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By: Bonnie Foshee, Tue Feb 19th, 2008
Making Money Using Email Subscriber Lists
Keeping your business name in front of your customers can be expensive. Traditional methods of using television or radio commercials can be way beyond what the small business owner can afford. Even direct mail can be very costly. So what is the small business owner to do? How can the small business owner compete?
A very cost effective way of keeping your name in your customers’ minds is to use email. Of course there are laws against spam, so you have to find a way to get your customers to give you their email address. On the internet, this is known as an opt-in or squeeze page. You offer the prospective customer free information in exchange for their email address.
Isn’t This A Lot of Work?
Using email to keep in contact with your customers can be automated with an autoresponder. You set up a sequence of messages to send. Once you set it up it runs automatically when a new prospective customer signs up. The messages can work like a funnel leading your customer to buy from you.
Autoresponders also have the capability to send a broadcast message out to your list. This can be used to send announcements of sales and offers for a specific date.
You can also use dynamic content in your scheduled messages so that no matter when a customer subscribes, they can receive an offer that is only good for 10 days or whatever time period you choose. You want to give your customers a reason to take action and buy now.
It is also possible to switch your subscribers from a prospect email list to a customer email list once they buy from you. This would have the advantage of sending them a different series of messages once they are a customer.
Why Internet Marketers Love Autoresponders
There is money in the list. Your emails go out automatically prompting your customers to buy. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up in the morning, log in to your computer and see that you made money while you slept?
You need a little extra money for vacation? You send out an email to your list with a special offer. Even if you are a brick and mortar store, there are all sorts of ways to use this to grow your business.
So Where Do I Start?
It is best to have a dedicated server for your web site and autoresponder so that you will not get shut down because someone on a shared server is sending spam. This may sound expensive, but it isn’t.
I also recommend Autoresponse Plus for your autoresponder. It is web based and you can access it from any computer that has internet access. So you could send out an email to make money while you are on vacation, if you want to. This is much better than Aweber which is blocked by a lot of spam filters and has a monthly fee. Autoresponse Plus is software that you buy for a one-time fee. The software is set up on your website for you. Your web site will need to be hosted on a Unix or Linux server.
Remember that the money is in the follow-up. So start keeping in touch with your customers.