Launching Your List Building Campaign
This is how it works:
Your visitor enters in their information via your squeeze page and confirms their request to be added to your newsletter.
Your autoresponder kicks in and emails your prospect a welcome email that you have written. This is sent out automatically within minutes of their subscription.
Your autoresponder continues to email your subscriber on pre-set dates, according to the system you have set up within your autoresponder account.
You can determine delivery dates and times from your administration panel, and all of the emails you create within your autoresponder account will be sent out to all active subscribers on a regular schedule.
Example: You create 4 emails that are scheduled to be delivered accordingly:
1st Email: instantly sent to your subscriber thanking them for subscribing to your list and provides the download that you initially offered on your squeeze page, usually a direct link to the download location on your website.
2nd Email: Scheduled to sent out on the third day after your subscriber has confirmed their request, and includes an email offering free content, additional articles or another report.
3rd Email: Scheduled to go out on the 7th day of the sequence, promotional based, advertising a related product.
4th Email: Scheduled to go out on the 10th day.. and so on.
The balance that you use, when mixing up free content with promotional based material is entirely up to you, however the more value you give to your list, the easier and faster it will be to develop a relationship with your subscribers.
Taking an aggressive approach to email marketing works for some, however for the majority, it’s always best to tread carefully, initially focusing on building a relationship with your list, and then doubling that up with promotional offers, or recommendations to affiliate based products.
Essentially, you want to ‘condition’ your list so that they grow accustomed to receiving promotional based emails from you on a regular basis.
It’s up to you to keep a pulse on your subscriber base, and determine what works best, how frequently you contact them, and whether they respond well to the products you are promoting.
Just don’t be afraid to experiment and test out new ideas and innovative ways to consistently grow and maintain your subscriber base.
Here are a few ways to build the highest preforming mailing lists, quickly and easily:
TOP TIP! – Create Multiple Squeeze Pages
Rather than just constructing one squeeze page, consider creating a network of opt-in pages that cover various markets as well as the SAME market, but offering a different giveaway product.
By doing this, you are able to cater to all sorts of people who might not be interested in one giveaway but would gladly sign up to receive another. Plus, you can easily split test different layouts and templates by running various squeeze page offers at once.
Keep in mind that the more squeeze pages you have in circulation, the more exposure you’ll receive.
Note: You can use the same autoresponder sequences for all of your squeeze pages within the same niche markets, as long as you customize the introductory email so that it features each unique giveaway/offer.
TOP TIP! – Implement Your Squeeze Page Into Social Profiles
If you have a Squidoo lens, you can now add opt-in pages right into yourexisting page. It’s available as a module, and it’s a great way to generate instant traffic to a remotely hosted opt-in page.
You can set up an unlimited number of Squidoo lens pages, incorporating your squeeze page into each one. Just make sure to make sufficient content into your lens so that you are offering something of value to visitors.
Note: Squidoo is considered an authority website and carries exceptional weight within the search engines, not only will you be able to generate fresh leads from your opt-in page itself, but you could also add links to your Squidoo lens pages that lead visitors to your other squeeze pages as well.
Hub Pages is also another great method of drawing in new traffic and subscribers. HubPages works similarly to Squidoo in terms of being able to create instant single websites even if you are unfamiliar with HTML.
http://www.Squidoo.com
http://www.HubPages.com
You should also add your squeeze page into your www.twitter.com profile, as well as every other social community you are a part of including Facebook, YouTube and MySpace.
TOP TIP! – Article Marketing
Article marketing is a very effective (and free!) marketing strategy and for many of us, end up being our primary force behind generating consistent traffic to our squeeze pages.
With article marketing, it’s all about offering high quality, relevant content that targets your market and propels them into investigating your resource box and visiting your website to find out more about you.
Article marketing is extremely easy to set up, and even if you aren’t a proficient writer, you can easily outsource article creation to affordable, high quality writers.
Even if your budget is very small, there is no reason why you can’t compile a small package of articles, spanning from 300-500 words in length that are highly targeted and relevant to your squeeze page’s topic.
Start out by submitting 3-5 articles every week, and before you know it, your article campaign will generate consistent traffic to your squeeze pages. As you continue to expand on the number or articles in circulation, you will be able to generate more traffic on a regular basis.
Just make sure that the articles you do submit into article directories are exceptionally well written and targeted.
After all, these articles represent you and your brand, and you want your readers to be impressed with the quality as they are likely going to base your other products on the information found within your article content.
Pay attention when constructing your author’s resource box (which is attached to each article that you submit.)
This resource box is the only place in which you are allowed to include external links and you want to include a call to action that motivates your reader into clicking on your link and visiting your squeeze page.
You also want to use anchor text whenever possible, so that not only are you able to generate traffic from article directories, but you can also rank for specific keywords within the search engines.
Example:
“Click on the link for more free article marketing tips and techniques”.
Then in another article, I could use a different resource box that featured a slightly different keyword anchor such as:
‘Click on the link below for a free guide to article marketing for newbies!’
Just the same, be sure to include your primary and long tail keywords within your article’s content itself, so that your article content appears within search results for both the main search engines like Google.com, as well as via the internal search utility on the article directory websites.
Here are a few article directories to get started:
http://www.EzineArticles.com
http://www.GoArticles.com
http://www.ArticleDashboard.com
http://www.SearchWarp.com
http://www.ArticlesBase.com
TOP TIP! – Participate In Giveaways
I’ve personally used giveaways as a way to build generic lists, and then by sending out targeted offers to my contacts, I am able to weed out the freebie seekers from active customers, and manage my lists more effectively, but using Aweber an GetResponse’s built in filtering system to unsubcribe a person from one list when they subscribe to another.
What this means, is that you can grow a large email list from giveaways and then offer specific downloads for different niches.
For example, if I was targeting the dog training niche, and weight loss niche, I would grow a quick list by participating in giveaways and then create two separate squeeze pages, one for each of my main niche markets.
Then, I would email my entire (generic) list and offer them specific free downloads.
This filters out your list quickly and easily because as a subscriber joins a new list that is focused on a specific subject (dog training), they are automatically removed from my generic list and placed into a targeted one.
Using this strategy, you can take advantage of the exposure available by joining giveaway offers and special events while still being able to build relevant mailing lists.
When joining giveaway websites, you will be required to offer a free download in the same way that you do on your own squeeze page.
Once you have joined a giveaway as a contributor, you will be able to edit your gift so that it directs potential subscribers to your hosted squeeze page.
Subscribers join your list directly, and are not managed by the giveaway host.
Here are a few resources to keep you up to date on future giveaways that you can join as a contributor:
http://www.affiliategiveaways.com/
http://eprofitnews.org/giveaways
http://www.newjvgiveaways.com/
TOP TIP! – Co-Registration Services
Co-registration involves a cooperative marketing effort between those catering to the same (or similar) niche market, where they promote each other’s offers to their subscribers.
You can approach competing email marketers and offer them a joint venture opportunity, however until your list is a bit established, it’s unlikely that you will be able to find many marketers who would be interested.
A simple solution is to purchase a package from a co-registration service provider that will feature your ezine, and help you grow a list of subscribers.
The problem with this is that your leads might not be all that targeted, depending on the service you sign up with, however it’s a cost effective, simple method of jump-starting your list building efforts, with very little effort involved.
Here are a handful of co-registration services worth considering:
http://worldwidelists.com
http://ezinecentral.com
http://www.zmedia.com
http://www.myfree.com
http://www.funezines.com
http://www.internetfuel.com
http://www.bay9.com
TOP TIP! – Ezine Advertising
One of the easiest methods of building your own list of subscribers is by purchasing advertising in established ezines relating to your niche market.
You could consider purchasing a solo ad, or at a lower cost, purchase an ad spot within an existing newsletter.
You need to track how well your ezine advertisements are performing, so that you can ensure that it’s worth the money you are paying to feature your advertisement.
If you find that your ezine promotions are generating enough traffic to justify further advertising, consider purchasing a top sponsor ad within select ezines and newsletters for maximum exposure.
Your advertisement should feature your squeeze page, and provide information about what you are offering.
Final TopTip!- Video Marketing
With video websites like www.YouTube.com, it’s never been easier to use the power of viral video to generate fresh traffic to your websites. All you need to do is develop a video or slideshow presentation that highlights your giveaway and directs people to your squeeze page.
Better yet, you could incorporate video tutorials based on your niche market, with a direct link to your squeeze page that appears at the end of the video.
That way, rather than setting up video marketing campaigns that only offer a promotional slideshow, you are adding value to the community by offering useful information that your target audience will appreciate.
Like article content, search engines rank video pages individually, so if you upload a video that receives a good amount of exposure, you will benefit from a higher search engine ranking as well as the direct exposure from the video community itself.
Regardless of the traffic generation strategies that you use, always be sure to properly manage your mailing lists, so that you have an email campaign based around leads and others based about customers.
For instance, your squeeze pages will build lists of leads, however each time one of your subscribers purchases one of your own products, you could feature a different opt-in form on the products thank you page, where your subscriber can join to receive updates, new editions or special bonuses.
This will enable you to filter your subscriber over into an email list compiled of customers, and will make it easier for you to manage lists containing leads from those you know are active buyers.
Furthermore, it’s exceptionally important that you properly manage your lists for other reasons including the fact that the last thing you want to do is advertise a product to a list of subscribers who have already purchased the product from you, especially if you end up offering it at a lower price or on a special offer.