I don’t use email effectively. I have thousands of emails on my server. Unless you receive my blog via email, you don’t hear from me or receive promotional emails related to my work. You might think, that’s awesome, I don’t want more spam. The problem is, email campaigns are the most effective digital marketing tool available. I assure you my bank account would be a little larger if I took advantage of my email list. The same goes for your list too.
3 Powerful Email Collection Techniques
Before you can send emails, you must collect them. Many business owners find it hard to collect quality emails. Fortunately, I’ve learned a lot through the years about how to collect good emails. I’m going to share three useful techniques with you. Each of the following strategies have earned the most emails on my lists. If you follow my suggestions, you will have an email list that will increase your income.
Many of us have a lonely form somewhere on our website or blog. It’s a simple form with an email request in exchange for a newsletter, prize or free consultation. There is nothing wrong with these forms, however, there are better ways to build your lists.
The Ebook Offer
My first email bonanza was in 2012. I finished my first e-book, One Hour Photographer, a fifty page book with excellent information about how to take photographs and develop your photography business. As I was uploading the book to Amazon I decided to try something new (for me). I created a landing page and for 72 hours gave my book away for free in exchange for emails. To my surprise, at the peak of my experiment, people were downloading the book at the rate of 100 per hour. Crazy enough, the average download rate was still increasing at the 72 hour mark. I’m not sure if I did the right thing; I turned off the campaign.
The side effect of my experiment is that the next morning my book was number one in my category on Amazon. Plus, I had a lot of emails for future promotion. Every year since, I’ve given the book away free for a short period of time. I now have a segmented email list of thousands of people who downloaded the book.
Pop!
It took three years for my next big step. I installed a pop-up email capture on my blog. Maybe you’ve seen it. It’s quite possible you subscribed to the blog using my simple pop up from Mail Munch. I use the WordPress plugin and I’m very happy. During the first year I tripled my email list of blog subscribers. Please understand, I launched my blog in 2008. This means I increased my subscribers by three times in one year compared to the total of the previous seven. We say we hate pop-ups. Unfortunately for the general public, they work extremely well.
Old School Technique
Last is a technique I was reminded of on Rick Mulready‘s podcast, The Art of Paid Traffic. It’s an old school concept. Rather than a form or pop-up, use a link in your blog post to describe your offer which sends people to an email capture page. Once they click, people are more committed to finish the process. It’s important to make the offer relevant to the page topic. For example, yesterday I blogged about pricing. So, at the end of the post I have a link — Get My Free Pricing Check List (Here). I’ve placed similar links on many of my older pricing posts and the results are amazing.
Old blog posts are earning me new subscribers everyday from SEO and social media traffic.
It’s important to segment your lists for each topic. When you use your lists later, you can select the best email lists for the right offer. People who sign up for my pricing offer are a good candidate for more pricing or business information. Visitors who sign up for marketing information will receive relevant offers. It works.
Segmentation and sending offers to the most relevant email lists is very important. I have new ideas for classes and offerings which I plan to develop over the next year. Knowing what visitors find interesting helps me send the best offers to the right people.
Emails Can Work For You
You can earn the same results. Look at your Google analytics and determine which pages and topics drive the most traffic. Develop a downloadable PDF and give them an offer they can’t refuse.
Don’t burn out your list. Treat your lists like children. Be cautious and respectful of the people who give you their email address.
As for my email lists, they have gathered too much dust. I have a great opportunity to drive traffic and develop more income. I assure you, I plan to do just that, respectfully.
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