Now that the election is over I think it is time to get back to some money making threads here. With the success of the 100k and 200k a year threads I thought this one would be useful for some of you already doing things like this because you could easily leverage your existing clients and up sell them this service. This could also be used in conjunction with local leads through PPC and people doing web design and SEO for local clients.
This isn't my idea by any means but I have read about it in a few different places and I think it has some good potential with little work involved. I haven't started doing this yet but plan to in the coming weeks.
What are we going to be selling to these local businesses?
Autoresponders....
Now, I know most douchebags use autoresponders to spam the shit out of our inboxes with affiliate offers and their own products. We aren't going to be doing that here. The idea is to offer a customer something of value in exchange for their email. If the company already has a website it would be very easy to through up an autoresponder code and if not offer to make them one, that is more money for you.
What could be offer of value?
Well, coupons and deals would be the easiest. Companies are already putting these out in local papers and on their websites. If they already offer them on their websites it would be a good idea to take those down and only offer them to a list of customer's who signed up to thier autoresponder/newsletter - whatever the fuck you want to call it. This might me a tough sell if they are getting a lot of people downloading these already but a nice big list of existing and potential customers is worth way more then the occasional coupon download.
I hate reports as much as the next guy but people who aren't in this niche don't see them that often. If you were doing this for an insurance company you could have a report on what to do in the event of an accident. Write up some 10 steps to follow with the companies logo and contact information on the pdf. This is just an example, be creative with this.
Giveaways work great here. I am sure you have seen these many times at stores. You could do this once a month or once a quarter. This is up to the business. But, people like free shit and will give out their contact information to get said free shit.
You also are going to want to have the client collect names and emails of walkthrough traffic. There is a company that does this already for restaurants nationally and they use a fishbowl. You could also use some sort of box or whatever suits your needs. Just make sure it is out front and that the employees tell every customer about this. Make sure that it indicates they will be signing up to a newsletter to receive coupons through email (to protect from spam complaints).
You could also print out the webpage on the reciepts with a "special offer" for signing up online or throw a flier in all the bags giving the customer instructions on signing up. It would be a good idea to split these into at least two seperate lists. People who signed up in the store are existing customers and far more likely to come back and buy shit.
As far as the autoresponder goes you could set it up all under one account on Aweber or whatever your autoresponder is. But, I would recommend either giving them your affiliate link to sign up on their own (reccurring commision) or signing up with seperate accounts yourself and billing them. That way if one account gets shut down for spam the others would still be safe and it won't be as big a hassle to move over to another autorepsonder (not sure how Aweber works here and if they would allow you to have a bunch of different accounts. I am still looking into this but haven't heard back from them yet.)
What to charge?
Well, this is really up to you and your local market. But, I am going to go with a setup fee around $100 and an ongoing monthly fee of about $200 to $250 and test that out. You will charge more depending on the list size. Look at Aweber's pricing and markup accordingly taking into account the affiliate commission you would get from these accounts.
This would be the very basic charge just to manage their accounts with them writing the emails for me. If they want me to write them I would charge more. Also, as far as name gathering goes either have an employee put them together in a .csv file and you could just import them for them, or do it yourself (also charge accordinly on a per name basis).
If you do this right the prices you charge are going to be peanuts to most cusotmers. Sell them on the benefits of an automatic email marketing system. I can't think of a cheaper form of advertising that gets such targeted customers then they are using now. I have even heard of companies cutting way back on traditional adverts because this works so well.
After a while you could outsource most of the work if you want and just manage the accounts. Getting about 10-20 clients shoudn't be that difficult and if you are charging at the low end $250 a month that is a nice extra $2500 to $5000 a month recurring.
You don't have to limit yourself to just local with this either. In my reasearch in my local market no one is doing this. You will find a few with newsletter sign up forms but they are generally a joke and I don't see anyone trying to get emails in their physical locations. This won't work for every business, but any kind of retail store, Dentist, Chiropracter, or any company that gets repeat business would benefit.
Be creative with this. The toughest part is getting sales face to face or cold calling - this is what I struggle with. I would rather hide behind my computer then sell but there is some potential here especially if you are already dealing with clients locally or to up sell other services like web design and SEO.
This isn't my idea by any means but I have read about it in a few different places and I think it has some good potential with little work involved. I haven't started doing this yet but plan to in the coming weeks.
What are we going to be selling to these local businesses?
Autoresponders....
Now, I know most douchebags use autoresponders to spam the shit out of our inboxes with affiliate offers and their own products. We aren't going to be doing that here. The idea is to offer a customer something of value in exchange for their email. If the company already has a website it would be very easy to through up an autoresponder code and if not offer to make them one, that is more money for you.
What could be offer of value?
Well, coupons and deals would be the easiest. Companies are already putting these out in local papers and on their websites. If they already offer them on their websites it would be a good idea to take those down and only offer them to a list of customer's who signed up to thier autoresponder/newsletter - whatever the fuck you want to call it. This might me a tough sell if they are getting a lot of people downloading these already but a nice big list of existing and potential customers is worth way more then the occasional coupon download.
I hate reports as much as the next guy but people who aren't in this niche don't see them that often. If you were doing this for an insurance company you could have a report on what to do in the event of an accident. Write up some 10 steps to follow with the companies logo and contact information on the pdf. This is just an example, be creative with this.
Giveaways work great here. I am sure you have seen these many times at stores. You could do this once a month or once a quarter. This is up to the business. But, people like free shit and will give out their contact information to get said free shit.
You also are going to want to have the client collect names and emails of walkthrough traffic. There is a company that does this already for restaurants nationally and they use a fishbowl. You could also use some sort of box or whatever suits your needs. Just make sure it is out front and that the employees tell every customer about this. Make sure that it indicates they will be signing up to a newsletter to receive coupons through email (to protect from spam complaints).
You could also print out the webpage on the reciepts with a "special offer" for signing up online or throw a flier in all the bags giving the customer instructions on signing up. It would be a good idea to split these into at least two seperate lists. People who signed up in the store are existing customers and far more likely to come back and buy shit.
As far as the autoresponder goes you could set it up all under one account on Aweber or whatever your autoresponder is. But, I would recommend either giving them your affiliate link to sign up on their own (reccurring commision) or signing up with seperate accounts yourself and billing them. That way if one account gets shut down for spam the others would still be safe and it won't be as big a hassle to move over to another autorepsonder (not sure how Aweber works here and if they would allow you to have a bunch of different accounts. I am still looking into this but haven't heard back from them yet.)
What to charge?
Well, this is really up to you and your local market. But, I am going to go with a setup fee around $100 and an ongoing monthly fee of about $200 to $250 and test that out. You will charge more depending on the list size. Look at Aweber's pricing and markup accordingly taking into account the affiliate commission you would get from these accounts.
This would be the very basic charge just to manage their accounts with them writing the emails for me. If they want me to write them I would charge more. Also, as far as name gathering goes either have an employee put them together in a .csv file and you could just import them for them, or do it yourself (also charge accordinly on a per name basis).
If you do this right the prices you charge are going to be peanuts to most cusotmers. Sell them on the benefits of an automatic email marketing system. I can't think of a cheaper form of advertising that gets such targeted customers then they are using now. I have even heard of companies cutting way back on traditional adverts because this works so well.
After a while you could outsource most of the work if you want and just manage the accounts. Getting about 10-20 clients shoudn't be that difficult and if you are charging at the low end $250 a month that is a nice extra $2500 to $5000 a month recurring.
You don't have to limit yourself to just local with this either. In my reasearch in my local market no one is doing this. You will find a few with newsletter sign up forms but they are generally a joke and I don't see anyone trying to get emails in their physical locations. This won't work for every business, but any kind of retail store, Dentist, Chiropracter, or any company that gets repeat business would benefit.
Be creative with this. The toughest part is getting sales face to face or cold calling - this is what I struggle with. I would rather hide behind my computer then sell but there is some potential here especially if you are already dealing with clients locally or to up sell other services like web design and SEO.
