Email marketing - ready to get serious about this

[Mrupp44]

Ok, I have my PILE of business cards from Chamber of Commerce meetings and different networking events I have attended.

I have 8-10 blogs that are worth sharing on my website - www.sawwebmarketing.com (I realize that's a pathetically low number)

I am committing to and excited about blogging MUCH more starting today! I have a huge list of ideas.

I am adding a signup to my site and putting up a pop up to collect addresses.

I have 15-18 clients that are paying me for ongoing seo / Internet marketing (or simply had my team build a new site for them)

AND AN ACCOUNT WITH AWEBER I HAVE USED ONCE!

Where do I start!? Any advice? I want to start building a LIST of subscribers and grow my list by sharing great advice, strategies and tips to help people put their website to work.

A) Send one email to EVERYBODY (ongoing clients, past clients, contacts who subscribe, website visitors, blog subscribers) or customize my messages for different groups?

B) Put whatever I want to share on my blog and share it via social media AND send an email to my list inviting them to check out what I posted so I get the most bang for my time? (LINKS BABY!)

I feel like an idiot I haven't got on this sooner but truly ANY ADVICE from somebody who has been there and done it would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Thank you!

Matthew

http://sawwebmarketing.com/internet-marketing-blog/

[Matt-Williamson]

Good point Keri - I think it would probably be appropriate to have a link to this as well http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

[KeriMorgret]

I'd add that just because you have their business card doesn't mean they gave you explicit permission to add them to a mailing list. In the weeks after a major conference, I'll see Twitter and Facebook complaints from people that exchanged business cards and were now on a newsletter. You may want to reach out individually and ask if people would like to be on your list, but be sure to not automatically add people.

[RuiZhiDong]

Matthew,

Looking at your blog page, you should have an opt in form on the right bar and maybe something at the top also. The good thing about aweber is that it's very easy to set that up.

You can incentivize people to sign up by offering a short eBook that would be useful and interesting for your target market. Maybe 7 Ways to Increase Your Traffic

Re starting up, you should look at Neil Patel's blog -- Quicksprout. There's a lot of useful information there

A) Send one email to EVERYBODY (ongoing clients, past clients, contacts who subscribe, website visitors, blog subscribers) or customize my messages for different groups?

That depends on what you plan to send out. If you send out a general newsletter or a new blog post, then you can put them all on one list. If you have something specific that you want to say to ongoing and past clients for instance which could potentially increase your revenue, then you're better off segmenting them.

When you add emails to aweber, you should segment them anyway so you know what source they came from.

When you send out an email, you will see which emails engages which groups the most. You will probably find current clients to be the most engaged in terms of open rates and click throughs.

Also be mindful of the fact that aweber does require double opt in sometimes so if you add a person's email from the CoC meetings, they will be sent an email confirmation that will opt them into the list. You can turn it off but you also need to delete the email confirmation message which is on by default if you don't want them to receive the email.

In any case, strictly speaking, you're not suppose to add the people you met at the meeting to your email list as it may be considered spam. So it's better to write them an email and tell them about what you're doing first and mention all of the really interesting stuff that you'll send them by including your best posts or something.

http://ug.infusionsoft.com/article/AA-00352/152/Marketing/Email-Delivery-SPAM/What-is-SPAM.html

B) Put whatever I want to share on my blog and share it via social media AND send an email to my list inviting them to check out what I posted so I get the most bang for my time? (LINKS BABY!)

That's the best way to share your blog. You should also ask in your email for them to comment, share etc. People on your email list are much more likely to do these things than a casual visitor

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Matthew

In order to capture more email addresses I would advise that you have some sort of incentive that makes it worth signing-up for - maybe a discount or some free aspect to your service.

I would also make sure that you customize your messages to different groups where possible - for instance you would want to hit a different angle with existing customers as against potential customers.

I imagine you are already planning on doing this but I thought I would mention it - create and integrate your form from AWEBER as this will make list management so much easier and you can create auto-responders easily. For instance if a person signs-up with your form you can have it set so that an automatic email with an introductory article or an offer is sent.

Always make sure you capture the persons name in the form so that you can personalise your email campaigns.

When sending your campaign with links to your blog I would write the email so as to encourage  readers to leave comments on your articles as this will be beneficial in many ways..

I would also consider encouraging customers to forward emails that are promoting your blog posts. This will increase your traffic and will help capture more email addresses in my experience.

I would also encourage you to push your blog posts via social media as well as by email, but I would try and make sure subscribers are getting extra value for being part of your email list - like I say maybe occasional promoted giveaway or discount etc.

Chamber of Commerce specific - personal email maybe saying something like it was great to  meet you at the chamber of commerce. I thought I would email you as I am starting an new periodic (weekly, fortnightly, monthly?) email about current SEO and our experiences/findings/knowledge so I thought you would be interested. As well as receiving some great information you will also be entered into a free prize draw or x amount discount on work (you would have to decide which works best for you), which is only available to those on our email list.

I find http://blog.deliverability.com/ a very useful resource when it comes to email marketing - lots of interesting information that will be of great use to you.

There are so many things you can do with email marketing and it is such a powerful tool if used right! These are just a few of my thoughts on your subject which I hope will be of help and will get you thinking...