Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Email marketing tip

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If you want your marketing emails to work, they need to actually REACH the people you send them to.  After all, the best marketing message in the world won’t work if no one receives it.

This means your marketing emails need to be written,  designed and sent in such a way that they are not wrongly mistaken for spam, by the various spam filters out there.  Avoiding spam filters is a huge subject, but you can quickly learn many of the things to avoid – simply by doing the following……

Read the emails in your junk mail filter

Take a look at the emails that have been caught in your spam filter and you will find that they all fit into 1 of 2 categories:

1. Emails from spammers, which were correctly detected as spam.
2. Legitimate email from people, which was wrongly detected as spam.

In both cases, the reason these emails were detected as spam is usually because of the way they were written, designed or sent.  There were things about those emails, that your spam filter thought was suspicious enough to merit them being blocked.  You need to look for some of the common factors and where these blocked emails differ from those you received, which were not blocked.

Common email marketing mistakes

There are a large number of things that can lead to an email being regarded as spam, from; using terms like ‘click here’ inside the email to the over-use of exclamation marks!!!!

The use of a graphics within the email can also cause problems, as can things like having too many upper-case letters in the subject line of the email.

Sadly, you can send a perfectly crafted email to your readers and STILL have it blocked – simply because someone using the same mailhost and within your ip range is a spammer.  Without you doing anything wrong, your ip address then gets blacklisted.

These are just a few of the things you need to look out for.  You will find lots more when you start to examine the emails that get caught in your spam filter.

So, what kind of things have YOU noticed that cause emails to be wrongly detected as spam – let us know.

The marketing power of questions

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If you want to improve your marketing, boost sales and increase the profitability of your business; you need to understand and use the power of questions!

In marketing – questions are like gold dust because…

The questions you ask determine the answers you get!
The answers you get determine the actions you take!
The actions you take generate either success or failure.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Bob is struggling to win new clients for his business.  The mailshots he has always relied on to generate his sales leads, have slowly become less and less effective.  With very few leads, Bob is now making very few sales. So, Bob asks himself this question;

“What can I do, to make my mailshots more effective, so they generate more leads?”

The kind of answers Bob can expect might include:
“I could make a more attractive offer in the letter.”
“I could get my letters written my a professional marketing copy writer.”
“I could use a better mailing list.”

These are not bad answers – but they are answers to the WRONG question!

Bob’s problem is not the success of his mailshots! His problem is the number of sales he is making!

Bob should have asked himself a question like;

“How can I achieve a massive increase in sales and profits?”

This kind of question would lead to far more valuable answers, like;
“I could stop mailing 500 companies a month using the post and mail 100,000 companies a month instead using email.  The savings will be massive – making the cost of each sale dramatically lower and my profits far higher!”

“I could advertise my widgets in ‘The Widget Gazette’ and get my sales message in front of 200,000 widget buyers next week!”

“I could start attracting leads using pay-per-click advertising on Google / Yahoo etc!”

“I could get my widget website fully Search Engine Optimised and use an SEO company that will work on a commission basis!”

“I could do an endorsed mailing with another company; where they recommend my widgets to their clients – the results can be stunning and the cost-per-sale is very low, increasing my profits!”

The marketing power of questions

There are an almost limitless number of GREAT answers to the second, more effective question!  Each answer has the potential to solve Bob’s sales dilemma and with so many great options, it’s far more likely that he will turn his sales figures around!

If you want to make more sales or increase your profits – make sure you are asking yourself the right questions.

Marketing and problem solving

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Whatever line of business we are actually in, we are always a professional problem solver. People pay us to solve their problems – think about it:

If you have a web design business, you solve the problem of ugly, ill-functioning websites.  If you have an insurance business, you solve the problem of unprotected risks or financial hardship etc.

Because your prospective clients are looking for service providers, who can solve their problems – just imagine how unimpressed they would be; if your marketing messages were all about YOUR business and YOUR amazing special offers.

If you want your prospective clients or customers to be attracted to you and your business – make sure your marketing messages are focused on the answers to their problems.

Take time to research the key problems facing their industry and when you speak with them – find out what problems their business is uniquely facing. Then, learn how to match the answer to their problem with your product or service.

Even if your product or service can only resolve part of one of their main problems – it’s enough for them to totally change the way they see you as opposed to ANY of your competitors.

You will become one of those rare businesses we value so much – which offers us the answers and peace-of-mind we all long for!

Top newsletter tips – part 1

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As you may already know, I produce a very popular newsletter; with thousands of readers spanning more than 100 countries around the world.  I have developed my newsletter without any form of paid advertising; everything has been achieved through my website, blog, referrals and forwarding!

Here are a few of my suggestions, if you want to either add a newsletter to your marketing or increase the success of an existing newsletter.

Content

I believe the finest way to generate a massive, interested readership for your newsletter – is to build your subscriber base on the recommendation of your readers! Of course, the only way to get people forwarding your newsletter and growing your readership for you, is to provide them with stacks of really powerful, valuable information!

My marketing newsletter carries an original article (always written by me) and usually just one very brief news story.  Most newsletters I see are just a massive sales pitch, wrapped around generic content.  As a result, no one bothers to forward them!

People do not forward adverts to their contacts; they forward things they find interesting, useful or both.  Focus exclusively on high value content and your newsletter will ‘go viral!’  I get around 25 new newsletter subscribers each day using this approach.

Only write for your readers

If you want your newsletter to generate new clients or customers for your business, make sure that you only write material that is 100% relevant to YOUR specific market! Many newsletters make the mistake of trying to appeal to too wide a range of readers and as a result, end up being of little relevance to anyone!

For example; if you sell insurance broking products to small businesses within your area – everything you write should be relevant to the local, small business community.  If you focus on their problems, their opportunities and their interests, your messages will always be relevant to the reader.  You will find it far easier to grow your readership this way, than if you write general information with no local appeal.

Ask your readers to forward your newsletter

Every edition of my newsletter finishes with a request.

“If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to anyone you think might find it interesting!”

This causes people who have just read and enjoyed your newsletter, to focus on people they know who might also find the newsletter useful.  This simple step can generate a 200% increase in the number of new subscribers you get after each edition – often more!

Offer new subscribers something to welcome them

You should ALWAYS offer people an incentive for taking the time to subscribe to your newsletter!  For example, when you sign-up for my newsletter, you get a free copy of my short eBook; “10 secrets to success!” People LOVE this brief eBook and it’s a great way to welcome new readers!

Just make sure that whatever you offer is likely to be extremely attractive to your ideal profile of reader.

No more than once a week & no less than twice a month

If you send people any form of email communication more than once a week, it is likely to result in lots of unsubscribe requests! People hate being bombarded with emails; even emails that contain really useful information, like your newsletter!  I get so few unsubscribe requests using this approach that I manually delete them.  I get fewer unsubscribe requests a year than many people get in a week!

However, if you leave too long a gap between emails (more than 14-21 days), response rates and new subscriber numbers start to drop!  For my newsletter, two emails a month seems ideal.

Let your readers know their details are safe with you

Never, ever sell, rent or share your subscriber database with anyone!  Also, make sure you let people know that you will never share their details!

You only need an email address

If you want to send your newsletter to someone, you don’t need anything other than their email address.  Did you know that every additional piece of information you ask for, drastically reduces the number of people who will sign-up?  It’s true!

If you think that by getting your readers names you will be able to ‘personalise’ their emails – STOP!  It’s not 1999 any more and EVERYONE knows what a mail merge is! You make your newsletter personalised by making the information specific to your target readership – not by opening it with Dear Bob!

Newsletter marketing is something I will be covering again in future posts.  If you have any specific newsletter questions, either contact me using the contact button above or leave a comment here.

….and feel free to subscribe to my newsletter, using the button below!

Jim’s 1 Year Marketing Program

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As some of my more eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, I have just added a new page to this website; all about my popular 1 Year Marketing Program.

If you are serious about dramatically improving your sales and profits, this program is exactly what you need!  To find out more, click here!

Making your marketing work

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Imagine a building project, where the carpentry work was being carried out by an insurance broker, the electrical work was being handled by an accountant and where the bricks were being laid by a web designer!

That project would be a total mess!  Although the people working on that building are all intelligent professionals in their own area – none of them are professional builders!

Marketing havoc

Believe it or not, I see the result of this kind of havoc all the time; when I meet with the owners of small businesses!  I see what happens when someone who’s an expert in Law or Recruitment or Insurance etc, but  with no marketing background or experience, handles their businesses marketing!  They usually waste a fortune; on advertising that could never work, mailshots that no one reads or websites that no one visits.  They not only waste a fortune, they miss out on masses of new business too!

Marketing & cause and effect

If your sales and profits are not what you want, you must either hire a marketing professional or decide to learn professional marketing.  Business is all based on cause and effect, which is great news.  It means you can achieve any result you wish; providing you do the correct things, in the correct order – correctly!

The law of cause and effect also assures us that; “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got.”

In other words, you can’t expect better results without making better decisions and taking better actions. The business owner who moans about her lack of success, but refuses to improve her effectiveness through study and application is a fool!

Free marketing material to help you

As one of the UK’s best known marketing professionals, I have produced a stack of free marketing material for you.  It’s on my main website at www.jimconnolly.com; in fact, 100% of the sales and marketing material there is free – even the audio program!  I also write a massively successful marketing newsletter, which you can subscribe to using the button below.  All the marketing material on my main website and in my newsletter is written by me and the free audio programs are written and narrated by me – to help you make your marketing as powerful as possible.

I hope you find it useful!