Simplified Property Analysis
By Larry Goins
Property Analysis
Before you can start buying property or making offers on property you have to learn how to analyze a deal. This section of property analysis is probably where I am going to butt heads with a few people. But I would like to challenge you to at least go through this and keep an open mind as to what I am doing. I know many Investors that have multi-page spreadsheets that list the ROI (return on investment) five, ten, fifteen years down the road. It lists every conceivable expense that they could ever incur on a property including holding cost and insurance, all the way down to marketing expense. I am very much a “big picture” person. I believe that if you need a calculator, it is probably not a deal. I don’t mean that in a bad way, only that if you are running all these numbers and you have to figure all this out just to tell if it is a deal, it probably is not a deal anyway. If somebody can run numbers by you in a conversation, “Hey, I have a house and the after repaired value is $100,000, it needs 10 Grand in work and you can pick it for $50,000”. Now what kind of numbers do you need to run on that? That is a deal, right? So, the way that I want to get you to thinking about your investing is, if you need a calculator, it is probably not a deal. The other thing is, if you have to ask someone, it probably is not a deal either. I get people asking me all the time, “Hey, what do you think about this deal?” Well unfortunately, it usually is not a deal or they would know it, right? Having said this, remember that most deals are made and not found. Meaning that when I found it, it wasn’t a deal until after the negotiation process. You want to hit home runs, especially on your first few deals because you need to make sure there is plenty of profit in the deal. The worst thing you can do is get involved in a marginal deal and get discouraged and get out of the business before you get started well.
I want you to get used to running the numbers and making the offer before you ever get off the phone on your first call. Sure it is going to feel odd at first without ever having seen the property but after you do it a few times it will come as second nature. Remember here that the goal is to get your offer to them and start the negotiation process. I know I am not going to buy it on the first phone call but we have to get them “in the glue” so they feel attached to you because you are probably the only person who talked to them about their property that actually made an offer.
Now if you are just starting out remember I still want you to go see the properties before closing on them but eventually you will be able to complete the entire
transaction without ever looking at the property just like we do and many of my students do. We now do all our business by phone, fax, FedEx, email and internet and we never go look at our properties. Now don’t worry because once you get to that point I have included specific scripts, a property analyzer and other tools and techniques to do the work for you as we will discuss later.
Property Search Criteria
Before I can make an offer on a property I need the answers to two, sometimes three questions.
1: After Repaired Value: A lot of people ask me, “Well, what is the current value?” or it has a “current value of $___”, they tell me. That does not mean anything. It makes no difference, whatsoever, what the current value of the property is or what it will appraise for in its‟ “as is condition”, if it needs work. We are not basing it on “as is”; we are basing the value on after repaired value or ARV as you will often see. So the first thing I need to know is what is the after repaired value?
2: Amount of Repairs: What is it going to cost to fix up this property? And that is where you are going to catch a little bit of resistance, especially on the phone with people, especially with realtors because they do not want to make a commitment to a figure. One of the phrases that I use a lot is “just a ball park”. Give me “just a ball park”, what do you think it is going to cost to fix it up?
3: Potential Rent: If this is a rental type property I will need to know what kind of cash flow it is going to have to make sure the numbers will work at the total cost I will have in the property. Another thing I will probably need to know if it is a For Sale by Owner, is what is their loan balance and are they current or how far behind on the payments are they? I usually ask it that way to, “How far behind are you on your payments?” That way they are not as embarrassed to tell me if they are behind or not. They assume I already expect that they are behind. This is all in the FSBO script in the course. Now you are probably thinking that the seller or realtor does not know this information or will not tell you but don’t worry as I will show you in the section on negotiating exactly how to ask those questions and get your offer to them before you get off the phone. I will also show you how to make those low offers and not have them hang up on you or laugh at you like they may have in the past.
Now, let’s take a look at the way I run numbers and determine whether or not a deal is a deal. Most of our houses we wholesale to other Investors. In my market we have to be able to wholesale houses at 70% of appraised value. (Now this may be different for your market depending on market conditions, price range of the property and what investors are willing to pay in your area.) The 70% includes purchase, repairs and closing costs, so I basically have to be able to buy the property at 60% or 65% or sometimes even less. Now when running your numbers, you always want to use worse case scenarios. For example, if your seller tells you that the house is worth $80,000 to $85,000, then you are going to use the $80,000 number. If they tell you it needs $10,000 to $15,000 in work, you are going to use the $15,000. The other thing that we do since we are in the Mortgage business and we provide rehab financing for most of our customers, we always figure in the rehab closing cost, so that is the worst case scenario. If an Investor is paying cash or has their own money or has a relative funding their deal, they will actually make out even better. If they also do some of the repairs themselves, they will make out better. Because we are basing our rehab cost on hiring someone else to do the work and we have already probably gotten at least two or three estimates on the repairs, we give those over to the person buying the property.
I hope you have enjoyed this article taken from my course called the Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! which teaches how we buy and sell 5-10 properties a month, have them sold in less than 2 hours and never leave the office or look at them. For many more articles and a 10 part ecourse on how to create your own Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! as well as over 50 training audio recordings you can listen to online, download and collect, simply go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com where you will gain instant access to all of this and 51 Exclusive Editable real estate investing Forms and Documents all FREE! You will also get two FREE real estate investing eBooks, A free Personal Coaching Profile to help you jump start your real estate Investing, FREE Nationwide Wholesale Property Listing Notification, FREE Weekly Training Teleconferences with Different Topic Each Week, FREE subscription to Larry Goins “Almost” Weekly Investing Newsletter, FREE Admission for Two to Investor Palooza 3 Day Training Event, FREE Admission for Two to Larry Goins 3 Day Boot Camp, Plus over 31 Exclusive Articles on real estate Investing and Much More! Just go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com. Thanks and I look forward to working with you, Larry Goins
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Websites You can Use in Your Real Estate Investing
Websites you can use
This month I want to share with you a few of the websites and strategies that we use for classified ad posting. You might be thinking what in the world is classified ad posting and why do I need to do it?
There are a ton of sites out there that have free online classifieds: Craig’s List, BackPage.com, Postlets.com, BuySellCommunity.com, USFreeAds.com, etc. There are all these different sites that you can use to advertise your houses for sale or build your buyers lists.
Say you are wholesaling properties and trying to build your list posting to all these lists with an ad such as: “Handyman specials! Fixer uppers. Cheap Cash.” With you phone number or your website address.
It could take you all day and all night to post your ads and keep them generating leads. You might not realize that on these sites every time an ad is posted, your ad drops down on the list. You can very rapidly move from page one to page two to page ten to nowhere to be found. So you need to continue to post your ads weekly if not daily. It can take you hours and hours if you do it manually. But manual posting is the only posting that is effective.
You need to be able to use some ad positing services. Before we get into that I want to share with you some things to be on the lookout for. Some ad posting services have software. But with ad posting you need to find somebody that will manually post your ads. If you just use a software or a service that uses a software those ads usually get flagged and shut down, never appearing on the classified ad site at all.
You know that I am all about automation in the real estate business. But you don’t want to automate anything that gets blocked, such as ad posting. You want to find someone that will manually post your ads.
If you just use a software or a service that uses a software, you are wasting your time and your ads get flagged and shut down. A lot of places refer to this as spamming software.
You don’t want to start out purchasing 1000 ads per month, either. Start small, ten or twenty ads per month. Don’t risk ordering a big order with a service that you don’t know or have experience with. You might not get a good return on your investment. Or you might even get such a good response that you cannot handle the influx of inquiries.
One place that you can look for somebody to manually post your ads is ELance.com. You can find an individual who will manually post your ads such as the one above to build your buyers list. Just search for a provider with the keywords “manual ad posting service”.
Another place that you can find somebody like that is RentACoder.com. Often RAC folks are writing programs or software to automate the posting. But you can also find manually posters. Just check the listings carefully.
Two other good sites to look at are ODesk.com or VA4U.com. These also have outsourced ad posters.
There are also some individuals that I have worked with in the past who I highly recommend that are dependable and very good at what they do.
This first guy is ENAMUL.info. If you Google the words “ad posting services” he comes up at the very top. I figure if he can get to the top of Google he’s very good at marketing and I want to use him. And I have in the past with very good results.
Another one is Sunny-Pages.net. That is another good ad posting service. Another one that is real estate specific that a lot of real estate agents use is a website called TheRealEstateMarketingService.com. They do a lot of work with realtors and it would be worth checking out.
Another good one is OnlinemMrketingGrp.com. There is also a young guy that has written some great articles about how to choose an ad posting service. If you check him out you might want to give him a try, even though I haven’t used him yet. You can find him on Squidoo.com/CraigsList-Ad-Posting-Service which is his Squidoo lens, as they call it. He has videos about Craig’s List secrets, all kind of stories about what he’s done and how he’s done it. I haven’t talked to him and I don’t know him. But when I found him online I added him to my favorites and I think you all might want to try him out.
I hope you find this month’s Web Sites You Can Use helpful as you build your super targeted list of home buyers on your way to becoming and Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine.
Larry
This month I want to share with you a few of the websites and strategies that we use for classified ad posting. You might be thinking what in the world is classified ad posting and why do I need to do it?
There are a ton of sites out there that have free online classifieds: Craig’s List, BackPage.com, Postlets.com, BuySellCommunity.com, USFreeAds.com, etc. There are all these different sites that you can use to advertise your houses for sale or build your buyers lists.
Say you are wholesaling properties and trying to build your list posting to all these lists with an ad such as: “Handyman specials! Fixer uppers. Cheap Cash.” With you phone number or your website address.
It could take you all day and all night to post your ads and keep them generating leads. You might not realize that on these sites every time an ad is posted, your ad drops down on the list. You can very rapidly move from page one to page two to page ten to nowhere to be found. So you need to continue to post your ads weekly if not daily. It can take you hours and hours if you do it manually. But manual posting is the only posting that is effective.
You need to be able to use some ad positing services. Before we get into that I want to share with you some things to be on the lookout for. Some ad posting services have software. But with ad posting you need to find somebody that will manually post your ads. If you just use a software or a service that uses a software those ads usually get flagged and shut down, never appearing on the classified ad site at all.
You know that I am all about automation in the real estate business. But you don’t want to automate anything that gets blocked, such as ad posting. You want to find someone that will manually post your ads.
If you just use a software or a service that uses a software, you are wasting your time and your ads get flagged and shut down. A lot of places refer to this as spamming software.
You don’t want to start out purchasing 1000 ads per month, either. Start small, ten or twenty ads per month. Don’t risk ordering a big order with a service that you don’t know or have experience with. You might not get a good return on your investment. Or you might even get such a good response that you cannot handle the influx of inquiries.
One place that you can look for somebody to manually post your ads is ELance.com. You can find an individual who will manually post your ads such as the one above to build your buyers list. Just search for a provider with the keywords “manual ad posting service”.
Another place that you can find somebody like that is RentACoder.com. Often RAC folks are writing programs or software to automate the posting. But you can also find manually posters. Just check the listings carefully.
Two other good sites to look at are ODesk.com or VA4U.com. These also have outsourced ad posters.
There are also some individuals that I have worked with in the past who I highly recommend that are dependable and very good at what they do.
This first guy is ENAMUL.info. If you Google the words “ad posting services” he comes up at the very top. I figure if he can get to the top of Google he’s very good at marketing and I want to use him. And I have in the past with very good results.
Another one is Sunny-Pages.net. That is another good ad posting service. Another one that is real estate specific that a lot of real estate agents use is a website called TheRealEstateMarketingService.com. They do a lot of work with realtors and it would be worth checking out.
Another good one is OnlinemMrketingGrp.com. There is also a young guy that has written some great articles about how to choose an ad posting service. If you check him out you might want to give him a try, even though I haven’t used him yet. You can find him on Squidoo.com/CraigsList-Ad-Posting-Service which is his Squidoo lens, as they call it. He has videos about Craig’s List secrets, all kind of stories about what he’s done and how he’s done it. I haven’t talked to him and I don’t know him. But when I found him online I added him to my favorites and I think you all might want to try him out.
I hope you find this month’s Web Sites You Can Use helpful as you build your super targeted list of home buyers on your way to becoming and Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine.
Larry
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An Easier Approach to Property Analysis
An Easier Approach to Property Analysis
By Larry Goins
If you need an accounting degree to crunch the numbers when evaluating a property, then you need a new formula. Property analysis doesn’t have to be a mathematical challenge. If you will stick with me, you will see that simplified property analysis is an integral part of being an ultimate buying and selling machine.
Sure, it doesn’t hurt to have an idea what a property will cost you in the long run if you plan to renovate and then rent it out. But if the whole idea is to flip the house or build a real estate portfolio, then the big picture is how little you can invest and how much house you can get, right? If you find a deal, or negotiate a deal, it should be a pretty simple number game to crack. Either there is immediate value above and beyond your investment or there is not. You won’t need an elaborate mathematical formula to know if you can win or not. And you probably won’t need anyone else to tell you whether or not it’s a deal.
Side note here. You are a student of mine because you want to learn to be an ultimate buying and selling machine. However, if you use the simplified property analysis below you won’t need me to confirm whether you’ve found a deal or not. I’ll coach and mentor you along the way, but the only phone call you will need to make to me is to strike up the band and launch the cheering squad. You will know when you’ve found a deal or a steal.
There are plenty of reasons that a deal needs to have a high profit margin. Least of which is that without one there is too much margin for error. If something goes wrong, you might not make any money at all. Plus, let’s face it. We are all in this real estate game to make money. If you get caught up in a cycle of doing $2000 profit deals and just bringing home another marginal paycheck every month, you just have another job. Come on! You really want to be an ultimate buying and selling machine, right? Putting money in the bank and building net worth and honing your real estate investing craft. Not crunching numbers on some hard-to-handle property analysis spreadsheet. That’s what God made accountants for. I’m taking His creations and making real estate kings and queens.
With a simple property analysis you can crunch numbers and make an offer during your first contact with the owner. Okay, so you probably won’t buy the house on the first call. But once you make that first offer you are in a better position to negotiate and the owner is liking you because you are possibly the only one who has made an offer on his property. Don’t get hampered down in the discomfort of making an offer on a property that you’ve never set foot on. It doesn’t matter. If you have an appraisal, and you know the cost of the repairs, you are well on the way to closing the deal. It doesn’t help to see it, if you aren’t planning on owning it for any length of time or doing the repair work yourself. That’s a little bit like my wife insisting on looking under the hood of a car before we buy it. Okay, so now she knows it has an engine, but she isn’t going to like it any more or any less for what she sees under the hood. And you aren’t going to like the house any more or any less just because you look at it.
If this is your first deal, I still hope that you will look at the house. It’s a part of the whole real estate investing education process. If you haven’t seen a house yet, grab a copy of our Rehab Bus Tour CD so that you can see what we are looking for when we look at a house. But remember that the ultimate goal for my ultimate buying and selling machine students is that they use the phone, fax, and internet to do the deals without ever leaving their own homes.
Property Search Criteria
When you are looking at a house, whether its online or in person, there are only two or three questions you have to know the answer to before you know if it’s a deal, a steal, or a “get real and run away” opportunity.
You have to know the answers to these questions before you dare make an offer.
1. After Repair Value: It doesn’t matter what the current value of the house is or what it would appraise for in its current condition. We don’t care. The value that we care about is the after repair value of the property in question. Sometimes you will see this as ARV. Whether or not you have a potential deal depends upon the value of the property after the necessary repairs. There is a reason that people look for handy-man’s specials and fixer uppers. There are savings to be had. We utilize the savings to make sure that our deal really is a deal.
2. Amount of Repairs: What is it going to cost to get this property to appraise at the ARV? Its important that this is accurate and includes all necessary repairs. I have great luck telling realtors or owners that I need “just a ballpark figure”. Of course the number isn’t written in stone. It really is just a ballpark figure. But it’s the second number that you must have to utilize my easy property analysis.
3. Potential Rent: This is the optional question. It doesn’t matter if you don’t intend to keep the property for any length of time. But even if you plan to sell the property, its not bad information to have for your own sales pitch. If the property is For Sale By Owner you will also need to know what their loan balance is and how far if at all they are behind on their payments. Remember these are the people who are really keen to have you purchase their properties. They have a pain level associated with their property ownership. A good way to address this question is to ask, “How far behind are you on your payments?” It gives the owner permission to tell you how serious things are AND it let’s them know that you assume that is the case. So they aren’t embarrassed to discuss this with you. Don’t worry if this seems tricky. In my course there is a whole section on scripts for realtors and owners to help you get through these questions without stumbling. You will also learn how to make low offers without getting laughed at or hung up on. You will be amazed at how many really great deals you can generate following my steps.
Now let’s look at my simple approach to property analysis. You don’t want to waste time on properties that are “get real and run away” when you could be focusing your time on deals and steals.
In my market, I primarily wholesale my properties on to investors. That means I need to be able to resell the property for about 70% of its ARV after purchase, closing costs, and repairs. Its safe to say that 60-65% of ARV is all I can afford to pay on a deal and have it still be a deal. So I need a quick and easy way to analyze the property and see if I can stay within my numbers. Of course the numbers are a little bit different if I am buying to rent or buying to retail. But you get the general idea.
I highly suggest you work with worst case scenario numbers. That means if the customer says a house is with $70,000 to $75,000 you look at an ARV of $70,000. If they further ballpark the repairs to be $5,000 to $10,000 I always go with the $10,000. If I plan to wholesale the house, I also have to allow for closing costs. So that leaves me with a number like this.
Property ARV $70,000Repairs $ 10,000Closing Costs $ 5,300
This leaves you with $54,700 in value. So let’s assume you can get the deal for $44,000. Then you have a $10,000 deal on your hands and you are off to the races!
This property analysis is so simple, it enables you to do deals super fast without breaking out your calculator and spreadsheet. And the faster you can do deals, the more money you can make!
By Larry Goins
If you need an accounting degree to crunch the numbers when evaluating a property, then you need a new formula. Property analysis doesn’t have to be a mathematical challenge. If you will stick with me, you will see that simplified property analysis is an integral part of being an ultimate buying and selling machine.
Sure, it doesn’t hurt to have an idea what a property will cost you in the long run if you plan to renovate and then rent it out. But if the whole idea is to flip the house or build a real estate portfolio, then the big picture is how little you can invest and how much house you can get, right? If you find a deal, or negotiate a deal, it should be a pretty simple number game to crack. Either there is immediate value above and beyond your investment or there is not. You won’t need an elaborate mathematical formula to know if you can win or not. And you probably won’t need anyone else to tell you whether or not it’s a deal.
Side note here. You are a student of mine because you want to learn to be an ultimate buying and selling machine. However, if you use the simplified property analysis below you won’t need me to confirm whether you’ve found a deal or not. I’ll coach and mentor you along the way, but the only phone call you will need to make to me is to strike up the band and launch the cheering squad. You will know when you’ve found a deal or a steal.
There are plenty of reasons that a deal needs to have a high profit margin. Least of which is that without one there is too much margin for error. If something goes wrong, you might not make any money at all. Plus, let’s face it. We are all in this real estate game to make money. If you get caught up in a cycle of doing $2000 profit deals and just bringing home another marginal paycheck every month, you just have another job. Come on! You really want to be an ultimate buying and selling machine, right? Putting money in the bank and building net worth and honing your real estate investing craft. Not crunching numbers on some hard-to-handle property analysis spreadsheet. That’s what God made accountants for. I’m taking His creations and making real estate kings and queens.
With a simple property analysis you can crunch numbers and make an offer during your first contact with the owner. Okay, so you probably won’t buy the house on the first call. But once you make that first offer you are in a better position to negotiate and the owner is liking you because you are possibly the only one who has made an offer on his property. Don’t get hampered down in the discomfort of making an offer on a property that you’ve never set foot on. It doesn’t matter. If you have an appraisal, and you know the cost of the repairs, you are well on the way to closing the deal. It doesn’t help to see it, if you aren’t planning on owning it for any length of time or doing the repair work yourself. That’s a little bit like my wife insisting on looking under the hood of a car before we buy it. Okay, so now she knows it has an engine, but she isn’t going to like it any more or any less for what she sees under the hood. And you aren’t going to like the house any more or any less just because you look at it.
If this is your first deal, I still hope that you will look at the house. It’s a part of the whole real estate investing education process. If you haven’t seen a house yet, grab a copy of our Rehab Bus Tour CD so that you can see what we are looking for when we look at a house. But remember that the ultimate goal for my ultimate buying and selling machine students is that they use the phone, fax, and internet to do the deals without ever leaving their own homes.
Property Search Criteria
When you are looking at a house, whether its online or in person, there are only two or three questions you have to know the answer to before you know if it’s a deal, a steal, or a “get real and run away” opportunity.
You have to know the answers to these questions before you dare make an offer.
1. After Repair Value: It doesn’t matter what the current value of the house is or what it would appraise for in its current condition. We don’t care. The value that we care about is the after repair value of the property in question. Sometimes you will see this as ARV. Whether or not you have a potential deal depends upon the value of the property after the necessary repairs. There is a reason that people look for handy-man’s specials and fixer uppers. There are savings to be had. We utilize the savings to make sure that our deal really is a deal.
2. Amount of Repairs: What is it going to cost to get this property to appraise at the ARV? Its important that this is accurate and includes all necessary repairs. I have great luck telling realtors or owners that I need “just a ballpark figure”. Of course the number isn’t written in stone. It really is just a ballpark figure. But it’s the second number that you must have to utilize my easy property analysis.
3. Potential Rent: This is the optional question. It doesn’t matter if you don’t intend to keep the property for any length of time. But even if you plan to sell the property, its not bad information to have for your own sales pitch. If the property is For Sale By Owner you will also need to know what their loan balance is and how far if at all they are behind on their payments. Remember these are the people who are really keen to have you purchase their properties. They have a pain level associated with their property ownership. A good way to address this question is to ask, “How far behind are you on your payments?” It gives the owner permission to tell you how serious things are AND it let’s them know that you assume that is the case. So they aren’t embarrassed to discuss this with you. Don’t worry if this seems tricky. In my course there is a whole section on scripts for realtors and owners to help you get through these questions without stumbling. You will also learn how to make low offers without getting laughed at or hung up on. You will be amazed at how many really great deals you can generate following my steps.
Now let’s look at my simple approach to property analysis. You don’t want to waste time on properties that are “get real and run away” when you could be focusing your time on deals and steals.
In my market, I primarily wholesale my properties on to investors. That means I need to be able to resell the property for about 70% of its ARV after purchase, closing costs, and repairs. Its safe to say that 60-65% of ARV is all I can afford to pay on a deal and have it still be a deal. So I need a quick and easy way to analyze the property and see if I can stay within my numbers. Of course the numbers are a little bit different if I am buying to rent or buying to retail. But you get the general idea.
I highly suggest you work with worst case scenario numbers. That means if the customer says a house is with $70,000 to $75,000 you look at an ARV of $70,000. If they further ballpark the repairs to be $5,000 to $10,000 I always go with the $10,000. If I plan to wholesale the house, I also have to allow for closing costs. So that leaves me with a number like this.
Property ARV $70,000Repairs $ 10,000Closing Costs $ 5,300
This leaves you with $54,700 in value. So let’s assume you can get the deal for $44,000. Then you have a $10,000 deal on your hands and you are off to the races!
This property analysis is so simple, it enables you to do deals super fast without breaking out your calculator and spreadsheet. And the faster you can do deals, the more money you can make!
10 Point Email Marketing Checklist
The 10-Point Checklist for Successful Email Marketing:
1. I am sending to the correct list.Double check your email is going to the right segmentation of your list. Click carefully! When you send duplicate or irrelevant messages, you increase the chance that you'll irritate recipients into reporting you as spam or unsubscribing from you.
2. I proofread all the text in Notepad before having it coded for my HTML messages.If you created your text copy in Word or other formatted word-processing programs, paste it into Notepad or other plain-text programs and check it again, or read it backwards to take the words out of context. This can make misspellings pop. Don't rely on your spell-checker to catch usage errors (to-two-too, your-you're, there-their).
3. I verified that the offer or other purpose for sending the message is the correct one.Always check first by clicking through on your test messages and verify your destination is correct. A wrong URL or page not found error can destroy an email campaign.
4. I included an unsubscribe link and street address as required by CAN-SPAM. (Or, I included all the elements my country's commercial-email regulations require.)For U.S. email senders, the law specifically requires adding an unsubscribe link and your company postal address. If you have redesigned your template or switched to a new one, you should double-check to make sure these crucial elements are still there and easy to find.
5. These identifying elements are present and accounted for:
The subject line is filled in with text that accurately represents the email message content.
The "from" line shows my company or brand name, not an email address. You want the mail to stand as a reliable presence in the inbox.
Any dates, especially copyright, reflect the correct year. This is important, especially if you work far ahead and often overlooked in January when the year changes. Having the wrong date makes you look amateurish, and amateurish mistakes look spammy.
My company contact information, including name, street address, telephone numbers, Web site and email address for questions or concerns. If you want your customers to feel more confident about interacting with you, give them many ways to contact you.
6. I clicked every link and link-connected image to make sure they all work, and checked to make sure each image has an alt tag describing the content.This is a simple troubleshooter, but it seems to get overlooked frequently, judging from all the broken links we see. Broken links mean recipients can't act on your email even if they wanted to and actually makes your entire message useless.
The alt tag is important because it gives you another way to deliver information when your readers have disabled images. The alt tag can either describe the image or house a call to action.
7. I previewed the message in my preview pane and with images disabled, in different browsers and on different computer platforms.Your list software should allow you to test-send your message before launching it to your list. Do this every time, even if you're sending a message using a template that has been thoroughly debugged. Read it on different platforms – PC, Mac, mobile – and in different browsers, mainly Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (for Mac users), with the preview pane enabled and images disabled. Now you see your email as your subscribers do. If it isn't pretty, go back to the drawing board.
8. I proofread my text message and included the link to my message on the Web.Repeat Step 2 with the copy in your text message (not formatted in HTML or using pictures or other images). The text message has re-emerged in importance for mobile readers whose devices don't read HTML. Also make sure the Web link is present and working for mobile readers who can decode HTML or for subscribers whose alternative or nonstandard browsers don't render HTML well.
9. I had one other person look it over before I hit "send."Here you ask someone who was not involved in creating the message to give it a once-over before a launch. You want a fresh pair of eyes and a brain that hasn't looked at the same mistake 10 times without seeing it.
10. I tested my body copy and HTML coding with a delivery monitoring tool to make sure it doesn't trigger spam filters.You should always ask someone to look over your message before you send it, but a fresh pair of eyes doesn't always know what will trigger an ISP or email-server's spam filters. A third-party delivery monitoring service, such as Email Advisor, stays tuned to the most up-to-date filter quirks can reveal potential problems before you commit yourself.
A service like this can spot filter triggers in content or formatting, show you whether your email is more likely to get blocked outright, to get filtered to the junk file or be delivered straight to the inbox or check to see if you landed on a blacklist.
SOURCEhttp://www.lyrishq.com/content/view/174/
1. I am sending to the correct list.Double check your email is going to the right segmentation of your list. Click carefully! When you send duplicate or irrelevant messages, you increase the chance that you'll irritate recipients into reporting you as spam or unsubscribing from you.
2. I proofread all the text in Notepad before having it coded for my HTML messages.If you created your text copy in Word or other formatted word-processing programs, paste it into Notepad or other plain-text programs and check it again, or read it backwards to take the words out of context. This can make misspellings pop. Don't rely on your spell-checker to catch usage errors (to-two-too, your-you're, there-their).
3. I verified that the offer or other purpose for sending the message is the correct one.Always check first by clicking through on your test messages and verify your destination is correct. A wrong URL or page not found error can destroy an email campaign.
4. I included an unsubscribe link and street address as required by CAN-SPAM. (Or, I included all the elements my country's commercial-email regulations require.)For U.S. email senders, the law specifically requires adding an unsubscribe link and your company postal address. If you have redesigned your template or switched to a new one, you should double-check to make sure these crucial elements are still there and easy to find.
5. These identifying elements are present and accounted for:
The subject line is filled in with text that accurately represents the email message content.
The "from" line shows my company or brand name, not an email address. You want the mail to stand as a reliable presence in the inbox.
Any dates, especially copyright, reflect the correct year. This is important, especially if you work far ahead and often overlooked in January when the year changes. Having the wrong date makes you look amateurish, and amateurish mistakes look spammy.
My company contact information, including name, street address, telephone numbers, Web site and email address for questions or concerns. If you want your customers to feel more confident about interacting with you, give them many ways to contact you.
6. I clicked every link and link-connected image to make sure they all work, and checked to make sure each image has an alt tag describing the content.This is a simple troubleshooter, but it seems to get overlooked frequently, judging from all the broken links we see. Broken links mean recipients can't act on your email even if they wanted to and actually makes your entire message useless.
The alt tag is important because it gives you another way to deliver information when your readers have disabled images. The alt tag can either describe the image or house a call to action.
7. I previewed the message in my preview pane and with images disabled, in different browsers and on different computer platforms.Your list software should allow you to test-send your message before launching it to your list. Do this every time, even if you're sending a message using a template that has been thoroughly debugged. Read it on different platforms – PC, Mac, mobile – and in different browsers, mainly Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (for Mac users), with the preview pane enabled and images disabled. Now you see your email as your subscribers do. If it isn't pretty, go back to the drawing board.
8. I proofread my text message and included the link to my message on the Web.Repeat Step 2 with the copy in your text message (not formatted in HTML or using pictures or other images). The text message has re-emerged in importance for mobile readers whose devices don't read HTML. Also make sure the Web link is present and working for mobile readers who can decode HTML or for subscribers whose alternative or nonstandard browsers don't render HTML well.
9. I had one other person look it over before I hit "send."Here you ask someone who was not involved in creating the message to give it a once-over before a launch. You want a fresh pair of eyes and a brain that hasn't looked at the same mistake 10 times without seeing it.
10. I tested my body copy and HTML coding with a delivery monitoring tool to make sure it doesn't trigger spam filters.You should always ask someone to look over your message before you send it, but a fresh pair of eyes doesn't always know what will trigger an ISP or email-server's spam filters. A third-party delivery monitoring service, such as Email Advisor, stays tuned to the most up-to-date filter quirks can reveal potential problems before you commit yourself.
A service like this can spot filter triggers in content or formatting, show you whether your email is more likely to get blocked outright, to get filtered to the junk file or be delivered straight to the inbox or check to see if you landed on a blacklist.
SOURCEhttp://www.lyrishq.com/content/view/174/
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
AskLarryGoins.com
Do you have a pressing question about real estate investing that Larry could help you with? Go to http://www.AskLarryGoins.com and enter your question. Every Tuesday night Larry will host a Q&A call where he will address your questions and supply the answers. These calls will be hosted through Larry’s http://www.TheCoachingClub.com. If you can’t make the Tuesday night call, don’t worry. Replays will be available at The Coaching Club as well.
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