6. Exploding Your Profits through Email Marketing
Email marketing is pretty similar, but with one important difference: online, you can only send marketing emails to people who have already requested to receive them. And, because those people have already chosen to receive your emails, you can be a lot more confident that they will read your offers and buy from you.
6.1 Collecting Opt-In Email Addresses
Email is still the most popular and most used communication medium on the Internet. It’s also an efficient way to distribute your message to large numbers of people who have requested that information. As a form of marketing, it generates high response rates and gives you measurable results with instant feedback.
Just keep in mind, it is never acceptable to send commercial email to people who haven’t requested to receive email from you. Bust that rule, and there’s a good chance you’ll be out of business. That gives you the challenge of building up a list of willing subscribers.
When you’re first starting out, there’s often a temptation to simply purchase an opt-in email list. Lots of people sell them and you can easily pick up a million or so addresses for just a few bucks. But while that may appear to be a fast, easy way to build up customers, the names on the list may not be up to date and they are not even opt-in contacts at all. To say it bluntly, emailing people from a list like that is called spamming.
Similarly, there are also programs that automatically crawl the web, recording every email address they find. These will let you quickly build up a huge list of email addresses. But, nobody will thank you when you stuff their inboxes with marketing material. Forget about them; they’re not worth the effort. It’s much safer, and much more effective, to take the time to build your own real opt-in list.
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6.2 Double Opt-in
Marketing by email can attract new customers, keep existing ones, up-sell, cross-sell, and cut costs. E-merchant Wine.com, for example, found email campaigns drove twice as many "best prospects" to their site compared to banner ads or other Internet marketing activities.
If executed improperly though, email campaigns can backfire with disastrous business consequences. How to minimize the risk and maximize the return? Part of the answer is a common sense approach called "permission" or "opt-in" marketing, in which customers or prospects volunteer to receive email.
The odds of users joining a list can be improved by providing three opt-in opportunities, all with low entry barriers. First, there should be minimal sign-up work. Many sites require only an email address; all other personal information is optional. Second, there should be several sign-up opportunities on a site, including on the inquiry, order, and feedback forms. These forms may use a checkbox asking prospects if they would like to receive occasional special offers/newsletters by email. If so, it must be placed conspicuously on the form. Third, a privacy policy that addresses what will be done with user information should be posted in an obvious place.
Continuing on the lines of “opt-in” marketing, one of the most successful methods is the double opt-in technique. In double opt-in a user elects to receive email newsletters or standalone commercial messages. A confirmation email is sent to that user, who is now required to take one more action to be included on the list. The person must click the link within the confirmation email to affirm their intent to join your mailing list.
Although, the double opt-in techniques runs the risk of losing subscribers during the confirmation process, it gives the subscribers more control and thus, has proven to be more successful. That said, here are some measures emailers who practice double opt-in can take to reduce confirmation drop-offs.
When a user enters his address, mention an email will be sent to him and include its estimated arrival time. Indicate the user is required to respond to that message to receive subsequent mailings. With transactional customers, consider placing this information on the page with order confirmation.
Ideally, a confirmation message is sent immediately. It should be sent while the subscription is fresh in subscribers' minds and they're still engaged in an online session. If you indicate it will be within a day or two, make sure you follow through on that promise. If your systems are slower, then requirements related to message content are even more relevant.
If you need a confirmation, that's the only thing you should ask for. Explain to users they will not be added to the list until they take the necessary action. Most desirable is a one-click confirmation link embedded in the message. Giving users a reply option with subject line intact is another good approach. Requiring them to write something in the subject line or body of the message or asking them to forward the email on to another address is not nearly as effective. Ensure that your contact information is included in the confirmation message and, if possible, include a link to your privacy policy.
6.3 Intelligent Targeting Through Tailor Made Research
As with any other marketing campaign, careful planning and proven techniques are the best way to deploy the most effective campaigns and to realize the highest response rates. The key: putting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time. Targeting your emails is crucial for any email marketing campaign. No product or service can be all things to all people. Acknowledging this reality, targeting is simply focusing your marketing onto a specific niche. The two factors that you alter to target your email campaigns are targeting the message, and targeting the list.
Targeting your message means tailoring your message to the expected audience. For example, you may have two pitches for your product: one that concentrates on the radical new features of the product, and another that details the tremendous cost and time savings from using it. You can also target the ad used for the email campaign. You might have two versions, one that uses a clean list of bullet points, and another that features highly stylized text that flies across the screen.
You also need to target (i.e. subdivide) your email lists. Targeted messages will be more effective when sent to an appropriate group of recipients. Continuing the example above, you would send the product feature pitch and technical information to technical people, and send the cost savings information to finance people.
The primary rule of effective targeting is deceptively simple: figure out what your target groups wants, and then offer it to them. How do you go about doing that? Simple, try asking some of your existing customers. Another way to know what actually works is to send a test campaign to a sample of your targeted group. Once you have the attention of the recipient, for an all too brief moment, the biggest factor in obtaining a positive response is usually how valuable the offer is perceived to be. Providing something of actual value that really speaks to the target is a requirement.
Tell a story to each targeted group over a series of messages. This will help lead to increasing the permission level with each recipient. As you learn more about each other you will be able to utilize more sophisticated targeting. Once you begin to establish a dialog with your target, eventually a true one-to-one marketing relationship can develop.
Unless you have an unlimited budget for your marketing efforts, you need to make sure that every dollar invested counts. You need to target your email campaigns, or else much of your efforts are being wasted. Be careful to target accurately, or your campaign might miss the target or even work against you. Deliver the correct message to the correct group of recipients, and the results from your campaigns will "hit the bull's-eye" and deliver a great boost to your profits.
Many marketers peg acquisition-based email response rates at historically low levels, primarily due to the high volume of messages in everyone's inboxes these days. Some believe that allocating any percentage of a marketing budget to acquisition-based email is waste.
However, this is not true. Although the true response rates for acquisition are typically lower than those for retention-based email, renting lists to win over prospects and grow a customer base can work wonders, if you do your homework.
Here are some guidelines that can help in buying or renting lists for achieving high ROI.
A frequency cap can ensure lists aren't over mailed. If a list manager can't provide the details on mailing frequency, look elsewhere. That organization probably lacks the control, technical expertise, and reporting basics. Also ask about recency selections. Newer names offer access to new subscribers.
Frequent uploads of new names and instant suppression of unsubscribes are a must. Your brand will be associated with spam by those who unsubscribed but still receive mailings before their request is processed. Lists that are housed and resold by multiple managers are probably mailed more frequently. This negatively impacts performance, brand equity and deliverability.
As email filtering becomes dominant, you must make sure list managers are up to speed on delivery techniques and processes. ISP relations and white listing are critical. Check all available blacklists for the list manager's IP addresses. List managers should be able to monitor delivery of their campaigns and ensure messages are delivered to the inbox, not a bulk mail folder.
Finally, the best-performing lists provide the most ability to slice and dice the file to find the right people for your offer. Sorting based on demographics, psychographics, and even specific stages of the buying cycle will almost always outperform untargeted mailings.
6.5 Creating Unblockable DHTML Pop-Ups
Pop-ups are mini windows that open when a user takes a particular action. That action could be anything from reaching the site, clicking onto a particular page, or even leaving the site. The problem with using a traditional pop-up on your site is that it will probably be blocked by one of various pop-up blocking tools on the market.
However, there are some types of pop-ups that do get around most of the pop-up blockers on the market and many online marketers use these “unblockable” DHTML pop-ups quite successfully.
In fact, many businesses use DHTML pop-ups in collaboration with joint venture partners as a way of sharing traffic, but they’re also great ways to collect visitors’ email addresses so that you can keep them informed and send them marketing material. It’s very effective.
So how do you add DHTML pop-ups to your site?
The easiest way to employ this technique is using software to build your DHTML pop-ups. You can download a software program for free that will creates DHTML pop-ups for you in a few easy clicks at: www.antssoft.com/wisepopup/ One of the best things about DHTML pop-ups is that they’re very easy to produce. It takes just a few lines of script inserted into the <HEAD> and <BODY> parts of your website and, using the software listed above, you don’t even need to hire a programmer to do it for you.
Anyone can do it. But there’s no point in having a working pop-up if the pop-up itself doesn’t have text that is persuasive enough to sell. There are a few sales tactics that you can use on your pop-up to make sure the visitor actually fills in the form and sends you his details:
1. Give Them a Reason to Play
If you really want to make sure your visitors hand over their email addresses, offer them something in return. Free reports are good, ebooks are fine too. In fact, anything that’s free and relevant is likely to get results. You don’t have to go overboard here; if you can find a goody that won’t cost you anything, fantastic.
The title tag of your pop-up isn’t going to push it up the search engine listings, but it’s still important. If you leave it out, or worse, write something daft, like “mypopup”, no one’s going to take you seriously. Be professional and you’ll achieve professional results. Use a real title and make it interesting.
3. Use a Hard-Hitting Headline
I’ll talk about headlines in more detail later in this chapter. That being said, I can’t stress how important headlines are. You’ve got about two seconds to grab a reader’s attention and make them read. That’s the job of your headline. It’s got to focus on the benefits the user can expect by signing up:
“Increase Your Sales By 127%!”
“Learn How To Speak Swahili In Three Weeks Or Less!”
“FREE Marketing Newsletter! Sign Up Here!”
Use a boring headline and you’ll get a boring bottom line.
If your users have to wait more than a few seconds for the pop-up to download, the chances are they’ll close the window before it’s finished. Use minimal graphics and make sure everything’s optimized before you put it on the server.
5. Make it Sexy!
Slim doesn’t mean the same as dull. You can still use cool colors and attractive fonts, but make sure the pop-up looks professional. The copy has to be easy to read, and the whole page has to be good on the eye. Simplicity is key when it comes to effective pop-up design.
You might think it’s a good idea to keep the pop-up open until the user signs up. But if they’re not going to register to get the benefits you’re offering, are they likely to opt-in just to get rid of the pop-up box? And if they do, are they likely to buy from you? Keep your users happy; let them close the box easily if they want it out of the way. They might just buy something instead.
All right, so you’ve got the addresses. Now what are you going to do with them? Obviously, what you’re going to do is send your users marketing messages via email so that they’ll know all about the great products and services you offer.
There are two ways you can do that: you can send them a newsletter every couple of weeks or so; or you can send them a sales letter. Newsletters are very important for building trust with your subscribers and warming them up to your sales offers. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss newsletters in detail.
In the rest of this chapter, I’m going to explain how to write simple sales material that gets results. I’ll do that by concentrating on the two most important parts of any sales material: the headline and the call to action. Get those two right, and any piece of marketing material you produce — online or off — will get the results you want.
6.6.1 Writing Headlines That Grab Your Customers and Sell Your Goods!
Headlines are absolutely vital for all your marketing efforts. Whether you plan to use them on your website, your emails, your newsletters or anywhere else, they’re the hook that grabs your readers, reels them in and turns them into customers. There are dozens of different kinds of headlines that you can use and some of them are better than others. Below are the type of headlines that I use, and that I’ve found to be the most effective.
The No-Nonsense Headline
The first type of headline you can use is the simplest. No frills, no tricks, no hooks, just a straightforward description of the contents of your message. Your headline could be something like:
Tips to Save Money on Your Weekly Shopping
The Best Way to Choose Your Next Car
Real Estate Agents That Sell Properties Fast
Notice that you can still use explanations and powerful adjectives to get your point across, but these headlines do little more than tell the reader what to expect.
The advantages of these headlines is that they’re easy to write and easy to read. You don’t have to try to come up with some hard-hitting sales message and customers aren’t put off by a document that looks like a piece of promotional material. On the other hand, they are a bit weak and that makes them hard to turn into cash.
You can use no-nonsense headlines when you don’t need to work hard to make the sale. If you’re sending information that you know your customer will read, either because it’s free or they’ve specifically requested it, these are the kind of headlines to use.
Question headlines work by asking customers a question that plays on their worries and promises a solution. These are great when you really want to grab a customer and drive your message home.
Want To Save Thousands On Your Home Insurance Bills? Learn How To Cut Your Costs In Half!
Where Do You Look For Love? Discover The Best Places To Meet Your Match!
Suffering From Termites? Drive Them Out With The Extermite-Ator!
To write these headlines, think first of what problem your product is actually going to solve. (If it’s not going to solve a problem, then you’re going to have a problem selling it!) In the first half of the headline, you ask your customers if they’re suffering from the problem. Just by asking, you’re suggesting that they do. In the second half of the headline, you tell them that you have the solution. It’s very easy and extremely effective.
This is a really simple formula to follow: all you have to do is state the question and promise the answer. And it sells too; you’ve put the problem in the reader’s mind, now you’re offering the solution.
Of course, these kinds of headlines depend on the reader empathizing with the problem. If they don’t, or if they decide that the headlines look too long to read, they’re not likely to buy.
Question headlines are most effective when your product is going to clearly solve someone’s problem and when you know your customers are going to empathize with that problem. If they don’t say yes to the question, they’re going to say no to the sale.
The How Headline
This is pretty similar to the question headline, but only offers the solution. It makes for a shorter read than question headlines so you get your point across faster, but you lose the empathy.
How To Fix Up Your Home Without Breaking The Bank!
How I Made $3,000,000 With One Phone Call!
How I Lost 33 Pounds On A High Fiber Diet And A Revolutionary New Exercise Plan!
These kinds of headlines cut straight to the problem-solving aspect of your product. They’re short and to the point and can be easily absorbed with just a glance.
How Headlines are great when the rest of the document is going to reveal information. That information might just be details about your product, but the focus should always be on telling customers how they can solve a problem. These work best when you’re selling information products like books or newsletters.
There’s a good reason that magazines like Cosmopolitan use headlines like “6 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild!” They work. Most people are put off by the sight of a giant slab of text. They want their information in bite-sized chunks. When you put a number in your headline, you let your reader know that the information you’re offering them is going to be easy to read:
7 Ways To Make Your Computer Run Faster
15 Proven Ways To Make Money From Home
23 Sales Tools That Guarantee Success
The advantage of these headlines is that they promise easy reading, increasing the chances that your text will actually be read. It’s also easy to slip a call-to-action sales message into these kind of documents: one of the promised solutions can be: “buy my product”!
On the other hand, easy reading isn’t the same as interesting reading. The headline still has to grab your readers to make them want to read it.
Numbered Headlines are most effective when you’re confident your readers will find your message interesting and you don’t have to fight to make them read on. They’re best used when you’re competing against other articles or sales letters. I use them a lot in newsletters, especially when I know it’s going to be published in a joint venture partner’s newsletter.
The Testimonial Headline
These are some of the toughest headlines to write. You take a chunk of text from a letter written by a satisfied customer and use that as the headline for a sales letter:
“Last Year, I Was Working 12 Hours A Day And Making Just $36,000. Last Month, I Made $32,000 And Worked Three Days — All Due To The Amazing Techniques Revealed Below!”
“I’d Tried Every Weight Loss Program Ever. I’d Tried Dieting, Exercise, High-Fiber, Low Fat, High-Carbs... You Name It, I’d Done It And Nothing Worked. Then I Tried The Lose Fat Fast Program. I Lost 33 Pounds In The First Two Months And I’ve Never Felt Better!”
“Within A Week Of Sending Out My Resume, I’d Got Three Interviews And A Fantastic Job Offer. I Couldn’t Have Done It Without You!”
These headlines put your reliability right at the top, increasing the customers’ confidence to buy. They explain in detail precisely what you’re offering and what you can do for the reader. They also create massively long headlines that are difficult to absorb at a glance and can put a reader off.
Testimonial headlines are best used in industries where reliability is a bit of a problem. If you’re selling weight loss products for example, or any other life-changing service, then a headline like this goes some way towards proving to the buyer that you’re trustworthy.
Those are just five kinds of headlines that I use in my businesses every day. There are dozens more, but these are the ones that I’ve found the most effective. There’s certainly enough here for you to get started. Play around with them, figure out which ones would work best for your business and try them out.
But even the best headline will only grab a reader’s eye and get him reading. They won’t close the sale. After the headline you’ll need to describe all the wonderful benefits of your product in order to get the reader to actually take the action you want.
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6.6.2 Tips for Building Your Email Lists
A popular Internet battle cry states that “the money is in your list”. It’s true that you can make a lot of money by building a list of opt-in subscribers, establishing trust with those subscribers and sending those subscribers special offers promoting your products.
But you must do it correctly. Here’s a few tips that will help you get the most bang for your buck out of your list-building activities:
While requesting a visitor to sign up, collect information that is relevant to your business. A recent study lamented that most of the corporate probing was unnecessary, given that most companies never act on the information they extract from their customers. It is crucial that you know exactly what you intend to do with the information you’re going to collect. Moreover, you should also be able to prove to your visitors that information you would be collecting from them is actually vital for your business.
Don’t Make Your Customers Repeat Information
Most customers don’t mind telling their banks the ages of their children if they think the bank will use the information to help them sort through the myriad of college savings plans or make them aware of estate planning issues. But nothing irritates customers more than having to repeat the same information to each channel as if it’s the first time they've ever heard the information. This is especially true in the case of email lists on websites.
We’ve discussed the importance of focusing or targeting customers earlier as well. Current customers are the most important email addresses to collect, much more so than prospects. They’ll be more receptive to your communications and likely to respond, since they’re familiar with your company and its products. Don’t waste your time running campaigns that attract a high number of visitors who have no interest in your products or services.
Special offers like coupons and discounts are classic direct marketing techniques that translate extremely well to email. In order for an offer to be effective, it must provide something of real value to the recipient. Minimal discounts are not enough to get the reader’s attention; you have to offer something of substance. Of course, don’t discount lower than your profit on the transaction. Having a time limit on discounted offers is also very important in order for the call to action to work effectively.
Apart from using the Internet, there are also ways you can use your marketing efforts in the real world to help build your email lists.
Networking Meetings
From your local chamber of commerce, to specialized industry groups, the meetings of many organizations are great opportunities to make contact with new people. You are exchanging business cards with interested prospects or possible referral sources, so make sure that you send appropriate email communications to these people. Start with a personal email recapping your conversation with them, and ask them if they would like to be added to your monthly email list. Don't just start sending a barrage of email to every person that you come in contact with. Make sure that the person indicated their interest in what you have to offer first, or your contact will become quickly unwanted.
Whether you have a booth, are one of the presenters, or are simply attending a trade show, you have an excellent potential opportunity similar to networking events, but on a much greater scale. Organizing the follow-ups to people you actually spoke to yourself then adding the person to your personal contact list is a given.
The general information requests gathered by associates at your booth can be handled in a similar way. Lastly, you may have organized a giveaway or contest to gather more leads at the show. These people are frequently less interested in what you have to say, and more interested in whatever they might be getting or winning. As a result, it may require secondary contact to obtain the permission to add them to your regular communications. In general, hitting contest winners with a "hard sell" is not usually effective.
Organizing informational seminars is a great way to build a healthy relationship with prospects and potential referrers. One effective technique is to have advance registration and to ask permission to send regular emails at that time. This way, even if the person is not able to attend the seminar, you still have an opportunity to stay in touch with them. After all, they were interested enough to register for the seminar.
Concerts, parties, art openings, or any other occasion that gathers people together provide an opportunity to build your email address lists. Having a registration or check-in location, or associates with clipboards working the room are just two ways to make contact. In the case of events, it is a good idea to offer some kind of incentive to boost signups. However, make sure that the person can only receive the incentive via email. This way, you will improve the quality and accuracy of the lists you are collecting.
Post Cards/Direct Mail
When a company has an existing database of postal addresses, direct mail may be the best way to get the email addresses of your existing customers and prospects. Again, offeri