An ex-colleague, Kelly Flint, is now the regional development director at Constant Contact. I sat through one of her email marketing seminars last week and found the information so useful I asked her to guest blog for me today.
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Building relationships with your customers is key to growing your business, especially in a down economy. Now more than ever, it’s vitally important to market to and communicate with your customers in order to stay top of mind.
Getting started with email marketing isn’t difficult, but there are some important elements you should address before you start.
Get Permission
One of the most critical elements of email marketing is a clean, permission-based list of email addresses. Permission is vital to the success of your email marketing efforts. Sending email to people who have not explicitly given you permission to do so is considered “spam.” It will result in spam complaints and unsubscribe requests. As a legitimate email marketer you have a responsibility to send spam-free email to your email list. But don’t let this challenge stop you from trying email marketing. Staying clear of a spam label isn’t that difficult to manage if you follow some simple guidelines:
• Use a recognizable "from" name
• Use a clear subject line
• Make your email relevant
• Maintain a clean email list
• Avoid spam-like words and symbols
If you follow these suggestions, your emails will evade the dreaded spam button, resulting in higher deliverability and open rates.
Choose your Method
Once you have a clean, permission-based list, determine how you’ll conduct your email marketing efforts. While you could try to handle it yourself using your own email application, most experts agree it’s better to go with an email marketing service provider. Email marketing services handle all of the hard work, allowing you to focus on promoting your services. Good email marketing services deliver your emails with proper protocols and develop relationships with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to be sure your email is delivered to all the inboxes on your list. In addition, these providers offer numerous tools to make your email campaigns as successful as possible, such as professionally-designed templates, list management, tracking and reporting, and much more.
Make a Plan
When you begin drafting the content for your email newsletter, it is important to think about the goals you want to accomplish, your audience, and your message. Spend some time determining which type of email you want to send and craft the message to fit your target audience and goals. Another important consideration is frequency; this is a tricky subject because every business and organization is different. Think about your recipients and how much they might want to hear from you about your programs or services. After that, let your click-throughs, unsubscribe rates and customer feedback be your guide.
Choose Your Content
Once you’ve established your plan and identified your audience and message, it’s time to create your email campaign. As mentioned above, most email service providers make it easy to develop an email with pre-designed templates and email wizards.
Email newsletters are uniquely suited to accomplish the long-term goals of customer retention and loyalty. By providing interesting, relevant information about your products and services, and other related topics, you’re educating and informing your customers. Your customers know you provide a good service, but they’ll be surprised and pleased to learn you are also willing to offer advice, interesting insight and valuable resources in your regular newsletter. Then, when they need a service that your provide, they’re more likely to turn to you because you’ve established a trusted relationship with them.
A newsletter is just one way to use email marketing. You can also send promotions, announcements, invitations and any number of other communications to your email list. Promotions tend to be popular choices for many organizations looking to achieve short-term goals such as signing up for classes or for an activity. It is also important to segment your list and only send promotions to those subscribers who will be interested.
Get Started
Remember the ultimate goal of any marketing program is to build your brand and reputation and ensure your customers think of you when they’re ready to take action. Email marketing is an easy, inexpensive and effective marketing method. The specific rules and guidelines all email marketers should follow are designed to help you accomplish your goals. With a permission-based email list, targeted, relevant emails, and interesting content -- your email marketing efforts will generate more and better leads and improved customer satisfaction.
Kelly Flint is the Los Angeles Regional Development Director at Constant Contact.
Showing posts with label marketing operation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing operation. Show all posts
September 1, 2009
August 17, 2009
Ten growth factors for small and medium business (SMB) during the recession
Times continue to be difficult for businesses about a year into this recession. So many small and medium businesses I’ve recently spoken with are either going under or selling out, I’m beginning to take it personally (yeah, it’s all about me!). During good times, anyone can drift along, and during tough times, the weaklings fall off the grid, but during particularly hard times like right now, only the best survive. Being average no longer cuts it.
Reality check: by definition, half of all companies are below average. Where does your company fall on the spectrum?
Best business practices that make stellar companies need to be front and center in hard times as there’s no time to snooze. You and your employees have to work harder and much smarter in order to succeed. Here’s a list of factors that will propel growth during the good times, but must be seriously considered during tough times.
Embrace change. I know it’s cliché, but you don’t have a choice. The road ahead of you has turned and you’ve either come to a screeching halt or headed for the cliff. The only way to survive is to turn with the road. Change can be scary and unsettling for some, but get used to it. A windy road awaits all of us.
Define your target market with laser accuracy. Many of you have drifted along and survived on low hanging fruit, but this is no time to be fuzzy about your target market. Take a giant step back and define your market strategy. Where is your best bang for the buck? Are you headed for where the market is going? Without this, you’re shooting blind hoping to hit the target.
Develop complementary corporate partnerships. I’m a big advocate of corporate partnerships and when times get tough, joining forces with others becomes essential. Some of the best partnerships are with companies that provide solutions complementary to yours into the same target market. A combined sales force selling combined solutions can generate strong revenues.
License your intellectual properties (IP) to non-compete entities. This doesn’t apply to everyone, but to those who develop IP… In a perfect example of working smarter rather than working harder, licensing can increase your revenues solidly over time with high margins. Some companies develop IP and patents without doing much with them. Put your hard earned IP to work and watch your revenues grow.
Boost R&D. Times are not going to remain down indefinitely. When the next “up” wave comes around, you want to be ready with new solutions for the market. This is when weaker companies scale back on R&D and smarter companies invest in their future.
Evaluate all aspects of your marketing operations. The marketing function has transformed exponentially in a very short time. You can’t expect to print some brochures, design a cool website (even with SEO), announce some new releases, and expect the market to come after you. Explore new ways in which you can continue to engage the market (sometimes at a lower cost than traditional marketing methods). Social media is not a fad. It’s here to stay, and it will turn your marketing department upside down.
Evaluate and optimize your sales operations. Make sure you have the best Sales VP your money can buy as (s)he is the one in charge of generating your revenues. Being aggressive is no longer the main success factor in sales. Your sales VP should be strategic and creative, and embody excellent leadership skills to keep your sales staff highly motivated during tough times. Evaluate all aspects of your sales operations including direct sales, telemarketing, channels, ecommerce, etc., and focus your resources on the highest ROI methods. Spend time evaluating new sales and lead generation tools and pick one that best fits your business. If you decide to hire commission-only sales people, make sure they are deeply knowledgeable about your products and your vertical, otherwise they’ll fail and leave within weeks.
Engage your employees and listen. Your employee base is a goldmine of ideas and information about your business. They know your customers, your market, and your operations. Actively encourage them to come up with ideas to improve revenue generating operations, product innovation, cost cutting measures, etc., and listen to them. You’d be surprised at the level of ideas you’ll generate simply by asking. This also gives your employees a great sense of inclusion.
Evaluate your board. The purpose of your board of directors is to help the company’s health and growth. If every single one of your board members isn’t actively involved in the growth of your company, what are they doing there? Pick individuals for your board who can specifically help the growth of your company through their expertise in your vertical, connections to potential clients or partners, or extensive experience running businesses similar to yours. And ask them to get active about your company.
Stay physically healthy. (This is your mother talking!) You need to keep healthy to handle the pressures of working harder while managing change. Stress compromises your immune system and induces depression and anxiety. Regular exercise has the exact opposite effect, and has myriad of other benefits. It’s a slam dunk.
I’d love to hear about other creative improvements you have implemented for growth in hard times, and I invite you to share your ideas here.
Next time, I’ll talk about fund allocation tips for small and medium businesses during the recession. Feel free to subscribe to this blog to get the follow up blog by email (I don’t blog that often so you won’t be spammed).
Reality check: by definition, half of all companies are below average. Where does your company fall on the spectrum?
Best business practices that make stellar companies need to be front and center in hard times as there’s no time to snooze. You and your employees have to work harder and much smarter in order to succeed. Here’s a list of factors that will propel growth during the good times, but must be seriously considered during tough times.
Embrace change. I know it’s cliché, but you don’t have a choice. The road ahead of you has turned and you’ve either come to a screeching halt or headed for the cliff. The only way to survive is to turn with the road. Change can be scary and unsettling for some, but get used to it. A windy road awaits all of us.
Define your target market with laser accuracy. Many of you have drifted along and survived on low hanging fruit, but this is no time to be fuzzy about your target market. Take a giant step back and define your market strategy. Where is your best bang for the buck? Are you headed for where the market is going? Without this, you’re shooting blind hoping to hit the target.
Develop complementary corporate partnerships. I’m a big advocate of corporate partnerships and when times get tough, joining forces with others becomes essential. Some of the best partnerships are with companies that provide solutions complementary to yours into the same target market. A combined sales force selling combined solutions can generate strong revenues.
License your intellectual properties (IP) to non-compete entities. This doesn’t apply to everyone, but to those who develop IP… In a perfect example of working smarter rather than working harder, licensing can increase your revenues solidly over time with high margins. Some companies develop IP and patents without doing much with them. Put your hard earned IP to work and watch your revenues grow.
Boost R&D. Times are not going to remain down indefinitely. When the next “up” wave comes around, you want to be ready with new solutions for the market. This is when weaker companies scale back on R&D and smarter companies invest in their future.
Evaluate all aspects of your marketing operations. The marketing function has transformed exponentially in a very short time. You can’t expect to print some brochures, design a cool website (even with SEO), announce some new releases, and expect the market to come after you. Explore new ways in which you can continue to engage the market (sometimes at a lower cost than traditional marketing methods). Social media is not a fad. It’s here to stay, and it will turn your marketing department upside down.
Evaluate and optimize your sales operations. Make sure you have the best Sales VP your money can buy as (s)he is the one in charge of generating your revenues. Being aggressive is no longer the main success factor in sales. Your sales VP should be strategic and creative, and embody excellent leadership skills to keep your sales staff highly motivated during tough times. Evaluate all aspects of your sales operations including direct sales, telemarketing, channels, ecommerce, etc., and focus your resources on the highest ROI methods. Spend time evaluating new sales and lead generation tools and pick one that best fits your business. If you decide to hire commission-only sales people, make sure they are deeply knowledgeable about your products and your vertical, otherwise they’ll fail and leave within weeks.
Engage your employees and listen. Your employee base is a goldmine of ideas and information about your business. They know your customers, your market, and your operations. Actively encourage them to come up with ideas to improve revenue generating operations, product innovation, cost cutting measures, etc., and listen to them. You’d be surprised at the level of ideas you’ll generate simply by asking. This also gives your employees a great sense of inclusion.
Evaluate your board. The purpose of your board of directors is to help the company’s health and growth. If every single one of your board members isn’t actively involved in the growth of your company, what are they doing there? Pick individuals for your board who can specifically help the growth of your company through their expertise in your vertical, connections to potential clients or partners, or extensive experience running businesses similar to yours. And ask them to get active about your company.
Stay physically healthy. (This is your mother talking!) You need to keep healthy to handle the pressures of working harder while managing change. Stress compromises your immune system and induces depression and anxiety. Regular exercise has the exact opposite effect, and has myriad of other benefits. It’s a slam dunk.
I’d love to hear about other creative improvements you have implemented for growth in hard times, and I invite you to share your ideas here.
Next time, I’ll talk about fund allocation tips for small and medium businesses during the recession. Feel free to subscribe to this blog to get the follow up blog by email (I don’t blog that often so you won’t be spammed).
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