Email Marketing: What to do with your email list?

1. As often as your list wants to hear from you. You'll only know this from experience, testing (if you want to use software to track this) and your unsubscribe rate.

If they're opting out like crazy, you may be mailing too much, don't like what you say (you're content is no good, boring, etc) or any number of reasons.

If for the most part, the vast majority are staying with you, try emailing them more often as the weeks past and see how they respond. Does the unsubscribe rate hold steady when you mail more? Are you finding you get more click throughs, etc? Your list may actually want to hear more from you.

Here's a decent rule of thumb, but it varies from niche to niche. Start out mailing twice a week. Do this for a few weeks, and then try 3 times a week. Then 4, etc. Keep increasing every couple weeks or so and keep an eye on your metrics, like open rates, click throughs, unsubscribes, etc.

Some people mail every day, or even twice a day. Some only twice a month. There's a lot of moving parts so to speak, so it depends.

2. Set the first email to go out immediately and every other email spaced 2-3 days apart. See how that goes. Increase it from there. If you truly don't have anything content worthy or valuable to say, it's better to back off a little and don't go email crazy. Basically don't spam them with offers all the time.

3. That's the beauty of email. You can say anything to your list, and if you do it right, they'll love you.* Couple notes: They signed up for a reason, so make the vast majority of your emails about the niche you're in and what your promised to give them when they signed up. Keep it focused, for the most part.

But yes, you can talk about news, what you've been up to lately, etc and you can always weave this into selling whatever you want to promote. People want to get to know you, but again, no life story is needed every email, just a line or two or a short paragraph about whatever, and then segue into content about your niche.

4. It doesn't have to be connected to a website, but obviously, at a minimum, most signed up through at least a squeeze page. You don't need a full fledge authority site or anything attached at the hip to your emails/list you send out. It can help, but certainly not needed.

*If interested, you can check my sig link for how to do a lot of this. I worked for a major company or two that used email to build massive lists (and one company started from scratch and grew into a $26 million a year company based mostly around email and simple website) and interact with them, and we sold tons and tons (and tons!) of products to them.

I hope this helps and good luck to you!

1. Sure, you mix and match your offers, either your own or related affiliate products. It's good to have, say, 3-5 offers (or more) to "rotate" with every email.

For example, you may mail about your own product with the first email or two, and then a related affiliate product in email 3, another new product (affiliate or your own) in emails 4 and 5, etc.

Just mix it up from time to time. People who aren't interested in one product may end up buying a new product you promote. But if the links in your email are always to the same product, eventually, those people who clicked that link in the past and weren't or aren't interested, may not click any new links because they think you are only linking to the same thing all the time. Mix it up.

2. Yes, some will unsubscribe. Let them go. The ones who stay (assuming you are providing good content about what they signed up for) is who you want. Focus on your core buyers. You should be adding new subscribers all the time, and a certain percentage will be opting out as well. Hopefully, you are signing up more than those who are opting out, usually by a significant margin. Your list, hopefully, if you're doing things right, should be growing daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

Let the ones who go, go. Focus on who stays.

3. Depends on how much time and money you have. You can outsource every email if you want. Or if this is your passion and interest, then write them all yourself.

I will say that you should be doing whatever it is that you do best and that you have a love for. I mean specifically within this business. Don't wear too many hats or try and juggle everything. Focus on your main "love" and what you're good at. Outsource everything else, if you can.

3A: Again, mix it up. Variety is often the spice of life. Keep some emails short and sweet. Other a little lengthy. But never do so at the expense of being boring. If you have something to say, say it. If not, get right to the point.

Tell them, hey, I've got this product I found out about and love. It's working fantastic for me. You can check it out here: and then give them a link. Straight and to the point.

If you have a great content related email, telling them how to do something, then make it longer and give them the good so to speak. Don't short change them.

Look, don't make this complicated. Do what you do in your normal course of life. Not every phone chat or whatever is 30 seconds. Not every one is a two hour love fest sharing all your feelings. Sometimes you're witty and entertaining, and the life of the party, sometimes you're angry and you're ticked off.

Make your emails like life. It's fun, you'll be happier and likely a lot more profitable.

Subscribers will join your email list usually because they believe
you'll be supplying them with valuable information in your emails.

If all you send them is offer after offer then I would expect most
will unsubscribe or worse still start reporting your email as spam then
unsubscribe.

Even if they don't unsubscribe they're going to be far less likely to buy
from you because you don't build trust by going to a list over and over
trying to sell them something.


On the other hand if you have a lot of emails filled with valuable content
and if you even promote some of your products by giving them some
valuable content and having that content either lead into the product
offer or under the content on a web page then a lot more subscribers
will trust you and buy from you.

What you really need to do is think through who your subscribers are,
what's important to them and what kind of information will be valauble
to them.

That's the kind of information you can give to them.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Regardless of your niche there is one element that overrides all others with email marketing and that is the subject line.

If you cannot get the subject line to entice people to open then the content is irrelevant.

So subject lines...

A big benefit (that is related to what your prospects and readers want/need/desire).

Curiosity - If you can have a headline that has curiosity and benefit within it you will be well on your way to getting decent open rates and then the message can begin.

example (and I'm just thinking aloud here for the IM niche)


This weird tactic (curiosity)
Get's you 113 opt in's in 24 hours (benefit)

It's always good (and completely necessary if you want to offer real value and build trust) that the subject line relates to the content and can actually deliver on its promise.

And if you keep your subject line to less that about 65 characters the reader will be able to see the whole subject line in their email client even if they don't open it.

Thanks
Marcus

It depends. One formula I'm fond of is the e-course plus newsletter format. The course will be timed to allow people to perform an action, whether that's downloading a resource or actually performing an action (like setting up a blog, etc.). So some lessons will come on back to tback days, others might have three or four days in between. I'm careful to say when they should expect the next lesson. After the lessons, they get a weekly email newsletter.

See #1. I do let them know that if something I consider important comes up, I may send them occasional messages outside the weekly schedule.

For example, I've been known to send links to an online episode of a broadcast TV show. These are often only available for a limited time, so I'll let people know where to go, why I think it's valuable, and when I expect it to be pulled.

I generally don't participate in others' product launches. For my own products, one of the lists for that product is a rolling launch.

Always connected to a website.

I'd be careful here. As I recall, Mailchimp does not allow affiliate marketing via their service. Before you start sending affiliate links, check the TOS.

Only if the other offers are relevant and offer value. And if you don't overdo it. I'm not going to get into the whole 'churn and burn' arguement here - it's already hashed out many times in many threads. I'll just say that if you flog too many outside offers, you run the risk of your own offers getting lost in the current.

You can't prevent people from unsubscribing. Technically, you could, but you'd be violating at least one US law in doing so.

As a practical matter, why would you want to retain subscribers who aren't interested in reading your emails? Just to brag about your list size?

While you want to keep adding new subscribers, you shouldn't take digital hostages just to pump up the number. People drop out, they lose interest, they get distracted by other things. You want these people to unsubscribe.

I write my offers myself. Most of the time, the message is relatively short, at least for me. In the offer email, I'm mostly interested in selling the click to the sales page, so I'll include a quick overview of the offer, some of the key benefits, any urgency (like a special offer that is set to expire) and a link. I also encourage people to send me their own feedback on the product after they try it.

That's some good shit right there (can I say 'shit' on this forum?).

I recall some marketing course (?the Wizard of Ads), where it was mentioned that if Mozart was to scribble some musical notation on a napkin, it'd be worth millions.

But if you or me scribbled some fat-loss tips on a napkin and tried to sell it for $37, you may be able to sell it to some really rich guy that's right next to you and in serious need of a sneeze... but that's about it.

It's all about setting yourself up as an authority figure. A good modern example is Matt Furey, who seems to have set himself up really well.