Emailing

3 Steps To Getting Out Of Your Inbox Faster

April 11, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Your inbox is filled with emails. While most of these will come from people who you subscribed to a while back, some of those emails are important. Customers may have questions, someone might invite you to participate in an opportunity, and someone might reply to one of your emails.

While the inbox sometimes contains important emails you need to reply to, at other times the incoming emails may not need your attention. And yet, we check our inboxes often.

I’m sure some people have a craving to check their inboxes right now as they read these words. The reason people crave their inboxes is because, one day, you got an incredible email from someone. In my case, I remember when some of my role models agreed to be guests on my podcast. I also remember winning a sales competition and getting invited to an incredible mastermind.

Chances are you’ve had special moments in your inbox as well. You may also recall some of the emails that required more work on your part. Perhaps a customer complained about one of your products, and you had to stop what you were doing to address that customer. Maybe someone in your audience pointed out a legitimate problem with a part of your brand.

We’ve had great and bad moments within our inbox. These dispersed moments have taught us that we need to constantly stay on top of our inboxes. When we get a stream of important messages, we need to reply without leaving people waiting too long.

The problem with spending time in your inbox is that you’ll almost never grow your brand by staying in your inbox. In some cases, you’re building relationships and focusing on your customers. That helps, but almost every email you get will not help you grow our brand.

You can’t create a video, work on a product, or promote your content on social media when you’re in your inbox. But at the same time, you know it’s important for you to stay up to date with your inbox. This dilemma is the reason more marketers want to get in and out of their inboxes as quickly as possible. Here are 3 steps you can implement to do that yourself.

#1: Schedule A Time To Go In Your Inbox

One of the biggest problems with the inbox is that we feel inclined to check it every minute. Every time we get a new ping notification, we know it’s probably not important. However, there’s the “Just in case” running in the back of our mind.

We check our inboxes, and sure enough…no important messages.

People repeat this cycle because they don’t have a scheduled time to check and respond to emails. You need to determine the days and times that you’ll go through your inbox. Some people reply to emails every evening for 15-30 minutes.

Other people choose one day of the week to reply to every email (I don’t recommend that approach. You miss that day once and then you’ve got two weeks of emails waiting for you).

You can even just opt to check your inbox on weekdays. You can take the weekends off.

It’s important to schedule times and days to visit your inbox so every new notification doesn’t take up your time. You can also schedule times to go through your inbox that correlate with your productivity drops.

I never check my email in the morning because I’m at my peak level of productivity in the morning. Since you have to go into your inbox, you might as well check it when you aren’t as productive.

#2: Follow The One Touch Rule

Have you ever went into your inbox, read a message, and did nothing with it? Maybe you saw the message towards the end of the day and didn’t feel like addressing it on the spot.

You go into your inbox the next day, look at this message again, but something else comes up. You don’t reply to the message right away. This pattern repeats over a week or even several weeks. You still have not replied to that message.

If you do that with several emails, you’ll have a pile of flagged emails waiting for your attention. With many flagged emails, the inbox becomes a demoralizing place that reminds you of your shortcomings.

The one touch rule will get you out of this trap and prevent you from falling into the same trap in the future. The one touch rule states that upon opening an email, you don’t put it to the side. You reply to it right away or delegate it to someone else.

If you don’t reply or delegate that email, you skip over it. Some people choose to delete emails at this point, but I prefer to move onto the next email since that previous email was marked as read.

That way, you’re not spending time in your inbox reading and re-reading the same flagged emails over and over again without taking action.

One touch. Then move on.

#3: Write Shorter Responses

When you find an important message you must reply to, the length of your reply affects how much time you’re addressing that one email.

Decreasing the time you spend in your inbox is as simple as writing shorter replies. I abide by the 5-Sentence Rule. 95% of my emails are five sentences or less. Most of the emails I write are actually under three sentences.

Almost anything you could say in several paragraphs could be broken down into 1-5 sentences. If you want to get an idea of how short your replies can be, email the top people in your niche.

Examine the length of those emails. It seem as if some of the people I email follow the 5-Word Rule. Depending on the email I send, I could get a simple “ok” (not even a capital “O”) and that’s it. No “Hello Marc” or anything like that.

And I’m fine with it. In fact, I’ve done that before. You could write several sentences that state “ok” in much greater detail. But a five paragraph email with the central message as “ok” and just writing the word “ok” conveys the same message.

Writing emails like this makes it easier for influencers to reply to more emails and get out of their inboxes faster. That way, these influencers can continue scaling their brands and enhancing their existing products.

Replying to people and starting more conversations is an important skill. Writing shorter responses and sending them out as quickly as possible allows you to harness that skill.

In Conclusion

Your inbox is filled with emails that successfully grab attention due to our built-in obsession for instant gratification. While it’s important to check your inbox, there’s much more to any successful brand than the inbox.

By scheduling the time you spend in your inbox and efficiently doing what you have to do, you’ll get out of your inbox faster. That way, you can reply to the urgent emails and work on the important areas of your brand.

What are your thoughts about adjusting the time you spend in your inbox? Do you have any tactics for reducing how often we check our inboxes and reply to emails? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Tactics To Boost Your Email Marketing ROI

January 16, 2018 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

email marketing

Email marketing is the most lucrative platform for an online brand. It’s so important that every other platform (i.e. your blog and social media accounts) should direct people back to your email list.

However, getting people on your email list is only half of the battle. The way you communicate with your subscribers determines their engagement and the revenue that you make. In this article, you will learn 10 tactics you can utilize to boost your email marketing ROI so your return is more worthwhile.

#1: Analyze & Learn From The Masters

In every niche, there is an email marketer who seems to have the entire process dialed in. Some of these people have written books and blog posts about the process. Others prefer to tell their audience through videos and podcast.

Consume as much of this content as you possibly can.

Content consumption is a great start for becoming better at email marketing. You’re reading this post after all. With that said, the best way to learn is to subscribe to these individuals’ email lists to see how they communicate with their subscribers.

Pay attention to the copy, how links are introduced, the frequency of emails, the subject lines, and anything else that interests you when you read their emails. Don’t just settle for a few tactics. See the top email marketers in your niche implement these tactics when they communicate.

You can also subscribe to top individuals’ email lists who are outside of your niche. Even though these individuals are outside of your niche, there’s still plenty to learn about writing emails that generate more engagement.

#2: Insert A Countdown For Time-Sensitive Offers

call-to-action

Nothing moves people like a deadline. For some of your emails, especially emails featuring special discounts, it will be appropriate to insert a countdown. Countdowns raise the sense of urgency.

It’s no wonder that during a product launch, most of the sales come on the last day. The timer is ticking with less than a day left, and then most people take action.

This isn’t something you can implement within every email you write, but when you want to make a point about an approaching deadline, use a countdown timer.

I prefer to use the MotionMailApp to make this possible. You may have your choice for a different timer, but this is the one I use and I commonly see used in other emails with countdown timers. You can get 20,000 free impressions every month.

#3: Email Your Unopens

Emailing your unopens is the single easiest and quickest way to boost your open and click rates. No matter how loyal people are to your brand, they will miss some of your emails. This is the nature of our busy world where email marketing is no secret.

Some people receive hundreds of emails every day, so it’s normal for emails like ours to fall through the cracks.

To remedy this effect, you can create a second email and exclusively send it to the people who didn’t open the first email. This second email is an identical. The only difference is the swipe copy.

Since these people didn’t read your email the first time, this swipe copy will be completely new to them. For many of my emails, resending the emails to my unopens doubles my open and click rates.

#4: Learn From Your Past Emails

Every month, I look back at the emails I wrote for that month. I look at their stats and determine which emails over performed and which emails underperformed.

Ideally, I want all of my emails to over perform, but some of my emails underperform based on my standards. I look at both of these emails and see what I did. Here are some questions to consider and answer as you learn from your past emails:

What were the emails that came before this one?
Did I clearly describe the CTA?
Did I provide multiple opportunities for subscribers to click the link?
Did I keep the email nice and short and just provide 1 opportunity to click?
Did I use a P.S.?
What is the flow of my copy?

Continuously looking back at your past emails will help you write better emails in the future.

#5: Include Bonuses

gift

Including bonuses increases the likelihood of people taking action. While this is most commonly seen in product pitches where people say, “If you buy through my link, I’ll throw in some bonuses.”

However, you can incorporate bonuses beyond the product pitch.

You can offer a small bonus (i.e. 4 video series) to people who read your blog post and leave a comment. When Chandler Bolt started his podcast, he offered a free copy of his book (he even paid for shipping) to everyone who left a review for his podcast. With this promotion, Chandler was able to get hundreds of subscribers.

While it would be very complicated to offer a bonus in every email you write, you can offer bonuses for the important actions you want your audience to take. And those important actions go beyond buying a product through your link.

#6: Write Great Copy

Copy is the make or break point of all emails. Effective copy will result in more sales and poor copy will result in no sales. As you write emails, you’ll get a little better at writing great copy. However, the best way to write great copy is to learn from the copywriting masters.

For my copywriting education, I only pay attention to Ray Edwards. There are plenty of great copywriters on the planet, but Ray is the best for me. I’ve read his books and joined him in his product launches not just because I know his product is awesome, but also because I get to see his copy in action.

Analyzing email copy will help, but learning from a true master of the process will help even more. I recommend taking a deep dive into Ray’s books and reading his copy.

#7: Benefits > Features

I don’t care that your product has a bunch of modules, a constantly updating library of content, and swipe copy you can use for your funnel.

I care about a product that can triple my traffic, double my subscriber list, and give me a funnel sequence that will increase my revenue by 20%.

One product description focuses on the features. The other product description focuses on the benefits. People don’t care about what you give them. They care about the benefits they will get from purchasing your product.

When you share a new piece of content to your email list, describe the benefits they’ll get after they consume their content. What will they be able to do or have that they can’t do or have now? Answer that question in all of the emails you write, and your ROI will increase.

#8: Send More Emails To Your List

email marketing

No matter how great your email copy is, if you only send an email to your list every month, people on your list won’t remember who you are. While some people recommend weekly emails, I recommend getting as close to daily emails as possible…until you’re sending an email every day.

In 2017, I was inconsistent with publishing new content. This inconsistency in content creation led to an inconsistent emails unless I was promoting a product as an affiliate. Towards the end of 2017, I realized that this had to stop for me to have a successful 2018.

At the beginning of November, I decided to write one email every day that would go out to my list. This email would promote the blog post I had most recently wrote. Now I have emails written several months in advance.

The best way to get more consistent with your emails is to write them before you need them. When I was inconsistent, I waited until the new content was published before I started writing the email copy. That’s like hoping you’ll always publish a new piece of content at the same time and day every week…even if you couldn’t schedule anything in advance.

Sending more emails to your list simply means having the swipe copy ready well in advance. I write anywhere from 1-3 emails each day so I always have email swipe copy for a few months in advance.

#9: Offer Multiple Pricing Structures

If you promote a product to your email list, one of the best ways to drive more sales is to offer multiple pricing structures. These pricing structures allow you to account for people at different stages of the journey and with different incomes.

For the Content Marketing Plaza, I didn’t get many sales in the beginning because I only offered a $997 option. After some more consideration, I added a basic level and an advanced level. The basic level costs $497 while the advanced level costs $1997.

During my Cyber Monday promotion, I got many sales for the basic level and some sales for the advanced level. Neither of these levels were options when I first promoted the Plaza.

Getting a strong return for your email marketing efforts isn’t just about optimizing your emails. It’s also about optimizing the pages where you are leading your subscribers.

#10: Craft An Effective Funnel

Funnels are very effective for generating a strong ROI. You welcome your new subscribers with a series of automated emails designed to strengthen the relationship and promote one of your products or services towards the end.

The starting point of all effective funnels is an understanding of how you’ll take your new subscribers from the welcome email to the last email in the autoresponder. You should always start off your autoresponder with an email that strengthens the relationship. A popular way to do this is including a picture of yourself in the email and describing the context of that image.

As you continue through the funnel with the product in mind, offer free content based on that product’s topic. This will warm your new subscribers to your pitch which you’ll make later in your funnel.

When you do make the pitch, include several emails that promote the product. No one email will get the job done. As you subscribe to more people’s funnels, pay attention to how they lead you through the process. You can use that as inspiration for when you create your own funnel.

In Conclusion

Your email list is the most valuable asset for your brand. The growth rate matters, but the way you communicate with your email list matters more. Some people with small lists make 6-figures while people with much bigger lists struggle to make $10K every year. The way you communicate with your list determines the results you’ll get.

What are your thoughts on email marketing? Do you have any tips for us to boost our ROI? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Increase Your Email List’s Engagement

November 20, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

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You’ve heard this statement so often that you probably recite it in your sleep. If not, I’ll be the first to tell it to you:

The money is in your email list.

If you create epic content and have a large social media audience, but no email list, you’re missing out on thousands of extra dollars every month.

However, if you have a big email list, but no one on that list engages with your email broadcasts, then you won’t get much money from your list.

Therefore, the money isn’t just in an email list. The money is in the engagement of that email list. With that in mind, let’s explore how we can increase your email list’s engagement.

#1: Weed Out People Who Don’t Engage

Before we focus solely on getting more out of your email list, we must acknowledge another part of the equation. If you have 50,000 subscribers, and only 500 people open your emails, you have a problem.

You can get more opens, clicks, and sales with the upcoming methods, but understand that you should weed out unengaged people from your email list. Here’s why…

For most services, having 50,000 subscribers on your account means spending hundreds of dollars every month. ConvertKit, the service I use, has a rate of TKTK per month for 50,000 subscribers.

If you weed out the people who don’t engage, you will save yourself thousands of dollars every year. To keep the email addresses in hopes of re-engaging with these people, you can create MailChimp accounts which allow you to have up to 2,000 subscribers without paying a penny.

With this important idea discussed, we can now focus on the tactics that will help you get more out of your email list.

#2: Write Catchy Headlines

If you don’t get many people to open your emails, it’s time for you to examine your headlines. Mastering the art of catchy headlines is more important than mastering the email copy.

Eventually, you will need to master both, but if you write great email copy with a bad headline, you won’t get any clicks.

On the reverse side, catchy headlines with bad email copy will result in more opens but less engagement after the email gets opened.

It’s easier to fix things like clickthrough rate and sales once you get the open rate mastered.

So how do you write catchy headlines? Here are a few ideas from HubSpot.

Understand that you have a limited number of characters to implement these ideas. If an email headline has more than 50 characters, then your subscribers won’t see the entire headline.

If subscribers can’t see the entire headline, they won’t click. Short and concise is the way to go.

#3: Email Your Unopens

Each person’s inbox isn’t as crowded as a Twitter feed, but inboxes are crowded nevertheless. Some of your most loyal subscribers will miss your latest email just because there are so many emails in the inbox but so little time.

If these people get a reminder to open your email, some of them will take action.

You can create that effect by resending the same email to people who didn’t open the email the first time (your unopens). I typically send out the second email 1-2 days after the first email gets sent.

All I do is change the subject line, and just like that my open rate goes up by 10%.

This is the easiest trick in the book as it takes less than a minute to reschedule an email that you already sent to your list (the only difference is the headline).

#4: Consistently Send Emails

If you consistently send emails on the same days and at the same times, you’ll develop a cult following. Some bloggers email on Wednesdays at 7 am, and their audiences know to check their inboxes for the message they received on Wednesdays at 7 am.

This is a common practice among bloggers. Depending on your audience, you can add fuel to the fire by increasing the frequency of your email. Instead of emailing your audience every week, try twice a week, and if you can, send daily emails.

Always stay in the frame of your audience’s mind.

#5: Get Better At Copywriting

Now that we’ve explored boosting your open rate, it’s time to get results beyond a higher open rate. Copywriting is a dense topic that I can’t fully cover in this blog post. You’ll get better with practice, and while I recommend Ray Edwards’ book, here are a few copywriting tips I can think of right away

Use bold font, but more importantly, bullet points
Focus on benefits, not features
Always think of your customer avatar when writing your emails
Ask questions
Have a strong topic sentence
Use a P.S. at the end of your emails because those get a ton of attention
Subscribe to copywriting experts’ email lists and pay attention to their copy

#6: Include The Link In Multiple Places

One of the most common mistakes I see is when people send an email with the link in one location (usually towards the end of the copy). If you want to increase your clickthrough rate, you need to increase the presence of links in your email.

I typically utilize the same link in 2-3 locations. Here are my favorite places to put a link:

The very beginning of the email. For some people the headline and first sentence are enough to get the click

The middle of the email. This serves as a reminder. Your subscriber becomes familiar with the link, and with great copy just before that link, you’ll get more clicks

The P.S. Some of your subscribers will skim through your email and quickly scroll to the bottom. Your link will be waiting, and with great copy, you’ll get more clicks.

Some people place the link in as many as five places, but that number of link placements is usually reserved for lengthy emails or product pitches.

#7: See What’s Already Worked

Look through all of your emails and see which ones got the most opens, clicks, and sales. All three of those statistics are votes from your community.

If you see a trend where your audience engages better with Topic A than Topic B, then give your audience more of Topic A and tone it down with Topic B. You may prefer Topic B over Topic A, but your job is to serve your audience.

With that said, if you despise Topic A with a burning passion, then stop providing that type of content to your audience. Some people may no longer stick around, but it’s more important to do what you enjoy than find yourself stuck doing something you despise just for other people’s approval.

In Conclusion

The email list is your most valuable asset, but to reap the rewards, you must treat your subscribers with care. If you only pop in their inbox once a month, they won’t remember you for long.

The inbox isn’t as bad as a Twitter feed, but there are still hundreds of new emails people receive every day. With more experts advising an inbox detox, you need to stand out more than ever to make the cut.

Just because someone is on your list doesn’t mean they have to pay attention to you or stick around. The value and consistency of your emails will determine whether they stick around or not.

What are your thoughts on these tactics to increase email list engagement? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Jackpot Principles For Improving Your Email Outreach

August 22, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Lesley Vos.

Let’s start with the bad news:

Overwhelmed with email, people don’t always open, read, or respond to them. And with only 4% of all business related emails clicked, 22% opened, and 78% ignored, “overwhelmed” sounds like an understatement.

But the good news is:

Email remains the most effective digital communication channel with an average of $38 in returns for every $1 spent. Plus, email is 40 times more authoritative than Facebook and Twitter combined.

So the problem is not email, but how you use it, especially for your outreach efforts. With an average of $6.85 for every $1 spent, influencer marketing has become an integral part of most campaigns.

In fact, email outreach as the #1 tactic to hit a target. But with 84% of marketers running this strategy, how are you going to stand out and succeed?

Consider these core principles of email outreach when planning your marketing campaign:

1) Personalization

What makes email so efficient?

As ProOpinion states, email is “inherently personal – each person receives a message straight to his or her inbox.”

So forget about writing cold templates, paraphrasing and plagiarizing emails from other bloggers, and try to better personalize every outreach you send.

How?

Use first names
Offer a compliment
Show them you know them
Use a conversational tone
Be honest and sincere
Concentrate on what’s in it for them

Source: Tim Soulo for Ahrefs

Sounds obvious, but so many productive bloggers ignore these principles. They write “Dear Sir” or “Hello, Webmaster,” forgetting about psychology and the natural desire of every person to be treated as a friend and individual.

“Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Studies show that when we hear our names, a reaction in the brain makes us sympathize an interlocutor, allowing the latter to benefit from it.

Just like that!

Lyrical digression: try to guess if senders who email me with “Dear Sir” get a response. Yes, I get such letters. Yes, even in 2017 (and despite dozens of articles from influencers on writing badass outreach emails).

Personalization is about flattering one’s ego. You might want to double the effect, repeating a receiver’s name throughout the email, but be careful not to go too far and risk sounding insincere.

2) Power Subject Lines

The first thing people read is the email subject line, which helps them decide whether or not to open it.

So make this line appealing enough to spark recipients’ interest and encourage them to check your offer.

How?

Personalize it (personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened)

Source: Lesley Vos for SEMrush

Create intrigue (make the subject just clear enough to pique interest)
Consider length (subject lines of 51-60 characters or 6-10 words have the highest read rate)

3) Power Words

Words are a weapon in email outreach because they can make people feel a certain way and influence them to take action. Use power words to sound trustworthy.

How?

Make your message readable: use short sentences and paragraphs, don’t ignore bolded words and bullet lists.
Give your email a power information scent: what is the “meat” of your message?
Add surplus value: what makes you different from others? Why should readers choose and trust you?
Use power words: active verbs, no cliches, no jargon or plague words.

Visual and informational clues help recipients see the value of your outreach just by scanning it. Also, when writing for business, language patterns appeal to basic human instincts.

In his article for Mention, Mike Hanski recommends five power words to use in your emails:

You – appeals to selfishness
Easy – appeals to laziness
Save – appeals to greed
Results – appeals to pragmatism
Guarantee – appeals to skepticism

4) Credibility

Be honest. How many of you continue getting emails from lucio123@hotmail.com or lisa1991@gmail.com?

To enhance the chances your emails will be opened, tend to your credibility:

Use a professional email address or, at least, your real name for Gmail
Take advantage of the email signature

An appropriately named email address will help keep it out of the spam box and lets readers form an opinion of you as a reliable and competent person. Your signature tells influencers who you are and helps them remember you.

Source: Lesley’s outreach letter (not a template to use all over the place!)

When outreaching influencers, give them a reason to care. They don’t want mediocre work, so you might want to introduce yourself with a brief mention of your past publications, if you have any.

You can share publications on top blogs, shareable content, or simply well-researched articles that demonstrate your professionalism and ability to do awesome things.

Also, make it easier for recipients to research whether you are a good fit by including your name, website URL, and social media links in your email signature.

5) Objectiveness

Never contact influencers with vague sentences or ambiguous statements. Keep your message simple and to the point with the one-ask-per-email formula.

Write clearly and objectively, but don’t sound demanding. That’s a core principle of not conflating clarity with pushiness. Decide on a single offer or request:

Do you want them to read an article?
Are you asking for an expert opinion?
Would you like them to review a product?
Want them to share a link with their followers?
Are you pitching a guest post idea?

Keep it short and be sure they’ll never have to ask, “What do you want from me?”

Also, be humble.

6) Brevity

Consider the 3-5-7 rule of email copywriting when writing your outreach emails:

3 seconds to get their attention
5 seconds to draw them in
7 seconds to compel them to act

The perfect length is 150 words or up to 5 sentences/short paragraphs. Use lots of line breaks and white space so your email easy to scan.

As much as 56% of emails are opened on mobile devices now, so your outreach risks deletion if not displayed correctly.

Source: Dave Schneider for HubSpot

7) Time

Time matters for sending emails. Succesful marketing campaigns prove it:

The best days are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
The optimal times are 6 a.m., 10 a.m, and 2 p.m.

But since there is conflicting data on the topic, it’s best to A/B test your email list and learn the exact time to outreach them. As we all know, what works for one marketer won’t necessarily work for another.

Follow up on your pitch.

This is a bit controversial because no one likes a pain in the neck. After all, if you pitch a valuable proposition you should get a positive response without any follow-ups, right?

Wrong.

Out of all of my outreach emails, 60% get a response only after I follow-up. And that’s not because influencers don’t want to work with me, but because they’re busy.

Follow-ups act as reminders. But that doesn’t mean you should write them every other day and ask recipients if they’ve read your email. Give them at least 72 hours minimum to reply.

For example, I followed up with Marc a week after sending him the outline of the post you are reading right now:

Yes, I wanted to be persistent but understood that following up too frequently would look like a nuisance.

How many follow-ups are enough?

Well, my experience says two, though some experts recommend three or even four. But I remember those epic screenshots from Tim Soulo’s post with his reaction to bothersome follow-ups. There’s a limit to everything, after all.

Wrapping Up

Core principles for improving your email outreach are as follow:

Make it personal.
Use power words and create compelling subject lines.
Keep it short and to the point.
Consider your credibility.
Send it in right time.
Be yourself.
Show what’s in there for influencers.
Always follow up.

Getting influencers to respond and compel them to action is not that difficult, provided you are competent and persistent. Start giving a value, and you’ll succeed.

About the author:

Lesley Vos is a professional web writer and guest blogger contributing to publications on content marketing, social media, and self-development. Feel free to ask Lesley to write for you (an attentive reader, you might see her email address in the above article) or drop her a line on Twitter.

7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners

May 27, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Email list building is the most important activity you can do for your business. Your email list is truly your most valuable asset because people engage with emails far more often than social media posts.

In fact, if you have the same number of followers and email subscribers, you can count on anywhere from 3-10 times as many people seeing your email broadcasts than your social media posts.

The difference in click-through rates is even more dramatic. The average click-through rate for email is 3.57%, whereas Facebook and Twitter average click-through rates of 0.07% and 0.03%, respectively.

That’s right. Email gets 51-119 times more clicks depending on whether you use Twitter or Facebook. This isn’t to say social media is bad, in fact, you should be using social media to help you build your lists.

Remember, you own the traffic on your email lists. As for the traffic you don’t own, you’ll want as much of it as possible to join your email lists.

To help you, I’m providing seven simple-as-pie tips that you can implement to bring you email list building to the next level:

#1: Set Up An Email Server

Before you can even think of email list building, you’ll need to have an email server. And not one of those built-in WordPress servers that delivers your latest blog post to people’s inboxes.

Why? Because these services don’t allow you to communicate effectively with your audience.

Instead, consider servers like ConvertKit, iContact, and Aweber. Personally, I prefer ConvertKit because of its detailed auto responders, and its ability to seamlessly move people from one auto responder to another based on which actions they take (or don’t take). I wrote a more detailed post on ConvertKit here.

When you start using your server to send emails, focus on these two things:

Open rates
Click-through rates

Email marketers focus on other things too, but these two metrics matter most because, in the end, you want more people to open your emails, and more of the people who do open your emails to click on the links.

Besides, what’s the point of email list building if you don’t have an engaged list? By focusing on optimizing your open and click-through rates, you’ll end up with a more engaged email list.

#2: Create An Irresistible Free Offer

The irresistible free offer is the reason most people end up on your email list. Most people don’t subscribe to your email list to get more emails in their inbox. People get enough emails already!

The real reason they subscribe is to consume free content. My most successful free offer to date is an eBook containing 27 different tactics you can use to get more retweets.

You’ll want to be sure your free offer meets the needs of your niche and what you’re selling. When people subscribe and receive my free eBook, for example, they’re automatically sent an auto responder that provides additional value (as well as promotes my Twitter and social media-related products).

My irresistible offer leads qualified subscribers through a sales funnel that introduces my products based on a set of pre-qualifications — the products for which they’ve already expressed an interest — which keeps my messages relevant and on point.

Once you’ve decided on your irresistible free offer (video series, report, white paper, eBook, etc.), you need make sure it looks great. Design matters more than you think. We all judge a book by its cover (don’t deny it), and we also judge the value of a free offer by the way it’s presented.

For example, if all else is equal (including content), which book would you rather read?

A friend of mine was nice enough to create a new version of this eBook cover. And as a result, more people sign up simply because it looks better. You can even pay someone just $5 on Fiverr to come up with a good design. Just take a look at the logo for my upcoming summit:

I’ve made it my screensaver and I think it looks great! Just remember, the way your free offer looks is often more important than the free offer itself.

The title of your free offer is also important for building your email list. Choose a catchy yet simple title that communicates clearly what your free offer provides. If you have to choose between being catchy and being clear, always choose clarity.

As my friend Tom Corson-Knowles says, “Even a worthless book with a good title will sell more copies than a book full of useful information with a bad title.”

I write 10 possible titles for my free offer and then choose the one I like most.

#3: Create A Landing Page

Once you have the free offer in place, it’s time to create a landing page. A landing page is a page on your blog with a one or more CTAs (calls to action) and a form that asks users to enter an email address and possibly some other information (when you ask for less information, more people will actually fill out your form).

I personally use Optimize Press to create my landing pages. Optimize Press is a tool for WordPress.org users that lets you create landing pages, sales pages, membership sites, training courses, and just about anything else you can imagine.

If you don’t use this version of WordPress, you can still create a landing page. In fact, you don’t even need to have your own blog or website to create a landing page. You can simply create a self-hosted landing page on LeadPages or UpViral (they’ll host it for you so you don’t need to buy a domain name).

While it’s better to connect your landing page to a blog where you provide free, high-value content, you can technically go the self-hosted route that LeadPages, UpViral and others offer. The one problem with self-hosted landing pages is that people may not trust it as much since the URL doesn’t tell them who’s providing the free information.

When people don’t know who is getting their email address, for example, they are more hesitant about providing it. It’s often a good idea to say that you won’t share it with anyone!

Now that you know the basics, you’re probably wondering how to get people to subscribe via your landing page. There are two basic ways to do this. And understanding these two basic ideas will help you know what to look for to ensure effective email list building.

Increase the amount of traffic to the landing page
Optimize your landing page’s conversion rate

If two landing pages each have a 10% conversion rate, the landing page with 100 daily visitors will get more conversions than the landing page with 50 daily visitors.

But if the landing page with 50 daily visitors bumps up to a 30% conversion rate, that landing page now converts 15 visitors per day, whereas the other landing page with 100 daily visitors and a 10% conversion rate will convert 10 visitors per day. So even though one landing page gets half as many visitors, it’s still getting more conversions.

Ideally, you will increase traffic as well as your conversion rates. However, if you want to double your results, my advice is to focus on your conversion rates. Psychologically, it feels more doable to go from a 10% conversion rate to a 20% conversion rate than going from 100 daily visitors to 200 daily visitors. Are you still with me?

By focussing on conversions, you’ll only need a 10% increase. With a traffic-based goal, on the other hand, you’ll need an increase of 100 visitors.

#4: Share Your Landing Page On Social Media

Ah yes, here’s where social media joins the email list building mix. You can’t just create a landing page and expect people to visit it. You get those visitors by promoting your landing page, and social media is a powerful tool that lets you do just that.

The easiest way to promote your landing page is to use your bio. While most people link to their blog or website in their bios, why not link to the one page you want your visitors to see more than any other piece of content? I always link to my landing page in my bio.

Once you make this simple change, your email list building efforts will pick up momentum. You can then build on that momentum by promoting your landing page several times a day. But keep in mind that frequency will vary according to the social network.

On Twitter, for example, I promote one of my landing pages every hour. But on Facebook and Pinterest, I promote my landing page only once per day. And on Instagram, I let my bio do most of the talking.

Most social networks also give you the option to pin a post to the top of your profile. I use this feature with Twitter to keep one of my tweets immortal. While most tweets have a lifespan of 20 minutes, this one tweet continues to work wonders.

But I also noticed that as I shared my landing pages on more social networks, I fell into a time crunch. Sure, I was working on my email list building, but I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted from the rest of my business.

Why? Because I didn’t have as much time to communicate with my email list or create new products for them.

Once I realized the problem, I knew I needed to find a way out. So I began outsourcing more and more of my tasks. I delegated social media growth activities, image creation, and editing of my blog posts and podcasts, just to name a few. This decision opened up countless hours of my time and allowed me to pursue new opportunities.

#5: Profit From Your Autoresponder

What’s the point of email list building if you’re not making revenue? Your email costs go up but you won’t be able to pay for them.

To avoid this problem, you need to rely on your auto responders. An auto responder is made up of a series of emails people get after subscribing to your blog. You can set up your auto responders to email your list every few days, weeks, or even months.

Within each of these auto responders, you should be promoting a product. And if people buy one product, you’ll need to direct them to another auto responder that promotes a more expensive product. I refer to these as connective auto responders, since one auto responder leads right to the next.

This transition from one to the next only takes place when subscribers perform a desired action (i.e. buy a product). The more connective auto responders you have, the more revenue you can make.

Within each of your auto responders, tell stories! In my very first auto responder I share a picture of myself and explain the context behind it, which makes me more relatable, and my customers more attainable.

Plus, virtually every email service lets you check your auto responder stats. You’ll want to check the engagement from your overall auto responders as well as individual messages. That way, you can see what is and isn’t working. Then, based on the analysis, you can make changes.

Not bad, but can it be better? No matter how great my engagement, I always try to improve it.

#6: Get In The Growth Cycle

The growth cycle is the never-ending period of time in which you continue growing without boundaries. The basic set-up is that you pay for your traffic and make more money per conversion than you spend on each conversion.

For instance, if you’re spending $1 per conversion, but earning $2 per conversion, you should continue on that path until the end of time (or until/if these rates fall out of your favor).

But this also means you need to continuously monitor your ads. If an ad performs well, for example, use it as a model for future ads. But if your ad struggles to convert, change the copy, picture, or something else… but only change one thing at a time (A/B test) so you can better determine which variable is working or not working.

If you change more than one thing at a time, the image and the copy, for instance, and your ad continues to get the same results, you won’t have the full picture. As far as you know, the new picture could have doubled your results while the new copy could have halved your results. Thus, the final result is that nothing has changed.

#7: Give Yourself A Public Challenge

A public challenge for a big goal is intimidating because you can’t back out. But you don’t win by staying comfortable. You win by burning your boats so success or public failure (ugh!) are your only options.

Give yourself a public challenge for your email list. By the end of the year, for example, I want to see 100,000 email subscribers. That’s what I told my audience anyway, and I’m telling you (and everyone else) again in order to keep myself accountable.

Share these public goals in a YouTube video or blog post. So EVERYONE will see it, not just a few friends.

In Conclusion

EVERY marketer’s biggest regret is not having built an email list sooner. That fact alone should encourage you to jumpstart your email list building efforts (if you haven’t done so already).

Do at least one thing today that will help you to get at least one additional subscriber tomorrow. If you start with a one-subscriber goal per day, and follow this method for 100 days (1 subscriber on Day 1, 2 subscribers on Day 2, etc.), you’ll end up with 5,050 subscribers in 100 days with small, incremental gains.

That’s an average of 50.5 subscribers per day!

Power question: What can you do today to get more subscribers tomorrow?

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Which insight in this blog post did you find especially useful? Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Leave a comment now. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, please be sure you pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners http://wp.me/p2UPop-29Q”]

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Until next time,

Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

3 Strategies To Get Out Of Your Inbox Faster

May 13, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A lot of people suffer from inbox paralysis. This happens when they receive so many emails — and believe they must respond to each one — that overwhelm takes over and leaves them inert. Sound familiar?

Even when you do respond to your emails, you probably end up stuck in your inbox for long periods of time. Email is basically invading our lives. To think about the impact of the inbox, consider these statistics:

2.4 million emails are sent every day.
The average person receives nearly 121 emails each day.
50% of Americans check their inbox while in bed.

It’s easy to feel as if we’re chained to our inbox (much like our mobile phones). In reality, the inbox is a double-edged sword. Some people can focus on potential opportunities and good email content, while others complain, “Oh, this is such a time suck!”

To avoid inbox paralysis, you need to become conscious of how you use your inbox. At the same time, you’ll want to make sure you’re capitalizing on the opportunities presented therein. This means taking control of the situation and making sure you are getting the best possible results from the time you spend in your inbox.

One of the dangers lurking in your inbox is the notification. The red icon, or circle, that appears every time you get a new message. You must avoid being tempted by that! How? The following strategies will help you make sure that you are using your inbox more strategically.

The first strategy is called ‘Zero Inbox’ day

This is the strategy I use. Every Monday, I go through all of my emails and respond to every one. This means I’m responding to dozens of emails. And on some Mondays, I’ve responded to over a hundred emails!

Bur rather than scatter this out throughout the week, I prefer get it all done on one day so that I have another six days to address other areas of my business.

If you do a little here and a little there, you’ll end up losing focus and inbox paralysis kicks in. And it takes time to reposition that focus on the projects that you’re supposed to be working on.

So I choose one day to blow through all of the emails and get them done so I don’t have to worry about them for the next six days. Sure, there are lots of emails piling up during the week, but I only respond to the critical emails.

When I was planning my virtual summit, for example, I responded to every potential speaker or any speakers who had questions. I’m very particular about which emails I respond to during my six-day hiatus. But on Mondays, I respond to every single email that is addressed to me.

The second strategy is to shorten your responses

Basically, there are two things that control how long you stay in your inbox: the amount of emails addressed to you, and how long your responses are to each one of them.

If it takes you a minute to respond to 60 emails, averaging one minute per email, you’ll be in your inbox for an hour. But if it only takes you 30 seconds, on average, to respond to an email, and you’re responding to the same 60, you’re only in your inbox for 30 minutes. That is a big difference, and it all comes from writing shorter responses.

My rule of thumb for writing an email response is to keep it no longer than five sentences. Most often, it’s one to three sentences. I’m very quick with it. I have an automatic signature so I don’t have to reenter the same details over and over and over again.

And instead of writing, “Hello Name,” and hitting the enter button twice, I’ll sometimes just include the person’s name on the same line as the message. This basically allows me to write shorter responses, which in turn allows me to address more emails within a shorter period of time.

The people who are really busy and seem like they are getting hundreds, or even thousands, of emails every day, have the shortest responses.

That is very intentional because they have a whole bunch of people to get back to, and they also have projects they want to pursue.

Don’t be afraid to make your email responses a little shorter. Don’t be afraid of coming off as curt or anything like that. It’s just part of the nature of communicating with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, so that you can free up time for the rest of your business. You can be short and still be polite.

The third strategy is to hire an assistant

You should take this step when you’re getting hundreds of emails every day that require your attention. The assistant can go through the emails that follow a certain rubric. For example, answer all emails that say, “Please be a guest on my podcast.”

It’ll be a different person with a different audience and different podcast link. But the assistant can go through all of them and answer based on your preset recommendations for how to proceed. A good assistant will determine whether or not the gig is a good fit and/or which emails need your personal attention.

You can also ask the assistant to address common questions, send out thank you notes, or answer others who have written to thank you. Still, I would proceed with caution when hiring an assistant. Personally, I respond to thank-you messages myself. The idea of someone using my email address to respond on my behalf makes me a bit uncomfortable. But it’s done all the time.

If you do use an assistant, be sure they respond to your audience the right way. I suggest monitoring the person for the first week. My own rule is to micromanage for three to seven days only, just until I’m sure that my assistant or freelancer is competent.

Analyzing every little thing that your freelancer does, or micromanaging everyone on your team, makes hiring them to free up your time pointless.

Make yourself available for questions and clarifications the first week. Once you’re confident in their skills, step back and let them do their thing. They can always reach out to you with questions. But you needn’t bother analyzing every single email they send on your behalf.

To save even more time, you can take it a step further and hire a manager who oversees your freelancers.

These are three strategies for spending less time in your inbox.

I hope you enjoyed them. If you know someone who might benefit from these tips, please share this post.

Do you have your own tips to share? If so, please leave a comment. I read them all (and sometimes I end up turning them into a video or blog post).

If you are new to this blog, welcome! Sign up for more content like this using the form below 🙂

But what I’d really like from you is to dream big, achieve greatness, and unlock your potential today.

Until next time,

-Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com