A new organization is helping as a niche finder for your business to innovate new products and services for increasing profits.

Finding profitable niches can make or break your business. From the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Apple computer is a master at finding niches and because of that they are considered by many to be always a niche player.

That may not be a bad thing either considering how well Apple has done over the last two years.

This data can become very valuable because it will allow you to analyze the data you’ve collected and change your headline or promotions in future email newsletters to convert more people into customers.

For example, a best practice that email marketers will use is A/B testing the email subject to see which one will be opened by more people. The content of the two emails are identical except the headline of the email which the end user will see when it’s in their inbox. Which headline will more people open “Buy today at a reduced price” or “Save more money today only”.

I have my guess which one people will open more, but when you conduct an A/B test, you use data to make future business decisions for you.

When deciding which email newsletter provider you choose from business such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse you’ll want to see what type of analytics they provide and which data points will be most important to your business.

This ends our week in exploring email newsletter marketing for small and medium businesses. If you have any future questions, please leave comments below. Otherwise, here’s to your successful email newsletter marketing in the future.

Use analytics to monitor your email newsletters for success

Collecting email addresses from your site visitors is one of the most qualified email address you can acquire and it is also one of the most valuable. Whoever gives you their email address is telling you “Yes, please market your products and services to me” so they are already somewhat interested in what you have to offer and just need some more persuasion to purchase.

One method of collecting email addresses on your website is through a sign up form. This form can be as simple as just an email address or it can be more thorough and ask for more information such as name, telephone number, address, interests, or other qualifications that you want to know about your visitors.

You have to remember that the more simple the sign up form is, the more submissions you will receive. If you want to know more about your website visitor, you will receive fewer email addresses, but they will be more qualified. So you have to figure out a balance on how many email addresses you want compared to how much information you can collect.

You can use an email sign up form from vendors such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse. They each have slightly different offers and you’ll want to see which one best fits your businesses needs.

Smashing Magazine has a great article about where to place your sign up form on your website so you’ll receive the optimal number of email addresses.

Have an email sign up form on your website to collect emails for email marketing

Why use an email autoresponder?

Why would you even want to use an email autoresponder? Well, if you want to give someone that just emailed you or signed up for your newsletter with some immediate information, you’ll want to use an autoresponder from a service like aWeber.

For example, once someone has inputted their email address and told you they want to start to receiving your monthly or weekly email, you’ll want to send them a thank you message and let them know when they will start to receive their newsletter.

Or another example is your customer service email address. If someone emails your customer service with a question, concern, or complaint you will want to have an email autoresponder send a message back to them that someone is handling the message, the time expected to respond to them, your company’s telephone number, and the hours of operation in case they want to call instead.

Email autoresponders are great for connecting directly with your customer or prospect immediately after they’ve contacted you. Setting up autoresponders are quick and easy and can be a valuable tool in building relationships with your customers.

Email autoresponders are an effective marketing tool

What is email newsletter marketing?

Email newsletter marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to reach prospects and convert more sales for your products and services. Email newsletter marketing is the process of sending out a formatted email to your contact list using a service from company’s such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse.

Why choose email newsletter marketing?

Here are some stats from the EmailStatsCenter.com:

62% of marketing executives surveyed say that email newsletters are tactics that are a part of their 2009 marketing strategy. - Datran Media “3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey Results” (2008)

24%% of marketers rated Sending one newsletter to customers and another to prospects tests “very effective”. - MarketingSherpa “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide” (Oct 2008)

49% of email marketers said their newsletter routinely justified themselves. - MarketingSherpa “Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008″ (2008)

How do you acquire email address for your newsletter marketing?

Typically, you will acquire email addresses for your newsletter marketing from your website. You want to collect these email addresses from people that are already interested in your business, your products, or your services. Online consumers specifically like newsletters that have discounts or special deals in them.

Once you choose your email marketing partner, you will be able to start collecting emails on your website and connecting with those potential customers or current customers to increase your sales.

Email Newsletter Marketing

Many companies don’t know how to effectively market to their email list. This is why there are many email marketing tools that you can use to make the job easier and more effective.

Over the next week we’re going to look at the different email marketing tools that you can use to increase your success in email marketing:

Using Newsletters as a Email Marketing Tools

What’s a newsletter? How do you get informative newsletters out to your customers and potential customers that they’ll want to read and share with their friends? What is email newsletter marketing?

Autoresponders as a Email Marketing Tools

What’s an email autoresponder? How do you set up an autoresponder so when someone signs up to be on your mailing list they receive an immediate email from you? Can you offer free ebooks or other information with an autoresponder?

Website Sign Up Forms as a Email Marketing Tools

What do your sign up forms look like? Are there methods to increasing your signups with different types of web forms? Where on your website do you put your sign up form to collect email addresses?

Web Analytics as an Email Marketing Tools

How many people receive your newsletter? How many of them open up the newsletter once it’s in their inbox? What links ae they clicking on within your newsletter? You can find this out with email web analytics for your newsletter marketing.

These are all the different types of email marketing tools and email marketing solutions that you can use to turn your email marketing into a success. We will go over these tools this week so you can start to collect more email addresses and sending out valuable information to your list so you can sell more of your products and services.

Tools Needed for Successful Email Marketing Programs

There are probably dozens of projects left over from last year. It’s time to dump the projects that aren’t going to pan out and put those resources into other projects that will meet company goals.

Too often, leaders will hold on to old projects because they’ve become attached too them and believe that they can succeed. However, this keeps valuable resources on the project and can hurt moral and profits down the road.

Successful leaders are the ones that can eliminate dead projects and focus on new ones by reorganizing resources.

Companies that install ideas from Positive Psychology are finding an increase in employee happiness which has helped increase their bottom line.

It’s no surprise that the happier your employees are, the more productive they will be.

This is something that needs to be instilled at the DNA level of an organization.

I set up a website at Mersio Center that talks about Positive Psychology with the most current research being conducted and trends in the field.

An executive position is a high profile position within a company and most businesses will go above and beyond to bring in successful talent to increase the businesses profit or decrease it’s bottom line.

When negotiating executive incentive compensation packages it’s important to align your needs and desires with what the company can afford.

Some of the more common compensation packages are incentive based. These incentives can be from any sort of goals that you and the company put together.

The reason that an incentive compensation package is important to an executive is because he will get what they put in. If the company takes off and has record profits, that executive will get his share of the revenue generated. On the other hand, if things don’t turn out the way they were meant to, the company will not have to shell out tons of money for goals that weren’t reached.

When the offer comes to the table, you may or may not be pleased with what is offered. Even if you are happy with the package, it may not be laid out how you’d like it. Whatever the case, you may have room to negotiate different terms or add perks that weren’t in the original package.

Just like any other negotiation, it may end at any moment. So try to get the items you want in your package, but know what you can let go of or leave off the table altogether.

It kills me when I see these new “eager beavers” acting like they’re excited to be at these conferences and how f’ing excited they look to be meeting new people. I’ve seen these guys before. In two years I’ll see these same guys here and we’ll be taking shots at the bar, sharing stories of how we didn’t get that sale because the contract went to China, or a new competitor that moved into town and is undercutting prices just to get new business, or how our receptionist Tammy has been on maternity leave for the last month and we actually have to answer our phones.

I sometimes hate talking to these newbies and telling them about myself. I really don’t care what college you went to or who you worked for beforehand. You just got married? You just had your first kid? So f’ing what. You think I care? Hell no. I’m just talking to you because you’re going to be my drinking buddy at the next conference.

Yea, I know the next year is going to kick your ass. You won’t be the same, I’ll never see “you” again.

So let’s take another shot. That will be fun. Cheers!