TheCEOMamma Blog » Email Marketing

Free Must Have Online Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Use

CEOMamma — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:16:29 +0000

Determining how you will market your online business can be a challenge when your funds are limited or even, non-existent. It’s helpful when you have access to the necessary tools needed to run your business on a day-to-day basis and even better, when those tools are free!

When I first started my online business, I had no savings and no money to invest in marketing. I was however, determined to make my business work so I began to search for free alternatives. A few of the resources and tools I found are still tools that I use now in my business and allow me to keep more of my profit in my pocket.

Here are six of my favorite FREE tools I use to run my business:

Tungle Me – This is one of my favorites. Tungle Me is a scheduling application that syncs with your existing calendar. It saves me so much time by allowing me to schedule appointments and meetings without the hassle of trying to figure out convenient times due to time zone differences.

Since I can sync it with my blackberry calendar, whenever I have a request for a meeting, I can simply refer people to my Tungle Me calendar and they can easily choose a time that is convenient for both of us. We both receive a confirmation when a time has been chosen and it automatically updates my calendar.

HootSuite - Take back control over the time you spend on social media so you can focus on running your business. HootSuite is the social media dashboard that allows you to connect to multiple social networks from one website. It helps you manage your time by allowing you to schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks, check real time stats and more.

Skype - I’ve had Skype for a while but have been utilizing it a lot more lately. This is a software application that allows users to make voice and/or video calls over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a nominal fee.

This is a convenient way to conduct coaching or consulting calls with clients and conference calls with business partners because you can conduct visible presentations and share documents with each participant on the call.

Google Gmail Talk – This is a newer tool I recently discovered. If you have a free gmail account, you can make free phone calls to anyone in the United States – including landlines, mobile and toll free calls.

PayPal – The easiest way to accept payments online and customers don’t have to have a PayPal account to pay you either! There are no set up charges or monthly fees with easy copy and paste codes to add “Buy Now” buttons to your site. You can also send invoices to clients to request payment for services and other great features as well.

MailChimp – My favorite email marketing platform and yes, it is FREE! Mailchimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, track your results and a ton of other great features. With a free account, you can have up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails per month.

E-Junkie – Okay, so this one is not totally free but I love E-Junkie because it provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell your digital products, downloads and tangible goods online PLUS, you can even create and manage your own affiliate program. There are no setup or transaction fees, you get a free 1 week trial and you pay only $5 per month. It is so worth it and if you sell just one of your products a month, your monthly fee is paid!

So tell me, do you use any of these free tools in your business and if so, how do you like them? What are your other favorite must have’s? Share them in the comments below.

CEOMamma

Tamyka Washington is a wife, mother to six, Founder/CEO of TheCEOMamma Network, marketing strategist, coach and mentor. Tamyka empowers new and seasoned women entrepreneurs to business breakthrough by blending powerful attraction marketing methods with effective social media strategies to establish a CREDIBLE brand and profitable freedom based business online. Visit here website below, to learn more:

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10 Steps to Building a Profitable Business Online

CEOMamma — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:00:54 +0000

The Start-Up eGuide: 10 Steps to Building a Profitable Business Online, geared toward helping beginner entrepreneurs and marketing professionals discover the techniques to effective business marketing, is now available.

When you are new to online marketing, determining the most efficient and low-cost ways to develop your brand and presence usually is top priority. While some entrepreneurs may feel having a limited budget can be a major setback, others realize taking advantage of Social Media is the best option.

The real question then becomes: How do I Get Started?

The Start-Up eGuide: 10 Steps to Building a Profitable Business Online will help you not only discover how to establish a solid foundation and grow your business but also:

How to define your market and brand your business
How to use free marketing strategies to generate targeted lead
How to create and steadily build your mailing list
How to automate your marketing tasks
And more…

What Small Business Owners Have to Say About The Start-Up eGuide…

“The ebook is very well written and it held my attention. You were very creative with words and it was very descriptive on how to build profitable business. I’ve operated a commercial business for 12 years and I am ready to build several businesses online. Your ebook has inspired me to be patient, build list, offer bonuses and make the online business about the customer. The tools at the end of the book are also very helpful and when I have questions about operating an online business, I will definitely go to Tamyka!” ~ Shiketa Morgan, Learning Days LLC

“I must say that this e-guide is AWESOME! I learned great tips on how to write a great mission statement. I was reading and studying this book like I was back in graduate school. I highly, triple highly recommend this book to anyone seeking easy to follow instructions on how to build a profitable business online or offline for that matter.” ~ LaTersa Blakely, Baby Diaper Cakes & Beyond

“I have searched for a comprehensive step by step tutorial on online businesses for a few years now. Most are cleverly packaged adverts for something else to buy. With the Start-Up E Guide: 10 Steps To Building a Profitable Business Online I have stopped searching. It’s clear, concise, and easy to understand. It’s also thorough and helped me build a real knowledge base. Thanks,Tamyka, for creating such a great guide for everyone to profit! Great way to inspire women to be their best!” ~ Jacqueline Rizk, The Organic Blonde

Take the steps to turn your passion in to profits!

If you are ready to learn how to start earning income from home, discover the 10 steps to building a profitable business online – download your Copy

CEOMamma

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Using Email Marketing to Build Your Business and Your List

CEOMamma — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:25:59 +0000

You’ve created, designed and launched a website (or blog) for your business and now anxiously await the stampede of traffic you hope to accumulate as a result of the many hours of marketing you put in. You know you have amazing products and offer outstanding service, but what if your visitors choose not to buy during their first visit to your site?

If you fail to offer your website visitors the option to subscribe to your website or blog so that you can follow up with them at another time, you risk the chance of loosing that visitor forever. You worked hard on creating your site but what good will that do you if you aren’t able to reconnect with your visitors?

A huge part of building a profitable business online is learning how to implement successful marketing strategies that get you the results you want. Before profits can start rolling in consistently, you have to have an audience to market to, and what better way to do that than with Email Marketing!

Email Marketing provides a few great benefits for small business owners. Using this form of marketing allows you to establish and build a loyal relationship with people who are already interested in what you have to offer and gives you a way to stay in touch with new and current clients and continue to offer them products or services that meet their interests.

To set up an email marketing campaign for your business website or blog, you first need to choose a email marketing service provider. I personally use and recommend MailChimp.com. They offer a free service with great features and do not include ads in your outgoing emails. Other services you may want to check out are; aweber.com, icontact.com, constantcontact.com and madmimi.com just to name a few.

Once you choose your service, you can than create your email campaigns and set up autoresponders that will automatically send out pre-written messages (by you) to go out to your list at times you choose.

Each service provides special code so that you can add a subscription box to your website for your visitors to subscribe, or opt-in to your mailing list. (Watch my video: How to Add an Opt-In Subscription Box)

Now that your email marketing list is set up, the next task will be deciding…

How to Get People on Your List

Give a detailed description. Let your visitors know exactly what they can expect from you once they sign up to your list, then hold true to your word. If they opt-in to receive healthy eating tips, make sure that is what you give them. You can also create a “squeeze page”, which is similar to a product sales page except your visitors only option is to subscribe to your list. Using a squeeze page can be good if you utilize the space enough to share in detail all the benefits and incentives visitors will get when they choose to subscribe to your list. This brings me to my next tip.

Offer an incentive. You may want to consider offering an incentive in exchange for contact information. This works well when you have a specific niche market you want to reach. For instance, if you are a web designer and your visitors are mostly interested in web design, you could offer them a free report or ebook about how to design a website when they subscribe to your list.

Provide compelling content. If you own a blog (which you should), make sure that you are always providing quality and informative content for your readers. When people see you offer value and useful information that will actually make their life easier, they will be more comfortable subscribing to your list because they have a sense of what you bring to the table. This is why it is important to have an opt-in box on your blogs and websites to allow your visitors easy access.

Focus on your Niche. Another great way to get people to opt-in is to serve a particular niche. The more your content, products and service can target a specific audience, the more likely they will be to join your mailing list. Again, they can trust that you will deliver the kind of information they need and want.

Promote your list. There are a variety ways you can promote your mailing list. If you enjoy writing and blogging, find another blogger related to your industry and offer to do a guest post. You can take advantage of the bio box you will be able to add at the end of your post by sharing a description and link to your newsletter. Article writing is another way to reach more people. There are many article directories you can submit your articles to. You can always share links and sign-up information across your social networks and on twitter. The most important thing to remember is that in order for you to build a great list, you have to promote it on a continuous basis!

Being Consistent

Once you start your email list, it is important that you stay consistent. Be sure to always stay focused on providing the content your subscribers want to receive from you and on a regular basis. Email Marketing is an easy way to offer products and services to your list however, promotion should be kept to a minimum. When your goal is to provide your subscribers with useful content that will help them, in time, they will be more comfortable taking you up on your product offer when you share it!

Remember, just like every part of business building, establishing your list for email marketing takes time. Be patient consistent, and creative and watch your email list grow!

RESOURCE: 101 Smart and Easy Mailing List Strategies

CEOMamma

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Re-Thinking Your Email Marketing Tactics

CEOMamma — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:38:00 +0000

Is your email marketing campaign going stale? As an email marketer, you are attuned to the signs, and this time you can almost feel it. Your email list is taking a beating, and the people in that list are dropping like flies.

First, from the unforgiving spam filters, then to long-dormant accounts often coming from free email services like Yahoo! and Google. And then, there are those subscribers who have genuinely become dispirited and won’t even open your e-mails anymore. The first you cannot control, but the second – often known as list fatigue – you can still do something about.

Signs of List Fatigue

To fight list fatigue, you need to understand what causes it. Here are a few possible reasons:

1. Too much advertisement. Recipients are often dismayed by the blatant promotional campaigns. If a deluge of product marketing emails is all that subscribers receive, they will most often tune out and send your messages to the deleted or spam folder.

2. Going overboard with sending frequency. It really tests the subscribers’ patience if you email them frequently, and worse, with the same topic or content again and again. It gets monotonous, and clutters their mailbox. Result? Be tagged as spam, or left unopened.

3. Ho-hum content. Subscribers are often turned off by the email marketing campaign that carries the same message over and over. If your message looks like it was copied-and-pasted from the previous one, your emails drop in status in the eyes of recipients, to be potentially labeled “junk mail.”

There are countless other reasons why campaigns fall to list fatigue, and knowing the causes help in determining the mode of intervention to perk up the campaign.

Revitalize Your Email Marketing Campaign

Given time and budgetary constraints, how does one go about re-capturing the interest of inactive subscribers? Some recommendations are below:

1. Produce refreshing and engaging content. It maybe the same message: buy our product. But it need not be said in one and one way only. Try various ways to send out the message. Useful information, with a brief and tasteful reference to your product, is one effective act of email marketing.

2. Study your subscribers. Try to get a handle on the likes and dislikes of your recipients, and customize your email marketing strategy based on this. Often, there is a segmentation or trend in the subscribers’ list, and you will only know this if you take the time to analyze.

3. Pull out all the stops in luring subscribers in. An effective reactivation program may include a combination of offers and incentives to encourage users to re-engage. Together with fresh content, calibrated sending frequency, and changed email layouts and formats, there is a big chance that inactive subscribers will warm up and go back to the fold again.

4. Grow the list continually. List fatigue is unavoidable, which means you will always lose people and may not be able to bring them back. Don’t get stuck and instead, replenish the list with new subscribers regularly.

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar Inc., experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Ask about our search engine optimization, paid search advertising, social media, or email marketing services and request a free consultation. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips and follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to an SEO Consultant.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debbie_Everson

CEOMamma

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