Email Marketing

[playcasino1]

Hi Guys

Please can you share your ideas/thoughts/suggestions on email marketing in our industry.

1. Domain (sender email) - As this is vitally important for deliverablility, should one be using a gambling/casino domain to send the mailers & newsletters, or is it better to use a non gambling type domain, example bestdeals.com, gamingnews.com or makemoney.net etc. Can you provide some domains suggestions

2. Can one white-list their domain with Google, Yahoo, Msn so that the newsletters get into the inboxes and not SPAM/JUNK folders.

3. Is there a "best time" to send newsletters and mailers?

4. I have heard of mailing list cleaning tools, data scrubbers like G-Lock. Do you know of any good ones? Do they work?

5. Frequency of mailing. How often is reasonable to send a same contact a newsletter/mailer? Weekly, monthly

6. Good mailing solutions/companies? Can you provide a list of reputable mailing service providers that you use, who are reasonably priced, and offer all the bells and whistles needed to manage lists and create and send mailers.

Any other tips on email marketing in the casino/gambling industry are very welcome.

Thank you

[Thomas Angerer]

Hello,

Concerning point 3:
I experienced that Friday afternoon is a good time, as many people are in weekend mood and check emails to start next week without old emails.
There was a good and helpful discussion about this point in the GPWA the other day - I searched without success - maybe one of the participants can post a link?

Concerning point 3: Personally I do't consider any newsletter I get worth reading more than once in two weeks

To the other points I am interested to read some answers too!

[playcasino1]

Thanks Thomas.

I also heard Friday is a good day to send BUT if there's any day in the week people leave the office early, extended lunch or take the day off, it would have to be Friday

Keen to see that GPWA link...

[universal4]

Personally,

If you plan on sending me a newsletter about domain1.net then I prefer to see the newsletter come from domain1.net, otherwise it already looks like spam to me....

As far as I know you can not get whitelisted with the services you mention but AOL does in fact have a whitelist, but it is very difficult to get white-listed on it.... Caution needs to be used when trying to get white-listed with AOL since if you are and you get spam complaints your entire mail server can get moved to a blacklist which is a very bad thing....

Not sure about the best time to mail, but I have noticed that email is a bit heavier for me on Mondays and Fridays.

I am not sure how well the list cleaners work since the best way to tell if an email is valid is mail to it and see if you get a bounce. Removing the invalid emails as soon as possible is the way to keep the list clean.

For frequency, what some of the casinos do is way out of line.... I have a few that mail me every single day....and that is extremly annoying....

I recommend Aweber... My affiliate link available by request.

One thing you didn't mention completly but that I will point out as a preference, when I recieve a mailing I prefer the from email address to be a real email. In other words, if the sender is an invalid one (newsletter or not) and I reply and the reply bounces, I feel that the newsletter probably wasn't worth my time if the sender has to hide behind an invalid email. Not everyone agrees with that point, but it is my preference.

Rick
Universal4

[Nandakishore]

I also recommend Aweber. It is not free, but you won't have any problem about spam, blacklisting, invalid email address etc. And they also have a good reporting feature.

[gamerbud]

I got an email marketing tips somewhere and it says that it is best to send newsletter from Tuesdays to Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays are busy days so it's not good to do that. You can do some experiment on which day email performs best for it may differ to you.

[playcasino1]

I got an email marketing tips somewhere and it says that it is best to send newsletter from Tuesdays to Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays are busy days so it's not good to do that. You can do some experiment on which day email performs best for it may differ to you.

If you find the email marketing tips, please share. Thanks

If you plan on sending me a newsletter about domain1.net then I prefer to see the newsletter come from domain1.net, otherwise it already looks like spam to me.....

Agreed

One thing you didn't mention completly but that I will point out as a preference, when I recieve a mailing I prefer the from email address to be a real email. In other words, if the sender is an invalid one (newsletter or not) and I reply and the reply bounces, I feel that the newsletter probably wasn't worth my time if the sender has to hide behind an invalid email. Not everyone agrees with that point, but it is my preference.

Great point, being able to reply and recieving a response breeds trust and subscribers will most likely take up the promotion/offer on the newsletter, if any. Totally agree with this.

The list cleaners are most likely to be used for larger lists.
Thanks for recommending Aweber. Will definitely look at it.

Cheers

[TanyaEverest]

Personally I think Tuesday afternoons are the best time to send a business oriented email-and Thursday afternoons for something recreational. Its also great, if your doing a newsletter to send it out at the exact same time week after week so that your audience gets used to hearing from you at a specific time, and (hopefully) anticipates your next email. Keep it to once per week or twice a month max to avoid overload.

With regards to whitelisting, that's a tough one. Putting in a note at the end of your email telling users to add this email address to their whitelist is all you can really do to influence your users. Another important piece is to clean your lists regularly. If you are sending to invalid email addresses often, email servers will notice that and think of you as a spammer. The better the list, the higher chance of getting through to mailboxes.

If you have a lot of people on your list from Google, I would also make mention of the new Priority Inbox with Google, and ask your readers to tag you as important-this should help your influence across all Google readers.

Next, sign up to sites like raintoday.com and marketingsherpa.com who send out emails with tips on subject lines, content, best practices. I used to do a lot of email work and they are really helpful!

Tanya

[gamerbud]

If you find the email marketing tips, please share. Thanks

oh not a problem... i'll share it whenever i find it... my files are quite messy.

[TanyaEverest]

Another great resource I forgot to mention earlier is www.abtests.com. Basically the site gives examples of what kind of email content and html formatting works best for drawing in your audience.

I am also COMPLETELY addicted to their Facebook page. Every week they post an A and B email test and ask readers to guess which email was more successful and why. There are prices, but more importantly, its a fun little game to break up the work day that is also educational