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The Power of Email
By Claire Bowes
©2004 All Rights Reserved
Efficient use of email is critical because you can expect to receive 50 or 100 email messages everyday when your business is up and running.
You must be very organized when it comes to email as it can be very time consuming and can take up a lot of your very precious time. By being organized, you can cut the amount of time down dealing with your everyday email and closing the sale.
First of all you have to decide which email package is the best to use. In my opinion, the email package Eudora Pro is the most comprehensive package around. It has extra features built into it (i.e. it will encode attachments, has a built in spell checker and much more). You can either buy Eudora Pro for a small fee or you can download the sponsored mode for free.
Signature Files
You should then look at the more simple things you should be doing with your email. An electronic signature is a must as it is critical for any campaign forum and newsgroup posting success. A 'sig file' is a combination of a business card and a P.S. Depending on who you're writing to and why, you can pump your sig file with sales power.
A signature is the information displayed after the name at the bottom of your email message which should consists of four to six lines. This information normally consists of your name, your company name, your telephone, fax and URL address.
A sig file is a great tool for promoting any product/service you offer too. It is a powerful and legal way to attract targeted customers. You may have three or four different signature files to suit different marketing needs i.e. promoting your website, autoresponder, contest or special offer, or specific product or service.
Formatting
You should pay attention to the formatting of your email messages. Not everyone uses the newer email programs that wrap around the text in their viewing box.
If someone can't read your email, how can you sell them something?
In your settings menu of your email program you want to have approximately 65 characters per line. The reason for this is because some people are running in 640x480 pixels, which means you can only get about 78 characters per line. If you don't do this your email may look great when you send it, but the received file might look very jagged.
If you are writing a short letter, then yes, write it directly in your email. But, if you are composing a longer message, it is very wise to use a good text editor. Do not copy and paste from your word processor. The text from a word processor is not ASCII. You will get all kinds of weird symbols when you paste into your email.
Two of the best text editors are UltraEdit (Windows) and BBEdit (Mac OS).
Mailboxes
It is important to save your email into different 'mailboxes' for reference later. Mailboxes organise and store your email information. In Eudora Pro it is as simple as highlighting the email in your 'IN' tray box, clicking on the menu option 'TRANSFER', and then clicking on the appropriate box you want to go to. You can also set up filters which automatically filters incoming email directly into your designated mailbox.
It is wise to have several mailboxes set up. For example, Advertising, Business Propositions, Orders, Survey Results, Newsletter Subscriptions etc.. You can then have filters set up to automatically have the email put into each of these mailboxes ready for you to read at your convenience!
-Using Email to close the Sale You have your website set up, you are making sales, you have people signing up for your free newsletter and you are getting dozens of email 24 hours a day from enquirers about your great product/service.
You must answer within 24 hours or your goodwill and a potential sale are gone forever.
Use these simple steps to close the sale:
1.Respond within 24 hours. Even set up an autoresponder letting your customer know that you have received their email and you will be responding very soon.
2.Provide a sig file that sells
3.Remember to format your email messages (as above)
4.Soften your writing. Deliver a personal one-to-one message, not a sales pitch letter.
5.You must provide the answer the customer wants. Use short words, short paragraphs, short lines and no gimmicks. Get to the point quickly.
6.Have a sharp, active and benefit-laden subject headline. Take your time and write a great subject.
These are just the basics of organising your email to successfully run your online business. Take time to play around with your email package and see what benefits and features it offers to help you in dealing with your day-to-day emails and email promotion campaigns.
CLAIRE BOWES
, specialises in software to automate any online business in order to help it succeed. If you would like the addresses of the packages described above, then visit Claire's software catalogue at
http://www.internetbizsoftware.com
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