Email Marketing
– Website Optional
Email
marketing offers a great opportunity to grow your business, you can publish a
newsletter or e zine through an email marketing system, you can also set up a
fixed term membership site using email marketing and you can send broadcast
messages to your subscribers to encourage them to make new purchases.
It
is important that you follow the law and any regulations applicable to your
Country and if your hosting provider specifies it, you must comply with the Can
Spam act too. The laws for email marketing and what you must disclose change
often, so it is always best to keep abreast of what is happening. Check and
double check that any emails you send out to your list comply fully. If
you are using email marketing to promote products as an affiliate, then you
will also need to include a disclosure statement as per the FTC guidelines or
the relevant laws for your Country.
So
how can you perform email marketing with no website? Fear not. I have the
perfect answer.
Facebook
+ Mailchimp, Facebook will allow you to post a sign up form on your page and
Mailchimp will provide you with the App you need to integrate the sign up form
on your Facebook page.
Mailchimp
will allow you to have up to 1000 subscribers on your list before you will have
to pay for their services. The only negative with using Mailchimp is that you
cannot promote affiliate products to your subscribers; however you can promote
your own products that you have for sale.
By
placing your subscribe form on your Facebook page, it will encourage more
people to sign up, as they won’t have to leave Facebook to sign up for your
list.
Full
detailed instructions on how to use the Mailchimp APP on Facebook are located
here.
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/mailchimps-facebook-signup-app/
It’s easy to sign up for a Mailchimp account you don’t
even need a credit card.
Sign
up for your account As
usual make sure you read their rules, terms and conditions.
That
means that if you have 1000 subscribers, you will have the ability to email out
6 times a month to your list. Do be aware though mailing out too often to your
subscribers can send them running for the unsubscribe button.
If
you are going to be using this method of email marketing to run your
newsletter/e zine, even if you publish once a week, your Mailchimp account with
less than 1000 members will be fine.
There
are numerous plugins available for Wordpress that will enable you to run your
own opt in list on your blog. The only limitations on how large you can build
your list will be how many emails per hour your web host will allow you to run, Most
web hosts have quite lenient rules and if you follow them you should be fine.
Mailchimp
could also be used on your blog, most of the plugins available will enable you
much more freedom and flexibility.
Enter
Newsletter +Autoresponder in the box on the site and then click the Search
Plugins button. There
are just 5 plugins listed on the Wordpress.org site.
With WP Responded you can create email newsletters, follow up
autoresponders and provide subscription to blog via e-mail.
You can Import/Export your entire list, and the Plugin uses shortcodes
so you are not restricted to having a sign up form in your sidebar, you can add
a sign up box inside your posts.
There are other scripts freely available for you to use to add
subscribers to your Newsletter/Ezine or Mailing list some come with detailed
installation instructions and others are a bit lacking.
If you really need free then I would recommend that you take a look at
two php scripts, they have to be installed on your own hosting account (web
space)
Visit www.phplist.com for instructions on how to
install and use this program. PhPList is available as a one click install
through Fantastico on any hosting that uses C panel. Some Internet Marketers use
phplist to manage their mailing lists.
There are some companies who will for a fee, install and set phplist up
on your hosting space for you.
Infinite responded is another free Autoresponder script that you can install on your own web hosting space. Whilst it is not the prettiest looking piece of software, it
does work and will provide you with the means to start your mailing list,
newsletter or e zine.
These two programs are not the only free autoresponders out there; in
fact, if you ask your friendly search engine to find you a “free Autoresponder”
you will find there are a lot to choose from. All I would mention here is that
free sometimes can be very costly.
Some people will advise you that hosting your own Autoresponder on your
own site is the wrong thing to do. They will tell you that you can get your
site blacklisted or even worse shut down. The choice is of course yours, and
when you are first starting out it may be that there is no choice at all unless
you’ve been really successful and managed to get some funds together either
from Ebay sales or some Freelancing as I mentioned earlier in the report.
If you are a good person and don’t spam people with offers or bombard
them with email after email, or irrelevant content the risk of being
blacklisted or shut down is minimal.
For example, if you offer someone a newsletter/e zine on how to look
after rabbits, then further down the line you start to send them make money
online offers, you are going to get complaints, and quite rightly too.
There are a lot of companies that offer hosted autoresponders; this is
where they deliver your messages for you from their server.
These companies will then provide you with code to paste on your site to
host the sign up form on your site or blog.
Here are two free hosted email providers which may be of use to you
these are:
www.mailchimp.com allows 1000 subscribers, 6000 messages per
month. No advertising of affiliate products allowed.
www.listwire.com allows unlimited
number of subscribers, unlimited lists. You can promote affiliate products in
your messages you send out. There is no import or export facility available. If
you close your account, you loose your list.
As far as paid for Autoresponders go, this really does depend upon your
budget. All Autoresponder services vary some offer more subscribers for the
same monthly fee, others are more expensive, but offer better tools to use. It
really is a case of see which one suits you best.
The leading Autoresponder services at the moment are.
www.aweber.com sometimes they have
a $1 trial running. Generally it is $19.95 per month for up to 500 subscribers
with unlimited mail outs.
www.icontact.com their starter
plan is $9.95 per month for up to 250 subscribers with unlimited mail outs.
www.imnica.com their starter plan,
offers a 30 day trial for $1 after that they then charge $9 per month for up to
5000 subscribers.
www.constantcontact.com
their starter plan, offers 60 free trial, after that they then charge $15 per
month for up to 500 subscribers.
www.getresponse.com their
starter plan is for up to 250 subscribers and the fee is $9.95 per month.
www.profollow.com their starter plan is
for up to 10,000 subscribers and is currently set at $19.95 per month, however
they do plan on altering their prices in the not too distant future.
The
Autoresponders mentioned above are not the only ones on the market again have a
look around and see which one suits your needs and or budget. Please make sure you check the prices as they do change from time to time.
When you are
first starting out, don’t get bogged down with Internet terminology, you’ll
hear things like, squeeze pages, opt in pages, and wonder what the difference
is, to be honest, there isn’t one, one marketer will refer to their opt in page
as a squeeze page and another marketer will refer to their squeeze page as an opt
in page. Both pages perform the same task of presenting a sign up form to your
visitors so they can add themselves to your list, Newsletter or E zine.
If you are faced
with the option of single opt in or double opt in, always go for double opt in,
this stops the comedians from adding false email address to your list, and
keeps you out of the spam complaints list.
Why
write a Newsletter/E zine or build a list anyway
Every
website needs traffic, by creating a newsletter or mailing list, and
interacting with your subscribers, you remind them that your website is out
there what it is about and they will be more easily persuaded to return to your
site. A newsletter/e zine is one of the most effective marketing tools you can
use to promote your website.
You will
have heard a thousand times, that “the Money is in the list” or the Money is in
the relationship with your list. This is so true. In the offline world your
customers would walk into your shop, in the online world you have to bring your
customers back to your site.
It
is essential that you keep your subscribers happy with good quality content, by
doing this your list of subscribers will prove to be the biggest asset you
could ever have.
To
end a lot of confusion, I’m going to tell you now, a Newsletter is the same as
an E zine – both are online only publications. Traditionally the electronic
newsletter was referred to as an E zine because it was just a magazine published online. A lot of today’s marketers prefer to refer to their Ezine as a
Newsletter.
Lots
of people produce Newsletters the majority of them are free, some newsletters
have stood the test of time, whilst others have frizzled out and died.
Offering
your subscribers a Newsletter once or twice a week means that you are
committing to produce this for them.
Remember
your subscribers trusted you with their email address, on the promise that you
would produce that newsletter for them, you have to be disciplined and you have
to write the newsletter. So think long and hard about your offer to them when
they sign up.
It
is far better for your sanity to promise a periodical newsletter – that way you
can choose your own timing, once a week, or once a month.
There
are a lot of good marketers making quite a healthy living online simply by
producing a newsletter once a week or once a month. Jim Daniels and Marlon Sanders have been using
this method of marketing for years.
A
good example of one to sign up for is Martin Avis’s Newsletter, Martin
publishes his newsletter mostly twice a week, his newsletters are friendly,
informative and offer good snippets of information sign up here for free. http://www.kickstartdaily.com/
Another
example of a good informative newsletter again for free is published by Paul
Myers http://www.talkbiz.com Pauls
letters always contain great information although sometimes, be prepared for
the odd rant.
An
example of a paid newsletter giving great information to help you move your business
along is Tony Shepherds affordable mentoring newsletter. You can download a
free copy from this link here -à Affordable
Mentoring Newsletter
Other services
you can provide by simply using an Autoresponder
Have
you heard of a “fixed term membership model?” this is where you load up your
Autoresponder with a series of messages and automatically send them to your
subscribers once a week, or once a month. It’s like running your own membership
site without the need of an expensive membership script.
Your
e-course is delivered to your subscribers automatically from the Autoresponder.
You can choose either to offer this e-course for free or to charge a fee to
your subscribers for the information they will receive.
Jimmy
D Brown has very successfully used this model for his membership sites. Once a
week he sends his paying members an Autoresponder message that contains a link
to download that weeks’ lesson.
Should
you choose to offer an e-course you only really need to have the first 4 weeks
of material ready and inserted into your Autoresponder before you start to
promote the e-course; this would then give you four full weeks to write the
next stages of the course.
There
are lots of marketers out there who offer free e-courses sign up to a few, see
how they have constructed them and what level of information they provide. You
might be quite surprised at how easy a method this is to start your own online
empire.
There
are various ways you can monetize your newsletter/ezine, e-course initially
when you are first starting out, promote affiliate products that compliment the
content of your newsletter.
If
your topic for the newsletter is lets say on “Link Cloaking” go to the Clickbank marketplace and find a link
cloaking script to promote add the link to your newsletter – your readers may
click on the link and purchase the script and you of course would earn a
commission. There are other places to
find products to promote besides Clickbank, take a look at www.rapbank.com too.
Once
your newsletter has become established and you have a healthy number of
subscribers you could offer paid advertising where other marketers will pay you
to promote their products to your readers.
Once
you have decided to produce that e zine/newsletter, submit it to as many ezine directories as you can.
http://www.web-source.net/web/E zines/
People
who are looking to advertise their products use these types of sites to find e zines to advertise in; ensuring your ezine is listed in these directories will
also bring in new subscribers.
PLEASE NOTE BEFORE YOU FOLLOW ANY OF THESE IDEAS CHECK THEM AS INTERNET CHANGES VERY QUICKLY AND SOME OF THESE IDEAS MIGHT NOT WORK.
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