Thinking of a new way to acquire names?

So, you’ve tried banner ads, you’ve tried text ads, you even tried sweepstakes. But you want to deploy a new and creative lead generation tactic.

Try online polls or surveys.

This is a great way to build your list and qualify potential prospects for cross-sell or up-sell opportunities (either immediately after taking the poll or later on).

First, it’s important to pick a question or topic that is timely. Something that is in the current events and that most Americans would be interested in … perhaps even slightly controversial. Now, develop your question. The question should provoke thought and prompt response. This will be your headline on your creative.

Second, think of your answer choices. You can certainly do a simple yes/no question, but I’d recommend a variety of choices that makes the prospect think and involves them in the question. It’s also helpful to include an "other comments" box. You’ll be surprised how many people want to give you their 2 cents – this element really makes the poll participatory.

Third, make sure you let prospects know that you will not sell or rent their email names. People hate spam and you want to clarify that their email address will not be comprised. You should also advise prospects that by taking the poll they will be opted in to your free newsletter (if you have one) which they can opt out at any time and that they will be notified via email of the poll results. Also offer them a free report as a token of appreciation for taking the poll. Follow up with a "welcome message" and introductory email series to start the bonding efforts immediately.

Fourth, think of a good graphic that encapsulates your headline. Something visually powerful. Noteable personalities or images that convey emotions work best (greed, fear, love, hate, etc.).

Fifth, have a clear call to action in your creative, such as "sound off now" or "take action now." Get people excited about the poll they are about to take. Your creative can be a banner ad, text ad, eNewsletter sponsorship, or even a dedicated email. Some formats may work better than others. So test them all.

Sixth, make sure your poll runs on websites that fit the subject matter of the poll. When you do your media buy, pick sites that the audience is going to respond to. If you’re poll headline is about the 2008 election, consider political sites, news sites (broadcast and cable), political or news blogs, etc.

Finally, make sure you have a good reporting system to capture the emails and segment by promotional effort and website ad appeared on (for analysis) as well as store poll results and chart answer choices via pie chart. And don’t forget to send the poll results to the prospects!

Adding polls to our online marketing mix will increase your chances of list growth.

List Building 101

Whether you have a non-profit website or consumer website, your goal is to build your subscriber list and bring traffic to your site -- which over time can be monetized into revenues.

In the last week, I mentioned several proven techniques to drive traffic to your site. Now, I’d like to address capturing email names, or what is known as lead generation (list building).

1. Offer a free report. This is a great way to get people to sign up for your content and give them a taste of what your site/company has to offer. Reports are also a great way to qualify your readers interest and later on upset them to a paid product or service.
2. Have a free ezine/eNewsletter. Offer website users free, unique content delivered on a timely basis (daily, weekly, monthly) to their inbox. The key is your newsletter should have unique, insightful commentary – something people would be willing to give up their email address for. Make sure you highlight the newsletters benefits or USP (unique selling proposition).
3. Send alerts. It may be appealing to your audience to sign up to learn the latest updates, upcoming events, book signings, new product launches, media appearances, or other time sensitive information on a daily/weekly basis. The "exclusivity" factor is the driving force here. Your "elite" group of subscribers should feel like they're "in the know." Part of a VIP group that gets first hand information before it's made public.
4. Email words of wisdom. Again, depending on your service and how well known you are in your industry, you may want to offer daily words of wisdom, inspiration, quotes, or other motivational messages to your subscribers.
5. Webinars/audios/videos. Post teaser photos of webinar and key messages from a webinar or video/audio seminar. Have testimonials of how great and informative it was. Mention to users that they can hear/watch the full video by simply typing their email now!
6. Polls. Conduct a survey or poll. Ask a question that is topical and tied into the news. Something that stirs emotion and affects the masses. Something that’s on people’s minds and they just want to sound off about. Give your user the ability to answer from choices and then have a "additional comments" box. You’ll find 8 out of 10 times people feel compelled to give their 2 cents. This helps make the poll participatory and gives satisfaction to the user. Also, make sure you tell users before they hit submit that by taking the poll, as a thank you they’ll get a special report emailed to them and/or auto-signed up (opted in) to your free newsletter that they can opt out at anytime. It’s also important to advise users that results will be posted on your website (helps site traffic!) as well as emailed to them. Poll questions can also be a great way to qualify users for future up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
7. Most importantly, initiate a privacy policy. Make sure on your lead generation page you have a privacy policy or anit-SPAM notice posted (or link to it). Assure users that you hate SPAM just as much as them and it is your policy not to sell or rent their email address to any third-parties under any circumstances. If you’re not sure of the verbiage to use, just Google "privacy policy" and see samples of other site’s policies.
8. After you build your list. Know your audience and their threshold for email promotion frequency and price points. Remember, your ezine subs will be jumping from free to paid, so keep the price gap narrow.

How To Make Co-Registration Work For You

Co-Registration is a form of online marketing where your subscription offer appears on a webpage AFTER the primary transaction of the publisher whose site you’re advertising on.
For instance, if you sign up for, let’s say for MSN.com’s free enewsletters, after you submit a Thank You page may pop up with other publisher’s offers. The offers usually are an advertiser logo with small write up about their offer or company. This tactic of online marketing is usually used for lead generation purposes.

The key is to follow up with any leads that come in on a co-registration effort quickly. The names collected through this mechanism need to be segmented from the other names in your file since they’re "cold" leads. Meaning, they really don’t know your company at all. To get the most from these names and improve your conversion rate and potential life time value, you’ll need to bond with them and then hit them with your upsell offer. It’s usually best to have a series of introductory emails that try to accomplish this. You can also give this list some incentive, such as introductory offer (maybe 10% off you’re front-end product/service).

The average CPA (cost per acquisition) in co-reg agreements can range from $1.50 - $5.00 per name. Make sure this is "net" names – after any bad emails or duplicates (names you already have in your file) are removed.

Site Targeting: Optimize Your PPC Efforts

If you’re finding the Yahoo, Google or MSN universe is too broad and vast for your niche products (or budget), consider a smaller PPC network such as Miva, Kanoodle, Quigo or AdBrite.

Each of these networks allow PPC site targeting as well as have specialized publishers/websites in their network. Their universe is much smaller than Google, and you may find yourself a big fish in a small pond – hopefully increasing your click thru and conversion rate.

Quigo, for instance, has some heavy-hitters in their network, like major cable and broadcast new channel websites. Since the universe is smaller, you may have less competition, thereby a lower bid price.

Overall, you may find you get more bang for your buck.

It's worth running a test: the same ad in Google vs. Quigo (or another network). You may be surprised by the results!

Leveraging Online Press Releases: Press for Pennies

Company achieved a milestone? Launching a new product? Uncovered interesting statistics from a survey?

These are great reasons to create and distribute an online press release and increase your online presence and drive traffic to your website.

Press releases are effective vehicles for creating buzz and assisting in your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts through syndication back links -- that is, links from other blogs and websites that picked up your release and republished it.

There are many free press distribution services on the World Wide Web to help get your word out. But there's a criteria to be followed if you want your release to get snatched up by media, bloggers and online news aggregators like Google News and Yahoo News.

Here are five easy ways to leverage online press release...

1. Although most free PR distribution services have a release template that you can upload your release through (as well as keyword selection tool), consider using a standard PR template as a guide. This will help ensure your release is constructed as a legitimate press release. Here's a great one I use: http://www.press-release-writing.com/press-release-template.htm.

2. It's important to make sure your press release is newsworthy, written well, and has value-oriented information. It shouldn't be self-serving (i.e. blatantly promoting yourself or your website) and is editorial in nature. It should also have a strong, keyword-rich headline, subhead, and lead (introductory paragraph). Since search engine spiders scan pages from top to bottom, your top 10 keywords, as far as density, should also be heaviest from top of the document to the bottom. Some helpful keyword search tools include: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/, http://www.google.com/sktool/, or https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . These will help you identify keywords that have good search volume and fits your target audience.

3. Another PR basic but often gets overlooked is to make sure your release in written in the third-person and you include 1-3 quotes about the main person the release is built around. Don't forget to use spell check and proof your release. If there are spelling or grammatical errors, it will ruin your credibility. Remember to include only one or two links to your website at the bottom of the release, such as, "to read the full article or schedule interviews, contact at (add your web address)."

4. Recycle your enewsletter content through press releases. Take editorial content and repurpose it to be exciting, newsworthy, and consumer driven. You can often use the same copy with minor edits for flow and format.

5. If you use a PR Distribution service like PRWeb or Business Wire (for a nominal fee), in addition to online media your release will also be available to traditional media which includes major national and regional print publications. However, there's plenty of effective, free online services that I like to us such as www.PRlog.org, www.free-press-release.com, and www.i-newswire.com.

So don’t overlook the power of the press release. As I always say, if you’re a strategic and creative thinker, you’ll be able to increase your business objectives for practically pennies!~

10 "must ask" questions when doing a media buy

If you’re buying banner ads or other advertising spots on a website, it’s key to find out a few things before you sign your insertion order:


1. Competitive analysis. What’s the industry rates for that particular ad spot and placement?
2. Competitive analysis. What ad units typically get the best click thru rates?
3. Publisher placement. Will my ad be "run of site" (ROS), which is home page and sub pages and typically the most cost effective, on targeted subpages, or on the home page?
4. Ad targeting. Does the publisher allow day parting (running ad during specific time periods)?
5. Publisher placement. Will my ad position be fixed or rotated (shared) with anyone else’s ad?
6. Publisher placement. If shared, what percentage of impressions (or views) will I receive?
7. Dedicated email. Find out the size of the list you’re thinking of renting, the frequency the list goes out, and the average unit sale (AUS) per subscriber.
8. Dedicated email. Will there be a lift note (an introduction or implied endorsement)? Lift notes often help open and conversion rates.
9. Out clause. Does the agreement allow an out clause or termination right? Can I pause my ad during a "slow traffic time" (i.e. summer, holidays) as not to waste impressions?
10. Reporting. Will I be given daily/weekly reporting OR access to (the publishers) online ad serving system?

All of these factors will help determine the value of your ad space, and ultimately, the cost you’re willing to pay to access that audience.

PPC testing

Next time you have a concept or direct mail package you are about to launch, test it on PPC (Google, Yahoo, MSN) first. This is a great way to gauge general market sentiment that is cost effective and fast. Create your ads (if you already have headlines from a direct mail package, use 'em in PPC before your mail) and run them for about a 2-week period. You'll have an idea at the end of the testing period, based on clicks and conversions (or lack thereof), how your package may perform before it mails. Having this insight will help save you money and allow you to tweak copy, offer, landing page and other important conversion elements.

Targeted PPC Ads are as Easy as 1,2,3...

For targeted search marketing, consider using niche PPC networks like Adbrite.

Just as Google’s "site targeteing" allows you to pick where you would like your ad to be displayed, AdBrite has specialized sites/publishers that host text ads and banner ads on their site.

You simply create your ad, upload target URL, select your bid price (cost per click) and select which sites in the network you’d like your ad to run on.

Your bid price and click thru rate will affect your ad placement and frequency. This is a great way to target sites and test the same creative in multiple formats (ie. banner ads vs. text ads).