Webenso » list building

A Different Optin Strategy for Your Blog

Kathy Alice — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 06:37:08 +0000

How many of us have an optin box on our blog? It has been drilled into us over and over again, that if you are serious about your online presence for your business, you must have a list and a way for people to optin (join your list). Benefits of a list are many:

Build a deeper relationship with your potential clients by keeping in touch.
Let people know about your events, activities and yes, your new products and services.
Joint venture with others to cross promote.

And that’s just a few of the reasons to have a list. If you are new to email marketing, I have some earlier posts on the topic. Some blogs’ optin offer a free report as a bribe in exchange for an email address. Others don’t offer anything at all, just a monthly newsletter. What if we did something just a little different? Instead of a bribe (free report or video) or the promise of yet another unread newsletter, how about we re-purpose the optin box to invite questions? Not only does this help build your list, but you can get a real sense of what questions people are interested in, helping you write more targeted blog posts. Eventually it might even help shape products and services that you might offer. Way better than writing a newsletter than may or may not be relevant to your audience. Many autoresponder systems give you the ability to tailor the opt-in box to include custom fields, as a custom field is what is needed to add the question field to the optin box. I use aweber, and with that system, just look for the “Create New Field” button on the right when you are editing your web form. The hardest part for me was finding a form skinny enough to fit into my existing blog template. Once you have created your optin form, in most cases you can copy and paste the HTML code into a text widget in your blog (the widget menu can be found under “Appearance” in your WordPress dashboard). Note that you need to let people know that you are adding them to your list, see my “ask a question” widget to the right for an example. I’ve also decided to make the optin a double optin process (the reader has to confirm their email address) just so it’s really clear what’s going on. To give credit where credit is due, this cool idea is courtesy of Sylvie Fortin. Her website is workaholics4hire.com which provides outsourcing services

How I started my email list

Kathy Alice — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:27:26 +0000

The money is in the list. With a list you can build on your relationship with your clients so they are more likely to buy from you and also let them know of exciting products and services. For me, I wanted to keep in touch with my community and build my reputation as a web marketer, so what better way to do that than to create an email list with a monthly newsletter? To get myself into action on this goal, I had an networking event coming up so I decided to hand out postcards with a website URL where a free report was available for download when visitors opted into my email list. To make this happen there was a number of components that I needed to build or configure to work together. The cost was just over $100 (mostly for the postcards). Use this blog post as a guide to build your your own! Step 1: Create Your Offer To encourage people to opt into my list, I wrote a free report called “Five Ways to Make Your Website Googlicious”. Most website owners do not know much about SEO (search engine optimization), so my goal was to open their eyes on how they could make their website more search engine friendly. Step 2: Create the postcard I used VistaPrint for creating the postcard. On their site (Advertising and Marketing –> Postcards), I found a template that I liked and added the text I needed. Your choices of templates are overwhelming but otherwise the process is straightforward. Cost: approx. $90 for 250 double sided glossy postcards Step 3: Squeeze Page For the squeeze page, I bought the domain www.yoursuccessfulwebsite.com and recruited a bored college student to create a squeeze page out of a template we got for $9. I’m not happy with the template code, but it does the job. Since I hosted the site in a subdirectory in a bluehost.com account I already had, I didn’t have to buy additional hosting. Finding Images On the postcard there is a picture of a person looking through a spyglass which aligned nicely with the messaging of the postcard which asked “Can Your Customers Find Your Website?”. To reinforce the messaging and as a memory jogger, I wanted to show a similar image on the website. I found one in istockphoto.com for a few dollars. Image Tweaks for the non Graphically Inclined While everything looked great on a PC, I arrived at the seminar with my Mac laptop and found that that the header of the website was not displaying properly! For the just in time simple or last minute tweaks to images on my Macbook Pro I used Paintbrush which is a free download. Step 4: Autoresponder / Email System Since I wanted a flexible autoresponder for multiple uses, I created an account at aweber. aweber is $19 a month for 500 contacts. If you just want to just email a newsletter to a list, you might consider icontact which is cheaper. Both will generate web form code that you can copy and paste into your squeeze page for your opt-in box. Comments

Based on other freebies on the web and feedback I’ve received, I overdid it on the free report. In its current format, it’s 22 pages long and provides a lot of value. I probably should charge for it, however for now I’m going to keep it as free – you can get it at www.yoursuccessfulwebsite.com
Despite the lure of getting my website done for free, I might try a service like elance next time. Or since I am a do-it-myself type of person, find a better template.
I got lots of positive comments on the postcard. It definitely stood out, both in its size and coloring, compared to the business cards that most were handing out.
However, I did not get tremendous uptake on my free offer, about 7%, it would have been more lucrative to have a packaged service or product to sell and close people on the spot, however since I currently am not selling either, I’m happy with the results so far.
Be prepared to spend some time configuring aweber (or whichever ESP – email service provider you choose). There are multiple steps in opting into a list and you have to think about the experience for your visitor for each step. For example, where should your visitor be sent to after they have typed in their email address and name? What should you say in your welcome message when they join?
This one should be obvious, but I will say it again, test your websites in different browsers and both on a Mac and PC. Not only did the header look different on a Mac, but the opt-in box code from aweber looked different in IE (internet explorer) rather than firefox – requiring another fix.

I hope this overview helps you put together your own email list and opt-in web form. Good Luck!

Don’t spam your list

Kathy Alice — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:58:38 +0000

Like many of you, I belong to a few business networking and education groups. They are a valuable source of potential leads, joint venture partnerships and even great ideas. So imagine my disappointment when one of the group’s members started spamming us with emails that was marketing speakers and websites with obvious affiliate links.

His facebook friend request? That got the “ignore” click. His emails? The delete button. His potential to provide a service to me? Nonexistent. As a marketer he should really know better. With just a little education and use of the right tools, you can avoid following in his footsteps. As soon as you start using email to talk about your business and your services and products you need to avoid the “spammer” trap.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

In 2003, President Bush signed into law the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. I think it is helpful to know what CAN-SPAM stands for: “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing”. The key is “Non-Solicited”. Just like you may not like uninvited salesman at your front door selling you vacuum cleaners, un-solicited marketing by email has the same taint to it …. and it’s illegal to boot. While covering the CAN-SPAM Act in it’s entirety is beyond the scope of this article, here are the two things you need to know.

You must give the receiver of your email a way to tell you they don’t want any more emails from you. This is calling “opting out” and usually done by providing an “unsubscribe” link.
You must honor the removal request within 10 days according the Act(but really it needs to happen a lot sooner than that).

Many privacy activists felt the CAN-SPAM Act was ineffectual and didn’t go far enough. Some went so far to call it the “I can spam Act”. For these reasons the ESPs (more on what that is in a moment) that legitimate businesses use set a higher standard. The removals happen quickly, usually within 24 hours. And many businesses take advantage of the “double opt-in” feature and send invitations for you join their list before even one marketing email is sent. That perfect client you met at last week’s business event may need a reminder to remember you, and an invitation to continue the conversation by joining your list is a graceful way to keep you in the forefront of their mind.

What are ESPs?

ESPs are email service providers. There are a number of excellent ones on the market, and for a monthly fee they will store your contact list, send the emails for you, help you build in your opt-in box or link, and handle all the details of email marketing, such as complying with the CAN-SPAM Act by: 1) automatically generating the unsubscribe link in each email you send through their tools and then 2) doing the right thing when someone clicks on it. Some of the ESPs even enforce the “double opt-in” feature, where any existing list of contacts you upload into their system will be sent an email asking permission to be placed in their system. While it can be painful to lose those contacts that don’t respond, your resulting list will be of higher quality. If you remember one thing from this article, it is that you want to do Permission based email marketing. You always want to have a user’s permission before sending them an email. If that business network member had gone through a few extra steps to have an unsubscribe link in his email, I would have thought so much higher of him. And maybe I would have even clicked on one of his links, earning him a commission.

How to increase Your Opt-in Lists Sales Conversion Rate

Guest Author — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:48:16 +0000

You might know by now building your own email list is very important to the success of your online business. The most common strategy is making visitors to sign up your mailing list is offering them some free report or eBook or free software. Otherwise you can offer them some free email lessons. Using some of the available website traffic software in the market you can make compelling opt-in page. Here we will discuss how we can send the email lessons in an alternate way and more efficently sell your product. What you should do is upload the lessons in your website or blog. Send the list a brief introduction of the lesson and the link to your web page. At the end of each lesson briefly explain a product which is related to that particular topic and give your affiliate link and ask them to click. Here you can offer them your special bonus. But make sure you are not overselling to them. If your list feels that you are trying to sell them, next time they won’t click on your link. So more lessons and less marketing. Once they are your loyal readers and they know you are promoting quality products, and you give better bonuses, they will look for you whenever they heard of a new product launch. Another advantage of this method is you will have regular visitors to your site and blog. Once they used to your site, they don’t feel you are hard selling, even if you are doing that. This method will increase content in your blog or site also. You know that search engines will like that. So you are getting some advantage in SEO point of view also. Once you mix with your targeted keywords in your Lesson heading as well as in contents, it will give you magical effect on search engine ranking. Many super internet marketers are doing this method effectively. You check yourself how many emails you are getting every day with a brief introduction or news which will raise your full attention to click the link to read full story. That is the proof of the effectiveness of this strategy. The success of this method depends on how effectively you write your emails. You should write in such a way that, the reader gets your attention to click the website link. The subject of the mail can be even negative, eg., ‘Don’t make this mistake!’ , something like that. And in the content you can explain the problem and a very brief solution and invite to read full story at your site. When they are fully linked to the problem, there is a more chance that they buy the product which will solve their problem. So the sales conversion also will be high for this method. This method can be used for your other product lauch. This is a practical solution for marketers who complain their list don’t buy. To use this strategy you first need a list. You can start making list by article writing or some paid method and start capturing their details using some list building software available in the market. You should always give importance to this, since this will make your business a success in long term. Wishing you success in your online business Promotion. Read how to get website traffic.

Email Marketing Campaigns, And Strategy

Guest Author — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:30:55 +0000

4 Ways To Get Your Opt In Subscribers To Trust You Quickly While the rest of the world have developed many barriers and protections to keep their e-mail accounts spam-free, there are also those that subscribe to mails that promotes their products, services and their site. email marketing software, This is mainly because these subscribes wants to know more about what these sites are offering and can be beneficial for them. They expect to get be kept posted on what they are interested in and what are new in the market or field they have chosen. Businesses would be so lucky to have these kinds of customers; the basic element needed to get these types of people is trust. When your customers trust you they will reward you with their loyalty. Many internet users have gone to great lengths in protecting their email accounts from spam mail. Some free-mail internet providers and internet service providers offer spam protection while there are also some internet based companies that screen your mails for you. More email marketing solution,. With an opt-in mail list, the mails you send containing your promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and marketingintegrated marketing, media will go through. Your intended recipient will be able to read and view what you have sent making it a successful transfer of information. To be able to be allowed to do so, you will need permission from your recipient, to get this permission; you need to be able to get their trust. With the great lack of disregard for privacy in the internet, getting the trust of an internet user you don’t personally know is a big achievement. To build a good opt-in list you need people to trust you, for a faster and quicker build up, you need to get your opt-in subscribers to trust you quickly. The faster you build your opt-in list the faster word about your site and company gets to be spread. The bigger the scope of your opt-in list the more traffic you get spelling more profits. Its easy math if you thin about it. Getting the numbers is not that simple though, or maybe it is? ? Getting the trust of your clientele shouldn’t be so hard especially if you do have a legitimate business. Getting your customers trust should be based upon your expertise. People rely on other people who know what they are talking about. Garner all the knowledge and information about your business. Ell, frankly if you decide to go into a business most probably you have an interest in it. Like how many basketball payers become coaches, you don’t really venture into something you don’t have any interest in. More web copywriting,. ? Show your clients that you know what you are talking about. Provide them with helpful hints and guidelines that pertain to what you are selling. Talk about how to install a roof if you’re into hardware products or provide articles on insurance settlements if you’re a settlement lawyer. You don’t have to be a big corporation to make use of an opt-in list. If your customers see you as someone who knows what he is doing and saying, they will trust you quickly. ? Be true to your customers, if you want to hype up your products and services, provide guarantees. The more satisfied customers you get, the bigger probability there is that they will recommend you. Generally, people will trust someone they know, when that someone recommends you then you’re a shoo-in. They will go to your site and check it for themselves and be given a chance to experience what the other shave experienced from you, so make sure to be consistent in the service you provide. ? Another tip in getting a customer to trust you quickly is to provide them an escape hatch. Show them that you are not there to trap them. Keep a clean list that would enable them to unsubscribe anytime they want. Elaborate your web form by providing informationemail marketing, on how to unsubscribe from the list. Guarantee them that they can let go of the service when ever they want to. Many are wary that they may be stuck for life and would have to abandon their email accounts when they get pestered with spam. Remember that when you get the trust of your clients don’t lose that trust. Because if you do anything with their email More email marketing campaign, addresses like sell them or give them out, you will lose many members of your list as ell as potential members. The true quickest way to gain the trust of your subscribers is when you are recommended by someone they trust.

Getting Customers to Your New Website

Guest Author — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:33:04 +0000

When you have your website uploaded and running, you might be thinking the big job is over. In fact the big task is going to start now, promoting your online business and generating traffic. More visitors means more sales and more money. There are many ways to generate website traffic. It can be paid traffic method or free method. PPC campaign is one of the main paid website promotion. But for a new internet marketer with limited financial resorces often paid method is simply not possible. So we should think about getting free website traffic. You can submit your website to directories. Yahoo, MSN like big directories are paid directories. There are many free directories. Try a search in Google for free directories.Make sure you submit your site in the correct section of your niche. Make sure you use; low competitive, moderate demand keywords. If you go for competitive keywords it will be very difficult to win against high page rank sites. Also, find some ‘more targeted’ keywords. They will be less competitive, but you will get targeted visitors. Once you get many one way links to your site, these search engines will notice you. Write articles and submit to article directories with your site link in resource box. When more and more websites publish your articles, you will get as many back links and the visitors of that site may click on the link and come to your site. Again articles in your selected keywords will be more converting to sales. You can use software to submit article and directory submission. This will give you some time to concentrating on other website promotions. Once you have some back links by this method, you start thinking of other methods. Try getting back links from authority sites in your niche. One way links means vote of acceptance. When some authority site accepts you, you got high rankings in search engine eyes. Reciprocal link exchange also gives some benefit, though not as good as one way links. If possible add a blog to your site. Once you start adding contents, search engines will definitely index your site. Search engines like more and more fresh content. Also there are many ways to promote your blog postings and this will give more back links to your site. Social book marking is an example of blog promotion. Also try visiting forums in your niches and make some valuable comments and use your website link as your signature line. Before doing this make sure you read their rule and it is allowed to do that. Otherwise you will be booted out. Another advantage of visiting these forums is that you will know the pulse of the market. You will know what is hot selling right now? Also try noticing what people are asking more and more in forums. Try making a product in that field to solve their problem. Make some free eBook or small report in your niche and submit in free eBook directories with a opt in form. You can try free advertising blog, free classifieds sites and give away event sites with these offers. If you can make some audio or video product, it will be more effective. Once you have visitors in your site, make sure you capture their name and email address using opt in form. There are many types of forms available. Do market research and get one email list building software for that. You may have to give some free eBooks, reports or some email lessons to make the visitor sign in your opt in list. List building is important for your success. A visitor may not buy at first visit. Once you have his or her contact details, you can make offers in pre fixed intervals. You can automate this by some reputable auto responders. Using Auto responders will increase your email deliverability and avoid spam complaints.A prospective customer may need five to twelve emails to make him buy. You have to prepare for that. Once you got a list you can promote any future products or you can recommend other peoples product for affiliate commission. Combining all of the above methods will give you a maximum result in your website promotion. You can automate this by using internet marketing software, which will give you more time to develop your online business to next level. Learn how to build website traffic – realistic strategy.

Internet Marketing Company Strategies To Make A Difference

Guest Author — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:19:13 +0000

The five main methods that internet marketing companies use are applicable to businesses irrespective of geographical location or the type of business. There is significant amount of competition in running a business online as there are a lot of profits. internet marketing is necessary if you want to run your business online and hence you should possess a basic skill set in it. The five strategies are easy to grasp. The difficult and time consuming part is the execution of these strategies. An UK internet marketing company can save the time you spend to learn to implement the strategies. An internet marketing company can help you increase profits by cutting expenses. This is because all the money is spend on trying to learn the execution part. UK internet marketing company campaigns executed by amateurs are not up to the mark and takes some time to yield results. If you entrust this job to experts, you can be assured of a good job with less expenditure. Here are the five strategies: 1. Focussing On Target Market This is also commonly known as niche marketing. Advertising campaigns and the way they are designed are crucial to your success in internet marketing. 2. Building the Right Website You have to pay attention to the overall feeling your website creates. You can either make it simple and professional or put lots of graphics in it. Before you start online marketing, it is essential you have the correct website. You have to design your website in such way that puts the correct impression in people’s mind. 3. Advertising Campaigns For Online Business Testing can reveal which campaigns are profitable and which are not. The principle that apply to brick and mortar companies apply here too. This often requires using specific techniques and software that can track all of the relevant data. 4. Building and Maintaining Customer Lists When people visit your website, whether they buy something or not, it’s extremely helpful to get their name and email. If they do buy something, it’s even more important, as one-time customers are likely to make future purchases. Increasing sales and your customer base is easy when you start focussing on customer and potential customer list. The next strategy is as follows. 5. The Versatality Of Email It is a good idea to scan the customer’s list and then contact them through email to communicate about your new products. It requires certain protocols, however. The guidelines are important as you may be accused of spamming at times if you send the email to the wrong person. The email content is important and should be of top quality as it is indicative of the quality of the business. Internet marketing companies provide solutions that can help UK businesses establish themselves on the internet.

With The Right Internet Business Video Coaching You Can Generate Exponential Growth In Your Business

Guest Author — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:09:04 +0000

The Emperor of China, and how he rewarded the inventor of chess, is the earliest example of the law of accelerating returns, and yet it has been happening all around us since well before then. In a 2001 whitepaper, Raymond Kurzweil wrote that “…the emergence of the first technology creating species resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore, technological evolution is an outgrowth of–and a continuation of–biological evolution.” The article went on to explain The Law of Accelerating Returns, which outlines such phenomenon as Moore’s Law and sheds the spotlight on why technology is moving at such a rapid pace. So for entrepreneurs who are setting up a business on the Internet, Kurzweil is good reading. However, as important, is selecting the correct Internet Marketing video training. The Internet is still so new in business that methods, techniques and tactics of growth are changing all the time, and are likely to keep doing so for the forseeable future.. Therefore, what may have worked for people even six months ago could be passed their sell-by now. Yet one thing remains prominent. All successful online companies share this core characteristic: An ever-increasing list of customers which grows exponentially. Of utmost importance therefore is careful consideration of which web-based listbuilding software is best for your business. If you choose wisely, you could be working only a few hours each week and earning enough to be on holiday for the rest. Get it wrong and you could be chained to your desk. No one should make such a decision lightly. It is one which should be investigated thoroughly. Running an online business should be the most time-freeing things you do. It should give you more time with your family, to travel and to relax. But only if you can honestly call your business truly will it be so. One of the chief reasons why the Internet gives us such opportunity is because word-of-mouth marketing, as we used to call it offline, is the much more powerful viral marketing online. And viral marketing is a great deal quicker and more precise than good old Chinese Whispers. Lets look at a comparison… If you want to refer someone to that restaurant you had such a good meal in last night, you will need to give them the name of it and the exact location or telephone number for them to have what they need to make a reservation. There are numerous ways it might not work therefore. On the other hand, when you are issued with a URL from someone to go and visit a site, it arrives by email, Twitter, message chat or perhaps in a blog-post. Then, because it is a digital link, it can not be typed incorrectly or mislaided. It will always remain the same. And when you click on that link, you will go exactly where your referrer intended. If you don’t use viral marketing to grow your online business, then why have you got an online business?