I’m sure by now you’ve trialed various ESPs and you would have no doubt experienced the frustration of having to change your blog opt in web forms, resize text, format fonts, etc.

Let’s say you are using Get Response and you decide to change to AWeber, imaging being able to simply cut and paste your new web form code and that’s it, your blog opt-in form stays exactly the same, just with a different ESP collecting your registrants information.

Well, this has been made amazingly simple with a plugin called Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder.

Download the plugin, use your FTP client to upload it to your plugins folder, activate the plugin and start styling your optin form, just the way you want it!

Visit the Optin Form Adder page for more details and follow the step-by-step instructions of how to set up the form.

If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see that I am using the Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder for my newsletter (why not sign-up while you are taking a look and get posts like this delivered to your inbox).

I’ve trialed the Optin Form Adder with Get Response and AWeber and both worked fine. I’m sure the form will work just as easily with the other major email service providers on the market.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte

Have you purchased a website from a company who promised you that ‘your website will make you money while you sleep‘. Now while this is true in some cases, for others, this statement makes a cold chill run down their spine because, even after parting with hundreds (even thousands) of pounds on a new shiney website, they are still yet to generate one web based sale.

Before I discuss this further, I want you to bear with me for a minute or two as I invite you into my private world. I count myself to be very lucky as I run Foxley Marketing Solutions and my many other websites from my home office. This allows me to spend much more time with my family, and with a six-year old daughter, I want to be on hand and actively involved in her day-to-day life.

The summer holiday is coming to an end but in the last few week I’ve been able spend more time on with my family on the many day trips and fun days out while my automated systems work for me.

In the last week alone we went to the cinema to watch a new kid’s film, Shorts. We followed this with a day trip to Matlock Bath, The National Forest Maize Maze in Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire and, yesterday, we went to the Monkey Forest in Trentham, Staffordshire.

We had some great times and you can see some of our photos below. If you get the chance to visit the places mentioned then I recommend that you do!

The answer is a resounding YES!

Just imagine having a member of your team promoting your products 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Here are just a few of the benefits to having a website:

• a website will take payments while you sleep…
• a website will work on bank holidays, school holidays, public holidays and won’t need a day off…
• a website will NOT cost much money to set up and maintain…
• a website can answer your customer’s questions without you ever having to pick up the phone or answer an email…
• a website will (when done correctly) increase your profits and returning customers…
• a website can help you build long-lasting relationships with prospects and customers…
• and much more…

You don’t need much to get started. You don’t even have to pay a professional design team as you can have optimised sites created on the fly using specially designed software.

What you will need:

• A domain name – this will be what people type in to find your website. You can purchase a domain for next-to-nothing from GoDaddy.com. If possible purchase a .com and a .co.uk (if you are in the UK) and redirect the .com to your .co.uk URL.
• A hosting account – this will be where you host your newly designed website. I highly recommend Host Monster for the simple reason they have great customer support and CPanel in the admin area (I’ll cover CPanel in a future post but you really need a hosting provider that uses CPanel).
• A website design software. X Site Pro allows you to design websites on the fly that are totally customisable. Don’t pay for over-the-top content management systems when you can do it all yourself using X Site Pro. Visit the site and watch the video to see if the software is the best fit for you (it doesn’t cost much in comparison to the CMS systems being promoted by website design companies. X Site Pro can is as easy to edit as a Word document.
• Another essential must is to get an account with a dedicated email service provider. You can visit iContact and sign-up to receive a free mini-course all about email marketing. Briefly, you need an ESP so you can put opt-in forms on your website to capture the names and email addresses of your prospects and customers. This will allow you to build relationships through newsletters, updates, tips etc, and you’ll easily increase your profits with a successful email campaign.

You’ll find plenty of step-by-step information on the websites mentioned above making it easy to get started. The only thing you’ll need to know once you’ve got your website online is how to market your business for constant streams of visitors. You can get as head-start by signing up to our mini-course, Website Promo Success, and by optimising your website with our ‘tailored to your business’ SEO.

Be sure to get your website online as this is certainly one way of ensuring your business is adapting to current trends. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to get going.

To your online success,

Karl Foxley

Creating email marketing campaigns for your business should be a creative process. Sit down with your marketing team (if you have one) and work through the following checklist.

1. What are you marketing?

Are you promoting new product line, an existing product line, a new service, a special offer, or an affiliate product?

You need to be clear from the outset what your intend marketing message will be.

2. What is your desired outcome?

Do you want your email recipients to click-through to a promotion to purchase directly from you, do you want them to print out a voucher and visit your business to redeem the voucher, do you want them to forward your email to their friends and family, do you want them to be aware of a new feature on your site?

Your message must be clear. Never let your email recipients ‘guess’ what you intend for them to do, state it clearly every step of the way.

Example:

‘We have just launched a new section on our site especially for our upgraded members and we want you to click the link below and give us your feedback’.

====> Email link here to section

The section features “list features here” and the benefits to you are “list benefits”.’

3. Email Segmentation – Who Should Receive Your Message

Email segmentation is the ability to send your emails to only those that will benefit from your message. If you have multiple email subscriber lists you may wish to ‘include’ certain list and ‘exclude’ other lists.

You may need to send out a message only to subscribers that have arrived in the last 30 days. This can be very difficult to implement if you are managing your own email subscriber lists whereas if you use a dedicated email service provider this can be done with a few clicks of your mouse.

AWeber has a powerful built in email segmentation facility that is intuitive to use. If you have an account with AWeber then just take a look in your admin area for the options.

Click here to take AWeber for a Test Drive

4. Tracking

Are your email marketing campaigns successful?

You and your marketing team need to decide what are the requirements of a successful campaign. For starters I would suggest that you aim for a ‘open-rate’ percentage and ‘click-through’ percentage. Again, if you don’t know how to track this then think about switching to a dedicated email service provider (ESP) such as AWeber who give clear statistics for nearly everything your email marketing campaigns will ever need.

5. Test, Test, Test

You can never test enough and, again, this is where email segmentation becomes very powerful. If you have a decent sized email subscriber list then I recommend sending out test emails to see which ones convert the best. Use the winning email to send out to the rest of your email subscribers.

Be sure to have a clear plan for all of your email marketing campaigns. Stick to the plan, test, track and tweak for increased email marketing success.

To your email marketing success,

Karl Foxley