One way to stay in touch with your customers (and prospects) is by sending them a regular newsletter. If it’s good, they’ll look forward to it every month (or week!). This is an easy and inexpensive way to stay ‘top of mind’ with your subscribers.

Here are some ideas for content to publish:

• Informative, educational “How to…” articles
• Reviews of new products
• Comparisons between similar products
• Interviews with industry experts
• Case studies (preferably involving your own customers)
• Q&A – ask for, and then answer, customer questions
• “Best of the Web” – publish links to great sites, resources, videos and articles

With an autoresponder sysem, you can ‘preload’ your newsletters months in advance, as long as you publish ‘evergreen’ content. You can send out a broadcast email when you want to announce something – a sale, a new arrival, a subscribers-only special.

7 Newsletter Ideas is a post from: IdealMedia.co.za

There are basically three kinds of sequential autoresponder you can use for email marketing:

1. Desktop software. This is software that runs on your computer, such as Mailloop. The big advantage of this kind of autoresponder is that it gives you complete control over how it’s used. The disadvantage is that any mail you send has to go through your ISP’s servers. ISPs get very nervous about bulk email, because they can have their IP addresses blacklisted if they’re suspected of allowing spammers to use their systems.

2. Server-based software. There are scripts available which you can install on your hosting company’s server. Examples are AutoResponse Plus and PHPList. You access the system through your web browser. This kind of software, again, gives you a lot of control over what you can do with it. Your hosting company may have rules about the maximium number of emails that can be sent per hour, and hosting companies can also be nervouse about spam complaints.

3. Third-party services. These are web-based services like AWeber. They place some restrictions on how you can use their services – for example, AWeber will let you upload a list of subscribers, but they insist on sending an opt-in request to each subscriber. The advantage is that they have established relationships with the large ISPs, and because they enforce their rules strictly they can offer high deliverability rates.

I highly recommend AWeber. They have been in the business for 10 years, and many Internet marketers rely on their services.

What Kinds of Autoresponder Are There? is a post from: IdealMedia.co.za

An autoresponder is a software tool which automatically sends email messages. Most email clients, like Outlook and GMail, have an ‘out of office’ or ‘vacation’ autoresponder built in. This kind of autoresponder sends out a simple message, along the lines of ‘Sorry, Mike isn’t in the office today. You can reach him on his cell phone’.

Marketers are more interested in ‘sequential autoresponders’, which allow a number of messages to be queued and sent at intervals, for instance once a week or once a month.

With these kinds of autoresponders, you can write a whole year’s worth of messages – 12 or 26 or 52, depending on how often the’re sent – reminding your subscribers that you exist, making offers, letting them know about your business.

Most autoresponder services also allow ‘broadcast’ messages, sent to everyone on the list either right now, or at a particular date and time. If you want to advertise your April sale, you can set up a message that will automatically be broadcast at the beginning of April.

One way to use an autoresponder service is to set up a regular fortnightly or monthly educational message, to keep your subscribers ‘warmed up’, and send a broadcast when there’s something special to announce.

What is an Autoresponder? is a post from: IdealMedia.co.za

Do you have a way to consistently communicate with your prospects and customers? Creating an email newsletter or ezine is an extremely cost-effective way to remind people about your company and your products.

The US Direct Marketing Association estimates that permission-based email marketing provides a return on investment (ROI) of over 4500%. In other words, every $1 spent on email marketing results in $45 in sales. That is more than double the ROI of the next most effective marketing method, direct mail.

How does one take advantage of this inexpensive and effective marketing method? Here are a couple of pointers:

The most basic elements of an email marketing system are a mailing list and a newsletter. Get people to subscribe to the newsletter, and that’s half the work done.

A newsletter helps keep your customers and prospects aware of you. Every time they receive a newsletter, they at least have to decide whether to keep it or delete it. It reminds them that you exist.

Your newsletter should be published on a schedule, regular as clockwork. You’ll need to decide whether you want to publish it once a week, twice a month or once a month, or on some other schedule. This depends on your business and your customers. Too often, and they might get overwhelmed; too seldom, and they’re likely to forget who you are.

You need to collect email addresses. The easiest way to do this is on your website. You’ll need a simple form which asks for the visitor’s name and email address. You can ask for more information if you like, but the more you ask for, the fewer subscribers you’ll get. At this stage, you want as many subscribers as possible.

You need to offer something of value in exchange for your visitor’s email address. Your newsletter alone could be valuable – maybe it’s “chock-full of special offers, subscriber-only discounts and special 2-for-1 vouchers“. You might offer them a free consultation or a useful report or white paper.

Use an autoresponder service to automate the process of adding names and email addresses to your database, and just as importantly, to handle unsubscribe requests.

You may find it valuable to segment your list. That might mean that you maintain different lists for prospects and customers. You can still send them the same newsletter, but you might want to send out special offers to customers only.

How to Increase Your Profits Without Spending More Money On Advertising is a post from: IdealMedia.co.za