“Email marketing doesn’t work!” People who say this have it wrong. They’re confusing the medium with the message.

You may get dozens if not hundreds of emails each day that are tossed into your bulk mail or spam folder before you even see them. Of those that you do open, sometimes by mistake, most want to sell you stuff that you don’t want or need.

It’s true that a lot of email is pure junk, but before you dismiss email entirely as an effective marketing tool, you should know that for the past year I’ve been using a planned sequence of two emails that result in $15 to 20,000 in sales each time they’re sent out. And you can have the same success.

Here are four ways you can use email to increase your profits by helping more people buy your products and services.

1. Send Email to People That Ask For It
Sending email to people who have never heard of you is almost always a waste of time. They’re not going to open your email, much less read it.

Before people will open and read your emails, you have to prove to them that you can be trusted to provide helpful ideas or information. Then you can politely ask them to give you their contact information and ask their permission to email them. In your first email, double check that they want to hear from you.

The confirmation process described above may seem onerous, but it keeps all of us from being deluged with spam and ensures that the people on your email list want to hear from you and are interested in buying from you.

What’s the fastest way to build your own massive email list? Use this link to get the details about this marketing idea >>

2. Get the Conversation Going
One of the biggest mistakes online marketers make is sending out a barrage of emails that try to sell right away. Send emails like these out and you’ll destroy the trust you’ve been working hard to develop.

Instead, use your marketing emails to demonstrate that you’re the go-to expert in your industry niche. And periodically ask your readers’ relevant questions. Hearing their feedback will let you know what they want and need.

People are much more likely to buy from you when they know you, trust you and feel like they can talk to you.

Ready to find out the secrets to using email to build trust and sales? Start here >>

3. Use Personal Reputation To Increase Sales
Your personal reputation is the sum of every thing your prospect has seen or heard about you and your company. Ideally, your prospects think of you as helpful and interested in them as well as, knowledgeable, up-to-date, trustworthy and reliable.

If your reputation isn’t solid, people will perceive too much risk when you ask them to buy. If you’ve got a strong reputation, your prospects are much more likely to respond when you suggest a product or service and become clients and customers.

How can you use email to build your brand and your profits? Find out here >>

What can you do if you’re just getting started or have been in business for years but aren’t reaching many buyers with your current email list?

Find another company targeting the same market you’re trying to reach. Let them review your products and then make them an offer that can’t be beat to promote your products or services.

When one of the most famous people in your industry niche tells people to buy your product, you’ll generate five times as many sales as you would trying to make the sale yourself.

4. Listen to Your Readers; They’re Your Buyers
Your marketing emails are going to thousands, if not tens of thousands, prospects. You can’t hear what those prospects say when they get your email, but there is an easy way to find out what they are thinking.

Each time you send an email, check your email tracking stats to see:

# The percentage of people that opened your email,

# Of those people that opened your email, how many followed the links provided in the email,

# How many of those that followed the link made a purchase.

Use this information to improve the results of your next email. For example when I log into my email broadcast service I can see how many people opened each of the html emails I send.

When you have this information you can determine which topics and subject lines to focus on and which to dump. Similarly you can use tracking links in your newsletter to see what percentage of people who read your emails went to your product page and how many of those made a purchase.

With a little bit of simple tracking data in hand you can identify whether to fix your subject line, your email content or your sales page, or all three.

Want to know the secrets to using email to grow your business? I’ve been testing and refining my email and web marketing strategies for almost a decade.

Here’s a shortcut to email marketing success >>

Do these 4 ideas sound too simplistic? 90% of my sales are in response to emails that either I send out or my sales partners send out on my behalf. Using the four email strategies above, you could easily boost your sales by more than you ever imagined.

Want to increase your online profits? Put these ideas to work today to see your website profits soar.

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. - Even if you already have a web site that’s making money, I challenge you to double your profits this summer. I know you can if you use these proven email marketing ideas and techn iques >>

P.P.S. - I’m always amazed at how many people keep doing the same thing over and over when it doesn’t work. I know you’re smarter than that and would rather find out how to use these proven email strategies to grow your business too >>

You can use this small business marketing tip to close more sales.

You’ve got a live qualified prospect on the phone and you don’t want to lose this one. What do you do when they hesitate to make a commitment and want to think about it?

You know that if the prospect disconnects without placing an order, the chances are slim that they’ll call back and you’ll get the sale. What do you do?

Last week I got a call from another Internet marketer, who I’ll call Rex Relentless. Rex offered me a commission to promote his services. He wanted me to promote his business in my newsletter, on my Blog and, to top it off, add a flashing banner to my site.

I get dozens of requests like this each week and I wasn’t interested. When I balked, Rex shifted into sales overdrive. He wouldn’t stop talking about how great his product is. He kept pointing me to more and more pages of supporting data and testimonials.

Did he think I would agree to promote him just to shut him up and make him go away? I couldn’t get a word in edgewise and finally had to interrupt him to end the call.

Rex was like a dog with a bone. He just wouldn’t let go, and in the process he chewed up the bone and destroyed it. If you’re a dog that’s basic instinct but if you want to build a sales person who wants to build a positive relationship with a prospect and close the sale it’s a bad idea.

When I was done with the call I never wanted to hear from Rex again, much less work with him. If you’ve ever run into a similar salesperson you know how obnoxious they can be. And I’m sure you don’t want to emulate them with your small business marketing.

What’s the alternative? What’s the best way to close more sales?

Discover how to get your prospects to sell themselves >>

Rex couldn’t stop asking for the sale and in doing so, killed the sale! The irony is that he does have a great product that I might have been willing to promote. But he was so focused on getting the sale that he gave no thought to what I would want out of the deal.

Should you ask for the sale?

You may not be as relentless a salesperson as Rex, but in most cases asking for the sale at all is a mistake. It’s the fastest way to kill the sale and lose a potentially lucrative client.

That’s right; if you have to ask for the sale, that’s a clear indication that you haven’t sold your prospect. You need to do a better job of eliminating the obstacles to the sale.

By now you’re asking yourself, “Is Charlie off his rocker? If I can’t ask for the sale, how do I close more sales?”

3 Rules For Making A Sale

1. Never tell the prospect what they want. Ask them to tell you.
Discover how >>

2. Never try to convince a prospect to buy from you. Make them convince you that your product or service is the right one for them.
Find out what to do >>

3. Eliminate the obstacles to the sale so when you get to the close the client does it for you. You’ll sell more in less time and make more money. Learn how to use this strategy >>

To help you understand who should be doing the selling and why let me ask you a question before you go.

“Whose voice is music to your ears?”

Most of us have to admit we like the sound of our own voices. So put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Get a prospect talking about what they want and why. They’ll do a better job selling themselves than if they listen on and on to your voice. For the most part, prospects would rather hear themselves talk than hear you lecture them on the benefits and features of your products and services.

Want to double your sales with your small business marketing?

You can do it by using these simple strategies to lead your clients to sell themselves. Get the details here >>

Charlie

Want to listen to this week’s small business marketing podcast?
Use this link >>

When I came back from lunch on Wednesday I found a package waiting for me from a copywriter I who does work for me. I wasn’t expecting anything and was intrigued. Eagerly I opened the box to find a heavy gold tinted fountain pen.

I got it! A writer sending a pen as a thank you, but a fountain pen!

I haven’t used a fountain pen in decades. It was a nice thought but it wasn’t something I or anyone I know could use. Given the thousands of dollars I’d paid him it seemed cheap and went straight into the trash.

It’s not that cost is issue with a a thank you present. I’ve received Tiffany crystal from a financial advisor that cost hundreds of dollars. But it didn’t fit in our home and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

When you send your client a thank you present - you don’t want it to be outdated, out of place or useless - or they’ll think of you in a similar vein.

Now you know what not to do, what should you do to increase repeat sales?

You just made a sale or finished a project for a client and you’d like to get them to buy from you a second and a third time. You enjoyed working with them and you made some good solid cash and you like to make it happen again.

You know it’s at least 8 times easier to sell an existing client then a new one and you’d like to reduce your marketing costs and increase your profits. So what’s the solution?

When a client buys from you its based on the strength of the relationship. They could have bought a similar product or service from anyone but they picked you because they liked you and trusted you. It’s the strength of your relationship that gives you a competitive advantage.

What can you do to keep this advantage?

Every one likes to be appreciated and saying “Thank You” is one way of letting your clients know they are more than just another dollar to you - but to make it work you need to say thank you in the right way.

When you send a client a thank you present - send them something they want, will keep and can use. Do that and they’ll think highly of you.

For example I had one client that I’d worked with for a couple of years who spends a lot her time sailing with her family. I sent her a gift certificate to the marine supply store in her town. She couldn’t thank me enough.

Similarly a virtual assistant of mine, knowing I did a lot of hiking and skiing, sent me a gift certificate to LL Beans. I was delighted.

When you know your client well it’s easy to think of something they want that you can send them. What do you do if you don’t each client well enough to provide a thank you present tailored to their interests?

After answering a couple of questions over the phone about Blogging for Al, I received a gift pack of the barbeque sauces his company makes. Every one likes food, and thanks to Al’s gift for five minutes of my time, I won’t forget him.

You can also give clients travel certificates such as my client GetUpAndGo.com provides. Every one likes a vacation and the gift will give you permanent shelf space in your client’s minds.

What can I give you as a thank you for being a subscriber that you’ll keep and you can use?

I can give you the secrets you need to transform your web site into a profit center so you have all the money you need to take more vacations. And I’ll give you $100 off if you act before Sept 1st. Use this link to get the details >>

Most web sites don’t even generate a repeat visit much less repeat sales. Want to know how to change that so visitors come back again and again to buy from you over and over? Get the details >>

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Work

You may not have the marketing budget of AT&T or Verizon or Sprint but imagine if you could borrow some of their marketing tactics how much money you could make?

What marketing tactics am I talking about?

When you sign up for cell phone servicewith the U.S. cell phone service giants you:

- Get a phone for free or almost free but to get it you,
- Can only use phones they sell with their service,
- Have to sign up for 24 months of service at a minimum rate and,
- Pay an activation fee so you can start paying them your monthly fee,
- Pay the minimum monthly fees,
- And if you decide you want to change services you pay a deactivation fee.

Let’s see how you can apply these same six marketing ideas to a few products and services.

You sell ebooks and your customers:

- Get the first chapter to free but,
- Can only read it on a computer you sold them,
- Must sign up to keep the ebook for a minimum of 24 months,
- Have to pay an activation fee to get the password to open the ebook,
- Pay you each month they have your ebook,
- Pay a penalty fee if they decide they don’t want to keep if for the full 24 months.

Sounds absurd doesn’t it!

Continuity marketing, marketing where people sign up for a membership or ongoing service is one of the best ways to bring in a steady cash flow each month but you can take it too far and alienate your clients.

Imagine if you owned a gym, would you force your members to buy all their sneakers and sports gear from you.

Of course not.

While the cell phone companies can force you into service contracts you may not like, as a small business owner you need to more careful about how you apply continuity marketing to make sure your prospects and clients still want to do business with you. There are only a couple of cell phone companies to choose from - but I bet you have lots of competitors.

Which continuity marketing ideas are you using and which could you be using to bring in a steady cash flow and still have your clients love doing business with you?

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results

Before you start giving me flak for this blog entry - read this post about one bright, hard working women who does everything well except asking to get paid.

I was talking with a client, Kathy, last week, a women who is a super bright web designer. She was explaining to me how she had taken the marketing ideas I’d been sharing with her and put them to good use. One of her web design clients had called her last Tuesday to say they had an upcoming radio interview and were thinking of mentioning their web site and wanted to know if that was a good idea.

Kathy told them not only was it a good idea but told them they should set up an offer to prompt people to go to their web site, sign up for a free report and prompt them to buy. Her client liked the idea but didn’t have a free report setup to giveaway or have ideas on what to offer.

Kathy spent Wednesday setting taking some of their existing reports and setting up the whole system to capitalize on the potential web traffic. The result?

Shortly after her client was interviewed, visitors started arriving at the site and within the first 12 hours 500 people had signed up and given their contact information in exchange for the free report. Within the first 24 hours they’d generated over $6,000 in sales.

Kathy, was one bright women and had gone well beyond what most web designers would do including writing the copy for the follow up emails - except for one fatal mistake.

When I asked Kathy what she was going to charge her client for this rush job that was above and beyone the call of duty that brought in over $6,.000 of sales in one day - she told me…

nothing. She didn’t plan on charging her client anything. She loved doing the work and just wanted to help them.

When I mentioned this story to my wife, she said it was a problem a lot of women have. In her words, women want to fix the problem and take care of people but when it comes to asking to get paid, they, like Kathy, feel guilty asking for the money they deserve.

Is this right?

What’s the solution?

To help Kathy I detailed the questions to use with her client to set the stage so she would feel comfortable asking to be paid for all the extra work she did.

What’s your experience?

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work

Watch out! There is a lot of marketing information you’ll find on the internet touted by so called experts that isn’t fit to be feed to your dog. Take a look at the following and you be the judge.

Recently I found a post on a prominent marketing site that said “Every business - large or small - should have a “messaging platform” consisting of the following: A. Corporate positioning statement, B. Supporting key messages, C. Supporting proof points, D. Customer value propositions/statements. The author goes on to say that you shouldn’t leave the office without your messaging platform on a laminated cheat sheet.

Yikes! What a bunch of corporate speak and total crXX. My guess is most small business owners have no idea what a messaging platform is, what their supporting key messages or proof points are. Be honest, do you? Do you have it on a laminated cheat sheet?

If the goal is to make the simple complex and impossible to understand the author has succeeded. Imagine how well this process works to communicate with the prospect.

My dog has taught me more about marketing. Here’s the simple marketing lesson my dog teaches every night.

Each night we put out the usual dried dog food pellets with some canned dog food slime for our pet. Routinely our dog will give it a sniff and look at us with disgust and go lie down outside the kitchen door, leaving her meal untouched. I can’t say as I blame her. I wouldn’t eat that stuff either.

Later at the end of our family meal, my wife or myself will take a scrap from one our plates and add it to her meal. Once our pet sees she is getting the dinner she wants, (the one we are eating) she digs in and eats her whole meal.

What’s the simple lesson my dog teaches us every night?

Give a dog or people what they want to get the response you want.

Now I’m not suggesting that your company’s prospects are the same as dogs, though I know a lot of smart prospects. But, dogs and humans behave the same in certain ways.

If your marketing isn’t getting the response you want, forget all the corporate speak - the positioning statements, proof points, value propositions etc. The problem is your prospects don’t understand how you can help them, you haven’t given them the basic information they need to give you the response you want.

Running a business is complex - don’t make it any harder by buying into the nonsense that marketing is complicated. Marketing is simply about helping your prospects get what they want.

Its about action and response. Want more sales? Discover which actions to take to get the response you want. In most cases the solution is a lot simplier than you think.

Charlie Cook
Marketing That Works

I’m always on the lookout for new web tools to add to the extensive list at Marketing For Success, ones that can help small business owners attract leads, track traffic, convert prospects to buyers and manage their web sites.

You can review the tools already on the site at Web Site Marketing and at Advanced Web Site Marketing

Use the comment option below to submit the latest and greatest web tools you’ve recently discovered, ones that could help small business marketers improve their web sites.

- Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing Thats Time Tested and Profit Proven

If you could pick only one way to market your business, what small business marketing tool or technique would you pick?

This seems like an easy question to answer, but then when I started to think about having only one tool to recommend to people to market their small businesses it gave me pause. There are a bunch of ways to market your business which would be on the top of my list including:
- Making it rain referrals
- A web site
- Direct mail
- Free seminars
- A free report
etc.

I’m sure you have your own list of small business marketing ideas you use, but is there one that you like above all others?

My hands down favorite is using articles to market my business.

Why do I think articles are the top small business marketing tool.

1. When you write an article it helps to focus your own ideas.

2. The act of writing forces you to think about how to create a conversation with your prosects. If you can get your prospect’s attention in an article, and get a virtual conversation going, when you need to do it in person, it will be easy.

3. Every article your write helps to position you not just as another competitor but as “the expert”.

4. Each time you distribute your article on the internet you generate both traffic and links back to your web site.

5. When others use your articles on their sites or in their publications, it’s like an instant recommendation or your expertise.

6. Compared to advertising writing and distributing articles as part of your small business marketing strategy provides a huge return relative to the cost.

7. It works!

Yes, articles are my top small business marketing strategy, one that I’d recommend to anyone to use to market their business.

- Charlie

Why should you take a few minutes a day to write a blog and will it help you market your business?

Take a look at your marketing materials. Do they grab your prospects’ attention and make then laugh or cry? On the scale of dry and boring versus engaging and entertaining an insurance application form would be on the dry and boring side and what one of your impassioned colleagues shouts when he is throwing his coffee cup across the room is on the engaging and entertaining end of the spectrum.

The norm around marketing is that it’s supposed to be dry and “professional”. The result is that most small business marketing is boring as dirt. With blogs, the norm is still being defined. It’s acceptable to include opinions, rants, ideas, commentary and personal stories. The result, many blogs are attention grabbers, interesting and fun to read.

Blogs provide an accepted vehicle for you to make your marketing more personal, more direct and let people see your ideas and personality. Of course you might want to keep your wildest ideas and thoughts to yourself.

Why is this type of communication good for business?

Blogs give people and companies a chance to break out of an out-moded boring model of marketing and market and be more engaging, conversational and personal.

Whether you sell to small or large companies, the end buyer is just another person, someone like you. When they get to know you as a person, a person full of ideas, expertise and passion, they’ll be more likely to relate to you and to want to do business with you.

And then there is the added plus, that Blogs are easy to use and you can publish your ideas instantly without having to build or load a new page to your web site.

Want more prospects and clients to know you, trust you, understand how you can help and keep you front of mind?

Start blogging!

- Charlie

Yesterday I was talking with a client, from California, who wanted to know how she could reduce her small business marketing costs. She was sending out 100 free pamphlets each week at $8 a piece or $800 per week. Sounds expensive right?

I told her, before she looked at how to cut this marketing cost, she should take a look at her ROI, return on investment. When I asked her how much business this weekly marketing mailing was bringing in she calculated over $4,000 of weekly revenue that came in as a result of her mailings.

That’s a 500% rate of return on her small business marketing, which is, of course, outstanding.

Once she was able to evaluate the right numbers she came to the obvious conclusion, instead of trying to cut the marketing costs for her small business, the fastest way to increase revenue was to spend more on marketing that was working.
- Charlie Cook,