One of the most powerful (yet often misunderstood) tools in your marketing toolkit is an email autoresponder.

Direct Marketing emails can be sent automatically, even if you're not a copywriter!

You can use an autoresponder (such as Aweber, ConstantContact, iContact and others) to help automate regular communication in your business. Here’s some examples:

• Lead capture - as seen on this site and millions of others, you offer an incentive (discount off next service, free report, free trial, free access etc) in exchagne for someone’s email address. In its most basic form, the autoresponder will confirm the visitor’s information and deliver the promised benefit
• Customer reminders – if your service is recurring (eg hair salon, chiropractor) you can use an autoresponder series to automatically send customised reminders to your database. This will increase your sales without you having to lift a finger, and provides a valuable service to your clients who are often too busy to remember on their own
• Introduction of your services / products - once you’ve secured the prospects’ details, what you don’t want to do, is slug them hard for their credit card details. Not unless you want a high percentage of people clicking the “unsubscribe” option in your emails! Instead, you want to offer an education around the area of interest. Wherever possible, as a direct marketing copywriter I’ll create a series of 4-7 emails per product or service. In these emails we address the 2-6 biggest problems that their product or service solves. I’ll go into more details on the specific framework of these emails in future posts
• “Hand-holding” your customers through a process - for example, let’s say you’re an IT consultant and you’ve just performed an upgrade of your client’s computer systems. Your client’s going to have a bunch of questions over the coming days & weeks as they & their staff get their heads around the changes to their programs and processes. You could have a series of friendly emails written that address key areas that have changed… how to’s, things to look out for, answers to common questions asked after IT system upgrades and so on. This builds trust and a stronger relationship with your customers, as they know you care for them beyond getting your invoice paid!
• Notification of sales or special promotions - there’s nothing stopping you from scheduling 12 months of sales & marketing campaigns in advance. You can have these written by a direct marketing copywriter, then “set & forget” the whole deal. Like clockwork, your emails will be sent to your clients – normally suggesting they print out & bring the email / coupon into the store – and you reap the rewards. You’re also able to track the return on your investment far easier than you dreamed possible

In future posts I’ll go into more details around how I structure my emails in autoresponders. Of course if you have any questions, you can always email me at glen@glenparker.com.au and I’ll help where I can.

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Welcome, dear reader, to a brand new year!

While it certainly pays to be hopeful and positive, I’ve heard (from more than one reliable source) that this year is going to be… well… life-changing for many. September / October 2011 we’re likely to see some massive changes in the world economy, based largely on the US’ current (estimated) $14 TRILLION debt. To put that in perspective, in 2004 it was around $6 trillion.

Did you catch that? Around 7 years to jump $8 trillion dollars! I guess wars do cost money after all, huh…

Anyway, the big lesson for anyone this year has to be: build your nest egg now.

2011 Marketing Plan

Look, I’m no economist. I barely scraped by in my “Introduction to Financial Accounting” classes in uni (and hated every minute of it.) But I don’t need to be Warren Buffet to know that we can’t continue along the path we’re heading without some kind of major shake-up.

As a business owner, you’re in a better position than the employee to respond to this situation. After-all, you have the power to give yourself a pay-rise any day of the week instead of once per year (or worse!) You can introduce new products or services… increase your prices on your existing offerings… sell non-competing company’s products or services to your client base via joint ventures or other arrangements…

So – what’s your marketing plan for 2011? Will you finally “get around” to building that website with lead capture & autoresponders? Will you make an offer to your customers to entice them to sign up with you online? Will you launch your Facebook, YouTube, & Twitter accounts? Is this the year you’ll discover for yourself the power of video marketing, and how much Google loves the combination of WordPress and video?

What about offline marketing? Will you be sending any postcards to your customers or new prospects? Outrageous sales letters, perhaps? Are radio, TV or newspaper advertising on the horizon for you this year? Is 2011 the year you’ll give the Yellow Pages the flick, or the year you’ll ramp up your investment due to the large number of your competitors who won’t be listed… giving you greater exposure?

Whatever your plans, I hope you have plans – not just for survival, but for major growth!

And of course, you can always leave a question in the comments area below, or perhaps take advantage of my free 15 minute marketing consultation offer (at my company site) if you’d like to kick around some ideas.

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