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1: Encourage Repeat Sales & Customer Loyalty
By:
Jim Conley II, MerchantSeek.com
There
are a few good ways to get repeat sales and
increase customer loyalty. The one strategy
that I want to focus on this week is starting
your own opt-in newsletter. Now don't
cringe or click the delete key. Having your
own opt-in newsletter is critical to your online
success. That's one of the reasons why so
many of the larger dot-com companies are
failing. They simply fail to keep in
contact with previous customers. A
website's long term success largely depends on
its ability to regenerate sales from previous
customers.
Unlike
bulk, unsolicited e-mail (spam), people choose or
opt-in to receive your newsletter. You
don't have to worry about the chances of losing
your ISP or web host, nor will you have to worry
about people cussing you out, and the like.
Having your own newsletter will enable you to
show your subscribers that you are an
"expert" at what you do. This
will build trust, loyalty and credibility between
you and your subscribers. This tactic is
not aimed at generating first time visitors, but
rather setting up the stages to encourage your
past site visitors and customers to visit your
site repeatedly.
Today
let's focus on how to start your very own
newsletter (also called an e-zine). Before
you can jump into starting your own opt-in
newsletter it's important to map out your
strategy. Here are some things you must consider
beforehand:
a)
Frequency - How often do you
wish to e-mail your newsletter out to
subscribers?
Depending
on how much or little time you have to devote to
your own newsletter will ultimately determine how
frequently you will distribute it. Daily?
Weekly? Bi-Weekly? Monthly? Unless your whole
business is just about writing your newsletter
then daily is out of the question. It just
requires too much time and really isn't a good
idea, as many subscribers won't read your
everyday mailings. Many will get annoyed by
this. Monthly may work in some cases, but
usually that's not enough contact with
customers. I would suggest either weekly or
bi-weekly as this seems just perfect. Once
you've decided on a schedule, stick to it.
Not keeping on schedule will have a negative
effect and show your subscribers you don't have
time for them. This is not the message you
want to present.
b)
Newsletter Title - Simply, what
you are going to call your newsletter?
This
will require some thought, and you may want to
ask for a few suggestions from your employees or
friends. Come up with something easy to
remember and focused toward your business.
It's also a good idea to come up with a short
slogan or descriptive sentence that quickly
describes what your newsletter is all about and
place it under your title, just like a
sub-heading. Refer to the top of this
newsletter for an example.
c)
Content - What are you going to
write about?
Don't
just send a weekly newsletter with advertisements
in it. You'll quickly lose subscribers if you do
that. You must make your newsletter
informative because here is where you want to
express your expertise. Write articles that
help people in some way. Keep your articles
targeted to topics that compliment your
business. If you're a gardening site, write
articles that involve gardening, lawns, etc.
You
don't have to be a professional writer to write
articles. You just need to know what you're
talking about. Nor do you have to write
1,000+ word articles. Keeping within 400 to
500 words is sufficient. Remember, quality
is much more important than quantity. If
article writing just isn't for you, hire out for
someone to write for you. Really though,
it's not difficult and should be something you
can have fun with rather than dread.
Writing a good informative article will take
anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. If you have to
research your topic more (and chances are you
will) then it may take a little longer. I usually
find myself spending around 4 to 6 hours per week
on each issue of MerchantNewz, but this includes
my research time,and most of my articles are over
1,000+ words. Don't forget to have someone
proofread your articles before sending them out
with your newsletter. Trust me, you don't
want to be embarrassed by receiving e-mails from
people pointing out spelling and grammar
mistakes.
Also,
don't use reprinted articles that have been
around the Internet a number of times.
Write your own content, be unique. People don't
want to read the same articles they've already
seen a hundred times in other newsletters.
Provide valuable content people will want to
read. Get excited about your topic.
When you do this your readers will get excited
too.
d)
Distribution - What method are
you going to use to send out your newsletter?
Choosing
the right distribution method is crucial to
getting your newsletter out on time to your
subscribers. There are a few e-mail merge
programs available that you can use to distribute
your newsletter. Some of those are:
*
Mailloop - http://www.mailloop.com
*
MailKing - http://www.mailking.com
*
WorldMerge - http://www.worldmerge.com
Or,
if your budget won't allow for a software
purchase, you can send your newsletters with a
standard e-mail program (Eudora and Outlook are
good ones). Perhaps you may even want to
look into using a service like Topica (http://www.topica.com) to distribute your
newsletter to subscribers. There are other
similar services out there, but Topica seems to
be the best, from what I hear. While this
will work fine for the short term, as your
subscriber numbers grow it'll be in your best
interest to use one of the e-mail merge programs
listed above or...
Outsource
your newsletter distribution, subscriptions and
unsubscriptions to a mailing list system.
These are nice and allow for personalization (if
you collect names with e-mail addresses) and
automatic processing. Be prepared to pay a
higher fee for these services, though. A
good company to use for this would be Lyris (http://www.lyris.com). There are more
out there so feel free to research what others
have to offer also. Using services like these
will save you a great deal of time, allowing you
to focus on other important business related
tasks.
It appears this article is going to turn out to
be much longer than what I had first
anticipated. I'll stop here and let you
absorb the information I've given you thus
far. Next week we'll focus on how to get
subscribers, keep them, encourage subscribers to
visit your site again and other opportunities
that come along with having your very own opt-in
newsletter. See you next week!
-----------------------------------------
Jim Conley II is the CEO/Founder of MerchantSeek.
MerchantSeek allows merchants from around the
world to search FREE for a Merchant Account
Provider that best fits their businesses needs
and budget. Visit us at http://www.merchantseek.com/
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