Blog

Carley Knobloch

1. I use My Emma for my email marketing. Know them? Like them? If not – who would you recommend and why?

My Emma was the very first ESP I used when I started my business. I LOVE them they’re perfect for when you’re just starting out. Problem was, I outgrew their pricing model. They charge by the “communication” (how many emails you send out) rather than by the “subscriber” (how big your list is). So when I started sending a weekly email to over 1000 people, they got really, really expensive. If you’re sending monthly and your list is small, they’re the best. Just be sure to do a price comparison as your list grows to make sure you don’t end up spending more $ than you need to.

2. Is the newsletter the same as the blog? Can you tie them in?

The newsletter (AKA e-zine, e-blast) is what you’ll send to your subscriber’s inbox. Your blog is published on the web and boosts your traffic the more you have your posts search engine optimized. You could publish the same material on both, or keep the content on your newsletter exclusive to those subscribed to your list. There are marketing goals that support both strategies.

3. For a blogger, would a squeeze page be on another tab? Actually for anyone, how/where does the squeeze page go and why would they click it?

For a blogger or anyone else, a squeeze page would live somewhere on your server, and would be a totally separate page that has NO links to your website, blog, etc. The one and only thing you can do on this page is read great sales copy and then sign up (i guess that’s two things). It would then “go” to a “thanks for subscribing, stay tuned for our monthly newsletter!” page, and it’s done. You could even have a separate URL for this splash page, like I did. My newsletter was called The Juicebox, and my squeeze page was at juiceboxtips.com, not mothercraftcoaching.com, which was my regular website.

4. We have been thinking of creating a “wall” around our site where you can only access our site if you are signed up as a member. How well does this do? Any thoughts? As of now our site is very open, you can view/read without being a member. Any thoughts would be great.

This is tricky. You really have to have content that people can find NOWHERE else and are willing to pay for. Also, if there’s a wall around your site you basically cut off any chance of people finding you organically through search (ie. you write an article about how pregnant women can use fitness bands, but your article doesn’t come up when someone does the “fitness bands + pregnancy” search because you created a wall!)

5. What happens when you don’t get the results we are looking for or vice versa?
If your email performance were lacking, then you can start to chip away at WHY was your subject line super-spammy? Was your content too long? Did you miss the mark on what your audience wanted to hear? A/B testing can help you improve your performance with all this stuff.

Wanna learn more about how to build a high quality list? Check out our webinar by Carley Knobloch.