Monday, November 24, 2008

Send Proper Email Messages to Your Marketing List

By Chris Blanchet

Building an e-mail list takes time and effort. If you have succeeded in building a list, you may have hundred or even thousands of names and addresses for people who are great prospects who are primed and ready to buy the products you sell. What a feeling of relief to have accomplished such a feat!

But what steps do you take now? Writing your first e-mail follow-up or broadcast to your marketing list can be ten times more difficult than assembling all of those leads!

In sending an e-mail, a lot of writers know what they don't want. They don't want to offend their readers. They don't want to come across as overly aggressive. And they absolutely don't want them to click the "unsubscribe" link.

One strategy that Responsive Tutorials teach in their E-Mail Marketing course is to switch between "content" and "marketing" when sending out your messages. This only will not only improve conversion rates, but will help in building trust and loyalty with your list.

As an example, try sending a content-based message first and omit any marketing or product pitching. Not only will you provide value to your readers, but when you follow-up with a message that promotes a product, you will improve conversion rates on your messages. This is particularly true if the product has a strong relationship with your prior message. But even more importantly than making a single sale is keeping your marketing list away from the unsubscribe link. Keeping them on your list will result in more sales over the long-term, especially as you establish more value and trust.

With more e-mails landing in your marketing list's inbox every day, Responsive Tutorials raises a great point. How do you not only make sure your messages get read (instead of deleted or overlooked) but how do you turn your readers into steady buyers who look forward to your e-mails? The other tutorials cover issues such as brainstorming, common e-mail marketing mistakes, and optimal message formatting. Their objective is to show you how to ethically transform your readers into a steady income stream.

At a price of $47, Responsive Tutorials offers a manageable, video course that is much more manageable and visual than any e-book on the market. The total running time of 48 minutes is just long-enough without being overwhelming, and is spread over 8 videos. Its best feature is its simplicity. As a bonus, Responsive offers a copy of Brad Callen's e-book, Search Engine Optimiation Made Easy, itself worth twice the price of the videos. Although Brad Callen has produced a lot of great marketing materials in the past, we are unsure about the quality of the book as it is, again, a bonus (we haven't reviewed it yet). - 15246

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