Sliced Bread, Golf Balls, Making Money, and Your Email List

So, you put up a website and started building your optin email list, and you kept on building your optin email list for a few months and sending out the weekly emails asking them to buy your recommended product or service because its the best thing since sliced bread and . . .
NO ONE'S BUYING!!

So you keep it up for a few more months, building your optin email list a bit more and sending out the weekly emails asking them to buy your better than sliced bread product and . . .
NO ONE'S BUYING!!

So now, you're getting frustrated and annoyed, because you've read all the articles and PDF's that the guru's have sent you, telling you "You Must Build Your List" And now, after reading endless success story after success story, you're finally asking yourself why you can't succeed, where others make it all sound so easy, and very profitable. If other people are making money from their list, why can't you?

In fact, you may be losing money. You may be hiring writers to help you out, or you may have upgraded your autoresponder. Even if you managed to build a big list, you may find that only a small percentage of your subscribers will actually buy from you, so you're still not in profit. And it does not really show up, until you read the horrible facts and figures after a few months.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dived straight in. You chose a topic that you thought, would have been quite popular and would earn you money. But this is just not the case. Just because you emailed people from your optin email list does not mean that they are going to buy straight away, or ever. If you're selling golf balls, and the only people on your optin email list don't play golf, then you have a problem. Even if they are better than sliced bread golf balls.

For those who have started an opt-in list and failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three fast and easy ways to build a profit making opt-in list.

For this exercise, we are going to say that you have a website that sells golf balls, you have the knowledge, you know which golf ball is best for any particular type of player.

1) Start building your optin email list in an area in which you have some knowledge. If your site is selling golf balls, it makes sense that if you have people who play golf on your optin email list, then sooner rather than later you will get a response. Hang out in a couple of golf forums and start answering questions about golf balls. Find out what people want, and what they are buying. Then you will know exactly who to target, and who you want on your optin email list.

Should that be golf forums or golf fourums?<




Join forums from other related topic sites as well. How about golf clubs. You know that certain golf balls work better with certain types of clubs. Answer questions and provide advice and recommendations.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. You know what people are looking for, from your travel around the forums. Although it may not be your specialist subject, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it forward. Invest your time, effort and money in products or services that you could sell, as well as the buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list want to buy.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have an interest in, there may not be many people who have the same interest as you, if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your research well and you should see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around.

3) Make friends with other opt-in list owners, again try and find areas of related topic. How about golf bags? This can be very beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you on the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust. And you may be able to do some ad swapping to make it even more profitable.

Experienced opt-in list owners will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do, because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones.

Building a profitable opt-in list does not just happen overnight. There is a lot of preparation and work required before you can begin. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your optin email list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your opt-in email list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

Oh, and one more little thing. When a subscriber joins your list, do NOT have your first email to them, be one which is recommending they buy your better than sliced bread golf balls! Let them get to know you first, provide them with bits of information (for free) and then, after a few emails, you'll find that selling your better than sliced bread golf balls is really quite easy.

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Tips for Effective Email Marketing

Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

The best news is that the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

1. Spam! Spam! Spam! I don't need any Viagra!
The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week, 62% of which are spam. No wonder there's such hostility towards the industry. But spam filters, bulk folders and "report spam" features are helping consumers become more at ease about the perils of spam. While 89% of users cited spam as a major concern in 2003, that number dropped to 85% in 2004, proportionally to an increase in the use of spam-fighting tools.

So as a permission-based business email marketer, what can you do? One tip is to remind your subscribers to add you to their "safe senders" list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers' inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

2. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?
Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. In fact, according to ClickZ, 40% of email marketing messages delivered to inboxes are "broken."

This was actually something that came up during Eliteweb's beta-testing phases, as we had a client in the Canadian Government whose recipients were mostly using highly secure email programs. The solution we came up has now become one of our key competitive advantages.

What Eliteweb does is it publishes every single email marketing campaign sent to a secure location on the web (a location only original recipients of the email can access, thanks to encrypted technology that automatically authenticates the user). The technology also ensures you can track your users' behaviors, even if they are reading your email campaign at the secure web location.

3. Personalization and relevant content: In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all.
In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. That number points out the absolute importance of allowing users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. The most popular interest categories, according to the study, are coupons and household goods.




But your coupon is no good unless the user opens the email. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the "from" field. So it's a good idea to make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the "subject" line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

4. Click-through and conversion: Show me the money!
So the user has opened your email and read the content. Great. But where's the sale? There's good news here. For one, consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases as a direct result of a business email campaign. One-third of users in the DoubleClick study had purchased something by clicking a link on an email. Another 42% clicked on an email link for more information, then purchased the product at a later time. Second, online couponing is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline.

In terms of industries, the top performers are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

There's no need to fret if your company doesn't fit in to one of those industries. The overall landscape for email marketing conversions is looking brighter every day. The average click-to-purchase rate has increased nearly 30% since 2004 and the average orders-per-email-delivered rate has increased more than 18% since last year.

5. Stats tracking: who are my real consumers?
E-mail marketing is an increasingly popular tool in effective CRM, and it's about time more businesses recognize that. First off, if your provider's email services for business do not include detailed, real-time tracking, you're getting a raw deal. Real-time tracking is now an industry standard, and it's highly valuable, as it allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last (several email service providers also let you compare the performance of your campaigns).

But many marketers are still in the dark. According to a recent WebTrends research, only 5% of marketers are very confident in the measurement of their online marketing efforts, while 26% admit they're "flying blind." WebTrends says the low confidence comes from a lack of knowledge when it comes to measurement, which means there's still a lot of work to be done.

In email marketing, a blind shot won't take you very far. But if you aim properly by following these essential rules of play, you should soon be reaping the same major results as so many online and offline businesses.

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