Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » email marketing relationship

List Building Secrets E-book

Rick Braddy — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:13:04 +0000

As an Internet marketer, one of the most common phrases you will hear is “list building”.

You might wonder why this idea of building a list is so important in your ability to make money as an online marketer. Many wonder why they cannot just build websites, write some copy and collect their profits. Why is it so vital that you consider building a list?

First, let’s talk about what building a list means. Basically, this is where you have visitors to your site fill out a form with their name and email address.

Using this information, you stay in touch with your list (whether they have bought from you yet or not) via email. You will send good, quality information as well as the occasional sales letter to this list.

With any niche that you choose, you will need to make the decision as to whether building a list is even a viable option. However, if you think about it, there is usually some room for up-selling in just about any niche.

For example, if you have a website related to infertility and how to overcome it, you might wonder what else you could offer that group of people. If they use your program and are successful at getting pregnant, you could offer them all kinds of baby related items during their pregnancy. It is important to think outside of the box!

Discover how to reach the huge potential in your market

As marketers build their lists, they often see the huge potential they have in that niche. Taking the example above, perhaps you decide to write your own ebook that will complement the one you have been selling.

For example, if you have been selling an ebook titled “How to Overcome Infertility Naturally”, you might decide to write one called “Yoga Moves for Infertility”.

This way, you can still sell the original book, but now you can also offer your list this accompanying book.

To see the potential, let’s assume your list has only 500 people right now. Your ebook is priced at $19.95, and you send an email out to your list (which takes all of about 2 minutes).

If 150 people on your list purchase your ebook, you just made a quick $2992.50 for one email! That is the power of list building.

Of course, if you had to hire out the writing of the book, your profits would be a bit reduced. However, what if your email pulled a better return? You could make even more than that.

Now if you’re a larger business or enterprise, then you’re probably focused more on B2B style sales, which involve a combination of lead-generation online, plus follow-up and sales by phone or even in person (I know, it’s hard to believe, but some selling still takes place offline!)

Whatever size business you have, you simply must always be building, growing and nurturing your lists, because it’s the lifeblood of both new business and farming your existing installed base of customers.

So here’s my gift to you – a free 64 page e-book “List Building Secrets”

I decided to make these techniques for growing and monetizing your list available to our VIP members – for free!

This 64-page e-book is full of both basic and advanced tips and best practices for growing your existing list as well as starting a new list from scratch in a new or existing market.

It covers opt-in offer strategies, landing pages and auto-responder content tips that will help you build a stronger relationship with your audience.

I’ve written this guide to deliver a step-by-step blueprint to building a massively profitable mailing list in the shortest amount of time possible.

I take you straight into the heart of the time-tested, proven strategies that will build your list and make you money.

No time wasted, no watered down material that leaves you confused and frustrated. These shocking, unconventional strategies have been rigorously tested, PERSONALLY used and PROVEN to work – so you can just incorporate them and go.

Here is just some of what’s revealed in List Building Secrets:

	How to create massive mailing lists without spending a penny on subscriber acquisition. These stealth list building strategies will pull in more subscribers than many “paid to” use strategies and will save you thousands in the process!

	How to fine tune your list building campaigns so that you are attracting ACTIVE buyers! It’s important to avoid inflating your subscriber base with dead weight and this single strategy will guarantee that doesn’t happen.

	The fastest methods of building a mailing list in any niche market, even if you’re totally new to email marketing. These are newbie-friendly strategies and can be executed with ease!

	How to find the hungriest buyers and build high profit mailing lists, without even having a product of your own! You can jump right into these and start building your list and subscriber base right away!

	The super-charged list building strategy that can add THOUSANDS of new subscribers to your list in a matter of hours! Don’t waste time with slow-yielding list building tactics again. Set up a campaign this way and you will continue to suck in new subscribers every single day, for months or years to come!

	The virtually guaranteed formula for creating an irresistible squeeze page that sucks in subscribers like steel to a magnet! People will not be able to resist subscribing to your mailing list if you follow this simple squeeze page checklist!

	Turbo charged action plan for building a rock solid relationship with your list that compels people to respond to most every offer you send out! This goes far beyond offering decent content…

So, the question is – are you a VIP member yet?

Become a VIP member of my blog. It’s easy – you just register for free. That’s it.

Click here to access the List Building Secrets e-book.

Happy list building!!

Rick

How Successful Email Marketing Is Done

Rick Braddy — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:22:42 +0000

Check out this video on how successful permission-based email marketing is broken down into 4 essential steps:

Quality Opt-in Database – build an opt-in database of quality leads, using double opt-in best practices
Timely and Relevant Messages – use good lead nurturing techniques with timely and relevant content and messages, developing a relationship and trust with your prospects
Segment your Database – segment your lists into targeted, topic-focused sub-lists with similar interests
Advanced Email Software – use an advanced email auto-responder system that manages ISP relations for you and run your email marketing campaigns using these integrated systems.

Watch the video for more details:

It’s really not too surprising that the average ROI on email marketing investments is about 57 to 1; i.e., $57 returned for every $1.00 invested into email marketing.

Finally, for a better idea of what kind of ROI you can expect from your next email campaign, try this free email campaign ROI calculator.

B2B Lead Generation

Rick Braddy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:25:37 +0000

Here’s a few excerpts from an excellent post by Brian Carroll, CEO at InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and the Start with a Lead blog. For more information on the source article, check out the Lead Generation Checklist blog post.

In this particular post, Brian summarizes the 6th in an an 8-part series called the “Lead Generation Checklist”, a comprehensive approach for helping organizations optimize their lead generation processes. Brian outlines a complete system for companies to use in generating leads, as discussed below:

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can’t rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

It begins with a mindset that sees lead generation as an ongoing conversation – with human beings – that’s both multi-modal and iterative. This isn’t about doing random acts of marketing hoping something sticks.

Here are a few tips for creating a mult i-modal lead generation approach that will positively affect your bottom line:

View your Lead Generation Program as you would your financial portfolio. If you can’t measure channels or programs in terms of return on investment to the organization (leads generated, business closed, opportunities in the funnel) then the company should not be expected to invest in them. Maintain an assortment of researched and/or proven best-fit channels that can be drawn upon whenever needed.

Assess the number and mix of channels required. The model above shows a vast number of ways to generate leads for the complex sale. As you look over it, ask yourself a few questions: Which of these channels are we using? Which are our competitors using? Now think of what you know about your prospect’s buying process. Identify the gaps.

Adopt a flexible and iterative approach. Your program should allow marketing and sales to retrofit messages whenever a prospect’s position in the buying process changes. What worked yesterday may not work today. Complacency is not part of the marketing game. Well-performing or under-performing tactics should be quickly identified and dealt with accordingly. If a tactic fails to deliver, be ready to modify it or replace it.

Understand the synergies of various tactics for best ROI. Do you know how your tactics are performing? Are they working together in a complementary way to connect each step in the customer’s buying process? Try to detail a lead generation calendar for the year that maps out anticipated programs and tactics by month and quarter. Employ an effective closed-looped feedback system to structure information from the sales force than can be converted to actionable tactics. Collect sales feedback regularly and as rapidly as possible.

Not only do the disciplined integration and maintenance of a history of touches in the database aid relevancy, they open doors to tactical personalization.

Test and improve every tactic in your portfolio. The best way to maximize your budget resource is get more out of what you’re already doing. I don’t know a CEO or CFO that doesn’t already think this way, so why should marketers be any different? When was the last time you looked at your program and asked, “how can I make this a channel perform better?” Are you testing how you can optimize your lead generation results?

We know that in the complex sale most contacts do not become immediate leads so once dialogue has begun, other tactical modes should be set up to keep the conversation going. Remember, every touch should represent and communicate value. The tactics you choose should ultimately help your future customers (aka leads) form their opinions, directly or indirectly, as they proceed through the buying process.

Email Lists – The key to sustainable online profitability

Rick Braddy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:15:40 +0000

In the traditional sales world, sales people used to use a Rolodex (remember those?), business cards and a call log – and of course, their telephone. Many still do today. Of course, modern CRM systems have automated this process nicely. The Rolodex was the “list” back then… today, CRM software has largely displaced the Rolodex.

In my last several blog posts, I stressed the importance of building a relationship with your list of subscribers. Don’t have a list of subscribers?

Oops! You probably aren’t turning a profit online if you aren’t building and nurturing your list – are you?

Today I had a nice discussion with a work at home mom about her attempts to make money online. She had invested around $5,000 in affiliate marketing and advertising based on some “make money” course she saw on TV… well, I’m always saddened to hear these kinds of stories, when good people are taken advantage of by scams or incomplete sales processes…

I explained to her that the only way to turn a consistent profit in an online business is with a list of customers, subscribers and prospects. The reasons for this is actually quite simple. It’s simple economics.

It costs too much to advertise and bring a visitor to your website. On the first visit to a website, 99% are probably not yet ready to buy whatever you’re selling. Well, it’s impossible to turn a profit when only 1% or fewer people buy from you, given the cost of bringing visitors to your site.

Instead, it’s a proven fact that in order to run an advertising-driven, profitable online business, you must build a list of subscribers – who you then can develop a relationship with over time and market to them on an ongoing basis.

It seems simple enough, yet I’m still amazed at how many small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t do this properly. There’s tons of great information freely available on how to develop landing pages that get visitors to register and there’s certainly no shortage of email auto-responders to choose from (arguably there’s too many of them to choose from today).

So what’s the issue? Why are so many companies and people starting out still missing this critical piece of the online profit puzzle?

Perhaps it’s because they lack the content – the so-called “money magnet” needed to attract the right kinds of people to register and subscribe in the first place. Money magnet is a term that’s been used in a variety of ways, but I first heard the term applied to online marketing by Frank Kern, a very experienced and successful Internet marketer.

A money-magnet is anything you can give away for free or nearly free that attracts the right kinds of prospective customers to register and become a subscriber. Now I realize this is online marketing 101 stuff, but like I said, there’s so many people who are skipping right past the basics to put a gorgeous looking website up and then wonder why it’s not making money, that apparently it needs to be stressed more.

I outlined the entire process for building a profitable online business in a post earlier this year called “A PROVEN ONLINE SUCCESS FORMULA“, where I go into quite a lot of detail on proper goal setting and putting the necessary online selling machinery in place.

Incidentally, all of this is spelled out in even greater detail in the Online Leadership Guide, which comes with some very cool free tools and a mini-course you should check out (it’s very affordable, at only $19.95). Incidentally, this is a decent example of a money magnet and landing page.

So if you’ve tried Google AdWords or other online advertising and are disappointed with the lack of sales results, if you weren’t using a proper landing page with an enticing money-magnet free offer for your visitors to register and learn more, go back and fix your front-end “lead generation” process and start building your list.

Several earlier posts discuss the importance of developing a relationship with your subscribers, giving them even more value for free, then eventually *some* of them will be ready to buy – and when they are ready, some will buy from you.

Done properly, your subscriber and customer list become your more valuable online business asset – much like that Rolodex was to a salesperson in the offline world. Invest in building your list and the relationship with those on your list, and I promise you’ll be amazed at how much it will help you.

If you’ve been in business for a while as a small business, chances are you already have a “list” of sorts – a mailing list in the making inside your Gmail contact manager, Outlook or other mail client. This is, in effect, your mailing list – all your contacts. If you’re like me, you have hundreds of business cards squirreled away in a desk drawer somewhere.

Getting these entered or scanned into your contact manager will begin to round out your business contacts. Keep in mind that these folks would probably accept a personal email from you, but would consider advertising or other forms of direct promotion as spam, so be careful how you use these resources.

If you are a more established medium to large corporation, then you most likely have a corporate CRM system, which is a primary list source for you. You also probably have lists scattered all over the place and you may need to do some list consolidation, de-duping and cleansing. It’s well worth the effort, as these lists are pure gold when used properly with a focused email marketing strategy.

Finally, keep in mind that one of your best sources for lists is leveraging lists of your partners through cooperative marketing campaigns, whereby your partners promote your offer to their lists, bringing lots of qualified traffic to your landing page and building your targeted list.

Ultimately, you’ll need to break out from your core contacts and build focused lists of prospects in each of your target markets. It does take time, but done properly, it is well worth the effort and investment.

Crossing the Chasm of Doubt

Rick Braddy — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:22:41 +0000

TRUST

The number one reason people don’t buy from us online (besides price and no need) is the fact that we’re strangers and they don’t know us and don’t trust us.

We’re all taught from childhood not to trust strangers. This carries over into business, because most of us have been burned at one time or another by someone we didn’t know.

The old saying that “trust must be earned” is very true.

Big brands like Amazon.com or EBay do not face this same barrier, as they’ve already earned their trust in the market. Unless you have the wind of an established brand blowing behind you, you will certainly have to face and overcome this trust issue. Even if you have a brand, it may not be enough to carry you, especially in new markets.

The other reason people do not believe or trust you is because they realize you are trying to sell them something. In addition, they often have developed an instinctive distrust for sales people because of experiences buying things (and being “hard sold” on things that turned out not to be in their best interest or of value to them).

Lack of trust and belief is probably the single biggest cause of online selling failure (probably offline, too). Fortunately, you can do plenty about this.

When people do not trust or believe us, there is a gap or chasm between us and them. Notice my use of the term “us and them” here. They do not trust us.

To maximize our online sales, we must change this “us vs. them” perspective. We do this by building an online relationship – that eventually blossoms into a customer relationship.

Every relationship begins with a Chasm of Doubt between the two parties. This chasm is often filled with fears, anxieties, questions, misperceptions, and other forms of doubt.

There are those risk-takers who will simply leap right across this chasm, but more often than not, they are the exception instead of the rule.

To attract the big, mainstream part of almost any market, we must convince risk-averse people that they can safely do business with us.

Consider the following picture of the chasm. How many people will put themselves at risk to jump across it?

It is as if we are standing on one side of the canyon or a large gorge, and our prospect is on the other side looking across at us.

He can see us and hear us but isn’t ready to try to jump across this dangerous-looking chasm to join us on the other side, where we can help.

Yet to sell to him, we must somehow help him across this Chasm of Doubt onto our side, where we can have productive conversations about his desires and his needs and how we can best help and serve.

So how are we going to help our prospects cross to our side?

By building a metaphorical Bridge of Trust across the Chasm of Doubt – by removing the perceived risks of being on the same side with us – and avoiding the risky-looking jump we see here.

This “chasm” has been written about before, so this isn’t really new. Remember Jeffrey Moore’s famous “Crossing the Chasm”? Another place I saw this concept being applied to email marketing was Michael Cheney, an accomplished Internet Marketer, who portrays this chasm in his River of Doubt metaphor.

To get across this famous chasm, we must build a ”Bridge of Trust” and get our prospects to start walking across the bridge to reach us on the other side – one-step at a time.

You might be wondering: what can we use to build such a bridge?

Trust is built one step at a time.

It begins by being honest and sincere about helping the prospects get the results and achieve the positive outcome they seek.

Each step of the bridge must be built. We provide the prospects with something that causes them to consider us as trustworthy.

They then take a step closer to being on our side of the Chasm of Doubt.

Here are some examples.

We offer the prospect something valuable for free (perhaps a free offer that attracted them to us in our original advertisement), and then we deliver it to them.

We ensure they will be satisfied with what we give them. Gift giving has long been a good way to help build a relationship, and it is no different online.

Next, we give them something else that is completely unexpected for free, like a free video, report, or something else even more useful. These gifts must not be self-serving, with embedded sales messages, links to buy your product or service, etc. Real gifts aren’t Trojan horses – they’re honest to goodness useful, valuable things that can be appreciated.

By giving useful, free stuff to our prospects, we are accomplishing several important steps:

We’re demonstrating that we are trustworthy by trying to help them
We’re proving that we are interested in them and their needs
We’re showing them that we actually do have something valuable to offer them
We’re helping them along the path toward solving the ultimate problem (our product can fully resolve)
We’re staying in front of them and keeping our company/product in the foreground (vs. not following up with them at all and allowing them to slip into the ether).

Another way to gain their trust is to confide in them by letting them in on something special, telling them a secret, or even sharing something personal with them. When people confide in you, they are signaling that they trust you. Therefore, you should trust them in return.

Think of all the ways you would go about building a relationship with someone and evaluate whether that same approach could work in building bonds of trust with your prospect.

Sometimes it is easy to forget all the stuff we learned when selling to people in the offline world—how our sales people go about their process of selling.

It begins by establishing rapport, finding common ground and establishing some nominal amount of trust that the sales person has your best interest at heart.

It is no different online. Our brand (if we are an established company) helps to bridge the trust gaps somewhat. If you’re like most small businesses, you don’t yet have an established brand in the eyes of your prospect, so that’s not going to help.

Instead, we must invest the time and effort required to develop the relationship and bonds of trust with our market. Then when our email arrives in her inbox, she will open it and actually read it more often than not. When we recommend something, that recommendation will be taken seriously and not pre-judged as just another sales pitch.

So if developing these relationships is this straightforward, why don’t more companies do it? Because it takes time, work and a sincere interest in our market and customers. It takes doing things that aren’t in our own selfish interests and instead investing our time for someone else. And that’s not nearly as much fun as building more stuff to sell…

So the next time you’re wondering what you can do to increase sales in your market, step back and ask yourself this question.

Which side of the chasm is my market waking up on today?

To see how you can begin to develop these relationships online, check this post out.

Effective Tactic for Email Relationship Development

Rick Braddy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Frank Kern - Most efective tactic

I’m a big fan of Frank Kern, one of the most innovative Internet marketers and story-based marketing copywriters of our time. In addition to being very entertaining and down to earth, Frank’s insights are often powerful yet simple and pragmatic enough to apply easily.

Frank recently shared one of his most effective tactics in a video.

If you’ve ever wondered something like “what should I do to develop a better relationship with my prospects and list subscribers?“, then this is definitely worth 15 minutes of your time… (in addition to being a great example of developing rapport with an audience, anchoring and some other techniques being employed in the video itself).

Frank answers that question nicely in this particular video. Be sure to watch it.

Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » email marketing relationship

List Building Secrets E-book

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