Boosting
Subscribers And Customers By Thinking Outside The Box Here's
a highly effective strategy to boost your newsletter or ezine subscriptions.
by Willie Crawford
You know that email marketing
is one of the least expensive and most effective marketing tools that you
can use. That's
why you work so hard to build your list! Yet lately, it's
become harder and harder to get your message in front of
people asking to receive your free newsletter subscriptions.
Let me share with you a
way that I effectively get my message in front of hundreds of thousands...
potentially
millions.
Like many online marketers,
I publish an ezine. I work very hard to make sure that it contains information
of genuine
value to my readers. Like many of you I still have some
problem attracting new subscribers and getting through to
them.
One of the problems you
face in attracting new readers is just getting them to try your publication.
They have so many
choices, and they've been exposed to so much worthless
garbage, that they aren't anxious to have yet another
publication flood their inboxes.
A partial solution to that
problem is to offer a short course rather than an ezine. In this short course
offer such
tremendous value that you sell your potential subscribers on
the value of information that you provide. During, and after the
course, ask them to join your regular newsletter list. If you
do provide information of genuine value and meet their
expectations, course subscribers will join your regular
newsletter list.
About two years
ago, I noticed some newsletter publishers were using the ezine-in-a-box concept.
Their ezines were "evergreen," meaning that no matter when a person
subscribed, they received their first issue immediately via autoresponder.
Then they
received the next 52 weekly issues that the publisher already
had queued up, via autoresponder, over the next year.
Publishers did the work
once, posted it to autoresponder, and then let it run. I'm not sure what
happened after a year with some
of these... but it's easy enough to just add to the autoresponder
series.
I mention this ezine in
a box because it offered a solution to those who wanted a newsletter but
don't feel capable of easily
producing a worthwhile newsletter. Other prolific writers and
publishers simply offered the use of their material... their
ezine-in-a-box, for a fee. They basically took their existing
material... their pertinent ezine articles, and turned them
into a marketable product.
Knowing how well the ezine-in-a-box
concept works, and knowing that my personal course was well received, my
tiny mind decided to do some thinking outside the box
recently. I began offering my client and subscriber-base
an e-course in a box... but with a twist...
As I explain this, I don't
want you to copy my concept exactly. I want you to take the basic idea, and
improve upon it or
try variations of it. Realize that if you are doing the same
thing that everyone else is doing, it can at times be very hard
to get noticed, or to break out of the pack. I already consider
myself miles ahead of the pack, and so I don't fear people
stealing my ideas :-) Since I enjoy helping you, I ENCOURAGE
you to steal my ideas, but to improve upon them.
Back to my course-in-a-box...
I did not sell it. Instead I offered it to others free. I had several reasons
for doing this.
The first reason that I did this, was that by having others offer
my course from their sites I built customer loyalty by
actually giving them something of tremendous value!
My course is offered from
my homepage at http://WillieCrawford.com/ for free. It's also available in
a
PDF ebook for $9.97. Some people don't want to wait for
the twice-weekly lessons, so they have a choice. I also
offer the same material plus a few bonuses, packaged on
a CD for $19.97. Finally, I offer the printed course in a 3-ring
binder, along with even more bonuses for $39.97. This is
shipped via U.S. Priority Mail where available.
For those giving away my
course from their site, I allow them to offer the other options too... and
earn 50%. The offer
of the up-sell is included in one of the early messages in the
autoresponder sequence. So webmasters have more built-in
incentive to offer the autoresponder course.
For those who don't want
to go through the trouble of uploading my autoresponder messages to their
system, I
make it a breeze. If they use the autoresponders offered
from http://ProfitAutomation.com -
I allow them to automatially"
inherit" my autoresponders. That means, I have configured
the course autoresponders so that anyone with the right
information can log into their ProfitAutomation.com
autoresponder account and tell it to import my autoresponder
series over to an autoresponder series on their account.
To futher incentive people
to use my course, I even give them permission to change the resource box
in some of my
copyrighted articles (used in the course) to incorporate their
affiliate urls for my products.Do you see the beauty of such a simple idea?
Someone
offering my course from their site, now have a 20-lesson
course that:
- Builds their list of
subscribers to the course, giving their subscribers a tremendous amount of
free information
- Builds their regular
ezine list by inviting course subscribers to join their regular list
- Has a built in backend profit stream
This article is not intend
to have you offering my course from your site. It's intended to get you thinking
how you can
adapt and modify similar ideas to explode your business growth.
If you do want more information on how to add the course to
your site you can get it from my autoresponder at: tell-me-more@williecrawford.com
Imagine for a second that
you have just 100 websites giving away a similar course that you've created.
Also imagine that
each website has jus 200 course subscribers. That's a
subscriber base of 20,000 people that will be exposed to
your message. In the case of my 20-lesson course, that's
400,000 potential free exposures for me over a 10 week period.
This is just one example
of innovative ideas I've spawned largely from brainstorming with other successful
marketers. We
share with each other what is currently working best for us in
our online businesses. We share simple things that you can do
which offer a HUGE return for the time or other resources
invested.
Most of the people that
I brainstorm with and share ideas with are close trusted friends... friends
whom I mostly met at
seminars and workshops. I also have a habit of looking at
the contact information on any webpage I am visiting. You'll
often be surprised to see how many online people live near
you. When I notice someone within an hour or two of where
I live, I often suggest we get together... perhaps for dinner...
and see if there is any opportunity for us to joint venture.
Take the ideas present
in this simple article and see if you can improve upon them Also look for
ways to meet and
brainstorm with like-minded business people. I'm hosting a
workshop that affords you one such opportunity in Florida
April 30 - May 2nd, 2004. You can read all about it at:
http://InternetMarketingHowToWorkshop.com/lets-roll.html
Copyright 2004 By Willie Crawford
Willie Crawford has been teaching others
how to build an on-line business since late 1996. Frequently featured in
radio,
magazine
and newspaper articles and interviews, Willie teaches the average
guy what the top marketers are doing but seldom talking about.
Willie provides detailed how to information in his newsletter,
through his personal coaching, and at his annual how to workshop.
Learn more at:http://InternetMarketingHowToWorkshop.com
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