As you start your Internet marketing career, you will hear all kinds of advice from all angles. One piece of advice that is often left out though is being sloppy.
Two things happened to me today to prompt this post…..
One, I purchased a product from a “middle level” Internet Marketer. The PayPal redirect did not work after my payment. In other words, I finished paying with PayPal, waited to see if I would be automatically redirected and after I was not, I clicked the return to merchant link…. which sent me back to the sales page.
Then after an hour of not recieving an email, I wrote them and included a copy of my receipt, two hours later still no reply…..
Now, I am certain I will get my product, because this “marketer” is definately legit, but the whole process was just too sloppy…..
Item Number 2 is actually funny, so here goes….
I recieved an email today and here is what the subject line said:
“, I hand-picked you.”
I had to laugh….I was hand picked! or was it even me? Obviously all joking aside, the blank space before the comma told me that his autoresponder was supposed to enter my name there…. right away I knew this is just an Internet marketing tactic to make me think that I really was hand picked…. the email goes on to say that “he was going through his list of subscribers and my name jumped out, this was perfect for me he said.”
So, as you can quickly tell…. there was no hand picking here and this email went out to everyone on his list.
In my opinion this hurts the writer’s credibility.
So what exactly happened here? Either he used the wrong autoresponder personalization tag or maybe when I subscribed the name field was not an option or maybe I left the name field blank. What ever did occur, there were a few steps he could have taken to prevent it from happening.
If you are going to use personalization tags in your emails, as I highly recommend you do… you should assure that you are capturing the name along with the email and assure that you use the correct tags when writing your email.
One way to assure that your subscriber has to enter their name is to use a small snippet of javascript code with your web form.
Just enter the following code right before your webform:
<script language=”JavaScript”>
function checkSub(){
if (document.signup.email.value.indexOf(‘@’, 0) == -1) {
alert(”Please fill in your valid Email address.\nYour email should be in the following format: email@address.com“)
document.signup.email.focus()
return false}
if (document.signup.fname.value == “”) {
alert(”Please fill in your First name.”)
document.signup.fname.focus()
return false}
}</script>
Then, in order to call the java code enter the following code: onsubmit=”return checkSub()” inside the <form action> tags.
So an example code will look like this:
<center>
<table border=0 bgcolor=#CCCCCC>
<tr><td>
<table border=0 cellpadding=15 width=97% bgcolor=#EEEEEE>
<tr><td>
<script language=”JavaScript”>
function checkSub(){
if (document.signup.email.value.indexOf(‘@’, 0) == -1) {
alert(”Please fill in your valid Email address.\nYour email should be in the following format: email@address.com“)
document.signup.email.focus()
return false}
if (document.signup.name.value == “”) {
alert(”Please fill in your First name.”)
document.signup.name.focus()
return false}
}</script>
<form action=”http://yourfree.ws” method=”POST” onsubmit=”return checkSub()”>
<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
<tr><td align=right><font face=”Arial, Geneva” size=”-1″>Name:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”name”></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right><font face=”Arial, Geneva” size=”-1″>Email:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”email”></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td><td><input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Submit”></font>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</form>
</center>
Wow, I just realized…my post was about sloppy marketing and I turned it into a tutorial, sorry about that.
The bottom line is all about perception, when you deal with someone online whom you have never met… their emails, salespages, business model, and your experience with them shape YOUR PERCEPTION of them.
When I deal with Internet Marketers like this I see a huge lack of professionalism and credibility and I keep that in the back of my mind when dealing with them again.
Now don’t get me wrong… I definately make my share of mistakes, but I try and try, I test and test, and finally I stay in front of my keyboard nearly every moment that Im awake just to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Just remember, you are not alone out there….I appreciate you for being a subscriber of mine and taking the time to read my blog and emails, please do not hesitate to ask me if you need any assistance at all, I will do every thing I can to help.
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