Cyberwalker Blog

Q&A: Should I buy a list or grow the list organically?

I got asked this on Quora recently:

Question: What are the ways to gather contacts for email marketing? Should I buy a list or grow the list organically? What are the risks in buying an email list? Are there any authentic sources for genuine contacts?

Answer: Buying a list would be disastrous for your business and a waste of money.
First you will be violating the CAN SPAM Act in the US. Or CASL in Canada.

Worse your domain is at risk to be blacklisted as a spammer ruining all future chances of developing good email practices

But let me tell you how to build a great valuable list quickly.

1) Data-mine all existing relationships from your company’s employees personal business lists and get them into a smart automation system like Infusionsoft

2) Invite to your list through Linkedin using existing employee relationships.

3) Develop a brilliant lead magnet  (a valuable asset you can offer in return for an opt-in from a contact). Post on your company website and all social media outlets.

4) Incentivize employees to help grow your list. Run an internal contest.

5) Develop a system in your smart automation system that lets your sales employees send an email to people they have met for lunch offering your lead magnet.

That’s a start but you can get inventive from there.

The power of the P.S. in email marketing

The Power of P.S.

Someone recently asked me:

Do you normally use PS messages in the emails you send? If yes, how do they work for you?

Yes, Neil Strauss does this extremely effectively. More information look here. In fact his former email strategist Aaron works for us at http://Cyberwalker.com.

Neil’s strategy is to use P.S., P.P.S and sometimes to be funny P.P.P.S. I am always in intrigued by Neil’s genius and style.

The secret on the P.S. is to not over do it and work a little humor into it. A great P.S. is a good way to say – ok we got the business handled, now let me let you in on the inside. It should have high value content or contain  “secrets”, it can tease, and it can be funny.

It also has the effect that your email does not selling anything, but cheekily pitches something at the end in an off-handed kind of way — if you do it right.

Because I advocate using a personal tone in emails, I sometimes will write a message that shares something from what I am up to  in my life that I may be developing (and want to sell later).

Like this:
P.S. Sorry this email is late this week, but I have been heads down working on my new SEO course. Want a peek? Here's a secret preview. [LINK etc]

You can use this for anything you want to promote. Just make it worth their while to click. Intrigue your reader.

Well that’s all for now. Hope this little piece was useful!

P.S. If you have missed my other digital marketing posts you might not have seen this freebie. We give away a lot of these kind of marketing secrets  in our free digital marketing ebook: https://cyberwalker.com/free-ebook/

P.P.S. See what I did there? Did you click? If not here it is again: CLICK HERE 🙂

How do I grow my consulting business with digital marketing?

A niche consultant asked me this question recently: How do I grow my consulting business. Here’s the answer I gave him.

Answer: The best way is to become the pre-eminent expert in your field on the web and attract people who are seeking  your expertise as a consultant. Here are some ideas to grow your business with digital marketing:

  1. Figure out the top 100 questions anyone buying consultant services might ask and answer them comprehensively on a blog over the next 6-12 months.
  2. Provide a glossary of terms on the blog around your consulting area of specialty. Use common and esoteric terms, as many as makes sense.
  3. Establish a layman’s guide to your consulting topic and publish it in an ebook. 10 to 30 pages will do. Make it the best intro to guide you can. The offer it for free in return for a sign up to your mailing list.
  4. Send out great content on the list about case studies, new trends, how-tos, and other questions answered about the consulting topic you are an expert in (you can use your blog material)
  5. Offer a Q & A submission form and answer any questions within one business day to someone who might have ask about the topic. Answer directly (this is a good way to nurture a lead) and reuse the answers on your blog and in your newsletter to generate more leads.
  6. Follow the core community of consulting experts related to your business on social media, contribute to the conversation and publish some of your material on LinkedIn and tweet almost all of it on Twitter as it is produced. You can use Hootsuite for this.
  7. Hire an Search Engine Optimization company to work with your site to get it ranked for change management. Your amazing content will be a key tool in making this happen.
  8. Get help designing your email marketing funnel and be sure to use a tool like Keap to drive it. This will help you identify opportunities among your subscribers.

If you poke around the web you’ll notice that there may not a lot of stiff competition on your topic of expertise. With a bit of time, money and effort it won’t take long to dominate search engine results and social media. If not nationally, then regionally. Then let the business come to you.

BTW, you might also want to write a piece or FAQ (frequently asked questions) on “how to hire a [your specialty] consultant” and post it on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and of course your own site.

10 reasons why you should use Shopify to build a web store

At Cyberwalker Digital we build web stores for our clients and our preferred ecommerce platform is Shopify. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Shopify is scaleable. You can start with a $15/month store and scale to a multi-language multi-iteration enterprise site.

2. You can sell anything. Freeze dried strawberries? Yes. Forklift Manuals? Sure. Soursop tea? Yes. Fishing Tackle? Sure just ask the gang at http://tackleoutfit.ca.

2. You can launch with either a free or $80-$100 theme that you buy or have one custom designed by an agency like us.

3. Shopify handles all the web hosting needs and the transactional technology and credit card tools. You just connect your bank account.

4. Shopify handles all the site security so it’s worry free.

5.  One person can manage the store or you can set it up to managed by a team.

6. Tax tables make collecting sales tax easy – by country, state, province or region (including US counties).

7. Shipping can be manually set up or connected to Fedex or UPS or USPS for real-time shipping calculation

8. It’s easy to manage SEO.

9. You can easily sell digital products such as videos, ebooks or software keys.

10. The stores are beautiful, easy to manage and you can be selling in a day or two.

If you would like a free 30 minute consult on how Cyberwalker Digital can help you set up and build your store, contact us here

Or check out Shopify directly and see what the online selling platform can do for you.

Q&A: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people

QUESTION: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people or be dismissed immediately as spam, but rather be opened up, read, and actually turn into a lead or sale?

ANSWER: The secret to great email marketing is give more than you take. Give people a reason to love opening your emails.

Give them your best stuff for free. Load them up with everything they need to succeed. Demonstrate why you are the expert in the topic of the list and show them the way. Provide massive value with posts, ebooks, white papers, videos, tips tricks etc

Also be reliable (regular emails) and trustworthy. Never try to trick them or dupe them.

It also means you rarely sell to them on the list and when you do it should be a killer exclusive deal that has high value and low friction (easy to buy, money back guarantee).

The other smart thing to do is to use a Smart CRM system so you can track behaviour and engage with individuals when they demonstrate that they are ready to buy or engage. You can use a variety of platforms. Ontraport is one. We use the sales and email marketing software called  Keap.

Q&A: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people

The power of the P.S. in email marketing

The secret on the P.S. is to not over do it and work a little humor into it. A great P.S. is a good way to say – ok we got the business handled, now let me let you in on the inside. It should have high value content or contain “secrets”, it can tease, and it can be funny.

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