Do the Two-Step!

Top sales pros confirm that it often takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know gave positive testimonial about their products or services. 

 

What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas? A nifty and thrifty two-step. Try this two-step tip:

 

1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone's e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces. 

 

2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and / or .pdf to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above with monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products / services, and a request for referrals.

 

So why not improve your closing ratio and reach out even further at the same time? Do the two-step!

Auto Responder Marketing Techniques

The Internet offers many means of affordable marketing with auto responders. Here are a couple of popular ways of using them.

 

DIRECTORY

 

Some webmasters set up link or article directories on their sites. They create a directory on a specific industry topic, placing their own ad or banner along the top. Then they invite others to add their website links via a link exchange program, listing themselves in your directory. Or they invite articles to be submitted that include a resource box at the bottom of each with a link to the author’s website. This results on increased traffic as sites link up across the World Wide Web. Enter “link exchange software” or “article directory software” into a favorite search engine for help with each. 

 

TEACH A COURSE 

 

Some marketers write up a simple step-by-step instructional class in their area of expertise. Then they break it up into smaller portions or messages and set them up in an auto responder as email messages, including short ads within each message to invite sales & website visits. Then they invite website visitors to sign up through on online form or email subscription address offered through the auto responder service. As people sign up, they will learn more about the products and services through the teaching series.

Auto Responder Improvements

Stuck in an auto responder rut with only your eZine going out regularly? Get out of the rut with some of these ideas for improvements.

 

1. Provide back issues of your eZine archives via your auto responder instead of hosting all your archives online. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy access to them and offers a chance to include graphics, audio and video and other components all rolled up in .pdf files for quick, easy download.

 

2. Help with tech issues and publish your entire web site, save it in a pdf file, and load it into an auto responder. Sometimes visitors don't have enough time read your entire site or they lose their Internet connection or time online. So this way, they could print it out and read it offline.

 

3. You could offer your eBook via an auto responder. Often your visitors won't have to download it or have the software to read it right away, so this way they can take it “to go”.

 

4. For a handy - -and nice legal - touch, you could include the terms and conditions to purchase transactions and load them into an auto responder that is triggered with each purchase. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.

 

A Popular Auto Responder Marketing Technique

Marketing through auto responder series is a popular strategy to increase repeat website visits and sales. Here is a popular strategy.  

 

EZINE EBOOK 

 

Instead of trying to publish a small daily or weekly eZines, try publishing one large monthly eZine (similar to a monthly magazine) as an e-book format delivered via auto responder, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. You could have it made up of a large number of articles per issue and insert regularly featured areas throughout like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. You could also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio / video file links and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots to sprinkle in your auto responder announcements for each issue and with an informational series to announce your monthly eZine to new prospects. 

 

In summary, by using customized marketing techniques like an eZine eBook, tailored to fit your own products and services, you can reach out and increase your website traffic and sales opportunities. Internet marketing can mean more ways to grow your business.

Building Your List with Give Away Ventures

With the awareness of the importance of list building, comes a recent Internet Marketing trend which was started just a couple of years ago for the mutual benefits of all Internet Marketers and mailing list owners.

 

This method is more recognized as a “starting a Give Away venture”.

 

In a real sense, a Give Away event is much like a big time version of ad swaps. In a nutshell, a group of mailing list owners partner together and pool in their individual gifts in one limited-time event.

 

Each participating partner contributes a gift to the event. The gift can be a free product, membership pass or a product he is already selling (if he is kind enough to offer into the event).

 

The participating partner prepares a Lead Capture Page where he gives the gift in exchange for the subscriber’s email address. In other words, in order for a visitor to download the digital gift, he must opt in and subscribe to your mailing list.

 

When the gifts are pooled together into one event (site), every partner will then endorse the Give Away event to their own mailing lists.

 

The result: lots of visitors to one event as a collective effort of several participating partners!

 

With so many visitors downloading gifts from one focused event, it is a true win-win situation. This is because the visitors get to download several free gifts for their own use and every partner gets to build their own mailing list!

 

You can easily get notified about a Give Away event in the making by communicating with other Internet Marketers often or participating in Internet Marketing discussion and Joint Venture boards.

Landing Page Success Tips

Also known as the “name squeeze page” or “lead capture page”, you can build your mailing list by funneling all of your would-be subscribers through the creation of a landing page. Not only do you do the work just once, your traffic driving efforts can be focused onto just one effective method.

 

The following are tips in creating a successful landing page that converts visitors into subscribers on a very huge percentage.

 

Success Tip 1: Offer a freebie in exchange for your visitor’s email address. I very much endorse this method of building your mailing list. You can offer a special report or a sample of your paid product to your visitor in exchange for their details such as name and email address.

 

Success Tip 2: The landing page must be written professionally. When writing your page, treat it as if you are writing a sales letter. While you are not necessarily making a hard sale or try to get someone to buy your product upfront, being able to entice your visitors to give their details to you is just as important as selling.

 

Success Tip 3: Other than your opt-in form and perhaps important disclaimers and terms, there shouldn’t be any other links on your landing page.

 

Success Tip 4: Rub in the benefits of the freebie you are offering more than a mere subscription to your newsletter. You should focus most of the attention of the letter on encouraging your prospective visitor to download your free offer. Later, you gently remind your prospect that he or she has nothing to pay but just merely subscribe to your newsletter in exchange for the freebie.

 

As a final reminder and conclusion, in order to build trust, you can include your hand-written signature or a photo of yourself explaining where you are coming from and how you can help your visitor through your free report on offer.

 

Using Free Reports to Build Your List

Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free viral report should be to build your mailing list.

 

This is because if you are unable to pre-sell, let alone sell, the products and services featured in your free report, the last-ditch effort should be to collect leads. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber.

 

In that manner, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer, preferably lifetime.

 

You can do so by offering a lifetime update to your report or a unique notification list your reader will be interested in subscribing to, which leads to having him or her subscribed to your mailing list.

 

One of the few success factors in viral marketing of your free report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you!

Weakness in Safe List

How would you like to send your commercial emails to people you do not know, but are expecting to receive such mail from you? Wait a minute. That does not sound right. How can this be?

 

It is simple, if you know what is really going on. Everybody who is on these lists, also known as safe lists, knows that they will be receiving emails from other members. This is possible because that is one of the conditions of their “safe list” membership.

 

And those who join these lists are willing to agree to this condition because they themselves would want to send out their own commercial emails to the others on the list.

 

The result: everyone is sending emails to each other but no one is reading them!

 

It gets worse when some savvy members sign up for the membership using a free or less-frequently-used account to store the useless emails they will never bother to open and read.

 

Having said that, it is always wiser to start your own mailing list and build it with opt-in subscribers, no matter how tempting safe lists can be or how many members there are in a safe list.

 

Refrain from Buying Bulk Mails

I am sure that you have definitely come across advertisements that read: “1,000,000 email addresses for $29.99”. And these bulk mail companies can even offer you these names in a CD at your doorstep.

 

Sure, having 1,000,000 subscribers is the best thing that could ever happen to any Internet Marketer and often sounds too good to be true. But very often, it always sounds too good to be true.

 

What many beginning marketers do not really know is that these bulk companies harvest the email addresses using robots and other wares on the Internet. That is how the 1,000,000 email addresses come about, whatever the amount is.

 

Now, the really awful part is that if you purchase the so-called 1,000,000 names even at a low price, not only is it a waste of money, you are risking being accused of spamming. It is no longer a surprise how you often receive spam mails on Viagra, OEM Software and things you do not even need in your inbox.

 

That is so possible, because of the 1,000,000 names, no one knows you or even ask to be subscribed to your mailing list.

 

On top of that, not all 1,000,000 email addresses are really in use because a portion of them can either be own by the same owners (one owner can own more than 1 email accounts) or are obsolete.

 

When you read such ads again, tell yourself that it is a waste of money.