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Email Marketing

How Other Businesses Use Email Marketing To Grow.

Are you wondering how to use email marketing to build your business? From entertainers to manufacturers, authors to online marketers, more and more businesses are beginning to experience the power of email marketing to generate leads and drive sales. Let’s look at some of these exciting examples of how to use email marketing:


sheri lavo email marketing

Sheri Lavo, a Houston area singer, is using TrafficWave to build her list of fans in and around the Houston area. Each Monday, she sends a broadcast out to her fans to let them know where she will be performing that week.

This always brings in more fans which is good for her and the venues where she is performing.

Fans are regularly thanking her for her email updates because they love coming to hear her perform.


alternate mode email marketing

Alternate Mode manufactures a unique set of digital drum and percussion gear. They are  using TrafficWave to build and manage lists of musicians and musical educators.

When they have a new instrument to offer, or a new event to promote, they send out a broadcast to their list and typically see sales coming in within minutes.


Dothan Ice Cream Email marketing

Dothan Ice Cream Company sells unique ice cream pops in Dothan Alabama. From family events, local events, weddings, corporate parties, and more, Dothan Ice Cream Company is dedicated to creating lasting memories.

They use their TrafficWave AutoResponder to send out a regular newsletter to announce new flavors, special offers, and local events. They’ve recently begun shipping ice pops wholesale to retail outlets.


Tony Micelli email marketing

Internationally renowned vibraphonist Tony Miceli has been performing steadily on the jazz scene since 1980.  In All About Jazz, Vic Schermer describes him as … “a vibraphonist of astonishing virtuosity, musical resilience, and inventiveness. His vibes playing is nothing short of phenomenal.”is an accomplished musician and teacher who uses his TrafficWave Autoresponder to keep fans informed, promote workshops, sell educational books, promote events, etc…

Tony uses TrafficWave to build and communicate with his fan base, promote special events, workshops, and more.


shelley hitz email marketing

Shelley Hitz has published over 50 books and has personally authored over 40 of them. In addition to being an author, Shelley has trained many authors to get that next book idea out of their heads an on to the paper.

Shelley uses TrafficWave to promote her books as well as her classes for upcoming authors.

We are excited to have Shelley with us and look forward to her next release.


Ben Olszewski email marketing

Ben Olszewski is a successful swim coach in Washington. Using his TrafficWave AutoResponder, he began building a list of online marketing enthusiasts. He recently put together an online marketing program and ran a broadcast out to his subscribers. His system has already reached the point of creating a 5 figure annual online income.

This is in addition to the other Affiliate offers he sends to his lists and his TrafficWave Affiliate income he earns by referring other business owners and entrepreneurs to our site.


Chase Swift email marketing

Chase Swift has been a professional nature and wildlife stock photographer for over 30 years. His photos, represented internationally by GettyImages.com and iStockphoto.com, have appeared in a wide variety of publications. Chase uses his TrafficWave AutoResponder to build and manage lists of photography and videography fans, online marketers, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

He also shows other entrepreneurs how to build their lists with TrafficWave and earns regular ongoing residual commissions as a result.


Would you like to use email marketing to start growing your business? Fill out the form below to receive our free report that shows you how to use email marketing to grow your business.

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Email Marketing

Want to Make Real Product Sales?

As an Affiliate Marketer you must have affiliate products to promote and sell. I want to sell Real Products and get Paid Real Money for doing so. That is why I love this product.

Are you are familiar with Mighty 101 All Purpose Cleaner.? It is the “perfect product”. Why?

First it is very price competitive. One Packet makes one 750ml bottle of all purpose Cleaner. Here are some of the products that you could replace with Mighty101 and just look at the savings.

You could buy Mighty101 for 99 Cents (750 ml bottle) as compare to these Amazon Products you are probably familiar with:

Windex, 680 ml, cost on Amazon, $2.97 a bottle (you must buy 6) plus shipping.
Scotch Guard Carpet Cleaner $6.87
TECH Carpet Cleaner $12.49
Lysol All Purpose Bathroom Cleaner $3.96
Easy-Off Specialty Kitchen Degreaser Cleaner $7.90

All these products are on Amazon check for yourself. And these prices do not include Shipping. Mighty101 ships free and you do not need to be an Amazon Prime member to get that free shipping. Haha!

The second reason it is a Perfect Product is, it is a consumable. People buy it over and over again. So you make money by recruiting new customers and you make money every time an old customer returns to place an order. That is a growing residual income. 

Now how best to promote MIghty101? On all my Social Media I am placing one of two splash pages every day. I use both and I alternate back and forth.

First a straight forward ad Splash Page with a short Video. (You can purchase this at TripleClicks)

Second a Sales Page with a Landing Capture Page, followed up by a short email campaign. Some people want more information others just want to see the product, so I use both. (You can purchase this at Flexxity)

Now what do I post every day. Again I alternate between two “styles”. 

My First “style” is my personal experience with the product. I posted this in my “I Love Thai Food” Facebook Group.

“I love Good Food and My Wife is a Good Cook. We live in Thailand. We cook over charcoal, and over a gas flame. When cooking Thaifood, the Grease Splatters.

This is a Home and Industrial strength Cleaner. Yes in Thai cooking lots of grease splatters. But Mighty 101 will clean it in seconds, even in an industrial kitchen. Here is a quick literally 30 second video. This is an ECO Friendly powerful Pet and Human Friendly All Purpose Cleaner.
http://www.syrwebdesign.com/r/geo/Mighty101

My Second “style” is the experience of others. Each Day I went to the review section of Mighty101 in TripleClicks and got a review. Here is the first one I used:

Mighty 101 Review

Here is the image link feel free yo steal it.
https://www.servethailand.com/Mighty101/images/Review1.JPG

I then added some personalized text and the link to one of the 2 pages above. I strongly suggest using one of these pages, or one you make yourself, as a bridge between the prospect and the product. But if you do not want to do that you could just use a Share Link out of TripleClicks for the Mighty101 Product.

Here my wife, Awn, used her Twitter feed to make a promotion for me.

Awn's Twitter Feed

This is how I am making sales and growing my prospect list.

If you are an Affiliate Marketer and you need Real Products to promote and Real Cash Commissions then take a look at my Video Resume and see if I am Qualified.

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Email Marketing

Audience is Everything

I am listening to a Pod Cast from Pat Flynn and Clay Collins. The podcast is called Laddering Up. What it is talking about is how Apple, Netflix, and LeadPages all started as something different then they have become. You may remember Apple started as a little gaming computer.

Anyway there are four rungs on the ladder. The first rung is build an email list (TrafficWave). Ladder rung two is start selling your first product.  Ladder rung three is about optimizing and building a real business. Ladder rung four is leveraging the opportunities your new vantage point affords you. 

Ladder rung four for Netflix was production of films and entire character franchises. They began their business competing with Block Buster and now they are contenders with HBO and many other Movie studios.

Collins says, “I’ve heard a lot of people talk about creating a minimum viable product, and a lot of folks start with product creation. In my view that’s absolutely not the right way to go. You should start by learning how to build an audience and then letting your interaction with that audience dictate the product you create or offer.”

Or as I have said a million times, Let the Market tell you what to sell, do not tell the market what it wants.

Even the SFI opportunity is a product. Instead of developing the promotion of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) we should start by developing a Minimum Viable Audience (MVA)

Clay Collins suggests, “What I would encourage folks to do is take three to six months and get an audience of around 2,000 email subscribers.” This is what he defines as MVA.

I agree 100%. People ask me where to start what tools to buy to start, I would start with your email subscriber list. Grow that to 2000 subscribers and you will have:

1. People Buying Product Consistently. I have a list of over 30.000 Thai Food enthusiasts. Not everyone buys consistently but someone is always buying so I am selling consistently.
2. A consistent stream of Affiliates (PSAs) into your primary business (for me SFI). I do not have one off, tire kicking affiliates. I have people join SFI trained, motivated and ready to go.
3. A consistent stream of people using your ad products providing an additional income stream by buying ads and building a huge bank of Credits for you. I have 360 people willing to use Ad Services that I find valuable.
4. A consistent stream of people becoming your TrafficWave affiliates. They need an MVA also. By meeting the needs of fellow Business People, helping them build their audience provides you additional income as well.

This is what I have done.

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Email Marketing

How to Split Test to Improve your Marketing Results.

Yesterday I posted about Bridge Pages. In my example I included a Bridge. You can see it here. Using three Sites with similar membership and similar delivery methods. The results of a Split test will be very informative.

In that landing page there are three sites each the same in their layout. You get free Credits in all three. So, if you join all three sites for the free credits I suspect most others have done the same.

I assume that these three site have very similar memberships. So if I send the same email to all three sites many of the members may see my email 3 times. That is okay, increases exposure. But it does not really help that much to mail people 3 times. So, since the membership is basically the same people this is what I do.

First the email I send to these 3 sites is designed to get people on to My Personal Email List (Learn More). Once on my list I can communicate with them repeatedly and I don’t need credits to do it.

Second, I use the three sites to “Split Test” my email promotions. I send the same email to all three sites, but I change the subject lines. And I see which Subject line does the best.

Example:

My Pomotion URL – http://tinyurl.com/y84lerm7

My three Subject Lines:
Does your Cash Flow In or Out?
The most Important thing for Any Business is…
How I turned my List into an ATM

Then I go to each site and I can check the back office and see Which of the three subject lines gets the most opens. Which ever it is, I use that subject line in all my other solo ads.

I do the same thing with my Lead Magnets. I do Thai Food. Three lead magnets might be, Free package of Durian, A free Cookbook (PDF), a free specific recipe, or a free cooking Video.

Again I send the three or in this case four Lead Magnets out to this list and see which gets the best result. With these the best one was a single specific recipe. Interesting.

We need to let the market tell us what they want.

I suggest using these sites like that. Email me if you need more instruction.

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Email Marketing

Why Pay More?

How do I Make Money? Click 2C

Most Mailing companies increase the cost of your mailing program as your list grows, as the number of mailing campaigns grow and/or as your number of mailings a month grow in.

You may have less than 500 on your list but you mail them 5 times a month that is 2500 mailings and your price goes up.

I experienced this with another company. I had a list under 500 so I qualified for the free pricing, but I had a study going on. I emailed all participants the study material once a week, and twice a month I sent a short commentary from an expert on our study topic. And this was all in Thai!!!

I exceeded the “mailings per month” limit and my account was locked until I paid an upgraded price. That made a mess of my study. To keep going, what choice did I have but to pay.

There were 4 choices of upgrades. All four were pricey. And I thought, do I upgrade two levels just to be sure I am not locked again? Do I go to the Highest Level, that was $299.00 a month, but I got all the features and manageable limits. And it was my plan to grow. We all have that plan right?

Then I found TrafficWave. In TrafficWave you have a fixed price. With the 1 price you have access to All the Features. There is no upgrades. Unlimited List Size, Unlimited mailings, Unlimited Campaigns. All one price. Guess what service I use now?

And I made that switch over nine years ago. Still with TrafficWave and still moving along just fine. All the Features and an ever growing list.

Do you know How to build your list? Here are three points I think are important :

The number one most important thing is to build an audience, often called a List. But people don’t follow through. A big mistake is people just get a bunch of emails. You want to think Audience, not List. If you do not keep your Audience engaged they walk out.

The number 2 most important thing is to build the “know, like and trust” factor. Your content should be 80% Value and 20% promotions. Most people just post, “I just found a great new blah, blah, blah.” There is no Story, no Connection. I am not getting to know you. How can I like someone I do not know? Why would I trust you?

And…
The number 3 most important thing is genuinely serve this audience. Genuinely serving will result in a Buy Response. Disingenuous serving, serving to sell, is manipulation. People know the difference.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.