If you stop to think about it, we’re all marketers. We all have something to sell and we need to market it, whether product or service. Narrowing the focus of your newsletter to your particular niche will increase your bottom line – whether you’ve got a huge list, or not. Your email marketing list is an important feature, don’t get me wrong, but look at it this way:

Not everyone who goes into a store is looking for the same thing.

What is the strongest thing you offer, and who wants it? Your list can be divided up in such a way that your message targets the particular group who has already shown interest in a thing, or is in the category of someone who may not know that your product or service is their remedy.

The templates shown on AWeber for newsletter design are a nice way to present your message, and it does impact on your readership to a degree, but the most important thing will always be the content specific material that is provided in it.

Kaye Z. Marks says it this way in her article titled, Where Is Your Marketing Attention Focused?,

If you send out a mass mailing to everyone you can, odds are the people who will take interest are the same people you could have specifically targeted from the beginning instead of wasting money sending something to all the people who did not have interest.”

She’s absolutely right. Some of you stop here for information on marketing your small business by yourself, others want to know if they trust the claims about our services that we make. As our list grows, so will our specific newsletter offerings to each separate group of readers. Posture yourself through AWeber by using sign up forms and your first welcome responder email template to find out just where their needs are.

A great newsletter takes much forethought, but the right tools make all the difference.

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So, What Goes In A Newsletter, Anyway?

Maybe last week you were inspired to start your email newsletter service. Maybe you inspired me, instead. Newsletter design set up is so easy with AWeber that it might bowl you over. If you took any of our advice last week, you at least took a peek and know we’re not just some affiliate marketers out to sell a product. No, we use this service on two of our blogs, the Inside Line and Express Marketing Memo, with such ease that we gladly encourage everyone to try it for themselves. Yes, of course we become affiliates of products that work excellently and allow us to teach the small business owner how to take control of their marketing, duh. (No disrespect intended, just a disclaimer.)

So what type of content is appropriate for your newsletter? You can have your blog set up to automatically feed your newsletter with content that your subscribers get to view right in their own mailbox, and if you continue to update your blog with helpful information about your product, services, industry news, and specials, they will enjoy hearing from you if you follow the tips I outlined in Can YOU Influence Customer Response? Parts 1 and 2.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free

Is that all? Well, no. If you use this service, you get to choose your template (appearance) and can even set it up to include affiliate links that YOU endorse. Inside the templates are places where you can add helpful links, upcoming events, and even (if you’re organized and plan your posts in advance) let your readers know what’s coming up in future editions.

You can choose to offer different content in your newsletter than your blog. It’s unnecessary and time-consuming, but you can put any relevant information in there that you wish. I happen to think that the discipline involved when realizing that your newsletter content and blog content are one, causes you to make ever so certain that you don’t ramble and send out worthless diatribe.

To wrap it up, here’s what can go into your newsletter:

• regularly updated blog content
• affiliate links
• product information
• service offerings
• specials
• industry news
• relevant links from other sources that your readers can use
• social media buttons so that they can connect with you in the eco-sphere

A couple words of advice:

• Decide in advance how often to send out your newsletter. You can set it up to send out as you post to your blog, or every other one, or on the same day each week, and so on.
• Figure out what time of day your readers are most likely to read your information, and set it up to post during those hours.

And remember, if this is outside your range of ability, we can do this for you for a nominal fee. We do offer customizing if you are looking for something a little different than you see there. You’re going to do great, I just know it. Make sure you add us to your blogroll, and tell us about your experience in the comments, below.

Related Posts: What Email List Marketing Method Really Works?

Here’s to all the great information on business email list marketing we enjoyed reading this week, now it’s time to share it with you. Please take some time to check out these links this weekend.

(PT2) We want our relationships with our customers and readers to be actual relationships, and that requires two-way conversation. We want to encourage them to call, sign up, or click on a link. We want them to tell us what they thought of our products or services. If you read my earlier post on the value of influencing customer response, it’s time to start asking the questions and posing the statements that engage dialog.

Or you can just wait and see if your schedule fills up. (See pic for emotion that follows waiting for your schedule to fill up).

I suggest being proactive by adding these messages to your campaign:

• Has this helped you? We’d love to hear about it. Please email your comments to info@xxxxxxxx
• Please leave us your comments, is there anything you would like to learn about in the future?
• Please take this survey. It will only take 30 seconds of your time.
• Sign up for this promotion using this code: xxxxxxx
• If you purchase during this week’s promotion, every second item will be reduced! Buy now!
• Did you enjoy the last service call or sale? If your friend schedules and keeps an appointment between now and the end of the month, get $$ off of your next appointment.
• I want you to feel great about your purchase and to be totally satisfied because I know you made an excellent choice.

Notice how every one of these suggestions specifically asked the reader or customer to respond in a certain way? Did you notice the persuasive mechanisms at play? Believe it or not, these types of messages increase your response rate and conversion astronomically. You can’t go wrong inciting a positive response, but you can go terribly wrong not doing so.

How Do You Track Your Response Rate?

How do you know if your methods of engagement were successful? Using a customer code as a link to a page on your Web site that is unrevealed in regular navigation is a great way to know that the traffic you’ve encouraged is responding. Set it up and use your Web analytics to find out how many are making it to that page.  Surveys available through a link can really narrow down your information, and offering a discount or coupon for taking the survey is a helpful way to get the highest response rate. If your specials are only offered to those taking the time to respond to the survey, you’ll know exactly how successful your promotion was. Follow our  link to AWeber for the easiest way to track promotions using email marketing that lets your customer opt-in and opt-out, avoiding the spam implications entirely.

Take this advice and your readers will be EXCITED to open, read, and click on most anything you send, and look forward to more. How are you encouraging your customers’ response? Let us know what you would like to hear more about and we’ll be happy to respond to YOU.

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Can YOU Influence Customer Response?

Build Your Email List – Jump Start Your Marketing

Can what you say or write about your product, service, or message really influence a response from your customer? Can you inspire a reaction?

Are you a parent? Maybe you’ve noticed a response from your child that you didn’t see coming, but later realized was a direct response to a marketing message. We’re always being incited to respond, and kids are infamously receptive. No doubt you recognize these attempts on you and your children:

• RT this
• Sugared cereal on child’s level at grocery store
• Buy one, get 1/2 off of the next item
• Sign here for additional warranty (authorizing additional charge)

How Can This Work For You?

This type of marketing has been around since marketing began, but few small businesses take advantage of this tool for add on sales. It’s surprising how often we’re not encouraging a reaction. Not every response from your customer will be a sale, this time, but every attempt you make at a dialog is an investment successful companies know will eventually return positive results. So what responses would you like to encourage?

• Do you want your message to ‘go viral?’
• Do you want comments and feedback?
• Do you want your potential customer to purchase?
• Are you working on a larger sale from a previous customer?
• Are you testing an offer to check the response rate?
• Do you want more customers?

All these questions and many more can be answered by simply asking the uncomfortable. And actually, success often requires taking your comfortable self out of your comfort zone and doing the uncomfortable. In this case, I want you to think about what it is you want your reader, potential client, or previous customer to do, and then go about the business of encouraging that response.

That’s actually as simple as adding text to the bottom of your email campaign, newsletter, blog, or direct mail. You know the average, “contact us today,” message, (which is important because it really needs to be instructed), but how can you specifically target the response you’re after?

First of all, you’ll need to make sure your potential client enjoyed hearing from you. Are you adding tidbits to your regular messages that they enjoy? Is your tone pleasant, and do you offer what your readers are after? Do you offer a free anything? (freebies = good)

Once you’re convinced that your customer is looking forward to hearing from you, it’s reasonably certain that you’re conditioning that response. You must be doing something right. How would you ever know? You’re going to have to ask and use some tracking to see if your investment is yielding favorable results. In my next post I’ll go over some simple ways that you can influence customer response to find out information, add to your client list, and sell your product or service to an otherwise lethargic customer.

Are You Losing Profits Due to Inconsistent Follow-Up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow-up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow-up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow-up process.

Follow-Up Through Email List Marketing Increases Your Profits

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

Develop Your Follow-Up Messages

First, you’ll need to develop your follow-up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow-up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next two or three follow-up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow-up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow-up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final one or two follow-up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is too high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow-up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

Watch the Timing of Your Follow-up E-mail Messages

The timing of your follow-up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow-up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow-up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterward. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next two or three follow-up messages between one and three days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow-up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least four days apart.

We recommend AWeber for automation of your follow-up email list marketing campaign. Learn more about it on our DIY Business Email Marketing page.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow-up;  don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?

Image Credits: Osbock on flickr and Hummingbird by Images by Hawkeye

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Do your prospective customers forget about you?
Customer retention and your marketing dime
Didn’t you get the memo?

Never leave your customers hungry!

Do you have a follow-up strategy for online customer inquiries, one that includes adding your prospect to your email list for future marketing efforts? If your Web site is working as it should, you’re receiving product or service inquiries on a regular basis. But after you’ve delivered that first reply with the information your prospect requested, do you send him any further information? If you’re like most small business owners, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp. This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products or services, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase to see if you find him important enough to follow-up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow-up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Honestly, this has been a weak area for us, but we’re addressing this issue head-on. We already use AWeber for delivery of the e-mailed version of Inside Line, but we have yet to use that service to set up a specific autoresponder series to provide information to people who contact us about products or services. I’ll blame it on lack of time, but that’s an omission we can no longer afford … and I’m betting that you can’t either, especially when it’s so easy to set up and get the ball rolling.

Stay tuned because I go into greater detail in our next post. Meanwhile, we’d like to hear about your follow up challenges. Let us know why you’ve delayed your follow-up, or what you’ve implemented to correct that.

Related Pages: DIY Business Email Marketing

It may sound tacky to ask, but who is your best customer? Are you better off marketing to your existing customer base or to potential new customers? They’re both critical to the growth of your business, but where is your best dime spent?

Believe it or not, if you’ve done your job right, your previous customers are a walking, talking, and breathing advertisement! Getting them on board with your new projects first is the smartest way to grow your business. Marketing to new clients (prospecting) is important too. But the cost of converting a previous customer is far less expensive and much farther reaching. When they’re happy, they tell their friends, co-workers, and even family members. You can’t buy that kind of credibility!

How Do You Retain Your Customers?

Communication is the key. It is critical to stay in front of your customers 25, even 30 times a year! I’m not talking about spamming, I’m talking about relationship building. I’m encouraging you to remember to make your best offer to your previous clients first, and give everyone opportunities for feedback.

Every company offers specials, combined deals, or even reduced bulk rate products or services during strategic marketing periods. If you’re not, realize that successful businesses are. Don’t sell yourself short (you can’t afford to work for nothing), but if you aren’t currently doing this, take a good hard look at your offer and see where you can spearhead choice ideas to get them in front of your customers in an affordable fashion. Maybe that only means altering your payment schedule. Whatever that means for you, don’t miss out on the advantage that specials can make to your bottom line.

If you’re an email subscriber to Inside Line, you are a viewer who comes to us through the services of AWeber. In the Do-It-Yourself section of our Web site navigation, you can learn how to take advantage of this easy to learn method of getting your name in front of your clients on a regular basis. This is one of the most effective ways to reach your previous clients and new prospects at the same time. AWeber provides a sign up box for your subscriber and then you use one of several template forms to broadcast an e-mail special, regular newsletter, birthday message, or tips that are useful to your readers.

AWeber takes the subscriber information and sends out an ‘opt-in’ message that gives you permission to reach them via e-mail. You create the thank you messages, the content, and schedule when they go out. Everything else is automated and several different messages can be scheduled at the same time to different lists. Your readers also have the ability to ‘opt-out’ whenever they wish. If you want more detail in your template or one that is not offered, we can do that for you for a small fee. We custom built the Inside Line.

Okay, HOW Do You Stay In Touch With Them That Often?

• Blog updates 2-3 times a week
• Weekly newsletters
• Quarterly promotions
• Birthday messages
• Thank you messages for purchases made
• Customer service surveys
• Social media presence
• E-book offers

How are you retaining your customers?

Photo Credit: Jungle Jim’s International Market on Flickr

Related Pages: DIY Email Marketing

How many times have you received the neighbor’s mail, or direct mail advertisements that had absolutely nothing to do with your interests or needs? With mail so easy to get wrong, why not make sure your direct mail campaign hits the nail on the head? It’s time to clean up your list.

You may think it doesn’t matter so much, after all, how much direct mail comes to ‘Occupant,’ anyway? Depending on your market, it may not matter at all. But I would be willing to bet you that your campaign would fare much better if you knew that what you were promoting was going to people who could actually use your promotion.

• Take a good look at your holiday promotion lists, and start vetting:
• Businesses no longer operating
• Names and addresses that have not responded in the last 4 promotions
• Direct competition (I mean, why bother spending money on them?)

Replace those with:

• New businesses in the same area
• New addresses that didn’t exist before due to construction
• Customers you know you can serve. Ask yourself who you’ve thought about including but have neglected to reach.

Now go forward and let the world know what you do is important to them, and that you’ve got them on your mind this holiday season. Happy Holidays!

Photo Credit: florian on Flickr

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Is Your Customer Database Up to Date?

If you are one of the many subscribers reading this post, you’re definitely connected. However, there are still many small businesses that are not. Believe it or not, in this modern digital age there are some who refuse to use email. The old line “Didn’t you get the memo?” still holds so true these days.

Why is this? Email is a simple, easily and  efficiently used medium to share information about special promotions, sales, meetings, new product information … and so much more! Your message can touch hundreds, if not thousands of customers in one click, versus the vast amount of man hours trying to reach the same audience by phone.

Whether you’re in need of one or several branded email addresses (as in, your-name@your-domain.com), or a full-blown email marketing campaign, we can help.

For email marketing campaigns, we use and recommend AWeber. Be sure to visit our Do It Yourself Email Marketing page for more information.

Why be left out? Don’t miss getting the memo, it could save you time and create a profitable opportunity.