Shopping for an e-mail service is akin to shopping for detergent at SuperDuperMart: a mile aisle with 5,000 products that don’t differ very much. The little differences, however, are what make the BIG difference, and e-mail shopping is the same way. Gmail might be termed “new and improved”, to the point where someone who feels trapped in a Hotmail or Comcast account might wish to consider a change. Some of the more salient advantages of gmail are listed below.

Speed – Gmail loads quickly, and sends and receives at a good rate, a definite plus if rapid back-and-forth communications are necessary. In addition, threaded conversations are boiled down to a single line on the Inbox page, and a single click will take the user to the entire thread.
Capacity – Seven gigabytes of storage are available for free, which can help if a user needs to hold on to e-mails for a long time before deleting them.
Cost – This is a “free” service, though there are add-ons available for a price, and most people will only need the free components.
Spam – Some people like Spam, the tinned meat product, but nobody likes the spam a computer can cook-up, and gmail has effective filters to stop most spam.
Availability – Devised to work with all browsers and operating systems, gmail is a Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), which means it is a completely online system, and can be accessed anywhere that has Internet service.

HTTPS – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, or HTTPS, is a security measure whereby the user is provided with encrypted and authenticated communications, particularly valuable if you need to access your account from a public location.
Chat – Instant chat is available, as well as voice and video chat features, and everything can be added to your iGoogle.
Search – Need to find a message? The search function on gmail enables users to track that message down instantly.
Have gmail Will Travel – Travelers will like the ability to access their e-mail anywhere from a phone, which allows for more complete communications than a service like Twitter.
Multi-task – Another nice feature of gmail is that the user cannot only have multiple accounts but can also manage them simultaneously on a single page. This is great for any household where members want their own account, and also works well when users may need to separate business mail from personal mail.

Just as Hotmail seemed to be a leader of the innovative pack a few years ago, today gmail is forging to the front with its performance and multiplicity of applications.

This article was published by eMarketing21 with permission from Internet Service Providers.

Email Marketing is a very effective method when it comes to low cost Internet Marketing. It is the most widely used method to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers. Email marketing has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites.

An email may be in the form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and it is easy to send it to as many targeted recipients as possible. Here are some simple tips for using email marketing the best way possible:

Join the Can Spam campaign. Email marketing is not about spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for.

Get your email list to open your message. Your email might get lost within the hundreds of emails that people are receiving everyday. Improve your subject line by adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter, asking compelling questions, not making any unbelievable claims, and not using the word FREE.

Keep it real. Do not include any “too good to be true” statement in the subject line. Do not make a promise you can’t keep. Make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.

Don’t discount too low. Minimal discounts are not that effective compared with substantial discounts. But never offer discounts that are lower than your profit. It will defeat the purpose of your email marketing campaign.

Make it eventful. Include seminars, conferences and other events in your email. Businesses that require training benefit from this method. In this case, repetition is important. Just make sure that an ample interval is considered before sending out a reminder email.

Post news. Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point in order to be effective.

Using these simple tips in your email marketing campaigns, your business will prosper in no time. If you need help with HTML email or Newsletter design, contact eMarketing21.

Before we talk about Email Marketing, let’s clarify What Is SPAM? If you upload a list you just bought into any email service provider and send that list an unsolicited email, this is SPAM.  If you take that list, and write one-to-one emails to each recipient, personalizing your message for each recipient, that’s NOT SPAM. The United States federal CAN-SPAM Act became law on January 1, 2004. According to the FTC website, if you violate the law, you could be fined $11,000 for each offense. Remember, it’s very easy to get blacklisted and it can take months to get your name cleared.

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In general, when you send marketing emails, you have to provide an ‘unsuscribe’ link that must work for at least 30 days after sending your email.

You must include your physical mailing address in the email (no PO Box). Remove recipients from your list within 10 business days.

Never use deceptive headers like ‘from…name’, reply…to, or deceptive subject lines.

Describe the subject of your email, but don’t write your subject line like advertisement.

Use email newsletters and opt-in lists for email marketing. Tell your newsletter subscribers during the opt-in process what kinds of emails they’ll be receiving. Don’t confuse newsletters with promotions. If your email is a newsletter, put the name and issue of the newsletter in your subject line. If your email is a special promotion, tell them what’s inside.

Double opt-in is fast replacing the single opt-in method, where someone submits a form and is added right away to the list. One could get signed up to a list without his/her permission or by error or maliciously. The old opt-out method is getting phased out due to all the spam complaints from people who never saw the opt-out check. Double opt-in ensures that every single recipient really wants to hear from you. Here are the 3 steps of the double opt-in process:
1. A customer signs up for your email newsletter through a form at your website.
2. He/she receives an email with a confirmation link.
3. If the customer clicks the link, he/she is added to your list, and you store the IP address, date, and time of registration as a proof of opt-in if you need it in the future.

Grow your business with email marketing!