NAMS List building techniques

Building a Better List Faster

Phil Hollows
Founder & CEO, FeedBlitz
www.feedblitz.com/NAMS
@phollows
phil@feedblitz.com

About Phil Hollows

• Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, the all-in-one
solution for email and social media marketing
automation.
– Sending over 1,000,000,000 updates per year.
– The only FeedBurner alternative for RSS and email
stats.
– NAMS Sponsor! www.feedblitz.com/NAMS

• Author of “List Building for Bloggers”
– ListBuildingForBloggers.com


HOW TO BUILD A GREAT LIST

1. Get more subscribers

2. Keep them for longer


Complement Your SEO

• SEO increases traffic to your site … and
then what?

• Subscriptions convert visitors into
subscribers.

• You convert subscribers into money.


Why Isn’t Email Dead in the Age of Social
Media?
November 2011


Why Isn’t Email Dead in the Age of Social
Media?
November 2011

Via http://smedio.com/2012/05/11/why-social-media-is-yet-to-destroy-email-marketing/


Are You Wasting Your Blog’s
MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE?

“I get ten times more response to my blog
from my email subscribers
than I do from anyone else.”
Seth Godin


50 Shades of Email

• Be Christian, Not Ana.

• Take control of your subscribers.

• Get the right message to the right people
at the right Time.


What is a Great List?

Quality

Quantity


Adding New Subscribers

Make it EASY
Make it OBVIOUS

Getting New Subscribers

• Web site updates, a.k.a. the newsletter.
• Reports.
• Email courses: “30 days to …”
• Program members.
• Shopping cart sales.
• Membership sales.
• Affiliate acquisition.
• Event registration
• QR codes and offline forms, mailers.


Accelerating Growth

• Use a professional
service.
• Have a relevant
incentive.
• Popups.

http://www.feedblitz.com/how-i-created-a-listbuilding-machine-by-jeff-nickles/


Newsletter Subscription Sequence

Fill in Dual opt-in Content
form activation mailings

Check inbox Thanks for
landing page subscribing!

Autoresponder
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
sales sequence


The FeedBurner Migration Guide

http://www.feedblitz.com/the-feedburner-migration-guide/

Email Course Subscription Sequence

Fill in Dual opt-in Autoresponder
Autoresponder
form activation sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
Autoresponder
sales sequence
sales sequence
Check inbox Thanks for
landing page subscribing!

Content
mailings


Advanced: Automated Sales Integration

• It is 10x easier to sell to an existing
customer than to acquire a new one.

• Customers / subscribers are the most
excited just after they’ve bought.

• Capitalize on that enthusiasm,
automatically.

Tools of the Trade: Universal Integration

• A way for your shopping cart / third party
system to forward emails to your email
service
– Can be done using Outlook / Gmail rules
• An email service with an API or “Parsers”
– Converts email to new subscription
• Automation “Triggers” that can move
subscribers between lists for continual
relevance.

Power Parser Example: product Sale

• Shopping care forwards email to parser.
• Parser fires off autoresponder squeeze
sequence.
• Trigger migrates subscriber to content
mailings at the end.
• Meanwhile, affiliate pitch can be
processed by a second parser.
• When activated, sub gets affiliate-centric
mailings.

Shopping Cart Sale Automation Sequence

Buy Affiliate New affiliate New affiliate
New affiliate
e-book email pitch email sequence
New affiliate
sequence
New affiliate
sequence
New affiliate
sequence
Forward sequence
to parser
Thank you Download
landing page link email
Affiliate-oriented
content mailings
New buyer Autoresponder
Autoresponder
notification sequence
Autoresponder
sequence
Autoresponder
sequence
Autoresponder Content
sequence
Forward sequence mailings
to parser


Finding the Price Point

• Similarly, this sequence uses an
autoresponder to offer increasingly steep
discounts.
• When a purchase is eventually made, the
parser grabs the buyer’s email address.
• The trigger then removes the subscriber
from the discounting autoresponder


Content With Discount Squeeze

Fill in Dual opt- Content
form in email mailings

Check inbox Thank you Thank you
landing page landing page autoresponder

10% off
New buyer
email Purchase made 20% off

Forward 40% off
to parser Stops sequence
50% off


You’ve Built the LIsts

Now You Have to Keep Them!

Mailing Frequency

• There is danger on mailing too often:
– Subscribers can feel abused, bombarded.
– Increases complaint and unsubscribe rates.

• There is danger in mailing too little.
– People forget they signed up yesterday, last week, last month.
– Increases complaint and unsubscribe rates.

• Find the right balance.
– Watch your unsubscribe rates and reasons
– Don’t mail much less than once a week
– Use autoresponders after sign up to stay front and center


Mixing Content and Offers

• Continue to build trust and authority with
content mailings.
• Intersperse with your offers.
• Don’t make everything “20% off, free
shipping”!
• Idea: For sales campaigns, send:
– One more email than you’re comfortable with.
– Send it a couple of hours before the deadline.

Full or Partial Content?

• Full content:
– Richest subscriber experience.
– Affiliate links and sponsorships come through.
– Engaging when read in the preview pane.
– Lower click through rates.

• Partial content:
– Requires click through to get all the content.
– High risk of affiliate link loss, formatting, images.
– Much less engaging content.


Popup Subscription Forms

• Popups can be very effective!
– They can also be hostile, interruptive and
spammy.

• Build trust and respect your visitor before
popping up a subscription form.
– Give the visitor a chance to read your content.
– The longer the session lasts, the more
aggressive you can become.


Multi-List Segmentation Options

• Content segmentation for large sites
– Create lists to cater to each niche within the site.
– Increases relevance and hence engagement.

• Schedule segmentation
– Offer real-time, daily or weekly digest options.
– Untimely emails yield unsubscribes.

• Audience segmentation
– e.g. Subscribers, purchasers, members,
partners, affiliates.

Demographic Segments

• Don’t ask for what you’re not going to use.
– Reduces friction, accelerates list growth.

• Think about what you really need, e.g.
– Collect birth month, not birthday.
– First name and state, not ZIP and street address.
– “Blast” selectively – don’t make the subscriber feel bombarded.
– Use suppression lists for JV, sponsor mailings.

• Think “outside the blast” and be serendipitous!
– Birthday or anniversary discounts.
– Random monthly drawings.


Event-Driven Multi-List Segmentation

• Activity-based segmentation is the best way to
generate downstream revenues.
– Mail sent based on activity is always timely and
relevant.

• Use list automation – rules, triggers, parsers – to
move people between lists for your site.
– Use notification emails from third party systems to
trigger automatic list and subscriber management.

• Target the right message to the right list
during a sales program.

Automatic Subscriber Management

• Your email service should:
– Automatically remind pending subscribers to activate.
– Handle CAN-SPAM compliance for you.
– Manage subs / unsubs / complaints / bounces.
– Enable your subscribers to help themselves.

• Your email service should NOT:
– Charge you for addresses that it’s not mailing.
– Require you to manually clean lists to keep fees down.
– Hold your subscribers hostage if there’s a problem with your
account.
– Force you to reveal potentially sensitive information such as
your home address to all your subscribers.


Keeping it Clean:
Re-engagement and List Hygiene

• Remove subscribers who aren’t engaging with your
mailings.
– Improves list quality and delivery metrics.
– May save you money on your service.
– Be careful! Opens are difficult to track.

• Choose your parameters.
– e.g. >6 months old and no recent interactions (opens and clicks).

• Don’t simply delete subscribers who qualify.
– Run a re-engagement campaign.


Architecture of a
Re-engagement Campaign
1. Checking you still want to hear from me, did
you miss this great content? Want a different
list?

2. Offer an incentive.

3. We’re going to unsubscribe you unless you
click.

4. Last chance!

5. You’ve been unsubscribed. Here’s how to get
back on the list.

Re-engagement Sequence

Still want us?

Here’s a deal!
Reader engages
Removal soon Thank
you!
Last chance! Stops sequence

Buh-bye

End of sequence rule
unsubscribes reader
from main list


A/B Testing

• Have clear goals and metrics.
– e.g. ad copy -> click-throughs -> conversions

• Make sure your sample is statistically significant
– Margin of error is ~ sqrt(samplesize).
– Key: understand sample size.

• Can you do multi-variate testing?
– Can be easier to handle one change at a time.
– Sometimes really simple things make a massive difference, e.g.
• Add an arrow or >> to a call to action button.
• Changing a button’s color or test font.
• Changing call to action “Subscribe” to “Join”


Your Goal: An Automated Email
Sales and Marketing System
• Target the right people at the right time with the right
messages.

• Create a mix of autoresponders, lists and incentives.

• Automate using activity-based triggers and parsers.

• Manage your “digital sharecropping” risk.

• Keep engagement UP and complaints DOWN.

• Run periodic re-engagement campaigns if necessary.


Like Other Email Services, FeedBlitz
DELIVERS
• Automatic daily email “blog broadcasts.”
• Traditional email blasts.
• Multi-step autoresponders.
• Unlimited custom fields, segmentation and
personalization.
• Simple flat-fee pricing.
• Shopping cart integrations, triggers and parsers.
• Expert, friendly technical support.
• Comprehensive API.
• 99%+ deliverability.


Unlike Those Other Guys, FeedBlitz:

• Is your internet marketer friendly business partner.
• Speaks Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest,
YouTube, RSS and more.
• Has express, weekly, monthly and topic-filtered
automatic “blog broadcasts.”
• Preserves affiliate links, images and formatting in partial
posts.
• Handles video in email.
• Allows imports WITHOUT making your readers re-
subscribe.
• Won’t hold your subscribers hostage.
• Automatically reminds non-activated subscriptions.
• Won’t charge you for unsubscribed, deleted or pending
subscriptions.

A Word About FeedBurner

• Google just announced
the end of the
@FeedBurner Twittter
account
• They also shuttered the
FeedBurner blog

FREE GUIDE:

http://www.feedblitz.com/the-feedburner-migration-guide/


Two Great Deals!

• 25% LIFETIME DISCOUNT on FeedBlitz
at www.feedblitz.com/NAMS -
offer ends 8/15

• Join the affiliate program at
http://www.feedblitz.com/affiliate-partnership-p

– Affiliate and super-affiliate levels
– Up to 40% recurring revenue

Thank You!

Questions? Comments?

• Talk to me!
– phil@feedblitz.com
– @phollows

• Resources
– Visit: http://www.feedblitz.com/NAMS
– Check out: http://ListBuildingForBloggers.com
– Subscribe: http://feedblitz.com/f?Sub=84


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