Introduction

Email marketing is the art of making money from your email list. It is one of the ways to make money even if you do not have a fixed blog. As long as you have a list of responsive prospects of customers whom recognize you as an expert in your niche, they will definitely be up for offers of value, which you provide for them.

At IVD we exclusively use Aweber as our auto responder. Since all of our tutorials will reference and train on this, we ask that you use our affiliate link to subscribe when you are ready to do so. As you will learn that it does not cost you one extra penny to do this, and the commission we earn is passed along to the admin that maintains our Q&A forum.
http://www.aweber.com/easy-email.htm?id=343382

How does this work, actually?

Well, if you have a website and you draw in some traffic, people will come, absorb some information and go away.

However, if you managed to capture their emails, you can to email them repeatedly – offering those nuggets of useful information or giving them offers that they might be interested in.

Marketers have recognized the potential of email marketing in generating huge profits, and have since then sought out to find the best ways to monetize their list through good email marketing practices.

This ultimate email-marketing guide aims to reveal these good practices so you can learn and apply the strategies to start raking in massive profits from your list.

READ ON!

Basics of Email Marketing

Email marketing starts with your email list. What is a list?

It’s short for email marketing list or email autoresponder list.

The Basics

These emails are the contact information of visitors who come to your site who are looking for specific information on your niche topic.

In order to build a list, you will need to have an email autoresponder set up. As we noted previously, we use Aweber because we have found, after trial and error, it has all the resources you will ever need.

-Aweber (www.aweber.com)
http://www.aweber.com/easy-email.htm?id=343382

It is compulsory for anyone who wishes to start an online business to get an autoresponder account. This will be used to manage your subscribers and mass email your list with offers and information of interest.
Once you have an autoresponder account set up, you will have to set up a business system for collecting leads or subscribers, which I will go into detail in chapter 3 on list building essentials.
Now, with an email list, not only can you continuously build rapport with your subscribers, you can also offer them products of interest.

Traffic that comes and is not captured is a waste.

People are looking for specific information and they will leave forever once they have found out.

However, if you manage to capture their emails, you can continue to provide value and turn them into your loyal customers or followers. This is where the power of email marketing comes in.

First, let us look at some list building essentials, for how can we make money through our list without a list to start with?

List Building Essentials

So how do you start building a list, exactly?

You will first need to set up your list funnel. It typically consists of 3 components:

1) Landing page or Squeeze Page
2) Free Gift or “Bribe”
3) Opt in box

The landing page is a simple one-page website, which consists of a headline, sub headline, pitch & benefits and call to action.

What You Need

The headline has to be eye-catching and bolded to immediately get your reader’s attention. The sub headline will reinforce the message of the headline.

The purpose of the page is to “entice” a visitor to enter his name and email in exchange for a free gift. This could be an e-book, e-course or weekly newsletter.
The benefits are meant to explain what the reader would get from this free gift and to improve sign up rates.

In our members area we supply 10 proven templates to assist you.

Finally, in the call to action, you inform the reader that they must enter their name and email to get the free gift.

The place where the reader enters his contact information is known as the “opt in box”, which can be obtained from to email autoresponder host website.

Autoresponders like Aweber offer easy customizations for opt-in boxes to make boxes suit your site layout easier.

Alternatively, you can choose to put your opt in box in your blog or website to collect subscribers. The choice is entirely yours but landing pages often have higher opt in rates because visitors only have less choices – Opt in or don’t as compared to blogs.

There you have it; your list building system is ready. All you need is a bunch of traffic and you are all set to build a huge list!

Writing Compelling Email Headlines

Now that you have learnt how to build your list, let us head on to the concepts of email marketing.

Headlines

The most important component of an email is your headline. If your headline fails to grab your reader’s attention within the first few seconds, the whole email is wasted – They will not even open it!

So what are good headlines, exactly?

It has to ignite the emotions of curiosity and does not seem like blatant pitching. You have to word it in a way that makes it seem interesting, in a way that would make someone want to open it.’

For example:
Subject: “This Hopeless Beggar Turned Into A Self Made Millionaire Within 6 Months!

A title like this creates curiosity – People would like to know how someone as disadvantaged – Like a beggar turned his life around. If even a beggar could do it, so could he/she!

Recently I came across another headline, which caught my attention because it managed to include sexual vibes without coming off as spammy. Sex is a powerful emotion and strong motivator and often gets people (especially guys!) to look.

The title went something like this: “Subject: Don’t let your wife know you’ve seen this!”. As suggestive as it sounds, it worked in getting people to open it.

Try to play around with your words to find the right balance between curiosity generation and getting the message across.

Last but not least, it is highly important that your headline be relevant to the content of the email body, or else you will be essentially training your subscribers to treat your emails like rubbish!
Your email must be highly targeted, discover what is the most pressing problem in your niche’, and address your headline toward this subject.

Email Copywriting Essentials

Once you’ve managed to capture your list’s attention using powerful email headlines, let’s look into some useful email copywriting tips to make our emails count!

Copywriting

Remember, each time you email a subscriber; you take up their valuable time so your email has to either:

1) Provide really good value OR
2) Pitch something

It is highly recommended to send at least 5 emails of good value (spread out of course) before attempting to pitch something. That being said let us look at some great copywriting tips!
(advance copywriting techniques are available in our members area)

The first essential thing you must know about writing good emails, is to try not to be too formal. Retain a casual tone and people will be more receptive to your emails, content and offers.

Always address your recipient, whether a simple “Hi, Hey, Hello or guess what?”.

The key is to be nice in your emails but also demonstrate that you can provide immense value to your subscribers so that they will view you as an expert in your niche.

Let’s talk a little about good email practices.

Email line length should not be too long for better readability (preferably not more than 200 characters per line)

Always allow for “white space” between paragraphs so that not everything looks too clumped up.

Always end the note with a warm sign off or signature such as “best regards”, “to your success” or “with respect” (one of my favorites).

In the end of the day, these serve as great guidelines for good copywriting but you must also try to develop your own sense of style and writing method so that your readers can identify with you.

Email Links & Click-through

Ultimately, when you wish to pitch something, your most desired action would be to get them to click on your link (affiliate or not) which leads them to a sales page or landing page.

Links

Your click-through rate would be the percentage of people who click on a link in your email from the number of people who open your emails.

In short, to get more profits, improve your click through rate.

Here are some nifty tips for getting more click trough’s:

1) Use a link cloaker. Link cloakers have the ability to mask ugly looking affiliate links and can usually customize your links to make them look more credible
(e.g. www.yoursite.com/recommends/link)

2) Shorten your URLS! Nobody likes ugly looking long links, if you must, use a URL shortener such as Tinyurl (www.tinyurl.com) or Bitly (www.bit.ly)

3) Include a call to action before the link. E.g. “Check this out now” or “Click here if you’re in a hurry!” followed by the link

4) Include special bonuses as an incentive for people to click on your link. When it comes to affiliate offers, people are often looking for the most lucrative offers before they buy something.

5) Build your rapport. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Ultimately, if you want more click-throughs, you will have to first demonstrate value to your subscribers by giving them loads of free stuff or valuable content so that they will trust you.

In short, when you develop and practice these good email practices, your customers will become more responsive to your emails and you will experience a “breakthrough” in your “click-throughs”.

Advanced Email Marketing Tricks

In this section, I am going to share with you some advanced email marketing techniques for added profits.

Strategies

Here’s how you go by creating massive profits using automated emails. In every autoresponder, you can set up a series of emails, which brings new subscribers through a funnel of emails over a time period.

One effective way to draw maximal conversions from your list is to first provide free valuable content before attempting to pitch. Here’s an example of an effective funnel I’ve been using to generate passive income:

Day 1 – Introductionary email and link to free opt in gift
Day 3 – Free valuable content
Day4 – Free valuable content
Day 5 – Free valuable content
Day 6 – Give a free gift
Day 7 – Show the offer
Day 8 – Reminder of offer
Day 10 – Follow up thank you email

I find that this often results in higher conversions. As the saying goes, you will be paid in direct proportion to the amount of value you provide to your customers.

Therefore, after receiving so much free stuff and good value from you, they are more inclined to purchase your product!

This is much better than just blatantly pitching them after getting their emails, which often results in opt-outs.

If you wish to take things a step further, you can offer free bonus gifts if they buy through your email link (affiliate link). When people see affiliate offers, they often look around to see which affiliate gives the most valuable gifts.

Remember, it is all about increasing click through rates and conversions, so do your best to make your subscribers like what you preach!

Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

In this last chapter, we will look at some email marketing mistakes to avoid so that you do not have to walk through all the pitfalls of previous marketers.

Errors

Here are some of the common mistakes done by marketers:

1) Blatant pitching in hope that they make a sale
-Although email marketing is a lot about numbers, blatant pitching can make even a list of thousands turn into dust as they either spam list you or become unresponsive to your offers. This brings us to our next point:

2) Focusing too much on quantity instead of quality
-While the list in size is important, the real money is in the relationship you have with your list. So focus on making a genuine connection with your subscribers if you want to them to contribute to your coffers. Solve their problem.

3) Using spammy looking links
-You should always invest in a link cloaker or use a free link shortener like http://bit.ly or http://tinyurl.com.

4) Using “taboo” words which increase spam score of your emails
You should avoid words that come off as spam by the spam blockers such as ‘Sex’, ‘FREE’, ‘Penis’, ‘viagra’ or ‘MLM”. If you really must use these words, disrupt the spelling by putting a “.”
in between (e.g. make money online)

5) Finally, you should avoid using full capitals in any part of your email, whether if it is in your headline, copy or call to action. This increases spam score and sounds too salesy which lowers conversions. Treat your list with respect.

In short, good email marketing practices must be employed if you wish to build a responsive list which listen to you.

In our resource box at Internetvisionsdefined.com, you will see 2 lists of the 25 words and phrases to use and the ones not to use.

Wrapping Up

Probably the most important message of this email-marketing guide is that you should respect your list like how you would like to be respected and also learn and apply good email marketing practices.

As much as you would like to see commissions pouring in from one email, the proper groundwork and relationship, building has to be done if you want to have a responsive list.

A good way to learn additional marketing techniques that work is to model the emails of successful marketers and copy their styles, techniques and tone to suit your personal style.

Also, do not forget to track click-throughs and open rates of your emails to see what type of copywriting styles work best for your list.

I wish you all the best in your email marketing efforts!

Warm Regards ,

Rich and Marty

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