You never have to worry about chasing them again because they are captive in your list unless they decide to opt out at some point. And, the process can be simple to manage with the different email list services available like aWeber, GetReponse and others. They handle delivering your email, managing your users and even users opting out.

But, building these lists can be a challenge unless you know how to leverage the power of solo ads.

Solo ads can be a quick way to build your email list if you know how to use them the right way. Basically, solos ads are the opportunity for you to be the sole advertiser on another person’s email list. Generally, people offering to sell solo ads have lists of hundreds or thousands of people. They offer others the ability to advertise on their list for a set fee. This is usually determined by the size of their list and the response rate of their emails. The more opens they guarantee the more it will cost to advertise, for example.

Finding people that offer solo ads is not difficult at all. You can purchase a subscription online that will provide you with a list of people offering solo ads. Alternatively, you can use Google or another search engine to look for solo ad providers. Just get creative with your search terms by typing in your niche plus the term “solo ads”, “ad swaps” or something similar. You can even get involved in some popular Internet marketing forums, like the WarriorForum, to find people offering solo ads for sale.

Another great thing to consider about using solo ads to build your email list is that you can then become a solo ad provider yourself. By building that list you can now make some extra money to others that were in the same position as you needing to start building their list.

Solo ads are a great way to kick start your email list.

An email list can be an invaluable tool for online marketing, but can prove a slow and steady process to get it going. By using solo ads in your arsenal you can build your email list at a much quicker rate.

However, adding customers to your list can be the biggest challenge.  But, there is one technique you can use and that is called ad swaps.

Basically, an ad swap is the process of contacting another list owner and offering them the opportunity to advertise to your list if you can also advertise on their list. This is a great opportunity because you can contact list owners that are in complementary businesses as you and advertise your product to them. Then it is not like you are asking a competitor for a favor which could be more problematic.

Before you can really participate in an ad swap you will need to have a viable list of your own. Ideally, you would have built up a list that would be interesting to other list owners. Otherwise, it will be more challenging to find people to do this with you. However, you can still start small. Another idea is to look for list owners offering solo ads. You can buy solo ads from their list with the intention of getting people to join your site. After a couple of solo ads you may have your own list of a couple hundred users. You will then be in more of a position to offer ad swaps to other list owners.

You can find solo ad providers in numerous places. There are directories of solo ad providers available for sale online. These can be a great resource for people wanting to get into solo ads or build lists. You can also use search engines to look for solo ad providers. A good technique is to type your niche term into the search engine along with the phrase “solo ads”. This should give you several results of list owners to contact to see if you can run a solo ad with them.

Ad swaps can be a great way to help build your targeted email list.

They can help create the momentum you need to start building your list. Furthermore, ad swaps can be a way to continually build your list for years to come while establishing contacts with other people that have similar targeted lists.

Mobile marketing

Find out who your mobile marketing target audience is.

The first step is to find people you can market to. You can’t just send your advertising messages out to anyone and everyone unsolicited. Figure out who you need to reach out to and how you can get their eyeballs on your pitch. Do some market research to figure out who your target demographic will be based on who is most likely to buy what you are selling.

Once you know who you want to reach, you have to know where they are found. For example, do they frequent Facebook? Do they like to receive text ads with coupons? Do they check the news on their cell phones? Would they rather receive an email newsletter? If you know who your target audience is, you can quickly do some research online to find out what their marketing preferences are.

Now you can figure out how to leverage each type of mobile advertising to reach those eyeballs. For example, you can create an SMS marketing list which potential customers can sign up for. It can alert them to sales, new arrivals, coupon codes or other events they might be interested in. Be sure to make this a sign-up list as no one wants unsolicited text messages.

Using mobile marketing is a great way to reach out to a tech-savvy, young target audience.

The only way to let people know you have something for sale is to market to them. If those are the people you need to reach, use the  mobile marketing tips above to make it happen today.

If you want to learn more about how to enhance your email marketing success by using video, then  read on.

The first step is to decide what you want your video to do for you. You can create a video that gets your name out to new customers, or one that makes your current customers more loyal. What your goal is will determine how you create your video, both in its content and how you share it online. For example, if you want to expand your reach, you can create a funny viral video which will be shared over and over again. If you want a video which boosts loyalty, you can gear it towards people who have already shopped with you.

Next, you have to figure out where to host your video. If you host it on your site, you will find that your bandwidth use goes up and it may cost you a lot for hosting overage fees. If you host it on YouTube, it will be open to be viewed by anyone and everyone. That said, you can embed it on your site, even if you put it on YouTube, so that it fits in seamlessly with the rest of your content. YouTube also allows for comments, shares and ratings, which you may not be able to include access to if the video is hosted on your site.

Videos don’t have to be a commercial. You can instead create a how-to video with content related to what you are selling. For example, if you sell a sponge, you can show how to use it when washing a car, doing dishes or even sopping up floods. You can include important information such as how to sterilize it, dry it or even repair it. You can also show alternative uses, such as cutting it into shapes for painting or hardening it to use in a floral centerpiece. The more ideas people have about how to use your product, the more likely they are to buy it.

It can be very simple to use video to promote what you sell, but only if you use the tips you’ve read here. The harder you work, the better your results will be. In the end, this article should give you yet another way to ensure your email marketing success.

Your messages must be engaging, plain and simple. While there are many ways to do this, one very popular option is to tell your customers a story. This doesn’t need to be a long story, but instead a short story that is relevant and informative. If you grab their attention, you’ve got them.

Be sure that you understand your targeted customer base. Both the design and content of your message is going to have everything to do with the demographics of your customer base as well as your customer’s habits and views. The more you continue to learn about them, the better you can cater to them.

Never tarnish your reputation by resorting to email marketing strategies that are not professional.

You never want to spam, and you want to make sure you provide your customers with a clear option to opt out. Also, each message needs to have a purpose, and you want to stand out from the competition. Your reputation when utilizing your email marketing campaign means everything when building consistently.

You’re going to have to come up with special offers in order to entice your customers. It’s not going to be good enough to engage them but still give them the same offers that the general public gets. After all, those discounts and savings are part of the engaging activity.

Successful email marketing strategies will be the key to your marketing success!

Running a successful email marketing campaign is not as difficult as many people make it out to be. Do not take shortcuts but instead enjoy reaping the rewards of a steadily-built campaign. As you continue to learn more, you will see why great email marketing strategies will be a key for your success.

Building an email list is perhaps the most effective use of your Twitter marketing efforts.

While they may currently be friendly to marketers, you may find that their rules change at some point in the future. Even if you had 100,000 followers, it wouldn’t do you any good if their rules suddenly changed to disallow marketing!

Twitter has become an incredibly popular website, with millions of people logging in daily to read tweets and post their own. It’s hard to ignore the power of such a massive website, especially when their rules are so friendly to marketers!

Of course, most people don’t make the most of their Twitter followings. They log in only occasionally, usually posting a link to their latest product offering, or they make a post or two about something irrelevant and boring. This isn’t the best way or the most productive way to use Twitter.

By building an email list, you will have a resource you can continue to use for years, even if Twitter changes their rules. You will also have a “captive” audience. Rather than having to rely on people noticing your tweet among hundreds of others, you will only have to get them to open an email. This is a much more efficient way to market!

Building your email list with Twitter is simple.

You need to set up offers and tweet a link to your offers. Those offers should give people significant value in exchange for signing up to your email list. Remember that your incentives should be something people would be willing to pay for.

If you offer real value with your offers, you’ll not only inspire loyalty and trust from your subscribers, but you will also potentially get those people to tell others about your offer. When people re-tweet your offer to their own followers, you’ll expand your efforts far beyond your own email list, and this is a very efficient use of your time.

Perhaps the easiest way to build an email marketing list quickly is through social marketing.

Social Marketing –  Sites like Twitter.com and Facebook.com make it very simple to get a lot of traffic quickly. Not only that, but their very nature makes it possible for your offers to go viral, quickly exploding your list

Giveaways – Giveaways can be extremely useful for building your niche, especially if you are marketing to other marketers. There aren’t many giveaways available outside internet marketing, however.

You can get notifications about giveaway events by joining the email lists of many of the top marketers, as well as subscribing to IMNewsWatch.com.

A fantastic way to build your email marketing list is by exchanging mailings with other marketers who have lists about the same size as yours.

Joint Ventures – If you have 500 people on your list, you could fairly exchange emails with those who have 250 people (about 50% of your total) up to around 1,000 people (about twice your total). They will email their list with your offer, and in exchange, you will email your list with theirs. Just be sure to stipulate that you won’t email just anything, because you don’t want to lose the trust of your list members.

You can find joint ventures via forums, including WarriorForum.com. Just look for their joint ventures section and post there that you’re looking to exchange emails.

Guest Blogging – Guest blogging can be a remarkable way to grow your list, because you can piggyback on the success and reputation of a high-traffic blog. Just let the blogger know you want to write a high-quality article for them for free in exchange for a link to your squeeze page.

These are just a few of the best ways to grow your email marketing list. There are many others you can try, including video marketing, article marketing, solo ads, and much more. Get creative and you’ll have a larger email marketing list in no time!

• Domain – First, you need a domain name for your squeeze page. This will serve not only to host your opt-in form, but also to host your downloads.
• Hosting – If you don’t already have hosting, you’ll need to get some to host your domain. HostGator.com is a popular choice.
• Squeeze Page Design – A good squeeze page design is essential for your email marketing campaign. You can get a custom design done for under $100, or you can use a template. You could also use a clean CSS template if you don’t want to use a fancy design.
• Squeeze Page Copy or Video – You will also need a way to lure visitors to join your list. You’ll need a really great headline, plus either a fantastic video or some very compelling bullet points.
• Incentive Offer – You will need to offer some sort of incentive to get people to subscribe. This could be something as simple as a 10 page report that offers some “top secret” information, or as complex as a complete course of some sort.
• Autoresponder Provider – Obviously, you will need a provider to send your email marketing campaign emails through. I suggest signing up to one of the bigger providers, as they can offer higher deliverability than smaller providers. Try aWeber.com or GetResponse.com.
• Deliver the Incentive – You will need to build a page to send people to after they subscribe. This page will host a link to the download, as well as potentially having some sort of advertisement for your own product or an affiliate product.
• Schedule Autoresponder Messages – Once everything else is in place, be sure to set up some messages that will be delivered every day or two for a while after someone signs up. These should offer some value, such as articles and resources, but every 3-4 messages you can include a marketing message for your own product or an affiliate offer.

Use this checklist to make your next email marketing campaign a great success.

So how do you choose the right autoresponder? Here are the top 10 things to look for.

#1 – Deliverability

Of all the features you could look for in an autoresponder, none are more important than deliverability.

Deliverability is the number of emails that actually end up in your customer’s mailbox. That means it wasn’t caught by spam filters and it didn’t disappear in some black hole somewhere.

Deliverability is a big issue. People have often found that switching from a shopping cart autoresponder to a professional autoresponder can increase their open rates by as much as double. Why? Because their emails are getting delivered.

#2 – The Right Price

There are many different levels of pricing for autoresponders.

On one end, you have autoresponders like Mail Chimp that are literally free as long as you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers. On the other end, you have autoresponders like InfusionSoft that cost thousands of dollars to setup and hundreds of dollars a month to run.

Price is a big consideration when you choose an autoresponder. Pick a service that’s in your price range, that scales up in a way that makes sense for your budget.

#3 – List Importing

If you run offline events or need to import lists from outside sources, it’s important to consider what you can and can’t do in terms of important email contacts.

For example, Aweber is extremely restrictive about this. You either can’t upload your contacts at all, or you can but they all have to double opt in. In other words, there’s a very good chance you’ll lose 70% of your list when porting to Aweber, simply because their system isn’t setup for people who need to regularly import contacts.

On the other end of the spectrum is Autoresponse Plus, where you can upload as many as you want from whatever source. For example, you can upload your own co-registration leads if you’re using ARP.

Most services fall somewhere in between.

#4 – Tracking and Analytics

Tracking and analytics are crucial to email marketing success. Email marketing isn’t about getting it right the first time. It’s about learning what your customers respond to and learning about what’s working and what’s not over time.

What kind of emails do your customers open? What times of day work the best? What about days of the week? Do personal emails work better or do factual emails work better? All of these questions can only be answered by tracking and statistics.

When you’re choosing an autoresponder, make sure you take a look at what tracking and analytics data they give you.

#5 – Cloud Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

Autoresponders can be split into two categories: Those that are an online service and those that you install on your own server.

The online services are a fantastic simple way to manage autoresponders. They handle all the technical issues for you so all you have to do is send out emails.

On the other hand, self-hosted services give you a lot more control. There are no restrictions on uploading contacts. You can send as many emails an hour as you want, whereas most autoresponder services have a limit. And often time’s creating your own email server is the only option if your list is big enough.

Having your own server has its down sides of course. You need to install it, which is quite technical. You also need to manage your server’s deliverability and make sure you don’t end up on any blacklists. It’s a complex process.

Most small businesses start off with a cloud solution and only go with a self-hosted solution if they really need the extra functionality.

#6 – iPhone Capability

Are you regularly on the go? If so, try to get an autoresponder that you can take with you.

Let’s say you launch a broadcast in the morning. If you have an autoresponder that has an app, you can check all your stats while you’re on the bus. You can see exactly how your campaign is performing at all times.

You can also write your emails on your phone and do just about anything else you need to do all from your phone.

#7 – Spam Scoring

If you want your emails to get where they’re going, it’s crucial that you know you spam score. Your spam score is basically how likely your email is to end up in the spam folder.

If you use words like “buy now!” or “viagra,” there’s a higher chance of your email getting caught in the filters. If you don’t use personalization, you’re at a higher risk as well. Having a spam scoring system will allow you to tweak your emails to reduce your risk of getting blocked.

#8 – Unlimited Lists

Some autoresponder services only give you a limited number of lists. Some only give you one. Some will charge you more to have more lists.

You really want to have an autoresponder service that’ll give you unlimited lists. That way, you can run multiple sites and split up your lists all in the same account without paying extra.

#9 – Segmentation

Your autoresponder should be able to segment out just one section of your email list and target your emails to only those people.

You should be able to segment your email list by location, by name, by whether or not they open your emails and by custom fields. This kind of segmentation gives you a lot of power to really laser target your messages to the right people.

#10 – WYSIWYG Editor

If you plan on using templates to send your HTML emails, it’s essential that the autoresponder has a good WYSIWYG editor. Too many autoresponder services use just pre-made templates or have very bare bones WYSIWYG editors.

When you send out HTML emails, your email’s design is every bit as important as your website’s design. People will judge you and judge your brand based on your design. It has to be stellar.

Having a good WYSIWYG editor will allow you to customize those designs to your brand, as well as make sure everything really looks perfect before sending it out.

These are the top ten things you need to pay attention to when you’re choosing an autoresponder service. There is no “perfect” autoresponder out there. However, for each specific business, there is one service that’ll be better for you than any other service. Use this criteria to figure out which autoresponder is right for you.

Here are some of the things that you must have on your squeeze page:

1. The Design – There are two schools of thought about squeeze page design. Some say a beautiful design gives an air of professionalism, preferring to put a lot of effort into a really nice design. Others say a plain CSS design draws attention to the headline and other content elements. It’s a good idea to test both types to find out which one works best for you.
2. The Headline – The headline is absolutely vital. In fact, it’s probably the most important part of a squeeze page. Your headline should generally be red, enclosed in quotes, and it should be mysterious and intriguing in order to get people to read the rest of the page.
3. The Bullet Points – Standard sales copy shouldn’t be used on a squeeze page. You don’t want people to get bored and leave before they reach the opt-in box. Your bullet points should tell people a little about what they will get if they sign up to your list, but they should also be a bit mysterious. Curiosity is the best way to get people to sign up.
4. The Offer – In order to get people to join your list, you need to offer them a bribe of some sort. Most people offer access to a free report, but increasingly people are offering other things such as videos or software. Don’t just offer basic information. You’ll want to give them something really valuable.

An optional component that can boost your squeeze page opt-in rate is a video.

A well-produced video can work very well to convince people to join your mailing list. You can convey the same information you might in your bullet points, but a video makes it easy for people who don’t like to read to find out what you’re offering.

Putting a little effort into your squeeze page will really pay off in the end. If you can double your opt-in rate, you will build your list twice as fast as you would have otherwise!

Strategies identify what you need to do to gain the advantage over your competition or some other goals that you have for your business. It also identifies the course of action that you need to take and the resources that you will need to carry out these plans.

Email marketing strategies are not set in stone.

They are reviewed and measurable results are examined to determine if they are meeting your business objectives. You need to have components in place that will allow you to monitor your progress and contingencies in place just in case that problems arise.

One of the first things that you need to do is identify the strengths of the product or service that you plan to market. Why should someone purchase your product or service over all of the others in the marketplace? This will serve as the foundation for all of your marketing pieces from your sales letters to you follow-up emails.

Next set up your email marketing budget. Identify exactly how much you can afford to spend on email marketing. This will be especially useful when you get ready to select which methods you will use to reach your goals.

So now let’s talk specifically about email marketing strategies. How do you plan to use email marketing to reach your business goals?

For most online businesses, these strategies break down into two components which in some cases may overlap. Here are some examples:

Selling your product or service. How will you use email marketing to do this? You could use:

• Ad Swaps
• Solo Ads
• Video Marketing
• Mobile Marketing

Building an email list. This is very important to the long range success of your business so make sure you get this right. You could use:

• Newsletters
• Opt-in Forms
• Squeeze Pages
• Social Media
• Autoresponders

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the email marketing strategies. However it should give you a place to start.

Making sure that your email marketing strategies are effective is very important. To do this you must track and analyze your results. Some will work for you; some won’t. The only way to determine this is to test, make changes and test again.

Lastly, keep up with new strategies so that you can evaluate them for inclusion into your email marketing strategies.

List building strategies

Good list building strategies are the way you build and increase the value of your small business. One reason why email list building has become such a successful marketing technique is because that a lot of people check their emails at least once every day.

The truth is that email marketing is extremely important for almost any online business. When you have an email list, and start developing a connection with your online subscribers they will start to have a lot more trust in you and also in your internet business. Above everything else, always make sure that you are providing them with related information that they’re going to find useful and worthwhile.

Your main list building strategies need to include much more than simply a landing page that has a sign up form. Make sure you try to find some other ways to add online subscribers to your list.

No matter what list building strategies you choose to add to your internet marketing campaigns, just be sure you have them structured in a way so that your hard work at building an optin email list brings financial success to your internet business. You simply can’t plan your list building strategies in a hit-or-miss manner and then count on your optin list building initiatives to generate long lasting business success.

Below are some effective list building strategies:

Free Newsletter
To have good results with your newsletter, you have to give helpful information to your website visitors. Both interesting and useful information could be free tips and hints, special discounts, absolutely free guides, free specialized tools or just about anything at all that will make your website visitors interested enough to sign up for your newsletter..

Guest Posts
Submitting a couple of high quality articles that will attract someones interest is important to your success using guest posts. Always make sure that you include a backlink to your blog so that visitors will check out your blog and hopefully join your email list.

Pay per Click Ads
Internet marketers typically implement this technique since it is fast and is also extremely targeted. Having said that, you have to pay out a bit of money to run a Pay per click campaign plus the advertising campaign can cost you a whole lot if you happen to focus on a very high paying keyword or phrase.

Facebook Ads
The nice thing about Facebook ads is that they are highly targeted, actually much more targeted than most Pay-per-click ads. The only real downside is the fact that Facebook ads tend to be very expensive, quite often much more expensive than PPC ads.

Banner Ads
The true secret to results with banner ads is to design a very high converting banner. If you aren’t really good at making banners, there are plenty of skilled freelance banner graphic designers around who can assist you in creating high converting banners at a very affordable price.

Ad Swaps
This is really as easy as it sounds. You supply an ad to another list owner who sends your ad to their list and you do the same with an ad from them. In spite of its simplicity, this method can be quite successful and, in addition, it’s absolutely free.

Forum Posts
Whenever you are posting to online forums, always be sure that your posts aren’t blatent ads. Make sure you always give helpful information and only add your blog or website details in your signature file.

Free Gifts
Give a free gift for signing up to your email list. Always make sure that the gift has some value for the subscriber. It could be a free ebook, mp3 audio, special offer or even a discount coupon.

Solo Ads
Solo ads are basically a strategy where you pay a fee to a marketer that has a good sized list. The marketer will in return send out your email sales message to their email list.

There are lots of ways to build an opt-in subscriber list. Some tend to be much better than others. Select one or two of the list building strategies and then get started.

And so finally, always have a call to action on your squeeze page. You can ask your website visitors to subscriber and then point them to the optin form. By using these skillful list building strategies and growing your list of prospective customers, you’re developing the single most highly effective and important internet business tool you could have in your internet marketing business.

The greatest thing about being a giver is that the gold part will come naturally. You will enjoy a better income as your subscribers build trust in you. Your list members will contact you asking for a recommendation when they want to buy something.

What kind of money can you make? Regardless of what niche you’re in, you can make money with your email list in a wide variety of ways, such as:

Selling your own products

Create an info product or put a PDF on Amazon.com via Createspace and Kindle and use your expertise that you share with your subscribers to sell more in depth information.

The more you churn out products within your niche, the more of an authority figure you become to these subscribers. You can even have a ghostwriter create your products if you lack the talent or time for that aspect of it.

Promoting other people’s products

Affiliate marketers sometimes ruin their list trust by pushing and promoting everything that comes out. If you choose to promote other people’s products, make sure it’s a worthy item.

Don’t do favors for other people and abuse your email list.

Don’t promote things that aren’t relevant to your list topic. Just protect them like a Mama Bear and you’ll reap the financial rewards they have to offer.

If you want to, you can also add services like mentoring to your list of golden opportunities with a subscriber base. Some will join a group connection, but others will want to pay extra for one on one insight and advice.

Here’s five tips that can help get your email marketing messages opened and read more often:

1. Use Attention Grabbing Subject Lines

People are swamped with email these days. They login to their email account and swiftly sort though those that they feel are a waste of their time or considered as spam and quickly hit “delete”. The only ones they care to open are ones that catch their attention through the subject lines and those that they regard as “worthy” resources when they glance to see the sending email addresses.

The competition has become fierce to draw the attention of subscribers among all the other email that they receive. By concentrating on creating attention grabbing subject lines, you’ll have a better fighting chance at getting your email marketing messages opened.

You can build your skills on creating better subject lines by doing a basic study on copywriting. Copywriting focuses on choosing words that draw interest based on the readers’ needs and desires and uses words that stir emotions and spark action.

You need not become a professional copywriter to achieve positive results of creating better subject lines. Start watching the headlines of articles and subject lines from your own accumulation of email and pay attention to which ones are drawing your attention. When you create your own email to send to your subscribers, send a test email to yourself first. When you open up your email account, does your subject line stand out from among all your other emails? If not, try something just a bit more catchy.

Some other quick tips to keep mindful of are to avoid all caps in your subject lines and be honest — don’t try to trick your subscribers into opening your email with tricky subject lines. Those tacky subject lines such as, “You’ve got commission!” and “You’ve won!” are misleading and will not gain your business respect, nor will they encourage your subscribers to open your future email marketing messages.

2. Avoid Using Spam Words

Many subscribers are sincerely interested in what you have to offer but never receive your email. With today’s spam traps that are being utilized by most email hosting companies, the filters keep many email messages from entering into the user’s main inbox. As most subscribers will more than likely not take time to constantly check their spam box, you’ll need to take extra precaution when creating your email by avoiding words that may trigger spam traps.

You can visit this post here to view 290 possible spam words – http://www.mirnabard.com/2010/12/290-email-spam-trigger-words-to-avoid/

3. Use Good Content

Nothing could be more important in email marketing than the content you send out to your subscribers. Creating loyal subscribers begins with good content. By sending out helpful information and tips that your subscribers can use, you’ll keep them devoted to your list and willing to open the email marketing messages that you send.

Another important aspect of planning content is to create content that is relevant to your niche so that your subscribers find it interesting and worthwhile. Plan how often you will send your email messages so that you are not overwhelming your list with too many emails. Keep your messages short. Value your subscribers’ time and realize that they are usually in a hurry when browsing through all their received email. And finally, use humor in your content carefully so that you do not offend your subscribers.

4. Use Your Logo

Your logo is a way to identify your business just as people recognize who you are personally by your own facial features and identify your character by your speech and mannerism. By using your logo on your site and in your email marketing campaigns you’ll begin to brand yourself with your customers and subscribers. You’ll gain easy recognition and build trust.

5. Use Feedback and Statistics

Watch your statistic reports on which emails are being opened. You learn most from your successes and failures. Your reports will help you determine which subject lines were most successfully opened and which content produced the most results from your click-through rates on your links.

It’s also valuable to gain feedback from your subscribers. You can send out email surveys on occasions and find out more about your subscribers – such as their needs, their interests and any questions they have that might be presented and answered in future email messages. This is a great way to interact and build a relationship with your subscribers.

When you’ve built a good relationship with them, you’ll find that your email marketing messages will be opened and read by many loyal subscribers.

Here’s five simple ways to start profiting from your email list immediately…

1. Presell on your blog or website. Pre-selling is a form of mentally conditioning your audience to have a positive mindset toward your business…and getting them mentally ready or more open to buying.

Start warming up your visitors immediately. Use fresh content on your blog or website that will immediately allow your readers to see the benefits of your products or services. Once they sign up for your email list, you’ll have subscribers who are already attentive to what you have to offer them.

2. Plan specifically on how you will profit. As was mentioned earlier in planning your autoresponder series, plan well in advance on creating quality content that will keep your subscribers eager to keep reading your content. While creating your autoresponder messages, plan your promotional content as well. Plan to have these sent out every so often in between your regular messages.

For your promotional content, choose to spotlight specific products or services that you believe will be easy to sell and turn your subscribers into new customers.  If you do not have products of your own, consider choosing high quality products that offer affiliate programs where you can immediately begin earning commissions.

Don’t make the mistake of waiting until your email list grows larger before you start promoting. Having your promotional content placed in advance will allow you to start profiting right away from your first few subscribers.

3. Build a highly targeted list. Building a highly targeted list of 100 subscribers will profit your business much more than a list of 1,000 subscribers who were gathered in an untargeted manner. For this reason, plan to promote your site to a specifically targeted audience and also consider carefully what type of information your targeted market will most desire so that you can make sure that you’re, indeed, attracting the right audience.

When you build such a highly targeted list, you will find that immediately you begin to profit from your list, especially if you have planned your autoresponder messages and promotional content well.

4. Create a sale funnel. Creating a sales funnel will take some additional planning along side the planning of your promotional content. Basically, you’re leading your free subscribers into buyers by promoting some lower cost items and then leading the buyers of those items into purchasing higher-priced items.

There are also upsells (usually offered immediately during the sales checkout process) and downsells (for those who may yet be hesitant to hand over much money) to consider during planning your sale funnel process. Ultimately your sales funnel can be quite profitable for even a small email list when you begin to focus on generating sales through several outlets.

5. Think residual income. There seems to be nothing more attractive in producing profits than the opportunity of generating recurring income. Even with a small email list, you can gain ground quickly by concentrating on promoting products or services that will benefit you profit-wise month after month.

While planning your sales funnel, think about creating a product or service that will allow you to create some recurring monthly or yearly income. Some companies offer memberships or some type of monthly club that allows them to generate recurring income. If creating your own product or service is not an option, again consider promoting an affiliate program in a related niche that offers recurring commissions.

Use the above 5 email marketing tips to profit from your email list no matter what size it is.

Most companies these days are quickly beginning to understand that email marketing is something that needs to be conducted.

If you’re seeing your competition using email marketing services in their business, and you’re feeling left out, then this is probably what’s brought you to this review.

Email marketing is certainly something that you MUST be highly and actively involved in if you want to compete at all. It’s the great new medium and not using it is really a shame.

Is the VerticalResponse Email Marketing Service right for You?

Let’s do something that’s a bit unusual for a review. Let’s start with what I see as a negative. Why would I do that? Because I don’t want to waste your time! Time is money and business right? Why waste it then?

If you’re looking for an auto-responder for your email marketing…which means you can send out scheduled emails to your list, or send an automatic response as soon as someone joins your list…then you’re barking up the wrong tree with VerticalResponse’s email service.

Bottom line…they don’t offer it.

That being said, if having an auto-responder isn’t paramount to you and your business, then I don’t think you should count VerticalResponse out just yet. They do have a lot of great things to offer with their email marketing service.

Who Is VerticalResponse For?

If you’re a business that simply wants to be able to keep in touch with customers, clients, and or an email list by sending them a broadcast email that looks professional… then this is for you.

One thing that I can say is that VerticalResponse is extremely easy to use and navigate through. There truly are no headaches here with this service. It’s about as easy and straight-forward as you’re going to get when it comes to creating emails that will make an impression.

Their interface is extremely user-friendly (even for the newest of the new). In essence, if you can send an email through your regular email carrier, then you’ll be able to send professionally looking masterpieces with VerticalResponse.

They offer an extremely easy to use email editor, with the choice of either HTML (if you’re more advanced and want to be really fancy), or you can use their simple to use, email creation wizard. Nothing tricky about it!

Something Else I’ve Found That’s Really Cool About VerticalResponse…

You surely get newsletter type emails into your email box. We all do now right?

And a lot of times, those are HTML emails that well…look like a website arriving into your email box. That’s really cool, and as mentioned before easy to do because of VerticalResponse.

But something that I found that I really liked about VerticalResponse was their immense library of not only templates (about 700 at current) but also their ridiculously colossal free image stock gallery. By colossal I mean 75,000 images to choose from. So your emails are going to look extremely professional and really…images catch a person’s eye and keeps their attention so it’s going to raise your response rates big time.

With the VerticalResponse email service you can also host images so that you don’t have to get a separate hosting account just for that… filling up space on your existing hosting.

I thought that was a pretty great little benefit.

How About Advanced Extras?

With any type of marketing, one of the things that you always want to measure is your results.

Email marketing is no different what-so-ever. You have to measure how many emails were opened, how many didn’t make it through, how many people clicked an image in your email, and how many people left your list because of that email.

All of this is going to help you in the future because knowing what works and doesn’t work with your marketing is the key to your profits. It’s that simple.

VerticalResponse and Social Media Integration…

Social media is huge. It’s prevalent now in ALL marketing, and if you’re not using the vast power of the internet, and the ideas of spreading a message virally, then you’re out of your mind.

VerticalResponse actually makes this excruciatingly simple. Within each email you send to your list, you’ll be able to add a button that makes it literally push-button simple for your list to share your email with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or even their connections in the professional world of Linked In.

This can vastly increase your number of readers for any one of your emails that you send out.

Now Let’s Talk About Support!

VerticalResponse offers phone support, email support, chat support, support through social media like Twitter, a huge library of online tutorials that include webinars for you to view, and even text tutorials, etc.

There support is available seven days a week, from 6am to 5pm Pacific Time. Normally this would be a huge gripe for me, the lack of 24/7 support that is… However, since this is not an auto-responder service, and their email marketing service is so easy to use with such a vast library of material in their tutorial section, I can see that this is sufficient.

Plus their support, during hours of operation, is extremely good. They’re very helpful. But frankly, there’s really not a whole lot of need for support in most cases.

Overall, Where Do I Stand?

My big negative of VerticalResponse is the lack of an auto-responder. I believe in the power of auto-responders and personally feel that if you’re going to conduct email marketing then it’s nice to have that option as with a service like GetResponse.

However, those are my needs and you may not necessarily want, nor care about an autoresponder service.

If that’s the case then I can fully recommend VerticalResponse because I know how simple they are to use when sending out very professionally designed broadcast emails.

Their pricing is extremely fair, and they offer a lot of options in pricing that most other email marketing services don’t. That’s big. You can even use their “Pay as You Go” payments, which gives you the freedom to do your marketing at your own pace – without feeling as though you’re wasting money on emails not being sent.

Not to mention that there’s a 30 Day, or 100 Email Free Trial. This is great because you can test the system out, and see what YOU think for 30 days without any worries, or even giving a credit card number. Sign up and you’re in sending emails.

If this VerticalResponse Email Marketing Service review has made you realize that this email service is the way to go for total ease, and professionally looking emails that can help propel your business to massive new heights, then go check it out for yourself by clicking here now!

The truth is that it’s very hard to research email marketing software without coming across the name GetResponse. Is that a coincidence or is it because it has to BE a tremendous service?

Well that’s what you’ll find out while reading this review… whether it really is GREAT or not.

So What’s the Story With GetResponse?

When I first started internet marketing online, way back when email marketing wasn’t advertised all over the place like radio commercials, TV commercials, and every website under the sun…one of the first email marketing software I ever heard about was GetResponse.

That and another called AWeber.

GetResponse was often touted by some of the biggest names in marketing as being the BEST and easiest to use, even for a newbie. So of course that’s the one I went with (and again, there weren’t all that many to choose from back then).

I’ve since had EXPERIENCE with others, and have used other services, but I always compare them to my first EVER email marketing software… and the fact is that GetResponse still ranks extremely high on not only my list…but on the list of many other great marketers and businesses as well.

What’s So Great About GetResponse?

Again, when I first started, I was the ultimate green marketer. I didn’t know a darn thing about what I was doing, I just knew that I wanted a way to send messages to people on my list, a) without having to use my own servers and resources and b) set them up to go out ahead of time, so that I could spend time to run the other areas of my business.

Of course the fact that you’re reading this review means that YOU understand how vital time is. You get the fact that time is money, and the last thing you WANT is to have to fool around trying desperately how to figure out how to use a darn system. THIS was the same feelings I had and so I know exactly what you’re thinking about when it comes to researching email marketing services.

By the way, you should pat yourself on the back, because most people don’t take the time to conduct any sort of research. They just pick out the first thing that pops up on Google during their search and go with it…or they go with the cheapest one.

But you know that doing that is what leads to tons of heartache later. And when you’re talking about an email marketing service and auto-responder, there’s nothing worse than collecting email addresses and subscribers and having to either transfer, or leave those subscribers behind because you’ve got to switch service providers for your email marketing.

That’s a real drag and you don’t want to have to do that…so it’s better to get it right the first time!

Easy to Use?

First let’s talk about ease of use. Is GetResponse really that easy to use? I have to say that with the Ultimate Email Editor which I didn’t even have when I first started years ago with GetResponse…creating an email that looks like a professional has done it is so simple it’s mind boggling.

They’re interface is literally drag and drop.

One you log in and hit “Create Email”, you’ll be taken to the interface where you’ll be able to choose from a ton of different professional looking templates.  After you’ve chosen your template, you’ll be taken to the next screen where you can make the template completely unique by adding your own images, and even play with image sizes, and the layout of the template.

Then just add your content, and you’re ready to send off your email… Or you can simply store it for later use within your auto-responder.

Simple Auto Responder Solution…

If you’re serious about your marketing efforts, then one thing that you’ll want to consider is setting up autoresponder sequences.

In the direct marketing world, most savvy marketers like you and I realize that making just one contact with a prospect or repeat customer is business suicide. You’ve got to get your name in front of these people as often as possible – especially in the beginning.

Well, autoresponders make it brain-dead simple to do this. You can set up messages to go out weekly, bi weekly, or even every day… Even twice a day if you want to be really aggressive. It’s up to you but it’s easy when you load them up, and then the only time you have to mess with your messages again is when you want to send a broadcast email, or you want to tweak your automated emails for better conversions.

Speaking of Conversions…

How the heck do you know if your emails are even converting?  With GetResponse they’ve got some of the best tracking in the world.

You can check your open rates, your click thru rates (how many people clicked the links in your emails…and even which ones that they clicked), how many unsubscribed from an email, how many didn’t get to the recipient, etc.

Even further, you can tie in Google Analytics and totally track each sell so you know which messages are pulling in the most sells. This way you know which messages are causing you to PROFIT the most!

Growing Your Email List with GetResponse…

In the early days, one of the hardest parts about growing your list was the form creation. Many had to get a designer or webmaster to do this for them so that it looked good when people entered their contact information.

GetResponse makes this incredibly easy with their Form Builder. This is another simple drag and drop solution that will make your website visitors believe that you’ve spent a fortune on your web form when it actually took you less than five or ten minutes to create.

They’ve got templates to choose from in nearly any industry that you can think of, and if not they’ve got generic ones that allow you to add your own images and/or buttons for even more impact.

Will Your Email Arrive Safely Where Intended?

In today’s email marketing world, one of the things that everyone is concerned about is SPAM.

Email ISP’s are doubly concerned and don’t want their users getting inundated with it in their email boxes…so very strict filters are applied.

GetResponse has a great relationship with all of these, and they seem to make it a priority to keep it that way, because for a number of years, they’ve maintained a 99% deliverability rate. So MOST of your emails are getting where they need to go…which is to your prospects and customers.

This is a huge factor in your decision.

Modern Day Features…

Things have changed quite a bit since I first started email marketing in what seems like the dinosaur ages.

Now you can actually download an app onto your iPhone and manage your emails easily from there.

Not to mention that you can easily integrate your social networking into your emails by adding automatic “share” buttons from sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can also create fully functional web forms to your Facebook pages so that you can build your list from there.

You can even import your contacts onto your list from places like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

And let’s not forget that we’re living in a video world where YOU TUBE is king. You can actually send Video emails easily using GetResponse.

What YOU Need to Do…

The truth is I can sit here and tell you how great GetResponse is until I’m blue in the face, but until you see it for yourself it’s not going to mean as much to you.

Luckily there’s a absolutely no-obligation 30 Day Trial so that you can use every part of the GetResponse dashboard.

If this GetResponse email marketing software review hasn’t helped you see how this email service can change your marketing forever, then I challenge you to try the 30 day trial and not be persuaded to join forever yourself… And you can do that by clicking here now!

You can take advantage of this opportunity by offering your own report as an incentive for subscribers to sign up for your email marketing list.

You can even take marketing with reports another step further by creating some viral reports. The word “viral” is defined as “relating to, or caused by a virus”. Just as a virus quickly spreads and is passed around from person to person, creating a viral report is intended to yield the same results.

A viral report must contain content that is of high quality, informative and interesting enough that people will want to share it with others. You could market your report on free file sharing sites or list it in free ebook directories, etc. Within your report, you’ll want to give your reader the right to give away or resell your report. As many blog owners are seeking content to give away or sell on their sites, this is a very productive way to get your report to go “viral” and gain lots of exposure.

As a final tip to creating and marketing your viral reports, it’s important to include a link back to your sign-up page (also known as a landing page or opt-in page) for your email marketing list with another free related report or offer. Linking back to your sign-up page within your report can be tremendously effective in building a highly targeted list since the readers of your report are already hungry for more content from your business.

Many online marketers have successfully and quickly built very large lists by creating and offering reports with extended rights for the users. As reports do not need to be lengthy, but simply informative, you should be able to quickly create such a report. If writing is not your specialty, remember that you can always purchase a PLR report (or compile several PLR articles) in your niche and rewrite it as you see fit.

You’ll quickly have your own viral report ready to spread over the internet and build your email marketing list.

How do you get people to subscribe to your email marketing list?

You need to offer them something of value for free in exchange for their contact information.  Today, the increase of spammers has made people think twice about sharing their email address.  So, by sweetening the exchange with a valuable product, they will be more likely to sign up for your list.

A key factor in determining what to offer is to consider its relevancy to your niche market.  If you’re trying to get people to sign up for your email marketing list on the topic of healthy eating, offer them a free recipe eBook of healthy nutritious meals.  Make the offer relevant to the topic of the list you are building.

Let’s look at some free offers you can consider offering to get people to sign up to your email marketing list:

• EBooks/reports – this is a very common freebie offered in exchange for someone’s email address.  Again, make the information related to a topic your niche market would be interested in. 
• Ecourses – this gives bite-sized information on a particular topic, and some people will be more attracted to this type of offer.  They may be busy and only have time to digest snippets of information at a time.  Or they may get overwhelmed by a twenty page eBook, so an email each day or every other day for a period of time is much more inviting.
• Coaching – offer subscribers a free coaching session with you.  This will not only benefit them in getting some of their questions answered, but it will also give you the chance to mention what products you offer that might be a help to them.  It also helps them get to know you and trust you more.
• Advertising – do you offer advertising on your website or blog?  You can offer a free ad for a month as a bonus for signing up to your email marketing list. 
• Audio/Video – this gives a little bit of a unique twist to the standard report.  Instead of presenting your information in written form, record it as an audio or video.  This will appeal to a number of people.

Try to determine which bonus would be most appealing to your market (and in which format) and then customize your offer to fit. People need a little bit of an enticement to share their information with you.  Offer something that would be valuable to your market and you should see an increase in subscriptions to your email marketing list.

It’s really nice when you can get targeted traffic for free.  Sure, you can pay for advertising on some targeted websites.  But what if you can pull in lots of free targeted traffic?  That’s a pretty great deal!

The process of search engine optimization (SEO) does just that.  Think about it.  People go to Google or another search engine and type in some specific keywords for what they are looking for.  Your goal is to get your website on the first page of the search results, preferably in the first position.

For example, if you are in the dog training niche, you would want to use the phrase “dog training” or some variation of it as your keywords.  If you come up on the first page of Google when people are searching for information on dog training, they are very likely to click through to your website.  When they do, there should be an opt in form on the page so they can sign up for your email list.  It is also a good idea to offer a free “dog training tips” report to subscribers as added incentive to sign up.

Take a look at the process:

• You find some keywords that describe what you offer (use a keyword search tool like Wordtracker or the Google Keyword tool (both are free) to check and make sure others are using those keywords when looking for the product)
• Use keywords in the main places on your website such as in the title tag and sprinkled throughout your page content, and if possible, in the domain name
• You get inbound links from other relevant websites/blogs
• Your website gets ranked in Google and other search engines
• People come searching for what you offer
• They sign up for your list

Now, I know this sounds pretty easy, but it really is a process that takes time and effort.  And SEO is a whole course on its own.  But the basics are using keywords properly, keeping your website fresh and updated with new content, and getting inbound links from relevant sites. Yes, it is time-consuming, but if you are getting free targeted traffic and building a targeted email marketing list. Isn’t it worth the time?

Although you may be giving away a free report or ebook to build your list, offering some additional follow up messages can gain your business even more exposure. Planning in advance by creating a series of articles related to your niche and uploading them to your autoresponder can create a hands-free way to continually follow up with your customers. You’ll constantly be reminding them about your business and generating further interest by helping them see the benefit of your products or services.

If you’re selling some type of information, such as an ebook or membership, or perhaps providing some type of coaching services, you’ll want to be careful not to give away all your information for free. However, you will certainly want to provide enough worthwhile information that will show them a sample of the true value of what you’re offering.

Don’t burn the bridge that you’ve built….

Building a list can build a strong bridge of trust between your business and your customers; however, if you don’t treat your email list delicately, you can burn your bridge.  While planning your autoresponder series, you’ll want to make sure to create a good balance between useful content and promotional content. Too much promotional content can cause your list to fizzle out and become useless as your list members start unsubscribing or completely ignoring your emails. Many online marketers use the 80/20 ratio – that is, offering 80% pure content and 20% promotional.

How many and how often?

One question to be considered is, “how many follow up messages should be sent?” The answer would be, “however many messages that it takes to convince your potential leads that you’re THE source that can best help them.” For this reason, it’s recommended to send more than just five to seven simple follow up messages. Try to create a large number of articles that will keep reminding your leads that you are always there for them – offering help and caring about their needs. Offering high quality content will entice your subscribers to open your email and look forward to your future messages.

Another question to consider is, “how often should I email my list?” You certainly don’t want to bombard your list with tons of email from your business. Too much of anything is just that – too much! Again, you’ll need to establish a good balance. Emailing only once a month can allow too much time to lapse between communication. On the other hand , several times a week is just more than most people are willing to accept.

For most online marketers once a week seems adequate, however, if you’re offering some type of free ecourse as your followup messages, then once a week may cause them to wait forever to complete your ecourse and be ready to take action afterward. They may get impatient and seek out another source for help. So, in planning how often your email will be sent out, consider what type of content series you are sending out.

How do you create quality content for your email autoresponder series?

One option to consider if you can’t manage creating the content yourself, is to hire a freelance writer to create a series of articles for you. If you can manage jotting down a number of topic ideas or several article titles, you’ll more than likely get adequate help from your writer in creating exactly what you need for your followup messages.

Using PLR (private label content) is yet another acceptable option. Do some thorough research to find websites that offer high quality plr content. Choose some PLR articles in your specific niche to upload to your autoresponder. It’s suggested that you take sufficient time and effort to personalize your PLR articles by adding your own voice and personality. You might also consider doing some other minor editing by sprinkling some of your own thoughts, tips and ideas throughout the content.

As stated earlier, article marketing can really benefit and grow your list.  But this will only work if you provide some valuable, interesting articles.  If they don’t find the information to be helpful, they most likely will not be interested in signing up for more from you.

Make sure you are doing your best to submit quality articles that provide valuable information.   And please be sure to proofread your articles so that your grammar and spelling is accurate.  You can lose a lot of credibility if there are mistakes in your  writing.  Every time you sit down to write an article, make it some of your best work.

Use these suggestions to build your email marketing list.

There are quite a few data points to look at with email marketing. Some of this data will tell you things about one email specifically. Other kinds of data will tell you how well your email list is performing over time. Still others will shed insight on your customers’ psychology.

Get in the habit of reviewing your email marketing metrics regularly. Set goals for your most important metrics. Always work to improve on these metrics, as they really are the core of your business.

Metric #1:  Per Email Open

Get in the habit of reviewing the open rates of your emails every time, a few days after the email has been sent. You want to give the email enough time to be opened by people who don’t necessarily check email every day. After two or three days though, your open rate should be pretty close to your final open rate.

Look for patterns in which emails get opened most. Do emails of a specific topic get opened more than others? Do emails with free videos get opened more or do emails with free website content get opened more?

Use this stat to track and improve your subject line copywriting skill over time.

Metric #2: Per Email Click

Another important stat to track is the click through rate on your emails. This serves as a good indicator of how much your email’s message is hitting home, as well as how strong your call to action is.

Try different kinds of emails to get the best CTR. Many marketers have found that a half page teaser email works better than writing a 3 page long email.

Experiment with your market to see what works best for you.

Metric #3: Spam Complaints

If you’re getting spam complaints, that could mean people who subscribed didn’t like your email, didn’t remember subscribing to your email or just couldn’t figure out how to unsubscribe.

High spam complaint rates could be a sign that you’re being overly promotional. It could be a sign that you aren’t connecting with your audience.

If your spam complaint rate is under 1%, you’re doing fine. However, if you suddenly notice a spike in your spam complaints, you might want to look into what you’ve done differently.

Metric #4: Web Form Stats

Most autoresponders will provide you with stats on the performance of your web form. In other words, how many impressions did you get and how many opt ins did you get? What was your opt in rate?

If you have multiple web forms, your autoresponder will give you the stats for each form. You can use these stats to figure out which form of opt in gets the highest conversion for your site.

Metric #5: Daily New Subscribers

This metric is important to watch if you’re doing any specific kinds of marketing. For example, if you wrote a guest post on Monday, you’ll want to watch your daily subscriber rates over the week to see if it resulted in any spikes.

This stat is useful for watching your trends over a short period of time.

Another thing to pay attention to are sharp drops. One day isn’t a statistically significant measurement. However, if all of a sudden your subscribes drop for two or three days in a row, that’s a big warning sign that you need to do some investigation.

Metric #6: Monthly New Subscribers

The monthly subscriber metric is great for measuring trends in the long run. Is your list getting bigger or smaller? Are more and more people signing up for your list, or is it remaining relatively static?

If you wanted to get a snapshot of the health of your email list in one screen, this may be the ideal stat. The direction of your list – Whether it’s growing or shrinking – Is generally more important than the specific amount of subscribers you have.

Watch the trend of your signups. If it starts going down, you may need to put some attention into revitalizing your business.

Metric #7: Broadcast Deliverability and Opens

This metric shows you the deliverability rates of your broadcasts and the open rates of all your broadcasts.

Note that the deliverability rates reported by your autoresponder may not be entirely accurate. It’s not uncommon for people to switch from one autoresponder to another and suddenly see a doubling in their open rate – Even though the emails sent were the same and each autoresponder said they were getting a 99% deliverability rate.

This screen allows you to get a good sense of your overall opens and overall clicks. You can look for patterns, such as the best times of day to send your emails or the best days of the week.

You can also spot red flags. If your deliverability suddenly drops or if your opens are dropping over time, those could be early indicators of potential problems.

Metric #8: Countries

Where are your customers from? Knowing your target market can help you write your sales letters and time your email messages to your audience.

This isn’t necessarily a stat you need to check every week. Every couple months however, it helps to figure out where in the world your customers are.

If you notice a moderate subscriber base in another country, that could be an indication of demand in that country. For example, if you notice that you have a moderate amount of subscribers from Mexico, there’s a good chance that if you launched a Spanish version of your website you’ll get a lot of traffic. This stat can be an indicator of potential international opportunities.

Metric #9: States & Time Zones

If your customers are primarily in the United States, try calculating their time zones.

The best times for sending emails are usually early in the morning, so people get it before work, or later in the day so people get it after work. Sending emails during work or school hours usually results in lower opens and clicks.

In order to optimize your campaigns for these times, you need to know what time zones your users are in. Pull up a report of your subscribers’ time zones to figure out the ideal mailing time.

If you can’t pull up a report sorted by time zone, pull up a report sorted by state instead. Manually add up the top 10 to 20 states and figure out where most of your subscribers are from.

It’s inefficient and might take you 30 minutes to an hour, but it only needs to be done once and can help increase your opt in rates for months.

Metric #10: Sales

Finally, you want to track your sales. There are a few things you want to track in regards to sales.

1)      The specific email that resulted in the sale. This will help you improve your copywriting, as you can do more of what you’ve found works.

2)      The original traffic source that resulted in the sale. Focus your attention on traffic sources that bring in a lot of sales.

3)      The specific keyword or ad that resulted in the sale. This is the hardest stat of all to track. Often time’s people will buy products weeks or months after they originally clicked on an ad. The best way to do this is to store the keyword (without spaces) in your autoresponder database as a custom variable. This keyword is appended to every link to a salespage you send out using dynamic insertion. It’s treated as a tracking ID tag. You can then use the tracking ID to trace back to the original keyword.

For example, the link from your email might look like: http://www.aweber.com/?202080

The “dogtrainingtips” will be passed to your shopping cart and later can be used to track your sales.

Use sales tracking tools to make sure your original campaigns as well as your email marketing have a strong ROI.

These are some of the most important email marketing metrics to track in your email marketing. Watch your stats carefully and use them to improve your email marketing performance. If you improve your response by just 1% a month, in a year your email marketing will be a lean, mean, converting machine.

With social networks, you can interact with those you feel would be interested in what your business has to offer.  There is normally an option to join (or form) groups where your target market is.  For example, if you are selling jewelry, you may want to join some womens’ groups where you would find women who like to accent their appearance with nice jewelry.  You could also join some groups that include men who like to give jewelry to their wives as a gift.

There are a variety of social networks today:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• My Space
• Ning
• Forums – choose niche related forums

With any of these networks, when you join, you will be given the opportunity to create a profile.  Make sure you do this and make it an interesting one.  Be descriptive in what you do as far as your business, so that people will be willing to connect with you.

In your profile, include a link back to your email list sign-up page.  You can even consider creating a special page for each social network.  For example, when your facebook fans click through your link, they will come to a page that says “For Facebook Fans of (Business Name)” and then offer them a special bonus for signing up for your list.  You can do the same thing for each social network you join.

It’s good to include a picture of yourself so that others can see you.  It will help them feel more connected to you.  You will also be able to create a signature that will show up when you post a comment.  Make sure you include a link back to your sign-up page.

Social networking has made it possible to connect with your target market on a whole new level.  You can be more informal and relaxed and just talk to them, and they can respond back.  It is a great way, not only to build an email list, but to gather feedback on what your market needs and wants.

People come to article directories for two reasons.  The first group comes to read the articles and find out more information on a certain topic.  The second group comes looking for articles they can reprint on their own website or blog.  Either way, you can gain some new subscribers to your list.

People that come looking for information on a topic will be glad to read your articles if you offer them some valuable content.  Let’s say they read through the entire article and like what they read.  They have already seen that you are knowledgeable on your topic and probably would like to read more from you.

At the end of the article is your author resource section where you have included a link to your email list sign-up page.  Very often, they will click through your link and sign up for your email list.  And they might even open your emails when they come since they have benefited from your article!

If online business owners come to the directory to find articles to reprint, they may grab your article if it is written on a topic that is relevant to their website or blog.  Again, your author resource box will be included in the article that they put on the site.  This will allow a whole new group of people find out about you and subscribe to your email list.

Email copywriting differs from regular copywriting in several important ways. First, you’re competing against dozens of other emails for attention. Second, you’re getting people who’re often doing other things – Working, checking Facebook, etc. Third, there are technical matters to consider, such as deliverability and spam compliance.

Here are 10 email copywriting tips to help you get the maximum click throughs and maximum sales possible in the long run.

Tip #1: Use a Swipe File

Don’t try to come up with all your copywriting ideas yourself. This is not just difficult but nearly impossible. Even the best copywriters in the world regularly take ideas from other copywriters. You are no exception.

Create an email account specifically for collecting marketing messages. Go around the sites in your industry and sign up for all their mailing lists.

Next time you need ideas on copywriting, just pop into your swipe file account. Browse the headlines and the copy for ideas. Don’t steal sentences, but take other people’s ideas and shape them into your own.

Tip #2: Write 10 Subject Lines

When a world class copywriter writes a direct mail piece, they often write between 50 and 100 headlines before choosing the one that they run with. It’s the most important sentence of the whole mail piece and the effort more than pays off.

The same is true with the subject line in email marketing. If your subject line isn’t compelling, you email isn’t going to get opened.

Of course, writing 100 subject lines for every email simply isn’t realistic. Instead, write at least 10 different subject lines for every email you send. Pick the best one from the bunch and refine it.

Tip #3: Use Plain Text if Possible

Sending HTML email can be a bit risky. Different email clients can display your HTML messages differently across different clients. Some clients won’t display your HTML message right. Others will block images and make your email look unprofessional.

Direct response email marketers generally agree that plain text messages are a surer bet than HTML messages.

Use plain text if possible in your email marketing.

Tip #4: Focus on the First Sentence

When people open an email, the first thing they do is read the first sentence. They may also briefly scan the entirety of the email to see what the email is about.

If your first sentence isn’t attention catching, people will quickly delete your email and move on to the next email. The time you have to catch someone’s attention via email is even shorter than the time you have on a web page.

The old adage that people “sort their mail over their trash can” definitely holds true with the internet. Remember that people read your emails with one finger over the trash or archive button.

Your job is to catch their attention and get them to stop in their tracks and read the rest of what you have to say. Your first sentence has to do that.

Focus on the first sentence. Make sure it has emotional benefit. Make sure it conveys a benefit. Make sure someone in your target market who reads that sentence would be drawn into reading more.

Tip #5: Be Controversial

If you’re just agreeing with what everyone else is saying, or worse yet regurgitating what other people re saying, people are going to stop listening to you pretty quickly.

On the other hand, if you’re regularly coming out with your own opinions, sharing what you really think and going against the grain, people are going to keep coming back.

Be controversial. Be especially controversial when you’re writing subject lines and first lines. Those lines need to catch attention more than any other parts of the email.

Tip #6: Sell the Click, Not the Product

One of the biggest and most common mistakes email marketers make is trying to sell a product all through email.

Email is not the place to try and sell a product. It’s not the place to get someone to buy something either.

What you’re trying to sell is the click. No more and no less. The job of the email is to get people to click on over to another page. If you’re selling a product, that page is what does the selling. The email just gets them there.

Your goal with an email is to get as high a CTR as possible. Let your salesletters do the selling.

Tip #7: Proof and Social Proof

Proof and social poof still make a big difference, even over email. People want to know that other people are clicking and other people about buying.

The key with email is to weave the proof into the fabric of the email itself. Make it part of your content. Talk about some of the successes of your past customers and use it to draw lessons. Or pick questions that users send in that have social proof inside the question itself.

If you just put a pile of testimonials at the top or bottom of your emails, chances are they won’t get read. But if you weave in the testimonials and social proof with the content of your email, people will read it and subconsciously come to trust you more and more.

Tip #8: Send it at the Right Time of Day

The time of day that you send your message makes a big difference. It could as much as double or halve your open rates.

The day of the week that you send your messages matters as well. Some days are better for getting high open rates, while other days are better for making sales.

Each market is slightly different. For times, people generally find early in the morning or after work works best. For days of the week, people find that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays tend to work well.

However, these can vary widely based on markets and demographics. Test it out for yourself to see which days and which times work.

Tip #9: Add Urgency

Always add urgency to your emails. Urgency is even more important in email marketing than in other kinds of direct response marketing. You’re competing with other emails, as well as social media, RSS feeds that pop up and anything else that can grab your reader’s attention.

If you have a special offer or a limited time offer, don’t just put that on your sales page. Put it in you email as well.

Whenever you’re writing emails to sell, try to include some sort of urgency factor in there as well. For content emails this isn’t important, but if there’s an action you want people to take, be sure to add an urgency factor

Tip #10: Split Test

You should almost never just send out one broadcast to your entire list. Instead, you should always be running a split test – Even if that split test is just of two slightly different headlines.

Split testing allows you to learn what your audience responds to. It allows you to figure out which headlines tend to get click throughs and opens and which ones don’t.

You might not be able to use what you learn right away. For example, if you only have a list of 3,000 people, you’ll only be able to run one A/B split test. So you’ll take what you learn and use it to craft better emails in the future.

If you have a list of 30,000 however, you could split test two different emails among the first 10,000, then send the winner to the remaining 20,000.

Writing great copy online is a combination of using all the old direct mail principles that apply, as well as new technologies to help make sure you get the highest opens, click throughs and sales possible. Use the above email copywriting tips to make sure that your emails are opened and read.

Forming partnerships with other list owners is an effective way to promote your list. Let’s look at the reasons why.

Relationship With List
The joint venture partner you team up with has already built a relationship with their list.  So, a recommendation coming from them to join your list will mean much more than if they just saw an ad somewhere or ran across you on the internet.

A Ready Market
If people are already on an email list, there is a good chance they will join yours also.  They have proven that they are willing to share their contact information so they are a group that is ready to join.

Affordable Option
This is a very affordable way to promote your list – it’s usually free!  The way it normally works is that you  would approach a business owner (make sure they have a list which can be determined by seeing a sign-up box on their website/blog.)  Ask if they would promote your list to their subscribers in turn for something you can do for them.

Here are some suggestions for a reciprocal offer:

A service you could do for them – proofreading, marketing, etc.  Make sure you have the necessary skills for what you offer.
Advertising on your website – if you have an established site but just have not started a list yet, offering them some free advertising is a great option.

If you already have a list but are looking to add more subscribers, then you could do a cross promotion where you promote each others lists to your current subscribers.  For this to be fair, you should both have basically the same sized lists.

In some cases, email list owners will accept paid advertisements that go out to their subscribers.  This could be in the form of a solo ad or an ad in their regular ezine.  If you decide to pay for some advertising, try to find out the list size and the responsiveness of the subscribers.   And again, make sure it is a good match for the market you are trying to attract.

The other option is to create what is commonly referred to as a “squeeze page,” which is designed to do the same thing without all the other distractions that are typically on a web page.  With a squeeze page, all that you would have on the page is the opt-in form plus a little text.  You are giving them only one choice, which is to sign up for your email list.

Whichever way you decide to go – with a squeeze page or a web form, it is not enough to simply ask your visitor to sign up for list.  Many years ago it may have been, but not today.  There are so many email lists vying for your visitor’s attention, that they want to get something out of it before giving over their name and email.

Most times, you will need to offer your perspective subscriber something for free in exchange for their contact information.  Even though they will be receiving a lot of helpful information from you via email, they may want something right now – something that will tip the scales and get them to give you their information.

What can you offer them as a bonus for signing up?

Here are some ideas:

• A report
• An ebook
• A discount off a product they would love to get
• A coaching session
• Some ad space on your website/blog
• An audio or video explaining something of interest to your market
• A physical item mailed to them – this will cost you some money, so you may want to go with one of the above digital ideas

Your  free offer needs to be compelling enough that it takes away the question of whether they should sign up or not.  Make it something of value to them so much so that they are surprised you gave it away.  Leave the thought in their mind that if they paid for some of your products, they would really be outstanding!

Your email marketing list is of utmost importance to your business success so take good care of them right from the beginning.

And why would this be valuable?

(This is most useful for people who are selling their own products, but I urge anyone who is only recommending products as an affiliate to read it anyway.  It will give you greater knowledge on what you can do with email marketing lists, and maybe some ideas for the future.)

So, the ability to keep a separate list of people who have bought from you would be valuable in several ways.

First off, a buyers email marketing list is valuable because it is made of valuable people.  People who are willing to get out their credit card and buy.  People who actually have money to spend.  People who recognize the value in what you are offering and are willing to exchange money for it.

Not everyone is like this.  Many people will do nothing but look.  Never take action.  Never buy anything.  These looky-loos may be enticed to buy something in the future, but they may not.

Someone who has bought from you once, is likely to buy from you again if they like your work, and because of this a list of people who have bought from you should be treated differently than people who have not.

They also should be introduced to different products.

You don’t want to keep sending a pitch to a person about a product they have already bought!

In Aweber, the way to do this is through automation rules and email parsers.

So, with an email parser, you can sign up users for a list when they buy something using clickbank, e-junkie, yahoo, and other payment processors.

If these users are already on another list, you can use an automation rule to unsubscribe them from that first list and subscribe them to the second.

Boom! They are now on your buyers email marketing list!

You can keep pitching your initial product at your first list, and even offer sales over there, while on your buyers list you can give away more free information (as a thank you) and offer or recommend different products.

If you are only recommending affiliate products you can’t do this automatically, because the company who is actually making the sale will be the one to get the notifications of who has bought.

However, you could start making plans for making your own products, or start to get creative with manually making a buyers list if you were very active with your subscribers and they told you when they bought something.

Either way, buyers lists are valuable tools that can help you increase the amount of revenue you make even with a slow-growing list.

For help with how to use email parsers or automation rules, see the help or support pages of your email marketing service.

There are several negative factors to consider…

First, the delivery rate of your email messages can be extremely low since many of the servers from free autoresponder services get tagged as a source of spam from overuse and abuse of the many marketers who constantly send out blatant advertising messages.

Secondly, you risk losing your list. Free services online often have short existences and you place your business at a risk of losing your most valuable asset online, which is your contact list of subscribers.

Thirdly, you allow your business to appear unprofessional. In fact, there’s often advertising included within the email messages for using the service of free autoresponders.

And finally, you’ll discover that there are not as many tools or other features provided with free autoresponder services. For businesses who are serious about email marketing, you’ll want the features of knowing the opening rates of your email marketing campaigns, as well as the use of professional templates.