Don’t ignore your list!

Email marketing
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online-business-dont-ignore-email-list-1Over and over, I hear people who want to have a successful online business tell me that they have a list of people in some email provider account but haven’t emailed them in months. They are rebranding or focusing on something else or didn’t have time or whatever.

Wow!

Ignoring an email list is like walking past diamonds on the ground. There’s no excuse for it. Nurture your list because it’s the basis of your business.

If you have other issues that arise, drop back to emailing them every month. Invite others to guest blog post and send out an email about that. Find an old blog post to email your subscribers about. Really, you can keep your email list alive with a few minutes a month.

And sometimes I see something just as bad. The person wants to make some money or is asked to send out a promotion for someone else, so the first email they send to this old list is a sales letter. Bad!

What happens when you don’t email your list

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by Ellen Finkelstein

How to create a successful newsletter: Part 1-Set up a list

Email marketing
List building
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Have you read my free download “Your Master Plan for Creating an Internet Business?” (If not, use this link to get it.) Step 6 is “Set up an email service and web form.”

In this post, I explain how to set up your email service and create a webform so you can subscribe visitors to your website. If you have already done this, you’ll find next week’s post more applicable to you, but scroll down here to see if you’re using autoresponders to your best advantage.

If you haven’t set up a list, webform and free download, you should take care of this now! It’s an essential part of creating a successful online business.

I’ll be covering the topic of how to create a successful newsletter in 4 parts:

  1. Part 1: Set up a list
  2. Part 2: Design your visual layout and content structure
  3. Part 3: Use your newsletter to sell
  4. Part 4: 3 BIG mistakes to avoid

internet-marketing-successful-newsletter-set-up-list-part1-1Can’t you just have a website?

Yes, sometimes people just see your website and immediately purchase a product or service. But that’s rare unless they’ve gotten a great recommendation from one of your existing customers or they’ve read about you in an article. Most Internet marketers say that email is the way they make most of their sales.
Usually, you’ll use email to make an offer to the people who are subscribed to your list and that’s how you’ll make most of your money. So, having an email list is very important.

How do you get people to read your emails?

Some Internet marketers just send out marketing emails and get away with it, but this strategy doesn’t work for most people.

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by Ellen Finkelstein

The power of WordPress plugins to grow your list

WordPress/blogging
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You can install plugins to help grow your list. Here you can see my AutoCAD Tips Newsletter subscriber list, growing over time to 7,000.

Do you see the slight increases in the pace of growth where the arrows are? I think these are due to 2 plugins that I installed.

internet-marketing-power-of-wordpress-plugins-1

I’ve already discussed one, Comment Reply Notification, here and explained how it turns your blog into a discussion forum. For that plugin, while I definitely noticed an increase in subscribers, I was especially pleased to see a significant increase in comments. As people are notified when there’s a reply to their comment, they come back to reply to the reply.

Add text at the bottom of every blog post Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

Your email list will grow by itself, if …

Email marketing
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I’ve written several blog posts about growing your email list, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Yes, the truth is, I’ve written a lot about email marketing and that’s because it’s important.

Can’t people just find your website and buy from you?

Without a strong reputation, like Amazon’s or Best Buy’s, people are not likely to feel comfortable buying from you if they don’t know who you are. But, after they receive emails from you, they get to know you. Then they are more likely to buy from you.

My confession

I have to confess that I haven’t done anything at all to grow my email list since the last post on the topic, when my list was was 106. That was back in December, 2011.

It’s now March, 2012 and my list is Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

3 ways to increase your list

Email marketing
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In a previous post, I told you I would tell you what I’m doing to grow my list and tell you the result.

I’m now up to 41 people, a gain of 2 in 3 days. Not very impressive, but I’m not complaining!

Here’s what I did.

Use your tribe

A tribe, in the Internet Marketing sense, is a group of people who have something in common with you. You need to find groups and join them.

I belong to a great group of people who are trying to get on the Internet, the Social Media Attractionaires. It provides a private place where I can tell like-minded people what I’m doing, especially if it can help them. So I wrote a short post there.

For my main website-based business, I have a Twitter account and quite a lot of followers. I thought that some of them would be interested, so I sent out a couple of tweets.

Join other tribes

I use LinkedIn a lot. I especially find the groups useful. So I joined a few LinkedIn groups of social entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and asked a question. You can’t always just promote yourself in a discussion (it depends on the group), so you have to find a way to contribute to meaningful discussion. Most groups have a Promotion tab, but few people ever look at it.

I asked what people were finding challenging, finances or technology. As people responded, I was sometimes able to mention my website. This method can be time-consuming at first, but when you find the right location, can be worthwhile.

Make a list of groups you can connect with. Then try connecting!

by Ellen Finkelstein