There are many people who don’t start a mailing list in the beginning of their home business online presence because they feel they don’t have enough to share with a list. This is a big mistake! Email marketing is NOT dead and you need to be building your email list, now.

You don’t have to start by sending out a huge newsletter every week, but you do have to start building that list.

What you send to your email list will really depend on your market, and what they have subscribed to receive. You could do any number of the following:

* A monthly, weekly or bi-weekly html (colors, pictures) newsletter
* A monthly, weekly or bi-weekly text-based email
* An ecourse
* A daily, weekly, or monthly tips list
* A series of autoresponder messages
* Follow-up messages to customers or clients
* A list announcing upcoming events such as teleseminars

If you treat your email lists right they will become loyal followers, and when you have an offer to make them they will be there to listen to what you have to say.

So, How Do You Build Your Email List?

Before you can start sending messages out to a list you need to have people subscribed.

The best way to build a list that you want to grow long term is to use a program that is built for sending out messages to those subscribed and also will help you comply with the Can-Spam legal requirements of sending out messages to large groups of people.

Two programs I use most often with my clients and are well-known as industry leaders are:

Aweber & 1ShoppingCart

Signing up with either of these programs will allow you to easily set up your mailing list and start collecting names and emails that you can then start sending your email promotions out to.

Getting Opt-ins

Once you have a program to handle your mailing list you will then need to set up a mailing list opt-in form that people will fill out in order to subscribe to your list.

You may want to offer subscribers a gift for signing up, like the one you’ll see in the offer I make on this site.

When people sign up for my newsletter they get a five great bonuses to help them build their business on the internet

Confirmation Page

Once people fill out their name and email on an opt-in form you will likely need to have them confirm their opt-in so that you can confirm that they really did request the information and you are not spamming them.

The confirmation page is a page that you need to optimize. If you’ve offered a special report make sure that you let them know they need to confirm their subscription in order to get that report, or confirm in order to receive the information they requested.

You can make a special offer on the confirmation page, or send them back to your website to read articles. But since they’re on the page anyway, and they have to go somewhere YOU should be making a suggestion as to where they should go.

Now It’s Time To Send Out Emails

You’ve got subscribers, they’ve confirmed they want your information and now you’ve got to send them some valuable content!

A couple of things to really pay attention to when you send messages out your mailing list is your open rate and your click through rates.

Open Rate

One of the biggest things that will affect your open rate is the title of your email message.

You want a subject line with the following qualities:

* not too long – Long subjects get cut off in some email programs and a long subject line takes a chance at being ignored.
* includes the name of recipient – Personalizing your email subject line helps catch the attention of the person you’re sending it to. Who doesn’t respond when you call out their name? This is the same with an email. When people see their name they want to know what you’re saying to them.
* sounds personal – If the subject line sounds like it is a personal message to the person opening it, you have a greater chance of having it opened.
* isn’t misleading – Don’t try to trick your readers into opening something by using a misleading subject line. Not only is it illegal through the Can-Spam act, it just turns your subscribers off in a big way. If they’re expecting one thing and open up an email to see another, you risk them not opening anything else you send them.

Click Through Rates

Ok, you’ve gotten their attention and they’ve opened your email – but that’s only the first step! Now you need to have a call to action in each and every message you send.

Your call to action doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) have to be asking them to buy something. Maybe you want them to visit your website to read a great article you’ve written, or maybe they should go check out a new podcast you’ve uploaded, or download a free special report you’ve written (all of which will have their own calls to action within them).

Watch your click through rates and start paying attention to what works and what doesn’t for your market. If you have a large enough list you can do split-testing to test one message against another to see which has a better response. Sometimes the smallest things can make a big difference.

Your mailing list can be one of the biggest assets to your business so make sure you take care and don’t bombard them with spammy offers or just low quality information.
Take good care of that list and they will take good care of you for a very long time to come.

And make sure you start building it now!

Using email as a sales tool doesn’t have to be complicated.

You need to connect with your audience no matter what tool you use. Email just allows you another way to do so. Some of the common reasons why business owners don’t use email marketing is because they (1) fear it will take up too much time or (2) don’t feel they have enough expertise to write a ‘newsletter’ or (3) feel that marketing through email is ‘spamming’.

Here’s the thing though: You email marketing really doesn’t need to be a fancy, high graphic email Newsletter.

- You can offer quick weekly tips that take you 15 minutes each week to write.
- You can have a special offers list where you tell people what you have for sale.
- You can do a weekly article.
- You can give short, quick updates on your business.
- You can even set your email marketing on auto-pilot using autoresponders.

It’s your email list so you get to set the rules. Don’t let lack of time stop you! The amount of time you will save by having a responsive list to sell to will far outweigh the input of time in the beginning.

Many people want to learn from someone like them. Someone who remembers what it’s like to struggle, to learn the hard way and someone who’s willing to give the step-by-step information they need to move along that path.

Business success is a gradual growth and no one expects you to be an expert overnight. If you’ve been in business for a while you have great information to share and there are people out there waiting to hang on your every word.

Just get going, be honest and people will love you.

You can have an email list to sell to without selling like a spammer.

Provide great value, treat people the way you’d like to be treated, do good business and you have no worries about making people upset. The great thing about email marketing too is if you set your system up properly when people want to leave your list they can do so at the click of a button.
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1. Look at your sign up boxes – What do they say? Is the text appealing? Do you have an attractive graphic?

Your newsletter signup area should be like a mini-salespage. It should have a headline that is attention-getting and grabs people to pull them in and tell them the benefits of handing over their email address. Just putting up a form that says ‘fill out your name and email to be added to my list’ is NOT going to get you the most sign ups!

An example of a good headline might be “Sign Up Now to Get Your FREE Tips, Resources and Special Offers on X!”

You’ll also want to have some specific text below the sign up box that also describes what they will be getting. Bullet points work, highlighting, italics. Make it important and make it stand out.

You can also look at your ‘Submit’ button and see how you can create a greater call to action with this. You can use words like ‘Get my Free Subscription’ or ‘Sign Me up Now!’.

2. Opt-in Sign up Placement – Where have you placed your sign up box on your website? Is it just on the main page of your site?

Your main page of your website may get a lot of traffic but what about the rest of the pages? If you only have your opt-in on the main page then you need to think about incorporating it in to the rest of the pages of your site since you will often get website visitors from the search engines who don’t find you through your main page. You don’t want to lose these people!

Another thing to consider is to place the opt-in sign up on other websites you have that are also in the same niche as your list.

3. Test the Location of Your Opt-in – Where is your opt-in or sign up offer located?

Moving your opt-in location can make a big difference in the number of sign ups you receive. If you currently have your opt-in in the right sidebar of your site, try it on the left (assuming you have a left) or try it in the copy of your website. Test out what happens when you move it around and if you see an increase in subscribers you’ll know you’ve found a winning location.

4. Use a Pop-up/Hover-ad -Yes these can be annoying to some people but they really do work. If you use a service like Aweber (which I highly recommend) then you can set the ads to pop in only once per visit or one per visitor so that people who are clicking around your site don’t need to keep closing your ad.

Test out a hover ad and see if that increases your conversions. Sometimes it can have a very big effect on the overall conversions but like I always say ‘It’s all just a guess, until you test’

5. Host a Teleseminar – Now this task may not seem as easy as the others to set up, but once you have a system set up for hosting teleseminars can become part of your routine and be pretty easy to get going. Hosting a teleseminar allows people to get to know you better and creates more word of mouth about your business.

Of course you’ll also want to be looking at bringing more traffic to your website so more people see your email opt-in offer but

Aweber has an amazing deliver-ability rate, fantastic customer service and an excellent program – highly recommend. Check it out here: Email Marketing

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