The Email List Secret Weapon
Imagine this for a second… You slowly wake up on a late Friday morning after a good night’s sleep. The night before you got to see your favorite band play and it was fantastic. The music was phenomenal. You had a great time with your friends at the restaurant before the concert. It was truly a night to remember.
Your friends had to get up early for work, but you knew you could sleep in as late as you wanted to. You drink your morning coffee. You check your email. You even catch up with a few episodes of your favorite show. You’re relaxed, and you take a moment to appreciate the life you’ve created for yourself.
True, some days you love to get up early and work for eight hours straight. You feel great when you put in a hard day’s work, but last night you had already decided that this isn’t one of those days. Today you want to take it easy. Last night it was about having fun and today you intend to relax. But that doesn’t mean that the day should be wasted; you can still make some money.
You start browsing the latest products on the affiliate network that you frequently visit. You’re looking for a product that 20,000 people on your main email list will find interesting. And there it is, after some scrolling you managed to find a product that fits the interests of your email subscribers perfectly. You’ve been researching it a lot over the past few days, and you’ve come to the decision that this product is what your subscribers would most likely be interested in.
Today will be the day you tell them about it. This product has a high EPC (earnings per click) so you know the sales page converts well. You sit down and draft a fun and informative email to your subscribers. You give them a few free tips like you usually do. You then begin to explain to them what this product can really do for them. At the end you include your call to action and your affiliate link. You’re done. All of this took less than an hour.
You can now spend your day doing the things you love. You might go to the beach, or for a long walk in the mountains. You could go see that new movie everyone is talking about before meeting an old friend for lunch at that new downtown restaurant you’ve been wanting to go to for a while now.
Or you can stay at home and finish that book you’ve started reading and just relax. The possibilities are endless.
The story above is not a fantasy. Plenty of successful, full-time marketers have days like that all the time.
YOU NEED AN EMAIL LIST
Being your own boss does have its merits. But how exactly does someone create and develop an email list that churns out profit like this? Well, I’ve broken it down into 5 simple, easy-to-follow steps so you can get started on it right now. Please note, however… This is not a comprehensive, all-inclusive training with click-by-click videos. This is a primer on 5 simple steps that will get you down the right path to start building yourself an email marketing empire in the fastest way that I know how.
WHY DO I NEED A Email LIST?
For starters, having a large and responsive email list is the fastest way to bring in a consistent stream of money. Instead of having to figure out where you’re going to find new customers, you already have a large number of them in your email account. In fact, many of them have probably bought from you before and are willing to do so again. If you have your own products, you can release them directly to your list and often see a ton of sales even on the first day.
You can do the same with affiliate products. If you regularly promote extremely valuable and high-quality products to your list, you’re building trust and your subscribers will be more willing to buy from you. It’s that simple. If you are an internet marketer and you are not capturing email addresses for your list, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
HOW DO I START BUILDING A LIST?
Start building a list today, and take advantage of this amazing method. Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through the process and show you the secrets of exactly how to build your lists.
If you already don’t have one, you need to sign up for an autoresponder service. This is the service that enables people to subscribe to your list and helps you send automated emails, or just broadcast when you want to. You can create different email lists and choose what emails to send to each group.
One of the most popular autoresponder services is AWeber. It’s easy to use and user friendly, so I highly recommend it. You can sign up for a free trial to try it for a month free of charge. Once you have your AWeber account, you can find a ton of video tutorials on the Internet that will explain all the nuts and bolts of how this autoresponder works. You don’t have to be an expert user; the basic understanding will get you covered in the beginning.
When it’s time to actually start building your list, you will learn pretty fast with a hands-on approach. Now you will need a “website.” it’s in quotations because it doesn’t exactly have to be a website. It can also be a place for you to host your squeeze page.
YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS HERE:
- Pay monthly for a service like Clickfunnels, Leadpages or Systeme.io
The benefit of this option is that you don’t have to bother with getting your own hosting and domain and you have all the tools necessary to start creating amazing-looking squeeze pages.
- Get your own hosting and domain name
If you’re a little more tech savvy, we might suggest using WordPress since it allows you to create your own website without hiring a web developer. You can then use WordPress plugins, such as GetResponse or Leadpages to create your squeeze pages, sometimes called landing pages.
YOU NEED A LEAD MAGNET
If you want people to join your mailing list, you have to give them an incentive to do so. You won’t get many people to sign up by just saying, “Hey you! Sign up for my mailing list and I’ll send you stuff to buy!” Instead, give them something of value in exchange for their email address.
Enter lead magnets.
They are specially designed, usually digital, products that offer great value to your audience; more often than not, those are pdf reports, cheat sheets, checklists, etc. And that’s the key to creating good lead magnets – they need to be highly valuable and targeted.
For example, if you’re building a list in the weight loss market, then give them a product that tells them how to lose weight. A common mistake new marketers often make is to hold back on their free giveaway products. You can always come up with more products later. If you give your potential customer an amazing product for free that solves their problem and gets results, they will more easily decide to buy your paid products in the future.
If the product is of such incredible quality, they will be eager to pay for another product down the road. You want your customers to be thinking to themselves, “Wow, if this is how amazing the free product is, I wonder what I can expect from a paid product!” If you’re new to internet marketing, chances are that making your own product sounds like an intimidating task. But trust me, that’s not that difficult. If you know the subject matter that you’re talking about inside out, and have just a bit of creativity, then you can make a lead magnet yourself.
Another concern I often hear is that people say that they aren’t a big name expert so they aren’t qualified to create lead magnets on their own. The truth is, you don’t need to be a big name in the industry to create a product of value. All you need to do is give your audience the right information so that they can get the desired results. That’s it! If your lead magnet can help people get the results that you promised them, then it’s a good product. So, how do you decide what your lead magnet should be?
Let me illustrate; if your market is weight loss, create a product that explains a good weight loss diet plan and give your audience sample meal recipes. If your market is dating, then make a product based around overcoming the anxiety of approaching someone at the bar. Do you see the pattern here?
Solve a major problem for people in that market and keep it simple. Now that you know what your product will be you need to research it. Imagine you have that same problem and go look for the information online. Go to article directories like EzineArticles, find YouTube videos, or just do a simple Google search. Find at least five good sources of information and study it.
Take extensive notes.
While you’re learning you will probably come up with more ideas for products in the future. Write those ideas down for later use. You might be thinking at this point that if it’s that easy to get this information for free on the Internet, why would somebody want my product? To put it simply – people tend to be lazy. They don’t want to find multiple sources and study for a few hours. They want a quick fix. They want information conveniently laid out in front of them. That’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to compile all of the useful information and give it to them in an easy to follow, step-by-step guide.
Writing a report doesn’t have to be stressful, on the contrary, it can be quite fun. You just need to know how to structure it. And speaking of structure, a good report consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.
The introduction should state what problem the report is going to solve for the client.
Then in the body you should give a detailed, step-by-step guide to solving the problem at hand.
And finally, in the conclusion section you should give a short summary of everything you mentioned and ask your readers to take the next step with a nice, straight-forward CTA (call-to-action).
However, if you feel that you’re not up to the task of creating a lead magnet yourself, you can always hire freelancers to do it for you. You can find freelancers to hire on sites like UpWork, Fiverr and FreeLancer and many of them have probably already had previous experience writing lead magnets.
YOU NEED A LEAD CAPTURE PAGE
Now that you have a lead magnet, it’s time to think about where you’re going to host your lead capture page. We already mentioned the two options that you have. You can either start using services such as ClickFunnels where you can design and host your capture page or you can find your own hosting, get yourself a domain name and build your own website. Whatever option you choose, you should start creating separate squeeze pages where you’ll be giving your lead magnet for free. Your visitors will be able to download this lead magnet by leaving their contact information on the opt-in form (their name and email address is all you need). The copy on your capture page needs to be lead magnet-oriented. You should focus on your target audience’s pain points and list the benefits of downloading the product/lead magnet. A standard format for writing this kind of copy is:
• This is what I have.
Tell them what your free product is.
• This is what it does
Explain to them how your product works.
• This is what it can do for you.
List the pain points of your audience that can be alleviated by downloading your free product.
• This is what I want you to do next.
Remind them to check their email for the product.
YOU NEED TO DRIVE TRAFFIC
You ask them to download your product by clicking on the CTA button and leaving their contact information. Once people put their contact information, they will be added to your list. Your autoresponder will then direct them to a page of your choosing. Most often you will send new leads to a simple “thank you” page. Here you thank them for their interest and tell them that their free product will be sent to them in a couple of minutes.
Then, we tell them that while they are waiting, we’d like them to take a quick look at something that we think can really benefit them. This is where we pitch a one-time offer, either a product we have created or an affiliate product. You should always have a one-time offer. There is no sense in leaving the money on the table when they may be willing to buy right from the beginning.
Now you must make sure to set your autoresponder to send out an email instantly after someone has opted-in to your list. This email should have a link to wherever you are hosting your free product for them to download. As you can see, this can all be done without having your own website or spending too much time. Everything is automated and you get to make money on autopilot even when you’re having a fun night out.
Sending Traffic
Now that you have your website or squeeze page set up and ready to go, you need to start sending traffic to it. The more targeted traffic you get to your website, the more people will be signing up to your list. There are plenty of ways to get traffic to your site and I’ll cover a few of the most popular ones here:
Facebook is the largest social media website in the world with almost 2 billion active users each month.
It’s easy to tap into these enormous amounts of traffic by starting a Facebook advertising campaign. Facebook is great since it has amazing targeting options that will reach just the type of audience you want. Plus, their ads aren’t expensive. Starting by advertising on Facebook is a great way to get your lead generation system started.
BANNER ADS
You can create an account on one of the advertising networks; Google AdWords being the biggest one of them. If you start with Google AdWords, you can specify targeting options on the basis of keywords used, location and demographics. Then your banner ads would show up on topic-oriented websites and to relevant people.
FORUM ADVERTISING
You can start forum advertising by joining a large niche oriented public forum. When you contribute to discussions and try to give as much helpful advice as possible you get a better reputation. In forums, there’s no direct advertising, but you can put a link to your free product page in your forum signature and get the traction that way. The better your reputation score is, the more people will be clicking on your free product offer.
EMAIL ADS (SOLO ADS)
These can be a great way to grow your list fast. Essentially, you are paying people who already have large email lists within your market to promote your free offer to their subscribers. You can usually work out an arrangement with these list holders where they need to provide a minimum number of clicks that go through to your page. If they can’t provide that minimum, then they have to keep running the ad until the prearranged number of clicks is reached. You can find people with email lists on SafeSwaps. Remember, you don’t need to stick to just one form of traffic. You can try them all and see what works best for you. You can then focus on the one or two that seem to bring in the most leads.
YOU NEED TO MASSAGE YOUR LIST
Now that you have started building an email list, you can’t just start bombarding them with affiliate offers every day. You need to build a relationship with your list first (aka ‘massage’ them). You need to build trust. If you do this, then you will get a much better response when you send them offers. If you treat your list the wrong way, they will be quick to unsubscribe and all your list building efforts will have been for nothing. To build a relationship with your list you should regularly send them quality content for free. It doesn’t have to be a lot.
Just a few free tips here and there, something that will be of value to them. After a couple of emails like these, you can start sending them offer emails. A good formula to follow is 3-4 content emails, one offer email, and repeat. Make sure that you’re telling your story along the way. People want to know you’re just like them, and that you can help them. Don’t leave anything out. Tell your whole story and invite your subscribers to get to know you more for who you really are. Oftentimes, the deeper the relationship, the more money you’ll make. Make sure to send an email at least once a week (if not once per day). If you wait too long between emails, your relationship will get cold and they won’t be as responsive to your offers.
THE WRAP UP
So there you have it. 5 quick steps to begin building your own email list. Just remember that list building is an ongoing process. You should always aim at growing and maintaining your list as some of your subscribers will be unsubscribing as the time passes.
Your list will be a consistent source of traffic, easily available whenever you need it, and for that reason you should always strive toward growing your list and making your subscribers happy with the high-quality content and offers. Treat your list right, and they will treat you right.
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