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

 

What are Tactics?  Think of tactics as your daily To Do list or daily Production Schedule.  Tactics are the day-to-day activities associated with executing a Strategy.  To be an effective tactician you need to be detail-oriented and a multi-tasker because there are several “moving parts” to implementing an email marketing campaign — whether you’re sending a simple, promotional email postcard or a monthly email newsletter.

Fictional Scenario:  Let’s say you’re a self-employed Financial Consultant.  One of your primary strategies for finding new clients is to offer a two-hour breakfast  seminar — on a quarterly basis.  You charge a small fee — $75.00 — to cover your expenses of renting a meeting room at a local hotel and providing a continental breakfast to attendees.  (Free seminars have a high no-show rate.)

We’ll also assume you already have a good list of clients and prospects in an Excel spreadsheet; your list is segmented into clients and prospects and includes contact information, i.e., name, business name, mailing address and email address. Important:  You also have permission from each of your contacts to send them e-mails!!

For each seminar, you’ve decided to send a total of six emails to your clients and prospects to get them to sign-up for your seminar.  You’ll be sending an email postcard on the following schedule: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 week prior to your  seminar.  If you have a total of 500 clients and prospects on your list, you’ll be sending out a total of 3,000 emails during the six-week period.

The tactics to implement this strategy include:

1) List Management – be certain the list is “clean” – no duplicates, no incomplete email addresses.  And, don’t forget to segment your list by clients and prospects.

2)  Copy – your message to your clients will be different from your message to prospects (you have a personal relationship with your clients).  Be sure your copy has one or more benefits that each attendee will receive by attending your seminar.  

3) Email Design – there are virtually thousands of free HTML, 4-color email templates available on the internet that you can use.  No need to have any programming knowledge.

4) Deployment – this is the actual sending of the email.  Just like you write and send personal and business emails everyday, you can send 10, 100, 1000 and more in bulk.  How do you go about sending out hundreds or thousands of emails?  Watch the video at  http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jspo for a good overview of the tasks involved in implementing an email campaign.  (Click on the button on the left side of the page — labeled Email Marketing – See How It Works.)  You may want to sign up for the 60-day Free Trial to determine if you have the time and computer skills to work with a company like Constant Contact.  They make the process user-friendly and they offer customer support– but the details will take up your time because it’s essentially a Do It Yourself service. 

Also, consider their pricing model.  They advertise as low as $15 per month, but you can only send out 500 emails a month!!

Another alternative is to work with a small email marketing services company that will handle all the details for a monthly fee – with no restrictions on monthly deployment volume.  All you need to do is be available for approvals of the strategy and schedule, copy and design.  Check out a full-service email marketing services option available by visiting http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html.*

Deployment is not the final step in an email marketing campaign.  You won’t come full circle without Tracking and Analysis.  This is the invaluable benefit of email marketing.  Within 48 hours, you’ll know what worked and what didn’t work.  You’ll be a much smarter marketer the next time out.  Email tracking and analysis will be covered in our April 9 blog.

*Full disclosure:  this blogger is a co-founder of the email marketing service located at http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html.

 

Next post:  Creating an Email Marketing Calendar