Customized Marketing Techniques

Building Your Mailing List with Downloads

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list”cannot be true enough —if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product,you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example,let’s take a look at a very good example —apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site,they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via —guess where —iTunes!

In reality,you do not need to offer such a “heavyweight”download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report,a free wallpaper,and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

However,slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First of all,you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably,dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way,there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page,and when they do,you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!

Also,you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download,and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie,but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

For more information visit How to start a business

How to Get and Use E-Mail Addresses for Viral Advertising

Viral marketing has an array of possibilities and ways to achieve your overall goals. However,just like everything else,preplanning and the right setup to create success are the things you will need to make it work for you and your e-business.

The first thing you want to be sure you don’t do is get over-zealous. The one thing you need to avoid at all costs is spamming. Spamming is still used widely,but with the government establishing more restrictions and fines you don’t want this to be a problem for you. The professional image of your site will also suffer if you send mail blatantly.

Spamming requires a database that contains a huge list of e-mail addresses set up so that the message can be delivered with one click. The problem with it (aside from the governmental restrictions and associated fines) is that it irritates the recipients and kills the validity of your campaign,which in turn kills the factors that would motivate someone to refer your site.

You need to personalize by creating your website with personal appeal. You must see to it that your website makes your customers feel safe,secure and cared for. E-mail is important,because it is going to be one of the most affordable ways to keep in touch with your customers.

The proper way to handle email permission is to first let your customer know that you will not transmit their e-mail addresses to third party companies. The next thing to do is to attach the need for their e-mail addresses to benefits they can receive.

For example:Coupons or discounts that are only available to members who receive e-mail notifications. With each e-mail you send the viral marketing effect takes place.

For more information visit Start business or How to start home based business