We’ve all been told to send out email newsletter – colorful, stylish HTML email newsletters with lots of pictures – in the hope to gain more new customers and bond better with existing ones.

There is a big battle as to which mail system to use and what colors and fonts to choose, but many small businesses fail to recognize their deadly mistakes when they send out their newsletter week by week:

Email Marketing Mistake # 1:

A newsletter full of promotional offers. With “full” I mean 100%. Almost every day I receive a newsletter from differing sources with 100% promotions. Sometimes it leaves me quite annoyed that the sender of the newsletters and emails don’t even want to make an effort to talk to me rather than sell to me.

As a rule of thumb: effective email marketing includes 80% valuable content and 20% promotion, or you can sometimes stretch it to 70% content and 30% promotion, but that’s it. Many well known Email marketers, like Alexandria Brown, teach their clients this rule and their success has proven them right. It simply annoys me when I receive email newsletters that only contain promotions. When I subscribe to a newsletter I want to learn something, get value out of it. I give these companies my contact details so that they actually interrupt my day and send me a newsletter about THEMselves, so the least they can do is to offer you something of value for the courtesy.

In the past people may have subscribed to all sorts of newsletter, but nowadays it’s getting harder to compete with other companies who also want to build their list of prospects.

Always make sure that you include a personal note of yourself and what you are up to during this week. Some quirky personal messages have worked very well for many entrepreneurs. Ali Brown, self-made millionaire and former “ezine queen”, had a major breakthrough when she posted her cat’s “birthday sale”. People love personal stories and want to know more about the person who sends out the newsletter.

Always add one article to your newsletter (or ezine) that contains some valuable information. To find out what your target market wants, survey them or watch their questions on Social Media channels. If your readership finds the information you give them interesting, they will be keen to open your newsletters, otherwise they just press “delete” and off the email goes into the trash. Or even worse, they unsubscribe.

All this doesn’t only apply to Internet marketing companies, but also small businesses. If you don’t know what valuable content to provide, check out these ideas”

• If you are an accountant, write about any GST changes,
• if you are a coach give your readers good tips on how to set goals,
• if you are a psychologist help your readers with body language tricks,
• if you are a real estate salesperson write about homestaging,
• if you are a webdesigner help people with the search engine optimization,
• if you are a dentist tell your patients what happens when they don’t floss,
• and so on.

20 to 30% of your email marketing should be used for marketing or promotional opportunity. Try to tie the promotion together with your content.

2. The second big Email Marketing mistake is:

to solely write content and articles in your newsletter, but no promotion at all. Sometimes you get email newsletters that are long, very long and full of information. After a few minutes you notice you have fallen asleep or you just click “delete”. There is a lot of content, but it’s just too much and the concentration levels of your readers will go down. Additionally, there is no “call to action”, so no reader will actually “do something” after they read your newsletter. They will just continue their day the way they did before reading your email.

You need to make sure you have a good offer for them that they can take up, otherwise you don’t make money with your newsletter. As mentioned before, don’t make it bigger than 20-30% of the newsletter content, but don’t forget about it either. It’s an integral part of your business to make money, so use the chance to convert her loyal readership to buy valuable programs or products from you. Nobody will mind if you add some promotions to your emails if there is also free, quality content available. This can also include affiliate marketing or recommendations.

Occasionally, you may send an email to your list that only offers them something specific and this is fine, but don’t make it a habit. Stick to the 80/20 rule most of the time and you will have a loyal fan base for the next years.

Jay Bear, Social Media consultant, was interviewed by Social Examiner’s CEO, Michael Stelzner, about Social Media Marketing, and brought up very interesting thoughts.

Jay Baer Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

This interview gave me a different view on Twitter’s development during the last year. Jay felt that Twitter used to be the Social Network that described “where you are and what you are doing”, but has moved into a more resource sharing tool where people tells others about good resources and important news they feel others need to know about. Foursquare and Yelp are increasingly taking up Twitter’s former role of “where am I right now” with local/ized Social Networking. Jay also stressed to not undervalue Yelp for its role of local social networking.

Facebook’s Fan/Business pages can be viewed in a way of replacing company’s newsletters and convert previous customers into repeat customers through relationship building communication.

Jay also described that “tools”, such as Twitter and Facebook, are only “tools” and usually interchangeable. He stated he believes  current dominant Social Media networks will change in the future, just in the same way as dominant Social Networks of the past, eg. MySpace, lost its dominance and got replaced by Facebook. It is important to have a content strategy using the Social Media tools, but not solely seeing the Social Media networks as the end all without having a proper strategy. Without a strategy that connects all utilized tools and social networks the social media campaign is worthless.

Jay also pointed out that many companies have different people handing Social Media and email marketing, which leads to a lack of coherence in their campaigns. It is important to link them together and also make sure that email newsletters have “share” buttons included so that your messages and blog posts can be shared easily by readers.

Video and Youtube is still underutilized by companies in its importance of improving search rankings. Companies need to catch on to use video more often.

Written by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

 If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up – don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?