10 Tips For Email Marketers

Here are 10 Tips for email marketers which will help make your email campaigns … whether using broadcast emails or autoresponders … much more successful.  And could, in fact, make or break your online business.

1.  Build an email list.  The biggest email list possible. No matter what you’re selling, your email list will end up being the most important part of your online business.

Perhaps you’ve read about those people who built their whole business on social media.  Facebook, Twitter, or whatever.  But then they got kicked off.  Sometimes for no apparent reason.  And with no explanation.  Blowing up their business almost overnight.

Or Google Panda and Penguin.  They devastated thousands of online businesses by decimating their hard-earned website traffic.  I experienced this one.

But when you build an email list, you own it.  It’s yours.  And it’s a potential goldmine if you do it right.

One millionaire expert in email marketing I follow says that a good email list is worth anywhere from $1.00 - $3.00 per name per month in cash flow. 

Another top copywriter says his list is worth $.10 - $1.00 per name per month.  He’s not as aggressive in his marketing efforts as the former.

Think about that.  Depending on how good your emails are and what product or service you’re selling, a list of 20,000 names is worth $10,000 to $60,000 per month.

And some online marketers own lists with hundreds of thousands of names on them.  Focus your initial efforts on building an email list.

2.  Develop a FREE product you can give away to grow your list.  If you have a full-fledged website, offer them valuable information for FREE.  Information … in PDF form, video or whatever … that they find valuable.  In exchange, they give you their email address.  And they join your list.    

This works the same way if you simply offer up a one-page lead generation website … offering your FREE information … and drive traffic to it.  There are many online millionaires that use nothing but this business model. 

They build a one-page lead generation site offering something for free … usually valuable information … and drive traffic to it.  The people that request the free information are added to their list.  And then their list returns the kinds of returns I talked about in #1.

3.  Use AWeber, Mailchimp or Sendlane as your autoresponder and broadcast email service.  I've used AWeber but am now using Mailchimp. 

It takes some work to learn each process to get set up initially but once you do, it’s a no-brainer. 

Any of these 3:

• Will help you design and set up your autoresponders.  And deliver them.
• Will deliver your broadcast emails.
• Will design and add a popup on your website and save all your settings.  This allows you to change them at any time.
• Have a responsive and knowledgeable support staff.
• Is reasonably priced.

4.  Mobilize your website.  If you have a website, make sure it is optimized for mobile.  You’ll read on my website that email accounts blow away Facebook and Twitter combined triple-fold.  But with everyone you know carrying a mobile device … usually a smartphone … it’s imperative that your site is mobile-ready.

Look around.  What are people doing?  Staring at their phone right?  Unfortunately, even in their car as they’re driving alongside of you.  Comforting right?

Don’t get upset or try to make a statement.  You’re not changing those people. Use their behavior to your advantage.

5.  Don’t write your own emails.  Reading an article will not make you an email autoresponder copywriter.  Or a broadcast email copywriter.  It took me a long time to get good at this.  More than a year studying and writing emails every day.  And I was already a copywriter!

Sure you can try to write them yourself, but there’s a formula that if not followed, will cause your email campaign to crash and burn.  For your emails to elicit the response you need, the recipient has to want to receive them on an ongoing basis.  And then open and read them.

And they won’t do this with emails that suck.  One of the subject lines for my “10 Step Master Formula” autoresponder series is “Do your emails suck people in … or just suck?”  Most online marketers’ emails just suck.

6.  Determine the intent of your email series before you ever start.  What are you trying to do?  Are you trying to drive people to a sales page … your monetizing page?  Or are you delivering content like that in a newsletter?

This determines … no, it dictates … exactly how you want your emails to be written.  A series of autoresponders is a killer way to get the people on your list to click through to your monetizing page.  You can also use broadcast emails …original, timely emails … to get the same result.

Delivering awesome content … a newsletter, a link to your latest blog post … can use a much more laid-back approach when writing your emails but eventually get you the same result.

7.  You don’t need a multi-page fancy website.  As I mentioned above, many email marketers … very wealthy ones … put up nothing but a one-page lead-generating website.  They drive traffic to this page which offers a sign-up form for something the reader perceives to be valuable.

You can get traffic to any website you want … one page or multi-page … depending on how big your marketing budget is.  It’s all about building a list, developing a relationship and then offering your product or service to that list. 

Just like old-school mail order marketing.  And you forgot how that worked, ask Cabelas.  Or LL Bean.  Same model, different era.

8.  The Rule of 7 - The Rule of Seven was proposed by marketing expert Dr. Jeffrey Lant.  He stated that you need to contact your prospects a minimum of 7 times in an 18-month period. 

Of course, 7 is an arbitrary number.  And the 18 month thing is probably entirely outdated in our mobile economy.

But renowned marketer and entrepreneur extraordinaire Jay Abraham … a marketing genius … also echoed that same number.  He too said that 7 was the magic number for contacting a prospect before they decide to buy. 

That’s good enough for me.  These guys have studied this, made amazing amounts of money and know what they’re talking about.

The bottom line is that for your marketing efforts to be successful … online and offline …you have to repeat it, over and over again, to the same person.  Once or twice isn’t enough.  You have to repeat it until they buy or opt out.

That’s why email is so awesome at building those relationships and eventually closing the deal. 

9.  Abide by the 50 – 50 rule.  And what exactly is this one?  I know.  I hate “rules” too.  But so many of them actually rule.  Sorry.

Well, 50% or more of your email messages should be pure content.  You can’t go wrong with content.  But only if it’s actually good content.  And that’s the key.  Bad content will get your emails deleted.   

50% or less of your messages should be sales messages.  But always understand, even if you’re providing your readers with great content, it doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to get a click back to something.  Your monetizing page, your latest blog entry, an affiliate link or even just your website.

My goal … when I write an autoresponder or broadcast email series … is to tell a story and then get the click.  Without selling.  Because emails and autoresponders shouldn’t sell.  They should just get the click.  The page you’re directing your readers to does all of the selling.

10.  The 10-80-10 rule.  I love this one and have to give credit to one of my copywriting mentors Bob Bly.

• 10% of the people you’re marketing to won’t like you no matter what you do.  That’s called life.  Hell, I thought it was worse than that.
• 80% of them will go with the flow.  They don’t care either way.  Especially in today’s world, they’re ready to love you or hate you.
• 10% of them will follow you … even buy from you … no matter what you do.  This is where your money is made.

11.  A Bonus – I know.  The title says there only 10 tips for email marketers in this article.  If you don’t want another one, ignore this.

Your initial efforts as an email marketer should be entirely focused on getting subscribers not selling products.

I know.  That’s hard.  But when you build an email list, those people are so many more times liable to buy from you than from any other source.

Back to top 

Back to Articles

Back to Email Autoresponder Copy