Consumers today are smart. They do their research before doing anything else. They know who your competition is, and they’re all too ready to jump ship and move to them if they have to. Any slight can seem like a big deal and the ease with which they can change course is increasing each day due to the global economy we live in. You have to compete in some way, and it cannot always be on price. If you compete on value instead, you can end up the top choice of your market every time.

* Helps Your Messages Become More Targeted – When you know that your list has already taken some action such as downloaded your lead magnet, or purchased a specific item, then you can focus on sending very specific emails to them that not only discuss the purchase they made, but also discuss the next steps they can take.

* You’ll Increase Sales – By sending more relevant messages, you’ll ensure that your list members feel special. This will then help develop that “know, like, trust” connection that is so important. Thus, you’ll increase sales.

* You’ll Increase Conversions – It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to make a sale, or get people to join a contest, or join you on social media. A more targeted list will mean more conversions all the way around.

* You’ll Avoid Marketing to Unresponsive People – Sometimes people initially join a list just to get a free thing you’re giving away. They have no intentions of acting further. So, if you move those who do act into another list, you can then market more aggressively to the unresponsive ones or even remove them from the list.

* Your Emails Will Be More Personalized – When you have a specific segmented list, whether it’s due to behavior or demographics, the messages can be much more specific. You can discuss the things they have done, or name something personal about the group they’re part of (women, men, moms, dads, etc…) and that makes them feel important and included.

* Subscribers Are Less Likely to Leave – People think they’re on the wrong list if they see marketing messages or educational messages about a product or solution they’ve already purchased. That makes them leave the list. In reality, you want them to leave, but to a new list that’s more appropriate.

* You’ll Improve Response Rate – When an email is more targeted due to segmentation, you’ll see a huge improvement in response rate for things you ask them to do, such as fill out a survey. The reason is that they feel as if the information is more directed to them and not just generic for everyone.

* Different Forms of Marketing Work for Different People – Another reason that segmentation works so well is that each type of person responds to different forms of marketing. You can determine this by their behavior. If you segment based on behavior, you’ll notice an enormous increase in ROI moving forward.

When you segment your list, you can send more personalized and relevant messages to the list members. This will cut down on unsubscribes, and you’ll see an increase in return on investment. Your autoresponder software has features that will help you segment lists for best results. As always, follow the laws regarding spam in your country.

Your best chance of success with email marketing is to create a plan based on the products that you want to promote. It all starts with your product funnel, which leads to your content marketing plan, which leads to your email marketing calendar. All email marketing should be focused toward promoting your products and/or services and that requires planning. The following steps will help you increase the results of your email marketing.

Craft a Working Product Funnel – You probably already have various products and services, but you may not have designed a product funnel yet that helps you understand how everything is interconnected and works together. Understanding this can help you keep your different lists and promotions in order.

Design Sales Pages for Each Product – Each page should tell your audience the benefits of purchasing the product. Remember a sales pages focus is on the audience, not on you. Benefits over features, always – pretend you are the client and answer all the questions and concerns they might have right on the sales page.

Start Appropriate Email Lists for Each Product– Using your autoresponder, create the lists for each product or service that you will promote. At the minimum you will want a general email list for people who visit the front page of your blog and then two lists for each product you sell. Create one list for people who purchased the product and one list for people who just want more info about the particular product. Name them appropriately so that you know where to put the messages based from where the audience joins your list.

Develop a New Product Launch Calendar – Knowing when each product is being launched for new upcoming products and or services will help you identify which lists you can include the announcements and information on. Plus, it will remind you to create new sales pages, lists, blog posts and email marketing messages for each new product.

Create a Blog Post Publication Calendar – Based on the product launch calendar, write blog posts and set deadlines for them to be scheduled. Ensure that some blog posts promote the various sales pages, and other blog posts are designed for those who purchased already. For each message, consider who will see it and where they come from.

Create a Social Media Content Publication Calendar – Develop social media messages in a series based on your blog posts that will attract your readers to click through to your sales pages and purchase or sign up for your email lists.

Create an Email Publication Calendar – Based on how everything works together above, create a series of emails that you can edit appropriately for each separate list that you may want to promote the new product to. Load them into the right auto responders, ensuring they link to the right sales pages depending on the audience they are sent out to.

Craft Follow-Up Messages – Don’t forget to craft all your follow-up messages too for each product that you sell. Once sold, you will want to keep in contact with the customer who bought it so that you can market future products and services to them.

By creating a plan of action to follow, you can make sure every single time you launch a new product that you can cross-promote other products and services without bombarding your list too much with messages they don’t need, thus increasing your conversion rates exponentially. If all the content you create goes together like a puzzle to promote all of your products and services in a seamless way, it’ll be that much easier each time to set up for each new product.

Creating an eCourse is a great way to get subscribers to your list. An eCourse is also a great way to give information to your subscribers that they need, as well as a way to market other information to them. It’s important to build trust with your subscribers and you can do that with a well written and planned out eCourse.

But, there are some best practices for your eCourse that you should be aware of when using an eCourse as subscription bait, either free or paid.

1. Craft Well Written Opt-In Messages – Tell your subscribers what to expect in the opt-in information. That way they will know that they’re going to get more than just the eCourse. Letting them know this will do two things. One, it will prepare your subscriber to get more than just the course; and two, it will give them the opportunity to say no or yes. The best subscribers know what they’re getting into when they opt in.

2. Make the Most of Your Thank You Message – Once they opt in, send them a thank you message. This is a great place to include extra information about what they’re going to receive, again, and other opportunities that you have for them. If every single message you send out is packed with information, you’ll be more likely to get a positive response.

3. Craft Your Course Series Carefully – If you’ve promised your subscribers a ten-day email course, each day of the course should be very well defined and stand on its own but also make them excited for the next course delivery. Remember a ten-day course doesn’t have to be delivered one each day; it can be one each week with other information in between.

4. Create Offers within Course Messages – Each course message is a great time to include offers to the subscribers for other products and services or information that you promote. You can send them to affiliate products and services that coincide with what you’re teaching them in the course.

5. Add Extras within the Course Series – A ten-day eCourse can turn into a month of emails with extra days and courses. You can even ask for homework from your course subscribers, sending them to a private Facebook group or forum where they can turn in their assignments to give them extra -all within the same “10 day” course.

6. Give Bonus Course Information – If you want to, you can offer your subscribers the opportunity to sign up for another eCourse series within the current course that you’re providing. Many people are happy to find out about more advanced information about a particular subtopic within the original eCourse.

7. Offer Opportunities to Join Other Lists – If you have more than one email list that might be of interest, the eCourse is an excellent way to let your subscribers know about them. Keeping your subscribers moving through your product funnel by making new offers is a great way to make the most of your eCourse.

8. Periodically Update the Course Information – Even when the course is over, if updates happen, or changes in technology occur, it’s a good time to contact your course members to give them the scoop on the update.

Making the most of an eCourse is essential to making the course worth your time and effort. Thankfully most, if not all, of the email course can be automated using your autoresponder service – whether it’s a free eCourse or a paid course.

Email marketing is an effective way to market your products, services and information to your audience. But, it can be easy to confuse your readers to the point that they do not take action. If you want to improve conversions, consider the following.

Know Your Audience – The best thing you can do for your business is to understand your audience backwards and forwards. The more you know who you’re crafting emails for, the better you can word everything to get the response you want.

Craft Subject Lines That Create Curiosity – Your first line of defense is the subject line of your email. If your subject line doesn’t make the reader curious enough to open the email to read the rest, nothing else matters.

Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines – When someone opens an email, the headline is the first thing they will see after the subject line that enticed them to open the email in the first place. If this doesn’t grab their attention, they probably won’t continue reading.

Use Bulleted Information – Inside the email message, be sure to make the information easy to absorb. One way to do this is to use bulleted information and lists. People read online differently than they read a book. They read vertically instead of horizontally; therefore, make the information match where the eye goes.

Have One Focus per Email – Instead of giving too much information and many options for purchasing something, make your email focused on one item and one offer. You can always upsell and cross-sell at the point of checkout but for the purposes of the email, make the focus on one thing only.

Provide One Link per Email – Don’t overwhelm your audience with ten links to different items in your emails. Instead, provide one link for the focused information that you want to get across to your audience. One link gives them one thing to do.

Know Your Specific Call to Action – If you can identify the one thing you want your audience to do after reading your email then it will be easier for you to design the subject line, headline and email to match.

Keep It Short and Simple – Super long emails don’t translate well because most people just want to know what the point is and move on from the email. Take out extraneous words and get to the point in your emails for faster action.

Understanding that you can increase conversions by being more focused in each email that you send doesn’t mean you can’t promote more than one item in your email messages. However, focusing each message on one promotion will get you further than too many promotions in one email. The reason is that you avoid confusion and increase conversions by telling your audience about one offer at a time.

Once in a while you’ll have someone unsubscribe from your email list. In reality, you want to get some unsubscribes because that means your list is super focused and it might not be right for that particular person. However, the unsubscribe process is also another opportunity to refocus that person and better target your audience.

Follow the Law – By law you must offer an easy to use unsubscribe button. Don’t force them to re-enter their email addresses to unsubscribe. Just give them the button, and let them go without doing so grudgingly. However, you can remind them of why they joined your list at the same time by sending them to a special offer sales page when they click unsubscribe.

Keep It Simple – Don’t make it tricky to unsubscribe. Prepopulate the unsubscribe buttons but also offer the alternatives to the reader to choose different lists or information they may want that might be more accurate for them.

Ask Them Why They’re Leaving – Using the unsubscribe page as a way to find out why they want to unsubscribe can help you better focus your email messages and opt-in offers in the future. Plus, it can give the person unsubbing new insight into what you offer your lists and they may change their mind.

Offer Alternatives – On the unsubscribe page, don’t make them jump through hoops but do offer them some options such as lower frequency of email (such as a monthly option) and/or different newsletters they can sign up for, or other offers that you have that they may not know about.

Take It in Your Stride – It’s really not personal. If you can take the unsubscribe for what it is, a simple request not to get more email from the list they’ve subscribed to and not a personal attack on you, then you’ll be able to handle the unsubs better. Honestly, a clean list is better than a list full of inactive users, so some people are doing you a favor by unsubscribing.

Send High Quality Information – Stop unsubscribes before they start by providing high quality information that is very targeted toward your audience from the start. When someone subscribes to your list, let them know what to expect up front, then be sure to deliver what you promised.

Send a Free Parting Gift – When someone unsubcribes from your list, your autoresponder email will send them an unsubscribe confirmation email which is your chance to say goodbye. Within that you can offer them a parting gift which will then put them on a different list that might be more appropriate for them.

Ask Them to Reconsider – On the unsubscribe page you can also simply ask them straight out to reconsider unsubscribing. Offer them a gift if they stick around a little longer such as one more week or a month. Some people are only unsubscribing because they forgot why they signed up for your list. This is a chance to remind them.

You have to tread lightly when it comes to unsubscribing because you don’t want to make it really difficult and make them jump through hoops to finally get off your list. But, you do want to ensure that you remind your audience why they signed up for your list. Make it clear that you’re sorry they’re leaving, and finally ask them for another chance at pleasing them.