Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Email marketing is now an essential part of every business. No matter what business or industry you’re in; you need to use Email Marketing to your advantage. Like most people; I use it to build relationships with my subscribers, market my own products and obviously promote other people’s stuff.
There are two sides to email marketing; list building and actual email marketing. Actual email marketing is the sending of emails part. Crafting emails, building relationships and being able to influence your subscribers. Then there’s list building, the part where you build your list.
Most marketers struggle with the list building part. They create capture pages, spend thousands on paid traffic and maybe write the odd article or two. The result; not many subscribers. If you think you’re doing ok with list building, then great. However, by simply following these 5 tips you’ll be able to dramatically increase opt-in rates and decrease unsubscribers.
1. Detail
Detail people, detail! Isn’t it annoying when you have to opt-in to someone’s email list to find out what you’re actually going to get? You know those stupid capture pages that go like “Fill Out The Form Below To Get Access To My Super Secret Top Secret Maybe A Secret List Building Strategy”. Yeah – those… They’re dumb and if you craft your capture pages using total secrecy you’ll get awful opt-in rates.
Secrecy is a great marketing strategy and it works. However – when you do opt-in and find out the “Top Secret” list building strategy is just a simple commonly known trick, you’ll probably unsubscribe. Instead – tell people what your email list is about and what they’ll get for opting in. That way you’ll reduce unsubscribers and increase opt-in rates. Just give lots of detail – clearly explain why people should join your list.
If you’re giving away a free report of some kind; clearly explain what it’s about. I can’t count the number of times I’ve visited a website that’s opt-in form reads “Join The List For Our Free XX Report”. Maybe it’s “Join The List For Our Free List Building Report”. Instead of having that dumb materialistic headline, use numbered bullet points to list what visitors will learn inside your report. People like detail! Give as much detail as possible without losing people’s interest.
2. Overcome Objections
Overcoming people’s objections is a massive subject. If you’ve ever read a book on copywriting or marketing you’ll know just how important this is. If you ever want to sell something, get people to join your list or just influence people in general; you need to learn how to overcome people’s objections. With list building it’s really easy; the objections are always the same so therefore they’re easy to overcome:
- Don’t You Just Want To Sell Me Something?
- Will You Send Me Hundreds Of Emails?
- Why Are You Different?
- Is My Email Safe?
Those are some of the most common objections people have when on a capture page. You need to convince people they’re not going to get bombarded with emails, you don’t just want to sell them crap, you actually know your stuff and their emails are 100% safe.
3. Color Scheme
This one is very interesting and I was amazed when I experimented with it. I was always taught to use certain colors like blue and black in my opt-in forms. I never questioned why I was using them; I just did. After reading an interesting article; I discovered color schemes directly influence people’s decisions.
So first learn what colors mean to us, what they represent and how they make us feel. Use colors like blue, orange and purple. They all represent calmness, trust and authority. Never use more than 2 main colors in color scheme. Never use the color red for your links. Red links represent danger and on the Internet SPAM.
4. Focus On Benefits
Why do people always focus on features rather than benefits? It’s one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make on a daily basis. The way to influence people is to focus on the benefits. You need to tell people what they’ll gain out of joining your email list. For example if you were giving away a list building report:
Features: 27 Page Report On List Building
Benefits: 27 Pages Of Killer List Building Information That’ll Explode Your Opt-in Rates
You have been paid late before
You have watched the number on the dashboard not match the number in your account. What is different now is simple: it settles on a public contract you can check yourself, not a dashboard I control.
Read the contract →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
The second one is far more attractive because it describes exactly what you’ll get out of the report. You need to focus on the benefits of joining your list rather than the features. It’s huge!
5. Set Expectations
When people join email lists; they have expectations. Expectations of what kind of emails they’ll receive and what kind of products they’ll get pitched on. Many people expect a freebie and nothing else. When those people get a promotional email from you; they usually unsubscribe.
By setting expectations early on; you can minimize unsubscription rates. You need to directly state what your subscribers can expect from you. You need to tell visitors/subscribers the kinds of emails they’ll receive and how often they’ll receive them.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions in the box below.
Comments (carried over from the previous site)
Michael Burns, January 30 2012, 04:45
People respond to honesty and value. I wasn’t aware that color may make a difference. Thanks Dave.
Mike, January 27 2012, 17:43
Great tips. It’s all about offering value!
Micah, January 27 2012, 17:16
Some great tips here. I find it helps to think of my capture page as a mini sales page. In essence this is exactly what it is. Who was it that said show em show em and show em some more? Deagon Smith? I’m not sure, and that’s not an exact quote but the point is, people want to know exactly what they are getting. Show them. When all else fails, remember the words of Dan Kennedy: “It’s the offer, stupid”
Three posts a day. One email a day.
Everything I publish, in one short daily email. Real numbers, no hype, unsubscribe in one click.
Get paid 100%, on-chain, the second the sale clears
Most affiliates earn little, and that is disclosed up front. The difference here is not a promise about what you will make. It is that you can verify every payout yourself, on a public contract, in about twelve seconds.
See how the payout works →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
Never use red links, it ‘says danger and spam’ apparently. Around here red’s just the feed store sign. I’d bet trust matters more than hex codes.
Lonnie’s right the color science reads like guesswork with a rule pasted on top — I never saw hard evidence for it either way in six years of doing this. The ‘overcome objections’ section is the one part I’d actually keep. Most people who bail really do leave over exactly those four unanswered questions, and in my experience that part held up better than anything else in the list.
Lonnie’s pointing at something real. We split-tested button colors back in 2008 too. The honest answer then, same as now: it moves the needle less than whether people already trust who’s sending it.
Lonnie, the piece that actually stuck with me wasn’t the color chart, it was ‘overcome objections’ sitting there as a tactic instead of a question worth actually answering. If someone opting in is silently asking ‘don’t you just want to sell me something,’ I’d rather the honest answer to that be true than cleverly dodged, and this reads like it’s teaching the dodge.
Tried Hollis’s version of this in March — answered the ‘will you spam me’ objection honestly instead of cleverly, just stated the real send frequency up front. Opt-ins dipped the first week. Unsubscribes basically stopped.