E mail marketing is an important skill, if you can master this aspect of marketing you can profit wildly and grow your brand. In this post I will be giving you the how to email marketing for beginners guide to profitable campaigns so you can grow your business to the next level.
In the few minutes you will know more than most of your competitors in the email marketing space, you will have a firm grasp of this highly important marketing skill and be able to get started and build your first list which will enable you to form deeper relationships with your customers and expand your business with opportunities to make increased profits
The Three Undeniable Reasons Why You Need To Build An E-mail List
Customer Acquisition
The most expensive part of all marketing is the acquisition of a new customer, if you build a list you will only have to pay once for the customer saving you a great deal of money and work in the long term.
Building Relationships
E-mail marketing gives you the opportunity to build relationships with your chosen audience. Sending cold traffic to an offer has a conversion rate of about 1%, if you send traffic to an offer after building a relationship with them the conversion rate rises to about 40% or more
Your Most Valuable Asset
The Google algorithm is in constant flux, as are all algorithms, including the Facebook algorithm and all the other advertising and social media platforms.
Once you have an e-mail list you will never have to worry about the constant changes to these powerful platforms, your list is safe from these alterations and you will be able to market to them for ever without any extra costs
Get Your Strategy Right.
Give First And Sell Second
When it comes to e-mail marketing, the real money is in the back end of your business not the front end. Try and resist the temptation to sell things to your list straight way. This desire for instant gratification will do your business more harm than good
Always make long term decisions and give value to your audience first, the golden rule is give first and sell second
People buy from people that they know. like and trust. Your audience needs to get to know you first before they will purchase anything that you recommend to them
The goal is to get your brand into their unconscious mind to bring down their resistance to your messaging.
Everybody has a natural resistance to the unfamiliar so trying to sell or recommend things to complete strangers will only end in frustration.
The big brands spend millions of dollars on advertising to get their brand into your unconscious brain, they do not spend that kind of money on advertising for nothing, they do it because they know it works.
The power of brand is worth billions to them.
Fortunately you do not have to spend millions of dollars to create a brand all you need is email marketing which is very cheap compared to TV advertising or employing celebrities and this is the main reason that building a list should be a priority for your online business.
Its never been cheaper and more accessible for online business owners to create a brand with email marketing and make large amounts of profit, if you get the strategy right from the offset. Unfortunately most people try and sell all the time and then declare that email marketing does not work or is dead. Email marketing works if its done right.
The best marketing strategy is to care about your audience
Treat others as you wish to be treated
Lets take a look at what is needed to get started
Below is a simple guide to what you need to build an e-mail list in you niche. However don't ever forget that the most powerful tool in marketing is to know your audience.
The Three Component Parts Needed To Build An E-mail List
An Auto Responder
An autoresponder is a separate software service where you build and manage your list, in addition to writing and sending your emails to your list of subscribers
A Landing Page Or Squeeze Page
A landing page or squeeze page which only has one function and that is to collect the email addresses of your subscribers and is linked to your autoresponder
A Free Giveaway
This can be a free report or any type of content that helps your subscriber solve a problem. Of all the components parts that make up email list building, this one is the most important. It needs to be easy to consume and helps them in some way. You need to give away something of value.
The Money Is In The List
You may have heard this statement before, however the truth is a little more complex.
The Money is in the relationship you build with your list
If your intention is to just send endless emails full of affiliate links trying to sell stuff all the time, then you will meet with a brick wall.
Its important to remember that your email is will not be the only email to arrive in their inbox. You need to stand out from the rest.
Give first sell second
The money is in the back end of your business not the front end.
At the front end of your list building efforts you can make a few dollars but in the back end you can make thousands of dollars.
Understanding and getting to know your audience, or marketing to circumstances
What does marketing to circumstances mean?
There are two fundamental metrics that you need to pay attention to when marketing online.
1. Age
2. Location
3. Sex
4. Salary
5. Occupation
1. In Debt
2. Frustrated
3. Overwhelmed
4. Time poverty
5. confused
6. Lonely
7. confused
8. Low self esteem
9. Anxious
8. Depressed
9. Afraid
Demographics are things that you are.
Circumstances are things that your in!!!
When deciding what to use as your free gift, think about their pain points and what it is that they are desperate to do, I can tell you without any doubt that if you create a simple product that saves them time and money your conversion rates will skyrocket. What ever product you create it needs to solve a problem quickly and easily.
The biggest mistake people make is trying to create a "solve all product" that takes them weeks and weeks of hard work, trying to write an information product that shows people how to solve a massive problem or gives them the every step from start to finish.
Discover The Awesome Power Of Resource Lists Or Nano Products.
Resource lists are easy and quick to create and solve a specific problem, they give instant gratification and are valued highly, you can create a resource list in a few hours, which means you don't have to write a massive e book which I promise you most people will not read.
Example of resources lists
- The top 37 free online marketing tools
- The top 20 highest converting affiliate programs
- Ten top converting landing page designs
- Top 10 free iPhone photography apps
- Top 10 Free image creation and logo design websites
- The 5 must avoid foods when building muscle
- Top 10 Free wordpress plugins for marketers
Resource lists or Nano products get people on the first few steps of a ladder rather than trying to get them to climb the whole thing at once, small steps are what people desire, it avoids information overload which is a big problem in today's world of information technology.
All of these types of lead magnets are easy and quick to create, and they will save your list time and money, all you have to do is perform a Google search to find the information that you need to create a high value and highly desirable resource list, that you can use as a product to give away on your landing page. All you need is a spread sheet or word document to create a resource list and your in business.
No one wants 6 week courses any more, they want instant gratification and a quick win, all the products listed above achieve this.
Part 1 – An Introduction To Autoresponders.
There is, among many new online marketers a strong urge to do everything on the cheap or for free.
Dont Use FREE autoresponders
When deciding on which autoresponder to use, I would strongly urge you to avoid this type of mindset, unless you absolutely have to.
If you own a website, it’s advisable to treat your website as a real business and invest a small amount in it, to make it profitable.
Compared to offline businesses the set up costs of an online business are tiny in comparison, I spent $30,000 to set up my electrical installer business, and that is not including all the ongoing costs which are endless.
To set up this online business I only have to invest in a domain some web hosting and an autoresponder, all in all about $300 per year, I think would agree this is incredibly cheap in comparison.
You get what you pay for and if you are trying to build an online business, it’s much better in the long run to pay for a professional autoresponder, there are free ones but they always come at a price, free is never really free.
The good news is that even the very best autoresponders like Getresponse are really cheap to get started and come with free 30 day trials for you to try them out first. There are about 5 big main autoresponder services out there, my own preference is Getresponse.
What Exactly Is An Autoresponder, And How To Get Your Message Heard.
An autoresponder is an online cloud based service that handles all your email marketing campaigns, it’s where you can create your opt in forms and write your email messages.
Autoresponders allow you to have pre-written emails set up in a sequence, so when someone opts in to your list, they receive a confirmation and welcome emails automatically as well as any other e-mails that your have set up for them to receive, commonly known as an e-mail sequence.
The really big benefit of setting this up is that you don’t need to be there when someone opts in, its all done automatically, so your business is effectively running 24 hours a day even when you are asleep, there are few business models that can boast of that kind of automation and efficiency.
You can also send, what are called “broadcasts” to your list, this is an e-mail that is not in your sequence, that you can send to multiple people on your list at once at any time you wish to.
One of the really great functions of Getresponse is that they allow you to send your emails at the time of your choosing, so if you send e-mails in one time zone, you can set these emails to arrive at the appropriate time in the recipients time zone.
Having the ability to set when your emails arrive at the recipients inbox will give you a definite advantage as your open rates will increase if your email arrives at certain times of the day and go down at other times.
Studies have shown that the optimal arrival time for your emails is about 11:am in the recipients time zone.
E-mail Open Rates
The beauty of using an autoresponder is that it automates to some degree you’re marketing, if someone signs up to your list at 3 am, your autoresponder will be activated and the pre-prepared campaign that you have already built will begin to send your messages, without you needing to be there.
What To Look For When Choosing An Auto Responder
Like all services online, you really do get what you pay for, the free autoresponders may seem tempting, but there is always a downside to free online services, the main benefits of choosing one of the really top autoresponder services is they have been around for a long time, and done lots of testing.
Deliver ability
E-mail deliverability is the percentage of your emails that reach your intended audience rather than end up being blocked, or put into the spam folder. One way of helping this happens is to use authentication protocol when your emails are sent.
Get response does this by adding a DMARC protocol to all your "FROM" emails, this can be done in a few seconds inside Get Response, ensuring your email deliverability increases, this is another reason to use one of the experienced and well established autoresponder company's
Functionality
Simply put, does your autoresponder do the job it is intended to do, the best autoresponder's will also offer other functions that are related to the e-mail marketing service they provide, like landing page and website builders, and now automation has become the biggest innovation on the internet, with the introduction of AI
As you can see by the image below Get response offers a variety of other tools and functions to help your email marketing campaigns be successful
User friendliness
There is nothing worse than trying to use complicated software especially if you are new to email marketing, the big autoresponder company's know that complicated software will scare customers away, so they tend to make it as simple to use as is possible.
Price
When your starting out you will be able to take advantage of the fact that you have no leads yet and most of the established auto responders' will offer you a very competitive price .
You should be able to get started for less than $20.0 per month
Training
The biggest hurdle you will have when building a list for the first time is your lack of skills, so its imperative that the autoresponder you choose has a range of training videos to help you make the best use of their platform.
Support
Once again, its very important that you have access to support should you need it, in my view this is what separates the best from the rest. There is nothing worse than feeling stuck with some technical problem with no one to help you solve it.
E-mail Deliverability Guide
How to keep your emails from going to the spam folder.
8 Winning Strategies For Building Profitable E-Mail Marketing Campaigns
Part 2 – Opt-In Forms And Landing Pages.
In this section I will explain the simplest ways for your potential subscribers to opt in to your list, the first thing to understand is that you need to give visitors to you website a really compelling reason to opt in to your list. Creating an opt in form is normally done inside your autoresponder and is relatively simple.
The opt in form is created by first setting up a campaign in your autoresponder and then creating an opt in form that will be associated with it. The opt in form is built using a simple visual drag and drop editor which will then generate a code snippet for you or your web designer to insert into your website. This will then connect your site to your autoresponder.
The opt in form is crucial as it connects your website to your specific pre-written autoresponder campaign, it is in effect an API (Application Program Interface), in plain English that mean a digital access key to your autoresponder service.
There are certain types of page building software’s that allow you to build an opt in form on your website and you will need to insert the API key into the software to connect your website to your autoresponder, I use thrive architect to build all my landing pages and forms, all autoresponders provide you with an API Key, this is just a short piece of code which you can copy and then past into the appropriate section of the software.
Thrive architect is highly functional and I use it to build many of the working parts of this site, I have been using it for many years and would now not be without it as it makes creating landing pages easy.
How To Create An Effective Opt-In Form- Every Little Detail Matters
I design email marketing campaigns for clients and the simple fact is, that the more fields that are in your form the lower the opt in rate will be, just use one extra field and your opt in rates may go down.
The words on the submit button really mater, using the second one implies that your potential subscribers will not have to wait for what you are offering, the online world is changing and so are peoples expectations, and most expect instant access without any delays.
So the words used in your submit button will make a significant difference in your opt in rates, every little detail really does matter.
Your opt in form can be placed anywhere on your website, on any page or post or in the side bar if you wish, depending on what your are offering as a reason to sign up to your list.
If you want people to sign up to receive notification for your latest published content, then the most effective place for your opt in form would be after your content.
If someone has read all of your article, you can be quite sure that they are interested in your niche and will make much more responsive subscribers, as the main aim of building a list is to create a highly responsive list not just a big list, more subscribers does not equal more profits.
Small and highly targeted lists are what you really want to aim for so when you decide to promote any offers, the response you get from your list will be significantly increased if the people on your list are really interested in your niche and want what you are offering and so will be motivated to take action.
Using Landing Pages To Build Your List.
A landing page is a page built for a single purpose and in this case the purpose is to get people to opt in to your list, by offering them a free gift, usually this is a free report or any sort of information product, that solves a specific problem within your niche market.
The type of landing page needed for building a list is actually very simple, the whole focus is persuading people to opt in for your list by offering them a free gift in return for their email address, and so the product you give away is often called a lead magnet, or an ethical bribe.
How to Create And Set Up Effective Landing Pages.
There are a number of solutions for building landing pages, what ever type of website you are using, most people are using WordPress to build their websites and so you can use one of the many landing page plugins out there to create your landing page.
Your landing page should be simple in design and and be very tightly focused, in addition to this you will need a “thank you” page as well.
If you do not want to build your own landing page then use a web designer to create them for you, however these days its quite simple to build them your self.
One of the benefits of using Getresponse is that they also have their own drag and drop landing page builder which you can use to create and host your landing pages
The thank you page is the page your subscribers land on after they opt in to your list.
Building Effective Landing Pages That Convert Highly.
The design of your landing page will be instrumental in how high your opt in rate is, so it is essential to get it right first time, the reality is that there are thousands of different designs for landing pages and lots of conflicting advice on which design works best.
SIGN UP FOR MY NEWS LETTER
The Battle Of The Inbox
Asking people to sign up for your news letter is not going to work any more, because your news letter is about you, those days are over, you really need to give away something of high value and that’s in demand.
News letters still get used in e-mail marketing after people have opted into your list but its no longer effective to try and get people to sign up to get your news letter, most people have inboxes creamed full of emails and if you are just another one of those emails then your chances of building a profitable business with emails is close to zero
Don’t fall into the trap of ME Marketing!!!
Me marketing is without doubt the most common mistake I see online, remember no one is interested in you, they are only interested in what you can do for them. Who ever you are trying to market to, remember that there are two things that will appeal to almost any body no mater what the niche, and they are “saving time and saving money”. This is commonly called marketing to circumstances.
Part 3 – Creating Your Lead Magnet Or Free Giveaway
This is the most important part of your email marketing campaign and getting it right will mean the difference between success and failure as it will be the first experience your prospect has of your whole campaign and if you don’t deliver something of value then the chances of the people on your new list engaging wit you will be massively reduced
The Right Mindset To Have When Building Your List
The greatest mistake that marketers make when building a list is that they set out with the purpose of making money immediately from their list, this leads them to try and sell straight away and then sell all the time to the people on their list. They send offer after offer and wonder why no one responds or buys their products.
I strongly urge you to avoid this mindset as it will only bring you frustration and very little sales if any at all, remember you are not the only one in their inbox and most people are receiving constant offers from email marketers most of which are ignored. You need to stand out in the inbox and be remembered.
The Primary Purpose Of Building A List Should Be To Achieve Three Things
People buy from people that they know, like and trust!!!
If you set out to achieve these three things you will not make any money immediately but in the long term you will beat all your competition hands down every time, and people will open your email and engage with your brand. The sales will then follow naturally once your known and trusted by your customers.
If you do this right you will be in the top 3% of marketers that make all the money and not in the 97% of people who make only a few dollars if any at all. It does not take much to achieve this you will be surprised to hear, almost all your competition will be trying to sell all the time so if you implement a few simple things then you will be miles ahead of everybody else.
The SED formula for successful product creation
Simple
Effective
Desirable
- Give something away of great value.
- Send you leads to a thank you page with a video of you in it welcoming people to your brand
- Don’t try and sell anything in the short term.
- Use branding in your e-mails, picture of you, logo, background style, don’t just send plain white text, because that’s what everybody else is doing.
- Research your potential audience and find out what their frustrations and pain is, put your self in the mind of your customers
Give something away of high value, create something that saves time and money
In Conclusion
The purpose of this article was to give you an insight into successful email marketing, while there are lots of people doing this, few are doing it successfully.
Please tell me in the comments below if there is anything else that you are struggling with. This is a new blog and I would love to know what else you would like to learn and if there are any specific things you are struggling with.