• Who is your primary target audience? This is typically the same as for your business, but don’t forget to include your referral partners, suppliers, and strategic alliances. And your mom – she like to brag on your success.
• What is the primary goal you wish to accomplish with email marketing? Increased sales? Increase brand awareness? Drip Marketing? To establish yourself as an expert in your field?
• What type of content or free offer would entice your target audience to subscribe to your email list? Free tips? Exclusive discounts? A special report or white paper?
• What ongoing messaging can you share with your audience that will be of VALUE to them? Information about your industry or field of expertise? Specials? Exclusive access/announcements?
• Which email marketing program will you use to manage your list and messages? Aweber, Vertical Response, MailChimp, One Shopping Cart, InfusionSoft, etc…
• How will you display your sign-up widget? A separate squeeze page? A site-wide opt-in box?
• How will you measure your success? New subscribers? Increased sales conversions?
• What are your key benchmarks and how often will your measure your success? Example: A 25% increase in site traffic or 15% increase in the number of direct messages from clients and potential clients. How often: after 90 days? Monthly?

Free Offer Ideas – One of the toughest aspects of starting an email marketing program is getting people to opt into your distribution list. A great way to entice them to sign up via your website is to give them something of value. I suggest sitting down with a business associate and brainstorming ideas. Here is a handy “seed” list to kick-start your brainstorming session:

• Offer a free or discounted consultation
• Offer an eBook, White Paper, or Special Report
• Special Discounts or Coupons
• Have a contest with a valuable prize
• Write an industry survey and offer to share the results
• Create a video series or interview series

Don’t forget to answer the most important question of all, “What’s in it for me?”

For more on this topic be sure to check out my other posts on Email Marketing.

Here are my Top 12 Reasons to love email marketing:

1. Email is a multi-tasker – Once transmitted your messages can be shared, forwarded, answered, printed, or saved.
2. No middlemen – your message goes directly to your intended recipient. Even busy, powerful people, who won’t ordinarily take or return phone calls will read email. Plus getting past secretaries, receptionists, and other gatekeepers can be murder.
3. To the point – Unlike face-to-face or telephone encounters that necessitate time-consuming preliminary “small-talk”, email gets right to the point and encourages brevity.
4. Clear and precise – You can clearly convey precise information that often gets butchered in telephone messages, such as numbers/formulas, technical terms, URLs or other links.
5. Highly targeted – you can laser-focus on potential customers. Unlike print advertising you can choose who receives your marketing messages.
6. Ultra cost-effective – the average cost is only .08 cents per email sent without the expense of printing, postage, and design/typesetting fees.
7. ROI – According to the Direct Mail Association the average ROI is $1 to $46. TV, Radio, Billboards and other forms of traditional marketing can’t even come close to this!
8. Engagement – Its reply feature encourages recipients to respond with direct questions and comments. While you may not be able to meet with your past, current, and potential clients for coffee each month you can certainly stay in touch via email.
9. Social Media – It integrates beautifully with Social Media channels. Many email marketing services automatically link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
10. Follow up – Email makes it easy to send short, gentle reminders of your upcoming specials and/or events.
11. Increased traffic – By linking to content on your website you can drive more traffic to your site.
12. Photography – A picture is “worth a 1,000 words” and often evokes an emotional response; with email marketing you can easily add an eye-catching photo to your marketing message.

Bonus: Email marketing delivers even when unread! Suppose a recipient doesn’t read your lovingly crafted and beautifully designed email. Don’t fret they will still see your email address in the inbox (which hopefully includes your domain name) and read your subject line before hitting the delete button.  At a minimum, email marketing works like a “drip campaign” and keeps you on the recipient’s radar screen, reminding them that you are still in business and available if they need you.

For more on this topic be sure to check out my other posts on Email Marketing.

Lisa Giesler – Professional Organizer, Author & Coach

Paula,
Thank you for the information about the CAN-SPAM act.  I had one person spam my email newsletter last month and one this month.  I was so freaked out, because all the people on my list were either business people that I was comfortable with who gave me their cards, were part of the same network or visited each other.  The others were family and friends.  I called my email marketing service provider and they said to not worry, because it was just one and I had good open rates. It’s sad, I wish they would have just unsubscribed, afterall the unsubscribe link is on the email…also, we aren’t allowed to know who spammed us…

Lisa Giesler
Professional Organizer and Life Coach
Author of My Life is a Mess: Organizing 101
A Time and Place for Everything
 

For many the hardest part of doing email marketing is not taking it personally when our emails are marked as spam or people unsubscribe from our distribution list. I have one client that refuses to look because she can’t help but take it personally. :)

I was given the following SPAM guidelines by a customer service agent at my email service provider: 1% to 2% is normal, 3% to 4% is acceptable but once the % of SPAM/Unsubscribes goes beyond 5% there is probably a problem and if it reaches the 10% mark you might get a call from your email marketing service provider to help you try and figure out what is going on.

It helps to remember people unsubscribe and mark emails as spam for lots of reasons, most of which have NOTHING to do with you. :)

History and Penalties:

CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. It is federal legislation signed into law by the 2nd Pres. Bush and describes the legal requirements that must be fulfilled by senders of commercial email. The Penalties are $250 per email, with a cap of $2 million that can be tripled for aggravated violations. But don’t worry, this law is largely unenforced and is so poorly written it’s commonly referred to as the “You-Can-Spam” Act because the bill explicitly legalizes most email! In particular, it does not require e-mailers to get permission before they send marketing messages. Go figure!

Legal Requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003:

1. Use a legitimate return email address.
2. Provide a valid physical address.
3. Clearly label commercial email as advertising.
4. Use a truthful and relevant subject line.
5. Provide a  working opt-out link.
6. Process opt out requests within 10 business days.

As long as you are compliant with these six legal points, you have not violated the law. The good news is most email marketing services, like Vertical Response, come with tools that help keep you in compliance.

If you have any questions about email marketing please don’t hesitate to contact me. I love email marketing for small business owners and could talk about this topic all day!

There is an adage: “The money is in the list!” This is especially true for email marketing. The number one, real way, to have consistent and long-term success (i.e. making $$ online) is by building a list and regularly marketing to it. Potential clients/customers are more likely to buy from someone they’ve established a “relationship” with rather than someone who sends unsolicited, or spammy, emails.

I will help you create your winning list. We’ll start by harvesting addresses from your existing tools, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, plus your in-house CRM databases and even that box of business cards you have under your desk. Then we’ll explore tactics to get these valuable contacts to “opt-in” to your email campaign. With opt-in email, you can easily reach more people, more effectively, frequently, and at a very low cost.

Are you ready to try email marketing? Take a free test drive today using Aweber. They have helped over 90,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using their opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.

“These square bar codes are popping up everywhere. What are they, how do I get one, and should I put one on my online marketing and in my email newsletter?”

QR 101

First, in case you don’t already know, QR stands for Quick Response and is a 2D bar code that can only be read by scanning software on a SMART camera phone. (Think iPhone and Android…don’t bother with Blackberry as their QR app doesn’t work properly.) To make it work you need to download an app to scan the codes; search “QR Scanner” in the iTunes or Android app store.

QR codes are a brilliant addition to print media. They are a great way to drive offline customers to your website, or to give them information they can read, or store in their phones . Check out these clever uses:

What information should I include in a QR code?

Basically, any message you want this would be of value for your readers. Here are three examples:

• Contact info (like what is on your business card)
• Event info (date, time, location, etc.)
• Product information

How to create a QR code

There are plenty of sites that will create a QR code for you, just search “Create a QR code”; here are my two favorites:

1) Want to be a walking advertisement for your business? Use this site to have a QR code printed on a T-shirt (or the back of a business card): Visit http://goqr.me/

2) For office and/or brick & mortar locations, create a Google Places account and get one that looks like this:

Put this on the back of your business card, or print it as a poster and put it in your window.

So, back to the original question:

Should I put a QR code in my Internet marketing materials?

I wouldn’t bother. In my humble opinion, QR codes are perfect for print media but text and/or a clickable link is more practical, efficient, and understandable. Think about it, who is going to shoot a smart phone at a computer screen?

How do YOU like to use QR codes?  I would love to hear your ideas.

Emails that added:

• One social media option generated a 30% higher CTR
• Three or more social media options generated a 55% higher CTR
• Twitter alone generated 40% higher CTR

I hope these results inspire you to experiment more with social media sharing. Most professional email marketing programs integrate with Facebook and Twitter, which in turn will integrate with LinkedIn. The best part of all this integration is that it’s FREE! I truly believe that if your messages are relevant, timely, interesting, and you include social media links, your audience will eagerly share your message across the Internet.

Questions? If you have questions about how to get the most out of your email marketing program, please don’t hesitate to contact me.