Building a Hot Email List – Part 1
Published September 7, 2009 | 
In this article we are going to look at methods for building a receptive email list that you can market to again and again.
First of all let’s consider the significance of email marketing today and the importance of continued communication.
Email marketing averages 6% returns, that’s a 300% increase on direct mail.
Think about this too, 48% of businesses never follow up with a prospect, 25% only make a second contact and 12% only make three contacts.
It has been proved that maintaining a relationship with your prospects is the real key to making fantastic money online. Once you’ve got a customer base that you’ve sold to already you will find it 10 times easier to sell to them than it would be to a new prospect.
Believe it or not, it is the third contact where your conversion rates start to soar and by the fifth contact they will skyrocket. Email marketing is the perfect opportunity to tap into these amazing figures and start doubling or even tripling your profits today.
Choosing the Right Software
In order to market via email you will need an email marketing system that is easy to use, reliable and has the power to do what you need it to.
There are many systems out there but we recommend using a company with solid support and a good reputation in the market and there are loads out there.
A software system with a long history of sending email to major email providers such as Hotmail and AOL is critically important as this will ensure that your messages reach your intended recipients.
Ok, so once you’ve settled on a system that suits your requirements, we need to then look at how to build your list of hot emails.
Where to Start
In order to market to customers effectively you have to a receptive audience. So where better to look first than your existing customer data.
Now you might already have a database of email contacts that you’ve built over time and this is a potential goldmine. Put simply though if you’ve not been keeping in touch this data needs to be purified.
1. Mining the gold in your existing customer list
Our first suggestion is to blow the dust of that spreadsheet or database and re-introduce your company to past customers with a compelling email.
Now if you are concerned that you haven’t been in touch for a while and might get your hand slapped for spamming don’t worry, business law is slightly more forgiving than that which applies to the general public and it is perfectly acceptable to send an email to the business if you have had at least one contact with them and you provide a clear route for them to ‘opt out’ of further emails (check this email marketing legal document out if you are worried).
In fact your first email to ANY new sign up via your web site should always include an opt in link verifying their interest.
Failure to provide this step drastically reduces your credibility so don’t think that ignoring will help you.
The email should contain an interesting update about your product or service and a special offer of some sort like a ‘secret report’ to download or a limited time discount coupon – your offer will be something that fits in with your business of course.
The key here is to make it an offer that they can’t refuse as the aim is to get them to stay opted in to your list. If you do this properly you will now have a list of re-qualified customers that you can really get into.
2. Attracting New Customers
For this next strategy there is the assumption that you are getting traffic to your web site already (see here for more on traffic generation).
Now this can be more tricky and time consuming than purifying your own customer database
but remember, this business of data capture isn’t about snaring unsuspecting people so that you can spam them to death.
Your goal is to build a hot customer base through providing them with useful content (and your offers later!). If you don’t stick to this goal your new sign ups will unsubscribe and you will never see them again – simple as that.
So what is the best way to get the list growing?
Again, just make them an offer on your web site that they can’t refuse!
Our first technique for building a list is to provide access to a free downloadable report packed with useful facts or access to an e-course in the form of videos, mp3s or PDF’s.
For this to be most effective you should make your offer highly compelling like revealing insider tips, industry secrets, competitions etc. This technique will generate a nice list for you to work with.
The trick here is to ensure that your offer is quick and easy to sign up to, so only ask for their name and email otherwise you are complicating the issue.
So there you go, two tried and tested methods of getting a qualified list together that you can action now.
Part 2 of building a hot email list discusses how to set up your campaign for maximum potency.
Organic SEO Versus Pay Per Click…is There a Winner?
Published August 4, 2009 | Pay Per Click Advantages
Pretty much instant exposure – even in competitive markets – as long as you have bid high enough and have got a good quality score for your page (actually creating a page that lowers the bid price and converts well into sales is an area where many novices fall down).
Campaign control - Google provides tools that make your advertising campaign easy to track the conversion ratios and monitor budgets.
Targeted – You can use the keyword matching options to target specifically e.g. ‘Tennis shoes or you can target the phrase e.g. ‘Red Tennis shoes’ or ‘Tennis shoes red’ or you can broadly match to a keyword so ‘Discount shoes for tennis’. You can also exclude words using the negative keyword option.
Pay per click is great for testing the market with new products and services. By posting an advert for your latest idea leading to a ‘squeeze page‘ you can collect data and gauge the interest over a few days and avoid potentially costly market flops.
Pay Per Click Disadvantages
Continuous investment – Pay per click is like just renting space and when you stop paying for your listing it disappears and click prices can fluctuate and in many markets are likely to rise.
Not as trusted as the main listings – Users are 60-80% more likely to click on the organic listing (underneath the top advertising slots) meaning less exposure. However a point to note is if you are getting a lot of clicks for your ad it is a good idea to check out the organic competition to see if there is an opportunity to get an organic listing as your ad copy could be well worthwhile deploying there too.
Profit margin can be small or non-existent – Keywords can be very expensive and outweigh the returns in very competitive markets so you have to be very careful how you select them. It is critical that you quickly discover the ‘buying keywords’ early on and optimise your pages for them.
Organic SEO Advantages
Long term value – Organic listings can be cheaper to attain in less competitive markets but very difficult to achieve in competitive markets, however once attained maintenance can be lower. The graphic shows the initial investment to be higher but as time goes by performance increases and investment lowers.
Organic SEO requires bigger initial investment
Graphic supplied courtesy of Elliance.com
Better click thru rate - SEO is responsible for around 60-80% of the clicks available (in most markets – not all) since users tend to prefer to visit the web sites found at the top in the main organic listings.
Element of stability – Organic listings once attained can be cheaper to maintain and don’t disappear overnight once the funds dry up!
SEO activity benefits your entire web presence – Organic SEO focuses on building reputation through links and content on the web site and at web properties where you have posted content such as blogs, article directories and forums. Investing in your web presence will have satisfying long term rewards.
Organic SEO Disadvantages
Need lots of patience! – It can often take many months to get top ranked for mid/high competition keywords
Less control – Changes in the search engine algorithms, although usually not too volatile, can destabilise rankings without warning.
Resource heavy - Organic SEO can take up more marketing resources initially due to it being a content based strategy
Conclusions
Unsurprisingly both methods are highly effective, especially when compared to offline channels however, the key is to select the the right approach for your business. I often advocate an SEO campaign backed up by pay per click.
The reason for this is that with SEO we only target a handful of keywords and these are often the cream in terms of volume. This leaves us sort of invisible (I say sort of because our well written SEO copy will have long tail phrases salted within it) for a huge swathe of long tail keywords that receive fewer searches but are often higher converting.
A pay per click campaign targeting broad match versions of our main keywords will work towards hoovering up any potential customers that use these long tail phrases where our main organic listing page do not show up. Sweet!
Click here for some free SEO training videos or call 05603 145 278 for a free no strings consultation.