15 Ways to Build Your Subscriber List
Email marketing can be profitable for any business, no matter what kind of product or service you are selling. It is significantly cheaper than other advertising methods and it helps build credibility with your subscribers. As a result, you can generate more sales and profits.
The foundation for successful email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you an expert, you’ve completed the first step and are on your way!
Below you will several list-building ideas that will help you make the most of your email marketing efforts:
*Provide useful, relevant and unique content. Your visitors will not give you their email addresses just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful to your subscribers.
*Add a subscription form to every page of your website. Make sure it stands out so it is easy to find. If appropriate, you can also include it in more than one place. For instance, your opt-in form might always appear in the top-left corner of your site, while you also include an opt-in at the bottom of some of your popular posts.
*Make it easy for your reader to sign up. The more information you request, the fewer people will opt-in. In most cases, a name and an email address should be enough. If it’s not necessary, don’t include it here.
*Publish a Privacy Policy. Let your readers know that they can be confident you will not share their information with others. The easiest way to do this is to set up a Privacy Policy web page and provide the link to it below your opt-in form. (wow, this is something I’ve been meaning to do…)
*Show your first issue or other sample to your visitors. This lets potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up to determine if it is something they’d be interested in.
*Archive past newsletter issues. A “library” of past newsletters is both appealing and useful to visitors and builds your credibility as an authority. (Also, if your articles are written with good SEO techniques in mind, they can send additional traffic to your web site through good search engine positioning).
*Contact other newsletter publishers. Introduce yourself and explore ways you may be able to help each other. Perhaps you can introduce other publisher’s newsletters or print articles they have written to your list, with a link to sign up. When you contact them, be sure to tell them why you think THEIR readers would like what you have to offer and why YOUR readers would benefit from their newsletters. This is a win-win scenario; both of you will build your lists faster!
*Give away bonuses subscribers can use. Create an opt-in bonus for joining your subscriber list. You can write an ebook or PDF report, or even hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. But don’t limit yourself to only a gift for new opt-ins. Remind your readers that the next bonus is coming soon. People hate to miss out on things. If you systematically pass on “goodies” throughout the year, your subscribers are unlikely to leave.
*Ask your subscribers to pass it on. Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.
*Let others reprint your newsletter as long as the content is not modified. Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high-quality content and, if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.
*Include a “Sign Up” button in the newsletter. If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.
*Add a squeeze page. A squeeze page has one goal – to get an opt-in and build your list. Think of it like a mini-sales letter for your subscription or opt-in bonus. It features a powerful headline and a couple of very important benefits that should make subscribers want to sign up to your list.
*Include testimonials on your squeeze page. This can be important. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. To increase that believability, include full names, locations and/or urls; don’t use “Brian K, FL” as a testimonial name.
*Blog religiously. Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice flow with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign-up form on each page of your blog. You can start a free blog at Blogger or WordPress.
*Post on other blogs. Post great comments and information on similar blogs with a link to your squeeze or opt-in page. Also comment on others’ blogs through trackbacks. In most cases, your comments will be posted on their blogs with a link back to your site. This is an easy way to generate new traffic and subscribers. You can actually download a copy of my Blog Warrior software, which makes finding blogs in your niche, commenting, and building links a whole lot easier (for free for a limited time) right here.
One last point, you will most definitely need an autoresponder service to automate the signing up process, the newsletter delivery, subscriber management, etc… It’s impossible to be online marketing today without the use of autoresponders. Three of the top autoresponder services that I like are Aweber, Trafficwave, and GetResponse. They are all quite reasonably priced and I feel each provides topnotch support. If you know me, though, you’ll know which one I use the most and actually prefer 
Now go ahead…get to building your subscriber list 
Filed under affiliate marketing by on Jul 17th, 2009. 2 Comments. 
Using Articles and Autoresponders Together
Here’s a way to promote all your niche articles besides submitting them to directories one by one.
Writing articles to market a product or service is an excellent way to build any business. The articles, of course, should be very informative, providing the reader with information that is relevant to a specific topic. Your article resource box usually includes a link to a website or blog for more information. The website, of course, is designed to sell a product or service that relates to the topic of the article.
Articles are commonly submitted to article directories, websites, and ezine publishers. This is one of the most effective ways to market a service or product on the Internet, and get this…it can become even more effective when it is combined with the use of an autoresponder.
Here’s what to do. Take all of your articles for your one specific topic and start to set them up into an autoresponder. Each different niche or topic should definitely have it’s own autoresponder address so you will need an autoresponder service that allows you unlimited autoresponders. Make sure you have a master list of your articles per topic and the autoresponder address/form code for each topic one you have set up. Add descriptions of the articles on your master list also.
Now, we all know advertising your articles one at a time can take a great deal of time, but advertising one autoresponder address – the one for the master list of a specific topic – won’t take very much time at all. Simply put your autoresponder topic’s form code in a newsletter, and on your website or blog. That way when someone signs up to receive an informational article, not only will they get to read one, but having set up your autoresponder, they will continue to receive your other articles related to the specific topic. Make sure you have an excellent resource box set up at the end of your articles, pointing your subscribers to your site, service or product.
When submitting your articles to directories, you can even put a link to the autoresponder address or squeeze page where article readers can sign up to receive more articles, into your resource box.
If you don’t have an autoresponder service yet, there are a few decent ones out there, Aweber, GetResponse, etc… I would recommend checking out, TrafficWave.net. The quality of their service is excellent and you can’t beat the pricing, especially when you see all that they provide for one low fee. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to contact me!
Filed under affiliate marketing by on Mar 22nd, 2009. 2 Comments.
Boosting Your Business With Autoresponders
These days, almost everyone is familiar with autoresponders, although believe it or not, many don’t know why they are beneficial to businesses. I just finished explaining the importance of autoresponders integrated with an affiliate marketing business to a friend of mine – giving me the idea for this post!
If you aren’t familiar with autoresponders, and have never used or set one up, you will most definitely want to check into them and I bet you’ll be amazed! An autoresponder can help your business by automatically emailing your clients and customers with a preset message that will help to increase your sales. Automation!
Autoresponders can help your list of customers grow as you send each one of them their own personalized email message. Then if you want, you can also follow up each individual email with repeated emails, varying the content whenever you wish. Autoresponder programs also allow you to keep track of conversations, and send out broadcast email messages whenever you have news or new products to offer your clients. I can’t live without it! Nor could I run my business so smoothly
Personalized email from your autoresponders is a great way to boost your business. When you send a personalized email to one of your clients, the autoresponder by can address him or her by their name – which always makes a customer take notice. While you could do this yourself using traditional email, it could take you a few hours if you have a long list of customers.
Autoresponders make sending personalized email so easy. All you need to do is set up your email letters one time, selecting where you want the “name” to go. You can add everyone in your customer list to the autoresponder, which makes sending emails a snap. Once you have everything ready to go, all you need to do is send out the emails with one simple click. Best of all – you don’t have to set it up again when you need to send out broadcast messages.
With each autoresponder email series you set up, you would then want to grab the subscription form code for that series, place it on a website or blog, and visitors to your site can simply fill in their name and email address to add themselves to that specific autoresponder email series – and then they are on your list!
Although there are some people who will buy products after one or two emails, most people require about seven or eight emails before they will purchase anything. Autoresponders can really help you there, as they will do all of the emailing for you. You don’t have to keep sending manual emails or anything like that. All you need to do is set up the email address, type in your preset message, and then feel free to send it as many times as you like.
Through the use of an autoresponder you can really boost your business. I can’t say that enough. If you are running an online business, whatever the niche, this tool will prove to be invaluable. You can spend less time sending messages manually – and more time doing what you enjoy, or in my case more marketing! If you’ve never tried an autoresponder before, you owe it yourself to check out everything they will do for you and your business. Online businesses can get a lot of emails on a daily basis – which is where the autoresponder will really start to shine and show you just how great of an asset it really is.
You can sign up on this page to receive my free report: Autoresponders Really Can Make You More Money and read more about it!
You can also try this autoresponder program out free for 30 days! It is the best out there! I would suggest that you do this, check it out, have a look around, use it! I know you’re going to love it!
Filed under affiliate marketing by on Mar 15th, 2009. 1 Comment.
