List managers, or email marketing programs have many options, and some of these options can determine your success. The top three key things I look for in a list marketing program or email newsletter program are:
- Double Opt-In
- No Ads
- Highly Customizable and usable with any HTML content on any page anywhere on your site.
Double Opt-in is a feature you cannot live without if you want your list to be effective. There are typically two kinds of opt-in forms available. Single opt-in, and double opt-in.
Single opt-in means that when someone clicks “Submit” on your form they are placed on your list. The person signing up only had to press “Submit” and they got onto the list. This allows people who are not necessarily who they say they are or bots to submit emails to your form and they will automatically be added to your list. You can see how this can corrupt a list and also give you the mistaken idea that your list is growing and full of people who are interested in your products.
Double opt-in means that they will have to 1. click “Submit” on the form itself, and 2. also have an email sent to them which they must then click a link inside to get themselves added to the list. If the confirmation doesn’t happen, they don’t get added. Sure, a few people may miss the confirmation email, but that is a small price to pay to get a list that is full of actual people who are interested in what you have to sell.
If you are new to online marketing I highly recommend finding an email program that offers double opt-in, and setting up all of your lists to be double opt-in. There are some programs out there that do not offer this option, and only have single opt-in, but most are now aware that internet marketers want and need that in order to be successful.
No Ads! If you are offered a free trial be aware that there may be ads on your form, or in your confirmation email. You do not want other people’s links on something that is so integral to your business. That is just a chance for someone to get distracted and leave your form in pursuit of other things. If you must go the free rout at first get upgraded to an ad-free package as soon as you can afford it. In the age of ADD and ADHD you don’t want to tempt people to click away from what you are trying to accomplish with them.
Lastly, you want your form to be highly customizable. If you have an HTML template for your form, but you can only have your form on their page, or you can only have a form with a lot of formatting around it this is not going to work.
I recommend finding an email marketing program that can have formatting around it, and uses a form builder of some kind, but also have just a name field, and email field, and a submit button with HTML that you can copy and paste anywhere on any page of your site.
There are many form builders, email marketing programs, list management programs out there. Find one that has all three of these key things and you will be very happy you took the time to shop around.
In the member area, and soon for sale on the products page, are several videos of many different email marketing programs and how to use them. If you purchase a plan and you get stuck, as a member you can also request a video of exactly what you are stuck with and I will help you out. Which helps the whole community! Click here to start your online membership today!
Also check out the resources page for a list and links to the best email marketing programs.