* Responsible and effective email marketing
Responsible and effective email marketing starts by understanding the complete process.
We need to harvest opt-in email addresses. We need to know how to "play the game" without getting flamed. How to avoid getting our email account shut down. To understand the concerns of recipients. How to write a professional sales letter. How to get people to reach into their wallets and give us their money.
Thomas Edison the famous inventor, created the phonograph and the light bulb. But more than that, Edison was a salesperson. He understood people and how to sell. Edison wrote, "The art of
selling goods is as difficult to acquire as any other art. The proper methods can be acquired only by a multiplicity of actual experiments, and the one who tries the greatest variety of experiments will become, finally, a master of the art."
Now I'll introduce you to four master salespeople, direct marketers you may not know, Stephan Mahaney, Jonathan Mizel, Marlon Sanders, and Declan Dunn. These four have been experimenting with various sales and marketing strategies since before the internet began. They are the masters and I encourage you to get your own mentors, and learn from them, the art of marketing, especially direct response marketing like email.
The knowledge you get can change your life, it did mine! I wouldn't be writing this today if I had not discovered Mahaney, Mizel, Sanders and Dunn. If you want to be a student of marketing, get yourself role models and learn from the masters.
Stephan Mahaney you already know as president Planet Ocean Communications. He wrote the book on winning the search engine wars. You've probably purchased the book by now and are well on your way to improving your search engine positioning. I also want to let you know about another book he has written. The Permission Email Marketing Course. It's the essential business guide to no risk, low cost email marketing.
The course takes only a couple of days and is jam packed with what you need to know before you direct email your opt in list. I got a whopping 35% response - actual purchases - the first time I used the information in the course.
Get the Business Guide to Permission Email Marketing here:
http://www.cdzn.com/poe
If you want to know how to do effective email campaigns, Jonathan Mizel has produced everything from audio tape series to ebooks on the subject. They contain exactly what you need to know to get the best results from targeted email harvesting.
I have been using Jonathan's marketing material since I first looked up the words "internet marketing" in the search engines in 1995. What I can tell you is that I've experienced his newsletter to be one of the best investments I've ever made. It's always bursting with unique marketing ideas.
Plus there's usually one trick or tool in each issue, that has the "wow" factor, something you can
"sink your teeth into" and profit from right away! Jonathan was one of the first people to make money on the net and continues to be one of the greatest internet marketing gurus of our time.
I'm sure that Jonathan has made enough money to retire a thousand times over, and I'm not sure how much longer he will write his newsletter, "The Online Marketing Letter."
I also found copy writing genius Marlon Sanders. I've used Marlon's twister marketing strategies and his 12 step copy writing formula in all my direct sales letters. Remember that 35% response I mentioned a minute ago, I used Marlon's secret formula.
I have easily tripled my responses and tripled my sales since coming across the "Amazing" formula. Marlon has this unique insight into what makes humans tick. How to present benefit loaded sales letters, that will have your customers grabbing for their wallets. If you follow Marlon's formula step by step, people will give you money. I know it sounds strange, but its true and it works.
Get Marlon Sanders' Amazing Formula here:
http://www.cdzn.com/msf
Last but not least there's Declan Dunn. It was 1995 when I started applying Declan's philosophy of design to sites I was creating at the time. I noticed more sales immediately. I created sites that loaded fast and were designed to sell. Declan was the first to suggest using traditional typography on web sites.
Declan then created a step by step web site sales process. He removed all the friction from the buying process. He introduced me to selling by autoresponders, putting my USP on the home page and so much more. He has also written two classic books on affiliate programs. "The Complete, Insider's Guide to Associate & Affiliate Programs" and "Winning the Affiliate Game."
Before you even attempt email marketing. I suggest you work through some of the courses, newsletters and materials provided by Stephan Mahaney, Jonathan Mizel, Marlon Sanders and Declan Dunn.
At very least get Mahaney's course, so you understand how the process works. And Sanders' Amazing Formula for writing your sales letter. Afterall, you do want people to give you their money.
I worked through their tapes, courses and manuals for at least three months before starting to harvest opt-in email addresses and start my own email campaigns. The results were staggering. I had to hire extra order clerks just to keep up.
And by the way, I promise to keep everyone who reads this book, posted on my experiences, failures and successes along the way. But my chances are great and my vision is clear, after all, I have learned from the masters.
You can read more about my internet marketing efforts and my email campaigns in my newsletter. It's free and you can find it here:
Internet Marketing Secrets Newsletter http://www.cdzn.com/yes
* How I created an opt-in email list worth $2 million in my first year
If you don't get anything else from a visitor to your web site, at least get their email address. What you want is permission to send them email in the future. It may be news updates, product announcements, sales events, flyers, reminders, quotes, recipe, jokes, contests, free draws, a newsletter.... something of interest to them.
You are building your list. Your most important business asset. Your list will keep you in contact with your prospects and customers over the lifetime of the relationship. Do you know the lifetime value of your customer? Cell-West's is around $400 in gross sales per person.
Let's say Cell-West makes $50.00 on each phone sold. An average person will also buy $150 worth of accessories after buying a phone. That's $200.00 so far.
The average person will also upgrade to a new phone every two years. Now if Cell-West keeps the relationship for two years, that's $400 worth of phones and accessories per customer.
This $400 figure becomes our lifetime value of a customer. Multiply this $400.00 by the 5000 customers served in the very first year, and that's a customer list worth a potential two million dollars. Now you see why "the list" is so important. Once people buy from you they are 30 times more likely to buy from you again, than to buy from a stranger. Yes, 30 times.
Mailing to the list also gives you a chance to make amends for mistakes of the past. I sent out personalized email to the entire list, and was amazed at the amount of people that had complaints, but never said anything until I emailed them.
If any of these people had called the 800 number we would gladly have refunded, exchanged, done whatever we needed to do to make the situation right. There are a lot of people out there that don't say anything. They just never come back to your store and probably tell 20 friends.
We resolved every issue that came up and ended up saving a couple of hundred customer relationships. Many of them will be Cell-West customers for life.
* How to get opt-in email addresses
The visitor voluntarily fills out a form on your web site. It can be as simple as just asking for their first name and email address. Or it could be on an order form. Somewhere on the form there is a check box that states, "Yes, please email me news and product announcements."
Usually, the amount of personal information people are willing to provide, is in direct proportion to the perceived value of what they will receive. If you are willing to give a report worth $100, people might even provide you with a dirt world mailing address.
Over at Cell-West, they have three sources for gathering email addresses; buying customers,
a product news opt-in list, and free draw entries. Their "list" or database of email addresses is growing at the rate of over 500 names a month. They work the list, keeping the relationship fresh in the minds of the readers, with sales letters coupled with product announcements about once a month.
For the free draw, they decided to give away a cell phone every six months. The phone is a good value retailing at over $350 US. Since it has a high perceived value, people are willing to give their name, address, zip code, email addresses and phone numbers. Since we notify the winner by email, entrants need to stay on the list in order to find out if they won. If they opt out, they can't win. Sneaky huh?
There is also the option to fill out a questionnaire. There is a link to the form near the top right hand corner of the site's directory page. The text stands out because it is a different font and bigger than the rest of the text on the page. Only the name and email addresses are required fields, but most people fill out the entire questionnaire. We ask what make and model phone they have, as well as what they are likely to buy in the next six months.
When we get a new product for a phone, the first thing we do is sort our database by phone type. We then email all the customers and people on the opt in list, letting them know about this great new product just for them. Depending on the popularity of the item, we have experienced up to a
35% response to our direct email offers.
When it comes to customers, most are willing to give you their email address. If they ask "Why do you want my email address?" Justify your request with a need. For example, if you use trackable shipping, you might reply, "So we can send you a tracking number."
If you use free airmail shipping you might reply, "So we can send you an order confirmation number." Or, so we can confirm when your order has been shipped. Or, In case there's a problem with your order and we can't get a hold of you by phone. You'll find most people will now give their email address. And most don't mind getting mail from you later, because you've already started an email relationship with them.
If a customer asks or states "I'm not going to be put on any email list, am I? Tell them no and type N/A on the email field of your sales database. This way, when you export all the email addresses, you can omit all the N/As and prevent them from receiving email from you. You want to honor all remove requests immediately.
There are many other ways to get opt in email addresses. Besides asking customers, some of the more popular include offering a free newsletter, secret report, or series of tips. There's also
surveys, free for all links, classified ads, buy and sell areas, reminder services and members only subscription areas.
* Opt-in marketing - merging the sales letter with the database
Mailing to our opt-in list involves getting everything prepared and ready to go. We need to export the names from our sales database, clean the list, write the sales letter, load everything up in the merger / mailer software, then email the personalized letter to everyone on the list.
In the beginning, I used FileMaker Pro as the database software. BBEdit to clean the exported list.
(Any text editor that counts line numbers will do.) Arial's Email Merge software to merge the sales letter with names and email addresses from the database. Eudora Pro to send the actual email.
These days, I use an online database to handle the bulk mailing list, personalization, handle remove requests and do all the ad tracking. This all in one system is called AWeber. You can find out about its full set of features here:
http://www.cdzn.com/awf
AWeber provides you with two lines of code that you can simply copy and paste into your web site. You now have a two line form that you can use on any web page, to collect people's names and email addresses. That's it, you're done.
All the programming and back end stuff stays on their servers, not your hard drive. There is no messing around with multiple software processes like I described earlier.
For the sales letter, I create it using Marlon Sanders 12 step copy writing formula, the same formula I use in all my direct sales letters. They include headline, features and benefits, USP, lots of bullets, bonuses, guarantee, time limited offer and much more.
Do a test of a few hundred names first, and track the results with a special offer code. You'll know within three days what type of response to expect.
Take the average sale and multiply it by the response rate of your entire list and you can bank on the results. For example, take a hypothetical $25.00 average sale x (15% response rate of 5500 names) that's 825 buyers or in other words $20,625.00 you can take to the bank.
* Are we spamming yet?
What is spam? Spam is broadly defined as unsolicited and unwanted email messages. In other words, the recipient didn't ask to receive email from you. They are not a customer of yours or they didn't opt-in to your list.
The problem with most spam is that it's usually untargeted. The recipient often has little interest in what is being flogged as the latest MLM, business opportunity or adult chat lines.
If you choose to transmit unsolicited commercial electronic mail, United States Bill S.1618 Section
301 Title III: Spamming - Requires the name, physical address, email address, and phone number of the person that initiates the message or created the content at the beginning of the body of the message.
You must also include a statement that further transmissions of such mail to the recipient by the person, may be stopped at no cost to the recipient, by sending a reply to the originating email address with the word "remove" in the subject line.
Failure to do, or follow the above empowers the FTC to take action and impose fines up to two years AFTER the violation. Good, at least now we have some rules. (Anti spam legislation continues to evolve and you might want to check the FTC site for the latest information.)
So if you are going to ignore my sage advice about opt-in and choose spam anyways, stay within the rules. What the US government wants is for your message to look something like this:
Cell-West
305 Cambie Street
Vancouver BC Canada V6B 2N4
email: info@Cell-West
phone toll free: 1 888 462-2599
* * * * * * * *
Put your sales message in here
* * * * * * * *
Further email transmissions to you from Cell-West may be stopped at no cost by replying to this email address with the word "remove" in the subject line.
They are very serious about the "remove requests". Do not require the recipient to do anything but click "reply" and type "remove" as the subject, and click "send" with their email program.
Requiring the recipient to do anything more, ANYTHING, like going to a special web page or any other process might put you at risk of civil action brought on by the FTC or any State.
At Cell-West they follow the rules. They delete all remove requests from the active mailing list and keep a permanent record of all remove requests. Even if they are customers, they mark them in the main database as not wanting to receive email of any kind, period.
Whenever someone is tempted to spam, or send out bulk unsolicited email, my answer is always the same. Honestly, have you ever bought anything from a spammer? Would you?
* Using effective tail tags or signatures on correspondence
A tail tag or signature file is a few lines of text that appears after your email address. It's an acceptable way of advertising your web site in newsgroups and in email correspondence. You might throw in your USP while you're at it. Here's a couple I've used in the past.
Michael Campbell http://www.dynamicmedia.com
Providing successful online marketing strategies since 1988.
Michael Campbell http://www.Cell-West.com
Over 3000 cellular toys and necessities in stock.
3 year warranty, 30 day money back guarantee. Free Shipping, Call Toll Free Now 1 888 462-2599
The first one has a nice presupposition. Not only do I provide internet marketing strategies, but I provide successful ones. Stating the year shows that I've been marketing on the internet since the early beginnings, even before there were browsers.
The second pushes the envelope for the maximum size a tail tag can be. The first statement implies whether fun or need, Cell-West will have your product.
The next line offers confidence builders. The third line slips in the powerful word "free", not
once but twice. Plus it contains the effective call to action, call toll free now! It implies a sense of urgency and makes the reader want to pick up the phone right away. Many people do!
The surprising thing is how few people use tail tags on their email. It should be standard on every piece of email sent. Every email gives you another opportunity to plug your web site.
Large companies need the marketing department to come up with one "standard issue" tail tag and email it to everyone in the company. The CEOs need to implement the use of the tail tag as mandatory, even for internal communications. That way, it will never be forgotten.
Just like the business card for the company, the names and job positions change, but the company logo, the overall design, the look and feel of the card remain the same. The tail tag needs to follow the same rules and sales goals as your company business card.
* Sponsorship or purchasing advertising in a newsletter
Purchasing advertising in an online magazine (ezine) is like purchasing ads in the dirt world. Magazine rate cards - their suggested price list - vary wildly depending on the amount of names on the list and how targeted the list is. I've enquired about at least a dozen ezines and found prices for a three line "classified" type ad including a hyperlink to the web site range from .001 ¢ to .40¢ a name.
At the inexpensive end, a broad scope ezine like DEMC is focused on entrepreneurs, small business and is fairly generic in nature. Others like the i-Search discussion group are highly targeted to search engine professionals, but remain relatively inexpensive at only pennies per email address.
One (they'll remain nameless) that caters to programmers is so expensive, I'd have better luck throwing my money into a hole. At .40¢ a name, it's not worth my while. That's as expensive as renting a highly targeted list from a mailing service. And there's no guarantee!
Some people swear by their ezine advertising. Some swear they'll never do it again. I haven't done any yet. I've been focusing on other marketing methods up until now. I do plan on spending a few hundred dollars on ezine advertising, just to try it out.
I want to remind everyone again, that I will keep you posted on my failures, successes and observations along the way. Just be sure to follow everything you've learned about writing ad copy to this point. Use benefit and feature filled text, build trust, and don't forget to test and track every experiment.
Now we're going to do something advertisers call the A/B Split. Write two ads and put up two special web pages like:
Cell-West.com/special/demc500.htm
Cell-West.com/special/demc700.htm
Run one ad one week, then the other the next week, while driving the people to the corresponding web page. You'll quickly find out which ad pulls more traffic. That's the ad you want to run with.
For how long? Well, in the print world, according to the Newspaper Marketing Bureau, you should run an ad at least 20 times. I say run the ad as long as it's making at least 400% more than what it costs. Or in other words, as long as it works.
If you have a good statistics package, you'll know exactly how many visitors are coming to that special tracking page. You'll know in your first week of paid advertising if your ads are pulling the traffic you need. And if the traffic is quality traffic, converting to sales at the expected ratio.
* Using auto responders for customer service and profits
When you send email to info@cell-west.com, a reply will appear in your mailbox within seconds.
It's a prerecorded or prewritten message that automatically replies to the sender of the email.
It's called an autoresponder. It lets the sender know immediately, that their email, order, or question, has been received and forwarded to the helpdesk at Cell-West. Here is what one visitor said about the autoresponder:
Thank you very much for your quick response, this makes me see that you guys care for your customers and website visitors. Please notify me who the winner of the contest is. Hopefully it will be me!
Thanks a lot and I really liked your site.
Good job guys!
If you do not have autoresponders available, most hosting companies (like my friends at combustionhosting.com) provide them free of charge as a service to their customers. Ask your hosting company or switch to one that does.
Cell-West uses several autoresponders. The "info" responder lets people know that it may take up to 48 hours to get a response by email. If they need immediate help, they are encouraged to call the
800 number for faster service.
The "contest" responder thanks them for entering and lets them know the winner will be notified by email. It also ensures contest entrants provide a valid email address. If the email is a fake one it just bounces the autoresponder back as undeliverable mail and their name is removed from the mailing list.
The "order" autoresponder thanks people for their order. It lets them know that all in-stock items ship within 24 hours and they can expect a phone call from a customer service representative. This will confirm the order and give the customer an order number. It also gives the sales representative one last opportunity to upsell and remind the client of related products.
Autoresponders can also be used as a technical support tool. For frequently asked questions or FAQ's, you could set one up for every major topic. For example: For information on "Battery Charging", just send a blank email to battery@Cell-West and the information will be delivered to your mailbox. It's an easy way to have an online helpdesk.
The autoresponder can also be a selling tool. You could set them up for special reports, price lists, weekly specials and flyers. By placing a small classified ad with an email address, you could use an autoresponder to deliver a much bigger sales message.
My favorite thing about autoresponders is, that the customer, or prospect, initiated the dialog with me, by requesting info from my autoresponder. Bam, suddenly there's mail from me in their email inbox. I have collected their name and email address. They begin to know who I am and get comfortable receiving mail from me. I'll then send a followup email within a couple of days.
It's the beginning of a customer relationship - of two people talking. And if you really listen to the customer, they'll tell you what their needs are. Just find out where they are now and where they would like to go. That difference is your opportunity to be of service, or make the sale.
* Using stock responses to manage email
Is email driving you crazy? Do you seem to be answering the same questions over and over again? It seems like we get so much email that at times we don't even get around to answering it all.
Then I thought, I must be crazy, these people are looking for help. If I treat them right, help them by answering their simple questions, they'll come to trust me and call up and order. Many will
become customers for life, worth over $400.00 each. I think I can take two or three minutes on each email.
Now when it comes to questions, I try to answer each question just once, in a rather "one size fits all" approach. I started a folder on my hard drive called "stock replies". Every time I answer a question by email, I save the response. I make the response generic, but personalize it using the person's name. Here is a sample stock reply for: "Yes, we have it in stock, please call and order". All I need to do is fill in the blanks....
This is a message for (first and last name).
Hi (first name),
It's always nice to hear from someone that has recently visited Cell-West. Yes, we do have the
(item) in stock for only (price). Would you like us to put one aside for you, or would you prefer to order using our secure online order form?
To place an order, or ask any questions you may have about the product, just pick up the phone and call now, it's toll free! You can call and talk to one of our sales representatives personally, just pick up the phone and call now 1 888 462-2599.
Finest Regards,
Michael Campbell http://www.Cell-West
Over 3000 cellular toys and necessities in stock.
3 year warranty, 30 day money back guarantee. Free Shipping, Call Toll Free now 1 888 462-2599
Notice the use of the tail tag in the stock response. Also notice the action implied by "shall we put one aside for you" or will the person take self directed action by using the online order form. Either way, there is a question to involve them in further email discussion or they can call up, where a sales rep will answer questions and close the sale. After answering email for two months you'll probably have at least 20 stock replies that answer
80% of the mail. Can you add more stock replies to the ones below? I'm sure you can.
shipping procedure warranty info return policy
ordering procedure for certain products out of country orders
wire transfer information links to information sites sorry we don't stock that item forwarded your concerns to
retailers requesting wholesale prices wholesalers looking for retailers advertising and banner requests hours of operation
price list for a certain model's accessories
The thing is, if you create a stock response that's good and detailed. People will think you wrote it just for them. I get people thanking me all the time for caring, for taking the time, for being detailed, honest and concerned. I've won so many customers this way.
Yes, I agree with all those kind words. I do care, I am honest, I am detailed, but I wrote the answer only one time. I then saved it to my hard drive, in my "stock reply" folder.
If you answer every email, strangers with questions become customers. Make the people are happy, make them feel good. Take the time to care, to make people feel special. Even if it's with a stock reply. You'll win free word of mouth advertising and customers for life.
* How to use order confirmations to start relationships
At Cell-West, I noticed they were getting a large amount of customer support calls all asking very similar questions. Customers were asking; Has my order been shipped? What's my tracking number? When can I expect to receive my order?
There were also a number of "charge backs", that's people asking their credit card company for a refund because they didn't recognize the Cell-West name on their monthly statement. They simply forgot they ordered from Cell-West because there was no paper trail. Once someone ordered by phone, the next contact was the package arriving at their door.
I decided to put a stop to it by creating an email order confirmation. Just this little bit of extra work, sending a stock email confirmation, cuts down on support calls and charge backs by over 80%. Just use the "fill in the blanks" model we learned from the stock replies.
This is a message for: (put customer's first and last name here)
Hi (put customer's first name here),
This is your official order confirmation from Gumball Imports/ Cell-West, please save this email for your records.
You ordered: (briefly describe the product here)
Your order total is: ($52.95 US$)
Your order number is: (3551)
Your credit card authorization number is: (1234567)
Your shipping method of choice is: (UPS Ground)
Your package was shipped: Yesterday
Your tracking number (if applicable) is: (12345678)
You can expect to receive your order within: (5-10 days)
If you have any questions regarding your order, we encourage you to call us toll free 1-888-462-
2599 and speak to one of our representatives personally.
Finest Regards,
(put your name here)
Gumball Imports Ltd. / Cell-West
Business Hours are from
8:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday
10:00 am to 4:00 pm Saturday, Pacific Standard Time. Send email to info@Cell-West
Toll Free in North America 1-888-462-2599
***Please note that your monthly credit card statement will show our company name as Gumball/ Cell-West of Vancouver Canada.
Thank you for purchasing from Cell-West
When you tell someone to "please save this email order confirmation" they will save it. Plus you've taken the opportunity to remind them of your company name so they won't forget it when they get their monthly credit card statement.
Congratulations, now you're in their mailbox. You have created a "paper trail" and started a relationship. Now all you have to do, is to email this person once every month. That's the secret to keeping a customer for life, just keep talking, keep building the relationship. It's all about people interacting with other people. Let them know that there's a real live human on the other end of the transaction, someone that cares.
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