October 6, 2007

Email Marketing Tips - How To Start Your Own Opt In List

Tip! AVOID the Word FREE in Your Message: Why, because the spam filters will get you. While FREE might be the most attractive word in email marketing, it’s also one of those that spam filters will likely detect to block your message.

Having your own opt in list is essential if you want to succeed on the internet. Its common knowledge that email marketing is one of the most reliable ways of generating consistent free targeted traffic for your website.

Once you have your own responsive opt in list it can open up a variety of different opportunities, such as selling advertising space and setting up joint ventures with other list owners.

The first thing you need to do is collect email addresses from your visitors and you can do this by offering a free report or starting a newsletter using an auto responder, allowing you to set up a series of messages that will be sent out automatically on your behalf on a timeframe you specify.

Tip! Don’t be afraid to go long. In the early days of email marketing, short copy was the rule.

Its important to choose the most reliable auto responder at the start because it can be very stressful and time consuming to transfer your opt in list from one place to another.

For best results you should not use a free auto responder service because advertisements will be added to all your outgoing emails. You will have no control over which ads are shown and this will distract your subscribers and dramatically reduce the response rates to your emails.

You can either pay a monthly fee and use a third party hosted auto responder service like Aweber or Get Response, or you can pay a one time fee and install an auto responder script like Auto Response Plus on your domain.

Tip! My Email Marketing messages were boring and sleep inducing (which is not really the ego strokes I am looking for).

The problem with auto responder scripts is that the number of subscribers you can store will be limited depending on how much disk space you have with your hosting plan, and you will also need to backup your list on a regular basis in case a problem occurs and all of the information is lost.

It’s much easier and safer to use a third party hosted auto responder service because you will not have to worry about installing a script and your subscribers will be stored securely on a dedicated server with no limits.

It’s essential that you focus on one specific topic for your opt in list as this will dramatically increase your response rates. You need to create a landing page consisting of a short sales letter that encourages visitors to subscribe, and a subscription form that allows visitors to enter their name and email address. You should also offer some quality bonus gifts to increase your conversion rates.

Tip! Start using a permission-based email marketing software that allows you to easily create newsletters, automatically manage subscribes, unsubscribes, bounces, and view reporting statistics like opens and clickthroughs.

Double opt in lists are becoming more popular because they provide extra security as subscribers must confirm their email address, but many people will forget to complete this confirmation which results in fewer active subscribers so you may prefer to use the single opt in feature.

Once you have set up your landing page and follow up messages you will need to start sending visitors to your website. Submitting content to article directories and writing press releases are the most effective ways of generating unlimited free targeted traffic.

Tip! More often, boring Email Marketing messages get put right into the delete box.

This article was written by Simon Akers who is the editor of the Marketing Oasis newsletter, a free internet marketing ezine packed with tips to help you succeed and increase your profits: http://www.MarketingOasis.com

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