Email marketing

Email list building Strategies

While there are voices that talk of email being a not-so-sought after technology anymore, the truth is that email still works fine for people who know the actual benefits of it. Email marketing provides the most direct line of communication for turning leads into sales, which is why the most noteworthy entrepreneurs are in no mood to give it up at any cost. Social networks can be a good avenue to bring people to your website. But, you have to still continue to communicate with them, for which email is the viable choice. This can give you a good idea that email continues to be important in the present day dominated by social media. Here in the article, we talk about actions that will help build your email lists; Build Your Loyal Fans Early in the life of a website, it is necessary to get on to sites which are more popular than you by saying – “Hey, I love your post; I would like to contribute a post”.  After having published the post, at the bottom you need to ensure you tell them to come to your site for more cool content and link it to your site. This strategy accomplishes three tasks – you have put material in front of people who do not know you, second you have gone to a site that is bigger than you and get more exposure and third, you have shown people a way to come to your site. Mostly people who read your guest blog will like it and come to your site and ideally become your subscribers. Provide Amazing Content on the site Everything begins with content. People will find a website based on good content. Once you impress the reader, the next step could be to ask for email address. The good content on the website will help them stay subscribed.  Once the reader subscribes to your site, they will receive the updates as soon as you post them on your website. Offer your readers something in exchange for their email In this strategy, you need to offer more than just ‘updates’. The idea is to solve one of the problems, which the audience is facing and help them with a free download. You can offer any one of the following: EBook, workbook, templates, checklist, cheat sheet, email course, video course or a newsletter. It is not necessary that you always give an EBook (Find out Tips to steer your small business with an e-book); you can also give something smaller like a checklist or template because they make the process a lot quicker to implement. Provide Call to action link easily visible It is very hard to find a call to action on some websites because of the clutter on them. It is always better to put subscribe buttons to be placed on top of the websites. Keep your offers upfront and include a call to action on every page on the website. Key places to consider are your website’s homepage, the main page of the blog, ‘About us’ page and ‘Contact us’ page. Promote Your Email Newsletter on Social Media Most of the marketing services like MailChimp offer Facebook integrations. You can create a form within the mail client, sync it up to Facebook, and it will create a tab on your Facebook page. People who like your page can subscribe on the spot, without having to visit your website. Popups Popups are a great way to get in front of the user and encourage them to subscribe. This exercise asks for reaching the people at the right time- such as when returning visitor lands on the site after the visitor has seen a certain amount of pages or right before they plan to exit the website. Large companies like Xerox are able to deliver on great results by sticking to the Popup strategy. Do you find the entire process to be overwhelming? Outsource it to a Virtual Assistant and focus on business growth. It is a choice that is within your hands. You can either do the all the above-mentioned process yourself or you can outsource it to a virtual administrative assistant. The assistant will ensure that most of the processes being talked about in the blog would be taken care off by a hired virtual assistant. This will not only save time but also ensure you have the bigger picture in mind for your business. You will only be involved with parts of the business which takes it forward rather than getting involved in the nitty-gritty of the business. These are some of the processes that will help you in building the email list building strategies. The thing to remember is that following these measures will make your website an effective sales magnet for your business.

Email list building Strategies Read More »

While there are voices that talk of email being a not-so-sought after technology anymore, the truth is that email still works fine for people who know the actual benefits of it. Email marketing provides the most direct line of communication for turning leads into sales, which is why the most noteworthy entrepreneurs are in no mood to give it up at any cost. Social networks can be a good avenue to bring people to your website. But, you have to still continue to communicate with them, for which email is the viable choice. This can give you a good idea that email continues to be important in the present day dominated by social media. Here in the article, we talk about actions that will help build your email lists; Build Your Loyal Fans Early in the life of a website, it is necessary to get on to sites which are more popular than you by saying – “Hey, I love your post; I would like to contribute a post”.  After having published the post, at the bottom you need to ensure you tell them to come to your site for more cool content and link it to your site. This strategy accomplishes three tasks – you have put material in front of people who do not know you, second you have gone to a site that is bigger than you and get more exposure and third, you have shown people a way to come to your site. Mostly people who read your guest blog will like it and come to your site and ideally become your subscribers. Provide Amazing Content on the site Everything begins with content. People will find a website based on good content. Once you impress the reader, the next step could be to ask for email address. The good content on the website will help them stay subscribed.  Once the reader subscribes to your site, they will receive the updates as soon as you post them on your website. Offer your readers something in exchange for their email In this strategy, you need to offer more than just ‘updates’. The idea is to solve one of the problems, which the audience is facing and help them with a free download. You can offer any one of the following: EBook, workbook, templates, checklist, cheat sheet, email course, video course or a newsletter. It is not necessary that you always give an EBook (Find out Tips to steer your small business with an e-book); you can also give something smaller like a checklist or template because they make the process a lot quicker to implement. Provide Call to action link easily visible It is very hard to find a call to action on some websites because of the clutter on them. It is always better to put subscribe buttons to be placed on top of the websites. Keep your offers upfront and include a call to action on every page on the website. Key places to consider are your website’s homepage, the main page of the blog, ‘About us’ page and ‘Contact us’ page. Promote Your Email Newsletter on Social Media Most of the marketing services like MailChimp offer Facebook integrations. You can create a form within the mail client, sync it up to Facebook, and it will create a tab on your Facebook page. People who like your page can subscribe on the spot, without having to visit your website. Popups Popups are a great way to get in front of the user and encourage them to subscribe. This exercise asks for reaching the people at the right time- such as when returning visitor lands on the site after the visitor has seen a certain amount of pages or right before they plan to exit the website. Large companies like Xerox are able to deliver on great results by sticking to the Popup strategy. Do you find the entire process to be overwhelming? Outsource it to a Virtual Assistant and focus on business growth. It is a choice that is within your hands. You can either do the all the above-mentioned process yourself or you can outsource it to a virtual administrative assistant. The assistant will ensure that most of the processes being talked about in the blog would be taken care off by a hired virtual assistant. This will not only save time but also ensure you have the bigger picture in mind for your business. You will only be involved with parts of the business which takes it forward rather than getting involved in the nitty-gritty of the business. These are some of the processes that will help you in building the email list building strategies. The thing to remember is that following these measures will make your website an effective sales magnet for your business.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing Read More »

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Focus is one of the biggest secrets to success. So, start focusing on the core tasks of your business. But, what if you have a long, boring list of trivial tasks to handle before you can even begin to focus on the core tasks? What if you are too confused and can’t figure out what you should be focusing on? Aren’t these questions becoming barriers to your business growth? Today, many start-ups and small business owners suffer from the ‘superhero syndrome’ -a condition where business owners believe they can take on anything and everything on their own! While taking responsibility for your business is good, juggling too many hats at the same time, could eventually lead to your downfall, as you slowly begin to lose focus on the core tasks and what you should ideally be concentrating on as a business owner. You start dissipating your valuable resources across trivial tasks which can be better taken care of by someone else. This is where the need for a convenient solution arises. If you are seriously looking at business growth or a balanced, personal life, you must think of hiring a Virtual Assistant. Now, before you get all excited and make a hasty decision of hiring a Virtual Assistant, ask yourself if there are aspects of your life that you need a break from and if there is a long list of other activities that you need to focus on. Once you have filtered out the activities that are best handled by a third party provider like an outsourcing company, you can then finally get down to hiring a Virtual Assistant.If you are new to outsourcing and don’t know where to tread yet, let us take a look at some of the tasks that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. Managing e-mails Managing e-mails can be a whale of a job. Sifting through junk and responding to countless e-mails can eat into a good chunk of your productive time. Consider outsourcing e-mail management to a reliable virtual assistant. It will free up a lot more of your time than you would have imagined. Trust us! Bookkeeping We all know how monotonous bookkeeping can get. It involves the time-consuming process of recording bills, invoices, payments etc. Imagine how much you can achieve in your business or personal life with the free time you get after outsourcing bookkeeping tasks to your virtual assistant! Numbers can get harrowing and with a Virtual Assistant in the picture, you won’t have to worry about one more complicated entry or computation. Online Research     Online research is another important task that many individuals and businesses carry out in their day to day lives. It also consumes a good fraction of your precious time. Online research, if outsourced, can earn you that much-needed time to focus on the activities that matter the most to you and that are crucial to your business. Travel and trip arrangement We all know how much effort goes into planning a journey. One may face a lot of hurdles along the way when it comes to booking a hotel to suit the budget, hiring a taxi, booking cheap flight tickets and the like. With the help of a virtual assistant, focus on the destination and let your Virtual Assistant take care of all the nitty-gritties of making your journey a comfortable one. Setting Reminders/Calendar management A well-managed calendar can help you sail smoothly through the month. Setting reminders is also an integral part of a well-maintained schedule. Outsource your calendar management activities to a Virtual Assistant and rest assured you will never miss another important deadline or family event! Data Entry Data entry is a simple task but can be monotonous and tiresome. Consider outsourcing data entry to a Virtual Assistant. It will give you a lot more time to do the things you love.

Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant Read More »

Focus is one of the biggest secrets to success. So, start focusing on the core tasks of your business. But, what if you have a long, boring list of trivial tasks to handle before you can even begin to focus on the core tasks? What if you are too confused and can’t figure out what you should be focusing on? Aren’t these questions becoming barriers to your business growth? Today, many start-ups and small business owners suffer from the ‘superhero syndrome’ -a condition where business owners believe they can take on anything and everything on their own! While taking responsibility for your business is good, juggling too many hats at the same time, could eventually lead to your downfall, as you slowly begin to lose focus on the core tasks and what you should ideally be concentrating on as a business owner. You start dissipating your valuable resources across trivial tasks which can be better taken care of by someone else. This is where the need for a convenient solution arises. If you are seriously looking at business growth or a balanced, personal life, you must think of hiring a Virtual Assistant. Now, before you get all excited and make a hasty decision of hiring a Virtual Assistant, ask yourself if there are aspects of your life that you need a break from and if there is a long list of other activities that you need to focus on. Once you have filtered out the activities that are best handled by a third party provider like an outsourcing company, you can then finally get down to hiring a Virtual Assistant.If you are new to outsourcing and don’t know where to tread yet, let us take a look at some of the tasks that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. Managing e-mails Managing e-mails can be a whale of a job. Sifting through junk and responding to countless e-mails can eat into a good chunk of your productive time. Consider outsourcing e-mail management to a reliable virtual assistant. It will free up a lot more of your time than you would have imagined. Trust us! Bookkeeping We all know how monotonous bookkeeping can get. It involves the time-consuming process of recording bills, invoices, payments etc. Imagine how much you can achieve in your business or personal life with the free time you get after outsourcing bookkeeping tasks to your virtual assistant! Numbers can get harrowing and with a Virtual Assistant in the picture, you won’t have to worry about one more complicated entry or computation. Online Research     Online research is another important task that many individuals and businesses carry out in their day to day lives. It also consumes a good fraction of your precious time. Online research, if outsourced, can earn you that much-needed time to focus on the activities that matter the most to you and that are crucial to your business. Travel and trip arrangement We all know how much effort goes into planning a journey. One may face a lot of hurdles along the way when it comes to booking a hotel to suit the budget, hiring a taxi, booking cheap flight tickets and the like. With the help of a virtual assistant, focus on the destination and let your Virtual Assistant take care of all the nitty-gritties of making your journey a comfortable one. Setting Reminders/Calendar management A well-managed calendar can help you sail smoothly through the month. Setting reminders is also an integral part of a well-maintained schedule. Outsource your calendar management activities to a Virtual Assistant and rest assured you will never miss another important deadline or family event! Data Entry Data entry is a simple task but can be monotonous and tiresome. Consider outsourcing data entry to a Virtual Assistant. It will give you a lot more time to do the things you love.

Steps For Effective Lead Generation For Business Development

At GetFriday, one in five inquiries is about lead generation. Entrepreneurs and business owners are always seeking ways to generate leads. It could be perplexing to go through this phase of marketing operations. Though this sounds like the simplest of things in a business, this could in fact, be tricky to handle. A constant doubt lingers about the success of efforts and money being spent on lead generation activities. Click on the image below to see this blog in SlideShare presentation format. GetFriday has been assisting businesses for over 10 years now and we have seen our fair share of lead generation tasks that we have done for our clients – mostly small business owners. From our experiences with lead generation, here we list a few facts – Define Your Target Customers To begin with, you may ask is this not common sense? How is it even possible to generate a list without defining your target customers? Well yes, it is true most business owners define their target customers at the outset, but there are some who don’t. For instance, the common mistakes that could take place are – you may have asked for business development manager but instead, received an application from a marketing manager. The list may not distinguish the difference. Or instead of listing all dental surgeons in your area, you may have listed all the general surgeons in your area. Defining the target customer while generating leads must include a clear point-wise description of leads required and a list of points that state “don’ts”. A list with email address generic to firms eg: info@useless.com will not serve any purpose for you. Ensure you give clear instructions to search for alternate contact points. A good and clear definition of leads would look something like this – 1. Law firms within radius of 100 km of Greenville 2. Law firms must have employee strength of 10 – 15 people. 3. 1st preferred contact point is senior attorney. 4. 2nd preferred contact is junior attorney. 5. 3rd preferred contact is procurement officer. It Is A Hard-Work To Collect These Lists – Gather The Right Tools GetFriday has been in this business for 10 years now. And we can vouch that lead generation is hard work. But there are smart ways to handle this. There are ways through which, one can verify email addresses collected and tools that can help verify zip code authenticity. Databases could also be carefully mined for lists and tools like MS Excel can be employed to predict and source the most probable email ids. In case you delve into this without experience, you will surely learn it over time. But the cost of expensive time spent on this activity will not be worthwhile for your business. Instead, you would be doing a better job designing the marketing campaign details and fixing the operations for new customers that could be acquired through these lists. Is It Possible To Buy Your Way Through? Yes, you could buy your way through. If your business is a B2B, then you are lucky. The list may after all work. But if your list is B2C then you could end up annoying a lot of unknown people. All it does is exasperate people for having received one more mail from you, trying to sell something. If you are a business owner, you might relate to the analogy we have used here. How do you feel when you receive another mail about “best SEO service” or to source your products from some rural province in China? You would probably hire a virtual assistant right away to delete those e-mails even before you see them. Some GetFriday clients actually hire us for this! To delete those annoying, spam mails. So, why would the recipients of your mailing list feel any different? It fits Albert Einstein’s definition for insanity “doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result”. Generate A Long List It is mandatory that you generate a long list. The longer the prospect client’s list, the better the chances of success. Let us explain. Email campaigns and social media campaigns are about reaching your target audience at the right moment with the right offer. You can get your product offering right, but cannot predict the right moment. For example how do you predict the need for “buying shoes” or “buying handbags”? It is true there are seasonal increases in the sales of products. An example would be table ware sales before thanksgiving as people prepare to entertain family and friends. But the right moment cannot be predicted for most products and services. A larger leads/email list could increase chances of success by increasing the probability of reaching the right people at the right moment. Hire Virtual Assistants To Do The Work If you are a business owner or entrepreneur attempting to research and generate leads, the cost of lost time will be much higher for you. It is better to hire professionals to do this work. In case you still feel you must do it yourself, spend at least 10 minutes listening to this podcast “9 habits to stop now”, by Tim Ferris –http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/06/16/not-to-do-lists-drugs-and-other-productivity-tricks/ .

Steps For Effective Lead Generation For Business Development Read More »

At GetFriday, one in five inquiries is about lead generation. Entrepreneurs and business owners are always seeking ways to generate leads. It could be perplexing to go through this phase of marketing operations. Though this sounds like the simplest of things in a business, this could in fact, be tricky to handle. A constant doubt lingers about the success of efforts and money being spent on lead generation activities. Click on the image below to see this blog in SlideShare presentation format. GetFriday has been assisting businesses for over 10 years now and we have seen our fair share of lead generation tasks that we have done for our clients – mostly small business owners. From our experiences with lead generation, here we list a few facts – Define Your Target Customers To begin with, you may ask is this not common sense? How is it even possible to generate a list without defining your target customers? Well yes, it is true most business owners define their target customers at the outset, but there are some who don’t. For instance, the common mistakes that could take place are – you may have asked for business development manager but instead, received an application from a marketing manager. The list may not distinguish the difference. Or instead of listing all dental surgeons in your area, you may have listed all the general surgeons in your area. Defining the target customer while generating leads must include a clear point-wise description of leads required and a list of points that state “don’ts”. A list with email address generic to firms eg: info@useless.com will not serve any purpose for you. Ensure you give clear instructions to search for alternate contact points. A good and clear definition of leads would look something like this – 1. Law firms within radius of 100 km of Greenville 2. Law firms must have employee strength of 10 – 15 people. 3. 1st preferred contact point is senior attorney. 4. 2nd preferred contact is junior attorney. 5. 3rd preferred contact is procurement officer. It Is A Hard-Work To Collect These Lists – Gather The Right Tools GetFriday has been in this business for 10 years now. And we can vouch that lead generation is hard work. But there are smart ways to handle this. There are ways through which, one can verify email addresses collected and tools that can help verify zip code authenticity. Databases could also be carefully mined for lists and tools like MS Excel can be employed to predict and source the most probable email ids. In case you delve into this without experience, you will surely learn it over time. But the cost of expensive time spent on this activity will not be worthwhile for your business. Instead, you would be doing a better job designing the marketing campaign details and fixing the operations for new customers that could be acquired through these lists. Is It Possible To Buy Your Way Through? Yes, you could buy your way through. If your business is a B2B, then you are lucky. The list may after all work. But if your list is B2C then you could end up annoying a lot of unknown people. All it does is exasperate people for having received one more mail from you, trying to sell something. If you are a business owner, you might relate to the analogy we have used here. How do you feel when you receive another mail about “best SEO service” or to source your products from some rural province in China? You would probably hire a virtual assistant right away to delete those e-mails even before you see them. Some GetFriday clients actually hire us for this! To delete those annoying, spam mails. So, why would the recipients of your mailing list feel any different? It fits Albert Einstein’s definition for insanity “doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result”. Generate A Long List It is mandatory that you generate a long list. The longer the prospect client’s list, the better the chances of success. Let us explain. Email campaigns and social media campaigns are about reaching your target audience at the right moment with the right offer. You can get your product offering right, but cannot predict the right moment. For example how do you predict the need for “buying shoes” or “buying handbags”? It is true there are seasonal increases in the sales of products. An example would be table ware sales before thanksgiving as people prepare to entertain family and friends. But the right moment cannot be predicted for most products and services. A larger leads/email list could increase chances of success by increasing the probability of reaching the right people at the right moment. Hire Virtual Assistants To Do The Work If you are a business owner or entrepreneur attempting to research and generate leads, the cost of lost time will be much higher for you. It is better to hire professionals to do this work. In case you still feel you must do it yourself, spend at least 10 minutes listening to this podcast “9 habits to stop now”, by Tim Ferris –http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/06/16/not-to-do-lists-drugs-and-other-productivity-tricks/ .