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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Strategies for Email List

Email marketing requires thoughtful attention to be directed to both email message and email list. This is attributed to the fact that both are components integral and vital to the success of email marketing. The truth of the matter is that the email list is the potential source of future online wealth. If it is efficiently managed, the building of the email list will be realized and the current email marketing campaign will then have achieved its objectives.

How best and in what ways can building the email list be achieved? There are various strategies to build an email list that is creditable, reliable and is capable of capturing prospects for your online business.

(1) Decide on how to target your market

Determine precisely what will be your niche product or service that you have a strong passion in. This enables you to stand out well above the rest in terms of knowledge and expertise. Devise a real catchy name for the purpose of targeting your market. Equally important will be the tag line which is in essence the unique selling proposition for the brand of product or service that will in turn reveals the identity of your website.

(2) Get hold of the attention of your target market

This is an important step that will capture the attention of a targeted audience. All that is needed is a short description of about fifteen words about your list or even your newsletter. Subsequent descriptions would include writing a thirty word as well as a one hundred word description solely about the benefits of your product or service. It is important to put in more emphasis and attention to the unique selling proposition, as it helps in the garnering of favorable customer perception about your product or service. Do not forget to include a strong and compelling rationale to induce future subscriptions.

(3) Plan a schedule for your list

Putting up a proper and systematic schedule to activate your email list ensures that the whole process runs smoothly. The list system requires an effective format and regulated frequency to run the follow-ups. These may be done by issuing a weekly or biweekly regular e-zine or newsletter.

(4) Devise a lead generation system

Construct a powerful lead generation system making use of your salesletter. With flawless support from a good sequential autoresponder, you can now send in a pre-set timing about five follow-up emails. This serves to welcome new subscribers and lay the foundation for the building of customer relationships.

(5) Make full and effective use of your website traffic

With the traffic that is slowly coming into your website, prompt action must be taken to take advantage of it. Make hay while the sun shines. Harness this website traffic to support your primary aim of building your contact list. With the opt-in box in appropriate places on your website, make the sale giving these people the choice of signing up. Another appropriate way to gather names of potential subscribers is to make use of the pop-up box, which can be quite effective in capturing leads.

(6) Make use of auto-launching

With the list of names of subscribers on hand, it is appropriate to perform follow-ups with them by making use of the auto-responder system to send five email messages at pre-set timing. Each follow-up can be accompanied by a bonus or freebies that you can offer for free. Incidentally, you can upsell to increase your revenue from the list. This is another great sales mechanism in operation on the internet. There is actually the opportunity to capitalize on leverage. It is imperative to note that permission to send these emails must have been first given by the subscribers. It is strongly recommended to include in each outgoing email message this clause: " You have received this email because you're a subscriber to our newsletter. Click here if you wish to unsubscribe". This inclusion serves to eliminate issues of privacy and prejudice of spam.

(7) Submission of your list

Build the list massively by submitting it to different directories. This is the route by which you can harness the power of websites and lists that currently have high traffic, and increase your own subscription list.

(8) Gain recognition in your niche

Create a huge inflow of traffic especially the targeted audience to your website to gain recognition for your expertise in your niche. This is best achieved through writing an article about five hundred words on your niche, and have it submitted to different publishers and article directories. When visitors assess you as an expert in your niche, they will visit your website through its address which you have indicated in the resource box to sign up for your list.

(9) Create your own sig file

A sig file serves to make yourself easily contactable with the visitors. It consists basically of your name, email address, statement of benefit and a return link or email. The components of email address and the return link that will bring the visitor to your website are basically means to contacting you. Another potential source of list building is via viral marketing. Word-of-mouth marketing by subscribers will create the massive impact that viral marketing is well-known for.

(10) Advertise

Get to advertise on e-zine ads and pay-per-click search engines. Ensure costs are kept to a minimum. This process actually permits a great opportunity for those who did not buy the first time. The ad copy with the hundred word description may be used here to drive traffic to your website.

(11) Affiliate marketing

This concept supports the simultaneous building of your list and capturing of customers. It is a commendable system that helps you to search for, make contact, and build relationships that are beneficial to your niche. A good recommendation with regards to affiliate marketing will be starting your own affiliate program. This is the ultimate system for the building of the email list.

(12) Partnership

To accelerate and increase the traffic to your website and to gain exponential growth in your income, it is always possible to partner another marketer in increasing each other's visibility through each other's resource box. Spread the word about each other and the products or services that are offered by both of you. The possibility of virally increasing the sign-ups is obviously very high.

(13) Pay for leads

Buying leads from co-registration companies will be another option to accelerate results in building an email list. The plus factor will be the saving in time, otherwise it will take a while to get subscribers into your list to build it up fast.

(14) Always be on the lookout for leads

Seminars and networking events are great opportunities to building your list. Collect business cards and perform follow-ups through personal emails or phone calls, asking them if they would be interested to be on your email list. It is prudent to remember that permission must be given first before sending out those emails. Do ensure that there is no spam.

Building the email list requires a great amount of planning and effort to bring in the results. The marketing aspect with respect to the email list must be given serious consideration. The strategies listed above are by no means exhaustive. Nevertheless, they should prove effective in contributing to the building of a respectable email list.


by : Jeremy Long Chia Teik

Monday, February 11, 2008

10 Things You Can Do With Your Autoresponder

Think of an autoresponder as a 24 hour sales person, not pushy, aggressive or irritating. By using an autoresponder, you will never have to deal with rejection because no one will hang up on you, pretend like they are not home when you knock on the door, or close the door in your face. Your autoresponder helps you to build trust with a subscriber list that has given you permission to contact them and wants to hear what you have to say. Even if they change their mind, the autoresponder will take care of unsubscribing them from your list and you do not have to deal with rejection of any kind.

The main purpose of using an autoresponder is to follow-up with your prospects. Provide them with valuable information, gain their trust and you have greatly increased the chances of them buying from you or buying affiliate products that you are recommending. Each message that you send to your prospects should have links to your website and links to your affiliate products. You can drastically increase your income just by using an autoresponder.

Your autoresponder works tirelessly for you at all times of the day. It generates and responds to e-mails for you even when you are away from the computer so you can have more free time to do other things. Autoresponders dramatically reduce the need for you to constantly check your e-mails to personally respond to each email in a timely manner. You will increase the trust and confidence the customer has in you when you are responsive to their e-mails which in turn increases your chances of retaining the customer and making further sales to them.

Here are 10 ways to use your autoresponder to save you time and increase your income.

1. Use your autoresponder to collect the e-mail addresses of the people who subscribe to your mailing list.
2. Set your autoresponder to automatically respond to frequently asked questions.
3. Send news about special promotions or coupons for the products or services you offer.
4. Immediately welcome new e-mail subscribers or thank people for subscribing to your newsletter.
5. Automate the process of sending order confirmations and thank you letters.
6. Send e-courses sent to the subscriber delivered in a time interval that you specify.
7. Give away free viral e-books and reports related to the niche of your website.
8. Send offers to those that have ordered from you in the past, as they will be more likely to buy from you again.
9. Send articles, reports and newsletters that offer great content and promote your website
10. Send a broadcast message to your entire list at anytime when you have a special message you want to send your prospects about a new product or service that they could benefit from.


by : Nina Greene

When To End Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Deciding when to end an marketing campaign is one subject which many business owners may struggle with on a regular basis. This decision can be difficult both in situations in which the campaign is enjoying a great deal of success and in situations in which the campaign is failing.

In general business owners will have to evaluate a number of different criteria to make this decision and there is no one specific formula which will work for all business owners.

In this article we will examine three different scenarios including a successful email marketing campaign which is approaching a logical conclusion, a marketing campaign which is failing and a successful campaign which may be able to run indefinitely.

First we will examine the case of a successful email campaign which is approaching a logical conclusion. In some cases it may be logical for a bussiness owner to conclude his email marketing efforts. The most obvious example is a campaign which is focused on achieving a specific goal and not selling products or services.

For example a marketing campaign which is political in nature may start off slowly, peak during a time when voters are most interested in obtaining information about the issues and then begin to wane as the voting process begins and the majority of voters have already made their decision.

Similarly a marketing campaign which is focused on collecting donations for a specific charity will logically end as the goal is reached. These email marketing campaigns may be highly successful but there is simply no reason to continue them beyond when the goals is reached.

Next we will consider the case of a marketing campaign which is not achieving its goal. Deciding when to end an email marketing campaign of this nature can be difficult because it will involve a number of different factors.

For example if the business owner is investing a great deal of time and money into email marketing and not generating results despite an honest effort it may be time to end this marketing campaign.

However, if the business owner has not invested a great deal in the campaign and has a few remaining ideas for turning the campaign into a success, it might be worthwhile to continue the email campaign for a little longer to see if the desired goals can be met.

Finally, it is important to note that email marketing campaigns do not always have to come to an end. Consider a niche topic such as search engine optimization (SEO).

A business owner who has been producing and distributing monthly e-newsletters on this subject and receiving a positive response to these email marketing tools, there is not reason for him to discontinue the email marketing as long as he is still capable of producing the e-newsletters.

Similarly to the way many magazines have been in publication for years and years it is possible for an e-newsletter to remain active for as long s there is a need and an interest in the information being provided. In our example of a business owner publishing an SEO newsletter, the need for this product remains because SEO is continually evolving and recipients of the e-newsletter may anticipate receiving the e-newsletter each month to get more information on current trends in the industry.

by : Jo Han Mok