Relationship Building The Internet is a fantastic relationship building tool and by keeping in touch with your customer list on a regular basis via email you have an ideal opportunity to build up trust and credibility with your clients. There are several ways to do this:

1. Write an eZine to your clients at least once a week
2. Tips are very popular and they can be short, not more than one or two paragraphs you send out every week. They must be packed with information that is relevant and beneficial to your clients.
3. Mini courses are effective too, but again must contain good, useful, informative information. Ideally, it should be delivered over 5-7 days and be broken down into one subheading a day on your subject.

How Targeted is Your List? What type of client do you want to attract? It’s simple to build a large customer list quickly by appealing to anyone and everyone.

BUT, the more targeted the list, and your offer to that list, the greater chance of success your business has. I prefer 2000 people on my list who have a strong and passionate interest in my niche rather than 10,000 people who just have a passing interest and not nearly the same motivation to buy.

How Can You Be Selective With Your List? It pays to be as specific as possible when referring to your list. An example of what I use for my own eZine is… ‘Internet Marketing Review Newsletter – Subscribe Today and receive powerful & affordable solutions to increase your online sales and profits every time ..’ By putting in the word “affordable” I immediately put off all the ‘Freebie Seekers’ who are just out for a quick fix or magic solution. If I had put ‘Get the Internet Marketing Review Newsletter to improve your business…’ I would have got a lot of clicks, but not the people who are focused and motivated enough to be open to investing in their business.

How To Build Your List There are many ways to do this, and here are three you can start to use immediately:

1 Articles Writing and submitting articles to other eZines and offline magazines is a very powerful way to build your list and a fast way to promote your business in the resource box at the end. For example: “Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Caribbean Adventure Journal – Your key to unlocking the secret unspoilt hideaways in the Caribbean – subscribe to the Caribbean Adventure Journal eZine today” Click here………

You only need to write 500 to 750 words on your niche that is informative, entertaining and useful to the reader. Do that and it will get published, but remember it’s not an advert. Keep promotion to the resource box otherwise your article won’t get accepted.

2 Pop Up Box On Your Website They generate strong feelings, but whether you use a pop box that appears when a visitor either enters or leaves your site you NEED one to grow your list. The pop up can be a simple form that invites you to leave your name and email address but the results will be greater if you have a dynamic pop up that can’t be blocked. When people have to take an action, they are more likely to really want the information you are offering. Just clicking ‘ok’ means you will get more names, but also more curiosity and ‘freebie’ seekers so you have to decide on the balance.

3 Pay Per Click By using the PPC search engines such as Google’s Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing you can drive targeted traffic to your website. PPC is an ideal way to build your list quickly, but you need to understand the basics of cost per sale and conversion rates. I suggest you spend time researching it and a great start is Perry Marshall’s free 5 Day Course which you get by searching for Adwords on Google.

How to Manage Your List Automation is key here, so put a process in place at the beginning to automatically add and delete subscribers and send out emails and mini courses to your list. Again there are options, so do your research and cost comparison, but ones I use and highly recommend are Aweber and Shopping cart.

Last word These are the the basic principles you need to follow for building and managing your own customer list. Just put them into practice and see your list grow.Similar Posts:

• How To Build Your Customer List?
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Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How To Build Your Customer List?

Here’s are the 4 steps I’m following as I create the blueprint for my business model:

1. Make clients pay well for your most valuable commodity — your time. I see many service business owners tying themselves up with (and tying themselves down to) far too many 1:1 clients. You have only so many hours in the day, and at some point you’ll hit the wall and not be able to expand the number of 1:1 clients you see. Sure, you can hire and train additional staff to handle the overflow, but in many cases, you make less money in this model while tripling your headaches. Make your 1:1 time with clients your highest-fee service, charging a premium fee to dispense your expertise.

2. Ongoing recurring revenue is key. Feast or famine seems to shape the life of the service business owner, regardless of industry. Wouldn’t your life be much more sane if you knew that you could count on recurring revenue each and every month, rather than having to constantly go out and find new clients? This was one of the models I adopted early on in my virtual assistant practice, i.e. working exclusively with clients on retainer rather than a “pay as you go” model. What is it that your clients need from you that you could provide on an ongoing basis with them that isn’t time-intensive for you?

3. Always have an upgrade. Never offer a stand-alone product or program that doesn’t have a natural tie-in to the next level of program or service that you offer. If there’s no way to leverage what you’re offering into some type of upgrade, don’t offer it! For example, a free teleclass can lead participants to enroll in a paid short-term group program. From that program, plan to enroll a certain percentage of those participants into a recurring revenue continuity program. You can then upgrade a percentage of these participants into a live event or small ongoing mentoring program, and from there make an upgrade offer to your premium 1:1 time.

4. Design the blueprint. Brainstorm all of the types of programs, products, and services you might offer in your business. Your list might look like the one below:

• Consulting
• 1:1 Service Provision
• Group Coaching/Mentoring/Continuity Programs
• Sale of Info Products –Private Retreats
• Strategy Sessions
• Live Events
• Speaking
• Information Products or Books –Licensing/Certification Training
• Teleseminars/Webinars
• Subscription Membership Web site

Pick 3-5 of these items that will make up your business model, and then determine what percentage of income you want to derive from each. Your total needs to equal 100%. Then, determine the order in which you offer the components of your program over the next 1-2 years. This becomes your blueprint for action.

How do you determine your success? If your business still suffers from feast and famine, take a long, hard look at your business model for the solution. Every offer you make in your business should flow seamlessly into the next, which will result in a steady, predictable income that you can increase over time as you become more expert at designing and following your blueprint.Similar Posts:

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Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Business Planning: 4 Steps to Creating Your Online Business Model Blueprint

• Keeping in touch with clients and customers
• Sending out information updates
• Providing a monthly ezine
• Mini courses
• Eclasses
• Tips
• Sales promotions
• Recommendations
• Autoresponders
• And more

Does it still work? Well, I am in regular contact once a month with over 20,000 people just by email and that enabled me to sell out in just 48 hours a webinar I set up. Want more? Well in just 30 minutes I wrote an email that brought in 42 sales in the first 36 hours for a Chinese cooking ebook. Yes, it works! That certainly proves to me that email is still a powerful sales tool, but in a more competitive market you need to have an edge.

Here are 6 tips you can use to increase the power of your email marketing.

1. Ask your subscribers to filter your email. I always ask people to filter my email into a special folder for email they want to keep; or ask them to apply a color filter so when my email arrives it changes color and stands out. Make sure you tell them how to filter it in both your thank you and first email and give details for the most popular email programmes.
2. Send out a ‘Gentle Nudge’ Email People get lots of emails, and there is a chance yours will get lost in their spam filter. You can avoid this by putting your message or ezine on your website so people can view it there. It’s goo idea to also ‘remind’ your list of a new posting on your website as they may not have got, or deleted, your original email.
3. Respond to confirmation requests If you have signed up to any newsletter or ezine you always get asked to confirm you want to receive it and are a genuinely ‘live’ person. This avoids junk mail reaching you, and you can turn this to your business advantage. I always reply to confirmation requests because these people have taken the trouble to set up the filtering process and it will be on their primary email account; which means they will look at it on a regular basis. This way I get to build a relationship with them, which then results in more sales.
4. Use double opt in to build highly targeted and responsive lists I’ve used this method to build a highly responsive list of buyers in one niche I operate in. I emailed them first about a product I was launching and to find out more they had to email me back. Once they took that action I then asked them to confirm their request. Yes, this meant I reduced the overall number of people on my list BUT the people who were on it were eager for the information. The result? 31% of that list bought the product. .
5. Use S-P-A-M- filters to check your email before you send it out There are some words that will trigger a reaction in many email filters so avoid that and use an email checker before you send out your messages. This increases the chance of your email being received and you can find filters by just searching on Google.
6. Use additional methods to deliver your information Emails are an important part of your marketing mix, and you can also hook into alternative methods to actually put your message across. You could try, as I have, sending an email to your offering an mp3 recording or PDF report to download. Offering a PDF report means you can offer a lot more information, including graphics.

The great thing about PDF’s is that people tend to keep them longer than emails so you have a longer presence with them. Using an MP3 gives you a VERY easy way to send information out. All you need is a microphone plugged into your PC then record your information and upload it to your website. Then just email your list telling them it is ready to download.

And finally…… Emails are very far from dead, or even sick, but they still remain a very effective way to grow your business online.Similar Posts:

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Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Is Email Marketing Dead?

Define Success

Ask yourself “What is the purpose of your newsletter?” A newsletter is a substantial investment of company resources in terms of time and energy, and you need to define in as tangible terms as possible the purpose of your Newsletter.

Voice and Personality

Establish a voice or editorial personality—whether newsy, serious, gossipy or funny—that is synergistic with the image you want to portray and connects with your audience. Remember that e-mail newsletters aren’t e-mail promotions designed to stimulate immediate action. Sales and promotional copy don’t suit e-newsletters. Nor does the traditional tone of broadcast corporate communications. Think of your newsletter as a one-on-one conversation. Just imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking informally with a customer. That’s the starting point for your approach—a more personable and appropriate “human” voice will come naturally. Drop the jargon, drop the sales pitch, be as honest as you can, and talk like a human being. You can have as much or as little personality as is appropriate. Consider adding a brief editorial, a comment or two, an editor’s note, a couple of lines of commentary, a touch of opinion; adding a little human element here and there. Sign editorials, give authors a byline, or list some names down in the administrative section of each issue to which your readers can relate to.

“From” Line

Whether it’s a person’s name, name of the newsletter or company name, determine what will resonate best with your readers and stay with it.

“Subject” Line

“Vol. 1, Issue #8? or “Company News” are not enticing subject lines. They are certainly consistent and simple, but they don’t tell your readers anything that will motivate them to open your e-mail. Your subject line is your calling card—entice your readers with the most interesting or intriguing information in your Newsletter. Use attractive headlines as a means to summarize a section of content.

Style/Format

Establish a format and layout of your Newsletter that is clean and simple, with elements of the Newsletter (table of contents, “Tips”, subscription information, etc. located in the same spot each issue).

Content and Relevancy

Figure out what your readers want and give it to them. Seek continuous improvement by obtaining reader feedback and monitoring click-through rates to determine what types of articles are most popular. Another dilemma that we all confront is too much information and too little time. The newsletter’s job is to keep readers on top of trends and the latest developments in the industry. Aim for articles and feature stories to meet one of the following criteria by including either: major industry occurrences, forward thinking industry ideas, education on issues or new techniques, or business opportunities.

Whether your customers work out of a corporate or home office, or employees need answers to questions and tips for improving business activities, e-newsletters provide you with an opportunity to point out work inefficiencies, and share relevant best practice. When you create a newsletter, try changing your focus from selling products and services to solving your customers’ problems. Think about what they need and give options they don’t know exist.

The greatest thing about the electronic medium is that you can quickly add new hyperlinks and include updates on old material should new information surface without incurring another round of cost for a new issue (that happens in the real world).

Don’t Wait Till the Last Minute

Begin compiling newsletter information in advance. Ask fellow marketers to contribute articles. One great source of information is none other than your inbox where you can quickly search for worthy nuggets from the past week and relay the same essence in your own words.

Quality Sources

Where can you get quality content for your newsletter?

1. Article directories like ezinearticles.com or findarticles.com. Also get articles from yahoogroups. The downside to this is that you need to include the author’s signature or resource box.
2. Forums. One of the most dynamic and updated places on the Internet is where people write off the cuff and in real-time. Thread after thread, reply after reply of the latest information comes off the minds of forum participants. Combine interesting topics and reword them into an original article.
3. Again, your own inbox right under your nose. Whatever other marketers are writing or selling about, use them to your own advantage and recreate them as your own.
4. Your own insights are really your best resources. When you have passion, you will never stop talking about what you know. Be consistent at no. 4 and soon enough you will find a way to mold yourself into an expert. Continue to expand your knowledge database and add value to it.

Graphics

Use graphics that print well on your printer. Using a good mix of photographs and art work makes for interesting copy. Too many graphics can leave the newsletter looking cluttered.

Frequency

Determine how frequently your readers want to hear from you/receive your newsletter—and what you can commit to. As a rule, a weekly newsletter is ideal. However, don’t launch a weekly newsletter if you are not absolutely certain that you can distribute a quality Newsletter every week. A fortnightly newsletter is a good option too.

Length

A newsletter should be a quick read. Readers expect to finish reading it in 4 to 5 minutes. Short articles increase the probability that your reader will find something of interest to them.

Timing

Test and pick a day and time that works best…and stick to it. Readers should almost be able to set their watches by the receipt time of your Newsletter.

Penetration

You have the option of formatting your e-mail by including colorized text and a variety of fonts, but not all e-mail software supports HTML mail. Consider writing your newsletter in plain text or offer two mailing lists—one for plain text mailings and the other for HTML e-mail.

Make it Viral

Provide information readers can act on or that stimulates reaction—forwarding it to friends and peers, stimulating purchases or requests for additional information. Make it easy for readers to forward articles and information to peers and friends. Provide a “Tell a Friend” link that enables readers to forward the Newsletter with a personalized note.

Search

Make it easy to find articles of interest and back issues. Provide a table of contents and links to articles within the newsletter and to resources and past articles on your site.

Printability

If you want to give readers an option to print, consider providing “printer-friendly formats” on your website. Make sure your newsletter is physically readable. Avoid anything less than 12 point fonts for the article text. Fancy fonts may look good but can be hard to read when printed. Heading and text fonts should be consistent throughout the newsletter.

If you lack experience in print media, seek out assistance if you know someone in the field. If not, don’t worry—the abovementioned basic principles apply. Plan to research your material thoroughly and avoid factual or editing errors, as they will make you seem less credible.

Personalize

At the very least, address the reader by name. The most successful newsletters have a human being associated with them…and a personality. If possible, your Newsletter should be “written by a person” at your company…not the company.

Language

Not everyone has the range and depth of vocabulary as teachers and linguists do. Use words that are easy to understand, and if you do use technical terms, provide a definition that people can relate to. There is nothing more frustrating then a definition that makes less sense than the word itself. Just write in layman terms and keep it short, simple and straightforward.

Spelling and Grammar Check

Sending out copy with numerous errors creates a negative image to your readers. Aside from using a spell checker, have an outsider edit your final copy for readability, grammar and content.

Test and Track

Test the Newsletter on few e-mail addresses to check for errors and other issues before sending to the entire distribution list. Keep track of results and reactions to your newsletter to come to an understanding for further tweaks and corrections.

Lastly, to summarize the key fundamental features of an e-newsletter, make sure you include:

• Table of Contents
• Hyperlinks for customers who want more information for a featured topic
• Exciting secrets or tips related to your product or service
• Contact information

E-newsletters can take up a good amount of time if not managed correctly. The use of a list server (a piece of software that runs on your Internet provider’s computer or on your own web server) is a good option. It will automatically manage a list of e-mail addresses. Once you send your newsletter to the list server, it distributes the letter to the stored addresses. For more information on list servers, contact your Internet service provider. If you opt to use another method, make sure you have a plan for handling incoming and outgoing mail when your customer base increases.

In conclusion, your newsletter can serve as an extension of your business that will reach out to your customers. It will allow you to maintain regular contact with them and serve as an effective and rewarding addition to your marketing arsenal. These tips should help you put it all together and help you create an exceptional newsletter.

Learn more:
Earn From Your Own Ready Made Newsletters With PLR Newsletters.
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Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

How To Create An Effective Newsletter

As the number one goal of a website is to achieve traffic, i.e. people actually looking at the site, it follows that you must make the website visible. Generally speaking, to make your website visible, people must be able to find it when they search for keywords directly related to your product, niche, service or whatever else your website represents. Individuals tend to be seeking such information via the big search engines, whose operators have rather complicated algorithms to help them decide whether a certain website is applicable to the searcher’s request, or not.

Although they will not divulge exactly how they go about composing these algorithms, the search engine operators do assure us that relevancy, as viewed by others, is most important. If they see that you have a back link or a number of back links from other websites that have some relevancy to yours, this is a plus. In addition, if the site linking to you has a fairly high “page rank”, this helps as well. Page rank is Google’s proprietary method of allocating a number (zero being lowest and moving up to ten) indicating how important a site is within its particular niche of operations.

There are a number of ways to achieve back links for your site:

ARTICLE MARKETING

As Bill Gates once said, “content is king”. Article marketing is known as one of the most solid Internet marketing methods. By writing highly relevant and informative articles and submitting them to high profile article directories you do several things, not the least important of which is to help establish you or your site as an expert in your niche. Within your article, published in the article directory, is a resource box which contains your details – who you are and what you do, and a link back to your site, the all important Back Link.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

There are many hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and their primary motive is basically to provide a way of informing people about the existence of content related to any niche or interest in a very manageable format. You can sign up and initiate a process of notifying social bookmarking sites about fresh content, including back links in many cases. You should note at this stage that some webmasters apply a “no follow” tag which can void the effect of a back link, as the tag instructs the search engine spider not to give you points, or what’s called “link love”.

SOCIAL MEDIA – TWITTER

Whilst Twitter and other similar sites are becoming increasingly more powerful in marketing terms, you should know that to include links within your “tweets” or in your URL profile box is not a powerful back linking strategy, as these are all allocated the dreaded no follow tag. However, you may find that it is possible to link within a bio box and get some link love this way. Also, if you syndicate, your Twitter feeds are updated via the RSS aggregators, earning you back links.

BLOG COMMENTING

First of all, you will have to locate blogs or forums that are relevant to your area of expertise. This is fairly simple to accomplish as a straightforward and pertinent search will locate hosts. Once you find these blogs you can sign up and create a profile. Often you will be allowed to create what is called a “signature”, and within that signature you incorporate your links. Note, you should check to see if there are any no follow tags, as these will appear occasionally.

Enter into the spirit of the place by interacting with other members and making entries and posting comments that are relevant, useful and educational. As well as a back link being displayed each time you post a comment, you’ll also create a potentially profitable bond with other members – and this has the potential to lead to all kinds of new possiblities.

Back link building remains one of the most important SEO strategies to adopt.Similar Posts:

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Post from: Home Business and Work From Home Ideas and Opportunities

Using Back Links to Improve Your Website SEO