Hey Guys,
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.
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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!
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Thanks for the advice Matt, big help.
Matt Carter Reply:
August 6th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hey Stu,
No worries and thanks for dropping bye!
Matt,
Good stuff as usual. What about open rates for those two subjects? Its always nice to know what a good number is vs. a bad one.
I found this on mailchimp.com (below) and it shows averages but how does the title effect that average.
http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/email_marketing_benchmarks_for_small_business/
Regards, Robert.
Hi Matt, nice summary and overview as always. Most useful. Poppy
Matt Carter Reply:
August 6th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Hi Poppy,
Thanks and great to hear from you!
Matt
Hey Rob,
Thanks for the comment, and I checked out the mailchimp site, and it looks interesting and all I can say is that the email open and click through rates I get are well higher than any of those averages. I think the key is relationship building more than anything. Cheers mate!
One great thing about the internet is that you can share information and opinions about anything. It’s great to read about something that I can certainly use and benefit from. Thanks for sharing!
Matt,
While all the tips and advice I see from you and others on email marketing are great (yours especially), I don’t see anyone offering solid tips on how to get an email list going in the first place. I understand having an opt-in form on my web pages and blogs and offering something of value in exchange is where it’s at, the question I have is, how do I get the traffic to my web pages and blogs to get them to sign up? Kind of like which comes first, the chicken or the egg.
Maybe you could do a helpful post mapping out the best, most efficient process for getting people TO the opt-in form. I know about PPC and a little about social networking sites, but how does a pro do it?
Thanks, Matt
Owen
Matt Carter Reply:
September 16th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Hey Owen,
That a great question that you have asked there and I will consider doing a post on that soon. However to give you a brief answer I would recommend that you search for low competition keyword that you can rank a content squeeze page in the search engine for. This can be a blog also, just make sure that every page has an obvious sign up, like mine does at the top right (the eye drifts there).
The more content you publish on these low competition terms the more traffic you get, but you will have to do some minor link building to the posts.
also you can drive PPC traffic to a squeeze page and this works too, and yes I do that a fair bit, here’s an example of one: http://www.the-super-affiliate.com
You can also use flying pop over that are a squeeze page. So with this you set it to come over at a 30 second delay and that way you get better results. also with what ever you do make sure the page is giving something of value away like you mentioned, that is key. also having cool graphics like a software or CD case make the free gift look more valuable.
There is heaps more I could go into but I will leave it at that for now. Email me if you get stuck.
Cheers
Matt
Wow Matt
You really overdeliver and I love yru stuff. I truly appreciate the bit about always reviewing a product before you recommend it.
Too many of these so called gurus are selling this today and that tomorrow and they are nothing but shills and bad ones at that.
But everyone recommends Video. Do you have a recommendation for a video course? I don’t quite want what is offered with Video Boss as I don’t think the video needs to be that slick. the message is more important than the gimmicks but I know video is popular; although in my own case I hate it as I can read so much faster than the video goes.
Once again thanks a ton for all the great information.
Live Abundantly,
BoomerMary
Matt Carter Reply:
February 19th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Hi BoomerMary,
yeah video is popular, but I don’t do heaps
on it, but what I do do is use Camtasia
to record my screen, and there is a free
version of it called Jing that you may like
Cheers
Matt
Hi Matt,
This is a good advice, specially offering products to your list. In your case I made a point to read your email coz it contains value. I have
guru keep on throwing products, w/c I believe just for the sake of a sale.
I appreciate your effort to recommend products that you yourself found helpful.
Matt,
I think email list is the most important wealth in any Online business.
Just like me when I subscribed to a list and all of a sudden this person
keep on throwing out products left and right I immediately unsubscribed to that list. I want email with value and contents. I dont mind affiliate links but make sure he reviewed the products and actually successful on it.
Just in any personal relationship, value..value… value.
Thanks matt for those tips. Appreciated.