You have started your business and have heard for a while that the money is in the list. So what exactly is the list, how do you get one, and what do you do with it once you get one? These are all important questions that really fall into the main question of, “what is email marketing for beginners”. Well I am here to help you out with those small little details to achieve your dream of building an online business.
What is Email Marketing?
Well if you are a beginner no doubt you have heard about email marketing. You might not have done anything with it yet because you don’t know where to start. You may even have started but have not done anything with your list. Well here you go.
Email marketing is a type of marketing that utilizes an auto responder. I personally use get response. You collect email addresses by giving something away for free or even just having people sign up for a news letter.
You can see my newsletter signup form in a couple of different parts of this website. The top for example. The pop up after you have been on the page for a little while. I have my pop up so it will only pop up once a day for anyone visiting the site. I also use SumoMe plugin to have the pop up and the email header bar at the top.
This process gives you permission to send them emails. WARNING! Never send emails to someone who did not give you permission to do so. It is against the law.
Once you have their emails you can send them emails as often as you like. It can be in the form of a newsletter or an auto response message. Most of my emails I send to people are through a newsletter. I do occasionally send out other letters and have series of auto responders set up through different accounts.
People then open the emails and click the links to read more or go straight to an offer. When they make a purchase I make a little money. That is the basics of what email marketing is.
What is an email list?
Well as I mentioned before an email list is the list of people who have given you permission to you to send them information. The important part is that you have their permission. Without it you can get in serious trouble.
Do not scrape email addresses and send people emails that you did not get permission from. If you do not know what scraping an email is that is okay. It is basically a program that goes through a website and finds email addresses and gives them to you. Not a good thing to do.
The email list is where you can make a lot of your money. You want your list to be targeted and you want to send them emails on regular intervals but not too often. More on this later.
How do you get an email list?
You can get a list by giving people what they want. For example my list is built solely from people who like my articles. I send emails that contain my articles. They only go out after I have at least 3 articles on them.
You can also solve someone’s problem, give them a report, give them a free eBook. Really anything that would be useful to your target audience. In exchange for this information they give you their email address and permission to you to send them other emails. The best part about your list is that if done correctly you can grow a highly targeted group of people that will be willing to listen to what you have to say.
What to do with your list?
Send them emails of course. Well it is not quite as simple as that. You want to send them emails but don’t over do it. I would suggest sending them emails through the auto responder 3-4 times a week for the first 2-4 weeks. Then cut it down to a few times a week for a few weeks. Then once a week or a month after that. So even if you have 4 times a week for 4 weeks then 2 times a week for another 4 weeks that is only 24 emails for two months. Not too many.
You also don’t want to go crazy and sell, sell, sell on every email. Give them something they could use. Useful information. It takes some time to set up your first series for your autoresponder. Once you have done it you can forget about it for a while.
Then when you have something else you feel your subscribers would be interested in send out a news letter. These newsletters can be all about selling, although I personally like to give something worth ready and then sell at the end.
If you are always selling your list will quickly remove themselves from your list. You want to give your readers value. When you give them value for free they will repay you later. You are building a relationship with them. Make sure you are branding yourself properly.
Typically once you get a list of about 1000 active email subscribers you should be making about $1 per subscriber per month. It is important to go through your list periodically and clean it up. Delete those people who have never opened an email since they subscribed in 90 days. No need to keep them they are probably not going to open an email from you in the future.
Conclusion
It is not that difficult to get started in email marketing. I have given some tips, tricks, and the basics of email marketing. There are all kinds of courses out there. As I stated I use GetResponse. They have their own course that is free to use when you join. You can even start with a free trial from them.
Don’t wait give it a try. Most people who own a business online regret not starting their list early enough. If you are still trying to make your online business work to the fullest it can, try my top recommendations. There are many things that have helped me over the years and you can see all of my recommendations by clicking the recommendations button at the top of this page.
I hope you have enjoyed my little write up on “what is email marketing for beginners?” Please leave your comments, questions, or your own experiences below!