Here's How Email Marketing Strategies are Used to Generate the Big Money Online
If you've been on the internet marketing scene for any length of time, you'd likely have been told that building an email list is the most important task in an internet business.
That's because the big money online has mostly been made through email marketing strategies. It is how the established online marketeers generate income, and the secret to internet gurus being able to get up on stage and 'easily' achieve sales of thousands of dollars in a short time.
What they did was send an email promoting the product or service to their mailing list of subscribers, which can number in the hundreds of thousands, and they would immediately get quality website traffic.
That's email marketing -- the use of a mailing list to promote and sell products. It is one of the cheapest forms of advertising online, email being free, for now at least. It's also one of the best, as you can use it over and over, for different promotions.
You might even be on such a mailing list yourself, and been the recipient of promotional newsletters. Or even bought an ebook or a course through it. If so, you'd have seen how email marketing works, from the other side.
Obviously, to use this method, you need your own mailing list. But not just any list. It must be a list of people who are interested in hearing from you. That's why you can't buy one; you have to build it yourself.
How to Build Your Own Mailing List
List building is not a complex science. It's nothing more than driving traffic to a web page that has an opt-in mechanism, that enables interested visitors to subscribe to your mailing list.
The only things you have to figure out are a) how to drive visitors to that web page, and b) how to get them interested enough to opt-in to be your subscriber.
For the first part, you can use any of the ways to bring traffic to your website that we listed in the previous pages. (See How to Get Traffic if you came directly into this page.)
But use relevant keywords to get the traffic, as you want traffic that is targeted to the kinds of products or services you intend to promote to them later. So make sure you'll be marketing to the right market!
Once you get the visitors to your site, you send them to an opt-in page to build your mailing list. This opt-in page has a subscription box that says something like, "Enter your name and email below to subscribe", with text boxes for them to enter. You capture those fields, and store them in your database.
List-Building Tips
However not many visitors will subscribe merely for the asking. They will only do so if they see value in it. One way is if you offer something in return for signing up, such as a free ebook.
But try not to make it sound like an ultimatum, that they have to sign up in order to get it. You might say instead that you have such a free ebook, how it'll help them, and if they'd like it, to fill in the opt-in box, and you'll email them a link to the book. Or to a newsletter, or a course, or a teleseminar, if that's what you have to offer them.
Another aspect is, you must present your offer in way that makes them see what you have to offer as VALUABLE. This is where marketeers often make a mistake. Stacking up gift after gift will not help; presenting the value that you offer will.
If your offer is based on the gift rather than the value your subscribers get from you, then you'll be attracting those who just want your gift, not necessarily those who want to hear from you.
The way your list is built will determine how profitable it is. Subscribers generally buy from a marketeer to whom they subscribed because they WANTED to hear from him, rather than one they subscribed to merely to get a free gift. That's why a list of 10,000 subscribers can sometimes earn more than one with 100,000 subscribers.
Email Marketing Through JVs
The established marketeers with mailing lists can expand their lists very quickly through Joint Ventures (JVs). Here's an example.
Let's say Mr X launches a product or sells a course. In addition to emailing his own list about it, he gets JV partners to join him in promoting it. These JV partners write about it to their mailing lists, with a link to Mr X's site. He gets increased website traffic as a result.
Their subscribers who buy Mr X's product add themselves to his mailing list in the process. So not only can Mr X sell to a larger audience, but he also expands his list. And Mr X's JV partners get paid, possibly a commission on sales made from their referrals.
A variation of this arrangement is when Mr X first drums up interest in his product launch by offering free videos or reports or ebooks, obtainable upon subscribing. His JV partners send traffic to his site from their mailing lists, and their subscribers add themselves to his mailing list when they sign up for the free video, etc.
This is why JVs are very popular in the internet marketing world. You'll often see established marketeers taking turns to promote each other's launches. The increased website traffic each gets is the reason they tell you it's important to network with others in the same line.
Email Marketing Tips
In the course of talking about how to build a mailing list, we've touched slightly on how to make money from it through email marketing.
Email marketing strategies can be used for practically any business model. You can use email to follow up with visitors who didn't buy from you at first. Studies have shown that it usually takes 7 or more emails to get an order. One approach to get new visitors to your website is to offer a free email course with 5 to 7 parts.
The top internet businesses publish a free newsletter to their mailing list. You can too. Sending out a regular newsletter, perhaps monthly, will serve to build a bond with your subscribers. People buy from those they trust. The free newsletter can also attract more subscribers, and of course, the larger your list, the more you are likely to sell.
