Top 5 Email Marketing Tips that Could make You a Master

Marketing sucks. Yes, I said it sucks! I would rather write than market, have a nice conversation with some one that hates me, go a half a round with "Sasquatch" think (Ron Howards 68 whiskey, not Big Foot,) because one hit and I would be out. That's how much I hate marketing.

What I hate more than marketing is government laws like California's CCPA act. I mean if someone from California joins your list by the double optin method you would think that you would be law bidding. But it is possible that you may not be.

This law could be more of a headache than what it is worth.

Then again it might not be at all. At any rate this is why I am waiting...

Waiting to see if more states follow with their own laws or if it fizzles and dies.

We'll see what happens. In the mean time and until I am for sure it won't affect me or you, I am going to take caution and just ask you to subscribe by RSS through email or just add an RSS reader to your browser and follow this blog never missing a post.

Even though I am taking caution, you might be smarter than me and want to build your own responsive list. Well you are in good hands. I have used email marketing for years. I have built a prospect lists, buyers lists, and even a responsive blog list. IF your new to email marketing then you will find this post very useful before you get started.

And if you already have several lists you still may find these basic tips as a refresher in email marketing excellence. 

Finding the Right Autoresponder

Most marketers are following the direct marketing approach when it comes to their list marketing efforts. In Direct Marketing the product creator or marketer would rent a list of prospects from a list provider which most on the list came from relevant magazines subscriptions.

For the last 20 years most online marketers have not followed this example. Instead of renting lists they created their own list. People interested in a certain niche and got a report or visited a website and joined a list.

The loss leader didn't even come into effect until about 2005.

The reason for a loss leader is to share valuable information for a name and email address.
Today, you pretty much have to bribe people with courses in order to get just an email address.



Why is this?

Over marketing. Spammers as you call it have flooded the inbox. How do you get visitors to sign up to your list today?

You still need a good squeeze page landing page, or a blog with a $20 month AR. You can't build a relationship from this kind of marketing. You offer a loss leader, this is your first exposure, if the subscriber likes the content they will be with you until YOU break their trust.

Does Email Marketing still work Today?

I believe it still does. Look at all of the eCommerce sites. They all that I have seen anyway use email marketing. You sign up and most give you a coupon.

How about Ezines? (not solo ads)

As far as I can tell the ones that are still around are still in business. Think talkbiz.


Don’t just sign up for the first autoresponder that is recommended by the guru's in your niche.  There are so many great systems out there to choose from. A specific system may work great for one person but might be too much (or not enough) for someone else.



 Compare each of them and find the one that best fits your needs, budget and future upgrades. Making a wise decision before undergoing a marketing campaign will make a difference. Yes, you can change to a new autoresponder later, but why go through the hassle if it’s not necessary.

Some popular options are... • Aweber • iContact • Get Response • Traffic Wave (this is the one I use and recommend).

Know The Program and Educate Yourself

Before beginning any marketing campaign. Take the time to learn how all the bells and whistles work. Once you know what you’re working with, you’ll be unstoppable.
 Don’t leave anything on the table that will keep you from utilizing this powerful tool to its fullest potential.


If your autoresponder can do all that you need it to do, and you know how to use it to your advantage, your marketing campaign will flourish.

Now, onto those tips!


This is where an autoresponder will make or break your business. If done right, you’ll discover why everyone says: “The money is in the list.”



 #1: Be Consistent When you're marketing with an autoresponder it's important to be consistent. Put yourself in your prospects shoes. They want to know who you are and you’ll want them to remember you, but that doesn’t mean you need to email them every single day. Keep your business fresh in their mind, but don’t beat them over the head with it.

Remember, that unsubscribe button is just a click away!



#2 You’re busy and so are your customers. Always send your first message immediately after sign up. Depending on your specific campaign, you can send an email once a day for X amount of days (like an e-course) or once a week ( e-letter or newsletter).

For example, if you’ve created a free course titled “5 Days to dominate the search engins" You can send an email once a day for five days. Then shift to once a week or even every two weeks depending on your schedule and keep giving them more information relevant to the topic.

 One mistake is to continue to send them daily emails after the course is over.  Another mistake is to send them numerous emails in one day! This will drive your subscriber “bonkers” and they may consider you a spammer and un-subscribe.



#3 Give Your Subscribers Only the Best.

 Internet users want information, not just sales pitch after sales pitch. Give your readers quality and informative emails with sales pitches peppered in between.

If your only reason for creating a list is to make money and you only focus on that, you’ll never make a sale. Trust me on this. Remember your readers need to trust you in order to spend money with you. Once they do, you'll be unstoppable.



#4 Interact and Get a Reaction.

 It's one thing to write great emails; it's also a great option to get your list involved as well. You can really increase the interest and actions your list takes when you ask for their opinions and input. You can offer polls, ask for discussion on your blog or forum, or use a whole host of other ideas to get people to interact with you.



I’m sure you've signed up for a list where the messages seem cold and impersonal. Like you, many people on your list will realize you are not jumping online and “writing” an email to them every single day. However, when you offer your list a chance to interact and share their feelings you'll set yourself apart and give them a reason to want to open your emails first.



This is an excellent relationship builder. It’s also a great way to get into the minds of your prospects. Think of it as built in market research!



#5 Tell Them What to Do Next.



 Call to action are what create customer action. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your readers will recognize what to do next. Tell them!

A call to action can be as simple as giving them a link and telling them to click it. While they KNOW you want them to click the link, the chances of them actually doing it will improve if you give them instruction to do so.



The same holds true on your blog. If you use social sites like twitter or Digg, you can remind the reader of your post to re-tweet or digg your post by clicking the appropriate button or icon.

Marketing with autoresponders is a great way to increase your reach online. Remember to be consistent, offer high quality content and create an interactive experience for the members of your list.



 Once you get these tips fine-tuned, you'll have a responsive group of prospects who can't wait to open your next email.



Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed in the side bar. 

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Get Your Subscribers Begging For More

 Get Your Subscribers Begging For More

via GIPHY

Just as an experiment, a friend of mine subscribe to ten different opt-in e-mail marketing lists to see which ones are effective. Many websites and online businesses have resorted to sending promotional materials to people who have subscribed to them in an effort to boost their sales or traffic. Opt-in email marketing sends newsletters, catalogs updates, and many more promotional materials to website visitors who have agreed to be updated whether monthly, weekly or semiannually.

Through e-mail, an internet user that is on the list will receive their updates through email. If a promotional material piques their interest they will go to the site to learn more or to purchase outright.

For the website operators or owners, this is a chance to remind their list of their existence.

 With the numerous sites in the internet that offers the same products or services in one way or the other, the competition can get pretty tight and it is easy to be forgotten.

Back to my experimenting friend, he tried to find out which opt-in marketing strategies grabbed a person from begging for more. Some would send in very simple fashion, some would very outlandish while there are some that would just fall in between. The differences could easily be noticed and some have gotten the idea of an effective opt-in marketing strategy. He dubbed them effective because he felt like he just couldn’t wait to go their site and learn more, the more persuasive ones even got him halfway to reaching for his wallet and to his credit card before he realized this was only for an experiment.

Many companies and site present their promotional materials in a wide variety of ways. Each has their own distinctive style and designs, but more than the outline and the presentation, the content and the articles are what keeps the attention of your potential customer locked on to your opt-in marketing medium.

Creativity is the key here.

From talking to many satisfied opt-in list subscribers and forums, I have learned what is essential in opt-in marketing and what makes the subscribers begging for more instead of lining up to unsubscribe.

Keep your promotional materials light, creative and original. Many people are stressed out as it is. Getting a stuffy business proposal rather than a light-hearted e-mail may just agitate them more. A warm friendly smile or banter is always more welcome than a serious business meeting or proposal. While you do want your customers to take you and your products and services seriously, you also want to show them that you know how to have fun.

Splash some color in your emails as well as provide some photos and articles that can be related to you but show good news or good light-hearted images as well. Provide a newsletter or promotional materials that will keep them in a light mood. Make your materials eye-catching and grabbing that they won't be able to take their eyes off them. Pique their interests.

Have good content and article, even if it means investing in an experienced and professional copywriter to write them for you. An effective copywriter should be able to build trust between you and your customers. They should be able to establish your credibility in what they write. It must be informative but not too stuffy. Let go of the professional jargons and “talk“ to your recipients.

A good article and content should be able to outline the benefits of your product and services and why they need what you are offering. But do not look to be overeager and too persuasive. It should be able to entertain as well as lead them to buy from you.

Your promotional materials should be clear. Don’t leave people guessing. You should lead them to you and not vice versa. Explain to them what they need to do in a manner that won’t be confusing. Try to anticipate also what your target client needs. Do your research and information gathering, many sites will be able to help you with that.

Provide clear and crisp images of what you are offering. If the people know what you have for them, they are more likely to beg for more. For example, if you are selling a car, provide them photos but only enough to encourage them to go to your site for more.

This is a good start to Get Your Subscribers Begging For More.

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True Email Marketing Lies Gurus Likes to Tell

Why I don't email like Ben Settle

Why don't I email like Ben Settle?

 I use RSS silly-willy.
 Subscribe to my RSS and keep up with new postings. It's right there in the sidebar -------------->


Reason #1: If email marketing is done wrong you will look

like a spammer. Who in their right mind wants to look like a spammer?



Reason #2: You need a business plan, a content plan, and a marketing plan. That's too much planning for me.



Reason #3: You need a squeeze page. Great designs cost a lot of money and you still need first to test and track your conversions rates.



Reason #4: You need a good autoresponder service. Without this, you are dead in the water anyway. Not to mention out of pocket $20 to $50 a month.



Reason #5: The inbox war Competition is too great. It seems that there is so much noise in the inbox that the probability of your message getting notice is slim to none.


Now I am not saying email marketing is dead. It's not. For most folks that market their services and products if you are not in your prospects radar in the back of their mind somewhere, you might as well be another spammer.



This may sound daunting but there is another way to communicate with your tribe, assuming you have a tribe, to begin with.

You should also make sure that you're sending out your new blog posts by RSS. That' s a very easy way to keep readers coming back.

Readers of your blog can put RSS feeds on their browsers and get them through email, you can be sure that they'll be coming back on a regular basis.

The way around email is called RSS. Real simple syndication for short. If you have a blog, WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, you should have an RSS feed for your blog.

This is the way communications have been for a decade or longer and works. The problem is just many bloggers don't know how to use the power of RSS.


The Future of the Internet

The future of the Internet is not in search engines, and emails. Those are the 5 reason why I don't email. Allen Says, the creator of Warrior forum said this from his book Private Posts Vol. One.

Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed.

True Email Marketing Lies Gurus Likes to Tell

There's so much information on the Internet that teaches you how to sell your digital products, how to backend sales and follow up with your customers. This post of email marketing tips is no different, except you’re going to discover 4 lies email marketing gurus like to tell. 

I have been on several email lists for years. Few have fantastic subject lines, gives out great information, but many have lied to you!

They aren’t telling you the real story. How do they do this? They leave out important information and never tell you about it.

Okay, that was a freebie.

Read on to learn the true lies guru’s like to tell about email marketing.

Lie #1: The Follow-up. There are a lot of new email marketers that don’t know they can move the prospect to a different list which is called “the customer list.”

Here’s the scoop; when a prospect purchases a product from you that you have on your general list, you need to move them from that list over to a customer list. The reason for this is- they may purchase more from you. Think about this for a moment…

They trusted you enough to purchase your product. If they like the product well enough they will purchase more. Moving them over your customer list, you can follow up with emails asking them how like your product, what would they change if they could and so forth. Then you can pitch them with more relevant offers that you create.

There are two ways to move a customer. Either you do it manually inside of your autoresponder system or the new customer does it for you.

Let’s focus on how to get the customer to do it for you:

When a customer purchases your product they are taken to a payment processor like PayPal. Where they actually make the purchase. Then they need to click a button that says return to merchant.
At this point,  you can redirect them to a page that has a new list form on it.

This will look much like a squeeze page with simple instructions. “Enter your name and email address in the form below and you will receive future updates to this product.”

Now there is nothing for them to do but subscribe to your customer list. They haven’t received your product yet and let me tell you, they want what they just paid for so they are going to do whatever you ask them to do at this point.

So what makes this a lie?

Ben Settle has never taught this to his general list. He probably does if you subscribe to his psychical email newsletter “email Players club,” which cost $97.00 a month. Listen when a guru doesn’t at least mention a good tip like this to his subscribers,  it’s just the same as lying.

Lie #2: Double Opt-In. 

For the last couple of years list owners have been trying to make the process of getting on their list as simple as possible. Email marketing gurus have always taught that you need to have a list subscriber double opt-in.

Which means after subscribing they need to go into their email client, find your email and click a link inside the email that shows they really want it.

This isn’t a lie, but what you don’t know is most don’t do it. For instance, I recently registered with a well-respected Internet marketer and it was a single opt-in list.

This Internet marker has created over 5 email marketing products since 2000 and in all of them he taught and instilled in his reader's minds that double opt-in is the only way to run an email marketing business.

Lie#3: The Money is in the list. 

Here is another lie guru’s like to tell... the money isn’t in the list at all.
It’s in the relationship you build with your list. In order to form a relationship with a list you need two things:

1.      Quality Content + interaction with subscribers i.e. ask questions, take surveys, contests, etc. and

2.      Get as many of the right people onto your list, while keeping as many of the wrong people off your list as possible.

Lie #4: Size Matters.

 Okay, stop giggling class is in session, darn it!

The last lie I hear email marketing gurus tell is that you need a huge list.

Some even mention I won’t joint venture with anyone with a list smaller than 50,000.

I have lists that have had less than 300 subscribers and won big affiliate contests and whoop the snot out of some of the top guru’s in that niche with smaller lists.

How?

Because some of these gurus send offer after offer to their subscribers and never really form a real relationship.

Think quality over quantity. 

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