You've probably heard the expression, 'the money is
in the list'. It's become a bit of a cliché - but it's the key to successful
web marketing.
About 95% of visitors will not buy on their first
visit to your website - in fact, most of your customers will have to see your
message 7 times before they buy.
Many people starting out on the Internet believe
that their main marketing tool is their website.
In fact, your main marketing tool is your mailing
list. A website is just a way of building your mailing list - by collecting the
email addresses of your visitors.
Here are some examples of how to use mailing
lists as part of your marketing strategy. You could send:
=>
a customized
newsletter to your subscribers
=> sequential autoresponders to prospects
=> your Articles to Ezine publishers
=> offers for other products to your customers
However, managing your mailing lists can quickly
become an organizational nightmare if you don't have an Automated Email
Marketing Tool.
An AEMT is a program that merges personal data
into a form letter, schedules follow-up emails, and handles subscribes and
unsubscribes automatically.
Server Side or Client Side?
The first thing you'll need to decide is whether
to use a Server Side or Client Side program.
A Server Side program is a script that sits on
your server, whereas a Client Side program is an application that sits on your
PC.
In general, Client Side programs are capable of
much more advanced email management than Server Side programs.
But Server Side programs do have some advantages:
=>
With a Server
Side program, people who join your Newsletter receive an instant 'Welcome
Message'
=>
Server Side
programs include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your Newsletter. The
reader just clicks on that link and the cgi program removes them from your
mailing list.
=>
With Server
Side programs, you don't need to be connected to the Internet while your
Newsletter is being mailed out. You just click a button on a web page and you
can then go offline - the mailing is being performed by your server.
Here are some tools for automating your email
marketing:
Auto Response Plus (Server
Side)
This program gives you unlimited follow-up
autoresponders. It allows full personalization of subject lines, headers,
footers, ads - every part of every follow-up message can be personalized.
Auto
Response Plus
gives you full control over the scheduling of your follow up
messages - you can set an interval between messages or schedule them to be sent
on certain days of the week.
Although this program is designed primarily for
sequential autoresponders, it's also quite capable of mailing out your
Newsletter and managing subscribes/unsubscribes.
Mailloop (Client Side)
This application includes a newsletter server,
web form processor, bulk emailer, customer database management, and
autoresponders.
As with other Client Side programs,
Mailloop
allows you to merge an unlimited number of fields into your e-mail message (for
example: first name, last name, e-mail address, product purchased, date of
purchase, etc).
World Merge (Client Side)
This is another application that allows you to
merge personalized data into form letters.
Depending on your modem and the quality of your
ISP connection, this program will send approximately 8,000 messages per hour.
WorldMerge
is excellent value - it's about a quarter the price of similar programs.
Postmaster (Client Side)
Like other Automated Email Marketing Tools, this
program allows you to create a form letter and merge personalized data into each
letter. Your letters are addressed to 'Dear Michael' instead of 'Dear Customer'.
Postmaster
acts as a List Server, sends out follow-up Autoresponders, and manages your
database of contacts.
To sum up, in a successful web marketing
strategy, your website is merely the first point of contact. You then need to:
=>
build an
opt-in email list of potential customers (your website visitors)
=>
use automated
email marketing tools that allow you to follow up with your site visitors
If you aren't building mailing lists and using
automated email marketing tools you could be losing up to 90% of your potential
sales.
About The Author
Michael Southon is the author of the popular new eBook "Ezine
Writer! - How To Get As Much Publicity As You Want For You And Your Website on a
Zero Budget".
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