First things first, I would like to apologize for a mistake that I made in the past.

If you’ve been a reader of my list or/and blog for long, then you know that I’ve promoted a list builder program that is called TheListMachine.

At first I thought this program was good, but after having a decent list size and doing three CTR (clickthrough rate) tests on the program, I must admit that I was wrong.

The CTR tests that I have done are comparison tests. So what I was doing was sending similar emails that contain free offers about internet marketing to TheListMachine and my own list at almost the same time, and then compared the CTR generated from both lists.

There might be some limitations in these tests. For example, while the emails that I sent to my own list were free from any sponsor ad, I’ve seen some kind of sponsor ad in some of TheListMachine emails that I received. So, it’s possible that they also put a sponsor ad in some or all of my emails. This means that the emails received by both lists might not be 100% the same.

But in spite of their limitations, I still believe that these tests can give us an approximate depiction about the quality of TheListMachine program.

Now let’s go the results of the tests…

First Test Result:

Second Test Result:

Third Test Result:

Well, as you can see from the stats above, compared to the CTRs of my own list, the CTRs of TheListMachine are incredibly low. So I don’t think TheListMachine is worth your time and efforts. Instead, spend your time and efforts on building your own list.

Do you know that for every email that you send to your list, there is a chance that some of your subscribers will pass it to their friends or acquaintances?

Well, it’s very easy for them to pass your email. They only need to use the forward function in their email account or software, enter their friends or acquaintances’ email addresses, and then click the send button.

And if your email that they’ve passed around contains a link to your lead-capture page or the email address of your autoresponder, then you might get a couple of new subscribers.

Of course, whether or not people will pass your email depends on many factors, such as the interestingness of your email content, etc. But regardless of those factors, you can try to increase the chance of people passing your email by encouraging them to do so.

It’s very easy to do and it won’t cost you any money or much time to implement. Just add a postscript (P.S.) in every email newsletter that you send, that says something like this:

If you found this newsletter to be useful, feel free to forward this email to your friends or acquaintances. And let them know that they can subscribe to my newsletter at http://www.blahblahblah.com or by sending a blank email to subscribe@blahblahblah.com. They’ll thank you for it and so will I.

I know that this sounds too simple, but don’t let its simplicity fools you. I’ve seen people passing around other people’s email in the net, and I believe that this “passing behavior” is quite common among internet users.

And by the way, if you want to use the postscript example above, feel free to copy, paste and modify it to suit your own needs.

Tags: Marketing Viral: Viral: Word of Mouth: WOM: Buzz Marketing

You’ve probably heard hundreds of times that “the money is in the list,” but why’s that? What’s so special about having your own opt-in email lists? The answer lies in the three benefits of having your own opt-in email list:

1. It Can Increase Your Conversion

Let’s face the fact. Most of your site’s visitors usually don’t purchase at their first visit. Not everyone that comes to your site is an impulse buyer. Most of them may need to be followed up before they make their buying decision.

Also, most people prefer to buy from people they trust. This means that you may need to build a relationship first with your visitors to earn their trust before you start seeing some sales from them.

Now if you’re just generating traffic without building your opt-in email lists, you don’t have any means to contact your visitors. You can’t contact them with your website, because a website is a passive medium.

But if you capture your visitors’ contact information and turn them into subscribers, you’ll have the ability to contact them, follow them up, and build rapport with them, thus increasing your chance of getting sales from them.

2. It Can Give You Ongoing Profits and Repeat Business

Let’s say that you have 500 people subscribing to your e-course that pre-sells some relevant products. From those 500 subscribers, 25 bought your products. Is that means your efforts to get the other 475 subscribers are wasted?

Of course not, because you can always market to your subscribers again and again with other relevant products and/or services. And this is actually the number one benefit of having your opt-in email lists, namely ongoing profits and repeat business.

One thing that you may want to do though if you plan to send ongoing content and/or offers to your subscribers is to express it explicitly in your opt-in form or page. In this way, they know what to expect when they subscribe to your list, thus reducing the risk of SPAM complaints.

3. You Can Leverage Your Subscribers to Promote Your Business

This is perhaps one of the most neglected functions of an opt-in email list. Many people only see their lists as a means to generate direct sales. They fail to see that they can actually leverage their subscribers to become their partners in promotion.

And I don’t only mean recruiting joint venture partners or affiliates from your opt-in email lists. There are various other ways to leverage your subscribers to promote your business. And you can always leverage even if you’re in a business-to-consumer market.

Let me give you one simple example. For every newsletter that you send to your lists, there is a chance that your subscribers will pass it to their friends or acquaintances. And if your newsletter contains links to your website, opt-in page or sales pages, you may get some visitors, subscribers or even sales.

Now to increase the chance of your subscribers passing your newsletter, you can encourage them to do that. It’s a no-brainer and it won’t cost you any money or much time to implement. Just add a postscript in your newsletter that asks people to forward it to their friends or acquaintances (you can read more about this technique on my other blog post, “A Free, No-Brainer, Way to Turn Your Subscribers Into Referrers”).

Final Words

If you’re still generating traffic without having any list building mechanism in place, then you’re making a big mistake in your Internet business. This is especially true if you’re still pushing for traffic. Come on, you’ve worked hard, spent your time or maybe paid some money to generate your traffic, why let most of them leave empty-handed?

Even if you’re already in the level of enjoying tons of free, perpetual traffic, there is no reason why you should not have a list building mechanism in place. Because it will enhance your business, giving you the ability to actively engage your prospects and recycle your traffic.

First things first, I’m not a legal expert and so this article DOES NOT represent any legal or professional information and nor can I guarantee its accuracy. I only wrote this article to introduce you to these email laws that might affect us, email marketers.

OK, so what’re these email laws?

They’re the Child Protection Registry laws that have been taken into effect in the State of Michigan and Utah.

These laws established “Do Not Email” registries into which individuals or institutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors’ email addresses or any email address to which minors may have access. Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also register their entire domain names.

People are prohibited by these laws from sending email to the addresses that have been in the registries for 30 days or more if the email contains material or link to material that is illegal for minors. And it doesn’t matter whether the email is solicited or unsolicited, you still can’t send such email.

You might think that the materials must be something obvious such as pornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they’re only part of the materials.

The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namely stuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minors are prohibited by law from viewing, receiving, participating, possessing, or purchasing this stuff. This includes automotive sales, etc.

And according to the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, these laws apply to almost all people in the United States and even those outside the United States who have a physical presence in the United States. (see http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries .php)

So, imagine you have some email addresses in your list that happen to be already in the “do not email” registry for 30 days, but you’re not aware of them. And one day, you send an email that contains a link to a webpage that has some Adsense ads that advertise some automotive sales, guess what may happen to you?

Well, your action may be considered as a computer crime and you might face civil suit and fines or/and you might even face criminal suit and penalty.

So far, there are two things that you can do to prevent you from getting trouble with these laws.

First, make sure that you never send email that contains material or link to material which is illegal for minors. This is so obvious, right?

Second, if you think that you can’t comply with the first option, then you can purge your list by matching it against the registries in a regular basis. But there are fees for this.

Don’t panic about these laws. Instead, find more information about it. You can start learning more about these laws by visiting the references below:

- Michigan Children’s Protection Registry site:
https://www.protectmichild.com

- Michigan Public Act No. 241:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/ht m/2004-PA-0241.htm

- Michigan Public Act No. 242:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/ht m/2004-PA-0242.htm

- Utah Code - Child Protection Registry:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE13/13_26.htm

- Michigan government’s press release:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-23442_21974-121645–,0 0.html

Tags: Email: Opt-in Email Marketing: Email Newsletter: Newsletter Marketing