Email Marketing For Bloggers, The Basics
As I was looking through the Survey Questions submitted by some of my readers I noticed one trend – several people asked, using different words, same basic question:
How Does A Blogger Get Started With Email Marketing?
Quick search on the web didn’t bring the results for what I was looking for: step-by-step instructions to setting up the entire process and putting your autoresponder into action. In this post I assume following:
- You have something you willing to give away in exchange for subscription: an eBook, report, video, eCourse – something of Value
- You already have or willing to get aweber autoresponder. To my best knowledge it is the only one that will provide your with all the proper blog broadcast options and one I personally use.
- You have a WordPress self-hosted blog and know how to do some basic things.
And now lets look in details how you can get started with email marketing on your blog.
Autoresponder Setup
While I stated that this post will cover the basics – I still have no intentions to cover what is already quite nicely done by the aweber themselves. They provide you with wealth of the info on how to get started using their services but I recommend you have a look at their video guides – awesome resource for a quick learning of the entire process.
And if you need more detailed information their PDF guide will walk you through:
2 Videos You Should Pay Attention to to get Started:
- How to get started
- Add a Web Form Opt-in to Your Website
I highly recommend to integrate a pop-up, hover subscription form and based on my personal testing – set it to appear in about 15 seconds after visitor arrives to your site, much like you see on my blog. This way all accidental visitors already clicked away and form is presented ONLY to people interested in your information and you subscription rate will jump!
To integrate a pop-up form on your blog simply navigate to Appearance -> Editor and open footer.php file for editing.
Add javascript code provided by a right before the closing the body closing tag “</body>” as you see in picture below:
You can ignore the second javascript in the image, it is a peel ad script integration and specific to my blog.
Adding Subscribe Form To Your Sidebar
Simplest way to get it done is by using Text Widget.
It doesn’t matter how technologically challenged you might be – if you can copy and paste – you can add aweber subscription form to your sidebar using Text Widget.
Step 1: Get The Form Code
Simply navigate to Web Forms menu for the list you are working with and click the get code, as shown in image below:
Step 2: Add Text Widget To Sidebar With Subscription Form
Navigate to Appearance -> Widgets and place a new Text Widget into one of the areas on your sidebar. I recommend placing it as high as possible so it is always visible on your blog.
Paste the aweber form code into new Text Widget and save changes. That is it!
Process is extremely simple but if you want to have it even simpler then that – here is a WordPress plugin that can make it even easier for you:
- Faster IM Optin plugin for WordPress – you are required to subscribe in order to download the plugin and you also have a chance to upgrade to paid version. Quite frankly – free is all you really need but you might want to evaluate what they have to offer.
I don’t use plugin above because I don’t see the need in it but it can be a huge time saver for great many people as it will give you access to pop-up creation as well as sidebar subscription form. I’m not associated with the author in any way, shape or form and since I don’t use plugin – please don’t ask me how to use it – all I can say it is extremely simple based on one time I tested it.
Now that you have implemented a Lead Capture options onto your blog – I will discuss how to setup the entire process of moving your new lead from..
- subscription to…
- confirmation to…
- delivery of promised content
Stay tuned for next part of this series to get the complete details.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Disclaimer: some of the links mentioned within this post or posts they lead to are my affiliate links and I get compensated for recommending those products. However I never recommend something I didn’t believe in and welcome your questions and feedback.
Related articles by Zemanta
- How to Build Your Blog Using Good Old-Fashioned E-mail (copyblogger.com)
More Options Print This Post
 Subscribe With RSS Reader Subscribe by EmailFiled under Marketing |
Related posts |
Technorati: aweber, blogging, email marketing, marketing,
16 Responses to “Email Marketing For Bloggers, The Basics”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
[...] have discussed this in details in first post of the series “Email Marketing For Bloggers, The Basics” I still want to stress the importance of understanding that Opt-In means willingly and with [...]
Thank you for information about the plugin. I am going to see how I can use it for my blog.
Chandan´s last blog ..How To Continue Blogging When You Don’t Have Content?
Cool, though I don’t really see why a blogger would really require this unless they are trying to sell a product. In all honesty I would only really use this method if I were going to sell a million pound scheme or something where updates were crucial!
Patrick´s last blog ..How to block ads in Google Chrome!
Patrick,
You misunderstood the entire concept of email marketing and blogging as a combined process. It works together and feeds into each other and has nothing to do with “scheme” or anything like that. But to each his own.
Doesn’t EVERY blogger want more people to keep up with their blog? Doesn’t every blogger want visitors to their site to come back in the future and read more? Even if you are not blogging for money, or trying to sell something from your blog you certainly want visitors to come back.
Adding subscription boxes to your blog to make it easier for visitors to subscribe WILL increase traffic to your blog.
I talk more about using Opt-In lists with your blog in a recent article I posted…
http://www.insiderblogging.net.....table-blog
Bruce
PS… Be sure to subscribe to my blog while you are there
Thanks for sharing Bruce!
I know that everyone who ads email subscription to their blog ALWAYS sees increase but I guess one has to try first to actually believe!
Alex,As always, great post. I just spent the better part of this morning adding subscription boxes to several blogs. I agree 100% about Aweber, they are great. Anyone that wants to profit from their blog should be really pushing the subscription thing. Once you get the information from a visitor, they are yours for the keeping.
Thanks
BruceMcc
http://blog.insiderblogging.net
BruceMcc´s last blog ..Profit Blogging: Success Tips
Hi
This is a useful guide – many thanks. Do you think that the subscription to a list options conflict with RSS subscription options? Would you choose to have one or the other?
Neil
Neil at Debt Advice 4 Free´s last blog ..The Elusion of Financial Freedom That Debt Can Bring
I like using Aweber rather than RSS. With Aweber I can easily send out things on their own that I do not post to the blogs. I tie the RSS feed back to Aweber, so that when I post something on the blog it automatically gets sent to my list. You get the best of both worlds this way.
BruceMcc
BruceMcc´s last blog ..Profit Blogging: Know Your Target Audience
Great advice, Alex – especially about adding the opt-in form right into the sidebar coding so it shows up on every page. There’s no way of knowing which page a visitor will land on or leave from, so being sure it’s on every page is a powerful list-building tip!
Doug Champigny´s last blog ..Twitter Marketing Just One Component Of A Successful Marketing Mix
Great advice – I hadn’t heard of aweber till now; it seems like a good bundle (video walkthrough included).
The 15 second delay on an informative pop-up is a great idea, since anyone who might be offended/annoyed has already navigated away from the page at that point. I’ve seen this used on a few sites here and there; I’m surprised it’s not used more often.
E-mail marketing is growing very much and i am sure that it is of great use. E-mail marketing is used to promote a site very well and it becomes very easy for other people to know about the site very well.
See that’s where I get stuck – “You have something you are willing to give away in exchange for subscription”. Does anyone have any ideas for a give away related to a toys blog, other than free toys that would bankrupt me! I’d love to get started on building an e-mail list but this is my stumbling block.
Cheers, Chloe
Chloe Wilson´s last blog ..Why Eating Bogeys Is Good For You
Sure – it is very simple – create a short report filled with tips how to purchase correct toys for the child or some other useful tips. Information uis what people are searching for – provide something unique, create a report out of it and give it away in exchange for the subscription.
Alex
Thank you for this. Ive been thinking about incorporating email campaigns with a few of my wordpress blogs. I am currently using bigresponse for my main ecommerce site and know its also possible to use that with your wp blog. My appreciation for emails grow with every campaign we launch, any business or serious blogger would be leaving a lot of missed opportunities by not email marketing.
A very well written post, exciting to read. Full of contents and ideas, well done my friend. I hope to see more. Thank you.