ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

E-Marketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you   >>>  EMAIL MARKETING

To effectively launch an email marketing campaign, the two most important and immediate activities for you are to:

1)  Build and maintain a database of your clients/customers and prospects

2)  Develop your email marketing plan to include:  Your Marketing Objectives, the Strategies you plan to implement to achieve your marketing objectives and an Email Marketing Calendar to include the details of at least three months worth of email campaigns.

The most critical factor is the LIST and you should start working on it immediately.

Perhaps you’re ahead of the game and already have a list of your clients/customers and prospects in an excel worksheet or a contact database like ACT.   If not, use Excel to create your database.  If you don’t have the Microsoft Office Suite installed on your computer system, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can purchase the Microsoft Office Student Edition for about $150.00 (probably less online).  To learn how to create a database in Excel, click here http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/datamanagementinexcel/ss/080608_database.htm

If you haven’t been collecting email addresses from your clients/customers and prospects, start now! If you have long-standing customers/clients, you may want to call them and ask for their email address.  Tell them you’ll be communicating with them via email to update them on useful tips and relevant information along with special offers and promotions.  Assure them they won’t be receiving daily emails from you.  (Best frequency is twice a month, but it’s important to test optimal frequency, as each business differs.) 

After you call your best customers, also send an inexpensive postcard mailing to the rest of the list.  Keep the message short.  Ask them to call you with their email address.  Offer them a gift like an article that will interest them or a special discount on their next purchase of your product or service.  For a full-service, cost-effective vendor to send out your postcard mailing, check out www.vistaprint.com.  (If you or a friend is reasonably computer literate and you own a printer, you can buy postcard stock at Staples, and using Microsoft Office, you can do the mailing yourself.  And, remember, postcard postage stamps cost considerably less than first class stamps.)

A “clean list” (correct email addresses, elimination of duplicates, etc.) is the first step in developing and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with your customers and prospects.  How important is communicating with your clients/customers and prospects?  It’s the single most important and cost-effective marketing activity you’ll ever implement.  Research has shown that it costs about 5 times as much to acquire a new customer as selling to an existing client/customer. 

List segmentation is a vital component of your list.  What is list segmentation? It’s breaking down your list into smaller segments — with each segment sharing similar characteristics.  First and foremost, your list should be segmented into customers and prospects because your messages and offers will invariably be different to each of these audiences.

Businesses differ and the appropriate list segments for each businesses’ customer and prospect database will differ as well.  If you’re dealing with consumers, perhaps it’s important for you to segment your list by gender, zip code and transactional data, i.e., amount spent, recency of purchase, frequency of purchase, etc.  If you’re dealing with businesses, you may want to segment your list by industry, size of company by revenue, size of company by employees, years in business, location of headquarters, etc. 

Time spent on keeping each record in your database updated and information-rich is time well be spent.  Know your target audience — their needs, wants and problems. Maintain an ongoing relationship with them by communicating on a regular basis.  In that way, you are able to provide a solution to their problem — your product or service.

In this highly competitive marketplace, you need to have a high level of visibility and frequent contact with your clients/customers and prospects .  AND the most cost-effective way to stay in touch is via a well-planned, targeted email marketing campaign.

Next Post:  Writing your e-mail marketing plan.