We wonder why people get so upset when they get an email from a business who has the good sense to market electronically to their customers? If you think about it, noone takes it so personally when you go through your mail and dispose of the pieces of direct mail away you don't need. There is a understandable personal attachment to your email, but there is a method of unsubscribe or opting out that every e-newsletter has to have that will save you of all aggravation. If you market your business through email marketing, here are some ideas to create an opt out option.
By Definition: Opt-out email marketing assumes a general permission to send marketing messages to everyone who has not explicitly stated that they do not want to receive such information. Spammers operate on this highly problematic premis. Opt-in email marketing, where messages are only sent to those who request them, is much more effective.
At the end of every email from The Callan Group, we give you a very easy option to Opt-Out.
Just opt out! We won't take it personally and hope you won't either!
GreatTips for Successful Business Networking
Keep in mind that networking is about being genuine and authentic, building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others.
Ask yourself what your goals are in participating in networking meetings so that you will pick groups that will help you get what you are looking for. Some meetings are based more on learning, making contacts, and/or volunteering rather than on strictly making business connections.
Visit as many groups as possible that spark your interest. Notice the tone and attitude of the group. Do the people sound supportive of one another? Does the leadership appear competent? Many groups will allow you to visit two times before joining.
Hold volunteer positions in organizations. This is a great way to stay visible and give back to groups that have helped you.
Ask open-ended questions in networking conversations. This means questions that ask who, what, where, when, and how as opposed to those that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This form of questioning opens up the discussion and shows listeners that you are interested in them.
Become known as a powerful resource for others. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.
Have a clear understanding of what you do and why, for whom, and what makes your doing it special or different from others doing the same thing. In order to get referrals, you must first have a clear understanding of what you do that you can easily articulate to others.
Be able to articulate what you are looking for and how others may help you. Too often people in conversations ask, "How may I help you?" and no immediate answer comes to mind.
Follow through quickly and efficiently on referrals you are given. When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor that and your referrals will grow.
Call those you meet who may benefit from what you do and vice versa. Express that you enjoyed meeting them, and ask if you could get together and share ideas.
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You have a Website, Now What?
Marketing is the single most important activity in running a small business. After you’ve made that uber-important step of getting a website for your small business, you must begin to embrace advertising online. If your customers can't find you, they can't buy from you. While advertising on the internet is nothing new, many small business owners aren’t that internet savvy and the World Wide Web is the great unknown. Your customers are internet savvy, and you have to advertise where their eyes are. If you focus on the basics, you can develop an affordable online marketing plan.
1. Target Your Market
Know your market and what they want. Small business owners need to know who is going to buy their goods and therefore create marketing materials these buyers will respond to. For example, if you sell a product to runners, you want to use advertising that addresses the needs of runners using running language, and place the ads where runners will find them. The better you understand your market, the better your promotions will work. Ads on Google and Facebook allow you to specify who will see your ad depending on their demographics, interests, location, and more. Select the pay-per-click option and you’ll only pay for the ad when someone is interested enough to click on it and visit your website. These options also offer robust tracking tools to calculate your success rates, usage, conversions, and ROI.
2. Connect with your customers.
Making personal connections with your market always produces better results than trying to reach those you don't know or who don't know you. The more your market knows and trusts you, the more they'll buy from you and be willing to share information about your business with all their online friends. Connect with past and current clients and prospects to learn about their needs, get feedback, make a special offer or ask for a referral. You can do this online easily by installing a sign-up form on your website, asking for emails at checkout, or having a contest. Then, send them online newsletters or e-mails.
3. Educate Your Market
Providing information not only increases your credibility but can cost almost nothing. Develop free, downloadable information to offer your customers when they sign up on your website. This will give your customers a reason to visit your website other than getting directions (which is also a vital component!). You could also look into writing articles for internet sites, trade journals, and mainstream print sources to give you expert status and a wide audience.
4. Mix it up.
A mixed media/cross-marketing approach can be very effective. Every printed ad, brochure, and business card should contain your website address, including your email signature. For print ads, you should capture your audience, then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Have a contest on your website and advertise it on the radio. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market. Google TV makes placing ads easy and affordable because you can target your market down to the time and channel they might be watching. If you’re advertising in the local paper, ask them about a package that includes both print and ads on their website.
5. Get listed.
Online directories like Google Places are the new yellow pages. Make sure you are listed everywhere you can be. Most online directories offer free basic listings and some even provide stats so you can see how many people are finding you via that website. If it turns out it is working well, you might consider upgrading to a paid listing. Shopping directories like Google Product Search are my newest favorite thing. Submit your products to Google and when someone searches for that product name, your website will be listed with the price and description of the products.
Online advertising has finally matured into a serious advertising medium by providing high quality tools and information to small business owners at a reasonable cost. Some of it’s free if you have the time to devote to the research, and most options that do have a lower price than traditional advertising. While I have provided direct links to Google’s and Facebook’s products, I don’t think they’re the only options. But let’s face it; it’s certainly where someone should get started.
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1. Target Your Market
Know your market and what they want. Small business owners need to know who is going to buy their goods and therefore create marketing materials these buyers will respond to. For example, if you sell a product to runners, you want to use advertising that addresses the needs of runners using running language, and place the ads where runners will find them. The better you understand your market, the better your promotions will work. Ads on Google and Facebook allow you to specify who will see your ad depending on their demographics, interests, location, and more. Select the pay-per-click option and you’ll only pay for the ad when someone is interested enough to click on it and visit your website. These options also offer robust tracking tools to calculate your success rates, usage, conversions, and ROI.
2. Connect with your customers.
Making personal connections with your market always produces better results than trying to reach those you don't know or who don't know you. The more your market knows and trusts you, the more they'll buy from you and be willing to share information about your business with all their online friends. Connect with past and current clients and prospects to learn about their needs, get feedback, make a special offer or ask for a referral. You can do this online easily by installing a sign-up form on your website, asking for emails at checkout, or having a contest. Then, send them online newsletters or e-mails.
3. Educate Your Market
Providing information not only increases your credibility but can cost almost nothing. Develop free, downloadable information to offer your customers when they sign up on your website. This will give your customers a reason to visit your website other than getting directions (which is also a vital component!). You could also look into writing articles for internet sites, trade journals, and mainstream print sources to give you expert status and a wide audience.
4. Mix it up.
A mixed media/cross-marketing approach can be very effective. Every printed ad, brochure, and business card should contain your website address, including your email signature. For print ads, you should capture your audience, then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Have a contest on your website and advertise it on the radio. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market. Google TV makes placing ads easy and affordable because you can target your market down to the time and channel they might be watching. If you’re advertising in the local paper, ask them about a package that includes both print and ads on their website.
5. Get listed.
Online directories like Google Places are the new yellow pages. Make sure you are listed everywhere you can be. Most online directories offer free basic listings and some even provide stats so you can see how many people are finding you via that website. If it turns out it is working well, you might consider upgrading to a paid listing. Shopping directories like Google Product Search are my newest favorite thing. Submit your products to Google and when someone searches for that product name, your website will be listed with the price and description of the products.
Online advertising has finally matured into a serious advertising medium by providing high quality tools and information to small business owners at a reasonable cost. Some of it’s free if you have the time to devote to the research, and most options that do have a lower price than traditional advertising. While I have provided direct links to Google’s and Facebook’s products, I don’t think they’re the only options. But let’s face it; it’s certainly where someone should get started.
Source
Better Results with Email Marketing on Mobile Device
A reader of your blog and a loyal subscriber gets a new mobile device.
No problem: You’ve taken great care to make your site mobile friendly.
You’ve even taken the right steps to convert more mobile readers to your email list.
So you feel pretty confident that all your bases are covered.
Until your subscriber gets her first email from your latest marketing campaign. It’s all squished up on the screen, it’s impossible to click on any of the links, and the message overall is terribly hard to read.
Your loyal reader really wants to get the benefit of your great content. So she spends some time fumbling around trying to make sense of it.
But eventually frustration wins. She gives up and hit the red “delete” key.
Think this doesn’t happen? It sure does. I’ve seen it, more than once.
Mobile email marketing design is smoking hot. If you can manage to make sure your mobile readers are satisfied with those subscriber-based emails, then you have covered what may be the largest of your readership. And here are some tips to help you out.
1. Include a plain text version of every message
Including a plain text copy of every HTML message you send will help eliminate potential issues for those subscribers with mobile readers that do not support HTML.
Any good email marketing service lets you include a plain text version, make sure you’re using it.
2. Keep links uncrowded
If your email message has links that you want your readers to click on, such as navigation back to your main site (recommended), then make sure those links stand out on their own.
In other words, keep them uncrowded so it’s easy to click them within a very small space.
Imagine your loyal reader flicking around on a tiny screen to get to that link — and how frustrated you get when the links are so close together that you can’t land on the one you want. If you want clicks, make it easy.
3. Pull the reader in with your subject line
Hop on over and read Brian’s article on the three key elements of irresistible email subject lines.
Now … actually use those three key elements for your email marketing messages.
Like any headline, an email subject line has to capture attention quickly and drive the reader to click through.
By the way, the current best practice for subject lines for mobile devices is to keep it within 5 words. That’s right, you have about 5 words to grab the attention of your reader. Why? Because after about 5-7 words, the subject line gets truncated and thus it’s a lost opportunity.
4. Use the right tags for your images
If your email marketing message includes images, make sure you include an alternative (alt) tag to describe what the image is. (You should be doing this for any HTML content you create — mobile readers aren’t the only users who may not be able to see your images.)
Don’t stuff this tag full of keywords, it doesn’t work. Use it for what it was meant for — to briefly describe what the image is, in a way that lets your reader make sense of it if the image isn’t visible.
Many devices can display all your images correctly, but not all of them will, so it’s just smart to use alternative text to make sure every reader gets the message that image was supposed to convey.
5. Is your call to action clear?
People using mobile devices spend a little less time taking in the content due to the smaller screen sizes and the fact that they are usually on the go, so make sure your email marketing has a clear call to action.
Put it either near the beginning or somewhere where it will stand out. Don’t make it hard to find … after all, it’s the key to getting the response you want.
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Easy Tip for Gathering Email Newsletter Content
Finding e-newsletter content usually becomes a priority when deadlines are pressing. Then you're under pressure to come up with ideas and material fast.
A better approach is to keep a "newsletter content" folder or file permanently open somewhere on your PC or desk. One you can use to store content ideas and material as and when they occur to you.
To make this work, you need to keep the newsletter in mind at all times. Then the things you see, read or hear are more likely to trigger a "that would be a good topic/idea for the newsletter" reaction.
Ideally, everyone in your organization should keep the newsletter in mind when going about their work. So, for example, when a sales rep hears the same question again and again from customers, he could suggest addressing that question in a future newsletter.
Then when deadlines loom, this content folder eases the burden of creativity when it comes to actually writing the next issue.
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Why Email Marketing Works
Email marketing works for a variety of reasons...
- It allows targeting
- It is data driven
- It drives direct sales
- It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
- It supports sales through other channels
Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.
And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.
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