Previously, we’ve seen just how important targeting is when it comes to email marketing. However, many online marketers and entrepreneurs aren’t too sure about how to actually implement it as part of their online marketing campaigns. This is understandable, as there are actually few of them which truly segment their subscribers in order to deliver them personalized content when they send out email advertisements and newsletters. Here are some tips that will make it easy for you:

Maintain Separate Lists On Your Website or Different Websites

One of the most common mistake is putting in email submission boxes and capturing the client’s permission to email them on the checkout pages of all your websites, then putting all of these email addresses onto one big list. If you run websites that sell products that are very similar and which all target the exact same type of buyer, then this might be OK. However, it is better to keep separate lists for separate sites. Also, keep the email list that you got from customers that just signed up for your newsletter on your site without buying anything separate from the newsletter that you have for your paying customers.

Keep Track of What Your Customers Buy

If you have an e-commerce website that directly sells products to your customers, then keep track of who buys what. This will allow you to specifically tailor your promotions to them. Buyers who have purchased a specific kind of item are more likely to buy that type of item again, so if you include promotions on your products as part of the emails that you send to your list, you should show them products that are relevant based on their past purchases. This is something that’s already done by the leading e-commerce sites out there and is something you should definitely do as well.

Use Demographic Information

The most basic piece of demographic information that you could collect would be the country where the subscriber lives in. If you include affiliate offers as part of your emails, then this will ensure that you only include offers that accept traffic from that subscribers country. It could also allow you to display prices in the subscribers local currency. As for other demographics such as age, gender, income level, etc. you could include this as part of an optional survey when signing up for your mailing list or making a purchase. To increase the number of visitors that fill it out, you could offer a small discount or promotion of some sort.

Ask What Made Your Visitors Interested in Your Site

This is something else that’s good to include as part of the sign up survey. Ask your visitors what they’re looking for on your site and what they hope to buy in the future. This would allow you to create sub groups in your email list and then include offers and promotions that are relevant to these subscribers, thus making them more likely to actually buy something.

The content of your message is obviously an essential part for the success of your overall email marketing campaign. You need to plan what you’re going to be sharing with your readers from the start. Remember that if you bore them or otherwise make your readers uninterested with your message content, then this will reduce the effectiveness of your overall campaign even if you improve your messages later. Once readers stop reading your messages or view them as simply “junk”, they are unlikely to start paying any significant attention to them later on.

Here are some useful tips to deliver powerful content in all the messages that you send to your email marketing list readers:

• Don’t Simply Repeat What You Already Said

Many online marketers, webmasters and entrepreneurs that use email marketing also use other ways to get content in front of the eyes of prospective buyers. Website updates, blog posts, as well as posts on social media websites are all excellent ways to connect to your targeted audience. But you need to remember that many of those who are on your email list will already be subscribed to your social media page, or reading your blog from time to time. So if your emails are simply a repetition of what you already deliver through other channels, your email subscribers will start viewing your mails as “useless” and stop paying attention to them, even if you later change your practices.

It’s OK to link to your other communication channels, such as inviting a subscriber to read a blog post of yours. But don’t simply make your email messages a “repeater” of what’s on your other channels.

• Include Special, Email Only Promotions

People like to feel like they’re getting something special. This is why including discount codes, virtual coupons and other advantages that are exclusive to your email list members is great to keep readers interested in what you’re saying. Even if they won’t buy right now, they have a higher chance of opening your next emails just to see if there would be an item of special they would be interested in.

• Keep Messages Brief

People receive dozens of email daily. They don’t always have time to spend 15 minutes reading each message. If there is a long piece of content that you want to present to them, then include a meaningful description in your email and post the rest of the content on your website or blog, which would be linked to in your message. This allows yours readers to quickly see if they want to continue reading.

• Include Calls to Action

Just like on landing pages, including a call to action helps guide the reader to do what you want them to do. If you want the reader to check out some of the products on your site, tell them to do so. If you want them to provide more information to get a quote on a service, let them know in addition to providing the link to the relevant page on your site. Including a call to action is a great way to increase your conversion rates.

There are many things that you can do to have a successful email marketing campaign. Of course, getting good subscribers to your email list is one thing. The more subscribers you have, the more people you can deliver your message to. And the better quality these subscribers are, then the more likely they would be to buy something from your business. However, the quality of the list is only one part of being successful when it comes to using email for online marketing purposes. You also need to take some other elements under consideration.

• Use Quality List Management and Email Marketing Software

There are plenty of email marketing solutions out there, such as Aweber. These tools allow you to simplify your list management by automatically managing people opting in and out of your email list. Some also allow you to create sub groups within your email list, letting you segment your subscribers according to certain variables. Using software is quite useful if you have a large list, as it will automate many of the tasks and help you save time when you market by email.

• Choose the Subject Line Carefully

One thing that will determine whether or not a subscriber will actually read your email or not is the subject line. Sometimes, having a standard subject line such as “ACME Products – December Newsletter” will work, especially if your readers are looking forward to each newsletter as you provide them with news and updates that they find useful and relevant. You can also get more creative, of course, but then there are some things you need to keep in mind. Be as descriptive as possible in the subject line. Instead of “Super Promotion for You”, use a line such as “50% Off All Accessories and More”. This increases the chance that the reader will even bother opening your email. In any case, you need to consider the fact that your readers are probably on many other email lists as well, not just yours. So avoid using cheesy or deceptive lines such as “Your $1000 Payment is Waiting for You!”. Anyone who has used email has already seen this and this is a good way to get your mails ignored or marked as junk.

• The Message Content

Now, you need to focus on the actual content in your message. In order for your campaign to be an effective marketing tool, special attention needs to be paid to the message itself, so that your users will perform the action that you want them to, such as buying a certain product, reading one of the articles posted on your website or blog, requesting a quote or more information, clicking on an affiliate link for a product that you’re promoting, etc. Tomorrow, we will see some more information on how you can make sure that your message content is actually useful for your recipients and will give you a good chance of having the readers perform the action that you want them to do.

While there are many ways to promote your business online, email marketing remains one of the least expensive options and can be one of your best ways to keep in touch with those who are interested in your products. Even though social media marketing has gained a lot of ground in recent times, email marketing is still going strong according to surveys of online marketers and entrepreneurs. This is why building a strong email campaign is seen as a good step towards success for anyone that sells something through the internet. However, in order for a campaign to be successful, there are certain things that would need to be kept in consideration. A lot of the people that are having problems getting email marketing to work for them simply aren’t doing certain things right. Here are some tips which are used by the top online marketers out there that will help you achieve a good degree of success with it.

• Get a List Filled With Quality Subcribers

This is one of the most important pieces of advice that anyone could give regarding the topic of email marketing. If you don’t have anyone to send your emails to, obviously you won’t make any sales from email marketing. List building is the first step towards building your campaign. The best people that you can market to are the ones that have already purchased from you. The simple fact is that people, both in their personal lives and when doing business of any kind, are more comfortable dealing with those that they already know. Once a person has already established a relationship with you by buying from your site, chances are they will trust you if they were happy with the product or service that they got from you. During the purchase page, have a check mark that is on by default that would subscribe the buyer to your newsletter. That way, you can send them email with news about your new products and offer, or to promote some affiliate offers that may be useful to them.

Even if somebody doesn’t purchase anything from your site at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they won’t return in the future. This is why you should have an email capture box featured prominently on your site as well and not just use those who buy something from you as subscribers.

Avoid buying potential customer data from lead sellers if you can. Yes, there is a whole industry out there which sells leads in many niches, such as MLM programs, debt consolidation, finances, etc. The issue with these is that they are often of poor quality. Many of the people on these leads have already been contacted by other businesses. Some have opted in to have their information shared when they were signing up for a contest or filling out a paid survey of some sort, without truly having an interest in the product that you’re going to offer them. This doesn’t mean purchased leads are never profitable, just that they may not be as high quality as those you acquire yourself.

We’ve seen that you can sell plenty of different physical products in your own online store. In fact, most e-commerce websites specialize in selling products that can be shipped to the consumer. But what about digital products which can be downloaded instead? Obviously, e-books and online courses come to mind. The majority of such digital products are actually sold on a website that is dedicated to one specific product, however it is possible to build a web store around digital products as well, offering a wide range of products such as e-books for download.

But this can be just as hard, if not in many cases harder than selling physical products. However, here are some tips for you if you would like to sell digital items.

• Focus on a specific, well researched niche

Unless you have a very good marketing plan or already have a bunch of people that would be interested in buying your products (i.e. you have an email list or some past customers), choosing a niche that is too broad will simply lead to trouble. You will have a hard time attractive decent traffic that will convert well. For these reasons, you should avoid niches like “Make Money Online”. This is too broad. But you could, for example, do some products about “Making Money Online from Twitter”.

There are plenty of different niches when it comes to info products. These could be: learn to do magic tricks, how to maintain your car, teach your dog to do tricks, how to make money from real estate, etc. The more specific you are, the better.

• E-Books are not the only product you can sell

While they are definitely the most popular when it comes to digital products to sell, you should know that e-books are not your online available choice. For example, you can sell things such as web scripts, website templates, software, etc. Basically, anything that can be digitally delivered to your customer will do the trick here. There is a lot of money to be made in e-commerce when selling virtual products and you need to go beyond simply thinking about e-books.

• Combine physical products and digital ones

While some people may not recommend it, you should know that it is possible to successfully combine selling digital products together with physical ones. But your success will depend on just how you do it. Your digital products will need to be in the same niche than your physical ones. So if for example, your web store is in the business of selling pet products, then you can include guides about training your dog, or plans to build a recreational area for your dog in your back yard, etc. Basically, anything that is related to your original niche. You can sell these e-books, but they can also be used to add value to your merchandise. If a customer makes an order over a certain amount, for example, you can include a free digital product for them. This is a great way to make your site more competitive.

If you are thinking of selling your internet business it will be worthwhile going through these points below as you will get more money for your website.  Having an internet business that makes a regular income can be sold very easily but there are many other factors that a buyer will look for that you can implement to get more money from the sale of your internet business.

1) Make sure you have proof that your website has made regular income for at least the past 6 months

2) Make sure your website ranks well for its main keywords. If it doesn’t spend a couple of months building up your backlinks which overtime will increase your websites position within search engines and also increase your websites page rank.

3) Make sure you have a unique design for your website. I highly recommend having your website built on wordpress as wordpress rank very well on search engines. Also many webmasters know how to use wordpress due to how easy the interface is.

4) Make sure you have unique content on your website, having duplicate content on your website just lowers the value of your website to both the buyer and also to search engines.

5) Try to build up an email list on your website.  The more emails you have on your list the higher the value of your website.  The value of 1 email address is $1 a month. So if you managed to build up an email list of 1,000 leads, you can get at least $1,000 extra for your website.  I highly recommend using Aweber as an email autoresponder as they provide cusomised templates you can insert into your website to make the optin forms look very professional. Its also a recognised leader in email lead capture.  A very good way to build up your email list is to give a way a free ebook related to your websites niche.

6) The addition of a forum to your website can be very useful also if you can build up a large community of users, as a buyer can see this as a great way to market to this large community of forum users, which will increase the value of your website.  Not only that it will also increase the amount of traffic to your website. The more traffic you have coming to your website the more valuble your website is.  Because any internet marketer looking to buy a website also looks at the amount of traffic coming to your website. The more traffic you have the more opportunities your website will have for your buyers to monitiese from.

7) Age of domain – Its important to have a well aged domain, i would say at least 12 months, the older the domain the better.

8.) Social networking followers. Another good idea is to setup a Twitter and Facebook fan page and try and get as many followers as possible because this is another very good way to get traffic to your website and also increase the value of your website because its another avenue the buyer can market to your followers.

9) Make sure you have as much statics as possible, potential buyers love to see as much proof as possible when deciding to purchase an internet business.  For example – Google analytics, Income stats from any affiliate accounts you have, any transaction proof you have from paypal. Maybe even creating a video of you logging into your accounts to proof your website has made the income you state on your listing.

10) If your website doesn’t have a blog, get a blog setup with at least a months unique content. A blog is very good for optimisation on search engines, and a buyer will be looking to make sure the site has a blog.

Getting people to sign up for your newsletter, subscribe for a service you’re offering, or sign up for your website can be difficult. A lot of people will just choose not to sign up for whatever you’re offering for a simple reason, or no reason at all other than the fact that you didn’t grab their attention. One way to get people to do what you want them to is to offer them some incentive for doing what you want.

Contests

A contest is a great way to get new sign ups for your email list, or your website. Just offer a decent prize to one lucky winner who is a member of your site, Be sure to be clear about the terms of the contest, and spell the rules out clearly. Once you have your contest set up, spend some time and effort promoting it. Once people hear about the contest, they’ll start signing up for you site whether they have a healthy interest in your niche or not. That, unfortunately, is the down side of running a contest. Not every new sign up you get will be a useful, and high quality customer. Some people will sign up even if they have no interest in what you’re offering. and as such, they won’t add any value to your business. Still, a contest is a great way to draw in a lot of new customers.

Gifts

If you offer a gift to new sign ups, even if it’s a small one, it might just be the deciding factor in whether they do what you want them to or not. Even something simple like a coupon might be the final selling point that gets them to do what you’re asking them to. The gift doesn’t have to be fancy, but the better it is, the more of an incentive to do whatever it is you want people to do it will be.

If you want to draw new people to your site, or your mailing list, incentives are a great way to do that. A simple gift, or the chance to win a half decent prize might very well make the difference between getting new customers, and not getting them. People will do things they wouldn’t normally do for a gift, or a prize, so keep that in mind as you offer incentives to your audience.

Your squeeze page (or opt in page) is your way of introducing your visitors to your email list, and as such, it needs to have a few specific elements in place in order to convince them to sign up. People get a lot of email each day, and convincing them to sign up for another mailing list isn’t always easy, but if you have all the right elements in place, you’ll get as many new subscribers as you can.

Headline

Right at the top of the page, you should have an attractive headline. Your headline should be brief – one sentence is enough. It should also be catchy. For example, instead of something like “These five training modules will help you learn the PHP programming language” you might want to use something like “Learn PHP in just FIVE steps”. That way, the viewer will get excited about your list, and they’ll be more inclined to sign up.

Bullet Points

Instead of forcing your readers to wade through paragraphs upon paragraphs of text to find out why they should care about your list, give them the major highlights of your product in a bulleted list. That way they can get a clear picture of what you’re offering right away. To be clear, include the paragraphs that describe things in more detail, just do so after the bulleted list.

Opt In Box

You should have an opt in box for your list right at the top of the page. You don’t want to make your readers scroll down the page if they know they’re interested in signing up. The further down the page you put the opt in box, the less likely your readers are to sign up for your list. Keep that in mind as you lay out your squeeze page.

Putting these elements in place on your opt in page will help you get more subscribers to your list. Email marketing is getting more and more challenging, but by setting up a strong squeeze page, you can still use it effectively. Remember, include a strong headline, a bulleted list of benefits to the customer, and put your opt in box near the top of the page. Doing those things will help you to be successful with email marketing.

Whether you are writing your emails to your clients or you are outsourcing your writing to a ghostwriter, the most important thing is to cater to the audience you have currently.

Not the audience you wish you had.

What is the difference? A lot actually. Some emails that I get from internet marketing folks or even from big box retailers usually do not pertain to me. Sure, maybe I am cynical and a harsh customer, but I expect a lot from people sending me emails, so when they disappoint I usually unsubscribe as soon as I get to the link to click it.

When you have potential clients and clients on your mailing list, you have a problem.

Why? Because one group already knows you and your kick-butt products you sell.

The other needs to be convinced that your products are their best choice if they are going to buy “x” online.

Understand the difference? Good! Then don’t have them on the same list as each other.

Set up two (or more) lists for clients. If you have an opt in for a free report, have that as a “potential clients” list.

Then, if you have people who have bought your product, put them on a brand new list that is “buyers” because you know a few special things about them. They A) bought your product, B) Have money to spend, and C) are interested in your niche/type of products. With this you can market specific messages to them, how to get the most out of your program or other complimentary programs (down the line) that will help them boast their productivity more, or what have you. These can be your own products or products from others that you are an affiliate for.

Another thing you need to be careful of with your email auto responders is to not send them to frequently. Send an email per week and always make sure you include an opt out button at the end. Don’t spam your followers, you should just be happy they signed up for your email list in the first place!

Stay human. Don’t try to get overly complex (unless your product is on nuclear research or something), and make sure you explain everything in your email, so there are no questions left for the user to try and dig up somewhere else, you will lose subscribers easily that way.

Keeping your email opt in page clean and professional is important to showing your users trust and respect. Make sure you emphasize privacy and the purpose of your list. List the benefits of being a member of your email list such as giveaways, free information, gifts, or whatever benefits your list might have. This helps gain trust right away from your users and makes them feel like they will benefit from joining your list, rather than giving away their privacy to a third party. Trust is the most important thing you can build on your opt in page.

The opt in email page takes some time to perfect, but the main objective is to keep the person interested enough to want to give you their personal information such as an email address to offer them solicited information. This is known as opting in to receive the information and allows you to send them related information. Most people will not simply put in their information if they see no incentive or gains that they would receive for doing so. This is where you would provide a free gift for giving you their information. This allows you to provide a free gift as the ethical bribe to earn their email address information.

This means that you will be tasked with gaining the trust of opt in subscribers. The more that you work to gain the trust of the potential subscribers, the more likely they will be to opt in. Once you do get their trust to give you their information you will have to continue earning their trust. Sending them the free gift via auto-response scripts is important to utilize. Do not bombard them with spam and offers they do not need.

Delivering on the join request is very important. You will have to ensure that they will be receiving important information that they will want to read without asking them to buy anything at first. Once gaining their trust has gone on for a few days to a week, your email responses could be tailored to ask them politely to purchase a product. If they do not continue on, the next email should outline why they should buy it. After this, the emails should explain why not using the product is less effective than other products or methods. This will usually provide them with a reason to purchase within a set time frame if their interest is caught well enough.

Social Media is quickly becoming THE way to promote online business and websites. There are three main reasons for this, which are: the high amounts of back links, the increased attention to the website, and the increased amount of traffic sent to the website. Social media is a cheap, and generally free way for businesses and websites to gain free exposure resulting in the three things just stated.
Social media is built around interactions and conversations. So, in order for it to work for people wanting to advertise, they need to modify their techniques into a more personal, and conversational tone. This can allow businesses to create a face, and not hide behind corporate shields, resulting in more end-user trust, as well as an easy to obtain email marketing list.

Preparation is key for virtually anything, and is key when you are entering the social media market for the first time as an advertiser. First off, you need to know your audience. Hopefully, your audience, or at least part of it, is young, because mainly, the youth are the ones using social media, although the middle-aged and older sectors appear to be growing in numbers among the various websites out there. As a business, you should already have identified the demographics of your target audience, and with that, you already have your groundwork. The next step would be to analyze your competition, find out what they are doing and if it works, and if it does work, figure out why and how you can do that too.

After that, you should make sure you have employee guidelines. This might not be a big deal to small sites, but for large businesses with tons of employees, it’s important that they know what they can and cannot do in the social media realm when representing the business. That being said, it might be helpful to only have one or two people working on your social media sites and blogs, so everything is run smoothly. It is important for those people to update them frequently and monitor the conversations. They must also keep everything relevant to today’s society, and of course, interesting.

In closing, social media is meant to be fun, so keep it that way. Don’t bore people with plain old advertising. Make it new. Make it exciting. Make it cutting edge. If you do that, people will be interested in you and what you have to offer, whatever it might be.

A great way to make money with a website is to purchase an established website that you know you can add value to the website and flip it at a later date for a profit.

To give you an example of what i mean i will give you an example of how i once made money buying a website from flippa.com for $1800 and then 3 months later sold it for $15,000 making a tidy profit.  The website i bought was a 6 months old blog that was rarely updated by its owner.  It was in the internet marketing niche which i know alot about so i knew i could add value to the blog.

The blog at the time was receiving 3,000 unique views a month and was a PR2 and was making $500 a month from affiliate sales via clickbank.com and a little on google adsense.

When i took over the blog this is what i did to improve the value of the blog:

1.) Made sure i added at least 2 very informal posts everyday to keep my readers and attract new readers.

2.) I offered a fee ebook download with an optin emails form. (i managed to capture 5,000 email addresses) to which i later emailed offers to bringing in $2,000 in commission, mainly clickbank products.

3.) I changed the theme of the blog to a premium wordpress theme.

4.) I installed a forum which help build a community around the blog.

5.) I submitted alot of articles to article websites and built up some good backlinks

6.) I did alot of blog commenting on other similar blogs helping bringing in more backlinks

7.) I sponsored wordpress themes digital point marketplace also helped bring in more backlinks.

After the first month my traffic had reached 6,700 uniques a month and my revenue went upto $1600 a month from commission from various networks i was using.  Most of my income came from my email list because within the free ebook i was given away had links to affiliate products and was earning money from my readers clicking on links within the ebook and purchasing a product.

By the end of month 3 i was adding 3 new articles a day and my email list had reached 5,000 email readers and was making on average $3,000 a month from affiliate commission mainly from Clickbank.com, Cj.com and Google adsense.

Now i knew i could resell the blog as i had added some very good value to the blog and sold it back on flippa.com for $15,000

So the key to buying and selling websites for profit is to look for a website you know you can add value to it.  Pick a niche you know about and would enjoy working on.

A blog can be monetised in so many different ways, for example:

• Google Adsense (earn money from readers clicking on links on your blog)
• Amazon Associates (earn money from referring your readers to buy products from Amazon)
• Affiliate Marketing (earn money from referring your readers to buy products from companies you are affiliated with)
• CPA Leads (earn money from Cost Per Action, which means referring your readers to other websites that pay you for every lead you send them e.g an email opt in form)
• Click Bank.  Earn money from selling clickbank digital products
• Creating an email list.  Building up an email list is a great way to make money from emailing your lists with affiliate products.

If you keep your blog updated daily/weekly your blog will grow nicely and will get good traffic coming to it and you will start to see money being made from your efforts.  Top successful bloggers are making $1,000 a day from commission.  Because they have so many readers everyday and if that reader clicks on a Google advert or clicks on any of the affiliate banners and makes a purchase the blogger earns a nice commission.

If you’re serious about making money online with your own network of blogs then I highly recommend you to join up to my membership program and watch my video tutorials on how to set-up a successful blog and drive traffic to them and make money from affiliate marketing.