Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

Today, the world as we know it ended. Yes, everything came to a crashing halt. Aweber, the mighty autoresponder service was down for a few hours. Get Response was down as well. Turns out that their data center had a problem and that was the reason. In the meantime, Internet marketers all over the planet were in a panic. Opt ins were lost and nobody could email their lists. Yes, everybody was ready to jump out a second story window but me. Perspective is a wonderful thing. This article is going to try to give you some of the wisdom of my years and a piece of perspective at the same time.

Let me start off by asking you a question. The outage at the data center. Is there anything YOU could have done about it? I’m not talking about what the data center or what Aweber or Get Response could have done. I’m asking what YOU could have done. The answer to that question is pretty obvious. There is nothing you could have done. This whole situation was out of your control. When you put your business in the hands of a third party, you run the risk that the third party in question is going to have problems…maybe even go out of business.

So what are your options? Well, after the outage today you have two choices. You can continue to go with Aweber or Get Response, whichever one you use, or you can go with a different company. But let me ask you a question. If you go with a different company, do you REALLY believe that something like this can’t happen to them? I mean, after all, Aweber and Get Response are two of the biggest. So if this can happen to them, it can happen to anybody. No company is immune to problems…no matter how big they are. And if you DO switch, will you get the same quality service? Will delivery rates be as good? These are questions you need to ask yourself.

In short, stuff happens. The world is not perfect. If it was, we wouldn’t have all the problems that we have. The key to surviving in this world is being able to recognize what problems are within your control and what problems are out of your control. If in your control, then don’t just sit on your butt doing nothing. Attend to the problem quickly and efficiently. If the problem is out of your control, make the best of it. Do what you can but don’t get all worked up over it.

I know…easier said than done. But as you get older, you’ll find that it gets easier.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

This article is pretty much in response to a forum thread where a member was complaining that it would take a whole year to build a list that was 10,000 in size. You’d think that a year was a long time. In the world of Internet marketing, it’s not. It’s a drop in the bucket. Trust me, if you can build a list of 10,000 prospects in a year’s time, you’re doing good.

Let’s look at the math. If you take 10,000 and divide it by 365 days in a year, that’s a little over 27 opt ins a day. That’s nothing. I don’t even focus that much on list building like some people do and I get between 10 and 20 opt ins a day. So 27, for somebody who really works at it, is nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket. Do that consistently every single day for a year and there is your 10,000 prospects. But guess what? Size doesn’t matter. Not in list building.

See, this is where people get so hung up and I don’t know what I have to say to make them understand that the size of your list is meaningless if it’s NOT properly targeted. There are ways of building a list so fast that they’d make your head spin. But most of those ways are totally worthless because the list that you end up with probably won’t be very responsive at all.

Somebody pointed out at the forum that Frank Kern had a million dollar day selling a $1,997 product. That’s only 500 sales. Do you really think you need a list of 10,000 people to make 500 sales IF that list is so finely targeted that those people are just DYING to get a hold of your next product? Trust me, you don’t need anywhere near a 10,000 member list to make 500 sales.

But some people just don’t get it. It’s not the size but the quality. And quality only comes from making sure that you’re targeting people who are most likely to be interested in YOUR offer. If you’re selling a book on article marketing, it makes no sense to build a list of people who hang out at pay per click chat rooms or wherever. Somebody doing PPC is never going to want to waste time writing articles when PPC is so much faster. It won’t matter what you’re giving away. You won’t make any sales of your book.

So forget about list size. Forget about how long it takes to build a monster list. Focus on targeting people who are truly interested in what YOU have to sell and that year is going to go so fast you won’t know where the time went.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Why would you want to segment your list? This article, through example, explains why. I think you will find this interesting reading.

First off, I need to explain why I am even writing this article in the first place. Somebody over at the Warrior Forum started a thread informing people that he was on this marketer’s list and got an email sending him to yet another squeeze page to sign up for another list and couldn’t understand why he would do this. Well, hopefully, my explanation will make this practice clear.

Let’s say, for argument sake, that I have a list of 5,000 subscribers all interested in Internet marketing materials. The list is quite diverse. In other words, some people might be interested in PPC, some article marketing, some list building itself and so on. I don’t really know for sure where each person is. So I don’t know who is going to be interested in a particular item. With me so far?

Okay, let’s say I decide to release a physical product of CDs and DVDs. Now, a lot of people aren’t interested in physical products. They want all their stuff to be instantly downloaded. So they’d pass on my offer. So what I would do is send an email to my whole list letting them know that I was releasing a physical product on a certain date and that on that date I’d be offering it for a substantial discount for a 24 hour period. I’d tell them that if they were interested, to sign up for this special list and they would be notified.

Can you see now why somebody would have a subscriber sign up for a second list? Somebody who was really interested in your product would jump all over the chance to be on that list and get maybe $100 off on a $297 product. This way, you get to see who on your overall list is serious about this offer and who isn’t. That doesn’t mean they’re all going to buy, but you have a better chance of converting these people than the ones who didn’t bother to sign up again…especially since those folks KNOW they won’t be contacted first when the product goes on sale.

So there you have it. List segmenting is a powerful tool when there is a definite purpose behind it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim.

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

A question I get asked from time to time is this one. “Do you recommend using an email template to email my list with?” For starters, for those of you who aren’t quite sure what an email template is, I’m going to explain shortly. After I’ve done that, I’m going to give you the pros and cons of using such a template. As with anything else when it comes to marketing, there is good and bad to everything we do. You can decide, based on this info, what’s best for YOU.

Let’s start off with just what an email template is. An email template is one that has a general message for each one in the chain that is sent out. So if you purchase a 7 email followup system, you’ll get a message designed for each step in that chain, starting with the introduction and finishing with the final followup where you make your last sales pitch.

Okay, so what’s good about these? Well, the obvious thing is, assuming they are well constructed, you don’t have to think about the individual steps in the email sequence. They’re all laid out for you. Most email marketers who have a lot of success with email marketing have this down to a science. In fact, one of the things I do is write autoresponder templates for people, though it’s not a main part of my business. With a well constructed template, there is very little that needs to be added to it. Notice I said very little.

And therein lies the problem and the biggest con of email templates. See, because they have to be generic, unless you’re going to custom design a followup series (in which case it is no longer a template) the person using the template has to modify it slightly to fit their particular product or service. For somebody who has no writing skills or has never written an email before, this can present a problem. Leaving the template generic will likely result in few sales, if any at all.

It is for this reason that, unless you really know your product, you’re probably better off staying away from templates and simply learning how to write emails yourself. Otherwise, your offer will not stand out the way it should and you won’t make the sales that you’re expecting to make.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

I think if I hear one more “death of” whatever, I’m going to blow a gasket. Did you know that Internet marketing itself has been dying since 2003? Well, it has. I guess nobody has told it yet because it’s still kicking away. Anyway, the latest bit of gloom and doom has to do with Facebook and email marketing. Seems that some marketers are concerned that Facebook is going to make email obsolete. Well, if you’re one of those folks, you might want to read this article.

Granted, Facebook is huge. Just about everybody I know is on it and using it to communicate with their friends and business contacts. Funny thing is, I don’t use it (even though I have an account) and yet I still get tons of emails from customers and prospects every single day. Maybe they don’t know that Facebook exists yet. Perhaps I should tell them.

All kidding aside, email marketing and email in general isn’t going anywhere. Oddly, if you ask any of these people who use Facebook if they check their emails at all during the day, they’ll tell you that they do. So just because somebody is using Facebook doesn’t mean that they’ve totally given up on email.

In fact, if you look up the statistics, you’ll find that today, more emails are being sent than ever before. And I’m not just talking about the spam that you get flooded with in your in box. I’m talking about the legit emails that you read daily. You DO still read your emails daily…right? So what makes you think anybody else has stopped?

As to how to keep your email campaigns profitable, that’s simple. Keep your emails relevant. When you build a list on whatever topic it might be, make sure that each email is ON topic. Provide good and relevant info to your list of subscribers. Make them actually look forward to each and every email you send them. Make special offers that are ONLY available to the people on your list. That’s another way to make them feel special.

Take my word for it…email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

When a subscriber first opts into your list, it is at this time that they are going to be most open to any offers that you might have. So you want to strike when the iron is hot. In this article, I’m going to show you a simple way to get your subscriber to make a purchase on that initial opt in.

What you want to do is quite simple. Let’s say you have a product and it sells for $47 normally. What you want to do is include something like this in your initial newsletter.

“Dear Subscriber…Thank you for subscriber to my newsletter. I hope you find this information to be informative and helpful. In case you are not aware, I have a product specifically geared to solving the problem that you’re having with (problem goes here) that normally sells for $47. What I am doing today is making this product available to you for the next 24 hours ONLY for the reduced price of $27…”

And so on. You can then go on to describe the product and all the benefits of having it. You want to stress, at the end of this message, that this offer is ONLY good for the next 24 hours. What this does is it introduces a little scarcity into the mind of the prospect. Fear of loss is going to set in. They’re going to start thinking to themselves, “What if this product is really what I’m looking for? What if it really helps me? If I can get it for $20 less, I’d be a fool not to do it.” More times than not, the person is going to take you up on your offer.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, why would I want to sell a $47 product for just $27? Well, two reasons. The first reason is simple. A sale is a sale, and it may be one that you might not gotten otherwise had you not reduced the price. I have run many such sales and have had numerous people who had been on my list for ages FINALLY buy the product because it was reduced. It all adds up.

The second reason is something most people don’t think about. As this is most likely a digital product (no, you wouldn’t do this with a physical one where you’re losing money on the sale) there really is no cost of sale. Each sale is 100% profit. So what is the difference if you sell it for $47 or $27? If two people buy who normally wouldn’t have, you have $54 profit, which is more than the price of one regular sale.

It’s for this reason that you see many offline stores run sales. They know that the extra sales they make will more than make up for the money lost in the reduction of the price.

Anyway, it’s something for you to consider doing with your first time subscribers.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

There are many misconceptions about email marketing. If I had to take an educated guess, I’d say that the biggest misconception of them all is that you can’t continually pitch to your list. Doing so will get them to unsubscribe in droves. Well, believe it or not, this is not necessarily fact. In fact, it may be the total opposite. But why? This article is going to answer that question.

Let’s take a look at the average list joiner. What exactly is it that they’re looking for? This is where YOU as the marketer have to put yourself in THEIR place. This is, unfortunately, something that a lot of email marketers have trouble doing. And that’s why their success rates are so abysmal. So let’s do that. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the average list joiner.

If you’re like most people who join a mailing list, you are doing it for the purpose of getting information of some kind…hopefully, information that is going to help you in some way. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re looking for info that is going to lead to a purchase. You could, as an example, simply join another marketers list for the purpose of learning how THEY market to THEIR list in order to pick up some pointers. You’re looking to see how often THEY pitch a product and how often THEY give straight content.

But that’s not the norm. The norm is the average Joe who is looking for a solution to a problem…maybe several problems. In fact, most IM related lists DO cater to many problems such as generating traffic, writing content, and so on. If the list owner gives solid information on several topics and in turn has many products to sell on those topics, what do you think is going to happen if he pitches all those products PROVIDED that the info shared leading up to them was relevant and helpful?

I think you know where I am going with this. It is quite possible that a list owner with 20 different products to sell could sell all 20 to many people on his list. I personally have a large number of list members who have purchased double digit products from me.

Point is, pitching products does NOT have to be a prelude to your list abandoning you IF the list knows what to expect from you. If you tell them, upon signup, that you’re going to provide them with info but also tell them about any products that YOU think will help them…they will know what to expect and won’t be surprised when they get a sales pitch. Yes, it’s all about expectations. Blind side them and THEN you will find many will leave you.

So don’t be afraid to send sales pitches. Just make sure your list knows that they’re coming.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

I always believed that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. When it comes to list building, I’ve pretty much stuck to that theory. However, there are some other theories going around that I’ve had time to chew on and think about. In this article, I’m going to present one and then give you my opinion on it. Naturally, you will want to test this yourself.

Okay, so what’s this theory that I’ve been chewing on for the better part of a day? Well, I’m going to give you the Reader’s Digest version of it. In a nutshell, what you do is you present the prospect with a piece of content. At the end of it, you tell the reader that if they want to get the second part of that content, they simply need to opt in and they’ll have it delivered right to their email box. A variation of this tactic has multiple followups. The thinking behind this is that the prospect will be waiting for your emails and thus, you’ll have a responsive list.

On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable method that should work. But there is a downside. With the normal opt in process, you present the prospect with an opt in page telling them that they’ll get a free report or newsletter in exchange for their email. If they’re really interested in the info, they’ll opt in…sight unseen. However, by using the variation above, what if they didn’t like part one? They are unlikely to opt in for part two. In other words, by letting a little of the cat out of the bag, you risk losing the opt in before you ever get it.

Truth is, none of this should come as a surprise to you. With any marketing tactic, there are pluses and minuses. Nothing is 100%. The question is, which method works better? The answer to that, unfortunately, is only going to be revealed by testing. If you take what other marketers say, and you really have to take it with a grain of salt, many swear by this method. Interesting though how I don’t see all that many use it. Could it be because they’ve thought about what I revealed above? Yes, there are downsides.

My personal belief is that you don’t want to make your prospects jump through too many hoops. If you’re ultimate goal is to get them to sign up for your newsletter or free report, then make that clear up front. Don’t send them to a page of content, with their expectations that it will give them everything they need, and then pull the rug out from under them and tell them that they have to opt in to get the rest. You might end up ticking a few people off.

But like I said…the only way to find out is to test it yourself.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

This article was inspired by a forum post. Yes, that’s right… a forum post. Somebody at the Warrior Forum started a thread with the title “I Hate All You Warriors.” After opening it, I received the obligatory, “Just kidding” and then read the fallout. You guessed it. Many members were not happy with the trickery. Well, when it comes to email marketing, using tricks to get people to open your emails may or may not work. Do you know if it works for YOUR niche? If not, you might want to read this article.

Let me start out by saying that this is based on my own experience. You need to test this for yourself. For starters, I have never, nor will I ever use trickery to get people to open an email. However, I have pushed the envelop at times with rather odd subjects. What I have found, at least for the IM niche, is that most people in it prefer straight forward, benefit driven subjects. They want to know what’s in it for them right off the bat. So a subject like, “Free Report On Niche Research Inside” will most certainly get people to open their emails if they’re interested in learning niche research.

But what about outside the IM niche? What if you’re targeting video gamers? Well, I have found that being a little mysterious or even tricky can work very well. For example, the subject “The Greatest Video Game Ever” will certainly get gamers to open. But what do you follow it up with? Well, something like, “What would that be for YOU? What’s YOUR greatest video game ever, or what would you like to see created?” Then, ask for feedback in your email.

If you’re a video game maker, this could lead you to creating something that a good number of people on your list might want. So while the subject line was a little bit sneaky, in this case, it would probably work in getting prospects to open your email.

Bottom line is this. You have to know who your target market is and what they respond to. If you’re sending out emails with deceptive subject lines and your list isn’t appreciating them, they’ll let you know under no uncertain terms by opting out of your list. In my opinion, it’s not worth the risk and using a benefit driven subject line is the best way to go.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing… experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Oh well, another big product launch has come and gone. I’m talking of course about Frank Kern’s List Control. Well, I’m going to tell you something about it that most people either won’t recognize or won’t admit even if they did. I think you’ll find this article quite interesting to say the least.

First off, let me say that I think Frank Kern has a wonderful stage presence. Ever watch one of his videos? I could watch him for hours. That takes talent. Anyway, I was watching his video on List Control and I noticed something interesting. When he started talking about what people would learn from the product, I noticed that the individual ingredients were no different from any other massive product on Internet marketing. In fact, I didn’t find much difference between this product and Traffic Secrets, Nitro Blueprint or any of the other comprehensive marketing products. So what makes this one different?

To answer that question, one needs to look only to the title of the product itself…List Control. The focus is on building a list. And even though in order to do this you need to have many other aspects of marketing in place, such as traffic generation, copywriting and so on, the focus leads one to believe that even though everything that you’ve seen in every other massive product on market is in THIS product…this one is different because of the focus.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that this product isn’t good. It is probably excellent. But the brilliance here is in the marketing of it. This is something that YOU as a marketer should make a note of the next time you come up with your OWN product. What’s the focus going to be? How are you going to make your wheel different from all the other wheels that have come before it?

Let’s be honest here. There is nothing new under the sun. Everything is just a spin off of something else that came before it. And that’s fine as long as it has value. Two people can explain article marketing to a single person and that person can totally understand the one person and totally misunderstand the other. It’s not always the content of the message but HOW it’s delivered that makes all the difference in the world.

Point is, don’t expect to find anything revolutionary in Frank’s new product. However, given his reputation and the quality of his work, expect it to be of value and possible use to you IF learning to build a responsive list is something that you feel will help you.

There you go. Something you DIDN’T know about List Control.

Or did you?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to learn how to build a responsive list and all about email marketing at a fraction of the cost of List Control? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.