Easily Create Email Marketing Campaigns

How do you develop an effective email marketing campaign?

 

What you send to your customers is very important. If it isn’t well designed or professional looking the results could be damaging to your business instead of beneficial.

 

The first part of the email marketing campaign needs to include your goals.

 

What do you expect to achieve from your email marketing campaign?

 

Who do you want to reach?

 

You should also decide what type of marketing you are going to do. Will it be random discounts and promotions, seasonal, or will you be sending a regular newsletter?

 

Next you will need to do some research. Do you know the email marketing laws? What are the current market trends? How are you going to make your email marketing campaign more appealing than that of the competition? You have to have these goals clearly defined and outlined. Otherwise your will just spin your wheels while developing your email marketing campaign.

 

Since the goals of every business are very different, the strategies they use in email marketing will also be very different. While this gives each business the ability to be creative a unique in developing their marketing campaign, it also makes it difficult because there are no clear-cut, cookie cutter answers.

 

If you aren’t skilled in developing email marketing campaigns you may need to purchase some type of email marketing software or hire an email-marketing consultant.

 

How well do you know your customer? I hope well because this is a very important part of developing an effective email marketing campaign. You have to be able to address your key audience by providing them with relevant information. If they aren’t interested in what you have to say then it doesn’t matter how many emails you manage to send out.

 

Dot Your I’s and Cross Your T’s

 

Once you have decided on your email marketing campaign you may think you are ready to hit the send button, but hold on just a little bit longer. Make sure everything in the email is spelled correctly and grammatically correct. Nothing looks more unprofessional than an email marketing campaign will errors.

 

They will stick out like a sore thumb. Remember to test the effectiveness of the email on the various email service providers as they all have variations. You will be disappointed to discover that subscribers to a particular service weren’t able to open your email for it to read properly.

 

Subject Lines Are the Beginning of the Email

 

Make sure the subject line of your email is clear and effective. This will help your email marketing campaign to get past the various spam filters and virus protectors. Many researchers of email marketing believe the subject line will make or break the reader’s decision to open your email. Make sure you personalize the email and address it to the consumer rather than a broad introduction. You will want to attach a clear expiration date to your email marketing promotion. Nothing motivates the consumer than having a deadline. They don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of what you are offering.

 

Email marketing is a great opportunity for you to communicate with your customers and to promote your business. It is very important that you take the time to set your goals and to know the market before you develop your email marketing campaign.

 

This will ensure it is successful. While you want your email marketing strategy to be unique and creative you need to keep the wants and needs of the customer in mind. You can choose to develop your email marketing strategy on your own, using software, or by hiring a consultant. Getting your email to the consumer is only half of the battle.

 

As always, here’s to your success and to building your legacy.

6 Bad Habits That Can Stifle Your Success

 

Too often, our habits control us and determine whether we succeed or not. It is imperative that we change out our bad habits for good disciplines. To do this, however, we must first identify those habits that are limiting our success.

 

False Limitations

 

Ask a writer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves words. Ask a designer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves visuals. Ask a blogger for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves a blog.

 

We’re all a product of our experience. But the limitations we have are self-imposed. They are false limits. Only when you force yourself to look past what you know and feel comfortable with can you come up with the breakthrough ideas you’re looking for.

 

Be open to anything. Step outside your comfort zone. Consider how those in unrelated areas do what they do. What seems impossible today may seem surprisingly doable tomorrow.

 

If you recognize some of these problems in yourself, don’t fret. In fact, rejoice! Knowing what’s holding you back is the first step toward breaking down the barriers of creativity.

 

Lack of confidence

 

A certain level of uncertainly accompanies every creative act. A small measure of self-doubt is healthy.

 

However, you must have confidence in your abilities in order to create and carry out effective solutions to problems.

 

Much of this comes from experience, but confidence also comes from familiarity with how creativity works.

 

When you understand that ideas often seem crazy at first, that failure is just a learning experience, and that nothing is impossible, you are on your way to becoming more confident and more creative.

 

Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, divide it into what you’ve tried and what you haven’t tried. There are a million pathways to success.

 

Information Overwhelm

 

It’s called “analysis paralysis,” the condition of spending so much time thinking about a problem and cramming your brain with so much information that you lose the ability to act.

 

It’s been said that information is to the brain what food is to the body. True enough. But just as you can overeat, you can also over think.

 

Every successful person I’ve ever met has the ability to know when to stop collecting information and start taking action. Many subscribe to the “ready – fire – aim” philosophy of business success, knowing that acting on a good plan today is better than waiting for a perfect plan tomorrow.

 

Fear of failure

 

Most people remember baseball legend Babe Ruth as one of the great hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs.

 

However, he was also a master of the strike out. That’s because he always swung for home runs, not singles or doubles. Ruth either succeeded big or failed spectacularly.

 

No one wants to make mistakes or fail. But if you try too hard to avoid failure, you’ll also avoid success.

 

It has been said that to increase your success rate, you should aim to make more mistakes. In other words, take more chances and you’ll succeed more often.

 

Those few really great ideas you come up with will more than compensate for all the dumb mistakes you make.

 

Two Lines of Thought at Once

 

Like driving a car in first gear and reverse at the same time, it just can’t be done.

Likewise, you shouldn’t try to use different types of thinking at the same time. Just like in the transmission in your car going two directions at once, you’ll strip your mental transmission as well.

 

Creating means generating new ideas, visualizing, looking ahead, considering the possibilities.

 

Evaluating means analyzing and judging, picking apart ideas and sorting them into piles of good and bad, useful and useless.

 

These two types of thinking work together, but not at the same time without causing some issues; one will lock up the other.

 

Most people evaluate too soon and too often, and therefore create less. In order to create more and better ideas, you must separate creation from evaluation, coming up with lots of ideas first, and then judging the worth of each later.

 

Keep your ideas written down somewhere and visit them often. There are times when an idea will give birth to new ideas and even if you end up evaluating an idea as not working for you at that time doesn’t mean that it won’t work later.

 

Other People

 

Even if you have a wide-open mind and the ability to see what’s possible, most people around you will not. They will tell you in various, and often, subtle ways to conform, be sensible, and not rock the boat.

 

It’s like going crabbing on an Alaskan Sea Crab boat. They dump the crabs in a small box hold area that the crabs could get out of, but they don’t because just as soon as one starts to get up, others pull it back down.

 

The same holds true for people. There are those out there who find it easier to pull others down than to work on succeeding themselves.

 

Ignore them. The path to every victory is paved with predictions of failure. And once you have a big win under your belt, all the naysayers will shut their noise and see you for what you are — a creative force to be reckoned with.

 

Success is yours to grab, you just have to want it bad enough to overcome the limiting bad habits that keep you from getting it.

 

 

Secrets of the Cold-Call

Cold calling has to be one of the most dreaded ways to gain new clients/customers so that is why I am coving it first in this new mini-series.

When it comes to cold calling, there are a few questions that go through people’s heads that are more for procrastination purpose than actually answering the questions; “What is cold-calling?” “ Is it beneficial to my sales?” Cold calling (or canvassing as it is commonly known as) refers to the first meaningful calls you make to a prospective client for the purpose of marketing yourself, business, product or service and how it could benefit them. If used properly and effectively, the cold calling technique can be very beneficial and gain you quite a bit of future business. 

Having the best cold-calling techniques serves as an added advantage to your business in that it allows you to improve other aspects that will serve your business in a positive sense such as developed communication skills.

Notably, the basic principles of cold calling as they relate to communication are among the main characteristics mentioned by most prominent entrepreneurs. The fact that cold calling creates a focus on initiative, addressing one’s fears and action is a recipe for successful sales hence the importance of employing cold calling strategies while promoting your product brand and aiming for higher sales in mind with each call.

The need for cold calling strategies

Today's modern world is characterized by increased dependency to online marketing, social media marketing, email marketing and content marketing. Cold calling should be seen as an opportunity to generate new leads and contacts and a viable process in which to promote your product brand and increasing sales. Cold calling may seem like an ancient marketing strategy, but, though this is factual to an extent, it is also a tried and true method by which people have been making a name for themselves for decades.

Besides the fact that successful entrepreneurs were able to successfully nurtured their business skills long before the internet by employing basic principles of this marketing strategy, cold calling plan kits have been introduced making product brand promotions easy and general sales even easier. Cold calling marketing strategies kits are all-inclusive and will always positively impact your sales considering the fact that it comprises of:

 

• Detailed tips and techniques geared towards effective telephone pitches and additional win/win business opportunities that benefit everyone.

• A number of secrets to cold calling success that experts from the different fields implement on a daily basis.

• Examples of actual cold calling scripts that have helped secure appointments even with high profiled prospective buyers.

• Sample checklists and worksheets that can help you come up with your own personal cold script (which I recommend that you have your own that way it is geared toward your specific business).

• Tutorials on how to leverage voicemails to get prospective clients to call you back.

 

How does cold calling strategies affect your sales?

 

Normally as a sale's person you serve as a link between the customer and the supplier / source.

What this means in a nutshell is that you are the one who is influencing the leveraging products and services. With this task in mind, it becomes apparent as to why cold calling strategies comes can help you establish some key fundamentals when it comes to linking suppliers with customers.

At this point, I hope that I have given you a strong indication as to why cold calling strategies make it relatively easier for you not only to interpret and predict sales opportunities but also to control your market. Using cold-calling strategies for your sales intentions places you in the best position to control the relationship and cooperation between customers and suppliers.

It is crucial, as you work toward meeting your set sales goals, that you choose to implement cold-calling strategies focusing on more pertinent matters such as your target market place including your competitors and all the threats your sales are faced with.

 

Successful cold calling strategies for online and offline marketing

 

As an entrepreneur, to make cold calling strategies effectively work for you, it is advisable that you use the following basic standards in creating a cold calling strategies kit:

1. Preparation:

Before you call a prospective client it is vitally important for you to plan in advance, set your objectives right from the start and most importantly choose the best time to call you prospect as outlined below:

A) Pre-call planning:

According to research, a pre-call plan stands out as one of the main fundamentals when it comes to making a positive conversation with a prospective client. When prepping to make a cold call, it is crucial that you collect pieces of information about your prospect that will help you not only effectively introduce yourself but also professionally raise your business intentions in a manner that grabs the attention of the prospective client. It is during your discussion with such clients that you bring in the specific details of what you are proposing to assist them with in a way that they can directly relate it to their business. This helps you give a precise account of your company's' overall goals regarding business as you will be talking of specific features your product brand or service can provide to them. As Zig Ziglar always said, “You’ll get everything out of life that you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

Prior to calling your prospect, research for enough insights about your prospect’s business. To do so and to inject some of these facts into the conversation will impress the prospect and thus gain more interest from them. It's all up to you.

 

B) Setting an objective

Apart from the pre-call planning, cold calling strategies for offline marketing also requires you to have set objectives for the direction that you want the cold-call to go, and to have those objectives expressed clearly in writing prior to making that important call. Why is this relevant? Because the main aim for making this call is to set up a meeting and not necessarily to promote your product brand or services. Having a set of objectives, serves as a gateway, which allows you to bring in a possible business meeting to discuss the details of your proposals.

Remember your goal is to establish meeting with your prospect client and should you deviate from this by giving out too much unnecessary information up front, your prospect is likely to see you as being “salesy” and turn you down before you even have the chance of demonstrating the true value of your products or services. Consider your call to a prospective client as an opportunity to build more clout and develop a potential sales opportunity and introduce yourself as the best contact to consult in case of a situation change instead of “buy from me now” attitude.

 

        C) Choosing the best time to Call

Besides choosing to call your prospect at a time when you are prepared, well rested and ready for the call, it is extremely urgent that your timing be done perfectly; calling your prospective at a time you are certain he is not only available but also free to talk. Reason being chances are if your approach is agreeable; the call will most certainly be characterized by a lot of explaining and discussions before you finally settle on a meeting date. In other words, it would be more of a delightful conversation rather than one or the other trying to rush the call along. It is pointless to call up a client during extreme hours. Consequently, it is recommended that prospective clients not be contacted first thing in the morning, right before or immediately after lunch and not right before close of the business day as well as toward the end of the week is better. During such times, people are usually relaxed and in extremely pleasant moods.

 

2. Introduction

When introducing yourself and your business, try as much as possible to be relevant. Go straight to the point stating who you are, what you represent, the purpose of your call and the reason for the meeting request at a later date or another time depending on the availability of your client. At this point, you are free to explain the details of your offer, taking care not to go into details.

 

3. Ask questions

The course of your talk, it is healthy that you engage your client in a brief question and answering session to allow him to enlighten you on his situation. At this point, you will likely have a clearer picture on how best to approach so as to earn a more complete trust as well as being able to predict how he/she prefers to get work done which will give you a direction in how to make the meeting go most effectively. If the prospect is a story teller, then jumping right to the point with facts and figures won’t impress them, however, the prospect who is naturally impatient and likes to get to the straight facts, will be irritated if you go into testimonials and anecdotes.

 

4. Do not judge

Avoid taking sides especially when dealing with your customers; make sure you remain fair and neutral considering that most people prefer being helped to being judged and critiqued. In fact, providing help and offering guidance is the best choice regardless of your field of specialty, It is essential to consider this as it will help you come up with informed decisions that appeal most. Never get into what they are doing wrong, or could do better. Concentrate on how you can help them improve what they already have going.

 

5. Respond to customer inquiries

Take it upon yourself to listen to any inquiries that the prospect has and be willing to give an answer. If the answering the question is something that would be discussed in the meeting, then give a simplistic answer that doesn’t get into too many details and explain how you have full intention to go over that very question in detail at the meeting. Think of any and every question that could possibly be asked and have a prepared answer in advance so as not to have any dead space in the conversation. If the prospect feels that you are grasping for the information, then he/she might feel that you are not prepared, whereas on the adverse, a quick, well spoken answer could give the prospect the view that you are an authority on the topic.

 

6. Educate and inform your markets about your offers.

As a professional entrepreneur who understands the significance of an established offline customer base, make it one of your duties to reach out to your market audiences through both formal and informal venues of multimedia. Even if you don’t get the meeting, try to acquire permission to send them more information. Go with the attitude that if you can’t help them now, you may be able to in the future and express to the prospect that if they ever need your services in the future not to hesitate in contacting you.

 

They say information is power, so make sure that you never leave a cold call without having the prospect feeling that they are more informed without it costing them anything…and a future meeting to discuss a business venture wouldn’t be bad either.

 

Let me know your thoughts on cold calling, does this help you? What are some techniques that you use when it comes to cold calling?

The Ultimate Avatar: Knowing your perfect customer/client

 

No, I am not talking about tall blue alien CGI creatures from the movie, but rather a detailed vision of your ideal client. An avatar is a representation. By creating an avatar, you have something to concentrate your attentions to.

 

The more you can visualize the perspective of your ideal clients, the more you’ll be able to “speak their language” and be able to most effectively market to them.

 

John Lee Dumas goes so far as to give his ultimate avatar a name. He knows every minute detail about his average client and bases all of his efforts on that one avatar.

 

The following is a check list to go through so that you can determine who your ideal client is. Have fun with it, give this person a name, if this ideal customer/client actually reminds you of someone, get a picture of that person and keep it in front of you every time you are creating for that particular market.

 

Whether it is marketing or specific product creation, the less generic that you are, the more profitable you will become based on the selected avatar that you have created.

 

Ideal Client “Checklist”

 

This checklist will give you some great starting points on what you

should know about your avatar.

 

1. What is your ideal client’s gender, age, religion/spirituality, marital

status, socio-economic status, education level, or any other

demographics that are relevant?

2. What specific attributes do they possess?

3. Where do they tend to live?

4. What kinds of jobs or careers do they tend to have?

5. What are the things they’re most passionate about?

6. What are the things that most upset or irritates them?

7. What is their ideal vision for what they want their life, career,

health, etc. to look like?

8. In what ways are they stuck / what are their biggest challenges?

9. How do they learn best, and where do they tend to go to learn?

10. What types of groups, associations, or classes do they participate

in?

11. What do they read?

12. What hobbies and interests do they have?

13. What do they do for fun and recreation?

14. What are the priorities that they spend money and time on?

15. Is there a particular “situation” or “aspect” they have in common?

(For example: cancer survivors, recently divorced, retiring)…

16. What are their core values?

17. What is their biggest regret?

18. Have they likely already tried to get help for their challenges (pain points)? What have they tried?

 

It’s incredible what an awareness and insight you’ll have about your client after completing this checklist. Please don’t feel that this is all; remember that these are your avatars, so get them as personalized as you can. Feel free to add anything you feel is relevant to this list!

Remember, knowing your ideal client as intimately as you can and will pay off in multiples.

By actually being able to clearly see who your ideal client is, you’ll be able to attract the ideal client and be able to create that “know, like, and trust” factor that will turn that client into a fan and a repeatable customer.