Introduction
If you have been around for any length of time online, you have probably heard the phrase, “the money is in the list.”
This refers to the idea that the key to profitability with email marketing is having your own subscriber list that buys from you.
With your own list, you can email to them regularly and have them purchase your offers, whether they are your own products or products you are an affiliate of.
Of course, having success with email marketing involves more than just emailing your list repeatedly with offers – in fact, that’s a good way to get them to unsubscribe from your list and possibly even file complaints with your Internet service provider (ISP), which can lead to greater restrictions on your ability to email your list.
Thus, there are certain rules and guidelines you should follow if you plan on being successful with email marketing.
Done properly, email marketing can be a very lucrative marketing vehicle for your business, your brand, and your reputation.
This ebook will show you the proper way to begin building your list, forming a relationship with them, and getting them to trust you so that they will be likelier to purchase products and services you recommend to them.
It will also show you what you should avoid so that you don’t damage your reputation with them and make them want to leave your list and even complain to your ISP.
Begin With The End In Mind
A key mistake many beginner and intermediate Internet marketers make when they dive into email marketing is that they go in with the wrong mindset.
The mindset many of them will go in with is, “I’ll email my list repeatedly and make plenty of sales.”
It’s likely they have subscribed to some email marketers’ lists who spread this way of thinking in order for their subscribers to purchase from them.
Truth be told, if you go into email marketing with the mindset that you can repeatedly email your list numerous times over the course of a few days or even hours, you are essentially dooming yourself to failure in email marketing before you even start.
Despite what you may have heard or even seen from some Internet marketers, repeatedly emailing your list the same offers over and over again is only going to lead to them NOT buying from you, unsubscribing from your list, and even potentially reporting you to your ISP for harassment and abuse of email.
That will certainly damage your business, brand, and reputation, and it will not be easy to recover from such damage, if it’s even possible.
Thus, it’s best you NEVER have that mindset to begin with.
The mindset you should have when it comes to email marketing is not the profitability you can gain from it, but rather the value you can bring to your subscribers.
This includes the ability to know them and help them wherever possible.
A popular word that is being spread in the business world today is “engagement.”
Engagement is the connection you make with your subscribers and customers, showing that you understand them and providing them with what they need and want to buy.
Engagement is a big key to being successful with email marketing because your subscribers have to learn more about who you are, what you stand for, and why they should learn to trust you and your recommendations so that they will purchase from you.
Virtually no one is going to buy from a shady dealer, retailer, or business.
This also holds true in online marketing as well.
If people can’t learn to trust you because of shady business practices, your email marketing efforts will go for naught, leading to little to no profit and a negative reputation.
This is why your mindset from the very beginning of your email marketing career has to be what you can do for your subscribers and customers, NOT how much profit you can get from them and relentlessly emailing them in order to obtain that profit.
Have the right mindset from the beginning, and you can certainly earn a great deal from email marketing in the long term, not to mention create a positive reputation for your brand, your business, and yourself.
Choose Your Autoresponder Service
An autoresponder is a type of computer program that automatically answers emails that are sent to it.
Internet marketers will use these to send out pre-set email messages when an Internet user inputs their contact information, including their email address, into an opt-in form on the marketer’s website.
When the user does this, he/she will get pre-set email messages welcoming the user to the marketer’s opt-in list, providing a link to a free gift or an attached file of the gift itself, and information on what the user can expect to receive from the marketer in terms of future email messages sent to the user’s email address.
You can see why an autoresponder is so important to an email marketer.
If the marketer had to manually contact every person who signs up for his/her list, the marketer would have to be at his/her computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just to ensure he/she sent out welcome messages and gifts to every user who opted onto his/her list.
Obviously, the marketer would not get anything else done, and his/her business would fail.
As for getting an autoresponder, there are two ways to accomplish this.
The first way is to host the autoresponder on one’s own server and use his/her Web hosting provider to send the messages.
This is often done via a WordPress plugin or some other software program or script that allows you to run your own autoresponder on your own Web hosting server.
This method can be done, but it’s not always easy to install the plugin or script needed to make it run correctly.
Thus, only those who are versed in installing scripts and/or plugins should even consider this option.
Even if you can correctly install the script or plugin onto your server, this is often not the best way to have your own autoresponder, as there are pitfalls with this method.
One pitfall is that if you send out too many emails at one time, your Web hosting provider may throttle your loading page speed and may even flag your Web hosting account because you are using too many of their hosting sources to send out the messages.
Thus, you can only send out so many emails in a specific period of time, which can be detrimental if you have a large email list and/or gain a large number of subscribers in a short period of time.
The other major pitfall with having your own autoresponder via script or plugin on your own server is that you often can’t do double opt-in confirmation.
Double opt-in confirmation essentially means double-checking that your subscriber really wants to be on your list and wasn’t subscribed by accident or without his/her consent- more on this will be discussed in a later chapter.
With these pitfalls, most Internet marketers prefer to sign up to an autoresponder service with the resources to ensure that they can send out multiple messages to multiple subscribers at one time without getting their loading speed throttled or their account flagged.
These autoresponder services also enable double opt-ins (in fact, many service now require double opt-ins for compliance with various laws, such as the CAN-SPAM act).
Suffice it to say, having a good autoresponder service is essential to building a responsive email list and being successful at email marketing.
Fortunately, there are many quality autoresponder services available for you to choose from. We will go over some of your options below.
AWeber
AWeber was one of the earliest email autoresponder companies, getting its start back in 1998.
They serve over 100,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs in their email marketing campaigns.
They offer pricing plans from as low as $19 per month for up to 500 email subscribers up to a select price quote for email marketing lists larger than 25,000 subscribers.
You can try a 30-day free trial and get all of their features, including unlimited emails, automation, segmentation, and more from day one.
GetResponse
GetResponse was another early email autoresponder company, having been in business for over 15 years.
The company serves over 350,000 customers in 21 different languages.
They have offices in the US, Canada, Malaysia, Poland, India, and Russia, employing more than 300 professionals.
They have four main plans, beginning with their Email plan that allows for an email marketing list of up to 1,000 subscribers that you can send unlimited emails to for $15 per month.
Their highest plan is their Enterprise plan that allows for an email marketing list of over 10,000-100,000+ subscribers that you can send unlimited emails to beginning at $999 per month.
If you pay upfront for 12 months, you can save 15% off of the monthly rate; if you pay upfront for 36 months, you can save 30% off of the monthly rate.
You can also sign up for a 1-month trial to give them a test drive to find out if GetResponse is your best choice.
MailChimp
MailChimp has been around since 2001, so it has comparable experience to the previous two options.
Over 15 million people and businesses are using MailChimp, and over 1 billion emails per day are sent using their email marketing platform.
There are three main options: New Business, Growing Business, and Pro Marketer.
The New Business option is actually free forever, allowing you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers.
Beginning at $10 per month, the Growing Business plan adds unlimited emails, delivery by time zone, email and chat support, and more to your email marketing capabilities.
The Pro Marketer option starts at $199 per month and adds options such as multivariate testing, comparative reports, and more.
These are just three of the autoresponder options you have a choice of; there are many other choices, some of which will be listed in the Email List Building Blueprint Resources sheet.
Most to all autoresponder companies will either allow you to get a free trial, have a free plan option with limited emails, features, and subscribers, and/or have a 30+ day money-back guarantee.
Thus, you would be best-served by going over each autoresponder company carefully, analyzing the plan options you are considering, test-driving the ones you think might work best for your business, then deciding which one works best for you and your business.
Remember, if you plan on having a company that will endure for many years to come, you want to try to pick the autoresponder company that will be the best fit.
While you can change autoresponder companies and import lists from another autoresponder company, it can be troublesome and time-consuming, so it is best if you pick an autoresponder company that you feel will serve your needs for a long time to come.
Therefore, choose carefully and wisely.
Create Your Free Giveaway
Having a free giveaway is key to boosting the number of subscribers on your opt-in list.
This is because, people who sign up to your list are giving away at a minimum their name and email address, personal information that most people aren’t willing to give away for free.
They need to get something valuable in return for giving away that personal information.
That’s where your free giveaway comes in.
Also known as a “lead magnet” (because people subscribing to your opt-in list are considered leads to become paying customers for your business), your free giveaway needs to be seen as valuable by people who visit your website and see your opt-in form.
People must feel a desire to want the information and/or benefit that comes from downloading and reading or using your free giveaway, so much so that they are willing to give up their name and email address to you in return for that free giveaway.
Therefore, your free giveaway must address a need or desire that your visitors have in order for them to give up their name and email address to receive it.
Thus, you must know what your website visitors are looking for in terms of information to create an effective lead magnet that will lead them to give up their information for that giveaway.
You need to do some research and know what your target market (i.e. the people who you plan on serving with your website and business) wants in order to learn what will be the perfect lead magnet.
A lead magnet will not be effective if you offer something that they are not interested in.
You can look at competing websites in the same niche or category your website will be in and see what they offer as a free giveaway to get an idea of what members of your target market is looking for.
You can also look at online forums that cater to your target market and see what problems or issues they are having that they want answers to in order to learn what the perfect lead magnet will be so that they are willing to join your opt-in list.
If you are unsure what competing websites or online forums cater to your target market, use your favorite search engines and put in keywords related to your niche to find competing websites.
As for finding online forums catering to your target market, use keywords related to your niche and add “+ forum” (without the quotes) in the search engine search bar to find forums that cater to your target market.
Once you have done some research, you should have a better idea of what your target market is looking for in terms of problems they want solved and information or solutions that can help solve them.
Your next task is to create that lead magnet to entice people to join your opt-in list.
If you are proficient at writing, you could write a report yourself on the topic at hand and the solution they seek.
Most word processing programs now have the ability to export the .doc or .docx file as a .pdf file (it’s a button on your toolbar that is labeled as “Export to PDF” or similar).
This .pdf file can be uploaded to your website’s server, and the link to it can be sent to any subscriber who opts into your email list thanks to the autoresponder you signed up for in the last chapter.
Now, if you aren’t proficient at writing and/or don’t want to do the research to create the report, you have a few options to get that important report created.
You could hire someone to do it for you.
If you know a writer either personally or online, you could ask them to do it for you and offer to pay a reasonable amount of money.
Depending on their location in the world and their experience level, some writers will write for less than $0.01/word, while others may charge $0.10/word or even higher.
Alternatively, you could go to a place like Fiverr.com or a similar site that offers writing “gigs” (i.e. jobs) for $5 or so.
Hire that person offering the gig, give the details of the information you want included in the report, as well as any research requirements you need, and let them create the report for you.
The person will provide you with the file upon completion, which will be yours to do with as you wish, including uploading it to your site and using it as a free giveaway for your opt-in list.
Another option you can use to create this free giveaway report is to use private label rights (PLR) material.
Look through any PLR you have on your hard drive and/or search for the topic in question “+ PLR” in your favorite search engine to find material you can use for your report.
In both cases, be sure that the material you have does actually have private label rights; you don’t want to use material that doesn’t have private label rights, as this can get you and your business in much legal trouble.
Now, it is highly recommended you edit the PLR material you do use for four main reasons:
1. If any of your website visitors who opt into your list has the same exact PLR material, they will not be happy, as they will feel they were cheated and will likely unsubscribe from your list.
2. Depending on the topic, your PLR material may not exactly match up with what you need to create the enticing report necessary to get website visitors to subscribe to your list. Thus, you will need to modify it some to suit your needs.
3. Some PLR is not well-written, while others can also be outdated. It is important that you ensure the material is well-written, plus the information is up-to-date; otherwise, your subscribers will not find the information worthwhile and will likely unsubscribe from your list.
4. For people to become familiar with your “voice,” (i.e. your way of speaking and describing information), it is best if the PLR is edited so that it seems you wrote the material from scratch, not as rehashed PLR.
People want to know who you are- this is the only way they will learn to trust you and be willing to buy based on your recommendations.
Note the last part of #4- this is a key reason why you are offering a lead magnet in the first place.
Of course you want them to get onto your list, but the key reason why you are offering a lead magnet is because you want to show your subscribers that you are an expert in this field and have valuable information that can help them solve their problems/issues.
The best way to convince them that you are an expert in your field and worth listening to is to offer them valuable information that can solve an issue of theirs for free.
This way, they will begin learning about you, trusting you, and willing to listen to your recommendations about products/services to where they will purchase them in the future.
This is where your brand, business, and reputation will grow (and profit) from email marketing.
This is why the lead magnet must be enticing and serve a need of your target market- it is the first step to establishing a bond or relationship with your subscriber to show that he/she can trust you in what you say and what you recommend.
Fail to do this well, and you will fail at email marketing, period.
Set Up A Dedicated Landing Page
A dedicated landing page is a Web page where you want your website visitors to see your free giveaway offer and nothing else.
In other words, it is NOT the home page of your website.
While some Internet marketers choose to put their free giveaway directly on their home page, some studies have shown that having a dedicated landing page makes it more likely for a visitor to give his/her contact info to receive the free giveaway if it’s on a dedicated landing page.
Therefore, you should use whatever method you use to create new Web pages to create your dedicated landing page.
You are probably asking, “What should be on a dedicated landing page, and how would it differ from the home page of my website?”
Well, a dedicated landing page should put whatever your free giveaway should be in notably large letters and in a way that draws attention- you want your website visitor to see exactly what he/she will be getting in return for giving up his/her contact information.
You should also show a graphic of the ebook or report on this page to convince the visitor that the information will be worthwhile for him/her to give up his/her contact info.
Additionally, the landing page needs to have some blanks for the visitor to provide his/her contact info- at a minimum, it should have blanks to provide one’s name and email address.
Those blanks make up an opt-in form that you can create using your autoresponder (most provide opt-in form templates you can use).
Inserting the opt-in form into your Web page will connect that form to your autoresponder, enabling you to add the visitor’s contact information to your autoresponder so that you can email the person as soon as he/she enters in the info and clicks the button.
Note, some Internet marketers attempt to get more information from the visitor, such as address, phone number, age, interests, etc.
Studies have shown that this can actually turn off the visitor and turn him/her away from your site without subscribing, as most people are very weary of giving up their personal information, especially in light of the data breaches that have occurred around the world over the last few years.
It is arguably best to just stick to getting the person’s name and email address on your landing page; as your relationship with your subscriber grows, you can attempt to get more information later if you wish, but keep in mind that only a name and email address are necessary to be successful with email marketing- the other information is not actually needed for email marketing.
Another reason why it is good to have a dedicated landing page for visitors to subscribe to your opt-in list – social sharing.
Virtually every notable social platform – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. – have “buttons” you can copy and paste onto your site so that people can more easily share the landing page with their family, friends. and subscribers.
This can boost the number of subscribers you get in short order, especially considering the power of social sharing and how people tend to be influenced by the recommendations of family and friends on social media.
Thus, it is wise to add social share buttons to your landing page and to also share the link on social media profiles – this way, you can greatly increase the number of subscribers to your list in a shorter period of time.
As was said in the first sentence of this book, “the money is in the list.”
The more quality subscribers you can add to your list, the better, so do everything you can (legally, of course) to grow your list.
Spreading a link to your dedicated landing page on social media and using social media buttons to get the word out about it is a great way to boost your subscriber list quickly.
To Confirm Or Not To Confirm?
Recall in the “Choose Your Autoresponder Service” chapter that it was mentioned about single opt-in and double opt-in confirmation. In this chapter, we will discuss more on what is meant by single opt-ins and double opt-ins.
Single opt-ins is where a visitor will enter his/her contact information into your opt-in form on your landing page, then receive a message from your autoresponder welcoming him/her to your list and providing a link to download the free report he/she wanted or attaching the file to the email itself.
This will put the subscriber on your list for you to email at your choosing to inform him/her of further information on the topic, including offers and recommendations related to the topic.
Double opt-ins is where a visitor will enter his/her contact information into your opt-in form on your landing page, then receive a message from your autoresponder, but instead of welcoming him/her to your list, it will inform him/her that his/her email address was submitted to your list and if the person really wants to be on this list.
If this is indeed true, click the link in the email to verify he/she wants to be included on your list.
If this is indeed false and the person does not want to be on your list, he/she doesn’t have to do anything.
The key difference is that, with a double opt-in, the subscriber must verify a second time that he/she wants to be subscribed to your list.
Once the person does that, then he/she receives the welcome message and the free giveaway, also enabling you to email him/her as you wish.
The reason why double opt-ins became popular and even required by autoresponder companies like AWeber and GetResponse is because there were many spam complaints by Internet users.
Spam is any unsolicited email that is sent to an inbox.
Many years ago, many Internet users would have their email addresses “stolen” by someone else (sometimes even Internet marketers themselves) and entered into these opt-in forms on landing pages.
This would subscribe the person whose email address was stolen to the marketer’s list, thereby leading to a lot of emails that the person didn’t want.
As more and more spam complaints were filed with autoresponder companies, the U.S. Congress enacted the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to combat the growing number of spam email complaints.
In addition, the autoresponder companies decided to introduce an additional confirmation step to ensure that people who subscribed to opt-in lists really wanted to be subscribed to those lists.
Most autoresponder companies recommend that you use double opt-in confirmation whenever a new subscriber enters his/her contact info into an opt-in list form.
By introducing an additional confirmation step, people (including Internet marketers) could no longer enter someone else’s email address and have him/her automatically subscribe to a marketer’s subscriber list.
The person whose email address was entered now had to confirm he/she wanted to be part of that list before future emails would come.
Obviously, if the person didn’t enter his/her email address into the opt-in form, he/she was not going to confirm his subscription and give the marketer permission to send more emails to him/her.
Therefore, if you are considering the pros and cons of single opt-in and double opt-in leads, they are below:
Single Opt-in Pros:
– Shortest/Quickest way from visitor to subscriber
– Shortest/Quickest way for subscriber to receive your content
– Often is easier to implement
Single Opt-In Cons:
– No email address verification, which can lead to spam complaints,
– Lack of email address verification can lead to more bounce emails (i.e. emails never delivered), which can make you appear as more of a risk to your autoresponder company and limit your email marketing capabilities
– Can often lead to lower email open rates
Double Opt-In Pros:
– Eliminates fake email addresses from your list
– Can lead to greater deliverability (i.e. emails actually reach subscribers’ inboxes)
– Can lead to greater email open rates
Double Opt-In Cons:
– Additional step required by visitor to be subscribed to your list
– Can lose potential subscribers who wanted to be on your list by entering in their info, but never clicking the link in the verification email and never actually making it onto your list
– Can be harder and take longer to implement than single opt-in
Therefore, single opt-in is easier to implement and can get subscribers on your list quicker, but double opt-in is safer because it confirms subscribers actually want to be on your list.
While it takes extra work by the marketer and the subscriber to be connected, most Internet marketers and autoresponder companies recommend double opt-in verification to ensure subscribers really want to be on a list and receive marketing emails.
Plus, it ensures that your business is compliant with the law.
Create Your Thank You Page
When a person opts into your list, he/she will be taken to a download page where you can thank them for joining your list, ensure them that their personal information and privacy will be respected and never sold, and provide the download link to the ebook, report, or other free giveaway you have provided for their opting into your list.
If you elected to do single opt-in, the download page will display on the user’s screen as soon as he/she is done entering his/her email address into your opt-in form.
If you elected to do double opt-in, the download page will only display after the user has found the verification email at the email address he/she entered and clicked on the verification link inside of that email.
The point of the thank you page is to show your appreciation to the user for his/her joining your list, to assure the user that his/her information will be not abused or sold to anyone, and to provide the user with the free giveaway (i.e. lead magnet) you promised the user upon his/her joining your list.
Therefore, it is vital you have a thank you page. Fortunately, you have several options to create one.
Most autoresponder companies provide several templates from which you can choose from and even customize to better match your website’s layout and design.
You just need to look through the templates and choose the one you like best, add some appropriate text (including appreciating the subscriber for opting into your list), then choose where the subscriber will go after he/she confirms the opt-in- it can be to one of the autoresponder’s default thank you pages or to a page on your site that you select.
If you’ve elected to do double opt-in, some autoresponder companies will even provide a thank you page and message that informs people how to confirm their subscription so that they do get on your list and get your free giveaway.
Some companies will even provide a video that shows them exactly what message they need to look for in their email inbox and what link they must click to confirm their opt-in.
Once you’ve decided on which page your subscriber will land on once he/she confirms the opt-in, you will insert the JavaScript snippet or raw HTML code into the body text of your website (i.e. between the <body> tags of your site’s HTML code).
The JavaScript snippet is often easier to use, while the raw HTML code allows for more customization if you wish to make further changes or additions to the page.
Many autoresponder companies can also send the snippet or code to your Web designer if you prefer to have someone else work with your site’s code and publishing instead of yourself.
With the power of social media today, it is advisable that you add those social share buttons we’ve discussed previously to your thank you page.
As mentioned before, many people will act on recommendations from family and friends; if one of their friends or family members sends a message that they just downloaded this awesome new report or ebook on a topic of interest (for example, gardening), that person may also become interested in getting that report or ebook and will want to join your opt-in list as well.
Each social networking site (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.) has information on how to add their respective social sharing buttons to your website so that you can utilize the power of social media to spread the word about your free giveaway and your list.
Alternatively, you can use your favorite search engine and look up “How to add social media buttons to a Web Page” or similar to learn how to do this and reap the benefits of social media in your list building efforts.
Get Fast Exposure To Your New Offer
In the last chapter, we mentioned how you should use social media to help quickly spread the word about your free giveaway offer and boost your list building efforts.
There are other methods you should also utilize in order to get the word out about your free giveaway and quickly increase the size of your list.
One good way is to team up with other marketers and promote each other’s free giveaways and lists, especially if they complement each other.
This is known in the Internet marketing world as a “joint venture.”
Here, you get in touch with another marketer via email, Facebook, other social media, Skype, Facebook Live, etc., work out an agreement to where you mention the other marketer’s free giveaway and link to his/her sign-up form on your thank you page, and he/she does the same for your free giveaway on his/her thank you page.
The idea behind this is, being that a person just subscribed to one list to get a free giveaway, he/she is probably more willing to sign up to another list and get another free giveaway if it appeals to him/her, being that the link is right there on the thank you page to get the first free giveaway.
This is why this method is so effective and why many Internet marketers will utilize this method to quickly build their lists.
A few things to keep in mind when you utilize this method:
– Try to learn about the other marketer you plan to work with first; you don’t want to just team up with anyone, as someone who has a bad or shady reputation could damage your reputation and credibility because you are partnering with that person.
– Try to work with other marketers whose free giveaways complement your own; you don’t necessarily want to partner with someone who has the exact or similar free giveaway (though it can work, but being there are plenty of topics about many subjects, finding another marketer with a complementing free giveaway is best).
– While it’s certainly possible to partner with marketers from other niches/topics, it’s usually best to partner with marketers who are in the same or similar niche/topic as yours.
For example, if you are working in Internet marketing and offering a free giveaway on list building, you may want to partner with a marketer who is offering a free giveaway on good email marketing, not with someone who is offering a free cookbook.
This method can be very effective to build your list because you’ve made it easy for the subscriber to easily sign up for the second list, plus the subscriber gets another worthwhile free giveaway in the process.
In addition, it doesn’t cost any money to do this, it doesn’t take much time to set up, and other marketers are also looking to do this because it’s a great way to expose their free giveaway and list to many more people.
Plus, forming these joint ventures and relationships with other marketers could lead to future joint ventures and product launches in the future that could help both of your businesses reach greater heights and profits.
Thus, this method really is a win-win-win-win all the way around!
Send A Welcome Email To New Subscribers
As was alluded to earlier in this ebook, you should send a welcome email to your new subscribers either after they have entered in their contact information into your opt-in form or after they have verified their subscription request to join your list.
After all, you want the subscriber to feel welcome, and you want to build a long-term relationship with this subscriber so that he/she learns about you, feels comfortable with you, and begins to trust you so that he/she will purchase from you in the future.
This welcome email can be automatically sent out via your autoresponder once the subscriber has either entered in his/her info or confirmed his/her subscription.
You may be wondering what exactly you should put into your welcome email in order to start off your new relationship on the right foot. An example email you can use or modify to fit your purposes is below. (Note that the information in parentheses below is just for clarification).
Hello <first_name>, (Note: <first_name> is a variable used by many autoresponders to automatically insert the first name of your new subscriber into the email.
Personalizing your emails can go a long way toward building engagement, trust, and sales).
Thank you for joining the NAME OF LIST (i.e. whatever the name of your list is) and for requesting your FREE GIVEAWAY (i.e. whatever free giveaway you provided for subscribers to join your list).
I hope you are enjoying your FREE GIVEAWAY. If you have not downloaded it yet, you can do so via this link (i.e. provide download link here to ensure your subscriber has received the free giveaway he/she was promised upon sign-up).
Note: You can choose to provide a few details about yourself, your business, etc. here, but this is information you can provide in future emails if you wish.
If you have any questions about the FREE GIVEAWAY download or need help with anything related to the TOPIC (i.e. what you specialize in), please feel free to contact me anytime at EMAIL ADDRESS or URL (i.e. either your contact email address or a Web page with a contact form where the subscriber can reach you or your support desk).
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
YOUR URL or CONTACT URL
Therefore, the welcome email without any additional information would be as follows:
Thank you for joining the NAME OF LIST and for requesting your FREE GIVEAWAY.
I hope you are enjoying your FREE GIVEAWAY. If you have not downloaded it yet, you can do so via this link.
If you have any questions about the FREE GIVEAWAY download or need help with anything related to the TOPIC, please feel free to contact me anytime at EMAIL ADDRESS or URL.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
YOUR URL or CONTACT URL
Add A Product Upsell That Is Related To Your Free Offer
One good way to get some immediate sales from your new list is to add a product upsell related to your free offer.
Being that your new list was interested in the free offer, if the product you present to them is an enhanced version or more valuable version of the free offer, there’s a decent chance that they will purchase it, especially if you offer it at a reasonable or even low price.
In essence, this will help to condition the mind of the subscriber to begin trusting you and looking to you for special product offers to purchase.
As mentioned, this product upsell should be related to your free offer.
Thus, if you provided an ebook that gave the subscriber 10 free ways to grow his/her email list for free, you could offer an ebook that gives 20 additional free ways to grow his/her email list for $9.95 or even $19.95.
Being that the subscriber is interested in growing his/her list, and provided that the free ebook you gave had good, usable information in it, it’s reasonable to assume that the subscriber will have interest in more free ways to grow his/her list and will consider purchasing your upgraded or enhanced product offer.
The subscriber will think, “If the free ebook he/she gave me had such good information in it, then his/her paid ebook must have even better information in it, so I must get it.”
Use your autoresponder to set up a bunch of informative messages about the upgraded product offer and send them out at regular intervals (i.e. one
message every 2-3 days).
Not every subscriber will look to purchase the upgraded offer right away, but if he/she is reminded of it enough over a period of time, chances are high that the subscriber will want to purchase the upgraded product at some point in the future.
This method can be a great way to get immediate sales from your new subscribers and show them that you are someone who knows his/her industry and that you are looking out for their best interests.
This will help to build trust between you and your subscribers, which will further enhance the chances of them buying from you in the future.
How Often Should I Email My List?
You may have considered this question in the last chapter when we talked about emailing your prospect regularly about your upgraded product offer related to your free offer.
Truth be told, there is no one set answer to this question – it really depends on how much value you are providing in your emails.
There are Internet marketers who only email their lists a few times a week and do quite well, while there are other Internet marketers who email their subscribers one to two times per day and also do quite well.
How often you should email your list depends on your niche, your target market, and the value you are providing to your subscribers.
While there is no one set answer, there are some things you should do and not do when emailing your list.
Dos:
– Be sure each of your emails has a purpose for why you send it to them.
– Send enough emails to stay in touch with them and not let them forget who you are.
– Be sure your emails are helpful and valuable to them.
Don’ts:
– Don’t be putting product offers (yours or affiliate offers) in every email- good way to get more unsubscribes and spam complaints.
– Don’t just chit-chat with your subscribers- be sure the email has a purpose and will be valuable to them, as their time is precious.
– Don’t oversend to your prospects, but don’t undersend either – find the happy medium that will please your subscribers so that they look forward to hearing from you.
Conclusion
After reading this article, you should have a much better understanding of how to go about building your list and profiting from email marketing.
Remember what was mentioned in Chapter 2: “It’s all about the mindset.”
If you go into email marketing and think that you’re just going to email a bunch of offers to your subscribers and they’re going to happily and repeatedly purchase from you, you will FAIL at email marketing.
You must provide value to your subscribers, and you must show that you care about them and their well-being.
The money you gain from them is a secondary process that occurs when you put their well-being and best interests first – money should NOT be your primary objective or foremost on your mind when you are looking to build a list and send emails to them.
Remember, the key to successful and profitable email marketing is building a list of engaged subscribers who learn to trust you and your recommendations and know that you have their best interests at heart.
That’s when you will get many sales from your subscribers, as they will know that you are recommending offers (ebooks, software, membership sites, programs, etc.) that will benefit them in their lives and/or businesses.
Thus, “the money is in the list,” but only if you build and cultivate the list in a way that shows you care about your list and are looking out for their best interests, not looking to make the most money from them at any cost.
If you avoid that mindset and always put the well-being of your subscribers first when emailing them, chances are high that you will be successful at email marketing and profit greatly from it.
