It is extremely important to keep accurate records in any form of email marketing. It is only through these records that you can determine which ads pull the best, which advertising lead is the most enticing, and how well your product or service is selling.

Good records are the follow-up of good testing!

Keep copies of all ads and conversion material in a spreadsheet or a reliable file. You may also include in that file, or a separate folder, a record of all of the addresses you have used. The separate records per addresses or publication will help you to compare which ads are bringing in the profits.

You may have your own way of filing these ad campaigns. You’ll need a separate document for each ad you place. At the top of the document, place the name of the publication the ad appeared in, the issue number or date, the date the issue was placed on sale, the address, the size and cost of the ad, which ad you used, and the price of the product or service. This will be needed to calculate your profits later.

The main body of the document has two main categories - inquiries and sales.

First, the number of days should be listed in a column at the left. These don’t necessarily coincide with the days of the month, rather, start with the first days responses came in.

The subheads under “inquiries” should be:

- Date Received
- Number Received
- Running Total

The subheads under “sales” should be:

- Number of orders received
- Running total
- Cash sales
- Running total for cash sales

These records will help you figure out the responses to ads, orders from sales copy, and how much money you’re making.

To calculate the cost per inquiry, divide the cost of the ad into the number of inquiries received.

To find the cost per order, add the total of sending the sales copy to the cost of the ad and divide that by the number of orders received.

The ratio of conversion is the number of orders compared to the number of inquiries. For example, if you get twenty orders from one hundred inquiries, the conversion is twenty percent.

How To Calculate Profit

This is total the amount of cash sales. That is your gross profit. Subtract the cost of the product or service, mailing, conversion of the ad. That is your net profit, the one that counts.

Just stick with it and you can watch your profits grow larger with each ad - each conversion - each sale.

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC.

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Building a email list for your business should be a top priority. It is the most important marketing tool where you can build a mailing list and segment them according to your geographic, demographics, psychographics and Product benefits for your target market.

No email list is ever going to pull as effectively as your own email list created from thousands of prospects that your business will have the opportunity to market to, as well as the hundreds of customers who have tasted or selected or used one or more of your products or services.

Just names and addresses aren’t enough. You need to segment your prospective client email list like the big mailing houses do.

The way you do this is ask your clients and prospects their preferences. Why they purchased? Their reading habits? Their spending habits? You could ask them where they heard about you? TV? News? Interent? Radio? Paper? Other?

As soon as they become a customer, you record their purchase whether it was this particular product or that product, this service or that service. Track every purchase, every phone call you make to them, and everything else you’ve ever talked to them about on your computer.

You need to know how long they’ve been a customer. Whether they’re current on their payments. Whether they respond to an advertisement. What other subsequent purchases they’ve made? What caused them to make those purchases? Was it a letter you sent, a followup? The list goes on and on.

You want to be able to improve and offer them more things based on the pieces of information you know about them. You can segment your customer file as:

- Calculate the value of your customers. This is the value of every lost name that you don’t capture.

- Capture names through registrations, drawings, coupons, free subscriptions, consultations, charge card verifications, and photocopy their checks.

- Design surveys, registrations, etc. to solicit personal information from your customers regarding those variable, important pieces of information for your business.

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC

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Kristin Hilton 
Affiliate Manager, Multiple Stream Media, LLC.

Going Nuts Over Christmas For YOU!

You can’t wipe the ’smile off my face’ if you wanted to. Christmas has always had that kind of effect on me. You’ll see what I mean in the pictures below.

Oh Boy, How Time Flies…

It’s been about one year since I took over as the Affiliate Manager of Multiple Stream Media, LLC - but it feel’s like yesterday. Oh boy, how time flies…

This time, I want to stay away from the usual structure of this newsletter and go a little crazy - Are you up for it?

Here goes…

I Want To Move Heaven and Earth for you…

There is NO DOUBT about it, our affiliates are our life blood. Without you, growth would’ve been a rough climb up the hill. There isn’t a day that goes by that all of us at Multiple Stream Media, don’t think of our affiliates and do everything we possible can to make it better for you guys.

The core principles, standards and philosophy of our company, Multiple Stream Media, LLC, has been this…

1. Work at something we enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.
2. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
3. Persistence, persistence, persistence

With this as our aim, we look forward for many more great services for you in 2008. 

And for now, Look at how much fun we are having… doing the things we love to do for our affiliates…

It’s A Big Undertaking - BUT…

…It’s all worth it. 

For the past 4 years we’ve shown our gratitude to ALL affiliates that we’ve EVER PAID - by sending them Christmas Cards - this year it’s no different. Only that, this year we’ve a big undertaking, we’re sending thousands of Christmas Cards!

You can say that I have waiting for this moment for a long time, where I get to post some fun pictures and to make your day a little brighter - I hope you enjoy, as much as we did!

I’ve Been Waiting For This Moment…

 I hope that this 6th issue of our Affiliate Newsletter finds you in good spirits. As always I am here to help so just let me know what I can do.

 
Affiliate Manager, Multiple Stream Media, LLC.

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Let’s face it, Internet jargon emphasizes speed and up-to-the-minute currency that are not what they used to be. What I’m talking about is…

AFFECT/EFFECT: Affect is a verb. Effect is a noun. There are very specialized cases where that rule changes, but they won’t apply to you unless you’re a psychiatrist or a corporate attorney. “His decision affected us.” “The invention had an effect on our business plan.”

DATA IS/DATA ARE: Everybody who knows a smattering of Latin will argue that “data” is plural. “Datum” is the singular form. Therefore, “data are” seems correct. Well, no, not really. I guess if you’re writing a letter to the Pope in Latin, that’s the way you should do it, but if you’re writing in English, you need to be aware that we have what are called “collective nouns.” These are words like “jury,” “team,” or “sales force,” that represent a group of individuals but which almost always take a singular noun: “The jury is sequestered in the Brown Hotel.” “The team is flying to Chicago for a weekend series.” “The sales force is gathering in Orlando for training.” The word “data” is that kind of noun. Therefore, correct usage in English calls for a singular verb form: “The data is stored in a relational database.”

SERVE/SERVICE: I saw a letter in which a systems integration company promised, “Every facet of our company is oriented to servicing you, the customer.” Does that sound odd to you? I’m not sure I want to be “serviced,” although I might try it once just to see if I like it.

SIMPLE/SIMPLISTIC: The word “simple” means uncomplicated. The word “simplistic” means,essentially, “stupid.” (It really means something like oversimplifying to the point of distortion, but “stupid” is close enough.) Anyway, what kind of impression does a cover letter make when it proudly tells the customer, “We have carefully developed a simplistic solution to assure rapid deployment.”

Have we forgot how to use the language any more?

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC

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One of the most important things to remember when writing ad copy, is NEVER try to sell the features of your product or service. Sell the BENEFITS.

If you fail to sell the benefits, you will sell nothing!

Always remember, the reader is not interested in you or how long it took you to develop your wonderful product. They are not remotely interested that it took you 12 months of working 18 hour days at whatever cost. These are FEATURES.

And Features don’t sell. Only BENEFITS achieve that. What is in it for me - BOTTOM LINE.

A prospect is only turned on when you show them the benefits of how much time it will save them. How much money they could make for less work involved and how much they can use this to their advantage.

People are lazy by nature, we all know that at some level. It is human nature to get the most out something for the least amount of work. If I said you can earn $10,000 per month for 1 hour work per day “GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK,” I would  be flooded with offers. It would be nice scenario, but highly unlikely.

Show your reader BENEFITS, BENEFITS, and MORE BENEFITS.

That’s the one Golden Rule you must NEVER break! Paint a picture of what will be the ultimate desired outcome from buying your product or service.

Sell them your benefits over, and over again. What are they? Do you even know yourself? Write down what you think your product or service does better than anyone else’s and if it falls into these categories, you have a winner. You MUST get that across
to your reader.

- More Money
- Love
- Respect
- Security
- Better Health

These words all trigger emotional responses within each and every one of us. It is in our nature to want the easiest most profitable way to get on with our lives. Do not be ashamed of it.

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC

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Writing web copy is almost as complex as an offline sales letter. Online copy should stress a value in your products or services in that the reader will always feel the impact beneficial to theirs needs.

To Do this, You’ll want to use strong headlines as you write your copy on each of your pages. The headline should direct them to read more, then follow through with another headline before you throw the product or service at them.

There are several types of headlines to use when writing any kind of copy.

1. The News Headline
2. The Guarantee Headline
3. The How To Headline
4. The Benefit Headline
5. The Question Headline
6. The Reason-Why Headline
7. The Testimonial Headline
8. The Command Headline

The headline will determine wether your visitor will take action simply by placing the correct wording into the entire phrase.

Here are some proven headline words:

Advice To
Amazing
Announcing
At Last
Bargain
Break Through
Discover
Do You
Easy
Facts
Guarantee
Here
How To
Immediate
Life
Magic
Money
New
Now
Powerful
Proven
Quick
Sale
Secrets Of
Success
Surprising

The three most powerful of them all

FREE….YOU….YOUR

After you compile your content for your pages, use these words into your headlines as the page flows down. Start with an introductory headline explaining the benefits. Then write the features.

After that, write yet another strong headline “Call-To- Action” then carry on with more benefits, leaving out features. Here is the perfect place to use “Bullets” and load it will headline words like above.

As the page nears the end, put another closing headline using “Command” and finalize your “Call-To-Action” phrase. This will help reach the readers desire to pull out that credit card or sign-up for more.

The key Point - Tell them what to Do!

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC

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 “Scientific Advertising” - The first time I read it in 1997 - I GOT it. I got the message. It was powerful enough that I knew from the bottom of my heart that I would enjoy a career in Advertising and would never get bored with it.

Claude C Hopkins - He worked for various advertisers, including Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, Swift & Company and Dr. Shoop’s patent medicine company until. At the age of 41, he was hired by Albert Lasker owner of Lord & Thomas advertising in 1907 at a salary of $185,000 a year, Hopkins insisted copywriters researched their client products and produce reason-why copy. He believed, that a good product was often its own best salesperson and as such he was a great believer in sampling.

If you missed this golden classic, read it now.

Abe Cherian
CEO, Multiple Stream Media, LLC

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