Hi There !

I am a financial advisor.  We would like to use e-mail to market
financial services to high-net worth investors.  Obviously, we don't
want to
SPAM anyone---we are only interested in accepted Internet practices.

It appears Opt-In e-mail marketers may be the way to go.  
However, if you Researchers have some other creative ideas for using
the Internet, we would love to hear them.

A 5-star answer would be a list of 4-5 competitors to the
firms mentioned below.  This may be a fairly easy question 
to answer because all we really need are web links---no 
need for you to spend a lot of time on research.

One caveat:  we need a firm which will accept low minimums.
In other words, we want to spend $500-$1500 per month
on each e-mailing.  Over a period of months and several
iterations, this should allow us to test and fine-tune our message.

We would not want to use a company that requires a high
minimum charge ($5,000-$10,000).  If we chose such a company
and the marketing did not work, we will have blown our budget
in the first week without anything to show for it.

All comments (especially wild or unusual ideas) greatly appreciated !
Thanks.
ron


www.optininc.com
www.temd.com
www.allaccessmarketing.com

---

Clarification of Question by nronronronro-ga on 13 Jun 2003 17:58 PDT

Just found these.  They may or may not be helpful.  Thanks!  ron

www.silverpop.com 
www.webatise.com 
www.spamalternative.com

Hello  Nronronronro.

Before I go into this further, one thing you should know about opt-in
email lists is that some people might still regard your email as spam.
For example, if someone joins some kind of site and does not uncheck
the box that says "yes I want to receive special offers from your
partners" (or whatever) on te signup page, they are fair game to
receive 'opt-in' email from whomever and forever. Unwittingly joining
these lists are one of the primary reasons people get deluged with
spam.


So with that in mind, here is a list of companies that offer targeted
email lists based on qualifiers. In many cases I was not able to find
minimum spending amounts listed on their sites. My hunch is that even
if they have a minimum amount and you approached them saying that you
want to do a few test runs before you start spending a lot, that they
will be happy to accomodate you. There is a lot of competition in that
industry and you as the paying customer have the upper hand and many
options.
Also, keep in mind that you want your email to go to as targetted a
group as possible. So you want to add as many qualifiers as possible.
For example if you are targeting middle-aged men working white collar
management positions that make $50-100,000 a year, that is three
qualifers and you want to be sure that you are paying only for emails
of people who have all of the qualities you are looking for. You can
go to as many companies as you need to, to get the numbers you want,
but remeber that it is all about targetting. Not everyone in a certain
income bracket may be interested in your services. You know your
business and what your demographics are, so don't settle for less. You
may know a lot of this already, but I'm being a bit verbose here just
in case.

Now on with the companies (links go to relevant pages):

Edirect
http://www.edirect.com/rent.html


GMB Direct
http://gmbdirect.com/en/services/targeted/

Direct Synergy
http://www.directsynergy.com/dspage.php?p=marketing/index.html

TKL Interactive
http://www.tklinteractive.com/web2/optin.htm

Focalex
http://www.focalex.com/advertisers/

There are hundreds of other companies that do this. You can find a
good list of them here:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Marketing_and_Advertising/Direct_Marketing/Direct_Email/Opt_In/

Also, an article of interest about email marketing I found along the
way:

Unrealistic Expectations: The Email Marketer's Enemy
http://www.emailresults.com/articles/expectations.html

----

And now I'll explore a few other ideas. You no doubt have heard of pay
per click advertising. I have worked with a number of clients that
have found this to be an exceptionally good way to get visitors to
come to your site (I'm assuming you have a site).

The two main companies that you will want to sign up for are:

Google Adwords - no I don't get a commission for promoting them :-)
http://www.adwords.google.com

Overture - They do CPC advertising on pretty much all of the other
major sites besides google.
http://www.overture.com

I would strongly recommend trying these programs out. The great thing
is that you can set limits to your spending on them so you can try
them out. You can even direct the links to certain pages in your site
that act as a 'welcoming' letter (much like an email), so you can try
different approaches and see what your conversion rate is. The best
thing about these programs is that if they are done right they are
*highly* targetted. If someone types in 'financial investments' into a
search engine and your CPC link comes up and they click on it, that is
definitely a potential customer. Compared to opt-in emails, these are
much more highly targetted visitors. Of course you may end up paying
more per click through, but depending on your conversion rate and
amount made per sale it may very well be worth it.

In a previous answer, I put together a list of tips that may help you
put together an effective CPC program. You can find it here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=193878
For the same questioner, I put together a CPC keyphrase list for him
to sell his house which you can see here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=194711
Note that the keyphrase are very specific and and the description is
very specific. This is very important.

--------

Other avenues of advertising that you may wish to explore:

Consider starting an affiliate program. This is a program where web
site owners that have sites related to your service can advertise your
site on theirs. If a click through and/or sale  occurs, they get a CPC
or percentage of a sale. Many companies do this because it is possible
to set it up so that they only have to pay out if a sale is made
(besides other nominal fees from the negotiating company)


Two of the top affiliate program coordinators are:

Linkshare
http:/www.linkshare.com

Commission Junction
http://www.icommissions.com/i/index.php?pg=am

You might also want to check out:
Icommissions (which specializes in financial business programs)
http://www.icommissions.com/i/index.php?pg=am


----

Ezine advertising - another form of targetted advertising. You can be
sure if someone signs up for an ezine about financial investing they
are interested in that subject. Here is an article on it with further
links to explore this further:
http://www.4hb.com/0523arlezinetarget.html

Here is a list of ezines about finance:
http://www.liszt.com/channels/finance/
Advertising info for liszt: http://www.liszt.com/advertise/


------

I hope that this information has been helpful to you and that you a
launch a successful and profitable advertising campaign. If you need
further clarification on any of this information, please use the
'clarify answer' button before rating this answer. Thank you!
-shiva777

shiva777---terrific answer. Comprehensive and to-the-point.  Thanks !  ron

nronronronro,

Please be aware that, in my experience, many companies that promote
themselves as "opt-in only" are in fact nothing more than
garden-variety mass spammers.

I encourage you to check out *thoroughly* any companies with which you
are considering doing business before risking your and your business'
reputations.

Best Wishes,

aceresearcher

aceresearcher---thanks for your comment.  I must have just fallen off
the turnip truck.  I had not considered that spammers would simply lie
outright.  I appreciate your words of caution.  Thanks !  ron

The best way of creating an e-mail list, my firm has found, is to
create it yourself, from all possible internal incoming sources
(inside and outside sales staff, your website, customer purchase
orders, etc.).  Past customers are your most likely customers to be
future customers, and OPT-IN e-marketing is a great option.  You'll
know the e-mail addresses are for your target audience and are in fact
opt-in and that you won't be spamming.

ALWAYS GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS AN OPT-OUT OPTION for mass mailings, both
when collecting e-mail addresses for conventional business purposes
and within the body of every e-mail, and also consider sending your
(legit) batch e-mails in bunches of 50-100 or so, always as bcc.

Since these are internal leads, you probably also would want to keep a
separate list of e-mail addresses that HAVE opted out, so that you can
cross-check your database and keep it clean of people who don't want
your mass e-mails.  If your list gets to be large enough, outside
vendors (like Eloqua.com) can assist you in maintaining the
opt-in/opt-out and also assist in tracking click-throughs and more.

Thanks, localboyla.    I really appreciate it ! 

ron