You Must Do This to Sell to More Affluent Customers

Mass-affluent households, with net worth of $500,000 to $999,999 grew 6% from 2009 to 2010 and the number of ultra-affluent, with a net worth of more than $5 million, grew by 8%.

Overall, the number of U.S. millionaires remains below its 2007 peak of 9.2 million, so this growth is, in large part, not due to a recovery but more a demonstration of resilience.

Just to counter the theory that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, in 2010, the number of U.S. households with net worth of $100,000 or more hit an all-time high. You did not miss this in mainstream news coverage. It was not mentioned. They were too busy trying to convince you that everybody was being yanked out of their homes, living in cardboard boxes under bridges, or desperately in need of 99 weeks of unemployment welfare, while a handful of righ guys were making off with all the money.

When asked how they obtained their wealth, the vast majority of the affluent and ultra-affluent individuals cite hard work as the most important factor. Ultra-affluent, and affluent, individuals are most likely to have worked, and still work, 60 plus hours per week; while those with a net worth below $100,000 are less likely to work 60 hours per week.

This should NOT be taken as some big burst of optimism about the American economy as a whole but to the contrary.

There are several severe systemic weaknesses, past government mistakes being magnified rather than eliminated, and a majority of small business owners that are somewhere between being in a state of painful suffering to total downward spiral ... and as they go, so goes the entire economy. But with that said, each individual has the opportunity to manufacture his own economy, even one contrary to those of peers, of industry, and of the entire economy.

This is why it is important to continually push yourself to move to higher ground and market and sell to affluent customers or clients who are living in the resilient portions of the economy.

These customers, when they buy, make purchasing decisions not so much on price but more on service and support based on a relationship created with the seller ... and this is why email marketing is a fast, easy, affordable, and a key way to build that relationship and build your business.

Today's email marketing systems, with both Direct Broadcast messages but more importantly, an Auto-responding sequence of messages that are sent over a period of several days, are a channel by which you can capture prospects from your target market and keep customers.

You can send targeted messages, newsletters, and product information to both prospects and customers.

By using analytic capabilities of email marketing systems, you can quickly determine the effectiveness of your message to grow your business by monitoring which leads and customers open your emails, forward them to friends, and click on links.

Let's spend a minute to understand how email systems have evolved.

Many of us have experience with popular email systems like Outlook in Microsoft Office, or ccmail in IBM's Lotus Notes, or various webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo!Mail. We use these tools to enter contact information of a friend, family member, business associate, prospect, or customer onto a list; we author email messages; and we send the message to one or more members on our list.

Over the past few years, several new providers of email systems and services have appeared in the marketplace. They provide the capability to develop, manage, and deliver, online, emails to a list of subscribers in broadcast mode, just like the previous email systems. However, in addition to this broadcast capability, these email systems, offer a simple way to build a list and automatically respond by sending a sequence of pre-defined email messages.

Here is how they work.

Once a prospect provides, into an optin form, several simple pieces of information such as name, email address, and mobile phone number, the autoresponder capability begins. This functionality places the prospect's contact information into the list and begins automatically sending a sequence of pre-defined email messages such as letters, notices about events or activities, product information, or sales materials, to the prospect.

The key difference between the broadcast and autoresponder capabilities is summarized below.

Broadcasts emails are sent once, at a scheduled date and time. They can be written as far in advance as you would like, and you won't need to log into your account to send them; they'll be sent at the saved time you have requested.

Autoresponder emails are messages sent automatically, in a sequence. The first message in the sequence is sent immediately when someone subscribes to your list. That message is followed by a series of messages, each scheduled with a set amount of days in between.

For instance, the first follow up message could be an email sent welcoming subscribers; this way, a subscriber will receive a message, right away, acknowledging their addition to the list.

A second message could be sent two days later with a more detailed introduction about you and the product sold on your website. Three days later an email message giving more information on that product could be sent, and so on. This feature is sometimes referred to as drip mail as a series of pre-defined email message is dripped on the new subscriber to your list every day or so.

These messages help to build a relationship and trust over time with people who may have otherwise just visited your website once, never to be seen or heard from again. They are helpful for such things as marketing materials, training sequences, and answers to frequently asked questions. This technology is very useful to dramatically scale and leverage your marketing and sales time and efforts because the average sale comes after 7 email contacts.

Since the email marketing channel has no printing costs, no postage costs, no envelopes to stuff, and no paper costs, this channel will lower the costs to develop and market your business.

Plus, email marketing systems are permission-based. This means that by opting in to your list, a prospect is giving you permission to send email messages to them; anyone not interested in receiving your email messages can opt out of your list at any time. This means that the leads and customers remaining on your list are qualified prospects and the best targets for your business. They are truly interested in your message and what you have to offer them.

An email marketing system with both broadcast and autoresponder capability offers the lowest cost, most effective and targeted channel for small businesses around the world.

Several popular providers of the new email systems, offering both broadcast and autoresponder capabilities include Aweber, Constant Contact, Get Response, and MailChimp.

You must do email marketing to sell to more affluent customers!

This article and others that I publish, will continue to provide a blueprint for entrepreneurs and small businesses to make money online with Internet Marketing. Here you will find step-by-step road maps for various parts of the Internet Marketing business. You will find material that provides an entrepreneurial game plan generating a new approach to work, family, and lifestyle. You will find tools, education, training, and support. And you will find a community of like minded entrepreneurs that are using the Internet to get out of debt, build wealth, and secure their financial future forever.

Finally, a great book to read is NO BS Business Success In The New Economy by Dan Kennedy.

I Hope You Enjoy the Posts and I Trust You Will Find Them Insightful! Let me Know What You Think.

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