Email Marketing

Email Marketing

Email is one of the more powerful and effective tools you have in marketing today. Still, many small business marketers find email marketing to be challenging. To begin with your readers probably receive hundreds of notices every month, so your email needs to be something that really stands out or it may not get the attention you want it to have.

 On the other hand there is always the question of deliverability because people may block with various spam filters and inbox restrictions. Competition for the inbox is considerable, so you need to be able to see if your piece was received and read.

Technology is also an issue. You cannot just send thousands of email notes from your personal computer without getting a notice from your ISP or perhaps having them shut you down altogether.  Even if that does not happen you would get mighty busy typing out all those words.

This makes technology your friend. There are tools to send and monitor your email notes with the ability to send metrics back to you about your readership and their behavior once they receive the letter you sent. These metrics are the key to successful email marketing. If you can measure it, you can change it and these adjustments, no matter how small, will spell the difference between success and the alternative.

With these metrics you can manage the issues and learn about others. Then email will become a tool that is capable of generating leads at a low cost and help you manage buyer relationships maximizing customer value. But there is more to it than just the email which sends the potential customer to your door.

You need to capture the essential information about everything in the sales process. That would be the effectiveness of your emails to how well your sales team can handle objections. How long did it take for sales to call a lead? Did a particular landing page offer resonate with the buyer? Was pricing easy to understand?

Your buyers know the answers to these questions. It's just a matter of asking and recording. Record keeping is the best way to provide you with firsthand insights into what buyers experience when they interact with you.

For the small business where the business owner is the sales staff,  managed services might be the best answer. The small business owner has too many hats to wear to effectively compete in email marketing without help. Pick another small business who provides this service and work together to develop your market list and metrics that are relevant to you. 

For more resource material or for particular questions and comments send me a note. I will be glad to be of assistance.