Way too many people get mixed up or don’t even understand what email marketing is. All they hear is that “the money is in the list”. They take on something like online marketing, but only know one way to do it and email marketing is obviously not one of them. So what really works then?
Today I am going to give you a very clear understanding of what email marketing is and how it is done properly so that you can stop asking yourself if the money is really in the list.
You will no longer have to wonder what this whole “list” is and who knows, you might want to create one too. Here is what email marketing is and a better understanding of what growing a list means.
First of all, What Is Email Marketing?
All email marketing is, is when you market to a list, from which you have attained their email address somehow. Whether it be through a free gift you offered in exchange for their email address or through a simple opt in form on your website. Whatever the case may be, you got their email address (legally of course) and now you have that to use, over and over and over again, unless they opt out (not good).
Pretty simple huh? Not so fast cowboy, there’s a little more to it than doing just that. Although the whole email campaign can be setup fairly fast, it might be a little complicated in the beginning. Learning how to use an autoresponder to setting up your follow up emails, it all can become a pain in the butt.
My thoughts on email marketing? I think it’s fricken awesome and it is something that I would recommend, if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t have a clue as to what it is, then don’t let that scare you either, it’s not as complicated as you think it is.
Growing Your List
I actually enjoy email marketing, simply because it can be done in a number of ways. Personally, I like to incorporate an opt in form on my website, so that people can do this all on their own. Then I get to market (tactfully) to them whenever I want to.
Of course, there is a way that all of this is done and it will require something called an autoresponder. There are many to choose from, but I recommend Aweber more then any other company and not just because they have the best pricing. When you have an idiot like me, we like things to be simplified and that is what Aweber has done for me.
Most online marketers grow their list by giving away something for free in exchange for their email address. Giving away something of high value (and free) is the first step in building trust with your potential customers. This can all be done through an opt in form that you can place on your website or direct them straight to a squeeze page.
Using a 3 page website is another great way to have people opt in to your list. You would have a squeeze page, a thank you page, and a download page and that is all. I actually learned this technique from the Chris Farrell Membership and it is pretty effective. It consists of just 3 pages and you can advertise this on Facebook or even Google and have people opt in through your ads. This may sound very simple but this is probably going to cost the most to get started.
Leaving Money On The Table
I’m not too sure if you’ve ever heard this one before, but this is the whole reason behind the whole “The Money is in the List” thing. Let me explain this to you so that you can better understand what both mean.
When you do something like affiliate marketing, you make sales right? When you make that sale (without email marketing) you will make that sale and then the customer is gone. They would probably be on the affiliate program’s list if anything, and that is not good my friend. Now with email marketing, you have their email address, so you can sell them products over and over and over again.
When I first started with online marketing, I did nothing but affiliate marketing and it was totally fine. Now did I leave money on the table? Absolutely! Depending on your campaign and what you are promoting, email marketing will be a great asset to your ever growing online business. So if you’re promoting products from Amazon or any of those e-commerce sites, please don’t leave money on the table.
Do You Need Your Own Website?
I really don’t get how people are so worried about owning their own website, when it really is not expensive, at all! if you can’t invest $10 into a business, then you need to find another profession. To answer your question though, yes and no.
Yes, because you get to do whatever you want with that site, and not be tied to any nonsense that comes with hopping on someone else’s site. Not only do you own and control everything on your site, you get to add other ways to make more money, with the same site you set up just for email marketing.
No, because there are totally free websites out there that you can use if you plan to use some good ole advertising, which I will be getting a little more into later. But no, you don’t really need your own website, but it is definitely not recommended.
Getting Traffic to Your Landing Page
There are a couple of ways to get people to “opt in” through your offer when building your list. You can use organic traffic which is accumulated through your blog and getting natural searches from the search engines. However, since this is about email marketing, this method is probably going to be the hardest.
This to me, is the best way to make money online. I can give you a whole life story on why I love blogging, but I’ll leave you with my #1 reason. When you write a blog post, you get that traffic for a single article, over and over and over again, unless you lose your rankings in the search engines. Write 5 articles that get a lot of traffic and boy it gets crazy. Need I say more?
You can always use advertising, although I only recommend this if you know what you’re doing, because you can lose a lot of money in the whole process. You can learn more here if you want to learn more about PPC (pay per click) and how you can do this maximum results. Using ALL of these techniques will grow your business more than you can imagine. I use them all and they all work fine.
The Beauty of “The List”
The amount of money to be made with an email list is pretty amazing actually. Now the beauty of the list is even more incredible. Once you have this list in place, you can market to them over and over and over again.
If you do this right, you can literally have a customer for the rest of your life, or their life actually. How amazing is that?
The hard part of course would be building your list. There are different places that teach you how to build a list and most of them have the same approach to email marketing, but I actually learned different methods from my experiences online.
I highly recommend the Wealthy Affiliate not only for great training on email marketing, but also for everything about online marketing. There is so much to learn about doing business online that I don’t want to limit you to JUST email marketing.
Is Email Marketing For You?
Email marketing is absolutely for everyone, especially with the fact that there is not much to learn. However, there is a lot to apply and one mistake can ruin a whole email campaign.
I do email marketing, on top of blogging and there’s nothing better than making money in different ways, all through my own website. One website is all you need to run a fully functional and successful online business and there is nothing better then attaching some email marketing to your constantly growing business.
You can create helpful content and create sales while having an opt in page, just like the one to the right. On top of that you can create landing pages (separate from your blog posts) and use some good ole advertisement to build your list, while your blog does what it’s supposed to do.
If you haven’t started an online business, I really don’t know what you’re waiting for. There is almost no investment when starting up and I can’t stress anymore about how much money there is to be made online. I once ran a bar and the startup costs are not comparable. Thank you online marketing!
Get Started Today
You can have a website up and running in no time, so you can start building your list. With the endless amount of monetization and money to be made online, it is almost insane if someone doesn’t at least give this business a try.
Now you tell me, is the money in the list? I hope you found this article to be helpful to you and hopefully you too can build your list and start making some money online. Please let me know if you need any help with anything and don’t forget that “sharing is caring. Cheers!
– John
A Work at Home Jobs
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Awesome take here on email marketing, John.
From what I’ve seen over the years with online marketers raking in the big dough, it’s because they build email lists on top of their online marketing efforts and create money on demand any time they choose.
It’s pure genius!
I’ve just given your post a Tweet and G+ coz it’s just that brill.
Neil 🙂
Thanks for the comment and thanks for sharing Neil. Although it is pure genius, it is also something that needs to be learned and if you don’t do it the right way, you could end up losing a lot of money.