matthewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/email-marketing-part-1/

Practical Guide To Email Marketing Part 1 - Revealing MyPersonal Strategy

Email marketing is a critical part to any business – whether your an affiliate, blogger or run an e-commerce store.

I’m going to show you my personal email marketing strategy that builds relationships, drives constant traffic,provides user generated content, social shares & sales on complete auto pilot.

When someone signs up to your email list they are giving you permission to invade their personal life any time youwant.

That is a very powerful tool to have and is something that I use to great effect, but it is also a dangerous tool if notused correctly.

What You Will Learn

Why Email marketing is critical

My personal email marketing strategy & email templates

How I collect new subscribers

How I build relationships on auto pilot

How I breathe life into old content with constant traffic, comments & social shares

How to set everything up yourself

Why Is Email Marketing Important?

Before I show you the behind the scenes statistics & strategies I use on this blog let’s talk about why emailmarketing is important.

Hopefully you will understand why my #1 goal with the blog isn’t to get people to click on affiliate links, but to getthem to subscribe to my email list.

If you have ever heard the phrase “the money is in the list” – it is true, and if you haven’t started an email list yetyou are leaving an awful lot of money on the table.

Instant Traffic

The first and most important reason is having the ability to directly communicate with your audience at the push ofa button.

You can reach out to thousands of people in an instant to take action, whether that is to read your new post orcheck out a special offer.

Here is a screenshot from my Google Analytics account for the past month, where you see a red arrow is when Isent out an email to my list-

Having the ability to control thousands of peoples attention and direct it wherever you choose is like having superpowers!

Automate Relationships

One of my favourite uses of email marketing is to automate relationship building with your subscribers.

I do this through my autoresponder sequence which is pre-written set of emails scheduled to go out at set timesafter someone has subscribed.

I will explain more about this & how I do it later in the article along with all of the email templates I use!

Evergreen

No matter what happens you will always have your email list. What if one day your site gets penalised by Googleand disappears from the rankings?

Suddenly 80% of your traffic is gone and so is your income!

Your email list isn’t subject to the same risks as your website and will stay with you forever.

Cost Effective

You can start your email list for $1 which not only makes it cost effective, it makes it an absolute no brainer!

What other form of marketing can offer all of these benefits and more for just $1?

How I Use Email Marketing To My Advantage

So before showing you how you can get started with email marketing I’m going to reveal precisely how I use emailmarketing to drive this blog.

This strategy builds relationships, drives a constant stream of traffic, provides new user generated content, getsnew social shares & generates sales on complete auto pilot.

My email marketing service of choice is Aweber and if you want to follow along with this tutorial series I suggestyou use them as well!

Getting Subscribers

The most important part to any email list is getting subscribers – without subscribers your email list is prettyuseless.

You can get subscribers through a number of avenues-

1. Opt in forms on your site

2. Landing pages

3. When someone buys a product

4. When someone submits a contact form

5. When someone registers on your site

6. When someone comments for the first time

Those are just some of the most common ways of driving subscribers to your email list and they are the exactmethods that I use on this blog!

Opt In Forms

I have a number of opt in forms placed around the blog asking people to subscribe by entering their name/emailaddress.

There are 4 different types of opt in form that I use which are illustrated below-

In The Sidebar

The first one is in the sidebar, right at the top of the blog.

Sticky Sidebar

The next one you will see is also placed in the sidebar butstands out much more and follows you down the page.

In Content

This opt in form is usually placed within content to catchpeoples attention while they are engaged with content. Belowis a live example for you to sign up if you haven’t already

Subscribe to this award winning blog now to get free updates.

End Of Posts

The last opt in form you will see on the blog is at the end ofposts after someone has finished reading.

As you can see I like to place opt in forms everywhere! I have them placed at every opportunity to grab as manysubscribers as possible!

In fact there are a total of 8 opt in forms on my about page – that might seem like overkill but the page converts 1in 4 visitors into a new subscriber!

Landing Pages

I also use dedicated email opt in landing pages to generate subscribers. I use LeadPages & this Facebookadvertising tutorial to target blog visitors.

This is the landing page they get taken to that I created with LeadPages & integrates with Aweber seamlessly-

This method costs me $0.63 per new subscriber but each new subscriber is actually worth $17.81 to me (more onthis later).

Contact Form Submission

I get a lot of enquires via my contact page and I figured that anyone that wanted to get in touch with me, wouldalso be interested in joining my email list.

I use the Contact Form 7 plugin to power the contact form and use this plugin to connect it with Aweber.

So now when someone sends me a message via the contact form, they get an email asking them to confirm theiremail subscription.

When Someone Registers

The other way I capture email subscribers on the blog is when someone registers on the forum.

Again I figured anyone joining the forum would benefit from the email newsletter and I use this plugin to do thateasily!

First Time Commenter

When someone comments on the blog for the first time they get taken to a page thanking them for the commentand asking them to subscribe to my email list-

This is the perfect time to ask because once someone has taken action once (submitted a comment) they will takeaction again (email subscription) if you ask them to!

You will notice I’m using the in content opt in form here but the redirect to that page is done with this plugin.

The Subscription User Journey

When someone subscribes to my email list this is the user journey they will go through-

1. Enter name/email address

2. Taken to the confirmation page

3. Confirm their email address

4. Taken to the thank you page

This is a typical journey when someone signs up to an email list. So once someone enters their name and emailaddress they get taken to this page-

Then they have to go to their email inbox where they will find an email that looks like this-

Once they click the link to confirm their email address they get taken to the thank you page.

Now at this point most people would end the user journey, but remember when I told you that if people take actiononce they will take action again if you ask them to?

So I also ask people to connect with me on Google+ – you could ask people to follow you on Twitter, like yourFacebook page, tell their friends or whatever you choose.

That is all there is to it – that person is nowsubscribed to my email list!

But that is only the start, the next step is where themagic really happens!

The Magic Of Autoresponders

An email autoresponder is essentially a set of pre-written emails that gets sent to every newsubscriber.

This is the bit that builds relationships, drives aconstant stream of traffic, provides new usergenerated content, gets new social shares &generates sales on complete auto pilot.

Right now I have a total of 56 emails in myautoresponder sequence that gets sent out 1 perweek keeping new email subscribers engaged withmy blog for over a year automatically.

Here is a sneak peak at my email auto respondersequence-

As you can see Aweber makes it really easy to set up & schedule!

How I Use Email Autoresponders

There are lots of different ways you can use email autoresponders and I’m going to show you a few of the differentapproaches & email templates that I use once someone has subscribed.

The Welcome Message

The first email new subscribers receive is the welcome message which is sent immediately after they confirm theiremail address.

This email is simply to welcome them to the newsletter but also to set expectations of what they will be receivingfrom me each week.

I also ask people to connect with me on social media so I have another way to reach my subscribers.

The Relationship Builder

The next email goes out 2 days later and invites the subscriber to ask me any internet marketing question they like!

This email is designed to do a number of things. Primarily it helps to create a stronger relationship with the newsubscriber by offering to personally help them.

But what is also does is drives people into the forum which has a number of benefits like creating newthreads/pages which get indexed/found by Google.

It also gives them a reason to keep coming back to the site and getting involved with the hidden community on theblog.

Even if people don’t join the forum to ask a question, they fact that you have reached out and offered to help themreally sets the tone of the relationship.

Breathing Life Into Old Content

The vast majority of the emails in my autoresponder sequence are used to breathe new life into old content thatwould otherwise be buried away deep in the archives.

Not only does this keep people constantly engaged with my blog it also provides a steady stream of traffic,comments, social shares & affiliate clicks across every post on the blog.

Without an email autoresponder most of these posts would just be collecting dust – but now they are a powerfulbusiness asset I can use over and over again.

Content Ideas

I’m always on the look out for new content ideas and thinking about what I should write next. But really the bestpeople to ask for content ideas are your readers-

Not only does this email provide a constant stream of new content ideas every week, it also helps to strengthenthe relationship with subscribers further.

People really appreciate the fact that you are listening to them and a lot of the tutorials I have published on thisblog are the result of people replying to this email and asking for them.

Improving The Blog

There is always room to improve your site and again, the best people to provide that are the people that actuallyvisit your site.

By simply asking for 1 thing they like about the blog, 1 thing they don’t like and 1 thing they would changeimmediately you get some amazing feedback.

That feedback has helped shape the direction of the blog while strengthening relationships with subscribers at thesame time!

Collecting Testimonials

After someone has been subscribed for a while I also ask them to provide a testimonial for the blog.

It is amazing to read the testimonials people provide and how the blog has helped them – in some cases tutorialshave helped change peoples lives!

I haven’t published any of these testimonials yet, but I have a huge library of them ready to go when I need them!

Showing Gratitude

It is also important to show your gratitude to your subscribers & thank them for supporting you.

Some of the responses I get from this email touch me right in the feels to say the least!

Getting Started With Email Marketing Right Now!

I hope you are starting to understand why my #1 goal with the blog is to get people to subscribe to my email list.

The benefits are huge creating strong relationships while driving traffic, comments & social shares to old post. Atthe same time it provides new content ideas, testimonials & feedback to improve the blog.

You can start your email list for just $1 right now and start collecting subscribers for your email list.

Everyday that you are not doing this – your are missing out in a big big way.

Step 1 – Sign Up To Aweber

The first thing you need to do is sign up to Aweber – it will only cost you a dollar to get started!

I have always used Aweber because they are easy to use, very affordable, offer great deliverability and lightingfast support. They are the best email marketing service provider in my experience.

You can also create separate email lists for each website you own using a single Aweber account.

Once you have done that, login to your account!

Step 2 – Creating Your First Email List

Now you need to setup your first email list. I create a separate email list for each of my websites as it only takes afew minutes.

First click on Create and Manage Lists–

Next Aweber will take you through the setup wizard to finish creating your new list.

It is really easy to follow-

It will also ask you for an address, this address will get shown at the bottom of each email you send to comply withthe Can-Spam act.

If you don’t have a business address and are worried about using your home address, you may want to use adifferent address.

You will also be asked at this point to provide a sender email – this is the email the emails will get sent ‘from’ somake sure this is an active email address that you monitor in case anyone replys, which they will!

Next you’ll be asked to give your list a name & a short description-

As you can see it doesn’t have to be anything special.

Last but not least you need to setup your confirmation message. This is the email confirmation that people receivewhen they sign up to your list to confirm their email address.

This is what mine looks like-

Once that is done – you have successfullycreated your first email list!

Step 3 – Creating Your Opt In Form

Now all we need to do to start collecting emailsubscribers is to create an opt in form andadd it to your site.

To do that click on Sign Up Forms and thenclick on Create Your First Sign Up Form .

The first thing you need to do is pick a template that you like, Aweber provide an endless amount of designs foryou to choose from!

Just scroll through them all until you find one you like – you can even customise it if you want.

Once you have done that move through therest of the steps leaving everything at defaultand save your form.

Step 4 – Adding The Opt In Form ToYour Site

There are a few different ways to add the optin form to your site.

If you use WordPress you can just use theofficial plugin which makes it really easy toadd the opt in form to your sidebar.

If you get stuck with the plugin then check outAwebers guide on how to set it up properly.

The plugin will also add a tickbox that allowscommenter’s to sign up to your newsletter aswell!

If you don’t use WordPress then you can justtake the code that Aweber provides and pasteit into your sites template where you want theopt in form to appear.

If you aren’t comfortable with doing that – there is also the option to email the code to your developer in 1 click sothey can add it for you!

Congratulations!

That is all there is to creating your email list & creating your first opt in form.

Once you have deployed the opt in form on your site it will start collecting email subscribers for you instantly!

Feel free to give it a test yourself and see how everything fits together to help build your understanding.

ATTENTION: Download My Email Sequence To Use In Your Own Campaigns Here!!

In The Next Part Of The Series…

To help avoid information overload I have broken my email marketing guide into a small series of posts.

In the next part of the series you will learn-

How to design your autoresponder series

The best time & day to schedule your emails for maximum impact

How to personalize emails

The call to action trick I use in every single email

How to set it all up

You can read the next part of the series right now!