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The Golden Rules Of Selling To Your Opt-in List

06 2008 Wednesday

By Yunis Khan in Featured

You’ve got your internet business and you have created an opt-in list. Now what?

Well, you have to encourage your list to buy from you. This is a lot harder than you may first imagine. There are series of books written on this subject and it really is an art. Many people have studied for years to perfect this, however I’m going to go through some very important rules to follow when you start selling to your list. Email is the preferred method to contact your list as its free and very effective.

Always remember the vast majority of people base their decision to buy on EMOTION. They then justify their purchase through LOGIC.

When selling to your list you must address both these factors in order to maximise the sales from your list. Over the last five years I have been involved in various internet businesses and I have found the following rules to be most effective.

Get your customers begging for more information:

You have to grab the attention of your list, you must create enough interest so that your list is begging for more information on your products.

Carry out some market research for yourself, register with various companies and see how they sell, see how they make their products “sizzle”, this is sometimes referred to as “selling the sizzle” and can be very effective.

There are many ways to present your products and many promotional styles and methods. You have to grab your customers attention and get them to visit your site for more information and therefore buy your product. Content and creativity are the keys here, you are trying to lock in your customer to your marketing and therefore your products.

Keep your message simple, light and creative. Your customer does not want a long winded email with loads of facts and figure about your products and their performance. Keep it light hearted, your objective is to get your customer to read the email. We all live in a serious world, add a bit of humour or fun and it can pay off.
Add photos and splash some colour into your emails. Send out newsletters previewing your products, make them interesting, light hearted and eye catching. Grab your customers interest.
You must have good content and articles about your products. This will build trust between you and your customers. If necessary get a professional copy writer to do this for you in a style that is informative and light hearted, not stuffy. Outline the benefits of your products to your customers - do not talk about features - only benefits. Try not to be too keen here, people don’t like products being forced upon them, hold back a little, this often works.
A picture is worth a thousand words. If you do have clear and concise pictures of your products then use them! This coupled with clear concise benefits can work wonders.

Grab Your Readers Attention With Your Subject:

This is sometimes overlooked by new internet business owners. They don’t realise that just sending an email is not enough. In this day and age there are literally thousands of companies who market their products through opt-in lists via email. You have to realise that you are just one of the many companies vying for your customers attention.

Therefore it is imperative that you actually get your customer to open your email. To some this may sound rather a basic point. But do you realise that on average every 100 emails sent to an opt-in list, the average number of emails that are actually read is approx 30-40.

THE major factor in your customer opening your email is the subject heading in your email - that is why it is so important to get this right.

Try and keep the subject short and concise, it should ideally provide a summary of the content of your email. You need to grab the attention of your customer so that they are intrigued to open your email and read further. Tickle your customers curiosity, use emotion and selling words. Remember you only have a few seconds to grab your customers attention before they skip or delete your email.
A popular method is to indicate that your email will give your customer some sort of training or tips on certain subjects. You can do this by using such phrases such as “Guide To …” or “How To …” or “Tips for …”. These are known to work well but your email content must reflect your subject heading.
Asking a question in the subject heading can also work well. Again you have to get emotional buy in, even from the subject heading. So questions like “Are you looking for financial freedom?” or “Have you had enough of working for someone?”. These types of subject heading get your customers thinking straight away and are known to work well. Again always ensure your email content gives an answer to the question stated in the subject of your email.
New product announcements. This is perfect when previewing new products you are about to launch or make available to your customers. Headings like “Announcing great new …” or “2 weeks before launch of …”. Again can be very effective given the product you are selling.
Issuing a command or directive. Statements such as “Act now …” or “Limited opportunity apply now …” or “Triple your income, find out how …”. Again you are emphasising the benefits of your products to your customers.

Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List:

Online and email marketing is very common and your customers will be bombarded with many internet companies vying for their money. It is important for you to avoid getting into problems with the law or your ISP or with spamming. However, if you have created your own opt-in list then you should be o.k. and not have to worry from these problems. However there are still some things to avoid.

Remember it can takes years to gain a good reputation and only a few minutes to destroy it.

Analyse your email broadcasts, take note of those that bounce, i.e. that are undeliverable. Also get some information on how many were opened. Erase all bounced email addresses. Some autoresponders such as Aweber do this for you. Manually check the email address for common mistakes, it may be that it is a simple spelling mistake which you can correct.
Always but always provide an unsubscribe option at the bottom of your emails. Aweber automatically does this as do most autoresponders. It may be that someone used another persons email address so you need to give them an easy option to stop receiving your emails.
Do not send shocking or disturbing pictures or video, absolutely no pornographic content should be sent. You cannot be certain of the age of the person who has opted in to your list, therefore always keep your content respectable and above board. Always stick to the content of your site or your products.

Follow the above golden rules and you should be successful at marketing your products to your list and getting a favourable response. Remember, cultivating the relationship between yourself and your customers is key in establishing trust and thereby getting your customers to purchase from you.

Yunis Khan - I have been involved in Internet Businesses for the past 5 years and have gained some valuable experience, sometimes bitter, sometimes with fantastic results. I hope my experiences can help others become successful Internet Business owners. http://www.earnmoneydailyonline.com

Press Releases Aren’t Dead

06 2008 Wednesday

By Jennifer Horowitz in Featured

There used to be a lot of hype about online press releases. Recently it has died down a little bit. We are still finding that it works well for clients. But there are some very definite rules to follow.

When done properly press releases are a great way to generate publicity, drive traffic and boost search engine rankings.

The key to a successful press release is to have a clearly defined purpose.

Why are press releases important?

More consumers than ever are reading press releases online and consumers may be interested in a topic that the media may not be. So, there are releases where the target audience is the consumer and then there are releases were the target audience is the media. The releases targeted at the media are usually bigger news and more likely to be something that the media will run with and create an article out of.

Keep in mind there are journalists that have columns about websites; they cover what’s new, what’s hot, what’s popular on Blogs and sites. So, something that may not have been newsworthy to the “regular” media may be considered newsworthy to these new crop of journalists.

You should start by defining your target audience. Is this a story for the public, something that is potentially good for the mass media or something for the web reporters out there?

No matter who you target, your press release really needs to be creative to catch the interest of the chosen audience.

Press releases need to be stand out among a sea of thousands of other press releases that are being released every day. So, you’ll need to create an interesting hook. How do you do that?

Ask yourself these questions:

Who will care about what I’m saying and why will they care? In other words what is the focus of the release, what is the part that will excite, anger, interest people?
Is it something that is unique in your industry?
What are the benefits of the product/service/news you are announcing?
Is there anything controversial about this? If so, playing it up is a great way to get attention.

Next you’ll want to define your keywords for the release:

Doing keyword research will help you use keywords within the release that you know people are looking for.

Next you will make sure that you write a compelling title. Ideally it will include one of your keywords and it will pique the curiosity of people scanning headlines.

Since the launch of Google’s Universal Search and Blended Search from Yahoo, images are fast becoming another way to make your content stand out, so make sure you use an image with your press release.

It never hurts to have an SEO Firm take a look at your release. Have them go over your press release for any recommendations for better optimization. A fresh set of eyes, especially ones that are specifically trained in optimizing content can go a long way in helping your press release be found in the search engines.

So, there you go - a quick lesson in press releases.

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Website Transition Planning Critical When Making Changes

06 2008 Wednesday

By Jennifer Osborne in Featured

Picture this … you’re ranking really well for an important keyword(s). It’s driving a lot of traffic and life is pretty good.

You decide it’s time to take better advantage of that traffic by giving your site a face lift.

The next thing you know, you’ve fallen out of the SERPS and you’re left shaking your head, not quite knowing what happened.

It’s an all too common scenario. To us Marketing People it was just a “face lift” a “re-skin”. We didn’t really make any major changes that should matter to the search engines.

No reason to let our SEO team know in advance that we’re making these changes. After all, it’s still the same site. or is it? Google doesn’t think so.