• Sign up for a list service
• Add contacts manually or via import
• Create a form
• Put a form on your blog or website
• Send a message

In short, all of the basics. Check it out, and pass it along if you know anyone who would find it useful!

Check it out here!

To get an idea what I’m talking about, just look at how I laid things out in my free e-book. I want these to be stupidly easy. Not because I think you’re stupid (though that’s possible — have you ever walked into a closed screen door?), but because I like to make things crystal clear. I also know there are a lot (LOT!) of people out there who get overwhelmed by the plethora of choices out here in Internet land. You start to worry about clicking the wrong thing because there is too much going on, and it keeps you from doing anything.

So I’m going to start work on one of those hopefully today. The first one will be for iContact, because a whole lot of you said you wanted to know more about email marketing. I know I said I’m switching from iContact to aWeber, so you may think endorsing iContact is a strange choice. But I have my reasons, and here they are:

1. Most non-pros would be perfectly satisfied with iContact’s services and options.
i.e., it’s “enough” for most people’s needs. Most people who aren’t internet pros have ONE list, and they send ONE newsletter. They may need to segment that list some, but they need nothing fancy, nothing too highly customized.

2. It’s simple.
See above re: my thoughts on simplicity. aWeber is fantastic; don’t get me wrong. I will sing its praises from the roof soon, and will make tutorials upon tutorials about it. But aWeber is more complicated. If one of iContact or aWeber is going to confuse you, it’s going to be aWeber.

3. It will work with a “dirty” list.
Like “milk, cheese, condoms, lube, octopus porn.” Or like a list that isn’t “clean” by aWeber’s standards. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: aWeber are list Nazis. I’ve tried numerous times to import lists into aWeber and had them rejected because the lists are “stale” or “dirty.” Basically, if you haven’t been meticulous about managing your email list (if you have one), your list will register as stale or dirty. A “clean” list is ideally double opt-in (someone signs up, then has to click a link in their email before being added to the list), does not have addresses on it that have bounced more than once, handles unsubscribes immediately and unceremoniously, has a zero-tolerance spam policy, etc.

iContact, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to give a shit. You take a list, you import it, it’s there, you send stuff to it. End of story.

I’ll give you two examples of cases where I’d unreservedly recommend iContact over aWeber:

ICONTACT CANDIDATE #1: My wife’s boss
My wife works part time for a company that sells manufacturing equipment. The owner has a list of clients’ email addresses and wants to be able to send them email, and to sort it by company, city, etc. If he imported this list into aWeber, it would be rejected because a handful of email addresses on this large list are likely to be old and stale. But on the off chance that it wasn’t rejected, the system would send an email to everyone on his list asking them to opt-in. Because he collected these addresses casually, his clients would be annoyed that he seemed to be asking them to join a list, and none of them would opt in. He’d lose 90% of his list.

But by using iContact, he could just import the list and be done with it.

ICONTACT CANDIDATE #2: My client on a legacy email system
A while back, a company I work for built a proprietary email system. It’s like a shitty iContact. It sends email in the same way, but offers no reporting, doesn’t manage bounced emails, etc. As a result, this list SUCKS. I’ve recommended moving the list to a real email management system, but I’m recommending iContact. aWeber would laugh at this shitty, non-opt-in, stale-as-fuck list. With iContact, we’ll import it and use it. Done.

So if any of this sounds like you, you might want to head over to iContact and sign up for their 15-day free trial now, in advance of my tutorials, so that you can poke around. You don’t have to enter credit card info, so you won’t have to remember to cancel if you don’t like it.

This means I will have to migrate my list from iContact over to aWeber. When I move the lists, aWeber will send an email to all of my subscribers asking if they still want to be on the list. If they do, they will have to re-opt in. You typically lose half of your list this way. And it’s a kick in the gut, because you got all comfortable thinking about how many people liked you, and then only half of those people come back and you’re like, “Oh. Shit. I guess only half of those people liked me.”

So let’s also be clear that if you think you will EVER require aWeber, just start with it now to avoid all of this.

Anyway, I’m making the switch because I’m getting too many lists, requiring too much customization, and quickly running out of room on my plan. Because:

- iContact calls one person on one list a “subscriber.” So if johnny@theeconomyisnthappening.com is on three of my lists, he counts as three subscribers.

- aWeber calls one email address a subscriber, regardless of how many lists that address is on. So in the above example, that is only ONE aWeber subscriber.

Each of my webinars requires a different mailing list. Plus, I have my main mailing list (you join this when you download my e-book) and, of course, my The Economy Isn’t Happening email list. Which is the coolest among them.

So I’m switching.

I still think iContact is the best choice for people who have ONE main list, especially if they don’t have that list in any sort of automated mailing service now and just want to USE IT without requiring everyone to re-opt in, as aWeber would make you do.

But for me, looks like I graduated to aWeber. Hooray me.

I didn’t want to wait three weeks and schedule a new webinar, so I recorded this video. Here’s what it covers:

• How to create a new list in both iContact and aWeber
• How to manually add subscribers
• How to add a form in both, and add it to your blog even if you’re not too tech savvy

Enjoy!

Also, I hadn’t anticipated how many questions I’d get, so I didn’t think it would be a problem that you can’t hear the questions. But it is a problem. That’s what all of those long pauses are: Me listening to questions.

Sooooo, I may have to pony up for a better service. Let me look into it.

We did cover a LOT of the non-demonstration stuff: Why you need a list, why you need a mailing service, the difference between RSS email delivery and a broadcast mailing, and most importantly, the key advantages and disadvantages to both iContact and aWeber. Hopefully that was still useful info.

In the meantime, I’ll have to reschedule this one for some time in May. Sorry, folks!

LISTEN HERE >>

Answer: The bomb explodes if the bus goes under 60 miles per hour, but fortunately Keanu Reeves saves the day.

Actually, the answer is that they all have email lists. Hotshot.

Why? Because while people may forget to check websites regularly or may wander away from your stuff, they do check their email. You can wait for people to come to you to find out what you have to say, or you can email them a little nudge… or, putting it more accurately, you can serve good information up to them where they live and breathe. Posting something to your website is like putting a flier for your garage sale at the office water cooler and hoping people come by and pick one up. Email marketing is like calling everyone in the office and telling them about that sale personally.

Why do you need an email list? Because email marketing works.

Let me tell you a little story: I got on an email list a while ago when I visited some well-known guy’s website. I didn’t use the info he sent me, but I DO get his tons of worthless shitty spammy emails. The guy sends me stuff CONSTANTLY for crap that I honestly doubt he knows anything about. I think he just signs up to be an affiliate for the newest piece of shit and then blasts it out to his list, making phat cash as even a tiny fraction of his huge subscriber list buys it.

Yet, I’m still on the list because I’m far, far too lazy to click the link and opt out. And every once in a while, he’ll send me something with a catchy subject line and I’ll open it. And these emails? They’re catchy. I often come pretty close to clicking on the links.

So if email can be this powerful for internet dicks, just imagine what you could do with a good reputation and a bit of selective integrity.

I have two email lists, both of which are through iContact. I send my The Economy Isn’t Happening newsletter (which is hilarious, and studies show that if you’re not on that mailing list, dwarves may eat your face) and I send mailings for this site. The latter is not a newsletter; I just want to tell those folks about webinars and free reports and new products and stuff.

I do the first newsletter because I want people to keep reading me and keep coming back to my blog. And I send to y’all on the list for this site because you’re busy folks (except for one guy; you know who you are) and you might forget to check the site for updates.

If you don’t abuse your list and if you give them good info, you’ll have a nice, pre-screened pool of potential readers, customers, whatever.

So yeah, you really do need a list if you want to do business online. I recommend two email services, both of which I use every week. The first is iContact, as already mentioned. The second is aWeber, which is pretty much the industry standard for businesses bigger than my pissant empire. I use aWeber for client accounts, because their operations are more sophistimocated than mine.

My ten-cent breakdown of each is below. No, this summary isn’t perfect. No, it’s not hard and fast. No, I’m not going to listen if some smartasses yell at me for over-generalizing. But I try to keep things simple here, so I’m going to do my best to boil it down and make the choice easier:

• If you have relatively few opt-in forms and lists like me and pretty much “just want to mail shit to folks,” use iContact. It’s way easy, it’s way cheap ($9.99 a month for up to 500-person lists and not much more expensive for even huge lists), and they have a 15-day free trial. iContact also does not require your subscribers to double-opt in*. That’s another huge reason I like it. This is a great all-around mailing service. And yes, they also have autoresponders.**

• If you have a lot of lists, a lot of forms, are generally a complicated marketer, or if you want to integrate with a shopping cart, use aWeber. Really, aWeber has become the industry standard. They have a ton more features, a ton more customizability, and integrate easily with a shopping cart — meaning that if someone buys from you through something like KickStartCart (a 1shoppingcart private label), you can get that person on your mailing list. (Technically, some mailing capability exists in KickStartCart, but your more robust stuff is in aWeber.) The biggest downsides? It’s a little bit more expensive, and they do require your subscribers to double-opt-in… even if you’re importing a list from another mailing service that people have already double-opted-into. Try this little maneuver and you’ll lose half of your list. Enjoy that, by the way.

If you think you’ll eventually need aWeber, start there now. Moving is a major whore.

I’ll be covering a lot of this in my free webinar this Monday. Be sure to sign up if you’d like to attend!

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* Double opt-in means that you join a list by filling out a website form, but then must also click a link in an email to confirm that you actually want to be on the list. (If you import the list, double opt-in means that all of the people imported will get an email saying, “Hey, you want into this list again?” Wisdom says that double opt-in gives you a higher-quality list, because people have to REALLY want in.

However, personally, I like to think that your average person isn’t totally retarded. We’re all adults here. If you opt in once, I don’t think you need to opt in again. This is the equivalent of saying “Are you sure?” to your subscribers. It’s also the equivalent of that fancy Pepperidge Farm bread that still isn’t open after you open it. However, in defense of the double opt-in, it does at least cut down on spam — people signing up folks who aren’t themselves. But, hell. Small potatoes.

** Autoresponder = automated email. People use autoresponders most often to send a series of emails following an event, like a purchase. Maybe you want to send them a thank-you-for-your-purchase email right away (day 0), but then want to try to upsell those people on another product on days 7 and 30. An autoresponder would send those upsell emails to your people automatically.