Friday, January 05, 2007

Autoresponders Generate Online Profits

Autoresponders Generate Online Profits
by: Lewis Leake
If you ask online marketer how to convert website visitors into buyers, most will give you the same answer: the sales are in the follow-up.

It’s much more than just increasing your traffic volume. After all, most of your visitors won’t decide to purchase your products or your services when they first visit your website. But that’s not to say that they won’t be interested in your offer tomorrow or next week, or that they won’t be interested in future offers.

Therefore, it is necessary to get your visitor's email addresses so that you can inform them of current and upcoming offers. You do this by using an opt-in system that invites them to subscribe to your mailing list. By gathering their names and email addresses, with their permission of course, you are now able to contact them periodically with information, usually by sending them an ezine as well as an occasional freebie.

There are no problems as long as you’re only dealing with ten or twenty subscribers, as you could just email them individually. However, such numbers aren't going to make you many sales. You should aim for a mailing list that could reach into the thousands. That number of subscribers would make it difficult for you to prepare individual emails for each name on your list.

The basis of an ideal mailing list, therefore, is an effective autoresponder system that provides the power and flexibility to email your subscribers in a timely and efficient manner.

A mailing list of considerable size powered by a good autoresponder system consistently provides earnings for many Internet marketers. A lot of online businessmen make significant profits from their mailing lists alone.

Okay, but what is an autoresponder system? An autoresponder system is like a digital secretary. It takes care of your subscribers by providing an opt-in system that allows visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. An autoresponder system also takes care of the sending of emails to your subscriber base.

You can prepare your messages in advance, program them into the autoresponder, and preset the intervals by which the messages are delivered. You can even separate your subscribers into various groups. You could have a group for those who have not yet placed an order, for example. You could have another grouping for those who have already made a purchase. This allows you to use two different marketing approaches in dealing with each of the groups.

A good autoresponder system can help you build trust in your products or services. With a good autoresponder, you can also provide an efficient technical support program. If your subscribers email you a question about one of your products, for example, you could preset the autoresponder to reply with a general FAQ to send them the information.

Not all autoresponders are designed the same and much care should be taken in choosing the right one for your particular needs. Here are some questions you should ask before you decide on a particular autoresponder service:

* How many accounts can you create? Some business plans might
require that you have different accounts for different products.

* How many lists can you build? There are also some business plans where you might need different lists for different groups of subscribers.

* How many follow-up messages can you preset? Do you need a lot of follow-up messages or do you know yet? Quite a few autoresponder services provide for unllimited follow-ups.

* How many subscribers can the system hold? And also, how many subscribers can the system respond to?

* How much customization is allowed? You need to be able to personalize your email messages with each subscriber’s name and other customizable information.

* How does the system gather subscriber information? The process should be simple and convenient; otherwise, the visitor will not subscribe.

* Will you be able to send your messages in html and text formats? Most autoresponder services allow both formats.

* Will you be able to track your subscribers for the purpose of target marketing? This my or may not be important to you.

* Is the scheduling system fully automated and flexible enough for your current and future needs?

* Is the autoresponder easy to use? Do they have a demo area so that you can try it out?

Now, does the autoresponder service you are considering provide answers to all of the above questions? If so and if it is offered at a reasonable price, then you should grab the deal as soon as you can.

Remember, if you’re running an online business, a good autoresponder should be one of your primary investments. It could be the key to an excellent conversion rate, more sales and more profits.

About the author:
Lewis Leake, Jr. is the webmaster of GrowNetProfits.com - http://www.grownetprofits.com. Find out how to skyrocket your sales with unlimited, follow-up autoresponders! http://www.grownetprofits.com/SFAR


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How To Make Money Seven Days A Week, Literally!

How To Make Money Seven Days A Week, Literally!
by: Marvin Haycock
Don't let the simplicity of this very short report mislead you. You can literally make money everyday if you put the structure mentioned in this report into place.

Over the past year I've sent out one email per week to some of my mailing lists and have always received at least one sale from each of those mailings so…

Here's the secret…

Create seven (7) separate mailing lists and send one mailing to one of those lists everyday.

Each of the subscribers on your list would only receive one email per week and out of those subscribers you are almost assured of making at least one sale from each mailing.

Things to remember…

If you want to make use of this marketing model then build each lists using different traffic sources. You want to try and avoid overlap as much as possible. You don't want the same people receiving all of the same offers.

You DON'T need to promote a new product in every mailing. It's a proven fact that (if you have a good product to promote) you will make sales from your second, third or even fourth and fifth mailings for the same product.

With that in mind you only need to find between 10-20 quality products to promote over the course of a full year.

You won't make a million dollars online but you can definitely earn a decent fulltime income from this system.

About the author:
Marvin Haycock is the world's premier Internet Marketing Super-Spy. Find out how easy it is to make money online by accessing his Secret Agent Reports free at his website: http://www.SecretAgentReports.com


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Using an Opt-In List to Optimize Your Internet Marketing Success

Using an Opt-In List to Optimize Your Internet Marketing Success
by: Joan Yankowitz
In order to make a success of your website or online business, it is obvious that you will need customers. Although everyone who visits your page will not become a customer, they must have some interest in your product or service that brought them there in the first place and therefore they are a potential customer. Potential customers are much more likely to become actual customers if you make an effort to keep in touch with them. This essential marketing tool is called and opt-in list.

An opt-in list will allow you to keep track of your potential customers by obtaining their email address in order to keep them informed about the latest updates for your product or service. You can create your own opt-in list or you can use an opt-in list creator that is available online from several sources. The benefits of creating your own opt-in list is that you will be able to send personal messages to the potential customers and they will not need to do anything, whereas with commercial opt-in lists, the customer will receive a generated message and will be required to verify their acceptance of the message.

An important part of creating a successful opt-in list is to keep in mind that potential customer will visit your site from many places and may not see your homepage. Therefore it is imperative to have the ability to subscribe to the mailing list from all pages of your site. You should not, however, make the subscription information a focus point of every page. It is a good idea to put it at the bottom or top of the page where it is visible but not distracting. It is also a good idea to promote your mailing list by using a give-away. You could offer a service, a discount, or an ebook. You can also drive potential subscriber to join your mailing list by writing articles that will benefit the reader and at the same time, build your credibly as an expert. You can include the subscription information in the byline of the articles. You could also write an ebook with your subscription information on each page, which will allow the customer to easily access the information and join the list with ease.

Once you have created the mailing list and now have your potential customers within your grasp it is your responsibility to keep them updated and interested.
Provide them with quality information that is up-to-date and of interest to them. Offer discounts or a newsletter, something that the reader can use. This will keep them interested and will drive them to your site over and over, eventually they may make a purchase and if not, they will be informed enough to use word of mouth advertising for your site.

About the author:
Joan Yankowitz can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours... To
learn more, visit:http://www.WebIncome101.com/pips.html


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The Best Things In Life Are Free, EVEN Your Mailing Lists!

The Best Things In Life Are Free, EVEN Your Mailing Lists!
by: Janette Haugen
Direct mail marketing can be expensive for the business owner, if they are targeting the wrong audience. The process can be frustrating to everyone that multiple thousands of businesses give up on viable direct mail campaigns, leaving tens of millions of dollars in unsold revenue to their competitors. The single most important factor? Your mailing lists.

After experiencing much of the frustration myself, I became a self-taught marketeer on promotion through direct mail and set up my own company that specializes in direct mail postcard marketing & printing. One of my best and biggest secrets? How to get the freshest, most accurate mailing lists for Free. It’s not that hard, really.

If you already have a client or customer list then that is the best list to work with. However, if you don’t, here’s what you need to ask yourself, who would want or need my products or services?

Choosing the most effective mailing lists can be difficult, if you mail to the wrong target audience you are just wasting your time and money.

The advantage of having an effective mailing list is that you are now able to reach your best potential new customers, therefore getting your message to them, creating leads and sales.

Most companies just starting out have a marketing budget, and it’s not always a big budget. So I suggest that if you’re trying to reach other businesses in your area that you march on down to your local City Hall and get the current list of “New Business Licenses”. Some cities have a small processing fee they will charge you for the list, while a growing number of cities now offer them online for free. Our first list from City hall cost a whopping $7, now it’s free on-line every month.

These free lists aren’t limited to Business to Business List, Business to Consumer lists are also free. A local client of ours who has a Handyman business needed to market his services to homeowners. We suggested that he go down to the Property Appraisers Office to get the free current list of “New Home Owners” for that month, instead of spending the little money he did have for promotion on just the mailing list. He followed our suggestion, ordered postcards, and found himself receiving several calls which kept him busy for months.

Your local City Hall and Property Appraisers Office is a gold mine of information and often times businesses just don’t realize that this data is public information and can be obtained for a minimal fee and often times for free. These are the freshest most accurate lists available.

I’ve grown my own company on these lists, and you can too.


About the author:
Janette Haugen, age 34, first and foremost mother of 1, step-mother of 2, wife, animal lover and business owner. Coming from a large family of 8 kids, I learned the value of a dollar early on. Now that I am a business owner I can help other businesses with my frugal marketing tips, that is something that I enjoy. To find out about direct mail marketing with postcards, or general printing needs call us anytime at 866-492-2737 or visit us at
http://www.PostcardFrenzy.com


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The Importance of a Marketing Plan

The Importance of a Marketing Plan
by: Joy Gendusa
There aren’t many things in life that you would get into with out a plan. Marketing is no different. Your overall marketing plan should cover about a six month period, and should be made up of weekly and monthly marketing schedules.

This is how you do it:

1. Figure out how much money is in your budget.

As we all know, marketing of any kind costs money. How much money you are willing to commit to the cause is going to determine some key factors about how that money can be best spent. Remember, you want to be economical but you also need to be realistic on what it will take to pull in the leads you need to close new and repeat business.

2. Determine your target market.

Who is most likely to buy your product? Are they married? Are they business owners? What is their income level? These are the people that you want to target. One of the most common mistakes in marketing is answering "Everyone" to the question "Who is your target market?" It may be that you have more than one target market, but there is no product in the world that appeals to each and every person. Even Coca-Cola targets different people with different messages. Decide who is MOST LIKELY to buy what you have to sell and target them. Your message to teenagers will be different than your message to housewives even if the product is exactly the same. Different markets may require different mail pieces or advertisements.

2a. Using the Right Mailing List.

In making sure that your message is getting across to the right people - people who are in the market for what you’re offering usually comes down to finding the right mailing list.

There is a great deal to know about mailing lists. There are pointers you could follow when buying a mailing list that tell you what to watch for in a mailing list company to make sure they’re reputable. They are:

i) Get references. Talk to other people that have purchased mailing lists from that company.

ii) Do they guarantee on delivery? That means due to the inevitable number of bad addresses there are in a list, can they still guarantee a high percentage of deliverable addresses. That number should be 90% or better. People move all the time so a mailing list company cannot guarantee 100% deliverability – but they should guarantee at least 90%.

iii) How often do they update their information? They should be able to answer this question and should be updating their information monthly.

You can get burnt on mailing lists – it is the most expensive part of your campaign. Ask friends who own businesses. Don’t just purchase from the first person that tries to sell you mailing lists. Do your research.

3. Select what media to use. (i.e., Direct Mail, Television, Radio, etc.)

This decision will depend on both your budget and your target market. If you have not done a good deal of marketing in the past we recommend picking one media to start. This is much easier to keep track of and you will better be able to tell whether or not it is working. Also, since repetition is the key to marketing success, using one media to begin with will help you reach the same people multiple times. If you run a
newspaper ad and send out a postcard, you run the risk of the majority of the people only seeing your ad once. However, if you send out the postcard twice you can guarantee that you get your message to the same people twice and you will start to build recognition.

Once you are getting the returns that you want from the first media, or if you decide that it is not working for you, you can branch out into another form of advertising. Over time you will build up a very diverse marketing plan.

4. Make a Schedule and Stick with It.

Figure out how many people you have in your target market. For this example we will use Direct Mail Marketing. If you have a mailing list of people in your target market that has 1500 names, figure out how many times per month you can mail a postcard to them and still stay within your monthly budget. Once you come up with this number, do it!

The importance of having a marketing plan cannot be stressed enough. Create one and follow it and you’ll start seeing the benefits.





About the author:
Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998; her only assets a computer and a phone. In 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employs over 60 persons. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she’s sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at www.postcardmania.com



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Mailing Lists – Keeping it Simple

Mailing Lists – Keeping it Simple
by: Joy Gendusa
The right direct mailing list targets people who want your product or service.
The direct mail mailing list is a key factor in a successful direct mail marketing campaign and a major point to consider in small business marketing strategies where marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is a key concern.

What really makes your direct mail marketing and advertising campaign successful?

The biggest single factor in the success of your direct mail marketing strategy is who you send your mailings to.

A. You need a list.

This can be:

1) a list of existing customers or prospects who have inquired as a result of any of your marketing efforts or

2) a list which you purchase or in some cases obtain for free.

B. The mailing list must contain the names of people who are likely to be interested in the benefits of your products or services.

Don’t try and sell beer to the Temperance Society or real estate to people who cannot afford it. You have to target your direct mail marketing efforts.

What kinds of lists are available?

C. The three basic kinds of lists that you can use are (you can use all three):
1. Your own list of prospects and customers. This is a list that you collected with your own personal marketing efforts. This is known as a house list. These people are most likely to respond to your offers, because they have responded in the past.

2. A response list is a list of people that have actually done something. They have either purchased something from the people who put together the list or inquired in response to some offer or asked to be on the list. They have some level of interest in the topic or purpose of the list.

These people have not previously responded to you, but they have responded to someone in a related area (if you have purchased a correctly targeted list) so you know they are at least warm.

This is a direct mail mailing list you can purchase from the owner of the list (such as a magazine or company) or a list broker.

3. A compiled list is a list of people who were selected to be on the list because they possess the characteristics that you asked the list broker to screen for.
Examples of characteristics used to target correctly may include age, sex, geographic location, income level, etc. These are more fixed characteristics than response list characteristics, which are behavioral characteristics.

Case study: California based Sun Pacific Mortgage’s Forest Tardibuono found a great way to get the right direct mail mailing list for his company which has a very successful direct mail marketing strategy based on postcards and direct mail mailing lists.

“The title companies give us the mailing labels free. I’ll tell them we want all the homeowners in 95401 which is a zip we get most of our business from. So they’ll give us the mailing labels of anyone who is a homeowner from that lists. It saves money on labels and mailing lists.

They’ll even limit searches to specific categories such as all homeowners from that zip who got a loan from certain companies and they’ll do the search according to that so I can really target the public so that the mailing will be more effective.”

Mailing lists, correctly targeted, can make the difference in a mediocre promotional campaign to a wildly successful promotional campaign. It really just depends on what you are willing to have – success or mediocrity. So which is it?



About the author:
Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998, her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employed over 60 people. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she’s sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at www.postcardmania.com



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The Most Profitable Internet Marketing Strategy Ever

The Most Profitable Internet Marketing Strategy Ever
by: Houa Yang
So what's the most profitable internet marketing strategy you can apply to your business right now and start profiting from it for years to come?

It's having your own responsive mailing list.

Here's how it works:

You CAN start today by collecting the names and email addresses of people who's interested in what you're selling. And start selling it to them.

There is no doubt about it, owning a responsive mailing list is THE most profitable thing you can do online. It's more profitable than ...

Writing eBooks or reports.

Getting thousands of visitors to your site.

Having the hottest sales copy on the Internet.

Having a "top 1%" Alexa rating.

Being the smartest person on the planet.

It's even more profitable that having an army of affiliates!

Or ANY other ONE thing that you can do online.

Having your own responsive mailing list means that you can make offers week after week for YEARS, and your list will faithfully buy what you recommend. Now THAT'S marketing power!

If that sounds good to you ... keep reading.

The only way to reliably have a mailing list that is HIGHLY responsive is to build it yourself. The good news is that building a list of your own is actually VERY easy when you know how.

In fact, you probably have the seeds of a small list right now, even though you might not know it.

Let me be 100% clear. You do NOT need an advanced degree in marketing, need a big time "guru" reputation, have to spend thousands of dollars, or a huge mailing list.

All you need is to have something to say, and to learn HOW (and when) to say it in a way that gets subscribers to take action now!

To help you get started building your own profitable list here's a few marketing tips that you can apply today:

You can work together with other site owners. The idea here is that you get traffic that I'll never see, and I get traffic you'll never see. So, we make an agreement that allows us each to benefit from the other's traffic.

The most common form of this is what is called a "thank you page private co-registration". That's a fancy way of saying that I'll show your subscription form on the thank you page of my website, and you'll show my subscription form on the thank you page of your site.

The thank you pages involved here can be found in a variety of places. Each one has the common denominator that they are viewed after a visitor takes action. This is good, because studies show that visitors who take one action are likely to take another action.

Here are some common thank you pages where you can place your subscription form:

After a sale is made.
After someone subscribes to an ezine.
After they download a free gift.
After they complete a survey.

The possibilities are endless, and this is one of the most underused marketing methods around.

So if you can find a site that compliments your site, these arrangements can be a powerful list building method.


About the author:
YES YOU CAN build a powerful mailing list! Having your
own mailing list is THE most profitable thing you can
do online. Don't put it off ... begin building your
list today. It's easy! Just visit: http://www.email-marketing-strategy.com


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E-Z GRO Opt-In Mailing List Techniques

E-Z GRO Opt-In Mailing List Techniques
by: Shon Christopher
An opt-in mailing list can be your most solid internet marketing tool. Think of it as a foot in the door – or better yet, a standing invitation to drop by anytime. Research has shown that it takes an average of seven contacts with a prospect to make your first sale.

It’s hard to count on someone returning to your web site seven times – but if you get them there once, and convince them to join your opt-in mailing list, you have a standing invitation to contact them with your offers, at your convenience.

The trick, of course, is turning your web site visitors into opt-in list subscribers. Opt-in list building is easier than you think. There are a number of tried and true methods of list building that you can use – but don’t be afraid to think outside the box to sign up folks who drop by your web site for a short visit.

Start with a good reason for people to join your opt-in list.

People don’t join opt-in lists out of the goodness of their hearts – they opt in because you’re offering them something of value. What have you got to offer?

• Get a 10% discount on all purchases over $25 – exclusive to members of our mailing list!

• Find out about our newest products through our opt-in mailing list!

• We’ll keep you up to date on the latest developments in [insert your field here].

• Special discount prices and offers exclusively for members of our mailing list.

Get the picture? You’re not saying, “Hey, can I keep bugging you to try to sell you stuff?” You’re offering a service – “I’ll let you know when I’ve got good stuff you want to buy.”

Post the invitation to join your opt-in list prominently on your web site. Simple list building truth number one is that people can’t join your opt-in list if they don’t know about it. Put an invitation to join your email list on every single page of your site – and make the invitation enticing.

Practice opt-in list building everywhere.

Include a short invitation to join your opt-in email list as part of your email signature so that it goes out every time you email someone. If you do a presentation or event, personally invite participants or booth visitors to join your opt in email list.

Bribe people to sign up with a free gift.

Bribery is a tried-and-true fast list building technique and website promotion tool. Selling weight loss products? Put together an e-book of weight loss facts about nutrition and offer it as an incentive to sign up for your opt in list. Be creative, and watch your list grow like a weed.

Offer incentives for referrals.