Forget about Social Media. Forget about direct mail, PPC, and SEO. Prepare yourself for the most important marketing component that every business should be using, period. That, my friends, is email marketing. This is a personal plea to stop making excuses and start sending out a WEEKLY email or e-newsletter to all of your clients, suppliers, colleagues, and everyone else in your network.
If you’re like me, you probably get in excess of 100 emails everyday. These emails range from the critical (i.e. a customer is virtually screaming at you through your monitor) to the mundane. Let’s face it, out of every 100 emails we receive, only about a handful are truly urgent and require our attention right away. Another 15% or so will require a follow-up of some sort, and the rest are just informative…If we read them at some point, great. If not, oh well. That said, I can understand (to a degree) why you’re not currently sending a weekly email to your list of contacts. You’re either too busy, don’t want to annoy people with frequent emails, don’t have enough to say on a weekly basis, or some other reason you’ve conjured up. Well, listen up. If you like making money and growing your business, anything that doesn’t involve sending a weekly email is an excuse!
It’s important to engage your network of contacts on a weekly basis for several reasons. The most important reason has to do with brand recognition. You’ve probably heard the statistic which states that it takes a customer 7 times to hear/see/interact with a brand before making a purchase. The theory behind it should make common sense… As consumers, we’re bombarded with advertisements everywhere we turn (TV, billboards, pop-up ads on the internet, etc.). For that reason, our brains simply can’t store all of the information that it gets about businesses and their products/services. Therefore, it takes consistent brand recognition for a customer to associate a need (or want) with a solution provider (i.e. a company).
Email offers a wonderful opportunity to utilize brand recognition amongst a group of people that are most likely to contribute to your bottom line; your network. Unlike other forms of advertising, everyone in your network has had an experience of some kind with your brand. Either you know them personally, met them through networking, or perhaps they joined your mailing list because they found your company interesting or valuable. All of the people in your network already know you and thus have given you the first green light to stay in touch with them. Don’t let these prospective buyers slip away.
Now, it’s important to understand that your list of contacts, which I’ll you’re your “distribution list” going forward, is composed of many different types of people, all of which serve a slightly different purpose. They can be broken down as follows:
- Current Customers: These people have already spent money with you, which makes them the #1 buying prospect. Keep them engaged with new product announcements, upsell opportunities, special promotions, and customer appreciation messaging. Remember, it’s 7 times more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep an old one.
- Personal and Business Friends: These folks know you and presumably like you. They may not fit your business’ target demographic, but they’re willing to help you when the need arises. Keep them engaged so that they can refer you customers when there’s an opportunity.
- Networking contacts: As a business owner or operator, you meet people everyday at networking events, restaurants, and virtually anywhere else you go. The topic of “What do you do” and “Do you have a card?” always come up. Add these people to your distribution list and remind them over and over of what you do. Down the road, you’ll be the first person they call to fulfill their needs
Hopefully by now you understand the importance of emailing your distribution list weekly. Now, let’s talk about how you do it.
The Tools
In theory, you could cut and paste a huge list of email addresses into your email client and send out a blast once a week. That’s the dumb way. Don’t do that. Instead, use one of the many email management applications that are readily available online. I strongly recommend using Aweber, though there are others that you can also use such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, Infusion Soft, etc. They all vary in price and many have a free version. I recommend Aweber for two primary reasons:
1. Automation: This is magical! Automation allows you to program a series of pre-written emails and send them out in intervals to each new person on your distribution list. Therefore, you write out 7 or so emails, schedule them a week apart, and each new person becomes familiar with your brand. You’ve saved yourself a bunch of time by only writing once!
2. Email Capture: This is a neat feature that allows you to capture the email addresses of people that visit your website by utilizing a pop-up message that prompts for the address. The pop-up works best when accompanied by a free giveaway like an e-book. Remember, more emails mean more new customers!
The Content
You may still be hesitant about email because you don’t feel you have enough information to offer on a weekly basis. That’s a legitimate concern, but it can be overturned with a bit of planning. When sending out emails, you ALWAYS want to provide your distribution list with something valuable. That value can come in the form of helpful industry advice, humor, promotions/sales, and a suite of other topics. I recommend providing industry advice because this is what people really want to read. They want to become better at their jobs and better in their personal lives, so if you can send them helpful tips and articles, you’re making them happy. Think about what you do within your company everyday and write down a few advice topics that you could share. (Note: This is best achieved through a blog, but if you don’t have one that’s ok too). Oh, don’t blast out sales messages every week. The last thing people want to read about on a weekly basis is feature enhancement #1,092 of your widget!
Here’s a list of additional things that you can include in your weekly email:
- Inspirational Quote
- A Video (typically created by you) related to your industry
- Photos
- Case Studies of recent work you’ve done
- Testimonials from happy clients
So stop making excuses and start emailing! Sign up for Aweber and watch your sales increase dramatically!
