It happens to me over and over again. I sign up for someone’s list, then I discover several of their emails in my junk folder. Why? Because they use a different email FROM address every time they send to me.

It does no good to ask your readers to whitelist your email address if you change it all the time. Your one goal for effective eMail marketing is to get your messages delivered and, while there are a lot of factors that effect deliverability, you improve your chances when you use the same FROM address for everything you send whether that’s eZines, Announcements or sales messages.

Tell your readers what email address you’ll be sending from — ask them to whitelist it — then use that address. Consistently.

One of the systems I help my clients to implement is a schedule for getting on track with their ezine (electronic newsletter) as it’s so important that you have a systematic stay-in-touch strategy in place and a regular ezine is the perfect medium for achieving this!

However, the downside, and where so many solopreneurs fail, is that they don’t get into a regular publishing schedule and they start to lose their connection with their subscribers.

Today I’d like to share with you my top 10 tips for publishing a successful ezine and building that all-important know, like, and trust factor.

Read the rest of this post »

It takes many contacts with people on your list before they start to know, like and trust you enough to buy something from you. People rarely buy until after at least the 5th contact you’ve made with them, but most of us give up after the 3rd contact. It may take many more contacts beyond 5, and most marketers just give up too soon.

I get the question all the time, “when should I take someone off my list if they haven’t bought something yet?” and my answer to that is, “only when they ask to be taken off your list.” Because you just never know when they WILL be ready to buy. And that may be tomorrow, next week, or next year.

But you also need more than one channel to reach your prospects. So choose 3 to 6 marketing tactics that you’ll enjoy doing on a regular basis so that you can touch people in a variety of ways.

Read the rest of this post »

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve had enough with receiving emails with subject lines of “this one will work”, “the secret pill”, “do this and thrive”, “are you good enough”, “you’re an idiot if you don’t do this”, etc. While helping my Mum settle into her new home, I’ve been checking emails a lot less than usual and so am seeing more of the above types of subject lines all clustered together.

The above all came in within the last 2 days (and I’ve been unsubscribing at a record pace).

It’s really very simple. You want to succeed?

Create simple systems which support your goals and then consistently implement. Period.

I know it sounds boring, not nearly as exciting as what others are promoting, but this is a heck of a lot more effective. Promise!

Have you been thinking about sending a survey to your list, but not quite sure how to go about it?

Unsure of the types of questions to ask or even what you’ll get from the survey?

Not sure how to ask people to fill out your survey when you know how busy they are?

Great News! I’ve put together a step-by-step guide to creating surveys using Survey Monkey – we even walk through a sample survey and have screenshots to guide you every step of the way!

This digital guide isn’t meant to languish in your computer’s hard drive forever – it’s designed to have you sending out a survey TODAY!

Read the rest of this post »

Knowing how often to send emails to your mailing list is a big dilemma that many solopreneurs face.  You don’t want to bombard your subscribers with emails, but neither do you want them to forget you.  One of my own subscribers recently emailed me to ask me about how often you should send emails to your subscriber.

Here’s an excerpt of what she said:

“Your article piqued my interest today, and offered solid advice. It is interesting to note that I just attended a teleseminar where it was said that emailing your list daily was imperative and that every email needed to be full of outstanding content. Since I am shortly beginning my first online business, I felt overwhelmed by that directive to insure my online success.

Read the rest of this post »

As an online business owner you know how important it is to build your list in order to have a ready pool of clients, potential clients, and customers who are interested in your business and your services/programs.  But as a list owner you also have a responsibility to those people on your list to treat them well and build a relationship with them – it’s known as creating the like, know, and trust factor – and is crucial for sustaining a long-term business.

People will only work with those people who they like, know, and trust.

Read the rest of this post »

Whether your newsletter is a weekly, monthly or quarterly commitment it’s important that you have a plan for keeping the production flowing.  Your subscribers need to know that you will deliver exactly when you say you will, otherwise you will be in danger of appearing unreliable and not doing what you said you would.  Remember:  as a solo service professional it’s important to build the like, know, and trust factor, and getting your newsletter out on time, every time, is one of the ways in which you achieve this.

Read the rest of this post »

Just like writing a sales page for your product, program or service, writing successful email promotions can be easier than you think. There’s a science to it, more than an art, and to get you started, I’d like to share a tested formula for you to follow.

Taking the time to consider and answer the questions below before you write your email promotion will make it easier to write, easier for your reader to engage with, and easier to turn your prospect into a buyer.

Read the rest of this post »

Over the years I have worked with many solopreneurs helping them to create their online marketing systems and stay in touch with their audience via a regular ezine (or electronic newsletter).  Usually they come to me having already started to build their list, and have even subscribed to an email list management service so that they can deliver their ezine on a regular basis.

But what has happened several times is that the email list management service that they’re using isn’t working as well as they hoped it would, and they’re faced with the dilemma of either muddling through with their current provider, or switching over to a different provider and risk losing a large percentage of the list they’ve worked so hard to build up in the process!

Read the rest of this post »