Email Marketing Basics

There are many benefits to marketing your website with emails. It is cost-effective, it has a higher response rate than most other forms of advertising and it keeps communication with your potential and actual customers more personal.

However, you need a list of people to email, and there are a few of ways to do get this list. You can rent a list, borrow a list or create a list yourself.

Of the three ways, the very best is to create your own list, but there is a drawback to this; it takes quite a lot of TIME to get a good sized list.

Renting a list is hit-and-miss and I wouldn’t recommend it.  You might get lucky and find a good broker who has up-to-date lists to rent you, but it’s unlikely and in my experience, it’s mostly a waste of time.

Creating your own is great mostly because of the quality of the list.  You KNOW people are interested in what you have to offer, because you created it yourself AND you can keep this list updated by emailing it yourself and keeping a note of any emails that are returned (or if somebody unsubscribes, which is never a good thing).

To do this, you need to use an autoresponder service, because you simply don’t have the time to do it manually.  The one I use is GetResponse, but there are other good ones out there.

To get people onto your list, offer them something of value at no cost.  Don’t be cheap!  Give them something of real use.  An ebook, and audio or some video tutorials perhaps.  You’ll need an opt-in form on your main website, but GetResponse will provide that for you for no additional fee.  Their cost to you is about $15 per month.

Make sure that the initial message that is sent to them, once they’ve signed-up for your freebie, informs them that they are now on your email list, and let them know that they can expect some more free things from you over time.  This is so that they don’t unsubscribe once they get your free gift.  Oh, and DO send them some things once every other month or so.

Make sure the subject line reads something like “Here’s the free e-book you requested” so that they don’t delete it because they forgot that they actually DID subscribe to your list.

Email them about twice a month with updates, and always remind them to come and visit your site to read your latest materials or see your more recently added products.  Make the emails short and to the point.

Don’t use HTML, just use plain text otherwise it may not get delivered, because not all autoresponder services can deal with HTML.

Make sure that you include your name and contact details in case they want to email you back.  This is also good practice because they may have trouble buying something from your website and you DO want to help them buy from you, don’t you?

The third way is to borrow a list.  To do this you need a JV or Joint Venture partner.  In effect, you are offering your partner a large percentage of the sale price in exchange for her to promote your product to her list. Once somebody from her list has bought something from you, they are then on YOUR list.

You can find a partner at:

JVNotifyPro

Finally, ALWAYS BACKUP your lists! Your list is a goldmine if you know what to do with it.

GetResponse does a great job at backing-up, but the final responsibility is YOURS.

Happy emailing!!!

Luke.