Email Strategies That Work Your focus questions for today: 1. What kinds of cookie content can I create? What type of content will reward my reader for consuming it? 2. When and how will I make an offer to my email list for products or services? If I ve got an upcoming launch, is it time to start an Early Bird list? 3. Email is a two-way medium. It s as useful for listening as it is for talking. How will I field incoming questions and responses? Is that something I want to handle for now, or do I have a team member I want to delegate it to? Jargon watch: Double Opt-In Double opt-in means that once your subscriber opts in to join your email list, she must confirm that she wants to receive your messages. This prevents you from buying email lists or adding anyone to your list without their permission. It also prevents pranksters from adding others to your list, which would open you up to accusations of spamming. (Yes, weirdly, this does happen.) Double opt-in is also sometimes called confirmed opt-in. Page 1
Free or paid traffic? Will you use free strategies (blogging, guest posting, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to attract traffic to your email list, or paid (Adwords or other pay-per-click, banner ads, etc.)? Or some combination? How will you sell your free? What are the benefits to the reader of your free stuff? What will your prospect gain by reading your autoresponder, and/or any promotional content you include to reward them for opting in? Page 2
Ideas for cookie content Quickly brainstorm 20 ideas for cookie content. (You might set a timer for 20 minutes to keep your thinking fresh and agile.) For more on cookie content, see the Treat Your Readers Like Dogs link on the page for this lesson. Remember, making your email marketing a non-stop pitchfest is short-term thinking. The way to make more money in the long run is to keep providing lots of value, so you train your readers to keep opening your messages. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Page 3
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Oh, hai The Oh, hai message is the text-only message that you ll place at around message 2 or 3 of your autoresponder. Make it personal and friendly, but don t try to trick anyone that you re individually emailing every person on your list. Be sure you ve got someone to answer the replies! The Oh hai has two purposes. One is to create a sense of friendly connection. The other is to ask your prospect to white-list you. Jargon watch: White List White-listing means that your subscriber adds you to her email program s list of safe senders. When you can convince a reader to do this, you radically increase your chances of staying out of her spam filter. Page 4
What s your offer? What offer will you put in your email messages? You can either let people know how they can connect with you to do more business, or you can point them to an early bird list if you re building your list for a product launch. Early bird list? An early bird email list is a separate list of people who have a strong interest in a product you ll be launching down the line. You can email this list more often, so you ll be 100% sure they know all about your launch when it happens. It s also nice to give these folks first chance at the launch by letting them in before the main list. To create an early bird list, just build a second list in your email program. Then, in a low-key and friendly way, let your readers of your main email list know that you re giving them this opportunity to get advance notification. Page 5
Next Actions Next action: If you don t have an email newsletter/autoresponder today, get one set up. Both Aweber and MailChimp are good providers. Start with at least 3 or 4 good pieces of cookie content for your autoresponder, and include an Oh hai. Next action: If you want to experiment with AdWords, pick up a copy of a good, reliable guide. We like Perry Marshall s Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. No, it s not completely current. (No print book could be.) But it will give you the most important principles you need to get started without wasting a ton of money. Remember, don t send AdWords traffic to your home page or blog! And don t send it to a sales page for a product either. Send it to a landing page that s designed to sell the prospect on your great free email autoresponder content. Next action: Keep brainstorming cookie content ideas Try doing the 20 quick ideas exercise again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. The more ideas you jot down, the more ideas will come. Be sure to keep these in a system so you can easily find them when you need content ideas! The Last Word: They're smarter than you are when it comes to opening their wallet. ~Brian Clark Page 6