Are you using email marketing in your business? If not, why not?
Marketers don’t realize that having a list is like having money in the bank. It’s on-demand traffic. When you have a list of subscribers, you always have traffic. No more hoping G likes your site this month or this week.
It is also a way to build a more stable income, which we all want right? (raising my hand really, really high)
The list is always there when you need it, while your ranks in the search engines might not always be up high enough to send you visitors.
Although, just the fact of having a list does not mean you’ll have sales when you want them. There are plenty of marketers who have lists but see little profit from them.
So…. I wanted to cover some tips for a profitable list.
1. Professional Autoresponder Service
If you expect to extract maximum profits from email marketing, you must use the best tools. I know it’s common sense, but time after time I see marketers trying to skimp or save money and this is NOT a part of your business you want to leave to cheap or free solutions.
Just like a quality hosting service is necessary for a profitable website, your autoresponder can make a difference when it comes making money from your subscribers.
What a Quality Autoresponder service can do for you:
- Properly deliver your emails
- Get your emails in to your subscribers Inbox.
- Work with ISP’s to keep your emails out of the trash/spam folders.
- Give you stats such as deliverability, opens, click through rate and more.
From my experience, and many others, the top of the line (and very affordable) service is GetResponse. You can even test them out before you go all out.
It’s important to choose the right service from the beginning because most services will not allow you to import leads you’ve obtained from another service. It’s not easy to “switch” later on, another reason to choose a quality service right from the beginning.
2. Converting Squeeze page
Here’s where many people are missing out. I’ve lost count how many bad squeeze pages and opt-in boxes I’ve seen. I am not talking about “ugly” pages, I am talking about lame, or little to no copy. No really compelling reasons for the visitor to give up their email address. Actually, many a high converting squeeze page can be ugly.
But, “Join my newsletter” is NOT going to grow you a list. You need to make them WANT to give you their email address.
It’s most common on blogs, with sidebar opt-in boxes. Granted, you usually don’t have much space in the sidebar, but there’s still enough room to insert copy that will get them subscribing to your list. If you use wordpress, many theme’s have options where you can place an opt-in, say in the header. Or maybe you just need to find a better theme.
Side Note – If you need ready-to-go and easy to implement squeeze pages, you can find them here: PLR Squeeze Page Templates.
Another very important aspect of a high converting squeeze page is to TEST. Most folks slap up a opt-in and they are done. They usually have no clue how it’s converting.
Why does the conversion rate matter?
The better your opt-in form or page converts, the more you’ll be getting from your traffic. I doubt you have unlimited traffic coming to your website, so it’s in your best interest to squeeze everything from the hits you’re getting.
Here’s an example…
Say your opt-in section is converting at 10% (surprisingly many are lucky to get that), so for every 100 visitors, you’ll get 10 opt-in’s. Better than nothing, but your still losing out.
What if your opt-in section converted at 40% (very do-able with testing), so now, for every 100 visitors, you’ll now be getting 50 subscribers. And 40% is just the beginning, there are squeeze pages that convert at 90% or better. Point is, don’t settle, always work towards higher conversions. Your squeeze page should always be in testing mode.
Big difference right?
Here again, your getting more from the traffic you have. On a similar note, you won’t need as much traffic to see improved and profitable results.
How do you test your opt-in or squeeze page?
Some autoresponder services have this feature built in to their service. GetResponse is one of those. With their service, you can create different opt-in forms and they will be rotated for you and show you how they compare and how they convert.
Another option, more so if your doing squeeze “pages”, is Google Analytics. As of this writing, you can test pages in the content experiments section. What’s nice about using Analytics is that you can hook up your entire website and see how the traffic flows, and how it converts.
Speaking of squeeze pages, if you need a report to give away, here’s just some I have available: Giveaways for Listbuilding.
3. Mail Your Subscribers
If there was one major mistake I see so many marketers make is not mailing their subscribers. I’ll raise my hand and say I am JUST as guilty! I believe that many people think that if they mail too much, they will be bugging their subscribers and they might unsubscribe.
First off, if mailing them is a problem for them, then let them unsubscribe. Seriously.
Now, when I talk about mailing, I am talking about mailing once a day at the most. If you’re sending more than one email a day, you’re likely to burn out your list and have a high unsubscribe rate.
As you probably know there are some marketers that mail several times a day and mail promotion after promotion. It might work short term, but would you stay on that kind of list? Doubt your subscribers would stay if you churn and burn your list.
The key is to stay in contact. I can tell you from experience, people can and do forget you quickly. Sorry, don’t mean to hit your pride. You have to remember, these people are probably on more then one list, some on many lists, so they are getting emails from so many people. Since they have so many marketers coming at them, you need to continually remind them about you, your business, your products or your services.
Plus…. when they forget about you, they are more likely to hit the spam button because I don’t remember signing up for your list. It happens all the time.
Lastly there is also email interaction. Can’t remember the official term right this moment, but it comes down to how much or how little the people you are sending emails to, open or read your emails. It’s a way the email providers judge where your emails go, to the subscribers inbox or their spam/junk folder. I’ve seen it happen… I stop opening a certain marketers emails and eventually they start going to the junk folder. And as we know, if your emails are hitting the junk folder, you won’t be getting much from that list.
4. Build Trust
Who’s going to buy from you if they don’t trust you? Half the battle of any sale, even online sales, is getting people to trust you enough, that they will click that buy button.
How you build trust with your subscribers?
First step is to be yourself. (more on that in a bit). Another important way to build trust is to get a little personal. Right from the beginning, show them you are a real person. Talk about your family, kids, pets, hobbies, ect. The more they see you as a real person, the more they will trust you. How personal you want to get is up to you. Sadly it’s kind of risky for females, so keep that in mind.
It’s important to keep your word. If you tell them your going to do something, make sure you do it. You let them down, they lose confidence in you, or doing business with you.
Share your stories with them, maybe life lesson’s, the good and bad of your life. Telling them about your mistakes can show your a regular person and your real. Of course you need to be careful you don’t get to personal. Don’t think to many people would be interested in hearing the details of your latest pimple.
5. Show Your Personality
This should probably be part of the last one, but I think it is so important that I gave it, it’s own section.
One way you can stand out form all the other marketers is to have a personality in your emails. Be funny, be entertaining, give them reason to look forward to your email messages. As we know, the more people you get to open and read your emails, the more your likely to make when you’re promoting something.
I read where one marketer stated that if your entertaining and/or funny enough, you could send promotions every day and people would still open and read your emails.
Here’s a thought…. Are their certain marketers emails you look forward to? That you open every single time? Why is that? Here’s where you can study what worked on you. I am not saying to copy them, that will just make you a wannabe. I am saying to notice what they do and put your own spin on it.
6. Treat Them Right
It probably doesn’t need to be said, but treating your subscribers right can pay off in a big way for your email marketing ventures.
I try to live by this saying: “Treat others like you’d want to be treated”. Don’t know if I got that exactly right, but I think you know what I mean.
Here’s an idea… Before you send out your email, stop and think if it’s something you’d want to receive.
The same thing goes for complainers. Unfortunately there will be times when you’ll get emails from subscribers who complain you email them too much, you don’t have permission to mail them (even when your using double opt-in), or some other reason they are mad about getting your message.
What ever you do, DON’T argue with them, it’s not worth it. I’ve found, even if you explain it nicely, they are probably already upset and it’s only going to make matters worst. For me, if they have not already unsubscribed, I do it for them. I just let go, delete their email and move on. From my experience, it just seems to aggravate them more and they can get nasty. The customer is always right, right?
If your treating your list right and you get a complaint, don’t take it personally. It could be that person is having a bad day and your the lucky one that get’s the backlash. We’ve all been there and we’ve all done it ourselves. Life is not always happy happy joy joy.
The big thing is to remember, there is a living, breathing human being at the other end of the email. Keep that in mind and you’ll do just fine.
7. Give to Get
I’ve already talked about treating your subscribers right, and part of that process is to give them value before you ask them to buy something from you. Of course you don’t want to give away the farm and have nothing left to sell.
By the same token, if you provide your readers with quality freebies, you’re going to gain trust and show them what you provide. If your free stuff is good, they are going to think, “The paid products must be awesome”.
Give and take with email marketing means you send more non-promotional messages compared to sales geared messages. Of course this is up to you. Some people say to send 3 non-promotional emails for every 1 promotional one. But this is a matter of opinion and what works best for your list.
BIG TIP – Providing free content to your subscribers doesn’t mean you won’t gain anything. Items like short reports can contain links to your products or related affiliate products, and they always should. You could make sales even from seemly free content.
Well, that’s it for today. This subject is a book in itself, but I thought I’d try to cover the basics to get you going.
Struggling to Write Emails?
I know many people have a hard time writing emails to send to their list. They are not sure what to write, how to write it or how to start.
There’s a solution here: PLR Autoresponder Messages. Here you’ll find pre-written, ready-to-go email messages, on many different subjects, niches and markets. Save yourself time and frustration with these turnkey solutions.
Download this Report as a PDF: 7 Tips To High Profit Email Marketing
One Last Thing: If your just learning the ropes of email marketing, you need to pick up a copy of this: Email Marketing Assassin. Will give you a successful start.
Okay, that’s it for today. Was this helpful? If so, please share on your favorite social networks.
Anything to add? You’re encouraged to leave a comment below.