email marketing

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.

4 Keys to a Successful Blog

November 18, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

create a successful blog

There are many factors driving a successful blog: high-quality content, engagement, social media traffic, search engine traffic, domain authority and more. I focused on all of those and attracted hundreds of visitors to blog, but did that make my blog a success? Nope. Here’s what made my blog successful:

Serve Your Audience

Focusing too much on SEO and metrics can lead to overlooking the most important part of your blog: your audience. Serve your audience and you’ll build a loyal following. I’ve heard this advice a hundred times over.

While it’s valuable advice, it has become a bit overrated. Don’t get me wrong. Serving my audience has helped a lot, but it’s only piece of the puzzle. Serving your audience means being attuned to their needs and interests, and creating valuable content accordingly.

But in a world filled with good content, writing more of it just isn’t enough. To truly serve your audience, you’ve got to do more. Think of content as an appetizer in a three course meal.

A Recipe for Success

Some bloggers mistakenly think success is a numbers game. But traffic and visitors alone won’t propel you to the top. Some blogs thrive because they enjoy hundreds of thousands of visitors while others struggle with that kind of traffic, or any kind of traffic for that matter.

But the real winners are the bloggers who truly LOVE their readers. I’m talking about the bloggers who, in addition to offering valuable content consistently, nurture their communities. They make themselves available by regularly answering readers’ questions, responding to their comments and engaging with their content.

If you view everyone in your audience as little more than a potential customer, your blogging journey will hit a lot of bumps. View each member of your audience as a human being with something to offer besides a pocket full of money.

Go Above And Beyond

You should already be going above and beyond with your content. But you should also strive to go the extra mile with your audience by acknowledging and showing appreciation for their support, and offering your own.

Writing alone doesn’t do that. Acknowledge your audience by engaging with their social media posts, responding to their emails and thanking them for sharing your content. Always try to be available.

Neil Patel writes some of the longest SEO related blog posts known to mankind. I’m sure he’s written at least a few posts that exceed 10,000 words. He also spends a lot of time marketing himself.

One would think a busy man like Neil would have little time to dedicate to his audience. But that’s actually where he dedicates most of his time. According to an infographic on his blog, Neil receives around 207 emails every day. He responds to 91 of them!

contact neil patel infographic

Neil spends four hours a day going through his inbox and responding to anything from business questions to interview requests. He also makes the time to respond to readers’ comments on his blog posts, which easily attract 100’s of comments! His older posts consistently receive engagement as well.

Make Your Audience Part Of The Action

For a long time, I saw guest blogging as a personal opportunity but hesitated to accept guest posts for my own blog. Yet the benefits of opening your blog to guest contributors are many. It saves you time, keeps your content fresh and varied, helps increase your traffic and adds value.

Not only that, guest contributors become part of your story.

I have written many guest posts. Two that stand out were for Jeff Bullas’ Blog and ProBlogger. When I first started out, these blogs were the holy grail of blogging and social media, so I read them every day to learn more about my niche. Once I gained experience and expertise, it was an honor to be given the opportunity to contribute to these blogs.

Contributors inevitably have different motivations for writing guest posts. Some enjoy seeing their name on a credible blog (and potentially building their own brand), others enjoy giving back to the blogs they’ve learned from in the past. But every contributor becomes a small part of the blog’s story, of your story.

As an added bonus, you get a backlink. You can also do something similar on YouTube by recording collaborative videos with audience members.

Don’t Oversell

Overselling to your readers is a surefire way to make the relationship sour. You may be overselling if you are:

Creating products in bulk.
Involved in affiliate marketing.

Of course, some people who create products into bulk and/or engage in affiliate marketing don’t fall into this trap. The danger arises when you’re too heavily promoting a product (yours or an affiliate’s) every month. I made this mistake.

I first got involved with promoting other people’s courses in 2015. The first time I promoted someone else’s course to my email list I got a bunch of sales. The next month, I promoted a different course and got a bunch of sales. The following month, I did the same.

I spend five straight months promoting other people’s products and very little time delivering value. The result? Increased unsubscribes, fewer email opens, and fewer clicks. It was an email marketing nightmare. My email list is still somewhat scarred by the aftermath but my open and clickthrough rates are gradually increasing.

The point is I enjoyed increased revenues initially, but eventually my sales and email subscribes took a hit. Why? Because I was too focused on pushing products and not providing anything of free value. Worst of all, I saw my email list as just that: a list. Nameless, faceless people with wallets.

It’s was a big mistake, and hard to admit, but if I can help you avoid making the same error I’ll be happy. In fact, I can thank one of my subscribers for helping me see the light. His email said, “You’re better than this.” And his sentiments were likely shared by the others on my list, the silent majority.

In Conclusion

While I still occasionally promote other people’s training courses, I am more focused than ever on my audience’s needs and interests, and giving them something of value that they can use.

Any successful blogger is successful because of his/her audience. Tenacity and grit factor in, but a blog is useless without a loyal following. If you love your readers, they will love you back (and will also be more open to trying your products and services in the future).

What are your thoughts on audience engagement? Do you believe there is a more important determinant of a blog’s success? Sound off in the comments section below.

The Top 3 Email Broadcasts You Should Be Sending

October 28, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

email marketing

Email marketing produces a higher ROI than any other form of online marketing. Most marketers’ biggest regret is not building an email list sooner. Email marketing is that valuable.

There are plenty of ways to get more people to sign up for your email list. Landing pages and pop-up messages are two of the many methods I discuss in this post.

But what happens once someone subscribes and goes through your autoresponder? What email broadcasts are these people getting on a daily or weekly basis?

Over 100 billion emails are sent each day. These emails have many different lengths and purposes. Some are from friends or co-worker, while others pitch products and services.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the options, but these are the top three email broadcasts you should be sending your subscribers:

#1: Community Broadcast

The Community Broadcast asks readers to participate in a particular activity, from a real event to answering a question or providing a simple observation.

Most email broadcasts don’t involve community action. Rather, they often contain a CTA asking the reader to clink on a link or make a purchase. While those emails are important, the Community Broadcast is less about promotion and more about building relationships.

A while ago, I sent a community broadcast inviting my audience to ask me questions that I could answer on my YouTube Q&A series. The result? I got dozens of replies and enjoyed huge growth on my YouTube channel.

I like to get my community involved with the creation process. Not only do I get new ideas, but I’m also serving them better by showing an interest in what really matters to them. The questions they ask are always based on the problems they face each day. And since many of those issues are shared by a large segment of my audience, the videos appeal to most of my subscribers.

Find Inspiration

The questions themselves inspire new ideas for content. For example, one person asked me how he could get more book sales. Once I knew that question resonated with my audience, I dedicated an entire video to the topic.

Content producers always aim to inform, entertain or empower their audience. Every time I respond to questions, I know I am empowering my audience. And when my content empowers people, I know I’ve done a good job.

The possibilities for Community Broadcasts are endless. Community Broadcasts involve anything that will get your community involved. In addition to asking questions, you can encourage networking and dialog among your audience by creating a Facebook Group and inviting them to join. Or you can create a 30 day challenge of some sort and ask participants to share their results.

Remember that Community Broadcasts are more potent when your focus is on the love for your community rather than how you or your business will benefit.

#2: Broadcast Of Value

The Broadcast Of Value is an email broadcast in which you provide free value in the form of a blog post, YouTube video, podcast, livestream, webinar, or any other means.

These email broadcasts help you build credibility because people will associate your name with valuable information that is relevant to their interests. And as you become more credible, they will be more inclined to share your content.

The cool thing about the Broadcast Of Value is that you can turbocharge certain parts of your business. If you start a new podcast and have 10,000 email subscribers, you can easily tell those people about your first episode.

Hopefully they will tune in to your podcast or download the episode. As your episodes receive more downloads, your podcasts will rank higher and possibly end up in the New & Noteworthy category (the gold mine category for new podcasts on iTunes).

Segmenting

I have two rules for sending Broadcasts Of Value: the first is to provide value, and the second is to segment my lists as much as possible.

For example, when people subscribe to receive my “27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter” eBook, they are automatically added to my Twitter email list. This helps me on the weeks I produce a lot of content because I can be more selective about who receives what content.

For example, I may send different email broadcasts to segmented lists. The people on my Twitter email list might receive a Twitter How-To post while the people who’ve subscribed to my blog will receive a How-To Blog post.

Segmenting your email lists, and then sending targeted email broadcasts to each list, results in more engagement and fewer unsubscribes because you are aligning your content with audience interests.

The people on my Twitter list definitely want to learn more about Twitter. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have requested my free Twitter eBook. Some of them are also interested in blogging, but since I can’t be sure, I do not want to risk sending them irrelevant content. Likewise, the people who’ve downloaded by eBook “27 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Subscribers” are sent more blog-related content.

#3: Product Broadcast

The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The email list is the most profitable online platform today. But to make a profit you need to sell stuff. There’s no way around it.

I’ve read many Product Broadcasts and I can assure you that not all sales pitches are created equal. Most will lose your attention right away, some will leave you interested, and a few will prompt you to take immediate action.

Plus, if you send Product Broadcasts too often people will not want to hear from you anymore. No matter how strong your reputation, promoting product after product without sending other types of email broadcasts will hurt your credibility.

As a general rule, you should only send Product Broadcasts every 2-3 months. For a product launch, however, some companies send as many as 20 emails. These types of email campaigns are okay as long as you offer something of free value and make sure they don’t last for more than a month.

Be Subtle

It’s also important to be subtle when it comes to product promotion. What exactly does that mean?

For other types of email broadcasts, you can sneak in a product promotion. Two people who do this well are Neil Patel and Jeff Goins. Leading up to the launch of his book Hustle, Neil included a subtle call-to-action to preorder the book.

email broadcast example

This isn’t an in-your-face CTA. It’s not an email discussing all of the benefits of the book. It’s permission marketing in full effect. Neil isn’t telling you to buy his book. He’s just letting you know that it’s out there.

Jeff Goins is another person who knows how to subtly promote a product, service, or in this case, an event. During the Self-Publishing Success Summit, Jeff integrated event promotion with his latest content.

email broadcast example

That changes the entire dynamic of the email. Instead of primarily talking about SPSS, Jeff sprinkled it on top of another type of email broadcast.

Being subtle does not mean tricking your audience into doing something. It simply means focusing the main message of your email broadcast on one thing and gently mentioning a useful product, service, or event towards the end of the email broadcast.

In Conclusion

Email marketing trumps all other forms of marketing. It can even be argued that the primary purpose of other types of digital marketing is to attract more people to your email lists. If you make that part of all of your marketing efforts, your email broadcast will get more engagement.

And that added engagement will result in more traffic and sales.

What are your thoughts on these three types of email broadcasts? Which one of do you send most often? Do you send a different type of email broadcast? Sound off in the comments section below.

Why I Switched From iContact To ConvertKit

October 21, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Switching from one email service to another isn’t an easy decision. But after using iContact for years, I switched to the rapidly growing ConvertKit. Founded in 2013, the company has quickly become a million dollar business recommended by Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas and others.

When I decided to take a look at ConvertKit, this is what I found:

No Limit On Emails Sent

One of my biggest pet peeves with iContact was the limited number of free emails I could send. Some of my marketing efforts were cut short because I didn’t want to spend the extra money.

Once I sent an email blast that put me over my limit, and I had to pay an additional $100. Needless to say, I was not pleased when that bill arrived. Since ConvertKit has no limits, I no longer worry about getting hit with those charges.

The removal of this limit has helped me think differently about email marketing and how many emails I should send on a given day. Some of the people I’ve come to admire appear in my inbox more often than others. For instance, messages from Neil Patel and Jeff Bullas show up in my inbox every other day.

With each message, relationships grow. And now I too can send messages every day or every other day without worrying about extra fees. If I tried doing that on iContact, it would have cost me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Superior Automation Capabilities

Automation on iContact lets you schedule email blasts, get your subscribers on the right lists and send your subscribers a series of messages in an autoresponder based on those lists.

You can do all of those awesome things on ConvertKit, but with some caveats. For example, ConvertKit lets you create rules that control how subscribers move through your sales funnel.

One thing I try to be careful about is sending additional messages to people who already receive my autoresponder. I am so careful, in fact, that I’ve created a segment on iContact that contains only the people who’ve completed the autoresponder.

The only problem is that I have to remember to manually update this autoresponder. I put people on that segment based on the date they joined my account. I’d have to change the date every week to reflect the additional people who’ve completed the autoresponder.

ConvertKit now does that for me with a simple rule I’ve set up. Anytime someone completes my Twitter Domination sequence, they then end up on my Twitter Domination tag.

convertkit automation

This allows me to identify all of the people who have completed the Twitter Domination autoresponder. I can then email the people who completed the Twitter autoresponder and avoid emailing those who’ve already completed the autoresponder.

Here are the automation options ConvertKit provides.

convertkit trigger

Price

The powerful automation ConvertKit provides is similar to that of InfusionSoft. Before ConvertKit, InfusionSoft was one of the only players that enabled that type of automation.

Two big complaints about InfusionSoft are price and user experience (some see InfusionSoft more as a CRM network than an emailing service). ConvertKit is cheaper and simpler.

But let’s go back to iContact vs. ConvertKit. Which one is cheaper? Well, that depends on your account type. For this blog post, I decided to see what iContact and ConvertKit charge for someone with 10,000 subscribers.

You’ll pay $119/mo for ConvertKit and get all of the cool stuff the service has to offer.

On iContact, you’ll pay $79/mo for a regular account; I used this version throughout my time on iContact but it didn’t have nearly as many cool features as ConvertKit. iContact Pro, however, seems to offer similar features as ConvertKit such as workflows, triggered messages, and more. But it will cost you $189/mo.

The services on both platforms are spot on. But based on price, ConvertKit is the better buy.

Easier Emailing Format

Sending emails is easier on ConvertKit. iContact requires extra steps like choosing among templates whereas ConvertKit sends you straight to a text box similar to a blog post. Just write the email and that’s it.

convertkit-tutorial

Plus, immediately after you create the email, you can see a preview. The best part is that you can click on your links to be sure they’re working. Double checking the links takes only a few seconds and ensures that you don’t make a careless (and critical) mistake.

In Conclusion

Migrating from one email service to another can be a tiresome process, especially when you have numerous landing pages and subscribers. But while the switch may be bothersome in the short-term, the long-term benefits are worth it.

ConvertKit is very promising. I started using it last summer and completed the switch by October. Migrating email lists isn’t the most enjoyable activity, but in the end it was well worth it.

What are your thoughts about ConvertKit and iContact? Do you prefer another email service? Sound off in the comments section below.

50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List

June 24, 2016 by Marc Guberti 9 Comments

Email List Growth

The digital landscape is always changing right in front of us. More opportunities for growing an email list get presented as the days go by. Live streaming was recently introduced to us a little over a year ago.

Based on the number of articles and videos about live streaming since its existence, it seems as if live streaming apps like Periscope have been around for decades.

It is getting harder and harder for us to imagine life without this changing digital landscape.

No matter how often the digital landscape changes, the story will remain the same. Your email list is your most valuable asset. It’s where the money and ultimate engagement reside.

To grow an email list, you either increase the conversion rate or you get more traffic that gets directed to an opportunity to join your list. Those are the two underlying principles behind all 50 of these tactics.

#1: Create A Bunch Of Landing Pages

HubSpot came out with an article that helped us learn the importance of creating landing pages in bulk. More landing pages means more free offers that people can choose between…and therefore a bigger email list.

If you have Offer A and Offer B, some people won’t like Offer A, but they’ll love Offer B and vice-versa. Now imagine having 40 offers. Your visitor could be non-responsive to 39 of your offers, but as long as the visitor responds to at least one offer, you got another qualified lead on your email list.

Why 40 landing pages? According to the graph from the HubSpot blog post, it’s very helpful to have that many landing pages to achieve optimal growth for your email list.

lead generation

#2: Put A Site Wide Pop-Up On Your Blog

Pop-ups…you either love them or you hate them. Regardless of how you feel about pop-ups, they absolutely work for your email list.

The more your pop-up offer matches your blog’s content, the more subscribers you will get. If people aren’t interested in the pop-up offer, they can simply x out of the pop-up and continue reading the blog post.

#3: Create Udemy Courses

Udemy is a one of those unexpected places for building an email list since it is more known for course building. You can send email blasts to the students enrolled into your courses. You can segment them based on their progress through your course, when they enrolled, and which courses they are enrolled in.

The key to using Udemy to grow your email list is to promote free coupon codes of your courses into Facebook group pages that are specifically for free Udemy coupons. I got over 20,000 students by leveraging this strategy who I can send emails to.

Sending emails to over 20,000 Udemy students is free, but there are some catches. You can only promote your Udemy courses or learning material that students can access without entering personal info (i.e. an email address).

However, you can send these students to your blog posts and YouTube videos with a CTA at the end. Pop-ups are fine too.

#4: Put Your Udemy Courses On SkillShare

If you put your course on Udemy, you might as well put it on SkillShare. You’ll get access to more students who you can email and you’ll also make more revenue.

If you don’t feel like uploading Udemy videos into SkillShare, then hire a trustworthy freelancer. Putting your Udemy courses on SkillShare allows you to get more out of the same work.

#5: Use HelloBar To Promote Your Landing Page

HelloBar is a plugin that allows you to put a message at the top of your blog. Within this message, you can tell people about your landing page offer. Then you get to add a button which links to your landing page.

Since HelloBar rose to fame for putting that message at the very top of a blog, the plugin has added the capability of putting your message on the bottom left, bottom right, top left, or top right for your blog.

I choose to display another offer on the bottom right of my blog.

hellobar

If you are interested in HelloBar, I highly recommend joining here. If you sign up with that link, we both get a free month of HelloBar Pro.

#6: Leverage Your Blog’s Sidebar

The goal of a blog sidebar is to grab attention while presenting a compelling offer. The sidebar won’t be the highest converting part of your blog, but people will remember your offers.

To get more conversions from your sidebar, fill your sidebar up with awesome pictures that feel like a part of the blog post.

Better yet, have different sidebars for different content categories.

When reading Kim Garst’s blog post about Facebook live streaming, she offers her free eBook 27 Killer Facebook Post Ideas 2.0 on the sidebar.

For her blog post about tweeting during live events, she offers her free eBook on Twitter hashtags on the sidebar.

These two free offers promoted on the sidebar are relevant to the blog post. The free offers almost feel like a part of the blog post itself.

#7: Use UpViral To Create A Landing Page

UpViral is a great tool for creating landing pages in a few minutes. They are basic which can sometimes help out with getting conversions.

The magic happens when someone subscribes. They immediately get sent over to a Thank You Page that incentivizes visitors to share the landing page URL.

For my Thank You Page, I encourage people to get more leads. Each person who brings in five leads gets exclusive videos.

upviral thank you page

With this set-up, people now have an incentive to drive more leads to my landing page. The final result is that the people who get access to the three exclusive videos add five people to my email list.

UpViral can identify fraudulent sign-ups (probably based on IP addresses) so you don’t have to worry about people gaming the system just to get the exclusive videos or content that you offer.

#8: Promote Your Landing Pages On Social Media…A Lot

You can’t complete any type of list without saying “promote on social media.” Use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and all of the other social networks that you can think of.

However, don’t just stop at promoting your landing page once in a given day. At least 25% of my social media posts send people over to one of my landing pages.

Most of your social media audience will not see your first post about your landing page. The more times you promote your landing page on social media, the more traffic those landing pages will get from your social media efforts.

#9: Include A CTA In All Of Your YouTube Videos

It’s easy to promote a landing page on most social networks. Write the right copy, include the link, and then post it.

YouTube is a completely different animal. While the description is a great place to promote your landing page similarly to how you would on other social networks, YouTube requires an in-video call-to-action.

At the end of my recent YouTube videos, I have been adding this CTA.

youtube call to action

It leads people to my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. In the future, I plan on promoting specific landing pages that are very relevant to the video topic.

People who make it to the end of your video appreciate the value you provided. That’s the exact moment you want to provide those viewers with the CTA.

#10: Appear On Other People’s YouTube Channels

Some YouTube channels allow guest contributions similar to guest posts. While these channels are hard to find, it is possible to do a guest video on someone else’s channel where you provide the CTA.

Tim Schmoyer of Video Creators provides this opportunity for people with YouTube tips to share. So far the Video Creators channel is the only channel I have found that allows for this type of collaboration.

#11: Create A Podcast With A CTA

If you checked out my May 2016 Performance Report, then you know that podcasting has taken up a large portion of my time lately.

I have learned all about its potential. Podcasting allows you to share your expertise in the form of audio. In a world fueled by content and video creation, audio is one of the lesser utilized methods of getting traffic.

And if you utilize it well, podcasting can bring in a massive amount of traffic. Just ask Pat Flynn 🙂

At the beginning and end of your podcast episodes, you can introduce several CTAs such as leaving a review and subscribing to the podcast.

The critical CTA to mention within all of your podcast episodes is a free offer relevant to that particular episode.

When you mention the free offer, make sure the link is easy for people to remember. This is important because podcasts are all audio unless your listeners are also reading through the show notes.

When Mike Stelzner asks for a review on iTunes, he refers to the link as socialmediaexaminer.com/itunes.

He does not refer to the link as https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-marketing-podcast/id549899114?mt=2&ls=1

Both lead to the same destination, but the first one is much easier to remember. Please have mercy on the person who must recite the longer link.

While this is an example that relates to podcast reviews, the same general rule also applies to landing pages.

#12: Write Guest Posts With The Optimized Author Bio

Writing guest posts on relevant blogs is a great way to get more traffic from people reading your guest posts, and you’ll get a high-value backlink.

Whenever you write a guest post, you’ll usually get a quick bio of yourself. Within 1-2 sentences, you need to let readers know where else they can find you on the web.

Within this quick bio, you can direct people over to your landing page. In my Business2Community bio, I provide the CTA to check out my landing page.

guest post CTA

#13: Promote Your Landing Page During Podcast Interviews

The way almost all podcast interviews work is that after all of the questions have been answered, the guest has the ability to tell listeners where they can find him/her on the web.

When you are a guest on a podcast episode, mention your landing page. I have bullet-points in front of me specifically for that question so I know what to say when I have to promote my landing page.

Wondering how to be a guest on more podcasts? Neil Patel shows you how in his article How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview

#14: Provide Perks

Give your subscribers certain perks (i.e. discounts and exclusive content) that people outside of your email list won’t get. Then, make it known to your blog visitors that only subscribers get these perks.

You can include these perks as incentives to get more of your visitors to subscribe.

#15: Design Matters

The way you present your free offer is just as important as the value of that free offer. If your free offer has a bad design, people won’t want to enter an email address.

One reality of life is that we all judge a book by its cover. If you don’t believe me, let me know which book you’d rather want.

bad ebook cover

good ebook cover

It doesn’t matter that the content for both of them is the same. The second one looks better. The better the design, the better the perceived value of your free offer.

All you have to do at that point is deliver on the value.

#16: Live Stream Your Message

Live streaming is the hot thing right now. I think it will stay hot for a very long time (if it ever cools down at all). The attractive lure to live streaming is that you get immediate results.

Promote a landing page with an easy to remember URL, and you’ll instantly get a bunch of subscribers if you have a large enough live audience.

On Periscope, you either need the easy to remember URL or a link to your landing page within your bio. For Blab and FB live however, you can drop a link straight into the chatting section for Blab and the comments section for Facebook.

If you feel too stressed to include those links during your live stream, hire a freelancer who will get the job done.

#17: Co-Create An Offer

I have created over 20 courses on Udemy. I created some of those courses alone while I created other courses with some help.

The courses I have co-created with other instructors have combined to bring in over 12,000 new students which I can email at any time. If I didn’t co-create some of my courses, I would have lost out on a lot of extra students.

Co-creation is not something that only exists within Udemy. You can co-create a free offer with someone else and share the subscribers who sign-up for the co-created free offer.

The cool part about this type of co-creation is that both you and the person who helped you create the free offer will be actively promoting the landing page. You’ll be helping each other out.

#18: Create A Product With An Affiliate/JV Program

This is an advanced method to grow your email list, but depending on who is a part of your program, you can get tens of thousands of new subscribers overnight.

To get at that level, you need a top-notch product and a lot of connections. But even if you don’t expect to get 10,000 subscribers in one day from your program, you could still get hundreds or thousands of subscribers that you wouldn’t have gotten on your own.

Leverage other people’s marketing for the growth of your brand at any moment you get. Your landing page will reach more people and you’ll be putting in the same amount of work you put in now.

#19: Publish A Kindle Book

When promoted correctly, a Kindle book can bring in a massive amount of email subscribers. Within all of your Kindle books, promote a free offer relevant to the book people are reading.

Here’s how Nick Loper promotes his free offer within the first page

kindle offer

Promoting your free offer on the first page is important because anyone can see that offer through Amazon’s free preview option.

If you are wondering how to drive sales to your free Kindle books, Nick Loper had a great podcast episode about that.

#20: Put Your Presentations Up On SlideShare

SlideShare is a social network that people either seem to not use at all or use it often.It takes time to create a quality SlideShare presentation while it only takes a few seconds to send out a quality tweet.

However, SlideShare presentations have viral potential if you make yours awesome and promote it to enough people.

Self-published author Steve Scott uses SlideShare to grow his email list.

For his traffic and income report from 2014, Steve included that he got 1,915 new subscribers from SlideShare within those three months. That’s an average of 638 new subscribers per month just from SlideShare.

Steve did hire a freelancer to help out with the presentations to save time, but it will be worth the money if you can get those new subscribers to buy some of your products.

#21: Interact With Your Audience

Interacting with your audience allows you to build trust. The people you interact with will be more likely to enter their email address when your free offer comes up.

Even if you only interact with your audience for five minutes each day, you are creating more trust. The trust results in more people promoting your content and subscribing for updates.

The more interactive your brand is, the more your audience will love you. If you want to take this level of interaction to the next level, you can create a podcast in which you answer your audience’s questions.

#22: Analyze Your Results

If you create landing pages, get subscribers, but then don’t analyze the results, you can be missing out on a huge opportunity.

Analyzing the results allows you to discover which of your landing pages have the best conversion rates and which ones you are promoting the most.

Let’s say you have two landing pages. Landing Page A has an 80% conversion rate. It’s the king of all landing pages. Landing Page B has a 5% conversion rate which puts it at rock bottom.

You promote them equally and they each get 100 daily visitors.

The mistake lies right there. You are promoting them equally.

If you have a landing page with an 80% conversion rate, you need to promote that landing page far more often than any of your other landing pages.

If one of my landing pages had a 5% conversion rate, I would stop promoting it or completely change that landing page’s design.

#23: Offer A Content Upgrade

A content upgrade is exclusive content or video content that is related to the blog post your visitor finished reading. The only way to get access to the content upgrade is to enter an email address.

Content upgrades are valuable because they are specific offers based on the specific content your visitors were reading. While content upgrades create extra work, they get you a lot of subscribers.

I learned this method from Brian Dean. He wrote a very informative article about the subject which you can read here.

#24: Sprinkle Relevant CTAs To Landing Pages Throughout Your Blog Posts

When you have a content upgrade available, you want to reference it at the beginning and the end of your blog posts. That way, your visitors are constantly reminded of your content upgrade.

If you don’t utilize content upgrades, then promote a free offer relevant to the content your visitor is reading.

#25: Write An Expert Round-Up Article

I got the idea from Codrut Turcanu who has written several expert round-up articles. These articles get a lot of traffic because people love sharing articles that they get featured in.

You ask several experts for their #1 tip in something. You choose the best tips and put them in your expert round-up article. Then you email the experts and let them know when the article gets published.

Ask them to promote it.

This strategy works for getting traffic, and more traffic in most cases equates to more subscribers. To ensure you get more subscribers, include a relevant content upgrade within the expert round-up article.

#26: Optimize Your Current Traffic

Let’s say you get 100 daily visitors on your blog and you get five of them to subscribe each day. What if you made a few changes on your blog to get 10 daily subscribers with that same audience.

In a rush to grow and get exposure, some bloggers make the mistake of forgetting to optimize the experience for the audiences they have already built.

#27: Advertise Your Landing Page

Facebook ads, AdWords, YouTube ads, and any other type of online ad can be used. Of course, not all online ads are equal, and some of them are downright difficult.

You should only begin to advertise your landing page once it is proven to make money. You should know how much money you make per subscriber so you can identify what a conversion is worth to you.

For instance, if each subscriber is worth an average of $2, and your Facebook ad gets you new conversions at a rate of $3 per subscriber, you need to stop that Facebook ad or make your average subscriber worth more than $3.

#28: Use Permission Marketing On Reddit

The Reddit community is fierce if you get on their wrong side, but if you get on their right side, you’ll get a lot of added exposure.

The key to Reddit is leveraging permission marketing. The Reddit community will come at you full force (don’t underestimate the Reddit community) if they think you are self-promoting.

If you ask for permission, you have a chance at going viral.

Eddy Azar wrote an awesome article on SumoMe about harnessing the marketing power of Reddit. He does a better job at explaining it than I could.

#29: Capitalize On The 404 Error Redirect

When people enter the wrong URL, they get sent over to the 404 error page. Some 404 error pages don’t bring people back to the blog. Others simply reference the homepage.

Why not reference your free offer. Your 404 error page can have a message like this:

“Sorry! What you were looking for does not exist, but I don’t want to leave you empty-handed…”

Then you promote your free offer, and BOOM! People who were once lost are now sent over to your landing page.

#30: Keep Your Current Subscribers On Your List

If you get 100 subscribers per day but you lose 100 subscribers per day, then you are not growing.

Part of growing your email list is providing an awesome experience for your current subscribers so they are more likely to stick around.

#31: Host A Free Giveaway

Giveaways are great for getting subscribers because few people would turn away the opportunity to get something just by entering an email address.

When these people subscribe, you present them with a free offer that everyone gets. Maybe it’s a report or a video series. Regardless of what you choose, everyone gets it.

Only a few people will actually win your giveaway. Using UpViral to reward points to the people who share your giveaway landing page will result in more people participating.

But you want the right people to participate. Don’t be the marketer who offers a $50 Amazon Gift Card. EVERYONE wants that. You’ll get a lot of subscribers, but most of them won’t be qualified.

And you have to pay for having those extra subscribers on your list.

To avoid that heartache, offer a giveaway that only the people in your niche would care about.

Matt McWilliams hosted one of the best free giveaways for getting targeted subscribers. He didn’t offer the Amazon Gift Card. He offered five free books all related to his niche.

book giveaway

People interested in reading those books participated in the giveaway by entering their email addresses and promoting the giveaway on their social networks for extra points.

People not interested in the books didn’t sign-up. Most if not all of the leads he got from that giveaway were targeted leads.

#32: Add A Link To Your Landing Page In Your Email Signature

Email is one of the top forms of communication today. Including your landing page link within your email signature can give it more exposure.

The impact of this method is dependent on how many emails you send in a given day. The more emails you send each day, the more subscribers you’ll get from this method.

With that said, avoid getting trapped in your inbox.

#33: Promotion Exchanges

The word exchange has a bad rap in the online world. Most of us are introduced to the word “exchange” in the online marketing sense when people either ask for link exchanges (even though Google doesn’t like that) or following a random, non-targeted person just for the follow back.

Promotion exchanges can put your landing page in front of a massive audience if you know how to use them. It is ideal to do a promotion exchange with someone who has a similar audience size as you. There are several promotion exchanges you can use:

Promote each other on your social networks

Send email blasts to your lists promoting the other person’s landing page

Interview each other on your podcasts (if you both have podcasts)

The opportunities are endless, but the second option works for growing your email list. By promoting someone else’s landing page to your email list, your landing page also gets more exposure. The final result is both of your email lists will grow.

Imagine how much bigger your email list would be if you did this with dozens of people.

#34: Collect Email Addresses At Events

The old-fashioned methods still work. Go to the event with a notepad, pen, and paper. On the piece of people, provide a section where people enter their email address.

Let people know on that piece of paper and through your conversation about the free offer these people will get upon writing down an email address.

You can segment all of these people on a custom list where you thank them for meeting you at the event.

#35: Host A Webinar

Webinars convert very well because they provide free value and are time sensitive. If you have a monthly webinar, your audience will begin to expect webinars.

Some people within that audience will not currently be subscribed, but when you host a webinar they really want to listen to, these people will subscribe.

#36: Host A Webinar With A Guest

Hosting a webinar with a guest is better than hosting a webinar on your own because the guest will do some of the promotion.

You’ll get the email addresses of some of your guest’s audience members. Have a monthly webinar with an influential guest, and you’ll be sure to see a big increase in your email list.

#37: Utilize Social Proof

Not everyone can leverage social proof equally, but leverage it whenever you can. Here’s an example of social proof in action.

Within this opt-in box, Buffer indicates that 42,023 people are on their email list. This social proof indicates Buffer is a popular blog, and popular blogs almost always have valuable content.

Buffer is no exception to the rule. If you haven’t checked out their blog yet, I recommend giving it a look…after you spend some time here though 🙂

#38: Write Longer Content

This is one of my longer blog posts. At a little over 4,000 words at this point, this blog post is the second longest blog post I have ever written.

Why spend so much time writing a single blog post? They increase the reader’s time on your blog. If this blog post only contained five tips, you would have been finished reading a few minutes ago.

However, I stuffed this one with methods up to the gills. It’s a power post which is bound to rank higher on search engines. The longer your blog post is, the more search engines love you.

Plus, I wanted to use Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique, so I knew this blog post had to be massive and filled with value.

#39: Include The Landing Page Link In Your Social Media Bios

This is an easy change you can make to get more subscribers. Most people link to their blog home pages within their social media bios.

Unless your home page is a beautiful landing page, that URL needs to be changed. Notice how in my Twitter bio, I am promoting a very specific page on my blog.

More specifically, I am promoting one of my landing pages.

#40: Make It Easier For People To Share Your Blog’s Content

[Tweet “50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List”]

See what I did there? I know that not everyone will tweet my blog post with that plugin. However, some people will, and that creates more exposure.

Don’t just stop with the social sharing buttons on the top or bottom of your blog posts. Include chances throughout your blog post for people to share your post.

I used the Click To Tweet plugin by CoSchedule to put in that tweet.

#41: Pay With A Post

I have not used this method myself, but I hear it’s powerful.

The way pay with a post works is that visitors can only read some of your blog post. The rest of it gets blocked.

The only way people can get access to the rest of the blog post is by sharing that blog post on one of their social media accounts.

That’s how you get the name: Pay With A Post.

The website I recommend based on my research (but not implementation) is Pay With A Tweet. Pay With A Tweet has expanded to include other posting options in addition to tweeting.

#42: Build Relationships With Influencers

Building relationships with influencers helps out in the long-term. If you create a product with a joint venture program, you will know several influencers in advance who would be willing to help you out.

You can also host webinars with influencers as guests, and some of them may promote your content a few times each week on their social media accounts.

Having a relationship with an influencer gives you the potential to spread your message to the people within that influencer’s audience.

Some influencers will help you more than others, but any extra visitor you can get should be highly appreciated.

#43: Include An Opt-In Box At Your Blog’s Footer

Ever scroll to the bottom of a blog post? Maybe you wanted to go to the next page and see the next batch of blog posts, but you scrolled down too quickly.

Maybe you were looking for the blogger’s contact me page.

Some people make it to the blog’s footer, and within that footer, you can include an opt-in box. The Buffer Blog’s opt-in box which I showed you earlier is at the footer of their blog.

Some of the people who make it to your blog’s footer read a bunch of your blog posts to get there. These people will be more likely to subscribe since they stayed on your blog for a longer period of time.

#44: Improve Your Homepage

The homepage is one of the most visited pages on your blog. Most homepages lead to a bunch of blog posts. While this is a great way to get more blog readers in the short-term, it’s a disaster for the long-term.

Your homepage needs to make your blog easy to navigate while promoting a can’t miss CTA.

On Pat Flynn’s homepage, the CTA is to click the “Start Here” button. Scrolling down will reveal more CTAs on his homepage.

Pat Flynn Homepage

Seth Godin took a simplistic approach with his homepage. There are several CTAs, and if you have been reading Seth’s content long enough, you’ll probably click on all of those CTAs.

seth's blog

Both of these homepages include CTAs and easy navigation throughout the blog. Seth’s homepage includes a subscribe option and Pat’s homepage includes a subscribe option towards the bottom.

#45: Create Urgency Around Some Of Your Offers

If you have enough landing page, test creating offers that are time sensitive. Webinars are a great example of this.

People know the webinar will be packed with value and that it won’t be up forever. Do that with one of your free offers.

You won’t get consistent growth, but you’ll get a spike of growth from that one landing page. Your other landing pages can bring in the consistent growth.

#46: Republish Your Blog Posts Elsewhere

This method is designed to get more exposure for you and your content. Including your landing page link within the byline will help you get more subscribers directly from your republished content.

As your republished blog posts appear on more blogs, people will remember you. Some of them may decide to search for you on Google or social media and come to your blog.

Provide these people with an enticing offer and BOOM, you have more subscribers.

#47: Make The Free Offer Better Than Anything Else Out There

I believe this is an underrated tip that can be better understood with a comparison to blog posts.

There are billions of blog posts, and chances are millions of those blog posts are about growing your email list.

In an attempt to make this blog post stand out from the crowd, I went all-in and spend hours of my time on this blog post.

Are you spending hours of your time crafting your free offer? Are you truly going all-in?

There are some blog posts that would dwarf over most of the free offers someone with an email address could get access to.

Create free offers that would dwarf over any blog post imaginable.

Combine that with excellent design, and you’ll have an offer that people won’t be able to resist.

#48: Create An Infographic With Your Landing Page Link

Infographics have the potential to go viral. This is old news, but how you set up the infographic determines the success you get out of it.

One strategy you can use with your infographic is to include the link to your landing page at the bottom of the infographic.

Most people just include the link to their blog homepage, but the link to your landing page (or a homepage that functions similarly to a landing page) would be better.

#49: Waiting List For Your Upcoming Product

More people than ever are launching their courses to massive success. Depending on the people in your joint venture program combined with your own efforts, it’s possible to make seven figures in a few weeks.

But what happens after the launch? What happens to the people who missed out and didn’t hear anything about the launch?

After the launch, any pages related to the launch become redirect links.

The redirect links lead to a landing page that encourages people to subscribe so they can be notified when the product is available again.

There’s also a free offer included to increase the desire someone would have to provide his/her email address.

#50: Make Your Blog Load Faster

If the landing page takes 30 seconds to load, are you sticking around?

Probably not, and a landing page that’s one second slower is bound to get fewer conversions.

Patience is a virtue, but almost none of us have it. In certain scenarios, we want to achieve or get access to something immediately.

To Amazon, site speed time is critical. According to an article from Fast Company, Amazon loses $1.6 billion if the site loads one second slower.

You won’t suffer that type of loss if your landing page is one second slower, but you’ll definitely get fewer conversions.

I wrote a blog post about boosting your blog speed. I promise it isn’t as long as this one. In fact, it may take you less than a minute to read.

In Conclusion

Growing your email list is the best thing you can do for your online business. That’s where the money is.

Growing your email list involves creating a bunch of free offers and promoting those free offers to as many people as you possibly can.

You’ll have to do most of the work on your own, but it’s always good to leverage the help of other marketers when you can.

The next time you consider an opportunity or are utilizing a platform, ask yourself this question: How will I use this to grow my email list?

If you can’t think of a way a particular opportunity or platform will help you grow your email list, ignore it or find a way to make it grow your email list.

What are your tips for growing an email list? Did one of these tips resonate with you the most? What are your thoughts on email marketing? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Get More Sales With A Custom Thank You Page

May 31, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Every time someone enters their email address into your opt-in box, they get sent over to a thank you page. Most thank you pages let people know how they can access the freebie they were promised.

However, people are incredibly savvy these days. Getting access to any freebie is just a matter of going to the inbox and reading the automated welcome email.

So why do we continue providing something on the thank you page that people will get in their inbox anyway?

Beats me. I do this for some of my landing pages to this day because of all of the social proof the thank you pages have received. My newer landing pages redirect people to something very, very different.

And I make more money because of this decision. Watch the video to learn more.

[Tweet “How To Get More Sales With A Custom Thank You Page.”]