Posts Tagged ‘Email marketing’
Do you lie in your marketing materials?
Have you ever thought about that?
How many times have you seen a sales letter that made a big promise but the product didn’t deliver? Or how about a blog post whose title said one thing but the post itself said another?
How did you feel when you were done reading? Like you just wasted 5 minutes you’ll never get back.
Make sure you don’t do that. If necessary, have someone else read your marketing materials.
Always test your emails. Send them to yourself and click on the links, reread for clarity, and check the formatting. If your emails look sloppy, you’re going to lose subscribers.
And above all – if you say you’re going to tell your readers how to do something, follow through! And don’t take 50 paragraphs to do it.
Clients need your help in getting more customers, especially online. Most of them have no idea where to start – and not only will they pay you handsomely, but they will love you for taking this chore off their hands. These are just a few ideas meant to inspire you to come up with plans personalized for your clients.
1. ASK your clients what they need . . . just because your other beauty shop clients needed help with Craigslist ads, that doesn’t mean this one will too.
2. Closely related to #1 is Don’t assume anything. Your client may have a solid marketing background and just needs to know how to start a WordPress blog. To waltz in and assume he needs your services from A-Z is not only condescending and rude, but you’re going to lose business . . . to people who ASK.
3. What kind of list does the client have now? It may be mailing addresses only, in which case you can start a postcard campaign. It takes time to get this together and see results, so the process should be started right away and running in the background along with #4.
4. Gather contact information consistently, especially email addresses. You can use Aweber or Constant Contact to create a monthly newsletter with coupons and specials. Make sure that newsletter delivers quality content.
5. Create a blog or website. If nothing else, a Blogger site will do. The client may want to update the blog or website in-house but want you to train the staff who will be doing it. Or he may want you to take it over.
6. Don’t forget old clients. You may need to send them a “sorry we haven’t touched base” letter or postcard, but reactivating old clients can pay great dividends.
7. JV, JV, JV. Joint ventures are a big piece of the corporate money pie, but most small businesses have never heard of them. In a joint venture, two or more businesses leverage each other’s resources.
For example, a jewelry store that specializes in high-end diamond jewelry might work with a boutique in an upscale part of town. The boutique could send out a letter to its clients recommending the jewelry store, with an introductory special of 20% off for anyone who brings in the letter. The boutique gets 35% of the profit from the campaign.
All it cost the boutique was a little time mailing the letters, and the actual costs to put together the campaign could be taken off the top of the proceeds. The jewelry store has new customers they wouldn’t have had otherwise, and the customers got a great deal on jewelry.
A win-win-win situation for everyone.
Most business owners are so busy running their businesses (especially in this economy) that they don’t have time to learn how to market, much less to do it. Anything you can help them with will be much appreciated . . . remember, they are already used to paying for marketing and advertising.
Writing a good email is art mixed with science, with a smidgen of common sense thrown in. Your emails should be conversational, but not salesy. People are tired of being “sold to”.
They want information and help with their problems. If they get that from you, they’ll buy your products. If they get one whiff that you’re only there to sell them, they’ll unsubscribe.
The way you craft your email is crucial. Doing the following three things can cut down on your unsubscribes and help you stay in your readers’ inboxes.
1. Make the subject line as attention-grabbing as you can–but it better relate to the product. This is not to say you can’t connect flying green monkeys to computer software. However, if you put it in your subject line, you better be able to link the two and make the reader laugh, think, or buy…otherwise they are going to be annoyed.
2. Don’t use the reader’s name more than twice. When you talk to someone, you don’t say, “Mark, you know how it is, Mark, when you turn on your computer, Mark, and see the blue screen of death, Mark…”.
That might be a tad exaggerated, but you’ve seen emails that overuse the name. I suggest once in the salutation and once in the body or closing, at the most.
Some email experts suggest using the name in the subject line, some do not. When reading emails, I delete those with my name in the subject if I don’t know the sender well…I assume it’s a sales pitch. If it’s an email from a list I’ve been on for a while, it doesn’t bother me…because we have a relationship.
If your subject line is crafted well, you may not need to use names. Try split-testing and see what happens!
3. You are cultivating trust. Make sure you know it and show it. You are positioning yourself as an expert in the eyes of the reader. Sound professional, but let your personality shine through. People want to get to know you and they want to trust you.
Don’t lie to your readers–it will trip you up every time, and then the trust is gone. Yes, you can be informal, but keep in mind your relationship with the readers.
Your list is the goose that will lay your golden eggs. Don’t jeopardize what it can do in the long run for some short-term success.
Happy Marketing!
Today was graduation at my old high school. I love to check out the graduates’ pictures in the local newspaper. Recognized several of my classmates’ kids…congratulations to all.
Then I noticed something else.
I grew up in a small town of about 3,500 in southern Wyoming. It’s your typical Mayberry kind of town, where everybody knows everybody else. The graduation insert in the paper isn’t just for congratulating the kids and parents. It’s an opportunity for businesses to advertise.
Most of the advertisers blew a great chance to grab more customers.
I counted over 30 ads from retail businesses. Not banks, lawyers, or accountants, but stores, restaurants, and commonly-used services like auto shops. This would have been the perfect opportunity to get people through their doors with a great graduation deal.
Out of the 30+ businesses that advertised, guess how many gave readers some kind of special for graduation?
One. The theater offered a small popcorn if the customer brought in the ad.
Why didn’t these businesses take advantage of this perfect opportunity?
How come one of the fast food joints didn’t offer a buy one, get one meal deal after 8 pm on graduation night? The restaurants couldn’t have offered free desserts after dinner?
Why didn’t the flower shop offer 10% off all orders that mentioned the ad? They could have put a time limit on it, as the paper came out on Wednesday. Some dads could have made some moms very happy indeed.
The grocery store could have snuck in a $5 coupon, or offered a special on photo albums. Their bakery could have thrown in half a dozen cookies for every graduation cake ordered.
The ideas are endless. Why don’t they get creative with their advertising?
Because many have never had to. Rather, they’ve never felt like they had to. In a small town, many businesses don’t have competition and use the same old ad in the paper and yellow pages every year.
What they don’t understand is that it’s not always about competition (or lack thereof); it’s about getting as many people into your shop as possible, giving them good service and products at a fair price, and getting most of them to rinse and repeat.
And if you DO have a competitor, the need to do this is even more urgent. Effective marketing can put you head and shoulders above the other guy, who is likely cutting back on marketing.
Using the flower shop as an example, let’s say there were just 5 orders for flowers averaging $30 a pop, or $27 after the 10% was deducted. My math says that’s an extra $135 for the week.
Big deal, you might say. But what if the flower shop started running a monthly special? What if every third Monday was 10% off day? Using the same 5 orders per month, that’s over $1,600 in a year.
When every penny counts, that’s nothing to sneeze at. For some businesses, simple marketing changes like that could keep the doors open.
These businesses can’t be the only ones who make this mistake. What marketing opportunities do you see businesses missing?
Your email list is one of the most lucrative resources your business has.
Yet so many businesses don’t do anything with theirs — and I would guess many of them have no idea what to do with those email addresses they collect at the point of sale, other than hold on to them (if they even do that).
Every time I see a site that has good products but no opt-in box, I see dollar signs flying away from the screen. And I’m going to start approaching those business owners and offering my services. Why not?
If a business has just a couple hundred names, they can start pulling gold from that list by sending a "How did you like our product?" email. Or perhaps a "How are you, sorry we haven’t written lately" email. Anything to rekindle the relationship.
But many business owners don’t have time, especially if they’ve had to let employees go. They are likely wearing more hats than they used to, and they need help.
If this is you, please leave a comment or send an email to melody@grabmorecustomers.com and let’s see what we can do to help you grab more sales.
After all, it’s a lot easier to sell to someone who already knows you than it is to sell someone who doesn’t.
Melody
