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Posts Tagged ‘email’

Do not think that once you have got a customer to tick the box and come onto your email list the work is over as the real effort has only just started. The legislation makes it only too easy for someone to remove themselves from your list so you should target your efforts at encouraging them not to do so.

The fundamental principles of customer retention are simple enough. If the promise was to deliver between 09.00 and 13.00 on a specific day, then the previous afternoon is as much a failure as a day late. The product must be the one ordered, as described and at the agreed price. All fairly basic procedures that you ignore at your cost. For email marketing there are additional requirements, such as an acceptable and accessible privacy policy.

But a major advantage of direct email marketing is that an effective infrastructure enables precise targeting. Intelligent, data-led classifying of customers means that you do not bother those who would not be interested in a specific product while still being able to identify those whose interest might be grabbed by a well produced marketing email offering something they would not normally buy from you. But be aware that there is a limit to how many times a customer will open an email that probably has no relevance to them.

Whilst individually targeted emails might well give good responses, they are impractical for all but the smallest companies. So some form of classification is essential to ensure that different customers are handled according to their history, potential and needs.

A database should be flexible enough to pinpoint different targets. For instance for Business to Business you would want to know business size, products, their general client demographics, the specific responsibilities of the person you address your emails to and, especially in these days, if they are expanding or contracting. For the public, you would want to know age, gender, education, occupation, location and interests. The more comprehensive the information the more targeted the email.

A rough general classification could be those who buy the most; those whom you feel could be encouraged to increase their quotas; those who are regulars; those who might be about to tick the opt-out box.

The kind that should be kept at almost all costs is your biggest customers. These should be made to feel as if they are important to you as that is what they should be. Make them special offers as a ‘thank-you’, allow them first options on goods and ensure that they never pay more than your other customers. Keep a close watch on their performance, especially for indicators that point to the possibility of them going elsewhere. This should generate action on your behalf to get them back into the fold. Also any interest in new products must be followed up to ensure that they come on board with you for all their needs that you can supply.

Almost as important to you are those whom you can develop. It might be a large company that is only using you for a low percentage of their online purchases. An offer which undercuts their main supplier might well arrive at the buyer’s inbox at the same time as one from his boss demanding cuts. Your previous excellent service might well tip the balance.

Identify the little and often regulars. A twice monthly order of just £200 is probably worth more to you than twice yearly ones of £2500. Further, an email which encourages a slight increase in the fortnightly order needs to be assessed with a multiplier of 26.

Any sudden or persistent decrease in orders needs to be picked up at an early stage. Is there a specific item that customers are no longer ordering and is this a common trend? If so then your product needs to be modified in some way to make it more attractive. A competitor might well be undercutting you or supplying a better product at the same price. Direct email marketing allows these trends to be identified much earlier than other forms but this is only of use if such information is acted upon immediately. Take advantage of the short run-in time of direct email marketing.

Targeting of emails limits that most pernicious bad practice of sending offers which have no relevance to the receiver. Of all things most likely to generate a tick in the opt-out box, an inbox full of irrelevant emails with the same From address comes in very high.

Consider what those who bought a specific item might be looking for and when. On the assumption that you did not shortchange the customer with the original cartridge, it is of limited use to send an email offering reduced prices of cartridges a week after they have taken delivery of a laser printer. But if previous customers generally lasted three months before buying them then get your emails out after ten weeks, perhaps with a ‘regular customer bonus’. Similarly those who bought a specific software programme in the past might well have opted for a plug-in within weeks of their purchase.

Bulk Emails that are not targeted can be wasteful in two specific areas: of resources and of customers. Concentrate on defining the latter to ensure your aim is spot on.

Email marketing solution scan turn these tough times into a positive economic upturn for your used car dealership. As the economy falters buyers are more inclined toward buying used than new in this type of market, so you need to strike while the iron is hot. By growing your mailing list and sending out promotions you can make transition from paper and print ads to online marketing, saving you thousands and expanding your client base while others’ shrink.

Because you’ve already mastered the art of customer service, email marketing solutions makes it easy to expand the size of your customer and client base. Here is a three step strategy to help you make the easy transition from expensive paper and print ads to using economically priced email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Web Sign up boxes

A well established email marketing solutions provider will have available a free web sign-up box that is easily added to your website. An email marketing solutions web sign-up box will give your subscribers the opportunity to sign-up for your in-house promotions online. This is a great way to build on opt-in list so that you reach out to your client base via email marketing solutions.

Step 2: Newspaper and print ads

Yes, in order to transition successfully one last paper and print ad is necessary. This will help those interested potential customers that are accustomed to this form of contact, take the next forward step toward electronic fliers. This is also how you will develop your opt-in list and gain interested parties for receiving your promotions.

What you will do is place an ad in the local newspaper, or send out a direct mail flier, offering special discounts/promotions only available to people that sign up for your email marketing solutions services online at your web sign up box. This will expand your opt-in list to parties interested in buying a vehicle.

Step 3: Content and Design of Email marketing solutions Campaign

Create a campaign that showcases the various vehicles available at your used car lot. This means uploading images of your vehicles (hopefully high quality photos) with some short points about their features. You can then link the images in the campaign to that particular vehicle on line, so that those individuals that want more information can click and find out more about the car at your website.

The reason this is important to add is because of the tracking features that the better email marketing solutions offer as part of the cost of the service. Email marketing solutions will track which of your subscribers have opened the email, clicked on the links and which ones have forwarded the info onto others. This is important as it can give an insight into what your customer s want, and therefore you can create more targeted campaigns in the future.

The key to offering promotions on-line, and not in-house promotions, is because you want to be able to attract their attention more than one time at a lower cost. With email marketing solutions you can accomplish this task, while also learning what your customers want.

The continuing economic struggle, as odd as it sounds, can be a benefit to your used/pre-owned car company. Because there is less funds available, along with people as reluctant as they are to spend their dollars, those that are in need of a vehicle will be more inclined to purchase a used car as opposed to a new one. All they need is a suggestion on where to look. By offering them promotions, starting with a print ad, and then through an email marketing solutions, you will in fact be gaining more clients at an opportune time; and you will save thousands of dollars by making the transition from paper and print to email marketing. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Forget direct email marketing for a second, and tell me if this has ever happened to you. You go outside and open your mailbox. You get the usual: bills, bank statements, maybe a phoney million-dollar offer. But then, in the middle of it all, you see an envelope from your favourite restaurant. “Thanks for being a loyal customer,” it says. “Next time you come by, let us treat you to a free dessert.”

Now I’m not exactly the coupon-clipping kind of guy, but when I run into an offer that’s so relevant to me, I simply can’t resist it. Millions of you are like that too. And guess what? Millions of you check your email more often than your actual mailboxes.

That’s where direct email marketing comes in. Forget spam. Spam’s just the phoney million-dollar offer, and direct email marketing is miles away from that. Direct email marketing is reaching the right customers, with the right offers.

Let’s go back to that coupon you received from your favourite restaurant, and let’s think about it from the restaurant’s point of view. If you clip that coupon and come into the restaurant, their direct marketing efforts were successful.

However, to get that coupon into your hands, the restaurant had to pay for printing, buy and stuff envelopes, address them to you and then pay for postage. And chances are the restaurant hired someone to do the printing, maybe someone else to the design, the envelope stuffing, etc. If you’ve ever sent flyers or coupons in the mail, you’ll know it’s both expensive and time-consuming.

Here’s the beauty of direct email marketing. First of all, direct email marketing programs are packaged so you can do it yourself. The emails are all pre-designed, and the backend is already taken care of for you. All you have to do is sit on your computer for about 10 minutes and click a few buttons. There’s no postage, no stuffing, no expensive printing fees.

And as small business owners have begun to discover the power of email, many direct email marketing programs are now built for non-technical folk. So even if all you can do on your computer is check your email and browse the web, you can still be an expert in these programs right away.

What’s more is you’ll still get access to the most advanced functionality. Let’s get back into the restaurant owner’s shoes. We’ve just sent a Free Dessert email coupon to all the customers who filled out our customer satisfaction survey and gave us their email addresses. We also included a “Forward to a Friend” link, so our customers can email the Free Dessert coupon to their friends.

Now (and here comes my favorite part about direct email marketing), we can go into the Reports and Stats section of our direct email marketing program and get deep into our campaign. We can see exactly who opened our messages, and when they did it. We can even see who forwarded their coupons to their friends.

And we don’t have to stop there. We can group all our readers who forwarded their coupons to a friend and offer them an extra incentive (We know they like to tell their friends about us, so why not offer them 25% Off when they bring in two or more friends?).

Information is power, and direct email marketing is one of the most effective ways to gather that information and put it to good use. So next time you get that flyer for your favorite restaurant, think about how much unnecessary money and time that restaurant owner is spending. Think about how much information he’s missing out on, and think about how much better things would be if he sent that flyer through direct email marketing.

With all the noise on the internet and in the news about email spam, many home business owners may think that email marketing is either dead or not a good tool for advertising. Well I believe that email is as important as your website and is still one of your best options for building a relationship with your list.

But there is still a right and a wrong way to email marketing. Some marketers use email as an afterthought. So their emails have no substance and are not sent on a regular basis.

I am not the first one to say that “the money’s in the list”. Every home business owner can build a list but if they don’t manage the list then the list does not have any real value to the business. In other words you need to build a relationship with the people on your list.

This is even more important as internet marketers, since we do not have a brick and mortar spot to visit our customers face to face we need to keep in touch with them so they don’t forget us and we can continually extend our value to them.

So how do we do that?

As a home based business owner it’s your responsibility to keep in front of your list. You should be contacting your list a minimum of once per week.

Your email is no different than any sales or web copy you post elsewhere on the internet. The heading or subject line is the most important. It should be enticing enough to make them click on the link to open it.

Your emails should always be in a personal friendly tone. If you take a more “boardroom” approach you will always present a distance between you and your customer.

Not every email should be trying to sell them your product or service. A good mixture of information and selling is more settling to the receiver.

No email should be an out right sell. Mix the offers within the context of the email. The email should be about your industry and then simply mold your products sales pitch within the email. Do this with links to your site or blocks of sales data offset within the body.

Always, always insert a signature file. This holds true for anything on the internet, articles, ezines, solo ads and emails. This is your “business card” so tell them what you do and how you can help them.

This might sound like a lot of work to you, but you can minimize this task with an autoresponder system. There are many good ones on the market; the one I use is GetResponse, because of their reputation for email delivery. You write your emails once and you’re done…forever.

While email can and does make a fine supporting actor, this is only one of many options open to the home business owner. When used properly it can be the star of your show and a primary sales tool for your business advertising.