Hi Guys, I want to get my hands on email marketing. Any suggestions about where to start? Am I supposed to register for an auto-responder first? I think there is a daily limit for free email accounts. What is the best email provider for email marketing? Thanks in advance
Take a look at Aweber, and GetResponse, also ChimpMail offer decent tiers in terms of being free / cheap until you grow. Get an autoresponder, make a landing page and start offering incentives to get people into your list - give them free gifts and info and follow them up with offers.
Thanks for your answer, Let's say I registered to aweber and have 1000 email address and assume that I am using gmail as email provider. Can I still send all 1000 emails at the same time or do I have to purchase an private email address?
^ You get a email with your account, everything is web-based there is nothing hosted on your server, your email, your site, nada. Aweber is bomb, I would take icontact as a close second - which has a perk (or disadvantage/can work against you) of single opt-in.
Hmm, isnt the probem though with Aweber that if you already have 1000 names then they don't let you just add them in - you will have to send them all a confirmation again that they want to be part of your newsletter still and theyll have to confirm again... likely to resize your list to 1-200 perhaps.. Aweber is good / brilliant if you want to use it to build a list from scratch but not so good if you want to add existing lists into it.... ... at least I think this used to be the case, not sure if they changed it..
Aweber is still the number one choice in my opinion. The next step would be to create a convincing opt-in page. I would recommend hooking the site up with exitsplash to not waste the visitors.
Aweber seems to be the top choice among most marketers, although I've been using GetResponse for the past year and I've been fairly pleased. I'm "grandfathered" into their old pricing scheme, though! Another option is to buy a server-side mailing list program. This means you don't have to pay a monthly fee and you can control your list however you like, but it may also mean lower deliverability rates. I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to this sort of product, but one example is AutoResponsePlus: autoresponseplus.com If I had any other tips: - Promote aggressively, but provide content in most of your emails. - Focus on creating interesting email subject lines that make people want to open the email. - Make sure you're split testing different things in your email marketing campaign (ie subject lines, HTML vs. Text-only, send time/day, etc) - Cloak affiliate links so that people don't see you're making money from a product you've pitched (either set up a redirect or use a service like TinyURL) Good luck!
Here's a comparison (services included and costs) for the top 5 email autoresponder service providers: http://www.allanjamesonline.com/startbusinessmentor/blog/autoresponder-cost-comparisons
^ listen to mbelmont, some sound strategies there from someone with obvious experience. Our format is to mix up free info or free gift emails with offer emails - so ideally every week we sent a free gift, or some free advice / info and then follow it up with a related offer a couple of days later. The free gift keeps people opening our emails and interested rather than sending offer after offer after offer, and then the offer emails in between convert and bring in money... everyone is happy
aweber for autoresponder Email: And or http://www.safemailservices.com/index.html?hop=look4us http://www.blast4traffic.com/?hop=look4us
If you have a small list cultivate it well from the first e-mail, or don't even bother. You send one spam offer mail, and it's going right in the trash the second time around.
Depends on your definition of spam IMO. Should you send your list irrelevant advertisements & marketing crap? No. Especially not in the first 30 days. But if you're providing quality content and compelling subject lines, you can still be marketing aggressively in most AutoResponder follow-up emails. I'm totally in favour of providing quality content to subscribers and cultivating the list properly, but some people tend to lose focus and get too anal about their email content. At the end of the day, your subscribers are prospects, and your goal is to convince them to buy. If a promotional email leads to 10 conversions and $300 in profits for you, then who cares if 50 people unsubscribe or trash your future emails? The goal, imo, is to market as aggressively as possible without alienating subscribers or being seen as a "spammer" by email providers. You have to balance the pros and cons of marketing blasts. Just my 2 cents anyway.
And your two cents are worth thousands for those who that take note of it I've highlighted above in the quote what my experience has shown to be the most important prerequisite. If this is being done 'aggressive' marketing can, and should, be done. I always provide good content (the 'take away' for my subscribers) and usually include a freebie to download - I try to make it a freebie however that provides some return to me through an upsell/or future sales - and I'll include a paid product as a PS or footnote. That sets the expectations of (and starts to train) my subscribers - great content/some free offers/expect promos of high quality relevant products. And that's my two cents worth
To start have your autorespond in place, i wouldnt advice you to use the free one Though some of the free ones are good like sendfree.com, but they all has a limit. I use getrespond.com paid section and they have never dissapointed me. Then start using it to promote your free offers...with email marketing, You are surely to enjoy your today's work tomorrow.
Definitely go with Aweber, but grab my free fast start guide as well from adswaps dot info to see a step by step plan for building and monetizing your list. Hope this helps! ~Mike Cowles. <><
Hmm... Aweber and Getresponse - this always interests me as an example of great marketing, something both of them excel at in promoting their services. So good in fact that the 'wonders' of both become part of urban myth. In my five years building my lists and promoting my affiliate offers I've used both of them so may be able to comment - and perhaps open up a wider way of thinking. The questions are: 1) today, in 2010 do they represent value for money? 2) Do either of them provide a full suite of the essential marketing tools all online business owners have to have - or do they just provide the autoresponder? I thought this blog post, taken from the NetMarketers Forum, on the subject was interesting. http://www.12path.com/go/RespondersCompared/
OK guys, It's been 10 days. Right now, I am having 80-100 unique traffic per day and my list size reached to 30. I think it's not good enough but still something for me. Anyway, I have a question for you. I found a huge e-mail list but I don't even know if those emails are legit or not. Do you suggest me to try to add some emails from this list to mine? If so, which way am I supposed to follow for importing process? All at the same time or piece by piece? Thanks in advance