The key-word in the title of this post is customer. Not prospect, not lead, not opportunity. CUSTOMERS.
The lifeblood of your business. The last thing you want to do is destroy your credibility with CUSTOMERS!
However, data shows that 35% of business unknowingly destroy their credibility with existing customers everyday. Are you part of this 35% of businesses that are in the dark?
If you run an e-commerce business such as an online store, and pay a social media manager to help generate sales for you, then this is required reading. Depending on whether or not you are tracking the ongoing ROI from your social media investments, the data shared below may come as a shock.
It’s increasingly becoming more and more difficult to keep up with the latest tips and trends that deliver results in the internet marketing world. With technology rapidly changing from one year to the next (and sometimes month to month), a strategy you implemented last year could easily become obsolete overnight.
Customer segmentation is one of the most underutilized strategies by new entrepreneurs starting with email marketing for the first time. At first glance, new entrepreneurs view customer segmentation as a something they can defer until a dedicated marketing person is available to handle the details. So instead of building an email list with customer segmentation in mind from the start, new entrepreneurs assume it’s easier to start sending email newsletters that treat every email subscriber equally.
Getting email subscribers is probably the best thing you can do as a bootstrapping entrepreneur. In fact, email is the #1 marketing channel consumers use to make buying decisions beating out direct mail, telephone, Facebook, text messaging, Twitter and Linkedin. This statistic as well as 8 other surprising statistics, is why email remains the best marketing channel to generate revenue for a business.
One of the most undervalued marketing channels for entrepreneurs today is email marketing. The main reason for this is that the explosion of social media has made it easier for business owners who juggle marketing along with many other tasks to replace list building efforts with friending and following. This is a big mistake.
This week on twitter I came across a motivational quote that immediately connected with my soul. It was from the legendary hall of fame basketball coach John Wooden. The quote goes:
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
When it comes to building an email list, remembering this quote is critical. Not obeying the wisdom in this quote is probably the #1 reason all bootstrapping entrepreneurs don’t get started with building an email list so they can use email marketing to grow their business.
For seasoned entrepreneurs and marketers, it is a well known fact that email is still pound for pound the best way to deliver permission-based marketing messages. However, with the rise and dominance of social networking, many new entrepreneurs put building an opt-in email list at the bottom of their things to do list behind building a Facebook page, Twitter and Linkedin account. Although it is a much harder and longer process to build a quality list of opt-in emails, it is well worth your time. Below are some statistics that prove this fact:
