Marketing Science Blog

List Building Secret #1 - Making Your Content Relevant Keeps Subscribers Happy & Boosts The Number Of People Who Recommend Your Ezine To Their Friends.

One of the biggest problems I see newsletter and ezine publishers having online is that they write about subjects no one in their market is really interested in. They just write about whatever they think people want to know about without doing any of the research, which is a huge no-no.

Another problem is, publishers who have a market well defined don’t then write the content in their newsletters that interests their readers. There is no use having an ezine on coin collecting and running articles on stamp collecting just because you couldn’t be bothered finding the right content for your ezine.

This is easily overcome. Just send out an email asking your readers what they want to read. Also sign up for other ezines in your market and see what they are writing about.

List Building Secret #2 - Add More Subscription Boxes To Your Website

Sounds simple enough, but few people actually do it. If you have a 100 page website, you should have 100 newsletter subscribe boxes on your website.

You can integrate a subscribe box just about anywhere in a website. You could add one just before an article starts, in the middle of an article or even at the end of the article.

As long as you have good content on your website, you won’t have a problem getting people to subscribe to your newsletter.

An interesting way to do this for a content site is as follows.

Have a look at my website and see what I do to get subscribers…

http://www.marketing-register.com

List Building Secret #3 -  Offer An Outstanding Bonus Or Gift

I’ve had a problem in the past with offering freebies to get people to subscribe to your newsletter, but I also know it can work well, if done properly.

Why do I have a problem with it? Well I really want subscribers to be signing up for my newsletter because they want my newsletter not because they want the freebie im offering.

The best way to offer a freebie is to create one yourself and not something you have reprint rights to with 500 other people. You want it to be unique, and you want it to be something that plugs your newsletter heavily.

Do you know what makes a good bonus? Back issues of your newsletter!

List Building Secret #4 - Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers

Want to get thousands of new subscribers for your ezine without spending a cent on advertising and you’ve tried all the methods above but you still want more?

Viral marketing is the way to go! Writing viral ebooks that get passed around

Writing viral books is nothing new, but it’s still a great way to get your newsletter noticed.

There are a few methods you can use when creating viral ebooks.

You can either create them as a free product, or charge for them and give people the reprint rights to the product so they in turn can give your product away while making some money in the process.

I prefer the reprint right route. The key here is tho, once the momentum of the first book wears out, write another and another and another and another! All in the same method, all with reprint rights and all with your newsletter subscribe from plastered in them.

The goal really isn’t to make money from the sales of the book, it’s to get more subscribers.

So again, find a group of publishers in your markets, let them know you created a new ebook with sales letter that they can use and plug straight into their website and give them a mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free and that they can either sell the book or the book and the reprint rights to their customers.

This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you!

Doing audio interviews with experts in your field also is a great idea to get more subscribers. I’m not going to get into how to create audio products as that’s a whole other book, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, especially in fields other then Internet marketing where people don’t expect to get this much quality information for free

When you take marketing tactics from the Internet marketing field and apply them into other niche markets where they have never been seen before, you will get noticed more. Everything has been done in the Internet marketing field, we are all  immune to even the most brilliant marketing tactics as we see them almost everyday, but other niche markets eat these things up.

Creating audio interviews isn’t hard at all equipment wise and finding experts to interview is a piece of cake.

Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly?

Well most FAQ pages at FAQS.Org/faq/ have who its written by and an email address for them. These guys are obviously knowledgeable in their fields, and they would make great experts to interview.

Tell them you want to interview them because you’ve read information they’ve written and it was great and you think your subscribers would appreciate the information.

Most will do this without charging you a cent if you are outside the marketing field, they will just get a thrill out of being interviewed.

Once you have these interviews, tell all the publishers you’ve been in contact with recently that you have this great set of mp3’s just completed and you want to offer them for free to their lists.

Setup a section on your website with the download link to these mp3’s and also put a subscribe form near them for your newsletter and you will be surprised how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s.

Don’t make it so these people have to sign up for your newsletter before they get the mp3s.

List Building Secret #5 - Use Pop Up Windows

Pop up windows are still effective ways to get subscribers, especially in niche markets.

Creating popups on your website is as easy as pie. There are however a few different type of popup windows you can use.

The pop up window on exit, which pops up after you leave a website and the popup window on entry which obviously pops up when you first go to a website.

I prefer the exit popup. So when someone leaves  a page on your website they get a popup window asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.

This can get annoying so what you want to do is use a popup that allows you to tell if a persons already seen your popup before so it won’t keep showing.

You can find these sort of popup scripts all over the Internet.

List Building Secret #6 - Use Name Squeeze Pages

Name Squeeze is a big buzz word lately and it’s something people having been beating to death, but they really do work.

Name Squeeze is nothing new, it’s just that Jonathan Mizel gave an old technique a new name and new appeal. Good marketing on his part. He’s also trademarked the phrase.

The best way to explain a name squeeze page is to show you a good example.

http://www.scrapbookingprofits.com

This is a great name squeeze page. Basically, what a name squeeze page is, is a simple subscribe form that then leads them to either a free report or a sales letter.

Sign up for the following name squeeze pages to get a good idea of what to do.

http://www.doubleyourdating.com
http://www.scrapbookingprofits.com
http://www.fireyourweddingplanner.com

Notice how these sites have nothing to do with Internet marketing? But they are ALL pulling in tens of thousands of dollars monthly. Doubleyourdating.com is pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly.

List Building Secret #7 - Buy Leads With Co-Registration

Quick and easy way to get subscribers, but not the best way. That’s how I describe Co- registration.

Some marketers swear by it and have great results, others fail and have to throw out the entire list they brought because it’s riddled with fake addresses, spam complaints and basically freebie seekers.

So what is Co-registration?

Basically its building lists by buying subscribers from a 3rd party service.

Here is how Dr Raplh Wilson put it…..

“Co-registration is a widely-used approach to increase the size of your e-mail lists. Co-registration works this way: After completing a subscription form or upon leaving a website, visitors are invited to subscribe to one or more e-zines. If yours is listed among these and the site gets a substantial amount of traffic, you’ll begin to receive a number of subscriptions. ”
Have a look at the two best Co-registration companies to see what I mean.

http://www.worldwidelists.com
http://www.profitinfo.com/leadfactory/

What you do is you pay a fee to these companies per subscriber. So everytime they supply you with a new lead you pay them a fee. Usually around 15 cents to $1 depending on the niche market and if you want double opt-in or single opt-in.
Always go for double opt-in if you can.

The best way to make money from these types of subscribers is to first give something away for free. Build trust with your subscribers. Sign them up for a free course, give them some bonus products like you created before and remember if anyone asks to be removed from your list, just do it! And don’t argue with them… ever!

That’s the quickest way to get your newsletter shutdown.

Posted By Bob Thomson

Marlon,

I just read your most recent article…

Internet Marketing Made Simple — The ONLY 3 Steps You Need To Know To Promote Anything To Anyone Online.

I hope you’ll forgive me for posting my comment here, but I could not find your new article on your blog or Squidoo lense…and I am fired up and wanted to comment.

All I can say is you hit the nail right on the head — once again!

This “tell it like is” article details exactly how I feel about today’s Internet marketing landscape. I’m sure it is also represents what a lot of honest marketers out there are feeling:

• the squeeze of big companies and
• the market dilution by crap-pushing, me-too, anything-to-make-a-buck Internet “mock”-eters.

Yep…That’s what I call ‘em. Because they make a mockery out of Internet marketing. They are making it tougher for honest vendors to make a living.

And as for the larger companies, they are absolutely trying to squeeze us Mom and Pop operators. Here is one example I have been dealing with myself:

I have been posting a lot of simple survey questions lately to social networking sites and to my list. What I am finding is that “experienced “corporate marketing consulting types” seem to take enjoyment in trying to trip you up with technical “analytics” questions they think you can’t answer as a “Mom and Pop” marketer.

For example, my most recent survey question was: “What is your single most important question about Internet marketing even if you’re just starting out?”

I was basically targeting newbies and intermediates…but to my surprise, I had all these expert marketers throwing “curve ball” questions at me…questions they think a small non-corporatist can’t answer.

I was expecting questions like…”What’s the most cost effective way to get website traffic?” and such.

And I did get some of those questions.

But I also received a lot questions from people who are in corporate marketing, people who know a lot more about marketing “analytics” than I do.

These folks seem like they are trying to intimidate me by asking questions like:

“For 2008 what are the functional KPI’s Fortune 500 companies should be keying on?”… and endless blather questions about this metric and that metric.

I’m convinced these people with advanced degrees and corporate experience know the answers to these questions. Why would they post such technical, jargon-laden questions to someone who is obviously a small business operator? Unfortunately, I think I know the answer to this question.

I think some are engaging in a form of marketing intimidation. I won’t broad-brush all corporate marketing types with this, that would be totally unfair. But I think there are plenty of them out there who want to make us small operators look foolish.

And the reason is probably due to the fact that they think ALL small marketers are crap-pushers with no value-added contributions to make. In some way, I can’t blame them. There are a lot of those types out there.

In closing, I want to leave you with one more example. It relates directly to what Marlon was saying in this most recent article.

I was looking at a question posted at LinkedIn the other day. The question was:

What is the synergy between search marketing and email marketing and can you give examples?

Most of the “answers” posted to this question were laden in technical language, jargon and the latest marketing-speak.

Most answers were written in a way that seemed to say: Hey look at me, I’m a really smart corporate marketer, and I know a lot more technical stuff than you…”

The big thing that is missing in almost every blog post, social networking post I see from these types, is that Internet marketing is about PEOPLE..it’s about humanity, society… I rarely hear these marketing know-it-alls talk about “people”.

Sure they talk about “targets”, “prospects”, “buyers”…but the language is almost always cold and technical.

In response, I wrote and posted an answer (that resonates with much of what Marlon is saying in his newest article) that Online marketing is more about getting traffic and building relationships through value-driven email marketing and that is what is really important in terms of “synergy”. You can see more of my answer below if you’re interested.

My Answer

My answer probably made some of the corporate types think: “Who the hell is this guy?? That’s his answer?? What a simpleton”…

I don’t care what they think. Simple works. People are simple creatures after all. Simple sells.

Listen, many corporate marketers are very good at what they do, I’m not taking that away from them. Most are very smart people. All I’m saying is that many seem like elitist surgeons with no bedside manor or concern about the “people” who are ultimately responsible for their paychecks. And some of them seem to enjoy trying to belittle the “little guy”.

Ok, I’ve had my say here.. Sorry for the ranting post Marlon, but you really touched off a nerve with your article. Keep up the good fight!

- Bob

While surfing around LinkedIn.com the other day I ran into the following question from a member…

“What’s the synergy between search engine marketing and email marketing and can you provide examples of the synergy?”

Here are my thoughts on this…

Search marketing (as well as search engine optimization SEO) and email marketing are to an Internet marketer what the “one-two punch” combination is to a boxer. Left jab, then right cross. That’s a classic knockout combination. It’s your bread and butter if you’re a fighter. And it always produces greater results than the individual punches themselves.

Now, let’s put this in context with today’s web users, prospects and buyers… Nearly everyone turns to a search engine first to find what they are looking for Online. So, being found in search results, organically or by paid placement is arguably the most important element of Internet marketing. Search marketing is the left jab that sets up your right cross: email marketing.

Search marketing is also like a headline in a sales letter. If you don’t stop people dead in their tracks and get them to read more, the rest of the sales letter is meaningless, no matter how good it is. Without search, you would not be able to capture names and email addresses for marketing purposes (except if you advertise offline and drive traffic to your site). Search marketing is typically the starting point of a potential relationship between web marketer and prospect.

Enter Opt in Email Marketing…

The majority of times, your prospect has found your website and offer but is NOT ready to buy from you yet. She is not sure she can trust you, she just met you so to speak. Plus there are other offers and vendors to investigate. The web is big place with lots of choices. This is where email marketing comes in to create synergy with search…

People have more information and choices than ever. Unfortunately the more choices and information, the tougher it is to make a decision. More vendors, more information and more choices translate into more work for prospects. As a result many people get bogged down in “analysis paralysis”, procrastination or both. They are ruled by fear, uncertainty and distrust.

Because of all the information and choices available to Internet consumers, it is difficult to create lasting marketing relationships. There are so many vendors competing for mind and wallet share.

Search marketing does the heavy lifting of attracting qualified prospects to your sites and offers and creates potential relationships. Since a majority of people do not buy on the first exposure to an offer, it’s email marketing’s job to capture the name and email address and to break down barriers and inhibitions to buying over a time sequence.

Through email marketing you build solid relationships on trust, reciprocity (because you give something of value to them) and develop credibility as an expert in your field by providing good content on your website and in your email newsletter.

The success of the individual parts — search marketing and email marketing — can be attributed to the combination of these two forms of marketing. One without the other would produce poor results (an exception is offline advertising i.e. sending prospects to your home page or opt-in page directly from space or classified ads).

Also, synergy occurs when a web user is exposed to multiple instances of your brand, products, offers & websites.

For example, if a prospect keeps running into you online when they search on keywords related to your products/services and hears from you regularly through email marketing, credibility with that prospect is sure to increase because of the combined exposure.

Search marketing and email marketing are strongly dependent on one another for overall marketing success. Together they help you create relationships and online sales.

Of course your sales message has to be strong. But generally speaking any exposure in search results combined with email marketing is going to help your cause. It will help build trust and decrease buying resistance. This plus a good offer will produce solid online sales.

- Bob