What is Email Marketing and how you can profit by simply creating “a list”? By list, we are referring to a list of emails and names of people that you collect on your website that you can promote your real estate abilities, services, homes for sale or “money growth returns” to others online.
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I suggest that you start with building five types of lists:
- Motivated Sellers
- Hungry Buyers – Landlords, Rent to Owns
- Wholesale Buyers – Rehabbers
- Retail Buyers
- Private Money Lenders
Lists are generated through online forms and this method is typically referred to as opting-in or an opt-in. The person visiting your site will essentially give you permission to send them emails to their account on a daily, weekly, monthly or some other increment of time basis.
Mail-out’s are usually composed of relevant information, newsletters, product promotions, industry insight, special events/dates, and other information sources.
Here are a few components to the “SUCCESS BLUEPRINT”.
1. Website
2. Traffic
3. Opt-in Form
4. Email
5. Conversion
That is it!
Soak in these 5 points for a minute. They all seem very basic and the reason is because they ARE VERY BASIC. People tend to “over think” things and make them more difficult than they are. Building mailing lists is quite simple.
What You Need To Build Lists
The people on your list are your target customers. You must convert them into a base that looks forward to what you want to tell them. You yourself must be easily reachable. When you do this, people slowly begin to have faith in you. When you communicate with your contacts, you must sound approachable and friendly rather than seriously formal. Let us talk about the basic things you need before you actually experiment with different methods of building lists and stick to the ones that work most profitably for your particular line of activity.
A Website
The first thing you must set up is your website, so that your contacts have a place to come to and find you. They also need a place where they can securely leave their email and name. You must ensure that they do not have any difficulty in the process. Not only that, you want to give them something of value to remember. Your website is practically your main point of contact with your users. So make sure your website is good to look at. That does not mean graphics rich and jazzy, but something that is designed to be professional and effective. It must attract your users enough for them to want to browse around and check out what you have for them. Use pleasant colors and relevant images, a good layout and useful information.
Your site must provide crisp content. Write it in such a way that it draws their attention – like a magnetic headline, bullet points, etc. On top of everything else, it should endorse your own image. Do it in a way that is unique and memorable for your visitor. They are only going to be there for seconds before they move on to browse elsewhere. It must have something special for your prospect to remember and come back. The number of sites on the Internet is growing rapidly and it is up to you to make yours look special. A point to bear in mind here is that even after you have drawn the visitor to your site, there is no fixed rule that says they must purchase from you the first time they go by your site. Which means we must make sure there is some way by which they can leave their contact information behind before they go? You do need to remind them and follow up, don’t you? You can do this by asking them to sign up in exchange for something valuable to them – like a free download or newsletter. In this manner, your list continues to build. You must find a way to follow up with these contacts to that they become your customers.
Autoresponders
The next thing is your autoresponder. (We will talk about this more in detail in a subsequent section). Subscribe to one that suits your needs best. These are a wonderful way to automate your follow up, when you have to keep in touch with your customers regularly. You might find it easy to keep in touch with, say 20 or 30 people, but when the list runs to hundreds or thousands, just imagine the amount of time you’ll spend, time that you can devote to more creative activities. Instead, a good Autoresponder can help you tremendously in keeping up with your reminding and emailing.
Ways To Bring Traffic To Your Site
Unless you bring traffic to your site, how will you build lists? Right. But bear in mind that your traffic must be relevant to your requirement. In Internet marketing, the pay per click advertising campaign method is effective. What you really need to take care about is the keywords you use; they must especially relate to your unique product. Also, writing articles about topics related to your business and posting them on online directories can bring in traffic. You can tie up with an allied business so that together you can offer a range of services and mutually benefit while building those lists.
Relevant Content
It follows from the above that you must be attentive to what you write in your emails. You users will look for information that is useful and relevant to them. If you don’t send them messages that are meaningful, they will cease to read them. On top of that, they will unsubscribe. So make sure you provide value, because it will be a worthwhile investment. And, though it seems obvious, each contact must be able to sign up with you easily. Which means, every official communication that goes out of your office, whether online or snail mail, must contain your web URL, and encourage them to get on your list.
You must remember that it is not just for size that you are growing your list. Why you are doing it is so you can convert it into business. You can start with a strong small list and build it as you go along.
Kinds Of Lists
Obviously the best list you can maintain for your email marketing is the one you build from your own customers and visitors who browse your website. But it is not enough to only have a list of those you know. You also want to bring in new customers all the time. Lets talk about different kinds of lists in online marketing.
Opt In lists
An opt-in list is your list of subscribers who opted to receive your email, ezine, newsletter or whatever you offered when they signed up. It means they have allowed you to contact them via email. Here, a targeted opt in list would be a list of users who have been qualified for your specific market. Your subscriber becomes a part of your email list.
Double Optin Lists
Double opt in is when your subscriber opts in two times. How? First on the website when he/she click and confirm their subscription after giving their email id and name. After this they click on the link sent to them at the email address which they signed up with to confirm their subscription. So it means not only opting to be on the list, but also confirming it by verifying their email ids.
Opt Out Lists
Opt out is when your subscriber asks for his/her email address to be deleted from your list when they no longer want to receive messages from you. They can do this through the “unsubscribe” link that you include in your emails to them. But did you know that some online marketers provide their users an unsubscribe link that does not work. When the user clicks the link, it sometimes goes into the wrong hands adding the user to some spammer’s list under the assumption that the email address is being validated. These days, reputed companies make sure that they only send email to subscribers when they permit them to. By sending email to those who opted not to receive them will only end up irritating the user and mess up the credibility of the online business. Why lose all the effort you put in by simply not respecting your customer?
How Do You Build A List?
There are numerous ways in which you can build a credible list. More are evolving all the time. We will discuss the most widely used methods in this report and how they can work for you. Almost all of them are simple to get in place to get you going on your path to profit.
AutoResponders
The online marketing business wouldn’t be where it is today without autoresponders. It saves a tremendous amount of time by completely automating the process of communicating with your subscribers. An autoresponder uses software that can be programmed according to your requirements. Once you set the parameters of how you want things done, it just follows instructions. You can be as creative as you want. You don’t even have to make a major investment on one these days – several sites offer them for free.
Why Is An Auto Responder So Important?
Autoresponders save time and time is money while building your lists. If you send promotional emails from your ISP, you will be reported as a spammer. The next thing you know, you might have to close shop. Autoresponders can be exclusively used to send these routine follow up emails to the thousands of contacts on the list. You can plan and keep your emails ready, and set the autoresponder to send it at the specific intervals you want. It can keep track of subscribers signing in and even respond to let them know they have been signed in. Practically every single routine emailing activity can be handled by the autoresponder, which is why no online marketing can do without it.
How It Works
You can use a follow up autoresponder that can keep the follow up work ongoing with your contacts. No subscriber is going to worry about when your next email is coming, and you certainly cannot expect them to remember your particular message among the hundreds they must be getting on a daily basis. That’s where an autoresponder comes in. To keep your business information alive in the subscriber’s mind.
Program It And It Does The Rest
You only have to keep your messages ready, decide on a sending schedule and your autoresponder takes care of the rest for as long as you have set it. This will mean that you can concentrate on other equally important issues while your “sales” keep coming in, thanks to your autoresponder’s faithful follow up. In fact, it even lets you go on holiday while it keeps your office practically running!. Your autoresponder can help you send out useful information to your contacts. Instead of using the same: dear subscriber: for all your contacts, you can make your autoresponder address each contact by name and send the email. It is always nicer to receive an email addressed to us personally than get the feeling that we are one in a massive group of recipients. The autoresponder can even be programmed to wish your contacts “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings”
List Tracking
It can track your lists. This means you can make carefully thought out offers to your target audience. They just want to know what is in it for them. So you can structure your message accordingly so that it appeals to them. Experienced online marketers recommend that it is better to use autoresponders that give you an update about contact statistics. This can be split into month/week/day to tell you which of your leads are active and which ones have opted out, helping you in healthy list maintenance.
Keeping In Touch
Autoresponders help you in keeping in touch with your subscribers, giving them relevant information about your business, say, when you get fresh stocks or if you are planning a discount sale. Or you can even make your new subscribers some kind of special offer. This will keep your contact list alive and help you turn them into continuous sales!
You can also get your autoresponder to get activated when a contact signs up at your website. After they write their name and email address, when they send the information, it goes to the autoresponder URL that will send an acknowledgment right away.
Factors To Consider While Buying An Autoresponder
When you decide to use an autoresponder, you want to ensure that it is the one best suited to your needs in terms of performance, customer support, features and cost. These parameters must be balanced and convince you that it is the right one for you. In terms of performance, the main thing to consider while getting an autoresponder is delivery of email. The higher the ability to deliver emails, the better. The provider of the autoresponder must support you with prompt customer service that knows what it is talking about. Just imagine getting stuck half way through your campaign! So look for one that is accessible easily and responds quickly.
Features are only as useful as you find them for your business. It is possible that you may not use all the features your autoresponder provides. But you can have it working efficiently for you when you are clear about what you want and set it accordingly. Next, you want to check that what you are paying to use your autoresponder does not cut into your profits. After all, you are trying to find ways to build your lists, not incur losses. So check what it will cost you in service, set up, monthly expenditure and other costs that may not have been mentioned. There is no use getting an autoresponder that you can’t afford.
Sequential Autoresponders
Technology is advancing all the time to make the online marketer’s life easier. Many online business use what are called sequential autoresponders. These collect and save the names and email addresses of your contacts. This enables it to continue to send messages in sequential intervals, set by you, to your potential contacts. It can also take attached documents.
To summarize, your autoresponder can help you build massive lists depending on what you use it for. It helps in building an impression of your reliability, makes your customers have more faith in you and keeps them thinking about you.
Special Report and E-books
A lot of online marketers have tested and tried this strategy to build their lists. The main thing here is to make a good ebook that the user will want to get for free. This is usually offered as a sign up bonus – when the customer leaves his email id and name. As a next step, the user is taken to the website URL to download the ebook from there.
In fact, these days you need not even go through the trouble of writing your own special report or ebook. You can outsource it to writers who then give you the full resale rights of the book. After you get your ebook is ready, ensure that you add your optin page or autoresponder URL to every page of the ebook, to help the user find you right away. You can make an ebook that runs to several pages or just a few, there’s no standard length. People like to receive free ebooks, particularly if they are interested in the information it contains. Ebooks are inexpensive to give away because you don’t have to maintain physical stocks since they are in the digital format. You can send them to your users through your autoresponder, so delivery is quick. You don’t incur shipping charges. What’s more, you can give away as many copies as you like.
Ebooks can be given away for free as an incentive to sign up with you, or you could also charge a nominal fee and give away the reprint rights to your subscribers. They, for their part can also give it away for free and make money by doing this.
Ways In Which You Can Use The E book To Build Your Lists:
You can use your ebook to build your lists in different ways. An ebook given away free draws the visitor to your website. Ebooks can be used in the following manner:
- Offer the complete “stop foreclosure ” ebook in return for referral email ids
- Writing your own ebook makes you look like a ” professional investors ” , and builds credibility.
- You can post your special report / ebook on various free websites, which will ensure an increase in the number of downloads.
E zines
Ezines are not only useful as great list builders, but are an inexpensive and efficient way to keep in touch with your subscribers and interact with them. You can keep them updated with what is happening in your organization, telling them about investing or deal opportunities in your area to invest in or other innovations you deem noteworthy. Not only that, it’s a good publicity tool for your website. Ezines help in following up with the customer on an ongoing basis. Through its content, the subscriber is encouraged to visit your website often. People don’t take action on a single message. They need to be reminded constantly before they can consider buying your product. Ensure that you have an online version of your ezine on your website. This will help it to be indexed by the search engines and bring lots of visitors to your site. In each issue of your ezine, use keywords related to your business because gradually your ezine pages will get into the search engines.
Exchanging Ads With Other Ezines
You can use your ezine to expand your lists by putting an ad for it in other ezines and websites, preferably related businesses that are non-competitive. Here also, remember to include information about your freebie. You can in turn carry ads for those websites/ezines and divert traffic toward each other and benefit mutually. The more web partners you have, the more busy the traffic will be on your website.
And by the way, you can use free content on your ezine as well if you cannot write your own. The biggest advantage of an ezine is that you will make people get used to seeing communication from you at frequent intervals. Use good content or otherwise no one will bother to read it.
Every email you send out must have your registration/subscription link. Add a registration button or link to all e-mail correspondence. Also have a “if you liked this, recommend it to a friend” kind of link in every ezine. That helps in spreading the word about your products ethically.
STAY TUNED TO PART 2 …..