fatfoo, If you were not as ugly as this fella, you could ask 10 and I bet 1 would say lets go out the back!

[L-Pink]

Thank you Damian.


.

[bloggerz]

great infos

[Emma]

Thanks for sharing

[DamianJ]

Great article!



Why do you say it takes YEARS for people to react?
Say they read your emails every week and have come to trust you. The signal that will make them sign up is still the content you show them. If they receive this signal after a few days or weeks, then they'll sign up. IMHO, if it took your years to send them the right signal, then you must be doing something wrong.

After doing email marketing for 8 years, I have found that newsletter lists are most responsive after 18-24 months. Clearly people do respond after one week. But it takes a lot more time than people think to build up that trust.

I listen to Audible ads on This Week In Tech every week. For a couple of years. I haven't responded yet. But I am close to it.

Of course, your experience may well be different. This time is only for cold newsletter sign ups, not winback campaigns. There are no hard and fast rules, each list is different. I was just speaking from my experience.

Thanks for contributing to the thread.

[DamianJ]

This could be true. But, think about the numbers theory.

Let's say somebody says, "I want to fuck you" to 100 women. One of them may agree.

That's absolutely right.

They might. And you would definately piss off the remaining 99 during the process.

Depends what your game is. Seeing the way you post here, I imagine the whole permission thing would be of no interest to you and you wouldn't care if you pissed off the the other 99.

So if you think spamming if the sensible thing to do, cool. Everyone can chose what approach they want to take. The sensible one. Or the other one. Good luck.

[DamianJ]

If you were not as ugly as this fella, you could ask 10 and I bet 1 would say lets go out the back!

Gary, this is an education thread I was asked to write by GFY.

Please try and keep your playground-mentality name calling out of the education threads. By all means call me ugly in other threads if it somehow makes you feel better about your own life. But try and keep the educational threads free of your highbrow wit. These threads being put in a special section on the site where experts in fields help others improve their business skills. Be a shame for that to be spoiled by failed attempts at preschool insults.

I promise when Eric asks *you* to write an essay on how to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the adult industry I will not post in it calling you a big poo poo head. OK?

[DamianJ]

rather than newsletters, i prefer rss feeds and updates via twitter

Brilliant point. I prefer RSS too. However, you try and explain to a surfer what RSS is and how he should get an RSS client and then add RSS feeds to it etc.

The General Public have no fucking idea what RSS is. Just like they don't know what HTTP is. When RSS is seamless, like on the iTunes music store, "people" will use it.

So, as the general public are comfortable with email, I suggest it is more effective to send emails with updates rather than hope to persaude people to get into RSS.

However, I agree with you, and *personally* I like to get news/infos from RSS.

[Simon]

Thanks for posting about this, Damian.

Email is an incredibly important part of the marketing mix for mainstream online businesses, but it's rare to see someone write about using email in the adult marketplace, and to write about how to use it in an ongoing, responsible manner is more rare still.

I've used newsletter marketing since 1999 and you hit a lot of important nails on the head in your post. When we had our sponsor program we used newsletters to attract new members, to retain members, and to encourage members who'd left to return.

Double opt-in permission-based marketing works very well in adult, and you're correct that it does take time to build trust with readers. Now that we market other people's sites we see that even more than when we were working to build trust in our own site. While even the simple process of sending out some pics and a video each week will eventually yield signups, I did want to mention that we've found that using more text works best with our lists. Long copy vs short copy tests seem to indicate that while many people may not like to read, a lot of those who like to read also like to join.

While we get a good amount of RSS feed subscribers, we certainly get more surfers signing up for our newsletters. One thing we've done is to mention our feed URLs in our newsletters, where we can devote a little space to explaining how to read a feed. Also, we use Dada Mail (which you mentioned) and it provides an additional RSS feed for the newsletter itself, which we can promote both in the newsletter and on our sites.

Anyway, thanks for posting about this topic. I haven't gone to any shows in some years, but if I do go sometime I'll be sure to look for the magic Brit at the bar.

[ArsewithClass]

Gary, this is an education thread I was asked to write by GFY.

Please try and keep your playground-mentality name calling out of the education threads. By all means call me ugly in other threads if it somehow makes you feel better about your own life. But try and keep the educational threads free of your highbrow wit. These threads being put in a special section on the site where experts in fields help others improve their business skills. Be a shame for that to be spoiled by failed attempts at preschool insults.

I promise when Eric asks *you* to write an essay on how to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the adult industry I will not post in it calling you a big poo poo head. OK?

Playground mentality???

I was posting a comment that I believe is true. Where is the playground mentality?

You agreed with Fatfoo. I too, agreed with Fatfoo & said that it was no good listening to yourself, as it is a different story from different people.

You have not commented on my looks before? You are ugly & to say that you asked 100 women & got know where, was a ridicuous example as you could ask maybe a 1000 and still not get anywhere.

It is yourself that has childish attitudes to folks.

[DamianJ]

Where is the playground mentality?

It was when you tried awfully hard to insult me by calling me ugly. That is what children do. Hence the term playground mentality.

You agreed with Fatfoo.

No. I was taking the piss out of him for missing the point. Bless you for not getting that.

You are ugly

Again, Gary, this is an official Educational Series thread that GFY are offering for the more serious business people here. Your continual trolling of my threads trying to derail sensible discussions by calling me ugly is not really a helpful contribution, is it?

You need to think before you post man. I am trying to help you out here.

& to say that you asked 100 women & got know where, was a ridicuous example as you could ask maybe a 1000 and still not get anywhere.

Gary, it was an analogy. I am not at all surprised you didn't 'get' this. I wasn't ACTUALLY talking about going up to 100 actual women in a real bar and asking them to fuck me. That was meant to be an example of exactly what you SHOULD NEVER do when it comes to marketing anything. The fact you think the opposite speaks volumes.

Once again, I invite you to start another thread focussing on just how ugly you think I am, so as you can stop ruining this official GFY Educational Series thread. I doubt the admin team want these threads ruined by the likes of you. It would be a shame if you got banned from here too, as that would only leave you netplonk to spam your sites on.

Have a long, hard think about this before you carry on.

Do feel free to comment here on what YOU do with email marketing to promote your sites, or ask me questions about email, or marketing. Just try and stop calling me names as it doesn't really elevate the discussion in anyway.

Cheers!

[DamianJ]

To try and get this back on track, here is a bonus thought.

Subject lines

No more than 56 characters. You thought Twitter was restrictive, well think 84 characters *more* restrictive!

You need to get their attention quickly and achieve standout. Personalisation* is great for this. So adding variable_firstname is a winning tactic:

Hey, Damian, here's this week's update...

But, the important thing to remember is that you only get 56 characters. This isn't a law, but is Best Practise and will mean that it is very likely that your beautiful, hand-crafted subject line will not be truncated by the email client.


*yes, it has an s not a z, I am British

[ArsewithClass]

It was when you tried awfully hard to insult me by calling me ugly. That is what children do. Hence the term playground mentality.

No. I was taking the piss out of him for missing the point. Bless you for not getting that.

Again, Gary, this is an official Educational Series thread that GFY are offering for the more serious business people here. Your continual trolling of my threads trying to derail sensible discussions by calling me ugly is not really a helpful contribution, is it?

You need to think before you post man. I am trying to help you out here.

Gary, it was an analogy. I am not at all surprised you didn't 'get' this. I wasn't ACTUALLY talking about going up to 100 actual women in a real bar and asking them to fuck me.

I do not need to think about this & shall not continue to answer any more posts on your thread, unless you wish to continue this conversation, as I certainly do not want to troll your thread.
Its a shame that you mention trolling, when I look back to all of the trolling you have done on my threads saying about my hair or live in a caravan, when obviously none of the statements you have said are true. Come on Damian, maybe you should think about the immature comments you have made in the past.

Anyway, more to the point is that I mentioned a simple true fact that you are ugly with very bad teeth, an awful crater face & a face that shows you are a difficult know it all always wants his own childish way with sarcasm & arrogance. For this reason, many girls would have said no to you when you asked.

If you read your article, you have mentioned that you know that this is true as you have tried it. You were talking about the fact of questioning the girls in the bar. This point didn't seem like analogy to myself. You clearly write "Really, I've Tried"

You also were serious when you answered fatfoos post, saying he was right that asking 100 people, you could have 1 girl say yes. Do not try to change it into sarcasm, although, if you were being sarcastic, your proving correct over your facial looks.
Many companies still use telesales. It is a numbers game & they do well from it. 10 in 100 usually say yes. Unless, you are saying that all the telesales offices have got sales wrong & should do it your way?

Stop acting like an arsehole Damian. I have mentioned true facts & not obsurd statements like you do on my threads. If you cannot leave it there, it is you that acts like a child & should not be giving opinions to adult businesses.

Anyway, sorry that you have taking my thoughts of you to heart.

[bufferover]

Nice read Damian

Thanks for the share

[sexuallyhealed]

shut up your program and sites suck

[DamianJ]

Stop acting like an arsehole Damian.

Well, there is me trying to help people make more money from email marketing. And there is you calling me ugly. You do the math.

[Kolargol]

Even with double opt-in email list I am quite worried that someone could report me for sending spam (just like those retarded paysite members who buy membership and lose their accession details so they email you but never bother to check their spam folder for your replies so finally they charge back every single dollar spent on your paysite).

I am really worried that my hosting company or domain registrar could freeze or cancel my account just because a recipient of a newsletter is an idiot. What do you think ? Is such threat really possible or I'm being over cautious? What do you think? Could you share your experience?

Which option you think is better - own software on own server (phplist, dadamail etc.) or 3rd party service ? And why? I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks again for really good post!

[DamianJ]

Even with double opt-in email list I am quite worried that someone could report me for sending spam

I am really worried that my hosting company or domain registrar could freeze or cancel my account just because a recipient of a newsletter is an idiot. What do you think ? Is such threat really possible or I'm being over cautious? What do you think? Could you share your experience?

Which option you think is better - own software on own server (phplist, dadamail etc.) or 3rd party service ? And why? I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks again for really good post!

Well if they have double opted in, you have a record of that, so you can show them and then your host the double opt in, thus making their claim invalid.

This is one reason why you do double opt in!

A third party Email Service Provider will be much better for a variety of reasons. However, hardly any will touch adult.

[EmpireHP]

I've just started my own "all original" Australian solo and girl-girls site. I'm looking forward to implementing a lot of this! thank you kindly!

[martialtiger]

Great info DamianJ! Thanks for sharing! I'm not new to mailing but I am new to this type of mailing and it's a relief to know there's a way to do it right.

[Alex_Manifest_Men]

We have been using Lyris for our email and had really good luck with it. But I still picked up some tips from your tutorial. The double opt-in is an absolute must. I just wish I knew what to do with ALL the stats these emails produce. The list for our men site is just over 9k and absolutely makes sales. Not a huge number of addys but muscle worship is a pretty targeted niche.

[DamianJ]

I found Lyris had real deliverability issues. But I am glad it's working for you. If you want me to take a look at your creative, I imagine I might be able to eek out a few more clicks for you.

[djtomcat]

nice post

[LoveSandra]

Good read

[getmouthy]

great read! Thanks for the valuable info

[buildingfutures]

I realize this is an old thread but man, this post is amazing. Thanks a lot for this!

[adultforum]

DJ you rock. It's the first post on gfy with more than 20 lines i read it completely. You are very good. Keep the good work and help the others too.

[Sexgenoten]

Defenatly something to think about.

With some adjustments i think i can make it work from an afiliate pov as well.

I will sit on it for a wee bit longer and let it brew....

[DamianJ]

DJ you rock. It's the first post on gfy with more than 20 lines i read it completely. You are very good. Keep the good work and help the others too.

Thanks so much, kind to hear.

I am doing a seminar on Monday at InterNEXT about it if you are attending.

[Barefootsies]

Interesting read. Thanks top notch.

Porn Beer
Porn
Beer
Porn Beer

[HarryMuff]

This was a top notch and stand-up post, I feel confident in my email skills after attending this riveting lecture on the subject. You should publish a paper on your amazing findings.

[mike|melina]

Excellent read, thanks!

[mukeshsnp]

Thanks for writing it !

[dc0ded]

good job. very good article. very educational. hope you keep up the good job.

[My Pimp]

bump bump

[ManPuppy]

I've used e-mail marketing on all of my mainstream sites with results similar to the ones you outline, but I've been skittish about using it for my one adult site for the reason Kolargal mentions. One of my mainstream sites, a daily spiritual suggestion site, was briefly crippled when a malicious subscriber set up numerous subscriptions through numerous @MSN accounts then marked all the e-mails as spam. I had to change IP's, do some extra validation with my sign-up script, and rewrite my Privacy Policy to reflect the additional information I was collecting for validation (which still isn't a 100% guarantee it won't happen again).

This was an inconvenience for a mainstream site; it could have ended up a legal exposure for an adult site. The state of Florida is starting to become meanspirited toward adult, ignoring the letter of their own law to get a righteous sounding headline. If I do decide to do adult e-mail in the future, it will definitely be third party, to limit exposure as much as possible.

That said, yes, it does bring great results. And as a sidenote, I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of, "HI! WANNA FUCK?" ;)

[2ndxachrm]

nice read

[2ndxachrm]

Nice article, good information, Thanks

[DirtyHardCash]

Great info

Great info - really helpful

[Bat_Man]

Hello .. I appreciate your good work .. Thumbs up dude ..

[realgirlsgonebad]

very informative, many thanks

[GFELIFE]

gfelife is da best

Hello. My name is Damian. Some of you may know remember me from shows as "That rubbery faced British bloke that does magic at Internext". I have worked in online marketing since 1998 and been focussing on adult since 2004. I offer creative marketing services for many adult sites, run affiliate programmes and consult on opt in permission-based email marketing. In short, any part of marketing from corporate branding to clever ideas for banners. I worked for Playboy UK and Epoch before setting up on my own. I now consult solely with companies that I like and want to work with, like NSCash, and I help them make more money. Oh and I also do a vaguely amusing rip off of diggnation at www.pornbeer.com.

In this post I shall be showing you how to use email to engage, acquire, retain and especially win back customers. Let's start with a precis of a blog post I wrote over at http://www.adultmarketing.co.uk about permission marketing. If you want to read more about the idea of permission marketing, check out Seth Godin's book (4 chapters free here http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/) and his blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.

There's no point running into a singles bar and running up to every girl in there, one at a time and shouting in their face CAN I FUCK YOU? Really, I've tried. The best you are likely to get is a slap. However, this ballsy approach is what you're doing with your current advertising. Just interrupting people and saying BUY MY PORN. Banners, print ads, sponsorships at shows. All are just shouting CAN I FUCK YOU. I suggest, politely, this may not be the best approach.

If you go to the singles bar and see a girl you like, smile and walk over and ask if you can buy her a drink, you might get her attention. You chat for a while. You ask for her number. She likes the look of you so you get the number. Then, after the obligatory 3 days you call. You arrange a date. It's dinner. It's great. She laughs at your jokes, she seems interested. You do NOT try and fuck her. You are trying to get her to trust you. You can get laid any night of the week, but this is special. You would like to get to know her better. To build up relationship that might last more than 24 hours. You have another date, and another, THEN you try and have sex. Oddly enough, the odds are MUCH more likely you will get some sweet loving' now. She knows some stuff about you. She thinks you're funny. She trusts you. And she puts out. And puts out again, and again, and again. She likes you!

Thanks for the sex tips, Damian. But how does this help me do email, I hear you cry? Simple. It's just the same. Ask permission to email people, and then email them what you said you would. Don't spam them. Just send them a newsletter?

Acquire

The cheapest way to acquire new members is to use email newsletters. Put a harvesting box on every page you can. I would have them on every page on a site. Put them on 404 pages. The works. Make it a very simple call to action that gives the surfer a clear benefit.

"Sign up for our free weekly email with free hot pics and videos. We promise we'll never, ever rent, sell or giveaway your email address to anyone. Ever. We value your privacy."

Then, once a week, send them a newsletter with one gallery and one 30 second video clip. Just the promo content you would give to an affiliate. No extra work needed from you. Also, obviously, put in adverts and sales messages.

IMPORTANT - make sure the copy in the email is free of commonly blocked words. i.e.

CHANGE THIS:
Watch this teen sluts show their shaved cunts and get covered in hot spunk

TO THIS:
See this naughty girl show you her lady parts and get drenched in manmilk.

I am trying to change the obviously 'blocked' words to similes or euphemisms in order to get the email past the filters. Don't just put the text as a graphic. In order to get delivered to the inbox you need to have a mixture of text and graphics in your email. For more on email deliverability read this: http://www.email-marketing-reports.c...troduction.htm

After you run this campaign for a couple of years you will see something interesting happen. Sales of up to 1:200 from the newsletters. You have turned strangers into friends and friends into customers. You are not shouting CAN I FUCK YOU. You are letting people get to know and trust you. And oddly enough, when you do that, they are much more likely to buy from you.

Good open and click rates for general consumer email is 20% open, 0.5%-1% click. One of my clients, 3wayscash.com has open rates of around 50% and click through rates of 25%. Astonishingly successful.

Retain

When I worked at Playboy UK I set up their email programme. We started a retention idea I had. Basically, the site was updated frequently but when people cancelled the reason they gave was not enough updates.

So, I decided to email the members the weekly updates. People thought I was crazy. They said that I was reminding people they were paying for a porn site and this was suicide. They said much better to hope people forget it rebills and get more cash out of them. I initially planned to do it for the TV customers and the online. The TV were adamant I couldn't mail their customers. So, I just mailed the web customers.

⁃ The retention went up around 18%
⁃ It stayed there
⁃ The open rate on the email was very high

2 months later the TV department came to me with their tails between their legs asked if I could please email their members as well as mine.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. But, the best bit about email is you can test and measure. If you - like the TV boss - think this won't work - just take 10% of your members and mail them the updates. See the difference. Then decide if you want to roll it out to everyone.

Winback

This is the thing you have no excuse not to do. You have a list of people with credit cards, who bought porn from you. Why the HELL aren't you mailing them asking them to come back? They have credit cards. They like your content. As a minimum, send them a mail saying "We miss you, please come back. We added all this new hot content, you'll love it".

I do a very detailed plan for this with a "logic tree" that governs the mails they get. Pleads, price offers, etc. You can start off very simply. Send them a mail. If they do NOT open it, send it again in a week with a different subject line. If they open it, but do NOT click, in a week send them a different creative. Job done.

I would send only one email per person per week.

At Playboy UK I got between 8-11% of cancelled customers to come back using this method.

It really is this simple. Be nice to your potential customers. Send them free porn. When they cancel, ask them nicely to come back.

I'd love to hear how you get on. Please email damian AT adultmarketing.co.uk with any questions or comments. I love feedback.

If anyone wants to discuss this, or any of the other creative marketing services I offer, I will be the British dude at Phoenix doing magic tricks at the bar. Come say hi.



Recommended reading:

CAN-SPAM - where you stand legally (US only)
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/busi...rce/bus61.shtm

Open source email clients
http://dadamailproject.com/
http://phplist.com
http://infinite.ibasics.biz/