If there is one type of marketing that can actually create results, and change your life, it is email marketing.
Email marketing has been proven effective in every niche imaginable, and by people of all stages of experience … from “newbie” to “guru”.
Why is email marketing so powerful? I believe there are seven main reasons.
Over the years I have seen studies saying that email marketing can double sales, triple sales and even 10X your sales.
I have personally experienced these results, as have my consulting clients.
What I have never seen, not even once, is a study that shows that email marketing created fewer sales than other methods.
That makes perfect sense, in no small part because of point 2 …
Not only does email marketing build trust, but it builds authority and deepens relationships as well.
Some clients ask, “How is it possible for a simple email to do all of that?”
The answer is, ONE email does not do all of that.
You see, email marketing involves more than sending one email. It involves sending emails over time. And time is our best friend when it comes to online marketing.
When your helpful messages (and helping is the core of email marketing) arrive in a subscriber’s inbox you are giving instead of asking.
You are sharing instead of grabbing for the sale.
You are offering helpful advice, which will include product suggestions, from a place of having given before you look to receive.
And … perhaps the most powerful of all … you can do this in a personal and yet highly automated way.
What do I mean by “repeatable”? I mean simply that you can count on email marketing to work for marketing any product in any niche.
And you can count on it working for you, regardless of your experience level.
Some people find that last statement hard to believe. Here is why it is true.
The person receiving your email does not care about YOUR experience level. They care about getting their needs met.
Whether you are a “guru” or a “newbie” really does not matter. It is the quality of the information you share that matters most.
If you are helping them, they will love you.
I have a friend who used to make a handsome living doing pay per click marketing.
By handsome I mean he was spending about $6000 per month and doubling that in profit.
But he quit.
When I asked why, he said “bid prices skyrocketed and ate up my profits”.
It’s a tale as old as time.
That does not happen with email marketing.
Yes, the costs go up the bigger your list becomes. But that cost is predictable and controllable.
If you have a list of 10,000 today, and expect to double it in a year, you can accurately predict exactly what that will cost.
And that makes your costs predictable.
What about predicting results?
Because email marketing is so proven, we can know with certainty what the return on investment will be before making the investment.
For example, in the “doing business online” space, we know that each subscriber will bring in between $26 and $64 per year in revenue.
That's every subscriber, whether they buy or not.
Do the math for a moment. If you earned $20 per subscriber per year and had 10,000 subscribers could you live on that?
NOTE: These numbers assume that the email marketing is being done right and that the product/market match has been well designed.
Those things are not a problem when you are working with the right advisor.
When it comes to making money online there are two basic methods.
One and done or something scalable.
For example; an affiliate marketer who runs an ad and sends traffic to the product’s sales page is using a “one and done” technique.
The person who clicks the ad the affiliate runs will either buy the product or not, and their relationship is over.
An affiliate marketer who sends all traffic to their own squeeze page (email marketing) or to their own blog (content marketing) is using a scalable method.
This method scales because the email follow up system the affiliate uses will build trust and make many more sales than even the highest-converting sales letter possible could.
This method scales again when a person visits the affiliate’s blog and then shares it on social media or tells their friends about it.
These things simply don’t happen when you drive traffic to the sales letter of a product you are promoting.
The costs of email marketing are very low and controllable. While other methods can cost less (social media can be free) the predictable return on investment makes email marketing superior to other methods.
This is one reason that every company, and every individual, who is succeeding online today has a list of their own and uses email marketing.
And unlike other methods, there are even ways to eliminate the costs of email marketing completely!
Here are three examples …
Once you choose your email marketing platform, become an affiliate and include messages for that service in your follow up marketing.
Once your list has reached size, sell ads to others (very selectively) to cover the costs of your autoresponder or CRM system.
Do a joint venture with a fellow list owner. You will not only make sales but also build your list bigger, which is a double win for you!
Using any of these methods consistently can cover your costs and make your email marketing essentially free.
Getting started with email marketing is very easy.
The first step is set a goal for your email marketing.
Some things to consider include …
The niche you are in.
The product you are promoting.
Whether you want to write content or will use pre-written messages.
How often will you send messages?
Will you have a blog of your own? (You really should!)
Once you know some of these basics designing an automated email marketing system will be much easier.
Once your core system is outlined, you will be able to focus on list building. This means all of your traffic will go to your own squeeze page or blog so you can begin building your list.
You will be free to promote anything you want, anytime your want, for no additional cost.
Even more importantly, you will be able to ask your subscribers what they need and help them solve their problems.
And when you do that, you will develop friendships with your readers and build trust.
And once that happens selling will no longer be matter of convincing someone to buy but rather making recommendations based on experience.
Those recommendations will be well received because you will have done the work of building a repeatable, scalable, helpful email marketing system where everyone wins.
And when you have that you will have a very beautiful thing indeed!