• As an email marketer you can pound a person daily with offers related to a niche
• As a website owner you can remind people to tell their friends, colleagues, dogs about your site
• As an app owner you can remind them that the limited time offer is only valid for 5 days, 4, days, 3, days, 2 days, too late!
• As a person that is dying of some incurable disease you can send messages from when you are too weak to type and from beyond the grave
• The possibilities are endless…
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>> download the php autoresponder script here

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You’ll need hosting with..

• PHP
• A MYSQL database
• PHPMYADMIN or similar database management tool
• Cron

If you don’t know what any of the above are, then probably best to go to aweber instead.

How to set up

1) CREATE THE DATABASE TABLE: open sql.txt copy the create table code chunk and paste it into phpmyadmin or similar

2) CONFIGURE READY FOR DATABASE: open config.php enter your database user/pass/dbname/host & email from/email name settings here

3) ADD YOUR EMAIL SEQUENCE TIME GAPS:

add an extra $send_date[] row for each email in your sequence.

Time is calculated in MINUTES from sign up, so: 60=hour, 1440=day, 10080=week

The following sets up the time for 3 emails:

$send_date[] = 30; // 30 mins from adding email address
$send_date[] = 1491; // just over 24 hrs from adding email address
$send_date[] = 2910; // just over 48 hrs from adding email address

4) ADD YOUR EMAIL SEQUENCE

Edit config.php, it comes with 3 emails in the sequence. Edit the $title and $body for each.

Ensure that you have as many email $titles & $body as matching the number of $send_date[] s.

Don’t use ” quote marks in your email , as this will break the script, single quotes are okay.

If you want to add personalisation {name} {spare} and these will be replaced inline

HTML is okay in the email $body. E.g. use <br/> for line breaks

5) SETUP CRON

Setup cron to run file cron.php at ideally 1 min intervals if not possible,  1hr intervals should be fine. To run cron add a command similar to this command to run:

*/60 * * * * php -f  /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/emailsend/cron.php

ensure the patch to cron.php is correct and matches your server path, if you don’t know your server path run <? phpinfo(); ?> to see.

6) TEST SEND

Visit www.yoursite.com/emailsend/ and scroll down to fill in the test  section with your email address/name

7) USE IT!

You can either add emaill addresses manually,

or alternately view the source of index.php and take the form out and use it in the frontend of a website.

You probably should password protect your /emailsequence/ directory too, to ensure no one snoops.

DISCLAIMER:

Obviously, I provide this script free to use and modify as you see fit. But don’t come crying to me if it doesn’t work as you expect.

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In fact, I can’t believe how amazing the customer service was. I ring them up yesterday, tell them my HTC desire is overheating and crashing. And despite having purchased it 10 months ago, they replaced it free of charge.

But! Not only did they replace it free of charge, Virgin Mobile replaced it the very next day. They sent a friendly DHL guy who gave me a super new HTC Desire, and took away my old. Bing Bang Bong. That is how customer service should be. Well its better than how customer service should be its supercustomerservice!

I haven’t got any insight to add to this, other than my Virgin Mobile warm feeling, and general love for them.

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Met up with some interesting intruiging and exciting peeps last night in Cardiff  #cdfblogs meetup with @getgood @hrwaldram @carlmorris @stuherbert @GlynTansley Am excited again about the concept of local online. Might even do something like a “secret swansea” facebook group.

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click on image for more detail.

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So here, I’ve brought together some of the real world examples of psychological tricks people use in the real world attention locations that translate superduper well to landing pages, and are things that you should definitely consider on your landing page design.

Shopping channel heaven

Watching those muppets on The Apprentice (last night) try and sell on home shopping tv was a hoot. One trick that proper shopping channel pro’s use is rather than saying “call now, our operators are ready”, they use “If our operators are busy, please try again”. It’s a subtle difference, but embeds in the viewer that other people are ordering, and that they shouldn’t miss out, without explicitly stating so.

On your website landing pages, is their subtle wording you can use that implies that gazillions of other customers are buying your product or service right now?

*example used taken “Yes! 50 Secrets from the science of persuasion”, by R. Caldini & friends.

My local coffee shop

I like my local coffee shop, it’s not a Starbucks, it’s run by Adam, a guy like me trying to make living for his family. Recently, he had a promotion day, where he had his baristas out on the highstreet handing out mini-lattes, and a buy-5-coffee’s-get-1-free loyalty card, with 3 of the places stamped already, so only 2 left to get.

Who doesn’t like a free coffee on their way to work? I certainly do, and I like Adam’s photo on the flyer, I want to go to his coffee shop.

If you deconstruct Adams’ offer, he’s giving you a mini coffee, yet that not’s the full product, so you probably will still need your morning cup, but you’ve got the flava now.  He’s doing his offer at walk-to-work time, so the freebies match the customers normal requirements, their daily cup, let’s start the habit.

And the loyalty card, being pre-stamped, is f**ing genius. People see that they are more than half way to a free cup. This is so much more effective than giving them a two-stamp loyalty card.

So Adam identified the walking-to-work crowd, and built the components of his campaign around this, rather starting with the incentive first, he looked at mechanisms for creating habits.

Your landing page should start foremost with the potential customer, where have they come from?, what are the thinking?, and then once you understand the customer plan offers, and incentives around this.

Checkout impulse buys

A few years ago UK supermeerkats moved the chocolates away from the checkouts much to the joy of parents who are now not pestered “Muuuum I neeed this Mars bar, and I neeeeed the Skittles and I neeeeed the Snickers …”.

Still, the checkout is a location where supermarkets have your attention whilst you are loading your foodstuff and dog onto the carousel. So now at the checkout the sweets have been replaced by a raft of financial products, credit cards, pet insurance, car comparison insurance, mobile phone offers and more to tempt you.

So I recently paid more attention, in the stats, to the length that a person was spending on one of my client’s websites pages. I was surprised to find that the staff profiles pages had a significantly longer page viewing time than other pages. The profile pages are attention locations, just like the checkouts… Armed with this information, we created a series of product intros, different for each member of staffs profile page, so each member of staff in effect is introducing a product line. Guess what happened to sales, with these super personal product introduction?

Where ever you have someone’s attention, it is a potential selling point. Rinse it baby.

Rip off farmers markets

There are ton of things you can learn about marketing from seeing some farmer flog you overpriced locally grown organic vegetables. My friend Anthony runs a heirloom organic vegetables stall, which in itself is a good idea, as people are intrigued by white sprouting broccoli, purple carrots, and other funny vegetables.

But! What is more interesting is his constant incremental marketing and that he writes notes on in. One week his wife wrote careful titles of products rather than the computer print outs – Sales increased. Next week, he put his products in wicker baskets rather than cardboard boxes – sales increased. The following week, he wrote cooking/serving suggestions alongside the vegetable – sales increased

Guess what? Doing incremental changes to your landing pages works. In its nature, spending time tinkering and getting into the mind of your customer really f***ing works. Building a landing page and hoping for the best doesn’t.

You really have to test, report, try a new thing, test, report, try a new thing, test, report, try a new thing.. And then you’ll have the highest converting landing page possible.

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Next time, I look at some of the tools you need to do this landing page milarkey effectively.

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twitterpunch

Ever wondered why you tweet pictures of your cat, tweet about the cost of organic food, or tweet about your social incompetence? Help is at hand, this app will punch you every time you twitter; not just when you do lame, naval gazing tweets.

boat

Useful if you are stuck on an island based reality tv show with 12 muppets and a conflict-baiting camera crew.

ipillow

Really fricking handy when you are on long flights, or pesky train-replacement buses.

vegitracker

Grr! Rip off farmers markets. Simply take a photo of the offending £7 organic vegetable, and this app simultaneously gives you its real supermarket price and tells you what it is; ‘purple sprouting broccoli’ ah!

shawifezam

Make ill communication between you and your partner an historical footnote, by holding your iphone up to your wife/girlfriend mid rant, even 2 seconds is enough, and it will translate to what they really mean. “babble babble babble babble”, ah shawifezam says: ‘Pay me more attention rather than wanking over that fucking iphone’.

catnav

Ever wondered where Flossy goes in the day? Does she really shit in your neighbours garden, as per their allegations? This app tracks your cat’s position on Google maps and publishes it to other catnav users, so you can see your kitty neighbourhood and perhaps impose a curfew if she is fraternizing with that unsavoury tom from number 57.

iphone pro app

This app increases battery life, gives you a 5mp xenon flash camera, enables MMS messages and gives you the connectivity of Bluetooth all for $4.59.

bushcutter

Ditch dragging that epilator on holiday, this app makes light work of even the most forest-like unsightly bikini line.

twat tagger

Take a photo of any twat, any where in the world, and this app will automatically geotag the photo and adds the person to an online facial recognition database so other app users can be alerted when they’ve enter a neighbourhood with a high propensity of twats.

owl unlimited

Having a problem keep track of all your owl’s? This app brings owl management to a whole new level. With geo-owling, feather tracking, and falconry glove care tips all in one place. Solving life’s little problems one app at a time.

Feel free to add your suggestions for iphone apps that money can’t buy in the comments…  Until next time.

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1. Adwords, position #5

If you’ve got an eshop you’ve probably got a Google Adwords campaign running and you are constantly monitoring and re-selecting keywords and bid prices you are paying.  In an expensive keyword niche (bids over £2.00 a-plenty) for a client of mine, I’ve been targeting position 5 with some success.

I’ve not been paying the ludicrous amounts that others are bidding on in this niche. But been tidily mopping up customers for my client at a decent pay-per-click rate. The theory is that your competitors want the top spots, and ad results results 1-3 appear in the main pane, making result 4 the top result in right pane, and a natural psychological target to aim for. However others may be aiming for this right-side top spot, so you can get much better value being position 5, one below this… Try it you can only save money.

2. The more of the internet you own – the more traffic you’ll get

Why not add product reviews and FAQ’s to each product? The more pages that you have on the web, that are related to each product, the more perceived relevance to the topic/item Google will adorn you with.

It’s fairly simple to add a product FAQ module to an eshop, if you have Magento or Oscommerce there are modules for this already. Writing FAQ text should be straightforward, what are it’s uses?, who else uses it?, things to consider?, etc, and it will extra keyword filled pages to your shop. Lovely.

Product reviews, likewise. You can get modules for your eshop and they are fairly easy to set up. But this time you’ll have to ask some of your trusty shoppers for feedback. If they’ve found your shop efficient, they will probably be ok with adding a product review, especially if you direct them to the right page, and thank them, and then you’ll have loads more google indexable lovely content.

3. Google Local

The increasing importance of the Google Locals results (those that appear as  a block in the natural search) can’t be underestimated. An sure you’ve seen them (if you haven’t just do a search now for “plumber <your local city>”). This means that you really must spend some time getting your local listing right. Add photos, opening times, customer reviews, It will all help you. If you have offices/home that is fairly central do add a place mark, it will also do you a favour.

4. Youtube product reviews

Google is integrating video results from Youtube (Google owns Youtube), into it’s search engine results pages (SERP’s). So if you’ve got a cam, and have time to add a short video reviews/road tests of several of your products, then do it! It’s all going to help add to your branding and number of results you have on page 1 of your keywords SERP’s.

Don’t forget to add an ident/branding to your company on the video so people can type the URL in afterwards.

5. Livechat

Am sure you’ve seen the “to speak to a live person click here”, and if you click, a dialog opens with a salesperson from the site. If you’ve paid for Adwords visitors you really want to be converting as many of them as possible into purchasing customers not throwing your money away.

There are several systems out there and they are all fairly easy to integrate. They could increase your conversion rate dramatically! Got to be worth a shot.

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Hope you have a few more ideas  how you can improve your eshop, and make it a success (when the high street  is suffering!)

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