Mistake Number Four
Failing to deliver quality content
This is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes (and fatal mistakes) that both new and seasoned business owners make when running their list campaigns.
While the objective of building email lists is to effectively monetize them, you need to earn the right to send out promotional based emails.
This starts with first building a relationship with your list by offering high quality content, free tools and resources and material that is helpful and well received.
Once you have worked towards connecting with your subscriber base, however, you need to maintain that relationship by focusing on a well balance of solid, high quality content with any promotional emails you send out.
In fact, one way of maximizing open rates and response from your subscriber base is to over-deliver on quality content even during times when you don’t have a scheduled launch or affiliate program that you are planning to promote.
People tend to notice habits, and if they discover that the only time you seem interested in contacting them is when you have something to sell or promote, you will quickly lose any trust and credibility that you may have earned from your previous communication.
Keep this in mind whenever you create a new email campaign or broadcast.
Consider whether your email truly offers value and is written so that it genuinely benefits your subscriber base. If you build a solid relationship and brand with your subscribers, you’ll subsequently build a very responsive and loyal customer base.
Mistake Number Five
Letting their lists run cold
You absolutely need to focus on staying in constant communication with your subscriber base. This doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to email them every day, but what you want to do is consider creating a posting schedule so that you can get into the habit of connecting with your subscribers regularly, while demonstrating consistency. Your subscribers will then begin to expect your emails on certain days and by doing this, you will begin to see a dramatic increase in your open rates.
The more consistent you are with your broadcasts, the easier it will be to condition your subscribers to accept promotional based emails and advertisements in between mailings containing free content and resources.
Mistake Number Six
Failing to monetize
While it’s very important to provide your list with fresh, useful and free content, resources and information, you are in the business of email marketing so that you can build a profitable business and you need to get into the habit of monetizing your list right from the start.
Here are a few ways to quickly monetize your lists:
1) Affiliate Products
You can promote third party products to your list, where you will earn a commission each time one of your subscribers purchases the product using your referral link.
To begin, visit http://www.ClickBank.com or http://www.PayDotCom.com and review products relating to your industry from within their marketplace.
With these two resources alone, you will have an unlimited number of products available to promote, covering dozens of niche markets.
2) Sell Advertising Space
There are many benefits of offering ad space within your newsletter including the fact that you can set your own price structure based on the number of subscribers you currently have the exposure that you are able to offer to potential advertisers and sponsors, increasing your prices as your list grows.
You can also consider solo mailings at a higher price once your list has grown enough to make it worth their while.
With offering ad space within your newsletter, you are in full control of the types of advertisements that you accept, so if you currently have your own product line, you could avoid promoting competing products.
In order to set up a successful advertising program, you will need to be able to provide detailed statistics and demographics regarding your subscriber base.
I recommend building your list to at least 1,000 subscribers prior to offering advertising space so that you are able to offer greater value to potential advertisers who are looking to maximize exposure for their products and services.
3) Create Your Own Products
With direct access to potential customers, you already know the types of products or services they are interested in, so the next logical step is to create your very own product or service catering to your existing subscriber base.
Consider surveying your subscribers to determine what types of products or services they would be interested in and create a secondary squeeze page so that subscribers can choose to join your new newsletter to receive information on when your product is ready to launch.
This will help you determine the overall demand for specific products prior to creating them.
But Isn’t Email Marketing Kind of Dead?
No, it is not. In fact email marketing had never been more alive as it is today. Every website wants you to give them your email address, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or The New York Times. Why is email marketing so relevant and important?
The answer is very simple. Everyone has got an email address which they log into several times a day. Most people with smart phones are signed into their email accounts 24/7 with push notifications enabled. Email is much more personal, direct, and a reliable way to get in touch with most people.
Advantages of an Email List
During our years of online marketing experience, we have learned that building an email list is probably the best thing you can do for your website and your business.
An email list drives much more traffic and has a much higher user engagement rate than any other platform.
Why? Because when someone subscribe to your email list with double opt-in, they are really interested and are much more likely to open your email and click on the links. It is not such a surprising fact, here is why:
Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. Your message is intended for a user and it lands into their inbox. It is very direct, personal, and casual.
Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously already interested into hearing from you and is much more receptive and responsive to your message.
Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products / content. They have already given consent to learn more by receiving your emails. They are much more likely to click, buy, and spread the word around for your products and services. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results.
Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public wall or timeline. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to ask questions on public forums where everyone can read them. Email also allows users to build a one on one relationship with you. Gradually they develop trust in your brand and proudly spread the word around.
To summarize all this, email works a lot better than any other online marketing tool. Big name brands learned that long time ago, and this is why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists. They understand that the email is the best long-term investment and people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.
If you don’t have a mailing list or you don’t know how to create an effective email marketing campaign, why not contact us today to see how we can help your business increase its profits.