Email Marketing & List Building

"Email marketing and list building is one of the
most powerful strategies an online business has."

Those are the words pounded into my head from a mentor I had when I first began seriously marketing online. She would constantly tell me...

"You MUST use email marketing to build
a quality email list or else you are leaving
money on the table".

I'd heard that many times before, but it was hard to accept because the last thing I wanted to do was create a list and then bombard them with emails that pushed my products or recommendations.

But that's not what good email marketing and list building is all about and that was certainly not what my mentor had in mind.

Email marketing, if done right, offers huge potential for making sales and winning over customers.  Here's why it works:

1. Once you have an opt-in email list you have got a targeted market. These are the people most interested in what you have to say and offer. These are most often the people who are ready to buy, they just need some additional reassurance that what you have to offer is really for them. Consequently, if done correctly, you have a huge opportunity to make sales and lots of them.

2. This is your chance to make a real connection with your readers. You have a chance to help them trust you and become familiar with who you are and how you can help them.

3. You can bring your visitors back to your website. Any new products, news or information you place on your website is a reason to email your list and ask them to pay your site another visit. Don't be afraid to direct them where you want them to go. Offer them loads of good information, create a sense of need and add a call to action.

4. Email marketing is cheap. Creating an email list and sending regular, automatic emails is an extremely affordable way to stretch your marketing budget. There are no production costs, materials or postage expenses. A good email autoresponder such as Aweber, which is what I use, will cost about $20 a month and that will include unlimited emails, unlimited campaigns, reporting, collect email addresses for you and a lot more.

4. It's an effective way of getting in front of your prospects and customers on a regular basis. You are able to promote products, offer information, create relationships and of course, bring viewers back to your site.

Email Marketing is a great strategy, but hang on there ...not so fast

As affective as email marketing is, you can do it right or do it wrong and most people get it wrong, at least the first time through.

You need to get the basics right first.  That means building a list of people that have an interest, crafting a message that people will read and ensuring your message gets through to your readers. 

Here's what you must first do:

Build your email list
Don't buy email lists. There's a much better and more affective way to gain subscribers and they'll certainly be more targeted. 

I suggest building your own list. This means placing an opt-in box on your website where it's easily seen. Also add your newsletter page to your signature when communicating in forums and on social websites. Write articles that contain your newsletter page in your resource box and keep your sign-up box on in a place that is easy to see and on every page of your website.

Compose your emails
Create content that is useful and interesting to your members. Don't attempt to sell to your list. Compose your emails in such a way as to make your readers feel you are genuinely interested in helping them. Provide unique personal tips, direct them to useful information and invite questions. Give them reasons to look forward to your emails and newsletter.

If you're promoting a product, first give them reasons why they should do something, then reinforce how your product can help them do it is what they are interested in doing or have what it is they most want to have. The better your emails, the more profits you can pull in with your list. A hard sell in your emails is a sure way of getting them to opt-out.

Test and test some more
Watch for how many of your emails get opened. If too many go unnoticed this might indicate that your email title is a bit weak. Split testing works well. This means that if you have 100 people on your list split test by sending only 10 people your email with one title and send ten more with another title. The title that gets the most opens would be the one you send to the rest of your list.  Any good email autoresponder can help you do that.

Additionally other forms of testing can help you learn what day and time to send your emails, what topics, promotions and offers get the most clicks. 

I hope you're beginning to see how valuable email marketing is to for the success of your online business.  But how you manage your list and use it as a marketing tool is the key to making it work.  

Email Promos Exposed - Michael Rassmussen of Email Promos Exposed is offering free online videos that will walk you through the exact process of creating an email that almost forces your readers to buy whatever you're selling.

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