Just like a seasoned email marketing pro, a successful cowboy (or cowgirl!) always learns from his experiences and acknowledges his own limits. He is self-reliant, innovative and constantly looking for new ways to succeed out on the frontier. And he a… [...]
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But without a list of subscribers with valid email addresses to send messages to, it’s hard to justify using email as a means of marketing your business. Fortunately, there are lots of easy ways to collect email addresses so that you reap the benefits of an email marketing campaign. Here are some of the basics. Simply Ask!When existing and prospective customers buy something at your store, have staff members verbally ask if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter as part of the check out process. Keep a sign up sheet close to the register, so that browsers can sign up even if they don’t purchase anything. When you speak with clients on the phone, tell them that your newsletter is full of great information. Sell your content; it’s the one thing that you are most knowledgeable about and it will show when you’re talking it up. It only takes a few seconds to jot down an email address. If you make “the big ask” five times a day for one work week, that’s 25 email addresses you didn’t have before you started, and 100 email addresses in just one month! Put a Form On Your Website The sign up process should be blatantly obvious and provide all of the necessary background information about your email campaign. Web form templates give your form a professional, polished look that compliments your website design. You should also seriously consider using a popup form to collect addresses. While they’re not for everyone, popups and popovers have really come a long way from what they once were. You now have a lot of control over their frequency and appearance, and you can even split test different types of popups to see what works best for you. Send Postcards Via Snail MailMichelle Kemp, a fan of AWeber on Facebook, swears by sending postcards to prospects by mail:
If you have their postal address, sending a client a personalized, handwritten note or postcard with a return address shows that you market transparently. It also puts a human touch on the otherwise technical task of collecting email addresses online. Offer Freebies No matter what your newsletter is about, you are an expert in your field. Write up a quick guide to your industry, offer a free sample of hot sauce or hair product or send an exclusive MP3 download of your latest song that is only available to your email list. As long as your free gift is relevant to the content of your newsletter, it’s the perfect incentive for prospects who might be on the fence about signing up. Link to a Form in Your SignatureHow many people do you contact personally via email every day? These contacts might not be on your business email list yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t suggest that they sign up to receive your email newsletter. Simply include a link to your hosted web form in your email signature, and your prospects can sign up to receive your emails without even closing your personal message. Advertise On Everything You Print In a 2009 study, researchers from IBM and MIT found that the average email contact was “worth” $948 in revenue. With such minimal costs in comparison to print, and such high return on investment, email is the logical and result driven choice for modern marketing. That being said, take advantage of the fact that essential printed materials make their way out of your office or store and back to the homes of potential subscribers. Whether it’s your business card, a brown paper bag or a receipt, a physical reminder of your website could be the push someone needs to visit your site and fill our your web form. Utilize Social Media
Put a form on your Facebook fan page so that anyone visiting your page on the social networking site can easily subscribe to receive email updates. Ask Twitter followers to sign up for your newsletter by tweeting a link to your hosted web form. If you automatically tweet your broadcast messages, we add an email signup form to the sidebar of your archive, so that if someone stumbles upon your email they can easily sign up to receive more. What Are Your List Building Tactics?Does one particular method help you attract new subscribers? Is there something that doesn’t work very well for your industry? We can all learn from the experiences of others – please share yours!
Recently, we surveyed AWeber customers to see what small businesses are doing in their email marketing today, and what you’re planning to do in the future. Turns out you’re doing a lot of really cool stuff (no surprise to us
It’s actually much like building a house. There’s no way you can construct a building haphazardly, without direction, and turn out a flawless finished product. The result would be chaotic! The same goes for email. You can’t randomly send messages to your clients and prospects without establishing expectations and formulating a plan, or they will tune out and unsubscribe due to your lack of organization. Follow these guidelines for constructing a well built house and you’ll be on your way to creating a profitable and manageable email campaign in no time. You Need a Solid FoundationThe strongest buildings are built from the ground up on a rock-solid foundation. For your email campaign, the foundation is your message content. The whole point in sending email is to solicit an action. You want readers to click through your messages, buy products and respond to surveys. In order to engage subscribers and inspire those actions, you must consistently send subscribers interesting, relevant and incentivizing content.
Sources for Content
Plenty of Windows
Windows let light into your home. They give you different views of your yard and help you keep watch when the kids play outside. They also let your neighbors see in. Instead of drawing the curtains tight on your email campaign, take the opportunity to give your readers a look inside. Be transparent. Build their trust by making yourself available. Don’t make subscribers dig for your social networking sites. Instead, purposely link to your Facebook and Twitter pages so that they can’t miss them. If you put all of the information about your company out there for subscribers to see from the get-go, you will never need to Windex the windows on your campaign or backtrack to make yourself more transparent. Marketer Bill Gammell relates transparency to an episode of Seinfeld:
So reverse your peepholes! Get comfortable with your brand’s body and let your subscribers enjoy the show week after week through your emails. Curb AppealAnyone who takes pride in their home understands the desire to make your property as clean and beautiful as possible. You landscape, paint and generally spruce things up from time to time to keep your house in tip-top shape. After all, your home is a reflection of you. Your email campaign should be an extension of your business in the same way. You should take pride in its appearance, and realize that a neat and approachable design will only contribute positively to the perception of your brand. Using beautifully designed message and web form templates is the perfect way to put a professional face on your campaign. With hundreds to choose from, there’s bound to be at least one or two that fits your style. An Impenetrable RoofThe roof on your building protects your structure and everything inside. Email deliverability requires the same amount of protection. There are a few things you can do to safeguard your list:
A Maintenance PlanEven impeccably built homes require maintenance. While autoresponders allow you to “set it and forget it,” the best email campaigns have owners that are extremely involved with their clients and their product. Keep a close eye on the performance of your emails. Split test your subject lines and use analytics to track open and click through rates. When necessary, do a little spring cleaning. Your campaign can never be too tidy! Building your Own Campaign?Do you have a basic blueprint for building your email marketing campaigns? What does it look like?
The client had a link in their HTML message that was missing quotes around the URL. Incorrect: <a href=http://www.example.com?test=mylink>Read more</a> Correct: <a href="http://www.example.com?test=mylink">Read more</a> Both links worked find when tested in popular webmail clients like Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail. Unfortunately less popular email clients like Eudora Mail will break the link. Technically a link without quotes is improper HTML usage, but most email clients do handle it just fine which can cause the error to go unnoticed.
Posted by Ron Givens
In both fields, trust and reputation are important. And once both are built, you should have no problem growing your marketing sphere of influence. Let’s take a look at how you can use AWeber to your advantage in the email marketing and real estate worlds.
Why Build Relationships?Building a good relationship with your contacts is a must in today’s marketing world. It can take you into the realms of stellar achievement both on the local and global marketplaces. Also, a home can the biggest investment a family will ever make. It’s very important for people to have a high level of trust in you. This is the place their family is going to come home to; they’ll create many special memories there. Once you have built this trust, your contacts will always come to you when they need something. In addition to this, your customer’s word-of-mouth business can prove invaluable. Some Relationship Building Ideas for Realtors
Here are a few that you may find helpful for your prospective referrals: Local Email Newsletter or BlogInstead of going for a sale every time you send out an email newsletter, why not offer your subscribers interesting information about their area, including:
Broadcast ListingsAs a Realtor, there are several events that you can use our email newsletter tool for:
I highly recommend segmenting your list when sending to these different categories. You can easily notify different types of people, based on which of the above events happened. Open HousesAWeber can be used to broadcast open houses as well as broker’s open houses to colleagues. You can have an email list for homeowners, let’s say, and a separate list for agents and brokers in the area. Periodic CMAsWhy not send a monthly or quarterly Comparative Market Analysis, or CMA, to the people on your list? It will spark their interest and start a dialogue in case they are interested in buying or selling property. Offer Free and Personal HelpWhat better way to gain trust as well as a potential client than to offer free information based on their needs? Not only will you learn much more about who they are, but you can develop the type of quality in your relationship that is so important. Of Realtors and SPAM
It’s very important for Realtors to know which practices are acceptable and which aren’t. There is a bit of a difference between traditional real estate marketing as opposed to what is acceptable in the email marketing world. Realtors use a technique called farming in order to reach out to people in their area. This can be done in the form of sending unsolicited postal mail to a given area, over long periods of time. Farming to email addresses is considered SPAM – bottom line. Because SPAM is such a problem worldwide, it is completely unacceptable to send out unsolicited email to those who have never asked you for it. This includes people in your local board of Realtors, NAR, or from any type of directory. If you have any questions about specific marketing practices, please feel free to contact us. We would be more than happy to answer your questions. A Realtor ApartThe merger of real estate and email marketing can be a very exciting and lucrative one. If done correctly, it can add a new level to your creative approach and set you apart from the rest. I invite you to take a look at a couple of previous posts about content for real estate emails, and real estate email tips. Keeping the points above in mind, how can you use AWeber to establish and strengthen relationships? Share your ideas.
The new archive saves a web version of each broadcast in a central location, making it simple for you to share message content with subscribers new and old. With it, you are able to resurrect your dusty emails for new purposes and strengthen your existing relationships with your subscribers. But did you know that the broadcast archive can also help you build your list? Here’s how. Link to an Online Version
Placing a link on your web form to an example of your newsletter shows that your intentions as an email marketer are crystal clear. Given the chance to preview a real message, subscribers know exactly what they are getting into when providing their email address. There are no questions as to whether or not your campaign will apply to them, since they can sample your content beforehand. This can also lead to a higher retention rate, because subscribers are better informed prior to signing up to your list. Make the Most of Forwarding To A Friend
When a subscriber forwards your email, your audience expands for a moment – a blip in eternity. And then it shrinks back, unless the recipient takes initiative and hunts down your sign-up form. Now, the web version of your newsletter automatically displays a sign-up form. If your subscribers forward your emails to their friends, they will be able to sign up effortlessly. Even better, you’ve just suggested subscribing to those who might never have thought of it at all. Leverage Social Media
Twitter and Facebook are fantastic complements to any email campaign, and now integrating them is even more beneficial. You’ve had the ability to link to your archive in your Facebook status or tweet your newest newsletter to create some buzz and generate traffic for some time. You can even publish each broadcast to Twitter with one click. Now, as with forwarding, that web form on the archive page means interested readers don’t have to hunt to sign up for more of you – the option is automatically available when they are directed to your archive from your Facebook or Twitter status. How Do You Use Your Archive?Using the new and improved archive, the full value of your campaign is available to all of your readers: past, present and future. It’s also a great way to get new subscribers when using these methods. Do you have any interesting uses for your archived newsletters? We would love to hear about them!
For brick and mortar businesses, email marketing may seem too time-consuming. After all, you’re busy designing window displays, training associates and counting inventory. But emails can prompt more purchases. They can remind local customers to swing by and inspire long-distance customers to visit on their next trip through. They can even offer extra incentive to shop with you. And though you may not know it, your store already has content for the emails. Read on to find out what this content is, how to get it to your customers and how to make sure it’s well-received. How To Go From Brick & Mortar To Click & Mortar
Collect Email AddressesFirst, collect your customers’ (and potential customers’) email addresses. Emailing them without permission is spam, so make sure you’re cleared to occasionally pop into their inboxes. Ask for them:
Send MessagesOnce your list is ready, start emailing. Send out broadcasts to:
Segment and TargetRather than sending the same messages to your entire list, you may want to boost relevance with segmentation. This lets you send each customer the emails they want most. You can segment, or divide up your list, in endless ways. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Conclusion:If you are a brick and mortar business, do you have an email marketing campaign? How much time do you spend on it? How do you divide your efforts between in-store happenings, other marketing and your email campaign? If you don’t email market, what’s stopping you?
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Copyright © 2012 Kim A Gillett - All Rights Reserved |
If you’re in a situation where you can’t take email addresses verbally, always direct people to your website. It’s imperative that you have a form on every page so that anyone who happens to land there is able to sign up quickly and painlessly for your emails.
Nothing is more attractive to a potential customer than a free product or a glance at a service that they don’t have yet.
Traditional print media can be costly. With the state of today’s economy, you should think twice before investing company dollars in print advertisement.
Your personal network is just as important as your work Rolodex when you’re growing your email list.
)! Here are some findin… [...]
If you are using email as a sales tool, you want to wow readers with your products and your knowledge, and establish yourself as an authority in your field.
If you’re using email as a retention tool and are primarily sending informational updates and newsletters, you want to create content that 
If your business has a blog, you already have one valuable content resource well within your reach. 
Don’t have a blog? Look through old emails from your customers. If you see the same questions about your product or service over and over again, take that as a hint. You could probably create a whole 
Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of content you need to create? Check out sites like 
Because of it’s dynamic nature, real estate marketing can lend itself to creative ideas. Building your reputation can be a unique adventure.
AWeber Affiliate Manager Ron Givens has been practicing real estate for over ten years, and in three different states. He has experience in both residential and commercial sales.
Make sure to list your hours of operation and phone number, and provide a way for subscribers to offer feedback.
Use this information to segment your list. Then send each email to the appropriate segments.