Using Your Mailing List As A Test Market

Your mailing list is a great way to promote your products and stay in touch with your customers. You may not realize it, but it also serves another purpose. You can use your mailing list as a test market for new products and services you may be thinking about offering.

A test market is a limited group of people you offer a product to in order to receive feed back before you put the product up for sale to the general population. Using a test market will allow you to get feedback on your product. Your test market may suggest adding a feature you hadn’t thought of or offer other advice which will be helpful in fine tuning your product.

Your mailing list is a natural choice for a test market, as they have already expressed interest in the type of products you offer. For example, if you have sold an information product on starting a home based business before, perhaps you can use your mailing list of people who have bought that product as a test market for an information product on marketing techniques. You already know they are interested in starting a business; therefore, they would probably appreciate learning how to market their new business.

You can choose to offer your test products at a normal rate, a reduced rate, or even for free. Let them know that you are still working out the “bugs” and that the product you are offering may be different from the finished product you are going to sell to the general public. Letting them know this in advance can ward off any ill feelings; if one of the people on your mailing list buys a test product and later sees a similar product with slightly different features for sale, they may feel they got ripped off.

If you are going to offer the product at a reduced rate or give it away for free, let them know you would appreciate their feedback in exchange. Have a form set up online where the customer can fill out their opinions and advice. Ask them to leave a recommendation that you can use on the landing page once the product is finished.

You can also use your mailing list to get feedback when you are in the development stages of creating an information product. For instance, you can send out an email with a link to a questionnaire form and ask them to fill it out. If you know the general topic you would like to create a product on, you can ask your test market what are their three biggest questions about that topic. If you end up receiving a bunch of questions in the same general areas, you know that is the area of content you would like to focus your product on.

If you have a service based business, you can still use your mailing list as a test market. You can ask what type of services they would like to have. If you offer tangible products, you can ask your test market what type of new products they would like to see you carry and which features can be improved upon in your current inventory.

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Why You Need A Mailing List?

A mailing list is a list of people who signed up to receive your mailings, such as newsletters, ecourses, ebooks, and other emails. There are many benefits to having a huge mailing list. Here are a few reasons why you will want to start building one today.

There is an old saying that says, “The money is in the follow up”, and that holds true for your list. Your mailing list provides you a way of staying in touch with people who have visited your website. Maybe they didn’t buy anything the first time they visited your site. However, if you stay in touch with them on a regular basis, they may turn into a loyal customer.

There are several types of mailing list formats to choose from. You may want to include each kind on your website. You can offer a general newsletter that people can subscribe to. This is a great way to keep people informed on the updates you have made to your site. You can include excerpts from any articles you recently added with links to the full text. If you offer podcasts, you can include information about upcoming information you will be featuring, etc.

You can also choose to have a tips list or ecourse. People love numbers and are eager to sign up for a tips list, such as “15 ways to get organized today” or “50 ways to work from home”, etc. These tips can be small emails that are delivered daily to your mailing list. An ecourse is a great way to promote your information products. You can include a tiny bit of information and deliver a daily or weekly lesson to your mailing list.

The best way to manage a mailing list is through an autoresponder service. When you sign up for such a service, you can create a list and load email messages into it. When someone signs up for your list, they will automatically start to receive the messages you have already written. Each person will receive message 1, and the autoresponder will continue to send the messages in the order you selected.

While the main purpose of having a mailing list is to promote products, your visitors will be eager to sign up for them if you provide helpful information. With your mailing lists, you will want to include a “p.s” after the body of the message.

These will grab your readers’ attention. You can use this space to include your affiliate links for other products you are promoting. Your mailing list will allow you to cross promote your products and services and turn “fence sitters” into customers.

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Why Use Autoresponders

Why Use Autoresponders
Copyright © Jaime Parmis
http://www.JaimeParmis.com


If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you're ready to learn about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they're eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive - or even free - method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website - for free! However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business? The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company's server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It's a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company's reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing a professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your autoresponder.

There are a number of free autoresponders you can use. Try http:/www.getresponse.com, or http://www.fastfacts.net. Or go onto Google and you will find a long list of free autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions as to how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully. Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests. For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales. It's a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers. This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign.


About the Author:
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Jaime Parmis helps ordinary people all over the world make money online with affiliate programs. If you can follow 3 easy steps, you can get your own customized website, auto-responder (email follow-up software) and pre-written email marketing campaign professionally designed and installed and ready to pull in profits for you in 24 hours or less! See details and complete information and sign up today at: http://www.JaimeParmis.com/pips.html
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10 Innovative Ways To Use Your Autoresponder

Today's feature article is:

10 Innovative Ways To Use Your Autoresponder
http://www.JaimeParmis.com/pips.html


1. Collect leads with your autoresponder. You will get
an e-mail digest of everyone's e-mail addresses who
requests information from your autoresponder.

2. Publish a price list of all the products and services
that you offer. You could also include order forms,
product descriptions, and other sales material.

3. Publish free reports in autoresponder format. The
reports should be related to your business or web site.
Giving away free stuff will quickly increase your traffic.

4. Collect vital customer satisfaction information by
publishing a survey in autoresponder format. This type
of information will help you serve them better.

5. Instead of answering every customer question that's
e-mailed to you, publish " Frequently Ask Questions" in
autoresponder format. This will save time and money.

6. You could publish your testimonials or endorsements
in autoresponder format if you don't have the room in
your ad copy. It's more effective to include all of them.

7. Provide back issues of your e-zine archives in auto-
responder format. This will give your subscribers and
web site visitors easy access to them.

8. Publish your entire web site in autoresponder format.
Sometimes visitors don't have enough time read your
entire site. They could print it out and read it offline.

9. You could offer your ebook in autoresponder format.
Your visitors won't have to download it or have the
software to read it right away.

10. You could publish the terms and conditions to any
business transactions in autoresponder format. This
could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.

Quote of the Day:

"We live by admiration, hope and love." -- William
Wordsworth


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