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.

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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.

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3 Keys to Success with Email List Marketing

by Abdul on September 19, 2009
in Email Marketing

If you want to learn about email list marketing, this post will offer a few helpful tips. Using a combination of trust, specials, and short reports will quickly lead you down the path of success. Now I’ll cover each point in bit more detail.

Gain Their Trust

One thing you have to do is gain the trust of your subscribers. If your subscribers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. The way to gain their trust is to give them valuable information. Don’t try to sell them something every chance you get. You actually have to make an effort to refer them to valuable content. And when you do recommend products, be honest. In the long run, your honesty will pay off because people like to buy from people they trust.

Offer Them Specials

Offer specials to your subscribers. When you give people special treatment and go out of your way to please them, they feel indebted to you and they like you more. When you list feels they owe you and when they like you, they will be more likely to buy. Also, a discount obviously makes your product less expensive, so that will increase the number of buyers. And the feeling of being in a special club helps as well, so be sure to mention that the discount is only for list members. And most importantly, make sure you mean it.

Create Short Reports

Another way to use email list marketing effectively is to create short reports to sell to your list. This is a little used method that gives you a taste of product creation without having to commit too much. You can create a short 15-20 page report and sell it your list for $10, or whatever price you think is appropriate. You can create a product a month this way pretty easily. As your list grows, this will be an easy way to make quick money. Once you have a number of reports completed, you can also offer a package deal to get them all for a significantly discounted price.

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The Listbuilding Club – Tellman Knudson

by Abdul on September 19, 2009
in Product Reviews

Out of the list building courses out there, Tellman Knudson’s List Building Club is among the best, if not the best out there.

Now, I’ll be honest. Tellman is not my favorite email marketer. He likes to promote products and sell often. I get tired of getting so many product promotions. I’m sure you can relate if you are on the email list of many marketers. But with that being said, if you want to learn how to build a big list, Tellman is the guy to teach you. He made $800,000 his first year online. Now he makes millions a year. He knows what he’s talking about.

Ok, back on topic. The List building Club is an extremely thorough resource that walks you through every aspect of how to build a list. It has detailed videos that walk you step by step through every step necessary to do everything from setting up a hosting account, signing up for an autoresponder account, setting up a blog, putting your autoresponder code on your squeeze page, getting traffic, and a boatload of other things.

It also covers writing articles, press releases, ppc, and every other list building method out there. It also has tons of audio and written resources, and some nice bonuses. There is too much beneficial information for me to mention it all here. And once again, there are tons of step by step instructions. I am honestly not aware of a more comprehensive resource out there for list building.

For the current promotion, you can try it out for free for 7 days and you get free cd (you do pay $8 to cover shipping and handling). After the the 7 day trial, it’s $97 a month. Unless you are already a list building expert and know everything you want to know about list building, I’m pretty certain you’ll benefit a lot from it.

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What type of Email Autoresponder Should I choose?

by Abdul on September 15, 2009
in Email Autoresponder Tips

Choosing an email marketing service is one of the most important decisions you will make as an Internet marketer because your subscriber list is your most valuable asset. If you choose the wrong service, you will be severely limited in your ability to effectively communicate with your subscribers. If you choose the right service, you will find that communicating with your list effectively will be much easier. I don’t want you to make a hasty decision based purely on cost, so I decided to make this post about autoresponder options.

The primary decision you’ll make in terms of autoresponders is whether you will choose a subscription based service, or software that you will host on your own server. I’ll go over some benefits and problems with each option, then I’ll reveal my verdict on which option you should go with.

Self-hosted Autoresponder Scripts

Benefits

One time cost- this is obviously a good thing because in the long run it ends up being less expensive than subscription based services. The price ranges from free to several hundred dollars.

No restrictions on imports- if you have an email list from another program or service, you can import the entire list at will. If you are switching autoresponder programs this is a huge benefit because you don’t have to worry about losing subscribers through a reconfirmation process.

Problems

Complex to install- If you are tech savvy, then maybe this isn’t an issue. But if you are like me and are not that comfortable with technology, installing a self hosted script can be complicated. To be fair though, you can just hire someone to do it for you.

Limited deliverability- some web host servers will only allow you to end a limited amount of emails per hour, such as 500. If your list is really big, it might take a day or more to email your entire list. Most people only have a list of a few thousand people at most, so this wouldn’t be a huge problem for many people. But if there is a time sensitive email you need to send, it can be a big problem. And if your list is really big, it can be a huge problem. Who wants to wait days for all of their emails to be sent?

Domain Blacklist concerns- If your build a list and subscribers are too quick to press the spam button, your domain could be put on a blacklist for spamming. So you deliverability can become extremely poor because of this.

Subscription Based Autoresponder Services

Benefits

Easy to use- you don’t have to worry about complex installations. Obviously, this makes your life a whole lost easier.

Safe – you don’t have to worry about domain blacklisting because the email autoresponder services have personal relationships with Internet Service Providers to significantly increase the odds that blacklisting doesn’t happen.

Unlimited list size- you can deliver to a large list immediately, no matter how large the list.

Reliable ongoing customer service- assuming you have a reputable autoresponder company, you can count on having ongoing customer support as long as you subscribe for any issues you have. There is a learning curve with these autoresponders, so having dedicated customer support is a big plus that can’t be underestimated.

Problems

Restrictive- you will have problems with some services if you want to import a list from another source.

Expensive- sliding scale of costs, so for some, the bigger the list, the more the monthly costs

What’s the Final Verdict?

After weighing all of the negatives and positives, it is a no brainer to get a subscription service. Sure, it will cost you more money, but you can’t expect to run a business for free. If you can’t afford $20 bucks a month for an autoresponder service, that’s a problem. Most people can spare that much cash. And if you are serious about an Internet business, you absolutely need to.

The biggest benefit is the deliverability. If your emails aren’t getting delivered, you can’t make money from your list. So clearly, you need to maximize the odds that your email will be delivered.

There are a number of email autoresponder services available. The industry standards for Internet marketers are Aweber and Get Response. Both work fine. Aweber gets better reviews overall though from my experience. And the most successful email marketers typically use it. So there is no need to reinvent the wheel. You can get an Aweber subscription by clicking here, and start building your list today.

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