You can make a lot of money with quality email marketing. To this day, with all the fancy social media and text and messenger marketing, people at my level still make virtually all our money through email. In this episode, I’m going to cover the mechanics and theories of email marketing. In a future episode, I’ll cover list building. The reason I’m doing it in this order is to save you from yourself. I don’t want you emailing a bunch of people and getting no results or getting negative results.
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NOTE: Complete transcript available at the bottom of the page.
Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 034
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Internet Marketing Training Center – https://imtcva.org/
Higher Education Webinar – It's the second webinar on the page: https://screwthecommute.com/webinars
[01:43] Tom's introduction to Email Marketing [04:08] Overriding Principles [05:39] Spam [10:09] Spam triggers [11:22] Spam Assassin [15:19] Email formatting [23:42] Subject lines [26:33] Zeigarnik technique (part 1) [28:46] Sponsor message [29:47] Zeigarnik technique (part 2) [34:45] Selling solo ads [35:27] Promoting affiliate products [36:25] How often and when to send email [40:09] Scheduling advance emails [41:42] Miscellaneous tipsHigher Education Webinar – It's the second webinar on the page: https://screwthecommute.com/webinars
Screw The Commute – https://screwthecommute.com/
KickStart Cart – http://www.kickstartcart.com/
Copywriting 901 webinar – http://www.onlinemeetingnow9.com/seminar/?id=rgsfwncuyv
FTC CAN-SPAM Act – https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
Spam Trigger Words – https://prospect.io/blog/455-email-spam-trigger-words-avoid-2018/
Whitelisting email – https://www.whatcounts.com/how-to-whitelist-emails/
Texpad – https://www.texpad.com/
Internet Marketing Training Center – https://imtcva.org/
Pros and Cons of HTML Newsletters
PROS
– You can include graphics and pictures.
– Your response rate could be higher.
– You have more options when it comes to the types of links you include.
– You can track how many people actually open your E-zine/newsletter by noting how many times a certain graphic was served.
– You can track what time the email was viewed.
– You can track actual ad click throughs more easily.
– You can provide a more seamless experience between the newsletter and your website since they can look nearly identical.
– Because many recipients of HTML newsletters are on line when they read their newsletters, you can put the entire article on your website and only put teaser copy about the article in your newsletter. This will increase visits to your website.
CONS
– You will clearly lose readers who either cannot read HTML, don't want HTML because of the larger file size, or aren't allowed to receive HTML emails because of corporate restrictions.
– It's much more work for you to prepare HTML emails and make them look good.
– HTML newsletters are normally meant to be read while someone is connected to the Internet. In many cases the images are not included in the email, but served from the website to keep the file size of the email low. If someone tries to download your email and read it off line (like when they are going on a plane), it could look REALLY bad because the graphics will be missing.
– HTML newsletters are more difficult to forward and frequently get corrupted in the process. This means you'll lose recommendations because the person receiving the forward either can't read it, or it looks so terrible they don't want to read it.
– HTML email is targeted by porn filters and you’ll get a negative point just because it’s an HTML ezine.
– Did you ever hear the term “image suppression”? Most email programs now have image suppression turned on by default. That means that all your pretty graphics will have little boxes with red “Xs” in them requiring the recipient to do something to allow the images to show. Most people won’t bother to do this and your email will look really lousy.
– Myself included and all of the people I know who make more than 1 million a year on the Internet will not use HTML email.
Now doesn’t that tell you something?
Here's a sample from Great Speaking E-zine to show you what I'm talking about:
WORDS THAT SELL by Tom Antion
The title of this article is the same as a famous book
by Richard
Bayan that is used by marketing professionals around the world. As I was looking throughit the other
day I realized that The same kinds of words could be used in presentations to get the same kinds of effects.
In the sample above the E-zine was sent with the words wrapping naturally at whatever the senders margins were set at. Below is the same text with line breaks (hard returns) inserted at the end of each line.
WORDS THAT SELL by Tom Antion
The title of this article is the same as a
famous book by Richard Bayan that is used by
marketing professionals around the world.
As I was looking through it the other day
I realized that the same kinds of words could
be used in presentations to get the same kinds
of effects.
Shopping Carts – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/10-shopping-carts/
Copywriting – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/13-copywriting/
Quality Products – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/19-get-information-product-ideas-fast-quality-products/
Upselling and Advertorials – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/22-learn-the-details-upselling-and-advertorials/
Christina Hills – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/33-write-your-own-ticket-tom-interviews-christina-hills/
Scott Wilson – https://screwthecommute.com/episodes/35-green-acres-is-the-place-to-be-tom-interviews-scott-wilson/
I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906
The WordPress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/wordpressecourse
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Want The Transcript for this episode?
Episode 034 Email Marketing. This is where the money is. You’ve really got to absorb this episode and visit the show notes for examples.
Episode 033 Christina Hills, she’s also featured in “The American Entrepreneur” Documentary and check this out. She had a fancy Hollywood job. When she had her baby. She quit and never looked back.
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Email Marketing
INTRODUCTION
You can make a lot of money with quality email marketing. Still to this day with all the fancy social media and text and messenger marketing people at my level still make virtually all our money through email. In this episode I’m going to cover the mechanics and theories of email marketing. In a future episode I’ll cover list building. The reason I’m doing it in this order is to save you from yourself. I don’t want you emailing a bunch of people and getting no results. I especially don’t want you to get negative results.
Negative results mean at the mild end your emails take too long to create. At the moderate negative level many of your emails get caught in spam filters so you kinda wasted your time, and at the severe negative level you get yours and/or possibly someone else’s website shut down because of something you did either on purpose or just because you didn’t know any better.
So, in this episode I’ll be covering all the things you need to know about email marketing to be efficient, safe and to sell more stuff.
Email marketing also includes autoresponder marketing. Autoresponder emails are just emails triggered in a certain way. I should recap that here. A broadcast email is one that you send out anytime you feel like it. An autoresponder email is triggered by something the user does. They might buy something, opt in to your list or sign up for some to get some freebie you’re giving them. In some cases, they could email you at a certain email address to trigger the autoresponder. However, this is not very common anymore. I covered autoresponders heavily in Episode 010 all about shopping cart systems where good shopping cart systems include unlimited numbers of autoresponders. You really should review that episode and note that we use and promote http://www.KickStartCart.com we’ll have that in the show notes for you.
OK. I’ve got some overriding principles for you.
In general, the more email you send, the more money you’ll make. …up to a point. I’ll talk more about that in the frequency section a little later …. That section is about how to figure out how often you should send email.
The next principle is, social media has one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to get people the heck off social media and on to an email list that’s under your control. Yes, I know social media is a must for credibility building in that people that want to do business with you will frequently check your social media. But from a money standpoint…..you will make the money from email and you won’t be susceptible to the constant social media changes that can wipe out what you are doing in a second.
The third principle is the trend is to shorter emails leading to a web page. The longer your email is, the more chance it will innocently get caught in a spam filter. There are techniques and I’m going to tell you about a really powerful one a little later that with a really short email gets way more people to open your email and way more people to click through to your website where you can sell them lots of stuff.
SPAM
Let’s talk about the important subject of spam. If you’re a legitimate businessperson or aspire to be one, you DO NOT WANT TO BE THOUGHT OF AS A SPAMMER.
You will see people trying to sell you tens of thousands of emails for 5 or 10 dollars or something ridiculous like that. If you would send an email to that list, most likely many of the emails are bad and the ones that get through …..I’ve got to tell you, that you should hope they don’t respond. Why? Because they are going to cuss you out, threaten to kill you and complain to your email and web host and possibly get you shut down completely. I’ve even seen it so bad they will go to any links in your spam email and have those sites shut down. You will likely get sued by those website owners.
You just can’t get sucked in by the thought of quick email riches. IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.
On the other hand, if you do it correctly like I’m going to teach you in this episode, it can create enormous regular income for you and your family. Which do you want? Great regular income for years or immediately lose everything online for spamming? It shouldn’t be that hard of a decision.
UCE (unsolicited commercial email) is a legal term for an electronic promotional message sent to a consumer without the consumer's prior request or consent. We just call it spam.
Here are some typical ways you can become a spammer. I don’t want you to become a spammer but doing these things will ensure you become a spammer accidentally.
• Sending an email that someone didn’t ask for and telling them they can “opt out” if they don’t want them anymore. “Opt out” makes you a spammer. They didn’t ask for the first email in the first place so you’re still a spammer.
• Scraping: Using a piece of software to grab email addresses off thousands of websites and then emailing those addresses. You’re a spammer.
• Here’s a very common one I see all the time. Someone gets a directory of let’s say accountants. They type in all the emails by hand and email all the accountants. You’re a spammer.
• Buying a list as I mentioned before.
• Emailing from business cards. What I do is I ask the person giving me a business card if it’s ok to email them and I note on the card when and where I asked them. When I speak, I hold a business card drawing and I tell people from the stage if they don’t want me to email them, just write no emails on the business card. I teach my entire back of the room sales method as part of my professional speaking mentor program https://www.Antion.com/prospeaking I’ve made millions of dollars selling at the back of the room without being obnoxious and I can teach you how to do it.
We’re still on the subject of spam. In 2003 the Can Spam Act was passed into law. This makes it surprisingly clear for business people how to stay out of trouble when sending commercial emails. The link is humongous to the guidelines page of the Federal Trade Commission so I’ll put it in the show notes. I highly recommend you read through it.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
So that discussion was all about who you can send to and what you MUST do so you aren’t considered a spammer. Just because you aren’t a spammer does not mean your emails will get through spam filters….even to people who want your emails. So, this next section will tell you what to do to get the most possible emails to the intended recipients.
Let’s talk about Spam Triggers. Spam triggers are words or phrases that make your email look like spam to a spam filter. You could innocently write something that to you and even to the recipient looks like nothing but the information you wanted to convey about your product or service or free webinar or whatever you’re writing about. But to a spam filter that sees a billion emails an hour, that innocent thing you wrote looks like spam. You must avoid putting these words and phrases in your emails.
I never use the word “money” or “Free” in an email and there are hundreds more ….probably thousands of words and phrases you don’t want to use. I really want you to get feel for them so in the show notes I’ve put links to lots of lists of spam triggers however, there is an easier way to avoid the spam filters which I highly suggest you use because it’s more accurate than you could ever be and way faster.
Enter Spam Assassin. I have no affiliation with this company directly or get any money from them. This is a program which is always kept up to date where you can put In your email and it will evaluate what your email looks like to a spam filter BEFORE you send it. That way you can fix any problems and get a better spam score.
In spam scores the lower the score the better. 5 is bad, zero is great. If Spam Assassin gives you a 5 as your score don’t even bother sending out the email for several reasons. 1. Virtually none of the emails will get through, 2. You’re wasting your time and 3. Here’s an extra bad one you probably didn’t think of. Now the server you are sending from starts to look like a spam server where eventually everyone refuses to accept emails from that server because that server is sending out spam. So, that’s three things that are really bad about this. Don’t send out emails that look like spam.
You can either sign up separately for Spam Assassin or it’s included very conveniently in the email section of the shopping cart system I promote http://www.KickStartCart.com. So, in the cart email section all you have to do is paste in your email, click the Spam Assassin link and read your score. If it’s a good score, you hit send, if not, spam assassin tells you what to fix. You fix it and then hit send. In that extra 30 seconds, you can make a lot more money because more of your emails will get through.
You also want to put a section on your website on how people can whitelist your email, i.e. they are telling their spam and junk mail filters definitively they want to receive your email and not let a spam filter be the judge. It’s not 100% perfect, but it will help get more emails through. I’ll put a sample you can copy in the show notes.
When you get into this, you will most likely get approached about “ad swaps” and “solo ads” with other list owners. You have to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL about these deals. If the other list owner hasn’t been careful about how they got their email addresses, you could get in trouble or shut down. Be especially aware when you see people claiming really large lists and only charging you a little to advertise yourself to their list. I can’t tell you how many times those lists were all scraped email addresses and fake email addresses and if you’re lucky, you only lose money for being advertised on the list. If you’re not so lucky, again, you could get shut down.
One other thing about spam. You should clean up your undeliverable emails (called bounces) and remove them from your list. When you send out lots of undeliverable emails, you look like a spammer so keep your list clean.
And this is spam related and I’ll cover it in a future episode on list building but you do have to decide if you want people to double opt in or if single opt in is good enough. Like I said I’ll cover this on list building in a different episode. The only thing I wanted you to know is that single opt in has more of a chance to get spam complaints.
FORMAT
Our next topic is the format of your email.
People in my Butt Camps ….buttcamp is one of the top three longest running Internet marketing seminars ever. Mine started in 1997. I come from a comic background and people were begging me to teach them what I had learned about Internet Marketing. I was not about to do what everyone else does and have a “bootcamp” and I thought, “Hmmmm. I’m sitting here making all this money sitting on my rear end. I’ll call it “Buttcamp” and it caught on. It’s goofy name for a very serious seminar on Internet marketing. I’ve done them in 11 countries around the world except in England they made me call it “Bum Camp” hahaha.
Anyway, people at the camps always want to argue with me about whether they should do their emails in plain text or HTML (so it will come out all nicely formatted and looking like a web page).
First, let me say. Get this through your head. Nobody at my level who makes their living Internet marketing and sending emails uses HTML email. We just use plain text and I’ll tell you why in a moment. Yes, you might see a well-known person use it because some geek is doing it for them and that geek never made a nickel actually selling online. The well-known celebrity doesn’t know any better. They make their money some other way and don’t depend on email to do it. So, you can’t count on that.
Everybody says, “Oh I want it to look pretty and impressive.” All that prettiness doesn’t mean anything if you don’t make money from the email.
There are so many negatives to HTML email.
HTL takes way more time and work to create. I could create 4 or more email promotions easily in just plain text and make way more money in the same amount of time as you creating your one nice HTML email.
HTML Email can make you look bad and you’ll never know it. Some estimates say that as much as 60 percent of HTML email does not get to its recipient looking like it was intended to look. This means if you aren’t a real pro emailer, you probably don’t know all the tricks necessary to make your HTML email look good when it gets to your subscriber. If you hire one of these people, you’re going to pay a fortune because that’s a pretty high-level person.
HTML email was originally invented by the porn industry. Many people say still to this day spam filters tend to target HTML email which could further limit their delivery of your email.
Many recipients of your email, me included, have preview windows that are set to eliminate graphics so your gorgeous email looks terrible in the preview window and may not convey any of your message so people won’t be inclined to even open it.
As an experienced marketer the only time I would even consider HTML email is if I was starting a new project and wanted to know the open rate of the emails. This can be calculated with HTML email, but not with plain text. Then I would switch back to plain text.
It’s too much to cover here, but in the show notes I’m going to include a complete list of pros and cons of HTML email Screwthecommute.com/34
What’s the alternative? You’ve heard me talking about “Plain Text” email.
In plain text email there is no bold, italic, underline, bullets, colored text, different font size in the same email, no graphics. It’s just plain text. Sound boring? Not to me. I hear the sound of Kaching every time I send one.
In plain text there are some formatting things to keep in mind.
Have you ever gotten an email where there is a long line and then only one word on the next line? Then another long line and one or two words on the next line. It looks stupid and hard to read. I don’t know the technical aspect of it, but it has something to do with the way different emails readers wrap text.
You have no idea how long someone else’s email reader is set to wrap text. What you can be sure of it’s not much more than 70 characters and that includes spaces. If you set your email to break the end of each line at roughly 65 characters, then you have better control of the look of your emails.
I’m going to put a sample in the show notes of what a bad looking email looks like and what a proper one looks like. This is episode 34 or screwthecommute.com/34
To make your plain text email line up nicely you would count approximately 65 characters including spaces and then hit your return (enter) key which puts in a hard return. This is not that hard but is a pain in the neck if you have to edit the email. It is necessary to make your email look readable when it gets to the other end. The only problem is that some email readers strip out the hard returns so this isn’t one hundred percent effective.
How to make this easier? If you’re on a PC there’s a free program called text pad (not to be confused with Microsoft WordPad. You find it at http://www.texpad.com which will automatically put in a hard return at whatever character count you want. This saves lots of time putting in hard returns at the end of every line and if you edit the email, it’s not such a big hassle. Text pad also has spell check which is a handy feature to have. If you decide to get Textpad, take your time and set it up properly to put in the hard returns at 65 characters. It’s also smart enough not to break a line exactly at 65 characters and put a hyphen in. It’s got a little bit of leeway and it’s smart enough not to put a whole bunch of hyphens at the end of each line of text.
If I want bullets in an email, I put an equals sign = next to a greater than symbol > => The greater than symbol is above the “period” on your keyboard. So = and greater than symbol makes a bullet =>
I put space between paragraphs and I keep paragraphs very short. One or two sentences. You are never going to get an “A” from your English teacher for sales and email copy so don’t worry about it. We care about the easy readability for the recipient so they can understand your email easily and be encouraged to buy your stuff so you make money.
You will learn when you read about the Can Spam act that you must have contact info and an easy remove link in your emails. If you are using http://www.KickStartCart.com all this is inserted automatically for you.
SUBJECT LINES
Now let’s talk about subject lines. What do you think the number one thing is that keeps your email from getting deleted immediately when it hits people’s inboxes? ……..hahaha I fooled you. It’s not the subject line. …. It’s whether the recipient recognizes who the email is from. So, you must keep this consistent for each different list you have. If you have a list of golf enthusiasts, maybe your email comes from “The Golf Nut”. If you sell archery stuff, then maybe the email you send comes from “BroadHead” which is an archery term. You can always just use your name. No problem there. Just be consistent so the email doesn’t get deleted immediately.
Just because you don’t get deleted immediately doesn’t mean your email gets opened. I’m not fooling you here. The number one thing that gets your email opened is…..you guessed it…..the subject line.
Here’s a couple things about subject lines:
The Subject line should be 50 characters or less including spaces. Look at your own email reader and count how many characters you have allotted to subject lines. On my big laptop it’s only 36, which brings up my next point.
Put the most important words in your subject line to the left. Most places in the world read left to right. People should be able to tell what the email is about even if the subject line gets “truncated” which is a fancy word for cut off on the end.
Now this brings me to another point on subject lines and that is that the subject line must truly reflect what is in the email or you have violated the “Can Spam” act. Some forms of this are called “Click Bait” where someone writes some outrageous thing like “XYZ Celebrity passes” to make you think some celebrity died. When you click to the email it’s about tooth whitening cream or something totally unrelated. Not only is this technically illegal, no one is going to open any more of your emails because they see you as a liar.
I’ll just throw in a sidebar here from my Internet training. Never, ever, ever get people to click on a link where they think they’re going one place and they end up somewhere else. They will leave immediately and you have just damaged your reputation. And they won’t be back.
The click bait example I just used does have a powerful element that we will use in our emails and it’s extremely powerful. It’s called the “Zeigarnik Technique.“ I covered this more in depth in episode 013 on Advertising Copywriting. You’ll want to go back and check that out. I also have an in-depth Copywriting Webinar at tomantionwebinars.com That will be in the show notes for this episode which you’ll find at screwthecommute.com/34 Copywriting is the number one business skill I’ve ever developed in 40 plus years of business. That’s why you’ll hear me emphasizing it so much. https://www.Copywriting901.com
A quick recap about the Zeigarnik technique is that it creates curiosity. Using it legitimately to get people to open an email is fine. Using it like the click bait example is not.
So, you can use the Zeigarnik technique in the subject line to get more people to open your email. We call this the, “Open Rate”, i.e. if hundred people get your email and 30 people open it, that’s a 30% open rate.
Here’s some examples of subject lines:
“WoW did I get in trouble” – People will be curious to find out what I got in trouble for.
“He scammed me” – This is a double whammy. People will wonder who I’m talking about and how did I get scammed.
“The Dumbest thing I ever heard” – People want to know what the dumb thing was and most likely who said it or what dumb policy did some Government agency implement. I really don’t know what they would think about this one, but as long as I deliver in the email what I talked about in the subject line, I’m ok with the people and with the law.
screw the commute private Facebook group where you can interact with me, my staff and with other great entrepreneurs and like-minded people and it's a place where my staff and I put in training and business tips several times per week. And you can ask questions and get feedback on things you are doing from myself and everybody else. I give you quick tips that have made and saved me tons of money over more than 40 years in business and myself and my staff also give you more in-depth postings on all kinds of business topics. Check it out in the show notes at screwthecommute.com or you can go directly to
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Ok. Back to the main topic.
TRANSITIONS
Here’s a question you might ask me, “OK. That’s cool to get them to open the email with the Zeigarnik technique, but how do you make money telling stories of what happened to you or stories about dumb things you heard?”
You make money by transitioning to what you learned or what the situation meant to you and others on your list.
For instance, let’s take the subject line “Wow! Did I get in trouble.” In the email I might write.
“Times sure are a changing. I was talking to a woman at a seminar that had her late teenage aged daughter with her who had been participating very intelligently in the seminar. Her comments were especially articulate and very inciteful for her age.
During a break I was chatting away with her mother and I made the fatal mistake. I said, “Your girl is extremely bright and a great addition to this seminar.” Her mother said to me indignantly, “She is not a ‘girl’. She is a woman.” and she walked away and avoided talking to me the rest of the three-day seminar.
WOW! This really hit me hard. I was trying to compliment a mother on her daughter and I got it shoved right back down my throat. I figured, if this is the way the world is now, I better get up to speed. So, I started researching political correctness and I found an overwhelming amount of stuff that I had been messing up. I knew there were lots of guys out there like me, so I compiled everything into a quick read e-book called, “The Politically Correct Way to Speak to Women” blah, blah, blah
Then you take them to a web page to show them the full sales letter, sales video or whatever mechanism you’re using from my copywriting from episode 13.
You see I used a story to illustrate the problem and ‘transition’ to what I did about it and how it turned into a product.
So, you need to get good at storytelling and transitioning and practice that.
MORE ABOUT SELLING and UPSELLING
One of my overriding principles is that I want people to get used to getting emails from me that help them. That’s what email newsletters are all about. You give them tips and news on your topic that help them and they don’t mind if you put some ads in or occasionally do an email that’s just an ad
So, make sure the bulk of your emails help the people on your list and they will stay a long time ….sometimes forever which gives you lots of chances to get them to buy something from you or an affiliate product you’re recommending. I’ll be getting into affiliate marketing in a future episode.
But these people could stay on forever. I did a webinar not too long ago and I asked people how long they had been doing business with me. There were many people over 20 years and I think the most was 24 years because all the stuff I give them helps them and then they don’t mind if I sell them something once in a while.
Use the Zeigarnik technique. You don’t have to use it every time. It’s just one of the tools you can use.
You must ALWAYS use good Copywriting to get them to buy.
Another thing I want you to keep in mind is that it’s harder to sell high priced items directly from email. Usually you want to get them to click through to a webpage either using the Zeigarnik technique in the body of the email to create curiosity, or just tell them briefly about the great thing you have and get them to click through to the website for the complete details.
On the other hand, cheap items can be sold directly from emails. Cheap is a relative term based on your market. If your market is stay at home parents who can barely make their rent, cheap is one thing. If you are selling to stock market people who regularly pay $400/month for various financial newsletters, cheap is something entirely different.
You can have various promotions, like holiday sales, anniversary sales, birthday sales, etc.
Make sure you review my Upselling episode 022 for lots of ways to increase your income once you get them to buy the first product. I also cover advertorials in that episode which are sales letters that just look like articles. They sell like crazy. That’s in episode 022
Another way to make money with your email marketing is that you can sell “solo ads”. A solo ad is usually an ad for someone else that you send to your list where nothing else is in the email except the ad. If you get enough people on your list, people will pay you for this. Of course, you could also call it a solo ad if you are just sending an ad for your own stuff in an email that has no other content but the ad. Usually solo ads mean you are emailing someone else’s ad.
Another way to make money with your email marketing is that you can promote affiliate products. In this case instead of someone paying you a flat fee for emailing their product ad, you email it for free and you get a commission for each product sold. I’ll cover this more extensively when I do an episode on affiliate marketing.
And, of course you can sell your own stuff either as a small ad in a helpful email full of content or as a solo ad. To get thousands of ideas for products that are proven to sell listen to Episode 019 on creating Quality Products out of Nothing. I hope you’re not getting sick of me referring to other episodes, but I have so darn much material I can’t fit it all in one recording. I’ve got lots of Monday training sessions yet to come and a whole bunch already here, so check them out.
FREQUENCY AND TIMING
Now let’s talk about how often and when you should send email. In general, and I mean very “in General” Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the best unless you have a weekend-oriented topic like sports.
That doesn’t mean Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays “ARE” the best. I’ve had success on every single day of the week including holidays.
In the beginning, you probably don’t have any idea of the people that are on your list. Do they work 9-5 weekdays? Are they entrepreneurs working from home? Are they small business owners NOT working from home? Do they work shifts? Are they retired? What’s the average age? What percentage of people are in the different time zones? Etc.
You have to start sending email and start paying attention to the results. If you are just starting out, I’m ok with a little HTML email so you can see what open rates you’re getting for certain subject lines and days of the week. I wouldn’t do it too long and I wouldn’t put graphics in them. Just an FYI. You can send HTML email with only text, but it’s still technically HTML format so don’t do it forever because it will hurt you in the long run.
Once you get some experience with your audience, you will start to see what days of the week and even what times of the day you get the best response and then you’ll slant most of your emails to those days and times.
Frequency
Now let talk about how often you should send emails. There’s a rule of thumb here too. The more emails you send, the more money you will make. Period! ….. up to a point. I always say up to a point because you can overwhelm your audience with emails and they will unsubscribe.
Here’s the method I teach. Keep sending more and more emails until you get an unsubscribe and complaint rate that’s too high. Of course, “too high” is also subjective and depends on how many new subscribers a day you bring in through list building which I’ll cover on a future episode.
Most people get nervous about sending too many emails thinking their audience will think poorly of them and it will hurt their reputation. I guess that’s possible, but you have to decide if you want to make money or not. There are many doctors and lawyers who are making a fortune selling information, supplements and all kinds of stuff. Their jealous, broke colleagues cut them down, but they don’t seem to care. I know one doctor who never sees patients pulling in $40,000,000.00 a year doing this. He probably laughs when he hears about some other doctor criticizing him. So long as he is doing ethical things, I’m perfectly ok with him earning 40 Million and not seeing patients.
So, send more emails than you’re comfortable sending and watch your unsubscribe and complaint rates and adjust accordingly. Just keep sending, good and helpful information and you will attract and keep interested subscribers and those not interested will leave.
For God’s sake don’t stop sending because a couple people complain. You can’t let a couple negative people run your business for you.
Scheduling Advance Emails
I won’t spend too much time on this simple concept. Scheduling means let’s say you sit down on Sunday and write three emails to go out Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. You put them in KickStartCart and you’re done writing your emails for the week.
Let me tell you a story of why you shouldn’t they say “get too far out in front of your skis” on this. I know this really nice, thoughtful and caring guy from Texas who months in advance wrote an email with the subject line, “Get a FLOOD of New Customers” Guess when it went out. ….In the middle of Hurricane Katrina. OUCH! OMG. I felt so bad for him. He got tons of hate mail and called every name in the book. So, pay attention to your automated scheduling and don’t get too dependent on it.
One more thing. I have had successful email go out on Thanksgiving, (I even threw a teleclass on Thanksgiving one time) That’s how pitiful I am, I didn’t even realize it was Thanksgiving hahaha. Well 60 people signed up for it and I made around $4000.00 that day when most other people were wasting time watching football and getting drunk. So, don’t be afraid to experiment with promotions at odd times.
MISC.
OK I’ve got some miscellaneous tips for you before we hang it up for today.
Moving Your List – This freaks people out. They have their list on a poor email system and when it comes time to move it to someplace good. They lose tons of subscribers. This happens to everyone. It’s better to get a good system in place than limp along with a poor system and a bunch of what you think are great subscribers, but they really aren’t. If they were, they’d be bugging you to make sure they got signed up on your new system when you told them you were switching.
You have to get your ego out of it and realize, most people on your list don’t revolve their world around you. When my students have to move their list, I teach them methods to maximize the switch over, but just be resolved, you will lose subscribers when you move a list. Just remember, you’re not losing that much even though it seems so.
Next thing is there’s danger in free or cheap email hosting. You may get enticed to partake in this because you are on a budget. Hey, I’m the first one who will jump on something free as long as it doesn’t hurt my business. Email list hosting is not the place to go budget.
Here’s why. Every spammer and every newbie that does all the wrong things I listed in the spam section will be on that cheap email server. Servers around the world will be blocking all email from the service you’re on because the bulk of the email is spam. No matter how legitimate your list is, you are on the same server sending out millions of spam emails. You will be totally wasting your time. Virtually none of your emails will get through. And you always, run the risk of getting shut down. None of this is worth it. If you can’t afford to do this right, don’t bother until you can. You’ll just get frustrated and quit.
OK. So, we had a great primer on email marketing. This is a place you must concentrate on for either an online or offline business. This is where the money is.
Make sure you check out the show notes for lots more details and there were a lot of them in this episode so check out https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/34
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Okie Doke. The next Episode 035 is with Scott Wilson. If you’re old enough to remember the TV Show Green Acres, this reminds me of the guy on that show. He was an Adobe certified instructor with a great corporate job and chucked it all to run an organic farm with his family. And wait till you hear about the cow and the electric fence. It’s hysterical.
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