I believe it’s fair to say that email marketing is a great way to grow your business and make sales. Before that can happen you need to build a relationship with your readers and earn their trust. I’m sure you’ve heard that readers have to know, like, and trust you before they consider spending money with you. That’s why it is so important to create engaging emails that start a conversation between you and your target audience.
The best time to start that conversation is on day one. Not only will it help you build your business and learn more about your ideal customers, it also helps with email deliverability. I don’t have to tell you that spam filters catch more and more emails, particularly if you’re marketing a product or service in them. Add to that the Gmail promotions tab, and it’s a wonder anyone actually sees and reads your emails.
The key to much higher deliverability rates into the main inbox is to get your subscribers to hit reply and email you back. This starts a conversation and in the eyes of email providers makes you a much more legit and trustworthy contact. In other words, the chances of future emails landing in the main inbox are much higher if you can convince your readers to reply to one (or more) of your messages.
Can you take a guess what your most read email message is? It’s the first one you send to your readers after they sign up and confirm their subscription. This email is often called the welcome email and you usually thank your readers for signing up and deliver your lead magnet or opt-in freebie. Because it is the most opened email and the first message your readers see from you, it’s the perfect place to start engaging with your readers.
If you can get them to hit reply to this email, your chances of getting the rest of your messages into the person’s main inbox skyrocket. Making that happen is a lot easier than you may think. All you have to do is ask your readers a question. Seriously, that’s it. What you ask them depends on your market, your niche, and what you plan on emailing them about.
Keep it simple. Ask them to hit reply and ask a question or share a little something about themselves. Make sure it is relevant to what your emails and lead magnets are about. For example, if you’re building a list in the weight loss niche and are teaching them about eating low carb, you could ask them if they have any experience eating this way, share their favorite low carb food, or email you their biggest question or concern about this diet and lifestyle.
In addition to helping with email deliverability and subscriber engagement, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised how much you’ll learn about your future customers in these emails. Pay attention to them and learn from them.
Have yourself an awesome great 24 hours!
Robyn
P.S. Do you need support in your business? Click here to schedule a call with me where we can discuss how I can help you and your business.
Email marketing is a numbers game. The higher your conversion rates, the larger your list will be. The larger your list, the more sales you will make.
But there’s more to improving conversions and growing your list than just creating better offers and attracting more traffic. Each piece of your email list building and marketing effort has a job to do, and it’s up to you to make sure it’s performing as well as possible.
That’s where split-testing will come in handy. By tracking the results you get, then making incremental changes and comparing the numbers, you’ll begin to see the patterns that make a difference in your efforts.
And that’s the basis of split testing: tweaking, tracking and testing with a clear goal of continuous improvement.
What Can You Split-Test?
A better question might be, “What can’t you split-test?” Because frankly, you can test just about everything, including:
Subject lines
Calls to action
Button colors
Fonts and text colors
Opt-in incentives
Landing page layout
But here’s the trick to a good split-test: Only test one single change at a time.
You might be tempted to rewrite your headline and your call to action and your button text, but don’t. While it may seem more efficient, the problem with this approach is that you’ll have no way of knowing which change had an effect on your conversions. Did they go up because of the call to action? Or drop because of the subject line? .
Who knows?
Instead, make systematic changes to your landing pages and carefully track results. That’s the only way to know what’s working—and what’s not.
Most landing page tools such as LeadPages and ClickFunnels have built-in tools for split-testing. If you’re not using these tools, you can also set up split tests using your Google Webmaster tools account.
Testing Open and Click Rates
Your email list manager should offer a way to split-test your emails as well. Open rates are critical when it comes to email marketing and list engagement. We all know that if your audience isn’t opening your email, they’re not reading it either!
You can easily improve your open rates by split-testing subject lines to determine the format and style most likely to get your readers’ attention.
To improve your click rates, test your email’s call to action. Set up two identical emails— same subject line and same content—but change the call to action to see which gets the best response from your list. You’ll be able to use this information in later campaigns to improve click-throughs on all your emails.
Just like list-building, it’s never too early to begin split-testing. There’s no magical number of opt-ins you must have to get started. There’s no amount of traffic that’s too small. So don’t wait any longer, start split testing your opt-in forms and emails, so you can benefit from the best conversion rates possible.
Continuing with our list building theme, enticing your readers to join your list is just a small part of your overall list-building goal. The larger component is keeping them engaged. Do that right, and they’ll reward you with more sales—not only of your products and services, but those of your JV and affiliate partners as well. That said, here’s the number one thing your readers are looking for: solutions to their problem. It’s ultimately why they’ve joined your list in the first place. Your opt-in incentive solved a problem they were having, and now they’re counting on you to continue to give the solutions they need.
These solutions can take many forms, including:
Straight Information This is like a blog post or article. It answers a question (much like this email does) your readers have and gives them the info they need to move to the next step. Perhaps you discovered a simpler way to track Facebook ad conversions, or found some interesting stats on content marketing, or maybe you learned a new way to promote Kindle books. Share this with your readers. Don’t ask for anything in return; just send them the info they need. By offering value-packed information only emails, you’ll show your list members that you’re not just another marketer trying to sell them something. Instead, you’ll be seen as a valuable source of information (and your open rates will improve, too). Offers Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t ever sell anything to your list. You’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you did that. Not to mention you’d go broke pretty quickly!
In fact, since your readers have trusted you to give them the very best information available in your niche, it’s important that you DO create and send them offers. They need your:
Coaching programs
Self-study training
eBooks and guides
Private coaching and mentoring
So be sure to include these offers in your mailings from time to time.
Tools and Training from Others As I’ve already mentioned, your audience is depending on you to find and share the best information in your niche. Sometimes, that will take the form a specialized workshop, a free webinar of an affiliate offer for a new tool or other offers. If you’re new to list building, it might be helpful for you to remember that these offers are meant to help your audience, not sell to them. Even though you might earn a small commission, it’s likely not your primary goal. When you approach your email from the standpoint of being helpful rather than being a sales person, it’s much easier to get past that “what should I mail” question.
Let’s talk about list building, or more specifically why you need to build a list in the first place. It doesn’t matter what form your online presence takes – be it blogging, creating video content, running an online store or growing a social media presence – any online business can benefit from having a list and focusing on growing your subscriber base.
What makes email lists so special? It gives you a chance to talk directly to your audience. You don’t have to wait for them to come to your blog or login into Instagram to see your content, your message, and your offers. Instead you get to go to them … their email inbox to be more specific.
While blog posts, videos, and social media posts lend themselves to talking to your entire audience at once, with email… even when you’re writing an email to a larger list, it allows you to talk to each reader individually. While your blog posts are written to a whole segment of your audience, you can sound more personal and personable with your list.
Most importantly though, email marketing converts better than any other form of marketing and it’s the main reason all your other marketing efforts should focus on growing and expanding your list. In other words, the list allows you to make a living from your online business.
Plus, you have a chance to get to know your readers better. You can build a relationship with them through the daily or weekly emails you send to them (as well as their replies). You start to build trust with your audience. Why is that important? Because once you have earned that trust, they will gladly take you up on the offers you send them via email. And provided you treat your list well and share great stuff full of value, it’s sustainable.
Today’s topic we will cover how you can improve your landing page conversion rates with 3 simple changes.
For the most part, readers have short attention spans.
I’m sure that’s no big surprise to you. In fact, you probably browse the Internet at light speed, too, skipping to the bottoms of sales pages, and fast-forwarding through videos just so you can get to the next thing.
The same is true for your readers, and if you want to capture their attention long enough to entice them to opt-in to your mailing list, then you have to keep that in mind.
1. A Tip From Newspaper Publishers
Have you ever noticed that everything you need to know about a news story is in the first paragraph?
Journalists are trained to answer all the questions—who, what, where, when, why and how—in the first few sentences, just in case the story gets cut off when the paper goes to print.
In today’s online world, where column inches no longer matter, this type of story formatting isn’t quite so critical anymore, but it’s still a useful tip to use when you’re writing an opt-in page.
Think about it: If your readers are skimmers (as most of us are) then making sure you include the most important information right at the top of the page is going to greatly improve your conversion rates.
For opt-in pages, that means putting the biggest benefits in your subject line and following it up with two or three sentences that build on your headline. That’s it. Keep it short, sweet, and benefit-driven, and you’ll have greater success than you would with longer content.
2. Graphics Matter
Whether your opt-in incentive is an e-book, a video, or even a simple checklist, having a graphic representation of your offer is an important part of your landing page.
You could create an e-book or CD cover, which you can easily outsource, but be sure you follow these strategies:
Bold fonts and short titles make your cover more readable.
Use high-contrast colors for more visibility.
Be true to your brand and stay with colors and fonts your readers expect.
3. Crafting a Compelling Call to Action
You might think that when readers land on your opt-in page they know exactly what to do, but that’s not true. You need to invite them to take the next step. Give them clear instructions and you’ll have higher conversion rates than if you just leave it to chance.
Your call to action needs to tell your reader exactly what to do, like this:
Click here to download
Enter your name and email for instant access
Watch the text on your form buttons, too. After all words like “Subscribe” or “Sign Up” don’t exactly excite you do they? Consider using a phrase that matches your call to action instead, such as:
Get the Checklist!
Send the Video!
Take a look at your opt-in pages. Do they follow these strategies? If not, consider making some changes to your copy, your images, and your calls to action, then watch your results. You’ll more than likely see a boost in conversion rates if you do.
Have a great 24 hours!
Robyn
P.S: If you’re looking for virtual support in growing your business, click here to schedule a call with me where we can discuss your business needs and how I can help you.
One of my favorite topics is list building, and often when clients start thinking about building their email list they ask me…
“Which service should I use?”
Maybe you’ve wondered that yourself, and maybe even spent some time researching your options.
I believe, that this is not necessarily the first step you need to take.
The First Step in List Building
Before you need to think about tools, you must ask yourself this:
“How can I best serve my market?”
Whether you’re coaching business owners, new moms, or bloggers, they have a need that you can fulfill. And when you discover what that need is, you’ll have two valuable pieces of information:
What incentive will be a true no-brainer for your ideal client to opt-in to your list?
How can you use your mailing list to give the best value for those who join your list?
You don’t need to over-think these questions. Your opt-in incentive can be as simple as a resource guide or a short how-to video that answers a common question. You don’t have to go overboard with creating dozens of downloads and a 100-page eBook. These massive downloads are more likely to overwhelm your reader than encourage them to learn more.
And when it comes to providing value to your list members, keep three things in mind:
Regular communication is a must (consider an autoresponder series if you’re not good with scheduling email updates)
Marketing is second to information—too much selling will cause your opt-out rates to soar.
It’s your responsibility as a thought leader in your market to distill and provide the information, tools and products your audience needs.
“What is my list-building goal?”
How will you be using your list? Will you:
Send a weekly or monthly newsletter?
Create an autoresponder series that delivers content on a pre-determined schedule?
Promote your own services and products?
The answers to these questions will help you decide not only the right tool for your list-building needs, but will also determine the path for your ongoing mailing list content, promotions, and growth.
Have a great 24 hours!
Robyn
PS: If you’re looking for support in your growing your email list, click here to schedule a call with me where we can discuss your list building needs.
