email marketing

Archive for the ‘email marketing’ Category

Five Permission Email Tips For Marketing

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

1. Only email those who have asked. It’s the law

If someone hands you their business card, don’t assume you can just add them to your email list. Ask first – the best time to mention it is when you get the card in your hand. Say something like: ‘I’ve got a great online newsletter, would you like to get a free subscription? You can leave it if it doesn’t appeal.’ Nine out of ten times you’ll get an affirmative answer.

2. Always honour their requests to opt-out.

Make it a simple process. Since people often have multiple email addresses, include on your email the address you have sent it to. This can eliminate a lot of angst on their side and frustration on yours.

3. Allow your customers and prospects to give you their preferences.

Information: how much and how often do they want it? For example, if you’re doing a daily email – cater to those who might prefer to have only some of the information. This makes it more relevant for them instead of having to scan through the entire email.

4. Do not sell or rent your lists.

Your email list can be your goldmine, one of the most valuable assets of your business. Don’t ruin it by selling or renting your email list.

5. Give and take.

You don’t think people give you their email addresses out of the goodness of their hearts do you? They do it in exchange for something of value to them. A gift, Information. Education. White paper.Chance to win. Be creative, but truly add value.

6. Respond to customer email inquiries promptly.

Why is it that once someone hits that send key on their computer, they expect an immediate reply? They expect that someone is sitting at a computer ready to read and respond to their email. Have an email policy and enforce it. Ensure that you have a 24-hour turnaround if at all possible.

Tags: email enquiries, email marketing, privacy
Posted in communication, email, email marketing, Outlook, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Categorise Customers For Ease of Use

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Here are two great tips for enhancing your marketing database to make it more workable and accessible for you.

If you have information in a simple Excel spreadsheet, don’t have a different column for every variable. You’ll end up with an unworkable spreadsheet with too many columns. Instead, categorise.

The wrong way
You set up a column for customers, a column for prospects, a column for old clients and a column for suppliers.

The right way
One column is allocated and called Customer Type for example. All the different variables are then used within that one column such as customer, old customer, prospect, supplier. When you need to see or communicate with a specific type – for example you want to see all the prospects listed, you simply sort the entire list by Customer Type and all the suppliers will be listed one after another.

If you keep your information in Outlook or Lotus Notes Contacts, one of the least-known functions is Categories – a keyword or phrase that you can assign to a contact. Better yet, you can assign multiple categories to each contact.

Categories are utterly brilliant in many ways. Why? Because you can finely target specific customers. By creating industry, occupation, interest, purchase, service categories, for example, all you need to do is sort by category.

How do I create a category?
Open any Outlook contact. In the bottom centre you’ll see the rectangular Categories box. Click to open. Ignore the pre-programmed Microsoft ones. Click the Master Category List button, then type in your own. To view your contacts grouped by categories, go to View,
Current View, then Categories. In Lotus Notes, you’ll find it in the contacts section.

Article by International Speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. www.debbiespeaks.co.nz Debbie@debbiespeaks.co.nz

Tags: categories, contacts, database, lotus notes, marketing, Outlook
Posted in communication, email marketing | No Comments »

Activity equals success

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

If business is slow, don’t sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for the figurative telephone to ring, Listen to your gut for what would be good for your clients in this economy. Using your database, create your own activity. Activity Equals Success.

Let me give you a personal example. Last winter was going to be an exceptionally quiet one for business. While dropping the kids off at school at 8:25, I thought to myself “Why don’t I run some database marketing workshops around New Zealand and Australia By 9:35 I had segregated out my New Zealand and Australian newsletter subscribers, wrote a simple two paragraph plain text email to each group. I asked them to reply only if they were VERY interested in attending. A flood of over 700 emails had just arrived. Now two months later I conducted 14 workshops for 410 individuals, generated four speaking engagements and sold a lot of books. Let’s look at the aspects of this marketing campaign in relation to this economic climate.

Database
This entire exercise was marketed solely though my newsletter database. With the help of my readers, it was spread though their sphere of influence.

Targeted
Why burn the goodwill of your list by sending people in the UK, Spain, Brazil or Florida an email about an Australasian workshop? After the initial send, the communication continued primarily with those whom had expressed interest rather than the whole database.

Ease. Speed
From my initial idea in the car through to the final targeted execution and distribution of over 10,000 emails – only one hour had elapsed.

Inexpensive
The outlay was purely my time and that of an assistant helping with faxed forms and invoicing/receipts.

Not Fancy
It was simply plain text paragraphs. In fact I am 100% positive that the simplicity not only helped the email get through spam filters, it also was easy to digest and act on immediately.

Tags: email, inexpensive, marketing
Posted in Cheap marketing, communication, email, email marketing | No Comments »

Business Quick Tips February 2009 Vol 5 No #40

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Business Quick Tips February 2009 Vol 5 No# 40

Debbie’s Website | Business Books | Speaking | Where’s Debbie | Quick Tips Sign-up

1. Fluff Walks. $ Talks.

2. Extra Value WWD

3. How To Stop Redundancies From Killing Your Email List

4. HP Online Learning Centre.

1. $ Talks. Fluff Walks

Enhance and refocus your marketing and sales efforts by putting a dollar value on how your customer will benefit. Show them their rate of return.

This exercise is easier than you think. Will it save them time? Value it by estimating the time it will save per annum multiplied by the value of that personâ€™s time (their wage per hour, salary). You can reduce stress? Does that lead to happier employees which helps reduce turnover? You can quantify the recruitment costs saved along with the productivity continuum.

Help them make more sales or increase turnover?Â Â Take the average value of one sale (you can even factor in the life time value of that one new client) multiplied by the number of new ones expected.

You can get the base information any number of ways. Research on the Internet. Their Competitors. Annual reports. Talk to HR professionals about salary levels. Colleagues in that industry. Allies within that company.

Read entire article Diamond Marketing on a Pauper Spend on my new Time & Money blog

2. Extra Value WWD

What’s WWD? Working with Debbie. Please let me tell you about three new added value benefits.

If you want to improve the business performance or time management of your staff or sales team, or you’re planning a conference this year – allow me to give you a quote. You’ll get a motivating, entertaining, yet practical how to session on how to make significant improvement in business turnover or productivity from minimum effort or cost. It’s by helping to better understand and use the tools you have – database, email, mobile phone, Internet.

Areas we can focus on for example:

– Where and how to find new business

– Improve customer relationships and service

– Get better results from the Internet

– Boost time management, conquer email overload

The three extra value adds?

In addition to the research I conduct beforehand; this year you’ll get

One year follow up consulting for all conference attendees or staff trained.
Complimentary membership for all attendees in my IIY program – hundreds of one minute video lessons, educational articles and quick tips to use with copyright permission.
All new clients; or referrers resulting in a training / speaking engagement will receive one of the best ever business tools – A business card scanner, four hundred dollar value- take a look

Shoot through an email for a quote – or here’s my formal quote page

3. How To Stop Redundancies From Killing Your Email List

With so many redundancies, you’re going to lose a chunk of your email list. Here are three ideas to help you.

Have your newsletter sign up request on every webpage, every piece of marketing material – even your business card.
Have two email addresses on your sign up form. Primary and secondary. With the rate of downsizing – you’re going to lose a lot of subscribers.
If your unsubscribes are automatically removed, if possible take it over and do them manually. You’ll keep a closer watch on your list and be able to follow up personally on VIP’s that are now mail delivery errors.

4. HP Online Learning Centre

If you have the time, HP has 16 courses online from Laptop PC troubleshooting through to Search Marketing Fundamentals. You simply sign in to use them.

HP Online Courses

Read
the last Issue of Business Quick Tips

New?
Subscribe Now

No more? Here’s the politically correct yada yada yada “Debbie, no more communications please, unsubscribe here+-

Published by
href=”http://www.successis.co.nz” target=”_blank”>SuccessIS. Debbie
Mayo-Smith International Motivational Business Speaker and Author,
35 Chelmsford Ave, Glendowie, Auckland NZ. Phone 64 9 575 5359.
Copyright 2009 SuccesslS. All rights reserved. SuccessIS
is committed to protecting your privacy. We
do not sell, trade, rent or otherwise disclose any personal information
you provide to us.

Tags: email lists, hp online learning, marketing
Posted in email marketing, improving sales, motivational speaker, smart marketing | No Comments »

Search

Subscribe to blog

Free Quick Tips
View and sign up for Debbie's free monthly newsletter now!

Call Debbie Now!
64 (9) 575-5359 NZ
61 (3) 9005 7563 Melbourne
61 (2) 8005 7551 Sydney

Debbie@successis.co.nz

Books

Marketing in Today's Wired World alerts you to the many profitable and clever ways you can use email, txt, video and audio messages to boost revenues, recruit new business, cut costs, improve customer service and leapfrog in front of your competition.
Read more...

101 Outlook and Google Tips Debbie's years of experience working with email and Google are packed into this easy to read #1 bestselling book.
Read more...

101 Customer Experience Tips do you want more sales, referrals and repeat business? Then you need this book! You won't want to miss these 101 tips to place your head and shoulders above the crowd to build customer loyalty, word of mouth, and profits.
Read more...

101 Balancing Tips with nine children between them and busy careers, let Debbie and Mary Lambie use their experience to make this practical little book a goldmine of solutions for you.
Read more...

Save hours a week using clever, timesaving 'how-to' solutions to the top problems you have using email, your calendar, address books/contacts.
Read more...