How to Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

I have proven that it is possible to make a full time living by working online without ever investing in anything!  In my blog and on my website PaidOpps I share all of my tips, tricks and secrets to generating the most money with the least amount of effort. 

Todays article is about running successful email marketing campaigns - from start to finish.  Enjoy -

Email marketing VS Spamming...
A great way to make money and get even more traffic to your site is to email market. But if you’re going to get into email marketing – PROCEED WITH CAUTION. There *IS* a huge difference between “email marketing” and “spamming”. If you don’t carefully email market you’ll end up sending out spam and you’ll lose all of your business quicker than Dr. Phil loses hair.

BASICS OF EMAIL MARKETING 1.0
To being email marketing, you will want to have something to offer – and this doesn’t mean inserting an html banner that is linked to some random affiliate product.

A good email should include useful stuff – an article, a product, a tip, etc. If you plan to combine all of these into one, you’re going to be leaning towards “newsletter” marketing as opposed to email marketing. Newsletter and email marketing are pretty much the same thing, after all, a newsletter is still an email. The main difference is that email marketing generally focuses on a single item, rather than lots of different things. Let me tell you, newsletters are exhausting. I have about 500 people actively enrolled in my newsletter program and I think I have sent two to date. It’s VERY time consuming! So if you’re going to consider newsletter marketing, I suggest starting with email marketing until you know what you’re getting into.

EMAIL MARKETING 2.0
Each email you send need to be sent on a scheduled day. You can have multiple daily emails that really annoy people or go with once a day, weekly emails or even bi-weekly. Whatever you decide, be sure to stick to it. I recommend having several emails ready to go so you’re never left idealess.

Every email you send should benefit you. If you plan to give out tips every day, then use affiliate programs that people can sign up for. If you want to send out “Latest Product” emails, then make sure you’re getting a kick back on every product bought. If you are sending our articles, only send out a piece of the article and drive traffic to your site by providing a link to the full article.

IF YOU’RE NOT MAKING MONEY, YOU’RE WASTING YOUR TIME.


EMAIL MARKETING 3.0
Before you can begin sending emails and making money, you need to have people to send them to. There’s many ways to gather email addresses quickly.

1. Buy them. This is a great way to get tons of email addresses, but not GOOD email addresses. Plus, it’s kind of shady. You know all those emails you get that you have no clued where they came from? Those are from people who paid to get your info. If you’re like me, you don’t appreciate those emails and you probably don’t read them. So purchasing emails for money is not the best way to go.

2. Ask for them. Get people to sign up for your emails by offering them something in return – a discount, insider info, etc. It may take you a while longer to get registrations, but every person who signs up genuinely WANTS to be sent emails by you. This means they’ll read what you send!

3. Offer a referral program. If you plan to sell products via email, offer a program that pays for each registrant. For example, you can pay .05 cents per sign up. This encourages people to tell others to register. Just be cautious of fraudulent leads. It’s best to use a real program like Max Bounty (its free!) and let them be on the look out for multiple registrations from the same IP address. They take that stuff very seriously because it jeopardizes the success of their company.

(Toris Tip: By offering a “Double Opt In” feature, you will prevent malicious attempts to fraudulently create email subscriptions. Double Opt In means that the user has to sign up, then check their email and officially subscribe)

4. “Forward to a Friend”. This can be a wonderful way for people to tell their friends about your email list. If 10 people a month forward your email to 10 more people who then forward it to only 2 more people; you have gotten 12 additional reads and possibly 6 new subscriptions a month. That’s 72 more subscriptions a year!!!

EMAIL MARKETING 4.0
Troubleshooting. This is the part that nobody wants to think about but it’s very critical to your success.

ISSUE #1 – Html VS Text Only. Some people only accept “text” emails. Those who accept only text usually do it to avoid spam or because their computer has a hard time handling graphics. So if your email is in html form only, you’re going to lose every “text only” subscriber.

OPTIONS – Use a program that allows you to send html or text emails. Or, if you don’t feel like the headache, just pick one or the other and stick to it. Html email subscribers can still get text only emails – BUT if you decide to can the html emails, you’ll be losing a lot of the cosmetic appeal. Its up to you.

ISSUE #2 – Emails are F’ed Up. I can not stress how important it is to test each email by sending it to yourself first. You need to make sure it looks proper AND that your links work. There’s nothing worse than sending a killer email for a product that you know is going to make you cash and the recipient clicks the link and gets error messages.

OPTIONS – Send it to your own email address. Make sure everything looks peachy and the links go where you want them too. ALSO, be sure to double check that you have properly linked to your affiliate companies! If you accidentally missed a number or letter in your link you won’t get credit for sales!

ISSUE #3 – Unsubscribe. Sometimes people will want to stop getting emails from you. The more often you send emails the more of a risk you run with unhappy subscribers. Many people who use free email providers (yahoo, gmail, etc) have problems getting numerous emails at one time. This means that your emails may interfere with their other emails. So if you send out more than one a day, quite frankly, you’re going to piss people off.
Even if you only send one a day or one a week, you may get people who want off your mailing list. You need to offer an easy way for them to unsubscribe.

OPTIONS: Use a free site that lets you send emails with an unsubscribe feature. OR, create an email account just for unsubscribes. I LOVE BigString (Its FREE, of course!). All people to send emails to your separate account with UNSUBSCRIPE in the headline so you can remove them from your list.

ISSUE #4 – You SPAMMED ME! Spam is a CRIME. You can get in real trouble for sending spam.

OPTIONS: If you use a double opt in policy you can prove that the subscriber not only registered, but confirmed that they want to get your emails! I recommend looking into bravenet because it’s 100% FREE!! And offers double opt in!