Email Autoresponder Set-Up For Massive Email List Growth

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In today’s article, we’ll cover the Email Autoresponder Set-Up For Massive Email List Growth. 

If you missed the previous article, Build an Email List for Effortless Business Growth, click here to catch up.

Hopefully, you now see the absolute importance of having an email list for your business so you’re probably asking…

… how do I get started?

Later in this series, we’re going to look at advanced strategies you can use to grow your email list. You’ll discover how to get emails from ONLY laser-targeted visitors. Your visitors most likely to become paying customers.

For now, we need to look at the foundational principals of email marketing so you can get set up right at the beginning! We’ll be keeping this section purposefully simple so you can start capturing emails right away.

A lot of businesses, online and offline, know they should have an email list. However, they put off actually building it because they think it’s too difficult. To avoid the same fate, read on and then implement the following two simple steps to get going…

Step One – Choose An Email Autoresponder Service

The first thing you’ll need to do is choose an email autoresponder service that can manage your emails for you. I recommend AWeber and GetResponse. In either case you can sign up for a small monthly fee (which is more than worth it).

From there you can begin accepting emails and sending out newsletters. Each email autoresponder varies slightly in terms of the sign-up forms you can create, the pricing plans and any additional features.

It’s worth taking note that most of these email autoresponder services tend to get more expensive as you add more and more email addresses. There are also free options like List Wire but it’s not as feature-rich or well-known as the paid options.

Then there are alternatives like Constant Contact, iContact, SendGrid and others. In general, it’s worth paying a little more and going with a tried-and-tested email autoresponder service. You’ll find in the long run, it’s a savvy investment.

So… what’s an email autoresponder for? Simply, they provide the following services:

• Accepting new subscribers and sending out confirmation emails
• Preventing spam and robots from signing up
• Creating attractive sign-up forms
• Managing your e-mail list and allowing you to create categories
• Storing your list on the cloud
• Giving you data about when people sign-up (useful for split testing)
• Allowing people to unsubscribe
• Letting you send e-mails out effortlessly to your entire list

In short, these will save you a lot of time. And can prevent legal issues involved with generating lists and managing contacts.

Is it possible to build email lists without using an email autoresponder?

Absolutely: all you need is a sign-up form for collecting emails. The problem is you’re going to have to manually confirm all your new subscriptions (or risk getting a lot of spam/unhappy recipients).

Plus, you’re going to have to handle people unsubscribing manually. And you’ll risk losing all your emails if anything happens to your computer. All this and the end result will not look as professional.

For these reasons, it’s extremely crucial to sign up for an email autoresponder service. If you’re really serious about marketing your business online, then get started with Aweber or GetResponse. It’s quick and easy to do and inexpensive.

Step Two – Add A Sign-Up Form To Your Website

Now that you’ve chosen an email autoresponder, all you need to do is add a sign-up form somewhere to your website. This allows people to start signing up for your email list! To do this, just log into your new email autoresponder account. Then look for an option to create forms.

From here, you’ll then be able to choose things like the color scheme, the size of the various fields and the text…

… in most cases, it should be pretty self-explanatory.

Do bear in mind, design is going to have an impact on the number of people who sign up. Therefore, think about the color of your website. Make sure the form blends in. That it works within the context of your color scheme.

But also provides enough contrast to stand out against everything else on the page. It’s a fine line, but one that’s important to get right. Likewise, you need to ensure that the text boxes are the right size so the form looks functional (and thus trustworthy).

And you need to carefully consider your choice of text to try. Also, encourage the maximum number of people to leave their email address. Don’t worry too much though…

…all of this can be changed at a later date.

Do your best for now. But we’ll be coming back to it later. Once you’ve done that…

… you should be able to get the HTML you need to paste onto your site.

This will be text that is written with lots of <tags>. If you know a little about web development this will be no problem for you. If not, then essentially this is the formatting code you need to add to the code on your page.

To add this text into a website: you need to open the HTML file in a text editor. Then just paste the code in the correct spot on the site. If you have a WordPress site then you can click the ‘Text’ tab when editing a post or page.

And then paste the raw HTML that way. Alternatively, if you want your form to be a widget, then just look for a plain text/HTML widget and paste your code in there. We won’t go into any more detail on this here. There will be straightforward instructions provided by the email autoresponder service itself.

Where to Put Your Sign-Up Form

Once you know how to add your new sign-up form…

… you now need to decide where you want to put it.

This is perhaps one of the single most important decisions you’ll make when it comes to building your future email list.

There are four main options for sign up forms. In most cases, you’ll want to use one of them or potentially all of them combined:

1. On a Landing Page:

We’re starting with this option because it’s probably the most effective and the most popular. Here, you’ll simply be creating a static web page, the entire purpose of which is to get people to sign up to your e-mail list.

This will likely take the form of a long narrow passage of text that uses persuasive writing to convince people that signing up is a good idea. Furthermore, important for your landing page is to minimize the number of options available to the viewer.

Avoid distractions leading people away from your landing page. In other words, this is not the time or place for advertising or even for your usual website’s top navigation bar…

… any of which will take people away from your landing page.

All the content and design aim towards getting people to sign-up. Many marketers call landing pages = squeeze pages, because you’re in effect squeezing the contact information out of the visitor.

Most importantly, landing pages give you the advantage of being able to use advertising and marketing to grow your email list. For example, you can use Facebook ads or AdWords (advertising where you pay only when someone clicks on your ad) to drive traffic directly to your landing page.

Effectively, you’ll be paying for each new subscriber that signs-up. It’s an investment because you can convert these new subscribers into life-time customers.

2. Embedded Into Posts and Pages:

One easy way to deploy a capture form is simply to add it within your content. For instance, the form can be added to an about page and in posts on your blog. In effect, helping you keep the option top-of-mind, while your visitors are reading your posts.

3. In a Widget:

Adding your form to a site-wide widget. In this case, your visitors will be able to sign up on any page they land on. And you’ll never have to worry about adding the widget manually on another page again.

Conversely, having a sign-up form on the left or right of your page, in a sidebar, makes it easy to miss. And it won’t grab attention. In order to combat this, clever marketers use a popover….

4. In a Popover:

A ‘popover’ is a pop-up that opens on the same page as your site, appearing over the top of the content visitors are reading. You can use free or low-cost tools such as Sumo.com to accomplish this.

Or any number of WordPress plugins (using WordPress is generally a good idea for making internet marketing easy). And when used correctly it can be one of the most powerful ways to grow your list.

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Of course, you must walk a fine line here: you don’t want to irritate your visitors by constantly shoving ads in their face. That said, I’m from the ‘you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet school.’

So, I believe irritating visitors for just a little bit is worth it in the long run! Let me explain….

Normally, it’s a good idea to have the popover appear after 1-3 minutes of reading. This way, you’ll only be reaching out to people who are showing an interest in your content. Make sure it’s easy for them to decline your offer. Then ensure it doesn’t keep appearing every time they come back.

Otherwise, you’ll just be driving away visitors. Make sense? Now you have your sign-up form in place. And you’re capable of collecting e-mails and sending out your e-mail messages.

So now you’re probably wondering: how do I go about actually getting people to sign up? Well, simply having your sign-up form on the page isn’t enough. You need to really work at it. That is, to effectively convince people to subscribe to your email list.

Stay tuned because the next article is going to show you how to get subscribers! When you read and actually apply correctly the content in the next article you’ll have a definite advantage over your competition.

You’ll create a truly impressive email list. An email list actually resulting in lots of sales for you….

If you’re enjoying the content so far and you’d like to take the guesswork out of growing your business online, then click here to get the ultimate shortcut.

About the Author

Eric Dahl is the owner of Dahl Integration Marketing. Author of the Funnel Vision Method™ and Creator of the Funnel Vision Method Masterclass™. He’s also a World-class Sales Professional, Digital Marketer Certified Funnel Expert, Automated Marketing System and Funnel specialist.

He created Dahl Integration Marketing, LLC to help Entrepreneurs world-wide get leads, clients, patients and referrals systematically. So they can finally realize their dream incomes predictably… without the costly guesswork and technical challenges.

For more information about the Funnel Vision Method and how you can implement it to grow your business easier and faster visit www.dahlim.com.