Email Marketing Archives - Page 5 of 6

Affiliate Marketing: Mixing Pleasure with Business

June 26, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

Here in the land of Peaches and Beaches we're now into full-on summer, which brings with it the joys of swimming, hiking, biking and an endless supply of fruit. There are also wine festivals, sailing regattas and of course, the annual Pacific Northwest Elvis Festival.

As a car buff, I particularly enjoy the Peach City Beach Cruise, which is billed as “Canada's premier family oriented Rod, Antique and Classic Car Show”.

All manner of fabulous cars line up and parade along our beachfront “Magic Mile” while restaurant patrons vigorously encourage passing drivers to “SPIN those tires!”.

Aaah… but how I love the roar of big engines and the fragrance of burning rubber on a sultry summer evening in late June.

Ed and I joined the parade last Friday night in my new/old 1991 Mercedes Benz 500sl Roadster (AMG)… and no, I did NOT spin my tires… really, I didn't! 🙂

But boy, we had fun!

And once again, I have to thank affiliate marketing for my good fortune and all the ‘extra' fun I've enjoyed since I became an affiliate marketer back in 1998. 🙂

Sure, it takes work to ‘get there', and all those summer diversions make it more difficult to sit down at your computer and get to work.

But if you do it ‘right' – select and master a niche in which you're interested – you get to talk (write, blog) about what's fun for you, which is the next best thing to being there and doing the fun stuff.

Better yet, getting the work done gets you more toys (or more savings, if you're so inclined) and even more ways to have fun.

So, get it done.

Take an hour and write that product review or newsletter and post it to your blog. You'll be amazed how writing just one post everyday builds your web presence, your list and your revenues.

Then go HAVE fun!

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. The ‘sister' car in the photograph belongs to my buddy, Jonathan, who makes his fortune buying and selling on eBay.

The Internet Marketer’s Laundry List

May 16, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

OK, so what the heck was I thinking?

This week I…

Wrote more new content for the Super Affiliate Handbook, including a chapter called “Limes are Greener” – an approach to using Google Adwords that not many people utilize.
Then did rewrites on my rewrites…
Tried to get THOUSANDS of current SAH owners to confirm/validate their email addresses…
Got carpal tunnel syndrome trying to respond to all the Spam Arrest verifications, so figured out a better way to handle the SAH update…
Built 3 new web pages to support that ‘better way'…
Teed up a deal with Joel to handle the SAH updates starting on WEDNESDAY (tomorrow).
Found a ‘better approach' to Blog Alerts and got fixed that up in Aweber.
(Hint – don't try to build a new list of blog subscribers. Set the rss-to-email to feed to your current list.)
Had a TOTAL bird when I thought that 5 previous blog posts were being automatically delivered to my whole list.
(Another hint – don't set the feed up to run ‘automatically').
Had another bird when I broke my blog … again!!
(Don't look at it in Firefox, please.)
Posted a job at Freelancer to get the blog fixed.
Still waiting for the right geek to come along 🙂 …
Wrote a press release for a new website…
Set up the ‘Best PLR‘ challenge that required reading and pondering…
Selected the winners of that challenge.
Sent all the ‘TV Stars‘ zipped Handbook files that contained NOTHING…
(I'm STILL working that one out)…
Wrote an outline for my next Revenue mag article…
Bought and read an interesting marketing manual for poker affiliates…
Have been watching Sterling Valentine's countdown to his BIG LAUNCH DAY (today) with great interest…
…and last but not least… wrote this post.

Phew!

OK, that might not seem like much until you know that I was also getting ready to leave home for another month.

(Yes, Anik, I know you told me not to take any more vacations, but I can't help myself.)

Anyway, spring planting, mowing, raking and trimming (hacking, really) a half acre lot really leaves me wondering why I fired the gardener who ‘came with the house'.

Actually, I thought it would be good exercise and boy, I was RIGHT!

Tuesday morning I fly to Toronto to help my brother and best friend, Ed, finish packing up his house. In 2 weeks we'll be taking another 2 weeks to sight-see our way back out West.

Yup.

He's moving in!

Really, what the heck WAS I thinking? (Probably that he likes to cook, and I don't!) 🙂

(Ed and Joel riding Ogopogo in Kelowna, B.C.)

Anyway, it's getting late and I have yet to pack. More importantly, I need to find out whether Izzie killed Denny.

Have a GREAT week!

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. As for what I was thinking… actually, this is all alot of FUN! 🙂

Are You Losing Visitors to Your Newsletter Signup Process?

April 26, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

Hey All!

Did you know that you may be losing site visitors – and therefore potential customers – when people sign up for your newsletter?

A very kind NPT reader let me know (and then I learned about the same problem later at the Underground) and now I'm sharing the info with you.

Dear Rosalind,

I am in a position to help you with a problem you have on your web page.

Currently, a reader scrolls halfway down the page, sees the email subscription, and submits it, but when they submit it, the entire page reloads, which can be very disorienting, especially for people with slow connections who have to wait to get back to where they were.

I can, however, provide you with the HTML and Javascript code that will enable readers to submit the form, see that they've submitted the form while it's being processed, and see the results, right there in that box, so that they can just keep on reading without reloading the page.

Nick Chase
Backstop Media
http://www.backstopmedia.com

Although I had coded the page so that visitors ended up in the very place where they had left off, I really appreciated Nick's suggestion and assistance.

Here is the code that Nick supplied to avoid the page reload, and how you can do it too.

1) Visit Google Maps API and get a ‘key'.

2) Substitute YOURGOOGLEKEY in the script below and place the script within the metatags on your page.

<script
src=”http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=1&key=YOURGOOGLEKEY”
type=”text/javascript”></script>

3) Place the following code below your Aweber Autoresponder signup form code on the page.

<script type=”text/javascript”>

function addLead(theForm){

//First, let the user know something's happening so they don't submit again.
document.getElementById(“addLeadText”).innerHTML = “Adding you
to the mailing list…”;

//Now create the actual request.
var request = GXmlHttp.create();

//You'll likely want to change “test.php” to “http://aweber.com/scripts/addlead.pl
request.open(‘post', ‘http://aweber.com/scripts/addlead.pl',
true);

//This part watches for the response to come back, then drops the text into the page
request.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (request.readyState == 4) {

document.getElementById(“addLeadText”).innerHTML = request.responseText;
    }
};

//Now we build the data from the form into the request itself.
var postString = “”;
for (i = 0; i < theForm.elements.length; i++){
     postString = postString +
theForm.elements[i].name + “=” + URLencode(theForm.elements[i].value) +
“&”;
}

//Then we tell the request how to let the server know what we're doing.
request.setRequestHeader(“Content-Length”, postString.length);
request.setRequestHeader(“Content-Type”,
“application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8”);

//Finally, we send the request.
request.send(postString);
}

   function URLencode(sStr) {
     return escape(sStr).replace(/\+/g,
‘%2B').replace(/\”/g,'%22′).replace(/\'/g, ‘%27′).replace(/\//g,'%2F');
}

</script>

Voila! No more reloading.

7 Email Marketing Secrets that I Learned at the Underground

April 3, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

I took 12 pages of bullet-point notes during the Underground, even though I missed Day One of the seminar…

Twelve pages may not seem like a lot of note-taking, but all the attendees also received a big black binder crammed with each of the speakers presentation notes and Power Point slides.

Despite having that information at my fingertips, I can't share all of the ‘secrets' that I learned with you. It wouldn't be fair to those who paid to attend Yanik's Underground Seminar. Nevertheless, here are 7 of the finer points about email marketing that were re-inforced for me during the conference.

Guarantee Your Subscribers' Privacy – Have a link to the Privacy Statement on your site is good. Putting “Your information is never shared with anyone” directly above or below your opt-in form will dramatically increase your opt-in rates.
Expand Your Autoresponder Series – I was amazed (again) to learn that many of the speakers have Aweber autoresponder sequences with more than 200 mailings in the sequence. WOW!
Decrease the Length of Your Emails – Folks respond better to messages that are short, sweet and to the point. You want to create interest and give your subscribers a reason to visit your site, so create a ‘teaser' message with a link back to your site. Search engines notice your increased traffic and give you brownie ranking points.
Improve the Quality of Your Messages – We all learn tons each week about our topics of expertise. Although it's exciting to learn and share, avoid bombarding your subscribers with every little tidbit. That just confuses them. Focus each of your broadcast messages around a central theme and preferably a single product – unless you're writing a comparative offer.
Increase the Frequency of Your Broadcast Messages – If you're sending once a once, increase that to once a week. If you're writing once a week, try writing twice or three times a week. One speaker has great success writing TWICE a day. Note that his niche is outside the Internet Marketing field.
Monetize Your Opt-out Pages – Do you simply say ‘Good Luck' or ‘Good Riddance' when someone unsubscribes from your newsletter? Make a final pitch by adding one or more sales or affiliate links to your opt-out page.
Make Sure Your Email is Being Delivered – Are your subscribers getting your messages? Maybe. Maybe not. Fully fifty percent (50%) of all measured email is now considered spam, much of which is being filtered directly into your subscribers trash and junk bins. Top marketers use Delivery Monitor to test, track and confirm whether their messages are being properly delivered.

Implementing any tip will help boost your conversion rate or your opt-ins and ultimately increase your site profits.

Incorporate them all and watch your sales go crazy! 🙂

Whattya Mean You’re Not Blogging Yet?

March 14, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

You call yourself an affiliate marketer but you're not a blogger?

Please tell me it's not true!

You don't even need your own domain if you use a service like Blogger.com.

A free Blogger.com blog is a good option if the thought of having your own domain and building your own web site is an obstacle to getting you started in your own online business.

Of course, I still stick by my recommendation that every affiliate SHOULD have their own domain for the sake of creating a businesslike and professional appearance.

Honestly, nothing is easier to set up than a blog, especially if you decide to install WordPress on a Bluehost account.

One click, a couple of text blank entries and you're ready to blog!

Best of all, blogs are the fastest way to get free traffic known to Internet-Marketing-kind.

So, have I got your attention yet?

If you read the NPT Blog, you've probably noticed that I post more frequently now than when I started my blog.

There are a number of reasons for that.

First, blog posts are generally more informal and conversational than a newsletter which tends to be more structured.

That makes a blog easier to write, and easy is good.

Secondly, a blog is super simple to manage.

You don't have to create individual HTML pages or uploading files to your server. Just write your message, click ‘Publish' and your message is posted and available for all the world to read.

That means when I learn something of interest to NPT visitors and newsletter subscribers, I don't have to wait until NPT Newsletter Tuesday to tell them about it. I just blog it immediately.

So, for example, if you get some promotional copy with your links embedded from your affiliate manager, you could simply login to your blog, cut and paste the material, and Voila! there it is!

You could do that… but I suggest you change the wording and create an original post in your own style.

Lastly, I've discovered that the free traffic coming to my blog is phenomenal. The more I post, the more traffic I get.

If you look at the ‘Archives' for the NPT Blog you'll see the first entry was made in November 2004.

Confession… I didn't really start bloggin until February 2005. I just posted some previous newsletters and changed the timestamp to reflect their original publishing date.

At the time I started my blog, RosalindGardner.com had an Alexa ranking of somewhere around 60,000 as shown in the graphic below.

And I've seen it go as high as 2,827 as shown in the image captured on Aug 16th, 2005.

Not bad, eh?

By allowing comments to be posted to your blog, you build community, which makes your site still more interesting for visitors.

And when the site is more interesting, people stick around longer.

Something that encourages even more traffic are the RSS-to-Email “Blog Alerts” that allow folks to subscribe to receive my blog posts via email, instead of using a feed or news reader.

Aweber offers this service, and has posted an article
“Convert RSS to Email Newsletters Automatically” to show you how easy it is to set up.

Actually, I've found response to the NPT Blog so successful that I recently started blogging at my online dating review site, 101Date.com as well.

Now all I have to do is either stop taking month-long vacations every 3 to 4 months, or find someone with success as an online dater to write about various aspects of that topic…

(Interested? Please let me know through our Support Desk).

To sum things up… Blogging is fun, it drives free traffic and it PAYS. What could be better than that?

Affiliate Perks: You’ll Need a Bigger House

February 7, 2006 By Rosalind Gardner

A friend and I are winging our way south to spend the next month in Mexico.

Aaaah, Negra Modelo, Sol and Corona by the bucket.

Aaaah, the benefits of being an affiliate marketer and I STILL thank Al Gore everyday for inventing the Internet.

LOL!

We've rented a house a couple hours out of Cabo, without a phone and no cellular access. We were told that it has a wireless Internet connection, but I'll have to see it to believe it.

Connected or not, it doesn't really matter, because I worked my butt off for the last few weeks to make sure my affiliate business keeps ticking right along. Hmm… OK, my butt didn't really get worked off while sitting at the computer for that long… WRONG analogy.

Anyway, I wrote articles and posts that are now queued up in my Aweber autoresponder and my blog entries will be delivered on schedule.

Aaaah, the beauty of technology.

Speaking of the benefits and perks to being an affiliate marketer, I saw a post on an affiliate forum sometime back that asked if anyone had received gifts, cards or letters from their merchants at Christmastime.

The post reminded me that I hadn't shared this story with you.

My Favorite Affiliate Manager

Chris Reynolds is the affiliate manager at the Internet Marketing Center. Chris and I have talked many times and gotten to know a little about each other beyond the scope of affiliate marketing.

He's a really great guy with a super sense of humor.

Anyway, Chris calls me one Friday morning just before Christmas to ask if I'd be home later in the day because he was having ‘something' delivered to my house.

I was home all afternoon, but no one showed up.

On Monday morning, when I let him know that his delivery was a ‘no-show', he was really choked.

A little later that morning a package from IMC arrived. I opened it to find a lovely box of chocolates.

I emailed Chris right away to thank him for the gift and told him that I was enjoying its contents.

Of course, I'm privately wondering why Chris wanted me to be home for a box of chocolates, or why he was upset that it wasn't delivered the previous Friday.

He usually seems so laid back.

Whatever.

A little later that afternoon my doorbell rang.

There stood a guy with a big beer-gut holding two six-packs of beer; one Samuel Adams, the other Red Cap. It looks like he's ready for a party.

He asks, “Is this the right place?”

“It is as long as you're planning to leave that beer here”, I answer.

Now, if you've been reading the NPT newsletter for any length of time, (or even the second paragraph of this newsletter) you know that I enjoy a good brew, exactly like the stuff he was holding.

“This is from ‘some guy' in Vancouver” he replies, nodding towards the beer in his hands.

I could barely contain my laughter and told him that he had indeed come to the right place.

Then he asks, “Do you have a fridge in your garage?”

“Um, no… why?”, I ask.

“There's more.. a LOT more, and it's all nice and cold”, he tells me.

Yes indeedy… the trunk of his car was FULL to over-flowing with every kind of dark beer imaginable.

Now that's my kind of affiliate perk!

And Valentine's Day is yet to come!

Online dating service affiliates absolutely LOVE Valentine's Day. Customers are buying, affiliate managers are ‘perking' and we like both.

There are two things you should know if you want to be on the receiving end of ‘affiliate perks'.

1) Get to know your affiliate managers.

2) Work in a niche that you really enjoy.

For example, if you love to fish, build a site about fishing and sell to fishermen and women.

Affiliates sell much more when they're passionate about their niche, and selling more is a good way to get to know your affiliate managers.

Sell enough, and you might just find yourself with a fancy brand new rod and reel, or better yet… maybe even BEER!

In other news and views this week…

The Cream Rises to the Top – Colin's site hits #10 on Google after 2 weeks online!

Be sure to up for NPT Blog Updates and get the news as it happens!

Got a question? Get an answer at the Forum…

‘Til next time, promote and prosper!

Cheers,
Rosalind

« Previous Page

Affiliate Perks: You’ll Need a Bigger House

My Favorite Affiliate Manager

Categories

New Here?

Admin