Are the email open rates of your AWeber broadcasts on the floor? Is it hurting the profits of your online business?
Today I want to talk about how I've been able to build a list of just over 850 people in the last 5 months and get an average of 25% open rate and 11% click through rate for every email I send.
There are a lot of people nowadays claiming that email marketing is dead! Or not as effective as it once was. Well I am here to tell you that is a load of CRAP!
There is just a different approach that you have to take to really get great results with your email marketing efforts.
And if you are NOT utilizing your blog to build your list I'm telling you right now you are shooting yourself in the FACE! I'll take an opt-in over a RSS subscribers ALL DAY LONG!
How To Increase Your Email Open Rates
The first thing is to not think of your subscribers as potential customers or how quickly you can squeeze out a commission. Remember that they are human beings and they came to you and gave you their email address because they saw a solution to a problem at your optin page.
Your first priority should be to give them the answer to their problem as quickly as possible without a hundred and one loop holes to go through.
Delivering your free offer to them as quickly as humanly possible is the first building block to them trusting you and when people trust you that's when they open your email, that's when they buy from you.
So now that they are on your list and you over delivered on your free offer (which I assume you have) let's talk about how you build that trust. Right now they do not know you from Adam and it's your responsibility to close that gap.
Every time someone subscribes to my list the first email they get is of course my free offer which is access to my WordPress Video Tutorials which is delivered immediately.
The 2 week Rule and The Sequence
For the next 2 weeks they DO NOT get any kind of promotional email from me. This is VERY important!!
The next 3 emails are all about building rapport and showing them that I'm a true human being who truly cares about helping them and is thankful they have signed up to my list.
The following will be about how I have my AWeber Follow Up sequence set up in my auto responder 
Follow up email #2 (which I feel is the most powerful) is delivered the very next day which is a simple email welcoming them aboard my free training.
It also tells them how they can contact me at any time should they have any problems and I list 3 ways they can easily reach me. THAT IS IT! Seriously no additional links to click no nothing.
Follow up email #3 is ALL about building rapport on a personal level. I put together a blog post titled “19 things you don't know about JZ” and it's an article listing 19 things about myself such as my age, where I'm from and things I like to do.
Now when was the last time you got an email from an online marketer willing to share personal information with you? Probably never.
Do not be afraid to pull the curtain down and let your subscribers in. This was actually pretty fun because I actually found out I have the same birthday as two of my subscribers.
Email Follow up #4 is ALL about building rapport on a business level. For this email I put together a no optin, blog page titled “How I had my First $156 Day Online” and it's basically a 2 part video series on the exact system I use to make money online.
This is very powerful because not only do they now know me on a personal level but they also know that I have had success online and I position myself as someone who walks his talk.
That is pretty much it when it comes to the setup of my follow up sequence. As you can see I have
- Delivered my free offer immediately
- Let them in on a personal level
- Let them in on a business level and shared my success
The Most Important Rule To Increase Your Email Open Rates
The next step from here is probably the MOST important piece to this whole article.
There is nothing more annoying to me then opting in to someone's list and a few hours after I get their free offer I immediately get hit with a promotional email asking me to buy something.
This can be a huge factor to someone quickly unsubscribing from your list.
Luckily for you this is easily solved within your autoresponder dashboard. What I am refering to is creating “segments” of your lists before sending out any broadcasts.
I feel this is a way under used feature for many email marketers. Creating segments allows you to email a certain portion of your list as opposed to the whole list. So someone like me who just signed up to your list doesn't immediately get the broadcast you sent promoting a product for sale.
I ALWAYS create a segment before I send out a broadcast and I follow the same 2 week rule. When I create a segment I make sure it excludes everyone who has been added to my list within the last 2 weeks so my follow up sequence does it's magic of building rapport.
With this set up I rarely get open rates under 20%. If you follow this set up or something similar where you take the time to really connect and show your subscribers you truly care then your open and click through rate should increase.
One last rule of thumb I like to follow is a 3:1 content vs promotional email ratio. Meaning for every promotional email I plan to send I make sure I send 3 non promotional emails with great content FIRST!
That's it guys I hope this article helps you to better your rapport building and email marketing.
To Your Email Open Rate Success,
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