Online Marketing Part 10

Last time we looked at creating a list of interested people - potential customers - from those people that visit your website.

More information on how to do that are in our free ebook on email marketing, 'Automated Customer Collector' that you can download from our Cinnamon Edge Website.

But how valuable is that list of names to a business?

Well, if you don't use it to stay in touch it's probably worthless, but if you do - well, anything can happen.

With an active list you can

1. Remind people who you are and what you do

2. Make people offers and announce new products and services

3. Offer them an enhanced service or an 'upsell' on what they've bought from you already

4. Tell them about complementary products and services in exchange for a share of the profits or for a fee

5. Enhance your reputation as an expert in your field or a trusted supplier of your goods or services by giving away useful information

6. Give customers instructions on how to use your product safely or get the best results from it

Etc, etc.

By contacting people regularly you stay in the front of their minds rather than the back. When you use the messages to clarify your marketing message and unique selling proposition (USP) or irresistable offer, it will be you they think of when an opportunity to do business arises.

This means potential customers and clients start contacting you for help, which is a much better position to be in than when you're chasing them.

So even if your email marketing doesn't include 'selling' as such, it is still a valuable part of your marketing.

First step, though, is to start building that list. Second step is to remember to use it!

Roy

Online Marketing, Part 9 - Collecting Customers

Last time we looked at persuading your website visitors to respond to your site in the way you want.

This could be:

1 - Buying from you now

2 - Contacting you by phone, letter or email

3 - 'Bookmarking' your website to return later

4 - Telling other people about your website, perhaps via a bookmarking or social media site

5 - Leaving their contact details

Number five doesn't sound like the most exciting option, and if you can get people to buy from you and tell other people as well, that's even better - but building a list of interested visitors is a very valuable function for a website.

In Internet marketing, 'list building' is the number one aim of many websites. You can see from Part 8 of the course that a simple web page and an incentive are often all you need to get people to join your list.

But what happens to those details, and doesn't a growing list get unweildy and difficult to organise? Well, the simplest answers are, you use an autoresponder, and no, it doesn't get unwieldy.

Using an autoresponder like Aweber (which we mostly use) means you can collect customer details automatically and contact them by email any time you want. You can have scheduled 'follow up' emails that are sent at fixed intervals after people sign up and you can add 'broadcast' emails that are sent to all or part of your list at a time and date specified by you.

These messages (or newsletters) will contain useful information, which promotes you as a caring sharing business owner, and marketing messages, news of offers, new products, and so on.

Because the system is so automated, it takes no more effort to send these messages to a thousand or ten thousand people than it would to sent them to five or ten people. Because people have opted in to receive these messages from you, there is no danger of 'spamming' anyone. (A subscriber can opt out of receiving them at any time through a link that's included in every message.)

Most autoresponder services are inexpensive, especially in the beginning, and Aweber is less than £20 or $30 a month.

Email marketing, as it's known, is suitable for most businesses, although the details of how to go about it will vary with your business type and market sector.

Feel free to contact Cinnamon Edge for more information about email marketing services.

Roy

PS. We've written a more comprehensive guide on email marketing, called 'Automated Customer Collector', that you can get free of charge at our Cinnamon Edge Website.

Have Giveaways Had Their Day?

Hello again.

Like many information marketers, I've been participating in a lot of giveway events lately, with pretty good results, I must say.

The point of a giveaway, for you as a JV partner, is to add names to your list by contributing a gift (or several gifts, if you upgrade) and requiring people to give you their name and email in exchange for the download.

So, all you need is a product you can give away, a squeeze page and a download page. Then, in exchange for adding your gift, you promote the giveaway to your existing contacts.

So, it's quite easy. And, as I say, results have been pretty good.

But has the giveaway peaked? Recently, I've noticed more and more people willingly signing up for the free gift, only to unsubscribe as soon as they get it. At the moment, that's running at about 20% of signups. Others just use a temporary email which they then delete, so subsequent messages from me are bounced.

So, I imagine this is a widespread phenomenon. Whether the number of people joining giveaways and downloading stuff has plateaud, or whether the word has got around that this is the best way to cash in, I don't know.

But I do know several ways to improve the situation:

• Give better gifts. Wow visitors with the quality of what you offer so they're more likely to stick with you.
• Always have a link in your product that encourages them to resubscribe. Make a point of asking for their primary email.
• Use a double opt-in so people can't just give you a fake email address to start with.
• Make your gift a course or other continuity program, so they have to stick with you.

Remember, marketing is a numbers game, but an untargeted list isn't such a great asset as a small, targeted one will be. The ones who stick with you when they see what you really offer will be the ones you can build a profitable relationship with in the longer term.

I'm going to keep using giveaways - and I'm going to be offering better and better gifts to make sure they work!

Roy