Building Opt-in Mailing Lists

Introduction to Email Marketing

Are You Ready to Multiply Your Conversions? Today you are going to learn about autoresponders and why you should use them on your website. Top Internet Marketers from around the world use autoresponders on many of their websites to collect their visitors names and email addresses. Having the ability to send an e-mail to subscribers of your mailing list is a very power marketing strategy that can increase your sales.

By adding an autoresponder on www.wealthyaffiliate.com, we
increased our sign up rate by over 100%

This purpose of this tutorial is to walk you through the procedure outlining how to get an autoresponder setup on your website. Building mailing list that is relevant to your product is a very powerful asset to your business as you can send out notices, service announcements, tips, techniques, promotions, or anything related to your product. You will also have the ability to cross-promote other products of a similar nature. Mailing lists allow you to have continued contact with your subscribers (potentially for a lifetime), which is a very powerful position to be in.

The term "opt-in" means that someone has elected to join mailing list by choice. This differs from SPAM email because the owners of the email addresses are giving you consent to send them information via email. SPAM email marketing is unethical while opt-in email marketing is ethical as your subscribers have given you permission to send them email. Do not confuse the two. Email marketing is 100% ethical.

Lets Get Started...

First you need to focus on getting setup with an autoresponder. There are many autoresponders available online, however we have found that Aweber is the best service available. This entire course is going to be based on Aweber screen shots, functionality, and tools and we highly recommend using them. Aweber is a paid service and free autoresponder services should be avoided. If you are serious about email marketing, you should have an autoresponder service like Aweber.

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Visit: www.Aweber.com and click on the "ORDER" button at the top right hand side of the screen and enter your information. Remember, $19.95 per month is very little to spend on such a service. If you are skeptical about using mailing lists, then sign up for one month to prove it to yourself that this really works.

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Once you have signed up to Aweber you will be sent an e-mail with your login details, and you will be able to log into your Aweber control panel right away. When you enter into your account you may be overwhelmed by what you see, but don't worry! This course is going to walk you through everything that you need to do to start building your e-mail list from your existing website.

Something To Think About...

Everyday we log into many Adwords accounts of WA members, many times simply to look over things to make sure that no BIG mistakes are being made. Also, we help tweak the accounts by making suggestions. To be honest, many members are already making money, but are looking for ways to increase their conversions. Obviously, using tools like My-Linker.com and tweaking your landing page can help optimize your campaigns, but one sure way to increase your business is by building a mailing list. Obviously there are a lot of techniques that can be used to maximize the performance of your email marketing efforts, but the first step is to get signed up to an autoresponder.

We have been testing our mailing list techniques for quite a long time and we have some amazing techniques that can help you achieve over 80% sign up rates to your mailing lists. Check out this small example:

http://program.beatingadwords.com

This squeeze page is converting at an amazing rate of 80%. It means that 80% of people that come to this page can be contacted in the future.

People have Adwords accounts that are generating nearly 500 clicks per day at only 5 cents a click. If a form was added to collect mailing list subscriptions, and achieved a rate of say 50%, 500 clicks per day could turn into 250 mailing list subscriptions. That's 250 people that you can sell your products to. Perhaps you only get 50 clicks a day to your website. You could still get 20-25 people signed up to your list. After one month you could have 750 people who you could send a promotional email to! If you convert at 1%, it means that you could instantly make 7-8 sales from one broadcast email. Here's something else to think about. If you setup a follow-up email that is sent instantly when a user signs up to your mailing list, you are able to promote your product even after they leave your page. A promotional email would be waiting for them in their inbox. If 1% of those people make a purchase that is another 7-8 sales per month.

If you were promoting Beating Adwords at $30 / Sale, you could generate an extra 15 sales / month from your existing website, just by having an autoresponder. That's an extra $450.00 Cash in your pocket on top of the sales that you already get directly from your website. For less than $20 / month you can get an autoresponder. You really can't beat that ROI! Don't forget that you can sell other products to your mailing list at a later date. Your potential to make money grows as your mailing list does.

Signing-up For Your Free Account

In the last step you learned about autoresponders and how they can positively affect website sales and allow you to build a list of long term customers. Hopefully there is no doubt in your mind that adding an auto responder to your existing web page is going to make you more money. To follow along with the remainder of this tutorial you are going to need an Aweber account. If you missed the first part of the course, here is a link to register to Aweber.

www.Aweber.com

Today we're not going to be talking about theory or benefits, we are going to show you how to set up first mailing list. Aweber can be very difficult to navigate due to the size of the system and the large amount of functions that you can carry out within it. Below are the steps that you need to take to setup your first mailing list.

Steps to Setup a Mailing List

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Log into your Aweber account by visiting http://www.aweber.com/login.htm. Enter your Login Name and Password. Your Aweber control panel will look like the screen shot to the right. You will see a default mailing list that has been created for you. It will look something like this: default285252. We are going to modify this list so that we can use it to start collecting subscribers. To do this you need to click on the tab along the top that says "List Settings. This will bring up a new window that has the details of the list and a forms to customize it.

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Upon clicking on the "List Settings" tab, you will be taken to a screen that looks similar to the page on the right. Enter the necessary information for your new mailing list. You need to enter the list name, description, company name, and website url, however logo url and divider HTML color can be left blank. In the Autoresponder Admin Emails, you nee to have at least one email address that will be associated with all mail that you sent out.

Now that you have your first email list setup, you are almost ready to start collecting emails. We say "almost' because there are a few more steps that you need to take in order to take full advantage of your mailing list. In the next section we are going to set-up a feature that is very important, and can often times determine whether or not your mailing list will make you more sales. Feel free to browse around in your Aweber account, even create some new lists if you want, but please do not modify this list.

Don't Forget To Follow Up

Are you getting excited about implementing your mailing list on your website? You should be because you are adding another marketing technique that works very well and can make you a TON of money in both the long and short run. Your previous lessons have explained the benefits of having an autoresponder on your website, and how to set up your first mailing list. The previous steps haven't taken much time to complete as they are fairy straight forward. Today's lesson is going to take you a little bit of time to complete because it involves writing a follow-up email messaging sequence.

Follow-up messages are very important because many times they allow you to automate your mailing sequences and will make your email marketing campaigns much easier to manage. If someone signs up to your mailing list, they are showing a certain level of interest. If this interest is high enough they and you provide them with value as well as promotions, you are going to be able to monetize your list like crazy. Below are the steps that you need to take to setup your first follow-up message. These messages get sent immediately when someone subscribes to your list.

Follow-Up Messages

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Log into your aweber account by visiting http://www.aweber.com/login.htm. Enter your Login Name and Password. Your Aweber control panel will look like the screen shot to the right. If you set up your list as described in Lesson 2, you will see your list name this time instead of the default list name. With your list selected in the top "Select List" box, you need to click on the "Messages" tab.

2	Upon clicking on the "Messages" tab, you will be taken to a screen that looks similar to the page on the right. In the middle of the screen you will see a link that says "Create Message 1". Click on this link.

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When you click on the "Create Message 1" button you will be taken to the Message manager - Edit screen. This is where you are going to add your follow message text. You will see 2 main boxes, one that says "Plain Text Message" and one that says "HTML Message". It is very important that you copy you sent out your message in both Plain Text and HTML as not all email servers allow HTML. You will also see a box at the top that allows you to select a template for your message. For the purposes of this lesson, we are not going to use a template, however you can customize the way your messages look by using the pre-built templates. There is also a drop down box that allows you to "Merge Personalization Fields". This allows you to ad user information to the e-mail that you send. For instance, you may choose to insert the code: {!name}. This will add the name of the subscriber to the e-mail wherever this code is placed..

When you are finished writing your follow-up message, make sure that you add a link to your website, or perhaps even an affiliate link to the e-mail. You need to provide reference back to you site so that your visitors know where to go if they want to make a purchase. It also helps to add text links within the text of your message. This can drastically improve the click-through ratio from your follow-up message to your website. It is also a very good idea to have the box that reads "Click Tracking" checked as Aweber can calculate how many times your links within your website have been clicked on. This is an important piece of data for analyzing the effectiveness of your linking and your mail-outs in general.

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Click the "Save" button and you will be taken to a page that looks similar to the one on the right. Notice that there is a menu title that says "Spam?". If In this case, our spam reading is very low at 0.2, however if Aweber thinks that your message will be caught by SPAM filters, it will tell you. You can click on the 0.2 for an explanation on why your message is rated this way. You may need to follow the instructions and make changes to your message in order to lower your SPAM rating. If your spam score is below the 3.0 limit, your message will most likely get through to most of your subscribers. There is one more menu title that you should be aware of. Clicking on the "Test" button will allow you to send yourself a test email so that you can see how it looks when it arrives as an email. We highly suggest testing your message immediately after saving it to check for spelling and grammar errors.

Once you have saved your first follow-up message, your are almost ready to start collecting e-mails. To do this though, you'll need to add some code to your website in order to have the subscription form show up. In the next step, we are going to put everything together and add the sign-up form to your website. This will allow you to start building your list!

Adding the Sign Up Form

Lets get started right away because after this portion of the tutorial you are going to have a fully functional mailing list form on your website and be able to start collecting emails right away. In order to continue today, you are going to need access to the HTML code on your landing page. If you are even just slightly familiar with HTML today shouldn't take you very long as Aweber makes it easy for you.

Creating a Sign Up Form

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Log into your aweber account by visiting http://www.aweber.com/login.htm. Enter your Login Name and Password. Your Aweber control panel will look like the screen shot to the right. If you set up your list as described in Lesson 2, you will see your list name this time instead of the default list name. With your list selected in the top "Select List" box, you need to click on the "Leads" tab, and then click "Web Form Generator".

2	Upon clicking on the "Web Form Generator " tab, you will be taken to a screen that looks similar tot he page on the right. In the middle of the screen you will see a link that says "Create new web form ". Click on this link.

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You will be taken to the "Web Form Generator - Edit" screen. This is where you are going to set up your form for people to enter their names and e-mail addresses. At the top of the "Edit Web Form" section, you need to enter a name for your form. This name will only be seen by you, so use a name that makes sense to you. The second section is very important. You need to choose the TYPE of form. For this demonstration we are going to create an "In-Line" form (which is embedded within your page content), however you can choose to use pop-ups if you would like. Both work very well.

In the "Headline" section you need to write something to entice your visitors to sign up to your list. There are probably hundreds of different techniques that you can use here, however we are gong to focus on one only. Your headline needs to be relevant to what you are promoting on your site. If you were promoting a product that focuses on making money line, your headline may be: "Sign Up And We'll Tell You a Secret That Will Make You a $500/day Internet Marketer!"

A headline like this also needs to be similar to your follow-up message. If you are going to tell people how to make $500/day working form home, you may want to provide an explanation of your "$500/day strategies" in your follow-up message and then recommend some products that will help the person achieve this.

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Once you have the heading sorted out, you need to specify what Input Fields you want to use. Place a check in the box next to the field you want to include. We recommend collecting your visitors names, and email addresses, and making both of those fields required to sign up to the mailing list. The screenshot on the right is an example of how you can set up your form.

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Save your web form and you will be taken to a screen similar to the one on the right. Click on the Highlighted button "Get HTML". Clicking on this button will bring up a window with the necessary code for your website. We want to grab the "Javascript" version of the code that will look something like this: We're only one step away from adding this form to our website!

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Open your landing page HTML code and paste the Javascript from Step 5 on your page. You'll want to make sure that you add the code between the Tags on your page or if you are in Site Rubix, you will need to switch to "HTML" editing mode and add the code. Wherever you put the Javascript code is where the inline form will show up on your web page. The screen shot to the right is an example of what the form may look like.

Now all you need to do is save your web page file, and upload it to your server. You will now be able to start building your mailing list. To fully optimize the effectiveness of an opt-in form, you will need to test the web form in different locations on your page. You can also change this web form so that is a pop-up within Aweber. Now that you have learned the basics of how to create a mailing list and how to add it to your page, you have the necessary info to play around with the setup of the page. We highly suggest that you test in-line forms VS pop-ups to see which works better for your landing page.

The next section of this tutorial is going to outline how to utilize your list to make $1000's

Using Your Mailing List to Make Money

Now we are going talking about broadcast email messages. A broadcast email is also known as an email "blast" and essentially what you are doing is sending a timely email out to your entire list (or a portion of your list) to provide them with news, information, or promotions.

A broadcast email is similar to a follow-up message, but instead of having it sent at a particular time (for instance, as soon as someone signs up to your list), you can send broadcast messages out at anytime you want. After time your mailing list will grow and hopefully you will be able to get thousands of people signed up to your lists. Top marketers have thousands of people on their mailing lists. Marketers who have been building their lists for years can have 100,000's of people on their mailing lists. When you reach this point, the potential is endless because every single broadcast that you send out is going to earn you a significant amount of money!

With 100,000 people only one button click away, it is easy to see how you can turn an email list into a gold mine each and every month. With this being said, you DO NOT want to send out emails that simply sell products. In order to keep your subscribers from "unsubscribing" you need to send out quality content. We have tested many different techniques. We've sent out guides, tutorials, tips, e-books, how to's, and other information in our broadcast emails, just so we can keep our users interested in what we have to say and keep them reading our emails. Every once in a while we send out a pure promotional email that can generate literally thousands of dollars - tens of thousands in some cases!

Today you are going to learn how to send out a broadcast email to your subscribers. Yesterday we added the web form to a website so that visitors can join the mailing list, so in time, your website traffic will turn into a large list of potential customers. When they join your list, you are going to need to know how to send out a broadcast email, and the next steps will show you how to do this.

Sending a Broadcast Email

1	Log into your Aweber account and select the list that you want to create the broadcast for. So far we only have 1 list, so it will be selected by default. Next, mouse-over on the "Messages" Tab and then click "Broadcast Edit".

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Upon Clicking on the "Create New Broadcast" button you will be taken to the Broadcast Email to Mailing List section. This section is EXACTLY the same as the follow-up screen, so you should already be familiar with this page and how to use it. Write your email in both Plain Text and HTML, and click Save.

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When you click Save, you will be taken a screen where you will be able to view your SPAM rating. If it is over 3.0, you will need to modify your message to improve upon this. The you will want to test your email. Once you have tested your email, you can click the "Queue Now" button and add your email to the send queue. Once you send your message, you will have approximately 5 minutes to stop the send from going out (unless you specific a time other than the current time). The send queue is very fast, so before you click the "Queue Now" button, make sure your message is properly formatted.

Broadcast Messages are very important as you can turn each email into thousands of dollars, however, you do not want to become SPAMMY, and send out too many emails. It is sometimes a good idea to tell your subscribers up front that they will receive weekly updates and information from you so that they do not consider it spam.

Conclusion

Congratulations!

You've Completed the Wealthy Affiliate tutorial on how to set-up an autoresponder on your website! If you have followed our instruction, you will now be building a mailing list and hopefully be planning for your first broadcast message. We have one more piece of guidance that we want to share with you. Building a mailing list takes time and patience. Unless you have a website that generates thousands of clicks per day, it will take you quite some time in order to get your list into the thousands, and tens of thousands. Just think though, in time, your list will be in the thousands, and you will be able to make a huge lump sum of money from every email you send out!! Very cool!