Eat your heart out David Letterman! We’ve developed our Top 5 Benefits of Email Marketing. For many of our clients, they’ve realized many of these benefits in their bottom-lines. Which, at the end of the day, is the ultimate goal for any business that markets its products and services. Ladies & Gentlemen, the Rock Solid Media Top 5 Benefits of Email Marketing.
5. Increased Personal Relationships with Clients – Think about it. Your clients are giving you their email address and asking you to keep in contact with them. They want to hear from you. This is your opportunity to relate to your clients on a personal level.
4. Targeting with Pin-Point Accuracy – You’ve probably, at some point, spent money on traditional advertising mediums. And you should, but not for the reasons you probably think. Traditional advertising mediums (radio, TV, print, billboards) are great at driving traffic and building name awareness and brand recognition. Used properly, these venues can support a effective email marketing strategy. Drive people to your website, invite them sign up for your free e-newsletter. And for God’s sake, give them something FREE for signing up. Give them a certificate good for a $10 store credit to use with their next purchase. A free bottle of carpet stain spot remover. Something to get them in the store, or something to get them engaged with you. Once they’re signed up, you can target them specifically based on their interest, which you asked them about on the sign up form on your website.
3. Trackability – We now live in a world where everything is tracked. You log on to your favorite website, your IP address is being recorded. Email marketing gives you the ability to see who is opening your email, how many times they’ve opened the email, which links they’ve clicked on, and most importantly, bounces. If you get a bounced email from a subscriber, you can use that as an opportunity to reach out and have a conversation with that client/customer. Again, building a stronger personal relationship.
2. Stronger Online Presence – If you don’t have a website, get one. Everyone is turning to the internet to find products, services, phone numbers. The days of opening the phonebook, especially for the younger generation, are slowing diminishing. You need to have a website, and if you have a website, you NEED email marketing. Again, it comes back to trackability. You can see who’s visiting your website when they sign up for your e-newsletter.
And, the Number 1 Benefit of Email Marketing is…
1. Cost Effective – I want to bring the traditional advertising back into focus for a minute. Picture a funnel. When you put a bunch of “stuff” in the funnel, the result is a slow stream coming out the bottom of the funnel. Marketing, especially with traditional advertising, is much like a funnel. You’ve got to put a ton of money in the top of the funnel before you start to see a return on your investment. Remember what I said though. You need to have traditional advertising as a part of your marketing mix, with the specific purpose of driving traffic to your website and your e-newsletter. Now, turn the funnel upside down. What happens? You put a little bit of money into the top of the funnel (the narrow end), and what comes out at the bottom…an overflow of business. That’s email marketing’s cost effectiveness at work for you. Email marketing, when compared to other forms of marketing and advertising, is more cost effective and can bring you a greater return on investment.
So, you’re here. At the bottom of the post. Are you ready? Ready to take control of your marketing future? Ready to implement email marketing? Contact us today and let us show you how email marketing can help your bottom line!
We work extensively with Send Labs, and wanted to share some of their great insights about email marketing. In their most recent post, Josh Nason (an email marketing “ace”) discusses the importance of using a valid reply-to email address. We’ll let Josh preach it!
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Email Marketing Best Practices, Hints and Tips by SendLabs
Email Marketing: Use A Valid Reply-To Email…Or Else!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 4:24 PM
We had a new client send through our system recently and after their first deployment, they asked why their send-from address got hit with some Out Of Office replies. After explaining how the process works, they asked if they could just use a fake address or a noreply@company.com address instead. While it’s their list and they can do what they want, I highly recommend against anyone using an invalid email as a best practice. Why?
It’s an easy interaction point with your recipients. Everyone knows how to reply to an email, so why take the opportunity to interact with someone away? The user has given you permission to correspond with their inbox, but now you’re going to put up an iron wall when they want to talk to you? C’mon now. If I told you the potential for someone to spend a lot of money with you was at stake, you’d find a way to make this work, right?
That’s how you have to think about it: money. If you’ll do whatever it takes to keep your existing clients and obtain new ones, this is a no-brainer and should be encouraged. If you have to, create a new email address specifically for this purpose. By using a non-valid email, you are essentially saying you’re about one-way communication and that’s all.
Too many people assume using a real email address when deploying campaigns is going to be too much hassle in sifting through emails from people wanting to interact. Heaven forbid! Take a look around today’s economic landscape. There are plenty of other companies that would LOVE to have that problem. Hire an intern, create a system or make this part of an existing employee’s workflow, but don’t shut off this opportunity to talk with your clients in a very familiar and friendly medium.
And if you ever want to email me, I’m josh [at] sendlabs [dot-com]!
Thanks to the gang at SendLabs!
Thought I would share a recent recommendation from one of our clients. Metro CD Engineering, LLC is an engineering firm in Columbus, OH. We’ve been working with them for approximately 7 months, preparing monthly newsletters about their business. Michael Chow is the Managing Principal for the firm, and these are his words.
“My firm is an engineering consulting firm that utilizes Rock Solid Media, LLC for marketing e-mail newsletters.
We have been extremely pleased with the service Rock Solid Media has provided. Chris Stone, the Principal of Rock Solid Media, goes above and beyond to ensure our needs are met and our expectations are exceeded.
Chris prepares our newsletters including developing graphics as well as the text. The newsletters have been well-received by our existing clients and have helped us gain new clients.
The newsletters help us communicate to our clients projects we have completed, new services we offer, introducing new employees and ways for the clients to improve their bottom line. We are able to review statistics on each newsletter that show us which clients have read our newsletters.
In closing, we strongly recommend Chris Stone and Rock Solid Media, LLC for anyone interested in developing a highly effective marketing e-mail newsletter program.” – Michael Chow, Managing Principal, Metro CD Engineering LLC
Michael, we appreciate your business and thoroughly enjoy working with you and the team at Metro CD Engineering!
I had a great phone conversation with a banking client in Indiana this week. We were discussing their email marketing and what has worked well, and what hasn’t worked so well. From our discussion and review of their tracking reports, we found that pictures work EXTREMELY well!
Pictures, especially of your employees, work very well when you do a feature article about that individual. It gives your subscribers a chance to put a face with a name, before they come in to your business! In this era of “big box shops”, independently owned, local businesses need to take advantage of every avenue possible to build a strong relationship with current and potential customers. Great customer service should be the hallmark of every locally owned business, regardless of the products or services you sell! Being able to walk in and know a person’s face, name, and a little info about them makes that customer feel they’re a part of your family.