Building a 1:1 relationship with your customers and prospects
Email marketing is a powerful direct marketing tool to use as part of your internet
marketing programme. It allows you to conduct very sophisticated and targeted campaigns
that build a 1:1 relationship with your prospects and customers and it is one of
the cheapest lead generation marketing tools.
It can be used for several purposes as part of your overall marketing strategy and
importantly it is another marketing tool to drive traffic to your website.
Use email marketing as an effective marketing tool to communicate:
Sending out relevant, high quality, well-written emails on a regular basis to subscribers
or bought-in lists will increase your prospect to customer conversion - and, at
a fraction of the cost of traditional print marketing techniques. However, the copywriting,
content and call to action approach is very different to that of traditional print
marketing.
Special offers and promotions
Special offers and promotions are the on-line form of traditional direct marketing.
The offer must be something of real value to the recipient to hold their attention
and compel to respond to the call to action.
Invitations to company events
Email marketing is an effective marketing tool for promoting events like conferences,
seminars and exhibitions. Emails that link through to a website for on-line registration
make this form of invitation highly successful because of its simplicity and ease
of use. Repetition is important for inviting attendees to an event. Repetition results
in recognition and with an effortless on-line registration facility, the number
of attendees can often be doubled using this technique.
As with all email marketing campaigns, once you have the data you can easily send
out reminder emails and information emails to reinforce your event and minimise
‘no shows’ on the day.
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With customers and prospects
Keeping in touch with customers and prospects is a crucial part of your marketing
programme. Information needs to be useful, relevant and timely. It’s good practice
to use a communication calendar so that tailored and specific emails get sent out
to the right audience at the right time. There are many ways in which to keep in
touch – ‘tips’, articles, white papers, newsletters, case studies. The difference
between keeping in touch with your customers and prospects and sending special
offers and promotions is that you are not after an immediate response – you are
giving them information that builds a relationship which they cannot see anywhere
else.
News, PR and project wins
You can use your company news, PR and project wins in much the same way as keeping
in touch with your customers and prospects. Keep the information short and to the
point and above all useful. Use project wins as case studies to customers and prospects
that would find them useful and relevant to their own business issues. Company news
can be communicated in newsletter format with links through to your website for
more information or archive stories. The same goes for PR. If you are launching
a new product and sending out a press release, send out an email as well with a
link through to your website for more information. Include a photograph and well-written
concise copy and put the full story on your website.
Benefits of email marketing
- Data collection allows for targeted one-to-one relationship building
- More cost-effective than traditional direct marketing print
- Tracking responses is easy with a multitude of software applications available
- Statistics are readily available for number of messages sent, undeliverables, message
opens, opt-in, opt-out and forwards
- Management of your opt-in database of customers and prospects is straight-forward
using web-based email database software
For an informal chat about your email marketing needs or to arrange a meeting, please
call Marketingesp on 05600 473060 or
email
your enquiry.
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