Thursday, March 29, 2007

What You Can Do With E-Mail That You Cannot Do With Your Business Stationery

Addition and removal instructions at the end of this message

THE ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTERS

March 28, 2007

By Dan Harley, Jr. - danharley@primeconcepts.net

Hello to another week of stimulating information about e-mail marketing. I’m a little late with this edition due to a power outage from the nasty storm that went through Southern California yesterday. My main computer took yesterday’s activity a little hard, and decided to take a break from working for a few hours. It’s back online thanks to a few cuss words and a claw hammer that I threatened to use if it didn’t start up again.

My subscription list for this newsletter continues to grow. For those of you reading my newsletter for the first time, I would like to direct your attention to the next article about why you’re receiving this newsletter and why I’m publishing it. I also continue to receive a steady flow of questions, which I’ll answer in the Q&A segment of this newsletter.

If you’re into cigars, socializing or simply don’t have much to do on a Thursday night, then you might be interested in another newsletter I publish for the Victor Valley Cigar Club. The Cigar Club is a group of friends who get together regularly to smoke cigars or drink or “B.S.”. Reply back if you’re interested in being on that mailing list.

This week, I’m going to discuss what you can do with e-mail that you cannot do with your snail mail correspondence and how to capitalize on this to market your business. If you are confused about today’s topic of discussion, it might be due to missing information from my previous articles. All of my previous newsletters can be on my blog at:

http://primeconcepts.blogspot.com/

I have a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

IS THIS YOUR FIRST TIME READING THIS NEWSLETTER?

First of all, I want to thank you for spending the time to read my newsletter, and I’m sure you will appreciate receiving my newsletter every week from now on. You have been included on a very private mailing list to receive this newsletter. I know you and everyone else on this mailing list personally, and manually managed to assure it remains private and will not be used for any other purpose.

I’m publishing this newsletter to teach my clients, friends and associates on how to capitalize on e-mail marketing for their business. E-mail marketing is an extremely powerful way to advertise and market your business that costs little or nothing to do. Unfortunately, spamming has created a lot of negativity on this form of marketing as well as a lot of misinformation about e-mail marketing. Most won’t do e-mail marketing despite the fact that of literally throwing away business. I’m hoping to correct that with you and the rest of my readers by publishing this weekly newsletter.

I provide common sense e-mail marketing strategies each week that my readers will be able to implement into their daily business operations right away. I’m also proving that e-mail marketing works by building on my own business success through this same newsletter. I reveal EVERYTHING of how I am doing this so you can do the same for yourself. Best of all, this information is FREE! I will teach you what I have learned from the many years of taking courses and seminars to hone my own skills as an Internet consultant and doing this for myself. Learning what I know will cost you is about ten minutes of your time to read my newsletter each week and then implementing the information that I’ve given you.

Thanks again for being one of my readers for my special newsletter!

Dan Harley, Jr.

GET A WEB SITE UP IN LESS THAN TWO DAYS!

For more information, contact me at: danharley@primeconcepts.net

Or call 760-247-4814

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Answering questions in a newsletter is an excellent way to provide very informative content to your newsletter readers. I encourage all of you to send me your questions, and I will gladly answer them in my future newsletters. Thanks to your input, this Q & A segment is a permanent fixture to this newsletter.

Q: What do you use to manage your mailing lists?

A: The subscription lists for my other newsletters are managed on an e-mail server configured to handle subscription lists. I’m in the process of upgrading this service to handle much larger subscription lists as well as volume, because I’m planning to offer this as a service to my clients who also have large subscription lists that require sophisticated management. However, the mailing list for this newsletter IS NOT on my e-mail server.

This mailing list is managed through Microsoft Outlook on my main computer, and this is done on purpose for a few reasons. I want to use the same tools that you could be using to manage your own mailing lists on your own computer. I’m also better able to manage details of the mailing list through Outlook than from the e-mail server.

Q: What is a blog?

A: This was a question in reference to my own blog for this newsletter. A blog is like an online journal. Use of blogs goes back before the Internet was established, and had been called “Web Logs” instead of blog. Modern use of blogs expands well beyond just being an online diary. Also, creating and managing blogs have become very easy to do now. Many blogs have become extremely popular, which has drawn more interest to blogs.

Blogger.com (http://blogger.com) is arguably the most popular place for blogs, and I have two of my own blogs there, which are:

PrimeConcepts Newsletters

http://primeconcepts.blogspot.com/

Dan Harley’s Ventures in Vietnam

http://danharley.blogspot.com/

Setting up and managing the blogs are free and very easy to do. I’ll cover blogs in more detail through a future article.

Q: How do you get to be good at the Internet?

A: The simple answer is to keep surfing the Internet. The more you use the Internet, the better you will get. There is a more detailed answer when it comes to conduction business in the Internet.

There is a marketing theory called “Infinity Marketing.” This theory basically states that any product or service will find a consumer if it is presented to an infinite number of potential customers. The Internet is the first business tool that could allow a business to reach an infinite number of potential customers around the world with lower costs compared to other forms of marketing. E-mail is by far the most used service on the Internet, which is one of the reasons why I’m publishing this newsletter for you.

Q: What can’t my wife come to America after I married her?

A: For the new readers, I regularly receive personal questions, which should indicate how close the readers on this mailing list are to me.

Marrying my wife is not an instant ticket for her or anyone else to come to America. We are in the middle of processing my wife’s K-3 visa, which usually takes a year to complete. We’re doing everything we can to speed up the process, and we’ve already been successful in shaving off a few months. Our original date for her to come to America was November 2007. Now, it looks like she will be here by no later than August 2007 or even as early as May 2007.

DOES YOUR WEB SITE SUCK?

DO YOU EVEN HAVE A WEB SITE?

I can fix that problem for you!

Contact me at: danharley@primeconcepts.net

Or call: 760-247-4814

WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH E-MAIL THAT YOU CANNOT DO WITH YOUR BUSINESS STATIONERY

By Dan Harley, Jr.

The Internet has changed the way we can do business in more ways that most anyone can imagine. However, we tend to get stuck into doing business as it has been conducted before the Internet. I had taken a business writing class in college that taught me the proper way to write business letters, memos, etc, which I had implemented in my business communications ever since. You have probably followed a similar path in your own business communications, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The difference now compared to what I was taught in college is the Internet and e-mail.

It has been ingrained in our heads to keep business communications brief and to the point, because we have been impressed for years of what is proper and professional. We are taught to communicate on paper, and the paper itself limits what are able to communicate. Your business stationery doesn’t allow for much more than two or three paragraphs of information after the letterhead, address, signature and other miscellaneous items are added. We are literally communicating within a box, which is the shape of your stationery if you haven’t notice. What you need to realize is e-mail doesn’t have a box to limit itself. In other words, it’s you should “think outside of the box” with your business e-communications.

This newsletter is a perfect example of breaking traditional business communications barriers. This newsletter would be six to seven pages if printed out. The information I’ve provided here could never fit on one piece of stationery. There are no such restrictions in e-mail. I have devised a strategy that capitalizes on this freedom, and the foundation of this strategy can work with anyone.

I have compiled dozens of form letters using a word processor and I’m constantly updating them. These form letters range from a brief introduction of my company and services to incredible amounts of information on products and services that I offer. I use these form letters to respond to just about any situation I encounter.

Some of you may already have a library of form letters for your business. If you don’t, then you should start building your form letter library right away. Whether you have a form letter library or not, you should look at your form letters from a perspective outside of the box, because your e-mail is no limited to eleven inches of paper.

You should at least have a form letter describing your business or service. You could add as much information as you need to support your business since you aren’t limited to space. A very good idea is to include some testimonials from your customers. Once you have this form letter ready, you can cut-and-paste it into e-mail in a matter of seconds. Imagine the reaction of your new prospects when receiving such e-mail compared to not receiving anything at all from you.

As an example of how far you can go with form letters, I’ve included one of my form letters concerning Apptomix towards the end of this newsletter. You will notice that it is very detailed with lots of information in it, and I’m constantly adding to it. I usually delete most of the content down to what I believe would interest the prospect before I send the e-mail to them. This way, it takes me about two minutes to provide the quality information that I want my prospect to have instead of three to four hours in creating it from scratch. This format and strategy is far from the traditional sales letter format that I was taught in college business communication class, but it is extremely effective.

I’m sure that I will be receiving a lot of questions on this subject, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Next week, I will discuss a very effective e-marketing strategy where you don’t even have to describe anything about your business or services. Keep those e-mails coming, and I will talk to you next week!

OPPORTUNITY OF THE WEEK!

If you read anything in this newsletter, you will want to read this segment. I will have an offer of some kind published here weekly. It could be discounts on my services. It could be coupons for free dinners. It could be opportunities to earn cold hard cash.

This week’s opportunity is a FREE INVITATION…

I will continue this opportunity for one more week because it has been very successful.

For those of you who live in the High Desert, you may have heard about the Victor Valley Cigar Club. The Cigar Club is an opportunity for many of my friends to get together. I invite you to join the cigar club mailing list and join in our debaucheries.

To join, all you have to do is reply back to this e-mail with JOIN CIGAR CLUB in the subject line. I will add you to the mailing list, and let you know when our next cigar social will be.

FORM LETTER EXAMPLE

A SMALL BUSINESS WEB SITE THAT CAN

MAKE YOU MONEY!!!

I am Dan Harley, Jr. and I want to tell you about an incredible product, which I know you’ll find to be a tremendous benefit to your business. The product is called Apptomix, and it could increase your business in ways that you would never imagine. It could increase your credibility. It could cut your advertising costs. It could create new streams of income. It could solve problems for your business. It could generate more return customers. It could make you lots of money!!! Let me explain why I think Apptomix is the best thing to happen on the Internet for small businesses.

I’ve worked with many businesses in making them successful on the Internet. I’ve done this for a long time, and I’m very good at what I do. Many of my clients make a lot of money because of my efforts, and I want you to be successful ion the Internet too. Before I tell you how to be successful and make a lot of money from the Internet, let me tell you a cold hard fact about small businesses and the Internet.

MOST SMALL BUSINESS WEB SITES FAIL…

I’ll be honest to tell you that I have had my share of failures, and almost all my failures had been with small business clients. I’ve analyzed the failures over the years to find out what goes wrong. It comes down to falling short of enough resources to succeed online.

Money is not the problem, but usually ends up as the reason why many small businesses abandon their Web sites and others don’t go forward to build one in the first place. I’ll be honest to tell you that it could cost a lot of money to build and maintain a successful customized Web site. However, my successful clients don’t mind spending the money on their Web site because they’re making a whole lot more from it. Like I said, money is not really the problem. The problems lie between where my new clients start at and where my successful clients are now.

A common issue with many of my small business clients is thinking that just having a Web site will make them successful on the Internet. Yes, a Web site is an important part of what will make you successful online, but not just any Web site will make you successful. You need a Web site that will extend your already successful business strategy.

You know your business better than anyone. You know what will make you money and what will be a waste of time. You know that spending money on a Web site just for the sake of having a Web site is an expense of time and money that you could use for things that will actually make you money. If you’re going to have a Web site then it must provide a positive benefit to your business. In other words, your Web site needs to be a tool for your business.

SMALL BUSINESSES NEED THEIR WEB SITE TO BE
A POWERFUL BUSINESS TOOL…

A small business Web site need to have lots of features, functions and flexibility that will allow you the ability to discover what will work for you. You need the capability of easily modifying and maintaining the Web site, and preferably to do it yourself. You need promotion tools to help you find new customers and keep in touch with existing ones. You need something that will help you reap the rewards that only the Internet has to offer. The downside of all this is translating what you know will be successful into a successful Web site.

The big problem is taking what you know and having a Web developer create a Web site that will generate success. Just like your business, it will take some time and creativity to develop a Web site that will be successful. This usually translates to spending a lot of money before you find the right formula. More often than not, the resources of a small business fall short of obtaining online success. Frustration, anguish and failure from all this is usually blamed on the Web developer (I know this very well) and any further thoughts of going online will seem ridiculous. This creates another problem.

Would you take a customer knowing that they will be mad at you in a couple months? You wouldn’t if you had a choice. That’s why good Web development companies will steer away from small businesses and especially start-ups. They don’t want to deal with the headaches of failure when their customer’s Web site doesn’t meet expectations. This leaves small business owners with fewer choices for good Web development service. Quite often, friends or family members with some technical skills try to fill the need, but eventually find out that developing a successful Web site is much more difficult that it appears. This leads to more failure and pretty much kills any ideas of taking a business online.

Why I know all of this is because most all of my small business clients have had similar experiences. They all have great ideas about expanding their businesses online, but don’t have the right or enough resources to turn those ideas into something successful. That is why Apptomix was created.

The Solution: Apptomix!!!

Apptomix is a Web solution that is designed to fit the needs of a small business and helping them to succeed online. The years of developing Apptomix is focused on giving small business the tools they need to get online successfully. We’ve built in numerous features and functions into Apptomix to create a very powerful business tool. Apptomix will do much more for you than just a Web site can, because it is much more than just a Web site.

You can modify your Web site on your own without knowing HTML or other technical Web development skills. You can add and remove pages and function on your own. Do you want to sell products or services online? Apptomix comes standard with an electronic shopping cart system that you can activate, deactivate or configure into being a product catalog with just a few mouse clicks. Your customers can contact you through your cell phone with our special SMS text messaging system. You can keep in touch with your customers through electronic newsletters and electronic greeting cards. You can do all this and much more!

Apptomix is completely self-contained and requires no special software. Even the E-mail service is Web based. All you need is access to a computer that is connected to the Internet. You can literally operate and maintain Apptomix from anywhere in the world!

The best feature of Apptomix is our customer support, which starts with our Marketing Partner who had contacted you. They are business professionals just like you who were carefully selected for their integrity and desire to help their customers succeed online. They are supported by our staff, which also has the same objective of helping you succeed. We do not want to just sell you a Web site. We want to help you succeed.

What can Apptomix do for your business?

Get you online very fast…

There is no need to wait weeks or months to launch your Web site, as typical for custom Web projects. Apptomix is pre-developed with all the features and functions built-in. We can activate your Apptomix Web site usually within 48 hours. All you need to do is add content.

Give you the tools you need to make your Web site work for your business…

Apptomix is packed with features, such as shopping cart, events calendar, appointment booking and photo gallery, which can benefit your business right away. You don’t pay extra for these features and you don’t have to wait for them to be developed. The site administrator allows you to modify and maintain your Apptomix Web site, giving YOU control over how you make your Web site work for you.

You can try different online business strategies…

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort in making Apptomix easy to use yet powerful enough to be an effective online business tool. You can easily activate or deactivate Web pages and online functions, allowing you to see what Internet tools will work for your business without spending a dime in development costs.

Start selling online…

You can start selling items online right away by adding products to your online store that comes standard with all Apptomix Web solutions. The electronic shopping cart was designed to be easy to use yet robust enough to handle many complex online purchasing transactions.

Interact with your customers…

Apptomix can let your customers know more about your business with little or no cost. You can post special events, such as demonstrations and seminars, on your events calendar. You can send electronic newsletters to your customers notifying them of specials and new products or services.

Give you online marketing tools…

Apptomix has tools to help you attract new customers or draw existing customers back to do more business with you. This brings me to ask a very important question….

Do more for less…

The features and function contained in Apptomix could cost several thousand dollars if developed independently into a custom Web site. We skillfully packed numerous features into a single package and offer it at a much more reasonable price.

Give you the support you need to succeed online…

Our Marketing Partners and staff are there to help you succeed. We can give you the expert advice you need because we’ve already worked with numerous small businesses wanting to take their business online.

Your online success is going to come from taking your proven business strategy and using the Internet as a tool to improve on it. Apptomix is the online business tool you will need to be successful and make more money for your business. We want to show you how to use Apptomix in doing so.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to create an Apptomix Web site?

An Apptomix Web site can be activated within a couple business days. If you already have a domain name, it usually takes a couple days or more to transfer it. If you don’t have a domain name our staff will help you obtain one and assign it to work with Apptomix. You need provide content for your Apptomix Web site and you can start deploying it as soon as your account is activated and even your domain name is activated.

Can I maintain an Apptomix Web site myself?

Yes! Apptomix was designed to let small business owners maintain their Apptomix Web site themselves and without the need of technical skills to do so.

I’m on a tight budget. Do you have payment options?

We have payment options that will allow you to get online with Apptomix even with a modest budget.

I’m too busy to put time into a Web site. Do you have services that can help me?

Apptomix and our Marketing Partners can provide support services as an option if you are unable to find the time or resources to do it yourself.

Can I add to an Apptomix Web site?

Yes! Apptomix is packed with all kinds of features that you may not have to add to it at all. There are times when Apptomix users require special functions, which can be provided through a workaround within the capabilities of Apptomix or adding to Apptomix as a custom feature.

Do I need a special computer, software of Internet access for Apptomix?

No. Maintaining Apptomix is done completely online. Even the e-mail is Web based. All you need is access to a computer that is connected to the Internet.

Do you want to know how to draw customers back

to your business WITHOUT spending a dime?

Did you know that a return visitor to your Web site would six to ten times more likely conduct business with you than a first time visitor? Apptomix has the tools to make that happen.

Some of the unique features of Apptomix are the built-in promotion tools. I can’t tell you what these tools are without revealing trade secrets that are waiting for patent approval. I will tell you that the tools allow you to market to your existing customers and Web site visitors without spending a dime on television ads, yellow page ads, newspaper ads, radio commercials, printing, envelopes, business cards or even on a single stamp

Apptomix could bring you more business than any Web site can. Let us show you how!

Want to know more?

I would love to give you a thorough explanation of Apptomix and a demonstration of it’s capabilities. I work primarily with business clients, and can make it very convenient for you by setting appointments after hours and/or setup a conference call meeting. Let me know when is the best time to contact you by replying back or contacting me through the following information:

Dan Harley, Jr.

E-mail: dharley@apptomix.com

Phone: 760-247-4814 Ext. 4

I’m looking forward to talking with you, and I wish you good fortune in your business…

Regards;

Dan Harley, Jr.

Apptomix - Empowering Small Business

dharley@apptomix.com - http://apptomix.com

Apple Valley, California Office

ph: 760-247-4814 Ext. 2 - fx: 760-247-1387

"Technology to help grow your business"

Get an Apptomix Web site for FREE!!!

Contact me to find out

ADDITION AND REMOVAL INSTRUCTION

This is a private mailing list and will never be used outside of our organization.

If you desire not to be on this mailing list, reply with REMOVE in the subject line and you will be removed promptly. If you continue to receive this newsletter, contact Dan Harley (danharley@primeconcepts.net) to be removed manually.

To be added to this mailing list, send an e-mail to danharley@primeconcepts.net with ADD TO MAILING LIST in the subject line.

END

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