Clients ask me all the time how they can improve the performance of their email marketing campaigns. Nine times out of 10, their writing needs to improve. If you fill your emails with boring, unpersuasive copy, you will have bored, un-persuaded readers. It doesn’t matter what you offer or how good the deal. If your [...]
Three Tips to Make Your Copy Less Boring and More Persuasive
by Tom Ruwitch on 16. Dec, 2009 in Copy Writing, Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, Persuasion
Secrets To Create Successful Email Newsletters
by Tom Ruwitch on 09. Oct, 2009 in Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, Newsletters
Raise your hand if your company has an email newsletter that is more boring than the St. Louis Rams’ offense? Raise your hand if your company’s email newsletter seems like an aimless collection of information snippets and meaningless factoids. Raise your hand if you’d rather eat liver and onions (no condiments allowed), with a side [...]
The Wisdom of Yogi: Segment to Sell
by Tom Ruwitch on 30. Jun, 2009 in Email Marketing, List Builiding, Marketing Tips
Yogi Berra once said, “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you gonna stop them?” I love that quote, and I think about it often as I work with clients on their marketing campaigns. In his charming, convoluted way, Yogi presented a very basic but essential marketing principle: It’s far easier [...]
Focus On List-Building To Strengthen Your Greatest Asset
by Tom Ruwitch on 30. Jun, 2009 in Email Marketing, List Builiding
A friend of mine recently was on the verge of selling his small business, but the deal collapsed. The business was profitable and growing, and the prospective buyer liked the numbers. But the deal tanked when the prospect asked to see the customer list. When my friend replied that he had not been collecting emails and other contact information from most of his customers and prospects, the prospective buyer bolted.
The prospect knew that a business is only as good as its list. Sure, your business may be making money and even growing. But you limit your potential to grow your business if you do not have a good, clean, homegrown list of prospects, customers, and former customers.
More Lessons From The Pizza Parlor: The Power of Social Media
by Tom Ruwitch on 09. Jun, 2009 in Social Media, Twitter
The following article appeared in the May 2009 issue of St. Louis Small Business Monthly By Tom Ruwitch Last month, I wrote about Domino’s and how it cornered the pizza delivery business with its outstanding unique selling proposition (if you missed it, you can find the column by searching for “pizza” on www.sbmon.com. Here are [...]
Email Signatures Can Generate Leads
by Tom Ruwitch on 07. May, 2009 in Email Marketing, Marketing Tips
Do you have an email signature? If you’re like most people, you may have one that lists your name and basic contact information, but you most likely don’t see it as a marketing opportunity.
You should think of your email signature as an opportunity to promote your business and capture leads.
Here’s the signature I use for people who are not already MarketVolt clients:
p.s. Get Free E-Mail Marketing Tips:
“10 Secrets to Write Email Subject Lines that Sell”
http://www.marketvolt.com/SubjectlineTips
p.p.s. Please check out my twitter feed — http://twitter.com/marketvolt.
Daily interactive marketing tips and other ideas and observations to help you grow your business.
(My contact info follows the p.s. and p.p.s)
Marketing Tips from the Pizza Parlor
by Tom Ruwitch on 04. May, 2009 in Marketing Tips
When I was a teen, I loved to order Domino’s pizza. I would call the neighborhood shop, order my favorite (a small pepperoni), note the time of my order on a slip of paper, and then wait with breathless anticipation.
My excitement had little to do with the quality of the pizza. In fact, there were plenty of other pizza joints in town that, in my opinion, delivered better pies.
Why did I choose Domino’s over all of the other pizza places?
I chose Domino’s because it offered me something no other restaurant would: “Fresh hot pizza delivered to (my) door in 30 minutes or less…or it’s free.”
The Hidden Risk of Hosting Your Email Broadcasts
by Tom Ruwitch on 04. May, 2009 in Deliverability / Spam, Email Marketing
I recently got a call from a former prospect who is president of a company here in St. Louis. To save money, he chose not to work with MarketVolt, and instead installed a free email marketing application on his company’s servers. After a few months of sending email newsletters to a list of people who all had opted in, he began to notice a problem:
A certain internet service provider — a big one that serves many of the people on his list — was blocking delivery of the email newsletter. But worse yet, that internet service provider was blocking all emails sent from the company’s network.
Not only were the newsletters being blocked, but emails from the company president to individuals who host their email boxes with that internet service provider.
“What can I do?” he asked me.
Court The Maybes To Increase Sales
by Tom Ruwitch on 28. Apr, 2009 in Email Marketing, Marketing Tips
As I drove to my office this morning, I heard a radio advertisement for a local technology firm (let’s call it Acme Technologies) that sells a service I might need. At the end of the ad, the spokesman recited the firm’s toll-free telephone number and said, “Call today to get started.”
“I’m not ready to get started,” I thought. “I may be interested soon, but not today.”
I didn’t call. In a few weeks, if I’m more ready to buy, I may remember the ad and may call the firm. Meanwhile, Acme has no idea I exist and no way to court me further.
Thousands of people heard that ad. Most are like me. We are the maybes. Marketers frequently ignore us.
If you want to sell more, you must court the maybes.