Email marketing – is this an legitimate tool of direct marketing?

Email marketing is still new to many organizations and they do not have proper knowledge of developing a plan for launching effective email marketing. Most of marketing executives are unable to develop a plan that clearly demonstrates to management the value and ROI of a strategic and well-run email-marketing program.  

Marketing methodology and time management - A practical approach.

A day off: Extensive field marketing in streets of New Delhi.

Something comes out from clear mind about what I learnt in my early years. “Key to success is effective time management.” Sounds great!! Ever imagine how it is hard to implement in your day today life? And once you learnt your time management I bet you never say that you have lack of time.

The Choice between Yes and Yes: A Psychological Revelation   by Sean D'Souza

Three year old Kara was throwing a tantrum. She didn't want to go to bed, of that she was certain.

"Do you want to brush with the red or blue toothpaste?" her dad asked gently.

"Blue," she says, glad to be given the opportunity to make a decision.

Ten minutes later, Kara was well tucked up, wondering when she'd agreed to go to bed in the first place.

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You laugh at the story, don't you?
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The method used to get Kara into bed seems a bit like trickery. And who am I to say that it's not? Yet I want you to pay
attention to one thing. Kara was glad to be given a choice between yes and yes.

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Your clients are not much different
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Clients come to you every single day asking you to give them a choice. A choice between yes and yes. Instead all you're giving them is a choice between yes and no.

Mah friend, your bank account will see far better days if only you'd step back, and use the immense power of the choice between yes and yes.

Of course, you don't have to believe that this choice factor works. You don't have to believe your sales will go up. All you have to see is proof. So in the article below I'll demonstrate the psychological factor of choice.How it can work for you and how it can turn against you and bite you in the you-know-where.

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It all started on one stupid loss-making November's day...
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We were doing fine with the sales on our website when we made one change. I'm going to demonstrate the change in the article below so it would help for you to have the page opena
so you can see what I'm talking about.

If you look at this page at
http://www.psychotactics.com/hiddenlink.php
you'll find that you get the choice to buy two packages. One is the copy of the Brain Audit and the other choice is a copy of the
Brain Audit + the Brain Audit Rip.

Till the middle of November, we had both the offers up. Then one ego-driven morning we decided to pull the plug on one choice.

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We gave customers the choice between a yes and um..NO!
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Almost within 24 hours, our sales started going south for no reason at all. We ignored this sickening slack for about a week. Then we looked back at what was working. And we put back the choice between yes and yes.

The customer was back in choice-ville and the sales soared.

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But here's the curious part
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Among the two packages, one has a much higher price. Yet over 97.5% of customers, when given the choice between the two packages, chose the higher priced package.

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The customer is no dumbo
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No siree. The customer knows exactly what she wants. And when given the choice between yes and yes, she takes a decision to buy that which creates most value for her. Of course, if there's an enticement to buy, as was in this case, then
there's a far greater likelihood of her buying the more expensive product.

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The customer is no dumbo...but I sure am
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Think about it. If your revenue shot up. If customers were buying higher-priced products what would you logically do? Wouldn't you take the same concept and use it everywhere you could?

You'd think a smart person would do that, wouldn't you? (Which is why I qualified myself at the start of this paragraph). But no! As we speak, the only product that has a choice of YES and YES is the page I've already mentioned above.

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Don't stop at one point. Take the concept through it's paces
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If you're in consulting, look at the choice between yes and yes. Are you giving the customer a choice between package A and package B. Or do you offer just one package? If you're selling products, the concept of yes and yes choice stays put.

And once you've found that the concept works, puh-lease don't
do the dumbo bit. Audit every possible thing you sell. And put in a yes and yes factor. Not only will this bring you higher quantity of sales, but also an a much better price on every product/consulting assignment you do.

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I said yes and yes...NOT yes and yes and yes and yes
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You, me, we all crave for choice. But give us too much and we go a little waka-waka in our brains. Because choice is based on rejection. To choose the strawberry flavour ice-cream, you must mentally refuse all the other flavours.

(Read article on: The Curse of Choice)
http://www.psychotactics.com/artchoice.htm

If you give a client too much to choose from, they will end up rolling their eyes, doing a RAM check and shut down their brains before you have time to do anything at all.

Keep your options simple. Keep the choice between yes and yes.

So that even a three-year old has no trouble choosing!

How Direct Marketing Helps Your Internet Business To Prosper   by Evelyn Lim

What is direct marketing? Put simply, direct marketing is a process of recording information about your customer’s response to a planned marketing activity.

Increased computer usage has allowed direct marketing to evolve and to rise dramatically. For your online business, to begin with, you design your sales letter or craft your emails to elicit a certain response. You then test and track your customer’s feedback by the actions (or inaction) that he/she takes. The tracking process is easily accomplished via coding your online campaigns and can be fully automated.

As you gather more information about your customer's online behaviour, you are able to tweak your sales ad accordingly.

In a nutshell, the internet makes it possible for you to track your individual online communication with a customer and to know what happens over time.

With direct marketing skills, you will be able to acquire and retain your customers. There is less marketing wastage as you know what, how and where to roll out your online marketing campaign for the best response. Having good knowledge about your customers will definitely put you ahead of your pack!

So what are the qualities that constitute a good online customer? He/she is:

* Open to your offers.
* Repeat buyer.
* Buyer of your front end / back end products.
* Easy and low cost to maintain.
* High revenue dollar value per acquisition cost.
* Loyal to you.
* Swear by you!

The reverse is true of a poor online customer. He/she is:

* Not open.
* A complainer.
* A single transaction buyer.
* An easy product switcher to your competitor's.
* Not loyal.
* Quibbles a lot on price.
* Expensive to acquire and expensive to maintain.
* Low revenue dollar value per acquisition cost.

How then, do you pinpoint a good customer against a bad one? What kind of information do you need to know about your customers? Here are 8 critical but very basic information that you must gather:

1. Who are they?
2. What do they buy?
3. When do they buy?
4. How do they buy?
5. Why do they buy?
6. Where do they buy?
7. Are they satisfied?
8. What is their buying power like?

One way of getting the information that you need is to simply conduct a survey on your mailing list. Hot tip! Make it easy for your subscribers to fill up the survey and give them an incentive to do so!

The same pareto principle should apply to your online business: the 80/20 rule. The principle just means that 80% of your sales are generated by 20% of your customers.

If this is the the case, instead of spending huge sums on customer acquisition, it may be a more prudent measure to spend resources on knowing and understanding more of this 20% segment. Cultivate good relationships with this 20% segment and reward the customers here for staying true to you. (Again, this knowledge is only possible if you have surveyed or kept track of your entire customer base.)

All in, having happy, loyal and satisfied customers will result in a business that prospers. And you can achieve this through direct marketing and knowing what, where and how to please your customers!