Free From Harm Blog

Archive for August, 2011

E-mail groups can be a rich mine of prospects.  It’s only logical that you do everything you can to make sure that visitors coming in from that source are well taken care of so they come back to your blog or website again and again.  After all, it probably took you a lot of time and effort to target your leads and tap your network of contacts in order to generate the listing from that e-mail group.  Don’t let it go to waste.  Here are 7 ways you can use to treat visitors that come from e-mail groups and make sure they come back again and again:

Have a working website

Nothing could be more frustrating and annoying to a visitor than attempting to get through to a website that hangs or simply freezes.  If you want visitors coming from e-mail groups to stick around or come back, make sure your website or blog delivers.

Check your website for general operability and use.  Do graphics take too long to load?  Perhaps it’s best to switch to an image with a lower resolution or change the images altogether.  Are there dead links?  It’s probably time to do a periodic site repair.  Is the site troublesome?  Perhaps it’s time to overhaul the whole site or switch to an account with your ISP that can accommodate your site’s demands.

Make sure your site can handle the traffic

Traffic can be a problem, particularly if you’re on a shared site or free blog.  Ultimately, it all boils down to server and processor limitations, so it’s a good idea to check if your server has the memory and processor capacity to handle a surge of traffic coming from your e-mail groups.  Although blog platforms and most sites are optimized to handle any traffic surges, it’s still best to check.

Know your visitors

Granted that e-mail groups are generally easier to ‘read’ and categorize than generic listings, it’s still best to determine certain tendencies that each group has.  To do this, you’ll need to spend some time analyzing the figures and reports from your blog or website.

Check your most popular entries – those write ups that have generated a spike in traffic, read visitor comments, discussion threads and posts and check your stats regularly.  If you receive e-mail messages from your e-mail groups, you might want to check their content for clues.  Familiarizing yourself with your visitors will allow you to offer better content and service and approach them on a more personalized level.

Interact

Don’t make your visitors feel that they just landed on a deserted planet when they visit your website.  Make sure that you reply to their inquiries, comments and messages.  Go beyond the usual ‘Thanks for your comment’ or ‘Come back for more info’ posts.  Read their messages and post replies that encourage more interaction.

Have a segregated group?  Offer relevant content nevertheless

Relevant content is essential to ensuring that you treat your site’s visitors well.  Regardless of how diverse your e-mail groups are, it’s essential that you still cater to their unique interests and needs.  Check your content because this is how you’ll win their hearts and loyalty.

Always offer a selection

Variety makes for an interesting blog or website.  Even if your site has a theme, make sure you offer other content that may be directly or indirectly related to the main subject.

Practice politeness

Political correctness may be overrated for some but politeness is here to stay.  Always treat visitors that come from e-mail groups with respect.  Avoid writing insults or leering comments.  Remember that people are entitled to their own opinions and their right to express themselves is protected by the law.

You may not agree with what they say but hey, it’s a democracy.  And that’s exactly the reason why you enjoy the privilege of maintaining your own website in the first place.  So lighten up and treat your visitors with respect.  Who knows?  You could even build a stronger e-mail group list in the process.

Do you know what does it takes to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? Could you tell me the essential ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? . All these of these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.

If you are anything like I was when I started out; excited and all set to make my fortune as an affiliate marketer and yet not knowing where to start you may have to say what I said, “I don’t have a clue!” If you are new to affiliate marketing can I tell you something? There are some essentials that you must know or you will waste an incredible amount of time and money.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

Important Tool #2: Quality Content

One of the most powerful tools for building quality content for your website is writing relevant and informative articles. Consider this, almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more-trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation on the net is a good step in building loyal customers and articles help establish credibility.

Important Tool #3: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #4: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important success vehicles in the affiliate marketing world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do what is necessary to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must have an aggressive link building campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles as mentioned above, with your website’s link in the resource box. Submit to related e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick them up and post them.

These are but four of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become an affiliate marketing success.

When someone sends an email, they would prefer to get an immediate response.  Although most responses take time, customers and potential buyers prefer to get their response immediately.  To give an immediate response to an email, you can use an autoresponder.  They are a great way to let someone know that you received their email, and that you are taking care of their request.  Autoresponder messages can be custom tailored, and look much better than simple thank you pages.

Some Internet marketers use their autoresponders to save themselves time and make their customers feel a bit more at ease until they get the time to handle the request or issue. If you set up your autoresponder in your email account, you’ll find that there are many advantages, although the biggest advantage is answering email questions and acting as tech support.

Your autoresponder can act as tech support for your business by answering any questions you receive via email.  To make this work smoother, you can always add answers as you go or just include the most common preset answers in your autoresponder.  If your website has a technical support page, you can include different addresses for each specific question.  When a customer emails the address, the autoresponder at the other end will automatically send them the answer.

Using an autoresponder to answer your email questions can drastically cut down the amount of emails that you need to answer.  Instead of having to wait on your response, your customer will get an instant reply.  Customers love to get instant replies, which is one of the main reasons why autoresponders are so popular with online businesses and Internet marketing.  If customers start to ask questions that your autoresponder isn’t set up for, you can easily add answers to it anytime you need to.

No matter what the question may be, you can use an autoresponder to answer it.  With most autoresponders, you simply type the answer to a question or other piece of information into a text file.  You can include an answer section on your website as well, where customers will ask their questions.  If you set it up so that it includes a mail form, you can add several pages to the answer section.  Once a customer sends the question, the autoresponder should immediately send them an answer.

For a growing Internet business, an autoresponder is a must have.  If you deal with a lot of customers, you’ll find this tool to be very beneficial.  No matter what type of company you may have online, an autoresponder will help you stand out in a crowd – and keep you looking good night and day.  When customers email you and get an immediate response – they won’t forget it.