Mike’s Tips – Growth From Measuring

If you focus on it, results will flow.  One of the most valuable tools driving growth in MiniMovers, believe it or not is, a simple weekly graph that tracks the total dollars taken each week.

During the past 2 weeks 8 people, with existing trading profitable businesses, have approached me for mentoring.   NOT ONE could tell me their turnover last year or LAST WEEK (or whatever their main trading period is).

How can you know if you are still driving on the road if you are not watching the road?

Since the very first week of trading some 23 years ago we have on every Wednesday plotted (one number into an excel spread sheet – it takes 2 minutes) and published (printed on the notice boards) a graph of the total dollars taken each week.

What does this achieve?  Almost every person in MiniMovers is FOCUSED on turnover – making sales, taking money.  They can see in an instant if we are up on last week, what the trend this time of the year is, and how far ahead we are of last year.

Seriously – the mood of the Company soars and celebrates the “ups” and knuckle’s down and attacks the “down” trends.

My weekly graph motivates me and focuses my people.  It’s a very profitable exercise.

How do you communicate; how you are traveling to your people?

Mike O’Hagan
Mr. MiniMovers

Entrepreneur & Business Speaker
www.ohagan.com.au

Writing Compelling Email Marketing Copy

Coming up with effective email marketing copy can be a frustrating experience. The formula that sells is a blend of getting your readers to understand your offer and giving them a clear way to get back to you.

To successfully create the perfect formula, here are some tried and tested tips you should be aware of before you begin writing copy!

1 Picture your audience
Always keep your target audience in mind. Give your audience a bit of background; picture how they spend their day, what’s important to them, their age, what they have bought from you and their reasons for doing so. This makes your copy relevant and targeted.

2. Follow an objective
When you have an objective in mind, you can provide your readers with a clear view about your offers. Your objective should come across casually but firmly and not seem overly formal. Write about your products and services the way you would speak about it with a friend.

3. Explain the benefits
One of the most important tips for writing great copy is to highlight the benefits of your offerings. Enlist all the ways in which your offer benefits readers and ensure these advantages stand out in your copy. Your readers are spending precious time to read what you have to say; you have to let them know that it is worth their while.

4. Use subheads and bullets
Nobody is interested in reading a page long sermon about what you have to offer. Get to the point, and get there fast. Subheads are a great way to make readers focus on important details. Bullets allow readers to get a quick idea of what you are selling. With subheads and bullets, readers are able to quickly get an idea of what you are talking about by simply glancing at your marketing copy.

5. Use effective Subject Line
Pay attention to your subject lines and your headlines. Make sure your subject line communicates your email message precisely. Keep it short and sweet. Ensure your headline is a real attention grabber. Remember, your heading is what compels your reader to read further. Tip: create your subject line and heading after you have finished your email body for better results.

6. Make use of testimonials
Customer quotes and testimonials are an excellent way to sell what you are offering! Make sure the customer quote that you include explains why the customer loves your product or service. Also include your customer’s name and other relevant details, as this makes your testimonial more credible.

7. Be unique
In this competitive era, the uniqueness of your offering plays a large role in your success. A run of the mill offer will not interest your readers. The more unique your offer is, the more it will intrigue and excite your readers. So make sure your offerings are distinct, one of a kind and stand out.

8. Be positive
When writing marketing copy, avoid using words such as ‘hope’, ‘ish’, ‘try’ and ‘perhaps’. Instead, use direct and positive words such as ‘will’ and ‘can’. Such words make your readers trust your offers and go a long way towards making them believe in what you have to say.

Keep these points in mind and you’re sure to sell your email copy! If you can think of any other pointers, let us know!

How to Get More Clicks in Your Email Campaigns

Every email marketer looks for ways to constantly improve his click through rates. Why? Because the more clicks you get in your email campaign, the better your sales and your ROI! So here are a few tips to help you get more clicks!

Tip 1: Put in links
Links are a great way to increase those click through rates. You can link your images, headlines, offers and even your videos to your product! When it comes to images especially, readers expect to be taken to a new place when they click on an image; satisfy their expectations by linking your image to additional information relevant to your offerings.

Tip 2: Intrigue your readers
Intrigue your readers by giving them a taste of the information to come. Draw your readers in by giving them part of the story and placing a link that takes them to the complete article. Placing a line like ‘Click here to get the whole story’ is a good way to make your readers’ eager to read more. Just the way the synopsis of a book grabs a reader’s attention and makes him want to read the whole book, a little information will go a long way towards intriguing your reader and will make him want to know more.

Tip 3: Educate rather than advertise
Your copy should be informative, educative and compelling. This means it is important that you write about interesting and relevant topics and at the same time ensure that you have adequate writing skills. Your email copy should not simply blatantly advertise whatever you are offering. Provide your readers with a valid reason to make them want to read more.

Tip 4: Provide free gifts but with an expiry date
Free gifts are a great way to increase your click through rate. Statements such as ‘click on this link for your free gift’ are very effective ways of getting readers to click on your links. However, it is important that you place an expiry date on your free offers as this encourages readers to take instant action.

If you are interested in increasing your click through rate, make sure that you read through all these tips and implement them in your email campaign! If you know of any more tips to raise click through rates, do let us know!

Common Email Marketing Mistakes

Email marketing, if carried out in the right way, is extremely economical and can provide you with some spectacular results. Best email marketing results require a moral, and extensively detailed plan to be in place. Setting this plan in place usually takes up a substantial amount of thought and energy; this is something a lot of email marketers fail to give consideration to.

To avoid making typical beginner mistakes, take a look at our list of common email marketing mistakes.

1. Marketing without permission

• Sending emails without the explicit permission of your recipients makes you a spam sender. This is illegal and is an excellent way to destroy your reputation.
• There are a lot of email marketers out there who take the easy and wrong way out; they purchase email lists, or create lists unethically by compiling them from the Internet.
• The first step for you as an email marketer is to gather permission from your customers. This step should be carried out before you start pumping in money and effort in your marketing endeavour.
• Getting permission is not all that difficult and goes a long way in reducing your spam complaints and legal issues, increasing deliverability and vastly improving your open and click through rates. For tips on increasing your list, click here.

2. Ineffective List Creation

Your email list is critical for successfully managing your email campaign. In fact, your list is so important that it is what determines the success or failure of your campaign.

True, it is not always the easiest thing to choose the perfect list. However, there are a number of tried and tested techniques that should work well for you.

At the same time, there are certain common mistakes that are made frequently by email marketers and should be avoided at all costs. For instance, using outdated email lists that have been collecting dust for over a year will provide you with nothing but inactive emails.

Similarly, renting shady lists will simply result in you illegally sending out spam mails; this could lead to you getting caught as a spammer and you would then have to pay the consequences.

Another common mistake is bringing back to life inactive house lists; this is another sure fire way to be labelled a spammer. Avoid these mistakes at all costs.

• Your email list is critical for successfully managing your email campaign. In fact, your list is so important that it is what determines the success or failure of your campaign.
• True, it is not always the easiest thing to choose the perfect list. However, there are a number of tried and tested techniques that should work well for you.
• At the same time, there are certain common mistakes that are made frequently by email marketers and should be avoided at all costs. For instance, using outdated email lists that have been collecting dust for over a year will provide you with nothing but inactive emails.
• Similarly, renting shady lists will simply result in you illegally sending out spam mails; this could lead to you getting caught as a spammer and you would then have to pay the consequences.
• Another common mistake is bringing back to life inactive house lists; this is another sure fire way to be labelled a spammer. Avoid these mistakes at all costs.

3. Bad subject lines

• As an email marketer, your goal is to get your recipients to not only open your email but also to read its content. Your subject line plays a huge role in making this goal a reality.
• Unfortunately, many email marketers fail to see the correlation between an effective subject line and a great response rate. Many times the subject line is a last minute effort and at times it is even left as an empty field.
• It is not a question of filling in the subject line; your heading must be relevant, effective and something that grabs the attention of the recipient. Your subject line must give the recipient a feel for the content of your email.
• Keep your heading simple and honest; avoid trying to hard sell your email with subjects such as “Huge Discount”.

4. Going for one time sales rather than relationships

• The mistake here is that email marketers tend to use email explosions to carry out their campaigns. Launching emails at unknown recipients is a complete waste of effort.
• What must be understood is that a successful email campaign is one that is targeted at the right people and slowly but surely builds a long term relationship. Sending out emails to random people is about as subtle as throwing a bomb; all you will be left with is a destruction zone.
• You need to work on those people who have given you the green flag in terms of permission; these people want to read what you send them, are interested in providing you feedback and are a good investment in terms of time and effort as they have the potential to become long lasting relationships.
• So don’t bomb your recipients; build them up.

5. Failing to test your campaign

• Unfortunately a lot of email marketers realise too late that their marketing strategy could have been vastly improved upon before launching it full scale.
• This is because they tend to launch their campaigns without any prior testing. The result? Absolutely no response. This is a shame especially since email newsletters are such a prime method of testing different options.
• Try out different subjects; change your content around, experiment with images and pictures and test them all out on a sample group. Once you see what combination gets the best result, that’s when you should start sending your emails out to your entire email list.

8 simple and effective email marketing tips

Email marketing can lead to phenomenal results – provided you follow some basic rules when you run your email marketing campaign. If you are interested in carrying out successful email marketing, read ahead! Avoid the mistakes made by most email marketers and take a look at these simple and effective email marketing tips!

Take a look at some of the trouble you are headed for:

Tip 1: Provide a clear call to action

A lot of times email marketers get so caught up in making their newsletters and marketing messages look attractive and compelling that they lose sight of their goal. They end up creating a beautifully designed marketing message that conveys absolutely nothing. The reader notices its aesthetic beauty and feels inspired to so something – but unfortunately there is absolutely no call to action!

The marketing newsletter or message fails to guide the reader in terms of what the reader is supposed to do. Should the reader click on something? Should he follow a particular link? Where should he place his order? These are all important questions that need to be answered right at the start of the message.

The focal point of an email marketing message is that it should spell out clearly what the reader of the message is meant to do, and how the reader should do it. It is also important that readers are made aware of what they will gain when they click through. This can be explained as simply as placing a ‘click here for 35% off on your next purchase’ link.

Tip 2: Give the preview pane due importance

MS Outlook and other huge email clients provide readers with a preview of the email that has been selected in their inbox. The preview pane shows the reader the extreme top of your email message. For this reason it is vital that the top part of your email is exciting, interesting, attention grabbing and successfully induces the recipient to read further.

Tip 3: Benefit from the power of personalization

Personalization is one of the simplest tools for increasing your reading and click thru rates. Think of it this way; if you were out in public somewhere and you heard someone shouting, “Hey, You!” would you bother to turn around and acknowledge the shouter? No, you wouldn’t. However, if that person shouted, “Hey, (your name)!” you would certainly turn around as you would think the person calling out your name knows you. This principle holds true when it comes to emails. It has been seen that simply starting an email with the reader’s name can increase reading and click-thru rates significantly. So, benefit from this fact and always personalize your emails.

Tip 4: Place sign-up boxes on each page of your website

One of the easiest ways to increase your list is to get more people to sign up for your newsletter. This may sound like a case of easier said than done, but if you have a website, this goal really is very easy to achieve. All you have to do is ensure that you place a sign-up box on each and every page of your website, instead of just on your homepage. The reason for this is that not everyone accesses your website from your homepage; a lot of people happen to come across a random page of your website and may not know what or where your homepage is. Such people should be able to easily sign-up regardless of which page of your website they are on. You should also see to it that the sign-up process is short and extremely simple; this motivates visitors to sign-up faster.

Tip 5: Provide people with an incentive to sign up

People are reluctant to sign up for newsletters as this involves giving away their email address. Nobody wants to be a victim of spam and people prefer to be cautious and protect their email addresses by simply not signing up. Your job is to motivate such people to part with their address by providing them with an excellent newsletter as well as a little extra something – a bonus. White papers and detailed case studies for those who have already subscribed are great bonuses. New subscribers can be temped with a special newsletter edition or a humorous Winamp skin. These are just suggestions; there are plenty of other options when it comes to offering a bonus. However, it is important to keep in mind that whatever the bonus is, it should be relevant to your newsletter.

Tip 6: Send at least a monthly newsletter

An email is a passing phenomenon. It is something that needs to be constantly conveyed to its readers on a fairly frequent basis. Failure to send your newsletter often enough will result in disaster; your subscribers could easily forget you, you could lose your readers to your competitors and your emails may be considered spam.

Tip 7: Always send newsletters on time

It is important that your newsletter is always punctual. It is not enough that you send a weekly newsletter once a week or a monthly newsletter once a month. You need to ensure that it goes out on the right day at the right time. Let’s say you have a weekly newsletter that you sent out on Friday at 4 p.m. You need to ensure that your newsletter reaches your recipients inbox every week, on Friday and at 4 p.m. This will prove to your readers that you can be trusted.

Tip 8: Place your email signature everywhere

It does not matter who you are sending your email to; what matters is that your website URL as well as your email address is an inseparable part of your signature and makes its presence in every single one of your emails. Providing these details in your email signature is instant advertising and effectively lets all those who get your emails know that you are online – they let people know that you exist.

If you pay attention to these tips, you are sure to get better results for your email marketing efforts. So make sure you put these tips into practice when you embark on your email marketing journey!

Posted in: Tips & Resources

Leave a Comment

Your Name *

Your Website

Your Comments *

If you pay attention to these tips, you are sure to get better results for your email marketing efforts. So make sure you put these tips into practice when you embark on your email marketing journey!

Could You Use an Extra $300-500 per Week?

Tell some friends and build your PeopleString to Earn the Big Bucks. We
pay for 6 levels of referrals…so its pretty easy to start earning money on
thousands of people.

http://www.peoplestring.com/?u=dagmarmeachem

Free Accounts…. Earn 5% of your Direct referrals and 2% of their
referrals for 6 levels. All you have to do is tell a few people how to make
some easy cash and you will be surprised at how fast your PeopleString
Grows.

You Even get paid  $0.50 everytime a friend joins your Network in

PeopleString.

http://www.peoplestring.com/?u=dagmarmeachem

Could You Use an Extra $2000 per Week…It’s EASY MONEY?

Get 20% of your Direct Referrals and 6% of their referrals for 6 levels by
signing up for the Entrepreneur Package. The Entrepreneur package will
give you everything you need to turn Mailbox-Cashbox into an easy to
run home based business that will take less than 1 hour per week.

5 Social Media Lessons Learned From Whole Foods

Soren Gordhamer is the author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected(HarperOne, 2009). His homepage iswww.sorengordhamer.com. You can follow him on Twitter.

As a company, Whole Foods has impressively embraced social media more than most, gathering over 1.2 million followers on Twitter and 123,000 fans on Facebook in the process. While it is easy to understand why a relatively young company or one started by a tech-savvy founder would so completely embrace social media communication tools, it is quite a bit more remarkable for an almost 30 year old established brick and mortar company with roughly 50,000 employees and over 270 stores worldwide to have done so.

I recently visited the Whole Foods headquarters in Austin, Texas to meet with members of their new media team, including Bill Tolany, the company’s Senior Coordinator of Integrated Media, and Winnie Hsia, who oversees the @wholefoods account. I wanted to know how Whole Foods integrated social media tools into their communications strategy, and what lessons had they learned from doing so. Below are five of the lessons that Whole Foods shared with me during our chat.

Click here to read more. 

Turn Your 15 Minutes of YouTube Fame into Cash

Most of us secretly dream of having a hit viral video on YouTube. Though few of us actually realize YouTube web celebrity, there’s now more incentive than ever to mastermind a viral video sensation.

Today Google and YouTube are announcing that they’re rolling out the YouTube Partnership Program, an advertising revenue sharing program, to regular Joes like you and me. Basically, individual videos that become widely popular, amass a ton of views, and abide by YouTube’s TOS will be eligible to earn revenue share dollars.

 Your 15 minutes of web fame could turn into something quite profitable, though the criteria does seem to be a bit arbitrary. You’ll know that you’ve hit the jackpot when they contact you. According to YouTube’s post on the news, “To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video’s virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an “Enable Revenue Sharing” message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account.”

After you’ve enabled revenue sharing, YouTube will sell ads opposite your video and pay you via Google Adsense on a monthly basis. The only bad news associated with today’s news – individual video partnerships are US-only for the time being.

The Err Is Human. What You Do With the Error Helps You Be a Better Marketer

A friend recently called me in a panic. She had just sent out her email campaign and found some typos after the fact. She was so embarrassed. What should she do? I told her to take a deep breath and use this as an opportunity to show her customers that she is human. This would bring her closer to her readers, and create a more loyal customer base.

I’m guessing my friend wasn’t the first person to include errors in her email message. What should you do if this happens to you?

The first step is to go back and look at the mistakes. How serious were they? If you take a breath and a second look, they could be something that would not obvious to your readers. But, if you think they were a big oops and you want to acknowledge it, plus offer a mea culpa, then by all means, do so.

One fun way to deal with errors in your emails is to turn them into a scavenger hunt. Tally your typos and run a contest. Send an email out to your readership apologizing for the errors. Then, ask your readers to look at the previous email and find all the errors, if they can. Create a link in your new message so readers can submit the results of their hunt. And of course, offer a reward that’s related to your business for those readers who find all of them. My friend was a personal chef, so everyone who submitted the right answers got a free cupcake.

Scavenger hunt not sound like something you’d do? Take a different strategy: Send an email to readers acknowledging that errors were made and explain what you are going to do in the future to prevent them. (Ask more people to help review your emails in advance? Spend more time editing your emails?) To enforce the message that we are all human, ask people to submit a professional oops they made via a survey in your email. Request a story about a situation that, looking back, makes them laugh. And of course, don’t forget to also ask what they learned from it. (And don’t forget to offer any respondents the option to be anonymous if they want.) Need a motivator to get people to submit their stories? Promise to publish the best ones in your next email, so you all can have a laugh and learn from each other.

How does this help? It demonstrates that, yes, mistakes will happen, but you are a professional and will acknowledge errors and then take actions to make things right.

Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself that a typo is small issue and it’s better to move on without even acknowledging it. But an error in your email sets a precedent and starts to erode your customers’ trust in you. And additionally, your follow-up email showcases that you are human and reminds your readers that they are human as well. Remember, people buy from people they like and with whom they feel they have something in common. That is your competitive advantage as a small business or organization, that you’re real and genuine. Use that real-person relationship to help you through any errors, seen or unforeseen.

Email Branding & Design Checklist

How do you present your business or organization to your audience? Does your brand say “conservative and trustworthy,” “bold and innovative,” or “whimsical and inviting?” The colors, graphics, and words you choose to promote yourself are crucial to creating the image you’re selling.

Whatever type of industry you’re in, it’s important to make sure that the brand image you present is consistent in all your marketing efforts — including your email campaigns.

Branding 101 
Before we get into the hows of consistent branding, let’s define what branding is. Branding is all the graphical elements that tie your identity together. It’s your logo, your slogan, and the colors, fonts, and images you use on your business cards, brochures, letterhead, in advertising, on your website, and in your email communications.

Branding is also your message. It’s the language and tone you use when you speak to your audience.

Your brand combines image and message to convey the personality of your business or organization, and your promise to consumers. Consistency makes your brand more recognizable and helps build trust.

Tie It All Together 
Use this checklist to make sure your email campaigns reflect your brand. 

1. Select a Template 
Most professional email marketing services, offer a range of preformatted templates to choose from. I recommend you write your content first, and then choose a template that will best fit the content. Get a sense of how many elements you’ll want to include in your campaign, then choose a template with the right number of columns and boxes.

2. Upload Your Logo 
Your logo is the one symbol of your business or organization that appears everywhere. Put your logo on the top left or top middle of your email communications. The idea is to make sure people who open your emails see your logo right away. Use the same logo colors and treatment that you use on your website and in other media.

3. Choose Colors and Fonts 
One mistake people sometimes make is creating email communications that look wildly different from their websites. Reading your email and then clicking to your website should feel seamless, not jarring. Choose colors that complement your website color scheme. I’d suggest using two primary colors and one accent color for your email communications. If you’re unsure of which colors to select, use the ones in your logo.

Two resources that can help you match your colors to your website are Color Cop andColorSchemer.

Likewise, choose fonts that are similar to what’s on your website: One font for headlines and another for body text. Be sure to leave enough white space so your content is easier to read.

(TIP: Prepare three “pre-branded” templates for different email campaigns — for example, newsletters, announcements, and promotions. The logo and color scheme should be consistent across the templates, but you can vary subtle design elements to show each is different.)

4. Use Graphics and Photos 
Graphics and photos can bring your email content to life. Use them wisely. Go back to the basics of brand image: Be true to your business personality. Graphics and photos — whether original artwork or stock images — represent your brand. Too many colors, fonts, and graphics can make your communications look busy and amateurish. Choose images that elicit the emotion you want your audience to feel.

5. Keep Your Tone and Message Consistent 
The verbiage of your email copy should be consistent with what’s on your website and in other communications. If your web copywriter is different from your email newsletter writer, make sure they both follow the same editorial guidelines for your organization. The language used and the message conveyed in your emails should reinforce your brand image. Email is considered a less formal means of communication, so it’s OK to be conversational. But don’t stray from your core message. Be authentic, always.

6. Carry Your Brand Across All Media — Including Social Networking Websites 
As you’re thinking about your business image and your email campaigns, don’t forget about Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites! Those are great places to promote your content and invite people to sign up for your mailing list. Present your logo and message on Facebook in tune with your other branded communications. Twitter allows members to customize their backgrounds, so choose one with your website and email campaign colors in mind.

Promoting your brand image consistently with thoughtful design for all your communications builds a solid business reputation. In the end, people are going to spend their money with businesses whose brands they recognize and whose messages they trust. Consistency builds both.