Did you know you can send out an email… and make money? No, you’re
not sending a message to your buddy who borrowed money from you a couple
months’ and hasn’t paid you back yet.
I’m talking about a simple email to a list of subscribers
in which you promote a product or service as part of your online
business. You’re actively seeking a sale instead of waiting for them to
find you online. Another name for this is “push marketing.” It’s the evolution of traditional direct mail
marketing, in which snail mail letters are sent to prospects. But the
huge advantage is that while mail is expensive to send… emails are
virtually free. And that allows online marketers like you to test
different marketing campaigns, offers, and products without much risk…
and then fine-tune their approach in building a list of leads and then
selling to that list until they have a solidly profitable winner.
You may not have heard the term email marketing,
but you’ve probably seen it in action. You’ve probably even purchased a
product or paid for a subscription of some sort as a result of
receiving an email.
Go ahead and check your inbox right now to see
what offers are waiting for you. You might find limited time sales
related to products you’ve ordered in the past from major online
retailers, a product launch with a special introductory offer from an
information marketer, an invitation to subscribe to an investment
newsletter, or even an invitation to attend an online webinar...
the possibilities are endless.
All
those eletters or content messages you receive from different companies
are also part of email marketing… a very important part at that, as
you’ll see in a moment.
Whatever it is, the basic idea is the same. You get your prospect’s email address using methods we’ll discuss in a moment.Then you contact your prospect by
email. You email them on a regular basis, so they remember who you are
and why they signed up for your list in the first place. You provide a
lot of useful, free information. And on occasion, you send them sales
messages. Then a certain percentage buy. It does take some time. Why the
extra effort?
The thing is that many consumers these days aren’t
ready to buy when they first encounter your business and its products
and services. To be honest, as a small online business, you don’t have
the brand recognition of an internet giant like Amazon. You need to create a relationship with them so that they know, like, and trust you enough to buy. One of the best ways to do that is by email.
Given
that email has been around for decades, it may seem crazy that it is
still a go-to strategy for internet marketers. But, yes, even in this
age of Facebook marketing,
online video, “Big Data,” and other Web 2.0 marketing methods, email
remains a very viable and profitable marketing channel. Consider that…
That’s why major
retailers, including Amazon, big box stores, and others still use email
marketing. It may be “old school,” but it still works.
So where do you find these subscribers and how do you get their emails? It’s a multi-step process with several moving parts.
Back
in the day, you could go out and buy email lists with millions of
addresses and simply send your sales message and watch the profits roll
in. But these days, the average online customer is savvier, and the
novelty of buying products online has worn off. It’s pretty standard for
people to order stuff on the internet, whether it’s a physical product
or something downloaded.
To create your list, you must convince people to give you their name and email address. (You must have their permission to email them.
Otherwise, it is considered spam and you could be fined and even be taken to court.)
Convincing
someone to give up their email address is a mater of distinguishing
yourself from your competition. It pays to spend some time thinking
about this as it will guide everything that you do as you create your
email marketing campaign: the copy, the offer, everything.
So how
do you get people to sign up? There are many methods to choose from.
And, as always, you must figure which approaches work best for your
business through testing.
The Nuts and Bolts of Getting “Names”
There
are a variety of free and paid ways to add email subscribers to your
list. You should know that names you land through free methods are much
more valuable than paid advertising. The free ways take longer and
require more effort. While with paid methods you see more people sign up
more quickly. But those people don’t tend to buy as much. You should
try a mix of both free and paid efforts to sign up subscribers.
On the paid side you could include:
- Ads on Facebook (sponsored posts)
- Banner ads
- Insert ads
- Pay-per-click ads on Google AdWords
Free list building efforts could be:
- Posts on your Facebook page
- YouTube videos
- Forum marketing
- Blog posts
Search
engine optimization, in which you tailor your site or sites so that
they appear high in the search engine results when web surfers search
related keywords, is a very powerful free list building method.
It’s
important to include a unique link for each of your list building
channels so that you can track how many names came from each. That will
help you determine which is the most effective for your business so you
can run with them… and which methods don’t yield results so you can drop
them.
Many of your list building efforts will link directly to a landing page instead of your regular e-commerce website.
The
landing page is a very simple web page that includes a strong,
attention-grabbing headline and some body copy that highlights the main
benefits of your product or service. You could throw in some
testimonials about your product or service too.
The centerpiece of
the landing page is a sign-up box, where you ask the visitor to submit
their name and email address. To compel your prospect to sign up for
your list, it’s important to include some sort of incentive. It could be
- A bonus report
- A trial subscription or membership
- A book
- Access to a webinar
- A video
Whatever it is, make sure that it is displayed prominently on the landing page.
You
should also include an email sign up box on your main website so that
any visitors who come to your site through your search engine
optimization efforts have the opportunity to join the list too. Best
practice is to include the sign-up box “above the fold” so that the
visitor doesn’t have to scroll down and they see it as soon as the page
loads.
You Have Your List – What Do You Do Know?
So you
have this list of hundreds, then thousands of people who have expressed
an interest in your product or service. You cannot just send them sales
messages. This may have worked in the early Wild West days of the
e-commerce. But these days you need more finesse. You must keep the list
warm by sending them valuable free information. So what counts as
valuable free content?
You could send them short articles where
you offer tips related to your niche. For example, if you sell a natural
cure for migraine headaches, you could write an article with tips for
using exercise or a certain diet to reduce the chance of migraines
happening.
The idea is to showcase your expertise, create
goodwill with your prospect, and speed up the process of them getting to
know like and trust you. And that makes them more likely buy, if not
now, sometime down the road.
When you do send out sales message, make sure they’re the best they can be.
- You must have a compelling offer.
- Create urgency. Have a limited time discount or sale.
- Showcase the exciting benefits the prospect will gain by using your product or service.
- You can’t be boring. Your sales copy must engage the prospect from the get go and compel them to take action now. This will also encourage the prospect to share your message with their network, adding more names to your list.
- Be
sure to personalize your message with the first name (email services
can do this automatically). This will result in a higher response.
You
can include the whole sales message in the email if it’s fairly short.
The call to action at the end will send the prospect directly to an
order page.
Or you can include a “lift” in the body of the email
that acts as a teaser. You’re goal there is to the whet the prospect’s
appetite enough so that they click at the end to read your full sales
letter, where you do the real selling. It’s best to test different
approaches to see which works best for your list.
Once you find
the right offer, copy, and marketing approach that works for your list,
you’ll start to see the sales coming in. Again, that’s where tracking
comes in. Just as you track which types of marketing works in building
your list, you must monitor what marketing approach results in a sale so
you can run with the winners.
If you take this email marketing seriously, the rewards can be tremendous.
Some last things to consider if you haven’t been convinced to add email to your marketing mix:
- Email has the highest conversion rate - 60% - when compared to social media, direct mail, and other channels.
- For every $1 you spend on email marketing, the average return is $44. That’s an amazing ROI.
Here’s
the thing, even under the best of circumstances, a typical email effort
will only result in a small percentage of your subscribers actually
taking action and buying whatever you’re selling. An even smaller
percentage will buy more than one once. And many will actually sign up
and then never even open or read your emails.
So that means you have to constantly be adding new names to your new list
to keep your list growing and your sales steady. You can’t ever neglect
your list building efforts if you want your venture to be sustainable.
Managing Your Email Mailings
Now
you’ve probably figured out that you can’t just use your Gmail account
to mail a list of thousands of people. That’s where email marketing
services like
GetResponse,
MailChimp, and
AWeber come in.
Note: You can see a complete AWeber Email Autoresponder review here.
They
help you manage your new sign-ups, putting them automatically on your
mailing list. Then you use the service to create messages to send to
your list. You could have a schedule where you send out a “broadcast”
every other day or once a week. Figure out how often your list likes to
be contacted by monitoring how many people unsubscribe.
You could schedule mailings for weeks, even months in advance… so you don’t have to be tied into a daily grind. You could set up mailings so it is all on autopilot,
with a very specific sequence of emails going out in order to new
subscribers. These are called autoresponders. This series should be
carefully calibrated to get the prospect excited and then compel them to
buy.
Getting Started
As a solo-preneur, you probably
don’t have a lot of funds to invest in a huge email list building
campaign using paid methods like Google AdWords. So I suggest you start
with free methods.
First, set up your list building “back office” with one of the email marketing services mentioned above so that you can capture emails.
Create a simple landing page and/or add a sign-up box to your main website’s homepage.
Then
ramp up those free list building methods like search engine
optimization and Facebook and send people to sign up to your list.
Be
sure to be ready to broadcast to your list with marketing messages and
free content. It’s probably best at first to have a series of messages
ready to go automatically. As your list grows, you can then start
modifying that with new messages, new offers, and new email marketing strategies.
