Your mail message series is what list building is all about. You must build a relationship with your list by providing value but there’s more to it than that…

Let’s start with your first mail. This one should be fairly easy. A simple welcome message that includes your bonus (the one you created to get people to opt-in in the first place) and a thank you for signing up. And that’s it! I wouldn’t put any links or sales pitches in this mail at all.

The only thing I would do is put a signature link under your mail at the end like this:-

Dave B / Thad
AffiliateNicheClub

This gives them an easy option to re-visit your site if they wish.

(Note: I’ll cover more ground in the finished guide on how to structure double opt-in confirmation messages and what you can do with your ‘Thank You page’ after they opt-in.)

Now it gets more interesting…

One crucial thing to remember is that it’s all very well having a list, if they actually open your mails!

There are a number of key points to take into account here:-

You must add value. The content of your mail message series must obviously match what you have a promised. So, if it’s a five part course you give them that, if it’s a weekly newsletter or a series of tips you give them that. Provide your list with free valuable content and don’t try and oversell to your list. If you consistently add value your list will continue to open your mails.

Don’t spam! This may seem obvious but you may not always be aware that you are even doing it. You see the definition of Spam varies from person to person. We’re not going to debate that here but one thing you can do is make sure that your customer’s ‘email clients’ don’t think you are spamming them. Yes, that’s right. All the major email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Windows Mail have their own spam filters. They look out for certain words and phrases and the presence of links in all incoming mails.

If you are using a good autoresponder like Aweber or Getresponse you can check each mail, as you set it up, for it’s ‘spam score’ and make adjustments accordingly. This is a very important test, don’t miss it out… otherwise you will have people on your list who simply never receive your mails.

A tip here is to add a brief note right under your opt-in form like this:-

(NOTE: Please add support@affiliatenicheclub.com to your ‘Contacts’ or ‘White List’ so you have no issues receiving the report.)

Don’t bombard your list with mails. Some of the ‘Gurus’ will tell you to send a mail out every single day. Unless you have promised a free 7 day course I would not do this. It does depend on the niche and what you are offering but I would think once a week would be a good rough guide. Remember, you may well be sending out the odd one-off broadcast message as well so don’t overdo it. At the same time, if you send out mails too infrequently your list will simply forget about you. Don’t let a list go cold!

Don’t hard sell to your list. I know it is incredibly tempting to stuff your mails with product links but this really is counter productive. People will get turned off and unsubscribe. For your mail message series just provide free useful information. Now, that information might be about a product that has helped you along the way. Fine… but pitch it like that… not ‘go here and buy this now!’

Again, it depends on the niche but try and and send at least 3 or 4 ‘informative’ type mails to every one ‘salesy’ mail.

Grab ‘em by the headlines! You should think of a mail subject head line in much the same way as you would an article title or even the first line of an adwords ad. Your subject headline must grab people’s attention and make them want to open the mail. You can use call to action phrases like ‘Grab this’ or ‘Sign Up’ . Using words like ‘bonus’, ‘limited’ or ‘free’ can work well. As can questions or implications of success.

OK, we’ve covered the basics of setting up your mail message series. That’s the regular series of mails that will go out on autopilot to everyone that signs up to your list. In the next post we’ll look at the unique case of sending out one-off ‘broadcast’ messages as these can, and should be, handled differently…

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