Emailing

5 Reasons Why I Decided To Use iContact Instead Of WordPress To Send Emails

September 26, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I recently made the switch from WordPress’ free emailing service to iContact. I knew that if I wanted to reach tens of thousands of subscribers, something needed to change. Now I am wondering why I did not make the switch before. iContact has proven to be a more powerful option than WordPress’ free emailing service, and here’s why:

iContact allows me to customize the emails I send out. Instead of being linked to an RSS Feed and sending out an email each time I come out with a new blog post, iContact gives me the power to craft my own emails and include links to blog posts. This allows me to send one email every week containing links to all of the blog posts that I published that week.
iContact allows you to create autoresponders. Autoresponders are a series of emails that everyone gets when they subscribe to your blog. You can space out how long it takes for people to receive an email from the autoresponder and use it to promote one of your products in a way that people would want to buy it. WordPress’ emailing service did not provide this option.
iContact allows me to interact with my subscribers in a better way. No matter which service you use, there is a certain degree of automation. iContact allows you to schedule messages while WordPress would just send a message each time you came out with a new blog post. However, iContact allows me to craft my own message which allows me to interact with my subscribers in a better way. I get to ask subscribers how their day was, what they want to do differently, and anything else I want to ask them all in one email.
I have more control over the confirmation and welcome messages. Not only do I get to write anything I want for these two messages, but I also get to change the way these messages look. I decide what the backgrounds for these messages look like, the size of the font, and everything else as well.
More plugin capabilities. There are more WordPress plugin capabilities associated with iContact that WordPress’ free emailing service. Switching over to iContact has allowed me to do numerous things with my blog such as include a subscription form at the end of every blog post. This was previously not possible with WordPress’ emailing service, and now this form at the bottom at every blog post has been responsible for a majority of my subscribers.

There are some costs associated with making it as a full-time blogger. Buying access to an emailing service is one of the best investments any blogger can make to grow their email list. What are your thoughts on iContact and using paid email service options to get access to more features? Please share your thoughts below.

How I Plan To Massively Increase My Email List

August 25, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Email-List-2

With over 120,000 Twitter followers and over 10,000 Pinterest followers, growing a social media audience has become easy. Now my top priority is growing my email list. Since this blog’s creation, it has gained a few thousand subscribers. Although it’s a great start, I want to be have tens of thousands of subscribers, and several marketers emphasize how “the money is in the list.”

I have a plan in place for accomplishing this goal, and part of the plan is good news for everyone here. A free gift I give to my subscribers is the Pinterest Mastery video tutorial. In addition to this gift, I will also be writing free guides that will be shared exclusively to my subscribers. That means if I decide to write a quick guide containing 25 different methods to get more repins on Pinterest or something similar, I am going to share it with you if you have subscribed to my list.

Another big change I have already made is using iContact to deliver all messages. This gives me superior flexibility as well as a new structure for sending out emails. In the past, I used WordPress’ subscription option which sent out emails seconds after I came out with a new blog post. With iContact, I will now be sending an email to my subscribers every week with links and short descriptions for the blog posts published that week. Anyone who remains subscribed to the WordPress option will still get emailed when I come out with new blog posts, but I am going to move everyone over from that list to my list on iContact.

In order to focus more of my time into writing the informative guides for my subscribers and launching more products, I will only be writing one blog post every day. Anyone who subscribes to my email list will be sent an exclusive blog post every week via email that will never get featured on this blog. That means if you want more of my content, join the list.

Although I am putting in an extensive amount of work into growing my email list, I am one person, and I need your help. If you subscribe to my email list, you will get the free Pinterest Mastery Video Tutorial just like before. The only difference is that I am working on a guide that contains 27 different methods to get more retweets on Twitter. Right when the guide is finished, I will distribute it to everyone on the list, and anyone who wants the guide in the future just has to subscribe. I also encourage you to spread the word to your friends because there is strength in numbers in accomplishing big goals.

7 Ways To Turn Your Facebook Fans Into Email Subscribers

August 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Did you know that two-thirds of Facebook marketers are either uncertain about whether their methods are working or don’t even believe in their methods? That’s a big portion of marketers, and that’s because most of them are making the same mistake. Chances are you are making the same mistake with your Facebook page that a majority of other Facebook marketers are making. Advertising is a great way to promote your Facebook Page, but then what? Getting a bunch of likes is not the answer, and only 1 out of every 6 people will see your Facebook Page posts. The answer is turning those fans into email subscribers. Here are seven things you need to know so you can make that happen.

Host a giveaway on Facebook. When you host this giveaway on Facebook, you need to make sure that the only way for a person to win the prize is by subscribing to your blog.
Promote a free product. This free product needs to be enticing. In addition, it must only be available to the people who enter their name and email address in a form.
Post valuable content. Posting valuable content will allow you to spread on Facebook. By spreading on Facebook, more people will learn about you. Then, by implementing the other tactics, you will be able to get more subscribers.
Engage with your fans. Engaging with your Facebook fans is the key to your success. Engaging with these fans will allow you to have longer conversations and build stronger connections. This engagement will encourage new fans to have conversations with you, and if you have good conversations with your fans, those fans will become your subscribers.
Offer discounts. Discounts encourage people to buy products. Some people only buy a discounted product because they save money. Some products that people buy for a discount never get used, but buying a product at a discount makes a customer feel smart at the moment. People must be required to subscribe to your blog in order to take advantage of the discount.
Give subscribers access to a private FB group page. A private Facebook group page allows you to connect with more people, and it is a free prize worth winning. Only give your subscribers access to a private Facebook group page.
Share customer testimonials. Some people subscribe to bloggers who provide valuable content. Providing customer testimonials will prove to your Facebook fans that you provide valuable content. Posting testimonials will encourage more people to subscribe to your blog.

Your email list is the most powerful list you have. You can promote your products and blog posts to the people on that email list. If you have 100,000 people on your email list, and a tenth of one percent of those people buy your $2,000 product, that’s 100 sales (and $200,000 extra in your pocket). What do you do to grow your email list?

8 Signs Your Blog Is Not Doing Well

July 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

There are some blogs that are thriving and get thousands of visitors every day. On the other hand, there are blogs that are not doing as well. Some people know that their blog is not doing well, others know their blog is thriving, while others are not sure. Regardless about what you think about your blog, you need to know whether your blog is doing well or not. That is why I provided with you 8 signs that your blog is not doing well. That way, if your blog is not doing well, you know what to work on. In addition, if your blog does not have any of these signs, it means you are doing a good job with your blog.

Your blog does not get a lot of social media traffic. Social media traffic and SEO traffic are related. As you get more social media traffic, you will also get more search engine traffic. In addition, social media gives you the ability to interact with the people who visit your blog. Not getting a lot of social media traffic and not having a targeted audience means that you will not be able to interact with as many people who visit your blog as you could be.
Your blog does not get many visitors in general. A big reason this problem exists for most people is because they have not developed big, targeted audiences on their social networks. Few visitors on your blog means few people to interact with or share your posts.
Your blog posts are not getting shared often. If your blog posts are not getting shared often on social networks, it shows that few people visit the blog, and few of the people who come in the first place don’t share your blog posts anyway. In order to fix this problem, you need to by omnipresent on all of the social networks, grow those audiences, and share your blog posts. Then, some people will take your lead by reposting your post or sharing your blog post using social media sharing buttons which should be at the bottom of every blog post.
You don’t have a big email list. Everyone on the email list represents someone who likes your content enough to trust you with their email address. In addition, these people will most likely become returning visitors and read your blog posts every other day. In order to get a bigger email list, implement these tips.
You don’t know a lot about SEO. One of the best ways to get a lot of long-term traffic to your blog is by enhancing that blog’s SEO. However, there are many people who do not know exactly how to boost their SEO while some people get confused by the meaning of the word SEO. You can brush up on your SEO here and learn how to boost your SEO by going here.
You do not look at your blog’s statistics often. If you do not look at your blog’s statistics often, then you don’t know how many visitors you are getting or how many people are on your email list. Your blog statistics have the answers, as well as information. You can identify the day you got the most traffic on, and the sources that led to that traffic. Then, you can look back at that day and identify what you did differently to get the rise in traffic. After that, continue doing what you did differently on that day and you will see a big jump in your traffic.
You consider blogging to be a hobby. If you are writing blog posts inconsistently, and your blog is not big-time (yet), then you consider blogging to be a hobby. Blogging only works for the people who see blogging as something that is more than a hobby. Blogging for a hobby may result in a few visitors, but blogging for your profession will force you to consistently write blog posts and never miss a single day. Some passionate bloggers wrote blog posts for the day even when they had fevers. You need to decide for yourself how seriously you take blogging and decide whether your view of blogging will be as a hobby or a profession.
Writing 250 words feels awkward or too time consuming. There are some blog posts that will take a long time to write (some blog posts are longer than others). However, if feels awkward or too time consuming to put in the time to write 250 words, then that’s a big problem. You should strive to make all of your blog posts at least 250 words, and if it feels uncomfortable writing 250 words, imagine how difficult it would be to write 250 words (and eventually a lot more) every day. The best way to get over this problem is by writing more often. Challenge yourself to write 1 blog post every day. Then challenge yourself to write 1 blog post every day while writing a book. The more you challenge yourself, the more words you will be able to write.

Congratulations on making it though the checklist. Did you make it through the checklist fine or do you have some things to work on? What are your thoughts about the checklist? Do you have any additional signs that a blog may be in trouble? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why Do Spam And Phishing Attempts Always Have To Be So Boring?

June 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I would have been annoyed to receive spam or a phishing attempts in my inbox. At this time, I would simply come across the email, wonder if this person contemplated life, think about that for a few more minutes, and then delete the message. However, this method is such a boring process with no gain. When I started to get more spam and phishing attempts in my inbox, I decided to be creative.

One day, I got a message from the Facebook Award team saying that on behalf of the United Kingdom, they are giving me 1 million British pounds (hooray for me, right). All I needed to do to get the money was enter my name, address, phone number, age, country, and occupation (but Facebook already knows all of these things). Finally, I had to send this information to an email that had no relationship to Facebook whatsoever (the email address was daniel_moor@live.com. If spammers and phishers are going to try to see my private information and possibly share that private information with the world, then two can play at that game). Let’s not forget to mention that they left me their warmest regards.

The person hiding behind the email address made an earnest attempt to take away my personal information. Although I usually delete emails like this, I somewhat appreciated this person’s efforts. I decided to give this person all of my information:

Full name: Johnny Appleseed

Address: 123456789 Cedar Lane (that’s a lot of numbers)

Phone number: 777-7777-7777 (I am not responsible for anything that happens if anyone calls this number)

Age: 101 (not a teenager)

Country: Planet Earth (try to find me now!)

Occupation: I forgot my occupation (next time, I’ll say that I plant seeds all day)

Then, I simply had to end in style:

Thanks Facebook rewards team. You guys are the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regards,

Johnny Appleseed

I have been doing this ever since. I got another email where Optimum (my email provider) was going to shut down my account in 48 hours unless I gave them my password. These people were a little smarter using the email address customerservices1@safe-mail.net, but I still knew it wasn’t Optimum. The password I sent to them was “NotGonnaHappen.”

Phishers try so hard to take people’s private information. That’s how people get hacked. I take the time of day to respond to these people’s emails, but then the phishers never bother to respond to my emails that I spend so much time on. I wonder why.

These are some of the things I am considering to do for the next person who sends me one of these emails:

Send over some interview questions about why this person spams other people.
If I get another message about some Facebook rewards team, I’ll tell the person that I work for Facebook.
I’ll send over the definitions of 10 words so the phisher can brush up on his/her vocabulary.

The possibilities are endless. Maybe this entire thinking process is the teenager part of me talking, but I have a lot of fun sending out these kinds of emails.

5 Ways To Build Your Email List

May 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

No matter what niche you are in, email lists are critical towards your success. Email lists allow you to build a list of loyal subscribers who will very likely end up being your next customers. However, the art of growing a large email list is challenging. Few bloggers have email lists with over 100 people, and even fewer bloggers have email lists that exceed 1,000 people. In order to build your email list, follow these tips:

Offer a free prize to people who subscribe. A free prize will encourage people to enter their name and email and go on your list. The free prize needs to be something that you could have charged for so people who subscribe stay on the list.
Write quality content. Quality content makes your free prize look better. Many people subscribe to blogs for the quality content. Your subscribers want to read quality emails every time, not emails that anyone could have written.
Host an online webinar that asks for email addresses. Hosting the online webinar will allow you to get more subscribers. People who see the webinar would automatically subscribe to your blog.
Run a giveaway exclusive to subscribers. Whether you offer a $10 Amazon Gift Card or a free copy of your book, you need to run giveaways for your subscribers. Running giveaways exclusive to your subscribers will entice more people to sign up. The best giveaways for you are the ones that promote your own products. That way, you get a new customer.
Strengthen your social networks. In order to get more people on your list, you need to build your social media presence. The person with 100,000 followers is able to get more people on his/her list than the person with 5,000 followers. Social media is a very valuable tool to grow your email list.

Those are the 5 ways to grow your email list. By growing your email list, your product launches will be more successful each time. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.