nams list building techniques

Building a Better List FasterBuilding a Better List Faster

Phil HollowsFounder & CEO, FeedBlitz

www.feedblitz.com/NAMS@phollows

phil@feedblitz.com

www.feedblitz.com/NAMS

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

HERE IT IS: THE BIG SECRET!

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HOW TO BUILD A GREAT LIST

1. Get more subscribers

2. Keep them for longer

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Complement Your SEO

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

• Subscriptions convert visitors into subscribers.

• You convert subscribers into money.

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

November 2011

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

November 2011

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

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

November 2011

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Are You Wasting Your Blog’sMOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE?

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

Seth Godin

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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.

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What is a Great List?

Quality

Quantity

Adding New Subscribers

Make it EASY

Make it OBVIOUS

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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.

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Accelerating Growth

• Use a professional service.

• Have a relevant incentive.

• Popups.

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

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Newsletter Subscription Sequence

Fill in form

Dual opt-in activation

Check inbox

landing page

Contentmailings

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Thanks forsubscribin

g!

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The FeedBurner Migration Guide

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

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Email Course Subscription Sequence

Fill in form

Dual opt-in activation

Autorespondersales

sequence

Check inbox

landing page

Thanks forsubscribin

g!

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Autorespondersales

sequence

Contentmailings

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Shopping Cart Sale Automation Sequence

Buye-book

Thank youlanding page

Downloadlink email

Contentmailings

New buyernotification

Forwardto parser

Autoresponder

sequence

Autoresponder

sequence

Autoresponder

sequence

Autoresponder

sequence

Autoresponder

sequence

Affiliateemail pitch

New affiliateemail

Forwardto parser

New affiliate

sequence

New affiliate

sequence

New affiliate

sequence

New affiliate

sequence

New affiliate

sequence

Affiliate-orientedcontent mailings

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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

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Content With Discount Squeeze

Fill in form

Contentmailings

Dual opt-in email

Check inbox

landing page

Thank youlanding page

Thank youautorespond

er10% off

20% off

40% off

50% off

Stops sequence

New buyeremail

Forwardto parser

Purchase made

You’ve Built the LIsts

Now You Have to Keep Them!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Re-engagement Sequence

Still want us?

Here’s a deal!

Removal soon

Last chance!

Buh-bye

Stops sequence

Thank you!

Reader engages

End of sequence rule unsubscribes reader from main

list

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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”

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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.

FeedBlitz

Key Facts

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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.

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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.

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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/

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

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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