Online Marketing Blog

Capturing Email Addresses on Your Website

October 1st, 2008 at 07:48pm Under General

So you see the importance of having an email newsletter, and you’ve learned some tips on what to put in it and when to send it, but I can hear some asking, “Now how do I put an opt-in option on my website so that people can sign up?”

There are a number of different ways that you can do this yourself. Here are two simple ways.

First of all, if you want to manage your email list manually, you can add a simple form to your website that will collect the subscriber’s information – email address – and send you an email with that info. This is a simple solution if you don’t want to have to try to figure out how to use a mailing list program – but it also means that you have to manage the list, and transfer the email addresses from the emails you get into a spreadsheet or whatever you are using to build your email list. This may be more hassle then it is worth, or it may work perfectly for you. The important thing is to find the option that suits you and works best for your business!

Form Experts

To add a form to your website, I recommend using this service, Form Experts – the Fastest and Easiest-to-Use Website Forms, Guaranteed. Advantage Website Solutions uses this service for our forms, and for our clients, and we have found it to be exceptional! The cost is low – less than $50/year – and you can make as many forms as you need. The form building tools are easy to use. You can use these forms without any knowledge of html or any other kind of programming. You have the option to choose the colors, fonts and sizes that you want, and more. You choose what email address you want the notifications to be sent to and whether or not you want an autoresponder to send an email to the subscriber automatically.

To integrate the form into your website, you can choose from two different options. You can let Form Experts host the form – for this option you would have a url to link to your form. We use this option a fair bit and just have the link open in a new window, so the visitor does not have to actually leave your website to subscribe. The other option is to put the form right into your webpage. Form Experts automatically generates the html code for your form, and you simply copy and paste it into your website, or link to the version of the form that is hosted by them. Both options are simple, clean and easy. Form Experts does all the work, and you can relax knowing that when someone subscribes, the email will come right to your inbox for you to take care of from there!

Mailing List Software

Another option that we also use is mailing list software. Our preferred provider of this is BlueHost.com, where you can also get excellent web hosting, blogging tools, and many many other options for your website. We love that they have partnered with other programs and offer so many fantastic tools to their customers!

One of the software programs they offer is PHP List, which is a mailing list program that will manage your subscriptions as well as your actual email newsletters. You can do it all from this program! Setting it up is fairly straightforward, and involves customizing your subscribe pages, as well as the emails that are automatically sent when someone subscribes. You can add your own logo to the pages to customize it, as well. PHP List handles all of the details like adding new email addresses to your list, sending automated confirmation emails, as well as including easy links to unsubscribe as well in each email newsletter. You can design your newsletter right in the PHP List interface and automatically send it out to your mailing list.

To use PHP List in your website, you will just need to add your subscribe link, which you can find in the PHP List management page, to your website wherever you want people to be able to click on it!

You do not have to sign up for a BlueHost account to use PHP List. If you do not need the web hosting or the other cool programs BlueHost offers, then you can go straight to PHPList.com and use it alone – but don’t forget that BlueHost has it all in one place – hosting, domains, blogging, mail list, photo albums and more, and it’s not expensive (less than $100/year for everything)!

Which option do you choose? This will depend on what you are comfortable with, and what works best for you and your business! But if you need some assistance, or suggestions, or just some coaching to help you set it up, don’t be afraid to contact someone who can help you!

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How An Email Marketing System Can Help You Increase Your Profit Rate

September 24th, 2008 at 12:45am Under General

If you’re doing any form of business through the avenues and features provided by the internet and continue to refuse in using emails as marketing weapons, then you’re losing out on what will most definitely multiply your curren earnings by as much as 1,500%.

Without a doubt, email marketing is the most effective advertising technique on the World Wide Web these days.

Email marketing traces its roots from direct marketing via actual, physical mails.  Can you still remind yourself of those times when you opened thick envelops of colorful brochures from businesses plying their wares?  How many times did you suck up the pitches they mentioned?  How many nights did you spend thinking about the goods they offered?  Do you still remember the number of times you decided to purchase what they were presenting?

Such is the power of direct marketing, and this is the power of email marketing.

Email marketing can be divided into 3 critical stages:

1.    creating a subscriber base.  This includes building something that will enslave the interest of online denizens and providing for them something of worthwhile value to encourage them to share their contact infos, particularly their email addresses.

2.    Establishing a good relationship with the subscribers of your mailing group.  Email marketing is likewise named follow-up marketing, for the sole reason that it allows the web entrepreneur to check up on his leads.  Following up does not equate to merely delivering sales pitches.  On the contrary, web businessman are advised to build up their credibility, build up trust amongst their potential customers, and present their enterprise without being forceful about things. 

3.    Sharing one’s proposal.  Of course, it’s all about selling.  It must be ensured that a good and strong relationship is established before the web entrepreneur attempt to present his goods or services for sale.  With a significant mailing list that has grown to trust the online entrepreneur, he would have immediate access to many prospects who are most expected to acquire what he has to offer.

The heart of each email marketing system is an autoresponder service.  An autoresponder service allows the online entrepreneur to automate the entire process.  The autoresponder service can be left on auto-pilot to capture email addresses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The autoresponder service can likewise automatically publish emails to the subscribers based on prepared emails and preset schedules of deliveries.  Better yet, an autoresponder service can empower the internet entrepreneur to create several mailing lists – say, one for new signees, another for people who bought a product once, and a thirs one for sign-ups who purchased two times or more – and transfer subscribers from one group to another.

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