Opt-In E-Mail Marketing For Newbies Part 1
Posted on 07. Jul, 2008 by Benjamin Patton in E-Mail / List Marketing
The first thing that comes to mind for most when the phrase email marketing is uddered is that most hanus trashy spam email you get in every account asking you to take just one look at the next best thing. As of late for me it seems that these marketers or as I would prefer to call them spammers think that I may need to purchas presciptions online. No thank you and while we are at it please stop asking me to buy your viagra. The type of E-Mail marketing I want to talk with you about and give you a general enough walkthrough so that you will feel comfortable giving this a try via the many available outlets to a blogger.
First of all I do not approve or condone of any type of marketing that is not sought after in some form by the person looking for a product in the first place. Spam is a very serious thing. The type I will be talking about is an opt-in mailing list. For instance soon you will see a graphic located above my rss subscription button on the right side of the site that essentially will say “click here to recieve my free ebook” before you get it though I will ask for your first name and your email address. Before I allow you to download my ebook you will have to confirm that you opted into this mailing list otherwise you will not be added and most certainly will not recieve the ebook.
It is the best way to eliminate any unwanted or unsolicited email from sources otherwise unknown and sometimes even known. As far as protecting myself as a marketer my autoresponder will capture your IP address, time of day , email and first name, and then again after the confirmation. This way should you file a spam complaint with your ISP I will have a verifiable way to prove that you opted into this mailing list. Now as a way to seal the deal should you in the future decide that you do not want to recieve mail from me any further included at the bottom of every message you will ever recieve from me is a link to an automated unscubscribe page. You can even choose to ban yourself for signing up with this same address in the future should their be any confusion. This is a wonderful way to protect the marketer; as well as, the consumer.
Once upon a time, when you sent an email message to join a mailing list, you got right on. These days, we have a lot of pranksters that like to sign up other people for mailing lists. Sometimes signing up the same person to hundreds and thousands of mailing lists at the same time. And we have computer viruses, like the Klez or mydoom, that likes to send out email with forged email addresses. And these viruses sends out lots of forged messages. When those message arrives at most mailing list servers, it will automatically subscribe the person in the From line, even though that person did not send the email message. In order to protect yourself and your reader from this I suggest you run a double opt-in. In other words they will put the name and email of their choice, and then submit and in return recieve an email with a confirmation link that will activate the subscription and add them to your list.
Now that you know about what is considered a correct opt-in Email marketing list we can move on. Their are a few options in the email marketing world in terms of autoresponders. I will only really mention two of them. Normally your hosting will come with some capability to do this work, but odds are you will not have a very high deliverability rate if any since the odds are not in your favor that you will be the only one ever to have tried this with them. Isp’s and major datacenters can black list ip’s and subnet’s just because of vast email traffic. Because of this I highly recommend you sign up with Aweber for all your autoresponder needs. Despite the cheaper alternatives out there that will try to fool you about what they offer and how far you will be able to reach Aweber will deliver. Also they offer a wonderful breakdown of your stats in the form of analytics which will help you target where and when in your sales letters your readers are clicking so you can promote smarter. Aweber maintains relationships with the worlds top backbone providers, isp’s, etc. Because of this and their standard against spam they are considered a whitelisted domain. If you were to attempt being whitelisted as they are you would have to have the money to back it and more than likely the reputaion as well. Aweber is a pay for use host, but when considering if you want a reputation that is above reproach as an email marketer your choices will be limited as aweber is king of that mountain.
So no you have some form of list marketing host, and you know how and why you need to double opt-in your clients. Lets move along on how to capture these leads. As you have by now guessed you can offer a free gift to your potential lead in exchange for their email address and opting in. While some marketers mail daily you may find that this is not the best way to gain loyalty amongst your subscribers, less products at the right pricepoint and niche works much better than just mailing daily on whatever product you can get your hands on. Take the time to write a great pre sales letter after all your mail is essentially buttering them up for clicking the tracking link from your auto responder to the affiliate product or even your own product. Treat the people on your lists no matter the niche just the way you would want to be. This is not a get rich quick class and I will not tell you that your subscribers are worth $1 a day in sales. To me this is the worst possible way to treat someone who has essentially asked to be apart of your sales program.
This as easy as it is to do even if daily takes a bit of writing to explain some of the finer points. I plan to cover the most effective ways to capture leads, joint venture giveaways, and then in part three tackle the presales execution and tracking your clicks. At the end of this series you should feel confident enough to setup an aweber account and mail your first product and start earning some income.
Related posts:
- Opt-In E-Mail Marketing For Newbies Part 2
- Opt-In E-Mail Marketing For Newbies Part 3
- How To Setup A Successful Opt-In Email Marketing List
- Four Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build Your List
- Viral Marketing 101 – Can you afford not to use it?
13 Responses to “Opt-In E-Mail Marketing For Newbies Part 1”
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July 13, 2008
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February 4, 2009
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Great overview of email marketing Ben, I’m looking forward to the next article in this series.
JK Swopess last blog post..IMwithJoe goals for the week of July 7, 2008
Thanks for the overview of email marketing for newbies. Since I am still pretty new to all of this I appreciate all the information I can get.
Thanks.
Good Overview. Email marketing isn’t as easy as it may appear to be to some. I’ve tried it before and been mildly successful, but only with a lot of time and work. Yet once you build a large list you can definitely enjoy the benefits and rewards.
Erik Kareys last blog post..ErikKarey.com is now EntrepreneursWealth.com
Hard to believe but I am till a complete newbie to email marketing. It’s nice to have someone explain it though.
Hopefully I will get better at this.
IronBloggers last blog post..Using Web analytics To Optimize Your Blog: Part 3 Is Your Blog Performing?
Nice introduction to email marketing for us newbies!
I have heard time and time again that aweber is the premiere list maintenance system, but isn’t their a system more affordable for us rookies to start with? Overall $19/mo isn’t that expensive, but may be more than the starter wants to pay for something they are just playing with and may lose interest in or be unsuccessful at.
Their are a few other options in the way of auto responders. For the most part though your hosting company generally will only do 50-100 mails essentially speaking. This means you will have to seek out a temporary solution cause that’s what anything besides the bigger companies like aweb are. Soon as the domain is blacklisted and the ip’s locked you will fall from 99% to 10% deliverablity.
I can not recommend a cheaper route although they are out there. I am sure some other marketers will chime in with some effective alternatives for beginners.
With so many work from home offers out there I am incredibly happy to find one that works! I only paid for shipping and handling and am now making $500 a day!
googlebizkit.com
I must say, I could not agree with you in 100%, but it
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Thanks for the info – I wonder how many sites/companys use this in their practice?
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