It’s almost time for the holidays again and we all want to do something for our customers, right? We want to let them know how much we appreciate them and their business, and we want to wish them and their families a wonderful holiday season. Mostly, though, we’d like to score some big points so they will continue to be our customers! (Maybe we’re just afraid we’ll look stupid if we don’t do anything at all…)
The Art of Networking
Before there were computers and the Internet, before television and radio, before phones and electricity, business people still had to find ways to promote their businesses. The archaic promotional technique they used is still in practice today. The technique I speak of is networking; probably the oldest, most accepted, and least expensive means of promoting yourself or your business.
Keep Visitors Coming Back Over & Over! Offer Them What They Want!
Keep Visitors Coming Back Over & Over! Offer Them What They Want!
If you have a site you want to be “sticky” – meaning visitors will hang out at your site and check it out for awhile, and then come back for more visits due to changing content they want to see – you need to have a strategy. You need to know what your site theme needs to draw targeted visitors back again and again.
Formatting your Email Newsletters
Pop-quiz hotshot!
You’ve got to send an HTML email to a list of clients and have it display correctly across a spectrum of email clients which include Outlook, web-based, frame-based.
It has to be Netscape compatible, Eudora-friendly, Lotus Notes accessible…
What do you do?
So, you want to send HTML email to your clients, prospects or newsletter subscribers. Marketing has descended from upon high and declared it, the small business client wants it, and an executive in management has read something about it.
Well, why not? The clickthrough rates are noticeably higher on HTML email. Analytics show that customers are less likely to unsubscribe from HTML email than their text counterparts. In my last TemplateKit email newsletter (50,000+ recipients, http://www.templatekit.com/email/TK20.htm) I had 12 unsubscribes, 9 of which were text recipients. Customers simply respond with more click-throughs, more sales, more inquiries for information, but only if your message is in a form that the recipient can easily view and display correctly.
How To Follow Up A Consulting Proposal
After submitting a proposal, many consultants wait a short period of time–maybe a few days or one week, before contacting the potential client. The purpose is to find out if the proposal has been accepted, rejected, or if modifications are necessary. Contacting the potential client once is professional and acceptable. However, if your phone call or email is not returned, you will be tempted to repeatedly contact the potential client for an answer.
Resist this temptation. Hounding the potential client for an answer does not improve the situation. Don’t take it personally. After making your one inquiry about the proposal’s status, forget about it and move on. Begin searching for the next potential client.
Before you spend that money, let’s talk about history
Have you noticed all of the advertisements on the Internet from “gurus” and people who have “made it” with their Internet business? You know the ones, they tell you how in demand they are. They tell you how they get several thousand dollars for each seminar they give. They tell you how they’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars online. And they tell you they’ll give you their secrets and formulas for the “ridiculously low price of $99.95”!
If You Want Them To Hear You, Speak Their Language
You’ve probably noticed that there are some problems with our communication system. We have to use words. They are often imprecise, awkward and unable to capture the essence of what we want to say.
Harness The Power of a Strong Vision
What is your vision? How is this vision communicated to inspire you and your organisation? You don’t have a clear and powerful vision? Join the club. When I’m working with individuals, I’ve noticed that generally they fall into two distinct categories regarding having a strong vision. Either they’ve never really had the opportunity to understand the concept of having or defining their vision. Or they have a vision statement because they think they ‘should’. Remember, ‘shoulds’ represent other people’s expectations and therefore not things to which you a personally committed.
Technology That Sells: POP-UPS
Every day someone writes and asks me to “look at their site.” What they are wanting is a critique of their design, sales process, etc. Almost always there are a couple things they are missing that would greatly enhance the selling power of the site. This week I want to write a quick review of a couple of those things and even give you a file folder with some sample pages in it to show you how it all works.
Don’t you hate pop-ups? You go to a site and you are blasted with window after window advertising everything from casinos to mini-cameras.
Even though I hate pop-ups when I am surfing, as a web- marketer, I love them.
Pop-ups are one of the keys to making REAL MONEY rather than just surviving on the web. Here’s why:
Run Profitable Contests with the Aid of Autoresponders
Running a contest for your e-zine subscribers or web site visitors is one way you can generate interest and give more exposure for products or services you want to promote.
A contest could be as simple as spotting a word or a set of words within an e-zine’s issue or searching for a graphic on a site. A contest can run for one issue, or it can last for a month or more.
If you plan to run a contest, make sure you have a “contest management response system” in place.
This could be as simple as an automated e-mail receipt to let your participants know their entry has been received.
Run a contest that asks your participants to send their responses to specific e-mail addresses. Then create an automated receipt confirmation for each account.