Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

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.

These are the kind of articles I like to write…the ones that really get you thinking like a marketer. Okay, so you want to build an opt in list. Great! What’s better…a separate squeeze page to collect leads or a hover box over your sales page? Well, what we’re going to do in this article is go over the pros and cons of each. In case you’re wondering, this is all going to come down to one thing and I’m going to tell you what that is at the end.

Let’s start with the separate squeeze page. We’re going to view this from the perspective of the prospect because that’s the only thing that matters. First of all, there are two methods of getting leads from a squeeze page itself. The one is to simply send them to a thank you for subscribing page afterwards and the other is to send them to the sales page afterwards.

As far as the initial reaction to encountering the squeeze page, the method doesn’t matter because the prospect isn’t going to know where he’ll be directed next. However, the first impression DOES matter. See, some prospects want to go directly to the sales page. They don’t like the idea of having to “join” a list in order to be able to see your product. So some prospects, upon seeing a squeeze page, will simply close up their browser…never to be seen again.

Okay, what about using a sales page with a hover box? Well, on the plus side, the prospect is taken directly to the sales page…which is what they wanted in the first place. However, the downside to this, at least for the merchant, is that with a hover box for the opt in, the prospect is free to ignore it. Thus, you still aren’t going to get their opt in.

As you can see, neither is a perfect solution, but then again…what is in this world. So, what’s better to use? Well, remember at the start of this article that it’s going to come down to one thing and that I would tell you what that was at the end? Well, the end has come and here it is.

It all comes down to testing and tracking. That’s it. You need to do a split test for YOUR niche and YOUR product and see what gets a better response. That is the ONLY way you’re going to know for sure.

I bet you knew that was coming didn’t you?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to build a killer list? 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 I first started building a list, I had one list. It’s all I needed at the time. Then one day I realized that I had an idea for a product that, while related to the other list, was different enough that it needed a different list in order to be successful. So, I created another list. A couple of years later, I now have about 20 of these related lists. Yes, it becomes quite a juggling act. So how do you manage them? This article is going to give some insights into juggling multiple lists.

This is of course assuming that your lists are somewhat related and that you can do cross promotions. Okay, having said that, for a normal mailing, you want to keep your emails to the topic of that particular list. For example, let’s say you have two lists…one on Adwords and another on article marketing. The one for Adwords, you want to give them nothing but tips on using Adwords. The one for article marketing, you want to give them nothing but tips on article marketing. This way, you keep your respective lists happy.

Now, what if you have a new product out on traffic generation in general? Think about it. People who use Adwords might be interested in other forms of marketing if you can show them that it can be profitable to them. Same thing with article marketers. They’re looking to get traffic to their sites. If you can show them other methods to do this, they may be receptive to at least looking at your offer. So in this case, you’d send an email to both lists about your new book on traffic generation.

Naturally, the above example is a simplified one. In many cases, the relationships between two lists is very slim. You may have a buyers list and a non buyers list. You certainly aren’t going to send an email to the buyers list about a product that they’re already bought, but you would send them an email on a new product. For this reason, if you have multiple products, you’re going to need a list for each product so that you don’t send a promotion to somebody who already has the product.

List management can get really tricky, but if you keep these simple tips in mind, you shouldn’t have too much trouble making sure that your lists get the emails that they’re supposed to get.

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.

If you’re an Internet marketer, you’re building a list. At least I hope you are. And if you’re a marketer, you probably also belong to quite a few list. Well, let me ask you a question. The lists that you belong to, the ones that do nothing but pitch one product after another, day after day…don’t you really hate those lists? I know I do. So then why would you want to do the same thing to your list? This article is going to discuss the right way to treat your list…and it’s NOT by treating them as an assembly line for sales.

Think about how you first started dating. When you asked a girl out, you courted her, right? You took her to nice restaurants, held doors for her, bought her flowers and so on. You did all this and, at least at the start, didn’t expect anything in return. Then, after a while, you started to approach her about maybe making your relationship a little more intimate. Well, that’s how you want to treat your list. No, you’re not going to buy them flowers or take them to great dinners, but you are going to court them.

So how do you do this? Well, think about why somebody joined your list in the first place. They did it to get information. You promised them something before they even signed up…remember? Sure you did. You promised that you’d be giving them all these great tips on whatever. Did you do it? Or did you just feed them one sales pitch after another? If you broke your promise, guess what? They’re not going to want to go out with you anymore and they’ll end the relationship.

In order to prevent this, you MUST provide value to your list. I’m not saying that you can never pitch anything to them. After all, you are in business and they have to understand this. But if you hold up your end of the bargain, providing them with good information, they can’t possibly complain when you occasionally make a sales pitch. And if they do, well, no loss. They were just a tire kicker anyway and were never going to become a paying customer, So weeding them out is a good thing.

Bottom line: Treat your list with respect and they will become loyal to you in the process.

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 get this question asked all the time. “How do I build my opt in list?” There are more ways to build your opt in list than Plaxico Burress has team fines. All you need to do is just sit down and map out a strategy. If you’re having trouble doing that, what follows is a brief guide. You’ll get plenty of ideas from this article alone that you can quickly and easily put into practice TODAY.

One of the best and cheapest ways to build an opt in list is through article marketing. This doesn’t take a lot of time and it can actually be done without any cost at all. Simply get yourself a blog and put an opt in form on it. Blogger or WordPress will do just fine. Then, make sure you put some content on the blog relevant to your niche. You want your visitors to have something to read when they get there.

After your blog is all set up, start writing articles on the niche itself. Make sure these articles are informative and NOT sales pitches. You want to give your readers some real value here. Then at the end of the article, in your resource box, tell them that if they want more information, to visit your blog and give them the URL of it. That’s all. Nothing fancy here. If the article was good and the resource box gives them a reason to go to the blog (that’s coming next) they’ll go.

Okay, so what’s a good reason? A great reason would be by giving them a free report that will help them with their problem. Make sure the report is really informative. If you give them something of value, they’re going to want to remain on your list once they sign up for the report.

Don’t want to create a report? No problem. Create a newsletter series that you’ll send to them every few days or even every week. I have one series that is 52 weeks long. Each week they get a different issue of the newsletter. I make sure each issue has information that will help them with a particular problem they’re having.

It’s all about offering and then delivering value. Promises without the goods to back them up will get you tons of people leaving your list in droves.

Follow these few simple tips and you should be building an opt in list in no time flat.

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.

An effective ezine is one of the best ways to build a list and turn prospects into customers. The problem that many marketers have is that they don’t know how to properly manage their ezine. This article is going to give you three solid tips to make your ezine as effective as possible so that you retain subscribers longer and turn more of them into paying customers. That is, after all, the bottom line…right? So let’s get started.

The first tip is probably the most important. When you target people to subscribe to your ezine, you have to make sure that you give them plenty of incentive to want to subscribe in the first place. With so many marketers moving the free line, this gets harder and harder to do. Just offering them a free report or a follow up newsletter is not enough. You need to do both. You have to give the subscriber as much value for free as you can. You are competing with a lot of people. The more you give, the more you will get.

The second tip is to make sure that when you get a subscriber, you deliver on your promise and DON’T pitch them too often. People do NOT like to be sold to. If your ezine is nothing but one sales pitch after another, trust me, these people are going to tune you out. If you promised them a free report and a 52 week newsletter, give it to them. Don’t bombard them with sales pitches. Yes, you can occasionally mention one of your products as long as it relates to the ezine issue. But keep it low key.

Finally, you want to ask for feedback. So few ezine owners do this. If you don’t know what your subscribers are thinking, you have no way of knowing if your ezine is effective. I usually will include an issue in my ezine where I do ask for feedback. And always encourage your subscribers to contact you for help. It shows that you care and that you’re just not after their money.

Running an effective ezine is not rocket science. Make sure you’re targeting people who REALLY want what you have to offer, give them what you promised them, not pitching them to death, and ask for feedback so you can modify things that aren’t working. If you do these three simple things, you’ll have an ezine that people will enjoy being a subscriber to.

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.