Patrick Griffin - 10/25 - RocketResponder

Five Tips To Make Your Next Autoresponder Campaign Sparkle

December 29, 2014March 27, 2015 Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

sparkling lights When you use an autoresponder service like RocketResponder you open up a whole new world of communication with your subscribers.

You have a powerful tool to ensure that your message, or series of messages go out exactly when you want them to and over the time period you want them to go out.

This leaves you free to concentrate on the message and to ensure that the information you are communicating is spot on.

Here are five top RocketResponder tips to ensure that your next autoresponder campaign (and every other autoresponder campaign after that) works out exactly as you want it to.

Always plan in advance. This is a must. Take the time to work out what message you want to get across and what you are going to say. There should be a structure to every email campaign you put together whether it is a series of training steps, the build up to a launch or the ‘drip feed’ of information over a set period of time.
How long will it last? There must be a definite start date and a definite end date for your campaign. Make sure you leave yourself long enough to plan the email campaign in advance so it is all ready to go and you are not leaving things until the last minute.
What am I trying to achieve? The campaign must have some specific goal otherwise you will not be able to tell whether or not it has been a success. Work out what the goal is and how best you are going to achieve it.
How frequently will I send emails? If it is a short campaign then it might be appropriate to send an email every day but if it is a bit longer then maybe one every other day or every three days might work better. Finally if you have not contacted your list for a long time and you plan to send them regular emails during this campaign then it might be worth warning them in advance that they are going to hear from you again.
Make sure everything works. When everything is all queued up and ready to go then make sure everything works as you want it to. Send each of the emails to yourself first and read over them for any factual mistakes or grammatical errors. Also test that all your links work as you want them to and that any pages you send people to are the correct pages and the links or sales buttons on those pages are also properly set up.

Try putting these tips to work and see how well RocketResponder can work for you.

Why Quality Matters When It Comes To New Subscribers

December 22, 2014March 27, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Quality

Quality matters when it comes to listbuilding and at RocketResponder we strongly believe this to be true.

We don’t believe in the rather outdated concept that says you just pile as many people onto your list as you possibly can in the hope that if you send them enough marketing emails that some will eventually bite.

Not only is it not very clever marketing, but neither is it very effective and you will just end up unnecessarily annoying a lot of people for no good reason.

To everyone who enters the world of listbuilding there is a question which always must be answered…should I go for single or double opt in when it comes to getting subscribers.

Single opt in is where someone enters an email address and as soon as that happens the email address is automatically added to your list.

Double opt in is where someone enters an email address and it is only added to your list when the owner of that address clicks a link in an email to confirm that they actually want to be on your list.

The first, without doubt, will allow you to build your list faster than the second which is slower, but which, arguably, will give you a much higher quality list.

Think of it like this. It is so easy to get hold of someone’s email address and sign that person up to a list – with single opt in the owner of that email address is on your list whether or not they wanted to be on it in the first place.

With single opt in, you as a list owner, have no way of knowing whether anyone at all on your list actually wanted to be on it.

Even if someone did sign up for your list with a single opt in process, it is difficult to determine how interested they are in what you are promoting. The person who really wants to hear from you cannot be differentiated from the person who signed up to your list by mistake.

With double opt in you are asking people to actually take some positive action to say “Yes I really do want to be on this list and receive email communication from the person who owns it.”

I can guarantee that with double opt in you will regularly get people who sign up for the list but then never get around to clicking on the email to confirm their interest.

This can be really frustrating but it need not be. Look at is this way – if the person cannot even be bothered to confirm their interest then they probably have little or on interest in anything you have to say or any goods or services you might want them to buy.

At RocketResponder our message is simple – there is nothing to fear from double opt-in and by getting people to take one extra step to join your list means you are building a higher quality list.

The higher quality should translate into more engagement and higher conversions and that, after all, is what listbuilding is all about.

When It Comes To Lists Size v Quality Must Always Be Considered

December 18, 2014March 27, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

big and small When it comes to building a list, then the size of that list is obviously going to be important, however size is not everything and that is what a lot of new listbuilders fail to understand.

Let’s say you bought a list of 5,000 people – random people you have never heard of and who may (or may not) have any interest in your product. (Buying a list in this way is a really, really bad idea and we would strongly discourage anyone from doing so.)

Now let’s say you had built up a list of 500 people, perhaps from making them an offer via a squeeze page or from getting in front of an audience in an online live streaming event or via your blog.

The second list will be an order of magnitude smaller than the first but it will be much more valuable to you than the larger list. This is because it is not just a numbers game, it is a game of numbers combined with quality.

A high quality small list will always trump a low quality large one because you will be looking to build up a relationship with the people on your list and this is key.

How can you possibly hope to build up a relationship with people who have no idea who you are and have no idea how they came to be on your list in the first place? The simple answer is you can’t.

This is one of the reasons that buying a list is such a bad idea, because you have no way of knowing that the people on it have given their permission to receive emails from you. Maybe there people out there who are happy just to be emailed at random but I know I am not and I don’t know anyone who actually does fall into that category.

So always have list size v quality in mind when you set about building a list. Numbers for the mere sake of numbers is never a good idea.

At RocketResponder we want to ensure that your listbuilding efforts are effective and that you have all the right tools to both build a list and communicate with your list as effectively as possible.

If you concentrate on building a high quality list then it will take you longer to grow that list but once you understand that simply going for high numbers is not the best approach then taking time to grow a list is no longer a problem.

Seven Top Tips To Help Ensure Your Emails Avoid Spam Filter

December 16, 2014March 27, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Avoid Spam Filter When we write an email we want it to get seen. We want people to see it, open it, read it and take action on it if appropriate.

The very last place we want our words of wisdom to go is into someone’s spam or junk folder but sadly this happens from time to time because spam filters can sometimes catch some good emails as they try and filter out the bad.

Here at RocketResponder we want to ensure your emails get seen by the people who signed up to your list so here are our seven top tips to ensure that you avoid spam filter and ensure your message gets across to the people on our list:

Stop using aster*sks in your emails. The only possible reason you might have to use asterisks in your emails is to try and trick the spam filters. Just write your content for the people you are aiming for and don’t try to beat the system. Normal people never spell ‘free’ as ‘fr*e’ – I know this, you know this and the people who came up with the spam filters know this. Spam filters flag your email harshly if there are asterisks within words. Saying ‘fr*e’ is far worse than saying ‘free.
Understand email has changed. All the major providers understand that most emails come from the top 10 providers. They don’t base delivery on the provider. They now base delivery on the individual sender. This is why some emails will go to the inbox and others to spam when the email is sent on the same provider. So the major thing to take back from this is you need to have a good personal reputation.
Don’t send from a yahoo address. Yahoo made a change to their email policies which tells every receiver that if Yahoo didn’t send it to mark it as spam. For best results you should use your own email address on your own domain. So far Gmail isn’t bad, but they could make the change too. Nothing beats your own email address from your own domain.
Encourage people to interact with your emails. If users don’t open your emails, email providers know it and you are more likely to have your emails flagged as spam. Ideally you want to write content that ensures that people are opening your emails and clicking on links. If you can actually encourage people to reply to your emails then that is even better again – replying to emails is a sure sign that the emails are not unwanted spam.
Always use a valid email address. This may seem obvious to most but many people still send email from fake email addresses such as noreply@mysite.com. Guess what, when receivers get your email they check if the email address is real before accepting it. Use a fake email and you might not even make it to the spam bin, as it is quite likely that it will just be deleted on the spot.
Be original in your content. Don’t copy and paste emails. The number of people following some old school ebooks or PLR email series is crazy. The problem is email providers are smart. They know that same copy was used before and wasn’t wanted. So when you send it, they’ll know it wasn’t wanted again. Always create value and original high quality content is king. And finally…
Stop telling people you are not a spammer. Many spammers use this ‘trick’ in the hope that they get past the spam filters or convince recipients that they are not spammers. So even if you are not sending spam, the mere fact that you even mention it means you are in danger of being classed as spam. The bottom line is that if you talk like a spammer, you’ll get filtered like a spammer. If you have to convince someone it’s not spam, you’re not sending emails people want. Stop and rethink your email strategy before sending any more.

We hope those tips will be useful to you. Here at RocketResponder we are passionate about getting your message out to the people who want to hear it. We make sending emails and communicating with the people on your list simple and efficient. Use these tips and your messages will be seen time and time again.

Email subject lines – final selection for now

November 28, 2014March 26, 2015 Patrick Griffin 2 Comments

Email subject lines

Here is the final look at email subject lines for the year – I thought I would give you a break next month with the holidays coming up.

I hope you have enjoyed this series and that your own RocketResponder emails have had improved open rates because you have been taking care with your own subject lines.

So here are the final six for now at least:

WOW! This is HOT HOT HOT Right NOW! – Ok well maybe it is “hot hot hot” but it seems like you are trying too hard to convince me. Result: Very offputting and I will move on. Unopened and deleted.
Mega Stoon – What is it with two word subject lines which make absolutely no sense at all? Stop doing it. This is driving me crazy. Deleted for the sake of my sanity.
sanity – Seriously the very next email which caught my eye had the subject line “sanity” and nothing else. These people are testing my patience.
Use this & get new leads instantly! – At last an email I want to open. Notice how I am not told what “this” is. The idea is that I have to open the email to find out. An excellent subject line. I knew there was one out there this month.
Alphabet Soup: IPAS & PBAs – I am totally lost already. If the subject line is this confusing then I am highly unlikely to want to find out what the body of the email has in store. Not opened.
Patrick Want to do us both a Favor? – Who doesn’t want to do a favor for someone? And who doesn’t like having a favor done for them? So this is an email I would certainly open. As an aside it came from the same person who sent the Alphabet Soup email, so for any given person some subject lines work and others don’t.

Let me know some of your favorite and least favorite subject lines and also let me know what you have thought of this series…and whether you would like to see some more of the same.