Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the process of building a mailing list, and marketing your product and/or services to that mailing list. Email Marketing has suffered in recent years as a result of the increase in spam, and use of email blacklists, but still is an extraordinarily effective way of marketing to a targetted audience.

Professional internet email marketers all agree that your mailing list is your goldmine. Your goal as a serious email marketer, is to build your own email mailing list that you can market to - with their permission, of course.

Successful email marketers maintain multiple lists, and sub-lists. For example those who signed up for a freebie, those who then purchased at a later date, multiple purchasers, etc, those interested in particular products.

The most important reason to have a list is because people rarely buy things on their first visit to your site. Getting them on your list and following up with them later is the best way of increasing conversions.

An autoresponder is a program that lets you send emails to your list at controlled intervals. You can use your autoresponder to send free reports, to confirm a sale, to do a followup, to send an automatic welcome when they join your list, and more.

There are numerous free autoresponder programs available (courtesy of ads in the messages), generally with paid upgraded versions (without ads). Such as:


Bravenet
GetResponse
FreeAutobot
If you have something to sell, capturing people's email address is the most important thing you can do. Even the best websites may only get about sales conversion rate from their visitors. But following them up via email can increase that rate. So capture their address, by offering them something free, and then follow them up with an autoresponder to remind them how good you are, and how much you are willing to help them, the benefits of your product and how it can change their life for the better and solve their problems.

This is where people talk about front-end and back-end. People may join your list as they buy your main front-end product, or to get a free ebook or course. Then you can periodically continue to offer them related products later on, that they may be interested in, as back-end products for satisfied customers.

You can buy lists of names of people who are willing to join your list. Allow them to opt-out at any time. Make sure you buy from a reputable company, to avoid getting spam complaints. Get personal references from people who have used the company.

A common way is to write a series of lessons about a particular topic, with a catchy title, such as "Seven secrets to Marketing Success" or "Health Tips you can't afford to ignore". Save them in an autoresponder. Advertise your lessons. People have to enter their email address to subscribe to your course. Particularly if you offer something for free. Then you can followup with your primary and followup offers.

But you have to provide value to your list. If you are constantly mailing them ads, soliciting their money, without giving anything back, then they will get sick of the junk mail, and unsubscribe. I know I do.