• Confirmation of order or shipping detail
• Request for feedback on a purchase
• Request to tell all your friends about a purchase
• Happy birthday email with coupons
• You didn’t finish your order email
• Renew your subscription or contract
• “You may also like” emails showing you the other products and services also available?  Maybe at a buyers discount.
• Request for a product/service review
• Welcome message

I certainly think there’s a lack of knowledge about these mechanisms and plenty of opportunities that are missed.  It can be tailored to a company’s different types of customers and central to their interest.  We use well trigger emails to attract the customer’s interest, educate the buyer and nurture the lead.

Some prospects are not ready to buy your offer right now, particularly in the services industry. Great email automation can get them further along the buying cycle, and automate your sales before you engage your business development team.

According to a recent survey made by StrongMail in 2011, 46% of the businesses surveyed were already using automated, event-triggered, email marketing programs.

Interesting enough, the survey highlighted that the industry with the biggest life cycle email marketing usage is the travel & hospitality, closely followed by the retail industry.  Travelling to certain parts of the country or globe is very cyclical and email auto-responders for certain times of the year are just one brilliant example.  Once they are set up, you can forget about them but be assured that your prospects are getting a full tour of your brand.

The main benefits the survey respondents found about using these campaigns are shown in the graph below.

According to the survey, the main impediment companies find in implementing life cycle email marketing campaigns is the budget.  I think the investment is not so big, given the ROI on email marketing as a whole is the best per dollar spent.  Business should take advantage of it and I bet we could come up with 10 different ways for you to use trigger email right now!

For more hot uses on email automation, get the Effective Email Marketing Guide.

image via flickr by aussiegall

Despite all the talk about having a niche, many businesses still operate without one. Your must have something that sets you apart from anyone else either in product, distribution or promotion at all times. Doing this type of regular activity, protects your business from competing on price.

Now do not over think this. It does not have to be a new invention. It can simply be a new feature added to one of your current offerings. This is strategy to the core!

So below are three methods of uncovering your niche:

1. Call your top 6 clients.

They know what they want and need. Take detailed notes during the conversations and follow up on a least one idea that comes out in the conversation within a month. Keep the client involved in the progress too!

2. Do a ‘documented’ competitive analysis.

In a 3 column table, the headings should read ‘Unique Differences’ /’Risk Low -1 High -5′/ ‘Action’. List your competitors unique differences, the level of risk to your business and the actions you will take to combat them. Do a separate table for each client and review for possible feature combinations and brainstorm.

3. Compare against leaders in other industries.

If you are an IT company compare your product offering to a business in the restaurant industry or any category killer for that matter. It sounds odd, but list out all of your product or services for both you and them next to each other. You will be surprised how quickly a new offering idea can come to you and how creatively satisfying this can be.

Do this every quarter or half year and also pop it in your business plan.

If this is the first time you have done this, it will be a much needed reality check. I get to do this for clients all the time and it is quite scary how long they operate without a niche and wonder why is always comes down to price.

It is also advisable to have somebody outside of your business do this on your behalf and provide a report back to you. Business ‘owners’ and ‘founders’ in particular make ill judgements about the products or services and they never know that they are doing it

This is a short and snappy post about setting goals for your business. My wonderful personal trainer Esther from Passion8 PTput me onto the RunKeeper App for the iPhone. It tracks the exact distance by GPS, how far and how long you run. Now if you know me well, you know I HATE running. I will power walk for kilometers, follow a black line in a pool for as long and ride my bike with joy – but running – YUCK!

That would be fine except if my goal for 2010 is to finally compete in a Triathlon. It has been a long time dream because I love combining swimming and riding. So my goal is to learn to love to run. I have tried many times before and have failed.

So I started using this App and things have changed. Suddenly I am single minded about achieving my goal.Comparing previous runs and setting small weekly targets. I also get the sweet satisfaction of hitting these smaller goals with the end game in sight.

When on a run this week, my words from a recent post I did about Strategy for Social Media came back to me. Closely tracking myself against a long term goal means I am far less likely to give up and every move I make is deliberate.

Talk about motivation – I can’t wait to get back out there and beat myself. Previously I was running, but I didn’t really know where. I would easily tell myself that is far enough now.

Fluffy undefined goals are unachievable by their very nature. There is also a multitude of activities in your business you can waste time on and not achieve success. Ultimately strategy means clarifying what you want and setting goals on how you are going to achieve it.

Overselling can be a number of things.

1. Over promising – ie selling beyond what your goods and services are capable of delivering. A smart buyer will recognise this and you won’t get the sale. Others less astute may buy but will be disappointed and will either not come back to you or it will cause disputes. A good way to prevent this type of overselling is to understand the limits of your products and services and remember the adage “PROMISE GOOD AND DELIVER BETTER”.

2. Not recognising when you have the sale – You must listen to and watch the customer’s body language and not keep giving them information when they have already decided to buy. If you recognise when to stop selling and take an order you can always offer more information and the time of delivery, this will help show the customer that you are truly interested in them beyond that first order. This is very common.

3. Motor mouth – Again quite common. That is when a sales person just feels they have to tell you everything they can about everything they can. No cure for this but to get them out of sales and as far away from your potential or existing customers as you can.

In essence sales is about what you as a sales person don’t know about your customer’s wants or needs and therefore your ability to question them carefully until you fully understand what they really need to satisfy their requirements. This is a very important skill and in my opinion requires a certain degree of selflessness (that is another post). The customer is very grateful at this stage and if you can offer goods or services that meet that need do so. If you can’t see if you can point them in the right direction, Selling goods or services to a customer that don’t fit that need/desire requirement is the worst form of OVERSELLING. Indeed it is very selfish.

In short, overselling is selling beyond a customer present or reasonable future need/want requirement, selling above what your product or service is capable of delivering or simply over stating everything and most of all the inability to listen. Selling is simple – give em’ what they want.

So there is a commercial value placed on helping others-great. For those with a self-interest only sales orientation often burn out fast or get very little job satisfaction. The blossoming field of “social media” being an example of the economy moving beyond the outdated models of “The Corporation” that have long dictated the terms on which consumers interact with brands.
Perhaps this Global Financial Crisis will see businesses and sales teams re-examination these models.

These are a few traits of a Multiplier:
1. Has no hidden motives behind an action – It is easy to go I know in my country (Australian) people can smell self-interest 10 kilometres away.
2. Gives more then they receive – They go that extra inch. Their clients are always VIP’s.

3. Doesn’t keep count – Do it as if nobody will ever return the favour.

4. Builds up and does not tear down – It is really easy to find fault in something. But please believe me when I say moaning and criticism get really boring fast.

5. Doesn’t let anyone say it can’t be done – advice is easy hard to come by when you start sharing your ideas out aloud. Wisdom on the other hand is hard to find.

6. Never measures success in dollar terms – Don’t get me wrong, I know you need money, but if that is the only thing you based your decisions on, you will soon find you never have enough. True growth is based on so much more.

7. Passionate – It is as if what they are on about is dripping from their pores. You should meet our Children’s Pastor at our church. My kids are begging to go to both services before I am even out of Pyjamas.

8. They get next to people and walk alongside them – Take the time to coach and educate people so they can grow their own wings to fly. There is only one of you. But you develop the skills in those around you and suddenly you have an army. They Multiply