Mistakes to Avoid
Many marketers online today are giving up on email marketing thinking it is no longer effective. Part of the problem is that small businesses are making common mistakes when using this popular form of digital marketing, that when used correctly can still be effective when orchestrating your email marketing campaign. Listed below are common email marketing mistakes to avoid.
Avoid these common mistakes when planning your next email campaign.
Misleading subject line
This is your first point of contact between you, your business and the reader. Don’t mislead or trick the reader into opening your email as this will only lessen the open rates and build mistrust for future opens. You headline needs to promise the reader that they have something to gain by opening your mail.
A lot of thought should be put into your headline to assure a high open rate. One way to ensure that your headline has success is to test a small percentage of your subscriber list by sending two different headlines with similar wording and then check the open rates. Most email marketing tools have this key feature mainly used by sophisticated marketers and frequently ignored by others.
Build Familiarity
Always make sure that when emailing your name or business name appears in the same place every time. Not only does this brand your business the reader will become familiar to your branding and know what to look for when browsing their email. When you are providing your reader with valuable content, they will keep their eye out for your trademark brand in your email.
Does Size Matter?
Many mailers’ think it’s the size of the data base that makes the difference to an emailing campaign. However, the level of engagement the ability to understand your target market and their preferences and behaviours is far more important that the size of the list. You could have a large list of thousands and only 10% of this list may be active then you will have a small audience. However, you may only have a list of 1,000 people where 75% are active and your responsive is higher. So, is not all about how big your list is but how responsive those are who are on your list.
Information Overload
You have probably either seen this happen a lot or have been guilty of doing this sometime in your email/marketing life. A big mistake when emailing is to cram the body of the email with too much information and too many links. You must remember you aim is to have your reader follow through on a call to action, not to be distracted while reading your mail. After all, you managed to get them in with your awesome subject line so now you want to give them the information they came for and turn them into a prospective qualified lead.
Wrong Call to Action
The key to good email content is to elaborate on the promise you made in the subject line while continuing to withhold just the right amount of information to encourage your recipients to click on the call to action. Many small business owners make the mistake of not having a clear call to action. Email marketing is still a cost effective sales driver and so it’s important for the business to drive their traffic via the call to action into their only store or to relevant content on their landing page.
Tacky Email Design
Many marketers tend to get carried away with the design of an email. This can be time consuming and also this can be a barrier between the reader and your business.
Avoid visual elements or animation within your email design, which can actually make your email hard to read and/or obscure the value proposition. This is especially valuable information for those using Solo Emailing systems. More times than not when you see a Solo email from a business that has been given special effects to make the email stand out, such as different coloured text in each paragraph.
Really, all you are achieving by doing this is making your email look tacky and unprofessional and not worthy of reading.
Too much of a bad thing
Sending many emails during the day can be one way to have people unsubscribing from your mailing list. This is a big no no when using email marketing as an effective marketing strategy. A comfortable mailing rate is one that is not too disturbing to your reader, after all they have subscribed to receive your emails, you just don’t want them to be overwhelmed. I would say a comfortable rate would be one every day for a week or so after sign up and then perhaps once or twice a week. This of course is if you are only emailing your personal list.
Emailing TOP TIP
Email marketing is great for building your business, introducing yourself to the online community in your niche and building and gaining more visitors to your blog. I really wouldn’t suggest that you send your business opportunity to an email list through an email marketing company. You should be building a business relationship with these large email lists and you can invite them to your blog to gain the valuable information you have to share. Once they see the valuable information you are offering, they will keep coming back and eventually may even become long term customers.
It’s still very cool to practice email marketing methods these days….. just stick to the rules and you’ll be on to a winning marketing strategy.
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If you are new to article writing you might find it a chore to write lots of articles per week.
By following the tips I give you in this article, overcoming your article writing challenge should be a breeze. It won’t be long before writing becomes routine and you’ll be writing 10 or more articles a day.
To some of us writing comes naturally but for others it can sometimes be a difficult task. For successful article marketing you need to adopt a strategy and learn some tricks for your content to flow naturally.
The best way to illustrate this is with an example.
Every time you have an idea for an article you need to jot it down in an ideas journal. You then pick one idea from your journal and use it for the core of your article. Your best results will be achieved by writing your article in a list format. Perhaps it could be a list of how to information. Write down each tip step by step, and then expand on each tip with about 3 or 4 sentences about each one. This will act as a skeleton for the 10 articles you are going to write and you can even use this outline for an article on its own.
After you have made your list take each point in your list and turn each point into an individual article. Add an introduction and a summary at the end to add up to about an extra 150 words. If you are having trouble finding the words you can always use an example if it is appropriate to the article or a story that explains what you are trying to say to your reader. Use stories from your own personal experience, as stories also make good articles.
So, now you have an article about the first tip on your list. All you do now is rinse and repeat for your second tip until you are at the end of your list. I never run out of ideas for writing articles because I always jot down every idea that comes to mind in my ideas journal.
Another way to resource article ideas
I’ve been doing this for a while now and you can also use this method. When you are waiting for a doctor’s appointment for example most people have a flick through a magazine…. right? There is an endless supply of article ideas you can find in magazines and then adapt them to suite your niche. What I usually do is just put them into the notes section of my phone and put them into my ideas journal when I am at my laptop next. This way you will never run out of ideas.
Now that I’ve given you my secret to article writing, you should give it a try. You will be amazed by the results. You will start getting unique visitors to your website in droves just by using this step by step method. This simple tool will save you loads of time when submitting your articles to directories.
Posted on 26 May '10 by Sandy, under CopyWriting Skills. 1 Comment.
What exactly is Article Marketing?
Article marketing is the process of writing small to medium size articles about your niche. You then go through the process of submitting your articles to article directory sites to promote your article. This in turn brings targeted traffic to your website. This is one of the easiest ways to generate free online traffic to your website.
How long should your Article be?
As a rule I generally write articles between 300 and 500 words. If they are much longer than this you can make the mistake of boring your reader to tears and find they will click off your article before they get to the punch line and will miss the opportunity to send them to your website. Make your article interesting and take your reader all the way to the end. The punch line is also known as the author’s resource box. This is where you will drive your traffic to your blog or website to promote your product and is a crucial part of your article writing and marketing.
How to drive your traffic
One of the best ways to drive traffic from your recourse box to your website is to offer your reader a free eBook. Many online marketers offer free eBooks for you to give away through your resource box. Everyone likes something for free! A good idea is to start a collection of eBooks targeting your niche. i.e. Internet Marketing, Article writing, traffic generation, whatever is specific for your niche. Also available for you to promote yourself even more is a branded eBook. This is an ebook that someone else has written that gives you the opportunity for a small fee to put your own name and websites in. So when anyone clicks on the link in the book your business or website is promoted.
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Posted on 24 May '10 by Sandy, under CopyWriting Skills. 14 Comments.
Content isn’t just Content, you only have to visit the site of Shelby Larson and Heather Sneed to know there’s a lot more to content than you think. Shelby and Heather are trainers with my primary company and I’m lucky enough to have access to all their awesome training techniques and be kept up to date with what’s working and what’s not as far as content goes.
Time Consuming
Having said this, it is time consuming keeping the content of your blog up to date yourself. Letting your readers know the latest on what’s happening in your industry. It can also be extremely time consuming writing articles, finding new and interesting topics to write about and then having to spend hours submitting them to social sites and letting the world know that you have a new article online.
Of course, you can always use share tools and send your content to others via twitter, facebook, digg, friendfeed, etc.
Organic Content
Writing articles and submitting them to article sites such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles and hundreds of other article sites is one way to create organic traffic generation. The great thing about organic marketing is that it’s virtually slap proof! However, the best thing about organic traffic is that it keeps on keeping on. Content that you post on the web today will keep growing month after month, year after year.
Outsourcing
But like I said keeping up with this is a never ending job and is sometimes best to outsource this time consuming task. This brings me to the reason for writing this article, outsourcing! Content Divas, Shelby and Heather are exceptional at taking care of your content needs, such as content for your article submissions and your blog site, press releases and in-depth keyword research and much more.
If you’re business needs to be taken to the next level I highly recommend you visit Content Divas or visit me personally to find out more about grabbing Shelby and Heather’s free training by joining me in my primary business.
Until next time……
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prepare2succeed@gmail.com
Posted on 20 April '10 by Sandy, under CopyWriting Skills. 11 Comments.
Grab your free copy of Make Your Words Sell and watch your list build like Crazy!
Good copy writing is a skill I thought I had a handle on. Having read a myriad of books on the subject I can say I pretty much have it down pat. However, I am always finding new material to use in my writing ventures. When I found Make Your Words Sell I was literally like a sponge and couldn’t put it down until I’d read all the way to the very end. I realised at the end of the book that it was just the beginning of a new chatper in my writing skills. Always Learning.
Did you ever see a headline that absolutely demands attention?
A headline that says to you “Hey, I’ve got this for you!” Or one that completely seduces you to click on it?
I know I have, those are the headlines that people are making money with and a lot of it….. Now you can tap into this writing technique yourself with Make Your Words Sell and I’m giving it to you for free today.
But before you get your copy I just want to wet your appetite a little so you can know just what’s in store for you with this mind blowing book. If you can’t wait you can go to the bottom of this page and get your copy right Now!
Here’s just a snippet of what’s in store for you…..
How to create and develope ….
- Your own marketing concepts
- Your own individual Style
Learn how to create persuasive sales-generating headlines and copy that will motivate your specific prospects into buying from you.
You will never copy anyone else’s emails again, you will be writing your own original sales copy unique to your own situation and product.
Have you ever read a headline that has grabbed your attention and then you read the body… and it says “now that I have your attention” Yuck! I have to say I honestly feel cheated and click off the email immediately! You too hey!
Lets get real for a min. You want people to get to know you, you want them to join your list so you can share your information with them and you want people to eventually buy from you. So why would you trick them into opening your email…? Why? Because desperate people do desperate things! By tricking your reader you have just lost a potential customer. They will not join your list and they will never buy from you. Once they are gone, they are gone forever!
And Yes, I love this book can you tell… lol. You will too! (click on the book)
Time to Grab Your Free Copy Below
I love sharing great content with my readers and always endeavour to give value to help you achieve in your business.
Warm regards
Want to market your business online using free Marketing strategies? CLICK HERE!
Posted on 30 March '10 by Sandy, under CopyWriting Skills. No Comments.
