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.

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.

Sometimes we just don’t know where to start.

You may have been doing internet marketing or blogging for some time, but you are still trying to master email marketing. In fact, perhaps you do not yet know the importance of email marketing and what it can do for your business.

Well I am hoping to help you solve that problem with this in depth tutorial about how to start email marketing and what the best email practices are when it comes to building your email list.

In case you don’t know yet what an email list is, stop by my post How To Build Your First Email List From Scratch, where I take you and show you step by step, how to start an email list using the two most popular platforms, GetResponse and Aweber.

If you have already set up with another email marketing provider, then no problemos! The steps that I outline can be applied to any email marketing provider.

They’re just basic guides and best practices that you should be aware of when using email marketing as a way to grow your business.

What You Will Learn Learn

• What is email marketing
• Why you need email marketing in your business
• How to start collecting email subscribers
• Email marketing using a blog
• Email marketing using a landing page
• Your subscriber journey
• The best email strategy for your business with examples
• How to build relationships with your email subscribers
• What to do when your email list goes cold
• How to create your email marketing list
• Email marketing jargon you need to know

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is simply the promotion of a product or service via email.

So let’s say you have a business and you use social media outlets like Facebook or Instagram. You’re pretty active on those forums promoting your product or service right?

Your goal on those platforms is to convert your followers into customers or clients.

Well you’re doing the same thing in email marketing. The only difference is that you’re using email. 

Why You Need Email Marketing In Your Business

Email marketing is important for the growth of any business.

|Ownership

As a blogger, marketer or beginner whilst it is great that you have decided to create a following on today’s popular social media networks, it is important that you understand that the followers that you gain from them do not belong to you.

Ok so what do I mean by that?

Let’s look at some of the social media network’s terms and conditions.

This is Facebook’s

Here is Instagram’s

So you can see from the Terms of Use of these popular networks, that they do not belong to you and your account can be terminated at any time AND without notice to you.

So essentially you can wake up one morning and find that your 20k+ followers have vanished, because Instagram decided that you violated its terms of service and terminated your account.

This is why it is super important that if you do have any of these accounts that you start encouraging your followers to subscribe to your email list.

The reason why subscribing to your email list is important is because you own it. It is yours forever. You can easily export your subscribers (or as they say, back it up) in an Excel spreadsheet and keep it for safekeeping in the event that your email service provider decides to suspend your account one day.

|Income Source

Another crucial reason why email marketing is important to your business is because “the money is in the list”. Build a list, nurture and care for it and they will pay you forward by buying your products or buying tools that you recommend.

Your email list can be gold if you treat it right (I will get to that later on about how to build a relationship with your list.)

|Instant Traffic

When you build an email list to a sizeable amount, you can get instant traffic to any offer that you have on demand.

How can you get instant traffic? All you have to do is send an email to your subscribers. If they are interested in your offer and they click on the link to your offer contained in the email, that represents immediate eyes on your offer.

Plus the traffic is free and takes less than five minutes to draft the email and hit send.

How To Start Collecting Email Subscribers

Collecting email subscribers is simple when you follow certain strategies.

Without subscribers, your email list is useless. Remember that those subscribers are people, so you want effective ways at capturing someone’s email address so you can talk to them later on.

Let’s talk about the different ways you can collect email subscribers.

|Blog

If you have a blog there are different strategic places that you can place opt in forms on your blog to collect someone’s name and email address.

Side bar opt in form

On my blog, I have a static side bar opt in form that does not move. It is there if someone likes my content and wants to subscribe to receive more information from me.

Header opt in form

Most bloggers or website owners have an opt in form at the very top of their blog or website. It is the first thing a visitor will see when they get to the website/blog. Here’s an example of one from the Making Sense of Cents website.

Content opt in form

You can also place opt in forms within content that you are writing. I like this technique as I can give away a piece of content that is relevant to what the reader is reading.

For example, if the reader is reading an article on How To Start An Online Clothing Store, I will place an opt in form within the content to interrupt them to provide me with their email address for content that would be of value to them.

In this case, the piece of content is an eCommerce Wholesaler’s List.

In your case, think of anything that is of value that you can offer to your reader to entice them to provide their email address. Also, make sure that the content is relevant to the article that they are reading.

So I would not offer recipes in an article that is about Arts and Craft. Got the drift?

Footer opt in form

This is where the opt in form is found at the bottom of the article. How I do this, is I ask the reader a question. The strategy here is that if they like what they read, then perhaps they would like my other articles.

You can also offer anything for free in a footer opt in to entice the reader to hand over their email address.

Pop over opt in form

As a way to interrupt the reader you can configure your opt in form to drop in on the reader when they least expect it or maybe when they are going to leave the blog or website.

The key here is to offer something so good that they will want to leave their email address so they can receive the content.

Here’s an example of my pop over opt in.

|Landing Page

If you do not have a blog or website, you can also collect email subscribers via landing pages.

Landing pages are also called lead capture pages, lead pages and squeeze pages. So if you have ever heard any of those terminologies, they all mean the same thing.

The main purpose of a landing page is to solely collect email subscribers and then divert them to an offer for a product or service.

When you use a landing page, you will also use some form of advertising such as Google, Bing or Facebook to attract viewers to your landing page to sell a product.

I use LeadPages. You can also try Clickfunnel’s landing pages but if you want more options check out my review post of the 4 Awesomest Landing Page Builders You Should Use.

Your Subscriber Journey

Once you have collected your next subscriber’s email address there are a few things that you need to decide as a marketer or blogger.

There is a huge debate amongst marketers and bloggers about whether subscribers should go through a single opt in or a double opt in.

When you start using email marketing software, the provider will also ask you what is your preferred choice so let’s go over that now.

|A Single Opt In

A single opt in requires no further confirmation from your subscriber. They opt in to your opt in form and they receive your email.

Great! Pretty simple right? Not quite!

The icky thing about this, is that with single opt ins, you are more prone to receiving junk email addresses. Sometimes the email address may not be spelt correctly.

If you are only using a landing page and have an offer on the back side of that landing page, the user only needs to enter a fake email address to see what’s on the other side. 

This is what I call the curious cats. They are the ones who really do not want your offer and is only curious to see what’s on the other side, so they enter a fake email address to get pass.

What you end up with, is a bunch of non-quality email subscribers added to your list, which brings down the quality score for your email list.

So essentially, you can have a dead email list filled with fake email addresses that are of no use to you.

Bummer!

|Double Opt In

A double opt in requires you to confirm your subscription as a verification that you do want to receive the content that you have subscribed for.

The idea with double opt ins, is that only serious people will provide their real email address if they really want the content.

Double opt ins therefore ensure that you are connecting with real people. It also ensures that your list is of a high quality and improves your open email rates.

Here is what my subscriber journey is like when they opt into one of my opt in forms:

Firstly, the reader will enter their email address.

They will then see a pop up page like this asking them to confirm their subscription from the email sent to their email address.

They must check their email inbox and find the email that reads like this. They must also click on the link to confirm their subscription.

Once they click on the link, they are directed to a thank you page like this, asking them to share my content with their friends and family if I sent them content or to follow me on my social media. This helps create more exposure to my website and increase my following so I can connect with my subscribers in other ways.

You can create your own thank you page and ask your new subscribers to follow you on any social media platform you like.

Perfect! Now the next few chapters is where the action really starts, so keep on reading.

The Best Email Strategy For Your Business With Examples

Once you have started collecting email subscribers, what do you do next?

Talk to them of course.

You want to have a conversation with them so you can build a relationship with your subscribers. 

This is most important, as you want your subscribers to like you, know you and trust you. When you have their trust, you can recommend anything to your subscribers and generate a sale for a product or service.

So how exactly do you start building a relationship? Well this is where you will create email autoresponders within your email marketing software. Aweber is my preferred choice of email autoresponders.

|Email autoresponder

An email autoresponder, is a series of pre-written emails that are sent out to your subscribers automatically, daily or weekly.

The content of your email autoresponder will be based on your end goal.

So ask yourself, what exactly do you want to achieve from sending your email autoresponder?

If you simply want to connect with your readers and offer value, then your email autoresponder can be like this one.

In this autoresponder, you will see that I delivered the content on my lead magnet in the first email.

Then I am inviting the subscriber to connect with me.

Observe how I am being informal with my use of greetings like “Hey” or “Here’s Something Special”.

Your goal with this type of email autoresponder is simply for the subscriber to get to know you, so you will be providing more value than anything.

If your goal is to sell a product or service then your autoresponder can be like this one.

Notice how I am specifically targeting the reader with headlines where the goal is to encourage the subscriber to open the email to take a specific action.

So I have used headlines like “Do This To Start Seeing Results” or “Have You Seen It Yet”. I am also using proof emails to show that the product works.

How To Build Relationships With Your Subscribers

Here are some examples of the type of emails that I send to build relationships with my subscribers.

|The Welcome Email

|The Inspiration Email

Notice how in the above email I added my photo just to add a personal touch.

|The New Blog Post Email

You can write anything to your email list. The best advice I can give to you is to keep it personable, friendly and inviting.

If that fails and you do not know what to write, ASK YOUR LIST!! This way you show that you are interested in answering to their needs and you are giving them what they want. This really helps to strengthen the relationship with your list.

What To Do When Your Email List Goes Cold

Sometimes your email list will grow cold when your readers are no longer engaged with you.

This can happen for a number of reasons:

• Maybe they are no longer interested in your content
• Perhaps you forgot to email your list for a long time
• Some of your subscribers have changed their email address

If that happens, do not worry. It is normal.

You will find that some of your subscribers unsubscribe from your email list. That’s ok too.

You will know when your email list is no longer engaged with you, when your email open rates are low. So if 30%+ of your email subscribers open your emails, then this is an acceptable industry standard and you are doing ok.

If your open rates are less than 3% then something is wrong and it is time to have a clear out.

Aweber makes it easy for you to see how many people have not opened your emails and have not engaged with you for some time.

This is how you will do it.

First from your dashboard select the list that you want to inspect.

Next select the filter for No Opens and the since when date. So if you want to check for emails that have not been opened since three months ago, you will select the date three months in the past.

Aweber will then tell you how many people have not opened your email based on your criteria.

You can name your segment and save it.

Once you have created that group of people who have not opened your email in let’s say three months, you can send them an email letting them know that you will be removing them from your list.

Within the email you can also invite them to take some action, such as clicking a link, to confirm that they do want to stay on your list.

If they do not click on the link, they get the boot.

I give these subscribers two to three days to respond. Then on the third day whomever does not click on the link, I delete.

How To Create Your Email Marketing List

By now, I hope you understand why it is so important to get started with building your email list.

If you are just starting out as a beginner, I would recommend that you start building an email list today.

If you are already a marketer or blogger and do not have an email list then you too should get started today.

In my article, How To Start An Email List From Scratch, I break down how to start your own email list using Aweber and GetResponse.

Check out the article here.

Email Marketing Jargon You Need to Know

The worst thing about learning a new skill, is all the jargon you are bound to come across.

I have tried to make this tutorial free from jargon but as you continue on your marketing journey, you will see a few words that will leave you scratching your head and heading across to our beloved Google.

To help you avoid the confusion here is my list of email marketing jargon (words) that you should know:

Blacklist a list that identifies someone as a spammer and prevents them from delivering emails. As opposed to whitelist.

Bounce rate the rate at which your emails are not delivered. Usually your email service provider will let you know whether any of your emails have bounced or have not been delivered.

CAN SPAM Act this is a law set by the US for the regulation of commercial email and establishes the requirements for commercial messages. It gives the subscriber the right to have you stop emailing them and outlines the consequences if you fail to honour their request. This is why every email service provider adds an unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email you send to a subscriber.

Clicks your email service provider will let you know how many clicks you achieved from an email you sent, if that email has a link in it. This means how many people clicked on your link.

Double Opt in subscribers will confirm and verify that they do want to opt into your email list by clicking a link in a confirmation email sent to them before they subscribe.

Email Campaign a series of emails sent to subscribers to achieve a desired marketing goal.

Email List a list of persons who subscribe to receive emails from you.

Landing Page a page on your website that allows visitors to enter their contact details to subscribe to your email list. Otherwise known as a lead capture page, squeeze page, lead page, opt in page.

Open Rate the percentage of subscribers who have opened your emails.

Opt In to provide your contact details, usually your name and email address on a landing page giving permission to receive an email or emails from a company or individual.

Opt out to unsubscribe from an email list thereby preventing the company or individual from emailing you.

Privacy Policy a legal policy that must be provided on your website advising the reader how their details are used by you and what is done or not done with their data.

Single Opt in to provide your contact details on a landing page once, which immediately subscribes you to the email list without further need for verification.

Spam unrequested email sent to someone who has not provided permission to email them. This is unlawful and if reported can get your email account suspended.

Whitelist approving an email address as being trusted to be delivered to the recipient. As opposed to blacklist.

Congratulations!

Let’s wrap this up. You should now have a better understanding of what email marketing is all about, why it is important and why you should use it in your business.

Feel free to give everything that you have learned here a test and fit it into your own business.

Then comment below what you think. Was it hard? Easy? Anything else you’re not sure about?

Cheers,

LIKE WHAT YOU READ?

The post The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy for Bloggers, Marketers And Beginners appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

If your open rates for your welcome emails are not higher than 50% then you’re doing something wrong and I will share with you, one key thing that I always do to increase my open rates.

The thing is, if your open rates for your first email is low, it dictates what your open rates are likely to be for the rest of your email series.

What you want to do the first time, is leave a lasting impression on your visitors so they will feel like they just have to read your second, third or fourth email.

Doing so can lead to high click through rates, more people seeing your content and potentially sales.

What You Will Learn:

This is going to be a comprehensive guide on what to say in the very first email you write to your visitors and what to say before you even get visitors to your list so you can maximise every chance you get for them to open that email.

You will learn:

• Why your first email is the most important email
• One insanely easy thing you can do to increase open rates of your first email
• Exactly what you should be writing in your first email
• Other example templates of welcome emails than you can take inspiration from

Why Your First Email Is The Most Important Email   

Building Relationships

Like they say, the first impression lasts and is always the one that counts.

When you are meeting someone for the first time, or if they are just coming to your business through a sales funnel channel, it’s always best to greet them with an email that says “this is me but I’m not ready to marry you yet”.

The reason why we build email lists is that we are hoping that by adding a subscriber to a follow up process, they become profitable one day.

Essentially what this means is that you want to be able to turn your subscriber into a paid customer one day however whilst that is the outcome you’re seeking to achieve, on the first day you meet them, you don’t want it to be the obvious scenario.

This is why you need to work towards building a relationship with your subscribers and the first thing you do not want to give to them when you first meet them, is a sales pitch.

Selling to your subscribers the first time you meet them is like shooting yourself in the foot.

You have worked so hard to acquire that subscriber. You don’t want to end up with a lot of unsubscribes or even worse a dead, non-responsive list.

That is how important your first email is because it sets the taste in the subscribers’ mouth as to how valuable they perceive you.

If you can in fact help them solve a problem as opposed to getting money out of them they will decide whether they want to remain on your list or not.

So how exactly do you create a great first impression? By remembering that no one likes to be sold to. Therefore when writing your welcome email do not focus on the sale.

It’s Simply Expected

Another reason why welcome emails are so important is simply for the fact that it is expected.

When persons opt into a lead capture page to receive a lead magnet, they automatically assume that they are going to receive that lead magnet to their email address.

So what do they do?

They check their inbox or junk mail and if it’s not in there, they may opt in again to make sure that they did not enter an incorrect email address.

The number of times I have seen in my email list, similar names but different spelling email addresses. So it would be apparent that the lead made an error when typing in their email address.

That points out to me that the lead does expect some delivery to their email address.

If you do not have a welcome email set up, it tells the lead that you are not prepared, you’re not bothered about greeting them and disappointingly you have failed to deliver on your promise of the lead magnet.

If this happens don’t be surprised if your email list forgets about you when you do finally send your first email and a lot of unsubscribes occur.

Even if it is automated, remember that when you create that funnel and before you send traffic to that funnel, prepare an email list and at least a welcome email to introduce yourself to the subscriber.

One Insanely Easy Thing You Can Do To Increase Open Rates Of Your First Email

Industry standards say that the average open rate is anywhere between 50% to 86%.

Here’s my welcome email on two email lists:

So if your welcome emails are currently getting below these figures then you can optimise your opt in page sequence or sales funnel for better results.

Most of the times the reason why list owners get low open rates, is because the subscriber was not fully engaged, they did not receive the email in the first place or the email ended up in their junk mail.

This is why it is important that the message you send to the subscriber is clear, precise and gives them instructions to take action.

Basically your call to actions must be effective.

What is a call to action?

A call to action is a statement that you make to get an immediate response from the person reading the statement to do something.

Types of call to actions

For this particular section I am going to focus on the type of call to actions you can include in your opt in sequence and sales funnels.

When the subscriber opts into a content upgrade on the blog or a lead capture page on the sales funnel, you want to ensure that there is a thank you page at the end of each sequence speaking to the subscriber and telling them what to do next.

On the thank you page you can include text call to actions or video call to actions.

Text call to actions

If you are using text call to actions some examples of instructions that you can give to the subscriber to follow so that they head to their email is as follows:

Check your inbox for my email

An email has been sent to your inbox. Make sure and go there and look for it

Your gift/promised offer has been sent to your email. Be sure to check it out

Check your junk mail too just in case my email was delivered there.

If you are using the double opt in feature where your subscriber needs to confirm that they want to receive your emails give the subscriber instructions as to what they need to do.

For example, “you will receive an email with a confirmation link in it. Click on that link if you really want to receive my emails in the future”.

Here is what my thank you page call to action looks like:

Video call to actions

If you are using video call to actions you can create a video that gives similar instructions to your subscriber.

In the video you first of all want to introduce yourself, then tell the subscriber what to expect with any emails that you send to them.

By doing this you have a higher chance of your first email being opened because the subscriber has been informed about the arrival of the email, is aware that an email will be in their inbox or junk mail and so is more likely to take action to find the email and open it.

Exactly What You Should Be Writing In Your First Email

Let’s break down the anatomy of the first email.

Most marketers say that whilst your first email is opened by many subscribers it is important not to overload it with content.

I want to add to that it’s important that the first email is overloaded with the right content. Sometimes we can go on and on about things irrelevant to our readers which turn them off, but if you deliver the right content, even if it is overloaded, you will have a subscriber holding on for your other emails.

Let’s dive right into it.

I think your first email should have the following components:

• Thank you
• About me
• Who is the email list for
• What they will expect to receive from you
• How to continue receiving your emails
• How to connect with you
• What happens next

This outline can be applied to any email series, whether it’s for a course, a consultation, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.

Thank you

This is an obvious requirement and it is where you express your gratitude to the subscriber for trading their email address for joining your email list.

In this part I like to express how excited I am for them to choose me and join with me.

It’s all about giving the impression that they are in the right place and they will not be disappointed because of what you’re about to deliver.

You want to make your subscriber feel welcomed. So be as happy as you can with your words.

About me

If your subscriber has not already figured out who you are from your website or marketing material it’s a good idea to cover this again in a short blurb about you.

In this section you want you to introduce yourself again.

Tell them about your history in whatever niche you’re a part of and give the reason why you are qualified to educate them about what they’re about to learn.

So for example, in my email course about making money blogging, I tell the subscriber my history with blogging and what I have achieved since I started.

It is important to let your subscriber know that you have experience and you have gotten results before so you know what you’re talking about.

People want to learn from others, so if that is you who have had success then let them know about that success.

Who is the email list for

You want to make sure that your subscriber is qualified to be on your email list. So by stating who the content is for, will help the subscriber understand whether the information that they are about to receive is actually what they want to learn from.

For example, if I want to learn more about SEO but find myself on an email list that talks about Pinterest, then I know I am not in the right place.

Wouldn’t it be great if you can have only the right people that matter on your email list?

It would definitely help filter out those who stumbled into your email list out of curiousity and retain those who actually want to learn what you have to teach.

This section therefore should briefly explain what type of information the subscriber will learn from the email list.

And if it does not suit them you can politely invite the subscriber to unsubscribe from the email list by pointing them to the unsubscribe link.

Don’t be disappointed if you find many unsubscribes happen after this. It is a good sign and helps you build a healthy email list that is more likely to open your future emails and click through to your links.

What they will expect to receive from you

I think it’s  important to let your subscribers know what they will be getting from you.

It just sets their expectations for the type of content they will receive.

If you email list is specifically for a course feel free to outline the course structure. You can break down what the topics of discussion will be every day.

That way, you will have an email list that is looking forward to your emails as they already know what they’re going to receive from day one.

I find that when I tell my subscribers what they are getting each day, my open rates are higher in follow up emails.

I suppose it is something that they are looking forward to.

How to continue receiving your emails

This is not absolutely necessary but with so many emails being sent to the junk folder I think it is important that we ask our subscribers to whitelist our emails so that all future emails are delivered straight to their inbox.

It is more than likely that if the subscriber has opted in for a series of emails where they are likely to receive value, that they will want to ensure that they always see the email.

So this is where you can instruct the subscriber to take action so that they continue to receive your emails.

I like to say something like “please whitelist my email address so that you don’t miss an email from me”.

I also like to tell them how to whitelist it as some people are not really sure how to do this.

How to connect with you

People buy from people which is why this is a necessary step that you should take to get your subscriber from the inbox to any social media outlets that you are active on.

This helps your subscriber see that you are a real person.

It helps them to interact with you, thereby building the relationship and forging that closer connection which is a strong driver of sales.

When you get the subscriber to connect with you in person, they get to know more about you and also builds trust with you.

I would recommend sharing the easiest way to connect with you. Whether that’s on Facebook or Instagram.

Some people go as far as providing their contact number or Skype contact. This is not absolutely necessary unless contact by phone can help close a sale quicker.

This is where you decide what mediums are best for your subscriber to connect with you.

What happens next

Finally you can conclude your email by telling your subscriber what they can expect next. Whether that is waiting for the second email which comes the day or week after.

It’s an informative way of closing the email and preparing the subscriber for your next action.

Other Example Templates Of Welcome Emails That You Can Take Inspiration From

Whilst I have set out a comprehensive guide to welcome emails and everything that should be in it, there are other welcome emails which are short and simple.

However these shorter welcome email templates are useful for eCommerce brands.

If you are a brand that is providing a professional service such as consulting, coaching, advising you may wish to opt for the long form welcome email.

Here are some email templates from eCommerce brands.

Here’s Camelbak.

Notice how the first thing the email says is “thank you”. It also includes a hint of what the reader is likely to receive in future emails, “hydration tips, pack hacks and previews of new gear”.

NaturallyCurly

Another example of what you can expect from being on an email list, Naturally Curly tells their subscribers “you are now signed up for…”

Wrapping up

So that’s my complete guide to welcome emails.

It is the first and most important email that you should be writing, so use the points that I included here to craft your first email and make sure to get it right.

Remember email list building is all about building relationships. So even if you get the best first email, what comes after is also important so pay attention to this as well.

Give me some love in the comments by letting me know whether you like long or short form welcome emails.

Cheers

The post How To Write A Welcome Email That Gets Opened Every Time appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.