Live & Dream

That said, once you have your strategy in place, email marketing to a quality in house list is
one of the most effective, low cost, forms of marketing available.

Choosing the right email service provider (ESP) is like finding the perfect shoe.

You can limp along if that shoe is too big or too small, but you’ll only get optimal comfort and performance
from a great fit.

So how do you get there? Read on as we offer five actionable
tips for choosing the right email
service provider (ESP) for your business.

Consider your strategy

What makes email marketing so effective?

Well, the cost is relatively low, and the upside can be tremendous. It’s easy to start and you
can begin as big or
small as you like.

But hang on! Before you start testing solutions and providers, it’s important to figure out how email marketing fits into your overall marketing strategy.

Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.

With all that potential, it’s vital to make sure you have clear goals, processes and tools in
place.

Questions to consider as you build an email marketing strategy:

What are your goals for email marketing?

How are you going to achieve those goals?

How will you use emails? Newsletters? Lead gen? Upselling?

What metrics do you want to track?

Will you use features like mobile friendly templates, A/B testing, dynamic content, and
others?

Your answers will help dictate the features and priorities you need
from an ESP.

Rank the features you need

In this video are 4 must have features in any email service provider.

You’ll want to make sure your email provider not only offers the features you need but also
that it’s easy to use. Once you prioritize the features you need and want, you can better
evaluate potential providers.

Templates

The key part of email marketing is, well, the emails.

So you need an email service provider that helps you create simple, elegant emails quickly and easily.
Look for a provider with a range of designs, flexible layouts, and mobile friendly templates that
look great on any device. Free image hosting is an added bonus.

Tracking

Those beautiful emails won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t know how they perform.

Make sure your email service provides a consolidated dashboard with all the statistics
you need; open rates, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and social sharing
both large scale and drill down.

Automation

It’s important to send the most relevant messages to the right people at the right time and automation is what helps you do that. Make sure your email service provider
offers solid workflows to help you schedule and send automated messages.

Mobility

Your emails must work across the various devices people use to consume email.

Today 53% of email campaigns are opened on mobile devices while 28% are opened on
desktop clients and 23% are opened in Webmail.

So unless your email campaigns are specifically optimized to work across all of those devices and clients, you’re missing
out on conversions and revenue.

Email doesn’t need a big budget to be effective but in marketing, effective often isn’t enough.

If you want awesome campaigns and analytics, you need to make sure you’ve got the
appropriate budget in place.

There are very basic free tools out there and then there are tools that cost tens of thousands of
dollars and have heaps of advanced functionality.

While enterprise level providers may seem attractive in theory, if you don’t actually use all
those Cadillac features

which can take a lot of time to learn how to use in the first place

you’re just throwing good money away.

Essentially, you have your choice of low, medium and enterprise level providers.

Choosing the right one for your needs can keep your costs low and t
he return on your efforts high while still delivering the functionality you need.
Look at delivery rates

Why?

Because by investing in your email programs, you’re building customer relationships.
After all, investing more in email marketing doesn’t just mean sending more email.

To have a chance of engaging customers and prospects, your messages have to land in their
inboxes.

Ask any potential email service provider about its delivery rate and how they work
with their customers to keep that rate high.

You want to look for an average delivery rate of 98% or higher.

Look for providers with solid relationships with internet behemoths like Microsoft, Google
and Yahoo.

Keep in mind that delivery rates are a combination of both how the email service provider
ensures delivery to inboxes on the backend and how you use the service, so be sure to ask for
any resources they offer on best practices for content and list management.
Check out customer service

Your email service provider should function as an extension of
your marketing team seamlessly and without much hassle.

But there will be an occasional time when you’ll need some help.

When that happens, it’s critical to have access to a smart and resourceful customer support team to help you address any issue.

See how long it takes to get through to a rep via email or on the phone

Browse the online knowledge base

Ask for help importing your list or creating segments

Ask what other resources they offer to help customers succeed
While a lot of the free ESP tools might seem appealing, many aren’t set up to support
you when you really need it, and that’s a big deal.

Because if you’re a professional
marketer

with goals and KPIs to achieve

you need to know that if something goes
wrong you can get help quickly. In that case, you’re better off using a professional
quality email tool that offers 24/7 customer support.

Make an informed decision

Choosing the perfect email service provider is critical to your company’s success, but it
doesn’t have to be hard. Use the tips in this video, and this handy checklist to help make your
choice.

Consider your strategy

Define your goals for email marketing

Decide what types of emails you will send

Decide what metrics you want to track

Decide which features are important for your email
marketing.

Rank the features you need

Templates: Look for a range of mobile friendly designs

Tracking: Get a dashboard with all the statistics you need

Automation: Include workflows for sending and scheduling

Mobility: Ensure your emails are optimized across devices

Define your budget

Make sure you have the right budget to achieve your goals

Invest in email marketing to build customer relationships

Look for an email service provider that offers a variety of payment plans
Look at delivery rates

Look for an average delivery rate of 98% or higher

Find a provider with solid relationships with the internet giants

Choose an email service provider that works with clients to keep delivery rates high
Check out customer support

See how long it takes to get
through to a rep via email or on the phone

Ask for help importing your list or creating segments

Browse the online knowledge base

Ask what other resources are offered

With tens of thousands of businesses diverting their lead generation budgets towards areas
like content marketing and marketing automation, there’s more competition over capturing
email addresses than ever before.

As such, marketers have to step up their game and create increasingly compelling lead magnets to persuade users to hand over their email address.

A lead magnets come in many shapes and sizes.

From free online tools to free shipping
coupons, their scope covers anything designed with the intention to attract and capture the
contact details of a potential lead.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is a free offer you make in exchange for an email address (and possibly
additional information).

lead magnets are also called:

Signup incentives

Signup offers

Freemiums

content upgrades

And many other terms

One well respected digital marketer calls them “an irresistible bribe.” lead magnets are
above board and have always been a powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal.

They’re especially golden in digital age because we c
an satisfy the reader’s request in an instant.

What’s the purpose of a lead magnet?

The purpose of a lead magnet is to inspire the people who are consuming your content to get
on your email list.

You’ll aim to convert them to customers in the future with lead nurturing
tactics, most notably, email.

Offering lead magnets is a vital part of the content marketing formula that builds a more loyal
audience, and in turn, effectively builds your business.

Keep the following ideas in mind when you’re creating your lead magnet:

Results captivate your prospects with a lead magnet promising to move the reader
closer to a desired result.

Specificity

Don’t be vague. Tell readers exactly what they’ll get. Be ultra
clear about the benefit of signing up to receive your free content.

This title is vague: An Introduction to lead magnets
This one’s specific: 25 lead magnets That Will Double Your Email List

Instant gratification

Everyone wants shortcuts

the fast track lessons that can be
immediately applied.

An email course
is an example of a lead magnet where the
gratification comes slowly.

Authority

A lead magnet is often the entry point into your marketing funnel. Deliver
content that demonstrates you’re an expert. Don’t be afraid to give away your top tips.

Value

Free or not, the content you create must be valuable. Aim to make it so
valuable people would pay for it if asked.

Ebook

An eBook is a stellar choice for your first lead magnet. The eBook is a flexible format and you
have great room for creativity.

The most popular style, of course, is the “how to” guide or
some variation of it.

While you can present your eBook content a variety of ways online, the PDF format remains
the popular favorite, as your readers will want to save it for future reference.

EBooks can be easily be created by gathering multiple blog posts addressing a specific topic or
related topics into one publication. Or you might work the strategy in reverse: create a multi

chapter eBook, and after, publish multiple blog posts based on it Interactive content has come on strong in recent years.
Quiz style assessments are among the
most useful for potential buyers.

A strategically designed assessment helps your reader better understand his or her challenge.
Often, the results help the reader self qualify for specific solutions you recommend.

Behind the scenes, assessments are golden to marketers and sales
people because they deliver data about each prospect and are often lead
scored.

This (somewhat lightweight) parenting assessment scored a mind
boggling number of email lead captures for app company Funifi.

Case study

Case studies or customer success stories are a staple of modern marketing and therefore may
be too much of a commodity to “gate” with a form
or not.

Many companies do well with case
studies. The reasons are fairly fundamental:

Your prospects like learning how other companies solve problems.

Case studies often include useful findings and data readers also crave.
And above all...

People like to read about people, plain and simple.

Cheat sheet

A cheat sheet’s a list, hopefully a good list of useful ideas, which will save you time or help
achieve some other desirable outcome.

The formula for acing this form of lead magnet is this one two punch:

Create a great, detailed list

based blog post or asset of some sort.

Abbreviate it, simplify, or sexify it somehow into a something save worthy.

Does a checklist differ enough to warrant a separate listing? Maybe. We’re talking psychology
here and checklists fulfill your readers’ innate need for order and process.

You could offer any length course: 3 lessons or 30.

Content might be copy, video, audio, graphics or any combination.

You could deliver instant access to all the content or “drip” it in a series of
Autoresponder emails.

That said, once you have your strategy in place, email marketing to a quality in house list is
one of the most effective, low cost, forms of marketing available.

Choosing the right email service provider (ESP) is like finding the perfect shoe.

You can limp along if that shoe is too big or too small, but you’ll only get optimal comfort and performance
from a great fit.

So how do you get there? Read on as we offer five actionable
tips for choosing the right email
service provider (ESP) for your business.

Consider your strategy

What makes email marketing so effective?

Well, the cost is relatively low, and the upside can be tremendous. It’s easy to start and you
can begin as big or
small as you like.

But hang on! Before you start testing solutions and providers, it’s important to figure out how email marketing fits into your overall marketing strategy.

Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.

With all that potential, it’s vital to make sure you have clear goals, processes and tools in
place.

Questions to consider as you build an email marketing strategy:

What are your goals for email marketing?

How are you going to achieve those goals?

How will you use emails? Newsletters? Lead gen? Upselling?

What metrics do you want to track?

Will you use features like mobile friendly templates, A/B testing, dynamic content, and
others?

Your answers will help dictate the features and priorities you need
from an ESP.

Rank the features you need

In this video are 4 must have features in any email service provider.

You’ll want to make sure your email provider not only offers the features you need but also
that it’s easy to use. Once you prioritize the features you need and want, you can better
evaluate potential providers.

Templates

The key part of email marketing is, well, the emails.

So you need an email service provider that helps you create simple, elegant emails quickly and easily.
Look for a provider with a range of designs, flexible layouts, and mobile friendly templates that
look great on any device. Free image hosting is an added bonus.

Tracking

Those beautiful emails won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t know how they perform.

Make sure your email service provides a consolidated dashboard with all the statistics
you need; open rates, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and social sharing
both large scale and drill down.

Automation

It’s important to send the most relevant messages to the right people at the right time and automation is what helps you do that. Make sure your email service provider
offers solid workflows to help you schedule and send automated messages.

Mobility

Your emails must work across the various devices people use to consume email.

Today 53% of email campaigns are opened on mobile devices while 28% are opened on
desktop clients and 23% are opened in Webmail.

So unless your email campaigns are specifically optimized to work across all of those devices and clients, you’re missing
out on conversions and revenue.

Email doesn’t need a big budget to be effective but in marketing, effective often isn’t enough.

If you want awesome campaigns and analytics, you need to make sure you’ve got the
appropriate budget in place.

There are very basic free tools out there and then there are tools that cost tens of thousands of
dollars and have heaps of advanced functionality.

While enterprise level providers may seem attractive in theory, if you don’t actually use all
those Cadillac features

which can take a lot of time to learn how to use in the first place

you’re just throwing good money away.

Essentially, you have your choice of low, medium and enterprise level providers.

Choosing the right one for your needs can keep your costs low and t
he return on your efforts high while still delivering the functionality you need.
Look at delivery rates

Why?

Because by investing in your email programs, you’re building customer relationships.
After all, investing more in email marketing doesn’t just mean sending more email.

To have a chance of engaging customers and prospects, your messages have to land in their
inboxes.

Ask any potential email service provider about its delivery rate and how they work
with their customers to keep that rate high.

You want to look for an average delivery rate of 98% or higher.

Look for providers with solid relationships with internet behemoths like Microsoft, Google
and Yahoo.

Keep in mind that delivery rates are a combination of both how the email service provider
ensures delivery to inboxes on the backend and how you use the service, so be sure to ask for
any resources they offer on best practices for content and list management.
Check out customer service

Your email service provider should function as an extension of
your marketing team seamlessly and without much hassle.

But there will be an occasional time when you’ll need some help.

When that happens, it’s critical to have access to a smart and resourceful customer support team to help you address any issue.

See how long it takes to get through to a rep via email or on the phone

Browse the online knowledge base

Ask for help importing your list or creating segments

Ask what other resources they offer to help customers succeed
While a lot of the free ESP tools might seem appealing, many aren’t set up to support
you when you really need it, and that’s a big deal.

Because if you’re a professional
marketer

with goals and KPIs to achieve

you need to know that if something goes
wrong you can get help quickly. In that case, you’re better off using a professional
quality email tool that offers 24/7 customer support.

Make an informed decision

Choosing the perfect email service provider is critical to your company’s success, but it
doesn’t have to be hard. Use the tips in this video, and this handy checklist to help make your
choice.

Consider your strategy

Define your goals for email marketing

Decide what types of emails you will send

Decide what metrics you want to track

Decide which features are important for your email
marketing.

Rank the features you need

Templates: Look for a range of mobile friendly designs

Tracking: Get a dashboard with all the statistics you need

Automation: Include workflows for sending and scheduling

Mobility: Ensure your emails are optimized across devices

Define your budget

Make sure you have the right budget to achieve your goals

Invest in email marketing to build customer relationships

Look for an email service provider that offers a variety of payment plans
Look at delivery rates

Look for an average delivery rate of 98% or higher

Find a provider with solid relationships with the internet giants

Choose an email service provider that works with clients to keep delivery rates high
Check out customer support

See how long it takes to get
through to a rep via email or on the phone

Ask for help importing your list or creating segments

Browse the online knowledge base
Ask what other resources are offered

This presentation contains images that were used under a Creative Commons License.

What Is List Building?

List building means every activity that’s targeted toward adding new subscribers to your
email list. On a strategic level, think of list building as an exchange of value.

If you want website visitors to give you access to their inboxes, you have to give them
something that makes it worthwhile.

On an ex*****on level, activities to build email lists can
range from small and quick tactics (like adding a popup to your site), to more comprehensive strategies (like hosting evergreen webinars).

Why Building an Email List Is the Single Most Important Way to Grow Your
Online Business?

Commentators love to talk about how email is dead, but this couldn’t be further from the
truth.

These are just a few reasons, based on a recent
consumer survey:

72% of U.S. adults prefer email
(over postal mail, TV ads, newspapers, magazines, text
messages, social media, and in person communication) as a channel of communication
with companies.

91% like to receive promotional emails
from companies with which they have a
relationship.

69% of the respondents made purchases
influenced by promotional emails.
If you haven’t built an email list yet (or you don’t put much effort behind it), you’re probably
missing an opportunity to take your business to a whole new level.

If you’re new to list building and email marketing, look around and see which services will
allow you to do these important activities: segmenting subscribers, tracking email marketing
metrics, broadcasting emails, customizing email messages, and building automated funnels.

Whether you intend to begin devising an email marketing campaign, or you are already
running an email marketing strategy, there is one vital
element which is key to your success...
A Good Quality, In House, Email List.

DATA QUALITY

You could have the most attractive and appealing creative campaign, coupled with a rock solid
offer, but if you are sending it to the wrong people, or worse still, the
email is not being delivered at all, because the address is wrong, your campaign will not be successful.

PERMISSION BASED

It is extremely important that your list is permission based. There has been a lot of media
coverage regarding spam, and rightly so.

The effect a non permission based list could have on
your email marketing campaign, is one that should not be underestimated.
Therefore, it is very important that you use an optin process and preferably a double optin,
when aggregating new subscribers.

BUILDING YOUR IN HOUSE EMAIL LIST

Fortunately, there are a number of different methods which you can use to help build a quality
email list. The following list, although by no means exhaustive, will certainly help you on your
way to developing your in house email list.

CONTENT RELEVANCY

Consider what would be of value to your recipients. If you operate in a specific industry, do
you have access to up to date industry news? If not, how can you go about providing good
quality news content? Although you may want to include your own company news items, this
on its own may not be a big enough draw for your target audience.

The key here is in understanding your audience and reflecting this in the newsletter.

The more targeted your list, the more appropriate you can
make the content.

For example if you are sending a newsletter which has a very generic subject, say travel, it is difficult to target the
recipient with the correct type of content and offer.

But, if you have a profiled list, you will know that I have a
budget of $500 and like to take weekend city breaks, therefore your
content and offers should reflect this.

STATISTICS

Perhaps you have access to industry statistics. People love reading interesting statistics about
their own areas of interest.

POLLS

Online polls are very easy to create; you could include an online poll on your website, or on
the newsletter itself. This is good for provoking interaction with your audience and you can
publish the results in the following newsletter.

PROFILING Of course, when someone subscribes for the first time you may not have any information
about this subscriber, other than an email address and maybe a name.

That’s where email marketing really comes in to its own.

Every newsletter you send out should help you to profile your recipients. Has the recipient
opened the email? What have they clicked on? Did they respond? etc. etc.

It is extremely important that this information is analysed, then you can begin to segment
your audience into groups of recipients by subject.

When we have a profiled database, we can
then set about sending far more relevant newsletters and the more relevant the newsletter,
the more productive it will be for you.

Remember, content is very important. The content is why subscribers decide to want to
receive your messages and what makes them want to continue receiving your messages.

After all the hard work you have gone to, to gain the subscription, you don’t want them to
unsubscribe because the information you send them is of no value.

REGISTRATION

The mechanism you use, needs to be very easy to find and very easy to use. Your website
should have an advertisement on many pages recommending that the visitor subscribes.

At 2nd Income Solutions the same time you must do a good selling job. Outline exactly what the visitor
will receive in exchange for providing their email address.

Although it’s nice to gather information about your subscribers, the point of subscription is
not the place to ask too many questions.

Keep the subscription process light. By light, start
with the minimum requirements, for example the email address. Then look at ways further
down the line to build a profile.

The lower the barriers to entry, the more subscribers you will
receive.

3RD PARTY LISTS

Using a 3rd party list, also known as a ‘bought in list’, sometimes looks like a quick way to
increase the size of your database. But, caution is required. As with all data lists, there is a
range of quality available with email data.

Beware of cheap lists, particularly those that offer millions of contacts
for $300. Many lists are overused.

Email lists need to be updated regularly and become out of date very quickly. Your
reputation could be damaged by using an out of date, over used list.

Do your research on the list supplier, do they advocate good practice, will they provide details
of how the contacts opted in to receive emails, for example?

TELEMARKETING

Ensure that your staff or telesales company have an up to date script, which outlines the
benefits your subscribers receive from the newsletter.

Then make sure that every client and prospect is asked the question, “You’d like to receive
relevant information regarding X, wouldn’t you?”
Document the date of the call and remember to offer the subscriber the opportunity to opt out
of future mailings on each message.

OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNICATION

Use every opportunity available to you. If it fits with your branding, why not draw attention to
your email list on your company stationery. Another great position to sell your email
subscription is on the signature of all of your emails.

Make sure you create a hyperlinked description to make it very easy to locate the correct web address and take the visitor directly
to the subscription process whenever possible.

For the vast majority of companies, building
an in house email database should be as natural
as keeping a list of prospect and customer telephone numbers.

Of course, you must be aware that certain methods and processes need to be considered first
to make sure you achieve your objective.

Building an email list without meticulous preparation and possibly outside help, can result in creating more harm than good.

That said, once you have your strategy in place, email marketing to a quality in house list is
one of the most effective, low cost, forms of
marketing available.

This presentation contains images that were used under a Creative Commons License.

How To Do Document Sharing Marketing To Grow Your Business

If you want a fast, easy and cost
free means of generating massive traffic to
your website then you should explore
the potential of content sharing and
distribution networks.

An example of a great content sharing
site is the ever growing DocStoc.com

DocStoc is a very easy to use website for sharing documents and you
can start generating traffic with it almost instantly. Just create a free
account for yourself and start to upload
your content.

Adding a resource box is unnecessary at DocStoc but you can embed your links directly in
your content itself.

Another site that is similar to DocStoc is Scribd.com.

This is another very popular site for sharing documents and it works in a similar way to
DocStoc where your contents can be uploaded and added to specific
categories.

The great thing about DocStoc and Scribd
is that virtually any type of document can be uploaded, including letters, reports, articles, ebooks,
tutorials and several others.

Give it a try yourself; just find some PLR ebooks, redo them to fit your
style, include links back to your squeeze page or website, and upload
them to both sites.

Ad swaps have been in use for many years, and there’s good reason for
that; they work very, very well.

Those who spot and appreciate the
value of ad swaps can instantly exploit the endless supply of targeted

traffic for building their lists much faster, and
they’ll be able to maximize
their business exposure while applying very little effort.
The objective of ad swaps is
resources exchange

You just look for ezine publishers or newsletters in your own niche
market, and request for an ad swap with them.

This means that they advertise your offer and you advertise theirs in exchange.
To succeed in ad swap, it’s important you find marketers at the same
marketing level as you are.

The reason for this is that you want to
ensure you want to deliver the same number of subscribers and views,
as you are going to get from them.

Although ad swaps can be fundamentally an advertisement exchange,
where you agree with someone to send out each other’s product
advertisement, the most efficient ad swaps concentrate on the
exchange of valuable resources and subscribers.

For instance, let’s say you are in the work at home niche market, you
can get plenty of ad swap opportunities for yourself. Consider many
work from home sites just starting up, which cater for single parents or
the communities of work at home moms.

A lot of such websites are just beginning to acquire traffic and are
growing a list of very loyal subscribers, customers and repeat visitors. If
you could contact one of these publishers with and offer to provide
their subscribers with valuable content, you’re going to get a good
response.

The key is to provide good quality information, and send visitors to your
squeeze page so you can build your list as well.

No matter what niche market you are in, there must be ad swap
opportunities within your reach.

Naturally, you will like to build a sufficient list for yourself before approaching your potential partners so
that you can deliver clicks and subscribers to your ad swap partners as well.

Even if your list size is very small (200-300 for example), if your open rate is high and you have responsive subscribers, you’ve got a viable asset which you can offer your potential ad swap partners.

When you want to look for potential ad swap partners, start by
searching for startup websites in your market since they are usually the
easiest for you to approach.

Also remember that even if you contact someone who has a list which is
much bigger than yours, an autoresponder account allows easy
segmentation; therefore the list owner could decide to send out mails
to only a particular number of subscribers, depending on what you
yourself can deliver in exchange.

Use forums, groups and social communities as great resources to find
potential ad swap partners in the same market as you are. So take time
to do proper research and come up with a list of 20-30 potential
partners.

Next, prepare an email that entices people to click on to your page. This
email is what your ad swap partner will be sending to their list in order
to advertise your offer.

Don't hide anything because you want the
publisher to see precisely what you're offering and what benefits they
would derive from the partnership.

When sending out emails to potential ad swap partners, put them in
your focus. How will they benefit? What can you do for them? You
should customize and personalize each email as much as possible.

Also remember you’re not just looking to get marketing partnerships,
but, more importantly, a relationship
with key players in your niche
market as well.

A great place to get started with ad swaps is
Safe Swaps.com Check it out and get started now