Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing strategies usually focus first on informing your customers about something to do with your business. But writing a newsletter doesn't have to be all about information, in fact as marketing firms well know, entertainment is a far more appealing option to a lot of people.

There is no reason why you can't steal email marketing strategies from big company campaigns that impress you, there's no copyright on a strategy! If you have the imagination and technology support to update your website - go for it! But even small businesses can increase customer loyalty by running a few raffles and random surprise gifts promotions with a simple blog announcement and an autoresponder.

This article from Troy White has some great email marketing strategies that could be adapted for most businesses.

Brick and Mortar Lessons for Click-Happy Lookers

Fellow Business-Builder,

There was a study done by ComScore and Google about online search, and the shopping habits of those who start their search online.

This was one of the more interesting points: ONLY 37% of those who look for a product online (looking at prices, options, shipping, etc.) actually end up buying that product on the Internet.

You can lose up to 63% of your buyers by them going offline to buy.

They still prefer that face-to-face interaction … the reassurance of buying from a physical store … the fear of using their credit card online … whatever the reason, the majority of people are leaving your site to buy elsewhere.

So how do you combat this major problem?

First, you need to find ways to capture their information while they are at your site.

• Opting forms for newsletters on your topic.
• Special reports on how to buy the best.
• Special Offers only available with exchange of an e-mail.
• Offer them a free CD or DVD to show them 14 insider tips to getting the most out of your purchase.
• Surveys, polls and questionnaires.

Second, you need to offer them BIG incentives to shop from your online store.

Maybe additional bonuses they will never find if they buy offline. Or extended warranties if they buy online. Or entered into a special discount club. Or free express shipping (save them the trip to the store and the associated hassle of the mall)

Third, be DIFFERENT! Do strange things with your website that compels them to want to do business with you. Offer contests, have birthday parties, have a chat room for buyers to discuss your products and services.

The key is that with 2/3 of your buyers buying elsewhere, it is up to YOU to make it worth their while to buy from you right now … right from your site.

Here are some ideas for you to make your online store more attractive to buyers:

• The first thing you should do is have a person dedicated to making shopping with you more enjoyable. A marketing assistant or coordinator whose job it is to help you implement all the marketing ideas you create. If this is going to be you, make sure you block off ample time each week to work on your customer wow experience.
• You can draw one name a week from your new buyers list. That person would get their name put up on your site as the customer of the week (with photo – much like an employee of the week). Give them a surprise or two – maybe some simple acts of kindness they are not quite used to. Simple things can make a huge impact with your clients. They just aren’t used to getting anything remotely resembling quality service these days – this gives you the chance to be the one and only person who treats them like gold.
• Random calls to buyers and prospects. A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Lady Gaga and some of the techniques she uses to build a solid relationship with her fans. Love her or not … she is damn good at what she does. I heard this week she randomly phones one of her fans … just to chat. Talk about an impact! To the fan who gets the call, she just rocked their world and they will tell anyone and everyone what she did. Such a simple technique … that each and every one of us should be doing more!
• Everyone loves a good laugh – Add a small box on your main page that has a joke of the day (keep them clean). You can even have your customers submit their best joke – do a weekly draw for the best joke and give them a gift certificate for future purchases.
• Treat them like royalty. If there is any way possible you can leverage technology to have repeat shoppers either login for future purchases, or have cookies on their computer that tells your store they are repeat customers … use it! By having your web site recognize them by first name (even by past purchases as well), you create a bond that is not easily broken. Look at how Amazon does it with recommended products (based on past purchases), cookies that instantly recognize you, wish lists, etc.
  1. When a family books in for a visit, they are greeted with personalized parking stalls (their names on the stall).
  2. They get to meet with Nido personally on their tour.
  3. The students get personal valet service so they don’t have to walk across campus late at night.

High Point University is very fortunate to have President Nido Qubein on board. A master of marketing (and Chairman of the Great Harvest Bread Company), Nido has established High Point as one of the top universities in the nation.

In the past two years, campus visits have grown 70%, and enrolments are up 63% (while tuitions have increased proportionately).

Three of his treat-them-like-royalty secrets:

[SIDE NOTE: One way you can incorporate technology to create tighter bonds with your customers and prospects is to use technologies like ChatWise (which provides interactive web chat with live operators) and call back buttons which they can click and a live operator will phone them immediately back to answer their questions or concerns.]

• Make it more personal. Here is a simple way to get both your employees and your customers personally involved … their pets. Have a “pet of the week contest.” Customers and employees can submit their pet’s photos, their information, and any funny stories about their pets to you. Choose two or three of them per week and have them posted on your website. Everyone loves pets – and this is a great way to get them coming back – and to get them telling their friends about their pet Spot, whose photo and story is up on this website.
• Have a “before and after” or makeover contest. All the rage on reality shows these days … tap into it! Find ways to incorporate before and after photos, stories and case studies with your customers. Give them lots of publicity and get the press involved as well.
• What do your gift bags contain? A unique idea that few people online are using is to give away real live gift bags with either purchase or form completion. Gift bags can contain all kinds of sales materials for your own products, your partners products, and your other associated websites and offers. Many times you can have gift bags created and filled for free through the use of co-op programs and marketing funds from your suppliers.
• Shopping isle placements. Much like retail stores and big box outlets, you can place special bundles, hot sellers, or low priced items in easy to find places. These are usually done strategically to get your customer in the buying mood, and to subtly (or not so subtly) add more to her cart until her order is 5-10 times what the first item she bought was worth.
• Jackpot anyone? Put an automated roulette wheel or slot machine on your webpage. Let them roll the dice or pull the handle and see what number comes up – that number will be their discount off their first purchase. While discounting is not my preferred method of increasing sales, it can certainly help put a spike in the numbers and add a significant number of new clients to the database.
• Sports teams. Hire a local sports celebrity and have him represent your business with photos, simple videos, endorsements, etc. If a local star is not possible or financially feasible, look into past sports stars. Give away team memorabilia with purchase (based on purchase volume, which determines how much memorabilia they get as a bonus). Have a “crazy fans” contest – have them do crazy videos, etc. about how much they love their team. Have a “pick the score” contest – anyone who enters the contest and predicts the exact score wins a _____. Have fun with this – sports fans are a little off the wall and will do anything for their team!

Yes, these ideas may seem off the wall – but that is the point.

In the Web 2.0 world (or is it 3.0? 4.7? I have lost track now),people are looking for something more than the same old same old.

They want a unique experience – and many are willing to pay for it.

They want a community to bond with.

They want more fun in their life.

And they want a place to escape from everyday realities they may not want to face.

I hope this list gives you an idea or two that you can put to use on your website to make more money and to build closer ties with your customers.

To your success,

Troy White
Editor, Small Business Mastery
Supplement to THE TOTAL PACKAGE

What a combination! The best browser Firefox and the multi-blog editor Scribefire is now integrated with the blog post improver Zemanta. Could blogging get any easier?

Scribefire Integrates Zemanta

I just updated Scribefire which is Firefox addon that enables me to post to my blogs without actually logging in and posting in the usual way. Scribefire helps me to post to different blogs easily especially when I am travelling and using my laptop as the logins are entered into this system and so I don't need to keep looking up usernames and passwords.

I also use the Zemanta addon for Firefox . Zemanta enables me to more easily link to related articles so I increase the usefulness of my articles but also points me to videos and pictures I may be able to use to improve them.

Now when I use Scribefire I can still use Zemanta which is great! You can learn more about Scribefire for desktop blog posting here...

And this video on Zemanta and Scribefire will show you how useful Zemanta can be for improving your blog posts.

Zemanta with ScribeFire from zemanta on Vimeo.

Here are some of the related articles that Zemanta offered for this blog post. You can see why I'm a fan and why other people are too!

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iSnare & Article Marketing

Send Your Articles to Hundreds of Sites With Just One Click On iSnare!

I'd like to point out to you a useful site called iSnare. The article distribution site  iSnare enables you to submit one article to hundreds of article sites for a very low maximum cost of around $2 per article. If you purchase higher distribution credits from iSnare the amount of articles you can distribute increases and the price per article reduces.

Thousands of guides have been written on Article Marketing. There are as many strategies and ways to do it as there are trees in a forest. I'll answer a few questions you have below, I just wanted to introduce you to iSnare's article distribution service first.

Why Might You Want Do Article Marketing?

Sharing articles is a good way to get links back to your site and also an effective strategy to establish your expertise in your field. By publishing  "helpful tip's" articles to specific sites, variously called article banks, article directories, ezines etc you gain in two major ways.

Your Signature - Name, URL and Anchor Text

A standard article has a title, a subtitle, a summary, the text of the article and what is generally called the signature. It is the signature area that gives you the most benefit. This is where you can declare yourself the author of the article, you can link back to your site with your site's url and you can enter  anchor text for the url to target specific keywords.

If anchor text is the only html you ever learn, it's the most important piece to use.

This is an example signature - (minus the pic) - it's a like a very low key ad.

The author of this article, Brad Pitt is a renowned actor and is often referred to as the sexiest male lead in movies. Read more about Brad Pitt by visiting...

Brad Pitt - Sexiest Man On the Planet

(The text above is  fictional except for the sexy bit!)

Now visit the top article site online Ezine Articles and examine a few article author signatures.  They are short and highly relevant and they almost all have a clickable hyperlink ( a blue link you click on to visit a website).

But they are not all web addresses with the http or www in front of a domain name, they are far more often relevant keywords that people are trying to rank for in search engine results. These keywords are called anchor text. Click on that link to visit wikipedia and it will give you the html code you need.

Establishing Your Expert Status

The second benefit of article marketing is fourfold.

1. A quality article shows people you "know what you are talking about".
2. A quality article acts as a signpost and directs traffic to your website.
3. A quality article on an high ranking site appears in search results.
4. A quality article can be republished on other people's websites

Did you notice that I am emphasizing "A Quality Article". This is because it's a complete waste of time to submit an article is that is not of high quality.

An unchanged PLR article will not be accepted for publication.  A bad article can damage your reputation. A poor article will not be read right through to the signature. Articles that are not read don't stay indexed long and will not appear in search results or be republished.

So don't waste your time on article marketing unless you intend to submit original articles that do give helpful tips to establish your expertise.

Article Marketing & Duplicate Content Issue

Getting back to iSnare and article marketing there is one more issue to tackle. When multiple articles that are exactly the same are online, search engines "hide" some - you may have seen a link on Google for "similar results".

This has led to many discussions about the benefits of submitting the same article to multiple directories. It is certainly true that articles that are at least 30% unique are better but there are only so many hours in a day!

So far as I can gather the best strategy is to write 10 unique articles to start with. The best one should be on your site. Two should go to high rank article directories such as Ezine Articles or Go Articles and one perhaps to a site like Squidoo or Hubpages. The other six mass submit to an article distribution service such as iSnare.

That way you get the all the benefits. Your duplicate articles will still be read and republished and give you backlinks from article directories and that is why article marketing is so useful. So go check out iSnare...

Click To Send Your Quality Articles to Hundreds of Sites With iSnare!

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Or Be Careful What You Say On Facebook!

Social sites are constantly shifting, changing and updating. View any trend analysis site and the graph is showing the constantly rising visitor rate especially for big community sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

You cannot afford to ignore the trends but neither should you jump in without a good plan. You need to be cautious before you post any content on the web especially if you are a business, but also as an employee.

This was brought home to me on a personal level twice. First when my nephew made unguarded comments on Facebook, agreeing with a friend's negative comment made about their boss and was fired. The boss wasn't even named!

Then my son joined a group on Facebook which was started by a workmate. This group was the opposite of a fan page and was let's say, less than positive, about the company they both worked for. They were also fired!

It's easy to say companies should ignore such minor infractions and accept the fact that people will get frustrated or be annoyed about something at work and then go into a social site such as Facebook and vent. But the web is a published document, there for all time, not just a few words soon forgotten.

Had either of them been in the pub at the time talking, this wouldn't have been an issue (unless the boss was standing just behind them listening). Facebook is like the pub to most people. They let their guard down there, they chatter and gripe in text just as if they were relaxing after work over a few drinks.

I don't know where this will go. It's hard on the boys who have had a sharp lesson in why keeping their mouths shut (especially on the web) is a good policy. At the same time, it's like the right to free speech has been taken away and Big Brother really is watching everything we do and censoring it violently.

Keeping a good reputation online is going to get harder and harder. For companies trying to keep negative comments off the web and for kids who haven't learned to hold their tongues yet. Lawyers will be scrambling to update libel laws to keep up, while enforcement agencies pick their battles between genuinely disgruntled customers and people out to cause trouble for competing companies.

Companies are going to need extra staff uploading new positive content and staff to keep an eye on where their brand is being used in inappropriate ways.

Nothing has really changed. Any freedom comes at a price, including freedom of speech. If you wish to exercise it, you take the consequences. It's just another thing to consider in our increasingly complex world. Sigh...

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Web2.0 is all about interaction . People don't go to Facebook to just browse like they do at wikipedia. They go there to actually interact with their friends, see pictures and videos they have uploaded, play games and boast when they do well, and chat to anyone who is online.

Well, I know this is just a blog but did you know that blogs were the forerunners of these social media sites because of their ability to enable their readers to comment on articles and interact with the author and other readers of the blog?

If you didn't know, you are not alone. There are still thousands of people reading blogs who never come out of their shell and use the comment box.

The comment luv plugin is good in fact I use it on this blog and it gives you a link back to your site. A backlink is a great reward I think but sometimes people want more tangible rewards!

New WordPress Plugin Rewards Comments ...

Some people need a gift as an incentive! So this comment rewards plugin is great!

Have you seen this new WordPress plugin RewardMe yet? It rewards the people who comment on your blog with a digital gift.

I just installed it on the Genie's Tips - New Products Blog - which means that if you leave a comment there and now, the blog will automagically send you an email with a link to download a reward. My rewards are training videos on different ways you can get more traffic such as videos on social media, seo, articles etc.

As I use Intense Debate to manage comments on this blog, the plugin doesn't work on this blog. So if you have comment plugins already, you may need to choose between them, they may not "play nice" together! ( BTW - I have only just installed Intense Debate and I have no comments (sigh) so my widget may not display much for a while!)

Comment Rewards For You...

Anyway I hope that this may encourage you to leave a comment on either blog (or both). You get Comment Luv here with a backlink and Comment rewards of a digital gift are available from Genie with 5 comment rewards available after 1, 3, 6, 12 and 20 comments.

So the more you comment, the more rewards you get.

P.S. If you have a blog and want to use this plugin too, the WP Incentive Plugin price is expected go increase by at LEAST double on March 17th 2010, so now is the time to take advantage of the dirt cheap pricing: (less than $10!)

Check out new Comment Rewards WordPress Plugin RewardMe

I'm think it's a great idea, and I hope you do too. It is hard to get people started commenting and I do feel lonely sometimes just blogging along by myself. I know people are reading my articles because my stats say so. But its a lot more fun to actually get some comments and real feedback!

So why not leave me a comment below and tell me what you think...

And don't forget to check out Genie's Tips - New Products Blog , leave a comment and check your email for your first reward video.