Social Media & Networking Archives

You Have to Work at Email Marketing Success

If there’s one thing that’s become clear, it’s that email marketing takes work, but it’s very much worth it. Your email list is an invaluable asset to your business that allows you to stay in touch with your target market, send them commercial offers and to cement a loyal relationship from them.

It’s also an asset you wholly own, unlike a following on Facebook or Twitter…those are things that can be taken from you at a moment’s notice, but an email list is 100% yours.

If you’re new to email marketing, I hope I’ve provided you with the knowledge you need to take the plunge into email marketing. From the technology to the techniques, we’ve gone through all the nuts and bolts. Of course, everyone’s business is different, so you may worry you don’t have all the answers to get started, but the best way to learn is to do.

There will probably be bumps in the road, but these are tremendous learning experiences that can help you improve your email marketing along the way.

To give you a little summary about the important keys to get started, here are some things that will help ensure your success:

Choose the right autoresponder service: While there are many choices and it might be difficult to decide which is right for you, you can change things later on. Sometimes moving lists is tricky, but it can always be done.

Set up your offer: Know what value you are going to bring your potential subscribers and shape your offers around that. Create at least one opt-in page that will be central to your list building efforts.

Get to know your audience: Use the tips for engaging your subscribers to understand what they need and deliver it to them. This includes understanding the types of products they would find helpful and creating or promoting them as well.

Track your results and tweak: The more you grow your list and the more you email them, the more data you will have at your fingertips to improve your results. Do more of what works and toss out what doesn’t.

Take it one step at a time, but keep moving forward. The power of email is an indispensable part of your business success. Thanks for taking the time to read through this series and all the best to and your business.

Engaging Your Readers and Delivering Exactly What They Want

Now that you’ve built up your mailing list, you’ve got to deliver on the promises you made to the individuals who signed up. These promises consist of both the promises you explicitly made (“sign up and I’ll email you a free report”), as well as the implicit promise you made to provide them with information they’ll find useful and valuable.

Here’s how to engage with your readers and give them exactly the content they’re looking for, and which they will hopefully come to rely upon you to give them in the future.

Use Analytics

One effective way to give your readers what they want is by paying close attention to what they’re currently spending their time reading on your website. The best method for doing this is by installing analytics software on your website.

Analytics software will help you learn how people found your site, what pages they visit, and how long they spend on each page before they leave your site. If you use a service such as the free Analytics code offered by Google, you’ll also learn more about where your visitors live, and other demographic information. Over time, this information can be a great help in deciding what your readers are most interested in, and therefore what type of content you should be creating for them in the future.

Read Comments and Message Boards

If you allow comments to your blog posts, or provide message boards for your website visitors to discuss various topics, then it’s important to read those comments and message boards to see what they’re talking about. Sometimes people will discuss with other users the features they think a product is lacking, or what information they wish they had, but they won’t necessarily take the time to tell you directly.

Look at Your Competitors’ Websites

Chances are you’re not the only business that’s operating in a particular niche..and if you are the only person offering a particular product or service, it probably won’t be long before competitors appear on the scene.

Make use of the fact that there are others operating in your niche by checking out what those other businesses are offering. Are there any product or service needs that you’ve overlooked, or not previously considered? You can also stay on top of what potential customers are likely to be interested in by subscribing to your competitors’ newsletters, Twitter feeds and other accounts and paying attention to what’s happening on them.

Ask Them

Finally, don’t neglect the most direct approach – ask your visitors what they’re interested in reading about. You’ll get the most direct answers, and the act of asking them will strengthen your relationship – it lets them know that you value their input, and that their wants and needs are important to you. You can accomplish this by making periodic requests for input as part of your normal article or blog post publication schedule, and perhaps even including a free product or service giveaway to provide additional incentive for your readers to participate.

So now you know how to give your readers what they want, but what about your business? Certainly, there has to be a win-win for both publisher and subscriber. In the next post, let’s talk about how to make sure your emails get the results and conversions that you’re looking for.

Eight Surefire Ways to Grow Your Mailing List

It’s safe to say that the bigger your mailing list is, the better. Having a robust list gives you more opportunities to sell and to build your reputation. Here are 8 sure-fire tips for growing your list:

1. Prioritize Building Your Mailing List

Make sure you’re putting at least as much effort into building your mailing list as you are to your social media efforts…hopefully more. Getting “Likes” on Facebook is one way of gauging your popularity, but you can’t control how your message is spread to your Facebook connections, and it can be difficult to effectively communicate with them directly.

2. Make it Easy for New Subscribers to Sign Up

Make the links to your signup page prominent on all the pages of your website. You can do this by placing a full-width banner at the top of your site, as well as within your margin or sidebar area. You might even want to use a pop-up or light box window as part of a particular landing page (provided that it only shows up once per user visit).

3. Be Up Front With Your Value Proposition

Two things should be immediately apparent from your opt-in page: (1) what a person will receive if they sign up for your mailing list, and (2) why that thing would be valuable or useful to them.

Don’t assume that a potential sign-up will be able to understand exactly why something has value just from a brief description. Explain exactly what’s in it for them, and don’t leave your value proposition to chance.

4. Offer Something of Value

It’s important to make sure that when you claim to offer something of value and substance in exchange for an email sign-up, you follow through. You don’t want to give away too much (in terms of volume or content), but you need to make sure that a new subscriber doesn’t feel as if they were tricked into giving you their email address. Over time you’ll gain experience in what’s appropriate.

5. Leverage the Trust You’ve Built Up

Your mailing list sign-ups are going to come from two sources – people who have never been to your website before, and those who have.

With respect to the second group, you can improve the sign-up rates on your squeeze pages by leveraging the trust you’ve already built up with them. If they’ve been to your site many times before, then they know from your prior posts and other downloads what you have to offer.

Reference these things as part of your sign-up pitch to help convince your current readers that your newest offer is right for them.

6. Run a Contest

Putting on a contest or product giveaway can be a great way to drive new traffic to your site and grow your mailing list. One of the most effective approaches is to make the item you’re giving away related to your niche.

7. Review Your Past Experiences

Go back and look at what’s worked for you in the past. If you’re using Google Analytics or some other analytics service, carefully go through the numbers in order to identify the techniques that you know work well. As the say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

8. Don’t Forget About the Offline World

Do you attend business networking events? Do you ever get new readers or subscribers by mentioning your business and website to people you meet? Have a set of business cards with a direct link to your splash page printed on them, and be ready to give them out when the time seems right.

Now that you know how to grow your list, it’s important that you communicate with them effectively and that’s the subject of the next post. We’ll talk about engaging your readers and subscribers, and giving them exactly what they want so they become loyal subscribers.