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The Best Email Marketing Service At a One Time Fee

sendreachI’m an Aweber user, but we’re not going to talk about them, even though this is a highly recommended resource. Thing is there is another player in town which is going to allow you go way beyond in terms of marketing, reach and technology.

Sounds like a bold claim?

Well I’m talking about SendReach, and if you haven’t heard about it, maybe you’ve heard about ListAnimal, its previous name. It was open for beta registrations for a ONE TIME FEE (LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION).

I of course jumped on the opportunity at this time and I urge you to do the same before the Beta Registration is closed. YES! It’s still open:

Click Here to See Plans

As I said, this is a limited time. At the time of speaking I see it should launch in its public version in just over 3 days.

I previously got an email by the SendReach team saying that the beta signup will be open until April 22nd. But today Andre Chaperon sent an email saying it will be closed tomorrow. So in any case if you’re reading this, don’t delay.

Now why would you grab this except for the one time fee?

Well if you clicked the link above (here it is again), you will see the various price points come with all the same features, but jujst like any other email marketing provider, the price vary depending of the number of subscribers.

You may wonder that if your subscribers database grows and fall into the superior category, how much will you pay, and will you still be able to benefit from the one time, lifetime subscription.

The answer is yes, you still pay once, and you just pay the difference. So what I did is I signed up for a 1,000 subscribers account at $297. If my list grows above that number, the lifetime beta price is $397, I’ll just pay an additional $100, once, for upto 2,500 subscribers.

This is a crazy deal. Really.

Now this is not only why you should join.

I’ve seen the demos live and SendReach is the best possible name for that service. I saw Chuck Mullaney (founder) sending a message with some of the highest SPAM filter triggering words. The message was just a list of those words, and it landed on all major inbox (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL).

I’m not mentioning that because to say it’s a great spam tool. But just to tell you it certainly has the highest deliverability rate in the industry. This goes without saying that deliverability matters a lot in email marketing. When you know that an email including the word “FREE” can be treated as SPAM…

The Facebook Connected Lists are also very interesting and allow you to segment your list very easily, and quickly. When people sign up to a list by connecting with their Facebook account, you don’t just get their name and email address. But other demgraphic datas that are highly important when you have a target audience in mind.

So for example you could build a list in the weight loss niche, and you get a lot of people to sign up because you have a very general squeeze page. Now everyone can receive your messages in the autoresponder. But you can decide which messages to send to what segment of your list. You create segment with gender, age, location…

That means you can write emails for men over 30, women over 40, etc. Then these emails will only reach the audience they are targeted for.

The Segmentation Wizard will make a huge difference. Not just from a marketing point of view, but also as I said earlier, when creating your squeeze pages. Because you may become way more general and attract as many visitors as possible.

Not that narrowing down to a specific group of people is not good anymore. But when you are just entering a new market you may want to get the highest number of people to sign up from solo ads or pay per click, you never now in advance if you’re going to get the most targeted audience (gender, age, location, family status…) for your offer.

So of course you can filter the people you really want in your squeeze page message. Or you can be broader and get more people to sign up to your list and then do the filtering when they already are in your subscribers database.

There is more to say, during the beta period, everything has been updated and optimized and works perfectly. But the most important is that you really shouldn’t delay to grab this one time offer. After that, there should be only monthly or yearly pricing plans.

So one last time, check out the SendReach Lifetime Beta prices and plans.

How To Design Awesome Sales Pages That Convert

conversion-for-sales-pageRecently Andre Chaperon shared an article on Facebook on designing high converting sales pages. And naturally I though I would share it there too. So, here is the article:

How To Design Kick Ass Long Form Sales Pages

This article is from ConversionXL.com, run by Peep Laja. And you really should read this blog if you think conversion matters (you do right?).

Anyway, not only you’ll get tips on what to do and what NOT to do, you’ll also see examples for both crap pages and great ones. This has opened my eyes on various things that I was planning for future products.

When I saw Andre’s share I responded that some of these long sales pages are actually NOT that long in terms of words written. But the design and readability made them really attractive, so make sure you check the good examples. If I mention word count that’s because we usually associate long sales letter written by copywriters that are 20-50 pages long.

So the examples in the article above are different, and it’s really the design or layout of the page and content that make them stand out.

Also I particularly liked the iPhone page with text and images alternated from left to right. As you may know I have a free blank page template I use to create squeeze pages, as well as sales pages. I will use the tips I got from Peep post and try to make a sales page as well as a review page as an affiliate, with changing layouts and share this with you here.

So the link is above, check that post and also read some of the other posts in the sidebar as you can only benefit from those insights.

Speak soon,

Tom

Free WordPress Plugin Adds More Subscribers To Your List

welcome-gateMy previous post was about building high converting squeeze pages with WordPress themes or using plugins to create great optin forms. The purpose is of course to get more subscribers into your list. I wanted to go on with WordPress resources, and this time I want to share with you a free one:

Welcome Gate

This application is actually a nice little plugin that will create a squeeze page like a Premium plugin would.

Very simply to use and set up, it displays a full squeeze page to people who land on your blog for the first time. If people get confused and type your site URL again, it will now display your blog.

This kind of squeeze is really great for getting more leads. It’s ben proven to work, and the guys behind it are the creators of LeadBrite, LeadPages and LeadPlayer. All great tools to help you build lists, and really easy to integrate with blogs or FaceBook.

Now, Welcome Gate is free, and you will need to optin to get it. But I highly recommend you do. No I’m not an affiliate. I won’t make any money if Clay Collins suggest you to purchase one of his products. I still highly urge you to check them out if you’ve never heard about them.

But if you actually buy something later, you won’t regret it.

How do I know?

Well I’m a subscriber too! And he sends me some updates on his blog (marketingshow.com) on high converting squeeze pages which you can download for FREE. Here’s an example (the last email I receive):

Highest Converting Page For Free Report

Indeed, if you’re a LeadPages customer you can use any of their templates and build great squeeze pages that you can immediately use on FaceBook for example.

But if you’re not a customer, you can use those templates and edit those manually.

So again, if you use a blog and want to test a very cool plugin to get more subscribers (the test results indicated that it converted better than popups), check out Welcome Gate.

Cheers,

Tom

Premium List Building Resources For Your Blog

I decided to publish some paid resources for building your list from your blog.

If you come from my VIP list you know now most of the best free resources to do that. But, indeed some premium tools offer you more options and control, as well as more features that free plugins or themes don’t.

So I think I can keep this short, as you certainly have heard about them all, being the most recommended products in this category.

And in the WordPress tools for list building we can distinct themes, and plugins.

There are infact much more than what I’m listing below, but too many choices may kill the choice.

Themes:

OptimizePress

I don’t think this one needs a big introduction. I think it’s still the king of squeeze, sales, launch pages and such. You can still build a normal blog with it, but of course this is not why it’s built for.

Tons of marketers are using it and just love it. You will find many people saying they build all their squeeze pages and achieve high optin rates.

However, another one on the market has quite a lot of features, and actually more than OptimizePress. This is…

Profits Theme

Some people may have been skeptical at first, but Profits Theme works very, very well. And you can even create membership sites with this, without additional premium plugins. This is a BIG good point for it.

I’ve seen some people complaining about Profits Theme because it’s not as sexy as others. But it gets updated, and you can now read that it does more than what more expensive or same priced solutions.

The guy behind it is Welly Mulia, he creates some really cool stuff. If you haven’t signed up yet, he created a payment platform: Zaxaa.com. This is what I use for my Get Real Online Now product. It does everything that WarriorPlus or JVZoo do, though it is 100% free. At least at the time speaking. It handles affiliate commissions and all, there is now a marketplace too.

One of their USP (apart from being completely free which is already huge) is that they will NOT email your customers, like others do. This is a well made platform and I like it. They also host and protect your download page. Nice.

I’d recommend Profits Theme over Optimize Press.

Plugins:

InstaBuilder

When it was released I remember it was presented as the OptimizePress killer. Well I’m pretty sure OptimizePress does still fine. Howeber InstaBuilder is a great plugin. The ultimate marketing plugin as it’s also nicknamed.

The cool thing with plugins is that you can use it with any theme. So yes, if you want to use it with Profits Theme or OptimizePress you can too. So InstaBuilder has tons of features and integrates smoothly with most autoresponder and payment platforms.

You can build many landing page styles with it. Even the cool Squeeze page with a full video background. So it’s more than Squeeze Pages only and definitely one option to consider. At the time of writing, it’s still quite new but really delivers a ton. It gets regularly updated and certainly will become an even bigger beast.

Hybrid Connect

This one is also worth the look, and you can check the examples on the site. This plugin is really focused on list building and squeezing as much subscribers as possible. In a godd way, it’s not annoying for your visitors.

Some cool features such as Facebook integration allow you to get people on your list with a Facebook connect button, if they’re logged in to Facebook. Otherwise, the squeeze form appears just like normal.

Create squeeze forms in the header, sidebar, and virtually any widget area, or create full squeeze page, or use a popup lightbox. Many possibilities and this is the cheapest option from the 4 listed here ($67 for unlimited sites). If you’re after list building only, then this is fr you.

What would I recommend?
My Free squeeze page template for TwentyTwelve of course! 😀

Okay just kidding (though I use it). My recommendation would be to grab a plugin instead of a theme.

[highlight bg=”#DDFF99″ color=”#000000″]I think the best option is InstaBuilder. Since it’s a plugin, there is the possibility to make it work with any theme, free and premium, without conflict.[/highlight]

At $77 for the unlimited site license, it’s $10 more expensive than Hybrid Connect (still very cool), but it offers a bit more, and it’s cheaper than the themes.

Here is my affiliate link for InstaBuilder, if you think I deserve a commission.

Tom

Just Do It Fast

Nike says just do it and Adidas says Nothing is impoosible. Great slogans which you should apply to how you approach your business.

Sure you will have some doubts but if you don’t make the first step, no one will do it for you. Ask questions to those who already have done what you’re trying to do, go to forums, read what others are saying. But at some point once you get the answers, it’s time to move on.

Do things fast. You failed? Good! At least you know you need to do things differently. Next time you will succeed.

Everyone fails at some point, so try to not waste too much time. Just do things fast. Don’t try to be perfect. You will “perfect” your work later.

You may have heard something along the lines of “Money Loves Speed”. Well this is the message I’m trying to tell you in this blog post.

Get an idea and make a plan. Then apply your plan fast. Get something out of your idea, you’ll have plenty of time to improve conversion, increase traffic, fine tune your funnel, redesign your message, complete your product.

If people don’t like your work, then take their objections or criticism and see if they are right. What can you do about it to make them happy?

Sure you don’t want to get into legal troubles and put your reputation on the line. That’s not what I’m saying and I guess you already know that. But you can certainly create some kind of value for someone, and improve from there.

It’s not that easy for me to say that. Because I think that, like MANY people, I have a fear of success. It’s starting to disappear as I practice the stuff that are out of my comfort zone.

But yes, a lot of people stop when success is almost here. In my case, what often happened was creating a product. I researched and gathered lots of datas, I analyzed a niche, I have written thousands of words and formated the ebook, I also wrote the followup sequence. I have created the autoresponder and webform at Aweber if that’s a squeeze page I’m creating. All of this would sometimes just take me a couple of days.

And then… it would take me WEEKS, to actually just copy and paste the webform to my page. Weeks to add a buy button to a sales page. And then several days before I really start driving traffic.

Now guess what. Once I finally do all the steps, it’s okay. I start thinking let’s see what happens. But if I really have put things together FAST, I would have that same reaction. Let’s see what happens.

So you should really not wait and see, or hesitate in taking action, massive action, FAST.

If you want to make your decision easier, here are few questions I’ve learnt during my “career” that helps me mve a bit faster now:

What is the worst that could happen?
Would it be irreversible?

In other words, you can certainly figure out by yourself if your business is going to completely burn overnigh simply because you have a decision to make, or an action to take. This is very unlikely that this would happen.

But even in the worst case scenario, would it really be the end of things? Most of the time we are able to end something bad and do things differently.

Do what matters for your business, and do it fast.

Welcome to the real world

Hi all,

Welcome to IMWeapons blog. This place is meant to give you tips, insights, strategies, case studies and whatever I think valuable to others in this business.

If you don’t know me, that’s perfectly fine. My name is Thomas Leroy, I’m French, and just like you (I guess) an internet marketer. I’ve been into this for over 5 years, and in IM years that’s a very long time. Things change fast, and what was true few months ago maybe outdated now.

However there are always stuff that works very well, always did, always will. The best example is list building, product creation and email marketing. Having a list will be your most valuable asset, because you can market to it forever.

Speaking of this, have you noticed the optin form in the sidebar? Well, sign up and you’ll get all my best stuff that I don’t share anywhere. I promise, I don’t spam, and if I mention list building just a few lines ago, that’s because I also know trust and relationship are very much needed.

But guess what, if I build a relationship with you, you will build a relationship with me too. So if you have some thoughts, questions, recommendations or suggestions feel free to message me or comment here on the blog. I’ll try to help and respond as fast as possible.

Helping each others is certainly how we all benefit from what we learn and know.

There are so many topics inside the IM business, from SEO to PPC, social marketing, web 2.0… that I’d like to share here. So again, if you haven’t done so, subscribe to get updates and free reports.

On this blog I’ll try to keep posts short. These would be for the most part some little tips you can immediately apply, or some mindset tips to keep in mind throughout your journey. And though some full guides may be posted here, I will keep the best stuff for subscribers 😉