With best regards,
Callie
Articles
:: Do you blog? - by Callie Carling
:: Grow your business with email marketing - by Callie Carling
(Callie also contributes to Just As Beautiful, an online monthly magazine for women. Please visit Holistic Feathers to read Callie's articles)
:: The Science of Getting Rich - by Wallace Wattles
This wonderful book, published almost 100 years ago in 1911, inspired Rhonda Byrne to write "The Secret" - a true gem.
:: Think & Grow Rich - by Napoleon Hill
A true classic, first published in 1937, this book was a real life-time work by Napoleon Hill - the teachings in this book are timeless wisdom that defines our understanding of success. Bob Proctor (a 'Law of Attraction' guru) references to this book in "The Secret".
:: Earn Twice As Much With Half The Stress - by Paul Lemberg & Tom Matzen
Would you like to know how to earn twice as much income with half the personal and business stress? A visionary ebook, suitable for sole traders, SMEs as well as vast corporations.
:: Achieve Your Goals - by Paul Myers
Learn how to set and achieve your own personal and business goals by using this entertaining and thought-provoking workbook.
*all downloads are performed at your own risk; please ensure that your anti-virus software is always up-to-date. Moonpoppy Enterprises accepts no responsibility or liability.
5 Steps of Permission-Based Email Marketing
Today I'll cover the various forms of email marketing available to online businesses and reveal what works and what doesn't. Here's what we'll discuss...
- Unsolicited bulk email marketing
- Opt-in email list rental
- Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising
- Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)
- Email newsletter network advertising
- Opt-in "series" email marketing
1. Unsolicited bulk email marketing
Let's jump right into that dangerous endeavor referred to as UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). Most of you know my take on this. Sure, you can get some website traffic using bulk email. (Though a response rate close to the 10% rate some companies promise is not likely - .01% is more likely.) You can tackle the rigors of unsolicited bulk email marketing yourself (you'll need lots of ISP connections because they'll be canceled quickly!) or hire a company to do the dirty work for you.
But the fact is, since unsolicited bulk email angers a huge percentage of recipients, your risks can be rather high. Your domain will end up being blocked by many ISPs and you could even face some legal battles. In my humble opinion, unsolicited bulk email is not worth the trouble. Read on and you'll find that bulk email marketing isn't really necessary either.
2. Opt-in email list rental
A much "cleaner" version of bulk email marketing is "opt-in email list rental." There are plenty of companies on the web that will rent you email addresses that have opted in to receive commercial email. Actually, in most cases they are not really renting the addresses; that is, you never see the addresses. Instead, they charge you a per email address fee for mailing your message to a list under their management. But does it work...?
As long the recipients are not being paid to read the messages and they are genuinely interested in the offers they signed up to receive, this strategy can be profitable. The problem is that in most cases you'll pay from ten to twenty cents per address and mailing to a list large enough to get great results can get quite expensive. But if your budget can handle it, you can generate some great targeted traffic. I've tried a few list rentals myself, though not recently. The best was from the site postmasterdirect.com which has millions of addresses in a huge variety of categories under management.
3. Email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising
Now let's jump to a more reasonably priced email marketing solution... "email newsletter classified and sponsorship advertising". In my opinion this one still gives the best bang for the buck, especially for small businesses with modest advertising budgets.
Some people think I recommend ezine advertising because I have an ezine and I'm trying to sell my own ad space. On the contrary, I've been trying NOT to sell my ad space for the last few years. That's why my own rates are fairly high! I can run my own offers or affiliate offers and make much more than I can selling the ad space. Many other ezine editors are finding the same thing. While this has resulted in rising ezine ad costs over the last few years, one fact remains... ezine advertising is still one of the most effective ways to get targeted traffic -- cheap.
Ezine advertising works best when you locate ezines that
your target market actually look forward to reading. And that's not difficult
to do... Just visit an ezine directory and search for ezines in your niche
market.
Subscribe to a bunch of free ezines and read them as they arrive. Look
for larger circulation ezines that have a good following. If you like the
content in any particular ezine, then hundreds or thousands of other readers
probably do too. Place a classified ad and if your site and offer are up to
snuff, you'll make a profit nearly every time. If you can swing a top
sponsorship ad, that works about five times better than a regular classified
ad!
Here are two solid ezine directories you can scour and locate lots of ezines that target your particular niche....
Direct Email List Source : http://market.emailresults.com
Ezine Hub :http://www.ezinehub.com
4. Email newsletter solo mailings (text and html)
An even better way to utilize email newsletters to drive traffic and sales is to purchase "email newsletter solo mailings." I've been able to locate both text and html solo mailing offers lately and some ezine publishers really underprice these. (especially compared to list rental costs.) I've found html email to be especially effective, returning 4-5 times the cost of the ad in most cases. Once again, the list should be tightly targeted to your niche audience for best results. Use the same directories above to locate ezines that reach your best prospects and you'll undoubtedly find some that offer this type of advertising.
5. Email newsletter network advertising
The next email marketing strategy which I've been using quite a bit lately is "email newsletter network advertising." In a nutshell, you pay email newsletter management sites to run top sponsorship ads across their network of newsletters. The traffic can be targeted to just about any niche and it's faster that finding each of the ezines yourself. Although this requires a larger initial investment than running ads in individual ezines, in the long run it is usually cheaper and it requires much less effort. The best advertising resource I've ever found on the web is an email newsletter network. It's one of the proven, super-resources I share only with my Make-A-Living-Online.com members!
6. Opt-in "series" email marketing
Finally, I'd like to cover one last email marketing strategy which very few Internet businesses use, and use properly. It's called "opt-in series email marketing." This is a secret weapon many of the big name marketers prefer not to talk about much. It works like this... You offer an attractive and irresistible freebie at your site, (in most cases this works best via a pop up or pop-under) and when your visitors claim their freebie, they are required to enter then name and email address. They then are subscribed to your series of personalized, scheduled email messages that you have pre-written. The best type of series is one that offers free valuable help and information about the subject they were looking for help on in the first place.
A well-written email series will form relationships with your best prospects, something that holds more value than most online businesses realize. The best part of this strategy is that once you do the setup work, everything is completely automated and personalized. You may wish to check out my Web Business Wizard service or the iContact software for good web based email list management software.
There are a number of sites that offer follow-up email auto-responder services. I use my Web Business Wizard service for my own follow ups and it has worked wonders for my business. When used properly, and with a bit of originality and flare, this email marketing strategy can be one of your top sales producers.
In closing... There you have it; six email marketing strategies and the results they yield. Of course here's one more email marketing strategy I highly recommend, but I left it off today's list. That strategy is "publishing your own email newsletter." I'll cover that in detail in the next issue of BizWeb eGazette. See you then!
Ryan P. M. Allis - CEO for Broadwick, Corp.
Broadwick offers the leading permission based email marketing software: iContact. (c) Broadwick, Corp. 2000-2006
http://www.broadwick.com All Rights Reserved
Why Email Marketing Matters
Many organizations, once they have spent the thousands of dollars acquiring their clients, fail to market to their existing base. I have met quite a few marketing managers who would rather continue spending $200 a pop for new qualified prospects rather than $0.01 per person to build the relationship with their existing clients and recommend new products or encourage re-orders. I have found that sending relevant email communications to persons who have requested to receive them is the single most effective way of cultivating the type of relationship needed to turn your prospects into customers and your customers into lifetime product evangelizers.
As a reader of this article, chance has it that your
organization is one that already sends out a newsletter, or at least is
considering doing so soon.
Once you began sending your own newsletter, however, it is important to follow two important rules that will increase your likelihood of achieving your marketing goals, whether they are to increase repeat orders, convert a higher ratio of prospects, or obtain top-of-mind brand awareness.
The first and most important rule is to only send relevant
content to persons who have requested it. What does this mean? Well, lets say
you are a travel and adventure planning company. If someone has subscribed to
your Kayaking Monthly Newsletter, don not move them over to your European
Vacations list and send them an article on Dining in
It is important to note that just setting up an interest segment and adding it to your sign up form does nt require you to create a monthly newsletter on that topic, but once you get a few dozen to a couple hundred people interested in that area (depending the value of the product or service you are providing), it will likely pay to have quality content developed on that topic for distribution in interest specific newsletters. This can be easily done within the iContact email marketing software by either creating a list specifically for persons interested in a topic or creating a segment of persons with a specific interest.
The second rule is to be consistent with your sending frequency. Depending on your type of business and your subscriber interest level, the right volume for you could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Once you find the frequency that is right for your organization (and this could vary newsletter to newsletter), stick with it. We see a lot of companies whose email strategy can only be defined as "ad hoc." Rather than blasting out a promotion whenever sales are lagging, we recommend having an emailing schedule for each newsletter and sticking to it, whether it be every Saturday, every other Wednesday, or on the 15th of each month. As an example our company newsletter, the Permission-Based Email Marketing Monthly goes out on the 28th of each month.
What type of results can you expect from regularly sending
out regular email newsletters? Here are two examples from users of iContact the
email marketing software my company Broadwick provides. Biotage is a company
based on
If you stick with sending relevant, high quality content-rich emails on a consistent basis to persons who have requested to receive your emails, you will increase your prospect to customer conversion rates and customer lifetime value at a fraction of the of the cost of traditional methods and take advantage of the best type of marketing possible - free marketing through authentic customer word-of-month.
Ryan P. M. Allis - CEO for Broadwick, Corp.
Broadwick offers the leading permission based email marketing software: iContact. (c) Broadwick, Corp. 2000-2006
http://www.broadwick.com All Rights Reserved