Are you making millions yet with your website/advertising? Maybe yes, maybe no. In any case, wouldn’t you like to make more? Today, many internet marketers are using another technique in conjunction with their websites/landing pages to help drive sales. They use a little thing called email marketing. Keep reading to surely increase your sales.
Email Marketing?!…What the Heck is an Email??
Email marketing is simply getting an email list through opt-ins* and then marketing to that list via email. It is very powerful because it gives you and your business many more opportunities to make a sale because people don’t have to visit your site to learn about the product. With an email list you can send out updates, notices, tip and tricks, service announcements, promotions and just about anything else you can imagine. You can even promote things that you haven’t created (affiliate marketing what?). They provide you with constant contact with potential customers for much longer than a single website visit would.
*An opt-in is a word that describes a person choosing to join a mailing list. It is different from spam because you are not “finding” these email addresses, they are willingly given to you with consent of future email. Opt-ins (and therefore mailing lists) are ethical internet marketing tactics used by millions.
The Beginning
The first thing you will need to do is get set up with an autoresponder. This will automatically send emails to people after they opt-in. You can also email your entire list at once as well as setup other automated email times. There are many out there, but I recommend Aweber because it’s the best you can get. Awebser is a paid service but it is well worth the money. If you’re serious about email marketing this is what you need. A free autoresponder service just won’t cut it.
To sign up visit aweber.com and click “Order” in the top right and fill in your info. The service is only $19/month and less if you purchase for a longer amount of time. It really is worth the money because it makes your life so easy and allows you to generate much more money because you will be able to advertise to more people more often. If you are unsure of this service or if email marketing is right for you, just try it for a single month and then make your final decision. This is a small investment with huge potential.
Once you sign up you will be sent your login information to access the Aweber control panel right away. The panel may seem a little confusing at first, but don’t worry. I will help you.
Think about it
Let’s say you have a squeeze page that gets about 50% conversions. This means that half the people that visit your page are opting in. Now let’s say you get a small amount of traffic each day, such as 30 hits. This will give you 15 people joining your email list a day. That’s 450 people in just one month! You can now market products to these people how ever often you’d like via email. Now pretend 1% of those emailed promotions convert into sales. That gives you 4-5 sales (on top of what you’re already making) per email, and after only one month of “squeezing.” If the product you’re selling is only $20, that’s a cool $100…just from sending out ONE email. Imagine what happens when your list gets even bigger, as it will over time, and you send out 2-3 (or more) emails per month! Craziness.
How to do it – Step by Step
Let’s get back to Aweber and set up an autoresponder to start making us sales!
Email List
First, login to Aweber. Once inside, you will see that a default mailing list has been setup for you. We are going to edit this. It should look similar to “default12345″. To edit the default list click on the “List Settings” tab at the top, bringing up a new window.
Now enter a list name, description, company name and website url. You can leave the logo url and divider color blank. For the Autoresponder Admin Emails you must enter at least one email address that all emails will be sent from.
OK, we’re halfway there. Your list is now complete, but there are a few more tweaks to perform to get the most out of our Aweber service.
Follow-ups
Follow-up messages are great because they allow you to automate basically everything, making your life easy as pie. They get sent out instantly when someone opts in.
In Aweber, make sure your new email list name is selected in the “Select List” box and then click the “Messages” tab. Click the link in the center of the screen that reads “Create Message 1″. Here is where you will write your first follow-up email that will be sent out when people subscribe to your list.
Tip: Be sure to enter your message into both the Plain Text and HTML boxes because not all email servers can read HTML.
There is a box at the top where you can select different prebuilt templates for your email. Feel free to use them, but I am going to go over manually creating your own [email]. Also notice the dropdown box to “Merge Personalization Fields”. This lets you insert code variables, such as “{!name}” which will be replaced when the email is sent out. In this case, the “name” variable will be replaced by the name of each unique person the email is sent to.
While writing be sure to add link[s] to your website and/or any affiliate product you may be promoting. Also make some of the text an actual link because it will greatly improve your click-through rate. Also check the “Click Tracking” box if you want Aweber to keeps statistics on how many times your links are clicked. This is very helpful in determining how effective your auto respond emails are doing.
Now click “Save”. Yay! Hold up, we’re not finished just yet. Check out that “Spam” menu. What’s your rating? Aweber will tell you how close your email is to being spam. The lower the number the better. If you click the number you can get an explanation of why you got this rating. If necessary, follow the instructions to make appropriate changes. A spam score under 3.0 will most likely reach most of the people on your list.
Now notice the “Test” button. This is a great feature to help make sure you don’t screw up. Click it and a test email (a replica of what your list members will receive) will be sent to the email address you setup earlier. I highly highly recommend you use this.
Woo, that’s all done! Let’s get this bad boy implemented so it works.
Sign Me Up
We need to get your signup form on your site so people can start subscribing and you can start sending emails. This will require a little HTML work (and therefore access to the website/landing page code), but don’t worry if this is foreign to you. It’s easy peasy.
Like before, make sure your list is in the “Select List” box from the main panel page. Click the “Web Form Generator” tab and click the “Create new web form” link. Now name your form. This will only be seen by you so make it meaningful. The next step is important. You need to choose the type of form you wish to use. I will go over the inline form, but you may choose a popup form if you’d like. Both are effective. It’s more about personal taste.
You now need an enticing headline. There are many headline techniques you can use here. Just make sure that it’s relevant to what you are promoting on your website. It should also relate to what your follow-up message says. If your website is about selling “kitty carriers” then both your headline and follow-up should be too. After the heading, you must choose the fields you want your visitors to fill out. I suggest a name and email (make them required).
Finally, save your form and then click “Get HTML” on the new window. Copy the javascript code that is similar to:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://forms.aweber.com/form/12/123456789.js”></script>
Head over to your webpage’s code and paste that code somewhere between the “<body> </body>” tags. Save the file and upload it to your webserver.
You may want to try placing the opt-in form in various places on your page to see which one works best for you. Also be sure to try out pop-up versus incline forms.
Broadcasting
So you want to send an email to your list (or part of it) but not on a designated time such as every Monday or when people first sign up. No problem. Send a broadcast message anytime you want!
As always, make sure your list is selected in Aweber and click the “Messages” tab and then “Broadcast Edit”. Click “Create New Broadcast” and fill everything out as you would for a follow-up email. Once everything is done and you check the spam rating you can press “Queue Now”. Once clicked you will have 5 minutes (by default) to stop the email from going out. Make sure everything is perfect before you queue the email. You don’t want anything bad or embarrassing mistakes being sent out to thousands of people.
Some Advice
Email marketing is very lucrative. It’s very exciting when you send out a single email and start earning hundreds or even thousands of dollars from a single click! But a word of caution. You absolutely positively under no circumstances never ever EVER want to just send out emails that sell products. I’m not saying don’t send out an email that has a sole purpose of selling a product. I’m saying change it up a bit. Users will unsubscribe (yes they can do that) from your list if you are always “spamming” them with products and never providing them with quality content. You will want to send out guides, tips, e-books, tutorials, member’s only bonuses, etc. to keep everyone well informed and happy with you. Try and keep product promotion to a minimum. If you do this, those promotions will generate TONS of income. It’s all about establishing trust. If a subscriber likes what you put out there (aka content) and trusts what you have to say, you are a million more times likely to make a sale.
You also don’t want to send out too many emails. Who wants 30 emails a month from the same person? It’s good to establish a timeframe of how often you will send out emails and then let your subscribers know. If you’re going to send out weekly messages, tell them. That way they don’t take it as spam but see it more as a newsletter.
My End, Your Future
I hope you learned a lot from this email marketing tutorial. It’s a great way to generate a ton of money relatively easily. Now go out there, get an Aweber account and setup your first mailing list to become an internet marketing success!
