The most powerful tool for marketing, branding, direct response, and building customer relationships is email. It’s cheap, easy-to-use, and everybody on the Internet has an email address. Here you can learn the latest email strategies and techniques to help you dramatically improve response rates and forge lasting customer relationships.
Top Internet Searches Marketing (TISM) will provide a comprehensive introduction to what email marketing is and how it can be used to reach a larger group of people at a lower cost. You’ll discover the ins and outs of creating an effective email marketing strategy and how it can play a significant role with your customers.
What is Direct Response Email Marketing?
It’s an automated email marketing system that allows you to perform ongoing, hands-off follow-ups with your clients and prospects
The Direct Marketing Association states that every $1 spent on email marketing yields up to % 51.45 Return On Investment (ROI).
Recent survey of 55,000 participants, conducted by Decision Direct Research revealed that the number of respondents that visited a website after receiving an email promotion increased to 62% in 2008! Undoubtedly, the 2009 figures will be higher.
How Does Direct Response Email Marketing Work?
Step 1: Your customer or visitor comes to your web page. They sign up after seeing the opt-in form that offers a free report or gift in exchange for subscribing.
Your client or prospect simply enters their first name and email address, then click a submit button. (Which will say something like “Keep me informed” as opposed to the normal but more common “Submit” title.
Step 2: After they enter their name and email address and click the submit button, they are redirected to a “Thank You” page on your website. The “Thank You” page thanks them for subscribing and instructs them to check their email Inbox or Junk Mail folder for a confirmation email.
This confirmation email includes a confirmation link that the new subscriber must click to actually be placed on the email list. This process prevents unsolicited email (spam.)
Step 3: After receiving the confirmation email and clicking the confirmation link in that email message, they immediately receive a welcome message in their Inbox.
This Welcome Message is the first of a preloaded series of messages. They will generally receive the remaining messages once every week, or at any interval that you deem appropriate for your business. The Welcome Message will tell them what they can expect as a result of becoming a subscriber to your business newsletter, as well as give them the link to download the free report that you promised them as an inducement to sign up in the first place.
It will also begin educating them about the products and /or services your business has to offer. The weekly email messages that follow will do the same.
These messages can also include. . . .
- Weekly specials and additional discount offers
- Upcoming community-based events
- Helpful tips that benefit them as subscribers
- Surveys and polls
And pretty much any type of message you wish to convey.
Most importantly, it keeps your business in the forefront of their minds. This is a powerful and proven marketing technique that has been used by large companies and corporations for decades.
How Do You Benefit?
- Effective mail marketing keeps you in touch with your current clients as well as potential clients.
- You can instantly notify your clients and prospects of upcoming specials, discounts and events.
Let’s say you develop an email list of 500 subscribers. You arrange to have an email message sent that notifies them of a special 15% discount on a popular service.Let’s assume the full suggested retail price of the service is $50 buy they will pay only $42.50 with the discounted 15% offer.
Now, let’s say that only 10% of your subscribers respond by coming in your business to take advantage of your discounts offer. That’s 50 clients. Now let’s calculate – 50 customers x $42.50 = $2125.00 in total sales. Pretty impressive!
Results like this would make it possible for you to stop paying for marginal and ineffective advertising that yields low ROI. This “increase-profits and lower- advertising formula” is highly desirable.
What would happen if you could get only 20% of your daily customer traffic to subscribe to your business newsletter? If you have 50 to 1,000 client contacts each day that would give you 10 to 200 new list members each day, 60 to 1200 each 6 day week, 240 to 4,800 each 4 week month and over 2,880 to 57,600 each year?
More Customers, More Revenue, More Profit! Isn’t that what you want?
Another very important aspect of your list-building effort is to design a reward system for customers to refer others to your website, and your sign-up list. This encourages customers to tell friends and family to receive further discounts, or extra products and services. The more referrals you can get, the faster your list gets built.
Each business might have different strategies that are appropriate to encourage referrals. Can you think of any businesses out there right now that are using this kind of strategy?
