Dear readers,

Usually when I disappear for awhile it is because I’m busy working.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur for me because I have 3 new products coming out!

I think you may find all 3 products interesting but this one in particular is notable. I’ve set up webinars for my business associates and friends.  These weekly webinars are on the topic of 40 ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.

This is going to be a beneficial webinar for any business owner.  We’re going to cover in detail 40 different ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.  We will be talking about a greeting card system you can use for follow up but you can even apply some of these same ideas to email, text messaging, or other forums of communication.

• We’ll talk about building relationships with clients and customers.
• We’ll talk about getting more referrals.
• We’ll talk about training team members, business associates, and employees.
• We’ll talk about rewarding people for their hard work.
• We’ll talk about prospecting.
• 40 different methods to Grow Your Business!

Another aspect you may find beneficial is you may want to create your own system like this for your team.  When I have written in the past about having your own MLM marketing system this is what I meant.  I am talking about a generic system your team can use to promote your business AND build themselves up in the eyes of the prospect.

You can join my webinars to see how I’ve setup the system.  Here is a quick overview of how this system works:

1. Lead Capture Pages personalized for each member of my team
2. Prospect enters in their email to register for the webinar
3. Prospect is asked to confirm their email
4. Once confirmed they will receive autoresponder emails and reminders about each webinar
5. An email is also fired off the the team member to let them know they have a new prospect
6. Each email in the autoresponder is personalized to my team member NOT me
7. Email reminders will go out day of webinar to remind people
8. All emails and autoresponders drive traffic to the webinar schedule which also contains the contact information for my team members
9. The webinars are setup using InstantTeleseminar.

The key here is that it is super simple for my team members.  Every team member has one link to promote. That’s it. They promote their link to get people to register for the webinars and the rest of the system does the work for them.

We use the autoresponder to keep in touch with the prospect and continually remind them of the benefits of the webinars and the upcoming webinar schedule. The webinar is generic  and at the end of the webinar we tell people to get back in touch with the person who invited them to the webinar.

New people who join our team can instantly get a web site like this and use the same tool to promote their business.

The whole team gains momentum and focuses on one simple marketing system.

Want to join us to see what the webinar is about?  Register for our 40 ways to grow your business webinar. You may learn some tips for growing your business.

- Ben Fitts

PS. Some links in this post are affiliate links.

MLM Training > autoresponder

Dear readers,

The last several posts I have been talking about building your own MLM Marketing System.  If you missed them you can read the previous posts here: post one, post two, post three, post four, and post five.

Sorry I took a few weeks off   My company is about to make a major announcement and I’ve been busy… not to mention having fun and traveling

Where we left off last time was I had just talked about making your own downloadable product.  I had talked about the importance of branding your team members and helping build them up in the eyes of the prospect.  In a PDF document you can do this using several PDF rebranders.

Today I wanted to take it to the next step.  I want to talk to you about autoresponders.  Several of the big gurus marketing system talks about the guru in their emails.  It doesn’t talk about your team members.  Since they are barely mentioned and 80% of the email is about the guru, it is kind of counter productive.  You want your team member’s prospects to feel like they are the best person to help them. You want their prospects to want to join them and no one else so you have to build them up.

In my emails for my team members I don’t even want my name to appear. I want it to appear as if the email is coming from my prospect even though they are using my MLM system.  In order to do this I use an autoresponder but I pass in the extra information for the person’s sponsor.  In my email form I setup some hidden fields to pass in their sponsor’s distributor id, their name, their email, and their phone number.  If you use an autoresponder like Aweber you can create custom fields to store the sponsor information.  I setup a field like {custom_sponsor_name}.  I pass in the sponsor name using a hidden form field.  Then in my Aweber email templates instead of using my name I just put in {custom_sponsor_name} where I want their sponsor’s name to appear.  I do the same thing with their sponsor’s phone, email, etc.

Now I write my autoresponder series like normal except I put in these custom fields anywhere I might normally put in my name or contact information.  This allows my email series to be used by any of my team members.

That’s just one option of course. There are many email services you can use.  I use Aweber and I am also an affiliate.  I’ve used them for years and love them.  However you can host your own mailing list using something like PHPList. Any good email autoresponder software should allow you to have custom fields.

You also might be saying well doesn’t “Guru X” do that?  Usually the answer is no.  Usually the top portion of the email, the content, is all about the guru.  Only at the very bottom of the message does my sposnor’s name appear and usually if I’m reading an email like that I don’t even get to the bottom of the email.

What I do instead in my emails is something like…

Hi name,

This is {custom_sponsor_name}.

So right at the top of the message I’m inserting in my team member’s name.  Remember I’m not making a marketing system for myself. I’m making something to help build up my team members and help them close more prospects. I have to take the “me” out of the equation.

Whew… Does that make sense?

Do you want more clarification on how to do it? Just leave a comment and let me know…

- Benikoni

MLM Training > autoresponder

I’ve recently written a couple of articles on using email autoresponders and mailing lists to grow your business.  You can see the first article here, and the second article here.

One of our readers, Mark Stevens suggested that I talk about anti-spam laws and how that applies to what you are doing with your email.

Sometimes you may not think that spam laws apply to you in your MLM business.  However this is not true! Spam laws apply to you as much as they apply to big retail firms and corporations.  You need to be aware of the laws.

In the USA the most important legislation about what is legitimate bulk email or what is spam is called the CAN-SPAM Act.

What the Law Requires

Here’s a rundown of the law’s main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

  Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.
  
  

• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.

Basically this means that you need to send legitimate mail and not fake your emails.  You can’t fake your address so that it appears to be coming from someone else.  You also need to make sure your email matches your subject line.  You need an opt-out method for people to easily opt out and it needs to be identified as a commercial email and include your physical postal address.

One of the advantages of using email services like Aweber for your mailing lists and autoresponders is that they take care of the last two issues for you.  Aweber will automatically put in a footer at the bottom of your emails with your physical address.  Aweber also puts in a link for people to easily opt-out of your emails. I know a lot of network marketers try and start sending email from their free email accounts.  They definitely don’t list their real address and they don’t have an easy way for people to opt out.  Guess what? This means you could be liable of a fine of up to $11,000 for the FIRST offense.  So make sure if you are doing bulk email you use a legitimate email provider that protects you!

The other thing that Aweber encourages you to do is use double opt in.  What this means is that when someone subscribes to your list they have to confirm by responding to an email.  Usually by clicking a link in the email to confirm that they do wish to be on your mailing list. This is another method of protecting you from spam complaints.

The downside of double opt in is that a lot of people fill out the form to get on your list but don’t confirm the email. This means they never get your messages.  It can be caused by people using dumb spam filters. It can be caused by someone accidentally deleting a message. It can also be caused by people who typo or other things.

Double opt in is not a requirement by the FTC but it is suggested.  By using double opt in you ensure that the people on your list really want to be there.

Double opt in effects network marketers because a lot of network marketers buy leads.  They want to dump the leads into an autoresponder and sit back and wait for the phone to ring… They don’t want to have to confirm them by using double opt in. Unfortunately since you often don’t know where the leads are coming from, how fresh they are, etc.  Dumping them into an autoresponder without asking them to confirm whether or not they want to get email from you often leads to a lot of spam complaints!  Services like Aweber won’t let you import names UNLESS you send them a confirmation email to see if they really want to get on your mailing list.

I think one reason why people like Get Response is they can import names without confirming them as long as the leads company provides some basic information on where the lead came from.  I’m not sure about that though. You might want to check with Get Response.  Basically I don’t use leads and don’t do that crap with autoresponders anyway. I’d rather build relationships with people so I can’t really give you advice on that.  Maybe someone else can comment on a good mailing list provider for people who want to bulk import leads lists?

Another quick tip for you…

Use a REAL email address in your emails and ask people to reply back to you.  Most email lists come from an email address like do-not-respond@myemail.com.  My friend Jack told me to use a real email address and solicit my list members to get them to reply back.  When I started to do that I found that they were surprised that it was a real email address and I would really reply to their messages.  It makes you stand out from the crowd and remember… my philosophy is we’re building relationships.  Replying back to their emails certainly helps build that relationship and gets them more involved in your mailing list.

So Mark, did I do a good job of covering anti-spam and can spam laws?  Let me know!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > autoresponder

I thought I’d start a series of emails discussing tools I’ve found really helpful in building my MLM enterprise. I take it for granted sometimes that everyone has been doing this as long as I have and has access to all the same tools I have to build my business. In this series I am going to provide some links to some of the tools I suggest you utilize in your business.

Let’s start by talking about email. One of the very best tools you can use to keep in touch with your team members as well as to prospect is email. Some common uses for email are:

1. Autoresponder series for prospects
2. Autoresponder “getting started” series for new team members
3. Autoresponder “getting started” series for customers to check in with them occasionally and make sure they are happy
4. Email announcements for big events, training calls, etc.
5. Two way discussion list for team members to chat, ask questions, help one another, etc.

IMPORTANT
Don’t use a free email account. If you do get a domain name to point to your email address. You can get a free email redirect and direct your email to go to your Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, etc. It looks more professional.

IMPORTANT TIP #2
Make sure you don’t send bulk email from your personal account. Also make sure you don’t send bulk email from your desktop. It’s easy to download free software like Worldmerge and blast out emails from your desktop but to the email anti-spam companies it looks like junk mail. Even if they opted in to your emails or asked for your email it looks like spam. The only computers that should send email are email servers. Your desktop computer connects to an email server to send mail. It shouldn’t send mail directly. It’s complicated but basically this is how a lot of spam is sent. Viruses take over people’s home computers and blast out spam.

IMPORTANT TIP #3
The best way to send email is to send all your email through a professional email service! They get paid to deliver your emails. They get paid to check and see if your mail is flagged as spam, etc. These services can ensure your emails get through.

Email Service & Autoresponder
The email service provider I use is called Aweber.  The way Aweber works is pretty cool. They have the ability to setup autoresponders or to send regular emails.  So you could setup a basic autoresponder series for new team members then blast out “broadcast” emails when you have an important announcement or training coming up.  Another really cool feature is you can connect your Aweber email list to a blog’s rss feed.  This means that Aweber can send all your blog posts to your mailing list. You don’t have do anything it does it automatically.

2 Way Mailing List
The two way mailing list we use is jYahoo Groups.  You can create a Yahoo group for free.  Make sure you set your list to moderate new members.  One problem we’ve found is that people from other teams will try and join your group.  This can lead to a lot of extra headaches and problems.  Plus you want to be able to prevent people from joining your group and spamming the group.  The Yahoo group allows people a web interface to check the mailing list and it also sends out emails.  People can get emails as they happen or they can get a daily digest of all the emails from the previous day.  The Yahoo group also has an area where you can store files like training materials, flyers, documents, etc to share with your teams.

Some other email tools
If you want to try a different mailing list service and generate real pretty emails from templates then check out Constant Contact. They have a really nice template system for creating things like email newsletters.  I don’t know if they allow autoresponders.

Another popular autoresponder for network marketers is Get Response.  The features of Get Response and Aweber are very similar. You can do autoresponders, broadcast emails, and also automatic emails from your blog.  One reason why so many network marketers like Get Response is the easy importing of leads into their system.

Finally, if you’re a bit technical and want to host your own email list then there is a free php script called PHP List.  You need your own web site to install it on.  One advantage of PHP List is you can import your own names (good for those of you that buy leads.)  The downside is mailing from your own web site can lead to spam complaints that eventually lead to your web site being blacklisted. I consider using PHP List to be a waste of time.  Since you can use Aweber or Get Response for $20 a month why pay $8 or $10 a month for web hosting and running your own list.  It isn’t worth the time effort, the frustration, the spam complaints, etc.

- Ben Fitts
PS. Tomorrow I’ll talk a little bit more about how I use Aweber in my business.

MLM Training > autoresponder