Archives for September 2016

Email Marketing Made Easier

If you’ve been reading the emails in this series, you know that email is a tremendous asset for any business today. It’s a direct way to reach consumers, tell your story, educate, entertain and make offers. Plus, it boasts a huge ROI (return on investment).

Your list is an asset that you wholly own and control, instead of being at the mercy of Facebook, Twitter or some other corporation. In short, email is something you have to pay attention to.

The only problem is, paying attention takes time, energy and resources. That can be a challenge if you’re flying solo as a small business owner, but there is good news. There are ways to automate and make your email marketing simpler and easier.

Here are just a few ideas for you…

Topic Research

The first stumbling block many writers hit is figuring what to write about. If you don’t have the ideas, it’s hard to progress in any meaningful way. To help you with this, have an assistant or writer to generate a list of monthly ideas. Give them a general subject area and have them search for hot topics, products you might promote and new angles to explore.

Writing Done for You

Contract with a writer to expand on the topic ideas. Ask them to deliver a month, or more, of email content, so you can make a comprehensive email marketing campaign. Plan ahead so you can have the writer add relevant links and a call to action into each email message.

Automated Delivery

Use an autoresponder service to manage your email list, and to schedule and deliver messages. You can pre-load a series of messages, so all new subscribers automatically receive all the messages you loaded, according to the schedule you set out.

This means that when Subscriber A signs up on Tuesday, they will get Email 1 on the first day, Email 2 at the interval you specify, and so on. Then when Subscriber B signs up on Friday, they will also get Email 1, Email 2 and the rest of the series, again, according to the schedule you create. I use and recommend Aweber if you’re looking for a good autoresponder service provider.

Using an autoresponder series has a number of benefits including:

• Every subscriber will get every message you send out. When you simply broadcast a newsletter every week, many of the great messages you previously sent out will be missed by new subscribers as they come on.
• You have full control over the message your subscriber receives throughout the series, which can help your conversions tremendously. You can start with providing information on a particular topic, introducing a product to help them and then following up to get them to buy. Each subscriber will receive that full series of messages and then you can continue to progress to topics and promotions that will help your subscribers even further.

Of course, you do have to be careful to ensure your autoresponder series includes evergreen topics and you should check it regularly to ensure that links and information are up to date.

Loading Your Autoresponder

Here’s where to really put your virtual assistant to work. There are many things your assistant can do to help you keep your email marketing hands-free including:

• Proofreading messages and checking links.
• Adding your affiliate and product links.
• Formatting email for HTML, if needed.
• Loading and scheduling messages.
• Checking stats and providing you with a report summary.
• Reviewing autoresponder series regularly to ensure they’re up to date.

The more you can automate your email marketing, the more you can focus on improving your results, developing products and growing your business.

If you need help finding ways to automate your email marketing, please email me and let me know how I can help.

How to Make Your Audience Happy

No doubt that email marketing is an effective marketing tool, but the big question is, “What should I email to my list?”

It doesn’t matter what niche you’re in, there is always plenty to share with your list. Never let writer’s block keep you from using something as valuable as your mailing list.

Here are some ideas for you. 22 ideas, in fact…

1. Make a list of major topics relevant to your target market. Break these down into sub-categories and ultimately into specific topics. Always keep this list handy as it will be great for generating ideas.

2. Keep a notebook or your smartphone handy for recording ideas that come to you spontaneously. We’ve all been at the grocery store or in the middle of a workout when a great idea comes to us. Make sure you have a way to record them or those ideas will soon be lost.

3. If you are in your own target market (ex. your target is Dungeons and Dragons players and you play D&D), make a list of products that you like and use. You can even make a list of products that you don’t care too much for. These lists will give you plenty of ideas of products to promote and educate your readers about.

4. Make a list of the most popular products for your target market and that will give you a nice list of products to promote. For example, if you sell consumer products, just go to Amazon.com, click on the appropriate sub-category and near the top of the page, you’ll find a link for bestsellers.

5. Write case studies. If your clients/customers are doing well, make an informative case study out of them. You can interview them, write a report of their results, etc. Just make sure it’s interesting to your readers.

6. Ask your readers to submit questions and answer them. Don’t have a huge list and can’t seem to get many questions? Visit topic-related forums and networking groups and see what questions they’re asking each other.

7. Do some keyword research. Look for the information or products your target market is actively searching for by using a tool like WordTracker.com or the free Google keyword planner.

8. Make a video and send it to your list. Make it an informative talk from you, do a screen capture video or just have a little fun. As long as it’s entertaining or useful to your readers, they’ll appreciate it.

9. Make an audio recording and send it to your list. You can teach something, do an interview or anything your readers want.

10. Write a blog entry and send it to your list. Not only do they receive good content, but you can add some interactivity to your communication by having them leave comments.

11. Send a link to your article on another site. If it’s useful to your reader, send them a quick and interest-generating description, plus a link to read it online.

12. Find and discuss a news story related to your market. Go to Google News (or wherever you like to read online news) and find something topical. Share your point of view.

13. Check your affiliate programs for brandable reports. Many affiliate programs are offering information-packed reports that you can brand with your own link. If they don’t have brandable reports, they may have some other useful freebies. Give these to your list.

14. Always follow up. Emails get filtered and people forget about things. There’s nothing wrong with following up on promos or even reminding your readers about previous offers and content. Sometimes you might send stand-alone email reminders. Other times you might include some extra content with the reminder.

15. Make it a series. You don’t have to give away all your content on a certain topic in one go. Break it up into bite-sized chunks and keep your readers ready for more.

16. Answer product/offer objections. If you send out a promotional email and then receive questions about the product via direct email, compile the answers to those questions and send them out to your list.

17. Give out software, a spreadsheet or some useful tool. What you send will depend on your target markets needs so get creative and, if needed, hire a programmer to create a simple piece of software.

18. Browse other information sites / article sites for topic ideas. Check the various categories of the site to come up with your own ideas.

19. Write a commentary about other blog entries you’ve read and share that with your subscribers. It’s called “content curation,” and it’s a way to bring great content to your list and develop a relationship with a fellow online business owner.

20. Make a top 5 or a top 10 list. When you aren’t sure what to write about, just make a list. For example, “Top 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Heating Bill” or “Top 5 Ways Increase the Speed of Your Cross-Stitching.”

21. Create “How to” instructions or some type of tutorial. You can send the instructions via email or if illustrations/screenshots will enhance the tutorial, give them a link to a tutorial you’ve posted online.

22. Build up to your product launches and other promos. Map out your product launches on a calendar and start ramping up to them by delivering content related to your products.

Use this list over and over again and you’ll never run out of ideas. Remember, to keep notes as new ideas pop into your head and keep those notes in one handy place. That way, you’ll always have a great resource for coming up with new ideas.

If you subscribe to my email list (over there on the upper right), I will be sending you emails periodically based partly on content generated from this list of ideas. Why? Because these ideas will help me be of service to you. That’s what you should be thinking about, too—how to serve your audience and make them happy.

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas to spark your emails, I can help. Just email me or comment below.

Email Marketing Is Still the Most Cost-Effective Way to Reach Your Audience

If you want to create awesome email marketing campaigns that set your business apart from the rest, it’s important to take some time to learn what makes the content and design of your email marketing campaigns stand out.

Your email campaigns should seek to:

Provide Solutions

Your audience cares about what’s in it for them. When you send them any information, it’s important that it provides solutions to problems that you know your audience has. Remember the “pain points” you discovered for your audience during your initial niche research? Use that information to give your customers and potential customers answers and solutions.

Inform, Educate and Entertain

Each email you send out should seek to inform, educate and entertain. You don’t want to be boring because people will quit opening your emails if they’re falling asleep trying to read them. Keeping your email marketing campaigns short and to the point will help. You want to link them to your website to drive traffic there for more information. Ask yourself if your email has a point, and then stick to that point.

Tell a Compelling Story

Consumers love a good story about how the products or services that you offer helped other people. If you place your focus on people and the story, you’ll get a lot more responses and send your marketing campaign into new territory – truly setting yourself apart from the others. Ask for feedback from your customers by having a contest. Let them tell their story, which you will share, then give the most read and liked story a prize.

Encourage Engagement

Never forget your call to action because you want your readers to do something after reading your email newsletter. If you don’t remember to ask your audience to do something (click through, buy now, respond, comment, etc.), they probably won’t do it. If you ask, those who wanted to will be more likely to do it. Ask for feedback, ask for stories, ask for opinions about new products or services, and your audience will feel more connected to you than ever before.

Build Relationships

Just like you can build relationships in social media and on your blog, you can also build relationships with the members of your email list. In fact, these are the people you want to truly focus a lot of attention on since they’ve already demonstrated trust in you by letting you into their email inbox. People like buying from those whom the know, like and trust; the better relationship you build with your customers, the more they’ll trust you and the more they’ll buy from you.

Finally, your email marketing campaigns should look good. Whether you choose to send a text email or an HTML email will depend on your audience. But, if you do choose HTML, you need to consider sending out both HTML and text versions. Some markets do better with only text, and some audiences such as artistic and visually motivated audiences do better with an HTML version with graphics and images.

If you have questions about email marketing, be sure to email me or comment below.