aWebBiz Internet Marketing Blog

Now that you know the basics of list building, it’s time to take it to the next level. The tips that follow will help ensure that your list is kept fresh and exciting, and that your profits increase over time.

Plan Ahead So Writing Does Not Get Cumbersome

One of the most common things that happens when someone builds a list is that they get tired of running it. When you start out you think it will be easy to keep up with the messages since they are on autoresponder. Unfortunately, there comes a time where it all becomes too much to handle and your messages start to become fewer and far between. When this happens people forget about you.

A solution to this problem is to plan your autoresponder messages ahead of time. Even if you don’t write them right then and there at least you’ll know what you’re going to say. Many people put off writing the messages because they are not sure what the next one should discuss, so this will help you avoid that problem.

Consider Outsourcing Your Messages

After you have gotten a flow to your messages and you know exactly where you want them to head, you may consider outsourcing them to a writer. This will make things even more hands off for you. It’s even better if you get a writer who is well-versed in writing autoresponder copy.

There are many writers available who are willing to do this for a very reasonable fee. Keep in mind that low prices do not always equal the best deal, and high prices do not always equal the best quality. You want to examine the person’s writing samples and give them some small work at first before you hand over the job on a long-term basis.

Run Contests to Excite Your List Members

It can sometimes get boring to open the same kinds of emails from the same person over and over again. That’s why you need to keep things exciting and fresh. A fun way to do this is to host contests. People absolutely love to win things, and this can help you get a lot of interaction.

Contests are even more exciting to your readers when the prize is valuable. You may consider investing in a physical product that you will ship to the winners – or cash! This is more exciting than providing digital gifts to your list members.

Try to Include Frequent Special Offers

Your list members are not going to get very excited about the offers you send them if they are not getting a special deal. If they see that you’re consistently pitching them a product at regular price, they will be less inclined to buy from you.

However, if they see that you are constantly negotiating special deals or giving them special bargains on your own product, they will be a lot more likely to buy. This will put you on their “favorites” list since people really do love to get a bargain.

Build More Specialized Lists

After you are well-versed in building lists, you will want to make them even more specialized. This means breaking them down into people who have purchased from you and people who have not, etc. You’ll find that you want to treat these groups of people differently, and even word things differently in your messages. It’s not to say that one group of people is more important than the other, just that they need different handling.

Examine your autoresponder company’s documentation to discover how you can separate your lists so that it makes more sense for your marketing.

Ask For More Feedback

It can’t be said enough that one of the best ways to make sure you’re delivering value to your list members is to ask them what they value.

Guessing  just doesn’t work.

Is gold valuable?

Not to someone who is drowning. I think they’d much prefer a life vest.

Is a glass of water valuable?

It certainly is if you’re stranded in a desert. The guy in the example above, though.. probably would pass.

It doesn’t matter what YOU think is valuable. It matters what your list members do.

Too many people consistently send messages that they aren’t sure their list members can even benefit from. By serving your members and asking them to tell you what they want to learn about, and what kind of offers they want to see, they’ll be a lot more likely to trust you and to buy from you.

Re-Examine Your Opt-In Box Positioning 

Hopefully you have been testing different positions for your opt-in form to see what works best. Keep in mind that the more boxes you have (within reason) the better. Once you start getting a high level of traffic, small changes can make a huge difference.

This goes hand-in-hand with testing your headlines and your copy.

Create Products on the Backend

Hopefully you have been doing well with some of the products you have been pitching to your list members. If you have your own products you want to make sure that you have a backend offering as well. This can be either an upsell or downsell that you offer once they purchase from you. This is a great way to increase your profits from the same customer.

Send Personalized Emails

This step might be difficult to implement depending on how large your list has grown. Still, when somebody joins your list or purchases from you it really helps to send personalized email. This shows that you are there ready to help them in any way you can. You can even hire this portion out, but the results will be well worth the effort. This will greatly cut down on unsubscribes and greatly increase your profits.

If you’re using a service like Aweber – it’s easy to do.

Create More Products

Many people who have a list get complacent with selling the products that they already have. However, after you have had a list for a while the chances are good that you have a feel for what your members want. You can create both smaller and larger products that encompass these needs and wants.

Your list members will love you for providing these things, and you will generate more income as a result.

Always Do What’s Best For Your List Members

If you always keep in your mind that you should do what is best for your list members, you will see rewards. Your relationship with your list will grow, they will trust you, and they will respect what you have to say.

You will be their “go to expert” who they love to buy from. This, of course, will increase your profits substantially and make your list very lucrative for you. It also just feels better to do what is best for your list members rather than using them as a “cash machine”.

That’s not to say that it’s not a cool thing to be able to send out a simple email and receive great profits and return!

Do you want to improve your email marketing skills? If so then register for the free webinars below.

Free, Live Email Marketing Webinars ~ Become an Email Marketing Master

Recommendations:
aWeber Autoresponders - Quickly create and run your campaigns with powerful, easy-to-use email marketing tools.
Go Daddy – Where I purchase all my domain names.
Hostgator – Very reliable and low cost hosting service which I have been using for about ten years.

While we would all like to think that building our list will go as smoothly as possible, it does not always happen that way. Sometimes things do go wrong, but you can minimize the problems as much as possible by being prepared.

Getting Spam Complaints Even Though You’re Not Spamming

One of the most frustrating things that marketers have to deal with is getting spam complaints. There are just some people out there that do not realize they will receive emails, even though they have signed up for an email list. This might sound facetious, but it’s very true. People might think that they are simply going to get the one special offer or freebie email and not continue to receive them. If they do receive additional emails and they are not sure why, they might hit the spam button. Some people also hit the spam button rather than hitting the delete button.

The best way to decrease the spam complaints you receive is to make sure people know what they are signing up for. Clearly outline that you will send messages regularly to help them. Making this clear may prevent some potential problems.

Also, make sure every email you send your list is in their best interest. If you keep sending them offers that are not in their best interest you will get spam complaints.

If you heed this advice and you still get a few spam complaints here and there, don’t worry. There will always be people who just do not understand. Your autoresponder provider will provide you with some guidelines to watch out for to make sure your spam complaints are not too high.

People Not Confirming Their Opt-In

Many autoresponder providers will recommend that you require a double opt-in procedure. That means that people not only have to sign up for your list in the first place, but they also have to click a link in their email that confirms they want to receive messages from you.

While this might seem like a hassle, it certainly does prevent complaints and other problems for you. On the other hand, sometimes these confirmation emails get lost in the shuffle or people do not understand what they are or what to do with them.

Make sure that people understand what they are supposed to do with the confirmation email by providing simple, clear instructions after they sign up. You may also wish to provide screenshots or video right after they sign up. This simple step can greatly increase your double opt-in subscribers.

Minimize The Number of People Who Unsubscribe

It’s hard not to take it personally when someone unsubscribes from your list. The fact is that there are many reasons this could happen. For one thing, some people are overwhelmed with the email they already receive. That means they might unsubscribe from your list just to cut down on the things that come into their inbox. Depending on how your list handles email address changes, you may also see unsubscribes whenever a person changes their email address. Some autoresponders require your readers to unsubscribe and sign up again if they need to update their contact info.

On the other hand, it might be something that you are doing wrong. One thing you might try is asking people what you could change in the future. This is certainly not a mandatory thing you must do, but some people will be more than happy to give you a reason.

Surveying your list and getting a feel for what your list members want is another way to cut down on unsubscribes. Knowing that you are providing quality content at all times is key. It’s also important to know the offers you send your list are targeted directly to them, and that they are enjoying the content that you provide.

Minimize E-mail Filter Problems

Dealing with email filters is a huge hassle if you are not prepared. Unfortunately, no matter how much someone wants to read your email, if their email automatically filters your messages out, you’re not going to be able to reach them!

The best way to avoid this problem is to make it very clear to your subscribers that they need to “white list” your email address. This will tell their email filter that messages from you are okay to receive. This is one of the things that you will want to include in the directions after people sign up. You may also want to include some instructions for the different platforms like Hotmail or Gmail accounts. AOL and Yahoo are known as being particularly picky.

Make Sure Your Messages Come Through Clearly

There are some people who have email accounts that cannot handle HTML. Still others do not wrap the text very well. You want to make sure you work with your autoresponder company’s tools to ensure that your emails are able to reach as many people as possible.

This often means including an HTML version and a text version of every email you send. You should also realize that some spam filters will give you spam marks against HTML. That is why some marketers stick with strictly text.

Do you want to improve your email marketing skills? If so then register for the free webinars below.

Free, Live Email Marketing Webinars ~ Become an Email Marketing Master

Recommendations:
aWeber Autoresponders - Quickly create and run your campaigns with powerful, easy-to-use email marketing tools.
Go Daddy – Where I purchase all my domain names.
Hostgator – Very reliable and low cost hosting service which I have been using for about ten years.

After you have your autoresponder set up, your opt-in forms in the right locations, and some promotional strategies that work, you want to do everything you can to increase your conversions. Your goal is to get as many people as possible who visit your web site to sign up for your list. It’s not uncommon at all to see a good conversion rate such as 30 to 50% on an established marketer’s squeeze page.

It’s in your best interest to tweak things as much you can until you reach that point.

Offer Opt-In Incentives

You can definitely increase your conversions if you offer the right incentives for people to sign up. This might be in the form of discounts, ebooks, sneak previews, or an e-course. You want to make the incentive to sign up so good that they don’t mind handing over their email address at all. Many people are wary of giving people their email address, so they have to be really enticed to do so.

You also have to keep in mind that there are other marketers who are trying to get people to opt-in to their own list. Making the best offer you can will help increase your conversions and put you ahead of the others.

Stand Apart From the Crowd

As was mentioned in the last step, there are many other marketers vying for people’s attention. If you want to get as many opt-ins as possible, make sure that you are standing out from the crowd.

Doing something different and creating a different offer than everyone else has will increase people’s interest and increase your conversions. If your offer is boring and just like everyone else’s, you’ll have a more difficult time enticing people to sign up.

Focus on the Benefits

It can’t be said enough that if you want to increase your conversions you need to focus on the benefits of your offer. It’s not enough to tell people that your course will help them, you need to concentrate on their emotions and dig deep into what the benefits are. Too many marketers focus on the features, which are wonderful but don’t really have those emotional hot points.

The old copyrighting adage is that people don’t want to buy the drill, they want to buy the holes. You need to be selling the holes, instead of the drill. Or another way to look at it is that people don’t want to buy the rake – they just want the nice yard.

Tell People What to Do

Having a call to action will increase your conversion rate. You’ll want to test to find the right call to action. Simply saying “sign up for my list,” might work… but it’s probably not be the best way to phrase things to increase your sign up rate.

Instead, you should encourage people to sign up for your list because of the benefits they will receive.

Make People Feel Safe

People will not sign up for your list if they don’t feel safe. There are scam artists all over the net, and many of these people you are targeting have been burned before. Make sure you include some text that guarantees that you will not sell or rent their email list, and that the information is absolutely secure.

Adding a privacy policy is also standard operating procedure and highly recommended.

Use a Picture of Yourself

If you want to increase conversions make sure that people know who you are so they can trust you. A great way to do this is to include a picture of yourself. It doesn’t matter whether you’re camera shy or not, having a picture can increase the number of people who sign up. People want to know who they are giving their email address to.

Make sure you look professional in your photograph so that you come across as an expert that people can trust. This is also a huge part of branding yourself, which is a great thing for long-term profits.

A smile wouldn’t hurt, either.

Include audio

Have you considered adding an audio message to your squeeze page?

Adding an audio message to your squeeze page allows you to add another level of personality and trust. Not everyone who visits your page will listen to your audio, but those who enjoy audio will certainly be more inclined to sign up as a result.

You don’t have to make your audio intrusive. In fact, you can simply include a very small area where it’s obvious that audio is available if people want.

You may not want to have the audio play automatically, because some people may be startled. Others may open your website in a place where they are not able to listen to it at that point in time – like at work.

Obviously it wouldn’t help your conversion rate to have people clicking away from your site before the boss catches them!

Try Including Video

Sometimes you might be able to get your message across more clearly if you include video rather than audio. You can buy an inexpensive camcorder to record yourself, use your WebCam, or create a screencapture video with free software. This type of personalized message also shows people who they are dealing with, which can definitely increase conversions!

In fact, you can kind of “kill two birds with one stone” by uploading the video to YouTube as well. That way you will get views on YouTube, and it will help increase conversions on your own web site as well.

Show People What They Can Expect

Depending on your niche, people may not have signed up for many lists before. If they don’t know what they can expect, you may get spam complaints or people simply will not confirm their address. After they sign up with their name and email address you might want to direct them to a page that outlines what will happen next.

You can either do a video or screenshots of the confirmation email that will arrive in their inbox. Some people have reported that this has increased their confirmed opt-ins substantially!

Consider Including Testimonials

One thing you might want to test is including testimonials on your squeeze page. While many marketers use testimonials on their sales pages, very few use them on the opt-in pages themselves. Remember — social proof is a very important aspect of making sales. Social proof can also show people that it is very helpful to be a member of your e-mail list. They are likely to feel more comfortable seeing someone that is “like them.”

Do you want to improve your email marketing skills? If so then register for the free webinars below.

Free, Live Email Marketing Webinars ~ Become an Email Marketing Master

Recommendations:
aWeber Autoresponders - Quickly create and run your campaigns with powerful, easy-to-use email marketing tools.
Go Daddy – Where I purchase all my domain names.
Hostgator – Very reliable and low cost hosting service which I have been using for about ten years.