Customer Rating:  
Summary: Not recommended, poorly written
Comment: I bought this book to help with my publishing company's marketing program. I truly regret spending any money on this book, and the time spent reading this book was a waste.
Brown's guide to E-Mail marketing is so poorly written, it was a tough challenge to understand what was being said. There are far too many grammatical, spelling, syntax and style errors, usually four or more on any single page. In some cases, there are sentence fragments where it is apparent that text was deleted in the manuscript. In one case, an entire page or more of text appeared to be missing. There are even a few instances of notes the author wrote to himself but did not remove before publication.
The book is also filled with "Case Studies" that are actually blog entries from other e-mail marketing professionals. This is not ordinarily a problem, but these sidebars are constantly repeating the same advice over and over again, almost verbatim, and as such they are a waste of many, many pages. Many of these so-called case studies refer to web pages or had links that in print are obviously missing, and so the entire case study is for naught because the reference material cited is not there.
In addition, there are entire chapters devoted to website design and search engine optimization. Great topics, but these have nothing to do with the topic of the book, e-mail marketing.
And yet Brown goes on and on about making sure that any email you send out in an email blast or in an email newsletter should have perfect spelling and grammar, and all links should be complete. He also makes it clear that if the subject line of an email does not match the content, it will only result in negative feelings on the part of the reader. Brown should take his own advice, because that is exactly how I feel right now.
There is a very troubling statement Brown makes about copyright laws. He said that there is no need to get permission to copy part of someone else's newsletter (or a story from an actual news agency) under fair use as long as you only use a small portion of it. This is not true, especially if the use is commercial in nature. If the portion is "substantial," and the use is *not* for critical review, then it needs a copyright permission in writing. Taking Brown's advice on this matter is certain to land most email marketing writers in hot water. It showed lack of research and little understanding of the industry, and made me doubt anything else he might have had to say about the CAN-SPAM Act, spam filters, and typical response rates.
The quality of the writing is so bad that not only do I discourage anyone from spending time with this book, I would have to say I cannot recommend this author, nor could I recommend any book published by Atlantic Publishing Group, as the publisher should have seen that this was not of publishable quality.
I feel like I just read 268 pages of SPAM.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Notable Recogition forThe Complete Guide to E-mail Marketing
Comment: "The Complete Guide to E-mail Marketing: How to Create Successful, Spam-free Campaigns to Reach Your Target Audience and Increase Sales" was selected as a "Notable" finisher in the 2008 Competition in the "Business" Category.
The Eric Hoffer Award (formerly the Writers' Notes Award) for short prose and books was established at the start of the 21st century as a means of opening a door to writing of significant merit. It honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing. The winning stories and essays are awarded prizes and published annually in the anthology, Best New Writing, along with the results of the book awards.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book delivers!
Comment: Most books that promise to be the only manual you need to succeed, do one of two things; either deliver the goods or not. Brown's Email Marketing Guide delivers and more. While some authors make a point of burying valid information towards the back of the book, Brown makes a point of introducing the material in an orderly and logical manner. Brown has put together one of the most thorough and complete books on the vast subject of email marketing. I will definitely recommend it to my friends and business associates.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's apparent that now author knows what he says
Comment: and it's 5 stars for this book, since here we get clear, easy to follow, and good advices to follow, and we have good selection of experts and good advices. If you plan buy a book on e-mail marketing this one will be good choice.
Also, I need to say, that as good was this book - same bad was another this author's book - The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Marketing: Pay Per Click Advertising Secrets Revealed
in this book, advices are or outdated, or even wrong, experts so called "advices" are nothing else but sales letters, and it is clear enough, that Search Engine Marketing is not a thing what this author knows.
But this book e-mail marketing, is clearly one of the best till now written on the topic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: How to market ethically, through email
Comment: With the passing of the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, it has grown more difficult to legitimately market through email. This book addresses this issue and many others with regard to email marketing. Mr. Brown provides a comprehensive guide to marketing your business or product through email, while navigating spam filters. This book is written for legitimate businesses with legitimate products and services to sell.
Mr. Brown describes how to grow your business through your website. Additional topics covered include how to write an effective sales email, search engine optimization (SEO), and to effectively target your emails. The book includes a glossary of terms and numerous case studies.
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