Marketing

How to Grow My Email List ?

1. Offer benefits especially for subscribers – Simply asking someone to join your email list will get you nowhere – they want to know what’s in it for them. So make subscribing worthwhile. Offer benefits such as these and display these benefits prominently on your website or sign-up form:

Tips and how-to’s
Access to private sales
Advance notice of special events
Entry into a prize drawing
Discounts only available to subscribers
A free gift
White paper, special report, or e-book

2. Let subscribers know what to expect – Tell them how often they’ll hear from you and what you’ll be sending them (for example, newsletter, special offers, discounts).

3. Make your sign-up link easy to remember – Keep it simple and memorable. Direct subscribers to www.YourCompany.com/subscribe and they’ll be able to easily find your online opt-in page.

4. Include a link in your email signature – Add a message such as “Subscribe to our email newsletter” in every employee’s email signature with a link to your opt-in page.

5. Add a sign-up invitation on all print materials– For example, add an opt-in offer and the landing page URL to:

Invoices
Receipts
Catalogs
Product literature / brochures / flyers
Bags
Product packaging and packing slips
Estimates
Print ads
Point-of-purchase displays
Customer surveys and/or feedback forms

6. Use a paper sign-up sheet at all events– If you’ll be at an event where you’ll have access to a large number of people, create a special sign-up form and put it somewhere highly visible. Be sure to make it clear that signing up is optional and spell out exactly what they’re signing up for. For example, you could collect names and emails at:

Trade show booths
Speaking engagements
Workshops
Networking events
Store sales

7. Gather emails when customers make a purchase – Put a sign-up form by the cash register or front desk. Add a ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ checkbox on your online purchase form.

8. Use a take-away card – Print up cards (postcard size works well) describing your list, the benefits, and how to sign up. Pass them out at every opportunity, such as when visiting customers or at a public event.

9. Include your sign-up URL on your business card – Most business cards are blank on the back. Use the space to show links to important social media accounts and your email list.

10. Promote your list at all public speaking events – Mention it during your presentation and list the URL in handouts.

11. Include a “Send to a Friend” option on your website and in all of your emails – This is especially effective if you offer an incentive to the referrer (for example, they’ll be entered in a special prize drawing).

12. Add a sign-up offer to account transaction pages and emails– When a customer buys a product or service, they may not sign up for your email list. Take the opportunity to remind them about it when you contact them about their account or purchase. For example:

Confirmation emails
Shipping notices
Payment reminders
Account registration and/or renewal reminders

13. Use social media– Include information about the benefits of joining your email list (and a link to the sign-up page) on all of your social media profiles. In addition, you can try these approaches:

Build a custom Facebook tab with a sign-up box
Place links to your opt-in page on your Facebook wall, LinkedIn account, or Twitter profile
Announce new email subscriber-only content on social media when you publish it – and include a link to let people sign up
Put social sharing links on your website and in every email

14. Ask customers if they’d like to sign up – Make it part of every employee’s job (including yours!) to routinely invite customers to receive your newsletter, get special promotions, or be notified of private sales and events. Whether dealing with inbound calls from customers or prospects, face-to-face interactions with customers in your store, or email conversations, ask for that email address.

16. Invite subscriptions in your voicemail – Mention your newsletter and sign-up URL (briefly) on your voicemail. People may not sign up after hearing it, but it will increase awareness.

17. Send postcards to customers and/or a mailing list – You may have a street address for some of your customers, but not an email address. Send them a postcard highlighting the benefits of subscribing to your list and encouraging them to sign up. Be sure to include the URL. You could also buy a mailing list (for example, homeowners within a specific area) and send postcards to them.

18. Promote your newsletter/email list in all publications – If you write for a trade or consumer publication, a blog, or another newsletter, be sure to include a link to your newsletter or email sign-up form in the article (if you can), byline, and/or author bio. A reader who likes your writing will often want to hear more from you.

19. Investigate reciprocal relationships – Are there other businesses that target a similar market segment, perhaps with a different product or service? Suggest to them that they promote your newsletter to their audience, and you do the same with your subscribers. But first, be sure that the other company’s newsletter or email promotions will be of value to your subscribers.

20. Use online classified ads – This can be especially effective if you offer a give-away of some sort with each subscription. Try listing your give-away and newsletter subscription of free sites like Craigslist.

These are just some of the ways you can get in front of potential subscribers and encourage them to sign up for your email list.

What approaches have you tried? What’s worked best for you?

By: Unknown On 7:00 PM

Why I Need Email List ?

An email list is a list of people who have signed up (subscribed) to receive emails from you.

The key here is that they’ve given you permission to send them emails – they actually want to hear from you. They’re not just a fan or a follower, they’re a member of your community – and that’s a much stronger relationship than can be built through social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to gain permission before sending out emails. Without permission, sending emails is spamming and is the quickest way to get yourself blacklisted by email service providers (not to mention that people will quickly unsubscribe from your list). Best practice is to use a double-opt-in process when asking people to subscribe.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “the money is in the list.” And it’s very true. Here are 15 reasons why you need an email list.

Benefits of an Email List

1. Everyone Has Email

Facebook may have 800 million users, but far more people have email. In fact, you need an email address to even sign up for a social media account! You can’t be sure of reaching your target market through social media, but you can be sure of reaching them through email.

2. Easily Connect With Your Target Market

Your email list consists of highly targeted people who are interested in what you have to offer. They’ve volunteered to get your emails because they want to hear more.

3. Make Meaningful Offers

Sending emails to a targeted audience allows you to promote your services and products to the audience that is most likely to buy.

Be careful not to overdo the offers – even the most responsive list will quickly tire of receiving nothing but sales pitches. But, when timed appropriately and combined with valuable content, you can make multiple offers to your list with great results.

4. Increase Conversion Rate

The ultimate goal of marketing of any sort is to bring in more business. Email marketing is no different – except for the fact that you can directly track conversion rates (the % of people who receive your marketing message and then go on to take whatever action you’re asking them to take).

Typically, buyers need multiple exposures to your product or service before they’ll buy. They need to develop an understanding of what you offer, the benefits to them, and the pricing and value. Over time, as they start to know and trust your product/service, they come to the decision that they need to buy it.

Regular emails keep you front and center with potential customers like no other marketing method. Keep reminding potential customers why they need you, and eventually they’ll buy.

5. Know Your Audience Size

In a way, your email list is a “captive audience” that is always there for you. In contrast, traffic to your website can fluctuate (sometimes wildly) from day to day – you’re basically waiting for people to stumble upon your site.

You never know how many people will be exposed to new content published on your blog or website. But you know exactly how many people have received your emails (how many people actually open those emails is another issue – we’ll look at how to increase your open rate in a later post).

6. Increase Repeat Traffic

Emails are a great way to generate repeat traffic to your website or blog. Make sure to insert a link to relevant content on your site into each email. Make it worth their while to visit your site.

7. Notify People of New Content

It’s easy to notify people of new posts or website content that they might otherwise miss.

Don’t rely on RSS alone – that’s too easy for people to ignore (how many people check their Google Reader regularly?). Because RSS is delivered through a 3rd party reader, very few people will click through to your site – why should they when the content is right there on their reader? So they’ll miss all the rest of your content and your marketing messages.

Customize your notification email with links to your site, contact information, and more (more on that in a later post) to keep people engaged and help them feel connected to you and your business.

8. Capture Attention

People pay far more attention to what’s in their inbox than they do to what’s online (or, sometimes, to what’s going on around them!). Have you noticed how many people immediately look at their monitor or smart phone when that ‘ping’ announces that a new email has arrived?

9. It’s Not Time-Limited

Email stays in your inbox until you deal with it (e.g., read it, delete it, move it to a folder). If you’re on vacation, it’ll be right there waiting for you when you get home. If you’re too busy to check your email account, the emails will patiently wait until you have time.

But social media posts, tweets, and comments come and quickly go. Blink, and you’ve missed it!

10. Keep Your Audience

A list allows you to more easily keep your audience once you’ve gotten them.

Most visitors to your website are just that – visitors. They come, they look around, and then they leave.

By contacting them regularly through your email list, you start to build a relationship with your readers, a relationship that keeps them coming back for more.

11. Brand Yourself As An Expert

By providing great advice to your readers over and over again, they come to view you as a trusted expert who delivers valuable content. When they need services, products, or consulting advice around your area of expertise, they’ll turn to you first.

12. It’s Easily Automated

Once the opt-in box and/or landing page(s) is in place, there’s very little you have to do to keep bringing in new subscribers. Sure, you may change out your sign-up offer or tweak the subscribe button wording (“Count Me In!” instead of “Free Updates”) but, beyond that, the process is fully automated. No work for you means more time to focus on running your business.

13. Maintain Engagement Over Time

One of the most under-used, but most powerful, features of an email list is the ability to automate the content you send subscribers.

An autoresponder allows you to send out a series of emails with valuable content that your subscribers will appreciate. Simply create the content, specify when the emails will be sent (for example, 2, 5, 8, and 12 days after sign-up, or 3 days after purchase), and let the autoresponder do its job. These timely emails will keep you top-of-mind with customers and help them feel engaged with your business.

14. Do Free Market Research

How many times have you wondered about what your customers really need? What their pain points are? Or how you can best solve their problems? Well, ask them!

Email is a terrific way to gather information directly from your current and potential customers. People may be reluctant to leave public comments on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ pages, but they’re remarkably willing to tell you directly. The more emails they get from you (within reason, of course!), the more they trust you, and the more information they’ll share with you.

15. You Own Your Email List

While you may have thousands of fans and followers on Facebook, Google+, or Twitter, if your account is de-activated or terminated for any reason, you lose all of those fans and followers. You don’t own those contacts, you can’t download them, and you can’t reach out to them through other channels.

In contrast, your email list is yours and yours alone. You can download all the information from your list and store it on your hard drive. If you switch email providers, your list goes with you. If you sell your business, the list goes with it (a valuable asset that gets worked into the sales price).

By: Unknown On 6:54 PM

How to Setup a Professional Email Address with Google

After purchasing a domain name, the first thing any webmaster would like to do is to setup a branded email address ending with the custom domain name. At WPBeginner, people over and over again ask for email hosting recommendations. Gmail has managed everything very well so it appears pretty illogical to look for any other email provider, particularly when Gmail is free. This tutorial will help you in connecting your custom domain name with Gmail so you can setup a professional email address and enjoy the irresistible features of Google Apps.

Update: Google Apps is no longer free. If you still want a branded email, then we recommend that you use the outlook.com service.

What is a Professional Email?

A professional email is the one that has your business name in it. For example support@yourdomain.com is a professional email rather having yourdomain@gmail.com. There are many ways you can setup a professional email. You can use the built-in mail server that comes with most WordPress web hostingproviders. But that does not nearly match up to the features you get with Gmail.

Why To Choose Gmail To Organize Your Emails:

Every organization needs to maintain their email records usually they recommend reliable paid email brands but using Gmail has many advantages. Not only it is free but it has some splendid features which are as follows.

Lots of Space: Gmail provides 10+ GB free disk storage so you can easily receive as many attachments as you like but if your disk space is full, then without any hesitations you can ask for more disk space from Gmail support.
More fun, less spam: Gmail has made the world of email spam free so you don’t need to worry about spammed emails because it automatically deletes unwanted emails, before it reaches your inbox.
Email Search: Gmail allows you to search emails like Google search engine and with instant search technology you can find the exact message by entering a few keywords.
Call phones: With Gmail phone service, you can easily call to USA and Canada phones free of cost and get low rates to other countries.
Security at its best: Gmail has always tried to fulfill the basic needs of its users and in order to provide full proof security Gmail has utilized HTTPS encryption to keep your mail secure.
All This For Free: You will get all these spectacular features for free.

Step 1: Setting Up The Google App

First go to Google Apps for Domains
Now once the page gets done loading carefully insert your WordPress domain without typing the “http://www” i.e. wpbeginner.com.

Then fill the vacant text boxes with your personal information i.e. username, password.

Fill in the information about your organization i.e. contact name, phone number, address and etc. but keep your alternate email address the same as your personal Gmail ID or any other email address ID.

Now, after agreeing to the Google Apps terms and conditions, just press “create the account” button and proceed to the next step.

After successfully completing the registration, you will be redirected to the setup page where you have to verify that you own the domain name. You have two options for the verification: express (ideal for individuals) or custom (you can test apps with few different users). I recommend express install because it will take less than 10 minutes for completion.

Step 2: Verifying Your WordPress Domain:

This is the most vital phase of the whole process where you have to verify your WordPress Domain name, if you wish to access the Google Apps. There are quite a few methods for domain verification, which include:

Recommended: Upload HTML File (Here you have to use FTP software)
HTML Tag (Second Best Option)
Google Analytics (Alternate Method)
Domain Name provider (Alternate Method)

If you have full command over your FTP then you could just upload an HTML file for verification, but if you don’t want to get your hands too dirty then inserting an HTML tag is a good alternative. To do this:

From the verification menu select Alternative Method >> HTML Tag.

Now you will see a one line HTML code, just paste it in your header or footer with the help of Insert Headers and Footers Plugin for WordPress.

After pasting the verification tag come back to the Google App verification menu and press “Verify”.

Step 3: Connecting Gmail with Your WordPress Domain:

To enable Gmail services you first have to login to your Google App account, so go to https://www.google.com/a/your-domain-name.com (Note:Don’t forget to replace your-domain-name with your WordPress custom domain that you have connected to the Google App)
Sign in to your account with your username and password.

From the navigation menu select Organization & Users » Services. Now look for Gmail App and then press the “on” button.

Step 4: Setting up Your WordPress Gmail Account

Now in order to send and receive emails from your custom WordPress domain, you have to make some changes in the DNS settings of your domain.

Go to your Google App and login to your account.

From the navigation menu select Setup » Set up Gmail » and then follow the instructions.

Now after following the instructions correctly you will be able to see 5 MX records, which you have to submit on your webhost.

If you have standard cPanel hosting, then with ease you can configure your MX records. First go to your cPanel and login to your account with username and password. Now within your cPanel look for MX records Tool (usually you will find it under MAIL options).

Adding MX records to WordPress for Google Apps

After opening “MX Records” you have to select your domain (this option will only appear if you are hosting multiple blogs).

Now we have to select Email routing there are 4 different methods available to route your emails, but we will select “Automatically Detect Configuration” (Recommended).

Then add the MX records that has been provided by Google App, one by one insert all 5 MX records correctly (here you will use “Add a Record Tool”)

After adding your all 5 new records, your MX Records would somewhat look like this.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a Custom Gmail address for your WordPress Domain. Note: It may take 24 hours to complete the MX records integration as it depends on your hosting and ISP. For most modern countries, it should only take a few hours though.

Head on over to Gmail and login with your new branded email. That’s all there is to it.

By: Unknown On 6:47 PM