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Using Twitter as Opt-in Pre-Sell & Trust Builder for Email Marketing

Many online marketers, who use email marketing as their main source of revenue, wrongly assume that Twitter holds no relevancy for their operations. This is not true and by ignoring Twitter, these email marketers are missing out on a potential goldmine.

Email marketing relies on subscribers (ignoring spam marketing which just sends unsolicited emails) and these subscribers will have usually have been persuaded to submit their email addresses in exchange for some free information or product – or something along these lines.

As there is no way to add an opt-in form to a 140 character tweet, email marketers just do not see the value of Twitter and how it can assist with their campaigns. What these marketers need to do, is stop concentrating on what Twitter can’t do and consider what it can be used for – sending people to the marketer’s opt-in pages.

One Problem Faced In Email Marketing

There is a famous saying in internet, or online, marketing: “The money is in the list.” While this is certainly true, obtaining that golden list is not as simple as many think. People are not always that keen to hand over their contact details and this initial period of gentle persuasion is the hardest part of email marketing.

The process usually involves driving traffic to a squeeze page and the common methods involve using: PPC advertising (which cost money); article marketing (which takes time and effort); blogging (time, effort and having to attract visitors to the blog) and video marketing (time, effort and costly software). Social media is an excellent platform for a squeeze page pre-sell and the fastest form of social media marketing is Twitter. 

Pre-Selling an Opt-in (Squeeze) Page

No matter how good the offer, no matter how good the sales banter – if a visitor lands on a squeeze page with no prior ‘warm-up’ they are untrusting and cautious. A visitor that is has already been warmed to the idea that they are going to be offered some valuable informational product, or software, is far more likely to submit their email address when asked. They have already showed an interest in the offer.

The last available figures (from 2009) showed that Twitter receives 600 tweets a second. That is an incredible statistic and displays how popular the site is and how interactive its users are. But how is this popularity harnessed and turned into an email subscriber list?

Twitter is not the place to hard-sell; it is the place to interact. A good email marketer is aware that if you want to turn subscribers into customers – the first, and hardest, step is getting your subscribers to place their trust in you and believe what you are telling them.

Think of Twitter as the beginning of a new email marketing campaign. Collecting the subscribers is easy – you simply locate viable targeted followers by searching for topic-related keywords, or locate the Twitter accounts of big name internet marketers and follow their followers. There are many other methods and a lot of information on attracting targeted followers can easily be found via a Google search.

From the moment a Twitter account is created, a marketer should be posting informative tweets. People will check a profile before following and they want to see good quality posts. These are the trust-building tweets, the ones that convince a follower that you are an expert and a reliable provider of useful information. 

Once a profile has 10-20 informative tweets, then it is time to warm up the followers and dangle the first squeeze page carrot.

Tweets Don’t Sell, Tweets Offer a Taste

Followers have now got used to reading tweets that contain good information and are probably interested in reading more. Only now can they be informed that they can read the full story, or find more on the subject by visiting the main site – which is obviously the squeeze page.

And whilst the squeeze page may not immediately contain that information – and the visitor will have to submit their email in order to receive what they came searching for – there is trust now and they know that the full information will be worthwhile. 

Trying to send followers straight to a squeeze page from the initial tweet is Twitter marketing suicide. Most users are hardened to obvious marketing and will hit ‘un-follow’ faster than you can say “No subscribers” if you don’t build up the trust beforehand.

Twitter Can Pre-Sell an Email Campaign 

Utilizing Twitter to pre-sell a squeeze page is basic email marketing – just a slightly shorthanded version. There is another valuable bonus of using Twitter to build trust and pre-sell: 

This Twitter technique will also pre-sell the actual email marketing campaign.

Subscribers that originated from Twitter will be used to the marketer’s tweets and when they start receiving their emails, there will already be a certain amount of trust towards the marketer – so these subscribers are more likely to believe what they are being told. Twitter can speed up the email marketing process, by negating the need to spend valuable weeks befriending subscribers and building up trust – this will have already been achieved during the Twitter campaign. 

Two Birds with One Stone

Hopefully, any email marketers reading this, will now be convinced of Twitter’s real value. Utilizing Twitter to build trust and reputation, will allow a marketer to send targeted visitors to an opt-in page, thereby increasing actual conversions. Then when the real email campaign begins, these subscribers will not need to be warmed up before pitching a sale. 

A small amount of initial effort – setting up and optimizing a Twitter campaign – can supercharge any email marketing strategy with targeted traffic, increased conversions and pre-sold subscribers.

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