Checklist 5: Email marketing setup

Email remains one of the world's best performing lead generation and sales platforms. That is why you should have an opt-in email list that people who visit your website can subscribe to. It is also why at least 25% of your paid advertising budget should be focused on trying to get people to subscribe to your opt-in email list. As the world's leading Internet marketers always say, “the money is in your list.”

There are many different email marketing platforms to choose from, but I like http://aweber.com and http://mailchimp.com. Both are affordable and fairly easy to use. There are also tons of Youtube videos that will show you step-by-step how to setup your account and create email campaigns.

1. Create an account with either aweber.com, mailchimp.com, or any other email marketing platform you like.
2. Create an email list.
3. Get the HTML code for your email subscription form and add it to your website, preferably on every page. A tip with your opt-in email subscription form is that the more information you ask for, the fewer people who will subscribe. To get the most subscriptions to your opt-in email list, just have a single one-line form that asks people for their email address. Don't ask for their name, company name, phone number, address, etc. All that does is kill conversions as people hate giving their personal information to companies they do not know. In this beginning stage of the sales funnel all you need is their email address.
4. To get people to subscribe to your opt-in email list, you absolutely must offer something of value for free as a bribe. You have most likely seen this done countless times on different websites you have visited where they offer a free ebook, a free report, a free webinar, a free training video, etc., and when you click on the offer to get the free item, you have to enter your email address into a form to get the free item. So, you need to create a free “something” of value. A big tip is the more valuable your free gift is perceived in the mind's of your niche market, the higher your conversion rate will be for people subscribing to your email list. So, make your free gift something of real value that your niche market will really want. Once you have created your high value free bribe item, promote it like crazy on your website and with Google and Facebook advertising to your remarketing lists to get as many people as possible to subscribe to your email list.
5. Connect your email list to your RSS feed on your blog. This way every time you add a new blog post to your website, a link to that blog post will automatically be emailed to all of your opt-in email subscribers. This is a very simple and inexpensive way to nurture your email subscribers to get them to contact you as leads and become customers.
6. Two to four times per month send a sales letter/promotion to your email list to convert them into customers. Be careful about trying to sell to your email list more than once per week or you will irritate them and they will unsubscribe.

Need help?  Hire me to do it for you.

If you don't have the time or expertise to setup your email system and write your emails, I can do it for you. I've been doing it for over 15 years and I am very good at it. For more information, email me at peter@geisheker.com.