Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Business Email Etiquette

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Email is a wonderful communication tool, but many people do not use it properly. 

You can annoy or even anger your customers and colleagues with poor email practices. Make sure you follow proper business email etiquette practices to maintain your professional image and make your email effective.

Make your subject clear. “Hey!” or “From me” are not good subjects. Be specific.

Keep your email to one subject. The more issues you try to address in one email, the less effective it will be. If you ask several questions or include several action items, chances are that many of them will be missed or ignored.

When replying to an email, quote enough of the original email to make it easy to understand your response. However, you do not need to include all of the previous email. Keep it short.

Choose recipients carefully. It seems as though everyone has a horror story about hitting “reply all” when they meant to reply only to the original sender, or sending what was supposed to be a private email to everyone in their address book. Always check and double check the recipients to make sure you are sending only to the person or persons to whom you intend to write.

Use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation when writing business emails. Although email is less formal than letters, it is still business communication. You may think it is no problem if your email is not written in proper English, but people judge you by your writing skills, even in email. Always proofread before hitting send.

Capitalize properly. Do not use ALL CAPS or all lowercase. Capitalize the first letter of each sentence and proper nouns.

Be careful in your choice of language. The reader can not see your facial expression or body language so what you thought was a funny comment may come across as nasty.

Avoid abbreviations and acronyms that recipients may not understand. Even many abbreviations that are widely used in texting are not understood by everyone.

Do not put anything in an email that you would not want anyone and everyone to see. Once you send an email, you have no control over where it is forwarded.

Attachments should not be used unless (1) they are necessary and (2) the recipient expects them. Many people will not open unknown attachments because of the dangers of viruses. Also, keep any documents and images to a reasonable size. Some people still have slow connections, and a large file can jam their email box.

Using proper business email etiquette can help you get more done while you maintain positive and professional relationships.

Get More Subscribers to Your Email Newsletter

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email-subscribers

You have probably heard that “the money is in the list.” That means that the subscribers to your email newsletter can be a source of profits for your business. After all, these are people who want to hear from you, and have invited you in to their email inboxes. They will be more likely to buy from you than a random visitor who happens to land on your website.

You do not have to have 100,000 subscribers to have a profitable email list. When you build good relationships with your subscribers, you can do well with a few thousand readers or even fewer. Of course, having a large list of interested and motivated readers can make you even more profitable. The key is building a list of subscribers who want to hear from you and will open and read your email newsletters. Getting your information in front of them on a regular basis increases the odds they’ll turn to you when they have a need.

Here are just a few ways to get more newsletter subscribers:

Offer a valuable bonus to subscribers. A free report, an online course, an audio or video program and other information products are low- (or no-) cost, high-value items that will motivate prospects to subscribe.

Dedicate a page on your website to promoting your newsletter. Give details about what subscribers can expect (e.g., content, frequency, special offers and bonuses). Include testimonials from other readers. Link to your privacy policy. And include a big sign up form right in the middle of the page!

Promote your email newsletter in your email signature, your profile pages on social networking sites, forum posts and other communications. People can’t subscribe if they don’t know about your email newsletter, so let them know.

Do an ad exchange with a complementary email newsletter. For example, if your niche is diet and weight loss, a newsletter about fitness could be a good match. You run a blurb about their newsletter, they run a blurb about yours, and you both get more new subscribers.

Offer sales and promotions exclusively for email newsletter readers. Everyone likes to save money, and everyone wants to get a special deal. Let potential subscribers know they will get discounts and freebies not available to others and they will be happy to sign up.

Test, test, test your sign up form. Test the layout, design, colors, position, headline, text on the submit button—everything. Generally, sign up forms are in the left or right sidebar, near the top of the page. You may find you get better results, though, with a form in the content section of your home page. Or, you might try a slide in or lightbox sign up form that appears on the page after a period of time. (Aweber makes it easy to create these forms.) It may be that none of these elements makes a dramatic difference by itself, but making several small improvements can make a big difference in the number of subscribers you get.

Each of these suggestions can increase your email newsletter subscriber numbers. Apply one of them or all of them, and watch your subscriber count climb!

Product Launch Formula and Content Marketing with Jeff Walker

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jeff-walkerFor years Jeff Walker’s specialty has been rolling out new products. After tales of his six figures in seven days, where he generated $106,000 in seven days with a new product and a relatively small list, word started to leak out and Jeff became a sought after hired gun for rolling out new products.

The information-marketing world suddenly took notice in 2004 when John Reese publicly credited Jeff’s teachings after he launched a new home-study course and sold over $1 million in the first 24 hours.

Since then Jeff has helped other famous marketers such as Yanik Silver, Brian Sacks and Frank Kern, and multi-million dollar launches have become almost common. However, many not-so-famous students of Jeff’s Product Launch Formula have had great success in all kinds of niches from massage therapy to software training to baseball coaching.

The following is an excerpt from an interview I did with Jeff where we talked about how to build an email list, create products and generate profits with your content. [Read more…]

How to Build an Email List

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Email Marketing $19/Month!Before we talk about how to build an email list, let’s consider why you would want to do so. When someone comes to your web site, there are several possible actions they can take. Bottom line, though, there are two: they can buy something or not.

If they buy something, you have their name and contact information so you could reach them again. However, you do not have their explicit permission to do so.Worse, the people who came to your site and didn’t buy are gone. Perhaps forever. Oh, they may come back some day, but it is more likely that they will forget all about you.

Now imagine that they have at least a third option. In addition to buying or not buying, they can sign up for your mailing list. Perhaps they are interested, but not interested enough to buy today. Now they will continue to hear from you, learn from you and remember you. Ultimately, they may buy from you. Even if they don’t, they may forward something they receive from you to a friend who may buy from you, or sign up for your mailing list, or…

Having a list is a way to develop relationships with possible customers. It creates trust and showcases what you can do for them.

So, how do you build a list? One easy way is with a form on your web site. When you use a service like Aweber (the list service I use), you can easily create a subscription box (like the one at IdeaLady.com) or boxes that slide onto the page, etc. Visitors simply enter their email addresses to subscribe, just as you did.

Put subscription boxes at multiple locations on your site. Much of your search engine traffic does not come in via the front page.

Offer a bonus to subscribers, such as a free course or ebook.

When you speak or present a workshop, ask attendees to subscribe by checking a box on the roster, or entering an email address on a form.

Make subscribing to your newsletter a call to action in your email signature, in the resource box of your articles, and elsewhere. Keep in touch with prospects to turn them into fans and customers.