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10 Steps to Triple Your Prospect Conversions with an Email Mini-Course

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 06:59 AM PDT

emailmktgFor years, I’ve been giving away a PDF ebook as my client attraction device to entice prospects to sign up for my list. This strategy has served me well as a way to grow my list. However, what I’ve discovered during that time is that many people download my ebook and then never open it. So, as you might imagine, my rate of converting a customer prospect to a buyer isn’t as high as I’d like.

Just like the people who join my list, I, too, often don’t open a PDF ebook when I download it. What I have noticed, however, is that when I subscribe to an ecourse that someone is giving away as a client attraction device, I’m much more likely to pay attention to it, since I’m getting emails every day with new information in them. And, all indications are that the conversion rate of prospect to customer is higher, as well, for this same reason. Your mini-course helps you automatically build a relationship with subscribers and drive sales of your products and services.

Here’s how you can create your own client attraction ecourse to help you triple your conversion rate:

1. Buy autoresponder system. In order to create your email mini-course, you need to purchase an email marketing system that has autoresponder capability, which is the ability to pre-set emails to go out at a periodic interval when someone opts into a list.

2. Determine your theme and catchy name. Your ecourse needs to have a theme or subject. What is it that you want to teach your prospects? Once you determine the theme, your ecourse needs to have a catchy title. Typically, you’ll want to focus on solving a problem or the result someone receives by enrolling in your mini-course.

3. Create content. Your ecourse should consist of 8-12 emails. The bulk of these emails need to contain valuable, actionable content that will help your prospect solve her problems. In a couple of the emails, you can break up the content delivery by introducing your prospect to other resources you offer that will help them, as well. In my new mini-course, I simply re-purposed a number of articles I had already written, paring them down to 400-600 words each, in most cases.

4. Add your soft sell. Rather than hammering a prospect over the head with sales hype, I did three things in each of the followup emails. First, I included a resource box at the end of the email with a link to the call to action I want my prospect to take or a postscript (P.S.) that included a link to the call to action. Secondly, in the body of the email, I made a natural transition based on the content of the email to ask people to buy the product I wanted them to buy. Thirdly, at the end of each lesson, I added, “In our next lesson, we’ll talk about…” to keep the reader engaged and anxiously awaiting the next email.

5. Format and upload your ecourse. In order to best track your open rates of each segment of the ecourse, you’ll want to format each email as HTML. This means that you’ll want to have a header designed and template created so that you can simple copy and paste the content into a properly formatted HTML template. To increase the likelihood that your ecourse will reach its destination, also format a plain text version of each segment of the course, as well.

Next, create a catchy subject line to entice your reader to open that email. Lastly, copy your ecourse into your autoresponder system and create the followup sequence. Ideally, you want your prospect to receive one email from you for a 8-12 days.

6. Design your opt-in box. Your email marketing program should provide instructions on how to create an opt-in box for prospects to join your list. Typically, all that you want to request of your prospects is a first name, last name, and email address. Once you have created the opt-in box, copy the code you’ll need to add the opt-in box to your web site.

7. Create a graphic. To make your email mini-course more appealing, have a graphic designed that visually represents the ecourse. I simply had a spiral book cover designed that contained my name and the name of my ecourse.

8. Create your landing page. To entice prospects to sign up for your ecourse, you’ll want to create a landing page that “sells” the mini-course. In today’s world, you have to “sell” free just like you do something for a fee, so create a short list of the benefits that someone will receive by signing up for your course, and add the code for your opt-in box. Since anyone opting in for my ecourse is also added to my ezine list, I make sure that all prospects know this at the time they sign up.

9. Copy the course content to your web site. To prevent your prospects from emailing you that they are missing some number of lessons in the ecourse, copy the content to your web site. Then, at the bottom of each email lesson, you can add a note that if they have missed any of the lessons, they can read them on your site. You can create one page for each lesson, or a couple of pages containing a few lessons.

10. Track and measure. The only way to realize the success of your mini-course is to track and measure. Create a simple spreadsheet with the open rates of each email and the unsubscribe rates. If you notice over time that many prospects are unsubscribing from your list when they receive a certain lesson, you need to review the content of that lesson and change it until your unsubscribe rate diminishes. And, of course, you need to track how many sales result from your ecourse.

Create an email mini-course to help you establish a relationship with your prospects and lead them to taking the action you desire. You’ll discover that a mini-course is the most effective way to convert a prospect into a paying customer.


Introvert Marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps professional service businesses stop the client chase and create online businesses that drive clients to them. Want to learn specific Internet marketing strategies that get results for introverts? Discover how to increase your online visibility in this free ecourse, Introvert Marketing Toolkit: 9 Strategies to Make a BOLD Impression Online, at ==> www.IntrovertMarketingToolkit.com.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

10 Steps to Triple Your Prospect Conversions with an Email Mini-Course

5 Focus Factors To Use For Your Online Business

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 06:53 AM PDT

businessOne of the biggest game killers for an online business is lack of focus. The internet is jam packed with distractions and time wasting activities. It is easy to waste hours doing useless things online without even realizing it.

There are millions of websites and people trying to get your attention and that can be very distracting, if you let it. The key is to stay 100% focused on your business and perform only those tasks that will move you forward.

After wasting hours and hours of my own time online, I decided to get serious and stay focused on my business. As you can imagine, it has helped me a ton and it will help you as well.

1. Stick To A Designated Action Plan

It is super important that you have an action plan for your online business. It is not a good idea to get online without a gameplan. If you get online without a clear idea of what you are going to be doing, you will just get lost in a never ending sea of distractions.

Having an action plan will help you to navigate through all of the online distractions, so that you can focus on what is important for your business. Having an action plan
will also help you to stay more consistent with your efforts.

2. Don’t Check Your E-mail More Than Once Per Day

As you probably already know, checking your e-mail can be a very big distraction. If you have to check it more than once per day that is fine, as long as you limit yourself.
It is a better idea to check e-mail only after you have completed all your tasks for the day. This way it won’t distract you.

Almost all e-mails can wait. In fact, you could probably check your e-mail 2-3 times a week and be perfectly fine. The trick is to eliminate your distractions and e-mail is a big distraction for most people.

3. Set Goals

It seems like everyone is always talking about the importance of having goals. Well goals are very important for your online business because they are going to help you to stay focused. You should have daily goals that are part of your action plan.

When you are setting goals you should remember to set short term, medium, and long term goals for yourself. This is going to keep you on track to achieving what you want.

4. Keep Track Of Your Progress

It is also good to look at the progress that you have been having in your business. Being online makes it very easy to get all of the statistics you need to see. Google Analytics will give you all sorts of helpful statistics that you can go back to often.

This will give you a good idea of what is working and it will also motivate you to get more good results.

5. Have A Clear Vision

This is almost like having goals for your business, except it is a little bit different. Goals are great for pushing yourself to reach new pinnacles of success. Having a clear vision means knowing where you are going.

There are so many ways to make money online that it can be confusing some times. You should know exactly how you are going to monetize your efforts and then stick to it. It will not be effective for you to try to make money a million different ways.

In Conclusion

Doing these 5 things above have dramatically changed my productivity online, and they will do the same for you if you apply them. There is no substitute for focused, consistent action in any business online, or off.


Learn how to build an online business that will make you money on auto pilot. ryan-martin.net Having an online business can offer you amazing results and benefits. Visit the following link to get more strategies and tutorials ryan-martin.net/5-tips-to-staying-focused.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

5 Focus Factors To Use For Your Online Business

What Should You Include In Your Video Resume?

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 06:45 AM PDT

videoA video resume may just be the key to your next job. Still relatively new, video resumes are now being used to land smart job seekers their “dream job,” because the HR field is beginning to embrace online branding and the use of new technology.

For example, recent research shows that 85 percent of recruiters and HR professionals make positive and negative hiring decisions based upon a candidate’s online reputation; good content equals positive decisions, negative content equals candidate rejection. Studies also show that 60 percent of hiring managers have shown high interest in reviewing video resumes from possible candidates.

Making a video resume to define your skills and to highlight your experiences just makes sense, especially for creative professionals who need to show off their creativity and ability to change with the times.

That’s because today’s society is extremely visual. We are used to growing up with a television in front of us. We’re used to learning, getting information, and being entertained visually. So why not take advantage of this and use the same technology to land a job?

What should I include in my video resume?

This is no different from your paper resume. It is a sales tool designed to help you get an interview. Your interview is where you’ll get your job. So your resume needs to be short, to the point, and highlight your most important qualities. You want to make sure that whatever you include, it matches your style, personality and the particular image you want to present. When including key skills in your video resume, make sure whatever is included is relevant.

It needs to be appropriate for the target industry and particular career.

Length of the video resume is also important. Your paper resume should be no more than one page long (remember, it’s getting you that interview, not landing you the job). Your video resume should only be a couple minutes long at the most.

Treat this almost like a commercial for your favorite product: you. The goal of this resume is to sell yourself. If anyone is an expert at you, it’s you. This should be used like a tool in a sales and marketing campaign.

A video resume needs to include your strengths and highlight them using the most up-to-date technology. Including the best quality graphics is also important. In order to hold an employer’s attention span, your video resume must be visually appealing.

This job-searching tool can also help you manage your online reputation, helping to push any negative content off the front pages of the search engines. This way, when an employer searches for your name online (remember, 85 percent of hiring managers make decisions based on your online reputation), the the first thing they see is the stuff that will help you get a job.

Using a combination of photos and hitting the high points from your paper resume, video resumes are key in achieving that unique look out of the bunch. But you need to make sure the audio, graphics, and video quality are all the best they can possibly be. So if you don’t have the equipment or knowledge, consider hiring a professional firm that can manage it for you. Consider this your job seeker’s canvas: whether you want your resume to be light-hearted and cool, or serious and conservative, there are a wide range of templates and designs that are suitable to many different career choices.

A video resume is an effective way to show yourself in a manner that is different and light-years ahead of what everyone else is doing. It should be one of the most effective tools in your personal branding toolbox, and one that you can use to great effectiveness.


Julie Ross, of Rostin Ventures references Video Resume Services.com for professional video production of video resumes, including executive resume services and expert online reputation management. www.videoresumeservices.com also offers video resume services to help college graduates get the edge in the business world.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

What Should You Include In Your Video Resume?

The Sunny Side Of Internet Marketing

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 06:33 AM PDT

marketing3I am the type of writer that can look at the glass half full or look at it half empty. Sometimes I think Internet marketers need to fully realize what a sunny business they have chosen to be in.

Here are 4 things that bring a smile to my Internet marketing lips!

1. Instant affiliate commissions. I love the fact that I can get paid to sell other people’s stuff and I do not have to wait to see my money.

Today there are affiliate programs you can join that will set you up with your own PayPal url. When you make a sale your commissions are instantly deposited into your PayPal account.

WackyCentral.com has a great program. PaySpree.com is an instant payment affiliate network. Both are worth joining for free.

2. Easy blog set up. I admit that I do not like to build websites. Even setting up a WordPress blog used to be enough to turn me into an A #1 Procrastinator. Not anymore.

Most hosting companies offer a Fantastico icon you can click on for fast WordPress set up. This is simple enough that I can even do it.

Because of how easy it is you can also pay someone to do it for you and not break the bank doing it. Outsourcing a WordPress blog set up is very cheap to do.

3. Very good training available. When I started out online good Internet training was expensive. Today you can join membership sites for under $1 a day and get some really good personal coaching. The Affiliate Power Group is at the top of my list.

There are also many top notch discussion forums where you can get excellent training and meet some fantastic Internet marketers. The Warrior Forum is one of my favorites.

4. People will pay you to do things for them. I learned this by mistake at first. I had my son write content articles for me starting back in 2005. He was a journalism major and I wanted to expose him to Internet writing.

Out of that came our own Internet writing company and article marketing company. We have been able to turn that into a 6 figure writing business.

There are many examples of people getting paid by other Internet marketers. Some of what they do includes copywriting, blog building, virtual assistant, graphic design and so on. You will be smiling all the way to the bank when you get paid to stay at home and do things for online businesses.

These are 4 things that make me happy about Internet marketing. It is very easy to see the sunny side of this business when you think about all of the advantages it offers!


If you enjoyed this article by Jeff Schuman please visit his article marketing website today. If you are not an article writer he offers a hands off program for getting backlinks and traffic using the power of writing and submitting articles.www.HandsOffArticleMarketing.com.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Sunny Side Of Internet Marketing

How to Out-Socialize the Gurus on Twitter and Other Social Media

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 10:00 PM PDT

socialmediaSocial media has long been touted as the latest and greatest Internet marketing tool that will bring new people to any online business seeking new customers.

For most online marketers, the social media environment appears over-hyped and ineffective. Between Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Delicious, online marketers waste plenty of time trying to tap revenue from these social platforms.

Why Auto-Following Will Always Fail

John Reese is one of those people who has become famous for his online marketing prowess, with a variety of product launches. Even with his genius for online marketing, John Reese failed to make the Twitter platform work for his business. In June of 2008, Reese realized that the auto-follow strategy of gaining Twitter followers was not working.

The auto-follow Twitter marketing strategy is doomed to failure. I actually lost a little bit of respect for John Reese because he had to learn the hard way that the Twitter auto-follow strategy would not work. A man with his genius should have known before he started that the technique was doomed to fail miserably.

It will fail because it works in the same manner as a safe list or traffic exchange system, where a bunch of people will gather together to send advertising to each other. The problem is that people only agree to join such systems so that they can send their advertising to others, not so that they can read a ton of advertising from other people.

People do not join safe lists because they want 10,000 people to send them advertising in their email. They only agree to let 10,000 people send them commercial e-mail, because they want to send their commercial e-mail to 10,000 people. Everyone involved is so caught up in the hope that someone will read their advertising and buy what they are selling, without giving much concern or thought to the idea that even they are not reading the email that other people send to them.

In June of 2008, John Reese gave up on the auto-follow strategy for gaining Twitter followers. He un-followed everybody in a single day and started again from scratch.

Is Twitter Dead?

Nearly 2 years later, in March of 2010, John Reese declared in an e-mail to his mailing list that he had deleted his Twitter account. He cited the same reasons that he did 21 months previously — too much noise.

John Reese is not the only online guru to abandon the Twitter platform. Frank Kern, and a few of Reese’s other online associates, also bid Twitter farewell. Kern said that Twitter was a “time suck” that was eating into his productivity.

Please don’t get the idea that my reporting on the marketing gurus leaving Twitter like rats from a sinking ship is a signal to you that you should do the same.

In fact, I am not leaving Twitter and I see no reason that you should either.

By mentioning Reese and Kern leaving Twitter behind, I am only pointing out that some of the sharpest minds involved in online marketing have yet to understand the true art and science of social media marketing.

Both of these guys are smart. Few people will argue against that. But, both have failed to understand how to turn a profit from the Twitter social media platform.

Social Media Marketing Is Not Mass Marketing

If you were to ask me… these two guys, smart as they are, missed the most elemental foundation of social media marketing…say, after me, S-O-C-I-A-L… SOCIAL media marketing.

John Reese and Frank Kern are masters of mass marketing. Mass marketing does not work on social media websites.

Social media is described as such, because it invites individuals to socialize with one another. Those individuals who have mastered the social media platform are those who have understood how to create relationships, develop relationships, and maintain relationships. They have understood that social media websites are there to help you nurture social relationships with other people.

The mass marketer is focused on himself, above and beyond all other people. The social marketer is focused on building relationships with the people with whom they would like to do business.

If you understand how to attract people and maintain personal relationships with those people, then you may master social media marketing in a way that John Reese and Frank Kern were unable to do.

Stumbling In The Dark

The first step to mastering social media marketing is to learn how to attract people. Auto-follow will never work towards that end. In order to attract people who want to follow you, you must inspire them to want to follow you.

It is funny when I watch the people who are trying to market themselves on Twitter.

Some of those people will send out an endless supply of quotes, trying to convince you of their value, because they have said something clever through the words of another person.

Others will send out sales message after sales message hoping to attract your business.

Still others will try to win your support by focusing on key words. They want to treat Twitter as if it were search engine driving traffic to their website.

Some Twitter users will make certain to include a link with every tweet. The smarter of the lot will only link to information. The more shallow of the group will only link to sales pages.

And finally, there are those who are probably smarter than all of us put together. They are the ones who provide a mix of content. Sometimes, they will give us a link to information. Sometimes, they will link us to the sales page. At other times, they will share quotes and news headlines. And in all cases, they will socialize with their followers, asking about things important to their followers and sharing their personal lives with those who ask.

The Lesson To Take From This Article

Social media marketing works best, when the marketer who is attempting to use it, remembers that first and foremost it is a platform to socialize with other people.

Why do people follow YOU on Twitter?

They follow you, because there is something about you and what you say that appeals to them at a very human level.

If you want to win in the Social Media element, be human and don’t be afraid to socialize with your friends and acquaintances.


We teach the basics of online marketing and cutting edge techniques used by professional online marketers to develop lead generation systems and new businesses. Our Online Marketing Bootcamp training is geared for new online marketers, network marketers and offline business people looking to go online. www.BestBusinessNetwork.com/OMB

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Out-Socialize the Gurus on Twitter and Other Social Media