e-Course Day 6 Email
[DIY Marketing] Let’s talk about building your marketing database/list this weekend
Hi and welcome to day 6 of the Entrepreneurs
30-day Do-it-Yourself Marketing e-Course! Thanks for being
here for the weekend. I know that some entrepreneurs take
weekends off, but many of us just can’t get away too long from a
growing business. So, with that, let’s continue!
Oh, and if you just signed up, you can see the course info we’ve
already covered right here:
http://www.diymarketingmonth.com/e-course-email-recap/
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“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
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Part of writing this e-course has been an excercise in ‘eating my
own dog food’, meaning that I’m actually doing all the marketing
tasks that I set out to do years ago and am seeing the results that
I expected. Imagine that.
Building my own house email list was one of those things that’s
been on my list since I started doing things on the web back in
1996 while I was teaching HTML to seniors in college. I knew the
value of list building as I’d always had a mailing list for my
small business that I ran through high school, but that was pre-email
marketing days.
Fast forward to today, and I can’t think of too many businesses that
wouldn’t benefit from some concentrated effort on building your house
email contact list.
Contrary to some of the popular marketing press, email marketing is
NOT dead and you need to be building your email list, now. You don’t
have to commit to sending out a newsletter every week, or even have a
newsletter in mind yet, but you do have to start building your list.
What’s So Important About the House List?
Most customers that are human follow some natural processes in making
commercial decisions. Human decision processes involve something
called the ‘hierarchy of effects’ and in order to move people through
the hierarchy, you need to be communicating with them. Enter your
house email marketing list.
So, How Do I Get Started?
We’ll share more tomorrow on the specifics of list building, but for
today, let’s focus on the important elements of:
1) Where to house the list (what service to use)
2) Mapping your email collection touchpoints
What Email Service Should I Use?
It’s no longer enough to fire up a spreadsheet and start collecting
emails in there. Ideally, you’re already aligned with an email
marketing service that offers an email collection form that you can
put on your website, blog, etc. I’ve used nearly a dozen different
email marketing services in my career and my two favorites are Aweber
(http://www.aweber.com) and Campaign Monitor (http://www.campaignmonitor.com)
For the purpose of your email list, I’m going to recommend Aweber. Why?
Well, Aweber is very strict about email opt-in. In that everyone that’s
on your list has to have ‘confirmed’ their status to say “yes, I want
to be on your list”. Just as all of you had to, as we’re using Aweber
for this course. Aweber has a dark side in that they WILL NOT allow
you to just ‘upload’ emails from other sources unless you can confirm
that you’ve followed the same riorous ‘double opt-in’ process. Most
email marketers do no do this, and thus it’s easier to start on Aweber,
which is a very, very capable email marketing tool, as you’ll have the
‘gold standard’ in opt-in lists.
Where Do I Collect Emails From?
First, take this weekend to setup your account and then build the ‘email
collection form’ that Aweber (or whichever provider you choose) allows
you to place on your website. You want to get that email signup form
onto every page of your site ASAP. The advantage here is that you’ll
be removed from any data admin work, as when people register for the
newsletter they’ll be dropped right into the database.
Secondly, you’re going to want to do a ’soft invitation email’ to everyone
in your contact list to invite them to signup for your newsletter. I know,
it’s tempting, but you don’t want to just add them to the list if you’re
trying to build a truly robust, high-return email marketing list.
***** ACTION SUMMARY *****
1. Find an email marketing provider that you like. I recommend Aweber
(http://www.aweber.com) and sign up for an account today.
2. Get familiar with the account. Aweber, and most others, have some
great training material ranging from videos to forums that can help
you get off the ground quickly.
2. Brainstorm a list of all of the places that you can collect emails
from in the next 3 months. Start working toward driving those people
to your email newsletter signup page on your website
***** RESOURCES *****
>> Lyris – Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success
http://www.lyris.com/resources/email-marketing/gurus-guide/
Tomorrow we’ll cover 30 ways to add subscribers to your house
email marketing list!
Well, that’s all for now! Be on the lookout for next lesson
tomorrow morning!
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If you would like to learn more about MarketingSavant’s marketing
strategy, thought leadership or social media services, where you
work directly with me to build your business through strategic
marketing, go to:
http://www.marketingsavant.com/diymarketing
I’ve created a special set of offerings just for DIY Marketing
e-course members.
And, as always… think big and market well!
Yours truly,
Dana VanDen Heuvel
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MarketingSavant(TM)
Leading Through Thought
Social Media // Thought Leadership Marketing
www.marketingsavant.com
dana@marketingsavant.com
Twitter: danavan
888-989-7771
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