Categories
Email Marketing

How much should you Pay for Your Auto-Responder

Cheap autoresponders, Free autoresponders, Expensive autoresponders. Which should you choose?

Your choice will depend on a few factors. This article should help you make the choice that is right for your company:

The first thing you want to do is decide how you want your autoresponder service to work for your business. If your primary goal is to generate new leads, follow up with those leads, and generate more sales, one of the cheap autoresponders may work very well for you. Simple and powerful, this can provide a great way for you to get started with email marketing and not have to worry about breaking the bank.

Many businesses choose TrafficWave due to its simplicity, low flat rate pricing, and ease of use. (Recruit Three and it is Free)

If you are more interested in a lot of bells and whistles, API Integration, Shopping Cart integration, etc… you may want to go with one of the more expensive autoresponder services.

Be aware that these sort of services typically charge more as your list grows. They have service plans for different levels. These plans are a monthly cost and limit your List Size, Your frequency of mailing or the number of Campaigns you can run. If you go beyond the limits you pay more.

For the budget minded marketer, or for someone just getting started, this may not be your best option. Trafficwave has One Fixed Price. No upgrades, no up-sell and no limit on services. One Price all the services.

If your business really needs some of the higher end integration options, it may make sense for you to select one of the more expensive services. But do not pay for what you do not use.

Of course, I should probably mention when I feel is the best time to use one of the free autoresponder services: Never.

As with many things, “Free” is often not actually free. Many of the free autoresponder services will run their ads and ads of other paying customers along with your message when it goes out. In this case, the cost of “free” is that you are diluting your message and may actually be helping someone else’s business more than your own. Many of us will gladly pay a small free to block advertising from our favorite games we play on our phones. It just makes sense to spend a little bit of money to avoid having your marketing message get diluted with other offers.

Another big issue is customer service. If the company is offering a “Free autoresponder”, they do not have funds available to provide a reasonable level of customer service.

What it really comes down to is deciding which option is the best fit for your company’s email marketing strategy. Many businesses choose TrafficWave due to its low flat-rate pricing structure of just  $17.95 per month, unlimited campaign options, and ease of use.

We have had a number of customers make the switch from the more expensive services because they found they weren’t really using or interested in many of the features. It just made sense for them to move to a less expensive autoresponder rather than continue to pay increasing fees.

Depending on your business needs and budget, going with one of the cheap autoresponders could be the right move for you!

Categories
Email Marketing

If You Knew How Powerful List Building Was, You Would Never Stop Doing It

I believe building your list is incredibly important. List building is so important that you should spend at least a portion of your daily activity on it.

Frankly, I believe it would be impossible to overstate how important list building is to any business. Let’s think about it.

Every business needs customers in order to survive and grow. But how does a business get customers? The smart ones focus on simple yet powerful list building strategies. The list they build is of people interested in learning more about their products or services.

Entertainers build lists so they can let their fans know where they are going to be next and when.

Restaurants build lists so they can keep customers coming back again and again. They send out coupon codes and even information via email.

Retailers Are all collecting your data at checkout. Why? Because they are building their list. Why aren’t you building yours?

Network Marketers and Affiliate Marketers build lists so they can find and follow up with people who are interested in learning more about their offers.

Clubs and Not for Profit Organizations are building their list. Mailing out newsletters to their list.

When you build a list, you are putting yourself ahead of the competition compared to companies who don’t build their lists. Any business that operates online or offline and isn’t building a list is essentially starting over at “0” every business day!

But the smart business person, who is building a list, is able to build momentum and quickly take advantage of sales opportunities.

The entertainer that picks up a last minute booking can quickly reach out to let their fans know. The entertainer working without a list is missing out on opportunities.

The restaurant that is promoting a special offer or event can send out a quick update to their list to bring customers in without spending any extra marketing money. The restaurant that isn’t building a list has to start over running new advertisements, spending more money, and taking more time.

Network marketers and affiliate marketers that have a special promotion can quickly release that promotion to their lists and start driving interest and sale. Those who are not building their lists have to start from the very beginning every time they have a promotion to run. They have to start a new advertising campaign, spending both time and money. And they are promoting to strangers meaning fewer sales.

When you spend a bit of time each day on powerful list building strategies, you are able to generate sales with the click of your mouse.

After 17 years, I still get a thrill when I set up a broadcast for one of my offers and send it out to my lists. It is not at all unusual to see sales coming within minutes of the broadcast starting!

This is why I am such a huge fan of list building. Once you really see how powerful list building is, you will never stop building your list. In fact, you will make absolutely certain that at least a part of your marketing budget and time are focused on making sure your list continues to grow.

Categories
Email Marketing

4 Tips to Get Your Email Opened

Increase Your Open Rate

Did you know, on average, there are 292 Billion emails sent every day? How will yours get seen, and when seen, get opened?

A strong email marketing strategy can help you effectively reach customers and stand out in a crowd, leading to higher open rates and increased customer engagement. That is how you drive sales.

To create successful email marketing campaigns, you should heed these four tips:

  1. Personalize emails

The Amazon/Netflix effect has created consumer expectations for hyper-personalized interactions with companies. Personalizing email marketing based on customer behavior, history, interests and preferences can increase open rates and conversions.

Personalize both the To and From. We all easily understand the Personalize To aspect. But also be sure that you personalize the from so that the email recipient knows right away that it is you.

Segment customers and pay attention to customer data so as to tailor messages and personalize interactions with every person on your list.

CRM tools can help create personalized emails that greet customers by name and use data on their past purchases to suggest complementary products or services.

Personalization builds trust and relationships with customers and delivers on customer expectations for tailored, relevant interactions with you. Personalizing email marketing has a positive impact on email open rates. Data reveals that open rates for personalized emails average 18.8% compared to 13.1% without personalization.

2. Create a compelling subject line

The subject line is a make-or-break proposition for convincing recipients to open marketing emails. Readers make split second decisions on whether or not to open an email and that decision is based on the email’s subject line. A marketing email can be visually appealing and contain great content, but if the subject line is not compelling, the email won’t be viewed or read.

Subject lines should be clear, short and attention grabbing and crafted using action words that motivate the recipient to open the email. A good rule of thumb for subject lines is to use 40 to 50 characters, keeping it between 4 and 6 words. Emojis, coupon codes, humor, creating a sense of urgency with a time sensitive offer are other tactics that marketers can use to craft subject lines that increase open rates.

3. Provide value-added content

Email newsletters should include content such as product updates, news, customer success stories and promotions that brings value to the customer. Providing high quality content in email marketing campaigns is critical considering that customers are busy, their email boxes are inundated, and reader attention span has dropped to 8.2 seconds, which is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish, according to a study by Microsoft.

Content should be brief, attention grabbing and relevant to the recipient. Giving customers the news, promotions and offers they want to receive makes it more likely recipients will open the email and less likely that it will be deleted or consigned to the junk folder.

  1. Pay attention to design

Optimizing marketing emails for design so that they are clear, crisp and creative will keep readers engaged. Eye-catching images, short blocks of copy and use of white space that allows the eye to rest are all design features that can help make emails more engaging.

Marketers can also amp up email engagement by incorporating design features such as animated GIFs, interactive features and gamified experiences that provide an entertaining user experience.

According to the Data & Marketing Association, every dollar spent on email marketing has a return on investment of $42. That ROI is largely contingent on one very key success metric – open rate. Marketers can strengthen email campaigns and increase open rates by personalizing emails, crafting compelling subject lines, providing value-added content and creating eye-catching design.

Categories
Email Marketing

Build a Good Mailing List

Build Your List

How do you build a good mailing list? Any email marketing success begins and ends with preparation. A plan must be in place before you start collecting those email addresses. It is important that you know what will happen after your potential customer has signed up, what they receive, and how are they segmented. Read on to discover how to get the most out of email marketing.

Principle 1 – Plan on Solving a Problem

If you want to build a good mailing list, make sure the messages you are sending solve a problem for your potential customers. They are joining your list with one primary question on their mind: “What’s in it for me?”. Make sure the messages you write answers that question.

Principle 2 – Use double opt-in

This helps you make sure your information is going out to valid, verified, and targeted recipients. You won’t profit from a big list of unverified, junk, fake, or unmotivated recipients.

Good recipients mean those who open your mails, display activity and click on the links in your messages.

Without good open rates and Click through rates your Deliver-ability will drop significantly because your messages will increasingly be designated as spam by email providers.

Principle 3 – Never buy recipients for your newsletter

NEVER ever buy recipients for your newsletter and mailing list. It may be tempting to buy 50,000 or 100,000 recipients, but at best it’s not worth the money – at worst, it can be a disaster for your business.

Most purchased lists are filled with SPAM traps that will destroy the value of your entire mailing list. A SPAM-trap is old outdated addresses that the recipient has closed 1-2 years ago, and which the mailing server – Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, or others – have made a trap. If you hit only 1 of these in your broadcast, you may risk that all the messages in your prospects emails are retracted into the SPAM folder – and at worst, completely deleted.

If they are not getting your email they cannot be opening them.

Principle 4 – Do not forget your website

Many companies completely forget the placement of the sign-up form (sign up form) on their website. A good location is not only on your frontpage since a lot of people do not see your front page at all. Therefore, the form must always be in the footer area (area at the bottom of the page found on all sides) or at the top of the page. With TrafficWave, you can easily create the registration form for your site using the capture form code.

Principle 5 –  Use a good layout

A great template and the content of emails together make the difference between opening and click-through rates.

TrafficWave offers a powerful letter editor so you can easily create the perfectly designed newsletter. The design, header, footer and other content will automatically fit each newsletter.

As well TrafficWave provides tracking on your links and a “heat map” that will help you improve link placement to maximize click throughs.

Principle 6 – A little common sense

Learn to think like your subscribers. Why are they on your list? What do they want to learn from you? Forgetting the purpose of your letters, forgetting your audience, or overwhelming them with irrelevant information can cause your unsubscribes to go up and your sales to go down.

Categories
Email Marketing

Email Marketing Goals and How To Reach Them

If you want to achieve email marketing success, it is important to set and work toward quantifiable email marketing goals. The challenge for many entrepreneurs is that they may not understand how to do that.

So many entrepreneurs believe the only goal they should focus on is sales. This causes the focus of the entrepreneur to be on his business and his goals not those of his customer/prospect. While sales is important and the ultimate goal, it is important to work backwards from there to reach the intermittent goals that lead to sales.

Once you have joined TrafficWave and set up your first campaign, and you have created a capture page or added capture form to your web site, your focus should be on the following goals:

1) Driving Traffic To Your Offer Whether this is through paid advertising, free advertising, networking, or a combination of these, you absolutely must be driving traffic to your offer. Otherwise, nobody will see the offer and you will simply have a well kept secret on your hands.

2) Building Your List is the next on your list of email marketing goals. Once you start getting eyeballs on your offer, on your Lead Magnet, you need to track how many visitors convert to actual prospects. If you aren’t getting subscribers, your offer may need work. You may need to adjust your copy, your call to action, layout, etc… Testing this and getting the right balance is critical to building your list.

3) Building Rapport Now that you have prospects in your autoresponder, the next item on your list of email marketing goals is to build a strong rapport. How do you do this? Your messages should be demonstrating how you help your prospects solve a problem. If all you do is hammer your readers with offers after offer to buy your stuff, they will quickly lose interest.

Your readers joined your list because they wanted to learn more. This is your opportunity to build that rapport, show them how you can help, and let them see why they should do business with you. This is what brings us to the last goal.

4) Close The Sale When your prospects feel they know, like, and trust you, they are more likely to do business with you. Simply put, they are more likely to spend money with you if you have shown them how you can help them solve a problem, right?

This is why we break down our email marketing goals. We can track the results at each step in the process. We can do whatever we need to do in order to drive traffic. We can track how well that traffic is converting to people joining our list. We can track how many people on our list are opening our emails and clicking through to our offers. And, we can track the number of sales we are making.

This method makes is much easier to pinpoint if something isn’t working and lets us decide where to put our energy. If we are getting a good conversion rate and people are joining our list, but they aren’t buying. So, we would focus on our follow up messages to see how we can improve those results.

Feel free to drop any questions, comments, or feedback in the comments section, below.

If you are not yet using email marketing and would like to learn more, we’d love to send you our free report. Just fill out the form, below, and we’ll get the info sent right to your inbox.

Categories
Email Marketing

Lead Magnets are Important

Yesterday I recruited 51 new subscribers in less than 24 hours using a specific Lead Magnet.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a landing page or an offer dedicated to giving your website visitor some relevant value in exchange for their contact information (at the very least, a email address).

It is usually some sort of giveaway or some form of attraction that compels a person to give you their name and email.

What was my Lead Magnet? It was a PDF on the Basics of Bitcoin.

To whom did I send this Lead Magnet? I sent it to people who have already shown interest in Crypto Currency and may need help in understanding how it works.

Here is List of keys to Email Marketing Success. In that list, number 2 is referring to your Lead Magnet.

Lead Magnets are the key to being able to produce real leads for your business. The best marketers learn how to do it well and they are always learning more.

One of the things you want to realize is that most new visitors to your web site are not coming to buy. They are coming to get information to make a buying decision. This is where lead magnets can give your business an advantage.

So, let’s look at some examples of lead magnets.

A Free Trial Offer 

If you are able to provide web site visitors with a free trial offer, you have a powerful lead magnet. Free trials are a great no-risk way for visitors to find out if your product or service is a good fit for them.

TrafficWave.net offers a Free 30 Day Trial to all web site visitors. This makes it very easy for entrepreneurs, affiliate marketers, sales managers, etc… to find out if the system is a good fit for them.

A Check List

Many times, if you can offer a free tutorial to someone, they are more inclined to do business with you. My blog is full of a variety of email marketing tips, guides, and tutorials for my visitors. For example: Our 7 Essentials to Email Marketing With an Autoresponder is a big hit to many of my visitors.

A Free Guide

If you can show somebody how to do something, and you can do it for free, you’ve got one of the most powerful lead magnets available. Our Free 30 Minute List Building Challenge is a great example. Thousands of internet marketers have used this guide as a way to get started with list building. Many of them have continued with us as customers since they first got started.

The key is to find or create something you can use to offer your web site visitors. It should be something of value that they are interested in. When they fill out your form, they are saying, “I want to learn more” or “I want to try this out for myself”.

You now have their information for future follow up and more opportunities to build rapport and increase sales.

Use the form below to download the Bitcoin Basics PDF. If you like it and you want to use it leave me a comment below and answer the questions:
1. Do you have an Autoresponder already? If not join TrafficWave and I will provide you email campaigns to grow your business.
2. Do you want the PDF customized to your name, and affiliate links?
3. Do you want a landing capture Page like mine?

Categories
Email Marketing

How to Recruit More and Retain Better Affiliates and Customers

This article is going to spend a little bit of time showing you how to recruit more and retain better affiliates and customers. When you do that your business grows.

As a top 100 TripleClick Sales Affiliate and Top Rated Sponsor both in SFI and TraficWave I get a “birds-eye view” of what is going on. I get to see my downline groups growing, when groups stop growing, when someone is really taking off, and when someone is backing off.

Over the years, I have seen a very clearly defined trend among Affiliates that really puts them in to two distinct groups. This is not referring to people who are customers only and have no desire or  intention to refer others. Customers are simply using these products and tools to build their own businesses and that’s AWESOME!

This article is designed to help Affiliates get a better understanding of how to build a solid stable income through the TrafficWave Affiliate plan. But the principles are true for any Affiliate Program that is sustainable*.

Both distinct groups of Affiliates, mentioned above, want to build more income. Both groups are working to refer other TrafficWave users. But the big difference I have seen is that one group focuses solely on “recruiting” while the other is actually using the tools and/or products.

So the two Groups are:
A: Marketing Affiliate Recruiters
B: Marketing Affiliate Users

Group B does two things better than Group A:

1. They are Using the tools.

2. They are Showing others how to use the tools.

That’s the big secret and the big difference. Consider your own TrafficWave business for a moment. Which makes more sense to you from a business perspective:

1. Trying to just recruit more people and hope they stick? OR …

2. Actually USING these powerful tools to build your own lists, selling to those lists, and showing your referrals how to do the same?

Really think about that for a moment. If someone joins your team for the sole reason that they are hoping for spillover or some sort of “magic bean” they might get lucky. But any old wind will blow them off course and they will quickly jump ship looking for the next pot of gold or “power team build” ( and those things pop up left and right ). This is why you see so many people “sign up”, never take any real action, and quit so soon.

This is true of any Affiliate Marketing Program. For example, in SFI, my primary program, a person joins to make money. He does not join to use the products, services, or educational tools. He does not join to advance his business using the RECA or Localvantia program. He joins to sell all that to others, but not use any of it. Why would I buy it if he does not use it?

I’m not knocking “Group A recruiters” at all. I think we all do better when we are able to work together with a team that is committed to our mutual success. A good team will be focused on helping existing team members get good business results AND will show them how to recruit more new team members. But “team” shouldn’t mean, “Join us and we will make you rich”. It should mean “partner with us and we will work together for everyone’s success!”

If someone joins your team because they know they can build a powerful business asset (their list) for less than 60 cents a day … and they begin building that list … and they begin generating sales through that list … doesn’t it just make sense that they would stay with you longer and even refer others based on their own success? This is how retention is accomplished. Help your referrals get RESULTS by USING the tools.

I want you to understand that this is my own process. I USE these tools, myself. I have other business projects I am involved with SFI, Crypto Currency, Online advertising and more, and I build lists to generate sales in those projects. (I personally USE these tools). I also build a list specifically focused on showing others how to use these tools to build their lists. Some of my referrals have been with me for 10 years! This is because they have LISTS and they get RESULTS with those lists! And, now matter how many referrals I recruit, “recruit more” is always on my list of things to do.

Remember the 30 Minute List Building Challenge

I use this simple system that shows people exactly how they can get started building a list with our system within minutes! When people actually build a list, they are more motivated to stay with us because they want to keep that business asset and generate sales. As they generate sales they can quickly and easily show other businesses how to do the same. As a result, their TrafficWave income grows.

One of the reasons I am consistently showing up in the Top Affiliates reports is because I am USING my autoresponder campaigns to build lists and sell products. I am showing other online marketers how they can use the TrafficWave system to build their own lists with TrafficWave. This is why I am able to recruit more new team members each week.

I have money that:
Comes in every week through Fast Track Bonuses.
Comes in every month through Residual Commissions.
Comes in daily, weekly, etc… because I have a list to whom I sell my products!

Build Your Credibility With Your Lists

Building your own lists gives you a lot more credibility in the market. Would you take fitness advice from someone who was dramatically out of shape, never worked out, and ate nothing but junk food? No! You would look for someone who is in good (or great) shape and follow their example. You might even buy a gym membership and pay a trainer! Why? They have achieved the results you are looking for!

It should be the same with your TrafficWave business. Build your lists. Sell to your lists. Teach your lists how to build and sell to their lists. You will find that you get a much more solid customer base as your referrals USE and benefit from the tools. You will also find that your fellow Affiliates are more productive at referring because they have results and can teach how to get results.

Imagine how quickly your team can grow and how strong that team will be when you have a bunch of your team members getting solid results and growing their referrals as part of that process.

Once you have an account, be sure to take advantage of the 30 Minute List Building Challenge as you begin promoting your TrafficWave affiliate site. Build your lists. Get results. Your belief will skyrocket and that will absolutely make you recruit more and be a more effective business builder for you and your team!

Communicate With Your Team

Communicating with your team is a big factor in your overall success. In the Affiliate Manager section of your back office, you will see a link labeled, “Email Referrals”.

This link gives you a quick way to communicate with your direct referrals so you can share your results and tips as you build your lists and show them how to do the same. This is a quick and easy way for you to make sure your team stays updated and is aware of how available you are to help them succeed in building their TrafficWave.net income.

So the core principles of success as a TrafficWave Affiliate come down to:

1. Using the tools to build your lists.

2. Teaching your referrals to do the same.

Success will come as a result of following these two principles faithfully.

FootNote* An Affiliate Program that is sustainable has specific characteristics. Two are:
1. It has a sustainable and viable compensation plan. This means they must reward their affiliates well, but not in a way that will ultimately destroy the business.
2. The rewards incite the actions that will grow the overall business, not just enrich a few top affiliates or just the business owners. Actions that deplete the rewards for a majority of affiliate or that can be fraudulently abused are quickly discontinued.

Categories
Email Marketing

Who are your Best Prospects?

George McBride

Your best prospects are those in your niche. Problem is they may be very happy right were they are. I am an Affiliate Marketer in SFI. I have been so since 2012. I am very happy “right were I am”.

Who are my best prospects? Other Affiliate Marketers. Why? because they want to do Affiliate Marketing, they have Affiliate Marketing experience, and they have Affiliate Marketing skills.

I am not asking people to leave their company and join mine. What I am doing is targeting people that have joined an Affiliate Marketing business in the past.

As you well know, most people that join an Affiliate Marketing company like SFI end up inactive in less than 6 months, and maybe in one week. The odds are that most people you talk to are not going to be active with a company, hence they are free to join you.

You see to succeed in Affiliate Marketing it takes more than just joining a good company; it also takes having the right recruiting strategies and the right Box of Tools.

So talking to other Affiliate Marketers is a great way to find people that are sold on the industry and want to achieve success as much as you do.

This is where you come in, if you are with a good company and you are able to provide great leadership and support then you are able to help a lot of people to get what they want. And you help enough people get what they want, you will win in the process as well. This is a win-win situation.

Now you will also come across people that are not open to looking at your opportunity. People that are focused and happy with their current program just like you.

These people are not open to looking at anything right now and you want to respect that. You do not need to “sell them” on your business. You do not need them to see why your business as so much better than theirs.

What you want to do is help them succeed at their business. And this is the importance of your Tool Box. This is why you must use your tools, know your tools and be ready to make your tools available to others.

For example, I use TrafficWave another thing I am sure you know well. I met Ken. Ken was busy in his business and had no interest in my business. So I asked him what is your best email marketing tool to connect with new prospects. He said he did not use email that much.

I explained what I was doing and he began using TrafficWave. His list is now over 3000 strong. Then he texted me a question. He needed to do more with TrafficWave. He said if TrafficWave can’t do it he would need to switch to another program.

Well I use TrafficWave extensively. I showed him a few of my promotions and he said, “Wow! Just saw it now. Good stuff! How was this done?” I proceeded to show him exactly how to do it. Then he worked on his promotions and wrote, “Finally I’ve learned how to do it…makes my life a lot easier.”

Now what if I did not use TrafficWave that much? What if I only promoted it hoping to make money? I would make a little bit. But I suspect Affiliates would come and go and real earnings would never be achieved.

Why is Ken still with me in TrafficWave? Because I was able to solve his problem. Leaders Lead. In any industry successful Leaders Lead.

I have other tools, like this blog, my hosting site, my customized splash pages, and more. Each of these would be useful to Ken. Do you think he would want to learn from me? Buy from me? Well he does.

Two things happen for you when you work like this:

  1. You can make some money if they decide to use the tools you use in their own business… nice. You are getting paid from someone that is not open to looking at your business… that is way cool.
  2. You get a chance to keep in touch with them. This keeps the door open for you to invite them to try out some of your products or services that you offer. Also if something was to change and they needed to look for a new company then you will be the first place they look at sometime in the future.

It’s all about building relationships and connecting with people. If you recruit people in your niche to your program, and if not your program, to your tool box, you will be building relationships in a big way. Plus with your tool box well filled and well used, you will be giving your team the same opportunity.

Two questions for you,

  1. Is the company that you are with at this moment the very first company that you have ever joined?
  2. Is your sponsor in that company/program the very first person that introduced you to Affiliate Marketing?

Please drop your answer, and comments below.

Here is my Guess: NO. I figure here is a 90% chance that is your answer to both questions… What that means is there are lots of good quality motivated people like yourself waiting for you to come into their life.

One last request.
What’s in Your ToolBox? Let me know in the comments below.

Categories
Email Marketing

List Building or Social Media?

List building and email marketing may be considered “old fashioned” and even “un-sexy” compared to social media. The rallying cries of “Email marketing is dead!” are ringing out all over the social media world. But you probably need to know that these cries are simply inaccurate. They are also hurting the bottom line of those businesses who listen.

List building or social media isn’t the question. The key is to use them both, together, to maximize results for your business. List building and email marketing provide your business with the most direct line of communication for turning leads into sales, which is why the smartest entrepreneurs have no intention of giving it up any time soon.

Social networks are great. I like to use them. You can find me on FacebookTwitterLinkedin, and Instagram (IG QR) at any time.

We believe that if you are asking, “List building OR social media”, you are asking the wrong question. I use both. I still focus most of my marketing on list building and email marketing. Why?

Social networks thrive on the sharing of good content, and your only real job on social media is to give people something to share.

When people see something on your social media site, some will like it and click it to learn more. When they do they have just told you something. What did they tell you? They are saying they value at least this particular piece of content.

When they get to your site, your job is to continue communicating with them on that topic. When it comes to ongoing communication, email is the best choice.

Email marketing helps you avoid just another update in an overcrowded Twitter stream. An update they may very well miss. Email allows you to stay in front of your audience.

When your information is on social media, it can get lost on the page with a lot of other posts. When your information is in an email that the reader asked for, you have their attention.

This is why so many successful entrepreneurs focus on list building and email marketing.

Still not convinced?

Look at the data.

In order to convince you that email should be your top priority when it comes to communicating with customers, look at the statistics and data and see how and why email marketing and list building lends itself to better engagement.

Email is More Popular than Social Media

According to a recent study by Ipsos, nearly 85 percent of people who use the web will use email, compared to only 62 percent who use social networking sites.

The key difference to note here is that all social networking sites were included in that 62 percent, which means that each individual site has far less of an audience than you think.

Email is universal, widely used, and still the biggest place where business is conducted online.

Worse yet, by using multiple social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest), you are dividing your audience across multiple platforms.

Compare that to list building and you can quickly see how email marketing can be very powerful as a single focused distribution channel for content and updates.

Email is Made for Business

One thing to remember when evaluating why social media updates, ads, and even promoted posts are so ignored is the fact that you are competing with fun and games on social media.

When the average user logs into Facebook, they want to see new pictures from last Friday night (so they can un-tag all the evidence), updates from family members who are out of state, political debates, and witty status updates from their friends.

Not only does email trump social media in both quantity (more users) and quality (better engagement), email marketing was simply made for business.

Email as a communication channel is personal.

As consumers, we are therefore naturally more receptive to things in our inbox. We guard our inboxes much like a mother wolf guards her pups … because they are filled with things we choose to see.

This more intimate method of communication lends itself to more honest discussions and decisions. This is an important reason why people will always be “warmer” to being sold via email, and just another reason why email will always beat social media when it comes to marketing.

When Facebook went down, we knew they would fix the issue. We did not panic. We were not afraid of losing a ton of communications we needed. When our email provider goes down we scream blood murder. Why? We need those emails. We areafraid we will lose an important communique.

When social media is experiencing problems all I do is log in to my autoresponder and launch an email campaign to generate sales while social media works out their issues.

Which do you prefer in your business, List Building or Social Media?

Categories
Email Marketing

Is There a Secret To Email Marketing Success?

By Brian Rooney Owner of TrafficWave

The quick answer is, “No”. There really isn’t a big secret to email marketing success. We all see the reports about how profitable email marketing can be and how every business should be using it. But if your business isn’t experiencing success, you may be wondering what you are missing. This article is designed to help you get unstuck and starting experiencing the power of email marketing.

The first step is to get rid of any confusion about what email marketing is and what it isn’t. Email marketing is not about spamming a bunch of people with ridiculous and unbelievable offers. The power of email marketing happens when you actually build a solid relationship with prospects and show them how you can help them solve a problem.

In fact, the first real secret to email marketing success could be narrowed down to that one word: Relationship. Think about it like this: We all prefer to do business with someone we know, like, and trust. Given the option of where I like to do business, I intentionally choose to spend my money with someone that I believe is going to take the best care of me.

The next so-called secret to email marketing success can be to understand the process involved. What I constantly bang the drum about is that we need to drive traffic to build the list so we can build rapport to drive sales. Let’s look at those steps.

Step 1: Drive Traffic. This can be via advertising, networking, social media, etc… Drive traffic to your capture page so you can …

Step 2: Build Your List. As people come to your site, they will see your offer and have an opportunity to request more information by filling out the capture form. Once somebody joins your list, you can begin to …

Step 3: Build Rapport. Set up your automated followup letters to show your subscribers that you understand their problem and that you can provide them with a solution. As you begin to build  that rapport and your readers begin to realize they can trust you, you can then …

Step 4: Drive Sales. This is the step where your subscribers make the decision to say “I trust you. Here’s my money. Help me solve my problem.”.

When you approach email marketing with this philosophy of providing a solution, sales becomes the natural result. Businesses that are able to do this effectively are successfully tapping in to the secret to email marketing success.

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Best advice I can offer.

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Email Marketing Tips