Does Your E-Newsletter or E-Zine Pass the "So What" Test?Written by Robert Moment
A great number of e-newsletter and e-zine programs fail every day, no matter how much time and money is spent on attempting to make them work. Perhaps they don’t reach their target audience, or they don’t make their sales goals. For some reason or another they simply didn’t work. The majority of times however, it comes down to fact that they simply did not pass “so what” test. Instead of trying to solve reader’s problems, failed newsletters attempted to sell products or services.It is a natural progression that when your readers trust you, they’ll buy from you, it’s just that simple. However, one cannot develop a trusting relationship with a customer by shouting “buy, buy, buy” at them. A newsletter must pay attention to what customer wants and needs, and it must speak to those issues. The reader will make conclusion to buy on their own, and since they have built up a trust for you through your informative newsletter, they’ll choose you first. E-newsletter marketing is a less intrusive form of communication than traditional advertising. It is much more appealing to readers and, in turn, is a great deal more effective, as it delivers value to your customers on a regular basis. Additionally, newsletters make it easy for you to track which articles are most read, and therefore what information is most interesting and important to your customers. The thing is, advertising doesn’t have to look like advertising. It can be an article chock full of interesting information that revolves around your product or service, without specifically mentioning your product or service. People don’t want to read ads - but they do want to find out how to make their lives easier or better in some way. This is illustrated through 1%-3% of readers who open a direct mail piece and request further information, in comparison to over 50% of recipients who click on newsletter articles to seek more information. People want to learn how to solve their daily problems, to stay informed of industry trends, to learn critical information, and save time. So how do you do this and still get your message across? Write quality articles about value and benefits of types of products and services that you offer. Make them look just like type of article you’d see in a quality newspaper. People don’t care as much about fact that Andyhairdryers.com has come out with a new hair dryer, as they care that this new dryer can cut their morning prep time in half. See difference? Stating benefit of new hair dryer answered “so what?” question concerning new product. This made product relevant in reader’s life and therefore prompted reader to continue learning, and perhaps even buying new product.
| | Using The Internet In Your Lease Purchase BusinessWritten by Sue and Chuck DeFiore
First you need to find a list of For Sale By Owner Sites. You do this by going to one of major search engines. Our two favorites are Yahoo and Google, but any one of them will do. Enter For Sale By Owner (FSBO) as your search words. After you search for FSBOs you will get a bunch of sites to go visit. Visit them, check them out, see how they work, and ones you like put in a favorites folder entitled FSBOs. Now that you have a list of FSBO sites you need to get telephone numbers of sellers who have homes you would like to lease purchase in your state. For those of you lucky enough to border another state you can enter a search for that state next. Remember to set up your yellow legal pad with columns for telephone number, type of property (single family, condo, townhouse), price and notes section. Remember you also need to set up your database with same information. However, you are going to want your database to have two additional fields for date your called, and action to take. Go through FSBOs sites you have collected and take down appropriate information. Get your telephone script handy and start calling. After you are through with your telephone calls, enter information in your database. We use Access, but any database will do. In action to take field I make a note of whether I need to send a letter, email, newsletter, and/or to tickle to call again. Next, however, you want to have a mail merge program. For example, we use Group Mail for all on-line correspondence. Group Mail allows me to take my Access files and import them into Group Mail. It also affords me ability to make my emails very personable by using individuals name in my letter, date I called on property, and depending on email when I will follow up. In addition program also allows me to put specific groups (prospects, consults, tenant buyers) into separate groups. I can have a very large Access database that Group Mail (it will import most major databases) will sort out for me, and give me just who I want to send a specific email to. For all off-line correspondence I use Microsoft Word.
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