E-Mail: A Vital and Simple Solution for Marketing
By Taylor Martinerin
Every business in the world should be marketing to its customers and prospects via email. If your organization isn”t using this channel yet, what are you waiting for?
Perhaps you thought that maintaining a list was too much of a hassle. Maybe you didn”t think that you had enough email addresses in your database to begin with. Maybe you thought your customers would feel invaded. And perhaps you just don”t see any advantage of email marketing over traditional methods.
It’’s Easier Than You Think
There are plenty of solutions out there nowadays that make email marketing as easy as assembling a web page in Dreamweaver. There are, of course, other “solutions” that can be rather complex and intimidating, but if you do a lot of segmentation in your marketing, it may be worth biting the bullet and training your staff to use these more robust tools. After all, it is much cheaper to put variables into an email message than to use variable print.
Look into software applications that let you painlessly manage a list in-house, or consider third-party vendors. As for which ones to choose, look into your own inbox for the answer. See which promotional emails you receive that are well-crafted, that show up cleanly in your inbox, that have clear calls to action and that make it easy for subscribers to opt out.
Always Be Collecting
Since email tends to be more or less a fixed cost deployment in many cases, it may seem overkill to send out an e-blast when you don”t have a lot of addresses in your database.
That’’s why you should be using every touch point and opportunity to collect email addresses from your customers. If you”re a hotel, collect email addresses at the front desk when your guests check in. If you”re a restaurant, leave space on the bill for your customer to leave you with their email address.
Many of them will be resistant; after all, we”re all paranoid in the age of spam and phishing. Assure them that you won”t sell their address or information, that you won”t waste their time, and most importantly, that you”ll send them information and offers of value.
Of course, when gentle cajoling doesn”t work, there’’s always the blunt force object known as bribery. Incentives can be cheap and effective when it comes to encouraging customers to opt in to email lists. Many of your opt-ins will wind up not even redeeming that offer, so breakage winds up reducing the acquisition cost severely.
Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger: Email Makes an Impact
You can do some pretty impressive things with email. There’’s an immediacy to it, so that you can unload distressed inventory that would otherwise be the victim of spoilage.
Text messaging has achieved great popularity as well because of the last-minute applications that you can execute with it. Email isn”t quite as quick on the draw, but you can still get offers into your customers” hands in a matter of hours with proper preparation and an able-bodied partner (or employee, if you choose to deploy your email campaigns in house).
In the 21st century, there’’s no excuse for not having a robust Internet presence that includes a website and a mailing list with which you can communicate with your customers. While everyone is quick to jump on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagons, people still read email. It isn”t going anywhere, and people are already comfortable with it across every demographic. Use it intelligently and strategically and you can generate lots of business with a relatively small investment of your own resources.
About The Author
For more tips on using e-mail for marketing purposes and reviews of leading autoresponders, visit us at Autoresponder-Review.com.
