SuperTips Ezine: Issue 12
IN THIS ISSUE
2. "Tracking Online Referrals"
3. Readers Forum
4. "Writing A Killer Sales Ad"
5. More "Super" Tips 6. Next Issue
1. Greetings! Reader Doris Sutton has asked "Harvey - why don't you post one of those confidentiality messages in your newsletter, you know ... your Email address will be kept private". Too late Doris. I already have made them public. I have Sammy sitting here right now taking note of all our subscribers. However, as Sammy** is only five years old, has four legs and purrs you can sleep easy. But if you are concerned you'll read further on how to track unscrupulous Ezine publishers. Harvey ** Having introduced my wife and daughter in the last few issues the cat was getting jealous.
2. "Tracking Online Referrals" The key to any referral program is recognizing the source of referrals so that you can encourage more of the same behavior. How do you track the success of your online referral program? If everyone is going to your index page how do you know where they came from? The trick is in the (?) No, I don't mean asking them, although that is a good idea any way, I mean in your web address like this; http://www.tqm-online.com/?AWLTOR Now they will go to your index page just like everyone else, but when you look at your log files the instead of just showing up as another visit to index.html it will appear as index.html?ATORWL. Now you know exactly the source of that visitor. This is done without making any changes to your site and as far as I am aware you can use any combination of numbers, letters or characters after the (?) If you don't have access to your logs, you can use an online referrer tracking service such as http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/ The only cases that I have seen this not work is if the page that you are linking to is dynamically created such as the link above. But that is rare. If you are *really* into the referral business you know that giving is as important as receiving. Start adding your name to URL's when you refer some one to a site. One of my clients offers consulting services for Tips Booklet creation so I pass her URL out a lot. I want her to know that the traffic is coming from my efforts, so whenever I type her URL it is http://www.tipsbooklets.com/?cortez. When she reviews her logs, my name and the number of visits show up in her log. It's just like writing your name on the back of someone else's business card to give to someone. In order to make this effective you have to come up with a code system. I have converted codes from my old real estate days when I did direct mailings. I would code each mailing with a special department number. The first example I gave was http://www.tqm-online.com/?ATORWL. In my spreadsheet that is translated as Article Tracking Online Referrals Wanda Loskot. You can have as many different codes as you like (or care to track) Items you may want to include in your codes could be dates, people, places, titles, whatever you want to track. One more referral tracking idea that I have 'borrowed' from John Gerits, Moderator of Markethink Digest. If you have your own domain you can set up a default email address so that anything@yourdomain.com gets routed to you instead of bounced. But you can use that to your advantage as well. John uses this to track referrals for subscriptions to his publication. So when I recommend that someone subscribes to his free publication (which I do a lot) I tell them to mailto:bob.cortez@dakine.demon.nl?subject=Markethink . This is just one of many uses. Ask your referral partners to do the same thing, make it special for them, and make sure you show your appreciation when those referrals start rolling in. Need ideas or help with setting up your tracking system? mailto:yournamehere@tqm-online.com <vbg>
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3. Readers Forum 3.1 Cut and Paste Following last weeks suggestions for software tools which can simplify cut and paste type operations here are some ideas from one of our readers on how to organise information with an existing tool such as Word. "I have a folder I call Quotes and in that folder I have documents; such as, Time,Home, Computer, Marketing, Motivation, etc.. These are my topics that I would like to save a quote or piece of information to. I open all these documents at the beginning of the day in Word and then I minimize each document. When I see a piece of text I want to save, I simply select the text and cut or copy, maximize the document it should be stored into, press Control END to go to the end of the document and press paste or Control V (Control X will cut). For e-mail messages you can simply click file, edit message, select text and copy and then maximize the document you want to paste into. Don't forget to always copy and paste where the information came from to give the person credit. Once you have the documents set up and opened, you might try playing around with macros to do some of this for you. This is a big lesson in itself! I have never tried to make a macro for cut and paste email, don't know if it can be done. To format the text before using it, open the document, click on Format, and click on Auto Format. This should take care of your wrap problem.
Hope these tips help you and your readers!" Janet L. Hall <overhall@chesapeake.net> http://www.overhall.com The little WHO, WHEN, and WHERE Booklet "If Your Current Systems Aren't Working For You...Get An OverHall!" Professional Organizing Services and Booklets 3.2 Request for Superman My thanks again to those of you who were kind enough to offer comments about my web site following last week's article. A lack of graphics was one of the main criticisms. I've not been in favour of these in the past because of the effect on download time but now that faster modems are becoming more frequent I'm going to change my tune. So I am on the lookout for a small graphic of no less a person than Superman ! - to match the name of my site. Does anyone know where I can find one ?
4. "Writing A Killer Sales Ad" Who is Your Target Market? Finding your target market is very important to your success. It's better to find your niche market and work in it than to try to market your product or service to a wide range of people. For example, I specialize in helping othesr market their business. I want to target people who have businesses online. I wouldn't want to advertise in a ezine focusing on parenting or weight loss. What Do Your Customers Want? What do you put in the ad? The first rule of advertising -find out what your customers want, need and fear - then give it to them. How do you find out what they want? Ask them. Put questions out to your target market. Use forums, newsletters, discussion lists. You may be surprised at what you find out. Also, survey past customers. Ask them why they bought from you. You may find out why they bought and why you thought they bought are two different things! Writing Your Ad When writing your ad, you want to keep it short and to the point. Don't use all capital letters. Don't try to sell every benefit in the ad. You want just enough to get their attention, so they want more information. To do this, select a few of your best benefits (I'll tell you how to make your list of benefits a little later). Use these in your ad and title. Remember, you want to get their attention. You will want to spend most of your time on the title or fist line of your ad. If you don't catch their attention by then, you probably won't. Use power words like free, insider, etc. For a list of power words, go to http://www.jbmarketingtips.com/powerwords.htm . Making a List of Benefits An easy way to make a list of benefits is to list all the features of your product or service. Now, write down what benefit you get from each. A feature is a quality or description of the product - what the products does. A benefit is what you get out of the feature. What does it do for me? Don't assume your prospective customer will think of all the benefits. They usually won't take the time. You must point them out. Be Specific General statements don't work as well as specific ones. Example: Increase your sales by 187%, instead of using 200%. It is better to use 9.8% than 10%. Don't round off your results. Keep them specific. The Sales Letter Once you have your ad written, you want to set up your autoresponders with your sales letter and follow ups. Here you will give them all of the benefits of your product or service. Make the sales letter enticing. Use exciting words. Make sure that every point flows naturally into the next. Keep it simple to follow. Be clear. Get testimonials and use them. Above all, write your sales letter as though you are talking to someone. Use informal language. When making the follow up letters, use different titles. Put your main focus on a different benefit in each letter. Always transfer ownership. Make your sales letter more personal by using "you" and "your". Say "You will learn...", not "The report will...". "Your report will be delivered in 5 days.", not "The report will be...". Count how many "you's" and "your's" you have in your letter. There should be at least twice as many "you's" and "your's" as "I's", "we's", "me's", "our;s" or the company's name. The Bonus Always offer a bonus. Offer more than one bonus and give a monetary value. Example: free bonus report worth $39.95. Closing the Sales Letter Close out the sales letter by asking for the sale. Use phrases that stimulate the potential customer to action. Give them a reason to act now. The first 50 who respond. On sale for limited time. Be sure to give a time limit. 2 days, 2 weeks. If you act within the next 48 hours, I will send you a free bonus report worth $29.95. Don't forget, ask for the sale. For a list of action phrases, go to http://www.jbmarketingtips.com/actionphrases.htm . * Written by Barbara Ayres, publisher, Advantage Marketing Tips Newsletter. J & B Marketing Group has helped 1000's of people profit online. Visit http://jbmarketingtips.com for marketing tips, software, web services, business resources and more. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to our Free bi-weekly newsletter, Advantage Marketing Tips. mailto:advantage@jbmarketingtips.com?subscribeAMTa or visit http://www.jbmarketingtips.com/newsletta.htm
5.1 Url not found (error 404) This is the error message received when you try to visit a page that no longer exists. Does it happen on your site - and would you even know ? Well here's a tip - don't remove a page when the content is no longer relevant. It may still be referenced in search engines, old ads, newsgroups etc. About once a month I receive a visit from a link that I placed in December 96 (!) for a product that I discontinued 2 year ago. Keep the page but redirect the visitor to a valid page, better still ask him to tell you where he saw the link to this old page. Offer him a free gift for telling. 5.2 SuperTips archives Just a reminder - there are some great articles and tips in our newsletter archives. You don't have to spend hours on the web searching through each issue for them. Get the index e00@sendfree.com and you will see the highlights of each issue and you can retrieve them by Email.
5.3 Safeguard your Email address You've probably seen this statement at the start of newsletters "Your email address will never be sold or exchanged"
But how do you know that this promise is genuine ? Here's a way to check,
using the tip from Bob Cortez in the above article if you have your own domain.
If you can set up a default email address so that anything@yourdomain.com
gets routed to you instead of getting bounced then you can use whatever name
to subscribe e.g Then if you ever receive an Email, other than the newsletter, at say ezine1@yourdomain.com then you know that ezine1 has given away your name. 5.4 Getting your articles published I've been receiving a stream of article contributions both from my usual request at the end of this letter and from postings in newsletters such as Gary Christensen's "Writers and Publishers Connection Newsletter" <writers98@aol.com> which puts publishers and writers in touch with each other.
Thank you - and keep them coming. It's unfortunate that many writers let themselves down in their presentation. Do remember to run a spellcheck, make the layout appealing and fix a limit on the line length of about 60 to 65 characters. Now when you send in the article you may be copying it naturally to a number of publishers - but it's most important to personalise your message. I can tell you that there is a world of difference from my point of view in receiving an article which just starts "Hello" compared to one which begins "Hello Harvey". Yes I know that in the latter case you may still be sending it to lots of others but somehow it doesn't seem so. And of course if you want to catch the eye of a publisher just mention his name or his publication in the subject of your message.
6. Next Issue For the first time I have not selected an article for next week - I want to encourage you to send in your contributions and if you have read 5.4 you'll know how to begin it ! If you have any suggestions to improve this newsletter so that we can make it a great resource for all our readers please drop me a line.
Thanks,
To SUBSCRIBE to the SuperTips Ezine:Click here ARCHIVES: Click here Copyright (C) 1999 by Harvey Segal, SuperTips
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