iEntry.com email marketing - anyone tried that?

Hi, I got an offer from iEntry.com, for opt-in newsletter lists. They offer so-called dedicated newsletters (promoting only your service/product) to targeted audience of approx. 10-15000 email addresses (Website Owners, Web Developers, Web Designers and Linux Webmasters).

Prices are rather high, approx. $1000 USD for newsletter, and I'm wondering is it worth the money? What are your experiences in conversion rates from this type of marketing?

cheers

 

Seems very spammy to me!

 

And how exactly did you come to that conclusion?

 

What kind of advertising send mails,
this is SPam, sin;rt it?

 

Did you ever hear about opt-in and double opt-in newsletter lists?

Pls, enough off-topic, I'd really like to hear something about iEntry.com, if possible.

 

What is the CTR on the newsletter? At 100% you are paying $.06 - .10/visitor. At 10% CTR it's $.60 - $1.00 in which case adwords might be a better bet.

Seems by your sig the traffic would be highly targeted and may be worth $1.00/click (10% CTR), but the CTR is the key thing.

 

Doing your homework is key here.

First of all, if the list is not 100% double-opts, walk away. Second, don't be wooed by statistics fed to you by the owner (like: our last client had a CTR of X and made millions). None of this applies to you.

If they have an "open" statistic, look at that.

As to worth, well the best thing you can do is get on their list (without them knowing). See how emails come and try to figure out if there is any loyalty with readers. If the emails are simple solo ads--with no content ever--the value of the list is very low.

10,000 emails for $1,000 is 10 cents per email, which is not too bad if the value is there--content, loyalty, etc. Only you can figure this out though. You have to look at the profit per "sale", figure out how many you need to recoup your $1,000 and then find out what that means as far as traffic required from the list.

For Example: You are selling a $50 product, that has a profit margin of 50% ($25). To break even, you would need 40 sales. If your current running traffic to sales ratio is 23:1 (23 viewers equates to one sale), you will need 920 viewers. If you estimate that 30% of all those who open your message will visit your website,and we assume that 100% will open the message, your target destination will receive 3,000 viewers. In that scenario, things are looking ok. However, 100% never happens. So we need to find out the lowest open rate required to break even if all the numbers hold true. The number required is 3067, so 30.6% must view the email to break even. Keep in mind, this is also assuming a 30% action rate.

If you are flying blind here, meaning you have no experience with permission marketing, I would advise you step back and look at what it takes to succeed with this marketing method. A list is the backbone, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. You need to know how to craft an exceptional headline and marketing piece to get the results--or have someone do it for you. If you don't, you are losing money.

 

One thing you should be aware of: iEntry uses a funny header format for sending out their emails and consequently their emails are flagged as spam by default using many anti-spam programs (like Norton) as well as many ISP spam filters (Brightmail and others). The question then will be how many people will actually see your ads, let alone click on them.

I receive iEntry emails related to a B2B listing I have at Jayde as well as previous activity at WebProWorld which they own. They still come but I never see or read them - periodically, I'll empty my "Spam" box and there they all are... unread... and from there they go straight to Trash.

 

Minstrel, can you lend me a couple thousand posts?

Anyway, see this is good info to know. The more you dig and build the model, the more you can see if this move is right for YOU.

 

There was a time when I wanted to receive their emails because then I was active at WPW. My ISP at the time was using Brightmail and I had to jump through hoops to get the emails -- even then, I had to repeat the process at least twice in a year when Brightmail would revert the emails back to the "spam flag".

 

the cost is just too high.

 

@marketjunction: Thank you for very, very informative post. I've read it carefully, and you definitely have the point there.

These guys don't have open statistics (or some 3rd party stats) for their marketing program, so I also doubt what kind of service can they offer to me, especially when I take into consideration the price they charge. I don't mind spending $1000 on marketing, but I want to know what I'm getting for the money.

I think I heard enough from @minstrel and @marketjunction...