How Important are Autoresponders?

How Important are Autoresponders?

Autoresponders – The More You Know, The More Effective They Are

If you have signed up with an autoresponder service, like Aweber, Constant Contact or Mailchimp,  you need to either take the time to learn how to use it or hire someone who does. Not knowing how to use the service will lead to many mistakes, and your customers and potential customers will most likely see every mistake you make!

As soon as you have complete the sign up process, load one email address into the autoresponders mailing list – yours. Your Virtual Assistant will know how to use all of the features of the autoresponder.

Work with it, sending messages to your own address, until you know your autoresponder service inside and out! This may take a little time, but after a few hours or so, you should know all that there is to know, and you will be able to set your autoresponders up much more effectively in the future. Taking the time to learn it or hiring someone who already knows, will not only save time in the future, it may also help you tweak and tune your autoresponder messages and tracking in a way that increases your responses!

How Important are Autoresponders to Internet Marketing?

Internet Marketing and autoresponders essentially go hand-in-hand. In today’s online business world, you simply cannot succeed at Internet marketing without the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders are used to achieve many of the marketing tasks that are essential to a successful online business.

Internet marketing can be very time consuming. Whether you do affiliate marketing or market your own products, an autoresponder is a big part of your marketing arsenal. Autoresponders are used to keepin contact with your past customers, and to develop a relationship with potential customers.

An autoresponder can be used to deliver sales messages to your opt-in customer list. It can be used to deliver email courses, to send reminders, and even to help you build an opt-in list if you don’t already have one. There are many creative ways you can use your autoresponder to make more sales and to build customer relations.

Any successful marketer will tell you that there are two tools that are vital to any type of online marketing – an opt-in list and an autoresponder. In fact, most marketers will agree that you could take away all of their other marketing tools, but they would fight to the death to keep the list and the autoresponder!

Build Interest With Autoresponder Messages

If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders?

It’s really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers those seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message – this won’t work.

You build interest slowly. Start with an informative message – a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.

Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product – giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch – not your first one! With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic – free information! This is what will keep them interested in what you have to say.

This type of marketing is an art. It may take time to get it exactly right. Use the examples that other marketers have set for you. Pay attention to the messages that you receive from other marketers. Start a ‘swap’ file, and keep those messages. Use some of the better sales copy for your own autoresponder messages – just make sure that yours doesn’t turn out to be an exact copy of someone else’s sales message!

Remember not to start with a hard sale. Build your potential customers interest. Keep building on what the problem is, and how your product or service can solve that problem or fill that need. If you are doing this right, by the time the potential customer reads the last message in that series, they will be convinced enough to make a purchase!

Please share any tips you have from your own marketing journey or if you have any questions! Also, you can join our Facebook group here and ask!

 

Building a List is Building Your Business

Building a List is Building Your Business

What is an email list? And why is it so important?  An email list is a group of individuals who subscribed to get updates and other important information about your business. Why are they important? The main reason is the one on one with your audience.

Here are four things that come with having these personal connections and what an email list could bring to your business:

Feedback:

If there is something you are unsure about in your business, in that email request feedback, give a link to vote in a poll or write a comment that will come directly back to you! With this feedback, you can better understand what your customers wants and needs are and how you can fulfill all of them!

Growth:

The customers that go through all of the trouble to subscribe are probably your loyalist, most crucial community members. Using your list you can send out invited to your events, to increase attendance, ask them to share it with their friends or bring a few people to the event you host. You want them coming back for more, more fun, more laughs, more of your products and content. One thing will lead to another you, also you can monitor how much that community is growing and stay interactive.

Communication:

Just the fact that you have a direct line to your customers, as soon as an idea hits, you can instantly communicate it! This not only improves their interaction but also can help make you money! You heard me right, MONEY! Instead of being the person in the mall striving to k\give out a hundred flyers to people who will only throw them in the trash, this email list can help you broaden your audience and cut straight to the people who are actually interested, who would keep the flyer!

Social Media:

You may have heard this before, but you can’t control social media. This business list is yours, just YOURS! You don’t own Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform unless you are a Mark Wahlberg of the world, of course. Not owning it means that you can’t control it, whether you have twenty million subscribers, the app could be gone in the blink of an eye, but not this list. You have complete control over everything that is published to this list, who is on the list, and every other small detail to help keep it completely yours.

Those are some of the essential benefits of building an email list.  When in doubt, email it out! With these lists, you can build your business, customize it, and keep growing with it. The benefits outway the nonexistent negatives and I hope I’ve helped inspire you to do your business a favor and start creating that email list as soon as possible! (If you are curious on what platform to use…and yes, this is an affiliate link, but I truly recommend Aweber!!! Click here to check it out!)

Telesummit: Online Event to Grow Your Email List

Telesummit: Online Event to Grow Your Email List

Build Your Email List by Doing an Online Event…..a Telesummit

Building your list is essential in today’s online business world. The best way to do that is by hosting an online event(telesummit). This way your list is genuinely interested in what you do! When done properly, you could capture the attention of possibly thousands of prospective customers.

You may be asking what is a telesummit(or teleseminar). Wikipedia says it best….

“Teleseminars provide an opportunity for a host to provide information to a large number of people at one time. It allows a trainer to train many participants at once, one on many rather than one on one.[3] These conference calls are typically recorded. There is typically a fixed period of time devoted to the presentation of information followed by another fixed period of time for questions and answers.”

Benefits of a telesummit:

  • Lead Generation: Telesummits are very effective at generating traffic,opt-ins, and sales. You get to use not only your own audience but that of at least 20 others….reaching potentially 100,000+ people!
  • Sets you up as an expert in your field. 
  • Expands your market reach

A few things you need to know when beginning the telesummit journey:

First and foremost, they should NOT be stressful! They should be exciting and fun.

Next, determine your theme. Know your niche. It needs to be something that your audience will WANT to hear and be a part of.

There are a few ways to do a telesummit. Your options are audio, video, or live. Prerecorded is the best option as you can edit and everything can look professional. But the other ways work well, too!

Hire a VA. Seriously, you cannot do it all alone. Especially if you have never done one or never used all the platforms needed (Aweber, OptimizePress, WordPress, Vimeo, Pretty Links….just to name a few!) There are a lot of little pieces of the puzzle that can be overwhelming unless that is ALL you have to do. There are a lot of platforms you will need and you do not want to be working on this last minute.

Having a good email list is vital to your online businesses. You must email market to people so that they know you are there. They need to have you in the forefront of their minds and the only way to do that is by having a strong list.

I found a great article that tells more about the importance of building an email list from 7 amazing experts. Check it out here.

Sign up to receive my free Telesummit Checklist HERE!

And contact me if you’re ready to get started or have a few questions! Send an email to tracey (at) bigskyvs (dot) com. Or schedule a time to chat Here.

Why I became a VA and more about ME!

Why I became a VA and more about ME!

Over the weekend I decided to make a list of topics for blog posts for my business. While doing so, I thought it might be nice for people to really know who I am, outside of business as well as inside. To be honest, I’m an open book. But this will be fun! And if I fail to mention something you are curious about, PLEASE ask me in the comments!!! xoxo

A little background. I grew up in a small town in Eastern Montana. It is a farming/ranching community. And I only THOUGHT it was small. Fast forward through school years and I moved to an even SMALLER town. I would say we have MAYBE 150 people. I joke that I think that number includes cats and dogs…..maybe even chickens? Who knows.

Our daughter is in high school, and she has 5 other students in her Junior Class. We have NO second graders this year. We know pretty much everyone who lives here. Our nearest Wal-Mart is 90 miles away one direction, 120 the other. And we love it! Wouldn’t trade it for the world…(not now anyway….years ago……that’s a whole other story…lol….live and learn!)

This is one of the few years we only have one child in our home. I’ve only given birth once, but we have had several kids in and out of our home. First, we raised two nephews for 5 years. Before the second one graduated, we decided to do foster care. And you know how they say, we don’t really know how long you’ll have these two little boys(ages 2 and 3) but it shouldn’t be too long. Two years later, we ended up giving them back to their mom. (side note….2 years later they are back in foster care in a different town….) After that we’ve had a few other foster kiddos. Most very temporary. One for 5 months who was just a baby, 3 months old. A charmer, I tell ya! We would have kept him forever. But of course, he went back to his mama, too. And from what I understand, she’s doing very well with him! A blessing for sure! Last year we added an exchange student from Turkey. We had her for 10 months and every one of us enjoyed her! We miss her every single day. So enough about kids…..even if they’ve never lived with me, I “claim” quite a few:-)

So onto the “interview”…..:-)

What do I love about where I live? 

It is a small and close-knit town and it is safer than the bigger towns!

How did I end up where I am today: 

Necessity. I live in a small town and there are very few jobs, and I love having the flexibility of working from home to be more available for my family. Before that, I ran a local cafe. It wasn’t something I loved, so I looked for something else to do. A friend I had made years before online had extra work and needed help, so I started there, and just started learning more and trying more things. Now, I have been in my business for 9 years and can’t imagine another way of life! I love helping small businesses grow and succeed!

What do I enjoy doing, outside of work?

Reading, watching tv with my family, cooking. We found out my daughter and I have Celiac Disease so cooking has taken a big, new, adventurous turn! It is getting better, but it was pretty depressing to start out with!!!

What type of work am I best at?

This is a hard one….I love doing almost everything I do, so if I had to choose a few, one would be working with blog posts, working with coaches and telesummits.

What is my favorite way to communicate?

Emails are the best. But I also love Slack!

I hope this post shows that I love what I do. I love my clients. I love learning new skills. If you sign on as a client of mine, you are signing on also, as a new friend! Your business means a lot to me. If YOU aren’t successful, I am not successful. 

You can see more about me on my LinkedIn profile.

If you want to book a chat with me click here!

 

 

 

20 Ways to Grow Your Email List

20 Ways to Grow Your Email List

Your email list is extremely important. You need to be working on building the list daily because email marketing is 75-80% of all landing page traffic. When you launch a new product or service, your audience needs to hear about it directly. You need it to promote it to your email list which should be your targeted market! As a result, you will see your sales go up!

Here I share 20 ways to grow your email list.

  1. Host a webinar or Telesummit, making signing up a requirement to participate.
  2. Create a website that has several places where they can sign up for your newsletter.
  3. Encourage your current subscribers to forward and share your emails.
  4. Add a link to your email signature. Have you ever used WiseStamp?
  5. Use your Facebook business page to promote an offer that requires them to sign up.
  6. Add a call to action to your FB cover photo that encourages them to sign up with their email.
  7. Add a call to action to all YouTube videos.
  8. Collect email addresses at offline events.
  9. Create a quiz that requires that they enter their email address.
  10. Pin your free offering optin on Pinterest.
  11. Look for guest blogging opportunities.
  12. Host a Twitter chat!
  13. Comment on other people’s blog posts, using your website URL that goes to your optin.
  14. Add a call to action to your podcasts telling your audience how to sign up for your lead magnet.
  15. Create a free, online tool and have users sign up with their email address.
  16. Utilize SEO to drive organic traffic to your website.
  17. Consistently connect with other bloggers.
  18. Run a Facebook ad
  19. Create content consistently. Killer content.
  20. Make your blog posts available to download.

Work on your email list consistently. This is how you grow your business. This is how you get your valuable information out there. Never stop. Never give up. Just keep moving forward and taking action. You can do this!

 

 

Email Marketing is Essential to Your Small Business!

Email Marketing is Essential to Your Small Business!

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail as a means of communicating messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

Email marketing is an essential, efficient tool for business owners, large and small, ever since the introduction of the Internet. It is a form of direct marketing which uses email to let customers and potential customers know what is going on in their business. It shares sales, new products or just simply reminds them they are there, ready to be of assistance.

Email allows businesses to reach out to their customers with important information about their business. Often they will have email offers that are only available to those on their email list. It is extremely cost effective for these businesses to send emails versus print mailings. It is also quicker to get an email ready and sent out, therefore saving not only time but money.

Another benefit of email marketing is you can segment your customer list. This way you can send targeted marketing campaigns which will increase your sales conversion! Which you can track a lot easier with email marketing versus sending print mailings. Email marketing programs are set up with great analytics so you can tweak it each time to make the conversions higher.

In this day and age, emails are the way to go. Not only do they take less time, but they are more eco-friendly. It is unbelievable how much junk mail is in the trash when we go get our mail. So much waste! Emails you can delete or save and either way, your desk is not piled to the ceiling!

Are you ready to start your email marketing campaign? Do you need assistance? Contact me! I am here to help you!

If you would like to look at one of the best emailing systems, here is my affiliate link to Aweber.