The Silent Avatar Speaks

If there is one thing that has been rammed home to me since I became involved in Internet Marketing is this catch cry “The money is in the list!”

What list? Your email list.

For anyone starting out in business this should become a personal mantra. As you go about your daily business keep your mantra uppermost in your mind and work towards building your list.

Your email list is your opportunity to communicate with your potential prospects and your customers and build your business.

So just how do you build a list?

Email addresses change at a rate of around 30 percent or more on most lists, and this means marketers (anyone in an online business) must adopt an aggressive approach to expand their list and yield a significant return on investment.

Email is a personal medium , just like the telephone, and like the telephone (where we have been bombarded with tele-marketers), unsolicted email (spam) has become the scourge of our inbox.

The Australian Spam Act 2003 and the Spam (Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 became operative on 11 April 2004. (click here for more info)

What constitutes spam. CAUBE-AU (the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia) defines spam very broadly as any electronic mail message that is:

1. transmitted to a large number of recipients; and
2. not explicitly and knowingly requested by some or all of those recipients.

Other common definitions of spam also require that the messages be commercial in nature.

To ensure you are not spamming, you need to work with permission based emails.
By marketing to people who have told you expressly that they want to hear from you, expect to see these results:

1. Better response rates
2. Increased trust and brand affinity
3. Better deliverability

It’s going to take time and money to build a permission-based house list and create targeted, relevant offers and messages, however your list will be a smaller but more responsive list than if it was an unsolicited email list.

But email marketing isn’t about how big your list is or sending your list email after email.

It’s all about getting results and building relationships with your list. Put simply, getting permission gets better results and is the only way to build email relationships with customers and subscribers.
Consider these helpful tips to build your list:

• Consider All Touch Points: Use every point of contact with customers and prospects.
• Obtain Permission: Always obtain permission with the confirmed (double) opt-in method for online contacts. For offline contacts, update your database with when, where and how the contact was initiated. Confirm their permission in the first email.
• Required Information: Obtain email address, name, format preference and logical interests/preferences.
• Focus Equal Attention on Existing Lists: Implement strategies and incentives to transform inactive subscribers into active ones.
• Provide Valuable Benefits: Convince potential subscribers of the valuable benefits they’ll receive.
• Convey Trust: Clearly state your privacy/email policies.

Best practices for building your opt-in list. 

1. Feature a Sign-Up Form on Each Page of Your Site – It should be obvious. All sites need to include a sign up form. Sign-up opportunities should be throughout your site.

2. Promote Benefits on the Sign-Up Page – Enhance subscription value with sample emails, testimonials and strong call to action copy.

3. Offer An Incentive to Opt-In – Incentives like reports, discounts and e-books significantly increase your sign up rate.

4. Optimize Your Site for Search Engine Placement – Optimize current and archived newsletters for search engines to increase traffic and subscriptions.

5. Pay for Search Engine Services and Promote Your Email on the Landing Page – If you pay for search services like Google AdWords be sure to include email subscription information on the landing page.

6. Add Opt-in Check Boxes on Demo Requests, Reports and Registration Forms – Well-executed forms and pages may improve conversion rates by 50 percent or more.

7. Include “Send to a Friend” Options – Generate new subscribers with minimal effort if bundled with promotional campaigns.

8. Use Direct Mail and Catalogs – Encourage email subscriptions on all print ads.

9. Direct Employees to Include Messages and Links in Email Signature Lines – Add “Subscribe to the Company X Email Newsletter” to employee email signatures.

10. Direct Call Center and Sales Employees to Obtain Permission and Capture Email Addresses Over the Phone – Instruct call center and sales staff to ask customers and prospects if they’d like to receive newsletters or promotional email.

11. Send Post Cards to Customers Encouraging Them to Subscribe to Email – If you have postal contact information for customers but not email addresses, send a post card with opt-in sign-up offer and URL.

12. Hand Out Sign-Up Forms at Public Speaking Engagements and Seminars – Promote your newsletter in presentations and handouts.

13. Implement Rented List Campaigns and Subscriptions – Promote your company in email campaigns and landing pages when you rent email lists.

14. Promote Sign-Ups in Confirmation/Transaction Emails – Add messages and links to opt-in pages of all confirmation and transaction emails.

15. Include An Opt-in Line on Credit Card Receipts – Not an obvious method, but may be quite effective.

16. Add Opt-in Message to Warranty and Product Registration Cards.

17. Add Sign-Up Message to Invoices.

18. Display Opt-in Forms at the Cash Register – An approach used by restaurants and retailers to advertise weekday discounts, catering services etc.

19. Promote Your Email/Newsletter in Articles and Article Attribution – Include a reference and link to your newsletter after the byline on articles in trade and consumer publications.

20. Include Opt-in Message and Check Boxes on Shopping Cart Pages – Remember to ask for email format and product/information preferences.

21. Promote Your Email/Newsletter in Other Company Publications – Promote online newsletters in print newsletters, magazines and brochures. Add “Sign up for our monthly newsletter at www.your website.com/subscribe.html” after “Visit www.your website.com for more information.”

22. Include Newsletter Subscriptions in Trade Show Lead Generation Forms – Obtain permission to send your monthly newsletter to booth visitors.

23. Promote Your Newsletter/Promotional Emails in Industry Directories and Sites.

24. Distribute Press Releases Based on Newsletter Articles – Newsletters with topical articles may warrant a press release. Make sure the press release includes links and information on how to subscribe.

25. Include Information and a Link to Your Newsletter in Press Releases – A good option for smaller companies. Include your company newsletter and other resources in press release copy.

26. Include Opt-in Information on Customer Satisfaction Surveys – Ask permission to communicate valuable information via email newsletters and promotions.

27. Include Opt-in Forms in Product Shipping Boxes – Advertise email promotions on packing slips and direct mail cards with links to your site. Many retailers and catalogers also include promotional offers from non-competing companies.

28. Employ a Reputable Email List Service – List services obtain email addresses and  Be sure you obtain permission before – or as part of – the first email you send.

29. Ensure you use a reputable autoreponder like AWeber Autoresponder to manage your email list.

So there you have it, a multitude of ways to build your list and keep your business growing!

Sign up to now to my newsletter and I’ll get more tips, tricks and information for growing your online business. Click here

Tags: Advertising, Newsletters, Tools For Your Business, Traffic Generation by the silent avatar
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Your web business can potentially get product inquiries from customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you won’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached them. Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, they will take their business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When you first start marketing and following up with prospects, you can usea follow up method that I now call the “List Building Technique.” Essentially it’s a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about your products and services.

Keeping track of these prospects would require you to write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from you. While this probably can help you win a few additional orders, it isn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List BuildingTechnique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies or business has “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. They can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When you write follow up messages using the List Technique, you are writing news bulletins to everyone you know. Instead you should be sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, any feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up – don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?

So, in order to do follow up your vistors or customers the right way you need to have an autoresponder.

So what is an autoreponder?

Quite simply, it’s a piece of software that enables you to send emails to people automatically. This doesn’t mean that it writes the emails for you and it doesn’t involve spam or sending unsolicited email. What it means is that you set up a sequence of prewritten emails that are sent out to prospects on your database at regular intervals.

The main benefit to using an autoresponder is connected to the fact that the majority of people need to be told about a product seven times before they buy it. So I want to ask you, how many times are you telling your visitors about your product? Chances are it’s less than seven.

Inavariably they’ll land on your homepage or somewhere else on your website and they’ll look at your offering, but the majority of your sites visitors will disappear. So unless you can get them onto an opt-in mailing list, either a course or free information that is of multi-part format, the chances are you will have lost them forever. You can use an autoresponder to send these messages out to people with their permission convincing them and educating them about your product.

The autoresponder I recommend is AWeber. You can check out all about them here

Tags: Tools For Your Business by the silent avatar
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