Email is dead!

Okay, it’s not actually dead. But it’s definitely time to start treating a mobile number and SMS marketing with the same priority and focus as email.

Why?

Because customers take their phones with them everywhere. You don’t need to settle for marketing to their inbox, when you can send an SMS message right to their pocket!

Smartphones make integrating your campaigns even easier because their web browsers allow you to display your existing landing pages. According to the Guardian, smartphones now account for more than 50% of phone sales in Europe.

Getting the numbers yourself

If you already have an email list, then it’s time to add a mobile number to your sign up form, giving your prospects an option to receive updates via SMS. Hotels are already doing this allowing a confirmation message via opted-in SMS complete with sat nav coordinates to plug right into a smartphone. Once they have the number, they have permission to send targeted offers.

Let’s say, for example, you have a weight loss or dieting site, and that you already have a whole site or landing page dedicated to your offer. Maybe you already give away an eBook or recipe book as an incentive for prospects to sign up to your email list.

Perfect. Simply add a mobile option into your subscription form, or better yet, create a second value-add specifically for mobile: “add your mobile number and receive daily encouragement by SMS.”

Buying the numbers

Make no mistake, getting a mobile number is definitely harder than getting an email address. But preferences are changing and people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of SMS marketing – especially when it is relevant to their needs.

Besides building your own SMS marketing list, you can also buy batches of numbers from others who run co-registration via CPA offers. Many of these marketers will sell you names and numbers segmented by interests, but this should really only be considered by marketers with experience in mobile marketing.

What and how to promote your offer

Beginning in SMS marketing can be as easy as adding a shortened URL to an SMS offer that sends the visitor to a mobile-optimised web page.

If your site isn’t optimised for mobile, that’s okay because today’s smartphones have capable browsers and most of your customers will be able to view some version of your site with little trouble.

Sending messages

Don’t worry, you’re not going to have to sit down and manually enter numbers in a phone.

Just like managing and sending out hundreds of emails to a list requires a specialised email management tool, sending out hundreds of messages to a list also requires a specialised service to make it easy to manage and send SMS messages in bulk.

A good system will allow you integrate your web forms right into your mobile database through an API. They will also make it easy to segment your list and connect directly to global mobile networks.

A robust SMS marketing platform will let you enter your campaign or offer once, and send it out to the whole list or just to the segment that you choose.

With the right offers and with a little experience, you’ll be well on your way to making SMS marketing an indispensable part of your outbound marketing.

Pavel Webb is from the mobile marketing company Text Magic, for more info on the company visit here: mobile marketing

Are Mobile Numbers the Marketers New Email Address? is a post from: Internet Marketing Secrets, Affiliate Marketing Blog, Affiliate Internet Marketing

In this post I will be focusing on list building advice. The first question is, should you be collecting emails from people in your niche or not?

Does it work for all niches, if so what ones? In this post I’ll be discussing my opinion on that matter and sharing what has worked for me.

Depending on who you have been influenced by in your internet marketing career, you’ll have different views on whether to collect email addresses or not.

I for one collect emails in some niche markets and in others I don’t bother. The internet marketing niche is obviously one of the ones I have the largest email list in,  and this niche is a classic example of one that it is a good idea to do so.

What Niches Work Best for Emails?

A niche market who’s customers have a keen interest in a subject where this interest will be ongoing and which potentially has a large number of quality products available. Anything that is hobby related can work well, because people in this niche will usually be interested in their hobby for some time and have some degree of passion towards it, which means they will most likely spend money on products .

Other classic niches are ones where people require ongoing education, whether it be a hobby or more of a business focus where they welcome information from other people involved in the niche itself, of course the IM niche is a good example of this (although I despise they way so many people do it in this niche).

What Niches Should You Avoid Using Emails For?

I have quite a few niche markets I’m in that make me great money and I don’t ever collect a single email and I never will. The reason is that these niches usually solve  a specific problem for people and the problem is not something they are interested in long term, in fact they couldn’t get rid of the problem fast enough, so they hardly want to be reminded of it via emails again and again.

Therefore it would be a waste of time for me to collect emails and write all the auto-responder sequences and manage the list, because it would simply not bring me in a good return on time invested.

The other thing to note is that in order to really monetize an email list properly you have to be collecting a decent number of leads everyday, as you can’t just rely on the same contacts and leave it at that, you always need new people coming along. So if you’re in a niche and you are not able to collect regular leads, then again I personally wouldn’t bother with it.

How to Collect Emails?

I assume the next logical question is, how do I get people onto my email list in the first place?

Well before I answer that, I think a more important question is, once people are on my email list what will I be offering them? What will I be able to do to help them. Far too often people want emails so they can make money off people, but I don’t like that approach, of course it’s ok to sell stuff, I mean your email list is not a charity list, but you have to think about quality first.

So with that said, in order to encourage people to get on your email list, you need some form of quality incentive. For example, I recently created a free wordpress theme for people to use. However you can create anything, but again make sure it’s quality. Videos go well, free reports, just make sure they are actually useful. You see, first impressions count, and if people sign up to your list and you promise them something amazing and you deliver something terrible, you have immediately given a bad impression of yourself.

So once you have good stuff ready, you now need to get people opting in. There are a few ways to do this, you can have a flying pop over on your site, which I am about to put on this blog, and then drive SEO traffic to the sites pages, and collect the leads this way.

You can also leave a link in your forum signatures and link it to a squeeze page. Another idea is to create Youtube videos and link off to your squeeze page from these. Yet another idea is to create a product in the niche you are in, this is more for info product markets, and then you can get affiliate marketing JV’s to drive traffic to your product and collect leads this way.

It’s also not a bad idea to have an exit grabber on certain sites to entice people to opt in before they leave. I have one niche where I get about 30 people a day from this alone. Some list building advice is to use paid traffic methods for gaining leads, but you have to track everything carefully. I don’t collect leads from paid traffic much anymore these days, although I have done so in the past.

Creating an Opt In Gift

I thought I might just add a little on some practical tips for creating an opt in gift. I find video works well, but not for every niche,  so if you want to do video, then you can always use the free screen capture software called Jing. Another option is to create a PDF free report and again one free tool that can easily make PDF’s for you is Open Office, a free tool that is pretty much the same as Microsoft office, but it has a PDF creator built in.

I don’t use private label rights stuff very often, as I find the quality is usually absolutely terrible and I don’t want to hurt my reputation by giving out garbage, but if you can find some decent PLR content, then this can also work.

At the end of the day, remember that email marketing is about building relationship with your list. Not everyone will like you, some will down right be rude, but that’s ok, just keep providing as much good content as you know how and monetize your list in an appropriate manner.

One final thing I want to reinforce is, if you do your best to provide as much free, and quality content to your subscribers, you will get them opening more emails that you send out. More opening emails is a good thing for obvious reasons. I have spoken to people in the IM niche, who’s names I will not mention, who tell me they get a 5% open rate on their emails, and that they were happy with that!!! Can you believe that, 5%!! I almost feel off my chair, that is appalling if you ask me.

It was after that conversation in particular, that it dawned on me, this guy didn’t focus on providing quality and did nothing but sell, sell and more selling to his list. My open rates are 6 times higher than this guys, and although he has more people on his list, I get more people reading my emails. I tell you this to explain the power of quality.

That’s all the list building advice from me,

Thanks

Matt Carter

List Building Advice is a post from: Internet Marketing Secrets, Affiliate Marketing Blog, Affiliate Internet Marketing

One of the best things that I did early on in my internet marketing career was to build an email list of customers.

In this post I want to share with you some of the best tactics that I have used to grow my email lists in the various niches that I am in, so that you can copy my success and grow big email lists as well.

Before I discuss how to build an email list, it is important that you understand the very basic concept of a squeeze page. In case you are a newbie, a squeeze page is a basic page that is designed to get the visitor to leave their name and email address, so that you can move them onto your email database.

Squeeze pages can come in many shapes and sizes, a few being flying popovers, exit grabbers, videos and standard pages. The key element is that you must make sure you are giving the visitor a good reason to leave their details. Giving away a free mini course of some type is a great thing to do.

I am not going to go into the do’s and don’t's of a squeeze page now, but I encourage you to spend some time learning how to make a great squeeze page, because it is a very valuable skill to have.

Now I am going to outline 7 strategies that work for me, however keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list, but these tactics work well indeed!

How To Build An Email List

1.) Forum Signature Links

Forums are a great resource for internet marketers, as this is where your target market hangs out online, and they are ideal places to find candidates to join your email list. The best way to do this, is to have a link in your signature that goes to a squeeze page. The more you post in the forum the more your signature link is placed, and the higher the likelihood of someone clicking the link and signing up.

The great thing about forums is that people use them to search for answers, and Google indexes them quickly, so the more your get involved, the more traffic you can get to that squeeze page through your signature link. This works exceptionally well in the Internet Marketing Niche.

2.) Blog Commenting

Blogs can be a great way to get a back link to your website for SEO, if of course the blog has the no follow tag switched off. However even if the no follow tag is switched on, if the blog is a high traffic blog, then this is another chance for you to leave a link with your comment, that goes to a squeeze page. Once again these are relevant leads and cost you nothing to gain, except your time.

A good way to find out how much traffic a blog gets is to use Alexa.com, and analyze the sites stats there.

3.) Content Network

You can of course pay for traffic to your squeeze pages, and this works for me, however I’ve experienced the best results when using Google Content Network. The volume is large when you are using the Content Network, however if done badly can actually be a disaster.

With that said, if you use the Google Placement Targeting feature, you can tell Google what sites you would like your ads to appear on. Then all you need to do is search in Google on high volume keywords, look at the first page results for each one, and take note of the ones that have Google Adsense on them.

These sites obviously get traffic, and you are choosing the keywords, so if done well the result is higher CTR (click through rate)
which means lower CPC (cost per click) and more leads onto your list.

One last point to note is, make sure you track what you are doing, by placing Google’s tracking code on the page a visitor reaches after they have left their name and email and clicked submit. You can also set up reports within Google to track what websites are giving the best conversions.

4.) Buy Products In Your Niche

This tactic works better in some niches than others, nonetheless one tactic is to purchase products in your niche market that have active forums for members. By doing this you can get involved in the forums and once again have a link in your signature to a squeeze page. The great thing about this tactic is that you are getting ‘Buyer’ leads onto your email list, which is worth gold.

5.) Twitter

I’m pretty sure a vast majority of the people reading this post will have a Twitter account. However a great way to gain even more leads is to have a link to a squeeze page in an auto-reply message that people get when they follow you.

Alternatively you can have a link to a squeeze page above the bio field in your Twitter profile, like I do.

6.) YouTube

More and more people are using Youtube every month, and an easy way to gain leads is to create  a video in your niche that has a strong and very obvious call to action. The video can either direct the user to click the link to your squeeze page on the right, or go to the page directly, with a very easy URL to type into the browser.

7.) Free Traffic on Longtail Keywords

One simple way to drive traffic to your websites and blogs is to continually be getting new content indexed that is optimized for longtail keywords. Longtail phrases are less competitive and therefore little SEO is required in some circumstances to get a high Google ranking.

If you do this regularly, and have a sign up method on the pages, then you will also gain leads this way too. Although the traffic on longtails is less, of you regularly add more content then it will add up.

That’s all from me, I hope you have learned some valuable tricks on how to build an email list.

I would love to hear from you, so please feel welcome to share your own tricks or simply comment below!!

How To Build An Email List is a post from: Internet Marketing Secrets, Affiliate Marketing Blog, Affiliate Internet Marketing

It’s no secret that building an email list is a very wise thing to do in your niche, that is of course if the niche you’re in responds well to email marketing.

With that said there are some common mistakes that I regularly see people make with their emails (sometimes myself) so I thought I would provide the top 7 things from my experience that have greatly increased my commissions through email marketing.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

Top 7 Email Marketing Tips

1.) Headlines: Your email headlines play a big role and will be the crucial deciding factor of whether your emails even get opened and the desired action be taken. A great headline will have a strong benefit, but that benefit must remain blind. By this I mean don’t give away what the email is all about so there is no need to read it.

Let’s take an example:

A.) Firstname Learn Why Talking About Yourself In Emails Can Drastically Reduce The Responsiveness Of Your List

B.) Firstname Are You Making This Crucial Error In Your Email Promotions?

The first example gives away what the email is about and can cause the reader to think that they don’t need to read anymore. Where as the second one arouses curiosity.

2.) It’s Not About You: When you write your emails remember that your reader, as sincere as they may be, are not interested in hearing about what you have been doing and everything about your life. The underlying question that people ask when they open, or even consider opening an email is – what’s in it for me? So make sure that you don’t ramble on about yourself.

3.) Powerful Copy Writing: I can’t stress enough how important it is for any internet marketers to learn the skill of copy writing. The is widely considered amongst the top marketers to be one of the most valuable skills that any marketer can acquire. If you learn to write powerful copy in your emails you will get a much better response from your readers.You can learn a lot from Gary Halbert if you are looking for great advice.

4.) Video: I have found that using video has increased my email response significantly. I saw a huge increase in email opens and a huge amount of positive feedback from my subscribers when I sent links to educational videos. Video is growing extremely rapidly across the internet and I think that websites are going to take on the form of infomercials, which to be honest is already happening, check out a lot of Clickbank’s high seller’s sales pages!

5.) Don’t Go Dormant: It is really important that you stay in regular contact with your subscribers, and don’t make the mistake of going dormant and not contacting your list for a few months. It really doesn’t matter how large your list is, what matters is how much response you get from them, and not contacting them will ruin the responsiveness.

6.) Review Products: There may be a huge number of products that you could promote to your email list, and new ones may be coming out all the time. However although it may be easy to make sales out of newbies on your list, I strongly warn against doing this. I always review products before I recommend them to my list, this way I know that what I am recommending is quality and my credibility will not be adversely affected in anyway. Your focus should be long term relationships and not quick wins.

7.) Clarity: When you do write emails to your list make sure that you keep the goal of that email clear and do to make the mistake of introducing multiple ideas and confusing the reader. The entire email should point towards one action which is clear and easy to execute, such as click here and do this.

Some of you may think that this is obvious but you would be amazed at the amount of emails I receive, where I am left wondering what I am supposed to do next and why I should do it!

Thats all from me,

See ya!

7 Email Marketing Secrets is a post from: Internet Marketing Secrets, Affiliate Marketing Blog, Affiliate Internet Marketing