The DMA has gone a long way to define some common sense standards for online marketing. You can find their document here. It’s worth a peek, print and wade through if you are already or planning to venture online with your marketing spend.
Planning shouldn’t be an onerous task.
The other day I sat down with a customer team to plan out their email marketing activities. After just a few hours we had put together some great points that outlined the proposed outcomes, content, frequency and direction of their email messaging.
My four step methodology took us through the process and we were done and dusted in record time. Planning shouldn’t be a difficult task. Check out this document as a thought starter. Or if you would some more interaction, here’s a streaming ppt preso to kick some ideas around. Now how does it go? Something like fail to plan – plan to fail??? Have fun.
As a customer I like to hear from my suppliers on a reasonably regular basis. Once ever six weeks telling me how they are going and what more they can do for me would be fine. And of course email would be the easiest way for me to digest this information. But how many do this, NONE.
You don’t have to be brilliant to stand out from the crowd. Just do the basics of keeping in touch, that’s all.
If you don’t already why not start planning to keep in touch with your customers – you may be the first to stand out from the crowd.
Look at this case study on how one business stopped looking for new business and mined the existing business they had. It’s an insight.
One of the top email newsletters for lead generation is from Grokdotcom. Their latest newsletter is out and about and worthy of a peek. It’s simple logic that is rarely enacted on. Your web site is not visited by a pool of unique visitors – there are different people out there with different needs wanting to achieve different tasks. One size does not fit all when it comes to designing the voice of persuasion for your web site.
Have you ever considered why SPAM has caused such a public backlash compared to the deafening silence from its unsolicited paper cousins of direct and junk mail? People seem to care a lot more about what enters their Inbox than their letterbox. And for the word “care” think about logical substitutes of “notice”, “read” and “respond”.
All this translates into campaign results that can surpass other forms of direct communication making it an ideal cost effective option for any small business owner.
And what’s more I believe that as a small business owner the odds are stacked in their favour to become budding email marketing superstars.
Let me explain why.
Firstly, it’s about personality. E-mail messages written in a personal style seem to work the best. Writing this way doesn’t seem to faze most small business owners. Usually their business shows more of their personality when dealing with customers than larger competitors so writing this way seems to be a natural option.
Secondly, a small business owner can understand what content that has a good chance of being read. With them working closely with customers they tend to understand what their customers want to know about and can easily translate this into articles and reports that will be read.
Thirdly, the time and cost efficient nature of email marketing ideally suits the busy small business owner. It can take the same amount of effort to create an email newsletter for 500 subscribers as it does 50,000. Plus the costs of an email production are a fraction of the alternative paper option.
For a small business owner a regular e-mail message can have as much personality and content to end up being the next best thing as a phone call from themselves, just more efficient and at a lot less costly to produce.
So there you have it, three reasons why small business owners can make it big in the Inbox. Have fun harnessing this great tool for your company.
Now this press release talking about Permission’s inclusion in Seth Godin’s book is a bit old as the book was launched back in May but hey, this sort of stuff doesn’t happen every month. So here you are, one of just three New Zealand companies that made the cut. Read the release here.
Here’s something to make youre life a bit easier. I know what it’s like to sweat over the send key before you unleash thousands of messages out onto the Internet. In one of my lessons I cover what to check. Now, here’s the check list to help you work through a campaign launch process. Depending on the messaging tools you use and the styles of messages you send this list can be even more complex. Have fun.
Need to know how much you need to spend in lead generation to make you sales targets? Here’s a simple spreadsheet worth a download. Have fun.
A review from MarketingSherpa fresh off the email from a recent conference in lead generation. Time to begin tracking those leads if it is something you are not doing yet….
Some of the best email marketing I get is from MarketingSherpa. The email message layout will not win many awards but what kicks it into the stratosphere is the quality of the content.
I just love hearing about real life experience facts and figures. OK there is a place for stats and analysis but nothing beats real tales from users like you and me sharing their own war stories. It’s a winner and worthy of your own Inbox. Good content wins every time. Hmm, it must be time to start next month’s newsletter.
The other day during my short lecture I asked the e-marketing students what the world’s best email marketing newsletter would contain for them. The answers were fun: -
• Answers to exams
• Rugby scores
• Advice on how to write an online marketing plan
• Tips to make their homework easier
Then I challenged them to think that if they were a marketing exec of a mobile telco wanting them all to subscribe to an online communication that it would be these areas of content that would entice them to join rather than latest mobile gizmo type and colour.
Good email marketing contains great content that attracts the right audience. Or, it’s not about what you want to say it’s what they want to hear….
OK, so you’ve written the text in trusty MS Word but when you copy and paste into your text area of your email marketing tool it ends up way to long. Now make it a bit easy and use this and make this web page take the strain.
About six months ago I started to publish some lessons in online marketing. The editions are frequently updated as I try to take new people on a whirlwind tour of how to unleash themselves online. Two months in I added some online demonstrations to show people it all in action. Well the system seems to be working. Another order just came in from someone that liked the demo’s and wanted to get involved in a hurry. Could a similar process work for your business?
I think it went well.
Here’s some audio ramblings on the result.
At 2.00 pm today I will be a guest lecturer to a class of 44 e-marketing students at tertiary institution in Auckland.
So why is this important? And why spend the time here?
Well as you may or may not know I live in New Zealand.
A country at the far end of the world – many miles away from the American, Asia and European markets that it desperately needs do well in. Plus it’s a country that needs to be a niche player that will market its wares to large markets that are many thousands of miles away from its own.
And funnily enough it can take the same amount of time to send an email message from one side of our great city as it does to skip across the globe.
Therefore I believe that online marketing can and will become a key ingredient in the success of promoting the wares of this great country. And therefore the more qualified online marketers there are out there the greater our chances to make New Zealand the best it can be.
I’ll let you know how i get on.
Earlier on this week I attended a trade show to hock the wares of Permission. Before hand I emailed part of my database looking for feedback on some of the free online marketing lessons i have been running for a while. Well surprise surprise i was swamped with responses and only managed to include a few in the flyer.
Like most other online marketing people i write articles. Before they are released to the world they get a thorough going over by someone better at English than myself. Now a blog is different i am told. Here i can be excused the occasional mistake or three.
Here’s a recent article that has been ” scrubbed”.
Does your web site appeal to the silent and suffering?
People come to your web site with problems to solve.
The small minority needs them fixed in a hurry; the remaining mass are in no rush, but know that sometime soon a solution will need to be found.
Web sites that fail to use email marketing just cater to the first group, leaving the remaining crowd to browse off their sites onto their competitor’s, never to be seen again.
Let me explain why.
If you are like me, you browse the internet at speed, hopping from page to page, site to site. It’s a fast process. But it’s not random. I know where I’m going. There is usually a goal behind my pathways. I just do it quickly.
Frequently I’m looking for information to solve a problem. For instance, the other day I took to the web to find a better way to build macros within Excel. My first stop was Google. After running a few searches, I started to find the web sites I wanted and then clicked down into them to learn more.
I needed to solve this problem quite quickly. I had a project to finish that needed some work completed in a few days and Excel needed taming to help me meet my deadline.
Fortunately I found it an easy problem to solve. I quickly found a site where I could download a trial copy of the software, use it on my version of Excel and see it working in all its glory. Within a few minutes of starting, the problem was solved and someone overseas was few hundred dollars richer.
The problems your customers may be facing may not be so easy to figure out as this.
For example, imagine you own an HR consulting business. Your typical customers experience problems in protecting themselves from falling foul of the employment laws that come with employing staff.
It’s important to understand that there are two levels of motivations behind this type of customer problem.
There will be those who are experiencing a real employment issue now and need immediate help. The others probably have a nagging concern that doesn’t need fixing now, but could well do in the future.
The first group will quickly check out the credibility of the service, pick up some contact details and place a call for some advice.
The second bunch, and most likely the larger group, will either choose to subscribe to your email communication focused on their needs (depending on how well you promote this option) or will drop off your web site, never to return again.
You see, we are all very good at living with our problems. And we do so until they become so bad that they force us to find a solution. Just think of the few that you are living with yourself. It may be a web site that you have known for months needs an update. Or, it could be that the quality of your own email marketing needs improvement. They both could be valid problems; they just may not need fixing today.
And it is in this state of “mild problem acceptance” that the majority of your web site visitors will be. They know they have a problem; they just don’t have the motivation to fix it right now.
Browsers in this state will flit through your web site at the same pace as the rest except their intentions are obviously a lot more passive than those that need an immediate solution. Pages that carry statements that empathize with their problems will help them feel welcome.
But they aren’t experiencing enough “problem pain” yet to make the decision to call, but what they may have is the motivation to continue to learn more. And it is that reduced level of motivation that you can capitalize on with email marketing.
Offering these people a chance to register for a communication that contains content that appeals to them in their present state will be enough to nudge them into subscribing. And as they do, you now have the chance to talk to these people as their problem grows in intensity, so that they call you when they need it fixed in a hurry.
Without providing an email registration opportunity, your web site will just serve the smaller group of visitors that have a problem that needs fixing NOW and for whom a “contact us” page in all its glory will suffice.
Think about the problems your customers are facing when they come to your web site. Then start to design your email communications to suit those that are wandering around your web site, silently suffering, but interested in learning more.
Well the last Blog was destroyed in a sea of SPAM so here we go with a new and protected version to hit the web. I will add in stuff to make your vist worthwhile.