(5) comments
Add Your Reply
Menu
Most unsuccessful marketers lack one thing, and it’s the one thing that 99% of the successful marketers have in common. Can you guess what it is? Come on, I gave you a hint (in the title).
Thanks right. Follow up.
And you can’t follow up if you don’t capture their name and email address. That part is called *Building a list*. Generally speaking, you offer something of value in exchange for permission to follow up with them. That *offer* is an ethical bribe. And frankly, it needs to be worth their name and email address in today’s world of spammers.
A free ebook they can’t get elsewhere, a newsletter, a 20% discount on a product they will likely want (based on your niche) or something of this nature. It will vary depending on the niche you are in, but not too much.
A name and email address in exchange for something of value is just your foot in the door, and like all good salesmen, you have to continue to earn their trust and attention. That’s where the follow up comes in. This is your opportunity to build your reputation with them. Build trust. Build a relationship. And don’t be like the other marketers that fail this part of the process by “marketing” too soon.
You aren’t an adviser yet. They don’t know or like you yet. You haven’t earned the right to recommend anything yet. To earn it, you have to continue to send them info/value/product that matches up with their needs. And for this to be successful, your message has to get past their “ad filters” (visual), their “spam filters” (physical) and reach their email inbox.
Well, okay, to be fair, you really need a few tools, but without the ability to follow up over time, and get those messages past their spam filters, you are just spinning your wheels in this industry.
The tool is rightly called an “Auto Responder”. It’s an automated tool that allows you to custom craft your messages and then assign a time period when to send them. In other words, send message 1, 10 minutes after they sign up. Send message 2, 3 days later. Send message 3 and every future message 7 days later. You get the idea.
Now, you can try to remember all this, you can track your prospects in Excel and you can manually deal with the Internet Service providers that will ban your IP address or domain name (it happens all the time), or you can sign up for a service such as AWeber or iContact, Constant Contact or Get Response.
Using a service (particularly one that forces an opt in confirmation), allows you to focus on your messages, your follow up and not the mechanics.
I know which method I would prefer. How about you? Are you ready to follow up like a pro? Get an autoresponder service account. I prefer AWeber for a variety of reason, but it really doesn’t matter which autoresponder account you go with. Just go with one of them. You can get an AWeber Test Drive here.
Each has their own merits so you can evaluate based on what you need. Trust me? Then get an AWeber account for a pittance ($19.95 a month) and double or even triple your sales numbers by allowing your prospects to get to know you first, hear from you often and purchase from you when you gain their trust.
