Email marketing & mail shots Archives | Page 3 of 28

What keeps your prospects awake at night?

August 13, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Do you need to attract more highly-motivated clients or customers? If you do, here’s (part of) a strategy I use with business owners that consistently produces fantastic results.

It starts with a question.

What keeps your prospective clients awake at night?

There are 2 broad answers to that question.

The things they’re worried about. Their fears, apprehensions or concerns.
The things they’re excited about. Their goals, dreams and the opportunities ahead of them.

Here’s the thing

Anything that keeps them awake at night is a super-high priority to them. It’s where their urgent attention is. Make no mistake, these are red-hot, prospective clients.

In order to help them and benefit from this opportunity, your task is twofold.

You need to determine exactly what they’re worried or excited about.
You need to clearly demonstrate how your service will help them in that key area.

Most marketing doesn’t do this. Instead, it focuses on how great the provider is. How happy they are to help. How their clients or customers love them. And it’s totally ineffective.

You need a better strategy. Like the kind I develop for my clients. Their marketing speaks directly to the need of their prospect.

It addresses that thing, which is keeping their prospect awake at night. Only after that, does it position my client as the answer. Get this right and it attracts enquiries from super-motivated people, eager to take action!

Take a look at the various marketing assets you use. Do they focus primarily and directly on the needs of your prospective client or customer? If not, you’re needlessly leaving money on the table and missing out on a massive opportunity.

5 Tips to help you build a huge, valuable newsletter list

July 18, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Here are 5 tips, to help you build a huge and valuable newsletter readership or list.

Let’s go.

1. Go easy on the pitches

Make sure it’s a newsletter and not a badly disguised advertisement. Here’s the thing: People avoid advertising. We skip the commercials on TV. We pay developers to remove the ads from the free version of their apps. We see advertisements as unwelcome interruptions.

If your newsletter reads a little too much like a sales pitch, it will be largely ignored. This leads nicely into the next point.

2. Be useful

The more useful your newsletter is, the more your readers will value it and share it. Your ultimate goal is to build a large, targeted reader community, who become either clients, customers or advocates. None of that can be achieved with predictable, pedestrian content.

Useful content is what gives your newsletter wings. It’s what inspires people to subscribe, stay subscribed, share and make purchasing decisions. So, before you hit send on a newsletter, make sure it contains valuable, useful information. Provide answers to your reader’s problems. Share useful tips. Point your readers to helpful resources. You get the idea.

The more value you pack into each newsletter, the more your readers will value it… and the more they will value you. Think about that for a moment.

3. Get the design right

Even if your content is wonderful, people won’t take it seriously if the design looks poor. The first bite is with the eye.

If your newsletter provides valuable information, but the design looks amateurish or outdated, it’s like serving a delicious meal on a dirty plate.

So invest in the best design or newsletter template you can. Because whether your newsletter looks cheap or is presented professionally, it all reflects back on you.

4. Ask readers to share

Even if readers think your newsletter is great, it may not occur to them to share it. People are busy. Really busy. By reminding them, you plant the idea of sharing the newsletter in their mind. Moreover, you do this at the exact point, where they have just read it and enjoyed it. I used to have a section at the bottom of my newsletter, which said:

“If you have found this newsletter interesting, please share it with your friends”.

When I added that short message to my newsletter, the results were immediate and measurable. It’s amazing what a simple reminder can do.

5. Help it spread

Convert people who had your newsletter forwarded to them, into subscribers.

Imagine your friend had just forwarded a great newsletter to you. You’d want to get a regular copy, right? You don’t want to have to rely on your friend, remembering to forward each edition to you. So, I added the following sentence to the above message:

“If you have had this newsletter forwarded to you and would like a regular copy, click here.”

Never underestimate the power of a subtle, non-pushy reminder.

Make no mistake, newsletters can be an extremely powerful marketing asset. It’s why I make my blog available in newsletter format. And it’s why I ask you to take your newsletter seriously and invest in it accordingly. Give it the time and effort it needs.

Because the rewards for getting it right are huge. No. Bigger than that.

How to make your marketing massively more effective

May 28, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Take a quick look at the following 2 statements. Which of them do you find the most appealing?

I wrote this blog post, now I want you to read it.
Business owners often struggle with this challenge, so I wrote this quick tip to help you.

Unsurprisingly, your marketplace is massively more attracted to the second statement. Despite this, the majority of small and medium sized businesses use the first approach in their marketing.

Rather than focusing on the wants and needs of their marketplace, they focus on what they themselves want. And it’s costing them a fortune in missed sales opportunities or client enquiries.

I received one such email earlier today. It started off with; “We’re delighted to announce our summer 2019 range is in stock and available to order”.

Let’s unpack that headline and see what message it sends to the reader.

The vendor is excited.
The vendor has an announcement.
The vendor has new stock.
They want me to order it.

As you can see, they’ve given me (I’m an existing customer) very little motivation to do anything. Their message is all about them and what they want. By switching the focus to their customers, they could have built a more compelling message. Instead, they’ll be wondering why that email’s response rate is so low.

The lesson here

The lesson is pretty obvious when you see an example broken down, like the one above. But sometimes in our eagerness to market our products or services, we can unintentionally make similar mistakes.

This is why I recommend you deliberately check, to ensure the focus of your future marketing is always about “them”. Also, review your existing marketing and shift the emphasis of any self-focused material, so that it’s them-focused… their wants and needs.

Show them how passionate you are about helping them. Show them you care.

And make solving their problems the cornerstone of your marketing.

Why lists dominate marketing. And why you should use them!

May 21, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Ever wondered why so many articles, blog posts, videos and newsletters are based around the idea of a list?

Yes, you’re right. It’s because they’re extremely popular. People love them. And it’s easy to see why.

Lists promise lots of ideas. And fast!

List-based content promises a number of bite-sized ideas or suggestions. And fast! So when we see “10 habits of highly successful business owners“, we’re not expecting an in-depth examination of commercial success.

No.

We’re expecting ideas. And we hope that at least one of those ideas will help us in some way. If it does, it will repay the 3 or 4 minutes we invested in reading it.

This begs the question… Does your marketing mix contain list-based content?

If not, I suggest you give it a try. Lists are perfect for sharing, which makes them ideal if you want to expand your reach on social networks. New readers who discover your work through list content, will then get the chance to see your more detailed work. Others will follow you on the networks, where they see your lists shared. Almost all of my most shared blog posts are lists.

Lists can also be very powerful, when it comes to increasing your email marketing open rates. Email marketing that has a list in the subject line, can result in massively increased open rates.

Here’s why.

Most small business owners are not expert copywriters. As such, the subject lines they use for their email marketing tend to under-perform. And poorly written subject lines result in low open rates. This means no matter how good their marketing message is, very few people will see it.

Using an average list title as the subject line of a marketing email, will always out-perform an average, regular subject line.

So, should I focus exclusively on lists, Jim?

No. No you shouldn’t. Seriously. Don’t!

Allow me to explain.

True, there are YouTubers making a fortune from creating only list-based videos. And yes, there are sites that attract millions of readers, who rely very heavily on list-based content. However, relying exclusively on lists is a bad fit for most small business owners. They should be used sparingly.

For example, I could have written this post as a list.

It would have taken me a lot less time to write.
It would have been shared a lot more on social networks.
And the email version of the post would have been opened by a lot more people.

However, I wanted to dig a little deeper into one thing… the marketing effectiveness of lists. I didn’t want to weaken that focus with “15 Reasons why lists dominate the internet”.

Here’s the thing

Sometimes, you need to offer more substance around one subject. Other times, an issue could be impacting your readers and you need to address it. And there are times when you want to share one really useful idea, which wouldn’t work if you broke it down into a list of sub-ideas.

In other words, that same surface-level approach that makes lists so popular, renders them useless for anything that requires depth.

So mix it up.

If you haven’t already used list-based blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts or newsletters, give it a go. Experiment. Test different types of list. Measure the feedback. Check things (metrics) including; sales, leads, open rates, social shares and new subscribers.

In short, if you’re not embracing list-based content, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Stop waiting for things to pick up

May 20, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Do you ever wonder what’s stopping you from getting enough high quality sales leads or enquiries?

This is a problem, which new clients often have when we first start working together. So today, I thought I’d share a very brief overview of how I turn things around for them.

Super-effective marketing is based on a 3 step process. It motivates people to take action, now. Let’s break that down.

Motivates people.
To take action.
Now.

Motivates people

Your prospective clients are busy. On top of this, they’re bombarded with notifications all day long, from people and apps demanding their attention. Faced with this reality, your marketing needs to rise above through all that noise. It needs to grab their attention, then generate enough desire for them to engage with your message.

None of this can be achieved, with the common marketing tactics you hear about in marketing seminars, or read about in marketing books / marketing websites. Why? Because those commonly taught tactics are already overused. People tune them out. They fail to make an impression. So they’re ignored.

To take action

To compel a prospective client to take action, your marketing needs to make a direct request. Note I used the singular ‘request’ there. Not request(s). The more options you offer, the less likely anyone is to do anything. So, make a single, focused, direct request.

Now

It’s not enough to ask the prospective client to take action. You need to ask them to do (whatever) now… while you have their attention and their motivation is high.

Why the rush?

Simple. Even if they love your message. Even if they’re genuinely interested. Their attention will soon jump onto the next thing. They’ll tell themselves “I’ll do it later”. And you’ll lose them.

If your marketing isn’t generating daily, qualified sales leads or client enquiries, it’s failing you in at least 1 of those 3 areas. There’s no need for this to happen to you. These are easy wins, if you choose to fix the problem correctly.

25 Recommendations to massively improve your business results

May 18, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Embrace brevity. Shorter messages are more powerful. Most marketing I see is 75% too long.
Stop waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Make it happen. Create it.
People buy what they want. Not what they need. It’s why people renew their phones every 12/24 months, even though their ‘old’ phone works fine. They want a new phone. They treat themselves to a new phone. But they don’t need it. Once you understand the difference, you can improve your marketing accordingly.
Keeping your promises is a proven way to build a great reputation. (Read more).
You don’t have any clients, customers or subscribers. They’re not yours. You simply borrow them. This means there’s no room for complacency. You need to earn and then re-earn their custom, attention and trust.
If you want your marketplace to talk enthusiastically about your business, do something worth talking about. If it’s remarkable enough, they’ll remark on it!
A confused mind always says no. Keep your marketing as brief and clear as possible. Fewer options. Fewer words. Less fluff.
The most successful business owners decide who their ideal clients are, then market exclusively to this super-valuable group. You should do the same. The average business owner relies on DIY marketing and takes whatever comes along.
People buy for their reasons. Not yours.
If you don’t receive regular referrals from your existing clients or customers, it’s a warning. A warning that, at best, you’re delivering what they expect. When you exceed expectations, they tell their friends. (Read More).
The word ‘Webinar’ carries a huge amount of negative baggage. Never use it. Because there’s always a better alternative. Always.
When you want to generate high quality cash flow fast, find new products for your existing customers. It’s far quicker and more profitable, than finding new customers for your existing products. I’ve helped hundreds of business owners enjoy windfall profits this way. Yes, windfall profits. It’s that easy.
Include deadlines in your marketing messages. They’re an exceptionally powerful way to motivate people to take action. (Read more).
Your brand is either working for you or against you. If you haven’t intentionally created a brand for your business, it’s working against you. It’s losing you money.
Everything your business does, is marketing. The way you answer the phone, your payment terms, the way you reply to emails, your location, the way you write, the design of your website, your prices, your social network activity… it’s all marketing. This means it needs to be intentional and consistent.
Don’t rely on Facebook, Linkedin or any third party for your communication channel. It’s like building a house on rented land. Instead, attract people via third party platforms. And then encourage them to subscribe to your email list.
Building an email list is a massively better option, than buying a list. The people on paid-for lists don’t want to hear from you. These so called opt-in lists are mainly just lists of people, who completed a form on a website once, without reading the small print.
The most successful business owners decide who their ideal clients are, then market exclusively to this super-valuable group. You should do the same. The average business owner relies on DIY marketing and takes whatever comes along.
Businesses with a fixed marketing budget never achieve much. It shows they regard marketing as a cost, rather than an investment. This is then reflected in their results.
The most powerful marketing is permission based. When people subscribe to your list, your message is treated very differently, than an unsolicited email from a needy stranger.
Learn how to make your marketplace curious. Why do prospective clients call you or email you? It’s because they need to know something and their curiosity motivates them to get in touch. So, you get a sales lead or client enquiry. And a chance to convert them into a new client or customer. As I said a few days ago, don’t explain everything in your marketing, unless you want very few enquiries. (Read more).
The more your services or products resemble what your competitors offer, the less visible your business is.
Avoid using buzzwords. Those who don’t understand them will be confused. Those who do understand them, will cringe. And buzzwords get old, really quick.
Tell the truth. It’s the easiest, least stressful way to build a great business and your marketplace will respect you.
If your business isn’t attracting regular sales leads or client enquiries, your marketing is broken. This means the very thing that feeds your business isn’t working. It’s losing you a fortune. Needlessly. Why are you allowing this to happen? Think about that for a moment.