Grow your list with us!

We sorta just realized we didn’t make a big deal about this. But we decided to have a flat monthly fee for RocketResponder. We were trying to be like the other guys and have it cost more as your list grew, but we found it complicated things for us and our customers.

So if you haven’t heard..  RocketResponder is $20 for unlimited subscribers! This is super exciting, especially for people who are new to list building. When you first start out you don’t know how many subscribers you’ll get, and you don’t know how to turn those subscribers into more income.

Take my blog for example.. It would cost me between $80-$130 just to send out emails whenever I make a blog post if I used one of the other guys. And if we wanted to use them for our membership sites it would cost well over $400.

Now those are scary numbers when you don’t know how to benefit from your list yet. But with RocketResponder you can build your list with us and never worry about having to decide between deleting subscribers or paying a higher bill!

The secret to winning affiliate contests

For years I’ve always enjoyed a good referral contest. There is something about the competition that gets me excited, especially when you’re winning them ;-)

Over the years, I’ve figured out the secret to winning contests. And while I’m no longer doing contests as “Tim Linden”, we do the same secret as “TimTech”. Now I want to be clear, this worked before when I was a little guy, so no excuses ;-)

The secret is..  email.  I know, right? Not really a secret.

But honestly, the big difference was when I started building my list. Before having a list, I would try to email out to my traffic exchange members with the built in mailer. I’d try promoting the link directly in traffic exchanges. And I wouldn’t place.

Once I started to build a list, something crazy happened. I started making the top 10!

What I soon came to realize was, even though my list was small, all I had to do was send an email and I’d get people to join under me. It took time, but here’s what I did:

  1. I created a list using an autoresponder service (since then I’ve built RocketResponder cuz the rest were either too much money, or too difficult to use).
  2. I created squeeze pages with my autoresponder code on them. This is where Trck.me came in. I would try different pages, and see which would get the most subscribers from 1000 hits.
  3. I emailed my list periodically. I used my blog but some people like to write the email directly, either way works. The key is for the people subscribed to your list to not forget who you are.
  4. When a contest came up, I would email about it. Repeatedly. Not over and over and over again, but a few times the first day, then maybe one time the next, and then every few days after that. Being sure not to send at the same exact time every day.

That’s really all there was to it. As my list grew more, I’d find the next contest or next thing I promoted would get more signups. But what I soon realized was..  I could email that list, anytime.

That is why you need to be building a list. When you promote a page directly, and someone signs up, the next thing you promote they won’t know about. But if they’re on your list, they will. So you get way more bang for your buck.

The rest is just trying out different methods and seeing what works best. And that was always the fun part. If you’re tracking you’ll learn some really cool stuff!

How to get your emails into the inbox

There is a lot of confusion about emails going to spam. As an email provider, we know this first hand. People sending blatant spam complain that it’s our fault. Now these people don’t read my blog, so it will still happen, but for you guys here are some tips for getting to the inbox..

Understand email has changed. All the major providers understand that most emails come from the top 10 providers. They don’t base delivery on the provider. They now base delivery on the individual sender. This is why some emails will go to the inbox and others to spam when the email is sent on the same provider. So the major thing to take back from this is you need to have a good personal reputation. Once you understand that, you’ll see why these tips make a huge difference:

Quit using aster*sks in your emails. Still to this day people are using them thinking they are tricking spam filters. Well guess what, normal people don’t spell fr*e that way, and so spam filters flag your email harshly if there are asterisks within words. It’s worse than saying free.

Don’t send from a yahoo address. Yahoo made a change to their email policies which tells every receiver if Yahoo didn’t send it, mark it as spam. For best results you should use your own email address on your own domain. So far Gmail isn’t bad, but they could make the change too.

Get people to interact with your emails. If users don’t open your emails, email providers know. At a minimum you should be sending emails that actually get opened. Clicking on links is great, and replying to emails is the holy grail. I know blast marketers don’t want to have to respond to emails, but it does some remarkable things for your email delivery.

Use a valid email address. Seems simple, but yet many people still send from fake email addresses like [email protected]. Guess what, when receivers get your email they check if the email address is real before accepting it. Use a fake email and you might not even make it to the spam bin, some just delete it on the spot!

Don’t copy and paste emails. The number of people following some old school ebooks or PLR email series is crazy. The problem is email providers are smart. They know that same copy was used before and wasn’t wanted. So when you send it, they’ll know it wasn’t wanted again.

Quit saying you’re not a spammer. Every spam email I get has an explanation of why it’s not spam. But I’ve seen legit emails with that same description get to my spam box. If you talk like a spammer, you’ll get filtered like a spammer. If you have to convince someone it’s not spam, you’re not sending emails people want.

Those are the major ones. The general concept is..  Be yourself and send things people want. If you’ve been doing it all wrong, make changes. It might take some time but your reputation will improve.

New Templates at RocketResponder

Having emails that stand out is a great way to get your emails noticed. With HTML emails the sky isn’t the limit, it’s usually your ability that’s the limit. But far too often marketers go with the basic template because they don’t know how to code a good one.

3-24-2014 3-30-23 PMWell we’ve made emails looking good easy too. You can now pick from 4 templates and our two newest templates have 13 colors, including two shades of orange.

Next will be to add more templates to the collection and a way for you to be able to add in your own templates. We want it to be super simple for users who don’t know how to create great looking templates, but the power for the super users who just want us to deliver their awesome looking emails.

You can find the templates selection on the list settings page. That way you set it once, and whether it’s a blog broadcast or a followup or a normal broadcast, they all look great!

Email Reputation is Going to Change

I got an email this morning which got me pretty excited. RocketResponder has been allowed into the Gmail Feedback Loop. FBL’s have been around for a while, but Google has always kept this information secret. It’s painfully annoying.

I get why, they don’t want people knowing who is reporting the spam. So they came up with a clever way to do this. They’ve asked ESPs to add a new header to their emails to mark each customer and campaign separately. At the end of the day they’ll email you a list of campaigns that got high spam complaints.

This is great, as most people use Gmail and not having that information has allowed problem users to stay with RocketResponder way too long. Now we’ll know immediately of problem users. But the real interesting thing is now Gmail will know for sure which emails are from which customers.

They’ll now be able to say OK these 5 emails were from this person, and these 6 were from someone else. And you bet it’s going to change the way spam filters work at Gmail, and probably others as they start to use this information as well.

This is a good thing. While we do everything we can to ensure that Gmail knows your emails have nothing to do with potentially abusive other customers, there was no way to 100% tell Gmail. As this unfolds I’m sure the good senders will start to see their emails get to inbox and out of spam more.

How to get Subscribers from Twitter Cards

If you’re a Twitter Hot Shot then you’ll LOVE this. You can now create Twitter Lead Generation Cards that let your followers easily subscribe to your list with one click. It integrates perfectly into RocketResponder, so get excited!

Step 1: Create a Lead Generation Card

This is actually the hardest part, finding the page to do it on. You have to go through the Twitter Advertise page. Up top they have Creatives, and Cards is under there. Create your description, upload your image, make your call to action. Easy

Step 2: Integrate with RocketResponder

Change the Twitter Card “Data Settings” to the settings below. This will integrate directly with RocketResponder so when users hit subscribe they are on your list! Click to view it bigger. The only difference you’ll need is highlighted in yellow, that’s my list’s permalink, you’ll want to use yours!

Twitter Cards

Step 3: Tweet your new Lead Generation Card!

Wow, that easy! The team was all confused when they clicked the button. They were like so how do I get on the list? It just did it? Wait it was that easy? It’s awesome when it works sooo easy people think they missed a step ;-)