Email Marketing

Building a Newsletter As Soon As Possible

I always get asked about email newsletters and I am always amazed at the most popular question. “When do I start a newsletter?” My answer is always the same “Now.”

Last month I started a new site and the first thing I did after adding a page of content was log in to Aweber and get a newsletter sign up form for the new site. I put it on the site and didn't think much about it as I was developing a content strategy and doing other things.

Today I log in and see the site has 28 subscribers. Not a large number by any means but it is a starting point to build from once I get the site going in a few weeks.

Since the email is loaded and the auto-responder is set to go out with content every 3 weeks for 9 weeks the people on the list are already interacting with it. I don't have to do anything and the site is getting traffic from the newsletter.

Building a newsletter list should be one of the main to-do's as you are building a site. In a world of “Not Provided” keywords disappearing from Google analytics and Facebook starting to show your page to less and less of your fans you have to get your slice of traffic any way you can.

Use Your Social Media Channels To Build Your List

I am a big fan of getting traffic from Facebook or any social site for that matter and getting them to my email list. Besides interacting with the interesting people on social media for future business I also consider social media to be the wide rim of the sales funnel. Once you get people on your newsletter list you control the way they interact with you. [Tweet “Once you get people on your newsletter list you control the way they interact with you.”]

You can sleep at night and you don't have to worry if Facebook is showing them your post. Actually you shouldn't be worrying about it because they are not showing it. You should be spending the time you are using worrying and build content on your site and build up your newsletter list.

Odds are if you are reading this post you came from a social media channel or my newsletter: )

Beyonce is The Ultimate Email Marketer

Every once in a while something happens across the entertainment industry that makes me think. Yesterday was that kind of day as Beyonce, out of nowhere released a new album. Usually there is a press tour and press releases before an artist drops an album but not this time. As it was reported in USA Today Beyonce just dropped the album without any of that. Most people that follow the music industry didn't even know she was making an album or 17 videos to go along with it. I am sure there were some serious NDA disclosures going on.

knowles1 — Photo from Beyonce on Facebook

The lesson that I took from it was that Beyonce will have millions of downloads this weekend because she has an extensive email list and a huge social media following. From what I have read she uses email and Tumblr very well to keep her fan base up to date with what she is doing. Her fan base is extremely loyal and it shows. Without her asking her fans Beyonce fans generated more than 1.2 million Tweets in just 12 hours. I am sure it would have been more if she had tweeted out to her 13 million followers on Twitter what she was doing. She didn't have to as her fans saw a video for the album on Facebook from Beyonce and it just took a life of it's own across all social media channels.

How To Make Millions With Email

Needless to say her album shot to the top of iTunes within hours on Friday the 13th. The lack of publicity made the press eat up the story even more than if she would of did a press tour and talked about the album. Saturday morning in my inbox was the email from iTunes which I am sure generated a few million more in downloads.

As I am writing this it is late Saturday night and Billboard magazine has said that she has sold 430,000 albums at $15.99. If my math is correct that is about 6.8 million dollars in sales without spending a penny on advertising. Whoever said the money is in the list wasn't kidding!

Another thing she did by accident is create such a buzz I am sure all the people at the morning television shows would kill to have her on. At this point she can stay home and have them come to her, on her time schedule.

Deleting Your Unsubscribers From Aweber

Last night at our Affiliate Summit Meetup we got to talking about newsletters and one of the people mentioned that they are getting charged a lot of money. When I brought up the subject that they should delete their unsubscribers because it would cut down on the amount of people on the list and cut down on the amount of money they would be paying each month I got a few funny looks. I then went on to explain how to do it, then it dawned on me that this could help others so here it is.

You no longer need these email addresses so all they are doing is counting against your total number of people on your list. Aweber charges you for your unsubscribers and here is how you cut them off and get back to the real list that matters.

How You Save Money On Aweber

Log into Aweber and click on the List you want to remove your unsubscribers. This is either in the drop down box or under List Stats.

Click Subscribers on the top menu bar and hit search.

There will be a dropdown on the next screen that says View Segment, scroll to the part that says unsubscribed. The list of your unsubscribes will appear, you may have to scroll down the page to see them. On the right hand side you will see a checkbox that says erase. This will highlight all your unsubscribes and click Save on the bottom.

Delete Unsubscribers from Aweber — Delete Unsubscribers From Aweber

That is it you have just deleted the people that have unsubscribed from your email list. Simple.