What is the cheapest fertiliser to grow your sales?
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
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Other than your own “verbal” marketing, when you meet people, Email is the cheapest way to keep in front of suspects and prospects. But many business owners fail to use it.

Todays Blog was prompted whilst I was unsubscribing from some of the many of the email lists I subscribe too that have just become "pitch" emails.

Being a bit of a "butterfly" brain, whilst I was doing this, I started thinking about current experiences with some companies I work with.

Companies I have been extolling the virtues of email marketing and autoresponders too. Virtues they have been regulalry ignroing even though the argument is a strong one.

Then I realised one of the reasons they feel email will not work is that their current experience is the same as mine - you receive a load of "junk" email - not JUNK JUNK but poorly thought out, poorly applied email campaigns that color their judgement. Color it so badly they believe emailmarketing will not work for them.

Some business owners argue they don’t want to use email because messages get lost amongst all the hype, you get the wrong readership, worries about spamming and more. Nearly all their concerns mask a reluctance, or ignorance, of how to use it effectively.

If you fail to use email your business will die, not necessarily today or tomorrow, next week, or next year but any head in the sand thinking will ultimately cost you money. Emailing your customers and prospects will make you money. Provided you treat it as the tactical marketing tool it is.

Get exposed

I hate to think on the number of emails I have responded to and bought something, probably after the 7th , 12th perhaps even the 20th email I had from someone.

Why?

Because during the process of getting these emails I learnt something to my benefit, something I wanted to know about.

As a business owner that is exactly why you should use email. Because you can inform, educate, advise, and even treat prospects how to consume your product before they have even bought it.

First, build initial trust by selling, and I mean selling, not with money, but words, your reasons why people should opt in to your email list.

Don’t just expect them too because you ask. You have to sell them on the benefits they will receive when they do. Give them useful reward for doing so. I give away two free ebooks for example, one on web design the other about achieving business profitability.

Then supply QUALITY content, not a pitch fest. Which is sadly what @ 75% of the old emails I used to get turned into after the 3rd of 4th issue!

They do nothing but make you feel conned to have opted in.

The initial content may have been good - for 3 or 4 issues - then suddenly they are all sell you, sell you, sell you. Still a model adopted by lots of people and one, now that email is maturing fast, that is wasting the senders time.

I cannot say my email reading behaviour mirrors yours or everyone elses, but I suspect if mirrors many. These types of email senders do not get read and they ruin the list owners reputations by continuing to send them.

Once I have opted out of that persons list, even though I may still see them as possibly as being worthy of keeping track of, I become very reluctant to re enlist and it takes ages for them to rebuild my "betrayed" trust. How about you?

Trust creates action

On the other hand those email list owners I do respond to are people who have gained my trust and respect. How?

Because they initially supplied useful information, insightful comments, market intelligence, advice, some humour at times but most of all knowledge and experience that I may not have had access to or time to research. AND they still do. Their emails have not turned into pitch fests. Yes, they promote relevant, timely, useful products and ideas but not every email.

For months and months, no make that 3 years at least with one client, I have been extolling the virtues of auto responders and email as in-expensive ways to get messages in front of suspects and moving them on to be prospects then clients. Some are starting to listen, espcially when I have reviewed their own email management and behaviour towards reading emails. They realise that provided they give good content, content part of a well thought out strategy, that it works and works well.

According to some research I read "54% of small businesses surveyed rated email as the top online promotion driving new and existing customers to their websites”. So the message is getting through to your competitors.

But Business Owners Sceptical

Don't be. Even though others remain sceptical, those that have made even a hesitant start are now reaping the benefit, using email as an extra marketing vehicle.

So what should you do?

Email is a direct response medium. By that I do not mean every email has to generate a response.

What I mean is you need to set an objective as to what your use of email is for and set about creating a string of messages that create that end goal.

It could be to drive a free product trial, claim a discount coupon, pick up the phone and so on BUT the messages created to achieve that need to be carefully thought out, and become part of a cohesive plan.

Systemise

The best way to optimise the process is to systemise it, use a commercial auto responder rather than Outlook or Eudora and countless others that were not designed for commercial emailing.

Commerical systems have tracking capabilities and as a regular readers of my materials you know I am a strong advocate of “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it”. So you need to measure opening rates, bounced emails, tracing through the messages and so on.

SPAM law requirements also need to me met and double opt in needs to be catered for. You must have permission to email people so ask them. Either via your system or at your cash desk with a suitable form, office reception and many other “touch points” where you can gather a mailing list.

There are many things to look out for in your emailing. It should be interesting, informative, useful, free of jargon. If you don’t treat every communication you send carefully, and just “bang them out”, they will devalue your business in the recipients eyes quicker than you think.

Divide and Rule

Email list managemnt is also a key element. You can segment your list. That means you can have separate messages for suspects, prospects, customers, regular customers, infrequent customers, high spending customers and so on. Dividing your list makes sure you can target your messages with far greater accuracy. It also means that recipients actually anticipate receiving your email and become more loyal because the more you segment the more relevent your messages to that section of your list.

Email marketing shares some commonality with direct mail in that there are good days and bad days to send them.

From research quoted by Dr Houchin, from an article I had from the Guerrilla Mark eting Association, carried out for Barnes and Nobel, it indicated that Mondays and Fridays were bad days to send out marketing material. Mornings were bad too. If you are like me, you are probably bombarded with email first thing in the morning. At the end of the day unless an email has a very catchy subject line I have got over the habit of ”leaving” it until tomorrow. It gets deleted there and then as my attention may have gone by then.

Dr Houchin’s own research determined the largest percentage of people opened and read their emails at 1PM on a Wednesday. So if you measure it!! You can learn from it and change plans accordingly.

Lastly, let me ask you a question:

“If you had a friend and you had sure fire way for him to make more money with just the click of the mouse, for virtually no cost and he said NO what would you think?”

So make emailing an integrated part of your marketing mix before it's too late.

For more information contact me webmaster@livewirebusiness.com