10 Ways to Grow Your Mailing List

Wow, you are going to kill me, but I have to say it:

It doesn't matter how good your website is, if people don't come back often. Your website gets them interested; your ongoing relationship with them gets them to buy.

The real key to e-commerce is building a mailing list of people who are interested in the topics you write, speak and teach about. On a good day, you might get 10 percent of your website visitors to buy. But what about the other 90 percent? Are you just going to ignore them and their needs?

The internet is a distracting place and a visitor may only come to your website once. A mailing list member can be told about new articles, new offerings and new resources on your site each month, thereby increasing your traffic and your sales.

I'm not talking about creating huge lists of people who will remove themselves as soon as they get your freebie. What's the point in that? I'm talking about a sustainable list of people who like the products and services you offer, who have an ongoing relationship with you, and are likely to purchase from you again and again.

I can think of 20 or 30 different things you can do to grow your mailing list. Let's look at the 10 techniques I like to use:

1. From Your Website. It should come as a great surprise that you should ask people to sign up for your mailing list from your website. But these days, people are overwhelmed with emails and email newsletters, so you have to offer them something more. A good suggestion is offering a free e-book or e-course. These are easy to deliver and don't take any of your time because they're automated. You'll need to have a mailing list system or autoresponder system set up to accept email addresses and automatically deliver the e-book or e-course information. Ones to consider are www.1shoppingcart.com or www.aweber.com. Note that whichever service you use, it must have both an email list manager and an autoresponder feature.

2. Outgoing Emails. On every outgoing email, in your signature line, you should be inviting people to join your mailing list. Just make sure you tell them HOW to join your list via email or give them a link to the sign-up page. By the way, it's considered rude and bad etiquette to automatically sign people up for your mailing list. Just because they've emailed you, or met you at a meeting, doesn't give you the right to automatically add them. Instead, send them an invitation and let them decide if they want to be on your list.

3. At Speeches. Meetings and conferences are a great way to get recognized quickly and to gather names for your list. Have a sign-up sheet on a clipboard ready, and pass it around while you're giving your speech. Better yet, give away something for free and have them sign up for the freebie and your newsletter at the same time. Or, ask the participants to take out their business card and write "giveaway" on it, and pass it up to you. Note: if you ask people to give you their business card, there is a good chance that the business card has the wrong email address on it. Ask them to check it and correct it before passing it up to you.

4. In Your Newsletter Itself. Lots of people like to forward your newsletter to their friends and colleagues. But once someone else reads your newsletter, they don't know how to subscribe to it. Make sure you give instructions in each newsletter so that new people know what to do.

5. On Business Cards. Lots of people have business cards with blank backs. Instead, use the back of your business card as a mini-billboard, and offer your freebie and sign-up instructions right on the back of the card.

6. About The Author Text. When you write articles, you should be including an "about the author" paragraph at the end, especially if you are submitting those articles to other websites. In the About The Author paragraph, make your offer and give instructions for your newsletter.

7. Thank You Emails. When someone purchases from you, you should be sending them a Thank You For Your Order email. In that email, ask them if they'd like to get your newsletter. It might be a good idea to offer a coupon or discount to customers in the Thank You email, as an incentive to sign-up for your newsletter.

8. Online Classified Ad. Use a service like www.craigslist.org to place an online classified ad for your free giveaway and newsletter subscription offer.

9. On Your Voicemail. When recording your outgoing voicemail message, always offer your newsletter, and tell them the website where they can sign-up.

10. In Interviews. Whether you are interviewed on the radio or in print, always mention your email newsletter and your freebie.

Autumn Classes Now Available

Our autumn class schedule has just been posted:

• Increase Your Income With a Powerful Marketing Plan, begins Sept 17



• Sounding Authentic: Proven Voice Strategies, begins Oct 9



• Designing Effective Workshops and Teleclasses, begins Oct 25



• How to Create and Run a Mastermind Group, begins Nov 26

To learn more about these classes, visit our Learning Center:

http://www.passionforbusinesslearning.com/calendar.html

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Copywriting Class begins April 17

Copywriting 101 For Small Business Owners
Begins April 17!

Copywriting 101 is an interactive teleclass designed specifically for small business owners looking to put their message into words correctly, persuasively and stress-lessly.

Upon completion of this teleclass, your copywriting skills and marketing materials (including your website text) will be more polished, professional, powerful and effective than ever.

When you write, you are making a powerful statement about yourself and your company. You need to ask yourself:

Am I getting the results I want?

Am I presenting my company in the best light?

Is my writing tailored to the medium I'm using and the market I'm targeting?

Is my message clear, concise and easily understood?

If your website, emails and brochures are not bringing results, this class is for you. Class begins April 17. To learn more about this class, and to register:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/copywriting-class.htm

What's New in Internet Marketing - Part 3: Email Marketing

Of course, email marketing isn't new; we've been doing it for over 10 years now. But according to some of the latest research into email marketing, over 70 percent of email marketers say the impact of it is increasing, not decreasing.

Anyone who uses email marketing techniques can tell you, getting through spam filters is part of the battle. While text-only emails received the poorest return-on-investment numbers, some ISPs are now blocking HTML emails and only allowing text emails to get through (notably BellSouth).

It's a quandary: produce newsletters that will get through filters, or produce newsletters that get results? I wish I could tell you otherwise, but truly, there are no easy answers to this question. However, here are some tips that might help you to think differently about your campaigns:

• Instead of a full newsletter or a long email, consider the "postcard" format for an email; email postcards received 75% higher click rates.
• Higher ROI tweaks include testing your email campaign with an A/B split, altering your subject line, having a specific landing page for your campaign (instead of merely sending them to your normal home page); and re-sending the same email message two weeks after sending the first one (especially if your email software can send it to only those people who did not open the first email)
• Consider putting your call to action in your subject line (register for the class, sign up for the discount coupon, call for a free quote)
• While 65 percent of emails now come with suppressed images, a large majority of users will manually turn those images on. This means that you should include images in your email campaigns.
• According to MarketingSherpa.com survey results, once-a-month mailings actually have less impact than shorter, weekly mailings.
• Consider segmenting your email mailing campaigns between customers and prospects, tailoring the message to them based on whether they've purchased from you before or not.

See Part 1 of this article series here:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles/whats-new-seo.htm

See Part 2 of this article series here:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles/whats-new-email-marketing.htm

Booting Spammers Out of Your Mailing List

I've noticed a trend lately: a lot of sign-ups to my mailing list from the same IP address. So I did a little research and lo-and-behold, it's a "zombie" computer automatically signing up for ezines in order to steal the return address when you send the "thanks for signing up" autoresponder. (Those little stinkers!)

So, what do you do?

• First, check to see if your ezine software captures the IP (internet protocol) address of people when they sign up. I use Professional Cart Solutions (a variant of 1shoppingcart.com), and they DO capture IP addresses of each person who signs up.
• Next, check for repeat IP addresses. I notice that these sign-ups are always in the "waiting for optin" list under the Manage Clients tab, because they have no intention of opting-in. It's easy to find them: look for email addresses that don't match the name they signed up under. For instance, the name is "Mary Jones" but the email address says georgesmith@xxxxxx.com. The email addresses are almost always from hotmail.com, gmail.com, mail.com, or yahoo.com because these are free email services.
• When you find repeat IP addresses, type the IP address into Google and do some research. For example, this IP address comes up a lot on my wait-list: 203.113.13.3. When I type it into Google, I find that it's a zombie computer and Wikipedia has blocked it
• Finally, I go back to my mailing system, and look for the place where I can block specific IP addresses from either ordering from me or from signing up for my mailing lists. In the case of Professional Cart Solutions/1shoppingcart, it's under the Orders tab.

Voila! Now that zombie can't sign up for my mailing list anymore!

It takes a little due diligence to keep your list clean, but it's well worth it. And if your mailing list system won't let you ban IP addresses, consider switching to a new one.