I like services and solutions where you get to own your data. This alternative to Mailchimp natively holds your data on your own website, so that is one of the upsides I really like about it.

As a quick disclaimer, I still think you should pay for your email marketing service from the beginning. This creates a little bit of pressure for you to follow through. There are also some logistical problems every time you need to migrate your email list.

For example, if you start for free with one company like Mailchimp and then you want to move to another one because of better features, you'll find that transferring your list successfully doesn't always work.

It's cool when you see a feature in a service you don't have and then you want to move over to it. But when it comes to email lists, you have to consider a lot of factors that can affect you. Email service providers look at opt-in method, frequency of contact, spam reports, and how you built your list. And that's not even going into whether the new service even allows you to import an existing list.

If you want to follow that advice, my go-to email marketing service is Aweber, you can get started for free here using my link. I've been with them for years and never had a problem.

But if you're still looking for free, this alternative to Mailchimp is free for up to 1000 subscribers, and it is highly dependent on your web host.

They work great with most hosts, AND they specifically have GreenGeeks as one of their recommended hosts, so that's a good thing. It is free, for the sites I've used it on, it works great to send out newsletters and updates to your subscribers and you can manage it all within your WordPress dashboard.

The alternative is an email marketing plugin for WordPress

This free alternative to Mailchimp is a plugin, called MailPoet. You install it like a normal plugin, configure the basic options, and voila, you now have an email marketing system within your blog or website. Using it is very easy and intuitive.

The free version allows you to have up to 1000 subscribers, and you get the premium features. After that, the pricing is comparable to other services. They have templates and customization options for your emails and newsletters so everything matches whatever branding you want, and they offer statistics such as open rates, click-through rates, and all that good stuff.

MailPoet form editor video

I'm not going to go into details on how to use it or have a full tutorial about it on this blog post, but here's a very helpful video by the Mailpoet team showing you how easy it is to use it.

The post Another Free Alternative to Mailchimp appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Deleted for affiliate links

First, they frown upon the use of affiliate marketing links in your emails. They will outright suspend or delete your account. They say they don't but there are many stories where accounts have been deleted without notice for this reason. They even have an article on their website trying to explain the difference between affiliate marketing links and affiliate links.

Yes, there are differences, but the line is so blurred, I wouldn't take a chance with Mailchimp. It's almost like they have that in their terms of service just to have a way to delete your account if they feel like they want to. Technically speaking, the definitions are clear, but practically speaking things can be confusing. An algorithm and some sort of filter will determine if your links are good or not. How do you decide beforehand? I don't know. Don't worry you're not the only one confused.

Mailchimp has this section in their "clarification" post:

Deleted for "inactivity"

This one is tricky because I can understand their point of view on this. If you don't use it, you lose it. Maybe they're doing it to save resources, or to keep some of their metrics up. I don't know exactly and frankly, I don't care to find out. But the bottom line is that if you don't use your free Mailchimp account often enough, they may just delete it outright. I just had this happen to a client.

My client had an email list with just over 1000 subscribers and they hadn't used it in a while. Despite the fact that the list was built slowly, over time, with subscribers looking for the content my client provided, using double-opt-in, Mailchimp decided that he hadn't used it often enough so they deleted it. No warning, no heads up. And he's not the only one, there are many stories about this happening, like this one, or this one.

Out of curiosity, I went to check on a list I had created for my daughter's website. It had a very low subscriber count, we built it just for fun. Most of the subscribers were just family and friends so I'm not too concerned. But that account too was deleted.

Apparently, Mailchimp wants you to spam your list regularly, send them stuff all the time, even if you don't have anything real to say. Go figure!

On one hand, they don't want you to use affiliate marketing links, but on the other hand, they want you to behave like an affiliate marketer by sending emails even when you don't have anything to send.

What's the alternative?

I believe the alternative is paying for your email list. Even if you start with a free account, think about it as a paid service and treat it like a paid service. I think if you pay for it, you'll have more skin in the game and you'll develop your list more and make a better effort to maintain it and use it.

Incoming shameless plug: my list is in Aweber, and I recommend that. They offer a free account as well, but they won't delete it and they won't delete it for using affiliate marketing links. Also, they will help you grow your list. I have used them since I started and they have always been great. Use my affiliate link to sign up with them.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The post Mailchimp is Free, But They’ll Delete your Account appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Every email list service I have used behaves this way. If someone unsubscribes, they are just marked as unsubscribed or inactive, but they remain in the account.

These "dead" subscribers can affect your cost.

Aweber charges you per subscriber, not per active subscriber so if I have a few people over the threshold, I may be paying for people even though they would never get my emails.

It makes sense for Aweber to keep them around. First, because it benefits them to increase your total subscriber count, but also because if the person decides to re-subscribe, you may have a special rule or autoresponder sequence that applies to that person.

By the way, I use and recommend Aweber for your email marketing needs. Give it a try for free today, get started here.

For most people, it doesn't make sense to pay for someone just in case they decide to re-subscribe. So the best thing is to remove those subscribers.

Aweber doesn't do any clean-up for you automatically, so you have to take a couple of steps to clean up your list periodically and remove unsubscribed accounts.

How often should you delete subscribers from your email list?

It depends on your list size and how frequently you email all of your subscribers. Most people unsubscribe after they receive an email they didn't like.

If you send emails daily, then you might want to do this email cleanup procedure every month, but if you only send a few emails each month, you may only need to do this every two or three months.

Also, keep in mind, this is not the same as scrubbing your email list. We'll cover that in a different blog post.

Don't sweat it. People unsubscribe all the time.

As I mentioned in a previous post, How to get traffic to your blog part 2, email is important, but people unsubscribe. It's part of life, there are taxes, death, and unsubscribers. All are unavoidable.

It's easy to take unsubscribes personally or to feel like you did something wrong. But don't. It happens and it's just a part of business, don't even think about it twice. As long as you're getting more subscribers than unsubscribes then you're doing fine.

But you don't have to keep those accounts around in your email list. Remove them, because they count against you. Here's a quick and simple tutorial showing you how you delete them so they don't count against your account limits.

If you want to send them one last personal email, you could download the list to your computer before you delete them then send them a personal message. But, I would say, let it go. In fact I have a video about emailing your subscribers after they have unsubscribed here if you want to take a look.

To delete users or subscribers from your account follow the instructions below. And if you don't mind, share this on Twitter with the button below so others can see it as well, thank you in advance!

How To Delete Inactive Subscribers

1. Login to your Aweber account and select the correct list.

2. Click on the Subscribers tab

3. Click on the filter called "unsubscribed."

This will give you a list of the people that are still part of your list but have opted-out. Now it's time to get rid of them. Like Mr. Wonderful would say, they're dead to you.

4. Select the accounts that have unsubscribed and delete them, as shown next:

That's it!

And this is how you delete the accounts that have unsubscribed. There's no need to carry those accounts around and in some cases, they could cost you extra money so keep it clean and remove those.

Most other email services out there have a similar procedure, the whole goal here is to remove those people that have unsubscribed. It's just dead weight, get rid of it.

The post Get Rid of Dead Weight from Your Email List appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Emailing unsubscribers is nothing new, email marketers have been doing this for over a decade but there's always some newbie that thinks they just discovered the biggest secret in the planet and start sharing it and posting about it.

And they automated it whoop dee do!

You may be tempted to put unsubscribers into a new "why did you unsubscribe" funnel. And you can even do it so it looks like you did it manually through your Gmail account, you know, to add that "personal touch."

Hint, it's not a secret and it's not all that impressive. You can easily do this with Zapier, or IFTTT or even manually from within your Gmail account.

Still, don't do it.

If you're faced with the choice to do this or not do it-- Don't do it... yes, it's clever and "neat" but it's annoying AF and most likely illegal, plus it will most likely damage your technical reputation and email reputation with the big email providers.

Should you follow up with people that unsubscribe from your list? Maybe, but probably not automatically. If they are only subscribed to one of your lists and they already chose to unsubscribe, they don't expect yet another email.

The post Email Marketing: Sure Fire Way to Annoy and Alienate People appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Clearly, I'm being sarcastic. But I do want to make a case for why you don't want to use Jetpack to manage your blog's subscriptions.

You don't want to kill all chances of your blog making money, right?

So WordPress.com is great. It offers a terrific free service and a premium service for a fee. WordPress.com also offers a number of add-on services you can use on your self-hosted or WordPress.org based website.

Through a plugin called Jetpack, you can get access to a lot of services usually only available to wordpress.com users. But because we want to monetize our blog any way we want, we are using WordPress.org, the self-hosted version of WordPress.

But at the same time we want the functionality that WordPress.com users have! What a conundrum!

The solution is that you can install some services through the Jetpack addon. One of the add-ons available through Jetpack takes care of blog subscriptions.

I cry a little every time I see a blog using the built-in WordPress.com subscriptions. So much potential wasted.

Sad.

Please, don't use it.

While I think that WordPress.com is great and the services they offer are solid, for reasons I already covered in a previous post, I'm trying to detangle all my websites from all the WordPress.com services.

Just like I discouraged you from using Akismet on that last post, today I'm discouraging you from using the built-in subscription feature that comes with Jetpack.

This blog post is all about making a case for you to STOP using that addon or module.

Stop it, now.

As in right now, when you finish reading this article, you need to go and take the steps I list at the end.

I mean, you only need to do what I say if you want to do the right thing, and only if you want to make money with your blog.

Even if you're not ready to make money today, you need to do this so that you can actually make money any time you are ready to start.

First, let's look at where the problem exists.

In your self-hosted WordPress blog, go to your dashboard, then to your Jetpack control panel and get to the settings for Jetpack.

From there, head over to the Discussion link at the top. (see screenshot below).

You can scroll down from there and you'll see the Subscriptions section. I highlighted that in the screenshot below.

When you use this feature, WordPress.com users can easily subscribe to your blog. Also if they leave a comment and want to, they can subscribe to future comments in that article.

Once this is activated, you can use a widget to add the subscription widget to your sidebar, so visitors coming to your blog will be inclined to put their name and email and subscribe.

Sounds fantastic doesn't?

It isn't.

Here's the problem with this service for you as a blogger trying to make money.

You don't have control of what or when stuff goes to those people that subscribe to your blog using this service.

For example, WordPress.com will automatically send an email to everyone that subscribed immediately after you publish your blog post.

The email is very generic and the text will be just an excerpt from your blog post and it will have a link back to your article.

This is a problem because you don't have control over when the email goes out to announce your blog post. You also don't get to define what text goes out in that email.

If you publish your blog post at 9:00 pm but you want to email your subscribers at 9:00 am the next day, forget about it. You can't do it.

This is a problem because if you press publish to your article, walk away for a few minutes to get a good cup of coffee, but when you return you re-read that article just to realize you were not supposed to publish it yet.

Maybe it was the wrong article, or maybe it needed a little more work. You immediately unpublish it and get to back to work.

You think all is going to be okay. Right? I mean, it's only been two or three minutes.

WRONG!

That article already was sent to your subscribers and the few subscribers that decide to open that boring email, then by the grace of God, decide to click on the link will find that your blog post doesn't even exist because you had to unpublish it. Or it's incomplete.

How embarrassing!

But besides getting our egos bruised a little bit, the bigger problem with that last scenario is that the people that clicked through may just end up unsubscribing because you sent a broken link.

But you didn't even send the link! Right? You just walked away to get some coffee after all that work you did.

It was WordPress.com that sent it. And this is when you realize you wish you could control the timing and send it only when you're ready.

But you can't.

There are more problems with this subscription system though.

For the subscriber, it is very tedious and the user experience isn't great. They have to click and confirm too many times.

If the subscriber isn't logged in to their WordPress.com account but they decide to subscribe to your blog with the same email that they use for WordPress.com then they will be asked to log in.

That can turn people off that don't want to take that step right now or are unable to for whatever reason.

But that double-confirmation is killer, it's killing your relationship with your readers. I recently logged into my WordPress.com to look at my own subscriptions and see if I even remember seeing these recently.

I didn't recognize any of my subscriptions, which means that I'm not getting notified correctly. But that wasn't the most surprising thing.

This was the most surprising part, I had subscriptions pending confirmation from years ago. I had a total of 42 pending confirmations.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this same issue so that means that people that wanted to subscribe to you will never receive your updates because they never confirmed their subscription.

But It's All About the Control

There's one more problem with this service besides not being able to control the timing.

You don't have the people's email addresses, so if you wanted to send them a special announcement, or a message that you aren't going to post publicly, you really can't do it easily.

You could export the subscribers and use that list to email them manually or try to import them into Aweber, or whatever email list service you have or want to use.

If you are already stuck in this situation, that may be the only way to get out of it, but now you can rectify this problem and get a proper email list sign-up box so your readers can really subscribe to you.

So how do you fix this problem?

Step 1. Sign up for a free trial account with Aweber here.

Step 2. Create a list in Aweber for your blog subscribers, create a form for this list.

Step 3. Install the form on your blog with a text widget or the new HTML widget.

Step 4. Remove the old WordPress.com/Jetpack subscription widget.

Step 5. Turn off the subscription service in the Jetpack dashboard.

You will have a little more responsibility this way, and it is a little bit more work, but you will also gain so much more in terms of control, messaging and the ability to nurture the relationship with your readers as best as you see fit.

In Conclusion

As you set up your blog for business or start a blog for business, this is one of the little details that you don't really know until you find out the problems that come with it.

Using the built-in subscription system seems easy, it takes 10 seconds to set it up and you think all is well. But it isn't.

For reasons I talked about in a previous blog post, (see: Gripes with Jetpack and removing Akismet) I recommend you avoid using Jetpack altogether, establish a proper email list and use that to build the relationship with your readers.

The post Want to Monetize Your Blog? Don’t Use Jetpack Subscriptions appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How do you feel when someone talks down to you? Not good, right?

How do you feel if someone tells you something, and then they finish with something like "... and that's it!" or "what I said is it, and I don't care what you think"?

Pretty crummy right? Maybe you feel belittled, ignored or at the very least, you feel unappreciated.

That's precisely the type of tone you're conveying when you use a "noreply" email address in your email marketing. I would advise you to stop using that.

Using the noreply address in your marketing is going to annoy and alienate your subscribers right away. So, if you're wondering whether you should start using it now, the answer would be an emphatic NO. Aside from the use case I mentioned at the beginning of my article, you should never use a noreply email address.

Whenever I see a "do not reply" or "no reply" or similar email address from a company, my urge to unsubscribe is immediate. I usually follow through and unsubscribe, buh-bye. If you don't have time for me, I don't have time for you. Even if I may never reply, knowing that I can't is off-putting to me.

I suspect that I'm not the only one that feels this way and this practice is probably causing some tension with your subscribers. At the very least you're doing yourself a disservice because you're training your subscribers that you don't want to hear back from them.

Email is becoming crowded, even though it is still the number one communication method online, the key to earning the attention and trust from your audience as well as closing a sale comes down to the relationship.

You should stop using "noreply" addresses when you send out emails. The noreply email account is a vestige from the early days of email marketing and doesn't belong in today's social-media driven marketplace.

So here's my advice for this post, next time you start an email campaign, put your name behind it. Alternatively, put an email address that is inviting. The best emails I get are from people; I prefer to see their name in the email and their signature, even when they're representing a larger company.

An email is between YOU and your reader. While we use email marketing campaigns and systems to facilitate our communications, we can't let the ease of use and automation damage our relationships.

Be real, be personable and be yourself. Moreover, when people reply, take a few seconds to respond to them. This simple gesture can turn a prospect into a raving lifetime fan and loyal consumer.

In your business, what else is more important than customer satisfaction? Ok, ok...  after sales, what's more important than customer satisfaction?

I would venture to say that pretty much nothing.

I'm a strong advocate for Email marketing. Email is the most widely used communication method in the planet. Many people have Facebook, many people have Whatsapp or Line, Twitter and other similar accounts, but virtually everybody has email.

If you haven't added email marketing to your business, it's time to do so now, use my promo link and start with Aweber for free here. Oh, and if I didn't make it clear enough, do not use a noreply email account!

The post Time to Stop Using the Noreply Email Account appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is a topic that is highly debatable and you'll find proponents of both methods. Each one has its merits and disadvantages. At the end, it comes down to how you send emails to the subscribers.

If you annoy your subscribers or send them irrelevant content, they will make SPAM complaints whether they joined your list via double opt-in, or single opt-in.

In some cases, the discussion isn't just a matter of opinion but a matter of law. Some countries or jurisdictions require that you collect email addresses properly and with full disclosure to the subscriber. That can be difficult with single opt-in methods.

I want to debunk a myth that permeates this discussion, too, while we are at it. In the U.S., businesses are guided by the CAN-SPAM Rule, and this does not specify that a subscriber has to opt-in. Here is a quick guide for business compliance on using promotional emails. In fact, you can theoretically email anybody you want so long as you follow the actual CAN-SPAM laws. The law doesn't say that the recipient of a marketing or promotional email must have opted in first.

Now that I got that out of the way, I thought I would make a short video talking about what I think it's best and why. Check out the video below and let me know what you think in the comments.

I mentioned some tools in the video so I'll link them here. So if you want to start an email marketing campaign, the three main tools I use are these:

Aweber - hosts my email lists and manages the sending and tracking of emails to my subscribers. Start for free here. Aweber allows single opt-in or double opt-in.

Optinmonster - provides me with opt-in boxes, sliders, and helps me capture people's attention before they decide to leave my blog or websites. Optinmonster doesn't have a free option or trial, but it's worth it if you have a website, doesn't matter if it's WordPress or not. Check it out here to learn more, or look through previous posts I've written about Optinmonster.

Leadpages - allows me to create amazing landing pages that connect to my email lists, they also have SMS opt-in services like leaddigits and it's all around one of my favorite landing page builders. Start for free here.

I recommend all three of these services if you are looking to start your email marketing efforts for your business.

The post Which Should You Use? Single Opt-in vs Double Opt-in appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

These pop-ups are created using various different tools. OptinMonster is one of the best tools you can use for this, in my opinion, it does the best job at creating lightbox pop-up optin boxes. For comparison, I've also tried Mailmunch, and the Sumome tools. I still prefer Optinmonster. The free option isn't always the best.

I've been a user of OptinMonster since day one.

I even interviewed Syed during the early days of Optinmonster, before it was available to the public. I now use it for all my websites and I highly recommend it to all my clients. Watch the inteview here if you're interested.

Optinmonster is active here on Notagrouch.com if you haven't seen it, you should see it at some point. Just keep coming back and visit different parts of the site, you're bound to run into it. This leads me to the next point.

It's non-intrusive and it's very flexible

A lightbox opt-in box should pop up for you from time to time, inviting you to learn more or to check out a special offer. I also use it to power the sign-up boxes you'll see on the side and even some links you'll find throughout the blog. Like this link right here which will allow you to join my private VIP list.

Optinmonster is a great tool to connect to your email list and provide your readers with new opportunities to engage with you, your brand or your products.

In some cases, optin rates have increased over 600% just by using Optinmonster. You can see tons of examples of the pop-ups here.

The best feature is the exit intent technology

This is one of the strongest points of Optinmonster, you can use what's called exit intent to make one of the OptinMonster boxes appear.

This means that when the visitor decides to leave your website, and they move their cursor away from the page, the lightbox opt-in will appear.

In this box, you could remind the reader to subscribe to your email list, download a free report, ask them to like your Facebook page, follow you on Instagram, or even check out additional articles on the website.

This is a very powerful and proven method to increase engagement and retain more visitors; many of whom would never come back after leaving.

It is a known fact that the majority of the people that leave your website will never come back. By using the exit intent feature, you will dramatically increase the number of people that come back.

Optinmonster is smart

Other ways to trigger the pop-up boxes include setting the percentage of the page a visitor has to scroll through before the optin-box is triggered to appear. You could also open one opt-in box if they come from a specific website, like Amazon or Facebook and a different one if they come from a different source.

It is also mobile aware so if your visitor is browsing your blog from their mobile device, you can show an entirely different pop-up.

You can, of course, make a plain link start the lead capture box or AND or you could place a regular widget on the sidebar if you are using WordPress.

You may be wondering: what do you mean if you are using WordPress?

But I thought Optinmonster Was Only for WordPress

OptinMonster started as a plugin for WordPress exclusively. But what I'm about to tell you is another development and proof that OptinMonster is the leading product.

Early on, the creator of Optinmonster realized that WordPress blogs are very powerful and represent the majority of the websites out there so they decided to build this service as a plugin. But they also know that you may be stuck with another system besides WordPress. I know, that sucks.

Maybe you're stuck with Joomla, or Squarespace, or some other system and you can't leave it. So Syed decided to make a huge change to Optinmonster so you could use it with almost any type of website.

If you're using a website that doesn't use WordPress, you can install the code from the Optinmonster dashboard into your website and you'll get all the benefits as well. Just copy the code and embed it to your website.

So what are you waiting for?

If you're not using Optinmonster for your blog or website, you're probably missing out. If everything I wrote about it and the fact that I use it and recommend it for all the websites I work with doesn't convince you that you should get Optinmonster right now, then maybe you should take a product tour and let them tell you a little bit more about it. Or check out the testimonials from other people using it.

Talk soon!

The post This Is What I Recommend for Pop Ups and Optins appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

That's why I do it to save you time and effort. I like to give you options, but I also like to show you the best of the best and save you the headache of using junk. Some people like to give you round-ups of 97 tools that all do the same thing.

That's not me; I'll give you a couple of options and tell you which one works the best. In this case, this is the best tool in its class.

Today I want to show you a tool every single blogger needs. It's called Grammarly. I know it has made me a better blogger and will probably help you as well.

I included it on my Must Have Tools for Bloggers in 2017. And it has become even more ingrained in my daily work-flow.

Grammarly is like a spell checker and grammar checker but on steroids. It is excellent, and it will help you fix your common spelling mistakes, but it will also help you write with more style.

The best part about it? It's free, check it out here. Yes, I upgraded to their premium service because it is that good and it was on sale recently. As you know I don't pay for most of the services for this blog, I usually get them for free, so I can try them out and tell you about them.

Grammarly is one of the few that I paid without a second thought.

Then I was pleasantly surprised to receive my first set of statistics via email. That email is in fact what prompted me to tell you more about it in this blog post. Let's go over those stats for fun:

First, I used it to check a lot of text recently...

You may not need to check that many words, but apparently, I did. And I'm glad I had them checked with Grammarly.

Grammarly tells me about my accuracy.

Ah, but of course Grammarly also likes to stroke my ego. And why not?

But before I get too hung up on that, it takes me back to reality to remind me of the things that I need to work on.

Why do you need Grammarly?

Grammarly because context is everything!

You may think you don't need it. But that's the thing with writing. It's mostly dependent on our bias. Unless you have a professional editor going over all your blog posts and making sure you are using proper grammar and not mistakenly typing "too" for "to" or "their" for "there," you need Grammarly.

Grammarly knows your writing context and will remind you that maybe using "too" is the wrong word this time and it really should be "to" or "two." It also tells you when you use certain words too much and brings in the thesaurus to give you a broader set of options you hadn't thought about.

Because it will save you embarrassment

Grammarly is great for multi-author bloggers. Another reason you need this as a blogger is when you manage other authors, or you accept guest posts. Grammarly has a built-in anti-plagiarism checker, so it saves you the embarrassment of publishing someone else's work disguised as a guest post.

Because it gives you confidence

Many bloggers are hesitant to blog a lot because they feel like they can't write well. Some have English as their second, or even third language and they're not very confident with it yet. Grammarly takes that anxiety out of the question because it will help you with everything I mentioned above.

So far it has been incredibly accurate and useful for me and I've been writing in English for over 20 years.

Go ahead, give it a try, it's free. You'll thank me later.

The post Grammarly Makes Me a Better Blogger, Let Me Tell You Why appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

An immigrant from Pakistan, he began his entrepreneurial career at the young age of 7. At age 12, his family came to the US and Syed took what he had learned in five years of selling wares and snacks to his neighborhood and applied it to the digital world.

You can read his story on his own blog, right here.

I meet up with Syed about once or twice a year, sometimes more if our schedules work out and I always have something to talk with him about and something to learn. He's much younger than me, but I feel like I am the student when he's around. I can always learn something new from him.

I think this is a good way of looking at life in general, we are always students, even when we are usually the teachers, we must continue to learn.

During this interview, I asked about success. I asked about habits and how he handles what needs to be done. I also asked him the question everybody wants to ask, what do you do to be successful?

We also talked about his recent acquisition of the popular Google Analytics by Yoast plugin, now renamed to Google Analytics by Monsterinsights.

In the video we talked about a lot of things, so here are links to all that stuff. If I missed any, please let me know:

You can find more about Syed on his personal blog http://syedbalkhi.com/

Optinmonster is used to increase your engagement on your website and to grow your email list.

Envira Gallery, my favorite gallery plugin. It's what powers the photos section on this blog and I use it for all my clients' sites.

Soliloquy, arguably the best slideshow plugin available for WordPress.

More related articles & videos

• This blogpost talks about how I used Envira Gallery to replace Nextgen Gallery.
• No more Ultimate plan with Optinmonster? - This was a warning post that Optinmonster was going to get rid of their Ultimate plan; and they did. But the current plans offer incredible value.
• How to get more traffic to your blog part 2. In this post we talk about the email list and some of the tools used for this, included Optinmonster.
• Optinmonster blogpost. This WordPress plugin will increase optin rates to your list.
• Optinmonster's exit intent is one of the best features of the plugin.
• Interview with Syed Balkhi & John Chow at Affiliate Summit.

The post Interview with Syed Balkhi. On Business and Success. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you just need a refresher, then the topics we covered were all about the basics. We did a short intro about SEO, evergreen content and other things to consider as you begin your planning for a traffic strategy.

We'll revisit a second list of things to check for as you progress through generating traffic to your blog later in the series. Also, as we get more and more into this, the topics will get a bit more advanced. But now let's talk about part two of the series, the email list.

How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog - Part 2 - The Email List

So first things first and get your own email list.

Get an email list. You may think that the one with WordPress.com where people can subscribe to your blog and they get an email when you publish a new post is your email list.

Unfortunately it isn't. What isn't an email list?

Using the built-in service, you can only send them blog updates and you must allow wordpress.com to decide when to email them.

You can't send them an update that is not public on the blog, you can't send them a personal email. This option is not recommended for optimal results.

You need the freedom to email your subscribers whatever you would like when you would like.

Always remember to Own The List. Remember this always. As you start a blog, you will be tempted to use the built-in subscription service for people to join your email updates.

This is not recommended. Because you won't "own the list." if the subscription is all managed by the hosting provider.

Other "email updates" you may want to avoid are "feedburner" or "feedburner-style" WordPress.com provides updates, and Blogger/Blogspot also provides their own email subscription modules. Avoid these, even the Jetpack plugin for WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs should be avoided. Other ones that you may encounter along the way are Feedblitz, FeedCat, Rapidfeed, and similar ones avoid the as well.

In my opinion, they give your visitors the false sense that they are getting everything they signed up for from you but in reality, they are only getting the blog updates. What if you want to send them an email that doesn't have a blog update?

Set up a real email list

You need to own your email list. I recommend and use Aweber, they are transparent and their support is really good. Another favorite one out there is Mailchimp. One that seems to be cleaning up their act quite a bit is GetResponse and some people are very happy with them lately.

One thing to consider is that if you are lured to Mailchimp or Getresponse because they offer a free account, come back to reality and understand that you'll likely need their paid services sooner than later. Free is nice, but you need some of the paid services to make it work the way you want to.

And maybe you didn't know that you can get started with Aweber for free as well.

No matter which one you use, they all allow you to send manual and automatic updates to your subscribers (the paid ones). If you already started with a service like Feedburner, or WordPress.com, try to export a list of the subscribers and you can try to import that into your new email service provider.

All of the accounts allow for you to import your email list from another service provider as well, or if you have a list from a service like salesforce, or ACT!. You just need a CSV with First Name, Last Name, and Email.

Once you setup your email account with one of them, you'll need to create a list to hold your blog readers. You should name this list something related to your blog. Like mine, for this blog might be named something like "Notagrouch Updates."

Oh one more thing. If you sign up with Aweber or Getresponse through my link, I'll give you a 25 min email strategy session over Skype or Google Hangout for free. Just email me your receipt when you've signed up.

The description in the list should tell your readers why they are part of this list. It can say something like, "You joined this list when you visited and opted into my website notagrouch.com, if you unsubscribe you'll miss out on amazing updates and incredible opportunities" or something to that effect.

This description is usually visible to your subscribers so make it meaningful, memorable and make it clear that they want to stay in the list.

The next thing you need to do is integrate the email list into your blog.

Integrating the list to the blog

You'll notice you can sign up for updates on my blog on the sidebar. There are also other pages that may pop up  a different opportunity to join or to opt into a different list. Sometimes you'll see a bar show up at the top or you'll see another method for you to join one of my email lists.

No matter which email list service provider you use, you'll need to create a sign up form before you can get people in the list. The sign-up form will have the fields you intend to collect from the reader when they sign up. Standard stuff like name and email.

I recommend keeping the opt-in information you require from your visitors to only name and email.

That's all you need and all you really want to ask for. When you ask for more information, it decreases the chances that people will join.

Don't show or ask for any other information, like Zip Code, or phone number. Stick to two fields: Name (1 field) and Email (1 field).

Once you create the sign up form, you will have a chance to install that form into your WordPress blog. Each service does it differently, but Aweber lets you copy the Javascript code. During the last step of your form creating process, you'll have the option to copy it.

Copy that code and then in your WordPress blog, use the Widgets section in the Appearance, menu to add a new Text/HTML widget.

Add the widget to the most prominent sidebar on your blog, or wherever it makes sense. Then, paste the javascript from your Aweber form in this new widget and save it.

Once you refresh your blog, you should see the sign up form in your sidebar in the position where you inserted it in the previous step. You can customize it all you want via Aweber and repeat this process to update it to the latest code.

Leverage plugins to help you get more out of your list.

If you're using WordPress, or even if you aren't, you can use this service called Optinmonster. It lets you create intelligent pop-ups, floating bars, and sidebar widgets to invite your readers to sign up to your list or lists just at the right time. Using this in addition to their current efforts, some people see a sign up increase of up to 600%!

You may think. That's great, but now what? How are people going to sign up and, more importantly why are people going to sign up?

You have to give them a reason to sign up into the list. Let's talk about that next.

Grow the email list

You need to grow the list now that you built it and set it up on your blog. It is known everywhere in marketing and even sometimes outside of marketing and sales, that the money is in the list. So your job isn't necessarily to sell one more thing, rather, your job is to get one more subscriber.

Then let the list do the selling! Let's cover the basics for the list to be able to grow.

First, make sure you get the person to complete the opt-in process. Especially if you're using a double opt-in method.

Here's one way of making sure a subscriber verifies their email address. Offer them an incentive to join the email list and make sure the incentive doesn't get delivered until they verify their email address.

Sometimes people don't confirm their email addresses and they never get new emails from you. You can help increase the opt-in rate and confirmation rate.

A way is to help with opt-in rates, and verification is to use a middle page to explain to them what comes next. Immediately after they put in their name and email, send them to a page to THANK them BUT explain to them that there's one more quick step they need to do to finish the sign-up process.

Let them know that they need to go into their email address inbox they used to sign up and look for your email so they can get the updates in the future. This step alone will increase double opt-in rates significantly. Don't assume the visitor knows how to join your list.

Once they click on the email message to confirm their request to join the list, then you can send them to a final thank you page and have something in the thank you page to direct them to new sections of your blog, the most popular articles, or just a new series of articles they may want to check out now that they're a little more committed to you.

That last step of the process is important, it solidifies the relationship and tells them that there is other content they might be interested in.

What do you do after you add new people to your list?

Send updates to the email list on a regular basis. I recommend and have experienced the best results when sending a regular set of emails after they join your list, and then send them updates on a daily basis. Maybe 5 to 7 times per week.

Some people don't recommend sending emails daily, but the most successful marketers I know send you one daily email for at least a couple of weeks after you join their list, or show interest in their program or business. This is to establish what they're about, tell you about their most important blogposts, showcase their expertise and so on.

Some may call this a "secret" but i don't think it is such a secret.

If you want to send a daily email then to do so in a way that is entertaining but also gives instant value. The readers know that each time they receive an email from you, they will receive a great deal of value in the message itself, immediately, even if you're going to ask them to click through to something. Hopefully, if you received an email from me to come read this post, you've found it valuable thus far.

Oh but,  everybody's sending emails nowadays, you think. So how can you make it different for them?

What more can you give to your readers so they decide unequivocally that they joined your list and they were smart when they joined? How can you make them happy to have found you and happy that they joined your list?

Give them a bribe of course!

So how do you invite new people to join, and have them love you for the opportunity to be part of your list? Well, an ethical bribe of course. Have you ever heard of this?I mentioned it briefly earlier, the incentive. Some people call it a lead magnet, or a free download offer. It's a bribe, a bit of an exchange.

You ask your visitor for his or her name and email, and because they are interested in your free incentive they sign up and agree to give you their name and email. This is basic and has been around for 100+ years. Except for the "email" part, people have been doing free trials, free samples, etc, just to get you in the door for a long time.

At this point, you can make a general assumption on three things about this person that subscribed to you.

You know their name, their email address and that they have an interest in a topic you write about. Or at the very least they're interested in the topic of your ethical bribe.

But EXACTLY what is the ethical bribe?

It can be whatever you would like it to be, like a download. A PDF document, maybe it's a 3 part series on how to get started in whatever topic your blog is about.

You could write the three parts into a nice PDF document. You could read the three parts into audio files and make the incentive be a 3 series quick-start audio guide for your industry.

Here I came up with 3 sample titles for three ethical bribes you could use for your business blog. These are completely hypothetical and the industry experts may laugh at them, but these are simple examples to give you an idea of things you could come up with that could be entertaining and of value.

• 3 Top Ways To Generate Your First Sale
• 3 Life-Saving Techniques To Practice With Your Kid at Pool Anytime
• 3 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About Your Carpet
• Top 21 tips to pass the bar exam in Arizona

Write 800 - 1500 words about each one of the ways or techniques or whatever it is, in a nicely designed document, convert it to PDF and you should have like a 4 - 7 page PDF to give for free as soon as they join your list. Use a nice wide space format with a wide gutter and a thick margin. Maybe a large font.

Make it super nice and presentable, make sure you have a footer where your website is displayed there and it's clickable.

That is an ethical bribe, that's a lead magnet.

If you feel that the one you came up with isn't a very strong incentive for someone to sign up, that is okay. It's a start. Done is better than perfect.

Many people think they don't have much to offer when they first create their first lead magnet, but you'll be surprised how much you have to offer to people that started a similar journey as yours, but instead of starting 3 months ago or 6 months ago, or even longer, they started today.

To them, you are an expert!

Your free download could be life-changing for them. Think about that and let it sink in for a moment. You're an expert in their eyes.

Your ethical bribe could also be a service. If you feel like you can close sales on the phone better, then try this on for size. Offer a free consultation for whatever service you offer, then convert the free consultation into a sale. You can make it work.

The lead magnet model always works.

There's always something you can offer for free to somebody that is a potential investor or buyer in your business. Make sure the offer is clear and make sure you are ready to deliver on the promise and make sure you have outlined a path for that person to have the opportunity to purchase something else from you.

For example, I made you an ethical bribe earlier in this blog post. Did you catch that? I told you that I will give you a free email strategy consultation for free if you sign up for Aweber or GetResponse. This would be beneficial for both of us because I can give you some tips about your email marketing efforts and in exchange, you purchase the service with my link which gives me a small commission. 

If your company is a physical company, or a business to business type of company, then a small service may be the ethical bribe. If you're an accounting firm, maybe you offer a 15 to 30-minute account evaluation when they join for free to your newsletter.

Of course, the free gift, or ethical bribe, or evaluation should lead them through an education process that ends with them signing up for your service, making a purchase, or a measurable step towards a purchase.

Other examples are everywhere

You see attorneys give you a 30-minute call to evaluate your case and answer a few questions. Their goal is to spend 30 minutes right now and see if you would be a profitable client. But you also get to evaluate whether this person knows what they're talking and whether you want to hire them.

Your reader also needs to know how valuable your content is, so give them the best in your lead magnet. Make sure it is valuable and of high quality. This is your time to shine.

There are some industries that are regulated so make sure you're not violating andy legal boundaries with any of the things you decide to give away. I don't and can't give you legal or financial advice.

An ethical bribe is a marketing tool that needs to be refined constantly. Whatever you decide to use as a way to invite people to join your email list on your blog, you need to fine tune it on a regular basis.

Over time, maybe you change the title, or maybe expand it and instead of 3 items, you double it or triple it and make it a 9 part series. Continue to improve it.

Make sure you blog about it as well so you can integrate it into the daily feed of your blog updates too.

I covered now some of the technical aspects on how to build your list and add it to your blog. I also covered a few things that will help you grow your list, now there's the maintenance part.

Your list needs to be nurtured and groomed

As you add people to your list, take some time to get to know them a little bit and use tags, or groups in your email service to group your subscribers into various different groups.

All of the email providers let you customize information about your subscriber. It has been proven that you get better results if you send slightly different emails to different groups of people in your list.

Your email about your upcoming sale may be worded differently for people that are already customers vs people that aren't customers yet.

If an email you are sending is only relevant to people in a certain geographic area, then you should target only that area when you send that email. Aweber lets you do that as well.

Geography matters too, for example, some readers may be annoyed if you send them an invitation to an event that is local to you and it wouldn't make sense for them to travel half way across the world for it. They don't need to know about that.

The trickiest group to define and to use in your list, but will also give you amazing results is to identify what product each customer has bought or is interested in. Having this information and using it intelligently can skyrocket your conversions. It doesn't make sense for you to email someone that already bought the product you're emailing them about right? Instead, sell them something that is related but they don't have yet, or remind them how great the product they bought could be as a gift for someone else.

Aweber and most other services charge you by the number of subscribers, something else you should do to maintain your list in a regular basis is to remove people that have unsubscribed. Just delete them from the list and over time you may save a good amount of money.

Keep an eye on the list, but do not obsess over it

Checking your list every day is good. You should login to your Aweber account daily to make sure things are working fine and to see if you need to make any adjustments. But more importantly, you may want to log in just to schedule your next email.

Do not be too concerned with unsubscribe reports. You may see that in one week you get 10 subscribers and then the next week, a few of those people unsubscribe. Do not worry about it. Focus on those people that you have on your list now.

People unsubscribe all the time. Let it go.

Maybe they didn't like something you said, maybe they were offended or maybe they just aren't interested in your information anymore. Don't take it personally. Focus on maintaining a positive flow of subscribers.

Every month or so, go through the people that have unsubscribed in your account and remove them from the system altogether because they count towards your total subscribers (even if they chose to opt-out).

In closing, I have a few tips

Before I wrap it up

Having a list is one of the best things you can do for your blog and your business. But using the list is even more important. Also, the size of your list doesn't matter as much as what you're doing with the list. For example, I have a list that currently has about 30 people and I get 2 or 3 new members each week, but the list continues to make me over $1000/week! How?

Well, the people on the list are very active and the products I am working with are essential to their business so the conversion is going to be high.

ALWAYS offer value in every email, or don't send that email. Many people say that they don't send email frequently because they don't have anything important to say. While I am grateful for that because they're not cluttering up our inboxes, the question I would have in return is: Why don't you have something important to say, every day?

Key Takeaways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog with email

• Use an email service that lets you control everything, content, timing, addresses
• I use and recommend Aweber, get it here. The other two highly esteemed are: Mailchimp and Getresponse
• Integrate the email list service to your blog using the theme and Optinmonster.
• Offer a lead magnet or incentive like a PDF, mp3, movie, service, consultation or other.
• Email your list frequently but purposefully.

The post How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog – Part 2 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I talk about list building and how it is similar to dating. I also talk about the infamous "free, just pay shipping and handling" method.

List building is essential to any business, the tactics change over time, but the goal doesn't. You need a list and at least two segments, buyers and leads. You can always segment more beyond that and you should, but you need at least two main groups.

For the lead generation part I use two programs. But at the very basic level, you need just the second one.

#1 Optinmonster, because it integrates with WordPress beautifully. It creates intelligent lead generation boxes and helps you retain more traffic on your WordPress blog. Rumor has it that it will soon be platform agnostic so I highly recommend it. You can get Optinmonster here.

#2 LeadPages is the other app I use. This has entire websites that you can build as landing pages and they are some of the best out there. They are mobile friendly, easy to use, and will work with any website you already have or will host them for you in their blazing fast hosting service (included in the price).

They are the leaders in creating squeeze pages and I highly recommend them. You can check out Leadpages here.

#2.5 ClickFunnels. Since I first wrote this post, I've added ClickFunnels to my daily toolbox and I recommend it as well. This is a more robust platform than most other SAAS. You can create squeeze pages or landing pages, or entire funnels with A/B split testing plus they have Actionetics and Backpack. The closest to an "all-in-one" solution. Watch the webinar here.

And of course, as I have mentioned before, I use Aweber to maintain my list. Both Optinmonster and Leadpages connect with Aweber seamlessly to make my life easier. Aweber is available now with a totally free 30 day trial and you can check that out here in this link.

If you can't afford Optinmonster or Leadpages, you can still use Aweber on its own.

Aweber has built-in lead capture forms and you can even create simple squeeze pages with it. I just prefer to use better tools for that, but if you just need to start somewhere, start with Aweber for free.

The post Driving with Oscar – Episode 3 – List Building Tips appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I cover some of the features Optinmonster has for you there.

My favorite is the exit intent feature, but they have added quite a few others that are worth checking out, so I show you a few in the video. More info about this whole thing on the link after the video too, where I published this originally. But here's the video in case you missed it.

This video originally published here: http://wp.me/p3Sinl-lr

The post OptinMonster Features and Exit Intent appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Optinmonster's biggest strength is the Exit Intent feature. Look at this short video and you'll see how it works.

The basic premise is that the Exit Intent feature will show a lightbox pop-up inviting your visitors to sign up for your newsletter before they leave your webpage. It's brilliant.

And it doesn't have to be a newsletter. You can giveaway a gift, or coupons or anything you want to offer in exchange for the email address & name of your visitor.

If you want to know more about Exit Intent and how it works and why you want it, visit Optinmonster, or check this post out: Exit Intent by Optinmonster What is it and Why do I want it?

The post Optinmonster Exit Intent Feature on Video appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We talked about email marketing and how Aweber helps you achieve great results. There are three main tips I covered as well as some insights from John Chow. We also took a little bit of time to do Q&A and really enjoyed the time hanging out and learning from each other.

At the very last minute before starting, we decided to fire up a Google Hangout on Air so the recording of that video is shown below. Paradise Perks, the coffee shop where we hosted this didn't have the best internet connection to stream this live so the video is a little fuzzy. But you can listen to the whole conversation in the form of a podcast.

[powerpress]

We also briefly talked about a few apps that integrate with Aweber beautifully:

• Gravity Forms - Integrate sophisticated and beautiful forms with Aweber and WordPress
• Optinmonster - Dramatically (up to 600%) increase your opt-in rates on your WordPress Website.
• Leadpages - Easily create beautiful landing pages that integrate seamlessly with Aweber.

Aweber Tips, and discussion Hangouts On Air

The post Aweber Tips and List Building Techniques – Dot Com Coffee appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Who should watch this? Anyone that is learning internet marketing. This is particularly useful for members of the My Top Tier Business program, My Online Business Education, and other affiliate marketing promotions. It follows basic principles of marketing and it can also be aligned with my Internet Marketing Basics Sales Flowchart.

You'll need two tools if you want to do what we talk about here. Head on over to get your landing pages here, and you'll also need an email autoresponder which you can get here for a buck!

The post Landing Pages and Email Generate Sales appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Many popular tips and some very unique ideas. Covers making sure your unique value proposition is clear and unique. What are you going to give me that I'm not getting somewhere else. Start a swipe file.

It's all about getting creative and saving time and effort.

The post 25 List Building Tricks appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Take a look at the chart below, and I'll explain it after (click to enlarge).

First things first

In the diagram, each of the purple boxes represents a landing page. Each one is titled differently, but they're all technically landing pages. Some may be sales letters, thank you letters, long-form sales letters, or squeeze pages.

Creating these pages is fairly simple if you use a service or outsource them. I would recommend you take a look at Leadpages as the best service to create these pages for you. They create mobile-friendly, responsive, Facebook-friendly, WordPress compatible, easy, painless, and compatible with Aweber.

First, we will start with the landing page. We are assuming you have traffic going to the landing page. The traffic could be sourced from any type of advertising campaign, social media campaign, word of mouth, or any other method you can muster. We'll cover traffic in another blog post.

Once the visitor gets to a landing page, and the visitor enters the required information, a confirmation page is presented. This page will explain to the visitor to check their email address and click on the confirmation link. This is pretty standard stuff and it relates to that double opt-in process I talked about on my previous post about the email system.

First major step

The visitor now has two options, to confirm the link or to ignore it. For now, let's assume that yes, they click on the confirmation link. This will take the visitor to the Thank you page. The thank-you page may contain the sales letter and offer and most marketers I think would suggest this option.

In the flowchart, I chose to put the sales page as an additional step to illustrate it clearly. Both options are valid, but keep in mind that every time you present an option to click or not to click to continue you risk a percentage of the visitors to not continue. Also note that the Thank you page is presented from the previous email. At this time, another email is also sent. This email tends to mirror the thank you page and sales offer. We'll come back to the email part in a couple of paragraphs.

The sales page needs to present the offer. The offer must be clear and simple to complete; don't overcomplicate the options the visitor has. Present the offer, make it irresistible and make the next step loud and clear. That step is to buy.

To buy or not to buy

We are now at another decision, the customer will decide if they buy or if they save their hard-earned dollars for another day. Let's assume and continue with the positive response flow and assume they purchased your product. Success! this is awesome and you're on your way to earning a living online. At this point, you use another landing page to present them with another offer, another product, perhaps an upgrade to what they purchased. The cycle starts over at that time.

Now let's go back to the thank you email/sales link. At this point, you present the sales offer via email as well as on a website. The email, like the website, provides information about the product. The email serves as a reminder about why they need to buy your product now. They can save the message, reply to you and ask questions, re-read it, forward it, this is why you do both a webpage and an email.

After the first email, you present the follow-up sequence. Opinions differ on what is the right amount of emails in a follow-up sequence, but facts show that constant reminders and relationship-building emails work best as opposed to infrequent ones. Most successful internet marketers will advise you to email your customer every day they haven't purchased your product.

Tie in the email messages to the sales pages

Each email you send gives you an opportunity to expand on the benefits of the product. You can showcase success stories or testimonials. You can present new offers, OTOs (one-time offers), or LTOs (Limited time offers) to encourage them to buy. Then the cycle continues. If you want to be more sophisticated, each email message in your follow-up sequence can send the customer to a customized landing page specific to that offer instead of the same sales page you've used in previous instances.

Now, let's go back to the first choice where the customer didn't confirm the link. For most internet marketers, this step is unorthodox. I add it to my own sales process because I think it is important and we need to account for a few possible scenarios.

The follow up is key

It is important to follow up manually because it gives you a chance to connect with your potential customer. There is also the chance that maybe something went wrong with the email subscription, maybe they didn't get the email, maybe it went to spam. The way to follow up, if you are using aweber, it is easy. Go to your list and look for the unconfirmed email message and manually send the person an email from your email. Introduce yourself, tell them why you're emailing them and help them get through whatever obstacle may be in the way of confirming their request for information via email.

So that's it

There are many ways to follow this model and variations can be endless. The only real way to find out what is the best way is to test each step yourself and see how your product or service performs. You can use a link shortener to easily do A/B testing for example. You can also create several landing pages in just a few minutes in order to test a short sales page vs. a long sales page. It's also easy to move a subscriber or potential customer from one list to another when you're using Leadpages and Aweber; they work together flawlessly.

This process can be applied to almost any type of promotion online. Doesn't matter if you're trying to sell a product, service or just increase the readership of your blog. It even works for a church if you want to increase your congregation. You just have to think out of the box and understand that a product is anything you want someone else to use, and a sale is made anytime you persuade your target customer to buy. Get it?

The post The internet marketing basic sales flowchart appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Look, if you had, one shot
Or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?

Before I tell you about email, I wanted to refer to the intro lyrics I posted above. They're from Eminem's Lose yourself and I posted them so I could ask you the following. So as I present you opportunities and guidance, what will you do? Only time will tell, but I hope you take action. That is all I ask from you. If I had to do it all over again I would not change a lot. But what I would change is how fast I take action.

So as you continue to read the rest of my blog and upcoming posts. Ask yourself, have I taken a positive action towards my goals today!? Ok on with today's post...

Email is proven, tried and true.

So today I'll tell you about the first thing I would do if I were to start all over with this online stuff. I would do this if I were a beginner for sure, but even if you're a seasoned veteran, you should do this. Setup an email list system. But email is so passe... so the social media purists say, right?

You'd be surprised, studies show that email has the best ROI when it comes to marketing online. It is still the most popular, most prevalent and most used internet service besides the internet itself. In other words, email is king. Or how about this article: Marketing E-Mails beat Messages from Friends for Finding Websites. Case studies, surveys and reports come out every few months pointing to the fact that we still use and respond to email more than any other communication method to date.

People read email daily, several times a day. They read and check their email more than facebook, more than twitter and certainly more than Linkedin. The other networks don't even get to compare as far as mindshare goes when it comes to email. In short, email is where is at when you want to sell, market and develop a relationship with your customers.

So what can you do to use this often called archaic system? Whether you are a blogger or a full blown entrepreneur trying to sell products online, you need to have an email list.

An email list serves various purposes and allows you to stay in touch with your customers, readers or constituents under any circumstances. And let me make a distinction here. I'm not just talking about having an email list, like an excel spreadsheet or a group of emails in your contact list in your email program. No, when I say "email list" I'm referring to an email list that lives inside an email service provider, like Aweber, Infusionsoft or Vertical Response.

Benefits of an email service provider.

By using an email service system, you are more likely to follow CAN-SPAM laws and be compliant. Most email systems require that anyone that joins your list goes through the double-opt in process. A process which requires the subscriber to take two steps to confirm his or her desire to join the email list.

Having an email service system also allows you to send hundreds or even thousands of emails without problems. There is no email provider that will let you send more than a hundred or two hundred emails in one day, especially marketing type of emails. If you use the service provided by Gmail or Yahoo or another service like that, you'll be shutdown if you send too many emails.

Once a new subscriber has joined your list, you can email them on a regular basis. And that part is crucial to a successful email list and email marketing campaign. You must keep your readers warm. In other words, don't let your readers subscribe and forget about you. You must email them in a regular basis. This is where the autoresponder feature from an email service provider comes in handy.

When someone joins your list, you can have a series of email messages ready for them and deliver them on a daily or weekly basis. This is what an autoresponder is. This is also how you keep your readers warm. You also have an opportunity to get to know them and invite them to know you better by sharing stories, key posts on your blog and even specials or unique offers available to them. But don't just email junk.

Offer tremendous value!

Your emails need to be valuable and compelling. It is quite a privilege to have somebody join your list, so make sure you offer something that is worth their time and attention on every email. You can tell your customers how to do something that is of interest to them, point them to insightful or members-only content. You could even give them special discounts, only available to email subscribers.

If you're going to have a sale or a special event, why not let your email subscribers know about it first? This encourages them to stay subscribed and also tell their friends about it. And you offer them value at the same time.

So how do you get an email list service?

There are dozens of email services out there and as a business consultant and overall kick-ass techie, I've worked with pretty much all the major ones. Your choices hinge in value, features, service and the most important is deliverability rates. I've worked with iContact, Constant Contact, MadMimi, Vertical Response, Infusionsoft, Mailchimp and Aweber. Maybe more but I can't remember them now. The one I recommend is Aweber. As far as online marketing, they are the defacto standard and the most widely used service, and for good reason.

Their system is full featured and it has automation rules which I love. So you can automate some of your email list management. They also have features like a +date system, so you can send time sensitive emails based on custom dates.

Like most of the other systems, they allow for variables so you can customize your emails with personalized information. The features available and the customer support make Aweber the irresistible choice . Their price is super competitive and while they're not free like Mailchimp, they do offer a $1.00 trial to start. Oh yeah and before you go jumping on the "free" Mailchimp wagon, you may want to read why I don't use them and why I switched. Just pony up a buck and get Aweber, you'll be glad you did. If your blog or business is important to you then you'll do this today.

In order to get an email service system, you need to sign up first. After you sign up, they will give you a special code that contains a form. This code goes on your website and it will turn into a form that your visitors can fill in to join your mailingn list. Voila! After this, you can login to the system and send emails to your list or setup an auto responder.

But how do you get people to join your mailing list? That is the trickiest part of any business online. You can read the full CAN SPAM law of 2003 if you'd like to really find out who you can and cannot email. But what you want to do is get your customer to agree that they'll be added to your email list. One way is to say this during the check-out process of your shopping cart. Another way is for a visitor to your website  to fill in their name and email on your website and explicitly request the emails. You can offer a free download, or a free coupon, or entice them by offering email subscriber-only discounts. You can get really creative on how you get people on your email list.

Bottom line is that you need an email list service and you need it yesterday. Start capturing the emails from your customers so you can give them a delightful experience when they interact with you. I personally don't care if you use one service or the other but I've helped enough people move away from their service and into Aweber that I would recommend you start out with Aweber. Their support kicks ass, their service is rock solid and they just work.

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