Atomic Email Marketing Blog ePochta.ru

I’ve mentioned before that the process of sales can be boiled down to solving problems. Seth Godin has a great angle on this idea:

That thing you’re marketing… Does it add to stress or take it away? Is it stressful to talk about it? Buy it? Get rid of it? Is it more stressful not to buy it than it is to go ahead and buy one? Does it promise to reduce stress, but end up causing more?

This is a great thing to keep in mind while creating your marketing message. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to use the word “stress” in your message, but it does mean that you should show people how your product or service will lessen the stress in their lives. If someone’s drowning, the person that has the most impact on them is the guy with the life preserver.

What you offer is brilliant…you know it in your heart. The problem with brilliance is that, sometimes…well, sometimes it has to be bluntly pointed out to others or they fail to see it.

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he tried to sell the rights to Western Union telegraph.  Their response?

They said “Thanks, but we can’t see any future in this device, other than as a novelty.”

Never assume your value is obvious to anyone else…tell them, bluntly and in what might seem (to you, anyway) to be excruciatingly simple detail exactly why you can be of value to them. The trick, of course, is to do this without talking down to your customers. Never assume they are stupid.

Just assume they aren’t spending as much time thinking about you and your business as you are…because they’re not.

If you had the opportunity to either tell ten people about your business or tell one million, which would you do?

I’m really hoping you said “ten thousand”.

Marketing is nothing more than telling people about your business while prompting them to take action. And while it’s true that marketing to ten pre-qualified targeted people will always give a higher percentage of conversions, they don’t let you pay your light bill with conversions. Sometimes, you have to put the marketing blowgun away and bring out the shotgun. Why?

Simple…if 80% of those ten people make a purchase from you at $10 each, you’ll have $80 in your pocket. But if only one percent of the larger group acted on your marketing message and spent that same $10 each, you would see a revenue of $10,000. And guess what? According to Jupiter Research, the average conversion rate for untargeted marketing email is 1.1%.

If you segment your list and mail to a targeted group, the conversion rate jumps to almost 4%.

There is a very good reason why companies are willing to pay millions of dollars to have one thirty second television commercial run during the Super Bowl…it’s the numbers game. Of course, to make the most out of getting your message in front of a ton of people, you’ve got to track your results. I’ll talk about that (and what should be in your email marketing message to improve your conversion rate) next week.

On Wednesday, I talked about the question “Why use email marketing?” The simple answer was “Because it works.” However, that leaves the question “Why does it work?” unanswered.

There are a variety of factors that contribute to the overall success of email marketing, with one of the biggest being the fact that an email marketing campaign using an opt-in list is reaching a very targeted audience.

If someone signs up for your email newsletter, decides to opt-in to your list in order to take advantage of a free offer or bonus or just to simply sign up as a user on your website, they have already shown interest in what you have to offer, and more importantly, have already taken action on their interest.

This is why email marketing is its most successful when you build your list from visitors to your site. Look at it this way…if you’re selling vacuum cleaners, which group of customers is going to have a higher purchase rate: the group you saw on cold-calls, going from door-to-door trying to drum up interest, or the group that drives to your store, walks in, looks around, and asks if you can send them more information?

I would be willing to bet you would say the second group, and when someone opts-in for your email marketing, that’s exactly the group you’re talking to. They’re already interested in your product or service, or they never would have arrived at your site to opt-in to begin with. If they haven’t made a purchase yet, then your task isn’t to sell them on your offer, it’s to sell them on you.

This is where we come back to the phrase you’ve already seen repeatedly here (and will probably continue to see quite a bit)…in your email marketing, you have to offer the customer something of value…in this case, quality content. The first time a potential customer opens your email and thinks “Why did I sign up for this thing?”, you’ve lost them. The reaction you’re shooting for is “I didn’t know that! I’m glad I signed up for this!” Also, if you can provoke the second reaction from your recipients, there’s a good chance they will forward your marketing message to their friends.

And that’s the kind of marketing you can’t buy.

I don’t mean to imply that this is the only type of email marketing that works; there are those who see a nice return on their investment when purchasing an opt-in list of email addresses to use in their efforts, and it can pay off if you’re looking for a quick infusion of customers. However, you will see a smaller ROI for that method than you will if you build your list over time, so that you’re not going door-to-door in email marketing.

As with most things in business, sometimes the slow way is ultimately the best, but with an estimated ROI of over fifty dollars for every one dollar spent on email marketing, the only bad choice is to make no choice.

In answer to the question “Should a blog be part of your marketing plan?” the answer is yes.

There are millions of blogs on the internet today; most are of the personal variety, with the blogger writing about what they did that day or their favorite television show. But blogs are increasingly becoming a part of the online marketing world as well.

With a blog, your business can achieve several things:

• Connect with your customers, both current and potential.
• Reach new customers that might not otherwise hear of you.
• Open a new line of communication with your customers.
• Help you focus your business plan on what your customers want.
• Give you the opportunity to educate your customers about the ways you can serve their needs.

If done well, your business blog has the potential to be seen by more people than you might reach with just your website. Just as there are millions of blogs, there are many hundreds of millions blog readers searching the internet for information that interests them.

Your blog will also increase the connection your customer has with you…it increases the flow of information, which increases the customer’s emotional and intellectual “buy-in” for your business. This is also helped by the newfound communication between your customers and you in the “comments” section under each blog post, so don’t forget to ask for their comments and questions!

With this new line of communication, you will get a better feel for what your customers are looking for, which will allow you to better meet their needs and educate consumers about ways that your business can meet those needs (or solve the customer’s problems).

Keep in mind, however, that a blog will do little to help your business if it’s not well done. The content must be well-written and it must be promoted. Even in the best-case scenario, a blog is not a quick-fix; it takes time for a blog to gather enough readership to become truly useful to your business.

Now, following my own advice, I’d love to hear what you have to think…how useful would a blog be for your business? Questions and comments are always welcome.

Inevitably, when the subject of email marketing comes up while deciding the marketing strategy for a business, the word “spam” is spoken, followed by “Why would we use email to market ourselves?”

Because it works, that’s why.

Your ROI (Return On Investment) with email marketing can easily be higher than any other form of marketing you do, provided you do it well. But don’t take my word for it…Datran Media conducted a survey of over 2,000 marketers in December 2007. Their results?

Overall, 82 percent of the marketers surveyed by Datran Media indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008, and 55 percent of the respondents cite that they expect ROI from email to be higher than any other channel. Datran Media’s survey results are consistent with the Direct Marketing Association’s recent report, which found the ROI from email is much higher than other channels. In fact, email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display.

There were several interesting results from this survey. For example:

3. Which advertising media buys perform strongly for your company? (select all that apply)

And this one:

9. Do you believe email has helped boost sales through other channels?

The answer to the question at the top of this article is indeed simple…

Why use email marketing? To get results with a good ROI.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways of improving your business, but there’s one simple step you can take to improve how your email campaign is received.

Whenever possible, address your customer by their name.

Simple, right? Unfortunately, it’s not obvious to quite a few online marketers. Everyone has received basic spam email marketing messages in their inbox, and most of the time it’s either a generic message, or a message that addresses someone by name…just not yours. This is why using your customer’s name can make you stand out from everyone else.

When you say “Listen to this, Bob!” instead of just “Listen to this!”, you’re going to get more “buy-in” at the very beginning of your message, because one of the most powerful words you can say to someone during a sales process is that person’s name.

When collecting your potential customer’s email address during the opt-in process, look at the feasibility of also collecting at least their first name, if not their full name. This can be used to customize your email marketing message for each recipient, which can lead to a much higher conversion rate than a generic message. Also, including the subscriber’s name will also assist your message in getting past spam filters, since true spam won’t have access to the recipient’s name.

Most good list managers (such as Atomic List Manager) will allow you to customize your list with names, making this process much easier.

However you do it, using your customer’s name in your email marketing strategy will improve your conversion ratio from your campaign…give it a try!