4 Tips To Double Your Sales and Profits From Ebay

Email is one of the most effective and profitable tools that you have at your disposal to promote your auctions and build your eBay business. It's fast. It's personal… and best of all, it's almost free!

Use email to notify your customers and subscribers of your latest auctions. Use it to keep in regular contact and build relationships with your customers and subscribers. Or use it to direct traffic to your off-eBay website or blog.

(And since very few eBay sellers are using email effectively, you can gain a real competitive advantage if you do it right.)

The best part is that the people who sign up to receive your email notices WANT to receive the information you'll send them -- so they'll be highly responsive to your offers.

So how can you harness the profit-boosting power of email marketing?

There are a number of email management tools you can use to get started -- both on and off eBay. Let's take a look at some of your options...

a. Use eBay's email forwarding system to upsell and promote your listings (or website)

eBay has an email forwarding system you can use to upsell, cross-promote, and push your customers back to your other eBay locations and listings.

Here's how to maximize your customer communications through eBay's email system:
Customize your eBay invoices: eBay emails winning bidders an invoice with their final total, including shipping and handling. From your My eBay page, you can add a note to this email pointing bidders toward your eBay store and other auctions.

Customize your PayPal emails: If you use PayPal, you can also customize the automated emails sent out by PayPal with a personal message and your eBay business logo, if you have one. You do this through your PayPal Account Preferences page.
The only real drawback to using eBay's system is that these emails look just like all the other emails sent out by eBay and PayPal, so they can get lost in the crowd. Here's a sample eBay email:

eBay Store owners, on the other hand, are given much more control over their communications...

b. Take advantage of enhanced email marketing features for Store owners

If you're an eBay Store owner, your email marketing options are even greater. You can:
Create your own email newsletter and send it to people who subscribe through a Favorite Sellers link in your auctions. Depending on your level of store, you can send it for free to up to 10,000 people. After that, it's one cent apiece.

eBay provides templates for you to use when setting up this newsletter, and there are many elements you can add or customize: add your store logo, write your listing, or feature individual store or auction listings, for example. And you can create up to five different mailing lists.

Plus, you can keep track of how many click-throughs you get so you can analyze the success of your campaigns!

Read eBay's help file for more details.

Use Markdown Manager's enhanced email marketing features. If you use Markdown Manager to put items on sale, you can now use it to automatically send customized emails to your Stores newsletter subscribers.

(The number and frequency of these emails depends on your Store subscription limits, however.)

Read more about using Markdown Manager to announce your Store specials.
As you can see, eBay gives store owners more email marketing options. (Yet another good reason to open a store as soon as you can! Article 4 from our April 2007 issue shows you why.)

But even if you don't have an eBay Store, you can still use email marketing to communicate with your bidders and customers. Here's how...

Discover the EXACT system 1,254 ‘Computer Dummies’ have already used to rake in $1,000s a DAY on eBay! “When I started a few months back, I thought that maybe if I was lucky I could earn a few extra dollars a month and fill my back pocket with a bit more spending money. Then one day, I woke up and found I'd received orders for nearly $1,000 from North America, Spain, New Zealand and South Africa! Nothing beats the feeling I get seeing my PayPal balance increasing every day. I can’t believe how far I've come considering I started out with pretty much nothing – just a vague idea that I wanted to sell ‘something’ on eBay.” We’ve already shown 1,254 self-professed ‘Computer Dummies’ how to rake in $1,000s per month selling useless “junk” from their closets, basements, and garages on eBay. To review the system they’re using, and discover exactly how you can start a FREE eBay account today, and earn profits by TOMORROW, click here now...

c. Build your opt-in list so you can communicate with your subscribers directly

You can collect the email addresses of your customers and auction visitors and establish a relationship directly with them. Then you can:

• Funnel them back to your auctions to buy from you again
• Offer more products related to their original purchases
• Direct them to your off-eBay blog or website

There are basically three ways you can maximize your opportunities to keep in touch with your bidders and customers and sell them more items. All three of these strategies are perfectly legitimate, and won't get you into trouble with the eBay "police"...
Make use of your existing opt-in list. You may already have an opt-in list made up of your customers and people who have added you to their Favorite Sellers list. By keeping track of which customers buy which items, you can build a picture of what they are interested in and send them details of relevant auctions.

In the emails that you exchange throughout the buying process, include a line that says, "I may periodically send you details of new items for auction that you may be interested in. If you don't want to receive these emails, please unsubscribe by emailing me."

Under US law, any commercial email you send must include instructions on how the recipient can "unsubscribe" to stop receiving your messages. Fortunately, there's software that makes it easy to manage your list -- you'll learn more about it later.

Drive bidders from your auction listings to an opt-in page. eBay allows you to provide a link within your auction listing that takes visitors to a page on a website off eBay -- but only if that page provides more information on the auction, such as more pictures, item details, or terms and conditions... and only if it doesn't offer the same item for sale.

This means that you can create a listing that includes a link to more images or a more in-depth explanation of your item -- and at the bottom of this page, you can provide an opt-in form that people can use to subscribe to your newsletter.

An opt-in form is designed to capture people's names and email addresses in exchange for something you are offering them, like a newsletter. The collected email addresses are then sent to your email management program and added to your list so you can follow up with them.

Collect opt-in email addresses from your About Me page. Another way you can get people to opt in to your email list is to include an opt-in form on your About Me page. Create a compelling offer by giving away a newsletter or valuable free report to encourage people to sign up.

Then make sure you use every possible opportunity in your auction listings and your eBay Store to encourage people to check out your "About Me" page. For instance, tell them to go to your page to read your FAQs, learn more about the products you sell and find out about more important information, such as your shipping policies.

Use PayPal to create a list of previous clients you can market to. If you have been accepting payments via PayPal, you can create an instant mailing list of previous customers.

If you decide to do this, your first message to your list should explicitly mention why you're mailing them (i.e., because they've purchased previously).

In your first email, make sure you state that they can simply click "Reply" to be subscribed to your newsletter updates. Anyone who replies can be considered to have opted in -- and you can add their addresses to your mailing list! If they don't reply, DON'T continue to email them or you'll be sending spam.

(Even once you've received permission, under US federal law, you must include "unsubscribe" instructions in EACH email you send.)

To get a list of these addresses from PayPal, open your PayPal account and click the History tab, then click Download My History. You can customize the Date Range fields and Export format which you can then save to a third-party software program.

You now have an instant list of customers who have already purchased from you in the past (and statistically, are 30% to 50% more likely to purchase from you again)!

d. Manage your email lists and campaigns automatically!

When you create a mailing list of people's email addresses, you're taking a giant leap beyond almost all of your competitors.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful and inexpensive ways for online businesses to market their products and services. And the best part is that you can use email marketing software to put 90% of your email chores on autopilot so your email marketing almost runs itself!

Using email autoresponder software like Aweber, you can take care of tasks like:
Managing your "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests and removing duplicate addresses

Creating opt-in forms

Adding new subscribers to your list

Personalizing each message

Sending a series of pre-written messages, such as an automatic "thank you for subscribing" email confirmation
... all automatically!

In short, it takes care of all the repetitive email chores that take away precious time that could be spent growing your business.