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This is the next episode from our Core Concepts Series – featuring the core online necessities you need to build a successful blog that makes money.
As with all our core concepts episodes, a written summary of the episode is below. But we always advise you listen to the full podcast as the concepts are explained in greater depth. Not everything makes it to the show notes. Plus, the audio is more fun 🙂
In the Email Marketing Podcast:
- 3 common mistakes that are slowing your email list growth.
- 4 steps to keeping your emails going direct to the inbox, not to spam.
- Email Marketing expert Tom Tate from Aweber discusses how email is a more effective way to connect and sell to your audience than social media.
- Plus, we explain the ESP (Email Service Provider) we use to manage and automate email to 4,000 subscribers across multiple lists.
Blog Startup Cheat Sheet (Part 2)
This cheat sheet accompanies episodes 060, 062, 064 of the travel freedom podcast.
It outlines the questions and process associated with:
-
Getting your first visitors with SEO
-
Keeping them coming back with a great email list
-
All the best WordPress plugins for improving your blog and user
experience
Take the fast track to setting up your blog and download the free cheat sheets now
You will also have access to all previous cheat sheets, and new cheat sheets as they are released.
Core Concepts Summary Notes for Email Marketing Podcast
How much better is email for connecting with followers than social media?
74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications by email.
Users on Facebook and twitter do not have the mindset to buy, they are there to socialise with other people.
Getting a Facebook like is minimal commitment for a user, and hence generally lower engagement. Giving out an email address suggests they really are willing to hear more from you. Social users could be considered closer to casual followers, email subscribers are serious followers and more likely potential customers.
Organic engagement on Facebook or twitter is typically from 0.5% to 2% for any post. Email open rates typically fall between 10% and 50% depending on the quality and relevance of your emails to your audience.
66% of all consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.
Tweet This“Don’t build your empire on rented property” – If you put all your eggs in the social media or SEO basket, if google or your social media platforms change their algorithms, you could lose a lot of your business overnight.
With email, you always have those email addresses so you can always contact those followers directly, at any time, no matter what changes happen to other platforms on the internet.
Why email list management software is essential to growing an online business
There are quite a few email management services out there. We use Aweber because it is optimised of the needs of small business and bloggers. But, why do you need any sort of email management system at all?
Deliverability – Aweber works to maintain strong credibility with email clients like Gmail so that emails they bulk send are less likely to get sent to spam.
Convenience – Aweber manages all of the emails and automates your mail-out process.
Stats – You can measure how many people open and click through links in your emails. This helps you judge which emails and subject headings are most successful.
Segmentation – You can send emails just to certain members on your lists. You can segment to only send to users who have not opened email in a long time, to re-engage them. You can send to subscribers from certain countries. You can even send a follow up to users who clicked through a link to learn more about a product, but who didn’t buy it.
3 biggest mistakes bloggers make with growing an email list
The biggest mistake is not having email marketing at all… All the traffic you generate, those visitors leave and you’ll see very few of them again, ever. Say goodbye to those leads!
Here are the 3 biggest mistakes bloggers make when trying to get email subscribers, and what to do about them.
1. No email sign up incentive (bribe)
“Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you more emails” is not an incentive – it’s an anti incentive. Unless you write the best, most compelling content on the internet, simply offering to send someone with a busy inbox, yet more emails, is not a good reason for them to hand over their email address.
You need an ebook, helpful video, or other premium content that would be of interest to readers in your niche.
2. Your sign up incentive is too long or not relevant enough.
Your sign up bribe should be short and easy to consume. It should also be relevant to the type of subscribers you want to collect. So if you are selling a course on travel writing, having a signup bribe of a gallery of your best Instagram photos would be encouraging people who like photos to sign up, rather than people who like writing.
3. Not having an email sign-up landing page or visible way to opt-in either within your posts or at the end of them.
If it is not really obvious how a reader can sign up… They won’t sign up. You should have a clear incentive attached to a form where people can enter their email address.
This could be half way down your article at a strategic point where the reader may be thinking your sign up incentive would be of use to them.
It could be at the end of each post as the next “step” users can take to learn more about what you can help them with.
You should also have a dedicated “landing page” (Refer back to https://travelfreedompodcast.com/056 for more info on implementing landing pages) that explains clearly the benefits of subscribing and what the user will get, as well as giving them an easy form to subscribe with.
We use optimizepress to build landing pages and insert signup forms into articles. We also recommend magic action box to put form in articles as well as Opt-in-forms though these plugins cannot build landing pages.
We use SumoMe to manage our exit pop up, that helps us funnel traffic to our landing page before they leave the site.
Hello Bar sits at the top of your site and people can subscribe at any time from the bar that follows them down the page. (there may be newer plug-ins available)
Sidebar signups are far less effective than they used to be and often do not show on mobile devices.
Double/Confirmed opt-in (COI) vs Single opt in?
Confirmed opt-in sends an email with a confirmation link to any user who subscribes. They have to go click this link in order to be fully subscribed to the email list.
This prevents accidental sign ups, fake users etc. But also ensure that the user is genuinely keen to be on the list, as they make the effort to go click the confirmation link.
The downside is, if the confirmation link goes to their spam folder, they may never click it. They may get distracted and forget to go find that email. Then you lose that subscriber.
The alternative is single opt in. You are likely to have lower open rates and engagement overall with this method. You also have a higher risk of being reported as a spammer. Which can be harmful to your list.
But, if you make an effort to clean up your list and remove inactive users, this can reduce losing subscribers from the get go, while also maintaining a good subscriber list of active followers.
Aweber recommends Confirmed Opt-in as best practice. But advances users may want to test single opt in.
What to include in your welcome email
You should have an automated welcome email that goes out to all new subscribers. This should not only connect well with your readers so they will want to open future emails, but also help reduce the chance of your emails being seen by gmail or hotmail as spam or promotions.
Unique and personalised greeting
Be genuine and personal. Let the reader learn something about you so they get to know you. Be memorable.
Request to whitelist
Directly ask the subscriber to add your email address to the whitelist. Give them a reason why they should take the time to do so. Such as: If you don’t add me, you will likely miss the rest of the free content I’ll be sending out.
Get them to reply to the email
Request them to reply to the email with some information about themselves – A very simple question that they can send an answer to you about. Not only does this help you get to know your subscribers, it also tells their email client that they are replying to someone they want to receive an email from, so future emails are more likely to get through.
Explanation of expectations for future emails
Let them know what you’ll be sending, and how often you’ll be sending it. This sets expectations as well as giving them an incentive to look out for your emails, if it is content they are going to want.
We Use Aweber to Manage our Email Lists
We now manage almost 4,000 subscribers across multiple email lists using Aweber. It does everything we need with a system that is very affordable for small businesses.
Test Aweber FREE for 30 days using this link.
This is an affiliate link. We’ve been using Aweber for 2 years and continue to send all our email through it. Affiliate links help support the podcast. So if you are thinking of testing out Aweber, please use our link, rather than searching through google.
Blog Startup Cheat Sheet Checklist (Part 2)
This cheat sheet and checklist accompanies episodes 060, 062, 064 of the travel freedom podcast.
It outlines the questions and process associated with:
-
Getting your first visitors with SEO
-
Keeping them coming back with a great email list
-
All the best WordPress plugins for improving your blog and user
experience
Take the fast track to setting up your blog and download the free cheat sheet now
You will also have access to all previous cheat sheets, and new cheat sheets as they are released.
Weblinks from Email Marketing Podcast
World Nomads Insurance – Specifically designed for digital nomads, flashpackers, adventure & long term travellers – Get a 5% Discount with our coupon code: FOOD5
Aweber  – our guest today Tom Tate is an email marketing expert for Aweber
Bluehost – The hosting platform we use to host our blogs – get a discount with this link, only $3.95 per month.
Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income
Ryan Deiss – digital marketer
Previous Core Concepts Episodes:
Building Authority and a professional, self hosted blog:
https://travelfreedompodcast.com/052
The importance of landing pages to get email opt-ins:
https://travelfreedompodcast.com/056
Developing an effective, modern online brand:
https://travelfreedompodcast.com/058
Optimizepress – the system we use to build all of our landing pages and opt-in forms
Become part of the Travel Freedom community on twitter.
Tweet suggestions to @mytravelfreedom
#travelfreedom #travelmonday #moneymonday
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DISCLAIMER: We are affiliated with, World nomads, Bluehost, Aweber, Optimizepress – companies we love and support. Some other links may also be affiliate link – these links help support the podcast financially. All our opinions, as always, are our own.
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