Lifestyle Entrepreneur and Online Marketing Success Blog by Scott Fox

Deliverability: The #1 (but most overlooked) Email Marketing Success Metric

Most email marketers focus on tweaking visual and copywriting elements to improve performance of email marketing campaigns.  But those elements are only part of the story for successful email marketing...

While your email's images, copy, and subject line are important to attracting customer click-through, there’s another factor that overshadows them all: deliverability.

Deliverability is a measure of how many of your emails actually make it to their intended destination.

Most marketers gloss over deliverability because it's more fun to focus on crafting pretty images and enticing product messages.  But it’s been reported that more than 20% of emails never even reach the email inboxes of your intended recipients.

Your precious noozles may be held up by spam filters at the ISP or network levels, misdirected due to technical glitches, or caught in local firewalls. Even more are mis-filed into Junk or Spam folders in the user’s email software program.

You Need to Use a Professional Email Delivery Service
So don't try to manage your email publishing efforts yourself.  You should use an email delivery service that prioritizes deliverability of those messages.

Your next email marketing campaign is much more likely to succeed in reaching the inboxes of your targeted customers IF:

• You use an email sender that has strong relationships with the top Internet service providers to ensure deliverability,
• You encourage your recipients to “whitelist” your sending email address, and
• You avoid using spam triggers in your emails (these are words and formatting that make your emails look like spam to the firewall and filter software employed by most ISPs).

My Email Service Recommendations
Enhancing deliverability is the #1 reason that I use professional email delivery services to send my ScottFox.com noozles.

In publishing my noozles, I have successfully used Constant Contact, Feedblitz, and Aweber enough to recommend (and become an affiliate for) all three. Today Aweber is my #1 choice because it offers the most affordable combination of strong deliverability, good reporting, and includes industry-leading autoresponders, too.

What do you think? Is this helpful?  Who do you use to get your emails delivered?

 

My Easy 10 Question Free Business Plan Template

Last week in my new Click Millionaires Forum, a member named Tony asked me for a free business plan template recommendation.

My response? Most entrepreneurs spend way too much time on writing business plans. I’d rather see your creative energy invested in product development or marketing, things that will directly lead you to more revenue.

So I sat down and thought about all the business plans that I’ve written and seen over the years. I think that they all boil down to a few basic questions that apply to any startup business.

My Free Business Plan Template for You
Here are my Top Ten questions I think are most important for you to answer when starting a new business. You can use these to focus your thinking and to impress potential partners or investors (like your spouse!).

This basic business plan template doesn’t cover everything, but if you can answer these questions solidly, you are on your way. (Conversely, if you spend much time beyond answering these fundamental questions, your business planning process may be too much.)

Scott Fox’s Top Ten Business Plan Template Questions

1. Who is your target customer? Be specific.
2. How does your product or service solve a problem for them?
3. Will your solution to the problem be unique and valuable enough that these customers will pay you a good price for it?
4. How can you reach this target audience cost-effectively?
5. Will satisfied customers naturally tell others? If so, how can you encourage them to do so?
6. How much time and money can you afford to invest in this new business before you need to stop? (Set a time and money cut-off.)
7. What will it cost you to get started? Why? How can the Internet reduce those costs?
8. If you make conservative assumptions about the number of people who buy, and how much it costs you in both time and money to sell to them, can you make enough money to achieve your goals?
9. How can you differentiate yourself from the competition?
10. What are the 3 key assumptions you are making that are required for you to succeed? Are they reasonable and probable? If not, what could you do to change them?

Bonus Question: How can you systematize your new business so it takes proportionally less of your time as it grows but makes as much or more money? (Creating a business that will grow without you can lead to a true Click Millionaire lifestyle!)

[Note: These questions are for a solopreneur considering starting a new venture. If you are planning a larger venture or looking to raise money from investors, you’ll need to be a lot more thorough, especially with financial analysis.]

An Easy, Instant Business Plan!
If you can write just a couple of solid paragraphs answering each of these questions, you will be well on your way to creating a respectable business plan, as well as clarifying your own strategy.

Don’t fall victim to “analysis paralysis” by over-indulging in business planning. I recommend emphasizing “doing” over “planning”. It pays the bills much better!

What did I miss? Please let me know in the Comments below if this business plan outline is helpful to you?

If you would like more details and follow-up conversation about my simplified approach to writing business plans, please join us in the Click Millionaires Forum!

What is Click Millionaires? Free Podcast

Why is everyone talking about Scott Fox’s Click Millionaires? Are you wondering what all the fuss is about?

Listen to this fre-e podcast to hear me explain the philosophy behind my new Click Millionaires online success coaching community. 

Click Millionaires membership can help you redefine success for yourself in the 21st century. Tune in to learn more about how this new social network dedicated to your personal e-commerce and online marketing success can help you upgrade your life!

Click on the player to listen now online or right-click on this download link and select “Save Target as…” to save an MP3 copy to your own hard drive.

Join Click Millionaires today!

 

P.S. I’d like to help you succeed online, so you can try Click Millionaires here.

Please let me know what you think of this Click Millionaire Kick-off podcast?  It's my most personal one yet and I'd love to hear your feedback in the Comments below!

The Easiest Way to Make More Money Online

The easiest way to make more money online is to convert more of the people who visit your web site from browsers into buyers.

Even without increasing your marketing or advertising budgets, one simple and inexpensive change to your advertising and linking strategy can help improve your sales conversion rate and your profitability.

What is this simple change?

Make sure that links to your web site have specific landing pages that match customer expectations.

Be Specific in Your Links, Content, and Advertising

All over the Web, potential customers are looking for things. Good research into customer search engine usage can help you determine what potential visitors in your industry are looking for the most.

You should then design your web site around the keywords most common in their searches. This will help attract free, “organic” traffic to your optimized pages from the search engines.

You can also use these keywords in online advertising to attract customers interested in those targeted topics.

These strategies will help you attract to your web site visitors who are already inclined toward your products. This is a good start toward a purchase “sales conversion”.

Increase Conversion Rates by Meeting Customer Expectations

Meeting a customer’s expectations and easing her along the path toward purchase is the best way to increase your sales conversion rate.

How to Do This?

This optimization of your site to meet customer expectations is not as hard as it sounds. You can raise your sales conversion rates if you simply stop directing incoming visitors to your home page.

Instead, create specific landing pages for each product or campaign or search engine-targeted keyword phrase. That way, when Web surfers run across links to your site in their search for information and products, the links they click upon will deliver them to the pages on your site most likely to help them easily continue their shopping process.    

For an insurance agent, this suggests linking to pages dedicated to auto insurance info when promoting auto insurance, linking to another page optimized for homeowner's insurance when promoting homeowner's insurance, other links to another page optimized for marine insurance, another campaign using links to a page optimized for medical insurance, and additional ones for dental, annuities, or disability, too.

The pages for each of your product lines sections should also be clearly visible in your web site’s navigation menu. That will help both customers and search engines to easily find the products that they are looking for and speed them on their way toward purchase.

So, while a web site alone is enough to establish your presence on the web, and probably even get indexed in the search engines, to convert your visitors into purchasers you’ll have much better luck if you optimize specific pages of your web site to meet the expectations of newly arriving visitors.

If you help your customers continue down the path toward purchase by making it easy to find what they were expecting, you are a critical step closer to making the sale - every time.

Easier shopping means higher conversion rates means more sales means more money in your pocket! And without spending more on new ad campaigns or marketing initiatives.

Focusing on customer conversion like this is a smart strategy for tight times like today.

What do you think? 
What are your tips for helping make more sales online?

 

p.s. If you would like my help in improving your web site, learn about my personalized web site design review videos service here.

 

 

 

 

Disclosure Reminder

Scott Fox, The Liminal Institute, or associated persons or businesses may have content, promotional, advertising, customer, consulting, or equity relationships with the entities discussed or recommended on this web site. Many of the links on our web sites and in associated materials contain affiliate advertising codes, for example.

While efforts have been made to identify the best suppliers/vendors in each of these areas, we assume no liability for your use of them. You should use your own independent judgment to evaluate their services and fit for your needs.

Please see the Legal & Disclosures section for more details.

Marks, graphics, and names are property of their respective owners, as appropriate.

On Newsstands now: SUCCESS

What do George Foreman, Seth Godin, and Scott Fox all have in common?  We're all in SUCCESS magazine this month!

You may have missed it but SUCCESS magazine is back.  It's been retooled to help anyone interested in succeeding with today's life, career, and relationship challenges.

This month you'll find me in the "Ask the Experts" column.  

I'm joined by my friends, Joel Comm and Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound.  Together we answer reader questions about today's best online marketing tools and opportunities. 

If you're looking for inspiration, motivation, and plenty of practical tips, too, check out SUCCESS.  It's a great mix of guidance and strategy that can make a difference in your life and career.

Also unique to SUCCESS is that each issue includes a FR-EE DualDisc™ (CD & DVD in one) with bonus content from top names in business and personal-development.  The March issue includes audio and video tracks from Seth Godin, Napoleon Hill, Harvey McKay, SUCCESS publisher Darren Hardy, and more.

Newsstand cover price is only $5.95.  Quite a deal for anyone interested in self-improvement.  (And, of course, you'll save big if you subscribe. (over 60% off the newsstand price!))

Learn more about SUCCESS online here.

How To Check Your Site’s Inbound Links for SEO

Your plan for search engine optimization success should include a campaign to attract links from other web sites.   

The number and quality of other web sites that create “inbound links” or "backlinks" to your web site is critical in determining how your web site ranks in search engine results.  This is because each link essentially counts as "vote" for the quality of your site's content.  Every vote you get helps your web site rank higher in search results and attract more fr.e.e traffic from potential customers.

How to find your site's backlinks to improve your SEO:

* Google: Just visit Google.com and type in: link:yourURL

This simple query will show you the number of backlinks your web site has from other sites across the web.  The more of these, the better for SEO purposes.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't display all your existing inbound links (usually only showing ~25% of them).  So, many webmasters also use Google Webmaster Tools (and Yahoo!) to find a more exact number of links to your site from other parts of the Web.

* Google Webmaster Tools:  You can register your web site for fre-e with Google to take advantage of its "Webmaster Tools."  Doing so will give you access to additional, more detailed reporting on how Google has indexed your web site's pages, your site's backlinks, and diagnostic tools (for checking on 404 errors and similar advanced topics).  Highly recommended and fr-e-e but a bit more work to set up and analyze.

* Yahoo:  Type into the Yahoo search box: linkdomain:yourURL

Yahoo will then display all the pages its index contain which include links back to your web site.  [Tip: You may want to try using both yourURL and www.yourURL in the search - results can vary.]

If this SEO linking analysis shows you that important pages on your site have few or no other sites linking back to them, you know where to concentrate your link exchange or publicity efforts to attract some.

As more fully explained in my Special Report "F-ree SEO in Plain English", you should then review the content on your most linked-to pages.

If you can detect why those pages are good at attracting links, you can do more of it!

7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam

Determining the legitimacy of an affiliate program can be challenging.  Typical big business credibility indicators like a listing with Dun & Bradstreet or the Better Business Bureau may not apply to a small software company, online retailer, or ebook publisher.

Here are some other ways to “check out” a company to determine if you believe they’ll be a good affiliate program partner.

1. The company must have a professional looking website. It should include contact information and likely also offer special contact details for affiliates who need support.

2. Determining the registration date of a company’s web site domain name can be one clue to the longevity of the business. You can check the age of any current domain registration by visiting http://whois.net. You can also use the “Wayback Machine” http://www.archive.org to view previous versions of the web site to see if any of them are incongruous with the company’s current pitch.

3. Google the company and the product and the names of any of the principal officers. Try combining the company or officer’s names with words like “fraud” or “convicted”, too. It’s amazing what search engines can turn up these days. 10 minutes of online research can save you thousands of dollars.

4. Examine the “terms and conditions” of the affiliate program (usually posted online). You can review this document carefully in 3 ways before joining the program:

a) Read it closely to make sure that you are comfortable with the obligations it imposes upon you. Also consider the remedies it specifies if you become unhappy with your new partner’s performance as the sponsor of the affiliate offers.

b) Look at the document to judge whether it looks professional. Does it read well and make sense in professional-sounding English? Or does it look copied and pasted from another web site. Does the business name listed match the company name you were expecting to see?

c) Does the document include real contact information? Locate the address on Google Maps to check if it looks like a real office building. Try calling the phone number or emailing the contact email address included to see what responses you get.

You can generally skip steps like this if you work with a major provider of affiliate programs like Commission Junction or Link Share, or directly with brand name companies like Amazon.com or Buy.com, but even then it can’t hurt to be careful...

As an entrepreneur your most valuable resource is your time. You want to invest that time only where you can reasonably expect a good return. Carefully examining your potential affiliate program partners BEFORE you enroll with them is a good way to improve your returns from affiliate marketing.

Visit my previous post on this topic "Avoiding Affiliate Market Scams" here.

 

EXCERPT:  This blog post is an excerpt from my new Special Report “Making Money with Affiliate Programs”. This 100+ page downloadable report is full of detailed advice, strategies, and screenshots that can help you quickly learn to make money online from affiliate programs. This Special Report is currently only available to subscribers of the Instant Internet Business Secrets program.

You can join now and download this expert report right away!  Click to learn more…

Tips to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Scams!

Affiliate marketing is a perfectly legitimate, modern industry.  That means it attracts scam artists, too.

So if you are new to affiliate programs, you should approach it sensibly, like any other business venture.  This will help you to avoid the many affiliate marketing scams and rip-offs that this successful new industry attracts.  Take Jennie's example here:

Here are some tips for avoiding Affiliate Marketing scams:

• Don't Pay for Membership: Affiliate programs are fr-ee. Any company that tries to charge you a fee for joining an affiliate program is not really an affiliate program. It is more likely a multilevel marketing company that has adopted the trendy “affiliate marketing” label to attract Internet curious newbies. You should not have to pay anything for the privilege of working to promote someone else’s products on commission, should you?
  
• Too Good to Be True: Just as in other fields, offers that sound “too good to be true” usually are. In the affiliate marketing space, the most common scams offer you guaranteed or unexpectedly high returns for little investment. Often this is a promise of tremendous traffic for a small price, inclusion in a “network” that claims to deliver such traffic for a fee, or a package of "turnkey" web sites or software that will "automatically" make money for you online. Don’t let your unfamiliarity with affiliate marketing cloud your good judgment. If something smells funny, it probably is.
  
• Fly-by-Night Merchants: You may also encounter companies that operate an affiliate program unethically. They might have professional looking websites and well-reviewed products available for you to promote, but when it comes time to cut you a check for the commissions you’ve earned, they are suddenly less available. You only want to promote products from companies that you are confident will pay you. Just as you would not go to work unless there was a paycheck coming, you don’t want to just “trust” a shady company to pay you. There many well-established and reputable affiliate programs in which you can participate.
  
• Pyramid Schemes: If a company’s only product is that you can make money by investing money and recruiting additional members, it may be a pyramid scheme. These scams take the fees or investments from new members to provide falsely inflated returns to earlier members or customers without any substance to the underlying business. This kind of activity is illegal in the United States. (Hello, Bernard Madoff??)  A “real” affiliate program sells real products (and/or services), not just the opportunity to make money by recruiting new members.
  
• Improper Partnerships: Affiliate programs are generally based on standardized legal terms that set rules for promotion of a clear set of products. If the “affiliate program” company wants too much information about you or to engage you in more customized “joint venture” strategies, be wary.  And if those strategies require you to invest real money, it is likely a con game. (It is okay, however, to disclose your social security number or other tax identification to a legitimate affiliate program operator. They really do need it in order to stay in compliance with federal tax law when paying you.)

Please stay tuned to this blog for next week's follow-up article:  "7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam".

EXCERPT:  This blog post is an excerpt from my new Special Report “Making Money with Affiliate Programs”. This 100+ page downloadable report is full of detailed advice, strategies, and screenshots that can help you quickly learn to make money online from affiliate programs. This Special Report is currently only available to subscribers of the Instant Internet Business Secrets program.

You can join now and download this expert report right away!  Click to learn more…

Recap: My Modern Online Marketing Strategies

In recent weeks, I’ve proposed a new paradigm for online marketing strategy. Together these posts outline how I think about modern online marketing, and how I recommend that you do, too.

This 3 part series of blog posts has included:

- "Why your crappy Web Site is not enough - Product Presence"
- "How to Stop Begging for Customers - Distributed Engagement" 
- "They’re talking about YOU in the Reputation Cloud!"

In case you missed these posts, here’s a helpful summary of my "Modern Online Marketing Strategies":

Traditional marketing was one-way, usually “shouting” at broadly targeted groups of potential customers. The hope was that some of those customers would appreciate the message enough to purchase a sponsor’s product.

Today this approach has been superseded by Internet marketing which allows much more targeted and interactive strategies.

The “cowboy marketing” of Web 1.0 where marketers simply try to herd customers toward their corporate web sites is no longer enough to be effective, however.

Instead, modern marketers need to consider, and carefully manage, their brands and product messages across media and platforms.

I recommend pursuing a strategy of “Distributed Engagement”, where marketing messages are delivered directly to targeted consumer groups online in their natural habitats – where they naturally congregate and converse online. (This diagram illustrates some of the many venues available to your marketing message today.)

This means marketing beyond your web site to expand your “Product Presence” to social networks like Facebook and Myspace, to online forums and discussion groups, to posting videos on your own site and on YouTube, and to publishing blogs and email newsletters regularly.  This approach presumes a level of interactivity unprecedented in the 20th century. In other words, in a Web 2.0 world you need to be ready to discuss the merits of your products with questioning customers!

The goal of successful Distributed Engagement marketing includes influencing your brand’s “Reputation Cloud”. This “reputation cloud” is the collection of:

• your own, deliberate marketing efforts,
• plus the effects of your advertising and that of partners,
• plus (most importantly) the commentary about your company and product created by consumers, competitors, and potential customers across the Web.

To succeed online today, it’s important to think not just about maximizing your own web site’s effectiveness or immediate revenues, but also to implement strategies for customer engagement that maximize your longer term and wider spread reputation enhancement.

In fact, the more you engage customers, and appreciate their feedback, the more success you’ll find online. Doing so positions you and your products to leverage the Internet’s viral promotions potential through the word-of-mouth that satisfied customers offer to market leaders.

Thanks to the many commenters, especially Eddie Lewis, who contributed to the evolution of these posts in recent weeks.

Please look for more details and examples of these principles in my new book, to be published next spring by AMACOM Books.

They're talking about YOU in the Reputation Cloud! Part 3 of 3 in the Next Generation Marketing Strategy Series

Today's Web 2.0 "Participation Nation" means that customers are talking about your products all over the Internet right now.

As we've discussed in recent weeks, an up-to-date online marketing approach today includes developing a complete "Product Presence" (See week one's post on this here) that extends far beyond your web site to include a strategy of "Distributed Engagement" (see last week's post on this here) that reaches out from your site to market to customers where they live and play online already.

Shockingly, these customers are talking about your product and services and web site without even asking your permission!  They are commenting on blogs, reviewing your products on Amazon.com and eBay, they are "tweeting" commentary to each other on Twitter, and online forums on every topic imaginable are under way RIGHT NOW including discussion about your products. 

I call this collection of customer conversations your "Reputation Cloud".  It is the sum of your web site and all your marketing efforts, plus what customers (and competitors) are saying about your products online. 

What are you doing to manage the 24/7 conversation in your company's Reputation Cloud? 

In today's Web 2.0 world, your "Reputation Cloud" is now active - whether you are paying attention to it or not.  It's the opportunity and responsibility of a modern marketer to pay attention, participate, encourage positive coverage, and try to ensure that your cloud stays clean. 

You should do this by engaging in social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace, by blogging and commenting on others' blogs, by regularly publishing email noozles, by micro-blogging on platforms like Twitter, by contributing videos to YouTube, and more. 

The Reputation Cloud affects your sales.
Therefore its your responsibility as a marketer to participate online. And, if you don't manage the conversation, it's quite possible that unhappy customers (or even competitors) will.

The Reputation Cloud is an opportunity for marketeters who embrace customer interaction but a huge obstacle to those that don't.  If you're reading this, you're ahead of the curve and I hope that you stay there by expanding your company's marketing strategies online today. 

Encouraging your best customers to spread the word about your products is the major new opportunity offered to you by social media.

What do you think of the Reputation Cloud?  Does this paradigm make sense to you? 

What did I miss?  Is the graphic an effective expression of these points? 

Was this series of "Next Generation" marketing concepts useful to you?  (They are likely to appear in my new book, so I'd love your feedback.  Please leave me a Comment below?)

[Please join me by subscribing to this blog by RSS or subscribe by email if you like this type of online marketing strategy advice.  And if you think these thoughts are worth a Digg or a Stumble, please use the "Share This" button below!]

[This is Part Three of a 3 Part Series on Next Generation Internet Marketing Strategies - thanks for reading! Part One on Product Presence is here, and Part Two on Distributed Engagement is here.]

How to Stop Begging for Customers - Distributed Engagement is Part 2 of the Next Generation Marketing Strategy Series

Stop hoping and waiting for web site visitors!  Today you can't wait for customers to visit your web site or online store.  You need to go find those customers where they are already hanging out online.  I call this "Distributed Engagement" marketing.

In a recent post I introduced the concept of "Product Presence" (which will be discussed more thoroughly in my next book).  Product Presence theory suggests that your web site is not enough. Today you need to reach out to customers into all of the niches where they hide online in today's Web 2.0 world. 

Distributed Engagement is the process of pursuing sales across platforms into the millions of small communities that Web 2.0 technologies have enabled today online.  Email newsletter marketing, blogging, Twitter, online forums, online PR/publicity, Facebook, podcasting - all of your online marketing efforts combine to "distribute" your "engagement" directly to these customers in a more diverse yet targeted way than traditional marketing ever did.  This is demonstrated in the figure at right.

Distributed Engagement is the process by which your Product Presence is spread.  It recognizes two important changes that Web 2.0 has brought to Internet marketing:
a) your branding and marketing is increasingly decentralized outside of your web site, and
b) your marketing is not simply one way but includes interactive engagement where your customers can talk back.

Communities = Opportunities
Today niche customer markets cluster around common interests that were often too narrow to market to cost-effectively in the 20th century.  But today these smaller communities represent potentially profitable targets for savvy marketers.  This is because although they may be smaller, such markets are highly targeted.  Delivering a correctly targeted offer at the right price to an audience pre-disposed toward interest in that offer can be very profitable.  Engaging that community on its own terms can also lead to rapid adoption and volunteer viral marketing evangelism by those targeted.

For example, offering a clever "go green" t-shirt to an online community of environmentalists, a gas-saving service to a truck drivers' email list, or an improved SAT test prep tool to college-bound Facebook users, can sell not only the direct recipients of your marketing, but also increase your sales from everyone they forward your marketing messages to.

Distributed Engagement is the opposite of 20th century broadcast marketing.  Back then customers were blanketed with one size fits all messages.  Distributed Engagement includes those techniques but also includes visiting customers where they congregate naturally, posting messages, soliciting feedback, creating content, running contests or promotions on social networks like Myspace and Facebook, via online blog or email publishing, or otherwise reaching out to interact with customers to extend your marketing influence (your "Product Presence") far beyond just your web site.  More importantly, this means that your brand's mind share and revenues are significantly larger, too.

What do you think?  Does this paradigm make sense to you?  What did I miss? 

Is interacting with customers a requirement for marketing success in the 21st century?

Does the graphic I created make sense and demonstrate these points?

(Is this post worth a Digg or a Stumble?  Please use the "Share This" button below!)

[This is Part Two of a 3 Part Series on Next Generation Internet Marketing Strategies - Please subscribe to this blog by RSS or subscribe by email to read my upcoming posts on "Next Generation Marketing Strategies" including my upcoming introduction to your company's "Reputation Cloud".]