E-mail Marketing: Sending Links Instead of Attachments

Introduction

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes. No matter how you define success, you can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money

“54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts.” Source: DMA Interactive

As with most everything you do in business there is a right way and a better way. E-mail Marketing is no different in that regard. Owners and managers of small businesses who are new to e-mail marketing usually understand the cost-effectiveness of using e-mail to promote a product or service. Frequently, however, they lack the technical expertise to fully leverage this powerful marketing tool. Small adjustments in how an e-mail marketing message is delivered can make a big difference in its effectiveness in producing revenue for a business.

 

How to Send Brochures, Reports, and
Other Content Via E-mail Marketing

If your e-mail campaigns typically include attachments such as electronic brochures, reports, or other content then we have some helpful advice for you:

Stop it!

Our clients are routinely warned NOT to send attachments in e-mail marketing messages if they want to deliver the full sales impact of the message. Instead, we insist that they send one or more links to collateral sales materials that have been uploaded to your company’s website. There are two big reasons why we make this an iron-clad policy.

1) “Linked” collateral content gets read more often. Content such as brochures, reports, etc. stands a better chance of being read by the recipient than does attached content. There are a couple of reasons why this is true. First, people are becoming increasingly fearful of opening attachments – from anyone. Second, attachments occasionally get stripped away from the e-mail itself by office antivirus and anti-spyware applications before the e-mail finally arrives in the recipient’s Inbox. Third, attachments tend to clog up the recipient’s e-mail system and consume a lot of e-mail bandwidth. In short, e-mails free of attachments tell the recipient (and potential customer) how considerate you are of his time and computer resources.

2) Links leverage the selling power of your company’s website. The goal of any e-mail marketing campaign should be to move the recipient closer to buying your product or service. Either your marketing message asks the recipient to pick up the phone and call you for more information or it leads him or her to an intermediate step that leads closer to a sale.

If your sales offer is compelling enough in the e-mail – and no more information is needed to make a buying decision — then an intermediate step may not be necessary. But if you want to keep the recipient’s interest for as long as possible – and increase the chance of converting him into a customer – then a link back to a page on your website is a smart way to do this. Once inside your website the recipient can download the desired brochure or report and also be exposed to more information about your company and your products.

Finally, once the e-mail recipient enters your website you have the opportunity to easily capture valuable information about your new visitor (name, e-mail address, company, etc.). This information can be requested just before the visitor begins downloading the desired report or brochure. Even if the visitor cannot be converted right away into a customer you will still have collected valuable information that can be used in future e-mails or other marketing communications.

Conclusion

Effective E-mail Marketing becomes a “salesforce multiplier” when combined with other online marketing strategies including “Linked Collateral Content” and a companion business website. When strategies such as these are combined the chances for ultimately converting a prospect to a customer increase dramatically.

 

For more information about Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores (OMS/RS) services offered by MELCOOPER Consulting please call us today at 1-866-695-8669 or visit our website at http://melcooper.com .

How to Create Store Groupies and Become a Retail Rock Star

Everyone likes to be an insider with exclusive access and priviliges. Rock stars have their groupies who get exclusive backstage access, a seat on the band bus, and who knows what else! Groupies, by definition, are ultra-loyal fans. But more importantly, groupies are talkers who unknowingly become a key component in the band’s overall marketing effort. Every time a groupie talks about their exclusive access with the band they generate more and more buzz. More buzz ultimately generates more business for the band in the music stores and at the concert ticket booth.

Retail stores can learn a lot from rock stars by identifying and constantly cultivating their own community of loyal store “groupies”. By giving customers an opportunity to become part of an exclusive club a retail store can increase customer loyalty to a level never before achieved. Furthermore, such customer’s tend to find opportunities to talk about their exclusive access to others which only makes it that much more desirable for non-members to earn the same privileges and access. A savvy retail marketer understands the value of leveraging a customer’s normal desire to be treated as someone special.

Suppose you started a free Preferred Customer Club in your store that would provide members with a free e-mail newsletter, a regular supply of valuable coupons, advance notice of new products that you’re planning to carry, and exclusive invitations to in-store events or seminars. If you were to offer every customer who walked into your store an opportunity to join your Preferred Customer Club how many customers would take you up on this opportunity? Ninety percent? Ninety-five percent? Fact is, most people want to be considered as being preferred and will gladly join once they understand the value proposition (a free opportunity to get special treatment and privileges).

Assuming you don’t sacrifice the value of the proposition to the customer – that is, you don’t start to treat them less special as time passes – your Preferred Club members will find it very hard to purchase the products or services that you sell from anyone else. They will generally become less price sensitive and more willing to recommend your store to others because they don’t want to lose the special “status” and privileges you and your sales staff have assigned to them.

In addition to increasing customer loyalty with a Preferred Customer Club the biggest advantage to the retailer is the amount of information that can be collected from a club member. If a retailer collected only the customer’s name and e-mail address he could actually reduce his print and broadcast advertising expenses significantly in favor of low-cost, e-mail advertising. Instead of paying for “shotgun” radio or newspaper advertising the retailer could easily launch highly targeted e-mail and website advertising that will produce more sales with lower marketing costs. E-mail marketing strategies that include online coupons also give you store “groupies” an easy way create more buzz by forwarding your marketing message and coupons to others.

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MELCOOPER/CGM Technica specializes in Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores and Services (OMS-RSS). For more information about how to use online marketing strategies to increase sales and profits for your retail store or service please visit MELCOOPER/CGM Technica at http://melcooper.com . You may contact us via e-mail at info@melcooper.com or by calling toll-free at 1-866-695-8669.

How Real Estate Agents Can Increase Sales By Leveraging E-mail Marketing Strategies

One of the things that bothered my wife and I the most during the few times that we’ve engaged a Realtor® to sell our house is that we often felt abandoned for weeks at a time — without any word from our agent. I suspect this is not a totally uncommon experience among clients even with the hardest working agents on the job. The client’s threshold of frustration with his or her agent only gets lower when the real estate market slows down and the house is not being shown to as many prospective buyers.

What is common with ANY customer is that he or she wants to be reassured — on a regular basis — that they made the right decision by doing business with you and that you are providing them with the best product or service possible. This is not Rocket Science, just human nature.

I read somewhere recently that the best salespeople were just “providers of quality information”. The quality, relevance, and frequency of that information will determine how the customer will respond to it. High quality, highly relevant, and frequently delivered information to the customer serves to deepen the relationship with the salesperson resulting in higher sales volume and higher customer loyalty. Poor quality, irrelevant, and infrequently delivered information achieves the exact opposite.

The truth is that regardless of what a person is selling — real estate, automobiles, stocks, or boiled peanuts on the side of the road — there is always a customer involved. Some would argue that a Realtor® has two customers — the seller and the buyer of a property. The real customer, however, is always the one who is being contractually represented by the Realtor®.

So, how can a real estate agent deepen his or her relationship with clients by delivering high quality and highly relevant information on a frequent basis — especially in a down real estate market? One way is to CAPTURE MORE INFORMATION from clients starting from the initial contact. A name and an e-mail address should be absolutely REQUIRED (unless, of course, the client is part of the 1% that doesn’t use e-mail at all). Those two pieces of information can trigger a virtually automatic — and low-cost — process of delivering quality information to anxious clients. This process can continue on a weekly basis for the duration of the selling cycle … and beyond. Delivered in the form of a well-designed, but simple to update e-mail newsletter, an agent can provide clients with weekly real estate outlooks for the local market that include trends, what price ranges are currently selling (and why), how local or national economies are effecting the market, and realistic forecasts that might effect the sale or purchase of a home in the area. This kind of information is usually available from local MLS services, boards of Realtors, chambers of commerce, and other sources.

Delivering information via e-mail newsletters is fast becoming the most desired method of marketing for two reasons. First, it is CHEAP! No postage, no paper, no ink, no delays, and virtually no mailing costs. Second, research has shown that customers appreciate getting news via e-mail more than they do by regular snail mail. Plus, it gives the information provider the advantage of appearing “state-of-the-art” in the eyes of the client.

If this sounds like an idea that you would like to pursue then I recommend that you get started today! There are a number of hosted (online) e-mail marketing services that will let you try the service for a period of time without obligation. I happen to use Constant Contact and can highly recommend that service. If you choose to continue their service after the 60-day trial period the monthly cost starts at only $15.00. Constant Contact makes it easy to design a newsletter by using professional-looking, pre-design templates. These templates also greatly reduce the time needed to get your newsletter ready to send.

All you need to get started with an e-mail newsletter campaign are three things:

1) A commitment to write a minimum of one page of relevant information each week on the topics that I discussed above.

2) A supply of e-mail addresses from current or past clients to get the ball rolling. These e-mail addresses should only belong to contacts that you have had a legitimate business relationship with in the last 12 months. Just sending an e-mail newsletter to everyone in your Outlook Contacts may only get you into trouble with folks who think you’re just spamming them.

3) A commitment to ask for the name and e-mail address from everyone to calls you to inquire about buying or selling a house. Simply asking for this information with the promise of being placed on your “real estate newsletter” is usually all it takes.

A weekly e-mail newsletter is a great way to keep real estate clients from feeling “abandoned” between visits by prospective buyers that the agent brings around. But what happens after the sales cycle has concluded? Fortunately, very few people live in the first and only house they ever purchased. If an agent wants to keep a client for life – whether they are in the real estate market or not – then there is no reason to stop delivering information to them. A savvy agent will continue to touch an inactive client at least one time per month because, as we all know, things change. A divorce, job promotion, transfer, or the “new house bug” can strike when it’s least expected and the Realtor® wants to be at the top of the homeowners’ mind when the time comes to list an existing home. An informative newsletter may even be responsible for sparking the desire for a new home in a new residential development in town.

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To summarize, delivering high quality, useful information to real estate clients and prospects via e-mail can distinguish you from other Realtors® who are unwilling to fully leverage technology in their businesses. Frenzied, old school methods of “churning and burning” clients to close deals only ignore the long term benefits of efficiently managing customer relationships by exploiting online marketing strategies.

MELCOOPER/CGM Technica specializes on online marketing strategies for retail stores and service providers. Our mission is to help brick-and-mortar businesses leverage such strategies to increase sales, profitability, and customer loyalty. The company can be reached at info@melcooper.com or by calling toll-free at (866) 695-8669.