Take a look at the following list and see if you think these are words which should keep someone from getting email from you they’ve requested.

Just using one of these words below probably won’t get your email blocked, but use it a couple of times or with one or more of the following words and your email may be blocked by a “spam” filter.

Use the words below with caution. Note, this is just a sampling. Make sure to check your content with a current content checker such as Ezine Checker before sending out your ezine to improve your web site marketing.

Common Words and Phrases to Use with Caution

More Obvious Words and Phrases to Avoid

I took a look at John’s website marketing after he emailed me the questions above. He was right. His site was attractive, well written and even had a place to sign up and to get more information. I filled out the form and then… well, and then I got nothing.

80% of potential sales are lost due to lack of follow-up. This is one of biggest mistakes people make in marketing their business. Do you want to know how you could increase web sales by as much as 400%?

The secret lies in what you do after you generate a qualified lead. The steps you take next to build a relationship and help your prospect get what they want make all the difference.

Most people are so focused on getting qualified leads that they neglect to put their web site marketing follow-up systems in place to convert leads to sales. It’s so important that I’ll say it again;

…with better follow-up, you could increase web sales by 400%.

Imagine you were training for the upcoming winter Olympics. You’re a skater and want to win gold this year. You get a new pair of skates to help you in your medal quest. Then you map out your workout plan. With your coach at your side you identify which exercises to do and when to do them.

Each day until the coming Olympics you show up at the weight room and the rink. What happens? Each week your strength and speed improve and you become a stronger competitor increasing your chances of w1ning a gold medal.

Now imagine a competitor who wants to win but after signing up for the team, didn’t show up for practice. Who do you think is going to win? The person who follows up on their commitment with a series of planned activities or the one who neglects these?

Web site marketing is like training for the Olympics but with a whole lot more gold medals available. Start with a lead, regular follow up and you can w1n many more clients.

You could continue marketing the same way and get the same results, or you could discover the lead generation and follow-up activities that can increase your sales by 400% or more. Ready to find out how to convert more leads to sales with your internet marketing? Use this link >

Just as in training for the Olympics, what you do and when is critical. Use these 7 follow up ideas you to increase your sales.

1. Act Immediately
Old leads are cold leads. Use automated email responses or voice messages to instantly acknowledge a prospect’s interest and give them the information they requested. If you plan to call them, let them know when you’ll call. If you’ve offered them a free report, deliver it instantly.

2. Use Curiosity to Motivate
The most powerful motivator in marketing is human curiosity. Tempt your prospects with something they want and pique their interest to prompt them to visit your the web sales pages or to call you to get the details.

3. Create A Sense of Urgency
People are prone to procrastinate, even when they want and need the product or service you provide. Give them a reason to act immediately, such as a limited time offer.

4. Educate Your Prospects
Depending on the business you’re in, prospects may not have an immediate perception of their need for your product or services. Use each contact to help them define a problem or concern and demonstrate that your product or service is the solution.

5. Build a Relationship
The stronger your relationship with your prospects, the more likely they’ll be to turn to you when they are ready to make a purchase. Do most men or women propose on their first dates? Of course not! It takes time and repeated contact to establish the basis for a long lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.

6. Give Special Attention to Prospects that Demonstrate An Interest
Let’s say you sent out a special $100 discount email offer to your prospect list. Typically, 10-16% of your prospects will open the email, and a much smaller percentage will act on it immediately. Go back with an even stronger call to action to the people that opened your initial email. You’ll find that approximately 50% will open it and you’ll sell a lot more of your products and services.

7. Use Automated Systems to Follow-up
Set up your email auto responders to do your follow-up for you. Use each email contact to educate and motivate your prospects and tell them about your limited time offer. Remember that prospects are more likely to buy after six contacts, so use a series of six emails spread out over two weeks.

If your follow-up involves a personal call, set up systems that automatically put prospects’ contact information on your daily calendar.

Want to earn gold with your business? Like Olympic athletes you need more than goals. You need a follow up strategy and system. Put these in place and you can capture the 80% of potential sales you’re missing.

[Content protected for Ic12m members only]

You know that hitting your prospects with aggressive sales pitches or grandiose claims is the fastest way to turn them off. But you’re serious about building sales. What are your options?

Build and maintain relationships with your prospects with your e-newsletter! You may provide the best products or services in your industry, hands-down, but prospects will forget you if you don’t follow up your sales calls. You’ve got to stay in front of your prospects and clients to keep business coming in.

It’s not personal. Business owners are busy and without reminders will forget about your product or service no matter how perfect it is for them.

Charlie interviews Michael J. Katz, a recognized expert in the creation and management of effective electronic newsletters. Michael is the founder and owner of Blue Penguin Development and the publisher of “Michael Katz’s E-Newsletter On E-Newsletters,” a free biweekly now in its 8th year. He has developed dozens of e-newsletters which today boast a combined monthly circulation of over 850,000 readers.

In the next few minutes, you’ll discover how to can use your own electronic newsletter to grow relationships with prospects and clients so you can grow your business.

It’s been proven time and time again that doing this well and doing it often will help a business not only maintain their client base but build it. You know what that means; steady growth and more income.

This healthy habit is as basic as eating your vegetables and just as tried and true; follow up with prospects and existing clients to build and maintain relationships. The number and strength of your relationships with your prospects and clients id your biggest competitive advantage.

Not only do you want prospects and existing clients to remember your company, you want them to think of you as the expert who can help them. You’ve got to be in touch on a regular basis.

In this information-overloaded, tightly budgeted, overworked business world, how are you going to do it?

In the old days, you could meet your clients for lunch once a month. But given the number of clients and prospects you have and the increasingly global nature of business, that’s just not possible.

The best marketing tool out there to help you follow up with a large list of prospects and clients is the email newsletter. It’s the most effective and efficient way to build and maintain relationships with your prospects and clients.

Is Anyone Paying Attention?

Most business owners I know are experts in their niche. They’re smart, ambitious, provide great products and services and have at least a handful of highly satisfied customers.

The problem too many of these entrepreneurs have is that hardly anyone knows about them. Not enough people in their target markets know the range of problems they solve or the results they provide their clients. Despite all their hard work, their expertise is largely unknown, and they’re earning only a fraction of what they could be making.

Are you one of them?

The Profit-Building Power of e-Newsletters

I’ve told this story before, but if you’re not in the habit of marketing with a newsletter yet, you need to hear it.

In 1998 I built my second website. The site ranked and reviewed search engines, offering a service that everyone using the Internet at the time needed — myself included. Every week I added more reviews and gradually began to build traffic to the site.

After a year with traffic only growing gradually, I decided to write a short newsletter about the latest reviews I’d added to the site. I sent it to the editors of other relevant sites and publications. Just a few days after emailing my second newsletter to my list, I got an inquiry from the top technology information provider on the web. After several conversations, they made an offer to buy my site.

A few months later, we had a deal and I made close to a million on the sale. If I hadn’t started sending out a newsletter, the chances that I would have sold my site, just before the Internet bubble burst, would have been zero.

Then and there, I realized the incredible power of sharing my expertise and regularly staying in touch with prospects, clients and buyers via an e- newsletter.

As a subscriber to my free newsletter you know that each week I send out between one and three e-newsletters. It’s the life-blood of my business. It’s the magnet that converts prospects into paying clients. Your e-newsletter can do the same.

Who Should Write Your Newsletter?

I’ve convinced you to make e-newsletters a marketing habit. Great. Now, who’s going to write the things? You’re looking around the office for likely candidates, calling friends for referrals to copywriters — but I’ve got news for you. Delegate this task with care, or not at all.

Remember that the purpose of these regular e-newsletters is to position you and your company as the go-to experts. The person writing the e-newsletters needs to have:

•          An inside and personal perspective on your company, its history and it’s culture,

•          An understanding of prospects’ and clients’ problems and how your company solves them,

•         Knowledge of the questions prospects ask relative to your products and services and

•         An understanding of the value your company provides your clients.

The person who best fits this description is likely to be YOU.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your company with the breadth and depth of knowledge that you have, then you can delegate newsletter writing to them. But plan to spend time with them regularly brainstorming topic ideas and checking their work.

You’d rather hire a copywriter?

Hire a good one or no one. These newsletters are going to become critical to your marketing, and they have to be done right. If you hire a copywriter, be prepared to spend time educating them about your prospects, your clients and your company, and keeping them abreast of what is happening in your company. It will be time well spent.

This is not a job to outsource to copywriters in India or the Philippines. They may write your e-newsletters for as little as $10 an article, but the results will be equally small.

Ideally, you’d hire a brilliant newsletter expert like Michael Katz, the subject of this month’s expert interview, to write your newsletter. If his fees are within your budget, you’ll still need to set aside ample time to discuss with him the best ideas for your target market to include in each newsletter.

Making It A Habit

There are endless ways you can improve on any newsletter, get more people to read it and make it more effective in converting readers to paying clients. By far the most important thing you can do is to make it a habit so that it reaches your audience regularly.

Get in front of your prospects and clients and stay there. Some will only read the e-newsletter subject line in their email box; some will read every word you send them. In either case, your name is associated with topical subjects that (if you’re doing your job right) are of interest to them, or entertain them on the way to learning something about your company. You’re helping them remember your name and the solutions you offer.

Set aside the time to meet with your copywriter or, if you’re writing the e-newsletters yourself, schedule a meeting with yourself so you get the writing done.

Allow at least 2 hours at a time when you won’t get distracted by email, the phone or co-workers. Then finish one e-newsletter each time.

Make it a habit so your prospects make buying from you a habit.

Just like an apple a day is a good habit to “keep the doctor away”, writing your e-newsletter each week is a habit to keep your business growing. It’s a habit to stick to and use to create content for your newsletter, for your blog and your next book.

Where The Rubber Hits The Road Or Pen Meets Paper

Most budding newsletter authors worry about the wrong things. They worry about providing lots of information or about how to use their newsletter to sell. They worry about sounding too personal.

You don’t have to provide a lot of information in your newsletters, but give your prospects useful information in each one. Keep them brief and focused. Getting personal is good (up to a point, of course). Business communication in general is more casual than it used to be, particularly on the Internet, and you are trying to build relationships.

After years of writing newsletter and testing to find out which ones generated the most sales, here’s the simple formula to use. I call it the a.b.c. writing system.

A. Detail the prospects’ problem — 70% of the newsletter

This is where you want to paint a picture with words of your prospects and their situation and concerns. Make it clear and tangible so when your readers get through it they’ll feel like understand their problems better than they do themselves.

Stories work best. Stories about your experiences that your audience can relate to or case studies, stories about your clients.

If you really get stuck you can always use Google to search for ideas. For example if you wanted to write an article about skiing, my favorite topic, just search for, “articles skiing.”

B. Define the solution in relationship to the problem – 20%

Typically this should be one blindingly obvious idea that most people miss where you explain what do to but not how to do it.

C. Your call to action – 10%

You’d be amazed at how many people I talk to who say they have a newsletter but it’s not generating any sales and when I ask them what call to action they’ve included they say, “None.”

Make sure to include a call to action in your newsletter, one that directly relates to the solution you’ve described. E.g. if you’ve just shared 3 easy ways to lose 5 pounds in 5 days include a call to action like:

Ready to get started? Discover how you too can look and feel great >>

And link it to your offer page on your website.

Avoid big pitches or trying to sell in your newsletter. It rarely works. The goal is to generate a lead. To get your audience to click through to your sales page, send you an email or pick up the phone and call you.  That’s it.

How to Spend Your Time

1. The subject line or title of your e-newsletter determines whether or not people open the email and read it. The best place to start is by keeping track of the subject lines that prompted you to open an email from a business.
   A good subject line should get 15 to 30% of your audience to at least open your email, depending on you’re the size of your list and the age of your mailing list (a fresh list always performs better).
2. Obviously you want your audience to read your newsletter once they’ve opened the email. Get their attention with the first one or two sentences and they’ll be on the way to reading more. Spark their curiosity or speak to their interests to get them hooked into your newsletter.

Here some examples from Michael Katz of first sentences:

“If you ask me, winter in New England (like pregnancy) is about a month too long.”

“You’ll be happy to know that my five year old son Jonathan has taken an interest in the game of Checkers.”

“The birds in my neighborhood like to poop on my car.”

These may not be your style, but you get the point. Your first sentence needs to be an attention-grabber.

3. As a rough guideline, time spent working on an e-newsletter could break down like this:

1. 70% of your time on the subject line or title
2. 20% on your first sentence
3. 10% on writing the rest

Keep a Running List of Subject Lines

Keep a running list of good ideas for email subject lines. Make note of subject lines that are memorable or funny or that prompted you to open an email. When you’re writing your next e-newsletter, you can repurpose a subject line you already have on file, sometimes just by changing a word or two.

What’s The Best Email Broadcast System?

I know many business people who are satisfied with Constant Contact and other systems. Here’s the one I and most of the other top online marketers use:
http://www.marketingforsuccess.com/email.html

Action Steps

Once you’ve decided who will write your e-newsletter, set up simple systems to make getting it out a regular habit.

1. Block out time

Whether you are writing the newsletter or working with a copywriter, lock a block of time into your schedule to make sure the newsletter gets done regularly.

When will that time be? Commit to it now:

Day of the week: _____________       Time:________________

2. Save Newsletters as Examples

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to the newsletters of other leaders in your market niche. Set up a filter in your email inbox to automatically drop them into a ‘Newsletter’ folder.

That way, you can skim through the folder at your convenience and when you’re ready to work on your newsletter, scan the newsletters for inspiration and ideas.

3. Create an Idea File

Create another file where you keep track of topics and subject lines for your next e-newsletter. Add to it whenever you run across a clever marketing approach, a seasonal offer, or other relevant marketing ideas.

Start by looking through your email now and list the top 3 subject lines that prompted you to open an email.

__________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________

The hardest part about getting your newsletter going and ramping up your profits? Getting started.

Over ten years ago when I wrote my first newsletter, I had no idea that just by writing one a week, it would lead to the sale of one of my first websites for almost a million dollars, or that it would lead to five marketing books that bring in the bulk of my income, or that it would lead to having one of the top ranked sites on the web. And it all started with just writing one, then two then three newsletters.

You can do the same. Write one newsletter this week, one next week and so on. Pretty soon, you’ll have a following and enough content to create new products much more customers than you ever imagined.

But don’t wait until next week. Get started right away.

Savvy small business owners and online marketers know that following up with prospects is critical to their success, but when the response to marketing emails is so poor, there are hardly enough leads to make it worthwhile.

Understand that email marketing is completely different than marketing through a sales letter, postcard, over the phone or in person. Don’t expect the strategies and the copy that work in traditional media to get results in email marketing. They won’t, whether you send ten or ten thousand email messages a week.

Think about what you do when you open your email box each day. There are dozens or hundreds of email messages in it. Many have titles that don’t even make sense, others promise untold wealth, superhuman capabilities in the bedroom or outrageous deals on electronics. Even the number of legitimate emails you receive from suppliers or employees can be overwhelming.

Given the demands on our time, most of us quickly delete the dubious emails, file the less urgent ones and only read a handful. How can you make sure that your emails are among that handful?

Email can help you establish your credibility, create a perception of need and the motivation to buy. Imagine where your business could be if your email marketing worked.

1. Motivate Prospects to Open Your Email

No email can persuade, convince, or sell if it doesn’t get opened and read. Grab your prospects’ attention with the title or subject of your message before they delete it.

Subject lines that work the best describe an item or subject that your prospects are interested in. Target their problems or concerns. Remind them of the reason they gave you their email address. For example, “How to Download the Free ——- Guide You Requested”. If the email is your newsletter, include your company name and the name of the newsletter.

2. Motivate Prospects to Read The First Sentence

Once your readers open your email, you’ve got 3 seconds or less to prompt them to read it. Don’t lose them; give them a reason to keep reading.

Ask a question or make a challenging statement relevant to the subject. If you can get them to read the first sentence or two, there is a very good chance they’ll keep reading and get to the links to your product or service pages.

3. Motivate Them to Visit Your Product and Service Pages

The ultimate goal of your marketing emails is to get your prospects to buy. Map out a problem or concern of theirs in such a way that your product or service is the logical solution and they’ll want to learn more.

The first step is to pick one issue or concern of your prospects. Then help them understand why it’s a problem. Then let them know you can help them and how.

4. Engage Your Readers by Keeping Your Emails Personal

After signing up online or contacting your firm once by phone, your prospects are still strangers. You want them to get to know and trust you and your firm.  Keep you’re the tone of your emails friendly and conversational. Tell ‘stories’ about the successes clients have had with your products and services to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Why Email Marketing Works

Thanks to this weekly ezine when I get a call from a prospect they’re typically already qualified. They know me, trust me and are ready to do business.

Cindy from San Francisco is a good example. The first thing she said when I took her scheduled call was, “I’ve been getting your emails and I really like them. I’ve learned more in the last ten months from your newsletter than in the previous 20 years of working in sales and marketing and I’m getting better results.”

To make your email marketing works, change the focus and content of your emails. Instead of just providing news or trying to sell to your prospects immediately, use your emails to help them. Help them solve a problem; demonstrate your credibility and build a relationship; and provide them with solutions.

When your prospects see how helpful your emails are, like Cindy, they’ll want to take the next step and buy your products and services.

Whether you want to improve your email marketing or use the Internet to keep communication going with prospects and clients, you want your emails to get a specific response.

You want people to open your emails, read them, and then take action. You may want them to fill in a form or pick up the phone or go to your website and buy, but essentially your emails should prompt prospects to contact you and prompt past clients to buy from you again.

Is that what happens when you send out emails to the people who have given you permission to email them?

If you’re getting a limited response to your web site marketing emails, its time to figure out what’s wrong.

The first problem could be your mailing list itself. I can’t emphasize enough that you should only send email to people who’ve indicated that they want your emails, either by signing up for them or by indicating their interest through a previous purchase.  It’s illegal to send Spam, unwanted emails, it’s a waste of your time and theirs, and its a great way to alienate potential customers. Don’t do it.

Ready to tune up your email campaign for maximum website marketing results?

There are 7 elements to an effective email campaign that include:

1. The subject or title,
2. The sender address,
3. The first sentence,
4. The first paragraph,
5. The perceived value of your offer,
6. Your call to action and
7. The landing page (the page on your website that the links in the email go to).

Want to know which of these elements are working and which aren’t in your company’s emails?

If you are using tracking software, as John was, you can tell how many people opened your email, how many clicked on the links in the email and how many either filled in the form linked to the email or made a purchase. With this information, you can pinpoint which elements are working and which need fixing.

I use the ad tracker provided in my shopping cart system. John, uses software from SalesForce.com

Open Rate
John knew that 22% of the recipients had opened his email. In this case, he was emailing people he hadn’t contacted in as long as 12 months. An ‘open rate’ of one out of five is respectable, and indicates that the title of his email was working.  There is room for improvement, though, and with a better subject line he could get an open rate of at least 30%.

Clickthrough Rate
Only 15% of the people that opened John’s email used any of the links in response to his call to action. While 15% isn’t bad, it’s reasonable to expect a 30% or better clickthrough rate. The key is to use the copy in your email to leverage people’s innate curiosity, to reaffirm your credibility and to clarify the value to the reader of taking the action you want them to take.

Credibility + High Perceived Value + Curiosity = High Clickthroughs

Want to use email to sell more? You could just keep running in circles without a map and hope that you sell more, or you could get a step-by-step guide to improve your web site marketing that shows you exactly what to do to reach your goals.

Sales
An email message is successful when prospects open it, read it and clickthrough to your sign up or go to your sales pages. Then what? They should take the action you want them to take.

Only one of John’s prospects filled in the form at his website. Since only three people reached this page, though, it’s hard to tell whether this particular page is doing what its supposed to or whether there is some other problem.

If you’re offering something for free, you should be able to get 25-35% of the people who reach your sign-up page to fill in the sign-up form. Sales page results will vary highly, depending on the product or service and your pricing.

Still not sure how to fix your emails?  Take these 7 steps to improve your emails and convert prospects to clients:

Take all of these 7 steps and soon more people will read your emails, click on the links in them, reach your sign up and sales pages and buy from you.

She loves to cook when there is an appreciative audience and she also likes to try new things. That’s all well and good. But every time we plan a big party or family gathering, she tries out a new recipe. Cooking dishes she’s never made before when a large group is coming over and we really care about the results, it is nerve wracking.

Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated my Dad’s 90^th birthday. Twenty children and grandchildren showed up at our house to honor him and have a big birthday dinner. My wife tried out not one, but several new recipes. Fortunately, the dishes came out fairly well and one, the veal stew in a red wine sauce, got rave reviews. Phew!

I’m all for experimenting. But when it’s important to hit a home run with a crowd, I want a recipe that’s been tested. I want a proven plan that I know will succeed every time.

Which brings me to email marketing. I highly recommend that you experiment on a limited audience, but when you want to ratchet up your sales and your profits, use a tested recipe to generate the response you need.

I wish someone had handed me the recipe that I’m about to reveal; my business would have grown that much faster. Instead I learned by making mistakes. But, thanks to my experience, you don’t have to.

When I first started using email to try to trigger sales, only a small percentage of my emails were opened, few were read and even fewer people bought from me. Over time I tracked every email I sent, and bit-by-bit I figured out the recipe that now brings in more sales than I ever imagined possible.

I use this recipe to craft the emails we provide to our affiliates when they promote our products. Last year this email recipe made us Brian Tracy’s top-selling affiliate.

Understand what that last sentence means; our email recipe outsold a host of other top marketers, including Jay Abraham. You don’t have to be a top marketer to use it effectively; one member of my MasterMind Group used just one element of my recipe and boosted his email response rate by 4200%.

Have I got your attention?

The Proven, Profit-Generating Recipe for Email Marketing

Once you have list of interested prospects, following up with regular email is the best way to build shelf space in your prospects’ minds and turn interest into profits.

To use it correctly you need to understand that it’s a simple tool and at best it can only get your prospects to take a simple action. Realize that the purpose of your email isn’t to sell, but rather to generate interest and get your prospects to take just one action.

A well-crafted email can tap their interests, create a perception of need and motivate them to want to find out more and click through to your sales pages or opt-in form.

Single purpose emails work best. Focus on solving one problem at a time and get your prospects to take a single action. Focusing on multiple problems or promoting multiple products at a time or giving your prospects multiple actions results in confusion and a lack of action.

How are you going to use your email to grab your prospect’s attention, keep it and get them to take action?

Entertain, educate and motivate.

Entertain your readers and they’ll open your emails and read them through. Entertain them with stories and examples; educate with an idea or tip that your prospects can readily use and you’ll gain credibility and trust.

Then motivate them to take action. Point the way to the next step to use the idea you’ve shared or to get more information by clicking through to the sales page for your product or service.

There are 4 steps to put this recipe to work for your email marketing. I’m going to describe them in detail below and include action steps so your next email brings in more sales.

1. Make sure your emails are opened
If no one opens your email, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the copy is in your email — or how great your offer or your products and services are. The subject line is the key to getting your prospects “in the door” and getting them to read the rest of your email.

How do you know if the subject lines you’re using are working? What’s a respectable open rate for email marketing?

Good question, and the answer is: it depends. It depends on how you’ve built your list, how qualified your subscribers are, how long people have been on your list and how often you mail to your list. Many people get open rates of only 2-5% with their emails.

Internet marketers with large lists, who mail their lists a few times a week often get a 15-20% open rate. Some members of my MasterMind Group get open rates as high 34% with lists of 3000 to 5000 subscribers.

Which subject lines work to maximize open rates?

Subject lines that give helpful information and avoid selling get prospects to open emails.

Using your subject line to sell is like shouting “Buy My Stuff!” in your prospect’s face before they know exactly what you’re selling, how it can help them, whether it has any value, and whether they can trust you to deliver. A big mistake!

To get you started thinking about your own subject lines and give you ideas, I’ve listed successful subject lines below. Try adapting them to your own business. Send them out and then check your open rates. Don’t assume they will automatically work for you just because they’ve worked for other businesses. Every audience and list is different. Experiment, split test and compare the results.

Leverage the winners, the subject lines with the best open rates. For example, I know that the subject line “What Nobody Tells You About Selling” has good open rates, so I’ve used variations of it with equally good success.

Sample Email Subject Lines

A. The Best-Performing Subject Lines From Our Last 100 Emails

•  How To Improve Email Response by 4200%
•  What’s New This Week 10/25-10/30/09
•  What Newton Discovered About Marketing
•  Eliminate The 2 Biggest Obstacles To Sales
•  Do You Need Help? – from Charlie
•  3 Steps to Successful Website Marketing
•  How To Eliminate Objections To Price
•  3 Things You Should Know…
•  Google This…
•  Is Your Website Killing Sales?
•  A Strange and Unusual Request from Charlie

B. From My Collection of Marketing Favorites

•  The Top 5 Reasons Small Business Marketing Fails…
•  Tip of the Week: A Buyer Tells You How to Sell to Him
•  11 Critical Ideas to Boost Your Shopping Cart Performance
•  Get Google Advertising & Traffic “Free”?
•  How Healthy is Your Business?
•  Smarter PPC Tactics to Save Your Cash
•  Killing your business babies
•  Getting deadbeat clients to pay, 11…
•  Write Magnetic Headlines with These 7 Tips
•  What We Can Learn from Infomercials
•  Are your business habits an anchor or catalyst for growth?
•  How to Arm Yourself for the Next Market Downturn
•  How election tactics can help promote your business
•  What Can Skydiving Teach You about Marketing?
•  11 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Web Site
•  Here’s How to Really Irritate Your Online Competitors
•  Kill Your Business Idea Before It Kills You
•  Getting better results on the phone
•  A Highly Profitable Skill… For Lazy People
•  How to Eliminate Rejection
•  The Most Important Wealth-Building Element of _____
•  The Most Important Piece of Equipment Any Marketer Can Own
•  The Logical Case for Increasing Your Prices
•  How NOT to Start a Retail Business
•  Sales Words That Cripple
•  How (Not) To Lose Clients
•  What Buyers Really Want
•  Reduce Customer Anxiety, Increase Conversions
•  4 More Ways to Get Maximum Impact from Testimonials
•  Why Other Marketers Are Making More Money

Looking for still more subject line ideas?

Go to www.ezinearticles.com and view the most popular articles. For example, when I wrote ‘Writing Copy That Sells’, these were the most frequently viewed titles in the Business: Marketing category:

•  SWOT Analysis — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
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Action:Test Subject Lines
From the above lists, pick five subject lines and adapt them to your business. For example, “What Nobody Tells You About Selling” could be modified to “What Nobody Tells You About Your Credit Rating”. Then test them and track your open rates.

1. _____________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________

4. _____________________________________________

5. _____________________________________________

2. Use the right recipe to get results with your emails

What should you write about in your emails that will move your subscribers closer to becoming buyers?

Simple.

Share helpful tips and ideas. Prospects can smell a salesman a mile away. If they sense that you are trying to sell them with your email, they’ll stop reading.

Instead of selling, focus on your audience’s interests. Write about their concerns, the problems they want to solve, and how you can help them get where they want to go.

For example:

Suppose you’re a mortgage or real estate professional. Your topic could be “10 Steps to Owning Your Own Home in 6 Months or Less.”

Selling health & fitness supplies or supplements? Then a series about “The Poisons in Your Pantry” will spark interest.

Is your target market men over 50? How about “Natural Ways to Supercharge Your Energy – Without Seeing the Doctor”?

Your Lead Paragraph

The first sentence of your email should make your prospects want to read the second sentence and the purpose of the second is to get them to read the next. It’s like getting a ball rolling downhill. If you can get your readers past the first paragraph there is a good chance they’ll read your entire email.

One strategy for doing this is to lead with questions. How does it work? Here’s an example:

What’s Blocking Your Growth?

What’s the biggest bottleneck every entrepreneur and business owner faces to growing their business? What is it that is keeping you from doubling your sales next month or tripling them this year? What’s the most common mistake that prevents 97% of entrepreneurs and small business owners from becoming a huge success and living the life they want?

…

A second approach is to lead with a client or prospect problem. For example:

“We just bought a full-page ad in our local newspaper promoting our computer sales and repair services, and as far as I can tell we didn’t get a single response. Why didn’t our newspaper ad bring in at least one sale?”
Phil, from Chicago

Want your ads or sales pitch to get people’s attention in 15 seconds or less? Who doesn’t?

If you could consistently sell your services or products in 15 seconds or less, imagine how much more money you’d make and how much free time you’d have to enjoy your family and your life.

…

Another approach is to tell a good story. People love stories:

The best sales presentation I’ve ever seen wasn’t a sales pitch, but when it was over I was sold for life.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to do the same with your marketing — sell clients for life without a single sales pitch?

I was in high school, attending a mandatory assembly about safe driving. We students were polite, but mostly inattentive until we saw the speaker toss an egg to a volunteer on the stage. By the time we heard “splat!” and saw the egg dripping from his hand, the speaker had our attention.

3. Share one key idea or concept

Want your readers to believe you? Tell them a story that demonstrates your expertise, and then share one blindingly obvious idea that hardly anyone uses.

For example:

To grow your business you need a proven system to succeed. I’m always amazed at how many entrepreneurs constantly try to attract new business without one.

You could be making ten times as much with a lot less effort.

Here’s another example:

The answer was simple: traffic alone isn’t the answer, whether you’re getting it from the search engines or pay-per-click advertising. You need more. You need an easy way to convert your traffic into sales.

“An Online Traffic To Sales Conversion System”

Most people make the mistake of trying to slap their readers in the face with their product or service, the solution they sell. When you define the problem your prospects face and then show how it’s the logical answer, you’ll find a lot more people interested in what you sell.

4. Get your prospects to take action

The purpose of your email is to get your readers to your sales page(s). How do you do this?

Include your calls to action in the body of your email. You’d be amazed how many people forget to provide any kind of call to action, or do it wrong. Here are two key mistakes to avoid.

• Avoid using your calls to action to try and sell. You’ll have plenty of time to do that on your sales page. Use this email to capture their interest.

• Don’t hit your readers between the eyes with your call to action too soon or you’ll scare them away. Use the magic words in your emails to capture their interest and to pre-sell them by showing that you understand their problems and provide the best solution.

Which Calls To Action Work

Use calls to action that leverage the issues you’ve been talking about in your email.

If you’ve been talking about 5 ways to cut taxes, leverage this with your call to action. For example, “Interested in saving up to $10,000 this year on your taxes? Get the details here >>”

Or if you work at an SEO firm and your email was about increasing traffic, your call to action could be, “Ready to double your traffic in the next 2 months, find the simple solution here >>”

Where To Include Your Calls To Action
In a typical email of about 700 words, I recommend including a call to action after the first 150 words, a second call to action after the next couple of hundred words and a third call at the end of the email.

Action: Turning Words Into Profits
Outline your next email below:

1. Identify at least one problem that your prospects have.

   ____________________________________________________

2. List the blindingly obvious solution you can share, that most people never use.

   ____________________________________________________

3. Write out 2 or 3 calls to action to get readers to your sales page.

   ____________________________________________________

   ____________________________________________________

Let’s review the No-Fail Email Profit Recipe.
A. Once you have list of interested prospects, following up with regular email is the best way to turn interest into profits.

B. The purpose of each email in your marketing campaign is to get prospects to click to your sales page.

C. There are 4 steps to crafting the email that will entertain, educate and motivate your prospects and get them to the sales page;

1. Write email subject lines that will get prospects to open the email
2. Use the recipe for capturing interest
3. Establish your credibility with one bright idea
4. Get your prospects to take action

Advice From A Cook

Unless you’re already a master cook, the first couple of dozen times you go into the kitchen to prepare a meal or a special dessert it’s a good idea to follow a recipe. That way you’ll have a far better chance of cooking up a meal your family and friends will enjoy.

The same is true with your email marketing. If you want it to succeed, to generate a response and sales, don’t just wing it. Follow a proven recipe to get results. The key steps outlined above will get you started and can easily double or triple your response rate and your profits. Put them to use to get results.