Building an Email list

[tml]

I am new to marketing via. email lists. Im thinking of trying to build a double optin list of emails. To all the gurus on this forum, what do I do with the emails once they are collected? Do you usually send out a weekly newsletter, a mini series? Maby you send out an email promting just once room. Not sure I havent done this before, and Id love any suggestions or tips from people who have experience with this.

[JasonD]

tml,

I would suggest you do both.

A free report or x-day course to generate a list, then maintain a weekly newsletter to maintain contact after they've received the course or report to maintain contact with them.

For example, you promote a free 5 day course on a particular aspect of poker, maybe how to choose an on-line poker room.

Set-up a mini-site to promote the course, including a subscription form to allow visitors to sign-up. Once they sign-up, the first email will be sent.

The emails are sent using an autoresponder.

You create the course and set the 2nd email to follow the first by 1 day, and the 3rd to follow the 2nd by 1 day, etc.

Once the visitor enters their email into the subscription form, they are entered into that specific autoresponders sequence and will receive emails from you as long they do not unsubscribe.

Once the course is done, they are placed into your newsletter sequence and will receive your weekly newsletter from there on out.

You can then promote poker rooms, books, and products via the reports, courses, and newsletters.

The most difficult part about all of this is managing it. You have to set-up a website and subscription form. Link the subscription form to your autoresponder sequence and pay of all of those seperately.

Thankfully, there is a much better solution.

ThirdSphere Hosting provides you with everything that you need to promote online poker.

You can sign-up for an account here:

http://betterpo.thirdsphereplus.com/

[RakeRecycle]

very slick spam

[Stephen]

Hey tml

I probably wouldn't suggest weekly emails to the lists that you have - you continually need to think of unique content to keep them interested, and there is nothing harder in this industry! Sending out advertisements is rarely going to keep people around long enough these days.

My thoughts would be to send out a series of articles on very specific topics - I still read Clickz, as the topics are specific and interesting (once in a while anyway). It's finding the content that's the hard bit....

Stephen

Thats a great point Stephen. When I get an email from a poker site I usually just delete it if it is advertising. On the flip side if there is good content I will read it through. Full-Tilt does a pretty good job of this. They send alot of emails but they are all filled with interviews of pros and playing tips, etc.

[JasonD]

Sorry.

I should have been more specific.

Stephen, I agree with you about not just sending bonus codes, etc. My suggestion for the weekly newsletter would be to fill it with articles, tips, interviews, and news related to poker.

Your newsletter needs to be valuable to ensure that people will continue to subscribe to it.

I believe this method works because studies have shown that you can reasonably expect to earn $1 for every subscriber that you have. This statistic is based on the fact that you generate one-time income (i.e. promote product A and 100 buy, 2 weeks later you promote B and another 100 buy), unlike the recurring income that is earned through affiliate marketing of poker rooms.

Everybody is different, but the guys at NitroMarketing earned $51 per subscriber last year by promoting one-time income products (i.e. non-recurring like poker rooms)!

Could you imagine earning $25 per subscriber to your list? With the recurring income inherent in poker affiliation, its definitely possible, especially if you have multiple opportunities to get them to respond.

Let's say you get 5 visitors a day to sign-up to your list. After 365 days, you'd have a list of 1825 people. If you generate $25 per subscriber, that would amount to $45,625 just from your list.

Some people here have 1,500 unique visitors a day. If 10% of your visitors sign-up to reach your emails, that's 150 people per day and you'd have a list of 54,750 people. At $25 each, that's $1,368,750.

Add to that number the amount of money that you're already earning with your one off marketing opportunities (biz cards, website banners, etc) and you can see the real potential of this method.

Every time someone comes to your website, you have one opportunity to get them to action your desired action (sign up to an online poker room), but if you could offer them something of value in return for their email address, you now have multiple opportunites to promote you affiliations.

It takes up to 7 impressions to get someone to buy or take your desired action. Without email marketing, you only have one impression.


Jason