How To Get FIVE Times More Profit From The SAME List of Prospects

September 10th, 2008 · No Comments

As I have mentioned before, there are occasionally articles and businesses I follow and recommend. Dr. Mani is one of those. Here is an excellent article on email strategies, but it is also a lesson on the importance of developing relationships and follow-up regardless of your type of business. The principles are also applicable to offline businesses with a direct mail program.

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How To Get FIVE Times More Profit From The SAME List of Prospects

By: Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

It looks impossible – but is really quite simple. You just have to keep following up!

It’s hard to believe this minor twist in your marketing can multiply profits – but it does. I’ve got the numbers to prove it. From one campaign that netted $2,521 in profit, there were 4 emails sent to the same opt-in list of 6,188 subscribers.

Email #1 brought in 43.2% of all orders… but email #2 got 26.7% of them, email #3, 18.1% and email #4 another 11.9%. Almost 60% of orders came from the follow up emails!

How many thousand dollars are YOU leaving on the table?

There’s a major difference between new home based business owners and experienced, more successful one. While beginners try to sell new visitors on their online storefront right away, veterans get them on a mailing list first.

Why? So that they can follow up. Educate visitors about a problem. Show them there’s a solution. Convince them that it’s their product or service. Get them to come back and buy from them – and keep coming back for more.

There’s a reason this approach works a lot better than a quick, one-shot sales pitch. In the moving parade of life, people are not always in the best frame of mind to buy what you offer right away – even if they need it.

They may not have the money ready. Or other priorities may be higher. Or they aren’t able to make a decision instantly. However, the fact remains that they are interested in what you have. They are potential buyers. They can be convinced to buy.

All you need to do is keep trying. Following up. Reminding your prospects about you, your business and your product or service.

To do this, you need to find a way to stay in touch – and then use it. There are some serious benefits of a follow up series of marketing messages.

1. You can tailor your pitch to prospect’s needs. People respond in different ways. The same people who ignored a marketing message presented one way would grab at it when you change its focus.

2. You can ensure your message catches different prospects at their ‘best time’ to buy.

3. You can establish trust and brand yourself as an expert, by giving information that positions you as a specialist in your field.

4. You can harness the powerful force of ‘reciprocity’ – shower your prospects with so much value they feel obligated to do something for you in return.

5. You can build up the value of what you are giving them, allowing it to gently seep into their awareness, growing in intensity and ultimately forcing a sale.

How to follow up with prospects?

There are many ways to stay in touch with your clients and prospects:

* Email auto-responders – set-and-forget email tools to pre-load a series of sales and information messages and deliver them on schedule

* Direct mail – an equally (or more) effective way to deliver your follow-up messages

* Tele-marketing calls – a conversation can make the difference between a buyer and a lost sale.

* Post cards – a powerful, inexpensive system to deliver your messages

* Webinars – Web based seminars are a cool new way to educate and persuade your prospects that your product or service is worth a try

* Live seminars and conferences – Useful for high-ticket items or complex products and services

And remember you can either automate or outsource most of this work – and still have your business enjoy the benefits of staying in touch with customers and following up.

There are other critical elements to the process, such as what you say when you follow up, how often (and for how long) to follow up and how to measure and track effectiveness of your sequential marketing – and improve it.

But at the very least if this article has helped you implement a sequence of follow up messages in your marketing, you will experience wonderful results – and make us both happy!

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About the Author:

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian runs the “OPTI-BIZ: How To Optimize Your Home Business” website and offers 10 more short free special reports about boosting your home based business profit. Read them at http://www.Opti-Biz.com or get them by email – write to: opti-biz@aweber.com

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To your business success!

Paul Elliott

Marketing With Unbelievable Guarantees!™

http://www.MarketingSuccessBlueprint.com/blog

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