One way to understand the power of email marketing is through the numbers. Imagine having a list of 100 subscribers and just 1% of your list makes a purchase from you. Not that great; only 1 customer! But with a list of 100,000 subscribers a 1% conversion means you’ll be making 1000 new customers! Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or own your own business, the power of email marketing cannot be denied.
Affiliate marketers should definitely build an email list of subscribers. An email list can massively improve your sales figures. If you’re a blogger, a list can help you turn your visitors into sales. Or, you can build a list through using paid marketing strategies and sending people directly to your landing page.
The Power Of Email Marketing
Anyone can build an email list from a website using an email autoresponder. An autoresponder lets you collect subscriber’s information on a website and send out automated messages as often as you wish. Aweber is a good autoresponder to purchase for affiliates.
By sending out messages which offer to help, inspire and educate, you can build a relationship with your subscribers. Over time, you can turn “cold” subscribers into “warm” subscribers, who are more likely to make a purchase from you.
To encourage people to subscribe to your email list, you can offer a legitimate “bribe”! This is usually something desirable which is useful for your visitors. I use ebooks on my website and also offer a free video series for people considering building their own online business. You can access the video series through this link. Here’s a ebook lead magnet I created – “Affiliate Marketing For Beginners”.
The Power Of Email Marketing – Why Build A List?
It is of course possible to make money from affiliate marketing without a list. Affiliates sell products online through banners and links on blog posts, through YouTube videos and social media. Why would you need a list? Although it’s possible to do affiliate marketing without one, a list can massively multiple your success as an affiliate. Take blogging as an example of an activity an affiliate might do.
With blogging, you create content, much like this article, and share it around the internet. Over time, more people should come and visit your blog as your “digital footprint” of content grows in size. Then, you make sales based on the affiliate links on your blog. With a blog though, most visitors won’t purchase anything. 99% of your blog visitors will have a look around and leave without taking any purchasing action.
They are typically on your site for less than 10 minutes. So they only have a 10 minute window to get excited about what you’re selling and make a purchase!
If, however, you get them to sign on to your list, you can build a relationship with this person over months, years and even decades. People on a list can make a purchase years after signing up to it!
Since you can automate your email messages and send out live emails whenever you like, it’s a no brainer to get a list if you’re serious about building an online business.
The Power Of Email Marketing – Compounding With A List
A list compounds your efforts as an affiliate marketer. Many affiliate marketers quit before even reaching 1000 subscribers on their email list. This is a massive mistake. At first, there may be little or no results from having an email list; especially when you have less than 100 subscribers. But as your list grows, your results will compound over time.
If you are getting only 0.5% of subscribers making a purchase, you might not see a sale until your list grows beyond 100 subscribers. But with 1000 subscribers you should see 5 sales. at 10,000, you’ll see 50, at 100,000 you’ll see 500, and so on. There’s no upper limit with building a list.
If you’re not getting this kind of percentage, you might have a problem with your lead quality or your list messaging. You can access a pre built sales funnel with pre written emails through this online business platform and training program.
Marketing For List Building
To build an email list, you need to get an autoresponder and set up a new campaign. Once you’ve done this, place your form code on a website or landing page. You will see I have a form on this website, where you can enter your name and email address. If you sign up to it, you’ll start receiving emails from my automated email follow up series.
To get people on your email list, you can do a few things:
- Pay for traffic
- Create content (like this article) and share it.
- Post content around the internet – social media platforms etc.
- Upload videos to YouTube and link back to your website
Content creation is much slower than paid marketing. To get traction from blogging, and creating videos does take some time. See how long does it take to make money blogging.
With paid marketing, it’s different. You can have traffic flowing to your landing page very quickly if you use paid marketing. You should use a landing page if you’re going down the paid route, not a website. The reason for this is because on a website, your visitors are less likely to sign up – since there’s much more for them to do. On a website, they can look around and browse your content. On a landing page, they only have two options: sign up or leave. Here’s the landing page for one of my ebooks. As you can see, it’s just one web page and there’s not much you can do except sign up or leave the page.
Targeting Your Subscribers
Before you start building your list it’s important to know what kind of people you want on it. Unless your lead magnet is aligned with your product, (or range of products), you’ll get people who want your freebie giveaway, but don’t want your emails or products. The quality of your list is pretty important because with a poor quality of subscriber, you won’t make any sales. To qualify your subscribers, you should make it clear what they are signing up for. That way, people who don’t want your emails won’t sign up!
But you need to make an enticing offer which attracts the right kind of people for your products. So choose a lead magnet which works well and draws in the kind of people who will also be interested in the products you’re promoting.
If you’re using paid marketing, you’ll be spending money getting visitors to your landing page. So you don’t want to spend it on the wrong kind of visitors. Getting this right is an art, and it takes practice. But it all starts with knowing who you want on your list; your customer “Avatar”.
Customer Avatar
Your customer avatar is the “perfect customer”. They are the person who signs up to your list and your “offering” (product) is exactly what they desperately need, and want.
You should be able to accurately describe who your customer avatar is before setting up your marketing, or creating content. That way, everything you create, and for every advert you run, you’ll be focusing on bringing in the right person to your email list.
Things to know about your customer avatar are:
- Where they live
- How old are they?
- What is their family circumstances?
- Do they have children?
- Do they own a house or rent ?
- What are their interests?
- etc.
Of course the details you need to know about will depend on what you are selling through your list. But ultimately, the more you know about your customer avatar, the better. There’s several marketing platforms you can use to drive targeted traffic to your landing page:
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Adwords
- YouTube
- etc.
Some platforms let you target search keywords with your advertising, others use different types of targeting. Choose these carefully to avoid wastage and track everything so you know which adverts bring in your best customers. Over time, and by collecting data, you’ll get better at knowing which adverts produce the most profitable customers.
Customer Journey
It’s also important to keep an eye on the customer journey when building an email list and follow up emails. Remember why someone joined your list. If you offered an ebook about blogging, stay on topic with your emails. Being congruent in your email messages will keep people on your list more engaged with you.
If you offer something as your lead magnet, your emails should reflect the reason they signed up in the first place. If they don’t you’ll find more of your subscribers are less engaged, don’t open your emails or unsubscribe.
Think about they types of emails you really want to open. They are usually covering topics you’re really interested in, and coming from people you like and respect. So try and offer a similar kind of message with your marketing.
If you want to start your own online business, you can access a product range to earn from, and ready made email templates, access through this online business community.