The Secrets Of E-Mail Marketing Success
      By Lesley Anne Lowe

Of all the 'business opportunities' on offer on the Internet the easiest to start up yourself is probably an 'email marketing business'. Unfortunately for most people who set up in business using this form of selling, only a small percentage experience any reasonable level of success.

There are many reasons for failure: the product, the way it is sold, the back up service, the costing - the list is almost endless. But one reason prevails above all others - a failure to understand the two main secrets of email marketing success.

Every successful email marketing company uses these, whether they realise it or not. By applying these two secrets you will be practically assuring your success.

SECRET 1 : PROMOTIONAL EXPANSION In email marketing everything can be tested and responses can be measured. Unlike most other businesses you can see where your orders are coming from, and what activity has brought them in. This makes life fairly easy. If something isn't working you can simply drop it. The 'test' need cost very little, if anything at all. But if something is working - and here's the first secret - you should promote it as widely as you can, right to point where you break even.

Many email marketing operators find an advertisement that works and make no attempt to expand it into other media. Others get bored with a promotion and cut it once responses start to drop off.

Wrong! It should be continued for as long as it continues to make money and only replaced with something proven to be better.

SECRET 2 : MULTIPLE SALES If you're considering starting an email marketing business please read this very carefully. This one secret alone will make or break your business and it is most definitely the backbone of every successful companies operations.

Very few email marketing businesses can survive on a single product. Most of the banner ads etc. you see on the large search engines and busy commercial sites will lose money! That's right, that nice flashing, rotating advertisement you see for the latest in software technology will, in all likelihood, cost the company more in advertising than it will generate in sales. So why place the advertisements?

Because the companies know from experience that once they have a customer, he will normally buy something else. That buyer of the new software package will probably buy the upgrade to it later on. Companies talk in terms of the 'lifetime value' of a customer. This can be many times the value of the original sale.

More people have gone bust in the 'mail order' business trying to make money from a single product than in any other way. Email marketing runs along a similar vein and the guidelines for success remain the same. Take both of these secrets into account and you will already be one step ahead of 75% of the companies currently operating in the online market.

LESLEY ANNE LOWE is publisher of Advance Consultancy News, a free email newsletter geared towards online business promotion, developing powerful marketing strategies and maximising online profits. For your free subscription email: news@advance.to and the most recent issue will be sent by return.

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