I was wondering if the opt in email strategy is a good marketing technique? If so, does anyone know of any good companies to use? Thanks.
Opt in email is normally associated with an offer that someone signs up for. Their info is usually collected with an autoresponder which sends them a message and asks them to verify they actually ordered something. Thus they option (opt) to basically give you their info in exchange for what they signed up for. My explanation is probably about as clear as mud but that's the way it works. donrock
I guess I was thinking this was a way I could send out an email to a large list to advertise a site. Are there companies that do this without sending spam? Is this a good form of advertising? Has anyone used a certain company and seen good results?
No there are definitely services that you can use to do this with a blog, not using some sort of offer or product. I have heard really multiple things about using an opt-in list. A lot of bloggers use them and claim that they are stellar for traffic growth. I, however, want to argue against them. I really do not think they are a viable options for blogs.
Opt-in emails are good if they are used wisely. Use them to offer discount or some free gifts otherwise on one is going to open them. Use a service that suits your niche.
Opt-in is critical if you wanna do affiliate marketing and PPC. Back-end selling is where most of the money come from.. Aweber and getresponse are the 2 most used email marketing companies..
Opt-in email marketing is slowly fading a bit as people get tired of getting hammered with spammy crap all day. Response rates are definitely a lot lower than they used to be. You could try buying a few blog reviews on popular blogs in your niche to effectively do a mass blast in your industry. You could spend less than $1000 and reach many thousands of unique targeted viewers. I do this all the time and it brings a nice flood of traffic. You could even squeeze that traffic and get them to opt-in to your list - effectively bypassing the need to find an outside email traffic broker and basically doing it all yourself. The perk then is that you can continue to market to these people at no additional cost.
People put WAY too much emphasis on "their list"... email marketing to a targeted list of prospects is great if done properly. For me it's always been more trouble than it's worth, at one point I had a nice list of several thousand people, but I'm just not that great a salesman so having a list really didn't do me much good. Maybe I was doing it all wrong, but I have found other means that work much better for me without the trouble of maintaining a bothersome list (I'm pretty lazy when it comes to that sort of thing). If you want to market to a large list of prospects I wouldn't bother with email broker's, you will probably just end up dissappointed. I have found it's much more effective to contact a few ezines and such in your industry and make your own deals with them, which I do from time to time. It will cost you a bit more, but you will know exactly who you are dealing with and what they have to offer in the form of leads.
Yes, it is a good marketing technique. But it's still depend in what niche you are. For example in high competition niche like 'make money online" you will see a click rate or open rate a bit lower now as people hate receiving email that selling stuff. You know its working or not by looking at how many people subscribes to your list, open your email and probably buy your stuff. The highly recommended is Aweber and Getresponse.
Watch out - Getresponse has abysmal deliverability. My favorite is Aweber if for double opt-in and 1ShoppingCart for single. The deliverability for both companies is excellent.