Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » lead nurturing

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.

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.

It’s good to be King

Rick Braddy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:43:19 +0000

It’s been said that on the Internet “Content is king.” Well, if content is king, then relationships go cha-ching!

Of course, cha-ching is the sound of the cash register ringing—the sound of making money.

Another popular online marketing adage is “The money is in the list”—meaning if you have a list of prospects and customers, the money is in farming the list.

In reality, the “Money is in the relationships,” including relationships that are embodied within mailing lists.

No relationship = no money.

Great relationships = great money.

These “Circles of Trust”, as illustrated at the top of this post, are where the real money is made. Get inside one of these major circles, and you’re in the money. And the more of these circles you become a part of, the easier it becomes.

Tapping into these circles of trust is probably the biggest untapped potential for social networks to create tangible value for online businesses.

One of the fastest and most reliable ways to make money online is to build relationships and then turn them into money. Sounds simple enough…

RELATIONSHIPS = MONEY

For example, let’s say you have a friend or business associate that has a newsletter and blog in your target market. Let’s assume this person has built a following of 30,000 newsletter subscribers and 20,000 regular blog readers per month.

These aren’t uncommon numbers on the Internet; in fact, these are relatively small compared to many people I know personally.

So, you convince this person that it would be in her subscribers’ best interest to know about your new product. As an added incentive, you agree to pay her a 20% commission on every sale you make from her subscriber base and blog. Never mind exactly how we will track those commissions (it is easy) for now.

I am going to use this concept of a “Trust-O-Meter” (below) to depict how much trust a prospect has developed in us. The following Trust-O-Meter shows how much our associate’s audience trusts her:

Like a thermometer, the Trust-O-Meter represents the level of trust and relationship strength, in a simplistic way, so we can conceptualize it better. As we see above, our friend’s audience not only trusts her, they like her. We might even consider extending the scale further to the right by adding “Respected” (not shown here).

Why Affiliates and Bloggers Are Trusted

Continuing the affiliate example above, since most of her audience has been with her for some time, they have not only developed a high degree of trust in her, but they also like her. Going beyond trusted to liked is a sure way to make more sales—a lot more sales.

So, we were introduced by our friend and associate to her audience. What is our Trust-O-Meter reading with them at the start?

Because we were introduced by a person the audience (those on the affiliate’s list) both trusts and likes, we get the benefit of the doubt and begin in a semi-trusted state with her audience.

We will have to earn the rest of their trust…

Together, you and your friend come up with a strategy for communicating and involving the subscribers:

An initial email and blog entry that introduces you to her community
A free teleconference where she interviews you about a hot topic of interest
A recording of the free teleconference posted on the blog site and a brief email note sent to the subscriber list
A free giveaway item you provide that is relevant to her audience
A “special offer,” a time-limited discount on buying your product!

Assuming your product can interest the majority of the 50,000 audience your associate has just introduced you, guess what just happened from the above steps?

First, a foundation of trust and respect existed between your associate and her subscribers and readers. Second, she introduced you to them. You are no longer considered a stranger, so you instantly became semi-trusted.

Next, your free teleconference gave those who attended an opportunity to learn firsthand what kind of person you are and to ask you questions and see how you responded. In effect, you became an authority who is operating at nearly the same level as your associate, and perhaps even at a higher level in your particular area of expertise.

Incidentally, everyone who actually registered for and attended that teleconference just became qualified leads for your product, since they invested some time with you.

Next, everyone else who listens to the recorded teleconference audio also trusts you more (assuming you didn’t blow it during the interview by trying to sell something!) Notice how you have moved up in the Trust-O-Meter!

Next, you gave away some of real value to her audience. This shows what a stand-up kind of person you are, someone who cares and is trying to help.

Finally, she pitches the special offer for your product to the subscribers and audience. In this pitch, your friend is effectively endorsing you and your product, which confers an even greater amount of her trust equity onto you.

I call this “transitive trust,” since her audience now implicitly trusts you primarily because you have been endorsed and approved. Why do you think companies pay so much to get celebrities to endorse their products? Because they are both trusted and liked by so many.

Now, let’s run some numbers to put this example of ours into the proper perspective.

Out of 50,000 subscribers, only 50% are even mildly interested in what you have to say or offer them, leaving 25,000 potential prospects.

By the time she makes these 25,000 the offer, around 40% have enough interest and familiarity to open the email and learn more (This is your email “open rate.”) That is 10,000!

Out of those 10,000, about 25% click through to get more details on this special offer— that is 2,500 qualified prospects that now show up at your website (instead of her blog).

Let’s assume your offer is truly special and motivating to the buyers who have an immediate need and budget, and now trust you enough to buy from you. Let’s assume that 20% end up buying your product over the next 30 days as a result of this campaign.

So you make 500 sales! About 1% of her total subscriber base ended up buying your product. Not bad for a brief campaign with this associate of yours. Let’s say your product sells for $100. You just generated $50,000 in sales.

Let’s say your product sells for $995. You just generated $497,500 in sales! Now you are talking!

What just happened here? You went from zero to half a million in sales and 500 new customers in a matter of a few weeks. That is what happened. What other business do you know of where those kinds of results are possible? It happens somewhere on the Web every single day.

The truth is, this happens in online businesses all the time. In fact, I’ve seen product launches orchestrated with multiple partners who have large subscriber bases sell many thousands of units in less than 24 hours—generating millions of dollars in just hours.

All of this is only possible when you have the right relationships in place.

Remember what I said: Relationships go cha-ching! It’s so true.

And, it’s good to be King!

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.

Why don’t businesses invest more in online lead-generation?

Rick Braddy — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:34:46 +0000

As I work with an increasing number of businesses, and their web developers, I’ve realized there’s still a huge opportunity for most businesses to leverage their websites to generate quality leads.

In the 1990′s, having a website meant putting up a “brochure site” and being on the Web. That was then…

Today, Google is the new “Yellow Pages” (sorry YP – it’s true!) When’s the last time you picked up a hardcopy directory to find something? (if you’re reading this, I’ll bet it’s been years)

When people need something, they go straight to Google and type in their search criteria. Whatever shows up on the 1st page is what 90% of those users accept as “good enough”.

So, is your website showing up in the new directory (Google)? If you haven’t invested and maintained your SEO rankings, then answer is almost certainly No. If you aren’t paying Google to list you in their directory (Google Adwords), then you’re lost in cyberspace somewhere (a place that not very many people are finding you).

Assuming you are properly listed and showing up in the Google “directory” in the organic search results and/or PPC results, that’s the first step. Unfortunately, many large corporations stop there – and waste most of their investment…

Far too many of these companies simply refer their traffic to their site’s home page, and make the user go on the equivalent of an Easter egg hunt to locate what they really wanted. Instead, these users coming from Google should be going to a relevant “landing page“.

Why don’t more webmasters and website design companies fix this for their client’s websites? It’s not as if landing pages are a new concept! Landing pages are the “front-door” for lead-generation for a website today. It’s where the website encapsulates a focused value-proposition and offer to turn that “visitor” into a “lead”…

Website owners need to carefully evaluate their websites and fix these “lead leaks” – the places where visitors are simply evaporating and never turning into leads.

Once the lead is captured, the next common leak I see is a lack of a coherent “lead nurturing” strategy or system (e.g., an auto-responder sequence). We’ll save that topic for another post.

So to summarize… website owners, designers and developers need to help their clients get out of the 1990′s and into this century by designing websites that focus first on getting into the Google directory (SEO/organic results), second on landing pages that synthesize visitors into leads, and then back-end processes that nurture those unqualified leads into better quality lead streams that flow into the sales process – sales department (for offline sales) or sales page (online sales).

I suppose I should be glad there’s still so much opportunity out there to improve businesses’ lead-generation results…

Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » lead nurturing

How Successful Email Marketing Is Done

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