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Archive for the ‘Advertising and Marketing’ Category

For starters, and just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is email marketing solutions? In a nutshell, it's exactly what it sounds like: communicating with your customers via email. But there's a key difference between legitimate email marketing solutions and the pesky spam messages that end up in your junk folder. The difference is that email marketing solutions is opt-in, or permission-based. This means that the people who are receiving your email messages have, at some point, signed up to hear from you. This is one of the key reasons why email marketing solutions is so effective.

But that's not what I want to focus on today. In fact, now that we've gotten the basic stuff out of the way, I want to introduce you to a completely new way to look at email marketing solutions. Yes, email marketing solutions will help you communicate with your customers and leads, and yes, it's an inexpensive and efficient method of marketing. But you probably already know that. You also likely know that you can use email marketing solutions for many methods of communication, including e-newsletters, e-flyers, e-coupons and promotions, press releases, postcards, event invitations (or e-vites), thank you notes, and so much more. But did you know email marketing solutions has another major functionality?

Email marketing solutions can help you get to know your customers. Just when you thought that market research and intricate customer profiling tools were reserved for big companies with huge budgets, here comes this nifty, easy-to-use and inexpensive online tool. Email marketing solutions is like a window into the actions, preferences and behaviors of your customers and leads.

So, the big question is: How? And, as cliché as it sounds, I'm happy to say it's easy as pie (actually, since I don't really bake, if you're anything like me this is going to be much, much easier than pie!) Here are the simple steps you can follow to get to know your customers via email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Take Good Care of Your Contact List

When you ask customers or prospects to sign up for your email marketing solutions subscriber list, the one key piece of information you must collect is their email address. If you want to make the most of email marketing solutions, make sure you also ask for their first and last name, and other information that may be pertinent to your business. For example, if you run a sporting memorabilia store, you may want to ask for the customer's favorite sports team(s). This way, later you'll be able to send out targeted messages promoting merchandise from the selected sports team(s). The simple step of asking for pertinent information when the customer signs up will later help you send messages targeted to the exact interest of each customer. If you keep the information you collect in a simple Excel file, you'll later be able to automatically upload it to your email marketing solutions software.

Now, you may be thinking: does targeting my customers' interests mean I'll have to manually sift through each customer record and separate customers by interest group? The answers is no, not if you are using a first-class email marketing solutions software package.

Step 2: Make Good Use of Interest Groups

An interest group is a group of email subscribers who share something in common. This may be a group of people who live in the same area, wear the same shoe size, purchase from your store with the same frequency, etc. In email marketing solutions, you can segment customers any way you want, or any way that makes sense for your business. By separating customers into interest groups, you can automatically send out email marketing solutions messages to one or more specific group(s) of people. For example, if you have segmented your customers by birthday month, you can send out a Happy Birthday email message specifically to the customers whose birthdays fall on the current month. You can even include a coupon for a freebie or a special discount on the customer's birthday.

One really cool thing about that is that the top email marketing solutions programs can auto-fill information on an email message. So, for example, if Annie's birthday is on April 2 and you want to send a coupon that can only be used on her birthday, the best email marketing solutions software packages include a feature that can auto-fill information, such as, "This coupon is only valid on April 2."

Now there are 2 key ways you would know Annie's birthday is on April 2, or Tommy likes the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first way is the one described in Step 1: you had the foresight to ask for this pertinent information when the customer signed up for your email marketing solutions list. So, what if you already have a list, but you never asked for customer information at sign-up? Can you still use email marketing solutions to get to know your customers? The answer is yes, of course.

Step 3: Make Good Use of Links In Your Email Messages

Another great way to get to know your customers through email marketing solutions is include pertinent links in your email messages. The best email marketing solutions programs provide you with detailed link click reports. This means that you will be able to see which customers clicked on each link contained in your email marketing solutions campaign. How does that help you get to know their interests and preferences? Easy! Once you have chosen how to segment your customers (by shoe size, birthday month, life stage, etc, etc..), create some email content targeted to that interest group. The simplest and most straightforward method is to say something like: "Want to receive emails about stuff that's important to you? Tell us what's important to you". You can then include links to options like "traveling, my kids, work, etc.." Make sure these links take the reader somewhere, even if it's a simple 'Thank You' page. And, you don't even have to be so direct. Say you run a music store. You can include links to your product pages with link text like "See what's new in classical music" or "Click here to browse through our hard rock music selection."

Once the email has been sent, your email marketing solutions software will show you a detailed link click report. You will see which customers are fans of classical music, and which are fans of hard rock. Then (here comes my favorite part), if you are using a top-notch email marketing solutions program, you will be able to automatically turn these report results into interest groups. This means that with the simple click of a button, you will instantly have a classical music interest group, and a hard rock interest group. Next time, you can send each group emails with more of the albums that you know will interest them. And, you were able to get to know your customers that well simply by including a few pertinent links in your email marketing solutions campaign.

With these 3 simple steps, you too can get to know your customers using the simple, inexpensive and highly effective tool known as email marketing solutions.

With the economy so bad and the numbers of people unemployed or underemployed it seems everyone wants to know how to make money online marketing. There are thousands of websites and products out there that claim to know the answer and you can pry it loose from them if you allow them into your wallet.

The information you find online falls into a couple of categories:

1.) There is free internet marketing information and paid information.

A good and effective business blog marketing strategy involves more than creating a blog and hiring a blogger to maintain it. There is more to it than meets the eye. Similar to other traditional forms of marketing, with blog marketing you will need to promote the blog so your target audience will be reached and they will learn about the blog and your business as well. After all the goal of every business blog is put an online face or presence for the business either for the company in general or specifically for its products and services.

There are a few things every internet marketer should know when he is considering to enter into business blog marketing.

1. Patience is a virtue.
Just because you can quickly put up a blog it does not mean that it will equally be fast to garner a sizable audience. It is not true here that when you build it, people will just come to read it. Be patient because it does take time to spread the word about your blog.

2. Create valuable content.
What good is a blog if all that can be read on it are useless information? Create content that people will find very interesting that not only will they read it, but they will also tell their friends about it.

3. Post regularly.
Do not just post once a month, because you will surely lose your audience if you only put posts once in while. Posts regularly so people will find it a routine to visit your blog and expect something worthwhile to read there.

When someone uses the word 'advertising' immediately you think 'expense'. Managed correctly, however, it doesn't have to be expensive. Here are some strategies for small business owners looking for ways to advertise/market without going over-budget.

Likely the most important advertising tip for small businesses is: be "web-centric"!
This means that your website is the mainstay of your marketing plan, and the purpose of almost every other form of marketing is to drive people to your website. If you do an ad in the paper, the focus point is your web address; if you do a billboard or radio spot, the whole purpose is to get individuals to go to your website.

The reason this is the most cost effective strategy is because changing the content on your website is very fast and inexpensive, while changing printed materials is time consuming and costly. By making the purpose of all your other marketing and advertising simply just to get people to your website, those other printed materials never go obsolete, since your web address is yours as long as you want.

Make the focus of your website the extraction of contact information.
Many small businesses think that the point of their website is the get people to buy right now. Rather, the purpose of a website is to collect as many email addresses and phone numbers with permission, in order to follow-up on prospective sales. By collecting this contact information you have produced a potential client list that you can send production information to and not have to worry about whether or not they visit your site again.

How do you get people to offer you up their contact info? As contact information is valuable, offer something of value in exchange for their information. For instance, if you own a rental company, or a retail outlet, offer a coupon for 15% off their next store purchase. Do what it takes to get the contact info of your web visitors. Doing so greatly increases the likelihood that they will become customers some day.

Make certain to follow up with intension.
One area small businesses infamously fail in is the area of following up on potential customer leads/contacts. That is simply leaving money on the table- money that is rightfully yours! On top of that, seeing as your competitors are likely failing in the same area, being careful when dealing with follow-ups will place you ahead of your competition and attract clientele.

Create an immediate mailing that will be directed to visitors who fill out an online form with contact info. Develop a well-thought-out autoresponder series to keep in touch with them for several weeks or months, dependent on the nature of your business. If you are fortunate to have gotten their phone number, be sure to call with a special offer. The bottom line is to make them happy for giving you their contact info. If someone asks a question, especially online, make it a priority to get the answer to them as soon as possible. Again, your care of their concerns will set you apart from your rivals and gain you clients.