There are three crucial factors in internet marketing that determine whether you’ll succeed or remain among the dreamers of internet riches. Without these three factors, your website is just a useless pile of files, taking up space on some server in the Internet.

There are three crucial factors in internet marketing that determine whether you’ll succeed or remain among the dreamers of internet riches. Without these three factors, your website is just a useless pile of files, taking up space on some server in the Internet.

What are these factors?

They are traffic, conversion, and the long-term value of your customers.

Traffic

If nobody visits your site, nobody will buy anything from you – it’s close to common sense. Without traffic, a website is like dead weight. So, your primary and first task (even more important than the modern design of your site and the fancy plugins you’ve installed from the internet) is to ensure visitors to your site. The more, the better.

It’s also important what kind of traffic you attract to your site. It can be untargeted and targeted. General (untargeted) traffic usually doesn’t do you any good – they’re aimless visitors just browsing around. Targeted traffic is the one that will bring you more sales and success. These are visitors who are looking for something specific and find it on your site.

Conversion

No matter how much traffic you have, if you don’t use it, it’s useless. Yes, having a popular website brings you some satisfaction, but nothing more.

So, the pages of your website are usually used to make the visitor do something – to buy a product, order a service, fill out a form with data, or perform another action desired by you.

The more visitors to the site perform this action, the higher your conversion rate. It is measured in percentages, and the formula is as follows: % Conversion = (number of desired actions taken / number of visitors) * 100, %

Here’s an example: If you sell your new e-book from your site and have 180 visitors a day, of which 2 buy it, then your conversion rate is (2/180)*100 = 1.1%.

A normal conversion rate is considered to be within 1-3%, a good one – 5%. If you have over 10% conversion, you can consider yourself a marketing guru. Of course, conversion depends on many factors—these values are just indicative.

Customer‘s Lifetime Value

If a visitor buys a product from your online store and then you manage to build a relationship with them—helping them, sending them useful information, building a strong brand—then they will buy from you many times over time. In other words, their value to your business is not just in the first purchase but in all the money they will spend with you over time.

There are various ways to increase the long-term value of your customers, but they all go through building mutual trust, adequate communication, and customer care.

Here’s an example: If a visitor buys your book for $20 and you do nothing to retain them, their value to you is $20. But if you manage to turn them into your “fan,” make them trust you, make them happy with you, then they may buy your home study course for $199 and participate in your live seminars for $490. And then recommend you to another 10-20 of their friends who make purchases from you for similar amounts. As you can see, the value of the customer to you becomes $20 + $199 + $490 = $709, with the effect of recommendations being even greater.

As an online entrepreneur and marketing specialist, you have three main tasks to bring your business to success.

1. Increase traffic to your site.

2. Increase the conversion of your offers.

3. Increase the long-term value of your customers.

It seems simple, but it’s not. It seems easy, but it’s not. It seems small—just three things—but it’s not!

Nowadays, with drastically increasing competition in practically all areas of life and business, personal branding is becoming ever more crucial for success. I’ll try to shed some light on how important branding is for each of us—from employees to entrepreneurs, from yoga instructors to mafia bosses.

What is a Brand?

My observations suggest that your personal brand is that thing, your thing, that sets you apart from the competitive crowd in the eyes of your audience. I read in a book that your brand is the word you’ve reserved in people’s heads. Even if it’s not just one word, it’s crucial that it’s something focused. And here is where our deliberate efforts come in. “Jack of all trades” isn’t always a good and useful brand for us.

Also, there’s something very important—if we don’t proactively take care of building our brand, others will do it for us. And we might not like the result.

Examples of good personal brands include:

• “The best Facebook marketing expert.”

• “The youthful-looking guy with abs who dances with models on Instagram.”

• “The master of the backhand.”

• “The guy you go to when you want breast implants.”

Here are a few examples of negative personal branding that some people allow to “build itself” instead of working on it:

• “The guy who always has reasons why something can’t be done.”

• “The creep who treats women poorly.”

• “The quitter who gives up when it gets tough.”

• “The guru who has no real experience in his field, only theories and chest-thumping.”

• “The dietitian caught eating pizza.”

As you can see, brands come in all sorts. How do you build a brand? By doing things in a way that defines us as we want to be seen by others (and as we truly are inside). A fake brand quickly cracks, so I wouldn’t advise anyone to pretend to be something they’re not.

If we have to summarize about branding:

First: Be someone and know it. From being a good parent to a record-breaking runner, know your superpower.

Second: Express your true self in every situation. Show your real self, not a fake and powdered mask. Be a role model.

Third: Carefully choose your audience. You don’t need to build your brand on a global scale. It’s enough to select the community where you want to shine.

Thinking about the third point, let’s consider more about the audiences, the communities where we try to build our brand.

Who Are Your Audiences?

What is an audience? In this context, it means the people before whom we express our brand and try to engrave it in their minds.

How do you show you’re a solid manager? By acting like one with your team and colleagues.

How do you build a brand as the best gastroenterologist? Treat patients and give your all, and don’t forget a little self-promotion where potential patients gather.

How do you become the greatest dad? By behaving appropriately with your children every minute and enjoying it.

How do people start thinking of you as the best designer? Do great designs? Work 14-18 hours a day. Keep up with the latest. Strive for perfection in every project. Your audience is your clients.

The key takeaway here is that it’s not necessary (and sometimes not possible) to build a personal brand that is recognized and established in the minds of people nationally or globally. We’re not always interested in being known by millions. Often, it’s about two or twenty people, but those who are important to us.

Why Is Personal Branding Important for You?

We don’t need to be professors in philosophical or logical sciences to realize a simple fact:

“People judge us and decide what to do with us—what to say, whether to help us, whether to meet with us, etc.—based on what they know and think about us.”

If they know nothing about us, their reaction is not under our control. If they know bad things, they won’t react in our favor. But if they know what we want them to know about us, then we can expect (with a great likelihood) the reaction we need.

This applies in professional circles, at the workplace, in business, as well as in personal life and relationships with friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and relatives.

I can even give an example from high school. When you’ve built a reputation as the “good boy” and you get into trouble where it’s unclear who is at fault, the slaps aren’t yours to receive (“it couldn’t possibly be Borilcho who did it”), but someone else involved, especially if one of the suspects has a “bad boy” reputation.

Whenever we deal with people, their reaction depends on their perceptions, emotions, and their impressions. If we’ve positioned ourselves correctly there, we can expect a much easier life and work.

Personal brand and reputation are why some people always find closed (or slamming) doors, while others never step off the red carpet of success.

Let’s now look at some specific cases…

Applications of Personal Branding and Reputation

How can a good brand make our life and work easier, and how can a bad one darken our daily life? Here are a few ideas.

Job hunting

If you have a reputation and are known for your skills in a certain area—for instance, you have a blog on the subject, are active in the community, and have your own stance—even a cursory glance from your future boss/interviewer will set you apart from other candidates. Not to mention cases where, based on that reputation, you might not even need to look for a job because top employers invite you, even compete for you.

Promotion and career

Working in an organization is also linked to building a personal brand—within that organization—in the eyes of colleagues and management. If you’re “the lazy one who slacks off,” you’ll hardly get a promotion or bonus. If you’re “the cool guy who works like a machine,” you’ll always get what you want, and easily.

Freelance professions

It’s an understatement to say that personal brand and reputation are important for freelancers and professionals. It’s practically everything. A good reputation brings new clients. A bad one turns even existing ones away.

Consultants and coaches

I mention consultants and coaches separately because, realistically, their product is their reputation. They sell themselves and their brand. While a designer who isn’t very good at self-promotion might still show beautiful designs, a consultant can only rely on their reputation.

Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are people of character. To a large extent, this character builds their reputation. But a personal brand like “the jerk who doesn’t pay suppliers on time” or “the fox who has cheated dozens of his clients” are not the associations we want.

Managers

A manager’s authority is his personal brand. And his audience—his team and peers, as well as – of course – those above him. Your subordinates will treat you and be as motivated as you’ve inspired them with your personal presence. Your colleagues—managers and directors—will be as cooperative as you’ve commanded their respect. Your bosses will include you in bonus schemes more likely if they like you but also respect you.

Public figures

What to say here. All public figures float on the clouds of their reputation and personal brand. If those clouds dissipate, the fall is long and—ultimately—painful.

Experts (doctors, specialists)

Do you know a doctor (or another type of therapist) who books appointments for two months in advance and you literally can’t get in line? This is the result of a built personal brand and reputation. Have you seen posts in forums saying how incompetent a certain expert is? That’s the result of poorly managed personal branding and—primarily—the lack of integrity in its expression.

In summary—personal branding and reputation are important factors for our life, career, and business. Pretending they don’t apply to us doesn’t change things. It just leaves this important asset in the hands of others, instead of taking charge to shape and manage it ourselves.

The time dedicated to developing ourselves and building a personal brand and reputation is an investment that pays off richly over the years. Neglecting this treasure, however, can collapse entire careers.

As you may know, simply sending emails to people might have some effect, but we want results, achievements, influence. We don’t want to waste our time or that of our recipients.

Sometimes, a one-time send is useful and appropriate, such as for a regular newsletter, reminder, or flash promotion.

However, if we want to launch a marketing campaign, we’ll need a series of messages, each with its own role.

From my experience, I can say that I most often use three types of campaigns. I’ve even named them:

Campaign 1: Atomic Bomb

Here, we rely on one main email message, but it is simultaneously supported across all our available channels. For example, we want to announce the launch of a new collection of women’s handbags. In this strategy:

• We prepare a special page on our store, showcasing the products from the collection.

• We prepare a blog post presenting the collection.

• We send an email campaign to our subscribers, announcing the collection and providing a brief summary and links to the blog post and collection page.

• We publish corresponding posts on Facebook, Instagram, and prepare stories and reels.

• We notify all influencers and partners we work with with a separate message.

• We arrange interviews with several podcasts, websites, and YouTube channels.

• We launch a Facebook/Instagram campaign for the new collection.

The idea is that the synergistic effect of communicating the campaign across all channels will reach a critical point and significantly increase conversion rates.

Of course, the key points here are:

• Timing synchronization.

• Unified visual and text communication.

This type of campaign can be combined with others without problems, as one of their stages.

Campaign 2: Earthquake

As you know, earthquakes often have one main tremor and then additional smaller ones, like an echo. This is the idea behind this type of campaign.

• We send the main message.

• We send reminder messages at specific intervals.

An advanced version of this campaign involves personalized and automated reminder messages depending on the recipient’s reaction to the main message.

An example of such a campaign is promoting a webinar:

• First, we announce the webinar.

• As the date and time approach, we send several reminders to registered participants.
  Another application of this strategy is when we send “cold” emails and then follow up and remind recipients, trying to get them to respond.

Campaign 3: The Hero’s Journey

This is the most complex type of campaign and requires very good timing coordination. It is built on the principle of gradual unfolding and reaching a climax. And after the climax, there is a post-campaign effect and actions.

Here’s an example of such a campaign:

• Announcement: We announce our upcoming event, such as a seminar, and present it in a blog post and a follow-up email.

• Attracting attention: We send a useful resource to our subscribers and try to create reciprocity.

• Engagement: We send an interesting survey or quiz to gather information and wake up our recipients from lethargy and get them to take a specific action.

• Creating urgency: Reminding that after a certain date, there will be changes in conditions – price increase, removal of bonuses, limitations on the number of spots, etc.

• Accelerating the pace: Conducting the webinar or LIVE session and announcing a special offer within the campaign, valid only for 24-72 hours, but very advantageous.

• Pressure: Reminding webinar participants about the expiration of the special offer and urging them to join.

• Final push: Reminding that the campaign’s end is approaching and the “disaster” will happen (price increase, closing doors, removal of bonuses, etc.).

• Impact: Fulfilling our promise and raising the price, removing bonuses, etc., as we said. If we don’t keep this and compromise with the “latecomers,” we lose credibility, like parents who initially forbid chocolate but give in when the child cries, giving them candies too.

• Finishing move: After the “big event,” we make a final offer, also valid for a very short time, not as advantageous as the original, but still quite good.

As you can see, the campaign unfolds, tension increases, and so does the recipients’ engagement.

The important thing is not to overdo the messages and to carefully craft each one. We don’t want our recipients to unsubscribe or report us as spam, right in the middle of our campaign, do we?

What do you think? Is any of these strategies applicable to your activities? Have you used any of them? Do you think they will be useful to you in the future?

Recently, I asked my audience to share what topics related to email marketing interest them. I expected everything to revolve around list building or improving open rates.

Imagine my surprise when, after analyzing and summarizing the received questions, I ended up with a list of 125 pressing topics.

Here they are:

• How to keep the audience interested without being annoying? How to be useful and wanted? To be effective without being irritating.

• How to use tags – examples with Mailchimp and MailerLite?

• How to always land in the inbox (for an online store)? Strategy and tactics.

• What is the real benefit of email marketing? Where and how to apply it to leverage its advantages?

• Segmentation – strategies and tactics?

• How to write successful subject lines and email marketing copy in general?

• Best practices to avoid ending up in spam folders?

• How to design emails correctly?

• Strategies and tactics for building a large email list? Finding leads through different channels and in various ways?

• Open rates – strategies and tactics to increase them; what can we achieve and what not?

• Advantages and disadvantages of leading platforms? Comparison? Review? Presentation of each platform.

• Does anyone read email newsletters at all? (Do it with new statistics and make it sound fun)

• Application of email marketing for non-commercial purposes, NGOs?

• How often should an email newsletter be sent? (Example for a clothing store).

• Email marketing automation related to artificial intelligence and machine learning?

• How long will we continue to fall for marketing? How long will marketing be a big lie and manipulation instead of simply presenting a quality product? (Cries for a funny video with many funny examples).

• How to structure emails? (For different types)

• What content to include in newsletters and emails?

• New trends in email marketing? How has it changed over the years? History of email marketing and practical-oriented trends and changes?

• Will messengers replace email marketing? Comparison between email marketing and messenger marketing. Trends, future, and applications of both.

• How to prepare an email marketing plan for an online store – frequency, structure, content.

• Most successful and effective practices and applications of email marketing.

• How to improve the deliverability of your emails?

• Ratio of useful to commercial content so people don’t unsubscribe or close? Is a mix necessary? Different segments, different content?

• Gamification in email marketing?

• Out-of-the-box campaigns?

• How to avoid being pushy with your email marketing and at the same time make your campaigns successful?

• Trends in email marketing for 2022 and beyond?

• How to track campaign effectiveness, how to interpret the data and make decisions for improvement?

• How to overcome the fear that your email newsletter (campaigns) will be perceived as spam?

• How does email marketing technically work? Building the technical process from scratch with different tools?

• Processes and procedures in email marketing? Email Marketing OPR.

• Psychology of email marketing?

• Appropriate form of address in emails?

• Volume/length of emails we send?

• How to increase sales with email marketing?

• Tips from email marketing experience? Case studies.

• Automated sequences – strategies, types, approach, building?

• How to send successful cold emails?

• How to ensure targeted traffic from people ready to sign up for our email list?

• What to do if we can’t speak good English but want to sell in the USA?

• How to write attractive emails? Email copywriting?

• How to gather an email database if you don’t have a website?

• How to use email marketing if you have a small list or almost none?

• Is Mailchimp still worth it? How has email marketing changed in the last 4-5 years?

• Effective strategies for email marketing with declining open rates? To examine cases where our open rate increases. Show statistics on whether it’s declining globally.

• How do mail servers work? What does each function lead to?

• Personalization in email marketing – strategies, tactics, examples, tools?

• Advanced email marketing automation?

• A/B testing approaches in email marketing?

• Email design – strategies, tactics, best practices.

• What to watch out for if using an external email marketing consultant?

• Should we use a mailing service from an external company?

• Integrations of Mailchimp (and other platforms) and how to use them?

• How to structure an email marketing campaign? Types of campaigns?

• Transactional emails for online stores and how to use them as part of your email marketing?

• How to avoid spam when receiving emails and how not to be considered spammers when sending them?

• The place of email marketing in the marketing mix of different types of businesses and organizations?

• Should we hire an external email marketing expert or handle it ourselves? Which is better?

• Is email marketing effective today and in what ways?

• Email marketing in the tourism and hospitality sector? (I have no experience)

• What is double opt-in and why is it important?

• Automation with Mailchimp? Specifics? Concrete examples, applications, strategies?

• What is the one thing people always respond positively to in emails? What makes them wait for our emails with interest?

• Why does my email go to spam?

• Is it appropriate to start communication with an email?

• Is it appropriate to send a company presentation via email?

• Technical details of email marketing? Hard bounce, etc.

• Effective ways to get feedback and survey audience interests?

• When is an email campaign considered successful?

• Email marketing before and after COVID? Successful practices, examples? What has changed and what has remained the same?

• How to attract more interested subscribers (potential clients) instead of owning bought email lists?

• How to quickly and easily manage a weekly newsletter? Strategies, tactics, process, automation options?

• How to choose an email marketing platform?

• How to manage a brand’s email marketing?

• Interesting ideas for attractive email marketing?

• How to organize and manage subscriber lists?

• How to find topics interesting for our audience?

• How to optimize email marketing – strategies and tactics?

• How does email marketing work?

• Optimization of processes and improving the service through personalization?

• What is the difference between people wanting to receive messages from us and us thinking they need these messages?

• How to reach people who need our messages without going through spam strategies?

• How can our message reach more people?

• Ethical issues: how much does email marketing invade people’s privacy and is it relevant to their needs and interests?

• Unconventional ideas in email marketing?

• How many links, how many images should there be in a newsletter and how long should it be?

• How to reach people who don’t even open their emails?

• What does an email marketing specialist need to know to start in a position responsible for email marketing?

• Useful and current information related to GDPR?

• B2B email marketing?

• How to reach emails via LinkedIn? SalesQL and its alternatives?

• How to analyze email recipient behavior?

• How to define the audience for each of our messages?

• Email marketing automation for online stores. Conditional workflows.

• How to formulate the needs of a potential client to build steps to achieve their goals through my product?

• Statistics and infographics for the most effective things in email marketing in 2022 – length, design, images, approach, frequency, etc.

• Small tricks in email marketing?

• How to make our images display by default when sending a newsletter?

• How to establish tolerance levels for receiving emails for people from Bulgaria and the region?

• How to choose the right tone for email marketing communication? How to set a semi-formal tone for people we don’t know?

• Should there be emotion in emails or not?

• How to request feedback with an email marketing campaign?

• Regular and predictable emails or variable sending frequency?

• How can email marketing be used for network business?

• How can I influence a client with an email?

• What is the cost of email marketing and what is its efficiency, return?

• How to migrate between different platforms and have proof that the emails are legitimately collected?

• Using GIF animation in email campaigns? Is it appropriate? In which cases? How is it visualized on different platforms?

• The dilemma: newsletter subscribers don’t buy, non-subscribed store customers actually buy?

• What is the effective ratio of images to text to achieve the desired action?

• Advanced strategies to increase the placed order rate?

• How to deal with low CTR?

• How to reduce the bounce rate?

• How to collect email addresses from clients when they prefer to order by phone? How do we know they prefer to order by phone?

• Why is SendGrid such a clunky platform?

• Mistakes and problems when creating email campaigns with Mailchimp?

• Working scripts for writing successful sales offers with email marketing?

• How to increase subscriber engagement?

• How to prepare the perfect follow-up email for those who didn’t open the first one?

• How to attract more loyal subscribers?
  —

Is there anything you want to add?

We all know that overplanning is not good. Action is needed. However, jumping in without figuring things out is not advisable either. This applies to email marketing as well.

I will share the main elements of an email marketing strategy and the basic decisions we need to make (understand: “problems to solve”) for each element:

Technical Setup

• What will be the primary email marketing tool you will use?

• What tools will you use for testing and optimization?

• What tools will you use for tracking and analysis?

• How will you ensure that all these tools work well together?

Database Building

• What lead magnets will you use to build your database?

• Where and how will you position the signup form?

• What channels will you use to promote the form and gather new subscribers?

• How will you ensure that you obtain real, quality leads?

Targeting/Segmentation

• What are the demographic characteristics of the people you want to send your messages to?

• What are their interests? What do they want to read, watch, buy?

• What is their usual behavior? Regarding email campaigns? Online? While shopping?

• How will you provide suitable information as you build your database so you can target your emails precisely to the desired audience?

Content Strategy

• What types of emails do you plan to send? Useful information? News and events? Discounts and promotions? In what ratio?

• What will be the visual style of your email campaigns? Plain text? Clean with minimal images? Text and visuals – almost equally balanced? Predominantly images?

• What will be the structure of your messages? Like a regular letter? Action-oriented with a clear call to action at the end? Multiple sections and links, newsletter-style?

Dynamics

• What will be the frequency of sending your campaigns?

• What time will you send the newsletters?

• On which days of the week will you send them?

• What will be the process? One campaign/send-off? A series of messages? Branching?

Improvement Strategy

• Which metrics will you track and how often? How?

• What reports will you prepare for email marketing, how often, with whom will you discuss them, and how will you proceed afterward?

• How will you organize the planning and implementation of improvement measures derived from the analyses?

—

As you can see, many things need to be considered. Think about the questions. Can you come up with some of the answers (or all of them)?