This weekend was a very chilly weekend, the weather here in New Jersey is very confusing. I feel like the environment here is confused on what weather to output. One day it will be nice calm and sunny the next day it will be raining belligerently!
But one thing that annoyed me this weekend was the spam I was getting. Everyone know spam is annoying and you need at least 10 good email addresses to control spam, or you will need a good spam protection for your inbox. If you have google gmai, yahoo, or msn hotmail, you should be good - but some spam still gets through.
This weekend I was just hackled with spam that I could not control it. Each one hitting me with a sales pitch and trying to get me to buy. I was angered at this kind of spam. Every time it was the same item being sold. These young kids are ringing at your doorbell, selling you newspapers, magazines, candy, or a raffle. I do not know if the school semester are over but all ages was ringing my door bell.
One was a young gentleman selling me a magazine, I politely listened and told him sorry that I will not subscribe. Then the last sales pitch came in, donation. The donation was for his school, so I gladly helped him with that. Education is important so I will support someones education as long as they are serious about and have the want for it. He was among friends doing the same, and once they saw that I have donated, I was then attacked by candy, more magazine subscriptions, and more candy. I politely said no thank you.
Another one came maybe an hour later and tried to sell me a news paper subscription for 10 weeks, free there after it would be automatically canceled. Well I didn't feel like joining, but her sales pitch was very very good. She first explained about the newspaper program and DIRECTLY said I know you do not want a newspaper for this price after 10 weeks when you can grab a news paper at a stand for less. Very good tactic. She is just looking for subscribers to sign up for the first 10 weeks, and I assume if she gets X amount of people she would have accomplished her goals.
She goes into, saying and describing that its a guarantee that the newspaper will be cancelled after 10 weeks and I will not be billed. She even added some sympathy in her tone of voice, because it was drizzling but on and off, stating that I am here to try to ean enough credits to go to college and attempting to get a scholarship to a college of her choice. I kinda felt sorry and wanted to join, but I politely said no thank you.
No I will not go into all the kids that came to my door but this is a very good topic for marketing. This door to door tactic I say is known as spam. What are the percentages that the owner of the home will answer the door? Once answered, how long will they be interested? Once interested will you be able to get the purchase? Once purchase do you have a guarantee?
This is very similar to Sales Letter, Niche Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing in general. These kids are just going to door to door and trying to see how many people answer their door, how many will be interested, who will buy, etc.
With this said, you need to go to a crowd of people that would be interested in the candy or magazine. Since those are the niches, selling magazine or candy.
For this example would it make sense for one of the kids to try to sell candy at a local food mart than going door to door? I bet he would have made more sales and more exposure. For the young girl, would it make sense for her to go to a local bookstore?
These area are targeted places. The young gentleman selling candy, is more likely to sell his candy bars at a local food mart because people are already entering the food mart to BUY food, most likely they may be buying candy as well. It is a targeted area where the visitors already have an intention of buying. Since they already know they are going to be buying something, it is a high chance that they will buy from you.
There are so many marketers out there that BLAST emails to random email addresses. This is just like going door to door and trying to sell, what is your conversion rate, I bet its very low or if any at all. But if you have targeted visitors, targeted users, a targeted niche, you will have higher conversions. The users are already interested in your product or services so the more likely they will buy. This brings back to email marketing, which you probably have heard: "The money is in your list." Why?
Because, they have joined your list because they are interested in your product or services. You have a higher chance from earning money from them from the ones that do not. They are interested.
E-mail marketing can be a good source of making money. If the campaign is effective, it will result in the increase in the volume of business. The money making in the online world is all about getting web traffic. E-mail marketing campaigns can help you in doing so by promoting not only the product you are talking about in your e-mail, but also your website in general. This will increase the chances of your website being visited by the people who can be your target market.
Once a user has joined your list, you have a better chance of selling to them. But you can not bombard them with petty sale pitches, you want to gain their attention, you them to be your friend. Its easy to get customers, its keeping them that is time consuming and where you spend more money on. That is just plain marketing.
Once you have your users interested try not to spam them, with email. They joined your list because they are interested in a product you have promoted. So they expect their email addresses to be kept personal. Email addresses nowadays is part of everyones life, so use it with respect.