|  E-mail for fun and profit
by Phil PhilcoxWhen I opened my e-mail mailbox last week, I had 44 letters, ranging in subject from junk mail from Japan to an acceptance letter for an article I wrote and sold—via e-mail. E-mail has opened the door for a lot of entrepreneurs and somehow they found me... and probably you, too. Situations
like this have given unsolicited e-mail a bad name and bulk unsolicited e-mail has even a badder name. E-mail works, if you use it correctly, and thoughtfully. It's efficient. It's inexpensive. If you use it indescriminately and Spam (meaning you send out unwanted mail), it can also be counter-productive and actually drive people away from your business. So I'm going to tell you how to use it in a positive, non-offensive way to help your business, and provide useful
information to people who are probably looking for it. Spam doesn't work: If you aren't focused and careful, you can do more harm than good.Being selective: You need to compile a select mailing list of people and businesses interested in your product or services.It works for me, and it can work for you: I sold this story using this technique, and you can use it to sell what you have, too.
The name aim game: So how do you figure out who to mail to? New programs collect, sort and contact people who might be interested in what you have to offer.Mailing the media: Publications want and need fresh, newsworthy material, so information that helps you also helps them, and their readers.How to begin: Interested? I'll show you how to start.Responding automatically: If you use an e-mail address for replies, check to see if your provider offers an auto-responder feature.My bulk e-mail story:
A marketing experiment.Remember, you can't sell your product or services if nobody knows you're out there. Studies show that the response rate for bulk snail
mail is less than 1 percent if you just choose people at random out of a phone book. Step up to a select list of people who have shown an interest in what you have to offer and the odds creep up to 2.5%...if you're lucky. At 33 cents for postage, plus the cost of printing and folding, paper and envelopes, the time spent licking stamps, and the delays in getting any responses, it's not a very effective way of marketing.
My focused e-mail solicitations have resulted in a 40%
response. Pretty good, huh? SPAM doesn't work John C. Rivard says, "You would never dream of mailing an advertising circular with postage-due. You wouldn't try collect-call telemarketing. Why would you think the people
will buy stuff from you if you send them junk email? By junk emailing, you'll offend and alienate far more people than you attract."He's right. Remember, when you send email, someone else pays to receive it. We tend to think of email as free, but there are connect charges (and in many countries, phone charges as well), and if nothing else, we all know that the amount of time it takes to sift through junk email can add up. If you bulk mail indiscriminately you're going make
people angry, and they'll (1) just ignore your message and delete it, (2) write you a nasty letter, or, worse, (3) contact your ISP and file a complaint. ISPs usually don't allow bulk mailings unless they do it for you, so they could disconnect your service. ISPs can not only cut you off, they can also fine you from between $25 to $2500 for each verified incident! So it's just not worth it.  Being selective
There are companies on-line that will compile a mailing list of people and businesses interested in your product or services and send your message off to hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of addresses. They claim they have sorted
lists with 99% accuracy rate but service like that is going to cost you.The trouble is, most of these lists are not selective, the people on the lists probably didn't ask to be on the list, and the end result is spam. It's worked for me,
and it can work for you As a full-time, freelance writer, my product is nonfiction
articles and books. In the 40 years I've been doing this, I've sold more than 1,200 articles and authored 45 nonfiction books, more than 25 of which are listed on amazon.com under my name. Despite my credits, I still devote a lot of my time to the marketing game, much as you do.Your customers might be businesses and individuals while mine are publishers and editors. My contact options range from snail mail to telephone to fax to e-mail. I use e-mail so
often that I haven't had letterhead printed for the past five years. I would guess during the past year, I've sold more than 75 articles to magazines and newspapers by e-mailing an editor with a query or by sending them the entire article. That process works for me (that's how I sold this article!). Book editors are always interested in new ideas and most book publishers have a Web site that allows anyone to send in a brief description of their book idea. I've done that as well
and sold a series of books to one Florida publisher.  Name aim game
So how do you figure out who to mail to? The best option I've found involves using a search engine to find sites with
topics similar to yours, or who's visitors would be interested in your site, product or services.If I'm trying to sell an article on how to buy a used boat, I want to reach only editors of boating magazines. To do this, I search for "boating magazines" and look at those sites, then find contact information. I can assume anyone I contact at those Web sites has at least a passing interest in something related to boats, and since it's a magazine, I know I'm
knocking on the right door.  Mailing the media
E-mailing publications is effective for news and product releases, articles on you and your company, and other means
of getting a free mention. Almost all magazines use news and product releases to inform their readers of neat stuff and new ideas. Publications wantand need fresh, newsworthy material, so information that helps you also helps them, and their readers.To reach publications such as this, I use E-Mail Publisher, a database of more than 6,500 daily and weekly newspapers and consumer and trade magazines. For each publication
listed, there's the name, phone/fax, editor's name, Web site (if they have one), and e-mail address. The information can be read by any word processing program. It comes on one, IBM-compatible disk and at $25 is well worth it. Using this database, I can extract the e-mail addresses of magazines on any subject (accounting, sports, music, travel, etc.) or search for newspapers by name, city, state, area, or zip code. Once I sort out the addresses, I have a program that compiles a
mailing list, loads a message from my text files (a query, a full article) and sends it off while I'm in the other room pouring a cup of coffee. 
How to begin
As an on-line business, you might want to reach potential clients and customers through one of these techniques, so if you're ready to give it a try, let's begin.First, write a message with your word processing program: a sales letter, an offer, a writeup on you and your business, whatever. Unless it's an article, keep it down to around 500 words so you don't lose the editor or individual at the other end. If it's a news release, don't forget to include information
on how people can reach you (an address, a phone number, an e-mail address). Responding automatically  If you use an e-mail address for replies, check to see if your provider offers an auto-responder
feature. This is similar to the fax-on-demand system where information seekers call a phone number, answer a few questions using their telephone keyboard, enter their fax number, and receive a return fax containing the information they requested. An auto-responder at the e-mail address you include in your news release will automatically send the sender another message without you having to deal with each inquiry one on one.A friend of mine in the electronic business sends news
releases via e-mail to magazines with readers interested in miniature TV cameras, cell phones, and other gadgets. If you want a photo, he tells the editor, I'll send it to you. He lists his company's address, telephone number, and e-mail address in each release. Everybody who responds to his e-mail address instantly gets a three-page price list and ordering instructions. It's all done with an auto-responder. You might want to use something other than your primary
e-mail address for replies. This frees up your regular e-mail address for more serious stuff. There are lots of free e-mail address providers, so search for some or go to http://www.starmail.com. They'll give you an e-mail address free and for peanuts they'll forward incoming e-mail
and/or respond to inquiries with your message. When you're done writing your news release, save it in a new directory called EMAIL as a .TXT file. You can use this in the Desktop Server program I describe later.
My bulk e-mail story As a full-time, freelance writer, to survive financially, I spend my days dreaming up book and article ideas, researching, writing, and marketing my stuff. As a business person like
you, I have to let people know I'm out there, ready to provide whatever they need editorially as long as they pay me.So, I ran a small Internet marketing experiment recently that anyone in business can use to communicate with would-be clients. So I looked around, got the e-mail addresses of 10 business magazines and e-mailed them all an article (1,300 words) on investigating would-be employees before hiring them. The article covered all of the potential
hiring problems, gave a few horror story examples, and told readers what they should do and how to do it. I included a sidebar listing the names/addresses/phone numbers of companies that did background investigations. Surprisingly, a background check is inexpensive—from $25 to $200, depending on how far down they check. A cheap price to pay to avoid hiring some lunatic or thief. I chose trade magazines with no overlap in readership (pizza
shop owners don't read magazines written for florists), so I could make some multiple sales. I told the editors if they could use it, I'd take their standard payment. If they couldn't use it, I told them to just erase it from their mailbox. Those $50 checks here and $200 checks there can really add up. Something like this will also work with travel articles sent to newspapers around the country and news releases or articles about your company sent to publications. It can also
be used to send an offer or information to individuals who might be interested in what you have to offer. Who are they and where are they? If your keyword(s) access a Web site with a list of members, staff, people who have posted their e-mail address in a letter or other individuals, their addresses will come up during your search.  Posting to the press
There are thousands of newspapers and magazines out there that might respond to an article of mine or a news or press release of yours. In my case, it worked. In less than a week, I got 10 replies in my e-mailbox. Two said they weren't interested, four bought it, and I don't know what
happened to the other four (they probably just deleted it). The four bought it for a total of $320 ($125, $75, $75, $45). I did it again a week later with 65 magazines and sold it 18 more times for more than $3,000.I don't know about you, but I'm impressed. I've become an avid e-mail marketer, and I still have thousands of publications to go and hundreds of articles to send. At last count, there were 26,000 trade magazines, 16,000 consumer magazines, and tens of thousands of weekly and
daily newspapers being published in the United States, so the possibilities are almost endless. Are editors and businesses receptive to e-mail queries and information? I would think those chosen carefully are. Publications need content and content consists of new information, advertising, articles, and words and pictures that take up space. Those words could be my article on hiring employees or your news release on what you have to offer.
If I was an editor (and I have been), I'd have no objection to getting information of interest via e-mail. It beats opening up envelopes, unfolding pages, reading hard copies, making a yes or no decision, writing a letter to the author, etc. [eFuse.com Editor's note: I agree completely—I'd always rather receive a press release via e-mail, it's a lot less trouble, a lot easier to follow up on if I'm interested, or delete if I'm not. It's more ecological,
economical, and efficient. I don't like or approve of SPAM, which is e-mail I didn't ask for, but I never mind unasked for e-mail that's useful to me—like the e-mail the author of this article sent me, which turned into an assignment for him and an article for eFuse.com and you.)
One editor told me he set up a special e-mailbox for queries only and has some flunky check it daily and pass along only the good stuff. Lots of options. Remember, you can't sell your product or services if nobody knows you're out there This e-mail thing is the marketing tool of the future. It works regardless of where you are in the world and all you need is a computer and a connection to the Internet. If you're selling information out of an igloo in Alaska, you can find customers
in Japan, South America, Europe, and other places.There are thousands of successful e-mail marketing stories ranging from amazon.com and its fantastic bookstore to a guy working out of his home in Australia selling surfboard wax. A writer I know in California has sold one article more than 10 times by e-mailing publications. Another writer in New York has sold an article on how to obtain business liability insurance to more magazines than I have! One
writer in Germany told me she's sold more than 30 articles to U.S. newspapers on vacationing in her country using just E-Mail Publisher. While other writers and businesses are printing out queries and news releases on paper, licking stamps, dropping stuff in mailboxes, and waiting around for an answer, you can e-mail a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand editors in one day and really get your message out to the masses. The whole thing is amazing and has changed the way we do business.
 About the author Phil Philcox has been a writer since 1956 and has sold more than 1,200 articles to magazines such as Family Circle, Playboy, Travel and Holiday, and Consumers Digest (57 times!). He is the author of
45 nonfiction books on various subjects including three on computers. His latest is How to Earn More Than $35,000 with your Home Computer (Citadel Press/New York). You can find at least 20 of his books on www.amazon.com. Phil lives in Panama
City Beach, Florida, with his lovely wife Beverly. He is the former overseas editor of Skin Diver Magazine and travel editor of the Overseas News Media in New York.Illustration: from www.artville.com
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