Generating a side income selling digital products is one of the greatest steps in your journey as a blogger or content marketer. You’re ready to get in the game after hearing from others how awesome it is to have this self-sustaining source of income that practically runs itself. And so you put together a few offerings, maybe a checklist, a How To PDF, or even an ecourse, and start dreaming of what you’ll do with the extra income boost.

Fast forward a few months and you’re tied to your computer, sending one-off emails about products, crafting new sales emails, following up with customers to see if they would be interested in another product, manually tracking which subscribers have or have not made a purchase, and that’s a short list of possible tasks, at best. You’re then doing all of this while trying to develope new products to turn around, promote, and sell.

The self-sustaining income generator you once believed would change your life, has become a monster, consuming your time and attention.

To complicate things even more, sometimes sales are hopping as if it were Black Friday at Bed, Bath and Beyond and sometimes they’re as quiet and desolate as a lone cactus in the Arizona desert. You start to wonder “What is up with this endless cycle of hustle, hustle, hustle? Where’s the flow part? How do other online entrepreneurs make it look so easy? What am I missing?!”

The Missing Link: Automating and Increasing Sales with Email

The self-sustaining and automated part of the cycle is what’s missing. Other bloggers or content marketers don’t necessarily have it easier; it’s where they have invested their time and effort.

Automation begins with your email marketing strategy. If you take the time to craft funnels, create tagging options and thoughtfully plan out your follow-up process once,  you’ll need only minor edits and adjustments along the way. The key here is planning. Not only have you created the customer journey for one product, you’ve created a system for your next.

Added Bonus: Your time will free itself up as things start to take care of themselves.

Simple Ways to Automate Your Self-Sustaining Revenue Generator

• Ask everyone who makes a purchase if they would like to join your email list. Do this during the checkout process via a Parser within FeedBlitz or using Zapier to connect your shopping cart to your FeedBlitz account.

• Add customers to a follow-up email funnel to ask how they are enjoying the purchase, offer a discount on their next purchase, and / or ask for a review. This funnel reinforces the customer experience with you, encouraging future purchases.

• Include your Etsy or Shopify accounts in your email template. Every FeedBlitz email template is configured to feature your most recent products in either online shop. This is a great way to keep subscribers informed of what is available, without having to manually send separate emails.

• Send Etsy or Shopify-specific newsletters to your list. Using a duplicate email list, skip the content altogether and show 1, 2, 4 or even 6+ products in the email. The product images and descriptions are automatically pulled from your shop in the order they are posted. You can create this email and schedule it to be sent on an automatic schedule (weekly or monthly) or send manually when you have a new product you would like to highlight.

Advanced Methods for Next Level Automation

We recommend working with Zapier to connect your FeedBlitz account with your shopping cart for simplified integration. Doing this allows you the ability to access the advanced methods of tracking and follow up some of the biggest brands in the market implement. Two examples of this would be:

• Tag customers according to the product purchased in order to add them to a purchase-specific funnel. The benefits here are not only asking how they are enjoying their purchase or offering a discount, but you can begin strategically introducing them to complementary products they may also enjoy, without including them in promotions for products they already have.Once you know your customers’ buying habits and really understand their wants and needs, relating products and creating these funnels will become easier. Always lead with the value these products offer and show how they relate to their purchase before going in for the sale. Value first, sale second.

• Send abandoned shopping cart emails to customers who did not complete their purchase. A gentle reminder a day or two later can be just what your potential customer needs in order to complete the purchase. The key here is having the customer sign up for an account and agree to mailings while on your site.

The Bigger Picture

It is possible for you to have an automated, self-sustaining income generator selling your products. A well-crafted email marketing strategy can help get you there. Imagine the time you’ll save in the long run to focus on growing your business, creating new products, taking up a hobby or spending time with family. There is a good chunk of work required in the beginning, but you’ll break the cycle of hustle, hustle, hustle with not a lot of flow once your system is in place.

If you have any questions when it comes to email marketing or increasing your online revenue, send our team an email at support@feedblitz.com. You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

       

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Email marketing falls into two categories: automated or manual. Some bloggers insist one is better than the other, sparking the great email debate. What really matters is:

1. Your preference in how the emails are sent.

2. The expectations you have set for your subscribers.

Do you want to be hands on and manually send out each email or would you prefer to allow your email to run automatically? Are your subscribers expecting updates from your site only or an insider look at content not available to the public?

You may be strictly one or the other, or possibly a hybrid of both. Let’s take a look to see how each category works.

Automated Emails and RSS

The good thing about automated emails is they are just that — automatic. Design your template, set your sending schedule and your mailing provider, such as FeedBlitz, takes care of the rest. You can focus on posting content to your blog assured your email marketing is being handled. Automated emails are a great way to stay in consistent communication with your subscribers as long as you’re posting to your blog consistently.

With this category of emails, however, you won’t be able to personally touch each email that is sent. While you can easily insert a subscriber’s first name and add an introductory sentence to your template to personalize the emails a bit more, some bloggers prefer to hand-craft an intro paragraph or insert commentary on individual posts. Revisiting our points mentioned above, it depends on what expectations you’ve set for your subscribers.

The Skinny on Manual Emails

Manual emails, on the other hand, offer you greater control when it comes to exclusive content and sending time. Starting with either your email template or a blank email, you add the content and choose whether to send right away or schedule for another day.

Many bloggers enjoy manual emails as it offers a chance to be more candid and personal with subscribers than what they feel is appropriate for a blog post. This also gives your subscribers the opportunity to receive something extra that blog readers won’t see.. As mentioned before, this hits on what expectations you have set for your subscribers. Did you promise exclusive content not available to everyone else? Then manual emails will be the way to deliver on your promise.

Now, say you want to send a manual email with a personalized note along with content from your website? FeedBlitz can assist you in this process. We curate the content, you choose which posts to send, the order to send them, the ability to add a note at the top (or bottom) then send or schedule.

A potential downside to manual emails as opposed to automated emails is the time invested in each email. It’s not running on an automatic machine so you’ll need to be more disciplined to carve out time in your schedule to send emails on a consistent basis.

Do what works for your subscribers.

The debate amongst bloggers as to which category of email is better — automatic or manual — isn’t going away anytime soon. There are pros and cons for both! Good news is you don’t actually have to choose. You can if you’d like, but many bloggers opt for a combination of the two. Automatic emails for the blog content and manual emails for exclusive updates or weekly summary emails.

The key is finding what works for you in meeting your subscribers’ expectations. If you’re unsure, simply ask your subscribers. If you’d like to test the waters, adding a second category of email, we suggest creating a duplicate mailing list and letting your subscribers know about this addition in the first mailing. This way they have the opportunity to unsubscribe to the new updates only if preferred.

Adding a second mailing can be just the next step you need in your email marketing journey. If you have any questions when it comes to the two categories of emails or anything email marketing-related, send our team an email at support@feedblitz.com. You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

       

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Excitement over email marketing tends to increase as your list grows. You can’t help but feel proud of your work as you add 5,10, 50, 100+ subscribers each week. These milestones build confidence in your abilities as a content marketer. It’s time to take the next step on your journey and attend an event to network with fellow content marketers, bloggers and online entrepreneurs.

At the event, everyone’s buzzing around, comparing best practices for all aspects of email marketing. Engaged in an intriguing roundtable discussion, about delivery metrics and list growth, a fellow networker congratulates you on your success and asks “What’s your open rate?“

Suddenly, your excitement dips. Open rate? “I’m not even sure I know what an open rate is, let alone what mine is,” you think to yourself. You toss out a number that would seem appropriate (half? 30%? anything that sounds strong) then switch subjects so the focus isn’t on you anymore.

During the next break, you sneak off with your laptop to do some digging. After a bit of clicking, you find it – 8%. “8%?! That’s much lower than the numbers everyone else was mentioning!” Your excitement over the success of your email marketing starts to plummet as you realize you’ve grown a large list of people who don’t seem to be interested in opening your emails!

This can be extremely frustrating, however, do not despair–there are simple things you can do to help increase your open rate, and you can start with your very next email.

What is an open rate?

An open rate is the percentage of subscribers, of the total number of subscribers, who opened your email. Open rates vary, but a good number to aim for is about 20%, the industry average. Deal sites and coupon bloggers see a lower average open rate, closer to 13-14%, while highly targeted mailing lists with a specific niche can see significantly higher rates.

Bonus Tip: P.S. – Embrace the power of the postscript! Let your email readers know what to expect in the next email so, they’ll be on the lookout for your next tidbit of content.

       

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Growing your website or enterprise can be a wonderful experience—entering new territories, starting new ventures, increasing your customer base—the thrill of expansion propels you from one project to the next. With growth comes scaling and hiring, whether you’re welcoming new staff members to the team, working with a virtual assistant, or reorganizing your company. Now you’re delegating tasks to accomplish your goals more effectively and efficiently.

However, when you delegate your email marketing to others, there’s a slight problem. Sharing your login grants your new employee access to everything in your account. But wouldn’t it be great to offer access to some areas of your FeedBlitz account while limiting the accessibility of others? To grant rights to edit or work in certain areas but keep your financial and monetizing information on lockdown? Or vice-versa perhaps? All of this and no worries about compromising your privacy?

Problem Solved! Introducing Multi-User

Today we’re announcing FeedBlitz has grown with you, adding multi-user capabilities. Give others the ability to work on your email marketing projects, within restrictions and limits set by you, while still maintaining your privacy.

When you add a user to your account, you assign one or more of the roles listed below. You can also narrow down specific tasks and responsibilities for a user further by limiting their scope of capabilities, ensuring organizational boundaries and privacy restrictions are protected every step of the way.

• Site Manager: This role has the ability to edit, create, and control anything site-related. This includes access to mailing lists, subscribers, feeds, funnels, as well as editing templates and subscription forms the site contains. You can restrict a Site Manager to a few specific sites or allow access to them all.

• User Manager: For larger organizations, you can delegate user management to someone else. This role is a great fit for project managers, large enterprises, or those working with a larger team of individuals.

• Account Manager: Now you can hand off billing to your accountant, purchasing department, or office manager. With this role, you delegate management of your own profile to another team member. Extend the scope to access financial information, including payment method, receipts, advertising options, and affiliate revenue reports, or keep the scope narrow to basic profile content only.

Improving Your Effectiveness, Controlling Your Privacy

Whether you’re a blogger, business owner, online entrepreneur, or corporate manager, nearly all levels of your email marketing can benefit from multi-user. Not only will these roles allow increased privacy measures, but as you delegate tasks to others, the opportunity to increase your efficiency and productivity exists as well.

Interested in starting with multi-user? Begin your free 7-day trial here, or open the User Menu by hovering over the green Welcome button and selecting User. From here, you will be able to begin adding new users and assigning roles. After the 7-day trial, you will be billed $25 per month per additional user. There are no limits to how many users you can have, and you are free to grant each user as many roles as you please. Multi-user fees are adjusted as you add or remove users, with updated charges showing on the next billing cycle.

Expanding your empire doesn’t have to be paired with any concerns over granting full access to your account. As your email marketing needs grow, FeedBlitz is ready to grow with you. Our multi-user capabilities are yet another way we are evolving to support your success.

Begin your 7-day trial of multi-user!

Our team is ready and standing by to assist in any way possible as you incorporate multi-user with your FeedBlitz Account. If you have any questions on multi-user, please email support@feedblitz.com. Our team is also available via chat, our Help Forum, or by phone at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

       

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Having your own little corner of the World Wide Web to write about anything, to engage with like-minded individuals, and to spark conversation is an incredibly wonderful, intoxicating feeling. You’re pouring your heart and soul into your work; your enthusiasm propels you forward in pursuit of your latest goal. Maybe you’ve just started your personal or business blog, or maybe you’ve been at this for a few years now. Regardless, the feeling of knowing you own that space and people are interested in what you have to say, how you can help them, is like no other.

Checking your site analytics offers encouragement to continue in your mission. People are visiting your site, interested in the content you provide; the proof is in the numbers. However, you start noticing not everything is going in the direction you’d like. People are visiting your site, but they aren’t signing up for your list. If they visit and are interested, wouldn’t they want to receive updates from you? What’s stopping them from entering their email address?

Why aren’t people signing up?

There can be many reasons why people will visit your website and choose not to sign up for your mailing list. They’re short on time, they don’t find the content valuable enough to be invited into their inboxes, or they could have even clicked onto your site by accident. You can easily run yourself tired attempting to address every possible reason visitors do not join your list, yet we suggest focusing on one item to tackle this issue.

You want to begin with the first place many publishers fumble—your subscription forms. Being in email marketing for the past decade, we’ve seen it all when it comes to these forms. The good, the bad, and the ones that should’ve never been taken live. With this knowledge in hand, we’ve devised 7 of the most common mistakes we see when it comes to subscription forms. Sometimes it’s better to know what not to do to, to narrow down what to do.

7 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Subscription Forms

1. Your reader can’t find your subscription form. It may sound like common sense, but think about it: Do you have a lot going on with your site? Flashy graphics, ads, pop-ups, the works? Your subscription form  may be getting lost in the sea of shiny objects. As the site owner, you easily spot your form right away, but  things can get crowded for a new visitor. Consider reducing the number of distractions on your homepage or adding a simple pop-up form that appears after someone has been on your site for 30 – 60 seconds.

2. Too many subscription forms. It’s tempting to overdo it when it comes to subscription forms. You want to make it incredibly easy for someone to subscribe, so you add a subscription form in every location possible. Header bar? Check. Pop-up? Check. Sidebar? Got it. At the bottom of every post? You betcha. One more in the footer, just in case? Of course!

   These forms are wonderful options to grow your list when they’re used in moderation. Adding all the form options you can, where you can, not only annoys your visitor but leaves you looking desperate to get subscribers. Choose 2-3 different formats and work with those for a month. Then try another combination of subscription forms. Test which ones are the most effective for your site and go from there. In this case, less can easily equal more, and desperation is never a good look for any site.

3. Aggressive forms that are too in your face. Similar to walking into a store to make a purchase and having a sales associate immediately approach you, asking questions and offering suggestions, you don’t want your subscription forms to be equally as aggressive or annoying. Using all caps, for example, is rarely necessary, as are bright, neon colors which do not match the scheme of your site. Aggressive forms can be a huge turn off for individuals considering signing up for our list. When you’re working with your forms, put yourself in the shoes of a brand new site visitor to your site and work from this frame of mind.

4. Not offering value in exchange for their email address. Value, in this sense, is not referring to an incentive. While offering an incentive is a phenomenal way to encourage readers to become subscribers (more on that later), this mistake is referring to the content you use on your form. Which site would you be more motivated to join?

• “Sign up for the latest DIY crafts!“ or “Never run out of craft ideas again!”

• “Get my weekly recipes straight to your inbox!” or “Meal Planning Made Easy!”

  Let your subscribers know what they’re getting from you and why they should submit their email address by tweaking your offer line. Anyone can send another DIY craft or a weekly recipe, but you’re offering something a little more special. Let your readers know they’ll be receiving more than another email to crowd their inbox; they’re signing up for something that is going to make their life more entertaining, easier, simpler, etc.

5. The incentive has nothing to do with the content you’re offering. Now, this is quite common when publishers first begin offering incentives. Thinking “as long as I offer something, people will surely sign up” right? Not always. The incentive you offer should make sense for your readers. It’s a direct indication of the type of content they can expect to receive from you on a regular basis. If your incentive is off topic from their reason for visiting your site in the first place, there’s no real value in submitting their email to receive it.

6. Requesting too much information. More common in small businesses or with professional content marketers, asking for too much information can hugely deter interested parties from signing up to your list. Begin with the basics of name and email address, then should you need more information, request it via a single-email Funnel once their subscription is confirmed. The less work your reader has to do in the beginning, the more likely they are to confirm their subscription. Not to mention, this could be the very beginning of your relationship with this new reader. Ease into things before you ask for all their personal details.

7. Your reader cannot easily close the pop-up. Not only does your visitor see the pop-up as intrusive, especially if it appears right away, they can’t get it off their screen. It’s common for readers to ignore or close out a pop-up then continue on to submit their email address later, after reading through some of your content and know you a little better. However, if they are unable to close the pop-up on its initial appearance, they’re more likely to leave your site as opposed to sticking around to see the content. Take careful measure to check your subscription forms on different browsers and multiple devices if possible to avoid this mistake.

Turning Readers into Subscribers

It’s not impossible to turn readers into subscribers., yet, it can take some before and after testing to figure out what works best for your site. The key is taking your excitement for the content you’re producing and offering it in a way that shows value, respect and appreciation for your potential subscribers. Working in this manner will guide your readers and subscribers to cherish your corner of the internet almost as much as you do. When this happens, your mailing list will grow with your rising site analytics.

If you have any questions on the subscription form mistakes mentioned above or anything else email marketing-related, simply send our team an email at support@feedblitz.com. You can also chat, check out our Help Forum, or give us a call at 1.877.692.5489. Our Support and Sales Desk is available Monday – Friday from 9 am to 5 pm EST.

       

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