Ever wonder why it is so expensive to do an email campaign?  The biggest reason boils down to economics 101, the fact that most cappers do not have economy of scale.  Unless your name is Jim Feist, you don’t have the economy of scale to acquire all the components to do a campaign cost effectively.  This means that you pay for services such as email delivery, design services and lead acquisition at low volumes which are typically the priciest.

Is their a solution to lower costs on your email campaigns?

Cooperative advertising is the answer.  Cooperative advertising means sharing the costs of the campaign among a group of cappers so as to share the costs.   Working together allows all the costs of a campaign to be spread out among 4-5  different cappers (that’s the most we recommend).  Most customers know that any capper is typically only good at one sport and at most two.  Our newsletter is written to promote a single capper in each of the key betting sports (i.e. NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAAF or NCAAB).  They are written in a format that appears less like advertising and more like a magazine review.  This appealing format increases readability.  We also include in our newsletter free giveaways and a free-ebook to increase the attractiveness of the creative content.

To see a our template sample click here or click the image at the bottom of this post.

What are the costs of email to do it yourself?

The costs for setting up a mail campaign can be substantial.  Here are some of the typical costs:

• Design of creative (e.g. image creation, layout)
• Setup and monitoring of campaign
• Acquisition of quality email lists
• Email delivery costs (based on number of emails and bandwidth consumed)

Our New Full-Service Email Solution

EZCapper is launching a cooperative email program that allows up to 5 cappers in any week to promote their services to our highest quality lists.  Our lists includes those listed on this blog at the “Email | List Marketing” category and most include full names.  This list is constantly monitored and renewed to ensure only the best and freshest leads are included.

Note: For those cappers that have the budget, they can choose to use our service to deliver a newsletter that exclusively advertises their service only.

Each week a newsletter highlighting a capper for each of the 3 sports (e.g. NFL, MLB, NBA etc.) plus a headline sponsor will get a mini-review that acts as an advertorial.  The headline sponsor will provide a free pick.  An advertorial will be written up on the sponsoring capper.  Here are the details of our delivery:

• Once per week from 10,000 up to 250,000 deliveries
• Cost will be based on whether or not the capper wants to sponsor the entire newsletter or do a coop with other cappers.
• Creative costs are included in coop deliveries.
• Delivery costs are based on the lists size and the actual cpm.  We will provide credits for future deliveries on emails that are not delivered (“undeliverables“).
• Prices are based on position in the coop ad (refer to the sample template)
• Reporting is provided 5 days after the delivery (for accuracy as it takes a few days for the reporting)

The advantages of using our service?

• The difference from owning your own email lists is that first of all you don’t own but are renting which is far cheaper.  As we are managing the lists, the lists are better quality than what you can get on your own.  Purchasing lists often results in a high number of undeliverables plus they are often a bit outdated.
• With our service you don’t need to manage the delivery or design the creative which is very time consuming.
• Technical issues.  If you have ever tried to send your own emails in large quantity you know the difficulties.

The cost of using our services?

As our lists are constantly growing we charge on a CPM (cost per thousand basis).  The costs depend on the specific position in the newsletter.  Here are the variables:

• Do you want to do a email on your own without cooperation with other advertisers?  If you want to do a customer newsletter where you are the sole advertiser it will cost $30 cpm with a minimum order requirement of 5000 recipients.  This works out to $150 ($30 cpm x 5) for a delivery to 5000 recipients and you need to do your own design work.  For us to design a newsletter for you will cost about $50 based on $25 per hour.With custom deliveries the exact number can be requested, so if you want to deliver to 5000 or 1,000,000 recipients we can accommodate custom delivery sizes.

• If you do coop advertising you cannot specify how many emails will be delivered to.  We charge only for emails delivered.  All emails that are undelivered are refunded in the form of credits to be applied to your next order.  For example if you are to do a Main Sponsor ad then your cost per CPM is $15.  We currently have a list of 125,000 recipients (this is changing daily as our opt-in lists are growing).To deliver to this would then cost $1875 (125 x $15).  At the end of each delivery we will receive undeliverable reports.  If say 12,500 emails or 10% are undelivered we will provide you with a credit of $187.50 ($15 cpm x 12.5)  in credits  to be applied as a reduction in the next mailing.

• If you want to do coop advertising this will cost depending on position.  Please refer to our template sample or http://topsportstips.com/newsletter/sports/handicapper_referral.htm

Will I make positive ROI?

A lot of customers have difficulty in doing calculations to arrive at what their return on investment is.  The first key is to determine what the lifetime value per average customer is (commonly known as LTPV).  Say for example:

• Average package size sold is $100
• Average length of customer using services is 4 months

Then the LTPV is simply $100 x 4 = $400 per customer.  Note that a lot of cappers upsell picks and provide other services that increase LTPV considerably.  The LTPV  range for some cappers can range up to $1700 per customer.

Now let’s say that you do 125,000 emails on our coop program at a rate of $15 cpm as a main sponsor.  The cost will work out to 125 x $15 = $1875.

So to break even on the campaign you would need 5 customers, 5 customers x $400 would yield $2000. A $2000 revenue on $1875 in expenses is a ROI of (2000-1875)/1875 = 6.67%.  ROI calculations for 10 signups would yield a return of (4000-1875)/1875 = 113.3%

To obtain just 5 customers on a mailing of 125,000 would require a signup rate of 0.004%.  That is only 1 out of 25,000 recipients would need to signup for your service in order for you to be profitable!

For EZCapper customers we provide an additional guarantee…. if you do not achieve a positive ROI on your first campaign we’ll include you on a second campaign for FREE.  To qualify for this offer you need to contact us so we can confirm your campaign details.

These sites are available.  Some may not be viewable online since we have stopped the service.  If you wish to view them please contact us and we can reactivate them.   For pricing information and details see https://blog.ezcapper.com/2010/06/great-deals-on-expired-sites-available/

Check back for further details.

Sites can be viewed here (as of Feb 9, 2012)

If you are a EZCapper customer paying either monthly or by Paypal invoicing, upgrade to our annual billing plan and get 3 months of promotion on our 8 free tips sites that generate new sales leads for your business.  If you do not know what our lead generation sites are about refer to:

https://blog.ezcapper.com/2010/06/advertising-opportunities-on-our-tips-sites/

Our leads sites are an excellent way of generating new leads for your business and all leads are highly qualified.  To upgrade to annual billing contact us at sales@ezcapper.com .

Sports Betting Units

Sports Betting 101 – What Is A Unit or Units For Sports Gambling Ever wondered – What a sports betting unit is, and how do handicappers use them for betting in an online sportsbook? Whats a Unit? Most people think a unit is $100, and quite honestly most handicappers use the 1 Unit = $100 philosophy, but a unit can also be $10, or $50, whatever the capper says his UNIT is. If you go to a sports betting forums website, guys like to post their record in plays and their picks for the week, month or year. They do this by posting their Units gained or their units lost. Cappers will say whether they are up +/- points. Example: +8.0 units this season. If they’re a $100 better they’re up $800. If they post that they’re 4-2, you’ve got to subtract their lost units to arrive at how much they’re up for the season. Big gamblers, you know the wiseguys or whales as we call them can be Bigger Unit players. Example: 1 Unit could equal $1000 or even more… Or for you small fish out there that don’t like to pony up Example. 1 Unit could equal $10. Remember the house Vig or commission when factoring in Units for sports betting. In essence your risking $1100 to win $1000 if you’re the whale or wise guy, or $11 to win $10 if your the small fish. How do Handicappers grade their Unit Plays? With most handicappers A 5-unit game is a top game of the week, or strong play, and these games are usually a strong percentage winner. Most handicapping outlets now pretty much use the same kind of system for their sports betting units, plus ratings systems on plays of the month, week or year are pretty much uniform across the industry. This unit system is the key to your success – but you must stay disciplined. Discipline is critical in sports betting because wins and losses often occur in streaks.

We have clients that wish to setup their own website.  In order to this you need to change a set of 8 files.  For the purposes of this example, I will reference the demo site system that can be found here http://demo.ezcapper.com/

The header.jpg file is 900×165 pixels and this is the main banner on the home page.

The header consists of two files wit the second file being headerBack2.jpg (900×46 pixels).  This file is a tricky file as it connects the header to the menu system.  More….

The second set of files comes as (notice they are all .gif files)

menu_hover_right.gif (250×46)
menu_hover_left.gif (19×46)
menu_bg.gif (2×46)

These files make up the hover menus when you put your mouse over the main menu ( “Home”, “Register”, “Access Plans”, etc. ).

The next set of files:

logo.jpg (330×95)
miniLogo.jpg (140×80)

are referenced at the following pages:

• header image of http://demo.ezcapper.com/admincontrolpanel
• right column image at http://demo.ezcapper.com/

The last image barBackground.jpg (5×22) is the color bar reference used in the “Member Login” background.

Please note the following:

1. The 3 files in the hover menu set can be designed as a solid color or a semi-transparent image by making some adjustments.
2. The images must be in EXACTLY the same pixel size and format (jpg or gif) in order for us to bring it to the system.
3. The header set of 2 files must align exactly particularly when using an image.
4. Access your admin settings and adjust the other colors in the “Edit Website Info / Settings” button.

Below I’ve attached the list of files for reference for the demo site.  Click on the files twice to download.

The way to keep people on your site is to put relevant and “sticky” content on your website.  What exactly is sticky content? Sticky content is content that keeps users engaged on the website and keeps them coming back on a regular basis.  Keeping users coming back to your site means more sales!

At EZCapper we’ve come up with three new features.

1.  Play for fun sportsbook with live betting lines

2.  Live Dealer Casino with real dealers (gorgeous and sexy!)

3.  Player to Player Poker coming soon!

To see how this works take a look at  http://www.atsinsider.biz/ , from here click on either the Sportsbook or Live Dealer Tabs.  To see the live dealer in action contact us for the passwords.

Then click on Live Games.  Select your game and have some fun.  This live-dealer product we are offering is totally amazing and keeps users on the site for hours.

Inquire with us on how you can get setup with these amazing add-ons.

Take a look at http://www.sportshandicappingonline.com

This site has custom tabs with a private players area and the use of iframes for the Match-Ups tab.

For savvy marketers, they should take advantage of our offer on expired sites.  What exactly is an expired site?  These are sites that clients have not renewed for the following reasons.

1. Decided to not continue in the business or lost interest.
2. Have not paid their bills and have had their sites claimed by us according to our stated payment policies

3. Have terminated either a sent invoice or a subscription indicating they are not continuing with the site.

These sites are valuable in the following ways:

1. Most have existing customers registrations and some have paying customers.  The following they have gained is valuable to the new owner.
2. Have invested money in marketing and promoting the brand of their site.  This may include SEO, registering in directories, monitoring services and creating valuable link exchanges.
3. Domains have a history which is very valuable for SEO.
4. Have unique content which is also valuable for SEO.

I often get asked if it is easy to take over another person’s site if they have had a bad capping record.  The answer is yes.  Most of the time the key thing to put on the site is that it is “under new management”.  Most customers will give the new owner a second chance to prove themselves.

I also get asked what happens if the guy who gave it up owns the domain.  What we typically advise is to register a domain with the same name but a different suffix.  So if the old owner registered ABC.com we’ll register ABC.info or another suffix.  This is the best way to work around the issue.

How much do we charge for Expired Sites?

The new owner would take over the site on the existing plan that the site was on.  So if were a Pro Plan then the monthly fee would be $99.99.  For our current prices refer to http://www.ezcapper.com/purchase.asp

The default setup fee is $50 for a transfer which covers administration and configuration charges. For sites with more than 20 registered users we charge $5 per registered user.  So if the site has 50 users then it would cost $250 as the setup fee.

Interested or have more questions?  Contact us.

What is considered billable service work?

We often get customers that are confused between what is a billable charge and what isn’t.  As an ASP (application service provider) we provide all support including server hosting and application support.  There are huge advantages between a hosted service (one famous example is Google Apps and in particular Gmail) which we are providing and doing it yourself (eg. running Microsoft Exchange which is the same as operating your own email servers) which can consume all your time.  Our standard  system is a template system where all settings are pre-configured.  Anything beyond our standard configuration is considered a custom site which is billed at a different rate.  Our standard system is defined by those links to the two demo systems from our website.

Here’s what is included and is covered by your monthly fees:

1. Any server related issue, we are responsible for.
2. Any minor modifications (eg. changing the email address notifications, updating any software settings not accessible from the administrator control panel).

Here’s what is included in your one-time setup fees ($50):

1. We cover a basic non-elaborate header design (see our demo) as part of the initial setup fee.  Any designs that are more elaborate than that indicated in the demo can be done by a 3rd party designer which we outsource to at $25 per hour.  Clients also have the option to provide their own designs if they choose to do so.
2. Configuration of the website system and testing.

What we charge for (one-time fee):

1. Transfer of content from an existing website to a new EZCapper website.
2. Adding new pages to the website beyond the template pages ($20/page or $25 per hour whichever is greater).
3. Changing the header designs (based on designer’s cost of $25 per hour).
4. Modifying any colors adjustments that the user can do themselves in the backend.
5. Writing and formatting content that the user can do on their own.
6. Modifying metatags for SEO purposes.

What we do NOT support

1. Content that you input on your backend administration including formatting.
2. Payment integration on behalf of the client (this can be easily done by the client, click here for details)
3. Custom access to any folder. As we are a template based system we do not provide access to our source code for security reasons.
4. FTP Access to any website.
5. Hosting of banner ads or images.  This can be done by the client, click here for details.

Questions? Please comment on the blog.

We operate a wager simulation product called WagerSim.com that provides game result simulation based on mathematical algorithms.  A lot of handicappers actually use our product to make their picks!

In this free service we have as of June 13, 2010 a total of 588 subscribers.  All have emails and about 20% have phone numbers.  All have names.  They are classified as Grade A since they are fresh and come in on a daily basis.  Also the emails are verified since without entering a correct email they cannot use the service.  These leads are available for sale or rental.