There are several email broadcast service providers that you can use to send out groups of emails to clients and prospects that have subscribed to your email list. For my most up to date list, download my special report called Special Report: Autoresponder and Email Broadcast Services.
WARNING: Never, ever use your regular email account to send out emails to people on your list. That means do NOT use the BCC, CC and especially do not mail your list by having them all in the TO field. You should use an email broadcast service instead to ensure you are complying with the laws for sending emails.
There are some free and low cost email broadcast service providers that you can use for small lists of less than 500 people. Most small businesses owners that are focusing on local business will find that having getting 500 people to voluntarily opt-in to your mailing list will take some time. Once you get larger than that, most email broadcast providers allow you to pay a little more for a larger list.
A major goal of your website is to get people to sign up for your email broadcast list. It is not unusual and I recommend giving people a good reason to join it. Some would say “bribe them” to join it. Give away something of value like a special report, a free audio download, a free video download, a coupon or special discount, a promise (that you plan to honor) of coupons or discounts over time or something else that would help you get the largest number of qualified prospects and clients to voluntarily sign up for your email list.
For those business owners that are doing very large scale lead generation, there are additional considerations that are beyond the scope of this material. Contact me directly for the most up-to-date information for doing very large scale lead generation and email marketing.
Backup Your List of Subscribers Often
Make sure you include backing up your list of email subscribers as part of your regular backup plans. Working hard for months or years to build up a list of prospects and clients that have opted to receive email communication from you could be lost in an instant if you fail to make consistent backups and something unexpected happens with your email broadcast provider.
Manually Adding Names to Your Email List That Did Not Opt-In
Don’t do it. Do not manually add people to your email list that not specifically opt-in and request information from you.
Specifically, if you are out actively networking and someone gives you their business card that is not permission to add them to your email broadcast list. If they tell you, “add me to your email list, I’d like to receive those emails you were telling me about,” that is a different story. However, you should not automatically assume that everyone you meet wants to receive broadcast emails from you.
To be clear, can you personally send them an email? Yes. Can you put them on your physical mailing list (think your printed newsletter sent via the US Postal Service)? Yes. Can you personally call them by telephone? Yes. Can you add them to your email broadcast list to send them your email newsletter? No, I don’t think you should.
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One of the great benefits of using a blogging platform like WordPress is the growing availability of hundreds of themes. Themes allow you to easily change the way your blog looks and how it presents the content you write for it.
Provided you do not manually try to format the text in your posts, if you decide later you want to change the theme of your blog, changing how all your posts and pages look and are displayed to visitors is only a matter of selecting the new Theme from your WordPress control panel and then choosing to apply it.
There are a large number of completely free themes that you can use with your website. You can also choose to pay a little money to buy a premium theme. Premium themes tend to be used less frequently than the free themes.
You can also hire a web designer to create a custom theme just for you as well to be used with your WordPress website.
The theme that your website uses can affect your credibility and the likelihood that a visitor will decide to stay on your website. For this reason, you may want to test a theme or two to see if one performs significantly better.
Adding Website Functionality With Plugins
Plugins add functionality to your website or blog. It can improve your website visitor’s experience and/or your ease of use with the website.
The overwhelming majority of Plugins available for WordPress are free. Some request that if you like the Plugin, and to encourage improvements and support of the Plugin, that you make a modest donation to the developer. There are also some Plugins that require payment to use.
Plugins with WordPress are extremely easy to install from the WordPress control panel. One of the challenges many website owners face is finding and deciding which plugins to install from the large number available. I will give you a list of some of my favorite Plugins. My recommended Plugins will very likely change as new Plugins are created, some great Plugins are abandoned and new technology makes certain ones obsolete.
Recommended WordPress Plugins
Here are some of my favorite Plugins (in alphabetical order). Try searching for these in your WordPress control panel to learn more about them and see if they would be beneficial to you.
- All In One SEO Pack
- CommentLuv
- Google Analyticator
- Google FeedBurner FeedSmith
- Google XML Sitemaps
- One Click Plugin Updater
- ShareThis
- Subscribe To Comments
- Thank Me Later
- TinyMCE Advanced
- Viper’s Video Quicktags
- WP DB Backup
- WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam
Plugins and Website Speed
Please note that installing a large number of Plugins will slow down your website. Website speed is a factor in how well a website ranks in search engines, so having a large number of Plugins can adversely affect your search engine ranking.
Inner Circle Membership - Daily, Live Training for Bird Dogs, Wholesalers, Real Estate Investors and Real Estate Entrepreneurs with Q&A and consulting and more.
Every week a small group of business owners get together for lunch at my favorite burrito place and discuss what the biggest challenge we are facing is and brainstorm ways to solve those challenges for each other. It has been immensely profitable and productive for everyone that continues to come and invest in the group and actually implement the strategies we discuss.
We also take time to read (and re-read) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Here is a short video by Napoleon Hill that I thought you might enjoy:
I strongly encourage you to read the book and form your own mastermind group to share ideas and help each other solve the challenges each of you are facing.
Until my next post,
James
Inner Circle Membership - Daily, Live Training for Bird Dogs, Wholesalers, Real Estate Investors and Real Estate Entrepreneurs with Q&A and consulting and more.
I just posted up a transcription job on ODesk.com to have someone transcribe the “How To Market Your Mortgage Broker Business” audio available on the Mortgage Broker Downloads page.
I originally went out and bought Dragon Naturally Speaking with the hopes that I would be able to transcribe this (and a whole bunch of other webinars and interviews that I have planned on our Calendar of Events), but it turns out that Dragon Naturally Speaking is not quite up to the task of transcription of MP3 or audio files that I would need it to be. In fact, I was disappointed in its ability to do transcription of external audio files despite my brother’s assurance that it works awesome for him.
In any event, if you are looking for work doing some basic transcription on this project and others, you can go to ODesk.com, register for free and bid on the job.
Until my next post,
James
Inner Circle Membership - Daily, Live Training for Bird Dogs, Wholesalers, Real Estate Investors and Real Estate Entrepreneurs with Q&A and consulting and more.
