August 13th, 2010
Do you remember the first time you received an email?
I got my first email on Christmas day in 1992. My wife had bought me an “Internet Starter Kit” for Christmas. It was a dial up account. I had some technical trouble, so I sent an email to their customer support. I got a response. Wow. A new world erupted.
Now, years later, I have lost track of how many emails I get each day, and how many get bounced by my spam filters before I ever see them. I can’t go out to dinner without checking my email. If you want to talk to me, it’s better to send me an email than to call me. I’m that bad.
Email is direct. It’s personal. It’s from someone else straight to you. It’s now, in the moment. It only takes a second.
We’ve developed filters to pass up email that doesn’t look interesting, but if it does make us curious, we read it. If we know the person sending it to us, or if we have a relationship with the sender, then we’ll open it.
The key to email is building the relationship, and the trust, with the person you are sending it to, so they open it.
The key to the trust part of that is to ask permission, then don’t abuse the permission when you get it.
If you were to create a mailing list, using a company that provides that service, you can ask for people to give you their email addresses. You then have permission to send them email. Using the service, managing all of that is easy.
Everyone who comes across your site, for whatever reason, can be captured for potential future sales. If someone finds your site, is interested, but then wanders away and never finds their way back, they are forever lost as a customer of yours.
If you can get their email address and send them regular newsletters or notices, (or whatever you want to call your emails), they will always have a link back to your site. They will be reminded of your products. They have raised their hand and shown interest in your stuff. We love these people.
So, the step by step process is to create an account with a mailing list service provider. I use and recommend Aweber, (affiliate link) but there are others that provide great service too.
When you have an account, follow their directions to set up a list, then a form, so that people can subscribe to your newsletter. You need to put that form on your web site. If you don’t have a web site, get one. You can get a free site at http://www.wordpress.com. If you do nothing more than create the site and put the form on the home page, do it.
You need to make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to your mailing list.
If you can give away something free in exchange for subscribing, you’ll get a good response. Put the form in the top right corner of the page, if you can. That’s where people expect to “do stuff”, like search or forms. Everybody does it that way because everybody does it that way.
Once you get the list set up, send regular emails. Make the email valuable, so that people are trained to open them. Give them a reason to open them. Once you give away a lot of good stuff for free, people will be happy to buy your stuff. They are fans.
The subject of newsletters and subscribing to mailing lists is a deep subject, with many posts that can be written about it. Someday, I’ll write them.
For now, just remember: “the money is in the list”.
Click here to get started: Aweber
Please Comment: 5 Comments »
Posted in marketing | by Conrad Walton | Please Comment: 5 Comments »
Most people focus on selling their product to people who are looking for their product. There are a lot of people in this world who don’t even know you exist, much less are looking for your product. 
Not only is Conrad masterful at web building he is also brilliant and very savvy in building business. Sea Glass is my passion and he gets it. 
