Personal Blog of Forest Marie

In online business, the only way of keeping in touch with your prospects and customers is through emails. You can run email campaigns to generate leads, you can send emails to convert leads to customers and you can send emails to answer customer queries. Email is the universal means of communication on the internet.

Technology also makes it possible for you to automate your campaigns so that you are free to devote your time to other priorities of building the business. Most of the limitations of offline marketing are overcome with online email campaigns.

In the offline system, you send out nice colorful brochures to your prospect which is highly expensive and time consuming. And when you need to upgrade your collaterals, you have to spend more money. On the other hand, with emails, there is no cost attached to your campaigns and you are free to update your material as often as you want. I am going to give you 5 ways to develop hard hitting email campaigns.

1. Capture leads automatically: Use lead capture pages dedicated to collect email ids of prospective customers. Set up a special website just for this purpose and promote its URL as aggressively as you can all over the internet. Let this be the door from where your leads enter your business. Once you get these emails ids, you can send messages whenever you want.

2. Go at your own speed: You need to move the leads through the sales process to get them to buy your products. You can do this at your own speed. On the first day, you can explain the common problems faced by people and how all their search for information does not bear any fruit. Next you can show them how your products offer solutions and finally you can offer discounts to convert the lead to a customer. All the while you are supplying valuable information to your list members which builds your brand.

3. Automate your process: This is the only way you can make more money in the online business. When you automate one campaign you need not monitor it. The software continues to repeat the same process for every lead and automatically moves him to the shopping cart. You can use autoresponders to manage your email campaigns and track how many people clicked on the link in the emails.

4. Customer support: This is the only thing you have to do manually since the software cannot handle this. To simplify further, you can include an extensive FAQ in your site so that customers can find answers by themselves before raising a ticket.

5. Multiply you business: Once you set up one automated business, you can move on to another and over a period of time, you can multiply your income hundreds of times.

Finally, keep yourself up to date on the latest trends in email marketing. Find out if there are other software that gives you more freedom and keep on upgrading your systems.

Business email marketing

Would you like to publish your own internet magazine? Why not? It is one of the best ways to develop a relationship with your customer or prospect. Whether you want to build a list of prospects or maintain customer loyalty, the ezine is unbeatable. With autoresponders, the task of managing ezines becomes even easier. I will share with you 5 steps to get started with your ezine.

1. Select a Theme: This is an important first step. If you already have a product and a business, then your choice of a theme is dependent on that. If you already have a well-defined niche market, then you have a starting theme. However, you need to decide based on the profitability of the segment, your expertise and your long term interest. A niche is profitable when there are many people with problems but not many providers with solutions.

2. Develop Content: Your task is to develop high quality content which gives useful information to your list. I would suggest that you write your ezine yourself since that would be a great opportunity to talk to your list directly. However, if you have other priorities, you can consider hiring a freelancer to write it for you. Ensure that he understands your business and products well and review his work before publishing.

3. Set up an Autoresponder: When you have an autoresponder, you do not have to bother about sending out that personal welcome letter to every new member who joins your list. The software does it automatically. You can even track who has opened and read your ezine. Two popular autoresponders are AWeber and GetResponse.

4. Develop a Lead Capture Page: The purpose of this page is to get as many subscribers for your list as possible. Most lead capture pages, also known as squeeze pages have a bold headline that captures your attention, followed by brief points in bullet form and finally a sign-up form where the person has to enter his name and email. This form is also known as the opt-in form.

5. Email ezine: Depending on your product and business need, send out your ezine on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Or you can use a combination for different themes. Try out which suits your leads the best. Send out regular informative ezines and in between send out promotional offers for your products. I have seen these to work the best for me.

Having your own ezine is an important component of your online business without which you will not be able to develop a targeted list and interested leads.

Business email marketing, ezine

Successful internet businesses are built on developing and leveraging a targeted email list of subscribers. When you have a focused target audience, your selling efforts will bear fruits otherwise they will be totally wasted. It is obvious that if you are addressing a group of people who are not interested in your product, then you cannot expect to get business out of them. So, to grow your business, you need to focus on building a targeted list first.

• Determine your niche market: You must narrow your focus and select a niche market which is not too broad. The selection will depend on the kind of product you are selling if you already have one. If you do not have a product, then there is a different way of finding a niche which is based on your interest or passion. For now, I will assume that you want to rent out videos. If you go for the broader end, you are in the entertainment niche while if you narrow your focus too much, you can be in the niche of “Clint Eastwood Westerns”. There is nothing to prevent you from specializing in it but audience which likes one type of westerns might like other type of movies also. So you can select your niche as “Action films”.

• Build a targeted list: When you have finalized your niche, you need to understand more about the people in that niche. What places they are likely to visit, what are their hobbies and what sites they browse. So you can place your advertisements at those places and entice them to your lead capture pages. Start associating your brand with western movies and build your awareness across the internet. Go for article marketing, blog posting and PPC advertising. Keep publishing great informative content on your films which would be of interest to people. Broadcast clips of movies on YouTube and give a link to your squeeze page. All these methods will bring only the interested set of people to your site and then you will not have to spend effort in selling them your product.

• Send targeted messages: Now that you have a set of people interested in western movies, you can develop and send sharply focused sales messages to these people who will not find them out of context because they have chosen to subscribe to your newsletter. Use all the standard sales techniques like explaining benefits, displaying testimonials from satisfied customers and making promotional offers. Keep hitting your message at regular intervals and you will find that your sales start to increase with less and less effort.

So long as you send the right information, have high quality content on your site, you will keep getting targeted leads.

Business email marketing

Tell me honestly how many unsolicited emails you delete simply because you did not find the subject interesting. Or how many emails you opened just because you found the subject interesting. I can bet a thousand dollars that 9 out of 10 mails are deleted instantly because they fail to grab the attention of the user and 1 mail is opened because you want to find out what’s inside.

That was for unsolicited emails – those which you are not expecting. Now we turn to the other set. You might be receiving emails from sites where you have subscribed or opted in. So you are expecting them. But still, if the subject line is not attractive, you might still delete it without opening.

I believe that if you are a regular user of email marketing, then you must pay extra attention to your subject line, irrespective of the content inside. Here are some points that you need to focus on.

1. Compose a message that is short and captures the imagination of the receiver. It is not necessary that you summarize the contents of your email. You might want to highlight just one point from your email. The subject line should tacitly say – click me, click me.

2. Even if you are sending weekly newsletters or updates, you must compose an attractive subject line. It does not matter whether it is long or short, but just take care that it can be read completely from the inbox. There is no point writing a long sentence which is not displayed fully in the inbox.

3. Create curiosity, mystery and urgency. For instance, “Find out how a 20 year old became a millionaire in a month”. Now you must have content or a video to support that storyline. Another one – “2 days left for you to register for the so and so Webinar”. You might want to use the word “free” in your subject to gain attention but be warned that overuse can reduce its significance. In fact, some spam filters look for the word free in the subject and classify the message as spam.

4. A neat trick is to use the name of the receiver in the subject line. You can do this using an autoresponder. I never fail to notice the emails whose subject says – Hey Forest, have you seen the video…” Autoresponders will also tell you who opened your email and who clicked the link inside. Then you can further program it to send a different set of emails to each group of people.

5. If you are in touch with the latest in your industry, then use the latest buzzwords in your subject line. Almost all people will be keen to know what happening.

There is so much competition out there that you need to be very smart in implementing your email campaign. I will emphasize again that the title is more than 90% crucial in getting your email opened.

Business email marketing

To Open or Not Open

Tell me honestly how many unsolicited emails you delete simply because you did not find the subject interesting. Or how many emails you opened just because you found the subject interesting. I can bet a two to one that 8 out of 10 mails are deleted instantly because they fail to grab the attention of the user and the two that are opened because you want to find out what’s inside.

That was for unsolicited emails – those which you are not expecting. Now we turn to the other set. You might be receiving emails from sites where you have subscribed or opted in. So you are expecting them. But still, if the subject line is not attractive, you might still delete it without opening.

I delete several a day myself because they’re boring…

I believe that if you are a regular user of email marketing (and you should be!), then you must pay extra attention to your subject line, irrespective of the content inside. Here are some points that you need to focus on.

5 Tips for Better Email Marketing

1. Compose a message that is short and captures the imagination of the receiver. It is not necessary that you summarize the contents of your email. You might want to highlight just one point from your email. The subject line should tacitly say – open me, open me!

2. Even if you are sending weekly newsletters or updates, you must compose an attractive subject line. It does not matter whether it is long or short, but just take care that it can be read completely from the inbox. There is no point writing a long sentence which is not displayed fully in the inbox.

3. Create curiosity, mystery and urgency. For instance, “Find out how a 20 year old became a millionaire in a month”. Now you must have content or a video to support that storyline. Another one – “2 days left for you to register for the so and so Webinar”. You might want to use the word “free” in your subject to gain attention but be warned that overuse can reduce its significance. In fact, some spam filters look for the word free in the subject and classify the message as spam.

4. A neat trick is to use the name of the receiver in the subject line. You can do this using an autoresponder. I never fail to notice the emails whose subject says – Hey Forest, have you seen the video…” Autoresponders will also tell you who opened your email and who clicked the link inside. Then you can further program it to send a different set of emails to each group of people.

5. If you are in touch with the latest in your industry, then use the latest buzzwords in your subject line. Almost all people will be keen to know what happening.

There is so much competition out there that you need to be very smart in implementing your email campaign. I will emphasize again that the title is more than 90% crucial in getting your email opened.

Copywriting, Internet Marketing email marketing, how to, tips