Diner Dave Works His Email Marketing Plan

After 1 month of prep time, DinerDave.com has content and, thanks to Juscott Media, a fantastic new look! My next order of business is to build up my subscriber base so I can start sending out articles and promoting my merchant programs in the Diner Dave Digest e-newsletter (using AWeber of course). Obviously, the best place to start is to solicit my current subscribers on DinerDeals.com.

Transferring Subscribers from DinerDeals.com to DinerDave.com

I am so happy that I chose AWeber as my email broadcast service because their support is amazing! I utilized their online help chat sessions and a couple of phone conversations to learn how to create a “transfer request” email and send to my existing DinerDeals.com subscriber list. My last provider, oemPro, provided NO SUPPORT for any issues with my subscriber list (my issues with them could take up an entire post altogether!).

I learned that I could import up to 2,000 subscribers a day through AWeber, AFTER I had an opt-in confirmation email prepared. The only issue that I had with their confirmation email setup was that I was limited to 500 characters in the intro before the confirmation link to subscribe to DinerDave.com. I wanted more space to really sell my subscribers on transferring from DinerDeals to DinerDave.

I created a 1 page “sales letter” asking my DinerDeals.com subscribers to check out DinerDave.com, sign up for the Diner Dave Digest newsletter and receive my special report (more on that later). I was only able to use a few sentences from the sales letter in the confirmation email that would be sent to my DinerDeals subscribers. Here is the official AWeber request to transfer email:

My First Obstacle – The OLD Mailing List

As I mentioned earlier I had several problems with my old email broadcast program, oemPro, and was unable to send emails to my DinerDeals subscribers for about 6 months (VERY FRUSTRATING!). As a result, my subscriber list was not “cleaned” and there were a few undeliverable email addresses. When I attempted to import certain sections of my old subscriber list through AWeber I was unable to do so because there were a few “bad” email addresses. AWeber, being ever vigilant in the fight against spam, refused to import a couple of sections of my old subscriber list because, in their words, “invalid addresses have not been tracked and removed from the list over time. This causes the list to become extremely stale and will cause significant email deliverability issues if emailed”.

I completely understand and agree with their reasoning behind this, but I’m a little disappointed! It took me almost 5 years to gather 15,000 email addresses! In fact, I have personally signed up hundreds of my subscribers face to face at food and wine events and at local restaurants. Fortunately, I was able to import about 2,500 email addressess (so far…this is still a work in progress). I still have over 8,000 more subscribers to notify and I have been able to import about 50% of the list through AWeber. The other 50% were rejected due to undeliverable email addresses. I guess a lot can happen to a subscriber in 5 years – they can change jobs, change residence, or decide to use a different email provider. Let this be a lesson to you…make sure you use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber so your list is always current and any invalid email addresses are promptly deleted from the list.

Overcoming Rejection

Now I need to figure out how I can spread the word about DinerDave.com to the VALID email addresses on the rejected portions of the DinerDeals subscriber list. I decided to get nostalgic and manually review the list, which had subscribers from 2005 to present. I quickly realized that I have personally met or corresponded with hundreds of these subscribers. I KNEW that these familiar subscribers were going to want to continue to receive my newsletters with dining out tips, coupon codes, restaurant gift certificates, and fun contests! So I decided to send them a PERSONAL note and attach the 1 page sales letter (see above). I was confident that once they checked out the “new and improved” DinerDave.com, they would sign up for the newsletter directly from the site.

Word of caution: I do not condone sending emails to your subscribers using your own email provider (Yahoo, Gmail, etc..)! Always use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber or Constant Contact.

The ONLY reason that chose to send my “request to transfer” email to a select few subscribers using my personal email account is that I KNOW these subscribers and am confident that my request will be well received.

Creating Incentive for New Subscribers

I’ve noticed that a majority of the websites or blogs that I visit have newsletter or RSS feed opt-in form where visitors can subscribe PLUS they receive a special free report as further motivation to subscribe. I started wondering “what special report could I create to entice visitors to subscribe to my newsletter?” Then it hit me! I’ll write a report focusing on one of the most powerful words on the internet: FREE! Over the last 5 years many of my subscribers have requested information about free meals, free restaurant gift certificates, buy one get one free meals, etc… So I decided to write a report with “secret” tips on how to dine out and get free meals.

If you want to learn these secrets, you’ll have to subscribe to the Diner Dave Digest Newsletter on DinerDave.com. Plus, if you subscribe, you will get see my newsletters firsthand (shameless plug: with tips and advice on how to “Dine MORE & Pay LESS” from your pal, Diner Dave!)

Stay tuned for my next post on how I created the Diner Dave Digest newsletter – with tips from Ros on lowering the “spam-o-meter” score.

Lastly, if you are interested, you can follow my progress here in my previous posts:

• Introducing Diner Dave!
• Diner Dave Does Market Research
• Diner Dave Writes Content
• Designing the Diner Dave Website