AWeber’s support offices will be closed on Monday, May 28 as we observe Memorial Day.

As always, we will monitor the AWeber system and the support inbox to address any critical issues.

We’ll be back at 8:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, May 29 to answer your questions by phone, email and live online chat.

Thanks, and have a great holiday!

In the hustle and hubbub of running an eatery, you’d think no one would have time to sit down at a computer and put together an email marketing campaign.

That’s almost true. But Bill Pavlou, owner of Super Duper Deli in Edison, New Jersey, has found a way to market in just (a very few) minutes a day.

He gets his marketing message out and brings the business in using three main steps.

1. Collect Subscribers Twice As Fast

Without extra time to spend collecting subscribers, the deli just lets it happen through the natural course of the day.

“Due to the nature of our business, we still collect email addresses the old-fashioned way – in store,” says Bill. “By signing up for our email list by leaving a business card, customers can win a free lunch.”

For people searching for local delis online, Bill has opportunities set up for them to subscribe. “We have a web form on our website and also have taken advantage of AWeber’s Facebook web form which allows us to capture subscribers there as well,” he says.

2. Copy and Paste Your (Own) Content

Super Duper Deli sends out an email every morning with their daily specials so subscribers keep them in mind when considering their options for lunch.

This is exactly the kind of email hungry locals want to see mid-morning. “We have a message that we want to communicate, and there’s an audience that wants to receive this information,” Bill explains.

Plus, the deli’s creating a comfortable routine for subscribers by sending them consistent content every day. Readers can come to expect and welcome the daily emails as the clock ticks closer to lunchtime.

3. Develop a 1-Minute a Day Routine

Bill sends the deli’s emails at around 10 a.m. every weekday. He finds the most valuable AWeber feature to be broadcast scheduling – he can put the day’s email together whenever he has a few seconds, and count on the system to send it at just the right time.

“Obviously in small business things can get hectic and certain things need to get taken care of when they can get taken care of,” Bill says. “With AWeber I can walk through those doors at 4:00 a.m., brew the coffee and cook some bacon, then login to AWeber to schedule my daily email broadcast to be sent.

“Or I can do it in the evening after I close down shop for the day. It’s intuitive and it’s flexible – two things that are an absolute must when you are balancing many responsibilities.”

Then, Enjoy the Benefits of Modern Marketing

Traditionally, delis have faxed their daily specials to local businesses to bring in the lunch crowd. The deli still does this, but replicates the specials with email.

“We realize that not all of our customers are working an office job where a receptionist might receive our fax and post it on a bulletin board,” Bill says. “With the popularity of smartphones, we can let an attorney walking out of a court room what his lunch options are just as easily as we can let a contractor installing cable know the daily soups are.”

How Do You Market In the Weeds?

The reason AWeber exists is to help busy business owners automate their marketing, so when their day’s crammed full of one task after another, they don’t have to worry about their marketing – the message is still going out.

As Bill puts it, “[Email marketing]‘s an absolute necessity to effectively communicate what you do with the people who want to know what you do. In 2012 we have plans to expand our email marketing outreach, but it’s already important enough that it’s a top priority everyday.”

Do you have any tips or techniques to help Bill and others like him market in minutes a day?

It was one year ago today that I sent out my very first e-mail newsletter.

I use AWeber to send my e-mails, and I highly recommend them. They have great tools, training and support.

I wanted to share 7 tips to other people out there who may be writing e-mail newsletters or are thinking about starting:

Lesson 1: If You Build It, They Will Come.

I sent out my first newsletter on May 22, 2011. At the time I only had 3 subscribers.

During that time my main goal was to try and add at least one new subscriber per day. Sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t.

But I think the main thing is to get started, even if you don’t have a lot of subscribers. The early feedback that you get can be very helpful. Don’t wait until you have a bunch of subscribers to start writing a newsletter. Once you start writing it, people can forward it to other people, and then “word of mouth” can spread.

Since that time I have grown my list to nearly 700 people.

2. Progress, Not Perfection

“Ordinary things consistently done produce extraordinary results.” – Keith Cunningham

I didn’t worry about my newsletter being perfect when I first started writing it. My most recent newsletters are much better than the first ones, but I had to learn how to do it, and the best way to do this is by actually doing it.

Later I went back and made improvements based on reader feedback, which gave me a lot of good ideas.

3. Run A Survey

I surveyed my readers and got a lot of good feedback and ideas from them. I used Survey Monkey, which is free and easy to use.

Ask readers what they like and don’t like. You will get ideas that you never thought of. After you get the survey results, make modifications based on the feedback that you get.

4. Get It Working

Lou D’Alo has a three step formula that I like. He says: “Get it working, get it working right, get it working fast.”

I was talking with another chess person, who told me that it takes him several hours to write a newsletter, because he has to fool with all of the HTML and writes each one from scratch.

I told him that this was way too complicated and shouldn’t be that hard. Find a good template, and then reuse this over and over again. This would be the “get it working” phase.

After you have the basics down, then you can add stuff to get it working “right” – adding followup sequences, personalization, graphics, social media links, etc.

After you have all this, you can “get it working fast.” This would be split testing your web forms, adding tools that will automatically broadcast your posts to Twitter and automating what you can.

5. Test Your Web Forms

I read a website where the author mentioned that only asking for the person’s e-mail address instead of name and e-mail address increased their conversions. So I tried this. And the results were the complete opposite!

The web form without the name only had a 1.2% conversion and the opt in form with the name was a staggering 37.5%!

My friend Paul Anderson has the theory that when you only ask for the e-mail it seems kind of shady, but if you ask for the name and e-mail, it seems more trustworthy.

I don’t know if this is true, but the point is to test things with your market.

6. Help Other People Promote Their Own Stuff

I like to help other chess players promote their stuff – I have helped promote chess tournaments, chess books, chess websites, chess tables, chess art exhibits and all sorts of things related to chess. In return, I get publicity as well. It’s a “win win” situation.

I also invite people to write guest newsletters for me, which has worked out really well.

7. Get Ideas From Outside Your Niche

I get most of my ideas about what to write about from outside the chess world. I’ll take ideas from business, self-help, spirituality, computer science, movies, biographies, psychology, marketing, folklore and many other areas and apply them to my niche.

If I hear an interesting idea, I write it down in my iPhone notepad. (If I try to remember it for later, I will likely forget.)

I write my newsletters in pieces. Sometimes I might have a good idea for the body, but not the headline. Or I have a good game, but nothing else. Everything doesn’t have to be done all in one sitting.

Conclusion

I’ve had a lot of fun doing my chess e-mail newsletters the past year and have learned a lot in the process.

If you have been thinking about starting your own e-mail newsletter, there’s no time like the present to start. Just get going, send some e-mails, get feedback and then make adjustments as needed!

Tim Brennan is the founder of Tactics Time, an online column where he strives to provide the most helpful chess tips and strategy on the web. You can sign up for his chess tips here.

Think of an old-fashioned, friendly neighborhood shop.

Customers come in to chat, they ask for recommendations, and they loyally purchase again and again. They trust the shopkeeper. They’ve bought there before, they’re comfortable there and they know their payment information is kept safe.

If you’re establishing the same dynamic of trust with your email subscribers, you’re becoming their friendly virtual-neighborhood shop. Once they buy from you, they should be comfortable buying from you again.

That’s where upselling comes in — making more offers to your established customers.

How Do I Upsell With Email?

It’s easy to do with an AWeber account. Here’s the walkthrough:

1. Set up Analytics On Your Website

Hopefully, you already have this done, as it enables click tracking and sales tracking, letting you see just how much activity your marketing emails are bringing to your site.

In this case, you’re looking to see who’s hit your order confirmation pages – those pages site visitors are directed to right after they complete an order.

If you don’t have analytics set up on your order confirmation pages, you can apply them by following the instructions here.

2. Identify Your Customers

Use the “Subscriber – Search” option in your AWeber account to find out which subscribers have hit your order confirmation pages.

If you have different order confirmation pages set up for different products, you can offer specific upsells for each product. Just search for each page separately, then label each segment with the corresponding product. You could also make a more general offer to all of your customers together by searching for all of your order confirmation pages together and saving a general “customer” segment.

If you use the same order confirmation page for all of your products, you can still offer different upsells for different products.

You would have to make an adjustment in your site, though: add a query string to the URL of your confirmation page to indicate which product the customer has ordered.

If you’re not sure how to do that, you can find a developer to help at our ODesk group.

3. Save Them Into Segments

Once your list of customers loads, save them as a segment of people who’ve purchased from you. (Make sure to name the segment something you’ll easily recognize later on.)

Now you’ll be able to easily send a broadcast just to these customers.

4. Send Out Your New Offers

Create broadcasts to upsell to purchasers of those items, offering the next level items, or related accessories or “app-cessories.” For example, Etsy

Then send each broadcast out to its corresponding segment.

Continuing Upsells Over Time

As more of your subscribers become customers over time, you may want to offer them the same upsells. The trick is making sure you’re not sending the offers to subscribers who’ve already gotten them.

You can easily control this by applying another parameter to your subscriber search when creating the segment to send to. Run your search for subscribers who have hit your order confirmation page and add another parameter: people who did not open your last upsell offer.

This is what your search should look like:

Then when you send your upsell again, you can be sure it’s only going to subscribers who haven’t seen it before.

Do You Upsell to Your Subscribers?

Segmenting your customers out to upsell to can help you make a second wave of sales with your email marketing.

Have you ever done this with your own campaigns? If so, what kind of response did you see?

We’ve talked about him before and recognized he has good ideas, and now he has something new to share. Tim Carter, the owner of AsktheBuilder, recently tried a different method to grow his list and is willing to share what he found.

Carter teaches his audience how to complete construction projects using videos. These videos get a lot of attention, with hundreds of thousands of views on some of them, which prompted him to think about how he can use them to get more subscribers.

If you use videos to market your product, or plan to use videos, find out how you can use them to help grow your list.

The Builder’s Video Technique

Carter had a major epiphany late in 2011. He realized one day that he was not leveraging the trust his videos on YouTube created with the viewers. He thought that after a viewer saw that Carter knew his stuff, the viewer might want to get more information from a trusted source.

What better way to do that than Carter’s weekly AWeber-delivered newsletter that currently has just under 100K happy subscribers.

Carter decided to try two things. His first task was to tape a custom short promo that he would tag onto all new videos he uploaded. You can see that here:

If you go to 2 minutes and 37 seconds into the video, you’ll hear him talk about his email list and why viewers should sign up. He even points out that they can easily click the link in the description.

Interested subscribers will still need to click on a link to get to his sign up form, but they have Tim actually telling them to subscribe at this point. This new technique has already brought in hundreds of new subscribers.

What About Older Videos?

But there was a problem with all old videos that had been up on YouTube for years. If you upload a new video to replace an old video, you lose all the accumulated views and comments. That’s not a good plan, so Carter decided to use the annotation tool with in YouTube.

The annotation tool allows you to add notes on your video, so you can still ask subscribers to join your mailing list.

Here’s how it looks:

Since this is not the same format as his new videos, Carter decided to track these differently. The results were close, but the videos with him speaking bring in 38% more subscribers than the videos with annotations.

Why Do Videos Work?

In Carter’s words:

“It’s easier to get people across the trust bridge. If you have no picture or video on your site, you’re going to have to be a lot more persuasive in your copy. My videos say ‘Here I am, it’s me, Tim Carter, I just helped you!’ If people watch your videos and like what they see, they’ll want more.”

But Whatever You Do…

Carter recommends testing your video sign up process to see what works best. You can try anything from a new shirt to a different form. He’s working on recording a new pitch for his videos so he can split test what works the best.

Do You Use Videos to Build Your List?

Have you tried something similar to the AsktheBuilder videos? What has worked for you?

What do you get when you combine great food with a great email campaign? Why, you get Fork Restaurant here in Philly!

We interviewed Ellen Yin, owner of Fork, to learn more about why they use an email campaign, how they use it and how it has affected their business.

Fork And Email Marketing

Fork is a nationally acclaimed New American bistro located in Old City in Philadelphia, PA. Fork collects their subscribers via a form on their site, as well as from cards that diners can fill out at their table after a meal. They then send emails out to those subscribers regarding events, birthdays and new dishes being added to the menu.

We invite you to take a moment and sit down to enjoy the main course — the interview with Ellen.

Ellen also authored the book Forklore: Recipes and Tales from an American Bistro, a cookbook containing some great recipes and history into Fork and its creation.

Do You Have Any Stories You’d Like To Share?

Do you have any cool stories that you’d like to share about your business in email? Tell us about it. Who knows, you could be the next one featured as an AWeber Customer Spotlight!

We talk a lot about segmenting by your list’s demographics. Breaking your list into segments certainly helps you deliver what each reader is looking for. But have you ever considered segmenting according to psychographics, instead?

While demographics show your subscribers’ hard data (age, location, marital status, ethnicity, etc), psychographics slice across your list from a different angle, looking at lifestyles, behaviors and attitudes.

For example, some subscribers would rather purchase by price vs brand name, go out vs stay home on weekends or carefully consider their purchases vs buying impulsively.

Why Do I Need to Know These?

Psychographics give you a much deeper look into the market you’re dealing with. If you know what’ll grab their attention and what’ll turn them off, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

VALS, a consumer psychographing system, suggests that people buy the things they think will enhance the view they have of their own identities, which is all tied up in their lifestyle choices and attitudes.

Which means YOU need to know what those are. Are your readers cutting-edge technologists or earthy environmentalists? Are they all about convenience, or would they prefer quality? Know this, and the appeals you wrap your offers in will really hit home.

(This doesn’t mean you should skip out on learning your list’s demographics altogether. If you can, get both. Then you can target specific groups within demographics, such as men who value exercise.)

What Kind of Groups Should I Look For?

To figure this out, first, get a clear mental picture of the offers you send out. What lifestyles, behaviors or attitudes might prompt different reactions to those offers? For example, some people divide their readers by social class (are they CEOs? skilled manual workers?) or lifestyle. Others use more complex classifications:

1. Marketing firm Young & Rubicam go by what they call the 4Cs, that classifies people based on their values. For example, the “resigned,” are most comfortable with safety, familiarity and economy. “Strugglers,” those with few resources, are attracted to impact and sensation, and so on. To check out the classifications, take the 4Cs test here.

Click to enlarge

2. Another popular classification suggests that everyone fits in these 6 categories: the Belonger (attracted to community) , the Achiever (likes short messages that focus on profit), the Wannabe (likely to buy imitation products), the Socially Conscious (read: environmentally friendly), the Balanced/Integrated (basically, socially conscious achievers), and the Needs Driven (impulse buyers who respond to urgency). You can find more details here.

3. Others infer psychographics from subscriber behavior. For you, this means purchases, plus opens and clicks if you have time to delve into them. It means checking if someone’s a frequent buyer, commenter or attender, a prospect or a customer, someone who buys continuously or only when you offer discounts.

Many of these differentiations may not apply to your lists. Some will. Think carefully about your offers to decide which trends you’re going to look for.

How do I Find my List’s Psychographics?

There are several methods you can use. The more time or resources you invest, the more exact data you’ll get. Here are some ways to learn about your audience, and the pros and cons to consider for each method:

Survey. Once you’ve identified the criteria you’re looking for, create a survey to find out where your subscribers fall.

Pro: You’ll get results quickly

Con: Not everyone will answer

Use web tools. Find psychometrics by zip code from Nielsen’s PRIZM segmentation system here. If you mostly market locally, this can be extremely helpful.

Pro: Sleek and analytical

Con: Hit-or-miss for your specific list

Outsource it. Hire a marketing firm, such as Peerset Audience targeting. They can conduct surveys, focus groups, and online searches to explore the psychographic groups of consumers in your specific industry.

Pro: Easy

Con: Expensive

Dig deep into data. Check out your analytics. What kind of information are your subscribers clicking on? What style of offers are they responding to? Use the information to create reader profiles.

Pro: Thorough and list-specific

Con: Time-consuming

Once I Have Them, How Do I Use Them?

Once you have you’ve collected your subscribers’ psychographics, use them to put together customer profiles – “example” customers that you keep in mind when writing your messages. Name them, give them a backstory, make them as real as possible.

If you have a single definitive strain of thinking throughout the majority your readership, you’ll end up with just one profile, and you can write exclusively to that audience.

But chances are, you’re offering your products to a few significantly different psychographic groups. To make each group feel like your offers are just right for them, segment your list – easiest if you’ve used a survey to find your data – and send each group its own tailored messages.

Is It Going to Be Worth It?

Finding psychometrics takes some work on the front end. You have to get yourself organized, carry out the research and then update your reader profiles periodically.

But with solid reader profiles in place customers, you’ll be surprised at how focused your offers become. And with more focused offers, you’ll be looking at more sales.

Have you ever taken a look at your list’s psychographics? If you have, what have you found?

I’ve subscribed to a lot of email lists in the last several months since I’ve been blogging about email marketing. And even though I spend my days discussing various aspects of email campaigns, I still end up deleting most of the emails I’m subscribed to without even opening them.

There are still some emails that stand out from the crowd. They’re the ones I feel compelled to open, like a message from a good friend. Sometimes the subject line draws me in, sometimes it’s the consistent promise of easily-digested content and sometimes it’s the design itself.

Here are three of my favorite campaigns, with a look at why they work so well and how you can translate their techniques into your own campaign.

Real Simple

True to their name, Real Simple uses simple, direct subject lines that entice me to open. They’re transparent enough about their content that I can quickly decide whether it’s worth my time to read. Since their emails promise a quick, light read from the start, I’m more likely to open their emails when they hit my inbox.

How To Entice With Your Own Subject Lines

Like Real Simple, be transparent about your message content. Your readers likely have plenty of other mail to sift through, so the quicker you can relay your message through the subject line, the better your chances of winning their attention (and an open!).

That’s not to say you should give all your message content away in the subject line. Give them enough to see the value in your message but not so much that they don’t feel the need to open and read more.

MySpoonful

MySpoonful is a weekly music newsletter that introduces its readers to a new independent artist every week. As a music junkie, I’m already interested in their content, but that’s not the only reason I enjoy their emails. The main reason is the easily scannable information they include at the top of every email:

That’s everything I need to know in a neat 2 second summary. I instantly know if I want to spend time reading the rest of the music review or close the email and move on.

It’s the consistent promise of great content in an easily digestible format that keeps me opening all of MySpoonful’s emails.

How To Effectively Arrange Your Own Content

Be considerate of your readers’ time. If you have a lot to say, consider summarizing your most important points at the top. That way, the people who are interested can keep reading while the ones who are less interested will still see your most valuable content.

Jones Design Company

There’s something to be said for emails that just look pretty. I always enjoy eye candy in my inbox. That’s why I always open the blog broadcasts from Jones Design Company – an AWeber customer. They consistently deliver simple and lovely designs in their emails:

Now that’s some clean, simple and effective design. They brand their broadcasts with a banner and navigation links at the top and chose a graceful font for their message text.

Good design doesn’t always have to be flashy. Simple, clean and well-branded is just as pleasing to the eye as slick images can be.

How To Design Your Own Beautiful Campaign

Lucky for you, AWeber offers a whole library of free templates to make your design job easier. And our new message editor makes it drag-and-drop simple to arrange an appealing layout for your content.

If you’re comfortable enough with HTML to take a more do-it-yourself route, here are some resources and inspiration to help get you started:

42 HTML Email Design Resources from Email Marketing Reports
20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners from Nettuts+
Rock Solid HTML Emails from 24 Ways
HTML Email Gallery
Inbox Award

Your Own Analysis

What have you learned from some of your favorite emails? Have any lessons to share?

Since it’s easier to get a repeat customer than obtain a new customer, it only makes sense to follow up with your customers after they purchase from you.

For the thousands of businesses using Shopify, building stronger relationships with your customers is now easier than ever.

Our users who sell products through PayPal liked the AWeber Paypal integration a lot, and we knew we had to make it that easy for you to integrate with other ecommerce platforms, too.

Once you’ve integrated Shopify with AWeber, you can easily add buyers to the appropriate mailing list in your account when they purchase one of your products.

About Shopify

Shopify is a unique ecommerce solution that allows you to create an online storefront. For example, here’s how The Oatmeal looks on Shopify:

Products and prices are clearly visible, along with filtering options to find specific products. Shopify allows you to pick from over 100 templates (or design your own) so you can create an online store that fits your image. Products can be purchased via credit card on your secure shopping cart hosted by Shopify.

How Does Shopify Work with AWeber?

With just a few simple steps, you can have your Shopify customers added to the AWeber list of your choice. But that’s not all! You also have the ability to assign customers to a specific list depending on which product they bought:

The ability to assign a specific list based on the product allows for more targeted emails. You’ll know customers on that list share a common interest, and you can send emails relevant to their interests.

How Do I Get Set Up?

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up your account with Shopify.

After that, just follow these easy instructions to link that account with AWeber!

About the Author: Adam Costa is the Editor in Chief of trekity.com, a killer new travel site. If you like to travel, follow him on Twitter for adventure and intrigue.

Creating a profitable newsletter requires a little planning. But once it’s set up, a newsletter continues to engage your readers for months or years to come.

In this tutorial you’ll learn:

• The psychology behind all profitable newsletters
• A simple newsletter schedule that works every time (be sure to download the free schedule template below)
• The three types of emails you’ll send (and the exact order to send them in)

This schedule template includes 30 emails, sent out over nearly three months. Every email (even the promotional ones) should be high-value, with the intention of getting your readers to know, like and trust you.

But before you write a single email you must…

Understand The Psychology Behind All Profitable Newsletters

What’s the number one rule for a successful newsletter?

Be useful.

Provide value in every email. Make bold promises, then over-deliver. Doing so builds credibility in your readers’ eyes, which means your next email will get opened – and eventually they’ll (hopefully) buy your solution.

AWeber – along with the following publishing schedule – makes this easy to do.

Use This Proven Autoresponder Schedule

Now let’s put theory into practice.

The first step is to create a spreadsheet which outlines your autoresponder series.

Here’s the one I use:

You can download the schedule here.

As you can see, there are three types of emails:

• Helpful Emails
• Pitch Emails
• Follow up Emails

Let’s look at each one in greater detail:

Helpful Emails

These are non-pitch emails designed to build trust with your readers. Do not even mention your products or services in these emails.

Think of helpful emails like blog posts. They should be between 500 and 1,000 words and solve a specific problem your readers have.

For example, if your market is interested in natural weight loss, your helpful emails could include tips for natural weight loss, fat-burning foods, or a list of “super foods” which promote weight loss. These topics demonstrate you understand their problem and can provide solutions.

In this autoresponder schedule you’ll write five helpful emails first. Then, after you’ve proven value to your readers, it’s time to send the first of three…

Pitch Emails

For the product pitches, avoid the hard sell. Simply address the problem your readers have, then lead them to your product in the email.

Please note: pitch emails are helpful, too.

The best approach is to provide educational content first, then end the email with education about your product or service and a few compelling reasons why they should buy.

For example, “5 Foods Which Burn Fat Naturally” would give your readers five foods, then offer them a list of 100 natural foods in an eBook.

Here’s an example of a pitch email:

The pitch email leads them to a sales page with testimonials, a strong guarantee and a prominent call to action (note: they should be able to read a sample chapter on this page).

Since you’ve already demonstrated value through your autoresponder, your readers are much more likely to buy.

Of course, you can greatly increase sales through…

Follow Up Emails

Once you’ve pitched a product, follow up a few days later and remind your readers about it. This email should either offer a limited time discount, stronger guarantee and/or testimonials from people who already purchased your product.

Here’s an example of what a follow-up email looks like:

Easy, right? Notice how we include benefits, testimonials and a guarantee in the email – but not the price. We just want to build the value of the product, then let them read the sample chapter before we talk about money.

What You Need to Do Next

Download the autoresponder schedule and start outlining your email series. As you write the emails, add them into AWeber, schedule them to go out every three or four days and presto – you’ve got a profitable autoresponder series which builds relationships for months to come.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments below!