10 Autoresponder Ideas to Increase Your Profits
June 5, 2008
It’s a fact that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your sales.
At least 20% of people who have purchased from you once will buy from you again if you follow up with them.
Let’s put it another way… one-fifth of your customer base is just sitting there waiting for you to offer them something new!
If you don’t follow up with your customers, you are losing a lot of profit — it’s as simple as that.
Your existing customer base is four or five times more likely to buy from you than to purchase somewhere new. And this "lifetime value" of your customers is one of the greatest assets of your business.
You can target your existing customers with regular emails, called autoresponders… without ever having to write yourself a reminder notice, or draft a new message each time.
Autoresponders are just the prewritten emails automatically sent out to anyone who requests information from you.
Once you have your autoresponder set up, there are any number of emails you can send out on a regular basis, including…
10 great ideas for autoresponders
- Send a confirmation email after a subscription request or purchase
- Send a thank-you message after a purchase
- Ask your customers if they’re happy with the product after they’ve had it for a little while
- Follow up on a purchase anniversary
- Remind customers if they have an appointment with you if you’re running a service-based website
- Send out a short survey asking your customer’s opinion about shipping times and any improvements you can make to your product
- Send a follow-up offer on your customer’s birthday
- Offer a customer loyalty voucher after they have made several purchases
- Remind customers to bookmark your site, and offer to email them when new information has been added
- Contact customers and remind them of what you can do for them during holidays and specific shopping seasons
Sending follow-up promotions is an excellent way for your business to generate a healthy amount of extra income without sucking up your time.
In fact, if you do it right, you should expect to immediately increase your revenues by an extra 30% to 50% just by sending follow-up promotions.
Think about it… how much extra money would that be for YOUR business?
Email is STILL the most effective online marketing tool
May 1, 2008
Email marketing always gets a bad press… but a new study proves it’s actually the most effective and efficient marketing tool available to online entrepreneurs.
Sure, spam is still as problematic as ever. But if you’ve got a targeted list of opt-in subscribers and a message they want to hear, email marketing can be incredibly powerful!
A new survey by Forrester Research and Shop.org says email marketing messages sent to in-house subscriber lists provide the highest return on investment of any type of e-marketing activity.
The report says the average value of a sale generated by email marketing to in-house lists is $120.27. At the same time, the average cost of making that sale is only $6.85.
So the Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) is 17.56, which means the average value of a sale made through email marketing is 17.56 times more than the amount it cost a business to make the sale.
ROAS is calculated by dividing the sale value (dollars earned) by the amount spent on corresponding advertising (dollars spent). Any value higher than 1 represents a positive return on investment.
So, 17.56 is a pretty impressive figure!
But remember, this only refers to email marketing using in-house subscriber lists. In other words, people who’ve actively asked you to contact them, not random email addresses you got from a rented list.
The survey says search engine optimization is the second most effective e-marketing tool, with an ROAS of 12.71.
However, I think this is much more difficult to measure — because it’s harder to attribute a sale to general SEO marketing than a specific email campaign.
Nevertheless, it emphasizes the importance of a top organic search ranking.
In third place is affiliate marketing, which can be easily measured. It has an ROAS of 10.01.
Bottom of the pile — rather predictably — is banner advertising, which has an ROAS of just 1.58.
So, as we’ve always said at IMC, email marketing works! It just needs to be used with a targeted list of subscribers who are interested in what you’ve got to say.
For more information on the report and these statistics, click here.
And if you’ve been neglecting your email marketing for newer, sexier strategies — get back on it!
6 ways to segment your email list
March 27, 2008
I’m always telling entrepreneurs how a big list of targeted subscribers is crucial for successful email marketing campaigns.
But the truth is, even with hundreds or thousands of eager subscribers, most marketers don’t have a clue how to make the most of their email marketing strategies.
Why? Because they don’t segment their lists.
According to a study by Jupiter Research, marketers who segment their lists (by things like what customers buy or where people click on their website) can improve conversion rates by up to 355% - and increase revenues by an amazing 781%!
So why did the same study find only 11% of marketers actually segment their lists using this kind of data?!
It’s outrageous!
But it does mean if YOU start segmenting your list, you’ll get a definite edge on your competitors.
How can you do this?
1. Target "subscribers" and "customers" differently.
This one’s simple! You should target subscribers (people who’ve opted in to your list) and customers (people who’ve actually bought something from you) in different ways.
You can use email to build trust and credibility with your subscribers - and then convince them to buy from you. With customers, you’ve already overcome that hurdle - so you can use email marketing to make follow-up offers and turn them into repeat buyers.
2. Target your best customers (the ones who’ve made the most purchases from you) with a special "Thank-You" promotion.
Since 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers, your repeat buyers deserve special care. Make sure they know you appreciate their loyalty by offering them some really great discounts, bonuses, or gifts.
3. Target customers who haven’t made a purchase in a long time with an offer to win back their business.
This is sometimes called a "We want you back" promotion. A simple bonus discount or gift can be a great way to win back people who may not have bought for a while. If they liked your offer enough to buy once, they may just need a little extra motivation to buy again.
4. Target subscribers who have been on your list a long time with a chance to "upgrade their subscription" to a paid product.
If they’ve been reading your information regularly for a long time, your subscribers likely value your content and enjoy the information you provide. Position your product as an upgrade with even more value, and some of them will be sure to snap it up.
5. Target customers or subscribers who share a specific interest.
If you sell wetsuits for example, you probably have some people on your list who are interested in surfing, and some who are interested in kayaking. If you send the surfers an email telling them how great your wetsuits are for kayaking, you won’t make many sales.
Target each group based on their interests and you’ll see much better results!
6. Target customers in different locations with localized offers.
Running an online business means you’ll likely have customers in many different cities and countries. If you can target them with offers specific to their location (such as national holidays, seasonal events, etc.) you’ll see a much better response rate.
Some of these strategies require that you know a bit more about the people on your opt-in list than just whether they are customers or subscribers. In most cases, it’s information you should be keeping track of anyway - like what products they’ve bought or how long it’s been since they made a purchase.
By collecting more specific information from the people who are visiting your site, you’ll be able to target your email marketing efforts in some very sophisticated ways.
And that’ll mean better response rates - and higher sales!
Four Proven Subject Lines
March 17, 2008
There’s no email marketing if nobody opens your mail! Try these four proven subject line angles.
Subject lines can make or break your email marketing strategy.
They’re the most important of any email marketing campaign because if you don’t convince the reader to immediately open and read your message, it’ll likely end up in the trash!
When you’re thinking up subject lines, picture your reader in front of their computer faced with a bulging inbox.
As they glance over your subject line, what’s going to make them open it first?For starters, nothing is more effective than using the reader’s name in the subject line to catch their attention. (You can easily set up this tried and tested technique with an email service provider like iContact.)
But your subject line must also answer the first questions on your reader’s mind:
- "So what?"
- "What’s in it for me?"
- "Why should I open your message (out of the dozens waiting for me)?"
Only a few subject lines angles actually answer these questions. We’ve tested thousands - and these four approaches have been consistent winners…
Angle #1: Make an announcement or share news
People want to be the first to find out new things - especially if your site covers a specific industry.
The news could be about your site (e.g., "Lana, we’d like your feedback") or about the topic of interest (e.g., "Michael, here’s a new back exercise").
Angle #2: Make the reader curious
You can do this by suggesting the reader is missing out on an important offer or piece of information (e.g., "Chris, are you making this common mistake?").
It’s important to leave something to the imagination when using this technique, usually by posing a question the reader can’t ignore.
Angle #3: Create a sense of urgency
You do this by either limiting time (e.g., "Mary, just three days left") or quantity (e.g., "David, last 50 copies available now").
This approach works especially well when you’re creating a follow-up mailing - and it’s a great way to motivate people to take action now! But don’t overdo it… creating a sense of urgency too often can be a bit like crying wolf, so use it carefully and sparingly.
Angle #4: Emphasize how the reader will benefit from reading your email
Out of these four angles, you’ll always be most successful if your subject lines state a clear benefit and tell the reader exactly how they’re going to save money, save time, or make their life easier by reading your email (e.g., "Christina, save $25.00 or more every time you fly").
If you can state a benefit AND create curiosity, so much the better! The key to writing benefit-laden subject lines is to consider your product or service from your customers’ point of view.
Write subject lines using these angles - particularly ones that emphasize benefits - and we guarantee you’ll dramatically increase the number of people who open and read your emails…
… Making your email marketing strategies priceless!
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Photo by Mzelle Biscotte (http://www.flickr.com/photos/biscotte/60963915/) on Flickr. Some rights reserved (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)
Start Building An Email List
January 22, 2008
… Especially when the answer is such a huge, unequivocal "YES!"
Without a doubt, email is definitely one of the major benefits of
selling online. It allows you to offer FAR more personalized service
than you’re normally capable of providing in a purely offline setting.
"WHAT? How can you be more personal through email as opposed to when
you’re selling to people face to face?"
… Is that what you’re thinking?
Here’s what I mean… When you have an offline business — without any
sort of online presence to back it up — your only chance to connect
with your visitors is when they come into your store.
But when you sell online, you can use email to communicate with your
customers regularly — whether they’re at work, in a coffee shop with
their laptop, or in the comfort of their own home.
Here are just a few reasons why you need to start building an opt-in
email list, if you’re serious about making money online:
Email Advantage #1:
You can help would-be customers get over the "buying hurdle"
Research shows it takes an average of FOUR TO SEVEN points of contact
to make a sale - and chances are good you’ll never make it to the
second point of contact if you don’t have a way to reach your visitors
after they’ve left your site.
Think about how many web sites you visit in an hour of surfing the Internet…
Do you remember the salescopy and products from each of those sites?
Could you find a particular site again if you wanted to re-check their
information?
Even if you Googled it, there’s no guarantee that exact URL would show up in your keyword results.
In most cases, visitors come to your site, they look around, then they
leave, and they’re gone forever.
But simply by collecting their first name, last name, and email
address, you can stay firmly on their radar and expose them to your
products time and time again - all at nearly no cost to you!
Email Advantage #2:
Your email list is made of people who WANT to hear from you
When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you’ll
be using it to send them information they actually WANT to receive.
These are highly targeted leads!
They’ve visited your site, or they’ve gone into your offline shop, and
they’ve decided that they like what they see enough to give you their
email address. They’re actually inviting you to sell to them.
Email Advantage #3:
You can turn one-time customers into lifelong repeat buyers
Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over
again, so you can build genuine relationships with them.
Why is this so important?
… Because studies show that 36% of your customers will buy from you AGAIN if you present them with a good follow-up offer!
Imagine how your bank account will grow if you use email to turn
one-time customers into lifelong repeat buyers.
Not only that, by forming a strong relationship with your customers,
you can get to know their needs and wants extremely well, so you can
give them first-class service.
Plus, you can discover what OTHER products they’re looking for, so you
know you’re presenting them with follow-up offers they’re sure to act
on!
Email Advantage #4:
You can track your marketing efforts, so you know exactly what works — and what doesn’t
Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to
evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours of
launching them.
If there’s a weak link in the chain, you can find out EXACTLY where it
is. Maybe your subject line didn’t compel people to open your email. Or
maybe the email itself didn’t persuade people to click through to the
sales page. Or maybe the subject line and email worked fine, but the
sales page failed to convert.
With the right email software, you can test ALL of these different
elements — so you can capitalize on the ones that are successful,
while working on the ones that need improvement.
100% of the guesswork is eliminated!
… Of course, in order to get meaningful test results, you need to be
using good email software that offers advanced tracking features — but
makes it easy for you to use them.
A great email marketing service you should check out is iContact.com.
This online service provider provides all the advanced tracking
features you need — plus, it’s dead easy to use and costs only $10 a
month, which is super cheap for this kind of service.
Not only that, when you use iContact, you have access to…
- Automatic whitelisting, so your messages are always guaranteed to land in your subscribers’ inboxes.
- A built-in WYSIWIG editor, so you don’t have to mess around with raw HTML code
- More than 300 templates, so your emails look professional AND original — even if you don’t know the first thing about design
- Spamchecking — to make sure your emails won’t get accidentally blocked by spam filters
- A public newsletter archive — so you can build a library of past issues and invite your subscribers to check them out
- Over 25 email marketing articles and resources, so you know how to maximize the effectiveness of your emails
… And that’s just scratching the surface.
If you’re thinking about getting started with email, then definitely give iContact a try.
And — great news — we got in touch with the good people at iContact
and worked out a deal in which you can use their email marketing
service for a FREE 15-day test drive, simply by clicking here:
Be sure to check it out!
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