Email marketing is most successful and is definitly important to build relationships on the internet. It is the best way to tie everything together especially...
The right direct mailing list targets people who want your product or service.
The direct mail mailing list is a key factor in a successful direct mail marketing campaign and a major point to consider in small business marketing strategies where marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is a key concern.
What really makes your direct mail marketing and advertising campaign successful?
The biggest single factor in the success of your direct mail marketing strategy is who you send your mailings to.
A. You need a list.
This can be: 1) a list of existing customers or prospects who have inquired as a result of any of your marketing efforts or
2) a list which you purchase or in some cases obtain for free.
B. The mailing list must contain the names of people who are likely to be interested in the benefits of your products or services.
Don’t try and sell beer to the Temperance Society or real estate to people who cannot afford it. You have to target your direct mail marketing efforts.
What kinds of lists are available?
C. The three basic kinds of lists that you can use are (you can use all three):
1. Your own list of prospects and customers. This is a list that you collected with your own personal marketing efforts. This is known as a house list. These people are most likely to respond to your offers, because they have responded in the past.
2. A response list is a list of people that have actually done something. They have either purchased something from the people who put together the list or inquired in response to some offer or asked to be on the list. They have some level of interest in the topic or purpose of the list.
These people have not previously responded to you, but they have responded to someone in a related area (if you have purchased a correctly targeted list) so you know they are at least warm. This is a direct mail mailing list you can purchase from the owner of the list (such as a magazine or company) or a list broker.
3. A compiled list is a list of people who were selected to be on the list because they possess the characteristics that you asked the list broker to screen for.
Examples of characteristics used to target correctly may include age, sex, geographic location, income level, etc. These are more fixed characteristics than response list characteristics, which are behavioral characteristics.
Case study: California based Sun Pacific Mortgage’s Forest Tardibuono found a great way to get the right direct mail mailing list for his company which has a very successful direct mail marketing strategy based on postcards and direct mail mailing lists.
“The title companies give us the mailing labels free. I’ll tell them we want all the homeowners in 95401 which is a zip we get most of our business from. So they’ll give us the mailing labels of anyone who is a homeowner from that lists. It saves money on labels and mailing lists. They’ll even limit searches to specific categories such as all homeowners from that zip who got a loan from certain companies and they’ll do the search according to that so I can really target the public so that the mailing will be more effective.”
Mailing lists, correctly targeted, can make the difference in a mediocre promotional campaign to a wildly successful promotional campaign. It really just depends on what you are willing to have – success or mediocrity. So which is it?
-------------------------- A typical day at the inbox --------------------------
Today, I received 374 e-mails total.
A pretty light day considering some days I get more than 1,000.
To clarify what they were--35 were for business, 4 were personal in nature, 11 were from groups I asked to get information from like Neiman Marcus and Urban Outfitters, VH1, and a PR Newsletter.
The balance of 324 was unsolicited (UCE-unsolicited commercial e-mail)--in other words spam.
If I extrapolate the UCE I’ve gotten in the last six hours alone, I find I must be missing something about myself on some spiritual level..
I am a balding, fat man with a small penis that doesn’t work. I am in debt.
I am looking for a lower interest rate on my mortgage while at the same time making thousands of dollars with no effort on my part in the privacy of my own home—filling out surveys, stuffing envelopes and not selling something that miraculously sells itself.
Even better, I can be a travel agent without wrinkles; obtain a college degree while waiting for my 1500 advance to show up in my bank account; I can restore my credit rating legally while watching my free satellite TV and munching on my drugs sent courtesy of an offshore pharmacy that has a doctor who will write me a prescription… HMMM…definitely something to consider. NOT.
I’ve also discovered that I am a prime candidate to help an African Prince transfer funds into the US. He trusts me. All I have to do is give him my bank account information.
The problem is that I am a woman who doesn’t suffer those ills. Someone thinks I do…There is something wrong with this picture.
------------------------------------------------------------ The future of bulk email and why it is likely to remain dead ------------------------------------------------------------
Now, you might be asking why I, who was dubbed the “Spam Queen” in the “Wall Street Journal” three years ago, am even bothering to say anything about e-mail?
Just to set the record straight, I have never advocated spam or sending spam.
One reporter said to me, "Some people consider all bulk email as spam. What do you have to say about that?" to which I replied, "Then I guess you'd call me the spam queen," as a joke.
In our sound byte media world, one editor turned this little quip into a buzzword and I became known almost instantly, all over the world, as representing what everyone, including myself, hates about email.
The media as usual emphasized sensationalism and missed the point.
I am not complaining because my marketing business skyrocketed as a result.
At that time I advocated email as a very effective medium for small business, which because of its low cost lets small businesses level the playing field against big corporations.
At no small personal risk, I visited the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, and spoke my peace about small businesses and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater before even the very term spam could be legally agreed upon and defined to the satisfaction of marketers, ISPs and the government jointly.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of the US economy, and entrepreneurs with their dreams are what have made the US the economic powerhouse it still is today.
Email that is sent to people who WANT to receive it, and that is in accordance with their preferences, still gets a high response. It allows many small businesses to get ahead. I didn't want to see big corporations or the government take over email and bar entry, filter, and extort everyone else while still sending their own advertising messages freely.
And then came the Can-Spam act, which I and many other legitimate marketers welcomed, because it had a great promise of getting rid of the noise while keeping the signal.
As it turned out, the opposite happened. Email filters from ISP's now block a large amount of legitimate messages, which they call "false positives".
Marketers can't send the text they would like to send to their subscribers, so they have to resort to filter tricking tactics such as spelling the word spam as sp@@@M so that they can get past the filters that were intended for another purpose entirely.
In a climate like this, legitimate companies that had been diligently following best practices, and keeping their lists clean for years, suddenly did not want to stay in business with ambiguities in the law and the potential litigation that might ensue even if all the rules WERE followed, so many companies just folded.
However the people that continue to send email illegally did not fold.
Often times sending from outside the US borders, they stepped up their operations even more, to the point that there is almost no truly legitimate bulk email left.
In other words, the signal has become lost in the noise.
The simplicity is this — bulk commercial e-mail has gotten to the point where it isn’t effective. We just don’t do it anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t get a response, and we found people are overloaded with advertising messages and no longer willing to receive more, especially in their inbox, unless they specifically asked for it.
As a marketing professional, the only thing that should count for you at the end of the day is effectiveness. Bulk commercial e-mail has turned into the above, a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams.
In other words, Spam is a four-letter word.
Legitimate marketers are staying away in droves and it’s easy to see why. First of all let’s look at some facts. In the United States, it is legal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. The CAN SPAM act allows for this. You have to provide a way to opt-out and not hide who you are, and a few more simple but ethical rules.
Although it is legal, there isn’t an internet service provider in the United States who will allow you to send unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Larger mailers have opt-in information from lists they purchase which imply consent but those lists aren’t originated from the mailer, but from other sub-mailers—you get a free thing or access to a particular site and the user checks a box that it is okay to get information from their “affiliates and partners.”
The “affiliates and partners” they are referring to are those who pay for the e-mail addresses and opt-in information.
These guys are sending you mail legally, but the fact is, they are not getting into your e-mail box for the most part. Blocking, filtering, and doing it the “legal” way bulk wise, is just not working.
Not to mention, there is no way to prove that the recipients opted in or are willing to get the message since they opted in at someone else’s site, not yours.
The response rate is pathetic and when that mail does get through, you have many disgruntled individuals who never remember opting in, so in their view, the mail is unsolicited. The only way to get e-mail into inboxes en masse is by not following the rules, so the only messages getting through are the scams, including the pornographic, illegal, and objectionable.
It is ironic that the very thing people want to rail against, they are getting more of in the aftermath of Can-Spam.
So where does that leave us?
What can a small businessperson do to get their message out, and not break their bank?
-------------------------------------------------- How to market effectively in the new internet wave --------------------------------------------------
If you are a small businessperson, there are 3 alternatives that you should consider, which are described in this next section:
What is effective you might ask? (Ask away, it’s kind of the point here..)
1) First party offers that impart some value added (a tip; some information, something the consumer is interested in.)
Lets say John Q. Consumer gave his e-mail address for a newsletter, or for more information on a particular subject, or to play a game.
Chances are he probably would not be angered to get an e-mail from your company especially since he asked for you to contact him. He would recognize your domain name since he spent enough time on your site to actually ask the info.
Additionally, your internet service provider would not shut you down for violations and you’d start to build a small but effective list of people who are actually interested in what you, as a business owner, have to say.
This has been effective since the beginning of the internet. The only problem is, how do you reach people the first time, to get them to your site?
How do you find a target market for your products that is likely to be interested in what you have to offer and sign up for your newsletter, visit your site, and hopefully buy your stuff?
Is there anything less costly than television, radio, and (ugh!) banner ads?
Yes there is. Drum roll please…..Search Engine Marketing. If you write good ads, and compete with the right keywords, people who are already searching for an answer to a question, doing research, comparison shopping will go to a search engine and type in their parameters.
If you know how to market well, only people who are interested will go to your site.
If you have a web site that is compelling and you are offering a value added, they will ask for more information or sign up for your newsletter, or get your free download.
Now, getting to this point can sometimes take a little time, but if you are persistent, and know how to interpret your statistics, you can do this. If you want the result without the learning curve, hire a Search Engine Marketing Firm.
So the new tools for small businesspeople to stampede traffic to their websites in 2005 and beyond are going to be:
1) Search Engine Marketing 2) Publicity, including press releases that provide meaningful news 3) Providing quality content and expert commentary for radio, TV, and internet hubs in your field
You can be successful on the internet and these tools help to establish you as an expert in your field, as well as attract the very people who are looking for your product or service at the same time.
These are the tools of a new form of marketing, which people are calling "In Touch" Marketing, or "intelligent marketing" and is one way to cut through and actually get you the most possible business, at the lowest possible cost, with laser precise targeting. In future articles I will teach you how to use them with deadly precision.
This is the new way for small businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in 2005 and beyond.
If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you're ready to learn about autoresponders.
The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they're eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive - or even free - method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.
Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website - for free! However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business? The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.
There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.
Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company's server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.
Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.
There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.
To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.
It's a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.
You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.
Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company's reliability and longevity.
Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.
Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.
With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.
Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.
Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing a professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your autoresponder.
There are a number of free autoresponders you can use.Try http:/www.getresponse.com, or http://www.fastfacts.net. Or go onto Google and you will find a long list of free autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions as to how to set it up and transfer your text.
Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully. Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests. For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales. It's a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.
Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers. This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign.
When you finish typing an email message, don’t forget to sign it. In email language, that doesn’t mean simply typing your name. The “signature block” contains a great deal more information.
An email is a blank screen. It contains none of the contact information found on traditional company letterhead or stationery. So, you need to provide this information in the form of a signature block.
Avoid the temptation to create a fancy banner with lots of symbols at the top of your email message. Most of that fancy schmancy stuff doesn’t translate well from one email system to another. It also creates huge files, which means the message takes forever to open. Locking up a client’s email is not the best way to make a positive impression on him/her.
The best position for the signature block is at the end. When creating your block, try to keep it to four lines. In some cases, you may need more space. Use caution, though, or the contact information may end up being longer than the body of the message. To solve this, try putting multiple pieces of information on a line. For example: Marketing Director, ABC Meeting Planners.
In determining what to include—again think of your letterhead. Provide your full name, title, company name, phone number, and email address. You may also want to give your mailing address and fax number. If you have a website, list that address, too. Don’t miss an advertising opportunity.
Why include all this contact information? Maybe an important client wants to call you instead of replying via email. Don’t make it difficult for him/her to find you. Including your email address is not redundant. Messages get forwarded, edited, etc. The ultimate receiver may not have a clue who the original sender was.
Almost daily, I receive requests from people for information, and they don’t tell me who they are or where they are. Even after requesting a mailing address, the response often comes back with no company name. Can you imagine mailing something to a 40-story office building that contains 150 businesses with the envelope addressed only to an individual?
If you work for a large company, such as a hotel or convention center, consider using a separate signature for internal messages, since your coworkers don’t need all those details. You might provide your phone extension, in case there isn’t a company directory handy, and your department, if the receiver doesn’t know you.
To keep you from having to re-type all this information with every message, newer email programs allow you to create standard signature blocks. This feature is usually found under the “Options” or “Preferences” heading. It automatically inserts the block at the bottom of your message. You can create numerous signatures and use them for different types of emails. If you use the same closing (Sincerely; Warmly; Regards) for all correspondence, you can save even more time by including it in your signature block.
Using autoresponders will help you to close more sales through consistent and effective follow up of your visitors.
With your autoresponders you'll be able to:
- Educate your visitors about your product - Share the benefits of purchasing your product - Increase your credibility - Build up your visitors' trust in you - Continue to keep your marketing message on your visitors' minds so that when your visitors are ready to purchase from you, they will.
Some profitable ways to use autoresponders:
1. Publish an ezine
Done right, your ezine will provide you with a powerful way to promote your products, special offers, and also your affiliate programs.
Your ezine can also provide you with an extra income, once it's large enough for you to start selling ads to your readers and visitors.
Begin promoting your ezine by including your subscription form and also your link to your sign up page on all your pages.
Also use a “popover” to plug your ezine and direct your visitors to either fill out your subscription form or visit your sign up page.
In addition, get the word out about your ezine by submitting it to ezine directories and ezine announcement lists.
Because these submissions can be very tedious, it's wise to use ezine promotion software to handle much of this time-consuming work for you.
That way you’ll be able to concentrate more on your ezine’s content and also on effectively marketing your business.
2. Offer a free email course.
The key to your winning course is your content.
Give your readers useful content, and they'll view you as a credible source of information and your product's value will increase in their eyes.
If your an article writer, you can use your articles as the basis of your course.
Because your articles are on topics of interest to your target audience, using them will enable you to create a course that both appeals to your visitors and provides them with information that they'll find to be very useful.
Simply choose a few related articles that cover different aspects of what you would like to write about. Then use these articles as your guide for writing the different parts of your new course.
3. Follow up with people that take you up on your free download or trial.
Start the follow up process by asking your visitor to fill out your subscription box or form in order to access her free trial.
On your "thank you" page, let her know that she'll need to confirm her subscription, and that after she does that she'll get her link to start her trial in her welcome email.
Give your visitor a strong incentive for taking you up on your offer.
For example, if you were offering a trial of your article submission software, you could offer an ebook that shares how to write articles and properly promote them to article directories and announcement lists as your special bonus.
4. Offer an article announcement list.
Your list will help you to get your articles published more frequently by webmasters and ezine publishers that have audiences that are interested in what you write about.
Your list can also help you promote your affiliate program and get more new affiliate sign ups.
In your publishing guidelines, let your subscribers know that they can earn money by rebranding your articles with their affiliate links in your "About the Author" section.
Your subscribers will be more apt to publish your articles, and you'll be able to get more new affiliates that have responsive subscribers and targeted traffic that they can promote your business to.
5. Offer a training course to your affiliates.
Savvy marketers know that to have a successful affiliate program, they need to invest in the success of their affiliates.
One powerful way to do this is to make a generic training course available to them by autoresponder.
Through your course, you’ll be able to provide your affiliates with valuable tips and strategies and elevate your profits by helping your new affiliates get started fast.
Make your course available on your affiliate sign up page/info page and also within your affiliates "control panel" where they check their stats.
If you run a two-tier affiliate program, your course can also be used as a smart promotional tool for your affiliates.
Just have your affiliates give your course away to their visitors or subscribers, and they'll be able to increase their commissions by referring more new affiliates into their second tiers that will successfully promote your biz.
An email automatic responder or autoresponder is the second most important marketing tool I have to make money online. The first would be my hosting company. Without these 2 tools my internet marketing business is dead in the water.
In the world of internet marketing, millions of sites are fiercely competing with each other to gain new clients. For any ecommerce site to succeed, it must capture the interest and the trust of its visitors. It is not enough that your site is perfectly designed or has the latest in animation of content.
You should focus your efforts not only in attracting visitors but also in leading them to make a purchase. There are dozens of marketing strategies you can use to attract more buyers and pump up your sales. One of them is by establishing an excellent and professional reputation for prompt and efficient response.
As more potential customers visit your site, you should expect a flood of inquiries and requests for information. This is an excellent opportunity for you to capture more clients and lead them to buying from your site. Thus, it is important that you carry out an efficient and prompt response to every email you receive. The fastest and most effective way to do this is by utilizing an email automatic responder.
Autoresponder services use a computer program that automatically return a prewritten message to anyone who sends an email to your site. It is widely used for responding to consumer inquiries and visitor comments and suggestions.
Follow up automatic responders are also used by e-zines in responding to people who subscribe or unsubscribe to their online magazines. Companies, who send out their e-newsletter regularly, also use utoresponders.
How can effective autoresponder services help boost your business? The answer lies in its ability to return a prompt response to any e-mail the site receives. By responding rapidly and efficiently, you create a very good impression on your potential customer. Good email autorespondrs help you get important information back to these customers immediately. An effective autoresponder service helps you communicate your message promptly, creating a sense of professionalism and efficiency that your clients will definitely appreciate.
Another very important advantage of email automatic responders is that it saves time with multiple marketing tasks. Certainly, you do not have enough time to personally make and send all correspondence. Autoresponder services allows you to send thank you letters, newsletters, product information, brochures, orders etc. to hundreds of clients almost immediately and simultaneously. Autoresponder services are also indispensable in any email marketing campaign.
Choosing the right autoresponder is very important. What makes the best automatic responder? First, you should pick an autoresponder that is reliable and can give you 24/7 service. You cannot afford to lose a customer because your autoresponder failed to answer his query or request for information. The ability to respond promptly is the first thing you must look for in any automatic responder.
Another key factor you should consider when choosing Autoresponder servcies is flexibility. Good autoresponders allow you to customize unique responses that will have maximum effect on the customer. You should avoid creating an impression that the customer is communicating with a machine instead of a real human being.
An excellent email automatic responder lets you provide the information that is specifically targeted for what the potential customers are looking for. Because any email from potential customers essentially represent the customer's intent on getting more information about your product, which can ultimately lead to direct sales, all emails are important. Thus, a top Autoresponder servcie must fulfill all these duties to help you boost your business.
For all of our autoresponder needs we prefer Aweber. They are very reasonably priced and have proved to be reliable and easy to use.
Email marketing and newsletters may be sent with more confidence for less than most of the competition. Emails are priced according to the quantity you purchase, so the more you get, the less they cost. email marketing solutions when they need to: Make customer communication more efficient and to improve the productivity or their marketing resources Improve email marketing deliver ability—ensuring their communications are delivered to the highest percentage of recipients as possible Accelerate customer acquisition and conversion rates from their email marketing efforts Track the performance of their marketing efforts from communication to transaction—connecting campaigns to tangible return on marketing investment Leverage dynamic content for customized one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many email marketing communications Reduce their marketing costs while improving the performance and productivity of their marketing resources Make it easier and faster for customers to buy their products and services than any other marketing or sales channel Integrate voice, fax and sms text communications channels with their email marketing efforts Maximize Web analytics data to improve customer acquisition, customer retention and customer growth results.
Marketing
Marketing leaders across all industries—business-to-business and business-to-consumer—are using email marketing as their core channel for acquiring, retaining and growing customers.
Bulk
Bulk email hosting can be affordable and bulk email can even be free. Bulk email sender for email newsletters, targeted email campaigns and email announcements. Bulk emailer is easy to use mass email software, which is used to send bulk email.
Quite apart from these practical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work anyway if they're permission based. It's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up on the subject of permission and spam. By offering value-added services to your existing clients with email marketing software, you can build indestructible customer loyalty, gain a sharp competitive advantage and increase the average order value per client.
As a local business owner you realize the opportunities available on the Web, but you probably do not have the time or money to invest into a full blown web presence. The obstacles and costs in building a web site keep many local businesses on the sideline.
But as a local business there is an opportunity to exploit the marketing power of the Internet at little or no cost, and it does not require a web presence.
Through email marketing you can have a direct conduit to both your customers and prospects. You may think email marketing is complicated, but that is a misconception. If you are already using email to correspond, then you are quite capable of advertising through virtual mail. In fact, if you are communicating to your customers through email, in a sense you are already marketing online. You are probably aware that a small amount of customer communication can be very profitable, and email can generate considerable income.
All you need to do is start collecting customer emails, and send them occasional promotions or sale updates. The email advertisements do not need to be coded in html, plain text messages are quite acceptable.
So how do you start down the road to Internet marketing success? You begin by simply collecting customer email addresses, with their permission. Permission email marketing is a requirement. It is referred to as opt-in marketing. At all stages of email marketing you MUST respect your customers and their privacy. Only when they have accepted your request to send information, should you forward email promotions.
How do You Collect Customer Emails?
You simply ask! As a local business owner you are constantly in touch with customers and prospects, either in person or on the phone. As a retail business you could have a clipboard by your register or pre-printed index cards that your customers can fill-out. As a service business you just ask for their email address when you make contact.
What's in it for Your Customers?
The opportunity to save money or be notified of special offers. People are always looking for a bargain, and through email you can keep them informed on the latest deals, in addition you can alert them to new services or products. This is very appealing. And customers will perceive this as a value added service, that makes doing business with you more appealing.
How Difficult is Email Marketing?
It is quite simple. If you email friends or family, you are quite capable of marketing through email. Initially your list will be small so you can manage it through the use of your current email client like MicroSoft Outlook. You place your customer emails in a "group," compose a message, and hit the send button. Not exactly rocket science. (Note: Make sure you use the "blind box" feature.)
But from the start, you may want to consider using a professional email management service like ConstantContact.com. They have a service that is free for lists that are under 50. Their next level handles up to 500, and cost only $15 per month. A service like Constant Contact simplifies the management of your list. These types of services offer features like tracking, reporting, templates and customer support. In addition, they automate the process of people opting out of your list. An important factor with permission email marketing.
What Results Can You Expect?
Think about the potential profit from simply keeping your customers informed. This is not invasive advertising, but permission marketing, where your customers have willingly given their consent to receive your advertisements. It is like they are saying, "Please allow me to spend more money with your business."
If you already have a web site then you will also want to add an opt-in box. Give your site visitors an opportunity to join your promotional list. Many will.
From a marketing perspective it doesn't get anymore targeted then this. And your advertising costs are insignificant. A perfect example is a local wine store owner who works her list twice a week with special promotions. She makes a killing, and often sells out her promotional inventory through email alone.
As a local business owner there are opportunities and there are golden opportunities. This one is solid 24 karat. It's simple, direct and very profitable. And yet few local businesses are taking advantage of email marketing. Why not lead the pack.
If you are like most new marketers you just dread logging into your autoresponder and seeing that you have lost list members due to them unsubscribing. Well I am here to tell you three good reasons to look forward to getting unsubscribes.
The first is that you are actually using your list. The only way that I have ever seen to not get an unsubscribe is to never send an email. If you are not going to use the list why go to the time and effort to build it. So congratulate your self when you get the unsubscribe because you are actually using your list.
The second thing is that someone is opening your email. To unsubscribe they had to at least open the email and click the unsubscribe link. The good thing is that your headline worked and got them to open your email. Now if you are using dishonest headlines, (You have won, your account status, and other headlines along those lines) this is not a good thing and you are reaping what you have sown. If you are using a solid headline that matches your email and it gets opened this is a good thing. Your headline is doing its job.
The third good reason to be glad to get unsubscribes has to do with personality. Now here is a shocker (said with sarcasm dripping from the keyboard) Not everyone is going to like you or your writing style. Those that don't will unsubscribe. The good thing though is that if they don't care for your style you will never build a relationship with them. If you can't build a relationship with them they will most likely never buy from you. So each unsubscribe will make your list more targeted to people who actually like your style and are more likely to respond favorably to your offers that meet their needs.
So now you have three good reasons to no longer dread seeing that people have decided to unsubscribe from your list. Rejoice in the fact that you are actually making your list stronger and more profitable for you in the longer run.
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