Rogers Online Business Management for the Agriculture Community

An effective email marketing campaign requires framework. Successful marketers will always be the first to tell you that their campaigns are the work of careful planning and diligent consideration.

It’s actually much like building a house. There’s no way you can construct a building haphazardly, without direction, and turn out a flawless finished product. The result would be chaotic!

The same goes for email. You can’t randomly send messages to your clients and prospects without establishing expectations and formulating a plan, or they will tune out and unsubscribe due to your lack of organization.

Follow these guidelines for constructing a well built house and you’ll be on your way to creating a profitable and manageable email campaign in no time.

1. You Need a Solid Foundation

The strongest buildings are built from the ground up on a rock-solid foundation. For your email campaign, the foundation is your message content.

The whole point in sending email is to solicit an action. You want readers to click through your messages, buy products and respond to surveys. In order to engage subscribers and inspire those actions, you must consistently send subscribers interesting, relevant and incentivizing content.

• If you are using email as a sales tool, you want to wow readers with your products and your knowledge, and establish yourself as an authority in your field.
• If you’re using email as a retention tool and are primarily sending informational updates and newsletters, you want to create content that builds relationships.

2. Sources for Content

If your business has a blog, you already have one valuable  content resource well within your reach. Try restructuring older posts for your new messages and pick posts with lots of comments – they obviously piqued the interest of your readers and will be relevant and helpful to new subscribers on your email list.

Don’t have a blog? Look through old emails from your customers. If you see the same questions about your product or service over and over again, take that as a hint. You could probably create a whole follow up series addressing the FAQs.

3. Plenty of Windows

Windows let light into your home. They give you different view of your yard and help you keep watch when the kids play outside. They also let your neighbors see in.

Instead of drawing the curtains tight on your email campaign, take the opportunity to give your readers a look inside. Be transparent. Build their trust by making yourself available.

Don’t make subscribers dig for your social networking sites. Instead, purposely link to your Facebook and Twitter pages so that they can’t miss them.

If you put all of the information about your company out there for subscribers to see from the get-go, you will never need to Windex the windows on your campaign or backtrack to make yourself more transparent.

4. Curb Appeal

Anyone who takes pride in their home understands the desire to make your property as clean and beautiful as possible.

You landscape, paint and generally spruce things up from time to time to keep your house in tip-top shape. After all, your home is a reflection of you.

Your email campaign should be an extension of your business in the same way. You should take pride in its appearance, and realize that a neat and approachable design will only contribute positively to the perception of your brand.

Using beautifully designed message and web form templates is the perfect way to put a professional face on your campaign. With hundreds to choose from, there’s bound to be a least one or two that fits your style.

5. An Impenetrable Roof

The roof on your building protects your structure and everything inside. Email deliverability requires the same amount of protection.

There are a few things you can do to safeguard your list:

• Confirmed Subscribers:

Confirmed opt-in ensures that you only send messages to people who specifically request them from you. It also protects you from false spam complaints, and ISPs and spam filters give priority to senders who use confirmed opt-in.

• Get Whitelisted:

Ask subscribers to add your email address to their address books. While emails sent from AWeber customers are already whitelisted on an ISP level, it’s important to reduce the likelihood of your mail being filtered to a junk folder on an individual level.

• Don’t Take Permission For Granted:

Remember that subscribers are interested in a certain type of information, which is exactly what they signed up for when they gave you their email addresses. Send only valuable, relevant information that relates to the topics the reader expressed interest in.

6. A Maintenance Plan

Even impeccably built homes require maintenance. While autoresponders allow you to “set it and forget it,” the best email campaigns have owners that are extremely involved with their clients and their product.

Keep a close eye on the performance of your emails. Split test your subject lines and use analytics to track open and click through rates.

When necessary, do a little spring cleaning. Your campaign can never be to tidy!

My team at REAS can help you get started with your email campaign. You can contact us at information@easmyworkload.com to discuss your needs.

Idyllic days in the sunshine. Ruby liquid in sparkling glasses. Merry picnickers and live music.

It’s these moments – drinking your wines and visiting your vineyards – that your customers remember. But even the best memories can fade.

Email marketing can remind your customers what they’re missing. It can invite your visitors back. It can inspire your fans to go buy that favorite bottle again.

Once you build up a sold list of subscribers, you’ll need some creative ideas to spark your customers’ memories and bring them back for more.

Here are some ideas:

Pairings and Recipes

• If your chardonnay sparkles with scallops, let your customers know. Pair your wines with complementary dishes and share the recipes.
• If your Burgundy is excellent in beef stew, share that, too. Original recipes for dishes cooked with your wines are even more valuable. If you have an online store, make sure to link up the wines.

Seasonal Gifts

• People are always searching for unique gifts. Show them what you have to offer, whether it’s festively wrapped wines for the holidays, wine and chocolate sets for Valentine’s Day or picnic baskets for Mothers’ Day.

Fun Facts

• Identify wine myths vs. facts. Quote some trivia your readers will want to quote themselves. Feature a rotating glossary fo wine-making terms.
• Your customers may not know why racking wine does not mean putting bottles into wine racks. Tell them why. Give them more than just discounts – give them an education. With insider information, they’ll feel good about themselves and grateful to you.

New Merchandise

• Giddy tasters and frequent visitors alike bring home the winery experience with glass charms, drunken olives and other goodies. If you add a new must-have item, email your list – they’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it next time they visit.

Video Footage

• Videos show off your winery even when your doors are closed. They also let you share more content than the typical email can hold.
• Use video for educational demonstrations, “meet our team” introductions and sweeping panoramas of your estate that call visitors back. Post them to YouTube and link to them with clickable screenshots in your emails.

New Releases

• Stir up some excitement! Introduce new vintages with fanfare. Tell your subscribers where they can find the new wine, and let them know that you can’t wait for their reaction!

Special Discounts

• As faithful readers of your content and proclaimed fans of your winery, your subscribers might deserve a little extra once in awhile. Reward subscribers (and keep them coming in) with email-exclusive discounts and offers.

Events

• Live music performances, tastings, tours of your production area, grape stomping festivals, wine education classes with guest speakers – if you host these, get the word out!
• Send an invitation to your subscribers early enough for them to plan ahead, but not so early that they forget!

Rate Your Wines

• Your wines may wind regional awards, but aside from recognizing this as a maker of quality, customers may not have much reaction. Instead of telling them someone else’s opinion, ask theirs.
• Have visitors to your tasking room rate your wines. Periodically invite your readers to send rating to your “from” address. Announce the winners in an email that subscribers will check to see – Did their favorite win?

Wine Classes

• If you offer wine education classes on-site, make sure to invite your local subscribers (try segmenting by location). Summarize the best points from the class afterward so the rest of your list can benefit as well.

Images

• Don’t forget pictures! Ambiance is an important part of the wine lifestyle, so extend yours to your newsletter.
• Show the grapes being crushed, the wine being bottled. Feature your winemakers, bartenders and grape pickers – give your readers faces to recognize when they visit.

***Don’t forget to watch out for minors! Make age a required field on your sign-up form. Marketing to those under-age could result in fines.

As a winery, what content do you send your subscribers? Do they respond? Do they mention your messages when they visit?

These ideas can easily translate to other businesses. Hotels and restaurants can use images for ambiance. Fitness bloggers can highlight fun facts. Galleries can announce new shows.

What kinds of content can you create from these ideas?

Be sure to take a look at our service packages as we can help you with all your marketing ideas, including shooting the video for your online ad and submitting it to the search engines to get you in the top ten ranking!

Source: AWeber Auto Responder Service

Creating videos to market your products and services became much simpler thanks to the introduction of a new set of cloud-based video editing tools from YouTube. Web marketers and content publishers can now build a library of online videos and increase opportunities for brand exposure at the same destination.

YouTube users have the capability to cut from videos, create montages of different clips and add or change accompanying music using YouTube’s commercial library of licensed songs.

If all the editing tools just seem so overwhelming to you, we can help. Contact us at information@easmyworkload.com to discuss your video needs.

The practice of one-page-long sales letters is being used widely today by businesses of various sizes to sell and push their products and/or services into the Internet marketplace.

Long sales letters are really just one long page with focus on selling the product to one prospect. It’s like an electronic salesperson on your behalf, and it certainly beats having you to prospect and sell to someone else face-to-face or gamble on sending out hard copy mail (that can span 5-20 pages long when printed) and face the chance of not covering your investment in printing.

Believe it or not, online sales letters consist of mainly the use of words, some images, and now videos. And words are indeed powerful tools; you should consider them as a double-edged sword.

If used correctly, words can sell literally anything. If used improperly, not only would your sales letter suffer in conversion rate, it might just deliver the wrong message and the worse case scenario can be that of offending your prospects (besides not closing the sale).

If your sales letters are currently not producing the kind of conversion rates you want, or this is your first try at wrting a sales letter, perhaps you may want to contact me at information@easmyworkload.com to help you design a sales letter that will produce a decent conversion rate of 2 to 4 percent.

I went to a local flea market this weekend and was so disappointed. Where were all the Farmers? The reason I bring this up is because Farmer Markets don’t go over so big in my area mainly because there is so little advertising for them. So I thought for sure they would be at the flea market that is held every Sunday in Waterford, PA.

Think about how simple this would be to sell your product at the flea market. You pay a very small fee to set up a table or two. You lay out your produce in a pleasing manner by using some big wooden baskets. And don’t forget to take the time to put a sign on the basket saying what it is and the price. Nothing urks me more than having to ask the price on the vegtables. Also be aware that some people may not recognize the produce you are selling if they never have eaten it before. That is why you need a sign saying what is in each basket.

I think it would also be very clever to print out some business cards that have the name of your farm and phone number so that if they like the taste of your produce they can call you up next season and order some more. The cards don’t have to be fancy so don’t fret over them. Also print off some recipe cards that show how to cook the produce. If they’ve never eaten them before they surely never cooked them before as well!

Here is a marketing idea that we used for one of our local clients…

Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, right? So our client emailed everybody on his list that were local to his business and asked them to email him if they wanted to appear in his commercial.

If they responded back saying “Yes”, he told them to show up on a certain day and time to his farm and be ready to be part of his commercial. If they showed up they all got a great big basket filled with all kinds of goodies from his Country Store. And he got to make a commercial that looked like his store was busting at the seams with happy customers!

Discounted products attract tons of traffic. Take one of your best selling products and slash the price as low as you can and still make a small profit.

Your smaller profit will be offset with a larger volume of sales. Even if you don’t make a lot of money on this one off promotion, you introduce more people to your products and services and can contact them later to make more profitable sales.

Try making a quick video about one of your products and tell them at the end of the video that if they mention your video by name they will receive a discount. And you will receive higher search engine rankings with your video so it’s a win-win situation!

Being a supplier for one source for your crop is not a wise business decision. Your “single source” may not always be there and you may find yourself scurrying to re-establish your supply lines.

It is wise to have a steady flow of income coming into your farm. You don’t need to search very far to have that happen. You can take processes that you have developed for your farm and make them into an informational product that other farmers are willing to pay for. You can get involved with your local tourism and have tours of your farm, or hold seminars on your farm.

The possibilities are endless. Don’t let your lack of knowledge of the Internet hold you back from marketing your farm. Here at Rogers Executive Administrative Services, We can help you with your online marketing needs. Just contact us at information@easmyworkload.com

If you are confortable with the Internet, You can start off with making a short video that will lead them to your sales page for your product on your website. Then upload the video to YouTube and other video submission sites.

A blog is a must for every Farm; whether you have a website for your Farm, your Farm is just another place in the Country, or if your Farm-related business is only on the Internet. If you are in any type of Agriculture business at all, you need a blog.

Blogging has become the way to drive new traffic to your Farm, whether the Farm-related business is on the Internet or in the Country. This is because people connect personally to you through your blog, even if it is a blog about your Farm.

Through writing blog posts your readers, subscribers and customers get to know a little bit about the person behind the Farm. And as long as you’re posting quality, trustworthy content your readers will come to trust you. Therefore, they will then begin to purchase your products or retain services that you offer.

Your blog should reveal a little about the person behind the Farm, but it should never be too personal. Having an “About” page on your blog is a good place to display a little about your personal life, but not too much. Keep it professional, but let your audience know who you are as a business person, as well as a Farmer. The “About” page is also a great place to display your qualifications, merits and credentials.

Once your blog is up and running, you will then use it to connect with people on the Internet through stories, talking about promotions or sales, and letting the public know your Farm exists. Having a blog is the most important marketing tool your Farm should have. If you don’t have a blog yet, and don’t even know where to begin, hire a virtual assistant to start one for you. A VA could even then maintain and manage it for you if you feel you don’t have the time. But, by doing whatever it takes to get a blog started now, soon you will see an increase in your Farm traffic and more traffic means more sales.

We offer a number of different packages for your blog setup to enhance your marketing campaign here at Rogers Executive Administrative Services. Contact us at information@easmyworkload.com with your questions about getting started.