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Chapter 21 - Campaign Ideas

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Your best bet is to start with a single standard campaign. Every contact on your list came from somewhere. If you have done your homework and have purchased contact management software you have a way to manage your contact list. With the right give away and you basic marketing activities, you should now have the start of a list with contact names, e-mail addresses and a source field.

The source field lets you know where they came from and it s an easy way to group the campaigns. Did they download a book or report from your site? Perhaps they attended a trade show you were involved in or you asked them personally if they wanted to be included in your contact list. Your standard campaign groups everyone together. You use your entire contact list with the standard campaign.

Checklist:

1. You have your list of contacts with valid e-mail addresses and a way to tell where they came from.
2. You have a mini-site or direct sales page finished.
3. You created 12 e-mail templates that follow one of the four message types: Direct Bribe, Mystery, Direct Sales Letter, or Testimonial.
4. You decide which order you would like to send the e-mails in.
5. You create a schedule for your auto responder with the correct sequence and frequency of e-mails

In the above examples there are 12 e-mails that can be sent out. For your first campaign, send one message every 15 days and you will have 6 months of constant contact with your list in addition to your newsletter. Every one of those messages has one purpose:

VISIT MY MINISITE NOW

The reader will either click on the link and be brought to the mini-site or they will not. Pretty simple really! The more effective you are in sending e-mails that get that click through response, the greater your chance of selling online.

Run your standard campaign for the first 60 days and track the response you get to different message types, subject lines, calls to action or P.S. text. How many e-mails you send and how frequently you send them is up to you.

By starting everyone in your list on one standard ongoing campaign, you are able to get a good idea of your response rates and quality of your list.

When you get comfortable with creating e-mail templates and understanding how frequently you can send to your list, you can introduce an unlimited number of campaigns. There are an unlimited number of reasons to set up a campaign. My best results have come from using a series of e-mails that relate to the offer I am making to them on my mini-site. If they downloaded a video on selling, I send them a series of e-mails about my online sales training site http://www.webmarketingforsmallbusiness.com.

As you add mini-sites, you can mix them into the existing campaign. For example if you have two or three different offers, increase the frequency of the e-mails but change the mini-site link. Instead of always sending them to the same sales page, each e-mail will focus on a different offer.

If that approach does not make sense for what you sell, just add another campaign for the new mini-site.

How your e-mail campaign is set up is not set in stone. In fact, it should be fluid, based on the responses that you get from your list.

If people are clicking the link in your e-mails and then visiting the sales pages, it s working. If they are not, you need to go back and try different offers, templates, message frequencies and calls to action.

Other ideas

These are examples of campaigns that you may want to investigate. Notice they are not limited to prospects or online customers exclusively.

 - Do you have an existing customer list? Create a special campaign that introduces a new product or add-on for what they have already purchased. Stress the additional benefits they will receive from upgrading their existing solution. A special offer for existing customers or subscribers works well.
 - Create a Notification Campaign with advance notice of upcoming events or product offerings. Keep your key customers up to date and in the loop with private, members-only information. It is easy to include links in the messages to mini-sites that give preferential treatment to an existing customer. This strategy works great with your best customers.
 - I use my Internet radio station as a reason for a campaign. Every week I update the play list with new content. Guess what gets included with every e-mail? Three links to one of my mini-sites. This e-mail goes out every week to all of my contacts who have requested the link to the Small Business Heroes Radio program.
 - Did you sponsor an e-zine, place ads in someone else s e-zine or purchase a list of e-mail addresses? If you did, create a campaign that follows up automatically with anyone who replied from your sponsorship or requested more information.
 - If you have an affiliate program, please take the time to create a series of e-mails that educates your new affiliates. By spelling out exactly what your affiliates are required to do to promote your products and services, you are dramatically increasing the chances of them being successful. I have included a series of e-mails that I received from Jimtools.com when I joined their affiliate program. What an outstanding job - and totally automated!
 - Do you have a service or technical support department? Create campaigns that follow up with anyone who has a service call or requests technical support. Not only are you providing excellent service, you gain opportunities to sell to happy customers.

Key Point!
Use Autoresponder E-mail
Campaigns for Every Part of
Your Business!

Offline Campaigns

Your autoresponder and e-mail campaigns can be used effectively as a way to generate new leads for your direct sales efforts. Create some simple tracks that address common problems with face-to-face selling. If you lose a deal or request for proposal, add the client to a short, follow-up campaign. The campaign may initially thank them for the opportunity. Two weeks later a follow-up checks to see if they are pleased with the choice they made. The next e-mail might update them to a new offering or event that you are holding.

A direct sales professional does not have the time to follow up with every customer that they lose yet those same losses can turn into real business if you can develop them. Automate the follow-up for the sales reps with a simple campaign that brings them back to a specific offer on a mini-site.

The same approach should be used for a Closed Sale. By adjusting the content and frequency of the e-mails, you can create any number of campaigns to suit your specific situation.

If you get stuck and cannot think of a reason for a campaign try these:

1. Existing Content Series: Use your own content or collect some articles from your partners. Package them up as an Expert s Panel and send them out as a series. You can use a series of e-mails with high value links. Collect industry or product specific bookmarks and create a series of e-mails or documents with the links. When sending the e-mails in the series make sure to include your own links to your virtual selling mini- sites. Include one at the top, middle and bottom of each e-mail.
2. Surveys, contests, reviews or quizzes: Create a fun or trivia quiz, top 10 lists, product/service reviews or survey on your site and include the answers in an autoresponder. This way, you will collect e-mail addresses and know who is interacting with the site.
3. Reviewing products that you receive affiliate commissions for is a great way to earn extra income. Right a review and make it available by autoresponder. Include your affiliate link in the review for those who want more information.
4. If you use a contest on your site or in your newsletter, have the entries sent to your autoresponder. You can set up the autoresponder to send a confirmation message immediately saving you time and collecting new e-mail addresses. Another idea is to put portions or teasers of past or upcoming events in an autoresponder series, and then include your follow-up sales letters at the end.
5. Send sequential testimonials, along with the description of your products, an excerpt or a free chapter. This will increase your credibility.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to e-mail autoresponder campaigns. By combining strategies and tactics, you can really automate the number, quality and effectiveness of your customer contacts. On top of collecting new contacts and e-mail addresses, you can automate frequently requested tasks. In all of these follow-up campaigns make sure to include your own links to your mini-sites. Include one at the top, middle and bottom of each e-mail.

Joint Venture Campaigns

When you are first starting out, you may find yourself in the classic chicken and egg situations. You have a great product and you have set up your VirtualSelling direct sales single page websites, but you do not have a big e-mail list and there is no traffic going to the site. Creating a Joint Venture is a simple way to fix that problem. The two reasons you would use this tactic are to:

1. Drive new traffic to your content site and capture e-mail addresses.
2. Send targeted traffic to one of your direct sales copy mini-sites to earn money.

It is a simple process that allows you to leverage the traffic of other businesses and partners for mutual benefit. This win/win approach puts money in your pocket and money in a partner s pocket.

Creating a Joint Venture is probably the fastest and easiest way to increase traffic to your main content site or one of your sales sites. It takes only a small amount of preparation after you have created your sites and can bring in lots of cash quickly. The three steps that I will outline are easy to implement, cost nothing and can be used at any time with any product.

Let us take a look at how it works. In its simplest form you:

1. Find another company or partner with a complementary product offering, making sure that they have enough website traffic for the joint venture to succeed.
2. Create a joint venture where they will send an e-mail to their existing customer base promoting your mini-site.
3. In exchange for the e-mail being sent out, you agree to pay them a percentage of the sales that are generated.

Key Point!
Other Entrepreneurs With
Existing Products And
Customers Are Willing To Help
You Grow Your Business!

How to Set Up a Joint Venture

The first thing is that you have to have something to sell, ideally your own product or at least the rights to sell it. Obviously, the greater the demand there already is for your product the better.

Since we already talked about it, I am going to remind you about your product checklist. Do you have a good product, a powerful direct sales mini-site for that product or service and an easy way for someone to buy?

The second step is to find a partner to joint venture with. Use some of the tools that I have mentioned earlier to find out who is really behind some of your potential partners.

 - Use Copernic or the Google tool bar to search for your product or service. For example, if you are selling gardening supplies, search on gardening keywords.
 - Visit the sites that get listed and look at the page rankings in the Alexa toolbar. You are looking for the owners of websites, newsletters, and e-zines that are in the same target market as you are. OK, now that you have done your searches, this next step is a simple step-by-step process.
 - Alexa will give you the competitive information that you need for the next step, so pay attention. Alexa features a popularity ranking, all the related links and categories that other surfers visited and complete site owner information.
 - If Alexa does not pull up the information that you need, use a Whois query. This tool lets you know who-is the registration contact and the technical contact for the domain name. You can go to www.betterwhois.com and search on the domain name you want to partner with.
 - Send an e-mail to the website owner proposing the joint venture. I have included a template e-mail from Joint Venture master Mike Enlow in the Toolbox.

Put yourself in the other site owner s shoes. You are going to call them out of the blue and request that they do business with you. Make sure that you do your homework and research the site. What is it that they sell and how do they sell it. Check the testimonials. Are they Real testimonials? You know you have done enough homework when you can give a nice description of who they are and what they do.

One of the fastest ways to get someone s attention is to give them a compliment. Use this strategy at the start of your e-mail too them. Write a nice sentence or two in the first paragraph. This also lets them know that the message is not a bulk spam letter. It is a real opportunity with another professional business person.

Make sure that when you send this request to do business together you use a professional business subject line in the e-mail.

Trying to hype them or make bold claims at this point is useless. You are a professional asking to do business with another professional. Get to the point up front.

What Kind of E-mail does The Partner Send?

The joint venture e-mail approach works well when the potential partner sends a personal recommendation. Here is an example of a joint venture letter that I received this morning.

Letter from xxxxxx...

This week xxxxxxxx has released a book about building a mailing list and growing your ezine.

Nothing special about that you might think. After all there are heaps of books about ezines.

But this one is different, and I've got to say that it's the best book about developing your online business that I've had the privilege of reading at any time over the past few years.

Now that sounds like a bit of a sensationalist statement, a bit of hype. But it's not.

I don't want to sensationalize this book at all, and frankly I don't need to.

It's a very serious book for serious ezine owners and list builders.

I'm not saying it's complicated. It's not.

Everything is explained in a straightforward, but detailed, manner. But it is only for people who are serious about building an online business. It's not fluff. It requires you to think. Well, it compels you to think, and to act on what you learn.

I've never scribbled so many notes when I've read a book.

http://www.xxxxxxxx.com/xxxxx/

Oh, before I continue, I want to say one sensationalist thing...what I'm learning from reading this book - a distillation of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx list building wisdom - is going to at least double the circulation of this ezine this year.

I've never seen so many ideas for getting new (very targeted) subscribers packed into one place before.

And so many of the ideas are new to me. I'm sure they will be to you as well. Xxxxxx doesn't just say "do this and you'll get 50 new subscribers a day" he tells you in step-by-step detail exactly how to do it, and why to do it, and even when to do it. But he's not just talking about 50 new subs a day, those figures are on the low end of the scale for him. He shows you how to take steps to get many hundreds or thousands of new subscribers a week.

The great thing is that he's not just plucked these ideas and methods out of thin air, they're not just theories, they're what he's done himself to build a powerful ezine and an almighty reputation.

In February he started a new newsletter, completely outside the Internet Marketing niche, and took it from zero to over 8000 subscribers in just the first few days

. And using Xxxxxx's advice, marketer Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx tripled his ezine subscriber list in just 99 days:

______________

" Xxxxx ...I made a challenge to myself to DOUBLE my Opt-in List in 90 days. You encouraged me to go for it, Xxxxxl!

Well guess what? I doubled it from 10,292 to 20,584 in 74 days and TRIPLED it to 30,903 in only 99 days." Xxxxxx Xxxxxx.

______________

I printed my copy of Xxxxx's book out, had it comb bound, took it into my favorite coffee shop and then let my coffee grow cold without touching it because I was too busy making notes in the margins to think about drinking.

I could go on about this book for ages, but I'm not going to. You know whether you're serious about list building or not. And if you are you've got to read this. Simple as that.



http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxx/

Xxxxxx's shown me an exact way to get 200 new targeted subscribers a day AT NO COST. That's 1400 a week.

And I'm going to do it or rip my hair out trying.

One more thing I need to mention. He's giving away, as a bonus, a tool called xxxxxx that on it's own is probably worth the cost of the book to people using mail merge programs. Very useful indeed.

************************************************************************

What a great sales letter, excellent copy, testimonials embedded in the copy and a personal recommendation from the list owner to his own customers. You can guess how successful this joint venture was.

The sender also used a tracking link in the letter. They have now had a campaign that both parties can test. The list owner knows how many of his customers have bought and the product owner knows exactly how many people from the list purchased. Win/Win for both parties.

If you are selling information or soft goods, the easiest way to share the revenue is with ClickBank. Remember ClickBank was one of the payment processors that included an automatic way to give a commission to affiliates or partners that drove targeted traffic to your selling site.

If you are willing to try a joint venture, follow the simple step-by-step approach of approaching another business owner. You will find enough partners to get the phone ringing and the cash flowing to your site.

Key Point Make Sure That Your Payment Done properly you explain how you will be doing all the work and they are simply showing them how to leverage an existing asset with a non-competitive offer. It is that simple and it works every time!

Key Point
Make Sure That Your Payment
Service Tracks Joint Ventures
Automatically. "ClickBank"
Makes a Joint Venture Easy!

Joint venture offers like the example above work especially well when they come as a personal endorsement from the sender.

Joint Ventures for Affiliates

You can use this same tactic with your affiliate network. Write all the letters that they would use in their own newsletters for them. Every ad, every banner, every graphic is ready for them to plug-in to their existing list of customers and prospects. Links in the copy of these ads can point directly to your site with the appropriate tracking link or to a mirrored page on your site for their benefit. An example of this strategy can be found at http://www.jamesmaduk.com/affiliates.htm. You can join my program or just visit some of the resources. I ve even included sales copy and websites that you can use to help sell. The e-mail that goes out to their list is only a teaser to come back to a customer sales page on my site.

Joint Venture Schedule

All you have to do is commit to working two days a week surfing, finding prospects, and sending out letters. Dedicate two days a week, a couple of hours each day to make the calls and arrange the deals. It is that simple& and yes, it works.

I have found all of my partners with a simple strategy. I subscribe to the newsletters of those individuals I think I might like to work with. They send me all of their contact information; I get a feel for the type of partners that might interest them, and find out whom they are already working with.

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