This is a question I get a lot and many people do the wrong thing.  Here’s the deal someone has signed up for you newsletter to get more information and not to be sold to. Get this into your head straight away. You have to provide information. Here’s a sample of what I do:

Message 1 – sent right away once they confirm. Hi [name], here’s the link to the free report you requested, I’ll touch base with you in a few days to see how you’re getting on.

Message 2 – sent about 4 days later. Hi [name] just wondering if you got the download ok, hit reply if you have any questions. This one is a great puller, I get so many replies saying “thanks for the email” etc. It’s personal and caring!

Message 3 – 10 – sent about every 4 days after message previous message.  I begin to go thru the contents of the report. Explain it a bit more.

By message 10 the people have been with me for about 40 days, I’ve built up a relationship and they know me a little. Message 11 might be a message re a product I came across or a service I offer that might interest them – not it’s not a sales pitch, simply a review or a “I saw this and thought of you” type email.

Remember don’t sell, advise and recommend!

So let’s define email marketing.  It’s a process of collecting visitors email address on your site and then sending them your marketing message. Or is it?

Frankly if that’s the attitude you have it’s the wrong one. First of all people don’t like to be marketed to through their email.  Seems paradoxical to talk about email marketing and then say people don’t like it! Let me explain further.

When a visitor visits your website you should have a call to action and ask them to give you their name to join your mailing list. However you need to give them an “ethical bribe” that is you need to give them something in return. Remember everyone things What’s In It For Me or WIIFM. People don’t like to give their email address unless they are getting something of value in return.  So what can you give to them in return is the first point you must ponder.

Let’s say you are a life coach. You can give them a free report about life coaching and top ten things to ask your life coach before engaging them.  This is a valuable report as it could save them money. So your call to action might be “Before hiring a coach you need to know the top ten questions you should ask them to ensure you don’t waste your time and money” – Ok that’s only a quick thought I had but look what the key is here, not to waste time or money – no one wants to waste either of these.  Therefore you may get some visitors signing up.  Remember statistics show that your conversion rates may be in the 5 – 10% range max.

You now have a person you can then send follow up emails to. I’ll talk about relationship building in a later post. But for now the sequence goes like this.

You get the person to sign up, you give them a link to the eBook and then you send them related information about coaching. You DON’T ask for the sale yet.  Again I’ll go over this in a later article.

If you don’t have a newsletter sign up form with a good call to action people will not sign up.  You need a third party to run your mailing list – doing it yourself will cause you problems. However be aware that this service should not cost you more than around €125. Many Irish companies are to be frank ripping people off, charging them per mailing, charging for customised templates for your newsletters and more. Some companies are charging upwards of €600 for this service. Others won’t even list their prices.

I’ve found that a trust and tested service is aweber.com who have been in the business of email marketing for many years and are trusted by some of the best known marketers online. Their service is around $160 or so per year. I use them myself and have to say I’ve not had any issues with them.