The Must Have Biz Tool For 2010
Those of you that are regular readers of this site will know that one of my “can’t live without” business tools is an email service provider . If you are going to do one thing to help grow your business in 2010, I would definitely suggest getting an email service provider. Of course, I would also suggest not limiting yourself to one thing, as you can certainly grow your business faster with more tools, but if you were only going to do one thing, go with the email service provider. Here’s why:
Mailing List: You need a mailing list! If you do not have one, you need to start one! When you subscribe to an email service provider service, you’ll be able to set up a mailing list. Once it’s set up, you can create a form that you’ll place on your website. Your readers can then sign up for your mailing list.
Staying in touch with your customers is one of the keys to success. An email service provider makes this super simple. The email service provider will handle all of the subscribes / unsubscribes for you. If you tried to do that yourself, you’d be spending at least a full working day each week on that task alone!
Newsletters: Many people tell me that they want to stay in touch with their customers, but they don’t want to come off as “pushing sales.” Sending out a monthly newsletter to your customers is a great way to overcome this. By adding a few helpful tips, your newsletter turns into a helpful piece of information that your customers look forward to receiving. Just remember to include a little something in there about your products or services. A little reminder can bring in a lot of sales.
Sending your newsletter via email is much more economical than sending paper copies. All you need to do is type your newsletter up, put it into the email service provider, press send and it will go out to your entire mailing list.
Yes, you could try to do that through your own email client (Yahoo, Gmail, etc), but I don’t recommend it. If you tried to send out a bunch of email through your regular email, you’d probably get blacklisted from a lot of ISPs on suspicion of sending spam. They don’t know you have permission to send all that email – they just know you’re sending a lot of it. The ISPs know that email service provider services send out a lot of email, and they know that people need to subscribe to mailing lists in order to receive email from them. The emails that you send to your mailing list have a much higher chance of landing in an inbox if they are sent from an email service provider.
Schedule Mailings In Advance: When you use an email service provider, you can schedule your mailings in advance. Let’s say that you like to send your newsletter out on the 1st of the month, but you’re going on vacation from the 28th – the 4th. You don’t have to miss out on any vacation time. Simply put your information into the email service provider before you leave for vacation, schedule it to be sent on the 1st, and it takes care of itself!
I actually use an autoresponder with lots of bells and whistles, like a shopping cart and an affiliate management center. But if you’re just looking to create, send and track email newsletters, I suggest you try out VerticalResponse. They offer a 30 day free trial, and their service starts at just $10 per month (there are a lot of places that charge MUCH more than that –do some comparison checks, and you’ll see what I mean!). They also offer flexible pricing, so you can either pay per email that you send, or send unlimited emails with a monthly subscription.
They also have hundreds of templates to choose from, so mailing out your newsletter will be a piece of cake. Of course, you can create your own – you don’t have to use the pre-designed templates if you don’t want to.
They also have lots of tracking tools, which will allow you to see who opened your email; how many people clicked through to your website, as well as how many people made a purchase. These statistics can help you figure out what your customers are most interested in, and that knowledge can definitely help your business. VerticalResponse also offers direct mailings, if you wanted to stay in touch with your customers offline, or use postcards to grow your email list.
Most of the people who visit your site or blog will never come back. It’s sad – but it’s true. That’s why having a sign-up area for a mailing list is so important! By capturing your visitor’s email, you’ll be able to follow up with them and turn them into a customer. Until you start doing that, you are losing out on business.