EMAIL MARKETING

• Email remains the most fruitful form of communication
• U.S. Internet users spend 7.8 hours per week checking their emails
• 92% of marketers say that their email marketing effectiveness has improved in the last 12 months
• How can email marketers harvest from the growing email trend and cultivate more profitable subscription lists?
• Fertilization tactics to try

• Email for Businesses
• Turning Emails into Sales
• Creating Your Promotion
• Critique Your Own Email
• Writing Tips to Improve Email Sales

• What is an Email Autoresponder?
• How To Setup Your Email Autoresponder
• Ways To Use Email Autoresponders
• What NOT To Do When Emailing Your List
• Powerful Words to Use in Your Autoresponder Subject Lines

• Email Statistics
• What Gets More Engagement
• How To Get Your Emails Opened
• How To Get Your Emails Read

• Incentives Get People Sharing
• Case Study
• Types of Incentives for Boosting Email Opt-Ins
• Using Incentives on Facebook to Grow Your Email List

• Why Trust is Important for Email
• Building Trust Through List Management
• Building Trust Through Communication
• 5 Simple Ways To Build Trust

• You’ll get an in-depth look at how to instantly turn your brand-spanking new subscribers into cash-paying customers using a slick psychological trick!
• You’ll find out what to do with your “dud” traffic – and how to turn these unresponsive visitors into rabid repeat buyers!
• You’ll also discover the four secrets of laying the perfect bait to persuade prospects to eagerly join your mailing list – list building has never been easier!
• You’ll find out the exact words to put on your subscription confirmation page to effortlessly create an untapped revenue stream for your business!
• You’ll learn two red-hot secrets for turning tire kickers into cash in the bank – these two tips alone are worth the price of admission!
• You’ll get three amazing tips that could double your money… and that’s without doubling your traffic!
• And Much, MUCH, More!

Visit Lists Monsters NOW to learn more about monetizing your exit traffic.

Learn why competition from the Gurus necessitates “smart marketing”.

Just like a short basketball player, you can move around the Internet Marketing field, quickly taking advantage of what the big “players” overlook.

Did you know that the Gurus generally do not market to over 90% of their list? How can that be?

Continue reading Guru Destroyer: How To Make a Lot of Money from a Small List.

Should you collect the subscriber’s name and email address for your mailing list? Or should you just ask for their email address? [Read more…] about No Name — Just Email Address

Everything You Need to Start Building Your List and Profit from it! Build Highly Targeted, Responsive Mailing Lists and Crank Out Easy Profits on Full Autopilot.

How to Explode Your Email Open Rate…

If there’s one thing every email marketer wants to know, it’s the answer to this question: When is the best time to send an email? By the time you finish this article, you’ll finally know the answer. [Read more…] about Here’s the BEST Time to Send an Email to Your List

Regardless of whether you’re new to marketing or you’ve been around for years, you’ve inevitably heard the term “squeeze page.” You may also have heard the term “landing page.”

Sometimes, they’re one and the same, but a landing page can be anywhere that the customer enters your site. A squeeze page can be used as a landing page and that’s what smart marketers do.

On the squeeze page will be a way for them to put in their email address in order to get a free bonus product or to sign up for a newsletter. That’s what an opt in box is on a website. That’s the very purpose of the squeeze page. You want a way to have further communication with the people who visit your site.

To set up a squeeze page, you need to make sure that it does what it was created to do and that is to help you build a solid email list. This page is where you want some action to take place.

This is also the page where you need to make sure that you make it worth the visitor’s time if they opt in. The text for your squeeze page should not have a lot of sales copy. You want one or two headlines that draw attention and capture interest.

You also want to talk about how you or your product can make their lives better, using a shortlist of the top bullet points that will convince them to share their name and email address.

Keep in mind as you write, what your squeeze page should do for you – give you a way to further contact the people who visit your site. If you have a lot of site traffic but people aren’t opting in, then you need to revamp your squeeze page and begin testing various elements from the headlines to the bullet points to the offer – even down to the color scheme of the squeeze page.

The squeeze page should keep everything “above the fold.” This means that there’s no scrolling required to see all of the copy on your site. You want the opt in box visible. This isn’t the place to try to convince them to buy something – that’s what the sales letter will do when you direct them there once they’re confirmed as a subscriber to your list.

For your offer, try testing a variety of items to see which helps you build your list better. It might be a simple 5-page report. Or it could be the promise of weekly newsletters. Split test to see which one works and then tweak it until it performs at its very best.

And don’t forget to add the opt in box to other pages, such as your blog. Just add a text widget to the sidebar of your blog and paste the opt in HTML code into that area, ensuring the width and height works well for your blog theme. And always make sure you test the opt in boxes to see if they’re working properly.

Your email list is just another tool in the marketers’ toolbox – and like all tools, nothing happens unless you use it. It’s important to load your autoresponder with emails and send them at regular intervals.

If you’ve ever subscribed to an email list and then didn’t get any communication from that party until six months later, then you know how difficult it is to remember what you even signed up for to begin with.

By not going after immediate contact and then maintaining it, the list owner lost a substantial chance to sell you any of his or her products. Since research shows that it takes multiple emails before most subscribers will act, you want to begin building a relationship with new subscribers as soon as possible. For a marketer, this is what it means by not allowing any grass to grow under your feet.

One way to connect and then stay in contact with your list is to load your autoresponder up with helpful emails. Offer something, and create a desire for them to know more. You achieve this by making sure your email pulls at the reader’s curiosity.

You offer your words like small previews of something bigger and more delicious so that the reader feels compelled to click on the link in the email and follow it to your website. But remember that follow up is where you don’t want to drop the ball.

Set your autoresponder to generate an email to all new subscribers who opt in within twenty four hours of their subscription. The longer you wait to send that first email, the higher the odds your subscribers won’t remember who your company is or what your online business does.

This initial contact email can be as simple as welcoming the subscriber and stating when to expect the next email in a series of lessons. You may want this first email to be breezy and personal, but have a good mix after that.

With follow up emails after your initial welcome, you can also direct new subscribers to recent posts from your blog or popular products on your website allowing you to further promote your business to subscribers.

Create a balance of selling to them versus being helpful. Send out a series of lessons. Ask them to participate in a poll so that it becomes interactive. Be a little controversial, but not offensive.

You’ll want to set up a series of emails to send to new subscribers on a regular basis. Moderation is key. Don’t overdo it by bombarding new list subscribers with email messages every day. Instead, contact subscribers within a couple of days after the initial contact to remind them of who you are and all the great things you have to offer them.

Once you have a website and you know how to use keywords to get traffic directed to your products, the next step is to make sure you keep those customers as repeat customers.

You do this by offering what’s called an opt in offer. An opt in means that the visitors to your website choose to receive (via email) a free gift or more information from you about what you have to offer them. This helps to keep you from getting tagged as a spammer.

An opt in is an important building block for your business. This is the tool that will let you continue to reach out to potential customers. The person who doesn’t buy after a first time visit to your website might do so once you’ve built a relationship and they’ve learned to trust what you have to say.

Not only can you reach those who sign up with an opt in, but if they like what you have to say, there’s a chance they’ll forward what you send them to a friend. For those customers who visit your site and buy from you straight from the site, you want them to opt in because they’ve already shown they’re interested in what you have and the odds are extremely high that they’ll buy from you again.

But you’ll still need permission to contact them. Once a customer leaves your site without purchasing anything, it’s highly likely that you’ve lost their business unless you have the chance to reach out to them again.

Of course, there are always those who read about your products or information, but because they’ve been burned before, they’re reluctant to trust anything – so you need the opportunity to show them that you’re different from the guy who took their money and their trust.

You have a chance to show them that there are still good people in online businesses but you won’t get that chance without them signing up to be on your mailing list. You want to make sure that your opt in box is at the top of your page.

The sad fact is that most site visitors don’t scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. You also want to remember that they have no reason to let you contact them. They know you want to talk about your products and try and sell them something.

So what you have to do is make sure that the opt in matters to them. Give them something they want or need in order to entice them to sign up. It can be something as simple as a short eBook or a report or a series of emails that you call a newsletter.

Whatever it is, make sure it’s worth the download and you’ll find that people are much more apt to listen to what you have to say when you do send out messages to your opt in list.

You can’t afford to ignore your mailing list!

No matter how well you’re doing in your affiliate business, you can lose everything at any time. Ask the countless affiliates who had their site bumped off the search engines, who had their PayPal accounts frozen, who were bumped by their partner websites for reasons they still don’t understand. The horror stories would shock you, but the one thing that they all have in common is this:

If you don’t have a mailing list, you don’t have anything.

A list of subscribers – real people who know you and trust what you do – gives you a chance to build a relationship with your customers, give them great resources, and recommend products that will bring money into your bank account for years to come.

What Is A Squeeze Page?

A squeeze page is the first step towards consistent affiliate profits. It’s a single page website that has a strong headline, an offer, a list of benefits, and a means to collect information, usually a name and email address.

Each of these elements are important:

• The headline needs to be powerful and invoke curiosity, desire, or passion.
• The benefits need to be “you” centric and help the visitor imagine the real, tangible benefits that they’ll get with your information.
• The offer needs to be strong enough to stand out from the norm.

You don’t need a fancy design and you don’t need to collect a lot of information – in fact, squeeze pages that only ask for an email address convert the highest.

What Should You Do With Your Mailing List?

Give them consistent bargains and value. This isn’t going to be an easy process at first, but you don’t want to burden your subscribers with a bunch of commercial stuff right away. Even linking them to a page on your website or a blog entry can be valuable if you treat it that way. The more you stand out inside that inbox, the more people will trust you, ask you for advice and help, and buy products that you recommend.

Remember that you can use PLR autoresponders and link to videos and other web content to “beef up” your correspondence with subscribers. Share up to date content and news with them – people love feeling like they’re the first to know about something.

What Does It Cost?

You’ll need only a few things, and most of them are covered by the bill for your affiliate website: A domain name, hosting, and the autoresponder. AWeber is the web’s top autoresponder, and it only costs $1 for the first month. After that, it costs $20 monthly, which is a small price to pay for such a handsome return.

You can start the path to long term affiliate success today – build your squeeze page and start driving traffic to it as soon as humanly possible!

Full Title: THE NEWSLETTER EXPLOSION How To Write A Newsletter Without Doing ALL The Hard Work!

Newsletters have become an increasingly popular way to communicate and it isn’t hard to see why.

Back in the days when printing was the only method of publishing a newsletter, the rules were different.

The production costs (print & distribution) were high and this excluded many people from producing their own newsletters.

But with the Internet and Email, the rules have completely changed…

Nowadays newsletters are incredibly cheap to produce and distribute over the Net. This fact has led to an explosion in the number of titles. And whilst it’s impossible to know precisely, one recent credible estimate said that there are between 3 and 400,000 newsletter titles published on the web and via email each month!

OBSCURE INTEREST GROUPS NOW HAVE THEIR OWN NEWSLETTERS

The ultra low cost of producing a newsletter, combined with the global nature of the Internet, has meant that any band of people with an obscure minority interest can now viably publish their own newsletter.

Hence most Internet newsletters have a distribution of less than a thousand and many have memberships in the low hundreds or less.

THOUSANDS OF NEW NEWSLETTER EDITORS

But the explosion in newsletter titles has led to a whole band of first-time newsletter editors.

Many of them are home based. Nearly all of them under-resourced for the writing task ahead.

So here’s one useful tip that during my lengthy newsletter editing career, I’ve used successfully many hundreds of times. I call it:

“How To Write A Newsletter Without Doing ALL The Hard Work”

One of the greatest challenges for any newsletter editor is not as the job title suggests ‘editing’, but finding or producing the content.

Some people view newsletter editors in the same light as magazine editors. Nice comparison; shame it just isn’t true!

You see a magazine editor probably has a sub-editor, a photographer, a picture editor and a number of reporters or feature writers. They probably still complain that they are badly under-resourced. But they are not compared with you of course.

So you’ve got to learn a few shortcuts! Here’s one to start with:

CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW AND TAPE IT.

Get hold of a key member of staff, head of the sailing club, whoever is appropriate to your newsletter. Tell them that you know that there’s an audience out there who would just love to hear about his/her views and that you’re coming down to do an interview (this can be done over the phone if need be).

Now set your Voice Recorder, Answering Machine or Dictaphone running and ask the key questions you know your readership is waiting to hear the answers to.

Remember to ask the open ended questions. Those are the ones starting with; who, what, why, when, where and how.

Remember you want to keep the content as interesting as possible. And there’s nothing more interesting to the reader than hearing about something that answers a problem that they have. So keep the interview rich in problem solving and benefits and you can’t go far wrong.

When you’ve finished the interview off you go with say 20-30 minutes of recording and your job is simply to play it back and write it out, editing as you go.

Good luck,
Michael Green

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

© How To Corporation. All rights reserved.

The author Michael Green has developed a TOOLKIT called “How To Write A Newsletter”. It comes complete with hundreds of Copyright Free Articles, DTP Templates, a How To Manual and lots more. A must for all Newsletter Editors! Check out How To Write A Newsletter.

by Alexandria K. Brown

Have you been publishing an e-mail newsletter for at least six months but still aren’t seeing real results (read: revenue) from it? Don’t fret – you may just need a tune up. Here are five ways to kick your e-zine income into gear this year:

1. TOOT YOUR OWN HORN MORE

The adage goes, “If you don’t blow your own horn, someone else will use it as a spittoon.” If your focus is providing your readers with useful information that enriches their lives and businesses, bravo! That SHOULD be your focus. But now I want you to look out for yourself as well: Take at least 25 percent of your e-zine space and make it all about YOU.

Give promos for your services, products, books, workshops, etc. List raving testimonials from clients and customers who LOVE you. Weave your business success stories into your articles and tips. Share something funny about your weekend that makes me feel closer to knowing you personally.

2. MAKE ME AN OFFER I CAN’T REFUSE

Let’s suppose I’m one of your subscribers. Even if I realize you offer amazing products and services, I may need a kick in the pants to make a move. To entice me, offer me a special, limited-time deal. Examples: three months’ of consultation for the price of two, a 20% discount on your latest book or newest service, or one of your usual offers with a few exciting bonuses thrown in. Make the offer obsolete within a few days or by next week. By putting a time limit on it, I’ll be more apt to act now instead of later.

Don’t overlook how powerful this tactic can be. Some of my most profitable weeks have resulted from running a limited time, special promotion of this type in my e-zine.

3. PACKAGE IT AT A LOWER PRICE POINT

This is a super strategy for service professionals such as consultants and coaches. As your subscriber, I know the way to get the BEST service from you would be to hire you one-on-one, but perhaps I can’t afford that right now. BUT consider that I may likely be interested in lower-priced options such as group coaching, teleclasses, online seminars, or a manual/e-book.

This is exactly how I became an e-book author. When I started my first e-zine, my main business was writing for corporate communications. After I gained a few thousand subscribers, I realized that my readers were mostly small business owners and entrepreneurs. So I began creating products and services geared toward them. And now I profit more from those each month than from my corporate work.

4. PROMOTE A PRODUCT/SERVICE THAT COMPLEMENTS YOURS

Do your readers and clients often ask you about a certain topic that’s related to – but not exactly – what you offer? Then resell a resource that you heartily recommend and would put your reputation behind.

For example, while my specialty is e-zines, I get many questions about creating and selling e-books online. So I continually research credible resources on this topic to share with my readers. Many of the creators of these products offer a handsome commission on any sales I refer to them. (As an e-book author, I do this myself by paying out up to 35% commission on any referred sale.)

NEVER recommend any service or product to your readers that you haven’t personally tried and wouldn’t back 100 percent. Otherwise you’ll blow the trust that you’ve worked so hard to build up in your readership.

5. SELL AD SPACE AS IT SUITS YOU

E-zine ads won’t make you rich, but they can make for some handy extra cash. (I call it my “margarita money.”) Most e-zines offer one sponsor ad at the top and several “classified” ads at the bottom. Sponsor ads typically cost three to five times more than the classified ad, but you’ll see the ranges vary greatly.

Start by offering ad specials to your own readers. Then also list your e-zine in the many e-zine advertising directories on the Web. These services help match advertisers with appropriate publishers just like you. (Need help? My manual gives step-by-step instructions on how to accept and profit from ads in your e-zine.)

Remember that you have every right to be selective about the type of ads you accept. While your readers know these ads don’t represent YOUR business, their quality will indirectly influence their perception of you.

REMEMBER THE *SILENT* BENEFITS OF YOUR E-ZINE

Keep in mind that even if you aren’t getting direct business from your e-zine at this time, it’s still delivering many benefits that may be less obvious. Your e-zine is helping to establish you as an expert in your field. It’s giving you massive online exposure. You’re gaining further credibility with your current clients and customers. And it’s forcing you to package your knowledge into concise articles on a regular basis, which you can recycle for many other marketing uses.

(c) 2000-2003 Alexandria K. Brown. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen,” is author of the award-winning manual, “Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.” To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at Ezine Publishing Profits.

One of the most common mistakes new Internet marketers make is in waiting to build a list. This is a task you should be doing from day one – without excuse. There are many autoresponder tools you can use, but one of the most popular ones is AWeber.

AWeber is a newbie-friendly autoresponder system that’s affordable for anyone. At under twenty dollars per month, you can build a list of loyal prospects and customers so that once your own info product is ready, you’ll be able to blast an announcement and profit from your list building efforts.

Once your account is set up, you simply create a list (you can have multiple ones in one account), and you insert the code for the list building opt in form into your website. The form can ask for the subscriber’s name, email address, or other information.

AWeber will then send the subscriber a confirmation email ensuring that they’re the ones who actually signed up for the list. After they confirm their subscription, they’ll begin receiving whatever emails you’ve queued up in the follow up email autoresponder system.

You can also, at any time, use the broadcast feature in AWeber to send out an email to your list. You can send out the same message to multiple lists or exclude certain lists if you prefer.

AWeber has many tutorials online that help you use their system, but you’ll want to learn the nuances of what it takes to get visitors to your site to actually fill in the opt-in form and take the next step to receive your messages.

List building is usually done by giving away something free. You can offer a free short report, or promise to email them a weekly newsletter. You have to understand that someone trusts you enough to give you their personal contact information, so you have to make it worthwhile for them.

There are many great list building guides and courses online. One of the best list builders you can learn from is Jimmy Brown, but he’s not the only one. People build lists in many different ways.

You’ll want to test and track your efforts and then tweak them to make sure you’re gathering as many names as possible. Make sure they’re not random names and email addresses, however – you want highly targeted subscribes who are likely to convert into sales at a later date.

An email autoresponder system lets you reach out and contact your subscribers in two ways. You can set up a series of follow up emails that get automatically dripped out over time. Or, you can blast out what’s known as a Broadcast email to your list at any time you’d like!

Keep in mind that these people have given you their trust. They handed over some very valuable information to them – their name and email address at minimum. So you want to treat that information with respect, not go filling their email inbox with dozens of messages each day. That’s a quick way to whittle down your subscriber list.

Broadcast emails should be used sparingly if you already have a follow up system in place. You don’t want your customers getting two emails per day from you. One is about the most your subscribers will want (and some won’t even want that many).

What goes into a broadcast email? Several things are appropriate. You might be the kind of person who has zero follow-up emails, so your daily broadcast can be less urgent – something where you simply touch base with your readers and discuss topics of your choice within the niche.

If follow ups are already in place, then choose to use your broadcasts for items of a more urgent nature. For example, if you have a sale that’s going to last for 48 hours, go ahead and blast your list to let them know about it.

Perks are always welcome, too. If you have a special code or coupon your prospect or customer can use to receive a freebie or discount, then by all means go ahead and blast that out!

The same goes for any freebies you have to offer in the form of immediate downloads. You can tailor your message to say you didn’t want them to have to wait for this amazing gift, so you’re sending it out ASAP.

Important news can be blasted out in a broadcast message. For example, if you discover something alarming that could have a detrimental effect on your target audience, it would be seen as a courtesy to rush the news to their inbox.

Broadcast emails are often preferred by email marketers because follow ups have to be tended to over time. If you have a follow up email that includes a link that goes bad, or even content that becomes irrelevant, and you have hundreds of follow ups in your queue, it can difficult to prune those from your communications.

If you use broadcast emails only, make sure you do set up at least one follow up email – your welcome message. You don’t want someone to subscribe to a bimonthly email newsletter the day after yours goes out and have to wait two weeks before they ever hear from you. So get the greeting over with and reiterate which days they will be hearing from you.

Once your email autoresponder company is chosen and the technical set-up has been done, you may want to create a series of follow up messages that get dripped out to your customers and prospects on a regular basis.

Consistent communication is vital to your email marketing success. If you get someone to sign up to your list and you neglect them for too long, they’ll forget who you are. The next time you email them, they’ll also forget they gave you permission to – and they’ll click the spam button. Too many of these and your account can get shut down.

Your customers initially signed up for a reason. What was it? Did you offer a free report? Did you promise to provide a series of lessons on a certain topic? Did you tell them they would be on the receiving end of some amazing freebies or offers from time to time?

Start by creating a warm welcome email. You want to thank the person for signing up. If you promised a free download, make sure they don’t have to jump through hoops to get it – give them the download link right in the first email.

Your follow up series of emails could be a variety of things. And just because you have a follow up series in place, it doesn’t mean you can’t blast out a broadcast message on occasion, too.

Step-by-step email follow ups are great because it keeps the target audience waiting for the next email. If you promise to teach them how to get their relationship back on track in 7 short steps, for example, don’t give them all seven steps in one email.

Spread them out among seven different emails. This gives you ample opportunity to interact with your readers and also direct them to some sort of product or service that could help them.

Thought provoking emails are always great for driving traffic back to your blog and getting people to comment on what you just said. You can use something in the news to provide an entrance for you on the topic.

Inquisitive email follow ups are those where you’re specifically asking for your reader’s input. Everyone loves to be asked for his or her opinion. You might even poll your audience about an upcoming product or service you have.

It’s best to sprinkle the regular follow up emails with some special perk emails. These are ways you can thank the reader for subscribing and letting you access them on a regular basis via email. Consider it a privilege.

Make sure you spread your follow up emails out in a way that your specific customers will respond best to. Some respond best to daily emails. Some might respond to once every four days, or bi-weekly. You’ll have to gauge your audience and see what works for you.

Setting up the official opt in box for subscribers to use in order to get on your list seems very intimidating to those new to email marketing, but it’s not that difficult to do. You may have a slightly different experience, depending on which company you use, but the basic steps are pretty much the same.

You’ll want to start by having your web page editor open and ready for when you want to insert the code into your site. You can use an editor like Microsoft FrontPage, for example.

Make sure you toggle from the Normal tab to the HTML tab before you paste the code you’re about to produce, or the opt in box won’t show up. Go ahead and figure out where you’ll want to put your code. Usually, it’s below the main headline and sub-headline, and possibly next to a set of bullet point benefits your visitor will see on why they should sign up.

Now minimize that while you open your browser and log into your email autoresponder system. We’ll use Aweber as our example, since it’s one of the most popular email marketing systems.

You should land on the main user control panel. You want to click on a tab or link that says Web Forms or something similar. Make sure if you have more than one list, that you’ve selected the list you want to create code for in the drop down menu, if applicable.

Click on Create a New Web Form and choose the design for your opt in box. They have a set of templates with a wide variety of niche images on them. For example, you might choose a box with fruits and vegetables surrounding it for a health or diet niche site.

Choose which type of opt in box you want. An In-Line box appears static on the page. A pop-over hovers in the web page. A lightbox is a pop-over that shows up while the rest of your site is darkened until the visitor takes action. And a pop-up open a new window.

You can adjust the width of the opt in box, either by manually dragging the sides or by typing in the specific dimensions you want to use. Choose which fields of information that you want the opt in box to collect.

You can go with the default of just name and email address, or add on a physical complete address or any other information with a ‘create a new field’ button that you name yourself.

Click on the various sections of the box to do any editing you feel is necessary. For example, if you don’t want the button to say “submit” then change it to something else such as, “Send Me That Report!”

Save the web form and name it and then go to the Publishing section. It will ask if you’re going to publish or install it yourself, or if you’ll be having someone else do it for you. You can even host it right on the system, but this isn’t recommended.

Click “I Will Install My Form” and then choose the raw HTML version. Copy the long, complex code and paste it where you want it to go in your HTML editor. After pasting the code, publish the page and test out the system to ensure it works properly. You want to be signed up to your own email autoresponder so that you’ll see exactly what your customers are seeing whenever they get a message from you.

When you’ve made the decision to use an email autoresponder system, you’re going to be faced with a tough decision – especially if you’re an entrepreneur on a tight budget with little wriggle room for added expenses.

Email autoresponder systems come in two forms – free and paid versions. There are pros and cons to each, one of which is obviously cost. Free might seem like the most attractive choice, but you have to consider the cost involved that’s not of a financial nature.

With a free email autoresponder set-up, you’ll be limited in what you can do. You might not be able to send out messages about certain topics. You may be limited in how many subscribers you’re allowed to have and then be faced with the harrowing task of moving your list elsewhere.

Still, it’s nice to have a free option to use when there’s just no money yet in the coffers to spend on email communications with your target audience! And these free systems are void of extra bells and whistles, so it helps with the simple learning curve and getting you used to being an email marketer.

Paid email autoresponder systems have their drawbacks and perks as well. Depending on the package and company that you choose, it could wind up costing you a pretty penny if you’re not careful.

Some companies charge per email campaign that gets blasted out. Others charge per subscriber. Some will level you up as your subscriber base increases. For example, the first 10,000 opt ins might cost you $20 a month, but the price increases once you go to the next tier.

The great thing about starting off with a paid email autoresponder system is that you won’t have to switch the list over at a later date. You’ll also be familiar with the system, so you won’t have to go through two learning curves to get the hang of it.

With a paid system, you’re usually allowed to market about topics that you want to email about. Some free systems prevent you from emailing about gambling, marketing, nutrition, credit repair or adult topics.

Both free and paid email autoresponder systems will generally have some starter information for those new to the email marketing scene. They’ll make it easy with opt in web templates you can choose that match the design of your site, and the set-up will guide you through the steps to completion.

Only you can determine if your budget will allow you to start off with a strong foundation rooted in a paid system. No matter what freebie you’re considering with a tool, there will always be some sort of hidden cost that might weigh heavily on you at a later date.

If you’re in business, you may have heard people talk about customer communications and it caused you to wonder, “What is an email autoresponder?” Email marketing is good for business owners who have online or offline business entities.

Keeping in touch with your prospects and existing customers means you have a way to promote your products and services to them, provide increased value, and keep an edge over your competition.

An email autoresponder is a custom tailored message that you send out through an automated system. You can send one message to thousands of individuals all at once, but it will have their name in the greeting.

It’s highly convenient as opposed to personally emailing each person on your list. Plus, an email autoresponder system lets you see statistics about your mailing, such as how many emails bounced, what your email open rate was among recipients, and more!

What kind of messages do you send out with an email autoresponder? Many business owners like to focus on value and information. This helps you create a sense of trust with your clients and it positions you as an expert in your niche market, too.

Other entrepreneurs like to send out nothing but sales pitches via email. This can work for some people, but for others, it backfires and makes you appear as a spammer, so you need to use this approach cautiously.

If you have an offline business, you can use an email autoresponder system to alert your customers about in-store happenings like special discounts and sales – some that are perhaps just for those on your subscriber list as a perk for staying signed up!

With an email autoresponder system in place, you won’t have to worry about removing people who choose to get off of your list. Each email will include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and users are only signed up after confirming they’ve made that choice, so there are no accusations of unwanted spam.

To get your email autoresponder system off the ground, you first need to choose a company and plan that’s right for you. Then go through the technical set-up steps that allow you to put an opt in box on your website.

Once it’s all in place, you can begin filling up your autoresponder system with messages that can either be blasted out or trickle out over a period of days on a schedule. If you go about it the right way, your prospects and customers will be able to form a relationship with you via an automated system that doesn’t cost you much time or money, but which provides a lot in monetary returns for you.

The technical options that you have make possible personalized emails from your autoresponder that can seem like the real thing. Not every buyer knows about autoresponders, so give them the sense that you created an email just for each reader.

When you write each response, start with the name of a trusted friend and write as if the message was just for that friend. Then edit out the friend’s name and set up the message so that your autoresponder takes over and inserts the prospect’s name.

Personalization isn’t just for emails – use it as an intro to your ezine, too: “Hi, Susan, here’s some great new ideas for using the XZY Information system that I know you’ll appreciate.” Use the name that the prospect gives in the information gathering form.

Add the name naturally as it would occur in conversation. Internet marketers can make the mistake of over-using the name just because it’s easy to insert electronically. Read the message aloud.

Would you use the name that many times or does it sound phony? Yes, people love the sound of their own names, but when it’s over used, the reaction is that you’re being a fake and that send the buyer fleeing.

Don’t let spell check defeat you. First, be extremely careful when you type a name into the autoresponder list. If the name was automatically added to a list, don’t change it. Some names are spelled differently on purpose.

There is an ongoing dispute between Teresa and Theresa as to which is the accurate spelling of the name. Answer: the way she wants it! Also, be careful that the name isn’t changed in the final spell check.

Avoid the marital status question. Don’t add Ms, Miss or Mrs to any correspondence. For one thing, email isn’t that formal. You don’t need to guess on this one or you’ll surely be wrong more often than right.

While the generic “Dear Friend” or “Dear Internet Marketing Colleague” seems impersonal, at least it doesn’t make obvious mistakes that are humorous to some people and blatantly offensive to others.

Use the name when you ask for the order. Remember to be personal when you make the final pitch. What’s more appealing to you: “Everyone needs this marketing package to increase sales” or “ I want to see you enjoy the kind of success I’ve had with this product – so, Stan, are you ready to make serious money online? If you are then click here. . . .but wait, Stan, I’ve got one more bonus that’s just what you need!”

That’s a personal close using the name and showing interest in the prospect’s success. So keep it real, keep it personal and keep making contact with your list so that the first sale isn’t the last one.

The best outcome of your first online marketing campaign is a big response. The worst outcome is being overwhelmed by thousands of responses awaiting your response. Online buyers expect instant response to their information requests.

So not only will you frustrate your potential clients, but you’ll wear yourself out trying to handle this alone. That’s where you hire the inexhaustible personal assistant, the autoresponder. Just set up your autoresponder to perform all of the tasks you need, and then you’re free to move on to the next campaign.

The autoresponder catches those email requests and in a split second sends information back. You can set the autoresponder to actually sound personal by sending the friendly, welcoming note that you wrote.

The autoresponder also captures the email information of prospects or buyers. That’s absolute gold for building your email list. Smart Internet marketers use this list to stay in touch on a regular basis.

No, you don’t have to irritate with daily emails. But you do want to give them a “sneak preview” and pre-sale buying opportunity for your new product along with many free tips. Another great use of the autoresponder is to send regular newsletters.

Offering a free niche market newsletter helps you get those valuable email opt-ins. Some prospects want to learn more about your product before buying. The newsletter is a tool for developing trust with potential buyers.

The fact is that buyers would rather choose products from trusted sources than take a chance on the unknown, so keep the relationship solid with regular, meaningful communication. Your autoresponder can handle multiple lists and different messages.

That gives you a way to tailor the email to prospects for each product. One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is failing to target the message for each product prospect. They get lazy, write one message and one thank you note and then move on.

The autoresponder is capable of so much more work for you. Give each list a distinct name that relates to the product so that you can easily identify the list. If the autoresponder tool seems daunting, take time to view the tutorials.

Even if you have an active list under management, scan the tutorials to see if there are new tricks you can learn for maximizing the effectiveness of your autoresponder emails. Keep your electronic personal assistant busy and you’ll make more money online with less effort.

Hopefully as you start list building, you will begin to make a great income. However, there is always MORE money to be made! That’s why it’s best to take it to the next level once you start to feel comfortable with how things are going.

The first thing you want to do is examine which things are converting for you. If a certain product was a flop, you’ll want to examine why that was the case. If a product took off like crazy, and the members of your list loved it, you’ll want to examine why that was the case.

Then, you can focus your marketing efforts on what converts best with your list members. Through trial and error, you will learn what makes them “tick” and you can more easily match the things you promote with what they will buy.

If you have just been promoting affiliate offers, you may consider creating your own product in that niche as well. By now, you have a good idea of what these people want and need to learn. You can satisfy their curiosity, and their thirst for knowledge, or desperation, and create products they will want to buy. This works especially well if you have built up a relationship where they trust you.

This trust is really what will carry you through. You can develop a list of raving fans who will snatch up anything you choose to promote. There really is no better way to do business than to have a list full of members who adore you and want to pay you.

Another thing you can do is offer high end coaching. This works especially well with people who are proven buyers. You know they are willing to spend money in the niche, so by focusing on them, you can definitely make some more money. Offer your expertise for a set amount per month and you’ll start to see some profits rolling in.

Another thing you can do is make use of Internet marketing techniques such as back end offers. If you do send out an offer to your list, you can have an upsell or downsell to make sure you make even more money. You can also think about creating a membership site. While your list members get great free content from you, many of them will likely pay for premium content as well.

Be creative when you want to make more money from your list! The answer is usually just a few tweaks away. Over time, you’ll learn exactly how to make as much money as possible from your list members.

When many people get started list building, visions of dollar signs run through their heads! While you certainly can make a ton of money with your list, it’s best to be realistic about what you’ll make when you start. If you’re not realistic, the chance of disappointment are very big.

That’s not to discourage you from building a list! Marketers who have their own list are generally the most successful. They make their own fortunes, and don’t have to rely so much on search engines like Google, or paid advertisements like Adwords. Still, it takes a lot of time to get to that point.

You have to keep in mind that your list will probably start off very small. Of course, it will be at zero when you first get it started! Then, as you start to drive traffic to it, it will slowly build up from there. You can think of it as a snowball rolling down a hill. At first it is very small slow. As it keeps rolling down the hill, it gathers more snow, and the larger it gets the faster it rolls. It’s called the “snowball effect.”

Your list is the same way. The larger it gets, the more commonly it will be referred to other people in the niche. Word-of-mouth will spread and your opt in rates will soar. Getting to this point is not the easiest task, so you need to stick with it. One of the biggest problems Internet marketers have is getting frustrated due to lack of results in the very beginning. You have to be someone who pushes through the lack of results so you can win in a big way when your list is successful.

With that being said, it’s time to talk about realistic earnings. Many marketers speculate (and have found to be true) that every list member is worth about one dollar per month. It may be more than that, or less than that , in your case. Using those figures will allow you to estimate what you can expect to earn the larger your list grows. This can be very motivating as you strive to reach the next milestone in the size of your list.

Your list truly is in your own hands. The more traffic you drive to your squeeze page, the more opt-ins you will receive. The more opt-ins you receive, the more money you will likely make. It is a great snowball effect!

As you start to create more follow-up and broadcast messages to your list, you might be overwhelmed with deciding when to send sales e-mails and when to send relationship building e-mails. There are many different schools of thought on this topic, so you’ll have to decide what works best for you and the members of your list.

The first thing you’ll need to do is think about the type of people who are on your list. If they expected to receive excellent and informative content, you’ll probably have to deliver more relationship building e-mails. However, if they expect to get sold to, there is no reason why you should spend any more time on content than you need to. For example, when people sign up to Wal-Mart’s list, they expect to receive sales e-mails and not much information.

If you’re having trouble deciding, you may want to rely on a formula many other marketers use. This is a good mixture of sales versus relationship building e-mails. For example, you might send out one relationship building e-mail, one relationship building e-mail with a mention of a product, and then one e-mail that directly sells the product. That way, you’ll get people who are expecting and wanting the product.

If your list is more content focused, you can write three information-based articles, and then one sales message. You can play around with this and see what works best for you and the members of your list.

It’s always a good idea to check out what your competition and marketers you admire are doing. Have you ever been so overwhelmed with sales messages that you wanted to unsubscribe (or did unsubscribe) from a marketer’s list? If so, think about their mistakes and how you are going to avoid them. If you’ve always been interested in opening a certain marketer’s e-mails, examine exactly what they are doing and try to model their approach.

No matter what, the best way to learn is by doing. If you find that you start to get a lot of unsubscribes because you’re increasing the number of sales e-mails you send out, you may want to back off a little bit. If your list members are always asking you for product recommendations, or you consistently get a lot of sales when you send out sales e-mails, you may want to increase the frequency with which you send them out.

Through trial and error, and research into your niche and other marketers, you will find a formula that works best for you!

Making that first follow-up e-mail to your list can seem like a daunting thing to do. You’ve gotten people to sign up, and now it’s time to warm them up. In some ways, this first e-mail is the most difficult because first impressions really do count for a lot.

Thankfully, in many cases, the first e-mail will contain a free gift they have signed up for. Nothing works better than enticing people with a gift! Actually, this has a lot of basis in psychology. It is called the Law of reciprocity. After these people have received their free gift, they are a lot more likely to think favorably of you and to want to return the favor in the future. In your case, you hope this comes in the form of them making a purchase through your affiliate link, or of your own product.

Whether they get a free gift or not, you want to take this opportunity to start building a relationship. Perhaps share with them what they can expect from these e-mails, or even some valuable information they would want to know.

There is no one right way to craft your first follow-up e-mail. The important thing is that you are yourself. One thing you can do to make sure your e-mail is as good as it can be is put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you are a person randomly searching in the net and you signed up for the free product, what would you expect to receive in the form of contact from the person you signed up for with?

If you’re really stuck for ideas, it’s a great thing to go through some follow-up e-mails that you have received yourself. Pay particularly close attention to those marketers who you have grown to respect. By using them as a model, you can easily create your first follow-up e-mail, and it will be likely to be something that well entice your list members.

Remember that these e-mails will be set up in an autoresponder. For that reason, there is no reason to expect perfection right away. You can always tweak this first follow-up message down the road as you get more information about how your list members react and what they expect to receive. Basically, do not stress yourself out, but do spend some time making sure this first e-mail makes the right impression.

After you have created your squeeze page, you’re probably very excited to start getting opt-ins to your list. Make sure you have selected a good autoresponder company that will keep track of your e-mail open rates and be very reliable for you and your list members.

Once you have the technical aspects squared away, it is time to start driving traffic to your squeeze page. If you do not have “eyeballs” on your opt in form, you won’t get any signups! This might seem silly, but many marketers spend a lot of time setting up their squeeze page and expect the leads to just start trickling in on their own. This just does not happen! You need to put a lot of time and effort into driving traffic before you start to reap the rewards.

Fortunately, if you have used traffic generation techniques for your website, or for any other reason related to Internet marketing, you already have a head start. You can use the same methods for driving traffic to your squeeze page!

One option is to use pay per click marketing, such as Google Adwords. You’ll basically bid on certain key words that people in your niche are likely to search for. You should create an enticing ad so they want to visit your webpage and see what you have to offer. If your squeeze page is compelling enough, you’ll probably find that you get an opt-in rate of around 20% or more! Of course, this varies according to the niche, but you’ll probably find a number around that.

You can also use search engine optimization. This is kind of difficult to deal with using a squeeze page since there is little content and not a lot of clutter or links. Still, you can place articles on the same domain and link those articles to your squeeze page to drive even more traffic. Having these articles will help your ranking in Google because Google loves content!

There are many free websites you can use to help you drive traffic as well. Sites like Squidoo and HubPages allow you to create a one-page website where you can link to your opt-in form. You’ll get the benefit of traffic straight from these communities, as well as through their rankings in the search engines for the keywords you have focused on.

Article marketing can work extremely well also. Sign-up for article directories, such as Ezine Articles and Articles Base and submit your articles with your squeeze page URL in the author’s resource box. Indicate that there is a free offer when they click the link, and you will likely get more click from your article.

Put these traffic generation techniques to work for you. It’s best to create a schedule and stick to it every single day in order to start seeing some good traffic. Do a little bit each day and it won’t seem like such a burden — and the profits will be great!

Businesses of any kind rely on a good, strong customer base to build their profits. There are two different types of customers that may visit your business. The first is a browser; a customer that likes to look regularly, but rarely buys much. These customers don’t do much to increase profits, although you may get some increased traffic through their word of mouth recommendations. Then there is the serious, motivated buyer. These customers come to you with their checkbook wide open and they are ready to take your recommendations to make their purchases.

Which type of customer do you prefer? If you are interested in building your business by working harder instead of smarter, you will probably go for both. This is done through collecting as many potential prospects as you can and sending out promotional emails to try to inspire them to buy. Creating a buyers list of this caliber will take a significant amount of time and money. And after you spend all that time and money, what will your return be? If you are lucky, you might see a 1% or 2% response to your email. While that’s good, you could do much better. [Read more…] about A Successful Business Begins with a Successful Customer List

After you have chosen a niche to build a list in, you need to set up an opt-in page, or squeeze page, in order to collect your e-mail leads. Many people gloss over these details and wonder why they are not getting as many sign-ups as they thought they would get! Follow this advice, and you should be able to create a great opt-in page that helps lead to great profits for you.

The first thing you need to realize is that the goal of your squeeze page is ONLY to collect e-mails. You don’t want to put affiliate offers or articles on this page because it could distract your visitors from the task at hand. They should see just one thing to do — and that is to sign up for your list. This will definitely increase your conversions, so try not to overstuff your squeeze page.

While you don’t want it to be too cluttered, you do want to put some compelling text on the page that convinces people to opt in. This does not need to be long — around 300 words will be just fine. Make sure you include the benefits of signing up for the list and definitely focus on what is in it for them.

You’ll also want to give something away for free in exchange for their e-mail. This is not mandatory, but many Internet marketers do so because it definitely increases conversions. You can give away an e-book, series of articles, audio, or anything else you have in mind. Many physical-based businesses give away coupons in exchange for the e-mail address.

Whatever you decide to do, make it very clear that the benefits of signing up for the list are greater than the costs. While it might seem silly to associate a cost with giving way an e-mail address, many people are wary of doing so in this day and age. For that reason, you need to make sure you come across as a credible person and make it clear that you will never send spam or sell their e-mail address.

A great thing to do is browse other marketers squeeze pages in your niche. That way you can get a feel for the layout of their squeeze page and how they have designed it. You’ll probably find that these are quite simple — there is no reason not to get started on your squeeze page today!

One of the most important decisions you will make when it comes to building your list is which autoresponder company you want to go with. There are many of them out there, but they are certainly not created equal.

There are also autoresponder scripts you can set up on your own host. Many people are attracted to these because there is no monthly fee and they feel like they will have more power over their messages and settings. However, you should probably stay away from these scripts as they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth!

For one thing, there is the technical hassle of setting them up in the first place. Beyond that, some of the scripts are unreliable, which can really harm your business. You should also be aware that the autoresponder companies usually have relationships with the e-mail providers. These scripts can have a higher chance of getting caught in the spam filters — which can destroy your business before you even get started.

You probably don’t relish the idea of starting a monthly subscription, but it will more than pay for itself! Going with a reliable autoresponder company is one of the best things you can do as an Internet marketer.

aWeber, Get Response, and E-mail Aces are the most commonly cited among Internet marketers. Out of the three of these, aWeber is the most popular. That’s because they have a great reputation and reasonable prices. No matter which of these you choose, you will probably be very happy with it!

Beyond choosing an autoresponder, you need to get familiar with the interface. Most companies you go with will allow you to have unlimited lists and will help you organize them. A good company will also give you statistics about things like your open rates, and which links were clicked. aWeber now has advanced tracking, which can certainly help you figure out how to craft your messages in the future.

A huge concern when you’re sending out autoresponder e-mails is getting caught in spam filters. When you’re in a spam filter, the chances of people seeing your message are very slim! That’s why you need to make sure the e-mails you send out will pass the spam filters. That is another service that the top auto responder companies provide for you. They will let you know how likely your e-mail is to be flagged.

Make it your mission today to choose the right autoresponder company, so you can start putting it to work for you!

One of the most important decisions you’ll have to make as you decide to build the list is which niche you should focus on. There are literally thousands of niches out there, so there is no one right answer to this question.

You might have some idea of which niche you want to focus on if you have built up websites in that niche already. If you have no idea of what you should choose, don’t worry! You can easily choose a niche if you follow the right guidelines.

The first thing you need to make sure of is that it is a hungry, or passionate market. This works well if people have some kind of problem they are desperate to stall. This is where people are passionate about their hobbies can work very well also.

It’s a good idea to make sure people are already spending money in the niche you have selected. You can check to see if there are physical products, or digital products being sold regularly to this group of people. This is usually a good indicator that you can make some money as well. Another place to check is advertisements on TV or in magazines. Where there are ads, there is money being made!

Basically, you need to make sure you have something to offer a group of people. You also want to make sure the customer base will be large enough to make your efforts worth your while.

If you cannot think of a niche, you just need to brainstorm and work your way from there. You can go to Amazon.com, magazines.com, 43things.com, Yahoo Answers, and many other sites to get some good ideas. Write down anything that comes to mind or stands out to you as a potentially profitable niche to build a list in. Then, you can narrow your choices until you have some good options. Some further research should help you make your final decision.

Of course, as an Internet marketer you are not limited to choosing just one niche. After you have built up a profitable relationships with members of one niche, you can add another to your business. That way, you are not dependent on a certain group of people for your income. Spreading assets out this way is an excellent way to make sure your business always stays afloat.

Remember — never take the decision of which niche to choose lightly. Choosing the wrong one could mean you hardly make any money at all, and choosing the right niche could mean you make some life-changing income!

A newsletter is one of the best ways to get repeat traffic. Sending your newsletter will bring back people to your website who were interested enough in your topic to give you their name and email address. That’s why this method of marketing is so valuable. [Read more…] about Publish a Newsletter for Repeat Traffic

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “the money is in the list.” Still, you may not have started to build a list because you’re intimidated, or just don’t know HOW to get started. The good news is that it’s actually not that difficult — and when you have a list, you really do have it made!

The problem in Internet marketing is that many people are worried about finding potential customers all the time. You have to rely on either paid traffic or free traffic. Unfortunately, this means you are at the mercy of other companies as to how far your customer reach is.

Your hope is that your site converts enough people so that you are in profit. This works better then standard ads where you pay a certain amount of money no how many people view or respond to your ad. This way, you are only focusing on those people who are truly interested in what you have to offer. You don’t pay unless those people respond!

When you have a list, you don’t have to worry as much about things like search engine optimization and pay per click costs. That’s because you own your list full of targeted buyers! The people have signed up for your list have chosen to do so and want to hear from you. You have control over when you contact these people; which means you can make excellent sales every time you mail them.

Having your own list really is building your own business. You now have an asset that can make every other aspect of your business work far more seamlessly. Hopefully, if you hadn’t considered building a list before, your mind is changed now!

Many marketers have estimated that for every one person you have on your list you’ll earn one dollar per month. That means with a list of 100 people, you can expect to earn at least 100 extra dollars. Of course, if you go about things the right way you can earn lot more than that — even with such a small list. With a list size of 2000 people, you can expect to earn at least $2000 extra per month, and so on. The sky really is the limit when you have a list.

If you are intimidated about building a list, it’s time to get over that fear. It’s time to take action and learn as much as you can about list building so you can fully control your business and your profits. Once you have a good list going and you know all about sales and building relationships, you’ll never look back!

Of course, it’s possible to make many mistakes along the way. That is part of the reason why it so important to educate yourself first. After you have done so, it should be smooth sailing from there as you build your expertise and your list size grows.

Your email signature file is the little blurb at the end of all the emails that you send. The point of having a signature file in each of your emails is to drive traffic to your websites. [Read more…] about Your Email Signature File Can Generate Traffic

An ecourse is an email series that goes out over the course of several days.

You may have signed up for a “Free 7 day course on How to Cook Healthy Foods for your Family” or “Five Days to a Well-Trained Dog”. If so, you signed up for an e-course. You received day 1 while other people may have been receiving day 3 or day 7. The emails are in sequence to be sent in order as people sign up, whether the person signs up today or next year.

How can an ecourse help you get traffic? [Read more…] about Provide an eCourse for Traffic Generation

By paying a modest monthly fee, you can have unlimited, sequential autoresponders working for you. Here are seven advantages of using paid autoresponder services. [Read more…] about Top 7 Advantages of Autoresponder Services

In my e-mail one day, I received the following message:

“Hello, I am a subscriber to your ezine and received the attached e-mail. Please advise if this is actually from your website. Thank you.”

The attachment was from my mailing list program. It was informing my dear subscriber that since her mail kept bouncing,

“I’m not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.”

[Read more…] about Are Your Subscribers Receiving Your Newsletter?

Another powerful reason for making the switch from using the unlimited autoresponders that come free with your web hosting account to paying a monthly fee for an autoresponder service is improved legal protection. [Read more…] about Protect Yourself Legally with an Autoresponder Service

Another powerful reason for making the switch from using the unlimited autoresponders that come free with your web hosting account to paying a monthly fee for an autoresponder service is improved deliverability of newsletters and other e-mails.

Are your subscribers even getting your newsletter? You might be shocked to find out how few of your subscribers are actually receiving your e-mail. I know I was! [Read more…] about Improve Newsletter Delivery with an Autoresponder Service

Another powerful reason for making the switch from using the unlimited autoresponders that come free with your web hosting account to paying a monthly fee for an autoresponder service is tracking capability. [Read more…] about Track Customer Response with an Autoresponder Service

A powerful reason for making the switch from using the unlimited autoresponders that come free with your web hosting account to paying a monthly fee for an autoresponder service is the building of customer relationships through sequential autoresponders. [Read more…] about Sequential Autoresponders Build Customer Relationships

I sent my e-zine out last week and I received a copy of it back. It had been forwarded to me by a subscriber. In the subject line was a two word sentence; since most publications and websites frown upon vulgarity, obscenity, and profanity, I have spared you the exact wording. Be assured, however, that Miss Manners would definitely not approve. [Read more…] about Anti-Spammers Need to Develop Better Manners

Perhaps you, like me, have web hosting that includes, free of any extra charge, unlimited autoresponders. That being the case, you might be inclined to balk at any suggestion to start paying for them.

Recently, however, I made the switch to paying a monthly fee for unlimited autoresponders. Am I rich (with money to burn)? Have I lost my mind?

Actually, I consider this move to paid autoresponders to be a wise decision. Here are some reasons why you might want to pay for an autoresponder service. [Read more…] about Autoresponder Services Improve Your Profits

A lot of non-marketers think of marketers as nothing but spammers. It’s easy to understand why. We all get mountains of spam emails on a daily basis – regardless of whether or not we gave out the email address.

But unless you want to be prosecuted and condemned for sending spam emails out, you’ll want to take precautions to be careful about who you email and why. Spam is defined as unsolicited email messages that are sent out to the masses.

True Internet marketers don’t mess with spam because it hurts their credibility, risks their accounts, and doesn’t convert as well as targeted, welcomed email does. You can have your ISP ban you for sending spam, and you can lose your autoresponder account, too.

It’s far better to use an opt-in form where people willingly enter their first name and email address. In fact, it’s best to utilize the double opt in option most autoresponders provide.

A single opt in is when you just let the person enter their information once. But what’s to stop one person from going around entering another person’s contact information for unethical reasons?

You want a double opt in to protect yourself. Here’s how it works:

The user lands on your website and sees an opt in box, asking for their first name and email address. They enter it (usually in exchange for a free download or the promise of information at a later date).

Then the autoresponder tool automatically sends out a verification email. The end user gets the email alerting them that they’ve signed up to be on your list, but it asks them to verify their subscription by clicking on a link in the email.

This means if someone goes to your site and signs someone else up, that person will get a notification and have the option to decline if they weren’t the ones who really opted into the list.

Make sure you abide by permission marketing standards. These people trust you enough to hand over important details, so don’t sell their contact information or abuse it in any way. If you respect the people on your list, it will grow and you’ll have a readymade list of prospects that can help you earn more money on both a short and long-term timeframe.

A squeeze page is a web page that’s used for the purpose of getting people to opt in to your newsletter or mailing list by entering their name and email address. A squeeze page generally doesn’t have as much copy as a sales letter, but most squeeze pages have some teaser text and bullet points.

Increasingly, video is being used in place of text on squeeze pages. Most text-based squeeze pages consist of a headline, a short paragraph or two of copy, a few bullet points, and an opt-in box – all “above the fold,” meaning the reader doesn’t have to scroll to continue reading.

Some squeeze pages will also have graphics, including a header and footer, and perhaps other graphics such as an eCover for a free report that’s being given away as a reward for opting in.

First, you need to create a basic HTML page.

You can do this using a WYSIWYG editor, which should make it easier for beginners. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get.” A WYSIWIG HTML editor lets you design visually, and you generally need to know little, if any, HTML to use one.

Many people use a darker red or a medium blue as the background color for their squeeze page, but you can use any color you like, as long as it isn’t incredibly bright and distracting and it looks good with any other graphics you might use on the page.

You don’t want to put your text directly on this colored background, because it will probably be difficult to read. What you want to do is create a table with a white background, and put all of your text and graphics inside the table.

In your program, create a table with a single cell (1×1) and set the background color to white. This table should probably be between 700 and 800 pixels in width. Most people use between 750 and 770 pixels, because it’s large enough to look good on monitors with very high resolutions, yet it still shows up well even at 800 x 600.

Inside this table, you’ll want to put the rest of your squeeze page information. This should include a headline, a little copy, bullet point or a video, and your opt-in box (you’ll get the code for this from your autoresponder).

You can also put the eCover of the product you’ll be giving away to subscribers, if you have one. Your headline should be something that will tease visitors and make them really want to sign up to get the information you have.

If you’re giving away a 10-page report on the hidden dangers in pet food, your headline might read, “Did you know the food you give your beloved pet could kill him? Read this shocking FREE report about dangerous additives in pet food that could cause your four-legged friend to suffer a slow, agonizing death!”

Next, you need to include some very short teaser copy. Just put in a paragraph or two of text or bullet points that describe the product you’re giving away for free. If you’re using Aweber, you’ll create a list, and then get the code from your admin area.

You’ll need to paste the form into the HTML area. Then you’re finished with your squeeze page! Just save the file, upload it and test it, then start sending traffic to it! You can use this landing page for an AdWords campaign, too – which is beneficial if your business involves a lot of affiliate marketing.

Here’s another phrase you’ll grow sick of: The gold is in the list. You might get weary of hearing it, but it’s smacking you in the face for a reason – it’s the truth! First of all, let’s answer the question, “What is a list?”

A list in Internet marketing terms is a database of contact information for your prospects. So if you have a product or promote products about gardening and I sign up for your list, I’m a prospect that you can market to repeatedly until I unsubscribe.

So why is building a list so important? Let’s say you start off as an affiliate marketer. You find a niche you truly enjoy and you start working what you’ve learned into some traffic for your affiliate links.

Over a period of 30 days, you funnel 5,000 prospects from the World Wide Web who are interested in your niche straight through your affiliate link to the product owner’s site.

They even buy – yea! You’ve made a 50% commission with a 2% conversion rate. That means 2 out of every 100 people you sent bought the product, and your share was $26.00 (as an example). You earned a cool $2,600 this month – good for you!

But you’re leaving money on the table. Those 100 people who bought from your 5,000 clicks? They’re now on the product owner’s list, not yours. So what he’s going to do is send them more offers over the coming weeks.

After all, they are proven buyers. Over the next 30 days, those buyers fork over some more money for products that complement the original one they bought. That money goes to the product owner, not you – because you passed on building a list the first time around.

A better way to build an Internet marketing business is to start with a list from day one. Before you let a single person slip through your link without capturing their name and email address, have your system set up to build a list.

You can have unlimited lists for different niches using a simple tool like Aweber, which costs $19.95 a month. Every day you can log in and see how many people have signed up, and you can create automated messages to send out to help convert your list into more sales.

Why should the product owner get to cash in on that person again and again when you’re the one who brought him the customer in the first place? Stake claim to each prospect and leverage your relationship with him for future sales and commissions.