The email list. Every internet marketing and small business owner out there has one, and for many of your it may well be your most prized possession.

The standard internet business model has as its aim 1) acquire email addresses, and 2) send offers to these addresses. Hence the big list – all the email addresses that you’ve acquired over the years, and with whom you regularly keep correspondence, and regularly pitch offers to.

However, you can make your email marketing campaigns so much more successful by learning how to break this list down into relevant segments and then making your product pitches and promotions only to the most relevant sections.

Learn their Preferences

The basic idea of breaking your email list down into segments is to learn the buying habits and preferences of different groups of people on your master list.

So, for instance, say that over the course of several emails to your master email list, you make a few product recommendations. Say you make one for an affiliate’s SEO book, and one for a PPC product. Hopefully you’ll get a few sales out of those recommendations. Now, based on who clicks through and makes a purchase, you’ve got valuable information about several of your readers.

So, for the people who responded favourably to the SEO book, you know that they have a strong interest in SEO. Strong enough to make a purchase based on it. So you put them in a separate sub-category, and when you have another product related to SEO you can pitch it only to them, instead of to the entire list.

Going Forward

There are two major benefits here. The first is that you learn the buying preferences of your customers, allowing you to make future recommendation to them based upon those preferences.

The second is that you also know what they are not interested in. This is arguably even more important than knowing their interests. There are few ways to get people to unsubscribe from your emails faster than by repeatedly offering them products in which they have no interest.

By properly segmenting your email marketing list, you’ll be able to avoid this problem. Over time, as you learn more and more about your readers’ preferences, you’ll be able to make increasingly relevant product recommendations, and your customers will start to see you as more of an advisor than a salesperson.

Trust me when I say that gaining this level of trust from your customers is one of the smartest business decisions that you can make.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

I write a lot on this blog about generating leads and increasing your visibility. These are essential business practices, and the true path to business success. However, generating leads is easier said than done.  One excellent way to turn site visitors into leads and potential clients is by making them an offer – giving them something of value in exchange for them taking one step towards a purchase. However, there is a right way to go about doing this, and several wrong ways.

What Is an Offer?

As mentioned above, an offer is something that you provide to your customers at no monetary cost to them. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t get anything of value. Typically, offers are provided in exchange for an email address, which allows you to open a direct line of communication with a site visitor.

When you’re designing an offer, you have a wide variety of options to choose from, and what your offers look like will ultimately depend on your industry niche and your personal tastes. Some types of offers that I’ve had the most success with in the past include podcasts and webinars, how-to guides, and ebooks. However, that for my particular industry. You may find that in your industry a free demo or a product trial is more appropriate.

This is a good time to offer a few words of warning about what you shouldn’t consider an offer. Product and company materials, contact information, and customer testimonials and case studies are not offers. They are materials that should be on your website, but they should be freely available for everyone to see. They do more to benefit you that way, and your customers will not be very likely to give you their valuable email address in exchange for something that they consider worthless.

How to Use Offers Effectively

There are two keys to the effective use of offers. First, you need to target the right people with differentiated offers, and you need to promote your offers adequately and effectively. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t.

To target the right people, you should begin by creating several offers – several pieces of material – and offering them to the people who you think can benefit most from each one. This means creating different offers for people at different points in the sales process, and with different buying patterns.

Promoting your offers effectively is mostly a matter of intelligent website design, and knowing where to position your offers in regards to the content that is already on your site. For instance, if you’re offering a free ebook on SEO, you would want to promote it to readers of the articles on your blog that deal with improving a site’s search engine ranking.

Remember, a customer’s email address is a valuable thing – treat it as such. Give them something of value in exchange for the ability to communicate directly with them when you want to. You’ll be happier, they’ll be much more satisfied, and your business will be much more profitable as a result.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

In a recent post entitled “Improve Your Email Marketing Etiquette For A More Successful Campaign”, I covered some of the basic email etiquette principles which will help increase the success of your marketing campaigns.

In this post I am going to look at four further ways you can improve your open and read rate by personalising the way you approach your email marketing campaigns.

Personalise Your Emails

When an email lands in your inbox the first thing you notice is the subject line, so many marketers will try and optimise this the its fullest in order to entice the recipient to open it. The first hurdle of email marketing is getting people to open the email rather than just deleting it, so I recommend you use the prospect’s name in the subject line as this immediately stands out.

Something like “Sean, download your six free cheat sheets today” will work much better than just “Six Free Cheat Sheets”, as the second example screams Spam email. Continue to use the prospect’s name throughout the email as this personal feel should encourage them to read on.

Give Them A Name To Reply To

The personalisation approach works in two parts; not only should you refer to the prospect by name, but you should also refer to yourself by name. Make sure the email comes from a real person, with a real name and a proper email address that the prospect can respond to. After all, email marketing is all about engaging and requesting a response, so if they can’t reply to you directly then they’re not likely to respond at all.

Also, sending an email from an info@ or no-reply@ address makes it very clear that this a mass send out, and that puts people off opening your email from the minute it hits their inbox.   

Plain Text Wins Over HTML

As aesthetically pleasing as HTML enabled emails are, they don’t get opened and read as often as plain text emails. Not only are they obviously a form of promotional email, but often recipients’ emails aren’t HTML enabled, so all the pictures and links are missing from them anyway.

If your prospects can’t read your email properly then they will simply bin it, so sticking to a plain text email ensures that your email gets through in full. It also looks less spam like and by combining this with the personalisation features I’ve discussed above, you should find that more of your emails get opened and read, because they look and feel like a direct correspondence rather than a mass email blast.

Avoid “Spam” Words And Phrases

Spam words and phrases are a pet hate of mine! Not only will you put the recipient off opening your email but it’s not even likely to reach their inbox, as spam filters will pick it up and “junk” it before your prospects even see it. Words and phrases such as “Earn extra cash”, “Bargain” and “You’re a Winner!” will be sniffed out and binned in no time so there is no point even sending the email.

You may think that everyone wants something for nothing, but the word “free” sets alarm bells ringing, so exchange this for “complimentary” instead and you should see a big difference in the response you get.

The key to getting the best out of your email marketing campaigns is to make the emails as “regular” as possible. By personalising the content to the recipient, sending them from a real person with a real email address and avoid spam-related HTML layouts and buzz words you will see an improved response rate to your campaigns.  

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Email marketing is an effective, fast and cost-free way to promote your business, but it can be tricky getting your message to stand out in the crowd of emails your prospects receive on a daily basis. The average professional is thought to receive around 100 emails a day, and a great deal of these will be a form of email marketing – so how can you ensure your email reaches its intended recipient and is opened and read?

People hate spam emails, which are just sent out on mass and often have no relevance to the recipient at all. In order to break through the tidal wave of spam emails your prospects will receive every day and make your email stand out as being a genuine and well thought out attempt to connect with your recipients, you need to consider some basic rules of email etiquette.

Make Your Contacts Relevant

Not every company will have managed to build up a successful contact database to engage with through email marketing, and there is nothing untoward or illegal about purchasing contact information for this purpose – but you must ensure that you are purchasing data from a reliable provider, and that the contacts have opted in to this database.

This is the first and most important rule of email marketing, but to ensure complete email etiquette you should also consider how relevant these contacts will be to what you are intending to contact them about.  If your product or service has no relevance to a particular group of people, then simply spamming them with emails and hoping it will bear fruit is pointless – it’s a waste of your time, and you will simply be making a bad name for yourself by not targeting the right people.

Make Your Content Relevant

Following on from the issue above, the content you send these recipients needs to be specific to them too. Some of your list may be interested in different offers or information than another sector, so make sure that the content you send to these prospects is specific to them. If it’s relevant and well thought out, it’s much more likely to be opened and read and this is the goal with email marketing.

Don’t Spam Your Contacts

When planning email marketing scheme you should not only consider how relevant your database and information is, but you should also consider how often you contact each list. Spamming them every day or every week is not going to get them to take an interest in you and it’s likely that you’ll just put them off you and your company. One well thought out and relevant email a month will gain a better response than simply bombarding them every day or week.

Acknowledge Unsubscribers

Although these contacts have opted in to this database, you should always respect any requests to unsubscribe from your list and not contact them again. People have the right to ask for this, and if you continue to spam unsubscribers you are only wasting your time and damaging your reputation with them. It’s also a good idea to email back and acknowledge the fact that they don’t wish to be contacted again, as it shows respect for their right to choose.

These four top tips for improving your email marketing etiquette should help you be more targeted and direct when conducting email marketing campaigns. Although you can never guarantee all of your recipients will open and read your emails, adhering to simple email etiquette techniques will certainly help increase your chances of gaining a positive response from your contacts.       

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

We have discussed email marketing before, but with the holiday season fast approaching, it may time for a quick update.  Though email blasts are not famed for their response rate, they are still one of the least expensive and easiest online marketing methods.  Email blasts can reach thousands of people in minutes, so they should still be included in your marketing efforts.  Putting together a series of quality emails to advertise your holiday sales is a simple task.  The truly difficult part is creating subject lines that drive sales.  Most emails will be deleted without ever being read.  The subject line is the key to getting people interested enough to open your mail.  Follow the three step process outlined below to get people to open your mail.

1. Don’t Beat Around the Bush

A subject line should be as direct as possible.  The body of your email can contain humour or subtlety, but the subject line needs to clearly communicate the purpose of the email.  Always convey the content of your message.  Let people know what they will be reading about, or when they open your message it will go directly into the trash.  A subject line must provide enough information to be interesting, but stay true to the meaning of the email.

2. Take the time to Brainstorm Options

The body of email may take several hours to create.  Take just as much time with the subject line; it is equally important.  The two pieces must work together.  The subject line draws people in, and the body sells the products.  Here are some basic ideas to start with:

• State the content simply and clearly (i.e. 30% off sale or your order has been shipped)
• Ask a question
• Number the steps to a desired result, 3,5,and 7 are often effective as they are short and sweet.
• Start with a How To.  Consumers are often interested in easy to understand guides.Focus on innovation. Include words like “new” “only” or “best”
• Set the stage for urgency. State the limited time frame.

3. Include a Call to Action

The subject line does not need to outright state the desired action, but it should drive in that direction.  If you want consumers to by a specific product, mention the special sale or the fact that it is new.  If you want them to respond to a questionnaire, include a question in your subject line.

Think through every aspect of each marketing effort to get the best results!

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Every move you make in a marketing campaign should be designed to accomplish one of several goals; inform, connect, brand, serve and/or sell.  The Internet has made customer interaction more personal than ever.  Prior to the advent of instant online communication, talking with a company could take weeks as letters travelled back and forth through the mail.  Now, communication is instantaneous and if a company takes more than a couple of days to respond to a request, it loses the opportunity to respond directly to a customer.  Even if subsequent communication occurs, the immediacy is lost, and the customer will no longer feel as important.  Thankfully, the Internet provides several alternatives to the plodding envelope.

Inform

A periodic newsletter is a great way to keep customers updated on what is happening within your company.  Industry news and news specific to your business should be answered here.  It is also a great place to post customer feedback and question and answer sessions.  If you routinely answer customer questions in this section, you give customers a public place to air their concerns.  This allows them to see how important they are to your company.

Connect

Business can be very impersonal, so it is important to be more than a faceless company.  Every action you take needs to develop a connection with consumers.  By creating an e-newsletter that is rich in detail about the people that make your company great, you give customers the connection they look for and build a lasting relationship.

Brand

Branding your company is one of the best things you can do to create simple and effective advertising.  An e-newsletter is a great place to have contests regarding logo creation and ad slogans.  Provide consumers with the information about your company’s goals and achievements and invite them to participate in the process.  This connects them, while simultaneously helping to develop your company’s brand image.

Serve

No matter the industry, the first priority should be to serve your clientele.  Even if you are in a direct sale business, where you market products rather than services, there are still plenty of opportunities to serve your clientele.  Product testing and honest reviews go a lot further than many businesses realise, and an e-newsletter is the perfect place for this type of information.  Small how-to guides can also be included to better serve customers.

Sell

While all marketing is ultimately designed to sell, in an e-newsletter it should be a very soft sale.  Instead of selling directly, the entire newsletter should speak to the customer about the value of dealing with your company, by providing valuable content.  At no point should you simply inundate them with sales speeches.

An e-newsletter gives you a great forum for marketing directly to customers and soliciting responses.  The best part about them is that they are very inexpensive to produce.  No company has a marketing budget that is too strapped for an e-newsletter.  If you don’t already produce one, start today!

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Consumers enjoy watching video that much is clear, witness the success of the magic box, also known as the television.  What consumers hate about television is the commercials.  You have probably already considered adding some video content to your website, but have you thought about adding it to your email blasts, as well?  Video is much more likely to generate a click thru than any other email content.  However, there are some things to remember about creating video marketing content for online distribution.

Keep it Informational, No Hard Sales

Consumers enjoy watching video content, but commercials are something to be endured or tolerated.  Don’t put a commercial in your email blasts; it works against your marketing efforts.  Instead, take the opportunity to teach customers about solutions that may help them.  Consumers are more interested in researching products before purchasing than ever before.  The availability of information via online sources allows consumers to make informed purchasing decisions.  You must ensure that your videos educate consumers, not only about your company or products, but about solutions to problems they experience.  Keep video content focused on customer needs, rather than company sales directives.  Video content needs to be used thoughtfully to build customer relationships.

Make an Emotional Appeal

Videos naturally trigger reactions that help develop trust, and including emotional content in the video will increase the potential impact.  Your video should talk to customers about problems they face and potential solutions.  The emotion should come out at the end, and connect with your brand.  By helping customers determine what they need or want, and by appealing to their emotions, you generate potential sales.  Including video content may not be something that you can do internally, so hiring a marketing company can help your business with the necessary production elements.

Email blasts are included in most marketing campaigns, and companies should always be on the look out for new ways to improve read rates.  Email blasts are still popular because they are cheap to produce, but they do not have the best success rate.  Many emails have a less than 10% read rate, which means that any strategy that can up that number is incredibly valuable.  Video content embedded in emails can increase read rates by up to 500%.  Make sure that your company is staying at the front of the marketing wave, so that you get the most benefit from your marketing efforts.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

A monthly or quarterly email newsletter is a great marketing tool that helps you stay connected with your clients and gives them regular updates about what your company is doing.  High quality content that is more than just a sales pitch encourages customers to actually read your e-newsletter and pass it along to friends.  An e-newsletter that strategically incorporates advertising in a non-invasive way lets you build a readership that will, over time, convert to a client base.  Providing useful and current information targeted around your industry to clients, keeps them interested and can be a great marketing tool when used effectively by following a few simple steps.

• Theme Each Issue

When producing a coherent newsletter choose one overriding theme on which to focus all content.  Research current events in your industry and provide up-to-the-minute information that is relevant and entertaining, while still pertaining to your chosen theme.  Also give readers behind the scenes information about your company.  Internal birthdays and celebrations should get an honourable mention to humanise your company and give potential customers something to relate to.

• Keep it Short and Conversational

An emailed newsletter should be more condensed than a paper newsletter.  Only a few carefully researched articles along with current information about your company should be included.  The entire newsletter should not be much more than 1,500 words, including advertising content.  Attractive layouts and careful attention to design will catch the eye of your readers and encourage them to finish the entire publication.

Keep in mind that this publication is not an encyclopaedia; its intent is to draw readers in, so keep the tone of articles very conversational.  The topics should also be chosen to appeal to your marketing demographic.  Make sure that your theme targets current events in a light-hearted fashion.  Your newsletter is intended to convey information, as it relates to your company.  A newsletter is a great place to let customers know about awards that you have received or to mention other news coverage about your company.

• Use Exciting Headlines

Most readers skim articles, but read headlines in full.  Make sure that your headlines are attention grabbing and interesting.  A good headline will draw in a reader and convince them to look at the entire article with more attention.

• Stick to a Scheduled Distribution

Instead of flooding in-boxes with information about your company, decide on a regular release schedule and stick to it.  Less can be a lot more with any form of email marketing.  Readers are much more likely to open your newsletter if they don’t add you to their spam list. To avoid being looked at as a spammer, simply keep your releases to a minimum.

Effective online marketing campaigns must include some form of email marketing.  A newsletter lets readers stay abreast of current industry news and new products or services being offered by a company. A newsletters first goal is to inform and selling comes in at a very distant second.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

An email mini-course is a valuable marketing tool because it serves both you and your potential clients, helping you get your message across while providing valuable information to readers.  Email mini-courses are a simple way to connect with readers and convert consumers into customers. The mini-courses are essentially a batch of “lessons”, with a soft sell at the end of the email. The concept is to get people interested in your product or service while helping them to learn something that is new to them and will be useful. The tool is a useful one, but only if done effectively which requires a few basic steps.

Choose a Defined Topic

 Existing content is a great place to start for creating an email mini-course, but it is important to keep the message consistent. There are some instances in which creating new content makes sense. For example, an existing company may want to promote a new product or share new information with its readers, while a new company will often need to start from scratch.

Creating Content

Each mini-course should, ideally, have 8-12 lessons spread out over a couple of weeks. Within these lessons should be pieces running between 500 and 800 words each. The content should be eye-catching and informative when writing lessons to send to readers.

If it is the first lesson, then the first paragraph should cover what will be taught in the lesson before diving in to the lesson directly. However, if this is any other lesson, in addition to writing about the content of the current lesson, there should be a re-cap of the previous one. After the main content is posted (the lesson), make sure to close with a preview of the following lesson. This is also where you could put a promotion or you could save it for a P.S., in order to make it so readers do not think this is only a sales piece. Make sure all parts of the email are compelling and will keep readers interested.

Scheduling Lessons

Auto-responders are a useful tool for getting lessons sent out to people reading your emails. It gives you the option of keeping in contact with your email list automatically and allows you to schedule the times emails are sent, rather than sitting at the computer for hours on end.  Many people choose to send messages once a week or once a day, but, more commonly the choice is to send emails every other day.

Effective email marketing campaigns often include email mini-courses which serve to inform readers and also promote a company’s products or services. These tools contain lessons regarding something related to what a company offers or the industry in which it operates. The messages must be engaging and informative first, promotional last.

Thanks!

Sean

Internet Marketing Academy

Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

Most marketers really mess this part up.

They go through the trouble building a list, creating a product, and driving traffic.  Yet they fail to realize the importance of following up with your list after people have opted in.

Believe it or not (depending on your market and product) most of your sales are going to come through your follow-up emails.

Why?

Because most people aren’t going to buy from you right away.

It has been said that people have to be exposed to your marketing message at least 7 times before they buy from you.  In offline marketing this follow-up was usually performed by simple phone calls and postcards.

But online this is performed with email marketing.

To do this properly, you have to program in at least 7-10 emails that will be sent every 1-2 days after people opt into your list.  The emails should resell the customer on the benefits of your product and why they should buy.

In other words, you’re basically restating the sales pitch they saw the first time, but didn’t buy from.  But this time you are slowly feeding it to them through your email autoresponder series.

Yet most marketers do not pay attention to this aspect of marketing.  They concentrate on testing and tweaking the sales letter and offer.

Yet the real gold is in having  a killer email autoresponder series that works on autopilot for you–delivering your marketing message again and again to them.

Best part: it doesn’t even matter if they open the email. If they see your name and subject line in their inbox, you will stay in your prospects conscience and when they ARE ready to buy, they will open that email and go to your sales page.

So before you launch your next product, don’t skimp on the email autoresponder series. Believe it or not, this will probably result in most of your sales.

Because the key is in the follow-up.

Live, Love, Laugh!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Internet Marketing Academy