Marlon Sanders’ latest article is titled “The Power, Profits & Process of Email Marketing In 2010”. [Article]


Marlon Sanders’ latest article:

The Power, Profits & Process of Email Marketing In 2010

When I started in this business in 1994 (more or less) and went full time in 1996, I never dreamed I’d be writing about the state of email marketing in 2010.

But here we go. There have been changes since “the old days.” And I want to talk about what’s working right now, today.

1. The Raw, Unabashed Power of Email Marketing

It’s still true.

You wake up in the morning. You check to see how many sales you had overnight.

You type out an email. You hit send. Minutes later you have money in Paypal. You drive to your local ATM and suck that cash out you made minutes before using a Mastercard debit
card.

Honestly, does it GET any better than THAT?

Let’s say you’re not creative or you’re behind in creating a product like I am with Traffic Dashboard (about SIX months behind)….

You buy a valuable plr (private label rights) product and zap it out to your list.

Money comes in. You can also promote an affiliate program like mine that pays daily or weekly via Paypal.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

2. The Profits of Email Marketing

Just as true as it was back in 1996, your income depends on your list. I wrote a phrase back in Amazing Formula that has become very famous, “The money is in the list.”

Now, people have done every kind of variation and riff on that statement imaginable. But it’s still true.

You got a list.

You got emails.

You got money in the bank.

List + Emails = Money

How much more of an equation do you need?

Some people want a model that isn’t email marketing based.I really can’t see why.

It isn’t hard to write short emails. You don’t need to write books like I do! I’m a writer at heart, so I like to write.

The cool thing about having a list is it really DOES give you the ability to get money by clicking send.

3. The Process of Email Marketing

Now, this would be a really short ezine if it were all so cut and dried and simple. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty….

a. Getting subscribers

Alas, we hit the great rub. All that talk of email marketing is great. But I imagine if you talk to Aweber, you’d find out most people with their service don’t have more than 1,000 subscribers.

There are several routes for putting people on your list.

Of course, there is pay-per-click. I predict a lot more marketers will start using Yahoo and MSN.

The cool thing about Yahoo is you can run your campaign without getting slapped every 6 months. They actually WANT your money! What a concept.

Can you imagine sending out a postcard or direct mail piece and having the mail delivery service in your country say, “I’m sorry,we read your postcard (or letter) and we feel it needs more content and links to even more content, and a blog, and videos…

And even then it may not be good enough for you but if it isn’t we won’t tell you why other than in the most vague, general terms! This JUST happened to several friends of mine with million dollar businesses via a rather well-known online advertising source.

I’ll let you guess who it was.

In my opinion, the best source of subscribers is an affiliate program. The reason is, you don’t get slapped.

As long as there are web sites, forums and blogs on the topic,you should be able to work out affiliate arrangements, even if they are informal.

If there are eyeballs to a page, you should be able to give someone somewhere a split of the action for sending some of those eyeballs your way.

The best guide I have to setting up an affiliate program is in affiliatedashboard.com . I also cover the topic in Writer’s
Secret.

I’m moving all new sign ups to my affiliate program to a new software program shortly. We have it almost all in place.

I think my affiliates will really love using it. Not sure what I’m going to do about existing affilliates on the old program. I don’t want people getting their links mixed up. That’s the
thing.

I think your affiliate software is more important today than ever.

You can also get subscribers from banners and article marketing.

In some markets, it’s going to be difficult to get the volume of subscribers you need from banners. In others, it will be easy.

If you do article marketing in a big way, it can also work for you. In Traffic Dashboard, I’m going to feature an interview with Sean Mize who is a huge article marketer and builds his whole list just from articles.

Fascinating stuff.

Believe it or not, the good ol’ fashioned viral ebook, ecourse and brandable reports STLL work. No one teaches them anymore because they aren’t new and exciting.

That doesn’t mean they don’t still work.

Writing an ebook or report, having your optin form in it and selling reprint rights still works.

The bar is higher. You can’t write up crap and expect people to promote it like the old days. But it still works.

If those people who have 1,000 on their list would start putting out brandable pdf’s, viral ebooks and reports, selling reprint rights and pushing an affiliate program for a product of their
own, I can almost guarantee you their list wouldn’t be 1,000 any longer.

If you can write problem-solving or results-getting content, you can do this.

Another great way to build your list is with ad swaps to an email capture page. We don’t know the future. There could be more legal concerns with affiliate programs.

If there are, I think you move heavily towards doing ad swaps email capture pages where there is NO exchange of money in any way.

No state taxes.

Less legal entanglement possibilies.

We aren’t at that point right now in my opinion. But I believe you should always have a plan B in mind. I’ve done a few ad swaps, not a lot.

A few of the folks on my list have complained about them even though they were with marketers I like and respect like James Jones, Jit, Jason Parker. I haven’t done one with Flads yet,but I’m sure I will sometime.

I’ll probably do more in the future. It’s not a bad deal for you. You get a nice, quality freebie. Does that suck so bad?

b. Getting email opened

Back in 1996 my open rates were 20% routinely. Now, they’re 8% to 12%, and I send tons more content than I did in 1996.

I’m taking the advice of James Jones from MicroNiche Finder on this and sending all emails as html to track open rates, as long as that doesn’t decrease my actual clicks.

I’m doing split testing on this currently.

The point is, by tracking open rates on every email, you can really zero in on what subject lines your readers like and don’t like.

c. Getting email delivered

You have to watch the bounce rate of your emails and ask your service provider to investigate if your bounce rate goes up.

They claim the average email address only lasts for 6 months now. If you don’t have enough new blood coming in, your list can shrink.

New blood is critical.

My bounce rates are higher than I feel they should be. And it’s another reason I’m at least LOOKING at other services. Although you know, there’s probably nothing anyone can do about it.

I think I’m at a 7th of 1% every time I send an email. James Jones is half that. And I can’t really explain that.

An email marketer complaining a little about their bounce rate and unsubscribes. Imagine that! Heaven forbid….

d. Keeping unsubscribes in check

I wish email services made it easy to see your unsubscribes in a glance. They don’t.

I’m thinking about moving my customer list to Lyris because they have killer stats, including being able to see unsubscribes.

I think that in today’s environment, it’s very important to watch your unsubscribes.

e. Watching your complain rate

For some STUPID reason, a few of my suscribers double FREAKING Opt In THEN for some bizarre reason feel a need to click the complain button or whatever it is in AOL ….

What? Because they didn’t like my subject line? Give me a FREAKING break. I swear, they’re lucky I don’t have a ski mask and a copy of the theme from Halloween!

Seriously, though. Complaints DO happen for reasons I can’t possibly understand when you DOUBLE opt in to begin with. Geez.

OK. Enough ranting. Point is, watch that stuff. Fortunately, my complaint rate is very low….probably because about the only real work I do each week is spending 2 hours on my Saturday morning pecking out this puppy to you.

f. Getting conversions

Let me guess. You’re sending people to a sales letter and they aren’t buying.

Want a solution?

Get ’em on your email list and send out emails 3x per week, if
not daily.

Remember, that email is only going to be good for 6 months on average. So if you email once a month, you aren’t going to get very far.

Now, send people videos, podcasts, blog posts and other things to get them to buy.

If you’re a Promo Dashboard owner, I refer you to I think it’s rows 5 and 5 where I cover conversions.

You can’t send people 3 paragraph emails that send people to a 1 paragraph post on a blog and get sales consistently unless you’ve got something really, really cheap or something
in scarce supply.

For the most part, you have to do a thorough job of selling the benefits of what you got, presenting proof it works and so forth.

People say, “Sales letters don’t work anymore.”

If that were true, Agora would be OUT of business. Agora is a 200 million+ direct marketing machine operating both online and offline.

If sales letters didn’t work, they’d be out of business.

But at the same time, I say sales letters are only one PIECE of what I call “The Full Arsenal.”

I explain that in this video:

http://www.promodashboard.com/video

The contest at the end is NOT valid any longer.

But the CONTENT of the video is evergreen and if you haven’t seen it, you need to watch it.

Alright boys and girls. There we go. It’s a wrap on this issue of Marlon’s Marketing Minute.

I don’t know if you got any take aways from this or not. If not, let me recap:

1. Email marketing STILL works, rocks and rules.

2. It isn’t as simple as it used to be.

3. Watch your unusbscribes, open rate and bounces like a hawk.

4. Give your money to Yahoo and MSN for ppc to build your list and shy away from relying so much on that other company…you know the one.

5. Affiliate marketing still rocks.

There are more legal issues to watch, no doubt.

6. Keep ad swaps in your hip pocket as a plan B.

Marlon Sanders

Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy.” If you’d like to get on his mailing list and receive tips, articles and information about online marketing, visit: http://www.marlonsnews.com.

*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Marlon Sanders for granting permission to reprint this article.

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