JR's Marketing Insights

Before I get to what I want to talk about today, just a quick update. I have added a bunch of new giveaways to the Giveaway Events page, so check those out when you have a chance.

I have been rather quiet on my blog recently, and I apologize for that, but I’m working on a number of things both here and my “day job” that have kept me rather busy. I’m also flying up to NY tomorrow for my sister’s wedding (my daughter is also a flower girl!) so preparations for that have taken up a bit of my time as well. I’ll try to be more consistent with my posting schedule in the future.

Today I want to cover adswaps. For those of you who are not aware, an adswap is when you and another marketer agree to send an email to each of your lists advertising something for the other person. It’s a simple form of a Joint Venture partnership. In most cases, the ad is for something free or low cost, with the primary motivation being list building.

You are basically paying for another marketer to advertise for you with your own subscriber list, so it only works if you have a comparably sized list, or some other way to compensate for the difference in list size, such as money, multiple mailings, cross-promoting on Twitter, etc.

Where do you find people to swap with? The best way is to look to fellow marketers in your niche that you already have a relationship with. Another great resource is the website IMAdSwaps.com. It’s a forum where you can post your ad swap request or respond to others.

If you don’t have a list to start with, then you are not going to be able to convince anyone to swap with you. Sorry, but that’s just the way these things work. That’s not to say you need a huge list; this is a way to get to that point, after all. My suggestion would be to start with the Giveaway Events, which is why I mentioned them at the beginning of this post. That can be an efficient way to build from zero to several hundred subscribers fairly quickly. Once you reach about 200 subscribers, you can start looking for ad swap partners.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Let me know if you agree with me that ad swaps are the way to go, or if you have a better list building method when you are just starting out.

When I wrote about freebies the other day, I mentioned that giveaways can be useful in list building.  Giveaways are a great way to gain exposure and build your list.  A giveaway is basically a site that a large number of marketers contribute free products to in order to attract visitors.  All the contributors then email their individual lists to inform them of the giveaway.  Each contributors list members then go to the giveaway site and are able to see the free products that are available.  If they like what they see, they can click on the link for the product and be brought to the squeeze page for that product.  Once they enter their contact information, they can download the free product.

So what’s the big deal?  The power of a giveaway is in the aggregation of multiple contributor’s lists.  Normally, if you want to increase the size of your list by promoting a free product, you can do an ad swap with someone who has a similar sized list.   You can only get so many subscribers from that method, since you are sending a message to a group of users roughly the same size as your existing list.  With a giveaway, on the other hand, dozens of other list owners will be promoting the giveaway to their lists.  For each contributor, a large number of their subscribers will be seeing your free product offer, and will hopefully click on the link to your squeeze page.  So instead of a group of people equal to your own list size seeing your offer, a group of people many times that number will see your product on the giveaway site.  This has great potential to build your list, as long as you are offering something valuable, and as long as your sales copy is compelling.

Someone I know who has a great deal of experience with giveaways is JT Martin.  I have had a number of conversations with him and he definitely knows what he is talking about.  I highly suggest you visit his blog to learn more about upcoming giveaways, and sign up to receive a copy of his ebook on the subject.  You can find him here:

http://jtmartin.net

Freebies are often described as the key to getting traffic and building your list.  But are they really that useful?  The concern is that freebies only attract cheapskates that are not interested in ever buying something from you.  I am learning that this is not the case.

Freebies are a great way to attract people to subscribe to your mailing list.  It’s a win/win situation: they get a free ebook (hopefully) filled with valuable information, and you get their contact information in order to further develop a customer relationship, and (again hopefully) sell them future products, whether they are affiliate sales or your own products.  My mentor, Alex Jeffreys, is fond of saying that it is better to have one opt-in to your list than to make one dollar from that person initially, because on average they will be worth many times that over their time spent subscribed to your list.  I’m paraphrasing, of course; he would say it more clearly than I did.

The problem with a list populated with “freebie seekers” is not with the subscribers themselves.  They, like everyone else, is looking for value in all their transactions, whether paid with cash, or with their subscriber information.  If you develop a relationship with your subscribers, they will be more likely to buy from you at some point in the future.  If all you do is pummel your freebie list with affiliate sales emails, they will become unresponsive, and likely have a high unsubscribe rate.

So, in my opinion anyway, the key to listbuilding with freebies is to treat your list with respect.  I think this is probably the key to all listbuilding as well, but I’m still working on other listbuilding methods, so I’ll let you know my opinions on that at a later time.  ;-)

How do you provide value to your list?  By offering content, free of charge.  This can be as simple as tips sent in a broadcast message, to free reports or ebooks, to adswaps with others offering freebies.  Also, giveaway events can be a good option, but I’ll explore that in a later post.  The point is, most people subscribe to your list for one reason, and one reason only: for valuable, useful information.  If you keep feeding that need, you will develop a responsive and loyal mailing list.

Am I way off?  As I said, I’m learning as I go, so let me know your opinions on using free products for listbuilding.

Since we’ve been talking about list building, I thought it would be a good time to discuss a common debate among internet marketers: should we use a single opt-in or a double opt-in for our mailing list subscribers?

First of all, what do these terms mean?  In a single opt-in mailing list, you go to a squeeze page, enter your name and email address, and you are immediately placed on the mailing list of the marketer.  In a double opt-in mailing list, after you enter your information, a confirmation email is sent to your email address.  Once you click on the link in that confirmation email, you are added to that mailing list.  If you don’t confirm your email address by clicking on that link, or if you entered a fake email address on the squeeze page, you are not added to the mailing list.

The argument for single opt-in stems from the fact that whenever you require subscribers to click on a confirmation link, a significant percentage of them (think 20% or so) will never click on the link.  Whether the email gets lost, the subscriber forgets they signed up, or some other random problem, you will have noticeably less confirmed subscribers with double opt-in enabled.  So proponents of single opt-in would rather have anyone who enters information into the squeeze page added to their list, with no further interaction necessary.

So what’s wrong with having more subscribers?  Nothing, except for the fear of being labeled a spammer.  See, if you have someone manually click on a link to confirm they want to join your list, there’s a pretty good chance they are going to remember doing it.  Even if they don’t, there is a record of that confirmation click kept by the autoresponder service.  Also, without a double opt-in, a visitor to your website can enter absolutely anyone’s information into your mailing list, whether they want to be there or not.  The confirmation link ensures they are who they say they are.  Spamming is a serious charge, and can have a massively negative impact on your business.  Not only that, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 can cause you to do jail time if you are convicted of sending spam messages.

My recommendation: stick with double opt-in.  Sure, it will reduce your subscriber count a bit, but the protection you are gaining for yourself and your business is more than worth the cost.  Besides, your reputation can be all you have in this industry, and what little you gain from single opt-in is too much of a risk to your success.

Squeeze pages are an essential part of list building.  What is a squeeze page, you ask?  In short, a squeeze page is a one-page website that offers something to the reader.  The reader sees the offer, and then has only two options: to enter their information (usually their name and email address) to continue, or leave the website.

Here is an example of a very good squeeze page (click to see the live version):

Example Squeeze Page

Some of the key components of a good squeeze page are the following:

• A compelling headline that entices the site visitor to continue reading.  This should be something that appeals to them on an emotional level.
• Bullet points explaining the benefits or rewards to signing up, whether it’s to receive a free gift or to learn more about a paid product.
• A call to action that makes it difficult to avoid signing up, such as a limited time offer or a free bonus.
• A sign-up form asking for (at a minimum) the visitor’s name and email address.
• Often, things that break out of the standard website format, such as handwritten emphasis (used here) or audio/video components.
• As little else as possible.  Avoid multiple links, navigation menus, and anything else that could lead the visitor away from the page.

I’m still learning how to perfect this process, so if you have any advice on how to make a squeeze page better, please let me know in the comments.

Another important tool you need if you are planning to be successful in internet marketing is an autoresponder.  An autoresponder is basically a way to maintain a list of subscribers, and send them emails, either on a schedule or as a one-off broadcast.  Most successful internet marketers believe in the saying “The money is in the list.”  This is because anyone can look at a sales page and make a decision on whether to buy a product, but you can have real communications with subscribers to your mailing list, and they can get to know you, and become more likely to purchase from you in the future.

Your first decision when choosing an autoresponder is to decide whether to purchase an autoresponder tool and place it on your own website, or go with a hosted autoresponder.  If you choose to purchase a software tool to run your own autoresponder, you will probably have a larger upfront cost (usually between $50 and $300), but no monthly subscription fees.  You will also have to set up the software and get it working properly.

If you choose the hosted option, there is no software installation, so you are saving some time there.  You will, however, have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use the service.  Most autoresponder companies have a tiered pricing structure based on the number of subscribers to your mailing list.  So if you have only a few hundred subscribers, you will probably pay less than $20 per month.  On the other hand, if you have over 10,o00 subscribers, you can expect to pay over $100 per month.

On the surface, it seems like owning your own autoresponder seems like the way to go, right?  Pay a little more now, and never pay a subscription fee.  But, as it turns out, this is rarely worth it in the long run.  First of all, you have to set up the software.  This can often be more difficult than it sounds, because it usually involves configuring script files and server cron jobs.  Unless you are an experienced server admin this may not be for you.

Also, the major advantage to the large autoresponder companies is the delivery rates for their emails.  I’ll sidetrack into an explanation of delivery rates for a second.  If you have a list of 500 subscribers who have opted in to receive your emails, and you send an email to them, only a certain percentage of them will actually receive that email in their inboxes.  The rest will either be bounced back by the subscriber’s email server, or will end up in a spam folder.  The percentage that make it through is called the delivery rate.  Large autoresponder companies like Aweber and GetResponse have negotiated agreements with the largest email hosting companies and spam filtering companies to ensure that the majority of their emails will make it through to their intended destination.  They have people working full-time to ensure their customers’ emails get delivered.  Can you afford to work on that full time as well?  This is the one and only reason why you should only consider hosted autoresponder services, and avoid running your own autoresponder like the plague!

For this reason, I’m not even going to provide links to autoresponder software you can run yourself.  I’m sure you can find it if you really want it.  Below are the autoresponders that I am familiar with and recommend.

GetResponse – GetResponse is the first autoresponder I used, and it worked very well.  From what I hear, their delivery rates are not quite as high as Aweber, but I chose them at the time because they had a cheaper pricing structure.  They have since updated their system with many new features, and changed their pricing to closely match Aweber.

Aweber – If you talk to any internet marketer, the first company that comes to mind for autoresponders is Aweber.  They have the highest delivery rates in the industry, they are easy to use, and they have been around for a long time.

AutomateYourList – This is my current autoresponder, and so far I am very happy with them.  Why would I choose them over Aweber, when Aweber is so highly recommended?  Here’s why: AutomateYourList is actually a “private label” version of Aweber run by Michael Rasmussen, so so I’m told.  So when I log in, I see the exact same interface, with the exact same features, as Aweber.  In fact, when my credit card is billed each month, it still says Aweber on the bill!   They have a flat pricing structure of $19.95 per month for up to 10,000 subscribers.  Every 10,000 subscribers above that number is an additional $19.95 per month.  This is will result in considerably savings once your list size is over 500 subscribers.

So any other good choices for autoresponders?  I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

I have some exciting news.  As you probably know, because I talk about it all the time, I am a student in Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program.  As part of the program Alex is helping us create valuable products to give away to our readers in order to provide value.  As the theory goes, the more value I can provide to you, the more likely you are to continue to read my blog, and hopefully want to pay for some of my products eventually.

Well, the first of many valuable freebies is now available!  If you go to Profit Pulling Bootcamp, you sign up to download a free ebook on List Building, as perfected by Alex Jeffreys!  I’m very excited about this product, because there’s tons of great information in it, and I feel it’s the first time I have had access to such great information to give away to you!

As you probably know, the key to earning good money online is in developing a large, responsive mailing list.  This can be done in a number of ways, but Alex’s method is one of the fastest, and most effective I have seen so far.  I’m so glad he let me share this ebook with you, and I hope you find it as useful as I have.  Please let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

Profit Pulling Bootcamp