Email marketing goes in waves.  Every now and then, we read reports and blogs posts telling us that email is dead and building a solid list is a waste of time.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree.  It doesn’t matter what niche or business you’re in, your prospect and client database is one of your most valuable assets.  In the online world, that database is your list.

After talking to clients over the years, there’s lots of confusion over what’s the best way to build a list, store a list and market to a list.  So, over the next 5 or so days, I’m going to do a post series on building recession-proof lists.

To start, let’s talk about email list services.

An email list service or an email marketing provider is the company that stores and allows you to maintain your list.  They provide you with all the double opt-in protection, autoresponders and the ability to do broadcast messages.

In short, the list service is your one location for email marketing.

Now, some services are dedicated to email lists only.  Others tie in services like CRM software, merchant gateways and shopping carts.

I have three favorite platforms that I have my clients set up on:

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is my first recommendation for people looking to do monthly email newsletters/information bulletins for their clients.  This might be something as simple as event announcements or sales and promotions.

For instance, I’ve done a lot of work with a sewing shop in the last few years.  Things like bringing them online, helping them through social marketing and list building, etc.  i pointed them to Constant Contact because it’s dead simple to use and they really just needed to send out monthly bulletins.  They weren’t doing any hard-core marketing through it.

Aweber

Aweber is my favorite out of the email list services because it’s cheap, allows autoresponders, and has great deliverability rates.

Besides doing all the normal broadcast type stuff, Aweber lets you set up a sequential series of emails that go out at a predetermined time.  For instant, the MarketingHackz Social Media Quick Start Guide is an autoresponder.  Starting the day you sign up, and for the next 9 days, you get a new social marketing lesson in your inbox.  Then, as we add to them, you get them all in succession!

It really does rock.

Deliverability is another factor.  If you were to email your 200 clients out of Outlook, chances are your server will shut you down for a little while.  They do that to avoid spam.  If you email those same clients from Aweber, your emails are almost guaranteed to get there!

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, head over to Aweber and grab an account.  Put the web form in your sidebar with a free download and you’re golden.

InfusionSoft

Now to the big boys.  I love InfusionSoft.  They’re by far my favorite of the email list services.  It has been built from the ground up for serious businesses only.  Up until a short time ago, you had to pay a setup fee to even get an account with them – I think it was $5,000.  Now, there’s no setup.  It’s just the monthly fee.

Infusionsoft has a couple different packages.  Their primary package is email marketing plus CRM integration so you can combine all your customer relationship activites with bulletproof email marketing.

Their next major tier is emai marketing + CRM + shopping carts + merchant gateways.  I’ve used this system for clients and am rolling it out for my own stuff now.

They basically offer all the great things like autoresponders, great deliverability rates, broadcasts, nice templates and all that stuff – but they tie it to CRM software which lets you really get an awesome idea of who your customer really is.  It isn’t just an email address and a name.

Plus their shopping carts rock and can be customized beyond belief.

If you’re serious about building lists and doing good business online – check out Infusionsoft’s free demo.  They’re my choice for high end businesses and projects.

Summary

There are losts of email list services out there.  These are the three that are widely regarded as being the best ones and the ones I’ve used/use.

The main point is that if you haven’t started building your list – you should (as in right now).  It’s the only way your business will truly be recession proof because there are virtually hundreds of ways you can make money if you can get in someone’s email inbox.

Tell me about who your email list is through.  Do you use GetResponse or iContact or one of the other ones?

One of the most common questions I get asked is “I’ve got all this stuff out there.  How can I bring it all together?”

Well, the answer is really simple.  But you have to change your views a bit.  If you start looking at all your blogs and social media marketing sites as being ‘lead engines’ revolving around one central hub – it starts to make a lot more sense!

I call this method social stacking.  Social stacking is a nice way of turning your social media friends and followers into paying clients and qualified prospects.

Let me know what you think!  What kind of success have you found through social media?

Just a quick post this morning..

I’m cleaning out my bookmarks this morning and found a site that I think you might be interested in!

The site, Spotrunner, allows you to place a ‘white-label’ commercial on television for only a fraction of a cost of shooting, editing and negotiating your way onto TV.

I’ve used the service to run TV commercials for a few of my businesses and got amazing results – and I’m sure you will to!

Spot Runner Advertising Services

For more info on strategic social marketing, check out the PDF and the full video at: Social Media Stinger

Social marketing is about interacting with people and building friendships. It isn’t about blitzing promotional material to everybody on your social media lists.

One of the things I like about the Stinger Strategy is the fact that it’s geared towards companies forming personal, one-to-one relationships with their prospects and clients. There’s a lot that can be said for companies who are approaching social marketing in this way.

Strategic social marketing isn’t about mass mailing or mass marketing. It’s about building and developing relationships with people of like mind who share the same interests.

The bottom line is you can interact with anybody. Whether that be an author, newscaster or a movie star – you can talk to anybody you like.

I really can’t wait for more companies to get into social media because I think a lot of things are going to change going forward. Obviously there will be paid models, because social sites are going to figure out that businesses will pay to be included, but that won’t change soon.

So check out the video above, and if you like what you see head over to social media stinger. And if you like what you see here, make sure you grab the RSS feed.

I have to admit – I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with Pay Per Click – especially in certain niches.

Over the last couple months, I’ve been turning out little information products, all catering to certain niches, with great results. But I’ve found that when I add PPC into the mix I get my ass handed to me!

Believe me, I know how to set PPC up correctly and keep my quality scores high – but the traffic flowing to the site is less than stellar.

So, after talking with a few of my mastermind friends, I learned about this niche profits program that really has a lot of people buzzing.

Now, I signed up for the course a couple days ago so I could get access to their niche finding tools, but I wanted to let you know too.

The program is Niche Profit Classroom and you can get a 7 day trial for only $1. Believe me, the tools and software that’s included is worth at least 1000 X times that – no joke.  Plus they do lots and lots of training on getting free, high quality traffic to your site (which lots of other online courses DON’T do…)

Anyway, check out the video by clicking here. If it sounds like something you’re interested in, I highly recommend at least trying it out!

So far in the past three months, I’ve gotten close to 25 emails requesting that I work with them in setting up their social media campaigns!

I’ve done my best to fill as many of those requests as possible, but sometimes it gets to be too much…

Next week, I’ll be starting a new membership site called SMO Bootcamp, where I’ll take members through the whole social marketing process – beginning to end in Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Stumble, Digg and Flickr.

For the most part, the content is going to be delivered through webinars and video training sessions, that way I can interact with you throughout the presentations…

I’m looking for 5 people who are willing to join me on the 6 week journey for free [all full]

I’m looking for any business owner or progressive marketer who wants to use social media in their marketing strategies.  The only real prerequisite is that you have a business or have something that you want to strategically position (it could be the company you work for too). And I’m also looking for your feedback as we build out the course!  You know, asking questions, providing comments, all that stuff…

The first webinar is going to take place on Tuesday, August 11th at 3PM EST. If you can’t make it, sign up anyway and I’ll make sure you get the replay as soon as we’re done!

Anymore, I haven’t been able to work directly with clients much, so if you want some serious free coaching and instruction on you social media marketing journey – this is your ticket!

Jason Drohn
@jasondrohn

PS. If you’re signing up here to be a beta user – do me a favor and reply back to the welcome email with a “Hey Jason – I get in for free!” That way I’ll know you’re one of the privileged few :0) Remember, there are only 5 free spots so act fast!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of private and public teleseminars for clients and my core grids group.  Coaching calls and things of that nature.

As I was playing around on my laptop last night watching TV, it occured to me that I never shared why I’ve been using so much of this interactive content, and how I learned it.

First to the why.  Teleseminars (and webinars) are awesome ways of teaching people about concepts very quickly.  If it has to be something visual, webinars are definitely the best there. 

With a teleseminar event, you can schedule an hour block of time and get a free conference line for people to call in on.  When they join you, it’s just like you’re in a big conference call – except you can mute them!

Secondly, on the the how.  Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been doing a ton or learning and research into marketing best practices and new ways of branding and promotion.  A lot of it I’ll be sharing with you soon.  But I took a class by Bob Jenkins titled, Teleseminar Formula.  In it, he walked you through everything from getting guests to what to do on the call to making money on the content afterward.

It was really awesome the way he broke it all down.

Anyway, I set out on my mission to get in front of other people and sure enough – I did a couple teleclasses and webinars and grew my list considerably.

So any small business owner or marketer out there looking for an edge – consider doing teleclasses or conference calls.  Learn from Bob too – his teleseminar training rocks.

[img caption: yeah I know this phone is old but it looks kinda cool :0) ]

It’s been a while since I’ve been out-and-out impressed by a web service.  When you’ve been immersed in this industry as long as I have, you get a bit jaded.  Everything seems to fall in the ‘not again!’ category.

About a week ago, I found a phenomenal way of spreading your message virally.  And no it isn’t with Twitter.  Well, indirectly it does involve Twitter, I guess.

The service is su.pr.  It’s Stumbleupon’s URL shortening service.  Aside from the amazing benefits of tying into Stumbleupon, su.pr is a revolutionary product in it’s own right.  It tracks the number of clickthroughs a link gets.  It lets you shorten url’s on your own domain.  It even puts your content in a frame that shows the user other related content.  It’s awesome. 

But that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about 3 things you can do with Su.pr to get mega traffic.

1. Testing post titles

   We all know that post titles will make or break you.  If you have a good title, you’ll get retweeted and dugg – even if your content is shit.  Most people simply retweet if the story looks good or is from a reputable author.  (Both are perceived characteristics)

   Why not test post titles out and link to other good content?  So if you’re going to write a post on productivity, test the title of the post in su.pr and see how many people click through the link!

2. Determining what kind of followers and fans you have

   Every once in a while, I go into su.pr and throw in a video game link or a link to a particularly beautiful picture.  Then, I keep track for about the next twenty minutes to see what kind of followers I have.

   Personally, I have a business oriented following who generally don’t care for my game/pic references.  I do make them suffer through them here and there though.  I know not to get too crazy with my Twitter/Facebook postings.

   The other thing this does is help you understand what they do want to read.  If you get 4 times as many click throughs for time management info, perhaps you should write about it on your own blog or make some cash by building a little information product.

3. Su.pr shows you the best posting times

   Perhaps my favorite su.pr feature is the posting times.  The shortening service tells me exactly when to post to get the maximum response.  It’s a bit like writing a controvesrial blog post and waiting until after your book comes out to through it on your blog (aka the Tim Ferriss method).

   The beauty is that it doesn’t have to be a blog post at all.  It can be an affiliate link, a link to a buddy’s site, or a picture of your dog lapping down your first cup of coffee for the day.

All I have to say is su.pr rocks.  My hat’s off to the guys at Stumbleupon who came up with the concept.  Bloggers and author’s – make use of it while you can.  There are bound to be ‘me-toos’ in this space very quickly, but few have the power of Stumbleupon to leverage.

Without marketing, nothing happens.  The world’s best products fail, great ideas are lost and fortunes are squandered.

With that, I want to know what you’re primary marketing project is right now.  What are you learning about?  What are you confused by?  Where do you think your company needs to go to succeed in 2010?

In the comments, I invite you to ask one question.  That one question is going to be answered in a teleseminar on Friday, July 17th at 3:00 PM EST.  If you can’t make it, no worries.  I’ll send you the replay.

For more information, check out the full write up on my personal site.  If you just want to listen in, it’s only $7 (sign up here). 

So, ask away!

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I’m knee deep in training and membership courses. I’ve been building them out for years now, but lately I’ve been doing longer, more in depth ones.

I thought you might be interested in one I’m planning on launching in the next week or so. It’s called AnalyticsMaster.com.

To make a long story short, I discovered a system that lets you funnel your organic blog traffic into a companion site. The process is pretty easy and I want to share it with you.

I scheduled a webinar to step you through the process tomorrow (Tuesday, July 7th) from 3PM EST to 4PM EST. To get access to the mind-blowing webinar – check it out here.

I shared a ton of tools that’ll get you started.

If you’re still interested in learning more about the course, sign up for the updates below, or head over to the Analytics Master information page to get started.

Believe me when I tell you this system will take your existing traffic and generate real cash out of it. I did it by building Creating Slogans because of a #1, first page rank for the term ‘Best Slogans’ and this site, MarketingHackz.com.

Within 6 days, Creating Slogans sold out at 1000 memberships..