Bruce's Golden Goose marketing

Building an email newsletter or customer list is one of the best long-term investments you can make as an affiliate.  Your traffic can disappear, and your conversion rates can drop off, but as long as you have a good list of people you can market to, you have a real, long-term asset that costs almost nothing to maintain.

There are a number of practices you should adhere to if you want to maximize your success, though.  Below, we’ll take a look at some of the best practices for affiliate email marketing.

• Don’t wait too long to mail your list. If people sign up for your list, you shouldn’t wait any more than a couple of weeks to reach out to them for the first time.  In fact, even a couple of weeks may be too long in some cases.  Reach out quickly and remind them of who you are and why they joined.
• Don’t let too much time elapse between mailings.  When people suddenly get an email from someone and they can’t remember ever opting in, they tend to make a lot of spam complaints.  That can hurt your standing with your email provider.  It doesn’t do much for your conversion rates, either.
• Stay aware of CAN-SPAM laws.  The penalties for violating CAN-SPAM are quite large, and certainly  not worth the tiny amount of additional income you might make by violating the rules.  Stay safe and check in with the most current laws from time to time.
• Test different types of headlines.  Don’t ever assume that you know what it takes to make a headline that people click on.  Test numerous different tones, styles, and techniques for getting the attention of your reader.  Use short headlines, long headlines, intriguing headlines, and straightforward ones.  Over time, you’ll get a better idea of what works with your audience.

Email marketing is a tough field, and there are professionals who have spent their entire careers learning about the best ways to market by email.  For those of us who don’t have time to do all of that work ourselves, we can take a shortcut by using a provider like aWeber, which offers both mailing services and plentiful advice.

A lot of affiliates like the idea of a newsletter…in principle.  If you ask, though, most have never actually acted on what they know to be a very good idea.  Building a list has potential for a great ROI if you do it right.  To help you out, I’ve included a number of tips that have been helpful to me.

• Get a trustworthy mailer. I like aWeber because they’re double opt-in (that means that users have to confirm their email address to get on the list) and they have extremely high deliverability rates.  They’re also very affordable.  Click here if you want to learn more about their plans.
• Mail frequently. If you don’t, people have  tendency to forget who you are.  When your mailing finally arrives, they’re likely to hit the “Spam” button because they don’t hear from you often enough to remember when they opted into your correspondence.
• Make it timely. While this may not apply to all fields and topics, people definitely appreciate current information.  If you can save them a trip to their favorite website for the same information, you’ve saved them time and helped to win their favor.
• Keep your tone consistent with your website (if you have one) and your audience’s sophistication level.  If you’re writing about web marketing but targeting people with brick and mortar businesses, your language will be much less technical than if you’re writing about the same topic for industry veterans.
• Don’t be afraid of templates. If you have no design skills, there’s absolutely no shame in using a template.  Heck, you can even joke about it if your audience is a casual one, but for goodness sake, have mercy on their eyes.  Don’t go the DIY route and create some fluorescent monstrosity that gives everyone eyestrain.
• Keep it simple. If you want to highlight a lot of content, offer links to your website where people can view it all.  Don’t clog up their inbox with a 10,000 word email.

Are there any good techniques I’m missing?  I’m sure there are tons, so feel free to chime in on the comments.

When it comes to list  building, it seems like some people are blessed, while others struggle for years with lists that never seem to get out of the 2-digits.  What is the difference between the two groups?

Sometimes, it’s as simple as having the right friends.  If you’re best friends with Frank Kern or Mike Filsaime, you’re not going to have any trouble building an email marketing list.  The same thing can be said of befriending popular web personalities or webmasters in other niches.

Relationship building is extremely effective, and it’s a great way to build your list.  However, we don’t all have those connections, and some of us just aren’t good at reaching the unreachable types.  For those of us who don’t have connections, freebies can be extremely fast and effective, assuming that you have an existing traffic source.  By offering your viewers some kind of free, interesting download, you’ll dramatically improve your signup rate.

That said, I still don’t have the secret to building a great email list.  In my experience, it has always taken a lot of hard work and time to grow a list.  That’s why I was so interested when I saw what Covert Opt-In had to say.  They are giving away top email marketing secrets in exchange for joining their list. From what I found on Google, that includes a host of tips on using social media to grow your list faster than was ever possible in the past.  To get the details, though, you’ll have to join their list.

Often, you’ll hear people say things like, “You’d have to be an idiot to not make money with a big email list,” or that you a big email list is practically a blank check.  Neither statement is true, though, as any good email marketing knows.  It can be difficult to strike the right balance with your users – the one that lets you keep their interest while still making money.

If you abuse your email list by being too promotional, you’re going to find that two things happen – (1) Your unsubscribes increase dramatically and (2) people stop opening your emails.  If you push it far enough, you may even start getting spam complaints.

Making money and keeping your list involves walking a careful line.  You need to make sure the content you deliver is consistently valuable.  That means that there should be a good ratio of non-commercial content to ads, and that the information you send is accurate and credible.  If you use junk articles or PLR content, users may begin to doubt your expertise on the subject matter.

If you use a quality email service provider like aWeber, you’ll have access to data on open-rates and click-through rates.  By watching the number of people who open and click through your emails, you can keep an eye on whether you’re losing user trust or composing emails that don’t interest your audience.

List building is one of those affiliate marketing topics that everyone talks about and everyone knows they should be doing, but few affiliates actually “get around to it”.  It can be slow and frustrating to build your list, and the payoff isn’t immediate.  Even still, a list that you’ve built and properly maintained is an asset that no one can take away from you.

If you’re just getting started, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of success.

• Work with a reputable email marketing company. aWeber, for example, is one of the top names in the business.  Click here and you can test drive their services for $1.
• Offer your users something for confirming their email address.  You can double or even triple your confirmation rate if you offer your users a bonus download for doing so.
• Ask, ask ask! Regardless of your promotional method, it’s vital that you ask for the signup.  Sticking a tiny signup box in the sidebar isn’t enough.  Shout it from the rooftops.
• Value your users’ trust. Remember that people can opt out or report you as a spammer whenever they want.  Make sure you treat your list members with respect.  You’ll get more long-term value out of the list and you’ll avoid jeopardizing your relationship with your mailing company, too.

Email marketing can seem like a long, hard road, but it’s one of those things you’ll be very glad you did once you have a list you can email freely.  Sign up with a company like aWeber today and get started!