The Silent Avatar Speaks

Did you know your mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business?

Well hell yeah! you say

The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough. If you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you’ll be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

Statistically, you have a better chance of making a sale to an existing customer, than trying to sell to someone who hasn’t brought before.

You can build a targeted list of prospects who are interested in your products by offering them a relevant download on your website.

To give you an example, let’s take a look at apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!

In reality, you don’t need to offer such a “heavyweight” downloads such as full-feature software like iTunes – you can attract prospects just as well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You’ll have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First, place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!

You’ll need to put some effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the benefits of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the hard disk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Traffic Generation by the silent avatar
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Give me $500. Come on! Give me $500!!! 

What?  You’re not going to just give me your money?

Why Not!?

See, when you ask someone to do something for you, unless they have some motivation to do so, they just won’t do it. No motivation.

So today I want to focus on motivating your current subscribers to grow your list (aka viral marketing).

Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something found to be informative, entertaining or amazing. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behaviour. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s fancy.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilise. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialise this marketing scheme.
Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behaviour. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an e-report, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s fancy.

Viral marketing is wonderful, but “True Viral Systems” are quite rare.

A true viral system is one with a “Spawn Rate” of x>1 Spawn Rate: The Rate at Which Your Viral System Grows – That is, for every one person who enters the viral system, they will, on average, result X number additional people spreading the word as well.
                        
If your spawn rate is greater than 1, over time you have something that grows and grows perpetually.

  Every viral system will die at some point even if they are truly viral, however your system does not have to be truly viral for you to benefit.  If you have a spawn rate of X < 1 you will still get growth – and growth, when you’re talking about an email list, *is* exactly what you want to achieve.

Ah, this is the *theory* of viral marketing.  It sounds wonderful doesn’t it?

The problem is, getting the actual result is the problem.
Here’s where the real value of what I have to tell you surfaces.

So just how do you increase the Spawn Rate of your viral system?, or put in layman’s terms, how do you get people to spread your marketing message for you?

 

The Golden Rule of Viral Marketing:
“If there is no motivation, there is no viral  growth.”          

You weren’t motivated to give me $500 were you?  Unconsciously you were looking for the “What’s In It For Me” answer.

And if you weren’t offered a reason to give me $500, or you couldn’t find one then you simply won’t do it. Put simply, there has to be motivation.

Whoa! I can hear the naysayer loud and clear…

 “But what about if I just wanted to give for no real reason at all?”.

Then I say your motivation is to please the asker, or you want to avoid the pain you will  experience when you say  “No”.           

So in order to motive people to do something for you, you want to motivate them by giving a compelling reason to do so.

The classic way to motivate people to spread the word is to offer them an incentive: “Pass this on and we’ll give you ____” (fill in the ____ with your creativity).            

Motivating doesn’t need to be overt as sometimes people are motivated to pass things on for more subtle reasons. Ever noticed how many jokes get passed on from one email address to another? The reason they get passed on is you generally found them funny and want to share the humour with a friend.

Knowing the value of viral marketing, a number of software applications have been spawned to assist your viral marketing efforts.

There was plenty of hype around Mike Filsaime’s Viral Friend Generator when it was launched and I recommend as the best viral marketing tool to use for your website.

Tell A Friend Script

One of the easiest methods in viral marketing is using a tell-a-friend script. This is a simple programming script that you can attach to the programming of your website. Generally, tell a friends script are installed in pages where a media is placed so that a person can easily send the media to any of his friends or his family members.

The basic concept of  a tell a friend script is a script wherein a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

 With the e-mail sent and opened the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. The along with it is another tell a friend script.

Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see would go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting to great number of potential customers.

 Tell A Friend Script Availability

 A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box “tell a friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

With a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

It is imperative that you have patience in using a tell a friend script. If your chosen media doesn’t get the mileage that is expected of it, it may take some time before it gets spread or shared. But surely many people will see your ads and there is great probability that they will visit your site increasing your traffic flow.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Tools For Your Business by the silent avatar
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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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