Effective Email Marketing is the only way to do business on the Internet. But,
most people have no idea what that means. They only have a rehashed version of what
has been repeated thousands of times all over the net. Well, we're about to settle
all of the myths here, to uncover a can't lose email stategy to ANIHALATE your competition.
I'll show you what I mean by giving you an example...
Let's say you're selling fishing rods. No matter how good your website is, there
is no way that you should advertise the link. Yes, you read that right! Because
like most people, if you send the people straight to your website, all you can do
is hope that they buy. If you're lucky, they'll leave you their email address.
Well, let's say 200 went there. (the number doesn't matter- as you'll soon see.)
At an average of just under 2% conversion (industry standard) 4 people bought your
fishing rod. Great! If you sold the thing for $30/each, then you just made $120
on an ad that maybe only cost you $90. The amateur thinks at this point "I'm in
the money."
This is the type of marketing that is destroying your business.
What do I mean by that? Well, you just made $30. ($120-$90 --for the sake of
the lesson, we'll forget about the cost of manufacturing and shipping the fishing
rods)
Now, next week, what do you have to do in order to make that same $30 again?
You have to write and pay for another ad. If everything goes the same (and it might
not!!) you'll earn another $30. But are you starting to see a problem here?
Every week, you are not making 4 sales, you are losing 196.
You spent your hard earned time and money to write an effective ad, you designed
a good headline, you set up a well written presentation, and after that, you threw
196 people away like they were garbage! Every lead you generate from advertising
costs you money, and each lead is worth its weight in Gold!
You have to use email to stay in constant contact with your leads for many reasons.
(if you know these, keep reading- it gets better.)
#1. You may have to contact a lead multiple times in order to get a sale. So,
out of those 196 people that you'll never see again, a lot of them were potential
sales that you let slip through your fingers.
#2. If you keep all of your leads that you generate, over time you will have
the most valuable thing on the planet for a marketer - a unique mailing list.
Now, why is a mailing list so important? Well, instead of having to re-advertise
every time you want to sell another fishing rod, you can just do a Free mailing
to your list, and you are just as likely (probably more) to generate sales. Plus,
a mailing list is good for a lot of other reasons. Ever heard of a backend? This
is when you sell your customer one product and then over time after you are in communication
with them, you sell them a much more expensive product.
Now, it is hard to sell somebody something high-priced right out the gate. So,
if you build repore with them over time, each and every lead you have could be worth
thousands of dollars in additional products.
Now, I can here you saying "But Scott, we already know this. I offer my traffic
a newsletter (or something) every chance I get. I even have pop-up windows after
they leave to try one last time to capture their email..."
This is the point you're missing in your advertising...
Why send them to your website at all to begin with? You shouldn't advertise a
link to your website. Have your prospects send an email to your autoresponder system,
and then have the system send out the website address. This ensures that every single
person who responds to your ad will be forever in your mailing list until they either
buy from you or opt off the list.
Now, lets clear something up. If you want to get someone's email address these
days, you have to offer them something of value in order to get it. A free course
for example :-) They may have clicked on your website out of curiosity, but nobody
is going to give you their email address unless you convince them that you have
something of value.
If what you have for them really is of value, your sales can go up by 1000% just
by doing email marketing . And, if you don't get the sale the first time, you can
followup with your clients an unlimited amount of times until you do.
So, let's review. This time around, you advertise your fishing rod the same as
always. But, now you're savvy enough to know not to just send people to your website.
You advertise a FREE report entitled "How to Catch 450% More Fish your First time
out using 5 Simple Techniques." You can compile these reports from free information
located all over the Internet, and once you have it, it costs you nothing to give
away. Plus... your report will basically reinforce the idea that your fishing rod
is the best one on the market.
Now, 200 respond to your autoresponder to get the Free Report. You send them
the Free report, with a link to your website, and you load the report with reasons
why your rod is superior. (the report can't just be a sales letter though. If you
don't provide good info, your client will feel cheated.) Now, because of the informative
report, out of 200 people that responded, 4 buy. Well, hey, that's no better. But,
much more important, is that you now have the email addresses of all 200 people.
(most people don't buy until the 5th followup.)
So, instead of blindly HOPING they'd subscribe to your fishing newsletter at
your site, you left them no choice. The only way they can get what they want is
to subscribe right away. Every week or month you send them another interesting fishing
article.
The article has to be somewhat useful, and nothing says if you're giving useful
info, that you can't plug your product. Over the course of the next 2-3 months,
an additional 20 people signup for your fishing rod. Now, that's 5X more people
than the first time - and you still have their email address.
You can sell these people new products as they come available, without having
to readvertise. So not only are you increasing your overall sales, but you are building
an exclusive mailing list that will one day allow you to stop advertising altogether!!
