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Email Marketing

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We’ve been told (and told and told) for years that “the money is in the list” and that “your mailing list is your biggest business asset.” But if your list numbers are hovering in the low four-figures—or fewer—with no sign of growth on the horizon, such advice can seem a bit unhelpful.

The fact is, building a list is a catch 22: You can’t get sign ups without traffic and it’s difficult to find traffic when you have no list. What’s a busy coach to do?

Paid Ads Make List-Building Easy

By strategically placing ads in front of your target audience, you can drive tons of traffic to your opt-in offers and enjoy conversion rates of two or three percent or more. Even better, with some tweaking and split testing of your offers, you can carefully refine your ads and copy so that you’re attracting your exact ideal client and filling your list with buyers who are ready to take action, rather than freebie seekers.

All you need to run paid ads to your opt-in pages is:

A compelling offer, such as a video training series or live webinar
Copy to grab the attention of your target audience

Best Ad Placements

Once you have your components in place, the only question remaining is where to run your ads. You have dozens of choices, from Twitter to Google to YouTube to solo email spots.
The key is to first determine where your market is most likely to be hanging out. If they’re on LinkedIn, then running ads on Twitter will be a waste of time. Keep in mind the cost as well. Ads on Facebook are generally less expensive and less competitive than a Google Adwords placement.

Start Small, Then Refine

Once you’ve decided where to place your ads, it’s time to set your budget and begin running a small set of ads. Consider setting a small daily budget, such as $10 or $20 at the beginning, so you can get a feel for how your ads will perform. Watch the traffic, track your conversions, and create split tests of your landing page and ad sets to determine which performs the best. You can also refine the audience you’re targeting based on the stats you receive. For example, if you find that men between the ages of 20 and 30 are clicking but not opting in, you might want to remove them from your audience.
At least at first, it’s best to avoid running ads for paid products. Conversions for a free offer will far outshine those to a paid product—especially if your program is expensive. After all, those who are clicking on an ad most likely do not know you at all, so it takes a much bigger leap of faith to offer up a credit card number than it will to provide an email address.

Ad Copy Blunders to Avoid

Have you ever clicked on an ad because you saw an adorable pair of sandals that you just had to have, only to land on a page full of sneakers, with not a sandal in sight? It’s frustrating, to say the least, and that kind of ad to landing page mismatch will kill your conversions.

Your ad copy is making a promise to the reader. If your landing page doesn’t fulfill that promise, your readers will click away, and you’ll have wasted the money you spent to get them there. Before running any ads, be sure your ad headline, image, and copy all match the message on the landing page.

Paid advertising was once a tool used only by big companies or marketers with a lot of money to spare, but today they’re more cost-effective than ever, and the technology makes them easy to create and monitor. If you haven’t yet tried your hand at this useful traffic generation method, it’s time to do some experimenting. You might just find your list numbers—and sales—growing.

It’s one metric we consistently watch and try to improve: email open rates. There’s good reason for it, too. If your subscribers aren’t opening your email, then they can’t read about:
• Your newest coaching program
• Your latest must-have tool discovery
• That epic blog post you just wrote
The trouble is, you only have about two seconds to entice a reader to open your email. Even worse, you have to do it in ten words or less.
Yikes! That’s a pretty tall order, even for seasoned copywriters. But there are some tricks you can use.
Be Ambiguous
If you’ve been on Facebook lately you’ve no doubt seen those “click bait” headlines that say things like, “She adds this to a box of Wheat Thins and I’m drooling!” The reason headlines like that work is because we can’t help but want to know what “this” is that she’s adding to her Wheat Thins. Is it sugar? Salt? Peanut butter? We imagine the possibilities, but in the end we have to find out, so we click.
You can employ the same technique in your email subject lines. Just substitute the word “this” for the actual thing you’re writing about, and you’ve got instant enticement.
Use Numbers
Here’s another strategy for creating must-read content: numbers.
“7 Hidden Benefits of Waking Up at 5am”
“3 Unlikely Ways to Close the Sale”
“5 Social Media Platforms You Shouldn’t Be Ignoring”
The reason numbers work so well in subject lines is because we are ego-centric and curious. We simply must know if we already use those three ways to close the sale. We will either walk away feeling good for being a marketing maven, or we will have learned something. Both are compelling reasons to open an email.
Use Power Words
Just as with all writing, choosing power words is far more effective than settling for their weaker counterparts. Imagine these two subject lines appear in your inbox. Which are you more likely to open:
“WordPress Makes Better Looking Websites for Non-Designers”
or
“Create a Gorgeous Website—Even if You’re Not a Designer”
While both subjects offer the same information, the first is weak, while the second is far more compelling.
When it comes to email subjects, there are a few more tips to keep in mind if you want to up your open rates:
• Keep it short – no more than 10 words at the very most, and fewer if you can.
• Test everything. Use your autoresponder’s split-testing functionality to see which subject line styles perform best in your market.
• Use personalization, but sparingly. Occasional use of your reader’s first name can be a powerful technique.
Here’s the bottom line: If your subscribers aren’t opening your email, they’re not buying. Paying closer attention to your subject lines is the single most important thing you can do for your email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing is an effective strategy and valuable resource for
entrepreneurs to establish themselves as subject matter experts, and build
relationships with their clients, while staying connected.

However, many business owners aren’t getting the results they want because of these mistakes:

Email Marketing-2016

1. Not Building an Email List

It seems pretty obvious but there’s no email marketing if you don’t have a list!

Whether you’ve a strong online presence or not, maintaining an email list is a critical part in nurturing leads and customer relationships.

If you don’t have an email list yet, sign up with an email service provider and start getting subscribers.

2. Not Sending Newsletter

Sitting on an email list and not communicating with your subscribers is as good as not having a list.

Stop “planning” to send a newsletter and just do it already. You’ve a lot to gain by consistently providing value and communicating with your customers and readers.

If you don’t have the time or know-how to do it, you can easily outsource the task – there’s no excuse.

3. Not Offering a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive to get high quality leads to join your list.

Your incentive can be valuable content such as a special report, an audio course or video trainings; or a special offer, discount code or free shipping for your products.

Taking the time to plan your lead magnet can help you get the right subscribers on your list and increase your email marketing ROI significantly.

4. Buying Email From External Sources

Don’t take shortcut and purchase emails from list brokers. They’re at best low quality and at worst will get you marked as spammer, which can impact your deliverability in the future.
Grow your list organically with high quality subscribers who genuinely want to hear from you, instead of getting into trouble by buying email lists or false hopes.

5. Not Verifying Email Addresses

A two-step opt-in may seem like an extra step but it helps ensure the email addresses you collect are valid and of high quality.

By putting verification in place, you can eliminate inactive or invalid email addresses that lower the quality of your list and impact deliverability.

6. Not Following Email Marketing Best Practices

Adhering to email marketing best practices can save you from being marked as a spammer.

Here’re a few things to keep in mind:

Include your physical address as well as an unsubscribe link or button in all bulk emails.
Remind subscribers how they got onto your list.
Send out both text and HTML versions of your newsletter.

Be sure to stay up-to-date with the help of your email service provider to make sure you comply with all laws and regulations.

7. Not Using an Email Service Provider for Bulk Emails

It’s a huge mistake to send out your bulk emails with your personal email account such as Outlook or Gmail – even if you think you’ve a small list.

An email service provider has all the checks and balances in place to make sure your emails comply with laws and regulations so you don’t get into trouble.

Most email marketing companies offer free starter packages for smaller lists so cost is not an issue if you’re just starting out.

8. Not Running A/B Tests

The marketplace and your audience is always changing and evolving, so should your email marketing campaigns.

Besides monitoring the metrics, you can run email split tests to find out what email marketing campaigns produce the best results.

Here’re a few tests to perform:

Time to send email – which day of the week and what time of the day to send emails to get the highest open rate, click-through rate and conversion rate.
Position of sign up box – where on your website to place the sign up box to get the highest conversion rate.
Type of email – whether emails with text only or emails with text, headers and images get better results.
Subject line – which titles and what title length get higher open rates.
Images – whether the use of images lead to more clicks.

9. Not Asking Subscribers To Add You To Their Contact List

Remind your subscribers to add your email to their address book or whitelist your email address during the sign up process and in your welcome email.

This will ensure your email newsletters reach their inboxes instead of getting stuck in the spam folder, impacting your open rate and deliverability.

Conclusion

With 3.6 billion email accounts (as of 2013,) almost everyone online has an email address. It’s one of the most effective ways to connect with your customers.

It’s imperative that entrepreneurs have an email marketing strategy to reap the benefits of a well-designed campaign.