Why Email Marketing is Crucial for Repeat Sales
January 3, 2013 by Lisa Santos · Leave a Comment
Every business owner knows the difficulty of marketing and the expenses that come along with acquiring new customers. If you have the money to put into it, getting new customers becomes easy after a while.
But most businesses struggle when it comes to “keeping their customers coming back and getting repeat sales.” Getting repeat customers is a piece of cake compared to generating new customers.
Many companies make the mistake of getting stuck in the process of attracting new customers and forget to take care of the ones that have already purchased from them.
We live in a world where there are thousands of players in any given industry and customers will continue to buy from businesses they know, like, and trust as long as they see value in the product or service.
Although it is ignored by many people, email marketing has the power to popularize company brands and keep customers coming back. The problem is that most businesses focus on “lead generation” and totally ignore “repeat business.” However, the more loyal customers you have, the more sales you can make while reducing your advertising expenses at the same time.
If you want your company to come to mind every time someone needs your type of product or service, you must use email marketing effectively. You first have to start by asking your existing customers to join your list; followed by new customers.
Never stop adding people to your list and think of creative ways to get people to join your list. Then you have to use email marketing to keep them informed with information related to your industry as well as special promotional offers.
The nice thing about email marketing is that while it is effective in keeping existing customers updated and coming back to you, it will also act as an effective method to recruit new customers. For instance, you can have people join your newsletter list and slowly build a relationship with them via email with an aim at converting them into new customers.
Emails contain more information as opposed to other forms of advertisement and marketing. This is because in an email, you can include a lot of information whereas other methods usually have a limited amount of small space that you can use to get your message across. The inclusion of a business logo and images can attract even more attention and create brand awareness.
Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoreponders
April 27, 2010 by Lisa Santos · Leave a Comment
An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It’s a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor’s large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.
In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust – unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.
Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email.
Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual
visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:
1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested
prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your
reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.
2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.
3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliate’s page in your autoresponder.
4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business
credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let’s say you’ve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.
5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when you’ve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.
6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to
effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you’re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.
7. Distribute advertising. Let’s say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospects’ email addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.
8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have yourm autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that
each lesson has quality content – not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.
9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.
10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a
potential customer than gain a sale.
11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be
motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitors’ email addresses who took your
quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of their entry.
12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.
13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that
contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.
14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or
discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.
15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular
interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.
Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant
ideas of your own!
Quick Tip#3 From Your Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant (Starting Mailing List)
July 10, 2009 by Lisa Santos · Leave a Comment
Let’s jump right into increasing your earnings by starting mailing list.
When you start collecting email addresses from visitors that come to your website you will see a definite increase in
your marketing efforts. To do this you can offer them a free gift, report or subscription to your newsletter. With newsletters you will have an excellent opportunity to build up a loyal readership.
Then you can send a message to them every so often and remind them that you are still around.
People are smart. Make sure you provide them with good information that is related to your product so that they will
keep on reading. Be sure not to bombard them with just sales messages. Remember you want them to trust you!
Quick Tip #1 from Your Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant (Creative Email Marketing)
July 7, 2009 by Lisa Santos · 3 Comments
Welcome to your first of several internet marketing tips from your Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant.
Let’s talk about email marketing…
Email marketing is no different than any other type of marketing, the same type of rules apply. Your goal should not be to make the sale, but to get the prospect to request additional information.
Did you know that over 90% of emails sent will never be read.
If you want to ensure that your emails are going to get opened you should make sure your subject line announces your email. It should do one thing only – get your reader to open the message and read the first sentence. In order to to do this your subject lines needs to be creative and catchy.
Personalizing the subject line with your prospects name is also a good idea and try not to use to much hype. Once you get them to open the email be sure to provide them with something of value and they will take you up on your offer.
If you become a resource to your readers then you will see the quality and quantity of responses change for the better.
Look for another quick tip soon!
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