When you have an email list… what do you send to them, how and how often. These questions have been around since the invention of email marketing and chances are you’ve asked them too.
In the last post we talked about how you can generate free and low cost traffic to build your list. Today we’ll look at how to best use your list to generate sales and income.
When planning out what to do with your list there are five main points to keep in mind.
1. Keep It Relevant
If people first subscribed to your list to learn more about how to run a WordPress blog, they are not going to take kindly to getting emails about buying knitting patterns… in fact you’d be swamped with spam complaints.
Make sure that your emails and the products you promote are relevant to your audience. If they aren’t then tell them how it could be or why you think they should also pay attention to this other thing.
2. Always Be Selling
Let’s face it… if you are building an email list you are doing it to make money. That means selling something to someone.
If the only thing you do is send out beautifully crafted and informative newsletters, week after week. Your subscribers will get angry the day you send out that one promotion.
You should include a link for something to buy in every single email you send out, even if it’s just in the P.S. Set their expectations early and don’t try to hide that you have something to sell. Those who don’t like it will leave and they were never going to buy anything from you anyway.
3. Find Your Style
It’s always best to write your own emails from scratch. You can take inspiration from swipe emails provided by vendors and affiliate programs. However, your subscribers will notice if you just copy and paste before you send (they get 50 copies of the same email from other marketers).
Write your own emails, find your style and stick to it. Again those who don’t like it will leave and those who do could become your best customers. You can’t please everyone, so you might as well be yourself.
4. Be Consistent
People always ask when it’s the best time to send an email and the correct answer is always: “right now”
But in all honesty it doesn’t matter when you send your emails or how often. There are very successful newsletters that go out once a month and there are very successful marketers who email their lists several times a day
Again, the key is to be consistent and set the expectations early. If you want to mail every day, do so from the beginning. Mailing once a week and then suddenly sending 3 emails in one day will set your spam complaints of like a nuclear bomb.
5. Offer Bonuses
You’ve probably noticed that some of the biggest and most successful affiliates always offer bonuses when they promote a product. They do that because it works and you should do it too. It shows your readers that you care about them and that you believe in the product you are recommending (otherwise you wouldn’t go through the extra effort).
Commission Gorilla, found on your JVZoo Tools page is the easiest way for you to get started making cool bonuses for your promotions.
This Is How You Write Great Emails
Getting good at writing emails is mostly about practice, tracking and testing. Look at what works and then do more of that.
That said – there is a short cut.
You are probably subscribed to multiple lists in the marketing world, if not go join a bunch immediately.
Look at your inbox every single day.
If a subject line makes you want to open and read an email – then copy that subject line on to a swipe file.
If reading an email makes you want to click to learn more (or even better, buy something) then copy that email to a swipe file too.
You will quickly build up a nice swipe file you can use for inspiration to write killer emails that convert.
Just remember two things.
Practice makes perfect.
And that if you are not getting people unsubscribing from your list you are not mailing often enough or selling hard enough.
Be good, be kind, be interesting… but don’t forget that you are building a business in order to make money.
