"What Is Email Marketing ... & How Can I Build a List & Run an Email Campaign?"

Email is a very effective - and very inexpensive - medium for a direct response follow up marketing campaign.

Remember, a website is primarily a direct response marketing medium. In other words, we use it to make a direct approach to our prospects or customers, and to invite them ... and entice them .. to make a specific response. And to do it now!

Unfortunately, many people won't respond straight away. They'll want to think about it. And very often, that means they'll go away and not return.

So what we need to do is ask them for their contact details so that we can continue to put our offer in front of them. In other words, we want to build an email list. This is different from renting or buying an email list. What we are doing is building our own list of prospects who choose to give us their email addresses so that we can send them something they want to receive.

And because they have chosen to give us their email addresses ... and we are only sending emails to people who have asked us to do so ... we are not sending "spam".

"What Is "Spam"?"

"Spam" - in this context - is unsolicited email. It's become a major problem on the interent, as more and more unscrupulous people send thousands and thousands of unwanted emails out trying to sell, shall we say, goods and services of a questionable nature.

But that doesn't mean that all email marketing is spam! Far from it!

Direct Response Email Marketing is Legitimate - & Very Effective!

The emailing that we're talking about involves asking people if they'd like some more information ... and then giving it to them if they say yes. That's about as above-board as marketing can get!

It's also very inexpensive ... and it can be set up to operate automatically using a piece of email marketing software called an "autoresponder".

"What Is an Autoresponder ... & How Does It Work?"

An autoresponder service allows us to ask our website visitors for their contact details, and to continue to contact them ..... automatically ..... for as long as we want to.

It's hard to explain just how powerful this strategy can be. In all probability are website visitors are not ready to buy yet (did you know that most people will say "no" at least 5 times before they make a purchasing decision?) but we'll be the ones who stay in contact with them. We'll be the ones who give them a series of useful tips and helpful information (that's how we "bribe" them to give us their email address!).

We'll be building a list of people who are seriously interested in the products or services we offer.

If you want to see an autoresponder in operation, just sign up in the form at the top of this page!

"How Effective Is Email Marketing"

Did you know that every $1 spent on commercial email produces an average of $43.62 in sales?

Source: US Direct Marketing Association "Power of Direct" economic impact study, 2009

Enough said!

The software I recommend for your email marketing (the same software I use on this site) is AWeber. You can see a demonstration of how their service works in this video:

On the next page, we'll look at how to write emails for our follow-up email campaign.