 Chapter 19 - Start Your Internet Marketing AutopilotSequential Auto respondersWhat the heck is an auto responder or a sequential e-mail ? Pay attention because I am about to describe the most important part of all the Internet marketing systems I ve researched and tried. This tactic and tool, is the glue that holds the entire sales process together. Better yet, it automates the work so that you do not have to remember or do anything to be in constant contact with your customers. In the old days, the fax machine automated some task by having a special fax-back code. You could request a template fax from a fax machine without the owner having to manually send the fax to you. The owner loaded the fax machine with ready-made faxes once and assigned a code to each document. The customer who wanted the information in that particular fax only had to call the number and the fax machine would automatically send the right documents. An e-mail auto responder works the same way. You create a message once. Whenever someone sends the auto responder an e-mail, it automatically replies immediately with the message. Sequential Auto responders Place your ad on thousands of sites with BidVertiser. Get $20 in FREE clicks. Key Point! While auto responders were helpful, the real magic comes when you can send a series of messages over time. Why? Done correctly you can create a hands- off automated follow-up system that constantly contacts all of your prospects, customers, partners, affiliates, anyone that you need to keep in touch with. You can create a Lead Factory , a completely automated system for creating customers. Consistent Follow-up Gets Results Just to give you some examples of why this is so important, understand that: - 48% of all salespeople give up after the first call What this means is that 9 out of 10 leads that go to real sales reps never get followed up past the fourth contact. Yet these leads end up buying.
It just takes some time to build trust. How long does it take for a lead or request to turn into a purchase? What is most important though is that you also need consistent contact to build a customer relationship. On average, it takes close to 7 contacts before the average customer will buy. When it comes to our customer online:
How does the live sales professional react?
What this means is that your Virtual Selling System has to follow up more than 7 times over a period of time that is appropriate for your product or service. Key Point! On Average, You Have To With no trust, no credibility and no relationship the online customer needs to be developed and nurtured with constant value-added information over time. While you may need to have customers in the short term to pay the bills, the online buyer may not be in position to buy (mentally) for a period of months. Think about what this means to your business. Online or otherwise! E-mail marketing and the use of a sequential auto responder is the most powerful idea in this book and something that I am positive my Mom never ever told me about. Blast Away?You have put the time and energy into your Internet marketing program. You have followed all the steps, now it is time to start sending e-mail to all of those contacts that your Internet marketing system has collected. Blast away! Wronnnnnnnnnggggg... No blasting. No spamming. No rushing to make the sale in the first e-mail. This is a long-term commitment; use a series of e-mail over time to build the relationship with your contacts. Your first job is to create a scheduled series of e-mails over a period of time. This has to be done upfront. You are building an e-mail campaign. Actually e-mail campaigns that are designed to build trust and credibility result in your contacts becoming so comfortable with you online they will give your their credit card information online. Your E-zine Your e-zine is the one regular touch that allows you to communicate directly to individuals who have asked to receive information directly from you and for that reason I am not including it in the e-mail campaign list. Jupiter communications reports that e-mail marketing will generate revenues of over 7.5 billion dollars by 2005. In fact, the number of e-mail messages being sent has been greater than the amount of traditional snail mail posted for some time now. The e-mails from the following campaigns are the key to this entire program. Building your list and sending a series of e-mails to the list is strategy in a nutshell. For Internet marketers, e-mail is special because it provides the instant results and very low costs. You can test on the fly and in real time. It takes only a couple of minutes to set up and send compared to a traditional offline direct mail campaign and best of all, if you use the e-mail in the manner that I am suggesting you will find an amazing response rate. There are really only two types of e-mail marketing. Unsolicited Commercial e-mail (UCE) and opt-in direct mail. By no means am I suggesting that you apply any of the following strategies to e-mail addresses that you have not earned the right to reach. What do I mean by that? Only send these campaign e-mails to e-mail addresses that your sales engine has captured. If they did not come from one of your Internet marketing activities or personal contacts, do not place the contact on a campaign. You have not earned the right to market to them and you are spamming. This includes lists that you have purchased from third parties. There is another complete strategy for those addresses that we do not have time to cover. You work like crazy bringing in potential customers at the front end of the sales process. You work day and night finding leads. What happened at the back end? If you were not able to convert your traffic into a sale the first time they visited and then you completely ignored them, they never set foot in your website again. Do you want to know why they ignored you, why it was so easy for them to put you out of their minds? It is because you ignored them. You thought that the opportunity to influence was gone, never to return. The good news is that there are lots of companies making the same terrible error. Ninety percent of your online and offline competitors are making the same mistake. A catch and release philosophy will kill your business. Let us look at some possible e-mail campaigns. Remember the purpose of any of the e-mails that you send in the campaign is to bring the reader back to your mini-site. If you include great information in the e-mail, you have a seamless and non-threatening way to market to your contact list. You leverage the natural tendencies of your customer, the need for current relevant information and the need to get online to check e-mail. Because you are sending e-mails to your list, you visit the customer instead of forcing the customer to visit you. This immediate connection to your customers and prospects gives Internet marketing lots of flexibility. Still, there can be problems. Since the small business market is driven by word of mouth, advertising should always remind you that this is a two-way street. A bad word travels just as fast as a good word. Key Point! What this means is that you cannot just send e-mail to anyone out of the blue. Remember the theme based content site is all about earning the right to market to your potential customers. In this section, we will look at a number of ways to add to your list of e-mail addresses and prospective customers. You are providing valuable information to the visitor on your website. What are some other strategies that you can use to bring new visitors to your site so that you can capture their e-mail addresses. Mini-site Ready? The e-mails that you send in the campaigns contain a single call to action. VISIT THE MINI-SITE NOWThe reader will either click on the link and be brought to the mini-site or they will not. Pretty simple really! The more effective you are in sending e-mails that gets that click through response, the greater your chance of selling online. |
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