By Jim Connolly
Marketing does NOT have to be expensive. Some of the most powerful marketing techniques are free or extremely low cost – like this great marketing tip!
I have a quick marketing question for you
Do you collect the email addresses of people who visit your website?
Well, you should, because these visitors are worth a fortune to your business! Remember, most of your visitors will have found your website because they have a need or interest in your services, right now – making them great potential clients! From a targeted marketing point of view, the value of these ‘leads’ to your business is massive.
With a simple email sign-up box on your website, you can very quickly build a significant list of future clients. In fact, your email sign-up box could quickly become your most powerful marketing tool! Why? Because soon, you could be writing to several hundred, several thousand (or tens of thousands) of targeted people every week – and all for free! The best part is, it’s actually really easy.
Just avoid these 2 common mistakes!
Firstly, always offer an incentive for people to send you their email address; otherwise they won’t! For example, on my site I offer a free copy of my eBook when people subscribe to my newsletter. The eBook is short, packed with valuable information and people love it!
Secondly, let people know that you will never sell or pass on their email address to anyone.
How do you use these email addresses?
The best way to get the maximum benefit from your email list, is to provide a newsletter. Your newsletter needs to offer either free advice or free, valuable information of some sort. Consider your readers as future clients and use the newsletter to show them how ‘great’ your business is!
However, make sure you do not email your list more than once a week. My newsletter is only sent every 7 to 10 days, because people hate being bombarded with email; even emails that offer great content. Pack your newsletters with great content and people will not only read them, they will pass them on too, which builds your list even faster! Pack your newsletter with advertising and they will get deleted!
This is a great way to market your services for free, to a targeted group of potential clients!
NEVER MISS A GREAT IDEA AGAIN!
Subscribe to my FREE newsletter and to welcome you, I will send you a FREE copy of my eBook; “Ten Secrets to Success!” Simply click here
If you found this useful, there are dozens of other free articles, guides and even a free audio program on my main website: www.jimconnolly.com
Filed under: Business development, Marketing, small business | Tagged: email, Marketing, newsletter, small business
A good newsletter title is really important too, to ensure that once delivered your mail is not immediately discarded.
Try to have new, useful information as well. Better to send one e-mail per fortnight with great info, rather than one a week with little or no content.
Hi Paul,
You make a good point about the title of a newsletter being important.
The title of my newsletter is simply ‘the jimconnolly.com newsletter.’ It explains exactly what it is and makes sure my readers know what has just arrived in their inbox. jimconnolly.com gets stacks of traffic and is a well-established and trusted brand.
The guess work has been totally removed from old ‘how often to send my newsletter’ question. It’s ‘no more than one every 7 days and no less than one every 21 days.’ The most widely read email newsletters are all weekly editions.
I agree fully that a great newsletter every 14 days is better than a lean newsletter every 7. People REALLY need to focus on content. It’s often overlooked, both when marketing a newsletter and also a blog! Content is king!
Thanks for the comment Paul and keep in touch!
JC
hi Jim
though i have been sending newsletters on and off over last couple years, i have just got more clarity in terms of how to make it really work for me and the benefits of developing my database with potential clients. some of this from Jim Connolly. Thank you.
recently i tested sending an informative newsletter as well as including related info on a monthly basis of national events which my target market of parents and young people might find of interest. it seemed to work as it triggered a response. i shall be doing that again to continue monitoring effectiveness and how much value it really is adding to newsletter and readers.
Jennifer McLeod
http://www.Jennifer-McLeod.blogspot.com
[...] to a client (or 500 clients). Send out a great marketing email to the people on your email list (you do have an email list don’t you?) Get new products or services, which you can sell to existing clients and call or write to them [...]
Jim, here’s a great marketing tip for you too…
In order to learn how to to write effective subject lines to get a better opening response from your mailing to your list, subscribe to some of the major email marketers and archive all their old emails – the ones you have opened and the one you did not touch. Then after a month or six, look at them again and check out the ones you opened to see what subject lines had successfully triggered you to have opened them.
[...] you want to get the best possible return on your marketing emails, make sure they arrive during the working day; between 10:30am and 3pm is [...]
[...] you want to get the best possible return on your marketing emails, make sure they arrive during the working day; between 10:30am and 3pm is [...]