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There are 4 Ways To Get Money From Your List, but it takes an optimized email marketing strategy to cash in on them.
Internet marketers still rely on their email lists more than anything else to drive profits.
Yes, it’s still true… the money IS in the list.
In fact, it’s probably more true today than ever.
That’s because your email list is the one place where you get to really build a relationship with people.
The size of your list is not the critical issue, here, although marketers talk about their list size all the time.
The truth is, you can often get more money from small lists than you can from large ones.
The difference between making your list where the money is or not… is not the size, it’s the trust factor you’ve built into your list.
When people trust you, then they’ll be far more likely to buy your offers.
It’s really that simple… and powerful.
In order to build the trust of your followers, though, you need to maintain a highly optimized email marketing program.
That’s why I didn’t simply call this post “4 Ways To Get Money From Your List” but rather, “4 Ways To Get Money From Your List | Optimized Email Marketing.”
Here’s what that looks like.
4 Ways To Get Money From Your List | Optimized Email Marketing
1. Targeted List
Every good email list starts with this.
This is the cornerstone step of the 4 ways to get money from your list.
Make no mistake, the money IS in the list… but only if it’s the right list to begin with.
You must populate your list with people who really belong there.
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Don’t invite people to join your list to get “lots of great information” about one thing, and then, 3 days or 3 weeks into their subscription, start delivering emails on a totally unrelated topic.
Don’t try to convince your email subscribers what they want.
They already know that, and it’s the reason they joined your list.
Target your audience directly and purposefully, and you’ll only get people on your list who belong there.
It’s very tempting to try to “cast a wide net” in the hopes of getting a “big list.”
But stay focused on the prize.
A “big list” of subscribers aren’t interested in your specific niche and specific niche offers.
So don’t try to get them on your list in the first place.
Drop your line very carefully into a well targeted pool of folks truly interested in what they’re about to hear from you once they’ve joined your list.
2. Auto-responder Messages
Your auto-responder messages are the ones you set up in your ESP (email service provider).
These are evergreen messages that everyone who signs up for your list will get.
You should have 30 to 60 days of emails loaded into your auto-responder series.
Special: FREE Guide Shows How We Build Our Own Lists
That way, even if you’re on vacation, subscribers will be getting your great information, value and maybe even offers on an ongoing basis from the moment they opt in.
It’s also one of the key methods among the 4 ways to get money from your list, because it allows you to be making sales from your list, truly, on auto-pilot.
That’s what makes auto-responder messages such an important part of your optimized email marketing.
The key thing to get right here, is to make sure those messages are highly congruent to the opt in offer you used.
So, if you offer a free graphics package when people sign up, the emails they get from your auto-responder messages should be related to ways they can use images in their marketing or content.
Remember that the auto-responder messages need to be evergreen.
Once you’ve written them, people might be reading them 5 years later.
So don’t write about things that will belie their dating.
Don’t, for instance, say “wow, this has been a wild winter but I’ve made it very productive.
Let me share with you how I’ve done that.”
This will make no sense to someone reading your email during a heat spell.
Try to avoid the temptation to talk about “what’s hot” in your niche because that will undoubtedly change… and it will probably change very quickly.
Just share great information about the topic people signed up to hear about and you should be building a solid following of subscribers anxious to hear more from you.
Mix in sales offers that, again, are evergreen.
Things like your own coaching program or graphic design service, or maybe a stable third party service like website hosting.
If there are changes to things, you’ll have to make changes of course.
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But the idea is to avoid putting prices or other minute details that are subject to change within the body of your auto-responder emails.
Just speak broadly about the offer, then put a link to the sales page where all details and pricing will be kept up to date.
Don’t be promoting things that are no longer available or viable a few months down the road, of course.
Those things are best offered in your broadcast messages.
3. Broadcast Messages
In addition to your auto-responder messages, you should be sending emails to your list on a consistent basis.
If it’s once a week, try to send it around the same time each week.
People get used to hearing from you according to how you condition them.
So decide on a schedule and stick to it.
Your broadcast messages can be a combination of “value” emails in which you give people greater insight or added information about your niche.
They can can consist of stories, interviews, links to articles or even videos… all of which give your readers enhanced value related to your main topic, or closely related ones.
Broadcast messages is where you’ll usually find that “the money is in the list.”
Special: FREE Guide Shows How We Build Our Own Lists
Of all the “4 ways to get money from your list” this is the most direct method.
You can broadcast messages about your new coaching program or a reminder to pick up your $7 ebook.
Broadcast emails can promote affiliate products, hot new launches or even business opportunity programs.
This is where most people get it wrong, though.
They tend to do one of two things, both of which get them nowhere.
The either blast out nothing but sales messages, or they practically never send them for fear of offending their readers.
If you do nothing but sell things to your list… stop.
Send more emails that offer just value without attaching an affiliate offer to it.
If you’re afraid to promote offers to your list, altogether, get over it. You’re stifling your business and
totally misunderstanding the concept of optimized email marketing.
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4. List Maintenance
Another important aspect of optimized email marketing is maintaining your subscriber list.
That means deleting people from your list who are not opening your messages or buying your offers.
Marketers are so afraid to shrink their list, but this is the wisest thing you can do.
If someone hasn’t opened an email from you for even 30 days (certainly by 60 or 90 days),
- they might have a bad email address, or
- they’ve opted in for your offer with an email address they never look at except to grab free offers, or
- your email messages are ending up in their spam boxes.
If you don’t delete these people from your list, your “open rate” will suffer and it will make you look like a spammer to people like Yahoo and Gmail and others.
Once they decide you’re a spammer, hardly any of your emails will avoid spam boxes, even for your most faithful readers.
My favorite auto-responder is GetResponse.
I’ve used them for years, partly because they have great systems in place for helping you delete non-performing subscribers.
They also have a toll free phone number to get help, and they’ll walk you through the entire process of anything you need to do while they wait.
If you don’t use GetResponse, make sure your ESP offers service like this… otherwise transfer your list to a provider that does.
There’s little sense to run a sophisticated, highly optimized email marketing program if your emails aren’t even getting delivered.
To learn more about running an optimized email marketing program, this is real nuts and bolts, detailed article on the topic…
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4 Ways To Get Money From Your List | Optimized Email Marketing
Do you believe that “the money is in the list?”
Have you learn something about how to do it from my “4 ways to get money from your list.”
Do you have the right systems in place to make it work in your business?
If not, what improvements would you like to see in your own optimized email marketing program?
I look forward to reading your comments below.
And as usual… please share this article on your social sites.
Thanks!
