12 Steps Towards Making Mega Money With Email Marketing (FREE Email Marketing Tutorial)

12 Steps Towards Making Mega Money With Email Marketing
Image – pixabay (PD)

Step 1: Understand The Why. Why Email Marketing?

“The fortune is in the list” — Anon

In a world where internet marketing methods come and go, one tried and tested method that has been around since the beginning refuses to die…

You’ve guessed it – email marketing.

There’s still a LOT of excitement about email marketing – and for good reason: The big cats are still using it to pull down big scores – and it is still stated often that email marketing remains the king of all internet marketing methods. Many of the famous six or seven figure launches that we hear about in the internet marketing field are based on permission-based email list marketing using a highly standardized technique of lead acquisition through the use of a free offer, followed up by subsequent high-ticket product promotions and joint ventures with other list owners.

Many people are surprised, in the era supposedly dominated by social media, when they learn that email marketing still works so well. Email has several advantages in that regard:

1) Once people are on your list, they essentially stay on it until they either change their email address (not very often) or they get sick of hearing from you and unsubscribe.

2) Deliverability is very high. Whereas Facebook might show a post to 0.1% of your subscriber base, email reaches a high percentage of subscribers and an open rate of 10-15% is not unreasonable – with some marketers claiming over 50%.

3) You are immune to the whims and nauseating little rules of the “traffic tyrants” – Google, Facebook and so on. With an email list, it doesn’t matter what Google or any of the other big sites do. From time to time the big websites are known to “shut down” various internet marketing methods that get too popular or too spam-laden. Your email list gives you a potential source of income that can outlast all of that.

4) Lifetime customer value of an email address can be quite high, because if the person likes hearing from you, then you can sell to them over and over again. When you create a new product, you can market it to all these interested people for free. When you have a new free gift, you can put it on a web page and by notifying your list, send a flood of traffic to it.

Also, you don’t technically even need a web site – which a user can click away from at any moment – because you can promote affiliate products. You can continue to market to a list for as long as the person is signed up.

Many people are a little wary of signing up for a new email list – because they know it could mean more inconvenience, more tedious stuff to wade through. I used to think “How can there be any future in this email marketing thing – people are sick and tired of getting too much email!” However, curiously enough, I think that the spam phenomenon might actually have had the opposite effect on email marketing – and caused it to grow in effectiveness: The fact that people are a little wary, yet still prepared to sign up for something if they are truly interested, acts as an effective separator of those who are really interested from those who don’t really care. And this “filtering effect” may ultimately result in a much more responsive email list. People still love free stuff and a good enough freebie is considered valuable enough to get the signup.

If someone is interested enough to write their email address in a form field and sign up for your email, prepared to put up with the possible inconvenience of whatever you are going to send them: These are your buyers. These are the people who are worth your attention, valuable free content and marketing efforts. The inconvenience of spam has effectively created a “hurdle” – and this means that those who aren’t very interested in what you are offering, will not sign up. However those who are truly avid will readily do so in order to learn as much as they can – so long as you offer them a reward that is targeted to their interests.

Return on investment (ROI) of an email list can often be between 3:1 and 10:1 with some top marketers claiming up to a spectacular 50:1. Yes, that’s $50 earned for every dollar spent. These are the marketers whose investment in their list has resulted in a situation where they can truly press a few buttons and watch the money roll in. However, this doesn’t happen overnight and is the result of an initial period of significant effort and sales ability. A good list is a true asset – but as with all true assets, they take time to build, take effort to maintain and you can’t just get them out of nowhere.

Customer Retention Strategies

Most web site owners – and most businesses in fact – leave “a ton of money on the table” through one simple fact. Do you know what it is?

It’s that they don’t have a customer retention strategy. Most of the visitors to most web sites, shops and other points-of-sale leave, and don’t come back.

Sometimes, they may buy something. They may even be fanatical about the product or service – and may even want you to sell them more stuff.

But if there’s no customer retention strategy, you’ll lose them – and a million other distractions soon pull them away into the digital distance.

In the modern age – the big problem with selling products or services is saturation. Information overload. People have more choices than ever before and less time. You may have a perfectly good product or service but if you do not put it right in front of people, at the right time, they will simply not notice you.

Many people do not buy from a site on the first visit. An email list is a way to get them to come back again – and an opportunity for you to build up, through time, the kind of trust that is often required before sales will occur. It is a classic example of a customer retention strategy.

It takes inside knowledge, work and a commitment to quality in order to develop and maintain a responsive, valuable customer list. But it really is a key factor that enables many of the top internet marketers to make thousands of dollars when they press that “send” button.

Step 2: Set Up Your Website

For the purposes of generating an email marketing list, you don’t necessarily need a big web site. A single squeeze page (this is explained later), autoresponder sequence, free gifts and the important “small print pages” – hosted on your own domain name and hosting account – will be sufficient. You don’t necessarily need your own products online at first – because there are many possibilities to earn revenue from your list by promoting other products or services.

One thing that is essential if you are doing email marketing is to have a privacy policy. People need to know what you are going to do with the contact and other information that you have collected from them. It’s important to get this right and also to honor the agreement that you have made. Typically you will need to state that you will not sell, trade or pass on the list members’ contact info. You will also need to give information about cookies and and other data management practices. You will need to learn about and become compliant with GDPR. You can see many examples / templates of these online with a search on “email marketing privacy policy” – although you will need to create your own. Most people seem to grab existing privacy policy templates (plenty out there) and make enough changes to them to personalize them – but as this is ultimately a legal issue I am not qualified to give legal advice – so consult a legal pro if you are in doubt.

Step 3: Set Up Automated List Management System

You will need to use a good email list management system. These provide you with all the tools you need to set up and manage your email marketing campaigns. They enable you gather email addresses automatically, to manage your lists, and to set up automated email sequences. These sequences might for example deliver a pre-written daily tuition course to someone for seven days after the date they subscribe, or a timed monthly newsletter. Autoresponders also enable users to unsubscribe automatically if they wish to. Typically, you will pay a monthly fee for the service plus a little extra if your list builds serious volume. Some services set a cap on how many messages you can send out.

Here are some of the best known services. I have linked to their pricing pages so that you can compare easily:

Getresponse
MailChimp (I found this one difficult to operate compared to others, just my experience)
MarketHero
Aweber
Sendgrid

The email software will also embed the kind of functionality that enables people to unsubscribe easily from your list. This is most probably a legal requirement in your location (I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice).

Step 4: Create Your Free Offer

The standard way to entice people to join your email list is a free item – typically a digital download, such as a tutorial – that is relevant to your intended customers, and directly related to products you are selling. This freebie will cost subscribers zero dollars – but – they have to enter their email address in the box to receive them.

The purpose of the free content is multi-fold – not just to acquire subscribers, but also to demonstrate knowledge and generosity, increase your perceived value, build trust, and perhaps to promote your for-sale products directly.

The free content might be a downloadable pdf report, web-based articles, samples of your work, free chapters, video tutorials. It should be something that addresses their needs and leads toward the “even greater solution” which will come later in the form of for-sale products or services.

When creating your free products – be generous. Most people are simply not generous enough here. When the free offer is big enough, people will not only sign up, they will notify others or even actively encourage them to subscribe. It should be something that is a bit too valuable to be free.

A critical component of the strategy is to offer something free that is highly targeted and relevant to those who are actually going to buy your product: That way, your list becomes much more highly streamlined towards those who have the strongest interest in what you are going to be offering for sale. Don’t worry about the ones who don’t want to “jump the hurdle”. Let them go. Chances are that they weren’t all that interested anyway, and you saved yourself from having to expend further energy on them.

It’s a mistake to think “all I need is a big list”. What is far, far better is a big, responsive list. This is why it’s great to make your free giveaways valuable, high quality and highly relevant to your for-sale products.

A classic example of a free offer is a “mini-course” (for example a “7-day course”) in your specialist subject. Done well, this:

a) It demonstrates authority and skyrockets your perceived value. Think about it – with the free stuff you give away, you have a perfect opportunity to demonstrate your brilliance.

b) It makes people really look forward to your emails instead of thinking “Oh no, not this guy again.”

c) It gives you an opportunity to send visitors to your web site every day for seven days! If you are good at your game, they will be more likely to stick around and check out the other stuff.

Another good tactic is to have a “condensed version” product or sample chapter as the free giveaway, with the option to purchase the full product.

It’s important to put links in the free content that lead back to your web site. Your free content (if it is any good) will likely get shared and quite possibly posted on other websites (the better your content, the more this will happen so you might as well take advantage of it!), and so it’s good to attempt to collect some of those readers.

Another aspect of “the freebie” which is not very often considered, is that if you give someone something for free, it makes them more likely to buy your other stuff out of appreciation and their sense of fairness. Almost everyone has an “in-built system of fairness” that not only senses if a deal is unfairly biased against them, it senses if a deal is unfairly biased in their favour. I have given unexpected free gifts to people that emailed me inquiring about a product and sometimes find that they buy the product soon afterwards. It’s amazing how well this works.

Step 5: Set Up The Squeeze Page

One of the principal keys to email marketing is to create a successful version of what is commonly known as a squeeze page. This is a simple type of web page which is built solely for the purpose of lead acquisition. The squeeze page typically offers nothing other than a streamlined opportunity for the visitor to gain the aforementioned freebie, in return for the email address.

On a squeeze page, there are typically no other exits from the page apart from the email submit button (and essential “small print” / legal information such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy). The customer has a simple choice to make: If you want this awesome freebie, you have to give me your email address. If you don’t, you have to hit the back button.

Let’s move on to the design of the squeeze page. Ideally, the squeeze page itself is short and to the point and all the info exists above the fold – unlike a landing page – which is usually long… really long… and basically packs in about as much info and excitement as you can possibly stand, in order to sell a product.

Another option commonly seen is the “Lightbox” popup. If a “regular” web page also includes an email submission form, this is often placed a popup that appears at some point after the page has loaded. This “light box”, appears in the center of the main window, greying out the other content. The code to create these is often provided by email list management systems.

Here’s an example of one of the most famous, and successful squeeze pages ever:

www.doubleyourdating.com It’s a tried and tested masterpiece from a website that made millions of dollars for David DeAngelo. It’s been up for over ten years which is a historical epoch in internet terms! It’s still there because it works so well.

The squeeze pages of internet marketing masters are fine tuned to make them “high converting” – in other words a high percentage of visitors are converted into subscribers. The best of these pages get thousands of subscribers onto their mailing lists.

Very often, ultra-simple squeeze pages work incredibly well – and the real reason for this is that they present a deal which represents fantastic value to the person seeing it – and get to the point fast. Here are a few squeeze page tips:

• Keep it really simple. A few lines of text at most. Most people are in “scan mode” – looking at web pages for only a few seconds – until they find what they are looking for; so you want to get to the point really fast – before they hit the “back” button.

• Study the greats. Investigate the squeeze pages of internet marketing masters and take notes.

• The headline is mission critical. Masters of this strategy use suspense laden headlines which calculatedly contain “power words” to create intrigue. Fortunately you can see the headlines that already work well and so you can create your own unique variation on these. This is one area where it’s best not to reinvent the wheel.

• Make the page short and sweet. It should all fit on one screen – and be aware that people worldwide are now viewing content on all kinds of screens from mobile devices through to 1920 x 1200 monitors.

• Put big red arrows next to the signup box.

• Who are you? Personalize the page, so people don’t feel like they’re dealing with total strangers. Build trust in every way possible.

• Don’t clutter the page with ANY other unnecessary stuff.

• As Frank Kern says “Help people decide that they want your stuff, instead of convincing them.”

• Make sure you put links to your privacy policy and other essential legal stuff. You will need this “small print” if you are doing email marketing – and you must be CAN-SPAM compliant. Many email lists are double opt-in – which means that the email management software will send a confirmation email to a new subscriber which will include the keys to access the main site; requesting that the user must confirm their email address by clicking a link in the first email your autoresponder sends, in order to receive your “free course” or whatever. The visitor has to enter a real email address to move forward. This double opt-in technique is usually very highly recommended as it ensures to a much higher degree that the people getting your content are the ones that want it. It is designed to be anti-spam compliant. However the downside of double-optin is that you will lose some people along the way.

It’s more important than ever to be anti-spam compliant. Please review the FTC’s regulations:
The CAN-SPAM act: A Compliance Guide for Business.

Split testing your squeeze page

All the best squeeze pages have been thoroughly tested and optimized for the best performance. Start by emulating something that is known to have performed well – and understand the factors that are responsible for this success. Then create variants to see which ones perform the best. This kind of testing is critical to the creation of a winning campaign. You cannot possibly hope to hit the target in the dark, unless you get really lucky – but you don’t want to win this game by luck, you want predictable results so that you can rinse and repeat.

Step 6: Drive Traffic

Next step is to direct a lot of traffic to the squeeze page. The better your freebie, the easier this is. This typically involves one of the following: 1) Having other powerful web sites which can send traffic 2) Buying traffic – i.e. from Facebook Advertising or from other websites 3) Joint ventures 4) Social media 5) Word of mouth – you could for example have a QR code on a simple business card that allows people to scan for the free offer.

These traffic generation methods are entire tutorials in their own right and will not be addressed here – though we have numerous other tutorials on www.makingwealth.info.

Step 7: Develop Your Relationship With Your List

A good, working email list is not just a cold block of data. It is a reciprocal arrangement. It is a relationship.

You can’t just conjure up a huge list and expect it to serve you if you do not feed it and nurture it. You cannot expect people to stay on your list unless there is something in it for them. I quickly unsubscribe form a list if it is annoying me and does nothing other than try to get me to buy stuff.

Value Content.

People are a little touchy around email. They can get quite irritated by junk email, spam or hard-sell content. The key to overcoming this resistance is first (as mentioned above) to only send email to people who have actually signed up – and then…. to send information that they actually want.

Focus on giving as much cool, free, valuable info as you can to your list. Too many internet marketers annoy their list members into unsubscribing – principally because they do not give to their list, they only see it as a way to sell stuff. So concentrate on building trust – demonstrate expertise, follow through with what you said you were going to do and deliver quality.

Never be tempted to send email subscribers from one niche, information that relates to another niche. You might annoy a lot of people that way. Create separate lists for separate topics / websites. The popular email autoresponder softwares usually allow you to do this easily.

Give something remarkable to your list and remember, if you want customers – it’s not about you. It’s about them. Focus on them. Focus all your energy on creating the best you can possibly give them. Make it your entire goal to elicit this response from them: “I want more of this”.

Periodically it is worth “cleansing” your list – removing email addresses that “bounce” and people who have not opened your messages for a long time. If you are paying for a list of a certain size, it makes sense to cull the dead wood from the list. Aweber for example allows you to search subscribers and remove (for example) people who have not opened any of your messages in the last 2 months. These people are clearly not interested or no longer check that email address. By cutting the dead wood you increase your overall response percentages and cut your costs, because most email softwares charge per subscriber.

Always be sure that the option to unsubscribe is in the small print at the foot of each email you send.

Getting past the spam filters

You will want to make some efforts to increase the deliverability of your emails. When people first sign up, instruct them to check their spam box if the email has not appeared, and to mark the messages from you as “not spam”. This is huge! Systems like Gmail, while awesome in many ways, often automatically dump these kinds of subscription confirmation messages in the spam box. The next step is to request that your subscribers whitelist you so that your messages automatically get through the “ice wall”.

Sometimes the spam algorithms are over-enthusiastic. Recently I signed up for a marketer’s email list and their confirm message ended up in my spam. I marked it “not spam” and continued. Then, the next 2 or 3 messages I received from them also ended up in the spam – and each time, I marked them as “not spam”.

Aweber includes a tool that helps you create better response rates by examining your email and giving it a “score” for whether it is likely to get past spam filters.

More on whitelisting: www.emaildeliveryjedi.com/mywhitelist.php

Step 8: Know Your Numbers So That You Can Scale

There is no such thing as cheap marketing or expensive marketing, only marketing that generates a positive ROI (return on investment) and marketing that does not.

In other words, an ad campaign that costs $10,000 is a good deal if you earn $15,000 back. But an ad campaign that costs $100 is not a good deal if it only earns $50 back.

In order to determine your ROI for an email list, you need to be able to estimate your LTV – lifetime customer value.

I say estimate on purpose because calculating a lifetime customer value takes a lifetime! So we need to set an arbitrary time limit.

The reason why this process is so important is that if you know how much each lead is earning on average, you know how much you can spend acquiring that lead.

In order to do this, you need to track your campaigns.

If you are driving your list traffic to Clickbank affiliate offers for example, you can add tracking IDs (TID) and these can be viewed in your “Reporting > Transactions”. Entering a particular TID will reveal all the transactions that included that TID in the link – so that you can see how much affiliate revenue your emails have generated.
If you are driving your list traffic to ad-enabled web pages, for example Adsense – you can add a simple code to the end of the link in order to track the Adsense revenue.

For example instead of

https://makingwealth.info/how-to-succeed-at-email-marketing/

You would use a link such as

https://makingwealth.info/how-to-succeed-at-email-marketing/?t=e

You can use any variation you want here so long as the ? and the = are present. Then simply go to your Adsense stats and display pages that have t=e in their URLs – and you will see all the income generated by your email list traffic, separated nicely from your other traffic sources!

Refer back to your total number of subscribes via your optin form stats in your email provider, and you can then calculate your earnings-per-subscriber.

Note that MarketHero email software enables you to track revenue from within the software platform, a nice feature and I think they are the only ones who currently have this – let us know in comments if there are others!

Successful internet marketers have suggested a ROI of 3:1 (i.e. for every dollar spent, 3 is made back) as a good goal.

The difference between an email campaign that has not been optimized and one that has can often be the difference between a negative Return On Investment (the campaign costs more to run than the revenue it produces) and a positive ROI (the campaign produces more money than it consumes).

Email list management tools allow you to measure numerous aspects of your email campaigns and fine tune your campaigns – doing less of what isn’t working and do more of what is working. You can typically measure email open rates, click rates and in some cases even track whether purchases were made – allowing you to evaluate ROI and to understand whether (for example) further investment in traffic to the squeeze page is justified. For example you can split test headlines and all manner of other factors in order to see what works. Options for things to split test include:

•Headline / subject line
•Email body – Copy, images, button color / size / placement, layout
•Time of day the email is sent
•Call to action
•Anything else you can think of that might affect the results – though note that there is not much point in testing “minutae” that only make a small difference to your results.

The larger the list, the better the results of split testing are going to be; simply because you have more data to work with. If you only have a handful of subscribers, you are not going to be able to make significant deductions from the results. You will find that the bigger the list, the more the ‘peaks and troughs’ even out and deliver reliable metrics. And this becomes more fun when it becomes more predictable. Learning what works, so that you can do more of it, is one of the keys of internet marketing.

Depending on your email software you may also be able to send different follow-up messages automatically depending on the response (or lack of response!) to a particular message.

Email management services will also allow you to see “unsubscribe rates”. If you have a large list you will typically get a few unsubscribes every time you send something out, so don’t worry about that. You can get a clear indication of whether people were annoyed by a message. It is said that complaint levels of 1 in 1000 people or less are not serious enough to worry about. It surprises me that even though people signed up for a list, they will occasionally complain when they receive a message from it, but there it is.

Step 9: Send Product Offers

This is the part where you collect some revenue for your hard work and the value you have offered.

The best format for selling is typically to keep the emails themselves really short – but include the link to the web page where the full content resides. Begin the email with a highly clickable “big news headline” type subject line and short, attention grabbing introductory text which summarizes the free content. Make them click a “more info” or “full repot” type link to direct them to the product offer page, which is where the main selling will happen.

Some email marketers go for “fancy” emails with html templates and graphics, but many others including some of the biggest pros go for simple plain text emails and advise against HTML messages. All the messages I send are in plain text, not HTML. What you go for is to some extent a matter of personal style but should ultimately be evaluated scientifically – by tracking and measuring which gets the greatest response.

If you are going to send affiliate product recommendations to your list, don’t over-do it. Counterbalance by sending your list lots of free, useful stuff so that they look forward to hearing from you. Some internet marketers follow a “one in three” rule where they provide two “value” emails and then one sales pitch.

Step 10: List Segmentation And “Super Lists” That You May Not Have Thought Of

Ok, it’s time to think out of the box. I love this section – because it’s packed full of list-building ideas and perspectives that are different from what’s out there. And it dives into the “old school” days of marketing which used systems perfected over generations.

Many of you know the old chestnut “The Fortune Is In The List”. But, as much as this expression is bandied around, many of the modern crop of internet marketers may not realize that the saying has much more “ancient roots” than internet marketing. The time has come to look further than the standard concept of the basic “email marketing list” and explore the creation of “other” email lists which may be of immense value.

List building has its roots in the days where companies kept databases of contacts in books or “rolodexes”. These contact databases were among a company’s most valuable assets. Looking back at these time-honoured business methods gives us new insight and ways to derive greatly increased value from our list building efforts.

What’s really interesting is that many internet marketers, especially beginners, will only have one type of email list. However, a more advanced and more potentially powerful tactic is to have several different lists for different purposes.

Get organized:

Most people have tons of useful contact information scattered around their office, social networks or various computer documents, that they are simply not utilizing. It can be immensely valuable to organize and make use of this information.

Places to trawl from include – your phone, business cards, old email lists, product buyer confirmation emails, all emails received, your “friends” on social networking sites, magazines and publications related to your niche, relevant web sites – and so many more.

Now, make no mistake: Databasing all this information is b-o-r-i-n-g. When you think about all those emails you have been sent, business cards and greetings cards you were given, databases of industry contacts – there is a potential scale of work here that can put some people off. This, my friends, is the un-glamorous part of internet marketing. But those who are able to get such unglamorous tasks handled may find themselves in a strong position, for it is ultimately upon such unglamorous foundations as these that empires are built. You have to put in the investment first to make money while you sleep! Once the information is all organized, you can then market much more powerfully and more easily from that point onwards.

A good way to organize these contacts is to use a type of software that organizes the information. I would say start with Google Sheets – which allows you to export the data as a CSV which can then be imported to wherever it is needed. Apple’s standard OSX Address Book software allows you to create multiple lists, and also sync them with the iphone. It also uses the vCard file format which is something of a standard for “electronic business crards”. Furthermore, it allows you to “drag and drop” from the list into an email, enabling sending messages to an entire group.

Below are my ideas for additional contact lists you might make / gather:

Past customers

Many companies keep a database of people who have already purchased from them. Why is this? It’s because it’s well known that those who have already bought from you are often far more likely to buy from you again than those who have never heard from you. For many companies and marketers, the most profitable list of all is the list of people who have already purchased. They have already demonstrated that they are interested, responsive, and are the kind of people who take action and actually spend money.

This can apply not only to those who create products for sale, but to consultants and those who provide services in many fields – and such lists can be highly beneficial even to those services not directly related to the internet.

For example, I have worked for several years providing services such as web design and audio production. Often, if work was a little slow, I would send a message out to my list of existing or past clients – asking them if they needed anything done.

It’s also the reason companies send Christmas cards. It is a way for them to greet you and to “remind you of their services” without actually asking for anything. It’s a visibility technique that has been used since way before the internet, and they do it because it works.

Industry contacts

Business is all about relationships. I think it could be a very valuable use of time to collect, gather and organize all your industry contact information so that it is available in one place, accessible at the touch of a button, and sifted into groups.

This can include companies you buy from, prominent experts and advisors, leading web sites in your field, competitors, industry publications. Why? These people are knowledgeable and can sometimes assist greatly.

You can also trawl through trade magazines and other publications – and if you have the patience, you can build up enormous and powerful lists of industry contacts. Do you have a contact database of all the industry leaders in your field? You can also very often obtain additional company contact info from alexa.com or yellow pages.

Industry publications are also huge sources of contacts. Many of these people actually want you to connect with them. For example, if you are a music producer, imagine having a list of email addresses of record labels, promoters or licensees, and the ability to notify them all of a new work at the touch of a button.

If you go to trade shows or conferences you will end up with a bucketload of these contacts. One of the principal reasons people go to such shows is for the connections they will make. Be sure to make notes or keep some kind of organized system to make sure you remember who is who before it all turns into a blur!

Rabid fans

I think it’s a good idea to create a special list for fans. Keep track of everyone who has ever taken the trouble to write you a note of appreciation or to rave about your products or services. This could be your most important list of all.

Such people can also act as beacons. I know this from my music industry days. Rabid fans will sometimes market you better than you can. They will tell people about how great your work is – and coming from a fan it is “genuine currency”.

Another tip is to give fans an opportunity to be part of something – which is what they often seek. You can sometimes ask them to help in certain ways – such as promotion. Also bear in mind that if someone is enthusiastic, smart, and hard working; there may be potential to employ them.

Anyone who has made the effort to send you an email of appreciation, approached you and expressed unsolicited enthusiasm for your work… these are your people – don’t let them slip through the cracks. These are the people who deserve exclusive offers and VIP treatment.

Leads

This is your regular list of prospects, usually created by opt-in – where people have given you actual permission to add their email to your list. This is your “main marketing list” – the one that has previously been discussed (and is the subject of most of the other “guides to list-building” that are out there on the internet).

Social Media Contacts

Have you reached out to your contacts and audience in other venues? What about your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, RSS subscribers, Youtube followers, Instagram followers and so on. You probably have a very significant number of contacts in all these disparate databases – waiting to be contacted and invited to join the main email list.

I have thousands of contacts on social networking sites; and I’m sure many of you will also. Whenever you create a new free product or gift, why not send out a message or bulletin to these contacts and invite them to take your gift? (and potentially sign up to your regular list of leads once they are on the site.)

Friends and family

Keep this list separate from your other more general lists so as to keep the right kind of content for the right people.

Business cards

What do you do with all the business cards you get given throughout the course of a year? I used to put these in a box and forget about them.

When a person hands you their business card, don’t merely add them to an email list. It’s not cool. A more appropriate strategy is the follow-up. After someone gives you a business card, make sure you write something on the back that helps you remember the person who gave it to you. Then, a few days later, you can follow up with a little greeting email saying it was good to connect with the person, and here is a quick rundown / reminder of your services / products etc. Even better if you have some free stuff. “I just want to let you know about”… This email can be kept as a template – it can then be cut and pasted, with a few modifications. You can send a link to your site, and if they are sufficiently interested, they can sign up for more info. You have already made “face time” with the person at the other end; it stands to reason that a list of such leads will have a good success rate. And, it is just sitting there waiting for you to take action.

Other people that email you

I get all kinds of emails from people every day and I’m sure you do too. Most of these, no doubt, just get deleted with some frustration at the amount of time this wastes. However, why get mad when you can get even? 😉

Think about what you are throwing away. Every one of these emails you delete, discards a potential new contact.

The way I see it, anyone who contacts you via email is effectively inviting a response. Therefore, you can respond to them. Don’t just add them to your list – they haven’t asked for it and so this is not cool. But – you can reply to their mail. You can be polite, thank them for their information (this also reminds them that they contacted you, which they may not even remember that they have done – especially if they have sneakily added you to their list!!!) Then, counter by saying “did you know that I have x available?” or that I offer the following services, or free products etc etc”.

So now, instead of being frustrated at having to delete emails you can be grateful for them – you have a potential new customer! And if they are trying to cold-sell you, then I think they are fair game for a return sales pitch. 😉

The affiliate list

If you have affiliates selling your products then you will of course want to have a list where you can send them special materials and assistance. The affiliate list can be gold – you are effectively training affiliates in selling your product and thus helping them to make you money. You can pass on all your best results and techniques in selling your own products and they will be thankful for it. This is what super-successful “Truth About Abs” creator Mike Geary does and is one of the reasons for his multi-million dollar success.

Step 11: Joint Ventures

If you manage to create a loyal, double-opt-in, niche-specific list of several thousand subscribers, all kinds of other potentially profitable opportunities present themselves to you.

The joint venture has become a standard “money maker” with lists – but requires you to have a substantial list before you have something to offer. The general concept is simple – two list owners get together and “cross promote”- sending a promotion of the other marketer’s work to each other’s list. This technique can be used to generate huge traffic for product launches, which often cross promote to several large lists.

If the two lists are of different sizes it is always possible to segment the larger list so that the swap is fair.

Another great technique is the interview. If you have a subscriber base, you have leverage interviewing prominent persons in your field. You could make this into a video or podcast – and in return generate a tremendous amount of publicity for the person you are interviewing. They can also post it to their fans, sending some new fans to you.

Step 12: The Up-Sell

A classic sales technique, the up-sell comes into its own with internet business because it can be automated. Once someone has purchased, a plain thank you page is a missed opportunity. If someone has already purchased, they are more likely to purchase again than someone who has not purchased at all. Email management softwares permit you to separate buyers into separate list segments. Other classic up-sell techniques include offering discounts on bulk purchases or purchase of more than one item.

Bonus Reading

I discovered a fantastic story of how Rappin’ Matt took a struggling newbie online marketer with a new product and helped him to achieve a six figure gross in the first two weeks of his product launch. I recommend listening to the interviews in the links below – they reveal a ton of information on email marketing:
http://www.emailrebel.com/launch/interview1.html
http://www.emailrebel.com/launch/interview2.html
http://www.emailrebel.com/launch/interview3.html

Another piece of interesting research: Go to Google and type in “the money is in the list” with an exact phrase match. 127,000 results!! Pick through some of these results and you are bound to score some useful email marketing tips.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/principles-beautiful-html-email

3 Titanic List-Building Techniques

List Building Secrets

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Your-Client-Database-is-Worth-More-Than-Money-in-the-Bank&id=1636793

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12 Steps Towards Making Mega Money With Email Marketing
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