Email Marketing Tricks of the Trade

While social media is the belle of the ball, Email marketing still arguably provides one of the most cost effective returns on investment… if you have a well-managed database.  So how do you spin those database names into pure gold?

Give it a Branded Look

Effective email marketing systems let you use easy templates, which you can have customised with your branding. Use them time and time again. This gives a consistent look to your prospects when delivered over time.

Send Laser-Targeted Campaigns

You can improve your campaign performance by segmenting your audience based on information collected with web forms, emails they’ve opened and clicked, their location, and previously purchased products.  This is the ‘gold’ in email marketing!

Track All Email Activities

If you want to know how successful your emails are, you need to track your email campaigns to see how well your campaigns engage (and convert) those that respond.

When you can easily view open rates, click rates, opt-out rates, and bounce rates for each campaign, you will know how to tailor future emails.

If you have a large database you should also test new emails on smaller sample groups (i.e. A/B split testing). You can test things like subject lines and pricing offers.

Automated Marketing

Most email marketing tools can send autoresponders (a series of pre-set emails sent by the system).  These are often lists of email addresses, rather than a database for your prospects and customers – which can prove quite limiting if you want to store and manage information about your prospects.  As well as the ability to have unlimited autoresponders, Infusionsoft can automatically start or stop any autoresponder when a person fills out a form, opens an email, or clicks a link.  And the database will tell you exactly who has done it, and who hasn’t.  Hence – you are using a far more sophisticated tool to manage campaigns that make the data crunching and analysis a whole lot easier.

Deliverability

While the average legitimate email delivery rate is around 56% (Return Path, 2008), a good commercial delivery rate is over 90%. Infusionsoft has a 97% delivery rate. A careful watch on wording will also see it get past the individual’s junk mail filters.

Delivering more emails makes the most of your marketing efforts, so it’s important to use your time and choose your system wisely.

Follow-up of Interested Prospects

I’d also recommend you employ a follow up system for all email and web form enquiries; people will have questions about your products, service, or costings. After all, this is how you bring people into your sales funnel and learn more about them!  Customer-focussed businesses need to watch they don’t ‘forget’ to respond. Australian businesses have a dismal rate of follow-up: 59% of businesses do not respond to email or web form enquiries within seven days (Strike Force Sales survey, 2008, NETT).

Copywriting of Emails

Use the right writer! While it calls for a journalistic style for newsletters, it takes stronger persuasive writing for effective lead generation emails.  Don’t think because you wrote a good essay back in 9th grade that you automatically know how to write to capture leads!  So seek out assistance of those who can do it better, quicker and more effective than you can.

Here are some guidelines:

1. The messages will need a consistent style and tone (especially if you’re marketing as if it were coming direct from you).
2. The copy must be not too wordy, and it should draw attention right from the subject line.
3. Of course, it must deliver on your campaign goals. Calls to action must be there!
4. Good writing needs time. Planning your campaigns well in advance with a copywriter will ensure that your emails are written in both good time and good style.  Let them know all the research on your customers that you have gathered, because then they will be better able to connect with your prospects.

If you hire a copywriter, expect to pay around $70 to $140 per hour. You can negotiate a good rate for multiple email projects.

Remember: email marketing when done properly with the right tools and resources will make a huge difference to your business.

You can do 50 different things to bring people to your website. But what about actually MARKETING to those prospects so that they eventually buy from you? 

One business owner I know had a website in a very crowded marketplace – gift baskets. Her site was nice enough but her conversion was very poor. If you’re in the gift basket industry in Sydney, you’d better be ahead of the game. If studies show that it takes an average of seven contacts from a business to convert a sale from a qualified lead, why do website owners often expect the people just browsing their site to instantly buy? Capturing people’s emails (with a tantalising offer just for subscribers) was my first piece of advice to her.

Where is Helpful Advice on Email Marketing?
Although there is a plethora of info on attracting people to your website, actually marketing to them and getting action (sales/calls/bookings) is often left to chance. 

Email marketing has been around for awhile now, but it is rare to get advice on what to send, how often, how to segment your list, and how to get a great response. So most business owners just send untargeted offers, which seriously under-utilises this low cost avenue for customer acquisition. (Of course I work with Infusionsoft, the tool to use to get those high performing results you want).

In addition, pay-per-click advertising to attract customers can get quite expensive if 95% of the prospects sail away before any contact. Email marketing works brilliantly with PPC advertising because it allows businesses:

• to tell them more details about the services/products
• to learn more about their visitors’ real interests
• to offer value through information prior to purchase (i.e. handy tips, news, events)
• to keep the relationship between business and prospect alive, right after they showed interest

Fortunately, I am working on a solution to help end the marketing confusion generally circulating in the small business world. It will be an exclusive Business Builder’s membership program. Stay tuned for some interesting, results-focussed advice.

Some E-marketing Tips

You need to encourage people to give you their email address, so what do you give them in return? While it is the most popular, you don’t necessarily have to offer a newsletter. Other options are: a free white paper with some facts about your industry, a free consultation or evaluation, or a free webinar or teleseminar.

Thank them for signing up to your list (automatically of course), personalising this message based on their encounter with your website. Once they read your newsletter/email, track which links they clicked on, and then target mailings to their interests and habits. You can even segment people who found you through search engine marketing in a separate mailing list from your general list.

CRM software is great isn’t it?  If you’re out visiting clients, it still sends out email follow-ups, builds trust through rich information, and sends out time-limited offers… doesn’t it?  Oh… yours just stores information that you’ve collected.

This problem came up recently with a prospect who is using SugarCRM. He says that it doesn’t DO anything for him; it’s just another place to store data.  After forking out his valuable time in setting up this system, he now realises that he needs something EXTRA that is going to automatically communicate to people, based on what they buy and what they request on his website.

This busy business owner wants to save time and effort when communicating to people in his database, so he is looking into Infusionsoft for both marketing and customer relationship management purposes.

The Right Tool
I guess the basic problem is having the right tool for the job. Also to be considered is, a lot of Customer Relationship Management systems available, especially Enterprise CRM, were designed for large companies with various departments. They are too cumbersome and expensive for the one-person to five-person small business.

Managing Opportunities
There is another segment of CRM which focusses on Opportunity Management.  Recording sales opportunities is important in most businesses, so every good CRM should include this facility. You can note multiple tasks against each contact, record activities likes meetings and calls, and note possible sales. Reporting tools also help you keep up with progress on a weekly or monthly basis.

Marketing is Left till Last
Save the best till last… while most large CRM systems are used with Enterprise Resource Planning, tracking customer data, and even recording all sales force activity… they do not automatically send out information, offers, and newsletters (by SMS, email, fax). That’s the work of yet another external system and an administrator as well.

So that’s why, when my new customers have got to the stage of seeing the Infusionsoft demonstration on automating their marketing to a segmented list, it’s like the light bulbs go on – because they realise it’s all simple enough for just one person to manage. Hooray.

“I know I put that number somewhere here… I have to call that guy back, where is that bit of paper?”
“Where did I put that Project Alpha file? It’s somewhere in this computer!”
“Seriously, would those spammers stop sending emails about their Indian SEO service?”

If these types of comments or thoughts sound familiar, it might be time to look at your work style efficiency. We’re not all natural-born brilliant organisers, and the time we lose on these little things does add up. It’s time that is not billable, and it’s moments like these that distract you from your core tasks.

With a little bit of forethought these inefficient habits can be replaced by new habits and new software rules. Let the software do the work, not you.

5 Work Efficiency Tips

1. While on the phone with a client, bring up your CRM system and find the client’s name. You can still jot notes if you prefer, but ensure you enter the notes and date while the conversation is fresh in mind. Walah – already in the system, never to be lost.
2. Each project should have a folder in your main documents. Never save working files haphazardly and try not to have more than four tiers of folders.
3. For emails that come in, spam filters can only catch so much. Set up some Rules so that those with certain words will get deleted or sent to junk. (In Entourage, select Tools-Rules, usually select email (POP), then specify the words commonly found in the message of these spam emails; in Outlook select Tools-Create New Rule).  If you have new rules set up, I suggest you check your deleted items/junk folder every two days to ensure that those you want to see are not going there (then adjust rules if it’s catching the good emails).
4. All e-newsletters which you subscribe to can be set up to go to a Newsletters inbox folder, with a new folder and a rule (Entourage: Add criteria: subject contains: newsletters; Add action: move messages – select newsletters folder). Any new newsletters that come in can then be added with a right-click, Apply Rules (Newsletters).  Then you only see these low priority newsletters when you want to ‘research’ or ‘play’.
5. All your bulk emails should be handled by an automated Email Marketing system, thus freeing you up from sending and receiving various emails, dealing with subscribes, unsubscribes or bouncebacks, etc. This system is held “off-site”, but you can easily upload any existing contacts.

I hope these few tips have given you a good start on making your work time more efficient. Please speak to Aveline for further personalised advice and systems consultation.

I used to work long hours each and every day in the corporate world. After long hours in the office, I picked up my daughter from after school care and crawled through all the traffic to home. Then, under stress, I used to pull out the laptop again and keep working.  Was I mad?  Probably.  But I thought at the time that it was the only way I could ‘get ahead’.

Since being in business for myself I’ve learnt how important it is to have good time management skills and prioritise everything, both business and personal. I’ve learnt that switching off the work by dinnertime each day is paramount to my sanity, health and happiness! So regardless of what’s going on, I don’t work at night… the work will always be there in the morning.

The Paradigm of Busy-ness
Have you noticed that everyone in your network is too busy? “I just don’t have time to relax” you hear people say, or “I wish I had more time in the day”.

It’s easy to just blame lack of time… but time ticks by regardless of our excuses. It’s more important to focus on whether you are doing what’s really important to you and your family… and for the growth and success of your business.

Ask yourself, “how do I want to spend my time today?”

Ask yourself, “is there anything that I’m spending much time on which could actually be done by someone else far cheaper or far easier? (e.g. cleaning the house, raking the leaves, filing, bookkeeping, SEO, typing letters – anything at all). This “letting go” process frees you up to spend more time on your core activity (your talent) and your relationships.

And lastly, ask “what business systems can I use to streamline & automate my regular tasks?” (e.g. software tools, macros, email autoresponders)

No more Excuses! Jack Canfield, with Mark Victor Hansen, found the time to do 5 actions towards promoting their books every workday for at least two years (e.g. call 5 radio stations for interviews), leading to the most successful personal development book series ever – 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages. Jack also found time to write a quality 500-page book, “The Success Principles” in 2005. Within these 64 principles is the foundation for anyone’s success.

If you want success and sanity, will you make the time for important things?

Every business owner I speak to has the problem of wearing multiple hats, chasing their tail and doing many things at once.  Is there an answer to this problem?  I think each business type is different but they all have common issues to deal with.

Because there are so many options, and so much information at our fingertips, many business owners get really frustrated and time poor. So what are some simple steps to get out of the mire and into productivity and growth mode?

Reminding ourselves to “Eat that Frog” and do just the most important things first in our day is the first step (recommended book: Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy).

Once you have your task list prioritised and under control, the next step is delegation of some tasks.  Sometimes you can outsource administrative/marketing tasks to someone who is either paid a lot less than you or else is much better at it, freeing up your time to focus on your core talent.

Next, you can set up a system to deal with repeated or follow-up tasks. You need a way to not only capture interested people’s details, but also build trust and respect. Say for example your system captures email addresses and emails a seven part course to interested prospects. It also tracks their interests and follows up with recommended products/services. They are invited to events you have put into the email service – and have a way of responding that is easy, like booking/paying through your own portal. This is all possible from within Infusionsoft.

What you are trying to achieve with these sytems is automation, to take less of your time and to increase the results from marketing activities. Infusionsoft is a powerful tool that enables business owners to leverage their time, grow their leads, and increase revenue and profits.

Hello and welcome to the first blog post for Infusionoz!  We’re in exciting times.  At least, we feel that we are!  And I hope you feel that way too.

I must share with you something that happened on the weekend that has got me thinking… and that has made me realise the ‘social media’ age that we are now living in and how important it is to be a part of it.

Last night I went to the Adam Hills live performance at the Powerhouse in Brisbane, seated just a few rows from the front (I love being up close so I can see expressions and the REAL person!!).  Adam came onto stage to a very excited crowd and within minutes he had discovered a man seated in the front row who looked a little like Santa.  Actually maybe a LOT like Santa! No kidding, and his name was Lex Cush.  Lex went along with Adam’s frivolity of wanting to take a picture of them both together and he then posted it on his blog page via his mobile phone, and then posted a tweet (on Twitter) to see who could come back with the funniest caption.

This might not sound that strange, however it was a live show and Adam was sitting on the edge of the stage with his mobile phone in hand, sending tweets and reading some back.  Not your usual stand-up comedy!  And it wasn’t just the photo of him and Lex that was posted either, as he found humour in some of the audience’s surnames (and admittedly it was VERY funny) so had to ID them and of course take more photos to post off.

After a little while Adam checked his mobile phone for responses and read out some tweets from around the world, with proposed captions for the picture of him and Lex, and we had a laugh.

What struck me as both funny and interesting is that one of the tweet replies came from a guy in the audience… who used his mobile to respond to Adam’s tweet.   As Adam remarked: “how funny that you’re communicating with me via a satellite and we’re about 15 metres apart”.

That is exactly the sign of our times:  tweeting, blog posting, re-tweeting, and using mobile phones to post comments and keep in contact with strangers all around the world, at any time, anywhere.

Not everyone is up with it though… it’s generally seen as a ‘young persons thing’.  Yet here was Adam Hills, an almost-40-yr-old sitting on stage with his blackberry taking photos, posting them and tweeting during his show.  Technology is available and accessible to anyone who wants it, and to anyone who chooses to get on board.

In business circles the traditional marketing channels are slowly being overtaken by our social media and technology advances in marketing automation such as Infusionsoft.  Those people who haven’t yet caught on are either looking in or choosing to let it go by.  I believe, to their detriment.

Regardless of what worked yesterday, we do know that things are always changing.  Traditional marketing of the past won’t bring the same results today or tomorrow, and with social media taking charge of the way we communicate – it’s something that simply can’t be ignored.

So with the memory of last night’s performance and Adam’s versatility with his tweeting and posting, I’m off to go tweeting myself.

Have a great week!

Aveline