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.
Source
Showing posts with label mailing list. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mailing list. Show all posts
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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.
Source
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.
Source
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)