Have you ever been faced with the task of having to write an email promotion to your list, and then realized that you didn’t know what to say or how to say it?

Michael Rasmussen’s new video course "Email Promos Exposed" promises to solve that problem for you by walking you through the actual process of creating killer email promos step-by-step.

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If you’re in a hurry, just go ahead visit this URL to get instant free access to these videos:

http://www.emailpromosexposed.com/
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I decided to see if Michael’s videos live up to their promise by trying them out myself. Here’s what I found:

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Overall Quality
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The first thing I noticed when I opened up the first video was the stunning production quality. He used Camtasia Studio for the production, which is now the industry standard for creating high-quality screen capture video products. The audio is near studio quality, and the graphics are very professional. These videos were made by someone who KNOWS what he’s doing. Well done!

I also liked how Michael divided the videos up by  section, and then again by sub-section. For example, one video is all about the subject line, and then there are different parts of that video that each cover a certain area of crafting a killer subject line.

Now let’s move onto…

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THE ACTUAL VIDEOS
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Here’s a brief summary of each video. Obviously it’s impossible to list every single thing here, but I want you to get a feel for what each one covered, and how well it covered it.

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If you’re in a hurry, just go ahead visit this URL to get instant free access to these videos:

http://www.emailpromosexposed.com/
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VIDEO 1 – INTRODUCTION

This video served as an introduction to the whole course. You get to see a picture of Michael in his every day life, and he establishes his credibility right up front by talking about some of his massive successes online. He even provides proof of credibility by displaying two checks in the amount of $50,000 and $25,000 which prove that, when it comes to the subject of making money with email promos, he knows his stuff.

This is a good lesson for anyone to get. Whenever you’re teaching people how to do something, it’s good to establish your credibility up front, so that there’s no doubt about whether or not you’re qualified to talk about the subject. Most product developers either skip or minimize this step.

VIDEO 2 – BEFORE YOU WRITE THE PROMO

This video talks about some things that no other marketer has bothered to mention. You’ll learn things like:

* The mindset you need in order to write a killer promo

* The different tools you need before you get started

* How to keep your emails laser-focused

* How to create an outline that practically writes the email for you.

This was a fantastic video, and did a good job of kicking things off.

VIDEO 3 – THE SUBJECT LINE

I liked this video, because it talked about one of MY biggest weaknesses when it comes to writing email promos… the subject line. The subject line is a confusing topic, because nobody’s 100% sure what the best tactics are.

Michael breaks it down, and reveals:

* The biggest secret for writing a subject line that makes people insanely curious.

* Techniques for personalizing the subject line.

* Mistakes to avoid when using personalization.

I was surprised to find that I was making some of the mistakes that Michael mentioned in this video, but now I know better.

VIDEO 4 – THE OPENING

This is where a lot of people slack off when writing their emails. Michael talks about how important it is to create an opening that is conversational, and then reveals techniques and examples on how to do that.

He also reveals:

* How to get people to keep reading your email once they’ve opened it.

* How to make your opening interesting.

* Mistakes to avoid when creating your first few paragraphs.

VIDEO 5 – THE BODY COPY

This is one of the "meatiest" portions of the course, because it reveals techniques that are not widely discussed on the forums, blogs, and in most eBooks. He talks about the importance of keeping your body copy tight and relevant, and then reveals how you can do that. You’ll also learn:

* How to write powerful bullets that make people curious and want to find out more.

* Simple formatting tricks for making your body copy easy to read.

* The secret of "bucket brigade copy" and how to use it in your email promos to force people to keep reading.

VIDEO 6 – THE CALL TO ACTION

This is where a lot of people wimp out in their email promos. They start out strong, but when it comes time to ask the reader to click the link and take action, they don’t know what to say.

Michael talks about some of his favorite techniques for making that happen, and also reveals:

* The "magic question" to ask yourself that will make your close much more powerful.

* The secret of the "unanswered question" and why handling this is a surefire way to get people to act right away.

* The structure of a powerful close.

* Mistakes people make when creating their close.

VIDEO 7 – CREATING AN EFFECTIVE P.S.

Some people say that the P.S. is one of the most important parts of the email, because it is often the one thing that gets people to click the link at the end. In this video, Michael talks about:

* Why you should be including a P.S. at the end of your email.

* The 4 different kinds of P.S.’s you can use (this section was a real eye-opener for me).

VIDEO 8 – COMMON MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE

I loved this video, because it showed me some mistakes that I was making that I wasn’t even aware of. Unless you’re a seasoned pro, you’re probably guilty of some of the things that Michael talks about in this video as well, and that’s why it’s so valuable. I’ve shaved years off my learning curve, because now I can avoid some of the costly mistakes that I was bound to make in the learning process.

VIDEO 9 – HOW TO CREATE FOLLOW-UP EMAIL PROMOTIONS

This video alone is going to make me a lot of money. Why? Because I used to only send out one email promo for each affiliate promotion I was doing. Michael showed me in this video how important it is to send a follow-up promotion, and he showed me exactly how to do it. He covered things like:

* The psychology of follow-up email promo’s.

* The 2 main types of follow-up promos that make the most money.

* How to overcome readers’ objections in your follow up emails.

* The 2 most common mistakes people make when writing follow-ups and how to avoid them.

VIDEO 10 – HOW TO WRITE BACK END EMAIL PROMOTIONS

Every marketing guru out there says that the REAL money is on the back end. I’d have to agree with them, but the problem is… most people have no idea how to set up a back end system that makes money. This video will teach you how to set up an automated back end that’s loaded with killer promos that make you lots of cash on autopilot.

He reveals things like:

* The big difference between regular and back end email promos.

* How to prepare a back end promotion sequence.

* Common mistakes people make when creating back end email promos.

VIDEO 11 – CREATING AFFILIATE EMAIL PROMOTIONS

This could be the most important video of the entire package for a lot of people, because most people email their list to promote other people’s products as an affiliate. Let’s face it, if you only have 3 products, can you really afford to only email your list 3 times a year? They’ll get bored hearing about the same old products over and over again. This video sheds some light on how to create killer affiliate promos. Michael reveals things like:

* The two main types of affiliate promos.

* What makes affiliate promos different than regular promos (and why ignoring this huge secret could cost you big money).

* Michael’s favorite tactics for creating affiliate promos that no one else is doing.

* 3 different ways to add scarcity to your affiliate promos (this is the most important section of the video, so make sure you watch it over and over again).

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CONCLUSION
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As you can see, Email Promos Exposed really packs a lot of punch! Most of the courses out there offer only watered down, weak content. Not this one! These videos are going on my "A-list" for a long time.

I’ve already watched them twice, and plan on reviewing them every couple months to make sure that I have the principals, techniques and tactics burned into my mind.

If email marketing is an important part of your business (and in my opinion, it’s the most important part of ANY online business), then you owe it to yourself to check out Michael’s exciting new videos, Email Promos Exposed.

Here’s the URL where you can get instant free access to the videos right now.

http://www.emailpromosexposed.com/

Wishing You Success,

Steve D’Agostino

Over the years, we’ve all been taught that the best way to grow a sizable mailing list is to give our visitors a great offer they can’t say no to. And the most common way to attract more traffic and readers is to pay or trade with another marketer to have a popup window or banner ad on their site with your offer and hope that the visitors will be intrigued enough to sign up. The ad might have music, flashy graphics or animations in an effort to not only bring in traffic, but also as a way to distract site visitors from other competing ads.

To learn more, visit http://www.HoveringAds.com/ - it’s free to join and there’s no membership fee.

Mini sites are not known for being flashy. And there’s a good reason for that. Too much flash and splash detracts from the message you’re trying to get across.

And when your site is made up of only one or a few pages, your message must get through quickly.

But as we all know, a page full of plain old text isn’t particularly appealing. And even if formatting is used to make certain things stand out, a bright and prominent graphic does a much better job of drawing our attention.

So even though graphics should be used sparingly on a mini site, it’s crucial to make sure that the graphics we do use are effective.

The first graphic people will see when they visit your mini site is your page header. It stands to reason that it should be attractive and captivating.

It doesn’t have to be a complex work of art, but it should be brightly colored and include the name of your product. A few more words might be in order, but don’t go overboard. The headline will provide more detailed information about what you have to offer.

Most mini sites have a bulleted list somewhere on the page. They are bulleted because they contain important information, such as your product’s key benefits or what’s included with it.

So attention-getting bullets in bright colors are good things to have.

And then there are your buttons and boxes. Boxes are used to bring things like testimonials and calls to action to the reader’s attention.

The most commonly used button is the order button, and that should definitely stand out.

A mini site is not the place for a graphic design exhibition (unless, of course, you’re selling graphics). The graphics used should be prominent and professional looking, yet not so fancy that they take the visitor’s attention away from the text.
 

Don’t forget to check out my free report Mini Sites Explained and learn more about using mini sites to help your business grow. If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for my newsletter and RSS feed at the top of this blog.

 There are always opportunities to take a step back and see what’s going on with your business when you are marketing on the internet.

Most likely, you started this business hoping to make a bunch of money. Without good tools and strong skills, it can be hard to reach a high level of success and profitability.

1.)  Traffic.The sales funnel starts the minute someone opts into your list when they land on your squeeze page. This is the place that you put your opt-in form so that visitors can give you their contact information for further follow-up.

This is absolutely imperative if you want to build a list or your sales funnel. People will just look over your website and move on to someone else’s to find what they need.

People need to stay at your site long enough to leave you their name and email. The net result is their agreement to receive more communication from you through your email autoresponder.

Whether your preference is pay-per-click, e-zine articles or any other lead attraction techniques, once a prospect gives you permission to contact them, your sales funnel has begun.

If you’re going to reach that goal, you have to get really good at driving traffic to your website. Anyone online needs to develop this skill early on in their online career.

You absolutely have to drive strong amounts of traffic to your capture pages if you want your business to be successful.

2.) Regular Contact.Keeping your list happy and trusting in you and your offers is the next part of your sales funnel strategy.

If you aren’t providing quality content through your autoresponder, you will more likely lose them as customers. The goal from the start is to show your people that you can offer them value. After your people get to know and like you, they will be much more likely in the future to return to your websites.

Constant following up with updates for your list both keeps them informed with good content and helps to weed out the people who really don’t belong on that list.

3.)  Marketing.You can start marketing to your prospects when these relationships have been developed.  This is where you start to promote more of what you have to offer to your prospects.

You’re still trying to build trust while giving excellent info that they are starting to excitedly anticipate.

They are starting to wait anxiously for your email autoresponders to arrive with something new and interesting for them.

The more you can keep your people interested, the more they will put into their own business. This, in turn results in positive results for your own online business as well.

All of these steps bring you to yet another step in your sales funnel. You potentially now have both front-end and back-end sales. Both streams are working towards your sales funnel becoming the profitable internet business you’ve strived for from the start.

Since your contact list is growing, you can breathe for a bit.  The difficult first-steps toward success have been taken.

Don’t forget my Sales Funnel Strategies to help you make the most out of your sales funnels and build that finally successful business you’ve always dreamed of.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and my RSS feed at the top of this blog!

 RSS feeds! Okay, so I’ve mentioned them, and you’ve seen them everywhere. But what is it, and how do you use it? Well, I can get into minutia later, but basically it’s a syndication, or a way of getting yourself out there to many different places from one hub. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. If you have a blog, you probably have a feed. Many article, press release, and social bookmarking sites provide them, as well.

So then, how do you use them, and how will they help?

This will be a pretty short post because this is such a simple concept, takes only a few minutes if you do it right, and should be the last thing you do at the end of your workday.

The great thing about these RSS feeds is that they tell the world about every bit of content that you create from every place that provides the feeds. You may have seen them on people’s blogs or on news websites. This is because the feeds provide content that can be published on your site so that you can provide news, stories, articles, press releases, or whatever on your site or blog to give people something interesting to read. The same thing happens to your content when you submit your feeds to different places, too.

Let’s say you have a blog, submit articles to directories, and post to bookmarking sites (I’ll cover that next time). You should post to your blog everyday, or at least 4 or 5 times a week. You’ll have an RSS feed, just like I do. Look at the top of my blog up there, and you’ll see an option to subscribe to it. Go ahead, click it. Put it on your blog. Then when you don’t feel like writing, my post will show up on your page, and you don’t have to worry about it.

Now check your article sites, like Associated Content, and check and see if they provide a feed for your author account. You don’t want the site feed, just the one for your acount. You want your content to go out. You can put the site feed on your site or blog if you want, but we’re looking for our own feed. Collect the feed addresses, including the one or ones (there are also Atom feeds, which are the same thing, but use them if you’ve got them) from your blog.

After you bookmark your article pages and blog posts, grab the RSS feed addresses from  the bookmarking sites that offer them. I’m not sure of them all, but I know that Mixx and Connotea provide them. If you publish any press releases, PRLog and some others provide them, too.

Now that you have all these RSS feed addresses, you’ve got to submit them to what are called feed aggregators. These places publish your feeds, all linking to your published content, which all link back to your sites and blogs.

Are you starting to see? Talk about link love! This is one of the best ways to get everything you publish ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! And all of it links back to your sites and blogs! SEO much? You better believe it!

Now the beauty of this is that once you submit your feed, that’s it! If you contribute something new, you just go to your feed aggregators and "ping" them, or let them know you’ve updated. It takes five seconds. Well, getting it set up takes longer than that, especially if you use a lot of aggregators, like Bloglines or Newsgator , which you should. But pinging takes a few seconds at each place.

So, can you automate the process? Of course! There’s a great new submitter software called RSS Power Plus that will hel you get this going quickly and easily and cut out the runaround part of the process, saving you a lot of valuable "do what you want to do" time at the end of your workday.

Check out the submitter, and even if you don’t buy and use it, use the aggregators anyway. It’s free if you want to spend the time going from one place to the next. Don’t worry; it’s not like submitting articles. It’s a lot faster, but you have to ping for every feed, which should be a lot if you want real traffic and links.

Try it out. You’ll be surprised at what you’re going to see.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. Grab my free Business Blogging Secrets report, too.