Part of the reason people get into online businesses is the ability to “not be there” and still get the order complete.

• Sales letter up 24/7
• Order transaction up 24/7
• Order fulfillment up 24/7
• Automatic email confirmation up 24/7

Real contact with the customer

ZERO

(sounds like a MasterCard commercial, huh?)

Online digital businesses make people lazy.

No matter how you cut it, people want to do less and less and get more and more.

A common fallacy – mainly contributed by the successful – is that you have all this free time to sit on the beach and drink from a coconut. Lots of sales copy reads, “I send out a couple of emails a week and clear twenty-grand a month.”

It sounds so simple, but there’s much more to it.

Nobody tells you about the number of emails you get that start with:

“I can’t get the thing to download. You mentioned something about an acrobat. What does that have to do with anything?”

How you serve your customers determines if they will ever buy from you again.

And it determines if they will tell their friends.

Excuse me!

What they tell their friends?

They will tell them something, but what that something is, is up to you.

It’s how you follow up…

How you treat your customer…

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will guide you along that successful path

You want your customers to tell their friends that you are a great marketer, right?

Three Reminders…

It’s About Support, Not Just Selling

Today an eleven-year-old with a website can sell something online. Selling is not the issue. But how will that kid react with an angry, frustrated, or confused buyer? What happens when the tyke who drinks bytes for breakfast meets grandma who decides this will be the day she logs on to the internet for the first time?

The unsuccessful look at a sale as the completion of THE goal.

Get the sale.

Get the sale.

They sell one person then move to the next. Those making the most money realize the first sell is a stepping stone to a relationship through which more sales will come.

Any kid can make a sale; it takes a pro to supply support.

It’s About Friendship, Not Just Salesmanship

There’s enough arrogant copywriting high-fiving happening in business it’s a wonder that some people can type with their blistered hands. Few people write real sales copy, most of it is just hype.

Why?

To get the money.

Big deal.

How many friends have you made through your products and services?

How many of your customers can you call and they’re thrilled to hear from you?

Whose house could you stop by for a cookie and a glass of milk?

Crooks don’t stop by for a cookie – friends do.

Uh-oh, I hear some excuses…

”But I run an internet business…but I never see a customer…but I’m trying to remain anonymous and make $4,000 a day from my kitchen table in my underwear…”

Some of my best friendships (and most profitable ones) have come as a result my digital business. No, you don’t have to be everyone’s pal, and there will be some customers you’ll need to get rid of – especially the dreaded freebie seeker.

But a handful of solid clients that you laugh with, dream with, go to for advice, and go the extra mile for will only boost your business.

What kind of friend are you to your customers?

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will provide you with the ‘insider’ knowledge of how to create that relationship with your best customers. It will give you enough material that you can’t be lazy.

See you on the inside

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If you are here for the first time, WELCOME! If you’ve been here before, welcome back.

If you got here from the emails I have been sending the past couple of days, THANK YOU! And if you found me by accident through surfing, here’s a perfect opportunity to listen/read to the rest of the post and then go to the upper left hand corner and sign up for my Relationship Marketing ecourse because that ecourse goes hand in hand with the topic of this post:

Squeeze Pages – Your Bait Just Isn’t Working

Now you’re saying, “What?”

Let me explain.

There are a LOT of people coming online each and every day with the aspirations of tapping in to the ginormous amount of money that is being spent on the internet. I mean there are people in search of information and these newcomers need to learn the process of gathering names and emails addresses and providing that information the correct way.

Now, this isn’t going to be a lesson on ‘how to sell’. Well, yea it is sort of, but one of the first things that they, and maybe you, need to learn is how to build a list so that they can have some people to send their messages to and make some money.

But before you can start building a list, you need a basic website online with an optin form to capture the names and email addresses of the people who are visiting your site.

A squeeze page.

And that’s where I say, your squeeze page bait isn’t working.

Now, if you have been reading my emails recently, I have been talking about ‘what’ a lot of the marketers are doing wrong.

Here’s what I mean.

I am on a LOT of mailing lists! Wayyyy too many if you ask the average person and I wouldn’t recommend being on as many… well, yes I would, but that’s for another post, but I digress…

I am on a lot of lists and here’s what I see; these ‘marketers’ are using squeeze pages to collect your name and email address and now you have given them the permission to send you emails. But what they are sending out with each email has nothing to do with the report or ebook or software or whatever they were giving away to get me on their list in the first place!

They are sending out promotion after promotion either trying to get you to sign up to someone elses list or they are trying to get you to buy an affiliate product that they will get a commission on. I really DON’T have a problem with that, I mean, I do it from time to time also. That’s just what we do, but most of these people don’t even have their own product and I would venture to guess that a lot of them don’t realize how easy it is to flip a plr product and make sales on their own.

Of course, that’s assuming that the product that they are going to sell has something to do with the product they are giving away on their squeeze page.

I mean, if I sign up to get a report or ebook about dating and how to read body language, why in the world would I want to be sent to another squeeze page that is dealing with forex trading?

Now let me ask you – you work hard driving traffic to a squeeze page and offering something of value in order to get people to sign up for your ‘newsletter/ezine’ right?

Say ‘right’

Why would you not provide them with excellent content dealing with the report/ebook/whatever that they signed up to receive?

I don’t have the answer to that question, do you?

Instead, most of the lists that I sign up for start right away blasting me (and hundreds if not thousands of others) with other offers, other sales pitches and other things that I can go buy that have nothing to do with their original product.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are several lists that I am on that I get fabulous content from and when they send an offer out for one of THEIR products, or an affiliate offer for a RELATED product, I will typically click over to take a look at it because you just never know when another product is going to come along that is going to help your business out.

And that’s where you come in; leave me a comment on why you think people market this way, or am I completely off base.

After you leave your comment, go up to the upper left and sign up for my Relationship Marketing Ecourse and find out why it’s important to build a relationship with your readers.

Once you are signed up, you will start receiving the ecourse and you will also receive the remaining messages in my squeeze page series which will include an announcement for the live webinar I will be holding on April 19th where I will show you EXACTLY how to fix this problem.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks in advance for your comments.

Even after you have built a list of subscribers, you must realize that a good majority of them are not going to be ‘buyers’. Most lists are built by giving something away for free as an incentive for signing up. Most of the list will prove to be ‘freebie seekers’ or ‘tire kickers’ who are unlikely to ever buy anything online.

Now is the perfect time to work on developing your relationship with the people on your mailing list. You are a marketer, so it’s your job to persuade these people to be more responsive to your messages and increase the number of sales you make through your emails to them.

In this post I am going to give you 3 tips on how to turn those people who have become numb to your messages into responsive, hungry buyers.

Tip #1

Be Consistent

One of the ways to create responsiveness from your readers is your consistency in sending content to them. You are working on developing a reputation with your list so regular, useful, messages need to become expected by your readers. Sporadic and infrequent mailings tend to leave a lot of your subscribers not remembering who you are, where they first signed up with you, or why you are finally mailing them now. Finding the right interval is very important. Every day can be too much while only once or twice a month is usually too little.

Tip #2

Don’t Bombard Them With Sales Pitches

You do not want to bombard them with sales pitches. Although I know marketers who do this (and I am subscribed to a LOT of these lists), it’s not recommended that you send two of these messages in a row. By sending several emails that provide content relevant to what they signed up to receive in between each promotional message sends the subliminal message that you value them as more than just a potential customer.

As I mentioned, everything you send to your subscribers should have something to do with what they signed up to your list for. All these mailings, free products, information, and recommended products need to be tailored to their interests. By providing targeted information you are branding yourself as not only an expert in the field but a helpful person to know as well.

Tip #3

Ask Them Questions – Ask For A Response

A good way to build responsiveness in your mailing list is to occasionally ask them what THEY are interested in knowing about. This can be done either as a poll or a straight question. Offer an extra special free product for the best suggestions and then send it to everyone who responded with a suggestion or comment. The more you know your list the better you can serve them while increasing the chances of making sales along the way.

Provide your email subscribers with an easy to use way of contacting you. The easiest way to do this is by setting up your autoresponder email address to be an email address that you monitor every day, that way your readers can just ‘reply’ to any one of your emails to contact. Make sure they know just how valuable they are to you and be ready to give personal service when needed or requested. By becoming a ‘real’ person for them, they are much more likely to take you up on your offers when you do send them a sales message.

I hope this series has helped you out in your list building efforts. If you want more in depth information about list building, check out my List Building From Scratch ebook.

As I mentioned previously, my next set of posts are going to be dealing with squeeze pages and how to avoid making ‘the’ fatal mistake.

Stay tuned.