Creating an Email List with Your Blog
by Abdul on October 4, 2009
in Blogging, Email Marketing, List Building
I can not possibly emphasize enough the importance of capturing your visitors contact information and building a mailing list.
A mailing list allows you to:
1)“Recycle” your traffic by allowing you to email your list with updates and bring them back to your blog over and over again.
2)Earn money by selling ad space within your newsletter.
3)Start making sales overnight by sending out a special offer exclusive to you list .
4)Do joint ventures with other online entrepreneurs who are looking to promote their new product.
5)Build an asset with real cash value.
They key to building a list quickly is giving your visitors or prospects an incentive to join your list.
After all, few people will willingly give up their contact information unless you give them a good reason to do so.
Capturing your blog visitors contact information is actually fairly simple, if you know what you’re doing. All you need to do is offer your visitors something they would want that can be digitally delivered, like an ebook, or an audio or video product.
You should have an idea of what your blog visitors are interested in because they are looking at your blog and are therefore interested in the kind of information you have to offer. But going the extra step and setting up a survey with survey monkey or setting up an ASK campaign to see what they want would be even better.
All You then need to do is find or create an information product that one of your visitors would also be interested in.
For example, suppose you have a blog that chronicles your travels across the world and divulges all kinds of travel secrets like how to save money in different places or how to avoid scams overseas, etc.
You would then need to find a travel related information product to use as a list building incentive.
To find such a product you could either search the Internet for a travel related information product with resell rights or compile one yourself.
….Or you could just go to ebay.com.
On Ebay you can find an information product with resell rights on just about any topic you can imagine in less than 2 minutes and without spending more than $2!
Offering such an information product to you visitors in exchange for their contact information will give you the incentive offer often necessary to get visitors to sign up to your list.
Remember that the faster you build your email list and the bigger it becomes, the more money you will ultimately make.
Email Copy: Four Tips for Compelling Writing
by Abdul on September 27, 2009
in Copywriting, Email Marketing
Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your list subscribers with valuable information and resources, at the end of the day, the purpose of a list is to profit from it. And if you can’t write email copy effectively, you won’t be selling anything.
Here are four key tips to make your email copy more compelling.
Keep it Short
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.
Don’t be Wordy
Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make it flow. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.
Use Action Verbs
Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.
Use Compelling Subheadings
Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.
Once you get a subscriber to your list, knowing how to maximize your profit over the long term should be your next concern. Writing effective email copy will enable you to get sales almost on demand, thereby increasing your ability to profit from your list significantly.
Email Marketing: Building Rapport through an ASK Campaign
by Abdul on September 26, 2009
in Email Marketing, List Building
Before you even start list building and email marketing, one great tip is to set up an ASK campaign to find out what the list wants. Focus on asking and getting answers to 100 questions about whatever your interest is.
If you do this, you will be way ahead of the game and in a far better position than most marketers because you will know exactly what your market wants. When you are in that position, it makes it easy to write emails, write copy, and provide content for your list, because you know exactly what it wants.
It might seem odd, but it might be a good idea to hold off on collecting people’s names and email address in order to focus on getting as many answers to as many questions as you can within a shorter period of time. In the long run, the amount of insight that you gain into the mind of your market will more than make up for the few names that you didn’t get on your list while getting your 100 answers.
Use the answers you get from your questions to write bullet points on sales copy, headlines, and other things on your squeeze page. You now have a true window into the mind of your prospect, because with an ASK campaign, you don’t have to rely on guess work and assumptions.
If you want to use paid advertising for your ASK campaign, start by asking what they want. Then on your thank-you page you can then offer the opportunity to join your list.
Another technique is to offer a free e-course or free report on the squeeze page to get the prospect to opt-in. Then, the Thank you page say something along the lines of: “Thanks for subscribing. You’ll be getting your first lesson soon. In the meantime, what is you single biggest question about ____ topic.”
This process will help you to begin building a relationship with your niche. Then, while you are developing content based on the answers to the questions in the ASK campaign, you can also recommend products that are worthwhile to your list.
If you want to skyrocket your Internet success and income, you should take seriously the job of building a bond and rapport with your list. That is done by having personality, offering valuable content, and being trustworthy in your product recommendation. If you do those things, you will be able to make much more money in the long run, and your list will benefit much more from your email marketing as well.
At the end of the day, the ASK campaign all about selling your list what they want, as opposed to selling them what you want to sell them – which is what most people do. Don’t be like most people. Set yourself apart from the crowd.
Discover Four List Marketing Advantages that Demolish Any Excuse for Not List Building Today
by Abdul on September 22, 2009
in Email Marketing
With list marketing, you can do things that just aren’t possible if you aren’t engaged in list building and marketing. Your Internet business success will be greatly enhanced if you focus on list marketing and make it a central part of your business. Read on for four key advantages that make a list centered business model superior to other business models on the Internet.
One key advantage of list marketing is that you can offer the same product to people multiple times to increase your conversion percentage. If you only have a simple web page up, once the visitor leaves, you have lost the sale. The truth is that most buyers don’t buy on the first exposure, but rather usually the sale doesn’t occur until someone is exposed to a product at least 3 or 4 times at a minimum, often more times than that. That is the benefit of an email list. You have control over how much exposure a subscriber gets to the product you are promoting.
Second, instant web site traffic is one of the most powerful aspects of list marketing. The fastest way to send traffic to a page is to send an email to your list. If you have a list with thousands of people, you can literally get thousands of people to visit the web page of your choice in a matter of a few hours. And the best part is it’s free. So if there is a promotion that is ending in a few minutes, or in an hour, there is no better way to send traffic than through your email list.
Third, you can also pre-sell or warm up your list and increase the chances of conversion. If you have a product of yours or an affiliate product that you want to promote, you can send a series of messages introducing the appeal of what you want to offer without overtly selling. You also can build anticipation for it. When the product is finally released, it will be much easier to convince subscribers to buy it, because they are already anticipating it. This is very easy to do through list marketing.
And fourth, no more leaving money on the table – maximize the amount of money you can make. Traffic is expensive, so once you have it, make the most of it. To get people to your web page, you either exert time and effort or money. Wouldn’t it make sense to only have to try to work once to get a customer for life? That is what building a list does. Once you get email addresses, you don’t have write articles or use pay per click or other traffic techniques for customers anymore, because you now have them in your funnel. Save yourself the effort and get the customers’ email address on their first visit, then you don’t have to use any traffic techniques for that customer.
8 Tips for Writing Effective Email Copy
by Abdul on September 20, 2009
in Email Marketing
Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your subscribers with valuable information and resources, at the end of the day, the purpose of a list is to profit from it. And if you can’t write email copy effectively, you won’t be selling anything.
To get on the path to writing effective email copy, here are 8 tips.
Personalize
It helps to use the customer’s name in the email and sometimes in the subject line (don’t overdo it though). When a person sees their name, they feel more of a personal connection and will be more likely to be responsive to your email.
Write the Way You Speak
Use easy to understand English when writing email copy. It’s nice if you have a big vocabulary, but don’t try to impress your subscribers with it. Write the way you would talk to an old friend. Try to be as friendly and as personable as you can when you write.
Write Passionate Emails
You can’t see your customer when you write emails, so be sure to put some extra feeling in email copy. Be enthusiastic. You want to catch the attention of the reader and stay as far from boring them as possible.
Write to One Person
Imagine the ideal prospect and write your email to that person. No matter how many people are reading your messages, each person who reads them reads them as one individual. Writing as if you are writing to one person will increase the impact of the message on each individual.
Keep it Short Buddy
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs can be as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.
Don’t be Wordy
Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make sure it flows. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.
Use Action Verbs
Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.
Use Compelling Subheadings
Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.