Grow Your Email List
Why is growing your email list so important?
When someone joins your email list, it is a sign of trust. These people are your ideal clients/customers. They are showing interest in you and your products. Let’s face it, people won’t necessarily visit your blog every day, and may not see your posts on facebook and twitter throughout the day either, but they will check their email several times throughout the day. It is the perfect way to make sure your content is seen.
Studies have also shown that through regular contact you can develop a relationship with your visitors. In fact, it usually takes around 6 contacts before a visitor will begin to consider your offers.
By sending a monthly newsletter with useful information, offers and some free gifts to your list, they will begin to see YOU as an expert. This builds trust and greatly increases your chances of them buying a product or service from you.
I recommend a professional-looking monthly newsletter that includes all announcements reguarding what’s new on your blog and in your business. The content needs to be full of great information in order for your clients/customers to look forward to reading your newsletter every month. Do you have a new video to watch, new products to see and new articles to read? Include inspirational quotes and stories. Use photos to help make your newsletter more personal so they get to know you.
Sending emails is an inexpensive way to stay connected to your ideal clients/customers. On top of the monthly newsletter, you may have an announcement to send out reguarding a sale or important article they need to read or maybe to inform them of a show you are doing where they can come and see you.
Be careful not to send too many emails each month or you will run the risk of being a nuisance and they will stop reading your emails and possibly unsubscribe all together.
How do I acquire email addresses for email marketing?
- Simply ask. When a customer is purchasing from you at your retail location or at a show, ask them to join your email list
- Have "join my monthly newsletter" printed on your business card with your blog address
- When at retail shows or trade shows, have a clipboard where people can sign up
- Ask customers to refer you to their friends and family
- Give away something free on your blog in order to collect emails addresses, this is called an "opt-in"
- In your monthly newsletter, include a "forward to a friend" link
- In your email signature, include a link to your newsletter opt-in form on your blog
- Include an opt-in form on your facebook fan page
- Collect business cards when at meetings, shows, etc and ask permission to add them to your list
How do I create opt-ins & a newsletter?
I use AWeber for my email marketing. They offer everything you need to do monthly newsletters and a host of other benefits. Here’s a list of reasons I prefer using AWeber.
- Unlimited lists in the one account – some providers charge per list. I have my blog list of customers/clients & also a list of retail stores that purchase my patterns.
- Unlimited emails – some services charge per email that you send. I can send as many as I want each month to as many lists as I want.
- Autoresponders – put together a sequence of emails that you want to send readers so that when they sign up for a mini course they get them sent out in an order and timing that you choose. For example, I could put together a 6 week free mini-course on the basics of licensing that would get sent out to readers once a week over 6 weeks. It’s a great way to connect people into your course and add value for readers.
- Deliverability – your emails won’t bounce back or be labeled as spam meaning more people will get your emails.
- Text and HTML Emails – I like to send HTML emails with photos, artwork, etc. AWeber offers many templates to choose from in order to make your newsletter more interesting. For those readers who can’t get HTML emails there is the option to send a text version too.
- Opt-in or Sign-up Forms – AWeber makes it easy to create these forms and integrate into your blog. You can have many different opt-in forms in order to track how you collected your email addresses. For instance, I have "Newsletter", "June Give Away", Free Original Painting" so I know how my potential customers signed up.
- Analytics – AWeber has many ways to track the activity of your subscribers use of your newsletter. Not only can you track which links in your newsletter get clicked (very very handy) it allows you to
- split test different versions of your newsletter to see which works best
- to see how different web forms on your blog perform
- to track what time of day readers open emails and click links
- to send emails only to certain subscribers (based upon what they’ve clicked previously)
- to track where on your blog readers are going after they click on a link
- and the list, goes on and on
- Blog Newsletters – You can turn your RSS feed into a newsletter. It allows you to send these updates not only daily but weekly, monthly etc and to have more control over how they look.
- Customer Service – They will help you transfer your previous lists to their system. It can be a bit of a process because they have safeguards in place to stop Spammers from using their system. They have a live customer support instant messaging service which operates most hours which is very helpful.
- Integration – I integrated my Paypal account and Facebook fan page with my AWeber account. Now when someone purchases something from my blog, their email is automatically added to my AWeber list. My Facebook fan page now has a form for people to sign up for my newsletter.
- Free Trial – There are many more features that I’ve not even discovered or tested yet, but you can test them for yourself. AWeber offers a free month long trial so you take your time and make sure this is the path for you.
Growing your email list is key to growing your business! Create an opt-in that people not only want but they can’t live without. This is the first step to massive lead generation and big list building.
Always remember, you are building a community through social media, your blog and your newsletter. Don’t use these platforms to just sell products. You want to engage them with interesting and useful content so they look forward to receiving your emails. Once they get to know you and trust you, they’re more likely to purchase something from you.
So get to building your list today!
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