Complete Guide to Email Marketing

When they click on the link they are taken to a landing page that has strong copy that reveals the biggest benefits of your product or service. Show the prospect how their life will change. You want this landing page, also called a signup page or squeeze page, to be short and to the point.

It is possible to send them to your main website. But it could be distracting with all the links and different pages. With a landing page there is only one message and one action to take: submit your email.

The box to include their email address and name should be prominent on the page — with something like a big button that says Sign Up. You don’t want your visitors to miss it.

You could even have multiple signups, say another one at the bottom of your landing page. At least one should be “above the fold” so the prospect does not have to scroll down to see it. Many experts say the best spot for a signup box is near the top right corner of the page.

To incentivize the prospect to sign up, it’s important to offer them some sort of bonus – something free – like an ebook, access to a webinar, or whatever attractive freebie you can give them that is related to your business. But you don’t have to bust your but to put this bonus together. You could collect together past blog posts into one PDF, for example.

Once, they’ve signed up, you send your new subscribers an initial email with access details for the bonus or an attached download. This is done automatically in your email system. This type of email is called an autoresponder.

Now they’re on your list and you can start marketing to them in earnest.

Using Automated Email Marketing Systems

It’s important to note that you won’t be collecting names or sending out emails by hand, one email at a time. You’d soon be overwhelmed by the volume! You can use systems like Constant Contact, Get Response, AWeber, and Campaign Monitor to manage your email lists and broadcast your emails.

Systems like this can also track leads, opt-in rates, sales, open rates, click-through rates and other important stats. You may have heard of Infusion — this is a very powerful system in this regard. It’s something to keep in mind for the future as your business — and your need for more sophisticated marketing efforts — grows.

It’s important to note that these systems make your job a whole lot easier through automation. The leads can sign up, be added to the list, and start getting emails, even making sales… while you sleep. With these systems, you can send the same email to thousands of people at the same time, automatically. You could potentially set up a schedule of emails going out for weeks or more at a time. You can even manually send emails if you want to run campaigns or send out messages on the fly.

There is a flipside — any mistake you make is multiplied by thousands and could mean a bunch of lost subscribers or lost sales.

So make sure an email is just how you want it before you hit Send! Look for typos, make the information is correct, and the links to any sales offers work.

You can usually do a test mailing to just yourself to confirm everything is good to go. So make sure you do so. And, even if you have everything automated for weeks, it pays to check in every once in awhile to make sure everything is running smoothly.

What You Should Email Your List

Once you have your leads on your list, you often send them an introductory series of emails to get to know you. And, because you want to strike while the iron is hot and they’re interested in your products, you can also include some offers for low-cost items.

This series of emails is often called a gauntlet. Again, all sent automatically. And every new subscriber goes through it.

A gauntlet could be three emails, five, 10… whatever works or your niche and business. Figure out what’s best for you through testing.

Once they’ve gone through the gauntlet, your leads are added to your regular email list. You should have a consistent schedule, sending around the same time, usually daily.

Now there are different approaches to marketing to your new audience by email.

• Email newsletters packed with useful content.
• Short emails — quick to read. Remember people are busy and get dozens of emails daily.
• Links to videos with useful content.
• Announcements of product launches.
• Industry news and your commentary.
• Sales offers.

What you send should be a mix of useful “editorial” content and sales offers, product launches, affiliate offers, and similar.

The editorial content is easy to put together. It could be your take on trends in your industry. Lists of top 10 best practices in your niche. If you’re in the weight loss niche — diet and exercise tips. An inspirational story of one of your past customers. Advice for something related to your niche. For example, if you sell a dog training course — you could give a way a free tip.

You get the idea. This free information is kind of a “tease” for your paid products. To get the full story, so to speak, they have to become a paid up customer. That’s why you throw in the sales offers in your emails too — to give them a way to buy while they’re excited about your products and your business.

Turning Your Email Leads into Valuable Customers

Just by signing up, the people who have signed up for your email list, called “names” (a holdover from direct mail) or leads, have shown an interest in what you’re offering. This makes them valuable. You want to treat that list of names of well and not miss the opportunity to turn that interest into sales. There is a specific course to follow.

Offer a low-cost introductory product first. This is known as a front end. Then you can start offering the buyers of that low-cost product steadily higher priced products.

Fewer people on the list will buy the “expensive” products. But the idea is that through your name collection/lead generation (often shortened to lead gen) efforts, you will be constantly brining new names on to your file, or list. Out of those, a certain percentage will buy. A smaller percentage will buy higher priced products. And the smallest percentage will buy your most expensive offerings and many of your products in all… think of them like the “whales” in a casino.

You want to cultivate your back end buyers by offering good products and great customer service. They’re VIPs.

Also, important for the growth of your business is that you’re always adding new customers. That’s what’s going to grow your revenues and make your business profitable. You can never stop generating new leads because old leads will fall off the list or start ignoring your emails… and many will never buy. So, it’s key to not let your list stagnate. Keep it fresh with an infusion of new names — potential buyers.

Email Marketing Best Practices: How to Maximize Your Profits

In the old “Wild West” days of email marketing, you could send out just about any message and make money. But as email marketing has matured and become more sophisticated, so has the audience. And you need to keep that in mind as you prepare email campaigns.

Here are some best practices for pulling a profit from an email list:

• Use engaging subject lines that grab attention and compel the reader to click.
• Get whitelisted. You don’t want to be considered spam and then banned. Each service like Gmail has a way to do this. In your first email to them, send the instructions to the subscriber.
• Mix in sales offers with useful content — you can’t pitch every day.
• Find the best times of day to send messages to your list — determine by testing what your open rates are at different times. Then run with the winner.
• And with so many people reading their email on their smartphones — of all email sent 56 percent are opened on mobile devices, according to Litmus Email Analytics, it’s important that your emails be mobile-friendly. This is a basic option in most email delivery programs you might use.

Through all this offer good customer service. Make sure products, whether are physical or digital, are delivered on time. Respond to customer questions in a timely manner. If a customer brings up a problem, try to solve it.

Taking Your Email Marketing to the Next Level

You might be pulling in some nice revenues from your email marketing based business using the techniques above. But there are ways to improve your results.

You shouldn’t set up a campaign once and then try to let it run forever. You never know when your copy, your offer, or your product will just stop resonating with the marketplace. So the key is to always try to be improving, which you do through testing.

• Test by offering different copy in the lead generation ads and on the landing page.
• Offer different bonuses for sign up for your list.
• Change the price of the products you offer in sales messages.
• Try to advertise in different ways in different channels.

For effective and actionable results, you should do A/B, head to head tests. For example, you could send half of your list one piece of copy, then the other half pretty much the same copy — with one major change — like a new headline, for example.

You send out both messages at the same time and see which got the best results. Then you run with the winner. This is a constant process. And this way you’ll maximize your profits.

Because you’ll be doing so much testing, tracking is so important. You should always know:

• How many people visit your page
• How many of those folks sign up
• How many people open your emails
• How many people buy
• How much each individual name on your list has bought
• The average lifetime value (how much people buy while on your list)

Your Next Steps

To be sure, this is a lot to take in. Email marketing has a lot of moving parts. But at its heart is a simple process.

So start simply. Set up some basic email campaigns to get practice in writing copy, setting up landing pages, using automated email system, testing offers, and creating content to create a relationship with your prospects and customers.

Over time, you’ll get experience and practical skills so you can take your email marketing business to the next level.