Whats on YOUR Subscriber Thank-You Page?
February 14, 2008
When I coach my clients on how to get more business from their e-zines, I’m delighted to see that they spend time on creating content that builds a relationship with their readers. But I see many of these publishers overlooking the very beginning of their valuable relationship with their subscribers. For example, the “thank-you” page. If I sign up for your e-zine at your site, where am I taken afterwards? I hope it’s not a page that only says something vague like “form received” or even worse, nothing, leaving me wondering whether my signup was successful. Create a thank-you page where new signups go to right after they complete the form. On this page, be sure to:
Remember, You’re Laying the Foundation
11 Extraordinary Ways To Expand Your Subscriber List
January 30, 2008
Here are 11 ways to expand your subscriber list:
1. Use a conversational writing tone. It makes a connection. Yet, don’t get lax on the grammar and spelling. Use personal pronouns (I, me, you and your). Limit the percentage of I’s to half or less of the yous.
2. Spread the knowledge even further by asking your readership to forward a copy of your ezine to family members, friends, colleagues, or co-workers. Create a “please forward this ezine to” line or two. Give them an incentive, offer a free but-not-free item. This can be challenging to design.
3. Do you give presentations with slides or a projection system? Add a paragraph about your ezine and how to get it on the test slide. A test slide is the slide you leave up there when they are seating themselves. Leave it displayed until a few minutes before your presentation and then turn it off. By turning it off, it creates a “loss feeling” and they will pay attention to it the next time you turn it on.
How To Use a Message Sequence to Increase Your Sales
January 17, 2008
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in over 3 years of web marketing, it is this: you *must* follow up with your visitors.
The statistics are very clear about this: the 1st contact produces 2% of sales, the 5th to12th contacts produce 80% of sales.
I knew about this for years but didn’t act on it. Then, about 8 months ago I wrote a 5 Day Email Course about my eBook (Ezine Writer) and offered it to my visitors.
The response was amazing - my sales almost doubled.
This is how it works:
When visitors leave the index page of my website, a popup appears inviting them to join my newsletter.
When they join, they also receive a free subscription to my 5 Day Email Course, which is delivered by sequential autoresponder.
But there’s an important detail here. You don’t want the popup appearing when your visitors click on the ‘order’ link - it distracts them and you could well miss a sale.
So the popup has to be designed so that it *doesn’t* appear when the order link is clicked.
Could This Be The End of Sp^am?
January 2, 2008
The war on sp^am has so far been waged on two fronts: legislation to make sp^am illegal and filters that prevent sp^am reaching its destination.
But neither approach has worked.
Even if US anti-sp^am laws succeeded, they would not stop sp^am that originates outside the US.
As for sp^am filters, the sp^ammers are constantly devising new ways to defeat them. The people who are really being affected by the filters are web marketers with legitimate optin lists - how many of your subscribers are receiving your newsletter?
But now, two researchers at IBM - Scott Fahlman and Mark Wegman - have come up with a completely different approach.
The idea is very simple.
Software located between your email client and your server would intercept all incoming email. The software would contain a ‘white list’ of email addresses that you want to receive email from.
Any incoming email that is not recognized by your ‘white list’ would be bounced back to the sender with a message directing the sender to a website where they could purchase a ‘charity stamp’ for a small fee - between 5 and 25 cents.
How Effective is Your Email? How Can You Tell?
December 19, 2007
Is your email getting to your list members? If so, how many of them are opening your message? If the email isn’t getting through, how many of your messages are “undeliverable” because of a bad email address? And how do you find out what these numbers are?
In order to test the effectiveness of an email campaign, you need to use html email. Although I have fought against it for several years, I consented to use it this one time in order to do the necessary tracking.
First, you need to prepare the email. I use the OnlineSuccessCart.com system, so I created the html email in my web creation program and pasted it into the broadcast window. Then I pressed the send button.
I sent a similiar announcement to each of my major lists. And the numbers started pouring in…
Emails sent: this is the total active on the list
Undeliverable: these email addresses bounced or had not completed the newly implemented AOL double opt-in process
Now I had a percentage of the total emails that were undeliverable. My numbers range in the 4-8% range, but I know a lot of Internet marketers who are fighting 25-30% of their lists who are undelivered. Undeliverables is the first figure you want to check.
Build Credibility With an Email Course
December 5, 2007
When you are an expert, you sometimes forget that others don’t know as much as you do. Not only do you understand your topic at a higher level, but you also know what’s important for a novice to know. By providing your insight to those at a basic level, you can save them time in learning and applying their newly acquired knowledge.
So how do you share your expert information with prospects and clients in order to showcase your expertise while providing them with desired knowledge? Why not offer a course via email?
Your course will consist of several lessons, delivered at pre-set intervals. You’ll compose the lessons once so that you’re ready to deliver them to anyone who signs up for the course.
Now won’t that be a bear to administer, you ask? Not if you use one of the online services that is designed to do this. This category of service is called a sequential autoresponder. There are several services to choose from.
Reach Out and Slap Someone
November 18, 2007
I got my first email account way too many years ago.
I was working for a large Chicago bank in the 1980s, when they introduced an electronic message service for internal communications. The only electronic mail that seemed to flow for the longest time were all those official HR notification of vacation time policies, etc., and of course, the ALL CAPS messages from the executive floor.
It took a brave soul to send out the first?”so, where should we go for lunch on Friday?” message.
It took a polite soul to create the first autoresponder message. It was nice of them to let people know that the reason their inquiry would not be answered immediately, and personally was because he (or she) was out of the office until XYZ date.
I’m still trying to figure out where the the personal and polite parts of autoresponse messages went. Sometime between then and now, the person who wrote that message left the building, but forgot to turn the machines off. Today, too many autoresponse messages are anything but personal, polite or informative.
20 Ways To Increase Your Traffic And Sales Using Free Follow-Up Autoresponder Courses
November 6, 2007
An autoresponder course is a group of articles or information set up to be sent out separately over a set period of time by e-mail. People just e-mail your autoresponder to receive the free course and it is sent out automatically over time. You can find free follow-up autoresponders to use by typing it into any search engine. Below are ten ways to use them to increase your traffic and sales.
1. Offer your course as a free bonus for purchasing one of your main products or services. People will buy your products quicker when you offer a bonus.
2. When you write and give away a free course you will become known as an expert. This’ll gain people’s trust and they will buy your main product quicker.
3. Allow others to add your free course to their own product packages. Their customers will see your ad when they purchase.
4. People love to get freebies. A free autoresponder course is perfect. They will visit your web site to get the free valuable information.
5. Allow people to receive your course for free, if they give you the e-mail addresses of 3 to 5 friends or associates that would be interested.
Heres Why You Dont NEED a Blog
October 22, 2007
The word “blog” seems to be everywhere, and what an ugly word it is!
Short for “web log,” a blog is a Web page made up of typically short, frequently updated postings that are listed chronologically. It’s similar to an online journal. Different blog publishers have different types of content and objectives, just like e-zine publishers do. Content can vary greatly, but most blogs I see are used to share news about a certain business, project, person, or idea. I’ve also seen some with personal diaries, photos, mini-essays, and the like. Most blogs feature “here’s what’s on my mind” type entries written by only one person.
Are blogs the next big thing? Well, people seem to love talking about them. (”Do you have a blog? Have you blogged? Want to blog me?”) They’re popular, easy to update instantly, and you don’t have to worry about sp^m filters eating you up.
Do you NEED a blog? Absolutely not. Blogs don’t come close to the marketing power of an e-zine. They require your readers to come to YOU instead of your coming to them.
Writing Newsletters Online: How to Get it Right
October 9, 2007
A strange thing has been happening to newsletters online.
They have been turning into either a) promotional emails or b) web pages delivered by email.
I’m sure you know what I mean. Go back a couple of years and you could look forward to receiving your favorite newsletter in the knowledge that the newsletter itself would contain some great content…something you could read and enjoy, or learn from.
You could open the newsletter in your email and read it, from beginning to end. There were articles, reviews or just personal rant…well written and interesting.
In short, there was real value, right there in the newsletter.
These newsletters, where significant value lies in the body of the newsletter itself, are becoming harder and harder to find.
Instead, more and more companies and organizations are using their ‘newsletters’ as a promotional ploy to drive you to pages on their sites.
In one way, it’s understandable. As anyone with a newsletter knows, if you have one or two links to your site in the newsletter, your site traffic really spikes on the days you send out the newsletter.
