The first step towards effective email marketing is obvious yet difficult for many: actually finding the emails to market to. Doing this step wrong could not only result in not achieving any results in terms of sales, but may even land you in jail. This is because there has been a recent crackdown by the Feds on what is known as ‘spam’, which is basically unsolicited email advertising. It can also refer to unwanted advertising on message boards and classified ads, though it’s usually the email variety that gets people in trouble.
To get these emails, spammers use a variety of methods including: simply guessing an email address, using a harvesting ‘bot to scour Usenet, message boards, social networking sites and other types of websites for email addresses, phising, (the process of getting information by making the victim think they are visiting a legitimate website) and buying bulk email lists. Once they get their hands on hundreds, sometimes even thousands of email addresses, they start sending out their advertising. Most of the time these advertisements are poorly written and have the characteristic look of spam. Others are more deceptive, and may even use phising techniques to get you to enter in important information such as credit card numbers, bank accounts and social security numbers.
In terms of what is advertised, they can be an ‘innocent’ affiliate advertisement to something more sinister, like the infamous Nigerian email scams. Of course, there is a possibility that people could become victimized by legitimate email marketing techniques, but it is usually far less common. You should desire to be on the legitimate side. Besides, when you send advertisements on people who actually don’t mind receiving them, you have less of a chance of your email getting put in the ‘bulk folder’ used by most email providers to help
eliminate spam.
Figure 1: An example of a spam email
So, how do you go about legitimately building an email list? You must first create something that can serve as a ‘draw’ for your potential subscriber. Most people have no problems giving away their email address if they are going to receive something in return. Affiliate marketers who do not have much money make free e-books or newsletters the incentive to subscribe. Companies and/or affiliate marketers with more money can experiment with more elaborate draws, such as sweepstakes entries or giving away a ‘free’ prize. Some do a combination. What should you do? It depends on your situation. If you’re promoting a business, you can offer free coupons as an incentive to subscribe. If you’re simply an affiliate marketer, you should consider promoting information.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. The thought of promoting information sounds like it’s a lot of work. In truth, it is, though there are ways to avoid doing the work yourself. Ghostwriters, who you can find through a general Google search or sites like Elance, can write e-books for you for a few hundred dollars. You can also see if you can find someone willing to volunteer their writing services in exchange for being able to promote their links in your book or on your site. Freelance writing boards are the place to go to post these types of volunteer jobs. The other option is to try to write the e-book yourself.
How do you go about writing an e-book yourself? The first step is to brainstorm. Think about what you know. General information can work, though the more specific your e-book is the more likely it will get read all the way through. Once you get a topic in mind, you will want to consider writing an outline to help assist you in the writing process. Although outlines can be somewhat time-consuming, in the long run you’ll be glad to have them because they let you know what direction you’re going when you start your writing. They don’t have to be elaborate.. just stating what you want to talk about in each chapter could be a good enough outline. Keep in mind that the more detailed your outline is, the less likely you’ll get writer’s block once your e-book is started. The outline format that is most popular in academia is shown below:
I. Topic One
A. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
B. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
II. Topic Two
A. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
B. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
III. Topic Three
A. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
B. Sub-topic One
1) Supporting point one
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
2) Supporting point two
a. sub-point one
b. sub-point two
With this format, remember that you need at least: three main topics, two sub-topics and two supporting points. Sub-points are optional, but if you have one you must have another to keep consistency. If you wish you can use the above outline as a template when creating your own or find out how you can make outlines with your favorite word processing program.
After you create an outline, you are ready to start writing-your e-book. You may want to think about what format you want it to be in. Since many people have Microsoft Word, you can write it in that if you wish, but PDF e-books are a more common format. You can use an e-book creator, PDF creator or Word Perfect’s ‘Save as PDF’ feature to create PDF e-books. There are also some e-books creators which will make your e-book a stand-alone program. This means that a person can read it without needing a word processor or Adobe Acrobat, (the program that is used to read PDF files).
Style-wise, e-books do not have to be ‘formal’, though they can if you want them to be. It is acceptable to address your reader through ‘you’, and refer to yourself as ‘I’ or ‘me’. Catch phrases and clichés can also be used since the writing can be informal, but only use these if you think it’s going to make a profound impact. The main thing you want to keep in mind is that you want to write as if you were talking to the person directly.
If you refer to any outside source when writing your e-book, make sure you reference it either in the section you use it or at the end of the E-book. If you want to be extra safe you can even say directly that you got whatever piece of information from such-and-such site, while still citing the information. In terms of how you cite, again since an e-book is an informal piece of writing it doesn’t matter, just as long as you include the essentials, including the name of the author and the name of the work you are using.
You can conclude the e-book writing process by editing your work. Make sure that everything is grammatically correct… don’t rely on the grammar checkers that have become popular with many word processing programs. This is because often times they see grammar mistakes in sentences that don’t contain any. Yet, word processing programs are still reliable when it comes to spell-checking, so make sure you run the spell-checker before doing anything else with your e-book. You may also want to have someone else read your e-book. Other people are able to catch mistakes that you might not be able to catch yourself.
Once the e-book is done, you will need to create a website to capture the emails of your subscribers. What will happen is on this website you will advertise that you are offering an e-book for free; all a person has to do to receive their e-book is provide the email address to which they want the e-book sent. There should then be a textbox where the person can enter in their email address. On the bottom of the page there should be a checkbox asking if the person is interested in receiving information from your affiliates and/or subscribe to your newsletter. This can be jazzed up if you can convince they should receive advertisements or newsletters from you. If possible, this checkbox should be checked automatically, though the person should have the option to uncheck it if they want to. With this you risk losing them as a potential subscriber, but you can try to make up for this by again advertising in your e-book the opportunity to become a part of your email list or newsletter.
If your e-book contains unique and specific information, the reader might be convinced that you can offer them even more inside information if they agree to be a part of your list. To do this, make a separate web page that would capture their email address…still include the checkbox described above just to be on the safe side. Include the link to this web page in your e-book, so your reader can subscribe just by clicking on the link. This extra step is a little bit more work, but if you choose the lazier way, which would basically ask the reader to email you directly for inclusion onto your email list, they might not do it. Remember, even though you’ve piqued the reader’s interest enough to download the book they are still in a more passive mode when it comes to action. In fact, there’s no guarantee that they will even be interested enough to subscribe, but at least it’s a shot.
Once a visitor subscribes to your email list, you will receive an email from your website giving you information on their email address. Make sure that with any email you send out you give them the option to want to opt out of the list if they want to. If you are using an email marketing service, (which will be discussed more in Chapter 3), you can provide a special link in the email that can allow them to do this. Otherwise, they will have to email you requesting that you remove them from your list. If you receive a request like this, make sure you delete them and don’t send them any more email. Continuing to send email to a person that wanted to opt out is still considered spam even if they initially agreed to be a part of your list.
Okay. So, at this point you are aware of using one type of incentive marketing to generate your email list. While this method is the most commonly used, it can take a lot of time trying to get contacts. In addition, you still have the same pitfalls associated with Internet marketing in general, since you have to promote your website in order to try to get email leads. If time is of the essence, you can try a less popular yet highly effective approach: getting leads off of paid email services. Paid email services, while viewed lowly by some Internet marketers, lessens the chance anyone can be accused of spam. People request to view advertisements because they are getting paid to do so. In fact, if you wanted to you could just email your advertisement directly through these services, but in the long run you will want to try to use them to build your email list instead.
Why? It is because it normally takes 7 times before a person decides to act on an offer advertised to them. You want to have the freedom to advertise that many times to people on your own list… not by having to pay the paid email service each time. So, instead of advertising your offer directly, you would advertise the website offering your free e-book and hope that the visitor subscribes. Just make sure that when using a paid email service to find subscribers, that the service is reputable. Entering their name in Google along with the word ‘scam’ or ‘didn’t pay’, are the best methods to determine if it’s worth doing business with them. Sometimes members on freelance boards will offer information on which paid email services are legitimate.
Paid signups are a corollary to paid email services. Just like paid emails, they tend to be controversial. However, they work. Basically, the marketing company will pay people to sign up for a program. The only thing that they ask is that the program is no-cost, doesn’t ask for credit card information and doesn’t ask for one’s Social Security number. As long as your website just asks for a person’s email address, you would not be breaking these rules. Once you submit your website, the company gets to work advertising your site to the people in their network, with the network usually consisting of several paid email sites or sites dedicated to paid signups. You receive all of your signups a few weeks later, (sometimes it will take a few months if you order a lot of signups).
Sounds good enough, so why is there any controversy at all surrounding paid signups? Marketers criticize paid signup programs because they feel that the leads generated won’t be interested in making a purchase. However, as an email marketer your goal is to try to generate a purchase after sending a series of emails, not before. So this wouldn’t be much of a problem for you. The only other concern you should have when it comes to paid signups is the cost. If you are interested in building a small list of less than 50 people, you can find signups as low as $37, but if you want a list of thousands, be prepared to pay exactly that. Cabezasr, one site offering bulk signups, charges $28,000 for 50,000 country-based signups. This is a lot of money to pay, especially when there’s no guarantee all of the signups can be delivered.
That’s right… sometimes signup companies won’t be able to fulfill the whole order, though many of them will offer refunds if they don’t. Others won’t do anything with the claim that they will keep working on it until you get the signups. For this reason, it is suggested to try not to buy so many at one time unless you know for sure that the company will deliver. Like what was suggested with paid email programs, make sure you Google in the name of the company along with the keywords ‘scam’ to see what comes up. If you get a lot of complaints, you know to stay away from the company. Unfortunately, paid signups do have a notorious element attached to them, so it is essential you perform this step before dealing with any paid signup program you don’t have direct experience with, or that does not have good testimonials. Also, if you must purchase a larger amount of signups, do a test purchase first. Buy a small amount, maybe 25, or whatever is the least they will let you buy. Take note of how long it takes for them to deliver the leads. If it takes forever for such a small amount, then more than likely you will want to stay away from them and not buy a bigger amount next time.
You can also try to get subscribers from safelists and autosurfs. Safelists are websites where people agree to see advertisements in exchange for being able to post their advertisement. Autosurfs work on the same principle, though they tend to be more elaborate. Working through a credit system, a person earns a certain amount of credits each time they view an advertisement. The more credits they earn, the more they can advertise their own site. Both of these methods are controversial, especially autosurfs. However, it’s only autosurfs offering cash that you should be careful of. This is because many of them are ponzi schemes, paying old members from new member money. Yet, credit-based autosurfs are ok because they are not offering money. People are getting compensated with advertising time.
The other option to try to build your email list quickly is one that oddly enough is not as controversial as paid emails, safelists and autosurfs but is still relatively risky. It involves actually buying emails from marketing companies. Why is this risky? It is because you don’t know how the marketing companies actually generated their list. You also don’t know if their prospects truly agreed to seeing your advertisements. This is why if you do decide to buy leads, it’s best to avoid buying emails directly. There are marketing sites that allow you to advertise through their network. You simply enter your email into the network, and they will send it out to their subscribers. Some of these are glorified safelists, others aren’t, (though the latter can be somewhat hard to find).
A variant of this practice are website owners who decide to sell advertising space in their email newsletters. You do not have as much exposure when trying to buy leads through this method, since most website owners would put your link at the bottom of their newsletter. However, if the newsletter is interesting enough the reader will reach towards the bottom of the page, making it likely they will at least see your advertisement. Also, just like with the other lead-generation tactics discussed, make sure your ‘advertisement’ is simply providing the link to the webpage offering your free e-book. This way you get a chance to try to gain the newsletter subscribers for your own email list.
0 komentar:
Post a Comment