How to approach on email marketing?

Email marketing is essentially all about building relationships. And if you want to become good at it, you might want to try this approach...

First though, please consider this fact... that each subscriber on your opt-in list is worth to you on average (depending on your niche) +/- $1 per person per month.

So, a list of 1000 opt-in subscribers has the potential to bring you in approximately $1,000 per month.

And if you've got 5,000 people on your list, correspondingly you should be aiming to receive approximately $5,000 per month from your opt-in subscribers. Etc; etc;

Now the secret is not to try and sell your opt-in list subscribers on / at every opportunity.

Do this and chances are you'll piss a lot of them off fairly quickly.

They'll perceive you to be someone who is not interested in building a relationship with them personally. Which is not a good marketing tactic.

You want to endeavor to do the opposite...

Say for example you intend to email your list / opt-in subscribers twice a week.

8 emails per month, one at the beginning of the week and one at the end of the week. 8 emails in total per month.

Here's what I would advise you do...

Week 1 - Emails 1 & 2 / Week 2 - Emails 3 & 4 / Week 3 - Emails 5 & 6 / - simply concentrate on sending your list valuable information which ultimately will prove to be highly beneficial to them.

Don't try and sell them anything at all in these 6 emails - weeks 1-3.

By all means certainly hint softly at the fact that you have something coming up, gently warm them up so to speak... but the main focus should be on helping your list of opt-in subscribers.

Delivering to them information / tools only which will ultimately help them and reinforce / justify why they signed up to your list originally in the first place. This is called relationship marketing.

Accompanied with PIM (promotional incentive marketing) which will be the focus of your last 2 emails each month. Talking of which...

Week 4 - Emails 7 & 8 - you've now established a lot of trust / credibility in the eye's / mind of your list subscribers with your previous 6 emails sent. You've delivered superb valuable insights for a period of a few weeks.

Now they'll be thinking to themselves...

'Hells teeth, if s/he's prepared to give away this much for free for the past few weeks without trying to sell us anything at all, I certainly don't mind these last 2 emails of the month pitching me for whatever it is - for it must be good whatever it is s/he's offering to me.'

You'll find by building a healthy relationship with your opt-in subscribers first, more of these people will be receptive to your sales pitch on these final 2 emails of the month.

Remind them in email #7 of the key points covered so far in the current month - why this info is important to them personally.

Simply condense / paraphrase / sum up all of your previous emails into one single email... this will help to reinforce your credibility, which will in turn generate more trust in you.

Present the information in simple bite-sized digestible chunks which is very very easy to understand.

Just concentrate on providing little golden nuggets of info summarized in simple form to enable them to accomplish their goal/s and do end this email (#7) with what to look out for in the final email for this month.

In other words... get them excited by building suspense about what you're now going to offer them.

In the final email of the month - Email #8...

Pitch them your product.

Give them a strong reason to take your direct call to action. Chances are many of them will heed your advice and take you up on your offer IF you follow this format now you've helped them to justify why they signed up with you to begin with.

Then in month 2 rinse and repeat the process again.

I hope this proves to be of some benefit to you and others too.

Btw... if you need a hand writing these sequenced autoresponder emails, each building on the excitement generated by the last one sent... do feel welcome to get in contact with me via email and I'll see what I can do to help you out.

Warmest regards,


Mark Andrews

Great advice, Ive been doing email for a while now and take a MUCH different approach but in terms of having a structured sequence in place with your followup thats a must. When it comes to broadcasts its a much different story.

Turtle,

Good question on email. Below is something I posted in this forum about a year ago. Below that are the emailing sequences of several other marketers.
Hope this helps.

How many marketing emails from the same source (things you've signed up for) become too many? I read somewhere recently that someone thought one a day from the same marketer was fine. Borders Bookstores (the U.S. chain that recently went bankrupt), sent me four emails in a week before I unsubscribed.

Here's some examples from January 2010 when I counted the emails from three marketers. In a 17 day period, copywriter Michael Fortin sent me 12 emails.

Michael Senoff of Hard To Find Seminars.com provides hundreds of hours of free marketing material in the form of audio interviews. In 15 days, I received 12 emails from him.

The only one of the three marketers I bought something from is Effexis Software where I paid $100 for Achieve Planner, an excellent time management program. In a 25 day period, the company sent me 10 emails. Some were tips on using the software while others tried to "upsell" me to a time management course.




Email mailing sequences
Online Home Mortgage Co (to people who started to apply for a loan online but quite before finishing)
They sent 4 within 15 days
Day 21 video and 5 question survey
day 35 offering $500 credit
day 49, testimonials
day 56 rates update
Day 62 humorous updates

A resort was sending emails to people who bought package,
order confirmation made immediately
then 40 days before trip
third email 5 days before trip
They found it more effective to cut sequence to 2
The confirmation and about 10 days before the visit

SMARTBARGAINS
Sent "next sale" 7 days after purchase--
new followup offer every two weeks, total three messages
"next sales" emails are mailed 8am Friday est
for those who don't complete an order, they sent email two days later

Corbis pictures which licenses photos ends email 30-60 days before license expires
This is sent at end October for leases expiring at the end of November
Sales rep calls week after email

Not a matter of being modest really, but thanks for the mention
of my program. It has helped hundreds of people and it's a product
with practically zero refund rate.

But most people talk about email marketing from two different
perspectives--newsletter and an autoresponder series.

A newsletter gives value upfront and hope for the sale later down
the road. An autoresponder series as I see it is tied to a sales
letter and pushes for the sale without apology. You may give
value upfront in the form of a "FREE Report", but you are
still doing direct selling.

For people who sign up to my list (newsletter) I send
them value in every email with little selling. But for
people who optin for a landing page connected with
a sales letter, then they would get the series as I outlined
above.

-Ray Edwards

Here's a surprisingly detailed post from the deliverability propellor-head at a popular ESP about what you're up against if you want to send bulk email:

Email Delivery For IT Professionals | MailChimp

Not exactly what you're asking for, but arguably more pertinent.

Brian