Email Marketing

Purpose:

The purpose of this bonus lesson is to talk about Email Marketing. The objective is to:

• Review why you should use email marketbling
• Discuss what services are recommended
• Present a bonus that will help you
• Learn how to configure your blog to collect emails "Blog RSS Feed Style"

Why Email Marketing? Because It Works!

There are several reasons why you should use email marketing.  Aside from simply mentioning that it works, we'll look at two of those reasons:

1. Rule of Multiplication: an effective email marketing approach enables you to show your offer multiple times PLUS provide multiple offers to a targeted audience.
2. Rule of Repetition: effective use of email marketing provides an easy way to get repeat traffic.

Multiple Times

Depending on whom you talk to or which survey results you read, it generally takes about 7 reminders before the average customer converts to revenue.  Whether this number is less, more, or exact, the point is that it takes multiple times to convert a customer.  Email responders make the task of reminding quite easy.
Another issue is the reality that not every offer will be of interest.  Using an email list allows you the opportunity to advertise multiple different offers quite easily.  Doing a different offer every few days will show which offers convert.

More Repeat Traffic

Nobody argues the value of repeat traffic.  Using autoresponder / email services, you now have the ability to email your readers when your blog's RSS feed is updated.  That means when you have a new post on your blog it will automatically get emailed to your readers.  This ability has been provided by a few services for years but now nearly all of them do so.
A very cool and powerful option now available with these services is the ability to have category-specific RSS feeds.  Completely optional, you are able to create an RSS feed that is specific to a category so that content posted to that category is automatically broadcast for that category's feed.  You could even go in and occasionally create an email for that blog which, once posted to that category, would have it automatically sent out to that specific audience.

What Services?

There are a lot of email services out there but the one we recommend the most is Aweber (we also use a rebrand of Aweber called Prosender). The reasons for choosing Aweber are:

• it is cost effective
• it has lots of features
• it has excellent delivery rate

You can check out this very reliable service at http://www.rssfeed.com.  It's a great service for those just starting out and, at the time of creating this lesson, Aweber's first month offering was just $1.00.
A couple other good services are...

• http://www.rssfeed.com/icontact
• http://www.rssfeed.com/getresponse

There are many other services out there, and if you are currently using one that is not included here and are happy with it, then just keep using it :)

What About Free Services?

There are options for services which are free and these free autoresponder services come in two forms:

• Self Hosted: such a service requires you to run a script, ensure your IP does not get blacklisted, and a bunch of other time consuming things.  PLUS, your delivery rates WILL SUCK!
• Third Party Hosted: a good starting point if finances are tight but they do add their own ads into your emails and their features tend to be limited.

Clearly we are not selling you on the first option and, while a consideration, even the second option is somewhat discouraged.  As a matter of personal opinion, if you're going to get into email marketing, you'd be better off spending the money to let someone else manage this system.  At $20/month to start, you get a good system that frees your time up to focus on building blogs and traffic!

How To?

In the following steps, we'll show you how we inorporate email marketing into our blogs.  While we have suggestions for what tools to use, feel free to use your own since the main point is how to go about getting your email list, not the tools you use to get it.
Now, one of the tools we use is the very powerful plugin called "PopUp Domination".  For those of you that have access to the Auto Blog Installer, you already have access to this tool as it is installed with your blog. As part of our developer's license agreement, we are able to offer it free for every blog installation done using our Autoblog Installer.
If you do not have access to the Blog Installer then you may want to check out "PopUp Domination" for yourself here http://rssfeed.com/popupdomination.
As an added bonus, regardless of which popup software you use, we have some great opt-in graphics that everyone gets access to, you can download them from http://rssfeed.com/

Incorporating Email Marketing "RSS Feed" Style!

Step 1: Ask yourself, "Is my blog ready?"

Using Auto Blogs to focus on lead capture is EXTREMELY powerful... especially if you own a business that knows how to follow up with those leads.
In the start of this training series, We mentioned how collecting emails as a core focus is effective for long term results. The main challenge with email marketing however, is you need a lot of combined traffic to get enough leads, and it can take a few months for your blogs to get enough traffic. The other issue is effectively following up with your email leads. Its great to want to capture leads, but if you are not going to follow up with them and sell to them, well then you may as well not do it.
If your initial core focus is NOT email capture then before you consider getting started with email marketing, you need to ask yourself:

1. Are my blogs getting enough traffic to justify adding email capture? The percentage of visitors to your blog(s) that actually sign up for your email list can be small, sometimes only 1% to 2% and that means to get even one lead a day you need 100 visitors. Now if you have a network of related blogs, you can of course have the traffic from all the blogs work together, since the combined traffic should be good. The choice is up to you, but I personally shoot for a 1% at one a day, which means our blog must get 100 visitors a day before i will focus on using email capture. Remember this is only relevant if your blog(s) were nto initially designed for lead capture, if your blog(s) is built for the purpose of lead capture, then of course you will want to incorporate it right away.
2. Am I willing to invest time in following up with my leads? If you are not sure if you will dedicate time to setting up offers, and emailing them... then why waste your time up front. Do not think that you can build a list up and then in a year email them... they will have no idea who you are and your conversion rates will be brutal. You need to contact them as soon as they opt-in and stay in contact with them until they buy something or unsuscribe. That may sound harsh but you are in this to make money, not to collect free email subscribers.

NOTE: Not every blog market is good for email marketing.  If you have a product that doesn't have a recurring passionate audience, getting them to opt in can be a challenge, even when offering backend offers such as a free product-related e-book. Also, there may not be a lot of offers you can send them on the backend.

Step 2 Create a "Bribe":

In simple terms, find a site-related offering you can offer visitors as a "bribe" to opt in.  Using the site we've been showing throughout our training (grindbrewcoffeemaker.org) as an example, we might offer a free e-book on coffee recipes.  The visitor would see this offer and enter (opt in) their name and email address in the provided fields.
For creating the actual bribe, the easiest strategy is to offer either an ebook or an email series.
To offer an ebook, the simplest option (in our opinion) is to purchase a product that has resale rights.
A few good places to look are...

• http://www.theplrstore.com/
• http://master-resale-rights.com/
• http://www.masterresalerights.com/

All three of these websites offer a huge selection of products that you can give away. Make sure you check all three sites, i have found that they often carry the exact same product but will have different prices. No one store is always cheaper then the other, so take a few minutes and look around. IMPORTANT: Make sure to check out the license for the specific product, some do not permit you to give the item away.
If you want to offer an email series, you can either purchase material or use a website like http://ezinearticles.com/ to locate a few solid articles on the topic you are promoting. Make sure to also work in promotional content with your mailings as well. An excellent option for the email series is to actaully post to content on your blog and in the emails, sent them the link to the post. Make sure the email has text to encourage the reader to click the link and make sure to monetize the content on yoru blog. You will also want to make sure there is no time stamp on the post, people are turned off if the date of the content makes it appear liek it is outdated. By removing the date, you eliminate this issue :)

Step 3 - Create Back End Offer

Set up a "Back End" offer (up sell) on your "Thank You" page - when the person has opted in for the free offer, create some content and provide access to a second offer (up sell) that will make you money.  You don't want to just give something away and not make some effort to capitalize on the fact that the person is now likely in the right mood for other things.
In the example used in the video, we found a related ClickBank offer and created a "presales" affiliate page that ensourages the reader to check out the product. Keep in mind that the example given is just an example and was created purely for demonstration purposes.

Step 4 - Set Up Your Auto Responder

Each of the recommended auto responder services have a unique process they use for creating your email list and is beyond the scope of this training guide. I do however recommend that for "legal" reasons you should always have your list set to double opt-in.  What this means is that when they give you their email address, a confirmation email is sent to them asking them to confirm their opt-in.  Once that is done, another email is sent to them containing the download link for the free offer as well as containing an up sell offer. By doing this, you keep yourself out of trouble from a legal perspective.
Remember to have the auto responder send the subscriber to custom thank you page that you monetize with an upsell. You can simply create a page on your auto blo to accomplish this.

Step 5 - Set Up Your Follow Up Messages

Your follow up messages are what your subscriber will recieve once they opt in. The first message should contain instructions as to what they will recieve. If it is a pdf to download, clearly state what they are to do. If they are going to be recieveing an email series, then tell them what to look for and how often they will recieve the messages.

Step 6 - Add Opt In Forms to Your Blog

If you take a look at our example site (grindbrewcoffeemaker.org), you will notice a popup opt-in box appearing on the index page of the site using "PopUp Domination".  This has been configured to show again only after 7 days of the person first visiting there.
You should also notice the free e-book offer presented in the popup opt-in box.  This is the "bribe" to get the visitor to opt in by filling in the name and email address fields.  When this is done, the visitor is taken to the download page which, incidentally, is also the 'Thank You' page.  Notice the "Back End" offer included on the page with a variety of means to access the offer (hyperlinks, etc.).
If you return to the index page, you will notice the opt-in box does not appear.  However, going to other pages (e.g. blog page), you see an opt-in box, including the initial free offer, in the sidebar.  This makesthe opt-in available in multiple, easy-to-access places and in easy-to-see locations.

• Step 1: Double check to ensure your blog is ready
• Step 2: Create a "Bribe"
• Step 3: Create a "Back End" offer
• Step 4: Set-up your Autoresponder
• Step 5: Set up your follow up messages
• Step 6: Add Opt-In forms to your blog(s