My review of Clickfunnels vs LeadPages is going to give the blogger, affiliate marketer, ecom store owner and marketer a clue about whether these marketing tools are ideal for their business.

Hands up, if you would rather know what the deal is, before spending money and time trying to learn something that does not meet your expectation?

Well as a user of both marketing tools, I hope that I will be able to give you a clear picture of the features of these products and whether they are the right fit for your business

I know there are a ton of Clickfunnels vs Leadpages reviews, but I had not seen any, that specifically answers to who the user is.

Which is why I decided to take a different route and provide a review for each specific business owner.

I will be making this review as unbiased as possible. After all I do have certain gripes about both Clickfunnels and LeadPages that I’d like you to know about.

If you’d like to skip to my review based on what kind of business owner you are, be sure to use the navigation menu below.

Without any further delay, let’s get right to it.

Here is what you will learn in this blog post:

• What is Clickfunnels?
• What is LeadPages?
• Clickfunnels vs LeadPages features
• Who is Clickfunnels vs LeadPages for?
• Clickfunnels vs LeadPages for affiliate marketing? Bottom line.
• ClickFunnels vs LeadPages for bloggers? Bottom line.
• ClickFunnels vs LeadPages for physical or digital products? Bottom line.
• ClickFunnels vs LeadPages for ecommerce? Bottom line.
• ClickFunnels vs LeadPages for network marketers? Bottom line.
• ClickFunnels vs LeadPages for local businesses? Bottom line.
• How to build a funnel on ClickFunnels or LeadPages?

What is Clickfunnels?

I have so many people come to me and say they’d like to build a clickfunnel. Let me set the record straight by clarifying that Clickfunnels is the name of a product or more specifically an online software.

Just like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint, it is a product or online software that helps you build a sales funnel.

A sales funnel is a series of web pages dedicated to the promotion of a particular product or products that helps the business owner achieve a desired goal.

That goal may be a sale, lead generation, booking a consultation or call or whatever objective you may have.

It is different from your traditional website because it does not have features like external or internal links, navigation menus, etc.

In this regard, the funnel is the ideal marketing tool because it helps to keep the user (your target audience) focused on the main objective of the funnel.

The owner of the Clickfunnels product is Russel Bronson.

What is LeadPages?

LeadPages was designed as a lead generation software but it can also be used as a sales funnel.

That is because LeadPages also allows you to build sales pages that help you generate sales of products.

So just like Clickfunnels, you can use the LeadPages software to also generate leads, sales, consultation bookings or calls.

When you first get to the LeadPages home page, if your goal is to sell a product, you may be wondering whether LeadPages is the right product for you, since their focus is more on the lead generation aspect.

Don’t worry because you can take payments with this online platform as well which means that you can sell a product if you want to.

When compared to Clickfunnels, notice how Clickfunnels immediately addresses this, by pointing out almost everything that can be done with the Clickfunnels software.

ClickFunnels vs LeadPages Features

Rather than write a paragraph about the features in each of these online software, I decided to create a table setting out the main features so you can easily get an overview and comparison of each one.

I will then go into the specifics of each feature so you can learn a little bit more about it.

Mobile Friendly Templates

Both Clickfunnels and LeadPages have mobile friendly templates.

However, if I were to pick one for easy mobile responsiveness, my vote would go to LeadPages.

That is because, with Clickfunnels even though their pages can convert to mobile, you must manually adjust your text for mobile viewers, before publishing.

What I mean is, if on desktop you have used a font size of 32px, with Clickfunnels you want to make sure that the text is down-sized for mobile.

If you do not take this additional step the text will also appear large on mobile. Clickfunnels have catered to this by adding a mobile text button in their editor.

The difference with LeadPages however, is that the text and images are automatically down-sized for mobile.

Drag and Drop Interface

Designing a lead page or funnel is simple with their drag and drop interface.

No coding is necessary which makes Clickfunnels and LeadPages easy for amateurs who have no coding or design skill.

To build a page with Clickfunnels, you can either use one of their pre-designed templates and drag and drop any additional elements that you want to the page.

If you are starting from the beginning though you must understand how a Clickfunnel page is designed.

Each of their pages are made up of sections, rows and elements.

Each page starts with a section which is identified by the colour green, which contains a row identified by the colour blue and a row contains an element, identified by the colour orange.

The elements are your content boxes and it is from the content boxes that you can design your page.

LeadPages has a similar construction however to start designing your page, you only need to add a section then drag and drop your content.

So once again in terms of ease, LeadPages wins making it easier for the user to build their pages effortlessly.

Pop-Up Lead Boxes

If you do not want to create a sales funnel but still want a place to convert your visitors into leads from your website or blog, you can create pop up lead boxes with both Clickfunnels and LeadPages.

Clickfunnels refer to these lead boxes as Clickpops.

Once created you are given code to embed the box onto a website or blog that you own.

Such pop up box can be added to your website as a link or an image which when clicked, causes the box to pop open. If you’d like the box to appear automatically such as on time or on exit then you can configure the settings to generate these actions.

LeadPages refer to these boxes as lead boxes. They essentially operate in the same way as Clickfunnels’ clickpops do.

LeadPages’ lead boxes can be embedded by a link, button or image. They can also appear on time and on exit.

Payment Integration

The two most popular payment gateways, Stripe and Paypal, can be used with both Clickfunnels and LeadPages, however PayPal does not integrate with either.

What this means is that when used, PayPal does not fully become part of Clickfunnels or LeadPages, so when payments are made, Clickfunnels or LeadPages’ automated features do not activate.

For example, when integrated with Stripe and a payment is made by a user, Clickfunnels or LeadPages would redirect to a thank you page within the funnel and if set up, will store the buyer’s details in their database.

When PayPal is used however, this does not happen. Whilst there are work-arounds, it is something you must be conscious of, if you want to use any buyer data from the platforms.

Clickfunnels goes a step further and integrates with and allows access to other payment options. Sadly LeadPages only stops at Stripe and PayPal.

Finally if you wish to use payment gateways with LeadPages, you must upgrade to a Pro or Advanced account which is $79/month when paid monthly ($48/month when paid annually) for the Pro and $321/month when paid monthly ($199/month when paid annually) for the Advanced.

Tracking Codes

One of the most important elements of your funnel, especially when you are using paid advertising, is tracking.

If you are using paid ad campaigns like Facebook ads, Google Adwords or any other platform, you are able to add your tracking codes or pixels to both Clickfunnels and LeadPages.

It is very easy to add, all you do is copy and paste the code into a section provided by the platforms.

A/B Testing

Both Clickfunnels and LeadPages allow you to perform split tests on your landing pages and funnels.

When setting up the split tests, they are both easy to implement for either of the platforms.

All you do is create your control, which is the first variation of your page. Then create a variation which is a variation of your control page.

Both Clickfunnels and LeadPages will take note of the conversions that you are testing and let you know which one is performing better.

You can then mark whichever page has the better conversions as the winner of the split test.

This is great if you want to see what type of factors affect your visitors and helps you improve the overall performance of your campaign.

Marketing Tools Integrations

Clickfunnels and LeadPages integrates with many other marketing tools to make your marketing efforts seamless.

Here is a full list of all the integrations that Clickfunnels has.

Here is a full list of all the integrations that LeadPages has.

If the marketing tool that you are looking for is not on the lists, then you can safely assume that it does not integrate but you can use the Zapier tool to help you connect one tool to the other.

Zapier is a web-based service that allows you to perform integrations with many different applications.   

Campaign Analytics

One thing I like about Clickfunnels and LeadPages is that it provides reporting on the performance of your campaign.

So you can see how a funnel or landing page that you created is performing and helps you make important decisions for your campaign.

Depending on how many pages there are in your funnel, Clickfunnels provides analytics for every page of the funnel.

The difference with LeadPages however is that several pages can make up a funnel which needs to be pieced together.

In that regard you must piece together your analytics for each page – so you do not get one global oversight like Clickfunnels provides.

This makes it a little more difficult to judge the overall performance of your funnel if several pages make up your funnel with LeadPages.

Here is what that looks like.

WordPress Plugin

If you have a WordPress website or blog you can integrate both Clickfunnels and LeadPages with their respective plugins.

This will allow you to use either Clickfunnels or LeadPages funnels or pages directly on your website or blog so that it looks as though the funnel or page is part of your website or blog.

This is just another way of directing visitors from your website or blog to your funnel or landing page but instead of going to a Clickfunnel or LeadPages domain, the users remain at your website or blog’s domain but still see your funnel or landing page.

That’s a pretty cool feature.

To see what this looks like for Clickfunnels you can take a look at Barbie Figueroa’s video where she explains how to marry Clickfunnels with your WordPress website.

To see what this looks like for LeadPages you can take a look at Inside Marketing Hero’s video.

Lead Notifications

LeadPages notifies you when you have generated a lead through one of your landing pages.

This is a great feature if you have many lead pages and you want to keep track of which one is helping you acquire leads.

It is not a major feature in my opinion as I am not too concerned about lead notifications but for those who want to know, you can receive these notifications directly to your email inbox.

Clickfunnels does not have this feature.

As I mentioned it is not a significant feature to have as you will have many emails notifying you of leads when you can simply log into the platform to check how the lead page is doing.

Dedicated Support

Clickfunnels and LeadPages both have support available but one is definitely a winner out of the two.

LeadPages offers phone, live chat and email ticket support. They also have a library of support documents in case you need any help and want to do it yourself.

Phone support is however only available with LeadPages Advanced package.

Clickfunnels only offers email ticket support. So if you have an urgent matter, then you’re pretty much screwed. You will need to submit your ticket and then wait for their support team to respond.

Usually responses can take a few hours and up to a day.

Email Autoresponder Integration

One important function of the funnel and lead page is the ability to capture leads and place them directly in your chosen email autoresponder.

Don’t yet have an email autoresponder? Here’s one that I reviewed that I currently use and recommend. 

Clickfunnels and LeadPages integrate with many email autoresponders and allows you to connect to them easily.

Here are all Clickfunnels’ email integrations.

Here are all LeadPages’ email integrations.

Once again, if you do not see your email service provider on the list, you can always use Zapier to integrate, provided Zapier allows the connection.

Sub Accounts

If you have a team working with you, you can assign them manager accounts where they have their own sub account and can work on projects for you.

This helps so you won’t have to give the worker, access to your username and password since doing so makes it very risky for you as the account holder since they can access your account settings and do anything with it.

LeadPages offers sub accounts only with their Advanced plan. That means you have to shell out a whopping $321/month or $199/month billed annually for this benefit. With their Advanced plan you get 5 sub accounts.

I noticed that Clickfunnels does have the feature but it appears non-functional.

Even when I searched for literature on the topic there was none.

I will assume that maybe it is a feature they intend to install in the future but not right now.

SEO Friendly Pages

Clickfunnels and LeadPages allow you to optimise your landing pages and funnels for SEO (search engine optimisation).

Although they both allow you to implement some on-page SEO I wouldn’t solely rely on this feature to help your landing pages or funnels show up in the search engines.

There are other things that you can do such as:

• Having your own domain and URL and including a keyword in that domain/URL.
• Use keywords in your funnel or landing page that you’d like to rank for
• Build a content map to help your funnel and landing pages align to the visitors needs and desires. Don’t just create a funnel for the sake of. Keep your visitor’s desires in mind.

In this Clickfunnels blog you can learn more about how to implement SEO into your funnel and landing pages. 

Web Hosting

The great thing about both Clickfunnels and LeadPages is that they provide their own web hosting.

So when you purchase a package with either platform, you do not have to look for separate hosting.

Both Clickfunnels and LeadPages host your funnels and landing pages on their servers. The only thing though is that when you host your funnels and landing pages with them, you must take on their domain.

For example, if you build a funnel with Clickfunnels, then your domain will be www.yourdomain.clickfunnels.com. If you build a landing page with LeadPages, your domain will be www.yourdomain.lpages.co.

This can look ugly if you are promoting your funnel or landing page and you may prefer to have your page align with your brand.

For that reason you can always use their domain assignment feature so you can replace their domains with your own.

Looking for cheap domains? Try Namecheap, Godaddy or Bluehost.

Domain Assignment

Clickfunnels and LeadPages both help you assign a custom domain to your funnels and landing pages making it more personal and branded to you.

I would strongly recommend that when starting on either Clickfunnels or LeadPages that you purchase a custom domain and connect it to Clickfunnels or LeadPages.

That way it is easier for your audience to find your funnels and landing pages and helps you create an identity for you, instead of one affiliated with the Clickfunnels or LeadPages domains.

Whilst you can purchase a separate domain from places like Godaddy, Namecheap or Bluehost, Clickfunnels allows you to claim a domain for free directly from their company for first time users.

If you have already claimed the domain then you can buy it at the retail price of $20 annually.

Customised HTML

What if you have an application, form, display banner or miscellaneous item that you want to install on your website using HTML?

Well both Clickfunnels and LeadPages have HTML elements that you can add to your funnel and landing pages to easily add these items to your pages.

For example, on a landing page that I designed with LeadPages to promote an affiliate product, I was easily able to add this gif banner to my page through their HTML feature.

So instead of adding an image and linking the image to your affiliate product, you can select the html code for the banner that your affiliate manager will provide to you and embed it on your page.

You can find the HTML widget in your LeadPages widget area.

The same for Clickfunnels. You can add the HTML element to your pages from your Clickfunnels editor.

Digital Asset Delivery

If you do not have an email autoresponder which you can use for delivery of digital products, or you have no place to host your documents, LeadPages and Clickfunnels digital assets delivery feature, allow you to store your documents on their platform and enable delivery when a user takes a specific action.

For example if you have a lead magnet that you want delivered to a lead when they opt in to a funnel, you must first add your digital asset to Clickfunnels from the digital asset menu.

Then you must set up outgoing emails so that Clickfunnels can send the email on your behalf.

Finally you must add the digital asset to the page where the opt in is being performed. This will be your opt in page.

LeadPages makes this process a lot easier for us.

To add your digital asset to LeadPages and have it delivered to your lead you only need to add the digital asset to the opt in page settings and LeadPages takes care of the rest.

There is no need to upload the digital asset and then select it on different pages. There is also no need to setup email SMTP settings for outgoing emails.

Adding a digital asset in LeadPages is a one-step process therefore eliminating the time and confusion that you get with Clickfunnels.

One Click Upsells

If you sell your own products or have an ecommerce store, the one click upsell feature is a great tool to help you increase the average order value of each order placed in your funnel and increase conversions.

Whilst I have never used LeadPages one click upsell feature (so I cannot say how easy or difficult the process is), they do have instructions on how to integrate this feature into a funnel you are managing.

The instructions look pretty simple, but when I read through them I do not like the technicality of the instruction.

It may be simple if you follow along slowly and take your time. If you do struggle to implement an upsell into your LeadPages funnel you can always fall back on the LeadPages support team for help.

Clickfunnels is a very simple process. You only need to drag and drop an upsell page into your funnel, design your page, add your product and that’s it.

You do not need to worry about any configuration.

Clickfunnels does all the hard work for you, so everything works smoothly.

Membership Areas

One special feature that Clickfunnels has, which is not integrated with LeadPages are membership sites.

A membership site allows you to house digital products such as a video library, ebooks or courses where free or paid members can get access via a username and password.

At one point LeadPages did offer a Wishlist membership site to Annual Pro members back in 2014 but it looks like this has been discontinued.

In any event, even if you no longer have access to this product with LeadPages you can always connect a LeadPages sales page to Wishlist separately if you want to.

Wishlist is a WordPress plugin so you must have a WordPress site to use this product.

Click this link to download your Wishlist plugin here.

Clickfunnels though has membership site features integrated into it so if you think you may want to create a membership site where your paying customers can get access to your products then you may want to consider Clickfunnels over LeadPages.

Affiliate Center

Clickfunnels helps you to offer affiliate commissions to affiliates for a product that you are selling.

Their affiliate center is great if you believe you have a great product, but need to get the word out about it.

By setting up an affiliate center, you can have people sign up and so be able to control their access to your product as an affiliate to promote it on your behalf.

The affiliate center is only available with Clickfunnels Etison suite however, so be prepared to spend at least $297/month for this feature.

Who Is Clickfunnels vs LeadPages For?

So now that you know the main features of Clickfunnels and LeadPages, this all probably does not make sense to you, if you do not really know how each product can help you in your business.

That’s what the next section is for. Simply follow your business model and read my unbiased view as to whether Clickfunnels or LeadPages can help you.

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work for affiliate marketing?

As an affiliate myself, I know how important sales funnels are for building email lists and guiding traffic to your affiliate product.

Even if you do not want to build an email list and you want to promote your affiliate product with advertorial type blog posts then you can use either Clickfunnels or LeadPages for this.

Because the affiliate funnel would be a simple two step funnel then you do not need any complicated software.

Both Clickfunnels and LeadPages are perfect for this. It will be up to you to decide how much you want to spend on your marketing tool to achieve this.

To remind you, Clickfunnels is $97/month and LeadPages is $37/month. Clickfunnels offers a free 14-day trial for you to test it out to see if you like working with it. Click here to get your free 14-day trial.

LeadPages offers a free 30-day trial. Click here to claim your free trial. 

Bottom line?

I would recommend LeadPages although both Clickfunnels or LeadPages are great. 

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work for bloggers? 

Can Clickfunnels or LeadPages replace a blogger’s website? Yes it can, but it is not feasible and I certainly do not recommend the software for traditional blogging.

If however you want to create a one off blog post, like I did in my one blog post strategy for promoting a product, then the software is a good one.  

A blog comes with so many moving parts. You need navigation menus, the ability to post as many blog posts as you can, the ability to embed contact forms, etc; you really and truly need a conventional website.

This is why I would recommend that you use a content management site like WordPress.

If you are ready to build your blog then you can head on over to my step-by-step guide where I teach you how to build your blog using WordPress and Bluehost as your webhost.

If you already have a website or blog and you really want to use Clickfunnels or LeadPages then they can be used as a lead generation tool.

For example, you may wish to generate leads for the provision of content upgrades.

Clickfunnels and LeadPages allow you to embed code into your website where contact forms can be installed on your blog to generate leads.

In this regard Clickfunnels and LeadPages are beneficial to bloggers.

With both Clickfunnels and LeadPages you cannot add an inline contact form to your website but you can add a link or button which pops open to a contact form. Here is an example of what LeadPages looks like on my blog.

Bottom line?

Don’t use Clickfunnels or LeadPages for your blog but use them for your lead generation tools.

Click here to claim your free Clickfunnels 14-day trial. 

Click here to claim your free LeadPages 30-day trial. 

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work to sell physical or digital products? 

I would give this question a resounding yes. Clickfunnels and LeadPages are perfect if you want to sell a physical or digital product.

Because of price point, I use LeadPages for all my digital products – it is cost effective and achieves everything that I need, to create a great sales funnel to sell my products.

It can design great opt in pages, sales pages and has easy to implement payment and email integrations.

Although I do not use upsells in my LeadPages funnels, I cannot comment on the difference between LeadPages and Clickfunnels, but if you are looking to increase the average order value of each purchase with upsells, then you may wish to consider whether Clickfunnels or LeadPages will give you better value.

I touched on this briefly here so you can go back and read my comment.

Bottom line?

Yes both Clickfunnels and LeadPages are perfect for your own products.

Click here to claim your free Clickfunnels 14-day trial. 

Click here to claim your free LeadPages 30-day trial. 

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work for ecommerce? 

Typically people use ecom-dedicated platforms like Woocommerce or Shopify to sell their ecom products.

Ecom funnels are however becoming very popular especially since it can help you drive massive sales to your business by focusing on a few core products from your ecom store.

This ensures that the customer only sees the specific products that you want them to see and that they are not given an overwhelming number of options.

In my opinion, the best platform for the ecom funnel is Clickfunnels. This is because they have specific well-thought out templates designed for ecom and makes the set-up process easy.

Although LeadPages do have ecom templates they are not as sophisticated as Clickfunnels.

You can use LeadPages for a simple product sale but if you want to include multiple products and have one time offers, upsells or downsells then I would strongly recommend Clickfunnels.

Want to see what an ecom funnel looks like in Clickfunnels? Watch the video below.

Bottom line?

Clickfunnels and LeadPages work for ecommerce but I would recommend using Clickfunnels for a more streamlined and easier process.

Click here to claim your free Clickfunnels 14-day trial. 

Click here to claim your free LeadPages 30-day trial. 

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work for network marketers? 

Like affiliate marketing, where you do not own the product and you are promoting it, you can use Clickfunnels or LeadPages.

A two step funnel is ideal for promoting network marketing products, although some funnels can be simple – such as a lead opt in and thank you page; to more complicated – such as a lead opt in page and onboarding page.

To help you decide which platform to use you may want to consider ease of building the type of funnel and price point.

LeadPages can work very well for network marketing funnels and so you really do not need the sophisticated elements of Clickfunnels.

Bottom line?

I would recommend a simple platform like LeadPages for this type of funnel. It is up to you to decide which platform you eventually decide to use.

Click here to claim your free Clickfunnels 14-day trial. 

Click here to claim your free LeadPages 30-day trial. 

Does Clickfunnels or LeadPages work for local businesses? 

If you are a local business and you want to generate leads for services that you provide, Clickfunnels and LeadPages are great options.

As you only need a lead generation funnel then you can consider both platforms but I would recommend LeadPages, again because of its simplicity. 

If you are conscious about money spent on your marketing tools, then LeadPages is a great alternative to an expensive product like Clickfunnels.

Bottom line?

Yes Clickfunnels and LeadPages are great for local businesses but I would recommend LeadPages.

Click here to claim your free Clickfunnels 14-day trial. 

Click here to claim your free LeadPages 30-day trial. 

How To Build a Funnel With Clickfunnels

How To Build a Funnel With LeadPages

Ready to create your own funnel and need some direction. Hire me to build your sales funnel.

Click here to get a free 14 day Clickfunnels trial

Click here to get a free 30 day LeadPages trial

The post Clickfunnels vs LeadPages appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

You must have an email marketing strategy and something as simple as a subject line becomes crucial when you realise that your leads are receiving your emails but not opening them.

So what exactly do you do?

Let’s examine your subject lines first. Once you have created your email list, the next most important piece of the puzzle is to have a catchy subject line.

The subject line must be such that, it can stop your readers from scrolling through their inbox and possibly skim past your emails?

Remember the leads that you have, probably receive over one hundred pieces of email per day. Make your emails stand out and scream open me.

Below I have created a list of some of the leading subject lines to use for a variety of cold emails you may be sending out in your campaigns.

Here’s what you will learn in this blog post:

• The type of subject lines to include in product launch emails
• The type of subject lines to include in ecommerce emails
• The best subject lines for outreach campaigns to get more replies
• Introduction to emoticons in email subject lines
• Best practices for writing email subject lines

The Type of Subject Lines to Include in Product Launch Emails

Preparing for a product launch is hard work. From creating the product, to promoting it, to gathering interest.

You really need a great email marketing plan to turn all those people who converted into interested prospects to paying customers.

Remember that your loyal and potential customers aren’t going to blindly purchase your new product.

You really need to send a message that proves that what you have to offer is useful to them and that you have a solution to their problems.

Having an effective product launch email series allows you to speak directly to your readers and enticing them to open the email in the first place all depends on catchy email subject lines.

The following are a few examples you can use in your own marketing campaign pertaining to your new product launch.

Product Launch Announcement 

There are two ways you can market a new product launch announcement via email.

You can start by building excitement before your product launches. One way I have done this is by creating an email sequence that acts as a teaser to gauge interest and reveal the big date.

Here are my email sequences that I wrote when I launched my first digital product. Pay attention to the high open rates.

As my product related to helping marketers generate affiliate sales without a huge website, I made sure that my subject lines mentioned some of their pain points, for example “I don’t want to start a new blog” or “the easy way… affiliate marketing”.

Another way to market a new product launch is to include the name of the product, the benefits and explaining its value to potential customers.

Also try offering incentives like bonuses or an early-access discount.

Product Launch Update

One thing to keep in mind when writing a subject line in your product launch email is to remove anything that sounds too spammy. Also, try not to use any overtly promotional words like “Buy Now.”

When I am launching a product, I often think about the reader and how they are likely to perceive my email.

I also want to encourage them to open the email so I like to keep my subject lines informative, creative and engaging.

For example, Mike Pearson of Stupid Simple SEO had a great subject line that made me want to open his email as I wanted to see what other people were saying about his course before I bought it.

Here’s how he delivered the message.

Upcoming Sales & Promotions

People love new products and new experiences, especially when they come at a discount! Personally, I am much more likely to open an email when there’s an offer directly mentioned in my inbox.

Example: “FYI: Your 50% Off Coupon Is Waiting For You!”

The more personal the subject line is, the better.

You can easily personalise a subject line with the settings provided in your email autoresponder. Here’s how it is done in Aweber.

Pre-Order of the Product

A company whose book you can take a page out of, is Apple.

They are the masters of pre-order campaigns. Their emails are always so well designed and straightforward with high-quality images.

With compelling subject lines such as, “Say Hello to the Future,” they are sure to grab the attention of their readers who are anxiously awaiting to see what new product they will be launching next.

As an online business owner, whether you are promoting your own product or service find some time to study the way that influential product owners are launching their own products and writing their emails, by opting into their email campaigns.

To be honest, this is exactly how I figure out what to say to my subscribers.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. If it’s working for big brands like Apple or Starbucks it can work for you.

Even if their brand may not be aligned with yours, key point is to find your competitor and study the type of campaigns they write to their own subscribers and copy them.

The Type Of Subject Lines To Include In Ecommerce Emails

A subject line can potentially block a potential customer or client from opening your sales email.

The best subject lines are creative, interest provoking and informative, but they never give away too much information.

I have compiled a few subject lines for cold emails any store owner could send to generate sales:

Holiday Sales 

The holiday season is a time when inboxes are crowded with an overload of sales and promotions from stores wanting more sales.

This is the time to make your magical mantra subject line and get your subscribers opening your email.

For Thanksgiving, an example of a great subject line could incorporate family, food, football and giving thanks.

For Christmas, you could add humour with subject lines incorporating Santa, feeling merry, escaping the winter weather, holiday cards and more.

Always remember how you can give value when writing your subject lines.

Example: “5 Fine Wines That Go With Turkey.”

The reason why this subject line works is because it is not sales oriented.

Remember that no one likes being sold to, so by writing a subject line that will help the reader learn about different wines that can go well with turkey will not only get them opening the email but potentially generate click through rates and eventually sales for winos who enjoy turkey at Thanksgiving.

Cart Abandonment 

The ultimate goal of sending a cart abandonment email is to convert the abandoned cart into a sale.

Providing a friendly reminder to your customer that’s clear and clever will remind them that they were shopping from your website recently.

Your subject line here should serve as a light bulb moment to your customer and lead them to revisit your site and finish up their shopping.

Example: “Oops, You Left Something In Your Basket!”

Other great cart abandonment emails that can drive massive sales is offering a discount as an incentive to the shopper to complete their purchase.

A Birthday Celebration 

Every year, one of your subscribers are celebrating their birthdays with you for the first time after doing business with you.

This is a built-in opportunity to build customer relationships with them through email marketing.

Connecting with your subscriber on a personal level is very important for repeat business, so including the recipient’s first name in the subject line is a way to engage and show you remembered their special day.

Also, most people enjoy being acknowledged on their birthday so a birthday celebration email will make them feel special.

Example: “Happy Birthday _____, A Special Gift For You!”

Welcome Email 

A welcome email is a very important marketing strategy as this fulfils your subscriber’s expectation and also helps you position yourself as a professional and reliable business.

This is your time to shine and make a great first impression!

Welcome emails are also known to get the highest open rate amongst other emails.

This is a great opportunity to include a call-to-action in the subject line for introduction emails. Should they download your product? Do you want them to check out your website?

In eCommerce a good strategy is offering a time-limited discount to encourage subscribers to make their first purchase when they join your email list.

Here is how Food52 was able to accomplish this in the body of their email:

Here is what their subject line looks like:

Whilst the subject line is playful and friendly, I do feel it could be a bit stronger by offering an incentive to open the email.

For example, Welcome to Food52! Grab $10 Off 

Here’s how The Real Real did it, which clearly demonstrates what I am speaking about:

Offering a discount in your welcome email can be used for both new visitors and customers. Even if someone has made a purchase get them to come back to your website by offering a discount. 

For example, they may have purchased a product at the full price. How about rewarding them and offering a discount on their next purchase?

Try and it see if it works

Thank You Email 

Letting your subscribers know how grateful you are for their support shows gratitude and is powerful for your business.

Personal connections are key and having subject lines for thank you emails is an easy way to build those relationships and earn respect from your customers or clients.

Even if the recipient doesn’t open the email, they are still able to see your appreciation, which is always a good thing.

Example: “Thank You For Your Review, We Appreciate Your Support.”

Repeat Purchase

The key to a profitable business isn’t the initial sale, it’s having repeat customers!

Email marketing offers an effective way to increase customer retention.

Sending a reminder to restock on an item that they purchased a few months ago, asking for feedback about their shopping experience or checking in with your customers to see if they need anything are all great examples of emails to send for repeat purchases.

Include subject lines for follow up emails aimed at nurturing their next purchase.

This could also be a good time to throw in a discount on their next purchase.

Example: “Share The Love – Review Your Purchased Item(s) Today!”

Outreach Campaigns to Generate More Replies

If you are a blogger and you have started outreach campaigns to get influencers, brands or other bloggers to work with you, I have learnt that there are some email subject lines that will make your emails stand out.

I’m telling you now, that outreach campaigns are exhausting and can be discouraging when no one is responding to your emails.

It really isn’t you. It’s actually your email subject line.

Remember that the brand, influencer or blogger may be receiving hundreds, if not thousands of emails per day.

For your emails to generate more replies, you have to craft an interesting out of the box subject line that is going to make the recipient curious to open your email.

The best cold email subject lines for outreach campaigns are compelling and piques the interest of the reader.

You want to capture their attention and get a response back.

Here’s how I would write a cold email subject line:

• Ask a question about a specific topic – “Best tip for online marketing?”
• Name a unique characteristic or idea that the prospect cares about – “Heard you like jazz on the avenue?”
• A simple straightforward message – “Can I join your Pinterest group board?”
• Ask for their help about a certain subject – “What would you do to get traffic to a blog?”
• Share a numbered list with them. This drives interest into seeing what your email is about “Here’s something your readers will LOVE”

Using Emoticons in Your Subject Lines

You may have seen marketers using emoticons very recently.

This is a great way to engage and connect with your subscribers by making your email subject lines fun and inviting.

Marketers are using emoji’s to stand out in their subscribers’ inboxes and to emphasise an idea and add expression.

Some businesses are also using a single emoticon in their subject line for branding purposes.

This makes their emails easy to recognise in their recipients’ inbox. You can also use emoji’s to compliment your message.

Using emoticons in your email subject line is as easy as copying and pasting the emoji from a website. I love using EmojiPedia for my emoticons.

Not all emoticons show up properly on all mobile devices and desktops, so send yourself a test email to ensure that it’s visually appealing.

Adding emoji’s in your email subject line can be an effective and attention generating technique that will have your recipients opening and engaging with your marketing campaigns.

Example: “Open up! We’ve just launched our first digital product”

Best Practices for Email Subject Lines

I hope that you found this blog post helpful and you get some inspiration for your own emails.

Email subject lines hook your subscriber’s attention and if they are not opening your emails consider doing a split test until you are able to increase the open rate of your emails.

Here are some best practices for writing your own compelling subject lines:

• Personalisation – Showing that you care for your subscriber and that they are more than just a sale is very important. People would rather open emails from those they know and care about so offering something of value, being personable and building relationships through your subject line is key.
• Length Matters – keep your subject line short and to the point.
• Keep Them Curious – Generating a little mystery in your subject line requires your readers to open the email so that they can get more information. These types of subject lines have a much higher open rate.
• Share Offers & Promotions – Open your subject line with a deal or a discount. When there’s an offer directly mentioned in the subject line, your potential customers are more likely to read on to see what kind of savings they will be receiving on items they already have an interest in.
• Create a Sense of Urgency – Subject lines that create a sense of urgency have a higher opening retention rate. Offering your customer a discount if they act within a certain time frame is a great example of creating urgency.
• Test Your Subject Lines – It is important to always test your emails before sending them out to your email list. Check the length, verbiage, capitalisation and punctuation to see how your message will be received to the subscriber.
• Keep Their Goal In Mind – Keep your subscribers goals in mind when writing your subject line. Pique their interest without giving away too much information. Tell your subscribers what your email is about so they know what to expect in the content inside.

It is crucial to craft a compelling subject line if you want higher open rates. While this may seem like a simple and easy part of your message, this is what will make or break your marketing campaign.

Think of your subject line as the first impression you are making on your potential customers and recipients. Always remember to be specific and clear about the topic of the email. Great communication will lead to great business relationships!

How are your email open rates? Is it poor? Are you doing great? Let me know in the comments.

Cheers

The post The Most Effective Email Subject Lines For Cold Email Marketing appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

In case you don’t know what Aweber is, it is an email marketing software that enables many entrepreneurs and small business owners to create and send emails that their customers and followers love.

I have spoken extensively about why you need to build an email list and send emails to your followers rather than relying solely on social media platforms.

Well Aweber is the one tool that I use to build my email list and I am going to give you an honest review of my experience using it, so you can decide whether it is for you.

I am going to tell you the good, the bad and the not so good about this marketing tool.

Let’s start.

Aweber In A Nutshell

Aweber has been one of the leading email marketing providers in the marketing industry, having been founded by Tom Kulzer in 1998.

Anyone in the internet marketing arena, is probably familiar with or has used Aweber at some point in their marketing.

So what does this marketing tool do? It helps you to communicate with your subscribers and market to them with automated email campaigns.

They exist for those who struggle with having enough hours in the day to complete the task. The process allows for complete automation of marketing emails with tools that launch, tag, and segment based on subscriber behaviour.

This is what I like about automated marketing tools, because it helps me to free up my time and focus on the more important things in my business, which is networking and making sales.

So if you find that you’re networking or following up with your leads manually, consider using an automated email marketing tool like Aweber.

I remember in my network marketing days, I would follow up with my leads by reaching out to them in a Facebook or Instagram message or via SMS message. Aweber would have definitely come in handy back in those days.

Email List Segmenting

Segmenting is a vital part of the key features offered by Aweber. Segmentation is the process of sorting your subscriber list based on specific actions taken by your subscribers.

The division creates subgroups, and the subgroups vary based on behaviour, interest, and characteristics.

Segments work well with keeping track and reaching out to groups of subscribers within a list who have similarities.

For example if you want to segment your email list by those who have opened your emails within the last month, then you can do that.

You will be able to tag these subscribers as active and send them more important or frequent emails since they continue to engage with your content.

If you want to segment your email list by those who have clicked on a particular link, showing that they are interested, you can do that and only send an email to that segment.

This is useful, for example, if you want to retarget persons who may be interested in a product you have on sale. If they clicked on the link to visit the product, you can segment the link clickers and send them a more targeted message where you offer an incentive to continue with their purchase. 

The segmentation process helps to streamline emails that are more result-focused instead of task-focused. It makes it easier to send the right emails to the right people. Personalising your list, based on segmentation, is a great way to increase click-through rates and reduce the unsubscribed rate.

Setting up the segmenting process is quick and easy with only a few clicks. Simply go to the email list you want to segment, select from the list of segment options, then click search.

Once you save a particular segment, you will not have to create that segment again, unless you choose to make changes to it.

I use segmentation all the time to help increase my open and clickthrough rates and to send special offers to those who I know are interested in my content.

Email Campaign Automation

The driving force behind an automated email campaign is to organise your subscribers into particular email lists so they get the most appropriate emails that matter to them.

There is a misconception that the email marketing automation process is challenging to set up, but, it’s pretty easy to get started, or so Aweber says.

Ok! Full transparency here…

I have never used the automation campaign before.

When I tried to set up my own campaigns in the first few months of starting Aweber (circa August 2016), I had no clue about what the campaign process was and why it was necessary.

At the time, it was a bit overwhelming, having just started internet marketing and learning everything I could about it. I completely gave up the first time and never made it a priority.

But studying the automated campaigns now, I have to say that it really is only useful if you want to free up more of your time and want a way to segment your list automatically.

For example, you can segment your list based on the country your subscribers are from and send them specific emails.

Other ways to auto-segment the list is by the source of the email and ad tracking. You can also apply tags to your subscribers and segment them that way.

If you have no issue applying tags and segmenting your list manually, then the automated campaigns offers nothing elaborate to boast about. 

Sign Up Forms

Aweber also comes with sign-up forms but truthfully, I rarely use them, instead opting to create my sign up forms, or lead capture pages with a designated lead capture page builder like LeadPages. You can read my review of LeadPages here.

In my opinion, Aweber sign up forms appear outdated and just do not have the design factor that I am looking for.

Here’s what they look like on my website

If you do decide to use Aweber’s sign up forms on your website, they allow your customers to subscribe to your email list effortlessly.

So if you want a simple sign up box where people can sign up for content to your blog, then opt to use Aweber’s sign up form as an in-content lead box or as a side column lead box.

To design your sign up form use Aweber’s form generator. It customizes the forms according to your specific needs. You have the choice to change the buttons, purpose, appearance, and entry fields on the form.

Once you have decided on the look and style of your form, you will have to add it to your website. You can add the form to any or all pages of your site with javascript code that Aweber gives to you.

Simply copy and paste the code where you want the form to appear.

Another feature is the split test option. The split-test is a great tool to use to see which form is most attractive to your subscribers. Finding out which sign-up form works best can be useful in subscriber growth.

In order to use the split test tool however you must create two sign up forms under the same email list. The split test option will only be accessible this way.

Email Templates and Content Editor

The content editor is nothing spectacular in my opinion.

Aweber recently upgraded their content editor to a drag and drop interface so it is easy to organise your content into beautiful emails by dragging the elements from the left into the center to create the email.

They also offer pre-made and tailor-made templates that meet your branding and style needs. This is a time-saver for the busy entrepreneur.

You have the choice to change a pre-existing template. You can modify the colour, background and font, as well as include video or images in your content.

I never really used any of the templates that are available but they do help your emails stand out if you are the creative type.

Email Types

The type of emails you can create include legacy series, broadcast emails or blog broadcasts. 

Legacy series is a single series of emails that is set up so a subscriber can receive your emails in a particular order.

For example, once a person subscribes, you can set up the series so that they receive your first email immediately, then your second email, a day later, your third email on the third day, etc.

The single series process is straightforward in its approach to send emails in a sequence pattern.

If you forego the single series, broadcast messages are available.

A broadcast message is simply sending everyone on your list the same email, whether your broadcast is an announcement that you are launching a product or have a sale.

Broadcast messages are quick and easy to create. Simply select the broadcast message item, create  your email and then send.

If you have an RSS feed on your blog you can connect your blog to the Aweber platform to send blog posts as emails. Another easy way to do this and to help generate traffic back to your blog is to compose a broadcast email with a link to your blog. 

Integrations

There are many online applications and services that integrate with Aweber making your entire marketing arsenal seamless.

Currently, there are over 150 listed applications.

Integration allows for a smooth merge of your marketing campaign with the rest of the online business strategies you may use often.

Some of the most popular integrations include:

• Facebook
• WordPress
• PayPal
• Clickfunnels
• OptimizePress

If you don’t see a particular service on the list, Aweber is set up to assist in new integration opportunities.

Email Tracking and Reporting – Open Rates and Clickthroughs

I don’t often pay attention to this, but email tracking and analytics are available to view at any time and can help with the growth of your business.

With the available reports, you will have the chance to see click through rates, open rates, purchases and more. It’s handled all in just a few simple clicks.

So let’s say you want to see what percentage of your list opened a particular email and how many people clicked on a link within the email, you can view the email report showing you the performance of that email.

Open and click through rates help to provide valuable information about the activity of the subscribers on your list.

Tracking this report can help you determine the success level of your email campaign and assist you in understanding whether your subject lines need rewriting or your content is engaging.

You can then use this information to split test different subject lines and email content. 

If you’d like to know whether email drives purchases on your website you can also set up tracking to track this important metric.

With the help of these analytics, you will have the ability to adjust your current campaign based on the numbers, and track emails aimed at increasing website traffic.

Keeping track of the analytical knowledge is important in learning what works best for your subscribers.

Support

One thing I must say about Aweber support is that it is phenomenal.

They do offer live support 24/7 via email and chat. They are also available by phone from 8am-8pm Monday – Friday. There is a ticket support system via email to work on technical issues promptly and in a timely order.

Usually when I report an issue with my email marketing I get a response within an hour. I don’t have any qualms at all about their support.

Besides technical support they also implemented a knowledge base that is an extensive list of frequently asked questions. The knowledge base contains answers ranging from questions about your account to how to use the service. It’s easily accessible because it’s divided into different categories.

There is also a blog on the website. There are many how-to articles and articles with advice on what works well and new options to try. If you happen to be looking for marketing tips, make sure to check out their blog.

Deliverability

Having the ability to deliver emails is crucial to any marketer.

Who wants to compose an email, click send and then that email lands in your subscriber’s junk mail?

The goal is always to get your emails in the inboxes of your subscribers. Once your emails are seen, you open availability to increase the opportunity for future opens and more clicks and engagement.

Aweber knows that deliverability is a key point for marketing emails which is why their focus is on securing a high performance score as determined my Sender Score.

Sender Score is an email deliverability firm that measures the performance of email servers, rating them on the quality and reputation of the emails they send.

According to Sender Score, Aweber has a high score of 97-98.

Tom Kulzer developed one of the first email autoresponders in 1998. His experience over the course of two decades allows him to provide insight into the best ways to get an email delivered to an inbox.

The in-house monitoring team also monitors reports of undeliverable emails 24/7. The data found in the reports help to identify and remove suspicious or low-quality emails from the list.

Is the Aweber Marketing Software For You?

With the information available for Aweber and based on your own trials of other autoresponders, it is up to you to determine if this is the best fit.

Aweber provides several benefits that help to lessen the load of an already overwhelmed small business owner or entrepreneur.

Many of their products have an initial free period that may be worth trying to see if the experience works well for you.

Click here to get Aweber’s free 30 day trial.

The post Aweber Review – Email Marketing Automation For Marketers & Bloggers appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

When we grow our email list and see the numbers increasing day by day, it’s easy to get excited at the possibility of every one of those leads converting into a paying client.

But unless your follow up email strategy is on point, your email list can be as useless as a dead horse with very little chance of generating sales from your subscribers.

When writing your follow up email sequence, place yourself in your prospect’s position. As a cold lead, they are already sceptical as they have only seen you once and don’t know exactly what to expect.

Their guards are up because they’ve probably already deciphered that you only wish to use them as a pawn in your marketing. They’re definitely waiting for you to mess up, so your emails need to show that you’re different from other marketers.

To do this, you have to use nurturing strategies that help to break the ice and get them to know you before you even ask for the sale.

In this post I will show you exactly how to strategise for best results with a cold email list, and how to warm them up for sales.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

• How to make a first impression with your welcome email
• How many emails to include in your sales email strategy
• What content to include in your sales emails    
• How to write the perfect sales pitch
• What to do when leads don’t convert  

How To Make A First Impression With Your Welcome Email

Even if you know that your end goal is to convert your lead into a paying customer or client, you do not want to start your email series with a sales pitch.

It is the biggest turn off for a lead who just came through your lead capture opt-in page and barely has had any time to get to know you. Except maybe for a few videos they saw of you on your website or a few articles you wrote here and there.

Your first welcome email is to do just that. Welcome the lead.

Acknowledge that they have made it on to your email list and thank them for doing so. Too many times we take this step for granted, but many of my leads respond to my welcome email by thanking me for my content or explaining why they decided to join my email list.

The fact that you can get a lead to respond, means that you have already started building the relationship and gives you an opportunity to demonstrate that you’re in fact a real person on the other end of the email.

So many leads who come onto an email list, know that your emails are automated. By adding a personal touch and some human-ness to the email, gives you points and helps you stand out from other marketers.

Another element of the welcome email is setting out the objective of the email campaign. You may wish to inform your leads why you created the email list, for example, to provide helpful insights into how to do affiliate marketing or to give tips on how to use Facebook ads for a business.

Whatever the purpose, set it out clearly so that the lead knows what to expect from you so they may decide whether they wish to stick around or leave.

It is also wise at this point to pre-frame your lead by mentioning your product or service.

Whilst the first email is not meant to be a sales pitch, briefly referring to your product or service invites the lead to become acquainted with it so they know that you do have an additional resource (albeit paid) that they can use to help them solve their problems.

Mentioning it here gives you enough time to prepare the lead for the sale down the line.    

How Many Emails To Include In Your Sales Email Strategy

They say that the fortune is in the follow up and it is true.

Every lead that comes through your funnel, is likely to contemplate making a purchase from you after seeing an offer seven or more times. Some even say that it takes 12 hits before a purchase is made.

Therefore when creating your email strategy and wondering how many emails you should include in your sales email series, I would recommend seven.

Of course you can have more or less, but the reason why I suggest seven is because it gives you enough time to provide a lot of value to the lead whilst warming them up for your offer.

You will see later on in this post how I structure my emails.

It will also make sense why seven is such a significant number. If you were to make your email series shorter, then there is the risk that you will have to include so much information in your emails that it can lead to overwhelm.

When you lengthen the email cycle as well as space them out, for example including two-day intervals you have a higher chance of the lead taking in your information, learning from it, then seeing the benefit of your offer and how it can help them.

What Content To Include In Your Sales Emails   

When writing a targeted email series dedicated to selling a product or offering a service I always have a beginning, middle and end.

The Beginning

At the beginning, which is the first email they receive, I like to welcome the lead so that they know who I am. Introduce myself and help them understand why they have joined the email list and what they can look forward to.

I also do some general housekeeping my asking them to whitelist my email so that it keeps me out of the spam box.

I do this in a way that allows the reader to see the benefit of doing so, such as they will keep updated with all material sent their way or they will never miss any important news that matter to them.

In the beginning I do not want to pursue the sale just yet as I am still in the nurturing phase. My aim therefore is to only break the ice, say hello and keep it moving.

The Middle

The middle is where I demonstrate to the lead my expertise in the niche. It usually spans emails two to four.

For example, if the service that is being offered is rental space, I want to provide some type of value within two or three emails that help to educate the lead.

Even if you are writing emails for an eCommerce product, don’t be afraid to spend some time providing education to the lead about your product.

For example, you can write content about how a particular product can be used, how it can benefit their day to day life or what alternative products would be useful to them.

Sometimes people may not know that they need a product or service and this is where you need to literally spell it out to them so they can see why it makes sense to invest in the purchase.  

The End 

This is where I get serious. I kick it up a notch and go for the punch line in emails five, six and seven.

The end is where I am telling the lead that I want their money.

After all the value that you have previously provided, don’t forget to use this time to ask for the sale.

Many email writers are afraid of asking their subscribers to make purchases because they do not want to drive them away or turn them off. But that is the main reason why you asked them to join your email list in the first place anyway.

You are running a business. It is a reasonable expectation that you want to be profitable and you can only do that by offering an exchange to your subscribers.

When asking for the sale I always pre-frame my subscribers by preluding to it in the beginning and middle emails.

So it makes it a natural flow that the next thing to do is get the sale.

When asking for the sale I do so over three emails:

1. The first one is a soft pitch directing the lead where they can purchase the product or service.

2. The second email is a hard pitch paying attention to getting the sale today. I offer incentives such as a time-sensitive discount, gift or free downloadable knowledge product to encourage the subscriber to make a purchase today. 

3. The third email I remind the subscriber about the offer and give a final warning of the time-sensitive bonuses.

I have observed that by adding time-sensitive bonuses can really get your subscribers to take action and increase your conversion rates.

Related Article: 

How To Build A Profitable Email List Step by Step

How To Write The Perfect Sales Pitch

So let’s put everything together with some examples of how you can ask your subscriber for the sale.

Often times marketers don’t know how to convince their subscribers to take out their credit cards and buy, so I have scrutinised sales emails of other marketers and broken it down for you.

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Here is one of Michelle’s sales emails, where she is promoting the sale of her course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Michelle appears to have only one email in her sales email series. She goes for the sale in the first email which for me is a big no!

Where’s the relationship building? Where’s the wooing?!

It would appear that she incorporates all the points of my email series in this one email.

She starts by delivering the lead magnet in her first paragraph.

In her second to sixth paragraph she shares a bit of knowledge about her niche – affiliate marketing – by demonstrating her expertise and authority on the subject.

This kind of value then leads into her pitching her course about affiliate marketing.

Although she mentions that the readers can check out her bonuses, I’m not keen on the fact that she has not broken down the bonuses within this email, which makes it easier for the reader.  

Frankly I don’t like the structure of this email as everything’s all meshed together in one. I do think a longer series could allow her to connect more with her readers.   

Create And Go   

Pay attention to this next sales email by Create and Go, which I think is the ideal way that an email should be structured.

This email is actually the seventh email in a sales email series where they delivered an email course over five days then sold their Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course in the sixth and seventh emails.

Notice how in the first few paragraphs they provide a bit of proof about their success with Pinterest and how it helped one of their clients.

This is very influential to subscribers to encourage them to make a purchase.

I really like how straightforward they were about describing their course so the reader knows what they’re going to get.

Also notice how they include incentives and bonuses to get the reader to buy today.

In their sales email they employ several urgency tactics, such as highlighting that the bonuses will be theirs if the subscribers purchased today.

They also stress that the discount is for a “limited time” and “will be taken down very soon”.

All in all this email scored well in my eyes and is one that I would recommend you follow.   

Dan Henry

The final sales pitch email is by a guy named Dan Henry.

His email followed a series of 9 emails altogether and this one is eight out of nine.

By the time the email came around I knew exactly what he was selling as most of the emails concentrated on the product.

He “sold” the product mainly through testimonials and social proof so it’s a great way to create credibility by showing that other people are getting results.

In this sales email, Dan uses emotions to empathise with his readers. By touching on the feelings of your subscribers you can almost always get them to relate to you or a particular person that you are describing.

In this case he focuses on Corey’s near-broke position and how he resurrected himself by taking Dan’s course.

This is a great strategy as when people see how it was has worked for other people who are “just like them”, they tend to take action quicker.

Another thing that exudes from Dan’s email is his confidence.

Notice how he keeps it real by telling his readers what his objective is. That is, to get results.

I must say he sounds convincing and it’s different because so many marketers disguise their sales pitches by sugar coating and making it look fancy. 

Even though Dan does not offer incentives for you to buy, I think he did a pretty good job in his tone and the use of social proof.

I like how he keeps it real and I would actually buy his course after reading this email.

From these three sales emails you should now have some inspiration for how to write your own sales email.

Take some elements from each email and go right ahead and create your own.  

What To Do When Leads Don’t Convert  

Not all your leads are going to convert.

That is the reality of email marketing. When you look at industry standards for activity within email marketing in eCommerce, you will find that sales conversions account for 1-5%.

I have not been able to find any statistics that show the sales conversion rates for service-based or product-based businesses.

So what happens when you do not convert leads? Well either those leads will drop off, this is where list cleaning comes in, or your leads may remain engaged with you and make a purchase months or years down the line.

Even though it takes at least 7-10 reminders for a subscriber to purchase your product, some people may only ever buy your product after months of following you.

So the lesson from this is to remain consistent in your email marketing efforts and continue to provide value and build the relationship.

Wrapping Up

As a marketer, always have an end goal for your email marketing, which ultimately should be converting your subscribers into sales.

There are good and bad ways of building a relationship for sales through email marketing and I have outlined the better steps to take when you generate your first subscribers.

Let’s summarise those steps:

1. Don’t start selling from your first email. Learn to get acquainted with your subscribers with a welcome email that supports relationship building.

2. An email series of 7-10 emails is ideal for converting subscribers into paying customers.

3. Include as much value as you can within those emails by pre-framing the subscriber for your product or service.    

4. One to three of those emails has to be a hard sell. Learn how to master the sale by studying other marketer’s emails and taking a few key points and implementing them in your own.

Email marketing is a skill that you have to learn and it is the easiest to learn by doing and seeing what works for you.

Not all email lists are made equal so study your own efforts and work on improving it every day.   

Cheers,

The post 6 Ways to Warm Up A Cold Email Lead For Sales appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

This blog post was inspired by an email I received from a reader of the blog who was in the direct sales industry.

Her question to me was:

One thing I’m stumped on as well is what value to give others … I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

I realised that a lot of people knew they had to get leads into their business but did not really know the process for getting those leads.

So I decided to create this piece of content in the hope that it will give you some insight into what you should be paying attention to, on your online journey.

What You Will Learn:

• What are leads and why you need them in your business
• How to attract leads with a lead magnet
• What’s the best format for your lead magnet
• How to create your first lead magnet
• How to promote your lead magnet
• 3 Major reasons why you may not be getting leads in your business

What Are Leads and Why You Need Them In Your Business

Leads are people who may be interested in what you have to offer. They are prospects who have seen or engaged with your business before and have asked for more information from you, to help them consider whether they want your offer.

So let’s say for example, you have a blog and on that blog you have created a content upgrade for A Blogging Blueprint Guide.

The person who provides their name and email address to receive that content upgrade, becomes a lead or subscriber that you can re-market to via email.

Consider the example of a brick and mortar store. When someone walks into a store, they become a lead to the store owner as someone who may purchase their item.

You can therefore see and understand why having leads in your business is necessary.

If every lead you generate to your business has the potential to purchase your product or service, then that lead is profitable and helps your business make money.

So if your business, whatever it may be, is not getting leads on a daily basis, then that is a major problem.

If no one knows that you are open for business and they are not seeing your content or you are not talking to them about your content, then there is no way for them to be inspired or encouraged to purchase your product or service and you should aim to fix that.

That is what this blog post is for and I hope that by the end, you will work on generating your first lead or subscriber for your business.

Once you know how to generate a lead, you will know how to get more of them as it’s simply a matter of repeating the process.

How To Attract Leads With A Lead Magnet

First of all, let’s address the topic of what exactly is a lead magnet.

A magnet attracts things to it right? Well a lead magnet is something that attracts leads to it.

So it is any piece of content that will attract your visitor to become a lead. They become a lead by exchanging their contact details, whether their name and email address, for that piece of content.

Therefore if you’d like to generate leads for your business, consider creating a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet should be something that is of a high perceived value by the visitor. Think for a moment, about your niche and what do you perceive as valuable information, that you know, that you can teach to others?

This should stir your ideas for your own lead magnet.

My subscriber said that

I’m feeling like I can’t yet position myself that way as I’m still trying to figure it all out.

Don’t think that you cannot create a valuable piece of content because you’re new to all of this. I like to think that everyone has something that they can teach to others. If you’re struggling for ideas here are a few places you can go to for help:

• Ask people who represent your ideal client or customer what their biggest problem is?
• Go to niche-related forums and see what people are asking. Don’t know any forums? Ask Google.
• Do you belong to any Facebook groups? Get suggestions from the members by asking a question about their biggest problems.
• Look at what your competitors are doing. Model after their lead magnets. You can even opt into their email sequence to see what they’re saying to their leads.

And if you’re still unsure what valuable content you can create, there are websites that can help you with this by offering their own products for sale which you can then give away.

These products are known as Private Label Rights products. In internet marketing, private label rights is where the author of the product sells the intellectual property rights to the purchaser, giving the purchaser the right to use their work and mark it as their own.

So if seller A creates an article or eBook and sells it to person B, person B can now claim to be the author of the article or eBook when they buy the private label rights to the product.

Some great PLR websites are:

• IDplr.com
• The PLR store
• Resellers Superstore

If you are concerned about creating your own valuable content to be used as a lead magnet, then you can purchase products from the above websites and use it as your own lead magnet.

What’s The Best Format For Your Lead Magnet

A lead magnet can come in the form of a PDF report, an eBook, a video, a short email course, a podcast, a checklist, a workbook. The list is endless.

You can decide what form suits you and your audience and if you don’t know, then split test it.

The form may also depend on what you want to teach. Do you need to be visual in conveying your information? Maybe a video is the best way to deliver the message.

Can the information be documented and will be easy to understand? Then text may be the better option.

How To Create Your First Lead Magnet

Make sure that your lead magnet looks professional and attractive. Even if you do have a good piece of content to give away, sometimes the way our lead magnet is designed can turn a would-be prospect off.

It can also lead to unsubscribes if there is no motivation to finish going through the content because of a lack of proper attention in compiling the lead magnet.

For designing eBooks, PDF reports or any text document, I would recommend Canva or PicMonkey. These design tools are awesome for crafting the perfect report.

For creating videos you can use Screencast-O-Matic to record your video and upload it to YouTube or Wistia.

If you’d like to incorporate images into your lead magnets you can use Unsplash which has some beautiful, royalty free images or Shutterstock which provides millions of royalty-free stock images.

Aside from the design, make sure that your headlines for your lead magnets are interesting.

No one is going to opt in for your lead magnet if the hook is boring. Here are a few things to consider when writing your headline:

• Does it solve a problem? Example, 21-day challenge to lose belly fat
• Make it specific. Example, 10 ways to work from anywhere in the world
• Is it easily digestible? Example, free home-buyers 15 point checklist
• Does it arouse curiosity? Example, learn how I generated $10,000 in under 2 months without a product. This last one I actually did and wrote an eBook about it.

How To Promote Your Lead Magnet

Where exactly does your lead magnet fit into your marketing? Obviously it needs to be the centre of everything that you do for your business because it is going to help you meet new people who you may end up working with one day.

If you have a website or a blog, you can start filtering your visitors by installing your lead magnet there. If you’re using WordPress as your content management software, you can install your lead magnet on the top bar using a plug in like WPFront. Do you see that top bar right on top of this blog post? That’s what it will look like.

If you don’t yet have a blog, learn how to start one here. 

You can also use LeadPages to create your landing pages and publish it on your WordPress website or blog by using the LeadPages plugin.

If you do not have a website or blog but still want to get leads for your business, LeadPages can act as a standalone landing page which you can promote via traffic channels such as Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

This is how I am able to generate leads from Facebook by simply adding a link to my landing page and asking people to opt in for my lead magnet.

I do the same for Pinterest (you can check out Pinterest Traffic Avalanche for a Pinterest traffic strategy).

3 Major Reasons Why You May Not Be Getting Leads In Your Business

So you may already have implemented some steps to getting leads but you’re finding it difficult to get one person to bite.

Here are a few things to consider:

You do not have enough traffic

Traffic is an absolute necessity for any business. From traffic you get leads. So if your traffic numbers are low, then this could be a good indication as to why you’re not getting any leads into your business.

Consider traffic generation strategies that increase the number of visitors to your website. The more people that see your website, the more people are likely to opt in for your lead magnet if it’s a good one. 

A good opt in rate for any lead magnet is 40-50%. So if you have 95 visitors to your landing page per day, that would mean that you can potentially have 38-48 leads per day.

Increase your traffic and get more leads.

People do not want your lead magnet

As already mentioned, if your lead magnet is boring or not enticing enough, people are not going to opt into it.

A good way to see what type of lead magnet works, is to test it with your audience.

I would recommend having two to three different types of lead magnets (if you are just getting started and don’t yet know your audience, make your lead magnet brief content) and see what is converting.

Once you know what your audience wants you can then create better lead magnets based on their desires.

Your landing page is not attractive

How your landing page/lead magnet looks to a visitor, is a good indication of whether they will trust you enough to provide their contact details in exchange for your lead magnet.

Poorly designed landing pages can cause visitors to abandon the site without even considering what it has to offer. When designing your landing page, I recommend using software that will create professional looking websites.

I use LeadPages because it is inexpensive at $37/month and their templates are beautiful. Do not be tempted to use free landing page software. Some do not allow you to track important elements of your marketing, their functionality is clumsy and frankly they can make your website look spammy.

When you’re starting a business, be prepared to invest in these tools if you want to stand out and be considered an expert by your audience.

Wrapping Up

I have given you the 411 on leads and how to get them for your business. These steps can be applied to any business model.

In fact, if you know how to create a lead magnet and what type of lead magnet to use in your business, then you’re on your way to selling your products and services.

Here’s a useful and very simple formula for you to remember when building any business:

Traffic + Leads = Sales

That’s it! That’s all there is to generating sales. Have a stead flow of traffic from traffic channels like Google, Pinterest, Facebook or YouTube, direct the traffic to a blog or website, offer them a freebie which is your lead magnet and follow up with them in an email sequence to generate the sale.

This was a super long post! Show me some love in the comments and let me know what you thought!

Related Articles:

• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Successful Blog
• The Ultimate Email Strategy For Bloggers and Marketers
• The Complete Guide To Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business 

Cheers,

The post How To Get Subscribers And Leads For Any Online Business appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you own. Whether you’re a freelance writer, a cake maker, a real estate agent; if you want to take your prospect through a structured path to know more about your products and service, then a sales funnel is the answer.

In this post I am going to give you the complete guide to sales funnels.

So you will learn what it is all about and how to create one. So many people still ask me what the heck is a sales funnel and whilst I wrote a post about network marketing sales funnels, I think it is necessary that I cover one for all businesses.

What you will learn:

• What is a sales funnel?
• The anatomy of a sales funnel
• Why should you use a sales funnel?
• Tools that you will need for a sales funnel
• How to design a sales funnel?
• Examples of sales funnels
• Build your own sales funnel challenge

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is the process of taking someone through a path where they are first interested in your business, then they get to know about your business through education and finally you close the sale after they have considered your business.

The ideal sales funnel will also filter out people who do not match your customer avatar and only permit those who are genuinely interested to enter in the funnel.

After all people who are similar to your customer avatar are the ones that truly matter.

If you think of a how a funnel looks you will see that it is larger at the top and narrower at the bottom.

A sales funnel has the same effect. So many people will come through your business but only a few will make it to the end which is the sale.

Everyone is not the perfect client for your business, so using a sales funnel will help you only speak to those that are interested and will not waste your time.    

The Anatomy Of A Sales Funnel

I am going to break down for you how a sales funnel functions.

There are three steps in a basic sales funnel but as you become advanced in marketing you will learn about longer sales funnels where there are more steps such as up-sells, cross-sells and down-sells.

If you are new to sales funnels then I’d recommend that you stick to a basic sales funnel and master it, until you can implement a longer funnel.

Top – Awareness

At the top of your funnel, which is the wider part, you are exposing everyone to your brand.

You are showing as many people your product or service since at this time you do not know who is likely to be interested.

The biggest mistake that business owners make, is that they see everyone as a potential client.

Everyone is not a potential client until they take their first step through your funnel. From the time they enter into your funnel, they will start to qualify themselves and as they go through the funnel you will be able to pull different qualities out of them to see if they are representative of who you want your client to be.

So at the top of the funnel this is where you will get people to show an interest.

This involves you spreading your message about your brand, what your unique selling point is, how you can solve the person’s problem and the product or service that you offer as the solution.

More than likely when you show your brand message to everyone, 40% or more will show an interest.

This 40% will take the first step of opting into your sales funnel.

Middle – Education and Consideration

After you have introduced your brand to an audience and you have segmented that audience into those who are interested from those who are not interested, it is time to reduce that figure further by educating your prospects about your product or service.

This happens in the middle of the funnel (the bridge page) and is called the education and consideration phase.

It is where you educate your prospects about what you have to offer and you sell them on how you can solve their problem.

For example, if you are promoting an ESL (English as a second language) course and you want attendees for that course then the bridge page can provide useful information to your prospects about who the course is for, who it is not for, the course features, the course benefits, the pros and cons of taking the course and the price of the course.

You can even go so far as to teach your prospects something of value so they can trust your expertise. This is all part of building a relationship.

So if you own the course this would be a strategy I would use to get the prospect to know you, like you and trust what you’re saying.

If you are promoting an affiliate product for example, you can still teach the prospect something about the product so they can make an informed decision about whether it is for them.

Remember that during the education phase, you should not focus so much on the sale. You should focus on providing as much value as possible to help the prospect make a buying decision and enter the consideration phase.

End – Sale

Finally after you have educated your prospect and they have considered your product or service, they may be so convinced that it influences their purchase.

Great! You have a sale.

But sometimes it may take the prospect some time to think about whether they want your product or service.

This is where a huge percentage drop off and only a very small percentage moves forward with the sale.

Conversion rates from bridge pages to sales is less than 5% so don’t be frustrated if you have not made the sale at this point.

Remember when your prospect entered your funnel at the top?

Well when they entered the funnel at the top, they would have gone into a bucket by providing you with some piece of contact information that you can follow up with them later on.

They say that the fortune is in the follow up so be sure to have a good email marketing sequence on the back end to remind your prospect about your product or service and push them towards making the sale.

Related Articles:

• How To Write A Welcome Email That Gets Opened Every Time
• How To Build A Profitable Email List Step By Step
• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers, Marketers and Beginners

Why Should You Use a Sales Funnel?

In the beginning I mentioned that your business must use a sales funnel.

It may not be a suitable model for every business and some businesses may want to ditch the entire process altogether.

But here’s what happens when a sales funnel is not used.

Let’s say you expose your business website to a group of people and one person immediately purchases a product.

That’s great.

What happened however is that the other nine people were potentially interested but you did not know that because you did not capture their details. Now you do not have their information to properly educate and follow up with them to close the sale.

They then see your competitor who is using a sales funnel and when they are ready to purchase maybe a month or two months later, your competitor gets the sale.

However, had you used a sales funnel and retained their contact information, you would have been the go-to business for the purchase because you remained fresh in their minds through your follow up methods and the value and education you provided.

By skipping the stages of a sales funnel you are losing business and it will cost you money in the longer run.

Every business who has a proper marketing strategy has the following in mind:

• They have a good system for following up with leads
• Their product or service is of a high value with a high price tag and understand that it is necessary to build a relationship with their leads before asking them to commit to a large purchase.
• They ensure that they educate their prospects about their product or service so the prospect knows how it can solve their problems.

Tools That You Will Need For A Sales Funnel

For your sales funnel you will need the following tools:

• A sales funnel builder like Clickfunnels or LeadPages. You can read my review here of LeadPages to see whether this product is ideal for you.
• Video recorder. If you are using video to educate your prospect about your product or service you can use Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia.
• Video input to upload your recorded video. You can upload a video using YouTube or Wistia
• Email autoresponder. Some great email autoresponders are Aweber or GetResponse.
• Product or service on a website

How to Design a Sales Funnel?

In practice this is a blueprint of what a sales funnel looks like.

I will show you how to build one using the LeadPages software. You can of course build this with any website builder but the process may take longer if they do not have a facility where they can connect pages through button links.

To start you can sign up for LeadPages. They offer a free 14 day free trial then it’s $37/month for their basic plan.

Once you have logged into your account click on Templates at the top. You will have access to over 100 landing page templates.

In this example I am going to create a simple opt in sales funnel.

Select Filter By and then scroll down to Opt in. You are free to browse through the existing templates to see which one catches your eye.

For this example I will choose the Health and Fitness Opt in Page. So I will hover over it and select Use This Template.

Once you have selected it, you will be asked to name your page. Give it a simple name to help identify it. This is purely for your own reference.

Next you will be taken to the page editor where you can begin to edit and customise the funnel to your liking.

In the page editor you will see the following:

A the widgets which you can drag and drop anywhere on your funnel drawing board. So if you’d like to add more headlines, text or images, simply select the widget you’d like to add and drag it to the area on the drawing board and release.

B the image area. This is the image of your funnel that will appear to your target audience. If you’d like to change the image here, click on the gear icon.

Then edit section styles.

You will then be taken to the Background image menu where you can change the image, remove the image and alter the settings for your background image.

C the Subtitle text area. These are areas that are free to be edited. You can replace the text here with your own by clicking in the area and typing new text.

D the Title text area. The same as the subtitle text area which is free to be edited with your own text.

E the call to action button. This button is what you are telling your target audience to do. Your call to action should be short and to the point and the action that you want your audience to take. For example some great call to actions are:

• Learn more
• Submit
• Subscribe
• Yes! Send me the video
• Send me the video
• I’m in!

To connect the top of your funnel to the middle part of your funnel you first of all need to create a page for the middle part. To do so, simply exit out of this editor by clicking on the LeadPages icon in the top left hand corner.

You will return to the main dashboard and you can create a new page by following the above steps.

Make sure and give your new page a name that you can remember as you will need to select it later on.

Once you have created the middle page, return to your top page and now we will edit the call to action button.

By editing the call to action button we are telling LeadPages what action we want them to perform and where we want to take the visitor after they have provided their details.

So let’s click anywhere on the call to action button and a small menu will appear.

Here you can edit the color and font of the button but for now we are going to link this call to action button. So select the link icon.

When you select the link icon a menu box will appear. Click on view/edit and your opt in box will appear.

To customise this opt in box hover over it and the gear icon will appear. Click on the gear icon.

Your menu will appear where you can select Edit Section styles. Go ahead and play around with the settings to customise the box the way you want it.

To link this call to action box click anywhere on the call to action button again and an Edit Your Form menu will appear on the left hand side.

You will need to add an integration which is the email marketing software. This will ensure that when your audience enters their contact details, it is stored in your email marketing software so you can continue to follow up with them and market to them later on.

To add an integration, click Add Integration.

Click on More Services.

Then select your integration from the integrations screen.

You will be required to provide an API key so follow the instructions on how to find your API key.

You can add an account name. This is purely for your reference.

Once you have completed both tabs click Connect.

You will then return to the editor dashboard where you can select your integrated email marketing service.

Select the email list you would like to add your contacts to.

The email list is a list of contacts that you can send emails to at once. You can send tailored messages to your email list with the intention of following up and continuing to sell your product.

Related Articles:

• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers, Marketers and Beginners
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie

To create a list in the Aweber email marketing software you can read this blog post here.

Otherwise go to your email marketing software and read their guidelines on how to create an email list then return and refresh the screen.

Once you have selected your list click on Next Fields.

Here you will be able to customise your lead box by asking the lead to provide their name, email address, phone number or any other contact information you need to follow up with them.

I recommend that you ask for the least bit of information to drive high conversion rates. I usually ask for the name and email address only.

Click Next Actions. On this page you will tell LeadPages where you want the visitor to go after they have provided their contact details and clicked on the call to action button.

It will be here that you can connect the previous middle page that you created.

Select LeadPage and select it from the list.

Click Save & Close.

Remember if you wish to direct your visitors to a sales page after the middle page, be sure to add the appropriate call to action button on the middle page and link it to the sales page URL.

For those who prefer a visual I prepared a video for you.

Examples of sales funnels

Here’s a few examples of sales funnels in action.

Kat Walters is promoting an Instagram course.

On the opt in page notice her title and call to action which then goes to a webinar registration opt in box and finally onto her thank you page which is a video and confirmation of the webinar information.

This is a two step funnel.

Here’s one of my funnels. I am promoting an affiliate product.

My opt in page leads to an opt in box and then onto the bridge page. Notice the video where I am talking to my leads as they come through the funnel. This starts to build the relationship so they know who I am.

Also notice the button that goes over to the sales page where the webinar product is sold.

This is a three step funnel.

Build Your Own Sales Funnel Challenge 

If you’re not using sales funnels for your business are you getting inspiration to start using one?

Do you see how you can filter out those people who may not be interested in what you have to offer and only speak to those who are likely to be interested in what you have to sell?

I challenge you to create your own sales funnel today.

It will change the dynamic of your business and most importantly it will help to automate the sales process.

Go on! Start creating your sales funnel with LeadPages today.

It took me a good few hours to create this awesome piece of content for you. Go on and show me some love in the comments.

Tell me what do you use for your sales funnel and if you haven’t started will you start now?

The post A Complete Guide To Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Not really? Read my article How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Blog Or Website, where I break down for you how to start affiliate marketing without a blog or website.

Do you really need a huge eCommerce site to do eCommerce? Nope.

Some people get overwhelmed by the idea of having to buy webhosting, build a website menu, design a website and all of that.

There are easier ways to build a website to promote a product and the good news is that you don’t have to hire a web designer or spend hours trying to put a website together.

In this article I am going to speak about a handy tool called LeadPages that I use as my marketing arsenal.

I use it to create one page blog posts, design landing pages, lead capture pages, sales pages, eCommerce one product pages. The sky’s pretty much the limit but you need to know how to be a little creative with it so that you can get what you want out of it.

What You Will Learn

• What is LeadPages
• Why LeadPages
• How to build a lead capture page
• How to build a one-page blog post
• LeadPages for eCommerce
• How to add affiliate links to your pages
• How to use it for lead boxes
• How to analyse your pages
• How to automate everything
• Other features of LeadPages

What is LeadPages?

LeadPages is a landing page builder. So it builds one page at a time although you can interlink to several pages all within the LeadPages platform.

Unlike your conventional websites, like this one you’re reading, you don’t need to set up webhosting yourself or spend a lot of time designing your website.

If you were interested in doing that then check out this article here.

LeadPages has its own hosting so if you were to create a landing page here, you will be given a LeadPages subdomain like yourname.leadpages.net.

Although it is possible to have your own custom domain where you can mask that subdomain using your own domain.

LeadPages is not only a landing page builder.

It also allows you to generate leads with a lead capture page builder. It helps you to generate sales with their sales page and checkout functions.

If you have a website or blog you can include pop up lead boxes inline with your text as well to capture leads.

You can also build out a complete sales funnel from opt in page, to bridge page to sales page.

If you want to do a webinar, yup! That’s something that you can customise as well as they have the features to help you create one.

Why LeadPages?  

I’ve been working online and I have tried so many landing page builders like Clickfunnels, GetResponse, Aweber, BuilderAll.

But I keep coming back to LeadPages because it is so easy to use and its design templates are stunning.

They look insanely professional and for anyone who does not have a creative bone in their body, the templates that they provide make it easy for you to change the text, drag and drop your own images and you’re done.

The price point is also amazing.

When I started with Clickfunnels, I was not able to maintain my payments because it was quite pricey at $97 a month.

I needed to find an alternative builder and was put onto GetResponse but this did not have the feature to allow me to build a sales funnel. Neither did Aweber. Although both are superb for email marketing.

Then I was introduced to BuilderAll and whilst that is the marketer’s ultimate tool as it has everything a marketer dreams of at a really nice price of $29.99 a month, I still was not happy because the drag and drop elements were sloppy.

LeadPages is perfect because it has everything that you need that Clickfunnels, BuilderAll, GetResponse and Aweber has all in one and the price point is ideal at $35 a month.

How To Build A Lead Capture Page

Building a lead capture page is quite easy when you don’t need to worry about coding or design.

The great thing about LeadPages is that they have over 130 mobile responsive templates that allow you to choose which one fits your brand or your style.

Once you have selected your template you can either preview it or work on it to make it yours.

In preview, you get to see how the page responds. It also offers you inspiration for your own page so creativity is not really necessary.

After selecting your template to work on, the editor makes it easy to edit the elements of the lead capture page so you can add or takeaway from it as you like.

The editor also has widgets that you can drag and drop onto your lead page to customise it. So if you want to add a headline, text, image or video, simply drag the widget and position it where you want it to go.

What I love about LeadPages are the helpful automatic guides that show up to assist you in dropping your widget so it snaps into place and creates a neat outline of what you want.

Other features for your lead page include the countdown timer, social share buttons and a calendar.

You can also customise the sections of your lead pages by adding background images, changing the default colour, increasing or decreasing margins and adding or taking away borders.

For marketers who love tracking, LeadPages allows you to easily put in place your pixels so you do not have to worry about source codes.

The one thing I despise about webpages is those that do not help you in adding pixel codes to your sites. If you are not tech savvy like I am, LeadPages makes it easy for you to add tracking pixels or other meta data to your web page by giving you a box to complete.

If you are using Facebook to promote your page and you want to make sure that Facebook pulls the right information for your page when it is shared, LeadPages also ensures that this is done correctly by having a Facebook Open Graph platform where you can add whatever text you want to appear on Facebook.

How To Build A One Page Blog Post

So this part is probably going to be the most exciting for wannabe bloggers who really don’t want to go through the hassle of designing a blog but want a website to write a blog.

Kind of ironic right but I hope you get my drift.

With a little bit of improvisation LeadPages helps you to create one page blog posts where you can add content for a product that you want to promote.

To do that you can use their blank templates, their letter templates or one of their sales templates.

To make it blog-like it will require you to add a few links here and there but that’s about it.

You can transform these pages into a blog-like post and promote any affiliate links that you want.

Here is an example page that I created into a blog-like post.

I could have gone on to add a comments section to finish it off but I did not want to do that.

You can see how the links at the top of the page lead to my actual website and blog, giving the impression that the page forms part of a wider website.

If you wanted to optimise the page for SEO, LeadPages allows you to add meta data to your page with their SEO platform.

Simply enter the data in the fields provided and save.

By completing these fields will help Google index your page and rank it in the search engines.

LeadPages For Ecommerce

Sometimes you don’t want to create a huge eCommerce store like I taught in my tutorial on How To Build An Online Store using Shopify.

You may only want to sell one product.

Well thankfully LeadPages helps you to create a one page eCommerce page to promote a single product with an eCommerce channel.

There are four eCommerce page templates and one thank you page template that you can use.

Once you have created your page using the available templates you can integrate your payment processor such as Stripe to collect payments from your customers using their checkout feature.

You can also build your email list at the same time with an opt in form before the visitor purchases or after they purchase.

How To Add Affiliate Links To Your Pages

Another great thing about LeadPages is that it is easy to add affiliate links and secure them so they do not cause link juice to be carried over to the affiliate page.

You may have known that Google penalises web pages that have too many affiliate links on them, referring to them as non valuable pages.

Google advises affiliate marketers to use nofollow tags at the end of their affiliate links to avoid this.

LeadPages conveniently allows you to add nofollow tags at the end of all your affiliate links.

To add your affiliate link simply grab your affiliate link and highlight the text that you want to hyperlink. Select External URL then paste your affiliate link in the pop up.

Select Save then tick the box Use NoFollow. This will automatically add the no follow tag to the end of the affiliate link so that your link juice does not pass to the affiliate offer.

You can then customise your link by changing the colour or making the text bold. All links are automatically underlined.

How To Use It For Lead Boxes

LeadPages have opt in boxes that you can embed into your website using a bit of code that LeadPages gives to you.

Instead of taking your visitors to another page, these leadboxes pop over the website allowing them to enter their details without having to navigate away from the page.

It’s very simple and streamlined to add these boxes to your website and you can even change the colour of the boxes so it suits your brand or style.

If you want your box to pop up at a certain time or pop up on exit as someone tries to leave your website, LeadPages takes care of that by giving you the option to configure how you want your box to perform.

Personally I use lead boxes as part of my blog and include them where it makes sense to invite my visitors to sign up for my content upgrade or courses.

Once the visitor enters their details, I can then direct them to a customised thank you page or take them back to the content that they were viewing so they are not distracted.

I found this feature of LeadPages to be exceptional.

The only other piece of software that has this feature which I have used before is Aweber although Aweber’s forms need some serious updating so that it looks more modern.

I have yet to see this feature on Clickfunnels or Builderall. I suppose because they are not blog friendly.

How To Analyse Your Pages

What good is your web page if you don’t know how well it is performing or what your visitors think about it?

Every marketer knows the importance of tracking and optimising your webpages for better conversions.

LeadPages offers on page tracking allowing you to see how many people visit your page and perform a desired action on it such as opting in.

You can even split test pages allowing you to test the performance of pages against each other.

Their simple to use split test feature allows you to create two pages. Their analytics then tell you which version gave more conversions.

The split test feature is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.

If you prefer not to get the Pro or Advanced plans you can always use a rotator tool from Clickmagick which allows you to rotate your links sending equal amounts of traffic to the link.

Clickmagick has a free 14 day trial then is $12 per month after.

How To Automate Everything

Ok so you have created your blog post or have your lead page created and you are ready to get some sales.

Once you have put everything together you can either use LeadPages Facebook Ads integration to drive traffic to your pages.

LeadPages tracks everything for you on page and you get to track your ads’ performance on the Facebook Ads platform.

If you do not want to use LeadPages Facebook Ads feature then you can create a Facebook ad directly on the Facebook platform and direct traffic to the LeadPages webpage.

If using a blog post make sure that all your affiliate links are working properly.

If using a lead capture page to generate leads, make sure that your opt in forms work properly and that your leads are directed to the correct email list via the LeadPages email service provider integration.

If you do not want to build an email list using a third party software, LeadPages allows lead magnet deliveries. They capture your leads’ email addresses and then send the lead magnet what you want your lead to receive.

They also have their own email marketing software called Drip.

This is how you  can automate an entire business model if you want to generate sales.

Even if you have a product to sell or are doing eCommerce you can use the same set up of sending traffic to your web page via Facebook Ads or whatever advertising mechanism you want to use. Then allow LeadPages to take all payments for you via the integrated checkout feature.

Other Features Of LeadPages

So I have outlined the main features of LeadPages that I use and love.

Other features that you may want to know about include:

• Drip LeadPages own email marketing software
• ConvertedU LeadPages training platform where you can learn all about marketing
• Webinar integration You can integrate webinar software with LeadPages. So if you are promoting a webinar you can have your lead opt into a lead capture page, then direct them to a webinar that you host directly on LeadPages.
• WordPress Plugin LeadPages integrates with WordPress so if you have a website or blog and you want a lead page to pop up automatically on visitor arrival or exit, you can add code to your WordPress website using the LeadPages plugin.
• LeadLinks you can have your leads opt in to different lists or webinar schedules with links added to emails. All the user has to do is click on a link for the function to work. LeadLinks is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.
• LeadDigits if you aren’t online you can also capture leads via a mobile device. Text messages capture email addresses and automatically add the lead to an email list or webinar. LeadDigits is only available on the Pro and Advanced plans starting from $48/month.

Wrapping Up

Well that’s all folks. If you want to do affiliate marketing and want a simple platform to host your links, you really do not have to build a complicated website.

You can use LeadPages as a webpage builder to promote a single or several products on a single web page. You can use it to capture leads on a lead capture page  and even generate sales with their sales pages.

I feel like LeadPages is an all inclusive marketing tool that every marketer and semi-blogger should have.

At a price of $35 per month the features that you get are incredible.

Were there any features that you have in your builder that you think LeadPages might need? Leave them in the comments. LeadPages has a suggestions menu that I frequent to make useful suggestions.

Cheers

The post How I Use LeadPages And Why You Don’t Need A Real Website appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Absolutely pathetic.

I started with a small email list size of 500 but only about 1.5% of my emails were being opened. At the time I knew very little about the science of email marketing.

I was also too lazy to even bother researching why I was getting low email open rates when someone mentioned that my email list is my biggest business asset and I should learn to nurture it and treat it with care.

From that day onwards I started testing every strategy that I learnt to improve my email open rates and deliverability so I could get the best out of my email marketing.

I want to share these strategies with you because if email marketing does not work for you, then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

Related Articles: 

• How To Build A Profitable Email List 
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie 
• The Ultimate Email Strategy For Marketers And Bloggers
• How To Start An Email List From Scratch 

Here’s What You Will Learn

• Why open rates and deliverability matters
• What can affect your email deliverability
• What can affect your email open rates
• 5 things you can do right now to improve your deliverability
• 4 things you can do to improve open rates
• Other metrics you should be testing to improve your email marketing

Why Email Open Rates And Deliverability Matters

If you have started email marketing, then open rates and deliverability matters because that’s how people see your content.

If no one is opening your emails or if your emails are not being delivered, then your marketing message is going unheard and you are wasting your time.

If you have taken care of your email list by giving them content that helps and adds value to their lives or businesses then chances are they are more likely to listen to product recommendations and this is how you can make money from your email list.

But first you have to overcome the challenge of having your emails delivered to your subscriber’s inbox.

Once it gets to their inbox it would be even better if the email gets opened so that the subscriber knows about your product or what you have to offer.

But I don’t want you to be so consumed by trying to increase your email open rates. It’s not all that matters. The objective of this post is to help you improve your email open rates and deliverability but if you stay to the end I will share with you why this should not always be your core focus.

What Can Affect Your Email Deliverability

There are many things that can affect open rates and deliverability. If someone subscribes to your email list for the first time and your welcome email lands in their junk mail then there are a few things you can look for to see why that happened.

Blocked Domain

Everyone starts with a clean slate but if you started off on the wrong foot by making email marketing blunders, then you may find that your domain has been blocked thereby registering any email you send to be listed as spam.

If you think that you might be a victim of those spam filters then a great way to see if your domain has been blacklisted is to run an MX ToolBox blacklist check.

This tool checks whether your domain has been blacklisted and is a good indication as to why your emails to your subscribers are performing poorly.

Here is my result after checking my email domain.

You can also check your sender reputation and see what your score is. If you have a low sender score then this explains the possible reason for your emails not performing well.

Free Email Addresses

If you are sending bulk marketing emails but do not yet have a private email address and you’re still relying on a free email address by Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or the like, then you run the risk of your emails being delivered to the spam box. This is because free email address hosts recognise any bulk emails using their domains and being sent from outside their servers as spam.

For example, if you are using Aweber as your email autoresponder but your From email address is @gmail.com, then any subscriber who also uses an @gmail.com address more than likely will not receive your email.

This is because Google will establish that your email is spam as it did not come from their server but from Aweber’s server.

Lack of Content Customisation

Another thing that affects deliverability rates is when your email content is not customised but similar to other marketing messages. If you have copied your email content from someone else who already has problems with email deliverability, it is likely that you will encounter the same problem.

The reason for this is that email service providers have already marked the content as spam. Therefore any words that you use that is similar to emails that have already been marked as spam, will trigger the spam filters.

Banned URLs

As an affiliate marketer you may be using URLs that trigger spam filters.

Think about this. If many people are including the same URL in their emails, email service providers see this as spam and therefore will mark your email as spam landing it in the junk folder.

What Can Affect Your Email Open Rates

Relationship Lost

Some bloggers and marketers are guilty of collecting email addresses but do nothing with them. When you collect an email address you need to start building a relationship with your subscribers immediately.

When you build a relationship they look forward to your emails and therefore are more likely to open your emails.

When they hardly hear from you, they’re like that one long lost friend you have that turns up at the most opportune time to sell something to you. Guess what?! They don’t want to hear from you.

So treat your subscribers like your best friend.

Opting for Single Opt In

You may also have opted for single opt in instead of double opt in. When you are using single opt in for your marketing, you may be at risk of getting lower quality subscribers.

People opt in for many reasons. Some are curious and not really interested in what’s on the other side of the page so whilst they provide an email address, they may not be bothered with what comes next which are your emails.

Others do not even provide their real email address. So if a fake or unused email gets through to your email list then even though your email may land in their inbox, it is unlikely to get opened.

Unappealing Subject Lines

Do your subject lines evoke excitement or curiosity? If they are boring and uninteresting then that’s an obvious reason why people are not opening your emails.

Take a look at Digital Marketer’s best email subject lines for ideas on how you can improve.

Unengaged Subscribers

There are many marketers with thousands of email subscribers but when you ask them what type of engagement they get, it is probably a small fraction.

If your subscribers have lost interest in reading your content then they are not going to open your emails.

If you purchased an email list and you are trying to engage those subscribers then it is likely that you will have difficulty in doing so.

When you purchase an email list you have not been given permission by those subscribers to email them. Therefore they will not open your emails unless they have to unsubscribe.

Time of Delivery

Sometimes the timeliness of an email can affect open rates.

They say that there is a good time and bad time to send an email. The best thing you can do is to check your email reports to see if there is any pattern to your subscribers opening their emails. If you see a pattern over a period of time then it’s a good idea to stick to that schedule.   

5 Things You Can Do Right Now For Improved Email Deliverability

Get Off of Blacklists

When checking the MX Toolbox and if you find that your IP or domain has been blacklisted, then be proactive and work on getting yourself removed from the list.

MX Toolbox explains how to do that here.

Use a Private Domain

If you are using a free email address then it’s time to use a paid one. You can actually set up private email addresses using domain providers like Namecheap, Bluehost or Godaddy.

Many email autoresponders do warn you against using free email addresses in any event and some may not even let you use a free email address as a sender’s email address.

Customise and Personalise Your Content

This particularly applies to affiliate marketers.

If you are an affiliate marketer, then avoid copying email scripts that affiliate managers provide to you when you are promoting their product.

Instead be unique and creative in your content. This will not only make you stand out from the rest but will help you bypass spam filters as your email content does not resemble thousands of others.

Also pay attention to your subject lines and be sensible. Some things that affect delieverability include subject lines and content that have all capitalisations (FREE), symbols (R@t3 Th1s N0w), repeated punctuation marks (!!! Or ???).

Check out this huge list of email spam words from Automational to avoid.

Pro Tip: It’s also a good idea to make your content appear genuine and relatable so that you can make that connection with your subscribers.

Use Cloaked URLs

As an affiliate marketer you will be given URLs that look long and ugly. Most of the time, email service providers can recognise these URLs within your emails and will block them.

Using a custom domain to wrap around your affiliate link will help you avoid this problem.

Whilst there are link shorteners that help you to make your affiliate links look pretty, be careful of using them in your emails as they are notorious for being used by spammers and will only help your email land in the spam folder.

Clickmagick is a handy tool that allows you to create a custom domain for every and any affiliate link you may be promoting.

Install An SPF Record

This is a crucial part of having successful email deliverability and not many people know how to do it. An SPF record is a sender’s policy framework which verifies with email service providers that you are who you say you are.

In the video below I show you how to set up your SPF record.

4 Things You Can Do To Improve Open Rates    

Keep In Touch

There are many times I will receive an email from someone that I subscribed to a long time ago, but because their emails were infrequent, I forgot I subscribed to their email list and have lost interest in knowing what they have to deliver.

Don’t be like that.

If have built an email list be sure to keep in touch with them regularly. Sending an email once a week is sufficient.

Pro Tip: Try to avoid sending emails everyday as some subscribers may find it annoying causing them to unsubscribe from your email list. According to Get Data Research, 46.4% of email unsubscribes were due to receiving too many emails.

Use Double Opt In

There is a great debate about whether double opt in is better than single opt in. Marketers use single opt ins to get as many email addresses as possible but what this does is lower the quality of the list.

In some cases people may not use their everyday email addresses causing your open rates to be lower.

In other cases they may not even use a real email address which may lead to high bounce rates.

Therefore when marketing I would recommend double opt ins as by asking your subscriber to take the further step of confirming that they want to receive your emails confirms that they are genuinely interested in your content and their email address is real.

Split Test Subject Lines

If you find that open rates are low it may be because of unappealing subject lines. Which is why it is necessary to split test your subject lines to see which ones get higher open rates.

To split test an email subject line start by sending an email to your list with your first subject line.

If you find that your open rate was low then consider segmenting your list for those people who did not open your email and send the same email but a different subject line.

This was how I was able to increase my email open rate by over 50% from 34.4% and my click through rate by over 8% from 3%.

Clean Your Email List

Some people say that you should not clean your email list as inactive email subscribers can become active again over a period of time.

But realistically how long should you wait for them to become active again?

As a rule, I generally clean my email list every three months. This helps to ensure that only people who want to read my content remain on my email list.

It makes no sense to have over a thousand email subscribers when only a tenth of them are opening your emails.

When you clean your email list you will generally improve your open email rates and your senders reputation. This tells your email service provider that you are responsible and people love engaging with your content which helps to increase deliverability in the future.

You are also likely to reduce the cost of your email subscription by paying only for worthy email subscribers who want to open your emails.

Here is an example of a recent email that I sent to a segment of my email list that had not opened my emails for three months.

When I did not receive any feedback from them, I simply removed them from my email list.

Other Metrics You Should Be Testing To Improve Your Email Marketing  

Whilst email open and deliverability rates do matter, they are not indicators of a successful email marketing campaign.

It is also important to measure click through rates, sales derived from emails, whether subscribers reply to your emails, how many website pages were visited as a result of your emails.

These are all part of determining whether you have a successful email marketing campaign and can be measured by using various tools like Clickmagick which tracks the traffic through any links that are placed in your email to see if those links generated sales.

You can also use Google Analytics to track your email marketing campaigns.

Wrapping Up

If your email deliverability and open rates are poor like mine was, I hope you will find this list of tips useful to help you improve your email marketing campaigns.

Certainly if you want to make a good return on your investment then email deliverability and open rates are key and you should be focusing on these two things when you start.

What other things do you do to improve email open rates and deliverability? Tell me in the comments.     

Related Articles: 

• How To Build A Profitable Email List 
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie 
• The Ultimate Email Strategy For Marketers And Bloggers
• How To Start An Email List From Scratch 

Cheers

The post How To Improve Broadcast Email Open Rates and Deliverability appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

If you do not yet have an email list or do not know why you should be building this valuable asset then head on over to my recent article The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy for Bloggers, Marketers and Beginners to find out why.

If you do already have an email list then this article will share with you an amazing strategy to making your list profitable.

That means that your subscribers are eager to hear what you have to say and are likely to buy your product or service when presented with the offer.

I would like to let you in on a major secret. Your email list, is likely to be the best traffic source you will have.

It is also likely to be the most reliable income stream that you have, because once you have cultivated a subscriber base who engages with you, and trusts your recommendations, that same subscriber base will not be afraid to spend their money with you.

But exactly how do you cultivate a loyal subscriber base? That’s what this post is about to teach you.

Related Articles: 

• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Beginners
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie
• How To Build Your First Email List From Scratch

What You Will Learn

• How to create an irresistible giveaway to attract leads
• What to say in your welcome email
• How to build your email autoresponder for the most profitable results
• How to write epic content that attracts your subscriber to click on your link
• What are bonuses and how to use it

How To Create An Irresistible Giveaway To Attract Leads

When thinking about your lead magnet, it is important to remember that people are going to opt into your email list if the thing you are giving away, is valuable and useful to them.

Save Time

One way to provide a lead magnet that delivers awesome value is to give away something that can help the subscriber save time and avoid information overwhelm.

For example would you rather create 10 high converting sales funnels or would you rather opt into someone’s list to receive access to those high converting sales funnels.

In this example, the valuable giveaway saves the subscriber’s time and also prevents them from having massive overwhelm in having to build those sales funnels themselves.

Prevent A Loss

Another way to provide a lead magnet is to provide content that makes the subscriber feel like they will avoid a loss. The lead magnet must therefore solve a painful problem.

For example a lead magnet which offers to show you one key thing that you can do to keep your Facebook advertising costs down, is immensely attractive to the potential subscriber because it is going to help them save a lot of money if the content provides a lot of value.  

Another example is a lead magnet that offers to teach subscribers how to train their dog to prevent it from damaging their furniture.

When building lead magnets like this, always consider what your audience’s pain point is. Make sure and capitalise on that pain point by offering a solution giveaway.

Don’t Overwhelm

Your lead magnet should also not overwhelm.

Most of the time subscribers want to do as little work as possible and when your lead magnet makes that impossible, then it is unlikely to convert well.

Therefore a lead magnet which offers a 50 page resource is less likely to perform better than a single page guide.

Take that into account when structuring your lead magnet. If your lead magnet offer is bulky then it is ok not to mention it on the lead magnet form.

Don’t add any content on your lead magnet form that is likely to dissuade your potential subscriber from handing over their email address.

Also you may wish to test whether a lead magnet offering a course converts better than an eBook.

The issue here is that from a time perspective, not many people have the time to sit down and study an eBook. However if the same written content was put into video form you may have many people prepared to go through that content.

Be mindful of this.

What To Say In Your Welcome Email

The mistake that I often see amateur marketers make is that they sell in their first email to their subscriber.

This is a big fail.

What do I mean by “sell”. Basically they ask their subscriber to make a purchase.

The reason why selling in the first email is an obvious no, is because it sours the relationship from the start.

To put things into perspective, I always like to use the dating scenario.

You need to think of your subscriber relationship like a dating relationship. When you go out on a date with someone for the first time, do you propose to them immediately?

No, you have to build and court each other, get to know each other a little. The same thing can be said with your email subscribers.

Treat them like a relationship you have with a normal person. Yes the goal is to monetise your email list, but you have to be smart about it.

Here are a few things you should not say in your first welcome email:

• Do not ask your subscriber to buy your product
• Do not ask your subscriber to sign up for a program
• If you are a marketer do not make incredible claims to your subscribers such as how much money or sales you made and the time period in which you did it. Making claims like that sets the tone for what’s to come and gives the expectation that you’re already going to offer a product to buy

Here are some things that you should say in your first welcome email:

Make them feel part of your community

You can invite your new subscriber to places where you hang out. If you have a social media following, include a few of your social media links in your email and get them to follow you.

Doing so allows them to stay up to date with your content on any platform that you’re on and let’s you expose the true value of your brand.

If you have a Facebook group and it is exclusive to people who follow you, you can extend an invitation to your subscribers making them feel special.

A Facebook group forges a closer relationship with your subscribers as this is where you get to personally interact with them sometimes on a daily basis.  

Make them feel safe

Most people are often reluctant to give up their email address in the first place. Now that you have it, deliver on your promise of protecting their information by telling them what you will do and not do with their email address.

I like to let my subscribers know what they can expect from me.

I may include a sentence like “I do not intend to send you spam emails but will send you weekly valuable emails where you will learn something”.

This lets your subscribers know that you understand their concerns immediately and reassures them that they made the best decision to share their personal information with you.

Ensure that your future emails land in their inbox

Even though your first email might make it to your subscriber’s inbox, future emails may not get past the SPAM filters.

This is why it is important to ask the subscriber to whitelist your email address.

Some subscribers do not know how to do this so you may wish to take it even further by giving step by step instructions.

Now it may not be effective to simply ask the subscriber to whitelist your email address. Some people glance over this request.

Be sure to tell them why it is important to whitelist your email address. For example if you are giving a free email course, explain that it is important so that the course content will not get lost in the junk mail and they can get ahead on learning something from the course.

You can explain that you’re giving away a bonus so it is crucial that you’re always notified of your email.

Give them a reason to want to take that further step of whitelisting your email address.

Keep your promise        

The worst thing you can do when offering a lead magnet is not fulfilling your promise.

This gives a very bad first impression. Therefore when setting up your lead magnet, make sure that you have the mechanics in place to deliver the product immediately to the subscriber.

Even though you may have everything in place, test your autoresponder to ensure that the product is delivered to the subscriber and can be opened.

There was one time I opted into a marketer’s email list to receive a PDF document. When I tried to download the PDF I was sent to a 404 error page.

Nothing is more annoying than when this happens. Don’t let that be you because you will see unsubscribes faster than you see subscribes.

Here is a perfect example of a welcome email from Stuart Walker of Nichehacks.com that hits every one of the points I mentioned above. You can see the tactics and strategies that he uses to engage his email subscribers and look to it as inspiration for your first welcome email:

Hey, Stuart Walker here. Welcome to the NicheHacks.com tribe.

You’ve joined a group of smart people who get exciting new niche ideas and online business opportunities direct to their inbox.

To get the 1781 profitable niches you just requested click the link below now…

>> Get the 1781 profitable niches here

Who is this mailing list for?

If you are a new to intermediate marketer looking to…

• Find your profitable online business idea.
• Learn how to profit from affiliate marketing.
• Change your life for the better through online marketing.

…then you’re in the right place.

So, now what?

You’ll receive daily emails with exciting niche ideas and ways to profit from them.

NicheHacks costs around $5,000 a month to run in expenses, (read about it here) so I will recommend products that I receive affiliate commission for as well as my own products.

Every product I recommend I will either have used myself and had good results from or have lots of experience with the product creator.

There’s no spam, solo ad garbage, selling or swapping email address or promoting junk products, I promise.

What you need to do next….

To make sure you don’t miss your exciting new niche ideas it’s important that you  ‘whitelist’ / ‘safelist’ / mark my emails as ‘not spam’ (depending on what your email provider calls it).

Gmail users need to make sure my emails land in their inbox and not the promotions box.

Be sure to drag the email from the promo box to the inbox if it’s in there.

I recommend you do this now because if you’re anything like me you’ll forget later and miss out on my unmissable niche hacks.

How to connect with me….

I love to chat with my loyal subscribers.

If you have a burning question the quickest and easiest thing to do is check the FAQ section on the link below, chances are your question has been answered before….

>> http://nichehacks.com/frequently-asked-questions/

Or ask it in the Facebook Private Mastermind Group

You’ll get a fast response from either myself or one of the thousands of smart marketers in the group:

>> Facebook Private Mastermind Group

Speak to you tomorrow,

Stuart Walker

How To Build Your Email Autoresponder For The Most Profitable Results  

The key to having a profitable email list, is to build trust so that subscribers can eventually buy from you. Once you have garnered that trust, you will find that almost anything that you recommend to them, will be purchased therefore giving you a healthy and profitable email list.

I often find that when asking for the sale, it is better to implement a strategy where the sales process starts with a low cost item.

This is particularly helpful if you intend on selling high cost items on the back end of your email sales funnel.

The reason why this is effective, is because once you have had a subscriber take out their credit card to purchase a small item and you have delivered that item successfully, it is almost impossible not to jolt that subscriber to purchase a more expensive product from you because the trust has already been established.

To do this efficiently set up your email autoresponder sequence like this:

• Day 1 Welcome email
• Day 2 Value video
• Day 3 Value video
• Day 4 Value video and Soft pitch to sell a $5-$10 product
• Day 6 Pre-launch and value content
• Day 7 Pre-launch and value content
• Day 8 Pre-launch and value content
• Day 9 Pre-launch and value content
• Day 10 Hard sell for the more expensive product

Value Videos

When creating your value videos be sure to mention nothing about selling your product. Your main priority should be to teach something that’s valuable to the product that you’re about to sell.

On day 4 the purpose of selling a low cost product is to recoup any advertising money you have spent in the first place to get the lead.

If you are using free traffic then the money that you make in the front end here will be profit for you.

The Buyer’s List

Now when you do get your subscribers to buy your product, you may wish to transfer them to another list. This list is what will be a buyer’s list – a list of all people who have actually bought something from you.

This list will be invaluable because when you build it to a sizeable amount, it can literally pay your bills.

Once you have built your buyer’s list you want to continue to foster the relationship by providing more value videos, support content or sending them blog articles on how to do something.

This way your subscribers here will continue to engage with you more and more. They will also appreciate the effort you are giving, helping you to establish an improved relationship.

Pre-Launch Phase

Now in order to sell a high priced item this is where you need to enter the pre-launch phase by slowly introducing the high end product to your subscribers.

During the pre-launch phase you will add four days of value content whilst at the same time promoting your new product. This prepares your subscribers for what’s to come and pre-frames them to see the benefit of the product.

On day 10 when you sell your more expensive product through a hard sell you can now transfer the buyers here to another list and classify these buyers as high end buyers.

Do you see what you’re doing here?

Each time you sell a product you are separating your buyers from those subscribers who are merely on your list for information.

By having a buyer’s list, it ensures that your list becomes profitable over time so you can always have a source to go to, to make money on demand.

How To Write Epic Content That Attracts Your Subscriber To Click On Your Link

So we’ve discussed your welcome email and what to say on the “first date”.

We’ve talked about the email sequence that you are going to send to your subscribers to get maximum results.

In this part I want to speak about what you should actually write in your sales pitch email to get your subscribers to click on your link and buy from you.

The mistake that most content providers make here is that their focus is entirely on themselves and not on the subscriber.

Remember that none of your subscribers have subscribed to your list because they want to know about your achievements. That does not matter to them.

All that matters is what you can give to them. Essentially a subscriber subscribes to your list with one goal in mind – that is to get enough information to help them achieve their goals or solve their problems.

With that in mind here is how you build the perfect email sales pitch.

Headline      

Every email starts with a headline that is convincing enough to get opened.

The headline should answer the subscriber’s question “why should I read this email?”

Here are a few examples:

She sold 122 subscriptions for $97 each. Here’s how… This email headline works best for the marketer who wants to know how to get sales in their business. If a case study can show how one marketer did it, chances are other marketers will be interested to know how they can do it themselves.

Secret Facebook campaign gets 23,247 leads in 30 days… This email generates curiousity and self interest for people who are using Facebook to generate leads but are unsuccessful with their campaigns. Such an email subject headline will prompt a response because it gives the reader the expectation that what’s inside the email can teach them how to get more leads for their offer.

[Checklist] Your Split testing Guide… if you know your audience then making an offer like this can improve open rates if you know that material like this will help your subscribers. Using the “why should I read this email” question, subscribers know what they’re getting immediately because you have answered the question directly.

Body

You’ve got your subscriber to open your email, now here is where you need to make your grand presentation to appeal to their emotions and pull them in to take action.

So considering the first example, it appeals to the reader’s sense of hope that they too can get similar results. When crafting your email think about how you can create an emotional connection (how you can sell a product for $97 each too and make sales that you were not getting before)

Example 2 – “if you are struggling to get leads into your business here is how you can get tens of thousands of leads in your campaign in 30 days as well.” The pain point you have highlighted is the difficulty a marketer faces in getting leads. The solution is showing them exactly how they can create a campaign that generates leads.

Example 3 – “how this split testing guide can help you get better results in your campaigns.”. The pain point here is a poor performing campaign but the solution is a split testing guide that will help the subscriber improve their results.

Call To Action

Another good strategy when writing your email pitches is to ask the reader to take a specific action. Now that you have gotten their attention by identifying the problem and stating the solution, your subscribers are not going to click on your link unless you tell them too.

Make sure that you have a strong call to action – click here to purchase, click here to get this deal, click here to get 50% off.

What Are Bonuses And How To Use It

Sometimes an offer might need to be reinforced with what is known as a bonus.

A bonus is something extra that you give to your potential customer to compel them to make the purchase.

The reason why this works is because you are adding more value to what they already have, that value being free.

Bonuses can also help you stand out from the rest. For example, if you are promoting a product and there are other affiliates of the product, your bonuses can help distinguish you from the rest by showing the subscriber what additional benefits they can get from you if they use your link to purchase the product.

Think of this. Affiliate A and B are promoting a weight loss item. Subscriber C opts into both of their email lists and receives offers to buy the product using Affiliate A and B’s referral links.

Affiliate A offers no bonus but Affiliate B is smart and offers three bonuses that will help Subscriber C use the product and get faster results.

Who do you think Subscriber C will buy from? Affiliate B of course.

That is the power of bonuses. So don’t be afraid to use them in your email marketing.

In fact I will urge you to use it when making a hard sell to your subscriber as a way to push the subscriber a little bit more through the door.

Here is an example of a bonus used by the creators of the Create and Go brand that I think is effective for getting the message across.

That’s It

So your own email marketing skills can now be improved by taking action and following the guidelines that I’ve provided to you here.

Simply get your email marketing software in gear, my favs are Aweber and GetResponse, load up your autoresponders just like I have shown you and take off.

If you are using Aweber or GetResponse read my article here where I show you how to create your first email list and email sequence.

Want more strategies for effective email marketing? Then read my ultimate email marketing guide for a whole load of tips.

Over to you. Any tips on how to build a profitable email list? Leave them in the comments and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Cheers

The post How To Build A Profitable Email List Step By Step appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

In that super detailed blog post I went through how to start email marketing and why it was important that as a new marketer, you start to build your email list.

Some of the key concepts in that post needed a bit more flesh on the bones so this is why I have created a series of posts to dive a little bit deeper into each concept so you can have a complete view of how email marketing works.

If you have a blog and you’re getting traffic from it, then that’s great.

Your blog might convert well but the number one goal from your blog should always be to get email subscribers.

Email subscribers are actually a lot more valuable than website visitors because your email subscribers actually stay with you.

They are also updated more regularly with your content if you have a good email autoresponder sequence.

Website visitors however are not guaranteed to return.

Therefore from the moment you start a blog, and you can learn how to do that from this blog post, you must implement various things to start building an email list.

That’s the reason for this post and I am going to show you some key actionable steps that you can take from day one to start getting email subscribers from your blog.

Here’s what you will learn in this blog post:

• Email marketing software for storing emails
• How to create custom thank you pages for more exposure
• How to set up opt in forms on your blog
• Landing pages to collect your leads
• Writing to your email subscribers

How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie

Email marketing software for storing emails

It is crucial that you have and use a service that can store your leads for you and also send them regular updates via email.

Most email capture facilities, like SumoMe or Hubspot Free Marketing Plugin For WordPress are merely lead capture forms that collect your leads.

You however need a proper email marketing service that stores the leads and sends emails to them automatically.

I see too many new bloggers using these free opt in forms to get email addresses but what exactly are you doing with the email addresses?

Are you engaging with your subscribers by sending them regular content.

If you were to send your subscribers an email now, will they know who you are?

This is why you should avoid making that big mistake of simply capturing email leads. You also need an email marketing service that will help you store and communicate with your leads frequently.

The number one software that I personally use and which I would recommend to my readers is Aweber.

I love Aweber because it has a high deliverability rate and will ensure that my emails are being delivered to my reader’s inbox.

Grab Your 6 Weeks Of Done-For-You Email Templates

You can also use other email software like GetResponse or MailChimp.  I have used both of these but have decided to settle on Aweber because of the simplicity of use and the higher probability that my emails are being delivered to subscribers’ inboxes rather than junk mail. 

Of course you can test any email service provider you want but for the purposes of this tutorial I will show you how to get email subscribers using the Aweber marketing service.

If you have decided to use Aweber as your email marketing provider then be sure to read this blog post where I show you how to set up your first email list so you can start the process of collecting emails.

How to create custom thank you pages for more exposure

The email subscriber journey goes something like this:

They see your email capture page

They opt in

Then they are taken either to the actual content that you promised them on the email capture page which may be a download or strategically taken to a thank you page.

Many marketers miss this point when doing email marketing and there is actually a reason for doing it so that you can get more value from every email subscriber that you collect.

The thank you page is a great way for your subscriber to actually follow you on other social media outlets or you can ask them to share your content with their friends.

Personally I like to ask my subscriber to share my content with their friends as this gives me more exposure to other people who may not know about me.

Here is what my thank you page looks like

As you can see from my page I have done two things.

I have told them where to find the content that I sent to them. This is super important because these days email providers like Hotmail or Gmail are doing everything possible to eliminate spam from their users’ inbox.

Sometimes your email may be sent to the subscriber’s junk mail without the subscriber knowing.

As a marketer we know about these troubles but the amateur subscriber does not. This is why you can use your thank you page to tell the subscriber to check their junk mail just in case they do not see it in their inbox.

The next thing that you can use a thank you page for, is to gain more exposure by asking the subscriber to share your content with their friends on social media. 

WHOA!!! Great idea right?!

That’s opening up the possibility for more people to see your content and get to know who you are.

At the end of the day, if you don’t ask, you will never receive and this further step can direct more traffic back to your blog.

Create Your Own Page

I create my thank you pages using LeadPages.

Then I add my thank you page URL to Aweber. This is how I do it.

Once you have signed up with LeadPages (they offer a 14 day free trial so you can test them out) you will click on Lead Pages then Create New Page.

LeadPages also have a split test feature which allows you to create two thank you pages to see which one gives a higher conversion based on your conversion goal – whether that be engagement by sharing your page or not.

After you click Create New Page you will then be directed to all their templates. Use the drop down menu on the right to select only the thank you pages.

You will then be given free thank you page templates that you can customise to your liking.

Thank you page created? Ok great. LeadPages gives you a few options for publishing your thank you page. To find those options click on the three dots next to the thank you page you have created. A drop down menu will appear where you will select Publish Options.

A pop up box will appear and you will have three options but stay with the first option which is Publish Status where they give you the thank you page URL.

Grab Your 6 Weeks Of Done-For-You Email Templates

Copy this URL then head on over to Aweber where you will add the thank you page URL to your sign up form.

I am assuming that you have already created your first email list and sign up form with Aweber after following my tutorial here.

Find the sign up form that you want to add your thank you page to by selecting your email list from the Current List menu, then click on Sign Up Forms.

Once you have found the sign up form click on Edit.

Then click on Settings. Go the Thank You Page drop down menu and select Custom Page. 

Then plug in the LeadPages URL into the field that appears and click on Save Your Form.

So whenever your subscriber opts into the email capture form, they will be directed to your Thank you page URL.  Be sure to test it yourself to confirm that all works well by opting into your own form.

How to set up opt in forms on your blog

When you are trying to squeeze a subscriber out of every visitor you get to your blog your aim should be to put your opt in forms in just about every place you can to attract people to subscribe.

Here are a few places where I have put opt in boxes on my blog:

• Top bar
• Footer
• Side column
• In line

Top bar

If you look at the top of this blog post you will see a bar which if you click on it directs my visitors to a lead page. This is a three step process which informs the visitor about my free giveaway, takes them to a page which educates the visitor about affiliate marketing and then entices them to subscribe by giving away a free e-course.

The reason why I chose the top bar is because it is completely visible and is the first thing visitors see as soon as they land on my page.

There are many top bar plug ins available with WordPress. I use the WP Front Notifications top bar but to find others that will suit your needs simply go to Plug Ins in your WordPress dashboard then do a search for top bars and you will get a wide selection of plugins to choose from.

If you are using the top bar plug in make sure that you have a lead page or lead magnet to send your visitors to.

To create my lead page or lead magnet I use LeadPages.

Footer

The footer opt in form is not one of the best places to put an opt in form as the opt in depends on how far down the visitor reads your post.

Regardless of that, I ask for the subscribe on most of my posts at the end of the blog post for those users who do actually make it to the end of my post.

This tells me that the visitor is engaged and if they read the entire post they may like my other posts.

My footer opt in form looks like this and is an embedded form using Aweber.

When you create a sign up form using Aweber, they give you HTML code that you can place anywhere on your website where you want the form to appear.

The HTML code is found by clicking on the Publish tab of your sign up form. Select I Will Install My Form.

To place the form on your blog, grab your HTML code from Aweber.

Then head on over to your blog post and select the Text label on your WordPress editor.

Then paste the HTML code at the end of all the text in the editor.

Side Column

The side column opt in form again is provided by Aweber HTML. I have used this form to simply request people who want to keep up to date with my blog.

To create the side column opt in form you will have to use the WordPress widgets which allows you to add images, text, or HTML to your side columns.

To find the WordPress widgets click on Appearance then Widgets.

To add the HTML from Aweber drag the Custom HTML tab to the right sidebar tab and place it where you would like the opt in form to appear on your blog.

Then copy and paste the HTML code from Aweber into the Custom HTML field.

You can also aim to offer something to the visitor to obtain their email address. All you have to do is customise your opt in form based on the giveaway you want to share, then copy and paste the HTML code in the same way that you would for the basic opt in form.

Grab Your 6 Weeks Of Done-For-You Email Templates

In Line Opt In form    

The in line opt in form is great to get more subscribers to your email list as it seeks to interrupt the visitor’s reading pattern with a bribe for their email details.

The key to making in line opt in forms work, is to offer the visitor something in exchange for their email address.

However that something must be relevant to what they are reading.

For example, in my post How To Create An Online Clothing Store, I know that readers here would be eCommerce store owners who need products for their store.

I therefore created an inline opt in form and bribed the reader by offering to them a massive list of wholesalers and dropshippers which they could get simply by providing me with their email address.

The opt in form was relevant because it provided an offer which every eCommerce store owner needs.

So if you have a blog post on how to take the best photographs, it would be irrelevant to offer the reader something that relates to food. Do you see what I mean?

In line opt in forms are also known as content upgrades. So if you read about them you now know what they are.

To create my in line opt in forms I use Aweber as well. Just like your footer opt in form Aweber gives you that piece of HTML code which you can add anywhere in your blog post.

If you want you can also create a pop open inline form using lead boxes from LeadPages.

Simply create your leadbox from the LeadPages dashboard.

Then when you are ready to publish the lead box select the three dots next to your lead box and choose the Publish Options. 

You will then be given five options to choose from which you can use depending on how you want the lead box to appear on your blog.

After selecting one of the five options click on the blue button Get Code then follow the instructions given to you by LeadPages.

Pop Ups

Some of you have asked about pop ups and the reason why I left it for last is because I am not a major fan of them.

Pop ups are very intrusive especially when a new visitor lands on your website and the first thing that stares them in the face is a pop up box asking for their email address.

Pop ups can also lead to higher bounce rates as some visitors do not like them and prefer to abandon your site.

That does not mean that you cannot use pop ups effectively.

If you are using pop up opt in forms here are some best practices to follow:

• Delay your pop up to appear a few seconds after the user lands on your website. Usually a 20 to 40 second gap is ideal.
• Use exit pop ups. These are opt in forms that are timed to display if it appears that the user is trying to leave a page. Exit pop ups are useful on desktops but with more and more people viewing content on their mobile phone this may not be a great option.
• Pop ups should be easy to close. Nothing is more annoying than having a pop up appear and you do not know how to close it. Sometimes your visitor may not be interested in what you have to offer and so will decline the offer by closing the pop up. If the ability to close the pop up is difficult, such as the exit link is not visible, you can lose visitors. Therefore make sure that your pop up can be easily closed to avoid losing readers.

Landing Pages to Collect Your Leads

I have already mentioned that I use the LeadPages tool to create landing pages and collect my leads.

This is just another way to give more information to your potential subscriber instead of the usual three or four lines of text that you would find on a simple opt in form.

With landing pages, I like to offer a bit more value to my reader so they know what kind of information they are likely to get when they subscribe to my offer.

Here is an example of one of my landing pages that I have created for this blog. I then attach the URL to this landing page throughout my blog on the top bar, within banners on the side column or within my text.

Your landing pages do not have to be as detailed as the one I have showed you.

Landing pages can be very simple like this one.

You can also use Clickfunnels to create your landing pages. Clickfunnels is just another landing page builder but a bit on the pricier side.

With Clickfunnels you do get other features such as the ability to integrate payment options, to create sales funnels, to do split testing, to track your visitors and opt ins.

Honestly I prefer LeadPages because it is much cheaper and I love their designs and how clean their images appear.

Writing to your email subscribers

Ok so by now you should have gone through the previous tutorial on how to start with email marketing.

You should have also sprinkled some opt in forms onto your blog and connected them to your email marketing software after reading this guide.

Now what do you say to your subscribers?

Within Aweber you can add an email autoresponder series which will greet each subscriber as they opt in to your form. You can do that by selecting the appropriate email list, hover over Messages and select Legacy Follow Up Series from the drop down menu.

I would recommend setting up at least four to five emails to send to your subscribers just as I have done, depending on what you want to offer them.

After the email series have been completed I like to send my subscribers weekly broadcasts just to keep in touch with them.

Broadcasts are simply single emails that you send to all of your subscribers on an adhoc basis. These do not go out automatically as they would in an email autoresponder series.

Usually I like to send broadcasts to my email subscribers when I have created a new post or when I have an announcement.

To send a broadcast with Aweber select the list that you want to send the broadcast to.

Hover over Messages then select Broadcasts.

Select the green button Create A Message.

Compose your message in the editor.

Make sure and preview and test your email message before saving it to ensure that it is exactly the way you want it to be sent.

Once you are satisfied with the email click Save & Exit at the bottom right corner which will take you to your broadcast draft folder.

Click on Send Options and select Schedule A Broadcast. 

If you want to send this broadcast to more than one email list select Edit then choose the lists that you want to receive your broadcast.

Once the broadcast settings are to your liking click the green Send Message Now button.

You will get a final prompt asking if you want to send the broadcast immediately.

Click Send Now and off the broadcast goes.

Aweber will track how your broadcast performed by telling you how many of your subscribers opened your email and how many clicked on your link.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. A complete guide to getting email subscribers.

If you haven’t already, it’s time for you to take action and start getting subscribers to your own list.

Obviously the bigger list you have, the more valuable it is for you.

So make sure and get started today.

There is so much more to email marketing and I have only touched the surface in my posts which I hope are helpful to you.

If you want to become a pro at email marketing and learn all the techniques you can use to convert your email subscribers into buyers then I would strongly recommend Aweber’s Email Marketing Masterclass where they teach email list building strategies and where to find people to actually subscribe to your email list.

This was the first course that taught me everything about email marketing and affiliate marketing and I cannot recommend it enough.

I only recommend products that I have tried and tested and will help my readers.

If you have any questions for me that I can help you with on email marketing then feel free to leave a comment below and I will be sure to get right back to you.

Cheers,

The post How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.