Websites generate sales. That's the whole reason they exist for many people. And mailing lists also generate sales. Targeted mailing lists, especially, are valuable; the audience they are directed at have been identified as interested in a niche item, and are likely to have a higher per-piece sale ratio than an audience on a list generated from the phone book.
Did you know you could leverage the power of the targeted mailing list for your website sales? It's not spam; you will be asking people to express interest in you mailing them things before you send them anything. And it's a great way to get a list of people you can advertise to as well.
What you're doing is building a subscriber list – a group of people who like what you offer on your web site so much they're willing to have their email box filled with more information from the site. And the primary tool you're going to use to do it is the excellent original article.
Generating the Interest
The first step in this unique method of creating a pool of targeted customers is to generate enough interest in your web site to make the customers want to get more. The best way to do this is by putting content-rich informative articles on your website.
Whether you write them, you hire someone to write them for you, or you get them from article broker like www.YourOwnArticles.com these articles should whet your customer's thirst for knowledge enough to get them to take the second step: signing up for a newsletter.
You can set the signup area as a form that emails the customer information back to you, where you'll be responsible for signing the customer up for the newsletter.
You can also set up an automated system using some freely-available software utilities – in essence, your customer's emails will bounce to the program sitting on your server, and the program itself will process the customer's request to be included on your email list.
No matter how you do it, ensure that the signup process is as simple, unobtrusive, and quick as possible. Customers asked to fill out lengthy forms or to jump through multiple email hoops aren't likely to finish the signup process.
Generating the Subscriber List
The list of emails you now have is your subscriber list. And those emails are really all you need to run your newsletter well, provided you have the content to insert into it. You will need to maintain the list, pruning out dead emails from time to time, and you should be responsive to any customer requests to be removed from the list as well.
How you maintain the list and email out the newsletter is up to you. You can create a group section on Yahoo Groups if you wish; this is one of the simplest methods of creating your group, but it also requires that your group emails include a Yahoo advertisement on each.
You can also create a group email distribution list in your home or online email as well, and send out your newsletter by hand when a new issue is ready.
The newsletter doesn't have to be fancier than plain text, though you'll see a few corporate email newsletters done in HTML; the important part of the email is that you include good solid content that the subscribers crave.
Leveraging the Subscriber List
Now that you have a subscriber list, you can do all kinds of nifty things with it. You can offer subscriber-only sales and deals; this drives fresh sales to your site, while also making your subscribers feel special because they've been singled out to participate in the sale. You can give them special discount coupons as well.
Or you can sell ad space on your newsletter to other vendors. Never sell anything inappropriate for your website; for instance, if you sell sports equipment, gym shoes or tickets to sporting events would be appropriate, while information about lawnmowers would not be appropriate and would probably result in some annoyance among your customers.
Though you can sell advertising within your newsletter itself, you should never sell your subscriber's email list. Web consumers are pretty smart, and it's not hard to figure out that you've been selling their information to someone without their consent. This is more likely to drive customers away than to make them more loyal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 partscourse on Article Marketing. You can sign up for his freeArticle Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.articlemarketingcourse.com
Did you know you could leverage the power of the targeted mailing list for your website sales? It's not spam; you will be asking people to express interest in you mailing them things before you send them anything. And it's a great way to get a list of people you can advertise to as well.
What you're doing is building a subscriber list – a group of people who like what you offer on your web site so much they're willing to have their email box filled with more information from the site. And the primary tool you're going to use to do it is the excellent original article.
Generating the Interest
The first step in this unique method of creating a pool of targeted customers is to generate enough interest in your web site to make the customers want to get more. The best way to do this is by putting content-rich informative articles on your website.
Whether you write them, you hire someone to write them for you, or you get them from article broker like www.YourOwnArticles.com these articles should whet your customer's thirst for knowledge enough to get them to take the second step: signing up for a newsletter.
You can set the signup area as a form that emails the customer information back to you, where you'll be responsible for signing the customer up for the newsletter.
You can also set up an automated system using some freely-available software utilities – in essence, your customer's emails will bounce to the program sitting on your server, and the program itself will process the customer's request to be included on your email list.
No matter how you do it, ensure that the signup process is as simple, unobtrusive, and quick as possible. Customers asked to fill out lengthy forms or to jump through multiple email hoops aren't likely to finish the signup process.
Generating the Subscriber List
The list of emails you now have is your subscriber list. And those emails are really all you need to run your newsletter well, provided you have the content to insert into it. You will need to maintain the list, pruning out dead emails from time to time, and you should be responsive to any customer requests to be removed from the list as well.
How you maintain the list and email out the newsletter is up to you. You can create a group section on Yahoo Groups if you wish; this is one of the simplest methods of creating your group, but it also requires that your group emails include a Yahoo advertisement on each.
You can also create a group email distribution list in your home or online email as well, and send out your newsletter by hand when a new issue is ready.
The newsletter doesn't have to be fancier than plain text, though you'll see a few corporate email newsletters done in HTML; the important part of the email is that you include good solid content that the subscribers crave.
Leveraging the Subscriber List
Now that you have a subscriber list, you can do all kinds of nifty things with it. You can offer subscriber-only sales and deals; this drives fresh sales to your site, while also making your subscribers feel special because they've been singled out to participate in the sale. You can give them special discount coupons as well.
Or you can sell ad space on your newsletter to other vendors. Never sell anything inappropriate for your website; for instance, if you sell sports equipment, gym shoes or tickets to sporting events would be appropriate, while information about lawnmowers would not be appropriate and would probably result in some annoyance among your customers.
Though you can sell advertising within your newsletter itself, you should never sell your subscriber's email list. Web consumers are pretty smart, and it's not hard to figure out that you've been selling their information to someone without their consent. This is more likely to drive customers away than to make them more loyal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 partscourse on Article Marketing. You can sign up for his freeArticle Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.articlemarketingcourse.com
