Internet Marketing Magazine November 2012 by Internet Marketing Magazine

november 2012

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

HOW MUCH IS YOUR SITE WORTH? >

PAGE 10

BEAT THE TOP HURDLES IN ONLINE MARKETING >

3 THINGS MARKETERS SHOULD AUTOMATE >

PAGE 25

PAGE 12

NINJA’S GUIDE TO GOOGLE ALERTS >

PAGE 27

> UPSELL PAGE 31

TRICKS

GENERATE MORE SALES FROM EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS >

PAGE 15

RECIPE FOR HOLIDAY PPC SUCCESS >

PAGE 23

VIRAL CONTENT MARKETING

ZEKE CAMUSIO >> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE internet marketing magazine DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB november 2012

INTERNET UPDATE

THE STATE OF THE INTERNET In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine we cover the low down on what are the big plays that have happened online recently and how they affect you.

Microsoft Releases Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Amazon Offers a New Prime Plan The smaller, cheaper iPad marks a significant shift in Apple’s stratAmazon has made a recent deci- egy, principal analyst at techMicrosoft has made its latest big sion to offer shoppers the option nology consultancy Ovum, Adam play to try and stay relevant and of paying $7.99 per month on a Leach, says. “For the first time in ahead of the curve in the modern month-by-month basis for Amazon its recent history it is responding web era by releasing Windows 8. Prime rather than a single $79 an- to market pressures from its comnual fee. petitors, namely Google and Amazon in bringing a smaller tablet to To briefly recap: Amazon Prime of- market.” fers subscribers free two-day shipping as well as access to its online streaming video library and Kindle lending library. This is really taking a swipe an Netflix as it seems Amazon is hopIt certainly didn’t have the same ing that consumers will notice it’s amount of buzz about it as an the same price as the Netflix serApple launch but on closer inves- vice but also includes all the other tigation the Windows Phone 8 has perks. In the past, Apple has defined new some pretty cool features such as: products with new form factors • Skype deeply integrated Amazon is also making it very easy and waited for the market to folinto the phone so that you can for consumers to choose them for low, Leach notes, whereas in this receive chat notifications and all their Christmas orders because instance it’s following the market skype calls even when you don’t consumers can pay $7.99 to get all trend towards smaller cheaper have the app open. their Christmas orders delivered tablet form-factors. Apple is as• Windows Phone Pandora this December. suming that a lower cost iPad will will offer one year of cost-free, allow them to sell more units. advertising-free music. This All in all Amazon is a very clever feature won’t be available until company that keeps evolving and early 2013. is very hard for other online retail As Android Hits 75% Market Share • Kids Corner – a section of consumers to compete with. is it like Mac vs PC All Over Again? the device that has all the kid’s games in it so that they are not The latest IDC numbers are out, messing with the rest of your Apple Follows Market Pressure and Android is by far the undisphone. for the First Time puted leader of the smartphone • Skydrive Integration so that world. your cloud based files are with Last month’s launch of the iPad you no matter which Windows mini marks the first time in Apple’s The Android smartphone operat8 device you are on, including history that the technology giant ing system was found on three out your phone. is playing catch up to its competi- of every four smartphones shipped tors. during the third quarter of 2012.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

IOS had 15% market share followed by Blackberry at 4.3%. The Apple ecosystem is still the best mobile/media/ apps ecosystem in the world. It punches way above its weight with the amount of revenue raised with it’s integrated ecosystem putting 30% of everything that is spent through its series of stores and marketplaces into its pockets.

Responsive Design Drives the Web Forwards A few short months ago responsive web design was a concept that everyone was talking about but not many developers were building with, but now that all seems to be changing.

Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy Android is a defragmented ecosystem because of reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, all the different carriers and phone providers in- panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of dedividual requirements, so it may never be as pure vices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile and clean as the IOS one. Although this does look phones). like a blast from the past where Apple is providing a higher quality product but is keeping its eco- Many of the common tools and framesets that are system closed whilst a big competitor (Google this popular amongst web developers are now becoming time instead of Microsoft) dominates the market by responsive, and in so allowing developers to build providing an Operating System solution to all the responsive sites for their clients. hardware technology partners. InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com, which is the sister business to Internet Marketing Magazine, now Author of Rich Dad Poor Dad files for Bankruptcy builds all new wordpress websites for its clients with a responsive design. How we are achieving Many an entrepreneur, myself included, learned this is by using responsive themes and responsive great business and entrepreneurial lessons in the sliders. Rich Dad Poor Dad series as a beginner. The main advantage of responsive design is that no There seems to be a progression from Rich to Poor matter what browser or device your site visitor utiat the moment as Financial guru Robert Kiyosaki lises, you will be able to provide them an optimal filed for corporate bankruptcy after losing a court viewing experience. It also then does away with judgment to The Learning Annex, The New York Post the requirement to build a 2nd site which is a moreports. bile site. Mr Kiyosaki’s company Rich Global LLC was ordered to pay almost $US24 million to the Learning Annex and its founder and chairman, Bill Zanker. Mr Zanker told the The New York Post that he was responsible for making Rich Dad, Poor Dad into the global name it is today “I took Kiyosaki’s brand and made it bigger. The deal was I would get a percentage and he reneged,” Mr Zanker said. Mike Sullivan, CEO of Mr Kiyosaki Rich Dad Co., told reporters that Mr Kiyosaki, was still doing well thanks to investments in other companies but that they thought the judgement was unfair.

An Example of Responsive Web Design – The Boston Globe

internet marketing magazine november 2012

Facebook to Roll Out New ‘Want’ they would like to own the prodButton uct and click through to buy the items via Facebook. Rumours of a ‘want’ button on Facebook have been confirmed From the Desk of the Editor with the social network announcing it is testing a feature that will Last month was an excellent allow users to declare their in- month for Internet Marketing tention to buy products featured Magazine with the ‘Lifestyle Dein pictures. sign with Blogging’ feature a real talking point. Facebook announced that it has joined forces with seven retailers This month’s full expert audio – including Pottery Barn, Victoria interview with Zeke Camusio is Secret and Neiman Marcus – to now available in the member’s test a platform that allows users area. Current members will have to ‘want’, ‘collect’, or ‘like’ a now received a link to that new product. audio interview. If you are not a member yet please feel free to join the many thousands who are by registering for it today at The button will be attached to http://internetmarketingmag. images designed to be discovered net/become-member/ in the news feed, which appear for non-followers of the brand Important: We’re working on when their friends ‘like’ an im- building the number of reviews age. Users will be able to click we have on the Apple platforms want to signify to their friends so as to keep dominant rankings

internet marketing magazine november 2012

in the search. If you are getting good value from Internet Marketing Magazine I’d really appreciate it if you could spare 1 minute of your time and click this link to give us a quick honest review (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :). For the readers with Amazon Kindle Fire we should be in the Newsstand by the time the next issue rolls around. Samsung Galaxy tab will be the platform we follow on with after that. Until next time… Wishing you the best of success online

GregCassar Greg Cassar Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine

EXPERT INTERVIEW

VIRAL CONTENT MARKETING An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar Zeke Camusio is the founder of one of the most successful content marketing agencies in the US. Zeke is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and sold four businesses. Following the recent Google Penguin update which changed SEO forever there could not be a better time to talk viral content marketing. Zeke is a regular featured expert here at Internet Marketing Magazine. You’ve got a very interesting story as a very successful entrepreneur creating a lot of success and wealth at the age of 18 back in Argentina. How did that come about?

tabase of people who had purchased stuff online in the past - and once I had this database of emails I used mass emailing software to market to them. I’ve always had a talent for writing very persuasive copy. So I wrote Zeke: I was really lucky from these emails and we blast out the very beginning when I was emails once a week and that’s 18 years old. I didn’t know any- how we’d get our customers. thing about business and when I look back at it I made so many mistakes, but there was a lot of demand for the products I had. I had approached five different experts in different fields, and we created courses that I later burned onto CD roms. I would sell those CD’s for roughly $20, but it was a very good model because I only had to license the content once. So once I owned the copyright to the contents I could burn as many copies as I wanted. Effectively I was selling I was making so much money CD’s that would cost me 50 cents back then that it was both a good for $20. Some of the courses we thing and a bad thing. I was acsold were different language tually making more money than courses such as Italian, English all my other high school friends and French. We also had com- combined, and I was also makputer courses in subjects such as ing more money than both of my how to use Microsoft Office. parents combined. They weren’t very happy about it. But you Back in those day email filters know, I was really young and so weren’t very sophisticated. So I just didn’t know how to handle all I really did was I bought a da- money. It came really fast, but

it went away really fast as well. After about a year and a half I was really tired and I was working really hard and I just wanted to do something else. Not every business you did after that was as easy, or was what you would call ‘a walk in the park’. What were some of the learnings and the mistakes you made going into those businesses that followed the first one? Zeke: Here’s one that really stands out. Fast forward six or seven years, I moved to the US where I met my wife, and we both started an online leather products store. So we had things like shoes, wallets, handbags – a lot of leather products that we imported from Argentina because the leather products there are really good. We ended up losing a hundred thousand dollars in four months. It was really hard because it took me about six years to pay off that debt. And it was really frustrating when you pay off your credit card bill every month but your debt doesn’t go down and you’re just paying interest.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

to your site as Google sees it as link farming. Sites really are now about a ranking based on quality content and that sort of thing. Could you please advise the benefits you see to content marketing?

your audience; keep them interested in your stuff and keep them coming back. That’s why I strongly believe content marketing is the future.

One of the main things that business owners and marketers struggle with is producing high Zeke: Content marketing is cre- quality content – how do they ating a really good piece of con- be creative, how do they make tent that others want to refer to, it interesting. Do you have any link to, interact with and share. key strategies that you’d recomIt could be a blog post, a video, mend for business owners and an infographic, interactive info marketers for how to produce graphic tools, viral games etc. high quality, interesting conGreg: That is such a contrast as There are a lot of different things tent? well from that early success. I that I see as content. wonder if from a mindset point of Zeke: I think that you have to view, after having such a big win so There are two main benefits to start considering yourself a creearly on that part of you thought content marketing: ative person. Being creative is no matter what you touched it was not something you either are born going to end up much the same? One is helping with search engine with, or without. I believe that rankings. Google has started re- creativity is actually something Zeke: Absolutely, and that was warding websites and businesses you can actually develop. But the the number one mistake I made. that do real stuff out there and first step is you have to actually I got overly confident and ex- they get mentioned in magazines, believe that that’s the case. tremely arrogant. Looking back in publications and so, with really at it I was so lucky with the first good content that’s really what business. It’s almost impossible to you aim for. have such high success with your first business. I was arrogant to Google really looks at off page sothink it was just because I was cial and relevant linking factors. really smart and really skilled at So high quality content is an excelwhat I was doing and I couldn’t re- lent way to get genuine links and ally see that it was just luck. to get social signals; to get people Fast forward to 2012 and you’ve gone on to become a very successful marketer online - you run a very successful ‘Digital Aptitude’ marketing agency with clients including Chevrolet, Burger King & Subaru. Google have released their Penguin updates and with it the effectively changed the rules of SEO forever where business owners will no longer be rewarded for artificially building links

internet marketing magazine november 2012

to share your content on twitter; to Like it On Facebook and to Plus One the content on Google Plus. The other thing that is really important is, allowing yourself to The second reason to do content have bad ideas, because when you marketing is because it’s the best allow yourself to have bad ideas, way to engage your audience. For you give yourself the permission a really long time it was all about to start coming up with a lot of advertisements in magazines, TV, ideas; most of which of course or even the Internet. But if you are really bad, but also there are think about it you don’t want to some good ideas there. Somesee an ad, you see that as an in- times you combine two bad ideas terruption. All you’re there for and you come up with a good idea is the content. With really good - or a bad idea leads you into a recontent you can actually engage ally good idea.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Being creative is not something you either are born with, or without. Creativity is actually something you can develop. But the first step is you have to believe that thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the case.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

internet marketing magazine november 2012

DigitalAptitude.com

Being up-to-date with what’s happening out there online is really important too - looking at other content that people are creating as all of this is food for thought. It doesn’t mean you have to go ahead and copy what your competitors are doing, but you can use those for inspiration sometimes.

costs you 200 dollars to do it and then you can get ten thousand dollars in business, it’s a good investment, even though it’s not free.

If you’re good designer, do this all yourself, otherwise hire the best designer you can find. If you’re not a copywriter, hire a copywriter. Most people The other thing that I believe is really important are really conservative when it comes to investing is you need to be truly unique - you have to do in their own companies. I can guarantee that if you something that nobody else is doing and think out- want to find a good copywriter you’d know how to side the box. do it, or a good designer. Again, those people are normally expensive. That’s why one of the trends You have to invest money in great content. So for I’m seeing is that the big brands are getting bigexample, if you’re going to do an infographic, you ger and bigger, while the smaller guys have a hard could do it yourself if you’re really good with Pho- time competing against them, because they just toshop, but if you’re not then hire someone who don’t invest in their businesses as much as the big is really good at that. It’s not going to be free but brands do. you have to think in terms of cost and benefit. If it

internet marketing magazine november 2012

You spoke about infographics, which certainly is a very popular way of producing content these days. Do you find it’s the best one, as far as from getting shared etc, or is there other ways of producing content that you really like and you find are effective in 2012 and beyond?

this is a little vague, but to me the way you know you’re doing something great is that if it makes you feel a little uncomfortable - just to put it out there.

Another thing we do for our clients is we target content to current events, so for example like right now as you probably know the Zeke: Back in 2010 and the begin- elections are on here in the U.S, ning of 2011 very few people were so we created this tool where badoing Infographics, so that’s what sically it helps you figure out who we started doing, because nobody you should vote for. So, you have else was doing it then. Now, ev- Obama and then Romney and then erybody’s doing Infographics. So, there’s a gauge that either goes to now we’re doing Interactive Info- the left or to the right, but you graphics, animated medias, viral have to answer ten questions, and tools and games. We always want based on all that stuff it tells you to be a step ahead of the curve. whether you should vote for RomWhen everybody starts doing this ney or Obama. This is very relething you’re doing then it’s time vant because that’s what everyfor you to come up with a new body’s talking about now. So tying way of doing things. content to current events, that’s really important. Not every piece of content is going to go viral, but what are the We also use press releases and sothings you can do to stack the cial ads, plus Facebook promoted odds in your favour for promot- posts, Stumbleupon & Reddit. Ading your content out on the web? ditionally our PR department identifies the top hundred or two hunZeke: This is a little counter in- dred key influencers and thought tuitive, but what we’ve found is leaders in that space - and we that to increase your likelihood work with them to promote the of things going viral, you need to content. remove or minimise anything that is commercial about your content. That’s one of the main criteria for So, for example, if there are ban- the kind of content we create - we ners all over the place, or if you ask ourselves, ‘will this be appealsay sponsored by the company ing to all these key influencers?’ If name is really big, its ok to put the answer is ‘no’ then we look for it somewhere in the website of a different type of content. course, because you want to give it credit for that, but it has to be A special thanks goes out to Zeke very, very minimal. for sharing his valuable knowledge in this content space. To Another would be, just be willing find Digital Aptitude visit Digito take risks. You can be contro- talAptitude.com or email Zeke versial, or you can do cool stuff. directly at zeke@digitalaptitude. You can really blend in with what com. everybody else is doing. I realise

internet marketing magazine november 2012

WEBSITE

WEBSITE VALUATIONS – HOW MUCH IS YOUR SITE WORTH? By Andrew Knibbe

Most people who own a website have asked the question: “What is my website worth?” It’s also one of the most common questions we field over here at Flippa and the only easy answer is that it’s worth whatever the market is willing to pay.

of the whole. Will more often end up at less than fair market value given the interconnectedness of assets for a given website. 3. Market Approach: this uses the transaction values of similar sites that have sold to provide an indication of the site’s value. Anyone saying “sites are generally worth X times monthly revenue” is effectively using this approach.

The Market Approach tends to be the most popular tool for websites based on the buyers and sellers we’ve spoken with. The This is obviously not so useful for trouble is that it has traditionally someone looking to price their been difficult to get sufficient site to sell, or for a bidder look- data about actual similar website ing to place a bid on a website transactions for this work effecauction, so let’s dig a bit deeper. tively. Most website valuations end up taking on one or more of the following approaches: 1. Income Approach: a valuation based on the site’s expected revenue after taking into account items such as risk. If you hear people talking about CAPMs, IRRs, NPVs, WACCs, NCFs, GAAPs, or Monte Carlo simulations, chances are they’re using an income approach for valuation. 2. Asset Approach: sums the value of the assets – such as held inventory for an ecommerce site – to define value

internet marketing magazine november 2012

That is, until now…

Big Data bandwagon and sent our army of propellerheads to run models across our 20 gigabytes of data from over 70,000 website sales that have happened on Flippa. They then did a pile of number crunching that resulted in a powerful algorithm for providing valuation ranges for any given website. This takes into account both third-party metrics – such as PageRank, Copyscape, Google backlinks and Alexa – as well as owner-provided website fundamentals such as traffic and revenue. It’s only in beta form at this stage but you can try it out and instantly get a free valuation for your website at flippa.com/valuation. How Does It Work? Simply go to the website valuation page, enter your URL, and hit “Calculate”.

Our algorithm will go off and grab a whole bunch of available Flippa Website Valuation Tool metrics for your site and present you with a valuation range based Introducing the Flippa Website on this information. Valuation Tool As the world’s largest website If you’re looking for something marketplace, we also have the more accurate, you can then add largest pool of website transac- your monthly uniques and revetion data. We’ve jumped on the nue, along with your email

address. Hit send and the valuation algorithm will What does Flippa Rank mean? re-crunch the numbers and email you the fresh re- We’re toying with the idea of a Flippa Rank (not at sults. all related to PageRank) so as to provide a relative measure between website valuations. It runs beFrequently Asked Questions tween 1 and 10 with 1 being the lowest value and 10 being the highest. How Accurate is the Valuation Tool? We’ve been running this website valuation tool We’ll be tweaking the algorithm and adding furacross Flippa sales in the background over the last ther features over time but we thought you’d like a 6 months or so. We’re seeing an accuracy of almost sneak peek at our beta. Have a go and let us know 90%. what you think. Why does the valuation tool return a range rather than a number? The tool will always return a valuation range. This is because there tends to be a significant amount of variability in both websites and the transaction values they sell for. The size of the range tends to reflect this.

Andrew Knibbe

has held Marketing and Operations Management roles at the Flippa.com website marketplace over a tenure that has seen over $50 million in websites change hands. Andrew authored the popular Flippa Pro Guide to Buying Websites as well as the Guide to Selling Websites on Flippa. Andrew will be speaking at Affiliate Summit West in January 2013.

CHARITABLE GIVING

Building a School with World Teacher Aid In August 2012 Armand Morin and his wife Marianna had the unique opportunity go with World Teacher Aid to Rongai, Kenya in Africa to help build a school and a high school. The trip was organised by Amy and Stu McLaren of World Teacher Aid. This is the very powerful video they made. Visit www.WorldTeacherAid.org for more Information on how to get involved.

www.WorldTeacherAid.org

internet marketing magazine november 2012

BUSINESS SUCCESS

3 THINGS MARKETERS SHOULD AUTOMATE TODAY By Bryan Brown

More and more marketers are looking to marketing automation technology and behavioral marketing to help provide the personal, relevant touch their customers and prospects want without draining precious time and resources. According to a recent Forrester study, eight of 10 marketers feel that marketing automation will increase the efficiency of their marketing processes, and more than half plan to increase their number of automated campaigns during the next 12 months. What’s so cool about marketing automation? Imagine alleviating the burden of trying to manually process and respond to so many customer and prospect behaviors, and instead being able to use your understanding of your buyers to deliver a unique experience with your company, scaling multitrack messaging across channels in real time. This is exactly what behavioral marketing and automation deliver.

For example, let’s say you offer a free 30-day product trial. Inevitably, some prospects will sign up but then not return to log in. In this scenario, you might set up an automated email, triggered after “X” days without login, that features a service-oriented message such as, “Hey, we noticed you haven’t There are lots of places for marketers to start auto- done these three things yet. Here are the reasons mating, but in this post I’ll dig into three common you should try this out, here’s a Slideshare tutorial areas of implementation that yield high returns: to help, and here’s a link if you want someone to welcome programs and activation series, nurture call you for assistance.” The timing of the message campaigns and lifecycle messages. and the content itself are based entirely on the individual’s behaviors. 1) Welcome Programs and Activation Series Sending a personalized, automated welcome email 2) Nurture Programs is an excellent way to quickly engage new contacts What’s your story? When sales cycles are long or by educating them about your value proposition, price tags are high, nurture programs enable you asking them to tell you more about themselves, to educate prospects who aren’t yet ready to enand providing resources and helpful information gage a sales resource and gently guide these buypersonalized to their point of entry or interests. ers through the purchase process by delivering relDepending on the business, many savvy market- evant content such as white papers, articles, and ers are even moving beyond welcome messages to event and Webinar invitations. Nurture campaigns activation or onboarding programs that guide the can also be used to upsell within a product line or prospect or new customer through the process of cross-sell complementary products based on your getting the most out of your product, free trial or customers’ expressed interests — so it’s the preferonline services. ences and behaviors that drive relevance.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

With marketing automation technology, you can set up programs that gradually help you collect data, build the relationship and are responsive to your contacts’ behaviors. Using a visual campaign builder, it’s easy to build nurture campaigns that route contacts down numerous different paths based on whether they opened your email, downloaded your content and/or shared it with their social networks. Dynamic content can also be used within these messages to automatically populate them with the most relevant content based on the recipient’s actions or preferences. As an added bonus, robust automation platforms offer integrations that enhance sales and marketing alignment. These systems give sales visibility into a prospect’s behaviors (site visits, downloads, link clicks, form submissions, video plays, etc.), which salespeople can use to have more effective conversations with prospects, and enable sales to drop contacts into a nurture program. 3) Lifecycle Messages The same music you love to listen to at a party might not be so appealing five minutes after you wake up. Likewise, buyers crave different content at different times in the buying cycle. So, consider organizing campaigns by stage of the relationship, specifically tuning different email messages and offers based on both explicit and implicit indicators of your customer’s readiness to purchase. For example, messaging might change throughout a customer lifecycle as follows: • “Interested” Phase: Welcome messages, educational and best practices content, promotions for first purchase • “Engaged” Phase: Reminders of upcoming events, targeted content based on website page visits, loyalty program information, pricing and feature comparisons, testimonials • “Lapsed” Phase: Surveys to gain a better understanding of the buyer’s needs, incentives to revisit website, promotions to encourage reengagement/purchases • “Post-purchase”: Info on how to get the most out of your product or service, cross-sell/ upsell offers, review requests, anniversary messages

By “listening” to buyer cues and delivering the right content at the right time for each prospect, you’ll nurture more relevant dialogues and build stronger connections, enabling you to more effectively acquire, convert, grow, retain and re-activate customers. For more tips on marketing tasks you should consider automating, including form abandonment follow-ups, product review and testimonial requests, and birthday and anniversary messages, download Silverpop’s tip sheet, 10 Things Marketers Should Automate to Drive Leads and Revenue.

Bryan Brown

As the director of product strategy, Bryan Brown is responsible for defining the broad strategic vision of Silverpop’s family of products and helping marketers grow revenue. He is a sought-after marketing thought leader, having helped hundreds of businesses adapt and thrive in the ever-changing digital age of marketing.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

Make Your Website Easy to Read & Effective on all Mobile Phones

internet marketing magazine november 2012

EMAIL MARKETING

HOW TO GENERATE MORE SALES FROM YOUR EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS By Peep Laja Compared to social media and content marketing, email is a mature channel for engaging online consumers. Its longevity is a testament to its ability to convert leads into buyers and buyers into repeat customers.

• • • •

Subject line Sender name Day of the week to send Time of the day to send

Subject Line: In fact, according to a Forrester report put out on According to research by Dan Zerella of HubSpot September 24, 2012 email continues to be the top and MailChimp’s Email Genome Project, there are factor in influencing repeat purchases: specific words that tend to increase open rates. You should consider these keywords when putting together subject lines to test:

Forrester Research report showing email’s positive influence on repeat customers.

Regardless of whether your business is in the B2B or B2C space, your email marketing effectiveness can be optimized.

HubSpot chart showing best keywords to use in email subject lines.

You already know you should be conducting a/b testing on your landing pages and website to in- Sender Name: crease conversions, but did you know the same Another important aspect to test in your email principles apply to your emails? campaigns is the sender name. The most common sender names include the actual name of a person within your company or the name of the company Conduct A/B Testing on Your Emails itself. Test both to see if one increases your open rate. When it comes to email campaign optimization you can test and optimize many of the same compo- Day of the Week: nents you do on a landing page. For example, it Next you’ll want to a/b test the best day of the is a good idea to test the call-to-action, offer and week to send your emails. According to MailChimp’s layout of the email. However, there are some com- Email Genome Project more emails are sent on ponents unique to email marketing that you should Tuesday and Thursday than any other day of the also test. These include: week.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

You should test sending emails on one of the other days to see if less competition for inbox space increases your open and click through rates. Research by Zarella at HubSpot suggests that doing so can impact your results pretty drastically:

MailChimp team is these hours are time zone specific and was told they are not; the times represent the best times to send in whatever your local area is.

MailChimp Graph Showing Best Time of Day to Send Emails for Max Open Rates

HubSpot Chart Showing Best Day of Week to Send Email for Max Clickthroughs

The team at What Counts decided to test what the best day of the week to send their enewsletter was. Traditionally they would send it on Thursdays; however, they wondered if sending on Tuesdays would be more impactful. When the team ran their test they learned that sending on Tuesdays increased their open rates; however, sending on Thursdays resulted in higher clickthrough and conversion rates. If they had simply started sending the enewsletter on Tuesdays without A/B testing the send day they would have missed out on conversions. Time of Day: The final key aspect for testing and optimizing your email campaigns are send times. According to the Email Genome Project, subscribers are most likely to open email between the hours of 2pm and 5pm. I asked the

internet marketing magazine november 2012

That being said, Zarella’s research suggests that while open rates may be highest in the afternoon, click-through rates are highest in the early morning, peaking around the 5 to 7am marker.

HubSpot chart showing best time of day to send email for max clickthrough rate

To find the best send times for your emails the best thing to do is to run a/b tests. You’ll want to track the email and click through rates of course, but even more important the conversion rate on those emails. Your email marketing software should come equipped with a/b testing capabilities. If it does not I recommend switching to a platform like GetResponse, MailChimp, Aweber or Campaign Monitor.

To take your campaigns even a step further you could tailor your send times to each individual recipient based on their history like Mint.com did. Mint’s senior director of marketing worked with her email provider to analyze recipient behavior on a rolling basis and predict the best delivery time for each address on the mailing list. According to MarketingSherpa which put together a case study around Mint’s behavioral targeting: • If recipient A displayed a tendency to open emails at 5 p.m., Mint.com’s campaigns, alerts and triggered messages would be sent at that time. • If a recipient B often opened emails at 3 a.m., all messages would be sent at that time. • If recipients started opening the emails at different times of the day, the system adapted and began sending according to this newly exhibited behavior. This approach lead to a 7% increase in open rates and 13% increase in click-through rates. Another company called eBags also took this approach and they saw a 20% increase in clickthrough rates, 65% increase in conversion rates and 45% increase in average order value. Create a Dedicated Landing Page for Each Email Campaign A/B testing your email marketing campaigns on the email side is really important in your effort to increase revenue. However, it’s also important to think

beyond the email to the landing page – the place he didn’t have the resources to create a dedicated you link to from the email. landing page. There are three typical places you might choose to send your email traffic: • Your website homepage • A deep link in your website such as a product or features page • A dedicated landing page The best option and the one that will convert the highest is the dedicated landing page. MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report showed that dedicated landing pages are highly effective when it comes to email marketing:

As a quick fix he started creating a banner to add to the top of each product page that reflected the offer mentioned in his email campaign. According to a case study completed by Marketing Experiments this lead to a 10%+ increase in Tafford’s email conversion rates. If the VP of marketing had the resources to create a dedicated landing page with controlled or completely removed navigation his conversion rates would be able to soar even higher. Encourage Social Sharing in Your Email Campaigns Optimizing your emails and their landing pages is important to convert the subscribers you already have – but don’t forget about their friends. Very often the company your customers keep would also make great customers for you.

MarketingSherpa Chart on landing page optimization effectiveness for email campaigns

In a study by GetResponse as reported by eConsultancy, email messages that include at least three social share buttons generated 55% higher clickthrough rates than messages with no social share buttons.

Why are dedicated landing pages so effective? The answer has everything to do with visitor expectations, increased relevance and reduced “leakiness” of a page.

Additionally research conducted by Brightedge Technologies, shows sites with Twitter buttons drive “7 times more link mentions on average than sites that did not have a button.”

This means the messaging on the landing page should reflect the messaging in the email, the offer should be specific and relevant to the same offer mentioned in the email and the page should have limited or no navigation so that the visitor cannot click-away get lost in a different part of your site. When you send email traffic to your homepage or a deep link in your site you miss out on the opportunity to tailor your message and offer. Additionally, when sending visitors to the homepage you put the burden on the consumer to find the right page on your site to take action on. Doing any of these things will result in reduced conversion rates. The VP of marketing at Tafford Uniforms knew that 1:1 message match between the email offer and the landing page would increase conversions but

BrightEdge Technologies chart showing social buttons increase online mentions.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

While you should not use social share buttons on your actual landing page because it introduces a competing call to action, the thank you page presents a great opportunity to increase awareness through social sharing. Conduct A/B Testing on Your Offers – Often In order to continuously push the envelope by learning more about your audience’s desires while simultaneously increasing revenue you need an ongoing a/b testing cycle. It’s not enough to conduct one a/b test showcasing two different offers (e.g. free shipping vs. $5 off) in your email campaign and think you’re done. Your first test is only the beginning! You should test different offers and different ways to present those offers over the course of time to truly optimize for maximum conversions! Here are just a few a/b testing ideas for your special offers: • Pricing ($30 vs. $29) • Placement of the offer on the landing page • Free shipping vs. percent off

The treatment, or version B, in this test increased conversions by 110% simply by extending the length of time for the free trial! Would you have guessed that the treatment would have performed so much better? That’s the beauty of testing – you don’t have to guess, you can experiment and know for sure! The really important thing to remember is that your email offer must match the offer on the landing page. So, for example people who received an email about a free 7-day trial should be sent to the landing page for the 7-day free trial. When there isn’t clear message match between the email (or ad) and the landing page you lose trust with your visitor and introduce the opportunity for confusion. Cohesiveness in your email campaigns is really, really important. Use Landing Page Segmentation to Qualify Your Email Leads You probably already know that email list segmentation can lead to better results, but did you know that segmentation on the landing page can help you further qualify your leads while increasing email conversions? It’s true.

Here’s an example of an a/b test inbound marketing software company, HubSpot, ran in an effort to increase the number of people who sign up for Jessica Collier, Director of Optimization at ion intheir free trial: teractive, states there are 4 key ways to segment visitors on the landing page: • Segmentation by Audience • Segmentation by Place in Buying Cycle • Segmentation by Need • Segmentation by Business Size Here we see a B2C example of segmentation by need: Version A: Try HubSpot free for 7 days

Version B: Try HubSpot free for 30 days

Example of landing page segmentation for B2C

internet marketing magazine november 2012

The visitor can select whether he or she is an owner, renter or commercial business and receive highly targeted information based on that simple click. And here is a B2B example of segmentation by business size:

According to their case study, this segmented landing page converts at 25% – well above the PPC conversion rate average of just 3.5%. The best way to create these segmented landing pages is to come up with a template. The immediate landing page will have one look and feel but each of the pages that the visitor clicks through to should have the same basic layout – only the copy and images will need to change. Here’s an example from the New England Journal of Medicine:

Example of landing page segmentation for B2B

Segmentation on the landing page not only helps you provide specific information to visitors based on their self-identification, but also allows you to further qualify them. For example, if your business only provides services for small and mid-sized businesses but not enterprise level ones, you can provide targeted information for the audience whose needs you do meet, Example of landing page segmentation while politely directly all others out the door. There’s very little value in spending time and money marketing to people who are out of your zone. The visitor lands and self-segments him or herself Instead focus your time on high quality leads. and the lands on a second page tailored to his or her needs: Sharepoint Solutions allows visitors to segment by their experience with Sharepoint (Just Starting, Immediate or Advanced):

Example of the type of page you would send segmented traffic to Example of Landing Page Segmentation internet marketing magazine november 2012

You can work from a landing page template purchased on a site like ThemeForest.net and then use a/b testing software like Visual Website Optimizer that allows you to run tests on your own website, or you can use a/b testing software that works off of a templated landing page software system like Lander and Unbounce (small business friendly) or LiveBall (enterprise-level). I recommend Unbounce and Lander because they comes pre-populated with templates that you can edit through a WYSIWIG/HTML editor. This means non-technical people can get their landing pages set up without hiring a web developer.

This is perfect for making sure your email software can talk to your landing page software, so no leads fall through the cracks. Final Thoughts on A/B Testing for Email Campaigns Because email marketing is still such an effective channel for reaching first-time and repeat customers it is really important that your campaigns are optimized. Without conducting a/b testing on both the email and landing page side of the campaign you are leaving leads (and revenue) on the table! I challenge you to start optimizing your email campaigns this week using the a/b testing methods highlighted in this article. If you have any questions leave them in the comments section and letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start a discussion. Peep Laja

A few of Unbounceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landing page templates

Not only does it allow you to start with a conversion-focused template, but they integrate with other software like GetResponse, MailChimp, AWeber, iContact, Salesforce and more.

internet marketing magazine november 2012

is the face of ConversionXL. Peep is an entrepreneur and internet marketer. He runs a unique web marketing agency called Markitekt, a startup called Traindom and several niche internet business like T1Q and others. He has a free website called Dreaminder. If you want to get in touch with Peep, shoot him an email at peep@conversionxl.com

internet marketing magazine november 2012

PPC

RECIPE FOR HOLIDAY PPC SUCCESS By Aaron Goldman ‘Tis the season to start prepping for the holiday season! Here are some tips for making sure you’ve got all the right ingredients to get your pay-per-click (PPC) search campaigns cooking.

U.S. (22%) and U.K. (26%) -- as advertisers tried to heat up Q4 sales. Deploy tools to monitor what your competition has cooking so you can adjust your keyword, copy, landing page and bidding strategies accordingly. 4. Don’t forget the side dishes. With more niche merchants setting up shop online and mass retailers offering free shipping, consumers are shopping around more than ever. As a result, total online sales transactions resulting from PPC during the holidays were up 56% globally last year, with average order value down 13%. Take advantage of this trend by peppering in add-ons to your main product dish and create bundles that entice consumers to load up their carts rather than just buy things on a one-off basis. 5. Put down the apron. You don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen when guests arrive. Same goes for your computer. Untether yourself during the holidays by using advanced technology tools to schedule campaign actions in advance. Launch new campaigns at midnight on Thanksgiving, update copy on Christmas Day, or even lower bids on New Year’s Eve, all without missing a precious sip of eggnog.

1. Be ready to talk turkey on Thanksgiving. Last year, our online retail holiday shopping research showed that Thanksgiving has become a major online shopping day in the U.S., with a 28% yearover-year (YoY) increase in PPC conversion rates and 40% bump in sales revenue. Some retailers even started their Black Friday sales on Turkey Day. This year, get a leg up on things by having your budgets fully juiced for the early birds. 6. Have special meals ready for the to-go crowd. In 2011, mobile devices accounted for roughly 15% 2. Keep stock of your stock. You’ve got enough of all retail PPC clicks during the holidays, and moto worry about over the coming months without bile adoption by consumers and advertisers has only having to keep track of what’s in your cupboard. increased in 2012. Just as you’d never serve ham to Leverage real-time campaign technology to sync your vegan niece Sally, don’t serve desktop camyour product catalog and/or key brand assets paigns to mobile or tablet searchers. Create cuswith your PPC campaigns so that keywords and tom ads and landing pages to reflect the consumer ads always reflect your up-to-date inventory and mindset and screen real estate of each device. And promotional strategies. adjust bids based on unique metrics and auction dynamics. Don’t hold mobile to strict conversion 3. Take the temperature of your competition. goals. Think of mobile more as tool for product reIn 2011, we saw global retail PPC budgets rise search, store directions, social sharing, etc. 10% YoY during the holidays -- even higher in the internet marketing magazine november 2012

7. Remember, you get what you pay for. If you’re an online retailer then you’re all too familiar with Google’s recent move to turn Product Search into Google Shopping featuring only paid results via Product Listing Ads (PLA). Turn this shelf tax into an opportunity by connecting your product feed through Google Merchant Center and integrating it with a sophisticated paid-search platform to track, optimize and report on PLA performance alongside text ad placements. Don’t forget to deploy custom bid policies designed for Product Targets.

purchase activity continuing after Christmas and through New Year’s. Whether it’s from returns or gift card redemptions, consumers have money to burn and you don’t want to miss out. Last year, in the U.K., we saw retail search advertising budgets decrease by 4% YoY during the last two weeks in December, while online sales transactions resulting from PPC were up 66%, and PPC conversion rates were up 57%. This year, if you want a cherry on top of your seasonal performance, don’t fill up on the entrée.

8. Set your timer. Unless you’re using a Showtime Rotisserie, you’ll need an alert to make sure your main course doesn’t get burned. Ditto for PPC. Set up a dashboard for your team to monitor relevant KPIs, and schedule reports to be sent regularly on all key metrics including side-byside PPC and SEO performance. Also be sure to create alerts to notify you when campaign activity reaches abnormal thresholds.

10. Give thanks. Many religious holiday meals start or end with saying grace and calling out everyone who had a hand in preparing the feast. When it comes to PPC, get in the habit of giving thanks to each keyword that contributed to a purchase. Create an attribution model that properly reflects the influence of each ad throughout the path to conversion within PPC as well as other channels. Or you can just go this route.

9. Save room for dessert. Just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean the party’s done. With each passing year, we see more online search and

internet marketing magazine november 2012

Aaron Goldman is the Chief Marketing Officer at Kenshoo, and author of the book “Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google.” Follow him on Twitter @aarongoldman. This article is originally published on MediaPost.

LANDING PAGE METRICS

TOP HURDLES IN MARKETING ONLINE AND HOW TO BEAT THEM By Alexi Neocleous Okay, everyone’s excited about SEO, lead generation, and SEM. All these shiny new objects promise new, innovative ways of promoting your business for less. You’ve got your computer, you’re hooked up to the Internet, and you’re ready to go. It should be easy breezy. After all, everyone’s online, right? Well, it’s not that easy…because everyone IS online. There are so many marketers on the Internet buzzing with offers that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. From Facebook ads and pages to deals and offers on Twitter, it’s hard to scream with the rest of them without being borderline “spammy.” You have to remember that marketing online is the same thing as traditional marketing. Although they are both on different platforms, their nature is the same: stop pushing, start engaging. 2 Main Challenges in Marketing Online 1. You need to stand out from… well, everyone! With everyone else selling online, it could get a bit challenging to get your voice heard. Nevertheless, many people fail to realize that despite the gazillion entrepreneurs promoting their business on the Internet, there are only a

few who focus on giving relevant and valuable content to their prospects, ensuring sustainable business for the long haul.

just like every other spammer. How do you generate leads? Well, you must perfect item #1. Be visible to your target market, lure them in with good content, and drive them to do what you want with an effective call-to-action. This brings your prospects to your offer, which has to be valuable enough for them to provide their information and keep communication lines open. Leads are only good when you turn them into actual sales.

Marketing online requires hard For starters, make sure your pros- work, patience, and dedication. pects can find you. Be at the top Nevertheless, it can be easy and of the search engine results pages rewarding with the right tools and by targeting the right keywords. perhaps, the right people to work Do your research and find out on your marketing efforts. what your prospects are interested in. Then, write about it! Alexi Neocleous It’s crucial to provide valuable content. Always remember: content is KING. It serves as your bait for all the prospects you are eyeing to convert into leads. 2. You need to generate leads… lots of them! Leads are not just phone numbers or email addresses you collect. Leads are quality contacts that fit your products or services. Note that these contacts are not just random people you reach out to. They’re a targeted audience. Without this key aspect, you’re

is one of the leading direct response freelance copywriters in the world. Having worked with business owners large and small, he’s known as a copywriter who gets fast results for his clients. Alexi is the author of some of most well received advertising and marketing courses in the industry, titles which include Advertising Secrets, The 3 Minute Ad Formula (which was co-authored with friend and top colleague Scott Bywater) and The Kaizen Marketing System. Grab your free copy of ‘The Marketing Domination Report’ to find the one simple change that can grow your profits exponentially. internet marketing magazine november 2012

Is Your Business On Google’s 1st Page For Your City? “I Can Help You Get Found By New Leads And Convert More Clients, With The Easiest and Fastest Way To Bounce Above Your Competition, Using Google+ Local” Dear Local Business Owner...

‣

Do you feel like your business is stuck in the stone-age?

‣

Do you struggle to get enough clients?

‣

Are you confused about how to adapt to modern business?

‣

Do you worry about the future of your business if your next marketing strategy isn’t successful?

Here’s a solution...

Google+ Local (formerly Google Places) is a free tool from the world's most popular search engine. It allows business owners to create their own online company 'listing'. The businesses that have the best correctly optimized listing are ranked on a list of seven local businesses shown on Google’s first page This means that your Google+ Local listing can outrank the most expensive and professional website.

Now you can discover the exact steps used by SEO experts, to claim that top spot yourself!

Andy Hopper

FREE WEBINAR WEDS 5TH DEC @ 8PM (EST)

Discover How To Optimize Your Google+ Local Listing On This FREE Live Webinar Presented by:

internet marketing magazine november 2012

GOOGLE ALERTS

THE NINJA’S GUIDE TO GOOGLE ALERTS By Matthew Woodward Google Alerts is one of the most powerful free tools available, but it is often overlooked. It monitors the Web for words and phrases and even sends you an email or updates an RSS feed every time it finds a new result. Sounds pretty simple right? You will be amazed at how powerful a simple tool like Google Alerts can be. It has a huge range of uses which are only limited by your imagination.

of new links that they have acquired. You can use Google Alerts to keep a close eye on their activity online and then leverage it to your advantage. I’m not going to publicly reveal who I monitor. :) Just setup brand based alerts for all of your competitors.

I’m going to reveal how I use Google Alerts to leverage brand, authority, traffic and sales, as well as share the exact alerts I have setup for my personal SEO blog. Monitoring Brand Just like John Chow, my name (Matthew Woodward) is my brand. Any time my website or name is mentioned, I get an email direct to my inbox to alert me of that. This offers a great range of opportunities: I can get alerted to new discussions about my brand or if I have been mentioned somewhere without a link back to my site. You can then take action by addressing the feedback and getting links added. These are the alerts I have set up to monitor my brand online: matthewwoodward.co.uk www.matthewwoodward.co.uk matthewwoodward matthew woodward Monitoring Competitors In addition to monitoring your brand, you should also be looking at what your competition is doing. You could receive alerts of positive and/or negative feedback about your competitors or even alerts

Monitoring Questions in Your Niche This is great for driving traffic and building authority and loyal subscribers. You can monitor your niche for a range of question-based terms and then jump in and provide an expert answer with a link back to your site. Here are the alerts I use to monitor link building-related questions (but you can swap the phrase link building for anything you want): How * link building Is * link building Can * link building When * link building Why * link building Will * link building

internet marketing magazine november 2012

I have alerts like that set up for Link Building, SEO, Google Penalty, and so forth. Every time I create a new piece of content that answers questions about a certain topic, I set up corresponding alerts so I can direct people to the answer.

Monitoring Content Distribution If you have a cornerstone piece of content, then you can use Google Alerts to monitor mentions of the article across the Web. You can get an alert if someone talks about it on a forum or shares it in a blog comment somewhere. Again, this provides you with multiple opportunities to get involved and add to the discussion. My Ultimate Guide To Tiered Link Building video tutorial series has proved to be very popular, and I have alerts to monitor for mentions of it around the Web: “ultimate guide to tiered link building” “ultimate guide to link building” “tiered link building part” Finding New Guest Post Opportunities Most blogs that accept guest posts have a page telling you how to get in touch and submit a guest post. You can use Google Alerts to monitor a range of common footprints used on those blogs to let you know about new guest posting opportunities in your niche. Here’s what I have set up:

internet marketing magazine november 2012

“write for us” SEO “submit guest post” SEO “bloggers wanted” SEO “become a contributor” SEO “this guest post” SEO “become an author” SEO Monitoring Link Building Footprints There are a lot of platforms out there that you can use to get links from. Commenting on WordPress blogs is a great way to establish traffic, authority, and relevant backlinks, but we can take this a step further. WordPress plugins, such as KeywordLuv and CommentLuv, will let us drop keyword-based anchor texts with links back to our most recent posts. This offers a lot more benefit than a regular blog comment, but how do we use Google Alerts to find these opportunities automatically? Here are my alerts: SEO +”CommentLuv enabled” SEO +”enter yourname@yourkeywords” -intitle:”enter yourname@yourkeywords” link building +”CommentLuv enabled” link building +”enter yourname@yourkeywords” -intitle:”enter yourname@yourkeywords” That’s just an example of monitoring the KeywordLuv and CommentLuv WordPress plugins for the keywords SEO and Link Building. There are lots of different platforms you can target this way, just find a common footprint and set up an alert. Monitoring Site Security I have had sites hacked on a few occasions in the past. Some hackers chose to inject hidden links in footers, while others go all out creating thousands of junk pages. Usually, the first time you notice this is when your site completely disappears out of the SERPs. You can use Google Alerts to monitor for any suspicious activity on your site, so you can take action before you get penalized. Set up an alert like this to monitor your site: site:matthewwoodward.co.uk acne OR botox OR casino OR dating OR debt OR insurance OR mortgage OR paxil OR pharmacy OR phentamine OR pherimones OR poker OR porn OR OR roulette sex OR viagara OR viagra OR xxx

Obviously, if your site is about getting into debt buying viagra in an online casino, then you need to tweak the keywords in my alert above. Monitoring Shoppers If you run an e-commerce store, you can set up a series of alerts that will drop you an email every time a shopper is ready to buy a product in your niche. With the right alerts, you can target people who have made the decision of buying a product but havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually bought it yet. Zing! Here are some laptop-based examples: laptop * under * * laptop under * laptop under * cheapest laptop * cheap laptop * buy laptop * cheap best price * laptop * laptop * price Regional Based Monitoring If your a local business, then you can use a range of search terms to monitor for shoppers in your immediate local area who are looking to buy. You can get in touch with them and convert them into a sale without having to move! Here are some examples to find people looking for laptops in London: london laptop * laptop * london london * laptop Discovering New Niches How would you like alerts of hot, new, and emerging niches landing in your inbox on a daily basis? Consider setting up alerts like:

new * this year new * 2012 will * 2012 what will happen *

ered via email or RSS. I tend to have things like brand-related alerts delivered by email and have link building opportunities delivered via RSS in Google Reader.

How to Setup Google Alerts Setting up Google Alerts is very easy and takes seconds to do. Once you have set everything up, This is what the form looks like: you will get new alerts forever! It might take an hour or so to set up, but it is worth every minute In the Search Query box, you of your time, and you can set up can enter the term you want be as many alerts as you want. alerted for. Have a look at my examples above and see which ones you can utilize for your site.

Think Out of the Box Now that you understand the true power of Google Alerts, take a step back and think about unique ways you could apply them to In the Result Type box, I always your business or website. There select to receive alerts for every- are thousands of different ways thing. you could use it over and above what I have discussed in this The How Often box allows you post. Think out of the box and to choose between once a week, be creative with your alerts! It is once a day, or as it happens. one of the most powerful tools at I change this based on what I your disposal, so make sure you want to achieve. For example, take full advantage of it. I want alerts about site security as it happens, but only want new guest post opportunities every week. Matthew Woodward

In the How Many box, I always choose All Results to make sure I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t miss anything. The Deliver To box, lets you choose to have the alerts deliv-

has over a decade of experience online and publishes a series high quality tutorials on his blog at www. M a t t h e w Wo o d w a r d . co.uk

internet marketing magazine november 2012

UPSELL TRICKS

UPSELL TRICK BOOSTS SALES BY 334% By Scott Bywater You learn a lot when you write emails on a daily basis. And one of the things I have discovered is that when I promote new products I SELL MORE. Now I can create lots of little

products, but truth be told I am often better off investing my time in writing copy rather than selling $27 or $47 products (you need to sell a LOT of $47 products to make up one copywriting job at $10,000.00).

Recently, that changed thanks to a little test I did which has allowed me to increase each sale from $47 to hundreds of dollars. It involved a little upsell at the point of sale which looks like thisâ&#x20AC;Ś

internet marketing magazine november 2012

This is what happens in a nutshell: At the point of sale, potential new customers have the option of subscribing to a marketing newsletter. But it’s more of an afterthought – visitors are brought in via the Adwords concept (what really interests them if they are buying) before seeing this offer and decide to give it a shot.

So all in all, that strategy is worth an extra $11,000 for every 100 sales. Or $110 on average, per sale – turning a $47 sale into a $157 sale. That’s a…

334% Boost

Simple but powerful, right? Especially since I know that if someone starts receiving this newsletter they are going to be worth several hundred dollars. Want to know how many people take up the upsell? Not bad, considering it cost less than $1000 for my designer to set So far, it’s 55%. it up – and far less for ongoing pages. What does this mean? Interestingly enough, this is a Let’s say I make 100 sales. strategy often used by some of the big direct marketing compaThe original model didn’t have an nies in the United States. Their upsell, so that would work out to approach is really quite simple 100 sales at $47 = $4700. – rather than selling the newsletter, they create a timely report For arguments sake, let’s say the of some sort – and they sell that average value of a new bronze report with the newsletter as an member is $200. afterthought.

For instance, the other day I was at Super Cheap Auto and they asked me “Would you like a roll of duct tape for $2”. I thought to myself, I’m not sure but I don’t think I have any duct tape at home… why not? And I grabbed one (only to find out I had plenty of duct tape at home) ;-) But here’s the thing – that little strategy could be worth a LOT of money to them. Think about it: if they get 200 people come through their store each day and 40% say yes. That’s 80 sales a day at $2. $160 profit. $800 profit a week. $40,000 profit a year. Not bad for simply asking one question – last time I checked, you could go on some pretty fancy, schmancy beach holidays for $40,000.00. So… When are you going to integrate an upsell into your business… so you can spend MORE TIME AT THE BEACH?

It’s more, but its early days with the upsell process - so let’s be conservative.

For instance, someone selling a health newsletter might promote a report called “How to Fix Your Scott Bywater Eyesight” and send it to people Do you want to That would mean that $47 sale who have eye problems. learn the easiest way to get more turns into a $247 sale. fast? So… how do you integrate the up- customers Leading advertising Based on 100 sales with 55% of sell process into your business? copywriter, Scott them taking the upsell, I now Bywater, has just have… It’s really quite simple: model completed a set of marketing and the above. advertising “cheat-sheets” to make 55 sales x $247 = $13,585. your online marketing work more 45 sales x $47 = $2,115. This isn’t a new strategy, but it’s effectively. Download it for free by Total = $15,700. a proven winner. visiting www.adcheatsheets.com/ imag

internet marketing magazine november 2012

Important: Become a member today

Your Free 24 Month Subscription is Valued

at $311.88

& Now Includes Members Area Access

and you will be notified the instant new episodes of ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ become available... You will also receive access to the Members Area for video training, expert interviews, eBooks, webinars and much more…

Register your details now at http://InternetMarketingMag.net to get access to the Members Area, the Webinars, the Expert Interviews & all Back Issues’

Experience the Benefits of the Internet Marketing Magazine in your life this year If you have enjoyed this edition of ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ please head along to http://www.facebook.com/ InternetMarketingMagazine and click ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ to share the message with fellow switched on marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs

internet marketing magazine november 2012