Listflex Email Bonanza

Send More Email and Make More Money Using ESP’s

 

Introduction:

The below is a simple road map to safely scaling email marketing as far as you would like using Listflex and multiple email service providers like Getresponse. With a small number of leads daily and the right set up, anyone can double or triple their email productivity in 30-60 days.

The step-by-step plan:

Step 1: Leads – Review the leads you generate or buy.
Step 2: ESPs* – Set up multiple ESPs to drip your leads into.
Step 3: Listflex – Get a Listflex account (Import, validate & clean leads before sending to ESP’s).
Step 4: Management – Balance & scale your lists & email campaigns.
Step 5: Product – Create or work on a product you own.

*ESP – Email service provider. Mass mailer platforms like GetResponse, Sendlane, Mailchimp, etc.

 

Step #1. Leads – Generating & Buying

Objective:

Acquire real-time leads through your own offers, traffic partners or from a data provider.

Explained:

Generating Leads: The leads that you generate are always the top priority for this email strategy. If you own the offers generating leads, you probably know the traffic type and likely the type of consumers being targeted. Leads you generate will always take priority over third party traffic partners or leads that you purchase.

Buying Leads: Getting leads from affiliate network traffic partners or through data brokers is a simple way to grow your lists fast, but the strategy is not without risk. Any time you’re getting leads that you aren’t generating yourself, you need to be ultra selective in who you work with and what you accept. I’ll skip enumerating the specific risks and just focus on what you need to be sure of when getting this type of lead. The leads should be real time, have an active compliant (one you can pull up in your browser) URL in your preferred niche, be email validated and not over-shared (know the source well).

Important Notes:

Your ultimate goal is to generate or acquire and mail up to 500 real time leads per day for each ESP.

Step #2: ESPs –  Set up ESPs, Drip Leads and Strategy

Objective:

Get ESPs set up and approved for single opt-in API.

Explained:

Having a handful of ESPs ensures you’re never down if there’s ever an issue with one ESP specifically. This model avoids a situation where you end up having all of your eggs in one basket and allows you to grow your mailing business to any level you want. Many email marketers have been quickly put out of business by having all their leads in one place.

Listfex will connect via API to nearly every ESP that exists and will give you the ability to manipulate the leads flowing into each. Let’s imagine, as an example, that a particular ESP can’t inbox Gmail. Using Listflex you would simply exclude gmail.com from going to that specific ESP and instead send it somewhere else. Monitoring each ESP to see what Email providers they can/can’t deliver to will be highly rewarding and profitable for you. You can also block specific email providers from getting to your ESP (yahoo.com, gmail.com) if you see a spike in complaints from their users. Using Listflex gives you the ability to only ever send leads to places you know can inbox your content, in almost any quantity you desire.

ESP Strategy:

• The list in your ESP should have 1 or 2 emails per day in the autoresponder. If you only have 1, send it in the evening. If 2, send one in the morning and one in the evening.
• It’s very important to use a URL that you own in every single email and have it redirect to either 1 or multiple offers. Never use a direct affiliate link, or, indeed, any part of the domain name that the offer lives on. It is most likely blacklisted by all major email providers and using it is one of the fastest ways to get banned by an ESP.
• 7-10 Days of autoresponders is what I recommend to uncover your active folks, either 1 or 2 emails per day. Some companies do 30 days of autoresponders while moving openers and clickers to a new list. It’s up to you and should be determined by your niche and best marketing practices. But make sure you are moving the openers and clickers to a new list.
• I do not recommend sending too many individual “campaigns” each week. Autoresponders cause far fewer red flags and complaints than campaigns. Campaigns surge your complaints and are almost always the reason for getting banned.
• Create your clicker/opener list & a rule in your ESP that dumps clickers/openers to that list. Then create a corresponding new autoresponder series based on them being active. This autoresponder should be at least 30 days long.

Important Notes:

Here is a sample API reference if you were sending leads from a Listflex Client Order to Sendlane.

(Sendlane is just one ESP example. You can add any number of integrations under “Client”, “More Options”, “API Integrations”, “Add New”)

Step #3 – Listflex:  Sign Up, List Import and Order Setup

Objective:

Set up a Listflex account to manipulate, throttle and drip leads to your different ESPs. You can go Here to set up an account online in about 60 seconds.

Explained:

The overall strategy of scaling this project is really about the manipulation of leads and the corresponding client orders to ESPs. Each lead order in Listflex will directly connect via API to an individual list in your ESP. If, for some reason, a specific ESP doesn’t like your campaigns or niche, it gives you the ability to simply pause and replace that ESP while Listflex continues to drip leads into the other active ones. You’re never shut down or out of luck because of one ESP. Never put all of your eggs in one basket.

Here’s how it looks:

Get Leads → Import to Listflex List → Send to Listflex Client (ESP) Order → ESP Sends The Email

List Import:

Your first step should be going to the Listflex help section and following the entire “New User Checklist” document. While doing that, you will create the vendor and list inside of Listflex to start importing leads (Import a file or use the API). When creating the rules for this list and each new list, at a minimum, ensure that level3 email validation is in place to validate and clean the leads before mailing. This safeguards you from accepting any leads that are likely threats or that can cause potential issues.

Another consideration while setting up the list should be “How To Sell”, or how many times/clients the lead can go out to. I recommend “Advanced Rules” and choose “How To Sell”. 1 or 2 is good depending on how many different ESPs you want your leads going to (1 is recommended). Always set the last position in advanced rules to “Unlimited”, this is very important.

Then, after you have leads flowing into your list inside Listflex, set up your internal client account AND accounts for each individual ESP. Now you can create your first order. Again, in the Help section at the top of your Listflex account, there is a “New User Checklist” that you should follow.

Listflex Order Set up:

In your In House Client Account, you will want to create your first order for testing purposes. Your In House Client Account order will send leads to the ESP of your choice via API. Next, create an order to drip leads into your first ESP. To start, I recommend only using one Listflex order per ESP. Later on you can duplicate the orders based on new ESPs and API’s you create and set up. In the Help section of your Listflex account, there is a tutorial to help you called “How To Send Leads To A Client – Setting Up An Order“.

Here’s how the order set up in Listflex might look for you after you get multiple ESPs ready and want to start dripping leads into each of them.

Here is what I recommend as a daily cap or leads per day into each list:

Week 1: 35,  Week 2: 60, Week 3: 90, Week 4: 120, Week 5: 180, Week 6: 220, Week 7: 300,
Week 8: 400,  Week 9: 500
(I never recommend sending more than 500/day into any a list inside of your ESP.)

Important Notes:

In the help section of your Listflex account, use the Help section tutorials and specifically the “New User Checklist” as your initial guide after setting up Listflex account.

When creating lists, turning on Level1 and Level3 (validation) email scrub is a must for every new email lead you bring in. I would also strongly encourage you to make sure Suppression Scrub and TCPA Scrub are turned on when you import your leads. Use your judgement on the other filters as well to help make sure you only have pristine data being accepted and getting through to your ESP’s. These filters clean in real time on your forms, via API, or when you upload a .csv file.

Here’s how it could look in your list settings:

Step #4 : Management, Suggestions & FAQ

Explained:

There are many different niches and strategies that can be crafted from the outline above. There is no “one size fits all” scenario with email. Below are a few topics that I usually get questions about.

Sending Campaigns:

I discourage mailers from sending broadcasts or campaigns too often. A couple a week likely won’t get you into any particularly hot water, but broadcasts and over-mailing are easily the #1 reason email marketers get kicked off a system. Broadcasts can “surge” unsubscribes and complaints, which alerts the ESP. Autoresponders almost never have this issue and provide stability and consistency in your mailing.

** Something that most people don’t know is that most ESPs have been known to use better IPs for autoresponders.

Value:

Every email you ever send should provide creative content and value for the consumer to consider or learn from. Never send vague, “tricky” emails that are just click bait and that upset consumers. Put something of value in every email. In addition to this – something I cover above – always have your personal URL be what is mailed, not affiliate URLs. Your owned URL should be a content site that helps people or is a credible source related to your email. No dead website pages.

How often to mail:

Some people want to have unlimited autoresponders, which is ok. However, most people can figure out who their active users are within 7-10 days or 15-30 emails sent. Move the openers and clickers over to a new list – that is where i recommend you create unlimited autoresponders if you prefer that. If you focus on active folks, you’re not emailing to a massive list of unresponsive people. You can also save money and have a much more active list of consumers, which makes you look much better to the ESP.

Clean Out Inactives:

Anytime you have the chance to isolate and remove inactive people from your lists, always do it. Less mail goes out and the subscribers you do mail have a much higher activity rate which keeps you in the good graces of the ESP’s. Weekly is ideal, monthly at a minimum and this practice with most ESP’s will help you save money.

Arbitrage vs Affiliate:

Some of the more successful guys who use this email strategy send 90% of their email campaigns to a squeeze page that they own, on a domain that they own. They then run arbitrage off the back of that by rotating different offers to see which will give them the highest returns. The important thing to note here is that if you do this, you can use all of the opt in’s from your owned page to warm up other ESP’s that you want to get approved for single opt in API. But the concept allows a lot of flexibility in all of the critical moving pieces of this plan. Sending affiliate offers is very similar but would still need to be rotated off of a domain that you own.

Ask people to reply:

In your first email, as in most emails you send, ask the consumer a question that requires them to reply to your email. Google and Yahoo control most email now and a major part of their algorithm to inboxing is based on engagement. The more people you have replying to you, the better your odds are of inboxing gmail and yahoo. Always ask for feedback or for something they will want to share with you.

Example:  “Hey, can you do me a favor? Would you mind sharing with me some of your ______ so that I can make sure we get you _____?”

Why only 500/day Max:

After years of testing everything imaginable, it has consistently emerged that keeping it to under 500/day per source is the magic number. Sure, some guys have gone bigger. However, the guys that plug away everyday at 500/day have seen extraordinary longevity from their SMTP/ESP relationships. I believe it’s because it’s a small, but very realistic number that isn’t going to cause any substantial problems for an ESP.

Email Content:

I recommend going with 100% text emails as often as you can. Anytime you start getting fancy with graphics, images and suggested templates, you’re more likely to hit the gmail promotions tab or junk/spam. Unless you have a long established reputation with your domain and users, text only is ideal. Keep the emails simple.

Step #5  Product: Owning Your Own Offer vs Affiliate Offers

Objective:

Create and work towards a solid offer that you are the owner of.

Explained:

Running affiliate offers through partners and ad networks that pair up with your niche is usually the easiest way to get this mailing strategy off the ground and running. You’ll make money on all of the conversions and will fine-tune and swap offers out as you go. But the long-term play with this strategy is certainly creating an offer of your own. Whether by using Clickfunnels or any other system like it, you will want to create something that you control 100% of the time, including upsells and all related retargeting. Affiliate network offers will always be around, but you creating a circumstance that is yours and that allows you to start branding your name or your business will be a tremendous long-term play.

Resources:

There are hundreds of ESPs. We recommend companies like Sendlane, Getresponse and others like them as a starting point if you’re not already working with them.

Wake Up & Flex,

Scott Heistand
scott.h@listflex.com

PS: If you’re on the fence deciding if this is for you, here’s a little incentive/proof for you (And we’ve got a pile of other stories like this). It’s a pretty cool story about my old friends Michael & Bobby.

Michael & Bobby’s Listflex Story

It wasn’t all that long ago that the two guys in this picture were trying to figure out how to leverage multiple different ESPs for there various squeeze pages and offers. After connecting with us at Listflex, we formulated a plan similar to the one in this document and went to work. As Michael and Bobby built their lists and started cranking multiple ESPs, a launch was announced for a product (Commission Breakthrough) offering a Bentley and roughly $80k for first place.

When the launch came, Michael and Bobby had a pile of lists neatly organized and all getting their 500-ish fresh leads every day. The already dialed-in autoresponders were helping these guys crank a ton of affiliate commissions and helped propel them to being number one.

This is just one of the many recent stories of guys leveraging this system to scale email massively. Listflex created a new 6 figure side business for them without having to bring on a team of people to make it happen. And it can do the same for you, too.

 

 

Compliance, rules & Law

Anytime you generate or buy leads, it is your responsibility to ensure consumers are aware of your intentions and how their information could or will be used. Prior to communicating with consumers, it is your responsibility to know that you can contact them legally. Laws vary by country and state, so it’s important that you educate yourself. Listflex and the above email marketing plan are not responsible for you or any action you take with this information.