Are you running ads and marketing with tag lines that send people to your website Then youre missing the point of internet marketing and losing out on your best money making opportunity.
First a little history. The guys who started internet marketing were all either successful direct marketers or people who learned from successful direct marketers. Direct marketing is marketing through the mail, catalogs, infomercials, etc.
Ask any direct marketer or any internet marketer who has gotten REAL results what the most important part of marketing is. They will ALL tell you its the list, the list, the list. In internet marketing this means YOUR opt-in e-mail list for your ezine or newsletter.
The larger your list grows, the more targeted customers you have to market to for the rest of your life. If youre not building a list then youre wasting your time trying to market on the internet. The BIG PICTURE is more than one sale to one customer.
The ONLY purpose of an EFFECTIVE (money making) website is to capture e-mail addresses of targeted people who are interested in what you are selling. Why Because most first time visitors to a site DO NOT BUY. Because you want customers for life, not customers for one sale and then bye-bye.
If you want to create good customers you have to earn their business. The only way to earn it is to follow up with them, let them get to know you and give them VALUABLE information for free. People buy from people and businesses they trust and trust cant be created from a one time visit.
You have to brand yourself just like The Gap, Coca-Cola, and Nike. When you buy their products you know what youre going to get. By the way, how many people do you know who only bought one coke or shopped at the Gap once and never went back
Your newsletter sent to YOUR opt-in e-mail list is the way you get people to come back. Its how people get to know what youre about and whether they should buy from you. Of course you better not sell them crap even once or theyll be gone, but were just talking about how to get them to the point of buying for the first time.
Instead of sending people to your website you should be sending them to an e-mail autoresponder. On the autoresponder you should write either a note about your newsletter or your site or both along with a link to your site. Even if your site is primarily set up to capture e-mails this will increase the amount of subscribers to your list much faster.
This way you have captured their e-mail for sure before they go to your site. Since your list is opt-in it means that if they dont want to be on it they can always click an unsubscribe link to get off.
If you want to increase your profits in the long run you need to focus on building your list. Dont be misled by thinking that you start an online business and go out and make a ton of money the first month. You can, but most people dont.
The internet marketing millionaires of today have well over 50,000 people on their lists. Lists they built over time and make more money from every time they send an offer.
You can do it too...if you stop sending people directly to your site.
Red To Greene, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
About The Author
Sopan Greene, M.A. is a marketing & life coach & editor of the Net Profits newsletter. Get 2 FREE eBooks & a FREE report: Million Dollar Emails,How To Start Your Own Traffic Virus & The 13 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Business Is Making...
Tis the season to leverage customer interest data for successful email marketing.
All of the information gathered throughout the year from customer purchases, customer feedback surveys, and other behavior offers direct marketers necessary direction for conceptualizing a successful email campaign.
Further, these customer data strengthen email promotions, ensuring the best possible message targets each individual customer. In the audio book, Sound Advice on Email Marketing, author Peter McCormick sites the example of a sporting goods retailer that uses customer knowledge to devise a series of successful promotions. Offers for discounts on golf clubs, golf vacations, and pro golfer apparel specials speak to a particular set of customers affinity for golf.
As with any direct mail campaign, one key to optimizing customer response is compelling each customer to open the email. Here, McCormick says attention to the email subject line is crucial, and suggests one winning strategy is to incorporate the call-to-action what you want your customer to do into the subject line. McCormick says, Dont let your message get lost on the customer. The key to making the message obvious to the customer begins with a dynamic call to action in the email subject line that is carried throughout the body of the email.
For the golf fanatic, combining knowledge of recent purchases with a call to action might result in a subject line, John, pack your new clubs for these golf vacation discounts. Within the email promotion, the body content would reinforce taking specific action on these discounts from clicking to learn more about the featured golf resorts to reserving accommodations and tee times.
According to McCormick, Leveraging this [customer] data with the correct promotion is the key to a successful email campaign.
About The Author
Richard Cunningham is a principal of Whats Working in Biz, , a publisher of business audiobooks and online audio programs on marketing, sales, and small business strategies.