Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Can a Blog Replace Cold-Calling?

Source: education58369.blogspot.com

I had a chance to read this blog post titled "Can a Blog replace Cold-Calling?". The post highlighted few points explaining how cold-calling can be replaced with a blog. I m listing down few points from the blog post. These points explain how to leverage the blog to not only Brand self and the company but also to serve as a passive lead generation tool for new prospects.

1. Provide reliable, helpful information. The more info the more trust and credibility you will receive.

2. Provide a sign-up form for newsletter tips. This will help you gather prospect email addresses and contact info that can be used for follow up.

3. Implement Google Analytics, a free Web site traffic reporting tool that will show exactly where your visitors are coming from, what they looked at when they came to your Blog and other helpful details.

4. Implement a Sponsorship program and advertise your best customers' services.

These are just a few of the many ways that Blogs can replace cold-calling to gather information and prospect contact information. When done right the process can be automated, allowing you to spend less time as a prospecting salesperson and more time as a closer.

To read more, Visit education58369.blogspot.com

About the author:

Jason Murphy is Owner of YourEdgeOnline.com and has spent over 10 years studying and learning what it takes to become a successful Internet Business Executive. He has helped some of the most successful online retailers and most recognized household brand names learn more about eCommerce, mCommerce and technology to help them sell more each day. He has consulted for many of the Internet Retailer's Top 500

He can be reached for consulting advice and Online marketing services via his Web site: http://youredgeonline.com/

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Automate Web Lead Response using eMail-Lead Grabber - Tip #2

How to create Mail Merge Template?

To create a mail merge template, launch the TemplateMaker in any one of the following methods.

Click File > Show Template Maker

[OR]

Right-click the Form Processing Center and select Create Template Advanced Mode

[OR]

Select any email that contains all the form tags, right-click and select Create Template in Advanced Mode.

The TemplateMaker window is displayed.

Click File > New in TemplateMaker. In the Create New Template dialog box, select the Template Type as Email Merge and select your destination from the Contact Manager list.











According to the selected destination, the Link Options dialog box appears and you need to fill in the details. Link Options are used to set up the transfer of information.

For example, if your database requires a user name and password to login, you need to provide the same details in the Link Options to ensure accurate transfer of information.

After you complete the Link Options setup, a blank template appears and you need to enter the pre-defined message in this window.

Click Insert Field Icon to insert the fields from your database in appropriate places.












To insert details from the received message, click Insert > Email and select the appropriate options as follows:

Text: To insert the contents of the received message.

Subject: To include the subject line of the received message.

Date and Time: To include the date and time.








Click File > Save and enter a file name to save the template.

For every received message, the Merge Template sends an automatic customized reply.

You need to configure the Mail Merge Template to send email using the template.

How to configure Mail Merge Template to send emails?

In the TemplateMaker, click ‘Process > Email Header’ to make the settings.

Provide the From Address, To Address, CC Address, Subject line as constant value or from database field.

Select Constant Value to provide a static value. Select Field Value to insert values from the selected database field.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Automate Web Lead Response using eMail-Lead Grabber

Responding immediately to a web lead is of paramount importance for any sales professional because you never know which lead would be your prospective customer. As customers always expect a quicker response, prompt follow-up of leads is very vital for any business. Typically, sales professionals receive multiple leads on a daily basis and manually replying to each and every email lead is a tough ask. This is where eMail-Lead Grabber, a powerful email lead processing software, comes in as a handy tool.

With eMail-Lead Grabber, you can automate customer follow-up using the auto-responder feature. You can send auto-response in two methods:

  1. Create Stationery and attach to a filter. Whenever a message passes through the filter, a pre-defined message is sent to the prospect using the Stationery.

  2. Create Mail Merge Template and attach to Email Extract Template. Whenever a message is processed through the Email Extract Template, a pre-defined message is sent to the prospect. Using Mail Merge Template, you can send personalized messages to the recipients.

How to create Stationery?

Whenever you receive an email lead from a prospect, you need to send a response to the message for effective follow-up. Instead of sending these reply messages for every email, you can create stationery with a pre-defined message and link the stationery with the Reply With action in Filter Setup.

Whenever an email message is processed through the filter, the Reply With option sends an automatic response to the message by using the selected Stationery.

Click Tools> Stationery.

In the Stationery dialog box, click Add to create new Stationery.












A new message window is displayed.

The From column automatically displays the email ID you have provided in the Account Setup. If you have created more than one account, you need to select the account from the drop-down list. The response message is sent using the selected account.

In the TO: column, enter the email ID of the recipient. If you are attaching the Stationery to a filter, then the TO: address is automatically detected.

Enter a Subject line.








The checkbox Include Incoming email while responding is selected by default. This option includes the text of the original message while sending the auto response. You can clear this checkbox if you do not want to include the original message.

Use Incoming subject while responding: Select this checkbox to include the subject line of the incoming email in the auto response. The Subject line is disabled when you select this option.

Type your message text and save the Stationery. Click Save and enter a file name to save the Stationery. The Stationery files are saved with the extension .sta

Click Attach to browse and select a document that can be attached to the sent messages. For example, you send your company’s brochure as attachment along with all the responses.

If you want to send an email message

to an individual immediately, enter all the details and click File > Send.

Once you save the Stationery file, the filename appears in the Stationery dialog box.

To modify the details of Stationery, select the appropriate filename and click Edit. To delete a Stationery, select the filename and click Remove.

After creating the required Stationery files, you can attach them to the Reply With action in appropriate filters. Whenever a message is processed by the corresponding filter, an auto response is sent to the sender of the email message by using the selected Stationery.

How to attach Stationery to Filter?
Select the Reply With action in the Filter. Select the Stationery fi
le from the drop-down list.









Whenever a message is processed by the filter, a response is sent to the sender of the message as per the settings you have made in the Stationery file.

Next tip will be on "How to Create a Mail Merge template and attach to email extract template"

Thursday, December 4, 2008

What is Your Web Lead Response Time?

Source: ReachForce.com Blog

Insidesales.com conducted a ResponseAudit to test every exhibiting company at Dreamforce, salesforce.com’s user group conference, to see how quickly they would respond to a web lead.

Here are some interesting stats from the ResponseAudit:

“39.5% of the Dreamforce Sponsors responded by phone with the average response time by phone of 44 hours, 31 minutes, and 8 seconds. Of companies that responded by phone the average phone attempts was 1.14 times. 53.2% of the Dreamforce Sponsors responded by email, with the average response time by email of 13 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds. Of companies that responded email the average email attempts was 1.45.”

Over 37% of companies never responded at all.

For those that did respond, the average response time was still very slow. “Recent lead response management research from MIT shows the odds of making contact with a Web-based inquiry increases 100 times if attempted within five minutes.”

To read the full story, Visit ReachForce.com Blog

However the research fact shows the significance of Web lead Response Time and its affect on conversion.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Why SEO is important for your web site?

Source: SEO Workers

What is SEO? It is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. What exactly does SEO do? It is the method of analyzing and constructing individual web pages, as well as entire sites, so that they can be discovered, analyzed, and then indexed by various search engines.

SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software.

Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.

This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?"

Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn't they?

Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn't get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?

Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?

So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit 'Enter', and immediately find a listing for your company's web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren't they?

Yes, they certainly are great, and the 'type-and-click' scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn't happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.

To read the complete article, Visit SEO Workers

About this SEO article

This article was written by Dan Johnson, Web Architect & Collective Intellligence Programmer at SEO Workers.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Should Small Businesses Invest In SEO During A Recession? - SiteProNews.com

Source: SiteProNews.com Newsletters

I read an article titled "Should Small Businesses Invest In SEO During A Recession?" written by Mike Tekula. I have listed down few interesting points from the article...

1. Unparalelled ROI
A 2006 MarketingSherpa survey of 3,053 client-side marketers determined that SEO was viewed as the most valuable marketing solution in terms of ROI, even higher than email marketíng to in-house email lists. ROI is everything - especially in uncertain economic times.

2. Targeted Traffíc
Traditional "push" marketing/advertising options often have you publishing an advertisement in a place where you're hoping it will get a lot of eyeballs. That's great, but the real question is: who owns those eyeballs? Are they the right people? Do they want or need what you're offering? With SEO, up front keyword research can tell you a lot about your market and what kind of language they're using. When you choose your keywords and optimize for them, you're addressing an existing need or desire - and you know that at least a good portion of visitors referred from search engines through your target keywords are looking for exactly what you're offering. In short, SEO helps to drive high quality traffic to your website and gets your message in front of the right people at the right time.

3. Precise Tracking
Web analytics allow you to track your users with a great deal of granularity. The most basic and easy to set up analytics platform is Google Analytics - and it's free. Out of the box, Google Analytics will tell you where visitors are coming from (including what search engines and keywords), what pages bring in the most users, what keywords have the lowest bounce rates (the measure of users who immediately leave your site after viewing one page), what keywords drive the most pages per visit and average time on site and a lot more. With basic conversion tracking you can even tie keywords to conversion rates - an incredibly valuable way to identify the most valuable keywords and focus on them. Bottom line: with web analytics you can identify the dead wood in your campaign and focus on better opportunities to optimize your marketing budget in real time.

To read the full article visit SiteProNews.com

About the author:

Mike Tekula is the President and Founder of Unstuck Digital, Inc., a Long Island SEO company that provides clients with effective and affordable search engine marketing strategies.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Join the Social Media Revolution - SEO Tip #4

The last tip from John Metzler article

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati provide users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo "lens" is also a way to network and share information.

However, if your goal is to generate sales, then you must provide something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn't unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Getting your entries and content to the popular pages on these sites requires some hard work. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers about the content you have on these sites. However, don't force your employees to vote your entries up - this is social media fraud. If you have great content and simply share it with as many people as you can, it will see success naturally.

The four tips are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you're in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.


About the author

John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based search marketing firm and updates his blog regularly