10.3 When should you distribute Press Releases?

Press Releases should be distributed every time something newsworthy happens with your website or products. The key here is newsworthy. A press release may easily be considered spam if the reader feels that the content of the press release is not interesting.

Given below is a list of events when a Press Release can be distributed:

• The launch of your website
• When you add new services & products:
• When you arrange events like public speaking engagements, open houses, seminars, fairs and so on.
• If your company creates new partnerships
• When you run contests on your website
• If you are arranging fundraisers & donations
• If your company or product gets a major award or accomplishment.

Press Releases can be an effective tool for marketing your products. As discussed, you can hire professionals to create a valuable press release for your company. However, this would add to your costs but nevertheless, it definitely is worth it.

In the next chapter, we will discuss a very interesting form of marketing known as Viral Marketing. Viral Marketing is probably one of the cheapest forms of marketing, yet extremely effective.

10.2 Press Release Distribution

Press Releases should be distributed to various publications. Smaller companies should start local and small. Here are some distribution tips:

• Local and/or small media are most likely to be interested in your story and it's the perfect way to hone your release writing skills. Try local newspapers, trade journals, industry specific magazines, websites, radio shows, and television shows. Don't send your release to just anyone, or you could be accused of spamming.

• Always remember to get specific contact information for your press release. A release address to a particular person will receive a lot more attention than a general release sent to the media outlet.

• Familiarize yourself with the editor or reporter's work. Find out the method she prefers to receive press releases. Don't automatically send them by email...some will prefer mail or fax. Find out their deadlines.

• If you are sending your release by email, never send an attachment. Copy and paste your release into the body of the email. Never send a bulk email. Address emails individually

• For your local media, check the publication or their website for information on how to submit a release. Do a search on popular search engines for websites in your industry that might just be interested in running your story. MediaPost (www.mediapost.com), which is an extensive directory for US media, may be a good place to submit press releases.

• Submit your site to a few online newswires and news websites. There are a number of sites that require payment. However, there are a few good free websites as well. Some of these are www.prweb.com, www.free-press-release.com, www.usanews.net and so on.

• If your budget permits, you may contact a good Press Release Agency. Such agencies distribute your press release to various industry specific websites and publications for a fee. However, care should be taken while selecting a PR agency. Some of these may just spam instead of targeting various sources.

10.1 Writing an effective press release or news article

Although common practice in the corporate world, press releases are an example of an all too often overlooked potential for business growth, exposure, and traffic generation.

Press releases, done correctly, can garner the online business significant, low cost marketing via interest generated in writers and editors across the globe. These interests can develop into stories, features, or even a mere mention that can send traffic counters reeling, and sales through the roof.

Developing an effective press release is an art form all its own. The content must be creative, eye catching, and somehow moving to the reader. Though this sounds much like the creation of a successful marketing campaign, the idea here is to assemble a final release that communicates ideas and features in a manner that makes the copy of interest to the news-hungry.

One of the most important lessons that you need to learn is that writing media releases is all about developing a persuasive communication within the framework of a traditional news story format.

Editors will quickly trash media releases that make outlandish promotional promises -- "the best ever," "everyone wins," "one-of-a-kind," "changing humankind forever." Instead, you must think like a reporter. Media releases must follow journalistic style in

order to be given any kind of consideration. How do you accomplish this task? Here are some tips:

Collate and organize your facts

Contrary to what most people think, a journalist actually spends the bulk of his time in collating information and facts. When everything is ready, it is not uncommon for journalists to finish writing the story in just half an hour.

How should we go about collating all the information and facts surrounding a particular event? A simple rule of thumb is to find answers to questions pertaining to the who, what, when, where, why or 5 Ws of the event. And we do not stop at just the absolute facts and figures. These must be presented in the right perspective relative to some industry norms, trends and statistics. You may have to undertake some researches by going through past industry and newspaper's reports.

Identify your story's angle

Now that you have collated all the relevant facts and figures, the next step is to identify the "angle" or headline of your story. A good story angle must have the following three attributes:

• It must be the most important fact in your story.
• It must be timely.
• It must be unique, newsworthy or contrary to industry norms and trends.

This story angle must be presented in the first paragraph as well as the headline of your press release. Most newspapers employ an "inverted pyramid" format that presents the most important information in the opening paragraph, follows by other information that support or develop the key points raised in the first paragraph.

Create a catchy headline

By all means, keep your headline short and simple using less than ten words. It should convey the key point raised in your opening paragraph in a light-hearted manner that catches people's attention and imagination.

Write in third-person voice

Unlike an emailed newsletter that is written in a personal voice, a press release must be presented objectively from a third person point of view.

The reason is obvious. Every journalist has a duty to provide his readers with impartial facts and figures. He must not be seen as endorsing a company's products or services.

Some of the guidelines are listed below:

• Refrain from using any sales pitch in your press release.
• Remove "you", "I", "we" and "us" and replace them with "he" and "they".
• Provide references to any statistics, facts and figures raised in the press release.
• Refrain from expressing personal opinions, unless they are done in quotes.
• Draw conclusion from facts and statistics only - not general opinion.

Provide "quotes" from the newsmakers

As a newsmaker, put your most important message down into a quote. Reporters always use quotes from the newsmakers to add an authority voice to their reports. If your press release contains quotes that are important and relevant to the story, chances are high that they will be replicated in full in the published article.

Provide additional background information

You should end your press release with an appendix that provides brief background information on your company, newsmakers as well as who to contact for further information. Identify your readers

Do you understand your consumers well? As marketers, it is important for you to recognize the profile and buying behavior of your consumers. Information such as their age groups, interests and preferred media would come in handy when you want to reach out to them effectively.

The key to an effective communication, whether verbal or written, lies in presenting your messages to interested audience or readers. Whenever possible, you should only send your press releases to those media whose readers' profile matches that of your target consumers. You must send your press release to the right persons in order to increase the chance of having your story published. Look through the chosen newspapers and identify those reporters who cover events or activities that share the same theme as your products or services. You can identify the reporters by the articles' byline.

Prioritize Your Messages

Before you start writing a press release, you should list down all the relevant facts and details on a piece of paper. This is a good writing practice. It helps you organize your story better. I encourage every writer to make it a habit to do so.

How should we go about collating all the information and facts surrounding a particular

event? A simple rule of thumb is to find answers to questions pertaining to who, what, when, where, why or 5 Ws of the event. And we do not stop at just the absolute facts and figures. These must be presented in the right perspective relative to some industry norms, trends and statistics. You may have to undertake some research by going through past industry and newspaper's reports.

The next step is to evaluate and prioritize the facts according to their relative importance in conveying your intended message to the media. The most important fact will form the basis for your story's angle.

Relate Message to Readers

What you want to say about your product or service may not be the same as what your readers want to know. What this means is that you and your readers may look at the same event from totally different perspectives.

To kindle your readers' interest, you must present your intended message from their perspective. If you have done a good job in understanding your readers, you should have no problem in empathizing with their view and interest.

Remember that practice makes perfect and the best way to learn how to write an effective press release is to observe how business news are reported in the business section of your newspapers.

10. Press Releases

Press releases, also known as news releases, are brief documents that are used to communicate news (not advertising) to the media. Although a one-page news release is the most basic of publicity tools, it is also one of the most powerful documents that your company can possess - IF it is used correctly. Just one news release has the potential to receive publicity that reaches thousands of potential customers.

Your press releases will provide publicity that will:

• Increase your sales
• Increase traffic to your Web site
• Give you and your company recognition and credibility
• Increase your profits for a relatively low cost
• Save money

Press release distribution is an extremely cost-effective Internet marketing tool. It can build more credibility than any other Internet marketing technique because most readers are more likely to trust independent authorities such as reviewers, columnists, reporters or broadcasters than an over hyped advertising message. A well-written press release can dramatically expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business.

9.2.5 Choosing the right topic

We discussed earlier the importance of choosing the right topic or your Ebook. The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain, educate and research. It is thus no wonder that nonperishable, information-intensive products - including books, travel guides, magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.

Ebooks and guides on various subjects have been prospering in the recent past. Anything you can put in a physical book, you can put in an Ebook. You can sell just about any content - as long as you have an offering that has a market and an ability to get it (legally) to your customer. Yes, there are exceptions. In some cases you might be competing with big companies with a chunk of the market share.

Here are some categories that you may pursue:

Personal advice, motivation and self help sites

There are several sites aimed at the individual - mainly motivational and self-betterment sites. Such sites offer tips, articles, advice and counseling on how to build self-esteem and self-confidence and reduce stress for a happier life. You may also provide great inspirational quotations, inspirational stories, motivational poems, and other resources to motivate and inspire your visitors. It could include psychology tests, IQ tests, emotional intelligence tests and personality tests for self-help improvement.

The market for personal advice and counseling, especially for students is pretty big. You can provide educational counseling through such sites. Professional advisory information and training is covered in a subsequent category.

Fitness and health, diets, weight loss sites

These sites provide complete guides, articles, tips and counseling on proper eating and exercising habits, benefits of diet and exercise, fitness techniques, diet articles and diet tips, weight loss, as well as some of the popular diet plans. It includes tips from fitness experts, reviews of fitness and diet programs, message boards, forums and discussions on health and fitness.

Information of various nutritional and diet supplements, healthy and non-healthy foods can be included. Some of the popular fitness and health sites are eDiets.com and WeightWatchers.com.

Not all the sites are comprehensive in nature; most in fact focus on some specific program(s) and try to promote those programs to their members. Members are provided not only great details about some proprietary programs, but also personalized guidance to suit their individual cases. Members are also able to share their experiences. Generally, such sites will also offer privileges and discounts to their members to avail of fitness equipments or nutritional supplements or membership of fitness clubs.

Credit Help websites

This category includes sites offering access to consumer credit history records and related content, for example ConsumerInfo.com and CreditExpert.com. Such websites also offer credit counseling and tips as well as credit consolidation services. Articles, guides, and tips for credit improvement are provided.

Medical research websites

These sites focus on medical issues and/or health insurance. Medical research websites provide an extensive listing of research resources on various diseases and promotion of health through public education. It includes clinical information as well as information about doctors and hospitals in all states. Information on medical ethics and fraud is also provided.

Medical Journals, publications, and articles are often presented. Such websites are a good resource for lists of National Institutes of Health, medical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs. Apart from these, all information related to Medicare and health insurance can be found on these sites.

Consultants, paralegal and legal researchers and consumers are amongst those who have interest in such sites.

You may also like to consider a site that provides information on health and medicine for the general public or for a specific target group, say women, nursing mothers. While there are quite a few sites that offer this type of information free, there is room for those that can provide uniquely targeted information. Alternate and complementary medicine and therapy is another area evoking considerable interest and audience.

Personal Finance and Investment

These sites offer advice and tips on managing personal finance and investments. These include articles and guides from financial experts and assist in retirement planning. Such sites provide comprehensive information on various investment plans such as investing stocks, mutual funds, bonds, real estate and so on. They also offer advice on taxes.

Finally, once you have selected your subject, it’s just a question of putting it all together and making the sales. Show it to your friends and colleagues to get their feedback, add some pictures to break up the text if you can, and upload it onto your server.

Your basic sales method is likely to be through a website, but e-books also make great bonuses, joint venture opportunities and ways to add extra value to your sales.

Information products have two great advantages. First, they’re dead easy to put together. If you’ve always thought of yourself as a bit of a writer and want to do it yourself, you can have fun and hit the keyboard. If you’d rather pay a pro, you can probably make the money back once you’ve shifted about thirty or forty copies - follow my marketing methods and that will take you less than two weeks.

Best of all though, information products give you an unending stream of revenue. Once you’ve uploaded the book onto your server and set up the website and payment system, they money pretty much rolls in by itself. There’s no shipping, no inventory, no fiddling about with order sheets. You just keep an eye on the marketing, make sure the users keep coming and count the number of times people download. Put a series of books like this out, combined with my marketing methods and you’re looking at a very nice way to make a living.

You can also sell a range of other products. One of these is software, which is discussed later on in this book. For now, lets examine some other marketing techniques such as Press Releases.

9.2.4 How-To Books

“Do-it-yourself” and self-improvement books. Straightforward approaches, pictures and analogies that teach everything from archery to amateur zoology.

Although all these types of books sell, the how-to-books and guides are by far the best sellers on the Web. You don’t have to be massively original here. The most profitable books are those that offer a slightly new take on a topic with proven popularity. There’s no point in picking a subject that only interests you and your best pals.

I’ve found that these are the ten most popular - and most profitable - topics for “how-to” e-books.

1. Making money.
2. Saving money.
3. Saving time.
4. Saving effort.
5. Building a more comfortable life.
6. Achieving greater success.
7. Solving a problem.
8. Increasing knowledge.
9. Attaining better health.
10. Gaining information.

Those are pretty general, and clearly you’re going to have to generate ideas that focus on a particular topic. A book entitled “Making Money” isn’t going to sell many copies; a book entitled “Making Millions in Your Pajamas” will.

When you’re looking for a topic, first make sure it’s a subject that you do actually have some knowledge about - or alternatively, make sure you hire a writer who does.

If you’ve found a subject that no one else has touched, or even come close to touching, it’s unlikely that anyone will want to read it. The reason that there are millions of romances on bookshelves - and almost all of them the same - is that publishers know they sell. And like you, they’re interested in making money not breaking new ground.

So how do you assess the popularity of your chosen topic? Here’s a simple three-step process:

1. Identify keywords for your book idea.
2. Conduct a search of your keywords to determine how many people are searching for the information you’re putting out.
3. Run your keywords through the search engines and look for the following information:
A. The number of e-books already available on the subject.
B. The number of paid sponsor ads for the search. This indicates that there is interest on the subject  - otherwise big companies wouldn’t be wasting their marketing budgets to sponsor the searches.

And what does all this information tell you? First, it tells you whether there is a market at all; and secondly it tells you whether the market is saturated.

9.2.3 Study Books

There is a constant need for reference material both for business and academic use. This could cover everything from supplementary reading for school kids to advanced math tutoring for university students. Know something others don’t?

9.2.2 Inspirational Books

Inspirational Books - Spiritual books, devotional writings, uplifting life-experiences, Biblical or other religious writings, stories from the heart, or life-changing principles. A select market that you need to know well to make pay.

9.2.1 Pleasure Books

Usually fiction: novels, short stories, poems, romances, sci-fi, historical, adventure or humor are the most popular, but they’re all hard to sell online. Most people prefer to buy fiction in stores.

9.2 What Can You Write About?

In essence, there are four categories of books. Of course there are a plethora of subcategories in each of these main categories, but the main ones are: INTERNET MARKETING GUIDE BOOK

9.1 Finding a Writer

If you don’t want to do the writing yourself, finding a writer for your e-book is dead easy. Finding a good writer though is a whole other ball game. Everyone and their aunty thinks they have what it takes to win the Pulitzer if someone would just give them a chance, but even most college graduates have a hard time constructing a sentence, let alone writing a complete book. And you don’t want any old book. You want a book your readers will enjoy reading in a style that speaks to them.

If you’ve already hired someone to write your newsletters for you, they’re probably going to be the first person to ask. Every time you hire a new writer, you’re taking a risk. You’ll have no idea how talented they are, how much they know about your industry or how well they can write in the style you need. A writer you already work with though, does know about your industry - and you know how well they can write.

If you don’t have anyone on call though, Elance is a good place to search. Again, check the portfolios carefully and pay attention to people’s feedback. Elance encourages its clients to review the work of the people they hire. These are great pointers to the reliability and skill of a writer you’re thinking of hiring.

One little tip for hiring writers on Elance is not to pay too much attention to the amount of work the writer has done in the recent past (another little piece of info Elance gives you). You don’t want to hire someone who’s too stressed to give your book the attention it needs, and just because someone’s new to Elance, or doesn’t use it very much, doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot of experience. They might have a lot of clients outside Elance.

In short, you want to find someone who can show you an e-book they’ve already written and ideally on the subject and in the style you want.

Now, once you’ve made the hire, it’s important to remember that you’re paying someone to do the writing not the thinking. It will be up to you to supply the writer with all the information he needs to get the job done. The more you help the writer with the ideas you want the book to contain, the greater the chance you’ll get the product you want.

And finally, don’t be surprised if the writer demands that you stump up some cash in advance. On Elance, a deposit of as much as 50% isn’t uncommon. This a result of all the unscrupulous buyers who have bought services and not bothered to pay the bill. Too many writers have been stung in the past and most of the more established ones will want to see at least some cash to know you’re on the level. There’s often room to negotiate the deposit though, and you can sometimes use milestones to lessen the risk on both sides.

9. Selling Information Products Online

In my experience, before most people set up an online business they’ve already got a pretty good idea about what they want to sell. It’s often something they’ve worked with in the past or something they use in their spare time, like model aircrafts or football memorabilia. The Web, they believe, is the perfect way to get those products to the public with little expense.

But not everyone comes online with an idea in hand. In this chapter and the next, I’m going to look at two kinds of product you can create and sell on the Web: information products and software programs.

Let’s start with information products.

On the Web, information products mean e-books. These are small books that are downloaded from the Web (like this one) and are usually aimed at niche markets. It costs a lot of money to make a print book and if the market is small, few publishing companies are going to bother with the risk and the expense. E-books cost little more than the time it takes to write them.

And anyone can write an e-book! You don’t have to be John Grisham or the world’s leading expert to write a book. Everyone knows something that other people don’t know,

whether it’s how to fix a TV or how to tell the difference between a blue tit and a crow. You don’t even need to write it yourself. If you’ve got an idea for a book, simply find yourself a ghostwriter, tell them what’s on your mind and get them to write it for you!

8.7 Keeping Your Customers

The whole point of joint ventures is to generate customers. But even more important that getting them is keeping them. It costs much less and bring in much more money. Before we go on to talk about products, I just want to stress the importance of marketing to your existing customers.

At the end of every month I sit down with my stats and sales figures, and try to figure out answers to the following questions:

1. What percentage of my sales came from repeat customers?
2. Do my customers believe that they are important to the success of my business?
3. Did I go out of my way to learn all about my customers and keep them interested in my products?
4. Did I check out my competitors to see if they’re offering customers something that I’m not?
5. If a customer complained, how quickly and adequately did I respond?
6. Were orders filled correctly and did I offer bonuses to particularly loyal customers?
7. If I heard about a customer who went elsewhere, did I try to win him back?

It doesn’t take long to answer these questions, although it does take a bit longer to put new procedures in place if an answer comes up ‘no’. But it’s definitely worth the effort. I’ll confess, I went into this for the money, but I love getting letters from satisfied customers praising me for my service. The fact that it pays to do that too, is a real bonus.

Essentially, there are two golden rules for providing great customer service: punctuality and politeness. Always answer your customers as soon they write to you and send out their goods as quickly as you can. And always maintain a professional, business-like manner with them. It doesn’t matter how much they complain or moan, or how unreasonable they are, remember that you’re a professional and keeping your cool is part of your job. It’s all about customer satisfaction.

So now you know of a whole range of different ways to promote your website. You know how to use search engines, buy advertising and build affiliate programs. You understand the benefits of newsletters and how to set up joint ventures with other people selling on the Web. In the next two chapters we’re going to look at precisely what you can sell on the Web, starting with information products.

8.6 Track Your Joint Ventures

Whenever you enter a deal, whether it’s listing a keyword on a search engine, buying a banner ad, or entering into a joint venture, it’s crucial to track your progress.

The only kind of joint venture you should enter into is an equal one. There’s no point in sending thousands of users to a site that only sends them back in the hundreds. You’re going to wonder what you’re getting out of the deal and if you can’t get more somewhere else. You probably can.

How you track the responses will depend on the particular joint venture. If you’re swapping users, any traffic monitoring script should keep you in touch. Otherwise, you’ll have to monitor sales—ultimately, the best way to monitor your progress.

Joint ventures are one of the most enjoyable ways of promoting your business. Working from home can be pretty lonely. When you start to set up joint ventures not only do you

get access to the customer bases of other entrepreneurs, you also build up a network of other people working in the same industry. There are benefits every way you look.

8.5 Strengthening Your Joint Ventures

The best way to make your joint ventures truly successful is to use exclusivity. Offer your users something they can’t get anywhere else, even if it’s someone else’s services, and you make your users feel that they’re getting a real value by knowing about your site. Of course, if you want your partner to give something truly valuable to your users, you’ll have to do the same for them. That’s not really a problem though. You don’t have to give them all gold watches, but you can offer them a discount or a special offer.

For example, I get a newsletter every week from a marketing guru. Just about every edition he sends me contains at least one offer of a book or some other product at a bargain rate. Those products come from his joint venture partners, and I assume that he’s doing the exact same thing with his products on their newsletters. I get a lot of newsletters, but his is one I always read. I never know what sort of offer I’m going to be made next, and I know that I’m getting a real value in return for my free subscription. If you’ve got a good relationship with a joint venture partner, these are easy to arrange.

8.4 Plug Your Pals

There’s no need to be too subtle with joint ventures. There’s nothing wrong with using your email list to simply send a marketing letter to your subscribers to plug your partner’s products. You'll have to negotiate a good deal for this in return - one that includes a mail-out of at least a similar scale.

Ultimately, a successful joint venture depends on providing services that are truly complementary. Offline for example, a computer technician could make a deal with a computer store offering customers free installations and advice in the first three months after their purchase. He’d get access to a pool of potential customers; the store gets an extra service to offer its users. Online you can use similar special offers to truly boost the power of your partnerships.

8.3 Exit Pop-ups

Exit pop-ups have become an increasingly popular way for Internet-based companies to work together. The fact is only a tiny percentage of the people who visit your site will actually give you money. The rest will just click straight through. The problem is that you’re paying for all of those users. Whether you’re buying them on a search engine, an advertisement or some other deal, you’re paying. The more ways you can find to turn those users into money, the better.

Exit pop-ups present another website to a user as soon as s/he leaves your site. The advantage is that your users aren’t bothered until they actually leave (in which case they’re no longer your users), and you can choose which pages generate the pop-up. So if a user comes to your home page and then clicks away, they get offered your joint venture; if they purchase, they don’t.

On the downside, most exit pop-ups are with competitors which means you’re getting good users but giving them extra business. Users also find them annoying.

You can approach another site directly to arrange an exit pop-up joint venture, or you can use any one of a number of different companies to join a wide ring of sites offering the same service. WebTrafficSwap.com for example, gives you two users for every three that leave your site. They also make sure the users you receive are well-targeted and unique. They’re a pretty useful site if this is the way you want to go.

8.2 Joint Subscriptions

This is a newsletter joint venture. A user comes to your site and signs up for your newsletter. They then get a thank you message inviting them to sign up for other newsletters that they might find interesting. Those other newsletters are your joint venture partners. In return for an advertisement on your site, you get the same on theirs. You want to be careful not to pester the user so the invitation needs to be kept simple and well targeted.

8.1 Choose Your Partners

Selecting the right partners is crucial for the success of a joint venture. As always, the best bets are businesses whose services complement your own. If you’re selling CD’s for example, you could do a deal with company that sells audio equipment, or a music magazine; if you’re offering home-made furniture, you could partner up with other home furnishing companies.

Essentially, you want to be sure that you’re both appealing to the same kind of market but not directly competing.

One way to find partners is to figure out where they advertise. As you surf around sites related to your business, you’ll probably notice that you keep seeing promotions from the same sites. Those are the kind of people you want to team up with.

In fact, you don’t even have to look further than your inbox. You probably already get a whole bunch of newsletters from companies in related industries, and are already pretty familiar with their business. Your first choices for joint ventures then will probably be easy to think of - and they’ll probably be the best ones too.

If you want to expand the scope of your partners beyond the immediately familiar though, it’s worth downloading Alexa. This is a neat little software tool that plugs in to your browser and ranks websites based on the amount of traffic they receive. That makes it pretty useful when you want to be sure a potential partner has a decent amount of users to send you. It’s also free.

You can then do a keyword search, pick the top ten sites, and use Alexa to get an idea of how big those sites really are. Alexa will even tell you the name of the webmaster and give you a contact number.

Of course, it’s one thing to get in touch with a potential partner, it’s quite another to get them to agree. In my experience though, this isn’t really a problem. About 80 percent of the people I contact already know me and understand exactly what I have in mind. Once

your business is up and running, you’ll probably find that’s true too. The whole negotiation takes nothing more than a couple of emails and maybe a five minute phone call.

Even a cold call gets pretty decent results. In general, I start with an email introducing my site and suggesting a partnership. It’s pretty rare not to get a reply at all, and about half of my proposals result in a deal.

So what sort of partnership do I suggest? In practice, that depends on who I’m writing to. Clearly, you want to make sure that you create a joint venture that uses your partner’s strengths to strengthen your own services - and your profits.

Here are three different joint ventures that I use regularly and profit from:

8. Joint Ventures - Partnering For Success

We’ve already mentioned joint ventures briefly, but in this chapter we’re going to look at these kinds of partnerships in much more detail. I can’t stress enough how important joint ventures are in creating a profitable online business. It doesn’t matter what products or services you’re selling, there are always people that you can partner up with in a way that will bring benefits to both of you, without costing you a penny. It’s those savings that boost your profits and reduce your costs.

In this chapter, I’m going to explain how to find partners, reveal a number of different ideas you can put into practice, and show you how to keep track of your deals.

7.10 Managing Your List: Paid List Servers vs. Free List Servers

As you build up your subscriber list, you’re going to find yourself with a problem. Whichever mail program you’re using, whether it’s Outlook or Eudora or something else, it’s just not going to be set up to deal with the kind of mass mailing involved with newsletters.

If you have more than 50 people on your list - and that will probably take you less than a week - you’ll need to use a listserv. Don’t even try to do this by yourself!

My hosting company organize this for me. They have a mail server that handles all the mail. I just send them the newsletter and they send it out. Alternatively, you can use a professional listserv such as Microsoft’s List Builder or Sparklist.

There are free list servers available too. While you can use these if you’re on a really tight budget, I don’t recommend it. First, they stuff their own adverts onto your newsletter. That doesn’t just reduce the effectiveness of your brand, it draws attention away from your own ads - provided you can persuade people to advertise on a newsletter like this. But their privacy policies have also come under a lot of criticism lately and even some of the biggest companies have been found to have used their clients’ lists to market their own goods.

If you’re going to do a newsletter - and you should - it’s worth investing in a professional service. That is, after all, what you’re offering.

Newsletters then are one of the most effective ways to keep customers, and keep your revenue flowing in. They remind people you’re still out there, provide news about deals and bargains, and give customers the confidence to buy. You can put them together in a snap, or even pay someone a pretty small fee to do it for you. If you sell advertising space on your newsletter, you’ll even find each issue will pay for itself.

It was mentioned earlier that one of the ways to maximize the revenue from your newsletter was to enter into joint ventures with other businesses. That’s what we’re going to look at in more detail in the next chapter.

7.9 Ezine Joint Ventures

You should also be creative in your advertising. Instead of asking for cash in return for advertising space, you can ask for a reciprocal promotion on a partner’s newsletter. As long as you’re not competing, setting up joint ventures with complementary businesses is a great way to increase your customer base - and boost your sales.

For example, you could trade articles or interview other ‘experts.’ Or offer special deals on your partner’s goods.

I look at joint ventures in more detail in the next chapter, but as you read that chapter, bear in mind that almost any joint ventures you create for your business, you can create for your newsletter.

7.8 Planning your Newsletter

Here are some other basic ideas that you can use to plan your newsletter:

Interviews

These are great opportunities for joint ventures. You don’t have to interview a competitor, but you can probably find people who work in related fields or clients who have used your product in a unique way. Just drop them an e-mail, ask if they want to participate (and seeing as they’re getting free publicity for their business, why shouldn’t they?) and then you can actually do the interview by e-mail. Dead easy and lots of fun too.

News

You probably already read the newspapers and magazines that relate to your businesses. They’re going to be full of great content that you can use in your newsletter. Obviously you can’t just paste them into your newsletter and send them out, but you can report what other people are reporting, provided you give due credit. Heck, you probably notice that they do it all the time. How many times have you seen phrases like, “according to AP” or “Reuters reports that” in the mainstream media? If it’s good enough for CNN, it’s good enough for you.

Talk to Your Customers

One of the best ways to guarantee that your newsletter will be read by your subscribers is to invite them to write in with their questions. You could devote a section of the newsletter to a Q&A column. You’ll have to be careful with privacy, and feel free to edit what they write so that it flows better, but don’t be afraid to let your subscribers speak straight to you. It’s the best way to come across as an expert and provide advice that you know they’ll find valuable.

7.7 Blogs

Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger

at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blog as a marketing tool

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use this tool to effectively advertise their products or services.

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster can give posting rights to other people – visitors and customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings. Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:

• Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.

• You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.

• Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.

• The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.

How to create a Weblog?

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the Internet. There are also commercial versions of some of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some weblog software is available only as commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website.



There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is “Blogger” which can be downloaded for free at http://www.blogger.com. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

Adapting Blog Concepts to Your Newsletters

Blogs as discussed earlier fit very well with newsletter strategies. A blog is not intended to replace your newsletter. Its purpose is to extend and complement a newsletter strategy, serving customers and prospects in a way that extends your expertise and leadership in the marketplace.

A blog communication is four or five sentences of direct, informative content about a specific issue or bit of news. Think of b-blog content as marketing to inform and educate. Besides, blogs are ongoing. The flow of communication builds a knowledge-sharing platform among a community of like-minded people. Soon, an extensive base of information will develop that becomes important not only to your company but also to the faithful readers who contribute to it.

Another advantage of blogs is that they can serve the purpose of FAQs through newsletters. Blogs can be automatically archived by age in days, weeks, or months. And

they're searchable, allowing readers to easily retrieve the information they need, when they need it.

However, creating an effective blog requires careful planning. Blogs should present as much information as possible while representing the voice of your website. Here are a few guidelines on how to plan and create a blog to go along with your newsletter.

• Like all good communication vehicles, you want to establish goals and objectives. Define your audience, what its needs are, and how best to meet those needs.

• Find someone who can step into the role of pundit, who's willing to be the host. Keep in mind that over time, your blog will develop a personality. Look for a thought leader who's just waiting to be unleashed and empowered.

• Search thoroughly for the right kind of tool to develop the Blog. There are tools developed everyday. Look for ones that serve your purpose.

• Before you officially launch your blog, plan topics that will start the initial discussion. Your readers and customers may be shy about being first to share, so ensure that you or your publisher posts information as needed to get an exchange going. You'll want to include an easy way for readers to respond to the content on your blog.

• Use your newsletter to announce and promote the blog. Offer to email it to subscribers or provide the option, through an icon or link, to visit the blog directly.

• Blog functionality should have the same analytical capabilities as a newsletter. So as with your newsletter, make sure you know who reads what, when, and where.

• You'll want to periodically check in on discussions and see if they flow the way you anticipated and if they meet your goals. If not, as with any newsletter strategy, you may need to refine your approach, depending on the feedback and analysis you receive.

7.6 Promoting affiliate programs through newsletters

As many webmasters are now discovering, making money with affiliate programs can be hard work. It is not as simple as uploading some banners then sitting back and collecting commission checks. A more effective way to distribute this content is through newsletters.

As a more creative approach, web savvy marketers are finding that creating a “niche specific” email newsletter is one of the most effective ways to boost profits with affiliate programs. For example, a website about Pets could offer a free newsletter about caring for a pet. The newsletter could include informative articles such as “How to exercise with your dog” and “10 tips on keeping your fishbowl clean”, etc. Pet products such as a dog leash, bowl, and toy should then be included with an affiliate link to encourage a purchase.

One of the main reasons why newsletters are a great way to promote affiliate programs is because of the clickthrough rates. Clickthrough rates for a targeted newsletter can reach anywhere from 10 to 15%. This can be significantly higher than banners and buttons. Obviously if you receive more clickthroughs, you will have a better chance of success.

Moreover, promoting affiliate programs through email allows for the removal of some of those slow loading banners from a web site. Instead, web sites can be filled with much stickier content such as interactive bulletin boards, exclusive articles, chat rooms, and voting booths.

Common sense dictates that featured affiliate products should be related to a newsletter’s target market. If a newsletter is geared towards senior citizens, this market is probably not interested in the latest skateboard gear. Instead, a better fit would be to feature an online greeting card service that pays a commission for each free registration.

Besides, a newsletter should always be opt-it/opt-out. A potential subscriber must request to be on the list and be given instructions on how to unsubscribe. Benefits of an opt-in newsletter include: higher response rates, fewer undeliverable emails, and time saved on list management.

7.5 Advertising in newsletters

We discussed earlier the advantages of having advertising space in your newsletters. Similarly, advertising in other companies’ newsletters is equally beneficial. By advertising in other newsletters, you can reach an audience which is highly targeted and cost effective. Moreover, you can never be accused of spamming as all the recipients have subscribed to the newsletter. There are so many newsletters out there covering so many different topics that it's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in. So if you've matched the newsletter to the product you're selling, you've reached your target audience to a tee.

Almost all newsletters are archived, thousands of people read these archives, and your ad will be seen by these people at no extra cost. This can bring in exposure and extra sales on a long term basis. Besides, newsletter publishers may have already developed a trust between themselves and their readers. Just by placing your ad in the newsletter, it's more likely to be read because it appears in a publication they like and trust.

Newsletter advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as well. A 5 line ad in a newsletter that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 and $25 per issue. With so little risk involved, this is definitely worth it.

Buying Ads in Other Newsletters

Just as you can sell advertising, you can also buy advertising in newsletters. You can use those ads to promote your business or to invite people who read newsletters to read your own.

Again, you have to pick your partners carefully. There’s no point just picking a newsletter with the cheapest rates; you want to make sure you choose an outlet that appeals to the same buyers as you. You also need to think about where your ad is going to be placed. In general, the higher the position the better.

And the more the merrier too. Don’t expect a huge response from a single ad. It’s always best to think of advertising in terms of a campaign. You’ll get a better deal - and better results - if you reserve an advertising slot for four or five issues than if you buy them one at a time.

7.4 Getting subscribers and generating leads for your newsletter

There are many different ways of getting subscribers to your Newsletter. Obviously, the first place you should start is on your website, doing this can get you an immediate flow of subscribers. You should advertise your Newsletter and place a sign-up box on every page of your site. Always use the sign-up box instead of a simple email link when you can because the results are far better. The top of the page is a better place for your sign-up box as it gets more exposure but the bottom is still good. Always include a privacy statement telling people exactly how you are going to use their email address and how

you will keep it private, with all the talk about spam nowadays this is bound to reassure them, which in turn will increase the number of new subscribers.

Offer an incentive to your visitors. You should whenever possible offer them a free gift if they subscribe, such as a free report or Ebook. There a hundreds of free Ebooks which you can give away. You are bound to increase your sign-ups by doing this provided you offer them something related to your site's theme.

Next you should submit your Newsletter to all the Newsletter directories you can find, there a plenty of them on the net, and some of them get really big traffic every month. If your articles are good quality and informative then newsletter and website publishers will be interested and your work could end up being published in endless newsletter editions and hundreds of websites. Not only will this increase your credibility, it could result in 1000's more visitors, this is because at the end of all your articles which you allow others to publish will be a link back to your site. Don't forget also if lots or your articles are published on websites then your link popularity will improve drastically. This will result in higher search engine rankings in Google and the other engines which use link popularity as a ranking factor, which or course means lots more visitors and profit for you.

Include details of your newsletter in your signature file. This is the little bit of text that you attach to messages you post on the Internet and the emails you send to people. You then can promote your Newsletter through you signature when you post in email

discussion groups. Email discussion lists are great ways of communicating with people who have similar interests as the topic of your Newsletter. Contribute to the discussion by posting solutions to problems. You can also mention "We have put together more in-depth advice on xxx. Feel free to visit our website. You’ll find loads of free information and resources."

This technique alone will drive much more traffic into your site. It also begins to establish you, the author, as an authority in your field. Once your online customers come to trust your information, they will also trust you enough to buy from.

Similar mediums to email discussion lists are newsgroups and online discussion forums. Remember that you cannot advertise your newsletter directly in any of these mediums, but having a little mention in your signature is perfectly OK (in most cases). The amount of subscribers you get through your signature file will depend on the quality of your post, if you post an interesting and useful article people will think that your Newsletter will also be useful.

Apart from these, Ad swaps are a very effective way of getting subscribers. You should find other publishers with newsletters similar to yours and trade ads with them. You run their ad and they will run yours. This helps both sides, which is another plus. You should swap ads with publishers no matter how many subscribers they have. Another method of 'swapping' would be to have the other webmaster recommend your newsletter in the

confirmation email he or she sends to people who have just subscribed and you in turn could do the same for him.

7.3 Steps for a successful newsletter campaign

Internet marketing with newsletters is probably one of the most effect marketing strategies. However, the whole process of devising and implementing a newsletter campaign involves considerable amount of planning. Given below are a few guidelines that would help you make your campaign a success.

Step 1: Determine what you can sell online, or how to monetize your site.

Step 2: People use the Internet for information. Try to figure out what information is unique to your business? Everybody is an expert in his or her chosen field. This information is valuable to others.

Step 3: Identify your target audience. Define your audience, and then find out where they are going online for information. E.g. which sites, newsgroups and discussions boards are the most popular. This technique alone will greatly build your traffic as well as your name. You’d be amazed at how many businesses still define their audience as "all people" or "everyone needs my product". This is not true. Contrary to popular business myth, the Internet is not a mainstream medium. Communities are usually quite passionate about their interests. Find your community and become an authority to them.

Step 4: Your website and newsletter content is the information that is your leverage. With proper content, the Internet can be the most successful medium to propagate the essence of your business. Content works in becoming your business’s USP. Your content will mean the difference in your site being an online business or merely a ‘brochure site’.

Step 5: Create and maintain your mailing list.

Step 6: Produce your newsletter. Email newsletters are great because you can include ‘hot links’ that will open a webpage. Make sure you include the http:// and almost all email software will understand it to be an internet address, make it ‘clickable’, then open the page in your internet browser.

Step 7: Make sure you have auto-responders in place to field often-asked questions, and subscribe and unsubscribe your recipients automatically. (You will always lose a few. Don’t take it personally. Make it easy for people to off your list).

Step 8: Never SPAM. Spamming is the practice of sending information to people who didn’t actually ask for it. It has been an accepted practice in the offline direct marketing world but for some reason has become a really sensitive issue online. Don’t even try it. You could find yourself switched off by your ISP. They will not hesitate for fear of being listed world wide as a SPAM server.

7.2 Creating an effective newsletter

Creating a successful newsletter can be extremely rewarding. Subscribers and customers respond with glowing feedback, online sales jump and your customer relationships and brand loyalty deepens. Here are some useful tips that might help in creating a successful newsletter.

Define Success

Ask yourself “What is the purpose of your newsletter?” A newsletter is a substantial investment of company resources in terms of time and energy, and you need to define in as tangible terms as possible the purpose of your Newsletter.

Voice and Personality

Establish a voice or editorial personality – whether newsy, serious, gossipy or funny – that is synergistic with the image you want to portray and connects with your audience. Remember that email newsletters aren't email promotions designed to stimulate immediate action. Sales and promotional copy don't suit e-newsletters. Nor does the traditional tone of broadcast corporate communications.

Think of your newsletter as a one-on-one conversation. Just imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking informally with a customer. That's the starting point for your approach--a more personable and appropriate "human" voice will come naturally. Drop the jargon, drop the sales pitch, be as honest as you can, and talk like a human being.

You can have as much or as little personality as is appropriate. Consider adding a brief editorial, a comment or two, an editor's note, a couple of lines of commentary, a touch of opinion; adding a little human element here and there. Sign editorials, give authors a byline, or list some names down in the administrative section of each issue to which your readers can relate to.

From Line

Whether a person’s name, name of the newsletter or company name – determine what will resonate best with your readers and stay with it.

Subject Line

“Vol. 1, Issue #8” or “Company News” are not enticing subject lines. They are certainly consistent and simple, but they don’t tell your readers anything that will motivate them to open your email. Your subject line is your calling card - entice your readers with the most interesting or intriguing information in your Newsletter..

Style/Format

Establish a format and layout of your Newsletter that is clean and simple, with elements of the Newsletter (table of contents; “Tips”, subscription information, etc. located in the same spot each issue).

Content

Figure out what your readers want and give it to them. Seek continuous improvement by obtaining reader feedback and monitoring click-through rates to determine what types of articles are most popular.

Another dilemma that we all confront is too much information and too little time. The newsletter’s job is to keep readers on top of trends and the latest developments in the industry. Aim for articles and feature stories to meet one of the following criteria by including either: major industry occurrences, forward thinking industry ideas, education on issues or new techniques, or business opportunities.

Whether your customers work out of a corporate or home office, employees need answers to questions and tips for improving business activities. E-newsletters provide you with an opportunity to point out work inefficiencies, and share relevant best practice. When you create a newsletter, try changing your focus from selling products and services to solving your customers’ problems. Think about what they need and give options they don’t know exist

Frequency

Determine how frequently your readers want to hear from you/receive your Newsletter – and what you can commit to. As a thumb rule, a weekly newsletter is ideal. However, don’t launch a weekly newsletter if you are not absolutely certain that you can distribute a quality Newsletter every week. A fortnightly newsletter is a good option too.

Timing

Test and pick a day and time that works best ...and stick to it. Readers should almost be able to set their watches by the receipt time of your Newsletter.

Make it Viral

Provide information readers can act on or that stimulates reaction – forwarding it to friends and peers, stimulating purchases or requests for additional information. Make it easy for readers to forward articles and information to peers and friends. Provide a “Forward to a Friend” link that enables readers to forward the Newsletter with a personalized note.

Search

Make it easy to find articles of interest and back issues. Provide a table of contents and links to articles within the newsletter and to resources and past articles on your site. Printing

Consider providing “printer-friendly formats” on your Web site.

Personalize

At minimum address the reader by name. The most successful newsletters have a human being associated with them...and a personality. If possible, your Newsletter should be “written by a person” at your company...not the company.

Write in layman terms with simple vocabulary

Not everyone has the vocabulary that you and editors do. Use words that are easy-to-understand, and if you do use technical terms, provide a definition that people can relate to. There is nothing more frustrating then a definition that makes less sense than the word itself.

Test

Test the Newsletter on few email addresses to check for errors and other issues – before sending to the entire distribution list.

If you lack experience in print media, seek out assistance if you know someone in the field. If not, don't worry – the above mentioned basic principles apply. Plan to research your material thoroughly and avoid factual or editing errors, as they will make you seem less credible.

Add hyperlinks and include updates on old material should new information surface. The typical form of newsletter is a one-way communication where you provide information to customers, such as product updates and announcements. You have the option of formatting your e-mail by including colorized text and a variety of fonts, but not all e-mail software supports HTML mail. Consider writing your newsletter in plain text or offer two mailing lists- one for plain text mailings and the other for HTML e-mail.

Make sure you Include:

• Table of Contents

• Hyperlinks for customers who want more information for a featured topic

• Exciting secrets or tips related to your product or service

• Contact information

E-newsletters can take up a good amount of time if not managed correctly. The use of a list server (a piece of software that runs on your Internet provider's computer or on your own web server) is a good option. It will automatically manage a list of e-mail addresses. Once you send your newsletter to the list server, it distributes the letter to the stored addresses. For more information on list servers, contact your Internet service provider. If you opt to use another method, make sure you have a plan for handling incoming and outgoing mail when your customer base increases.

7.1 Advantages of newsletters as a marketing tool

Just as in the olden days, trust builds relationships, and relationships build sales. Used properly, newsletters can help build business relationships based on trust. And the key word is trust--trustworthiness in content, subject lines, mailing lists, regularity, and ability to quickly subscribe and unsubscribe. Given below are some of the key advantages of newsletters:

Newsletters demonstrate value

Newsletters deliver valuable information that solves the day-to-day problems of readers, helps them stay on top of industry trends, and saves time by distilling practical information such as real-world best practices and industry advances from many sources.

They help in building trust

As stated earlier, the most crucial benefit arising out of newsletters is building of trust. Newsletters can very easily become customers’ trusted information source on business

problems. Trust helps you to position your company as a credible source, which in turn retains your customer base.

Online business owners can portray themselves as a stable source of information

Newsletters deliver accurate and timely information that is vital to the success of your customers and visitors business at regular intervals over time.

Newsletters serve as an attention puller

Valuable and relevant information can always prove to be a great attention puller. Most people dread junk emails. However, once you build a sense of trust amongst your potential customers, you can reinforce your value to your visitors with each newsletter issue.

Newsletters offer better prospects for closing a sale

Not only do newsletters make it easy for potential customers to contact you, they also let you harvest the relationship built around them and simplify sales for your sales team. The sales team dreams of knowing about their prospects’ hot buttons prior to making that first call.

7. Creating Newsletters That Sell As Well As Inform

Running you own free Newsletter or Ezine can bring huge benefits to your website and profits. Newsletters are one of the most important components for you to drive traffic to your website and build your online business.

The popularity of these newsletters is based on the need for information. The main reason people are online is because they want and need information and that is exactly what newsletters provide. Newsletters are mostly delivered via email, some however are delivered as HTML pages. Newsletters which are delivered as HTML pages still utilize email, as the webmaster will email subscribers notifying them that a new issue is ready.

There are many advantages of starting your own newsletter, however newsletters do require a bit of work to get started and maintain so they may not be for everyone.

The two main advantages are:

• Being able to maintain regular contact, and
• Being able to build a relationship with your subscribers

Newsletters allow you to maintain regular contact with your website visitors, this is vital to success, because rarely do people buy on there first visit, in fact people usually have to be exposed to an offer several times before they actually buy. A Newsletter allows you to

keep the connection with your site visitors reminding them of how your product is suited for them.

Newsletters give you the "excuse" to send potential customers emails packed with articles and off course your sales message. Newsletters are great for building trust and relationships online, if your newsletter provides regular quality content which your subscribers can really use, they will begin to trust your opinion and also they will begin to feel that they know you. This is important as developing relationships is vital for any business.

The other, often overlooked, advantage of having a newsletter, is the income it can generate, not from selling your products and services but from selling advertising space in it. You do need a medium to large subscriber base before other businesses will be interested in advertising but this is not that hard to achieve, especially if it is regularly full of quality content. You can earn a few hundred every month just from ads if you play your cards rights.

Your online customers will eventually become your offline customers if they trust the information you regularly send them. Put simply, a newsletter is your way of helping people. If you help people online, eventually they will buy from you.

However, running your own newsletter involves considerable amount of work. It is vital that you regularly write a lot of quality content before your next send-out. Besides,

ideally a newsletter should be sent out every week or at least every fortnight. This is not always easy. In fact it's never easy; the next thing that adds to your work load when it comes to newsletters is maintaining your email addresses. Many of the email addresses may be wrong. Maintaining a list of working email addresses is crucial.

6.11 Sample Marketing Email

Subject: Discover How To Make Your Users Pay You!
(The subject line is unique to emails. It’s like a mini-headline, but it’s got to stay short.)

Want Your Users To Give You More Money?
Give Them More Value!
(There’s the headline. I’ve used a Question Headline here. I’ve stated the problem and followed with the solution.)

Dear Friend,

As the webmaster of a dating site, you know how important it is to keep your users coming back day after day, week after week. You know that the more your users see your site, the more likely they are to buy a subscription – and the more they’ll keep sending you cash!
(The first paragraph explains what the email is all about: making money.)

And you also know that the only way to keep those users logging in is to renew your content on a regular basis.

GoDating.com is now making its dating magazine available to the webmasters of dating sites. GoDatingMagazine will give your users:
(And here I explain how to do it: by adding value. Note the link so that they can see what I’m offering.)

• Amazing, insightful articles on subjects ranging from matchmakers and soul mates to swingers and foreign brides.
• Real, practical dating advice for both online dating and face-to-face relationships.
• Exclusive interviews with dating experts, authors and celebrities.
• Fun, interactive Love Quizzes to help your users discover their real selves!
• Heartwarming relationship news from around the world.
• Exciting, fresh content, week in, week out!
(Bullets and bold make the benefits stand out.)

GotoDatingMagazine is updated every week with new articles, news stories and an interactive advice column.

That’s 20 original relationship articles every single month! You can provide your users with all this fantastic dating content for just $99.95 a month.

If you were to hire writers to produce this content yourself it would cost you hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars. For the price of just a tiny number of monthly subscriptions, you can give all your users this incredible extra value.
(More details. As soon as I tell them it’s going to cost money, I explain why it’s great value.)

To learn more about what we can do for your users - and your income - write to me today at bizdev@godating.com.
(And there’s a simple call to action.)

We look forward to working with you!
Yours Sincerely,

Andrew Hudson,
Editor,
GoDating.com

In conclusion, from the advent of the Sears catalog in the late 19th century to tons of catalogs arriving in every mailbox today, Email marketing has proved to be a superior way to quickly and cost-effectively create a personal connection with customers, and garner immediate sales results. It also lends itself to greater measurability and testing in order to optimize results. Email marketing can be easily coupled with other marketing techniques to further improve end results. One such technique, which is an integral part of Email marketing, is marketing through newsletters. Newsletters are discussed in detail in the next chapter.

6.10 Call to Action - Closing the Deal

At the end of the day, everything you do on the Web is geared towards one thing: driving your users to take an action that will result in you getting money. That might be buying something from you, subscribing to a newsletter, clicking an affiliate link, or any other move that brings you cash.

When you begin preparing your email copy, you have to know exactly what you want the user to do as soon as he finishes reading. You can have the most amazing headline and the greatest product described in the finest email ever written, but if the reader doesn’t know what to do at the end of the email, you’ve wasted your time.

You’ve got to get them to take action.

There are a number of points to bear in mind when you’re trying to turn your reader into a customer.

Stand out

You want to be sure that your reader doesn’t miss your call to action. It’s got to absolutely stand out from the rest of the page. You can do that by playing with font color, font size, underline, bold etc., but make sure it’s seen and acted upon!

Be clear

Orders rarely come in the form of long sentences. In general, marketing material should take the form of short paragraphs, punchy phrases, and bulleted points that spell out the benefits as clearly and quickly as possible. Potential customers tend to scan rather than read. The easier you make it for them, the more chance they’ll buy.

Compel

The words you use to persuade someone to take action are crucial. You want your call to action to include real action-packed verbs that are simple to obey. Use phrases like “Click here!”, for example, or “Press Submit”. The more precise the verb, the easier it will be for the reader to take real action.

Play it straight

Once you’ve got them doing what you want, you don’t want to waste time. If you’ve told them to click on a link so that they can fill in an order form, make sure that the link leads right to the form. Don’t give them a chance to change their mind. Even the best call to action copy only works for a short time.

Create a sense of urgency

Many people like to put off making a decision as long as possible—especially if that decision means spending money. The fact is though, if they don’t take action as soon as they finish reading the email, they probably won’t take action at all.

You have to create a real sense of urgency, an idea that if they don’t buy, click, order, whatever... right now, they’re going to lose the opportunity of a lifetime. This isn’t too difficult to do. Here are some options:

• Offer a time limited prize: “Order now and receive a FREE copy of ‘Build Your Own Bicycle!”
• Offer a quantity limited prize: “The first 50 people to register will be entered into our FREE prize draw!”
• Create a penalty for not acting immediately: “Every day that you don’t use the amazing ideas in this book, you’re throwing away thousands of dollars! Download your copy and start earning now!”

Bear in mind that the kind of action you want people to take will depend on the kind of product you’re selling - and the kind of person you’re pitching to. If you’re trying to sell cars online for example, “Place your order here” isn’t likely to get many results. People don’t usually like to buy cars so quickly. You might want to say something like: “Click here for a picture of the interior” or something that's less committal than inviting them to part with lots of cash. Similarly, if your marketing material doesn’t contain all the information necessary for someone to buy, your call to action will only be to invite them to find out more.

On the next page, I’ve put all that advice together in a sample marketing email. I’ve also added my notes to explain how I built it up. Feel free to use this email as template for your own.

6.9 Autoresponders

Automation of your Email marketing process is crucial for the success of your business. An automated system enables you to reply immediately solicited information, send follow ups to your prospects, and save lots of time. Automation can be achieved with tools known as Autoresponders.

The auto-responder is a program that automatically sends a reply with a pre-designed response to any email address that sends email to it. It is also often called infobot, autobot, auto-mailer, or responder. Auto-responders are great for confirmation messages as well.

Advantages of using an Autoresponder

The auto-responder allows you to capture the email addresses of your visitors, so you can build your own opt-in targeted mailing list. This is a great tool to use for an Email or Newsletter. You can offer via auto-responder a free article that pertains to the subject of the newsletter to all of your new subscribers.

The auto-responder will automatically extract the prospects name and use this information in your follow-up messages. With this marketing tool you can send personalized follow-up messages. If you personalize an email message, your prospect is twice as likely to buy from you.

You can sell your products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the help of an auto-responder. Auto-responder is a handy tool that automatically follows-up with a series of email messages at preset time intervals and works for you 24 hours a day. You will be able to develop your follow up messages and set reliable time intervals.

Following up with your prospects could mean a 50% increase in your sales. Your potential customers may simply forget about your initial message or they simply may have a bad day; for that reason, it is so important follow up with your prospects at preset time intervals at least five times after sending your initial message.

Autoresponders are great for sales letters. Suppose you posted to a couple of forums and newsgroups you can offer a free report about your industry and included in that you could have a sales letter. You then post the email address of your autoresponder and within seconds the user could be reading the free report and your sales letter. You don't have to do anything. Apart from these, autoresponders also allow you set up predefined answers to the most likely questions. This can cut up to 70% of your customer service requirements.

Given below are some of the other key benefits of Autoresponders:

• They introduce your business to the prospective customer
• List out special offers for members
• List out benefits of joining your website
• Compare your product or service with your competitors
• Give testimonials of existing customers
• Welcome letters for new members
• Thank you messages for new orders
• Order confirmation
• Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your customer
• A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about to expire.

It is a good idea to have a copy of the original email sent to the autoresponder forwarded to you. Some people don't understand exactly what to expect from the autoresponder and they put a message inside the body of the email. If you don't at least take a peek at these emails, you may accidentally ignore a question from a prospective customer.

Autoresponders can handle many more emails than you could ever process manually. Also, you can send a ten-page email just as fast and easily as sending a two paragraph email.

Choosing and Setting up Autoresponders

It can be simple to set up and use an autoresponder, but choosing which one from the dozens of autoresponders that are available can be difficult. Most web hosts offer a simple autoresponder that gives one email message in response to an email to a specific email address. The problem with this type of responder is that one message is often not enough to keep the continued contact or deliver the content that you want to offer your visitor.

There are two main types of autoresponders. They each have their pros and cons.

Autoresponder services

Autoresponder services are web based services that allow you to send a series of emails to a visitor who has either requested the email through a web-based form on you site (the service provides the html code for your site to use) or who has sent an email to a specific address the service has provided you to use.

The primary advantage of such services is that they are very easy to set up, and are very reliable. In addition, they are host independent. This means that your web host doesn't have to allow you to run any particular services on your site to have access to all that an e-mail autoresponder can provide.

Email autoresponder services have two main drawbacks -- they can be costly, especially if you need to use an autoresponder on more than one web site, and they lack a certain amount of flexibility -- whatever the service provides is what you get. There is a limited amount of customization that you can do with such a service. GetResponse is recommended for most people. It has good customization, and the price is quite reasonable.

Autoresponder programs (or scripts)

The other choice for an autoresponder is to purchase (or lease) a program or a script (usually written in perl, requiring CGI access on your server.) Several of these are

available. They offer the potential for lower cost, especially if you have multiple web sites to support. (But be careful to check the license agreement. Some license agreements require an additional fee if you are going to use the program or script on more than one site at the same time.

These types of autoresponders also allow, potentially at least, for increased flexibility. Some are quite powerful in their own right, while perl scripts can generally be modified to suit your needs for a fee. A good example of a script based Autoresponder that you can install on your site and never have to pay monthly fees to use is Autoresponse Plus.

Autoresponse Plus offers the advantages of a system you can own along with all of the flexibility. It is available at a very reasonable price, and a multi-domain license is also available for only modestly more. Finally, most of the complexity often associated with such programs can be almost completely eliminated because professional installation is available for a small incremental increase in cost.

6.8.3 Should the message trick the reader or be honest?

Often, companies try to trick people into opening an Email to start a relationship with a prospective customer. From the customer’s point of view, this is certainly not the most brilliant idea. Almost all potential customers would not prefer to do business with someone who deceives them, not matter how good a product or service they offer.

As a marketer you must approach your direct mail and email marketing messages with the attitude that this may be the one and only opportunity to start a relationship with a new customer. For that matter:

• Messages should be honest and reflect the company’s credibility - Take the high road with your creative. Tell people who you really are and what you really do.
• Be clear and concise with the offer - Don’t make it difficult for the reader of your message to figure out what you are promoting.
• Test your message - Try your message out and ask for feedback. This will be the best way to assure you are not misleading.
• Know your audience - The shotgun approach to marketing does not work with direct mail or email. Sending your message to the wrong audience is wasteful spending of your advertising dollars.

Remember your message is a reflection of your brand, product or service and employees. Make sure your message is something you can stand behind with pride no matter how it is delivered.

6.8.2 Enhancing Email response

The process of Email marketing may not always bear the kind of results that you expect. In fact, even after doing all the basics right the response rates may fall way short of expectations. The good news is that Email responses can be enhanced with a little bit of analysis and research.

We discussed, earlier, the importance of gathering statistical data during Email campaigns. With this ton of information available and a few creative segmentation strategies, email response can be enhanced by a great deal. Your Emails may reach three sets of readers:

• Those who deleted the Email without even opening it
• Those who opened the Email but did not read it or click on the offer made
• Those who read the Email, clicked on the link provided but did not accept your offer

The set which represents readers who never opened your Email is probably the biggest. It is very much possible that at least 50% of readers discarded your Email as junk. To boost response rates of such readers, you should segment these as a group and change the subject line of the Email, and the sender’s name and address. Chances are good that

you’ll find some of the changes work better than others, and that some of the non-openers to the first message have opened up the new message based on a single and possibly simple change.

Perhaps this change lies in a new appeal in the subject line, or perhaps it's due to the message coming from a living person instead of an impersonal company. Record and save those variables and continue to test and fine-tune them with each subsequent campaign.

The next segment comprises of readers who read the Email but were not interested enough to click on the offer and land on your website. This segment may be pretty huge as well. It is very likely that most of these readers may have read a couple of lines at the beginning of the mail and deleted it. The best possible remedy in such cases is to analyze the section of your promotion—does it say enough to make people want to read further? If not, reformatting and/or reworking the introductory copy and headline may be all it takes to increase your clicks.

Finally, we have the last segment comprising of readers who actually read the Email and were interested enough to click through and reach your website. However, once they got there their interest disappeared and they chose not to go through with the transaction. Such a segment would be much smaller when compared with the above two segments.

In such cases it may be best to take a hard, objective look at the landing page. Something is clearly missing or is not being communicated properly. Does the offer remain clear? Is

the form too cumbersome or too long? Can you revise the form, and perhaps also revise some of the required form fields within it, for purposes of having these potential customers complete their first transaction?

Some times it may pay to instill a tad of humor in your Email. There have been many instances when potential clients were so taken by a humorous gesture in mails that immediately decided to do some business with the marketer. Make some assumptions and apply them to your next campaign. It's all about getting potential customers over that hurdle and making that first commitment.

Considerable time and effort may be required to enhance Email responses. That said, the fruits such a process may bear over a period of time can be well worth it.

6.8.1 Tracking Performance - Measuring useful metrics

Tracking and analyzing the actions of your customers and prospects is critical to your success. After deploying several campaigns you will have generated a mountain of response information - invaluable data enabling you to create new and more effective approaches and offers. There are many software tools easily available that track, record and analyze all data pertaining to your Email marketing campaign. Many sophisticated analysis tools predict future actions based on past behavior. Such tools are crucial for your campaign as Response data is meaningless unless it can be analyzed and turned into valuable customer knowledge.

Once you have the capability to track the vital statistics of your email marketing campaigns, the inevitable question becomes: how well are my mailings doing? Here are some guidelines on what information to gather and how to measure the performance of your campaign from the gathered information.

There are a number of different pieces of information that can be gathered when using any reasonably good email broadcasting service. The five primary measurements are: the totals each of messages sent, message opens, click-throughs, bounces, and opt-out requests. Total number of items sent must be accurately counted, based on reaching each individual email address only once. Opens measure the number of people who actually view the message using their email program.

We prefer to use “unique” opens, so that if a recipient views a message in their preview window, then opens it into a full size window, that this only counts as a single open instead of two opens. Click-throughs are recipients that respond to your offer by clicking on a link in the email. Bounces are messages that are undeliverable to the recipient. They could be “soft bounces” due to temporary issues such as a full mailbox, or “hard bounces” from an invalid email account, but for our purposes here it means “people on your list who did not receive your message”. And last, opt-out requests are recipients who request to no longer receive email.

There are a wide range of results that can be measured for Email campaigns, such as:

• How accurate is the list (how many bounces out of total sent)
• How active is the list (how many opens out of total sent)
• How positive was the reaction to the offer itself (number of click-thrus out of total opens)
• How negative was the reaction to the offer itself (number of opt-outs out of total opens)

The actual number of responses on any particular campaign can vary quite a bit. A newsletter whose primary job is to inform, will not achieve the same click-through rate as a promotion, which is intended to get a specific response. The differing levels of permission within your list of recipients will also affect results. Until a list has been "cleaned" of bad addresses and those who are not interested, you may see far different data. Pruning these from your lists will help you improve your results considerably. In order to account for these wide variations in factors, we suggest some general "baseline" ratios that should be achieved on any particular mailing. There should be more opens than bounces, or else the list is probably out of date. Also, there should be more click-throughs than opt-outs, otherwise the offer is poorly targeted or the list is of questionable origin.

In order to get the optimum response you will need to send two or three multiples of your

email marketing campaign, each time using a variation of the original offer. If they haven't responded by 3 attempts, it’s time to change your approach.

The typical response pattern is that mailings 1 and 2 will have a similar response, with number 2 often slightly fewer click-throughs than number 1. Number 3 picks up the stragglers and undecided recipients, so the response will be much lower, but usually significant enough to justify the mailing. Please note that you shouldn’t necessarily just blast out three mailings one after another. For example, you might piggyback your first offer onto a monthly newsletter, send the second offer separately as a special promotional mailing two weeks later, then finish the series with the final offer in the next month’s newsletter. It is useful to understand how the size of your lists is changing over time. By viewing how many people sign up for your lists each day, you can attempt to correlate list growth with other marketing activities that you may be conducting. It is also important to consider how many people are signing up for your lists versus how many are opting off of them. If your lists have been cleaned, and the
overall list size is still shrinking, you need to reevaluate both your list acquisition strategy and the content relevancy of your mailings. Testing is critical to optimizing your email marketing campaigns. But in order to test, you have to measure first. Make sure you have a way to collect detailed information about

your mailings, preferably in an automatic way. Careful analysis of the actual metrics will help give you the information you need to take your email campaigns to the next level.