Permission Based Email Marketing

It is widely accepted that it costs around seven times as much to aquire a new customer than it costs to sell to an existing one. This is because your business has to overcome the initial mistrust that any potential new customer has.

By using email marketing to keep in touch with your client base you are leaving the door open for that holy grail of all businesses - repeat sales.

See, once a business appreciates the lifetime value of a customer they are able to leverage that relationship from a simple hard sell one time purchase to a full blooded business relationship that is of as much benefit to the customer as it is to your company.

Which brings in even more customers via referral or personal recommendation.

One of the best ways to build and maintain trust is with regular contact. With THEIR permission, of course. And the reason that permission based email marketing is so powerful is because it is your customer who holds the controls.

With opt in email they give the permission and they can take it away. Now while this may sound a bit alarming to most businesses, it actually encourages your customers to become more receptive to your follow up emails. After all, they can always unsubscribe, right?

Once you gain their trust you keep the relationship going by staying in touch with them via email. Don't underestimate the power of this - tapping into the lifetime value of a customer is surely the quickest and by far the most cost effective way to explode your profits for little more than a small investment of your time. Far, far cheaper than conventional bulk mailings via snail mail.

Squeeze Pages
A squeeze page is nothing more than a simple web page that contains a compelling headline written to catch your visitors attention, a few bullet points detailing the benefits of downloading your freebie, and a signup form.

A short video clip (as seen in the diagram to the right) can be used instead of pages and pages of text, but it is important that it supports the message, and not just there to provide eye candy.

Then when your potential subscribers visit the squeeze page they can either sign up to your mailing list to grab your freebie, enrol in your short tutorial...or leave.

Don't try to trap your visitors in some kind of popup hell, if they want to leave then let them go with good grace. After all, if they don't want to do business with you then nothing will persuade them otherwise.

Pop Overs
If you already have an established website that is getting visitors, another option is to have a signup form 'pop over' your existing pages, again offering your freebie in exchange for the visitors contact details.

Pop over scripts are very easy for your webmaster to install and with the right offer, can convert a large number of visitors into subscribers without inconveniencing your regular site visitors. Make sure that your popover script comes with the option to limit how often the popover appears so that your visitor only sees it once per visit.

Signup Forms
Aweber has hundreds of stylish sign-up forms that you can simply copy and paste into your web pages when you need them.

They are easy to edit and come complete with your autoresponder code built in. All you do is paste the resulting code into your own web page wherever you need the form.

With a growing number of signup form designs, you are sure to find one that fits in with your current website colors and layout.

First off, you will need to entice your visitors to sign up to your email list. This is usually done by offering them something in return for their contact details, such as an ebook, free report or possibly a coupon or discount on products or services.

Now you need to realize that this free report must actually be worth having. A sales pitch or company brochure is not going to persuade your visitor to hand over their personal details. So make sure that the report has some 'meat' to it!

Similarly, if you are offering some kind of discount as an enticement then it must be a REAL discount! Of course FREE is often a great inducement, but can encourage hordes of freebie seekers who would take anything as long as it was free. These are not the sort of signups you really want. However, a small charge, such as 'get your first meal for a DOLLAR' often works very well while keeping the freeloaders away.

Then you will need to write your series of email messages that you plan to send to your visitor as well as a timeframe for delivery.

A great way to achieve this is to produce a short training series or mini email course that informs or teaches your visitor.

For example, if your business sells cameras you could have a 'Ten Ways To Take Great Photos' mini course, delivering a lesson each day for the next ten days. Day one could be How to avoid Red Eye, day two could be how to capture great images of your kids, while day three could be a quick lesson on how to brighten dark images using your PC...and so on.

Can you see how someone looking for their first digital camera could be interested in a mini email course like that? No need to hit them with a hard sell sales pitch, the aim here is simply to build trust and show that you are the expert in your field.

Now think about your own particular business for a moment and come up with a few ideas for a mini series that would be of interest to your potential customers.

Do It Yourself Email Marketing is quick and easy, yet can make a massive difference to your businesses bottom line profits...as long as you have the right tools for the job, you make the right offers to your list and you actually put all this into action!

See, as with anything in life, nothing happens until you take action. And the best time to get started is right now.

So if you haven't already done so:

• Sign up to the Aweber autoresponder service for only $1.
• Edit and upload your squeeze page complete with a reason for visitors to sign up.
• Draw up your series of messages or newsletters and either write them yourself or visit Fiverr.com to get someone to write them for you. Load them into your autoresponder and let them start working for you.

I promise, once you start to see results from your permission based email marketing campaigns you'll wish you had started years ago!