How to Get People to Raise Their Hands


by G Harold - Date: 2006-12-23 - Word Count: 1523 Share This!

It doesn't matter how many tactics, principles, and strategies you know. What does matters is how many of these tactics, principles, and strategies you successfully use.

Last time we discussed a couple of the tragic mistakes many online entrepreneurs make that causes them to fail. You were asked if you were guilty of making these mistakes. What was your answer?

Do you begin marketing your product or service to your prospect before they have raised their hand and let you know that they are interested?

Is your web site or email communications structured to enable you to capture the name and email address information about your prospect so that you can do follow-up contacts?

Did you visit the web site of a few successful online marketers? Did you notice anything they all had in common?

Maybe because you did not know what to look for you did not notice anything. One thing all successful online marketers have in common at their web sites is a method to allow any visitor to raise their hand and say "I am interested, send me more information."

The successful marketers that earn above average incomes have discovered that a targeted opt-in list of qualified leads and satisfied customers is an essential component of their online business success. Therefore, one of their main goals is to capture the name and email address of the visitors to their web site and the readers of their email.

How do they get people to raise their hands?

They offer the visitor and the email reader a bribe.

There are a number of different bribes you can offer to get people online to interact with you. It is as unlimited as your imagination. The most successful approaches are:

Offer a free report on autoresponder
Create a newsletter
Offer a free e-training course
Provide free software appropriate for the audience
Give away free e-books
Have a contest or sweepstakes
Give away deep discount coupons

And they always, always ask for the prospects name and email address in return.

They know that if you give people a good reason, they will give you their contact information. With this contact information you can stay in touch with them, keep them informed, and send them new offers for your line of products and services. Your customers love to be kept inform about what's hot, what's on sale, what's new and what's different.

Now this is an important point! You must pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you.

The gathering of prospect's name and email address and placing them in a database for later retrievals is known as building an opt-in list. This list is extremely important to your online business success. This list is often abused and a high rate of "request to be removed" messages (also known as opting-out) result.

How is the list abused?

Your success with targeted opt-in email marketing is not determined by the size of your list and the number of mailings you make. Your success in this industry is determined upon how well you establish a relationship with the members of your list.

Let me explain.

A lot of email marketers send offer after offer after offer to their list. It's always buy, buy, buy. They never take time to ask the members of their list, how they are doing, what do they think and most importantly, what do they want. The email marketer fails to realize that the list member is bombarded daily with tons of "buy, buy, buy messages." They don't seem to be aware that their email message becomes another blur among the many other email messages the prospect receives daily. They fail to do anything to make their message stand out in the prospective customers over crowded email in box.

They failed to become personal. Sure, they add the prospect's name to the body of the message and sometimes they include their name in the subject heading, which is good. But that is not being personal. That is personalizing and there is a vast difference between the two.

That's abuse.

What they forget is that the people online are information seekers. They are readers. They are intelligent. They want new, up to date, cutting edge information in their areas of interest.

By providing the type of information they are looking for and through repeated contacts you establish a relationship with your list members. You must show to them first that you have their interest and well being in mind before they will open their pocket books and buy your product or service.

Art Meakins, a well-known mail order MLM entrepreneur, refers to this as the "know, like, and trust factor." He said, "Until a prospect knows you, likes you, and trust you, they will not buy from you. You develop the know, like and trust factor through regular scheduled mailings of helpful, content filled information packages that help the receiver erase a pain, improve their life, reach a goal, or help a loved one."

This is relationship building. The technical term is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). You MUST learn to use it, practice using it, and always use it if you want continuous, long lasting success as an online entrepreneur.

Now lets get back to getting people to raise their hand.

Your goal is to get your reader to take action now. You must communicate your message to one individual at a time. To that one person you think is most likely to respond. You cannot be all things to all people so write your message with one particular individual in mind.

You must infuse such psychologically compelling reasoning within your message that the readers' options are limited to just one…making your most wanted response…to raise their hand and ask for more information.

Your offer of a Free Ezine Subscription, a Free Report, or a Free E-Book, a Free Gift, or a Free Software download, a Contest or a Free E-Study course is most likely to get you a response. Getting something for nothing often encourage people to act. It satisfies an acquired need.

Another important point, you cannot give away junk. Your free offer must have a highly perceived value. The requester of the free offer must feel that they are getting and actually receive superior use value from the materials you give away to them. If you send anything less, you lose credibility

When you lose credibility you lose trust. If they do not trust you they opt-out of your list and do not buy from you. You can't build a successful online business that way.

Add a "this is a limited time offer," or "this Free Offer expires…on this date," or "limited quantities available so act now" clause in your message. This compels people to take action. "He or she who hesitates is lost." Fear of loss is a strong psychological motivator. People do not want to lose.

Include a photograph of the Free Offer. Let the reader know that the Free Offer is available immediately and tell them how to obtain it. Use a bold, colorful headline or banner announcing what you are giving away and what has to be done in order to receive it. Place this so that it is conspicuously visible. Also, remember to change your free offer from time to time.

Your completed message and ad must now be placed where they can be seen. On every web page of your site you should have an invitation to subscribe to your free ezine and opt-in to your free e-course. Be sure the invitations stand out. The upper right and left hand corners of the web page are good locations. A text link in your body copy and within your e-sig is also a good location.

Your ads and email messages should be linked to an auto responder that collects the requesters email address and automatically sends them the information. Your auto responder can send a series of tutorials or reports to your subscribers on a frequent basis, determined by you. It is a great way to increase sales and traffic.

Pop up and pop under windows is another excellent method to make your pitch and capture information. They are like mini billboards. You probably hear a lot of negative comments about their use. Ignore it. Used properly you will find them to be extremely useful and one of your best opt-in tools. On-exit pop under windows work best. There are numerous free scripts available.

Your online business goal is to develop an explosive, growing, and predictable cash flow. The number one marketing strategy to accomplish this is by developing your own in-house opt-in database and communicating with that database on a regular and consistent basis.

I have included information and instructions in this report that will help you build your own list and that you can begin to implement immediately. This is the magic pill you have been looking for. It's not glamorous or sexy, but it works.

As I stated at the top of this report, "it doesn't matter how many tactics, principles, and strategies you know. What does matters is how many of these tactics, principles, and strategies you successfully use."

What are you going to do?

How to Get People to Raise Their Hands and Say, I am Interested, Send Me More Information, offer the visitor and the email reader a bribe.


Related Tags: copywriting, email marketing, ecommerce, sales, email list, opt-in email list

G. Harold is webmaster of The Noun Project, http://www.infogine.com, a compilation of American Nouns defined "internet style" with over 200,000 articles, nouns, and computer term entries.

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