Would Love Some Coaching...

The list and auto responder part is right. Try sending hand written letters as well, addressed individually.

Stop sending automated crap.

You should only use an automated email, as your initial welcome message. After that, they should be broadcasts - REAL MESSAGES.

I do this by sending a weekly video newsletter to my subscribers.

Here's some advice...

1. Treat your subscribers as real people, not just subscribers. Answer all emails personally. Give them reassurance that there is a REAL person at the other end.
2. Give them what they want. When you give people what they want, you get what you want. If you dont know, ASK them. Do surveys.
3. Get interactive with your subscribers. Do a weekly Q&A. Talk about your specials, your products, your offers. Keep it entertaining/interesting.
4. Investigate your competitors, and do what they do, but do it BETTER.
5. Find out what their problems are and solve them.

The most important thing is to BUILD a relationship with your list. If you're just sending automated messages to products/articles, you're a goner.

With 5,000 subs, you should be killing it, especially with 30 years experience in the field. You're experts!

Oh, did you mean you're importing email addresses, not messages???

Have these people given you their permission to join this list?

btw, im still kinda a newbie, how do i "thank" ppl on this forum for their replies? ( i read a lot, but dont post much at all)

Before I ended up marketing full time online, I ran a construction business selling chicken coops and playhouses. It was a great business and we had a great customer base. Simply how I follow up with my customers is post cards. We send my customers post cards from sendoutcards.com that tell people about new products, new discounts, and we even send a card out for holidays. This gains a personal relationship with my customers and more appreciation for our friendships with them. Everytime I got back to one of these customers, the first thing they say is thankyou for the card.
Email marketing is good, but cards are personal.

Tough to give specific help without knowing the market or product/services you offer.

We have helped offline consultants, lawyers, chiropracters, and other similar businesses in this area...usually comes down to...

1. Building some stickiness into your site - what I mean is a reason to return to your site on a regular basis such as a discussion forum, weekly Q&A/FAQ, weekly or bi-weekly webinar or interview with an expert in your field (this can work well on building and onstruction type niches), a tip of the week, case studies, a blog with a focus on participation, etc... The idea is to give people a reason to visit you each week - you can then extend that to your email campaign where you market that week's offering or update

2. Having a solid sales funnel that moves people from your "sticky" pages to your various products and services...this can be done through front-end offers, contests, giveaway's, special of the month, new announcements or services, etc... that would get someone clicking from your content page to your sales page to buy more stuff.

3. Incorporate upsells and cross-sells into your sale checkout process so you actually sell more right at the shoppingcart - or you can follow up immediately via autoresponder with a special offer once someone has purchased.

These have all worked well in the past.

Jeff

well, i dont want my site for everyone to see, and i dont have enough posts to message you the url,so that puts me in a bind lol.