Thursday

How To Lose All Your Subscribers In One Week




Proven Opt OUT Techniques



We all know that there are techniques that have been proven effective in getting people to opt-in to mailing lists.



Successful email marketers practice these opt-in enhancing techniques daily.



Just as there are proven opt-in enhancement techniques there are an equal number of proven ways to encourage members of your list to opt-out and they are even more effective than the opt-in techniques.



Simply follow the opt-out techniques to insure the failure of your email marketing business:



1.Do not use the personalization feature that your autoresponder provides. The recipients of your marketing messages will delete them quickly.



2.Dont worry about the subject line of your marketing emails...just put anything....or maybe even nothing. This will guarantee that your emails will be unopened, unread and will never have a chance to be acted upon.



3. Dont check your spelling or your grammar. Thats just time wasted. They wont be reading them anyway...and if they do read one, you can rest assured, that they wont be reading the next one.



4.Dont bother with formatting. Just use a Word document and dont bother with using Note Pad.



The recipients who receive mail in plain text will get an email that they cant read and if you make your lines really long, they might have fun trying to figure out what the message was supposed to be about.



5.Be sure never to use complete website addresses. Just word-wrap your links. Its a lot easier.



Of course, those who receive messages in plain text wont be able to see the link at all...but thats okay.




Get Started Today For Only $1! - AWeber Communications




6.Send about ten marketing emails to every name on your opt-in list every single day. They are really going to love having their inboxes filled with marketing emails from you....NOT.



7. Be sure to use a lot of exclamation points and big blocks of all capital letters.



The recipients of your marketing emails will think that you are yelling at them...they will be looking for the opt-out button really fast.

Wednesday

How To Market Your MLM Product At Vendor Shows





I've been looking at working some vendor shows with my Network Marketing product and I did some research as to what works and what doesn't in terms of vendor show success. Here is a checklist for you to use if you're marketing an MLM or Network Marketing product at Vendor shows.



Checklist for showing your product or service at a vendor booth.




*Make sure you are in a high traffic area, like being near the food court or the bathroom. These are places people will go and lots of people will go there. You will be sitting in the catbird seat if you get this prime real estate.



*Do your math. What's your return on investment going to be? If the rental for the booth is $150.00 and your product sells for $39.99, yet you have to purchase banners and decorations to make your booth eye appealing and catchy, add all those figures up and divide the total by the cost of your product. That will tell you how much you need to sell in order to break even. Anything sold over that number is pure profit.



*Know your product, know your compensation plan, be personable and friendly. I tell MLM people all the time, if you can't explain your compensation plan, then that means you won't be able to explain it to others. And if you can't explain it to others, then they won't be able to explain it either. The key to MLM or Network Marketing success is duplication; be able to teach others what you know, or else you won't have sustainable income.



Seven Habits of Highly Effective People





Sometimes concepts that work need to be reinforced. I thought I'd put this up.

The seven habits of highly effective people are:



1. They take initiative. (“Be Proactive”)


2. They focus on goals. (“Begin with the End in Mind”)


3. They set priorities. (“Put First Things First”)


4. They only win when others win. (“Think Win/Win”)


5. They communicate. (“Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood”)


6. They cooperate. (“Synergize”)


7. They reflect on and repair their deficiencies. (“Sharpen the Saw”)

Monday

How Often Should You Send Email Marketing Messages?





Marketing by Email: The Basics



Email marketing is one of the easiest of all methods to market on the Internet...at least it is easy after an opt-in list is built up to a substantial number.



Getting an opt-in list built up to a substantial number is the hardest part and it is one that is never completed.





However, once an opt-in list is built, the basics of marketing by email are really rather simple. They can be made complicated but they certainly dont have to be.



1. Each marketing email should promote only one product, one service or one event such as a teleseminar or webinar.



You should never try to promote your entire inventory or every project that you are involved in to the same audience in the same email. Keep it simple.



2. Email marketing messages need to be very short. They should only be 300 to 400 words long. The main selling points of the product that is being promoted should be brought to the attention of the reader by the use of bullet points. These should all be simple sentences...not long paragraphs.



3. Email marketing messages do not need to come across like a used car salesman on TV. The use of all capitals is the written version of conversational shouting and it is just rude.



The use of multiple exclamation point is another form of shouting and they just cheapen the message.



4. Email marketing messages should not be sent too often. The recipients will become irritated and opt out of the list if their inboxes overflow with email marketing messages from the same sender.



5. Each recipient of a marketing email message should be addressed by their first name.



Autoresponders come with a personalization feature. This feature needs to be used on every marketing email that is sent.

Sunday

Do Link Exchanges Really Work?





That's what many of you have asked, do Link Exchanges really work?



Making Use of Link Exchanges



There has been some criticism of link exchanges of late. There are those who say that link exchanges create two-way traffic and these folks are opposed to any technique that sends traffic away from a website.



Link exchanges do, in fact create two-way traffic. It is true that by posting a link to a website that sells products or services that are complimentary to the products and services that you sell, you will be sending traffic to another website.



The opposite, however, is also true. The website that you exchange links with will be sending traffic TO your website.



If the products and/or services that are offered by each partner in a link exchange are complimentary rather than competitive both parties can equally benefit from the exchange.



You wouldnt want to send a customers to a website that you were in direct competition with of course, but sending your customers to a website that sells products or services that they might also be interested in can be seen by your customers as a service.



Remember that when you do a link exchange you are implying to your customers that you are recommending the products or services being offered by your link exchange partner.



For this reason you need to be certain that the products and services that are being offered by your link exchange partner are worthy of your recommendation.



You wouldnt want to be responsible for your customers buying inferior products or services that you have implied are good. That could give you a proverbial black eye with your customers, as well as, your potential customers.



Websites that you choose as link exchange partners should have a PageRank that is at least equal to or better than your own PageRank.



It wont do you a lot of good to exchange links with a site that is listed on page 20 of search results.

Saturday

Be Social Media Personal on Facebook and Twitter






Don’t forget to be human and social media personal on Facebook and Twitter.


People like the human side of social media marketing. Your tweets, your Facebook status updates will gain so much more traction if you give people the real side of you. Social media networking has so much clutter, that I believe people have forgotten they are talking to people on the other side of that computer screen. Remember, in social media, you are talking to people, not at them.


Whenever I post updates to my Facebook Fan Page TeasasTips, I notice the things that get the most shares are the experiences I share that I have had. People don’t want to read textbook crap, they can get that anywhere. Your fans/followers want to know what have you done with that textbook crap and how did it work for you. Simple as that. People respond to me, not the marketer, but to me, the person. Whenever I post jokes, scripture or some of my photos, people believe they are getting to know me, so my response and engagement level is higher than if I just post cold marketing advice.





The same thing goes for your personal Facebook page. Want to get a lot of shares and comments? Put personal stuff on there, like funny pictures or jokes, funny stories about yourself. Those are the things that people connect with. So the next time you’re on Facebook or Twitter or any other social networks, remember that you are talking to people, and if you can talk to people, you can get all the things you need.

Friday

{INFOGRAPHIC} Marketing Report: How Americans Spend Their Money





This piece of data/infographic is helpful to online marketers. Why? Because it shows where consumers spend their money online when they choose to shop there. If you are a marketer with an online business, for instance you own or make jewelry, you'll be happy and pleased to know that consumers spend a huge amount of money online on watches.



"The top five online retail categories are: jewelry and watches, consumer electronics, event tickets, computer hardware and books and magazines."



An astonishing 42% of purchases were made online. Is your business one of those benefiting from that statistic? Take a look at this graphic below and start figuring out where to target your advertising messages. Note: Spending is always higher during the holiday season, with many companies only reaching their yearly profits during this time.

American-Shopping

Thursday

Open My Emails Please!






Open Rates and Email Marketing



Funny thing about emails...if they arent opened, they arent read and if they arent read they wont be acted upon.



They become the equivalent of a piece of snail mail that is delivered to your home and tossed into the trash can without being opened or sales papers that arent even unfolded before being tossed out. Unopened emails are useless.



Open rate is probably the single most important piece of information that your autoresponder provider can give you and certainly the one you need to pay the most attention to.



If your open rate is low, you need to find ways to improve it. If you have a good open rate, you need to find ways to make it better. Anything less than a 100% open rate can stand some improvement.



Improvements in the open rate will translate directly into improvements in link clicks and link clicks will lead directly to more sales.



The first and most important step is to get the recipients of your marketing emails to open them rather than just automatically hitting the delete button.



They did opt-in so you must have done something right in the beginning or you wouldnt have permission to email them in the first place.



Your subject line needs to capture the recipients attention. There needs to be enough of a tease in the subject line to get them to at least open the email.



Dont let anybody tell you that free isnt a good word to use in a subject line...everybody loves free. Secret is another good word to use in a subject line.



Being nosy is a human trait that email marketers can use to get the recipients of their marketing emails to open them.



Try using the recipients name in the subject line of your marketing email.



When people think a message is meant for them personally, they are more apt to open the message and read it.

Wednesday

How to Increase Your Email Opt-In Rates




Opt-In Box Necessities



Ah! The opt-in box! It just sits there on a website waiting for a potential customer to type in their names and email addresses.



When names and email addresses are typed in, that means that they are added to an opt-in list and that they have given an email marketer permission to send marketing emails to their in-boxes.



The opt-in box is the direct connection to the inbox! Its a beautiful system that works very well....most of the time.



Problems can arise when email marketers forget to include the necessities in those opt-in boxes or when they include more than what is necessary. Too much is just as bad as not enough.



The necessary information that an email marketers requires from a customer or a potential customer is ONLY their first name and their email address. If more information is asked for, fewer people will complete the opt-in form.



If you ask for a first and a last name or for a mailing address or a telephone number, the person who is filling in the blanks on an opt-in form will start thinking identity theft or SPAM or middle of the night phone calls and they will surf away as fast as they can. ONLY ask for first names and email addresses...no more.



The person who is filling in the blanks on an opt-in form wants to be assured that their email address isnt going to be given to anybody who wants it or sold at any price. A privacy statement is an absolute necessity on an opt-in form.



The privacy statement can be a very simple statement and can, also, contain a link to a longer version of your privacy statement.



Whether there is a link or not, there should always be a clear statement that assures a person that you will not share their information with anybody else.

Tuesday

What I know....





While you can’t hurry trust or manipulate a
business relationship into a specific time frame, you’ll
find it’s worthwhile to invest time in the relationship forming
process by asking the right questions about the
customer’s past and present—and, equally important,
being patient and listening to their answers.

Monday

What's a good way to feed your RSS feed?





Post to Blogs and Forums to Build Opt-In lists




List building is maybe the most vital part of email marketing. You must have an opt-in list and building a list is far superior to buying a list.



In order to build an impressively long opt-in list, you first must find the people who are the best prospects to be members of your list.



Fortunately, you can find many of them gathered together on blog and forum sites that have topics related to the products or services that you sell.



They gather on blog and forum sites to discuss mutual goals or mutual problems that your product or services can help with.



A word of caution: posting to blogs and forums is a time consuming task so you need to restrain yourself a little bit when deciding which of these blog and forum sites to join and participate in.



Remember that for each site that you join, you are going to need to make posts of 300 or more words 3 to 5 times each and every week.



That is a task that requires at least 1 hour per day per forum or blog. If you join 4 blogs, it will be safe to assume that you are going to spend about 4 hours a day for 3 to 5 days each week.



While posting to blogs and forums is a high-cost advertising technique in terms of time, it costs absolutely nothing in dollars. You will be speaking directly to your very best prospects.



You must never join a blog or forum and immediately start advertising. This will get you tossed out on your ear.



You use a signature tag that includes a link to your website and then you treat the other members like new neighbors that you want to get to know.

Personalize your emails for best open rates





Personalization Works



Let me ask you a question. When snail mail arrives at your home or your place of business and it is addressed to resident, what do you do with it?



I thought so...I do the same thing. It is either tossed in the round file or it starts a meaningful relationship with the shredder.



There is one more question. If the mail is addressed to you but when you open it, it greets you as, Dear Friend what do you do with it? Me, too. It meets the same fate.



If you think about it, you apply those same principles to your email that you apply to your snail mail. You classify mail that does not address you by name as junk and hit the delete button.



You arent the only one who does that. Everybody mostly uses those same criteria and they apply them to the marketing emails that YOU send, as well.



Your autoresponder came with a personalization feature. You need to learn to use it and you need to use it with every email that you send out whether it is a welcoming, thank-you, or marketing message.



Some autoresponders include a feature that allows you to put the first name of the recipient into the subject line of outgoing messages, as well.



Learn to use that feature. You wont want to use it every time but there will be times when it can be very helpful.



Personalizing your email messages will keep them from being deleted before they are opened and read. If the recipients dont open them and read them, they cannot possibly act on them.



Personalize your outgoing marketing emails in order to increase your open rate, as well as, your link click rate and your bottom line. Nobody wants to be completely anonymous.



I recommend SendStream, (30 Day Free Trial), Aweber or Vertical Response (Build Stronger Customer Relationships with Email Marketing. Free Trial!), for all your email marketing solutions. Check them out, certainly one of them has a great offer going on this month!



Now You Can Multiply Profits AND Automate Your Business








AWeber's email marketing software makes it easy.


Learn how they can do it for you, too.


Take A Free Test Drive Today!