Pollen Marketing

Now here is a thought. Would it be great to find out exactly what makes your client’s tick? Imagine a device that could tell you exactly what made your customers heart leap? If something could tell you what motivates your customers and genuinely interests them, would you want it? Of course you can pay a for some market research usually starting at $8,000.00. Or….

The advancement of most cost effective, sometimes free email marketing software, that kind of knowledge is built-in. Indeed knowing inside your clients heads has been possible for some time. The reporting functionality on email marketing software like this is pretty standard out of the box. You just may not have been aware of the implications or know how to use it.

So here is a pretty common scenario for you.  You email out  an update to your database with your usual helpful tips. Ensure you place hyperlinks within your article. Only put a short version of the story in the actual email (25-35 words) and add a link to read more back at your website. There is no need to complicate it and get bogged down in the data. Just knowing what links most people click is telling you what to include in your next offer or what products are the most interesting.  For the campaigns we have created for our clients, there is almost always a clear winner when it comes to links clicked within an email. See the example below.

So be creative and customise your message knowing what interests people.  Or maybe do a review of your products and have hyperlinks on some of the features or benefits.  Which one gets clicked on most?  Perhaps you enhance that feature or provide more information on your website or brochure.  You may even plan the next product release on that type of priceless data.

 

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While email marketing continues to rule, but many businesses I have surveyed have struggled to get a regular meaning program of the ground. Is your business one of them?   What has been the main blockage that has prevented you from starting or maintaining an email marketing program? I would love to help you overcome these issues in the comments below…

But here are some great reasons for revisiting email marketing that you may not of thought of yet…

• Email reporting is so advanced, you can identify what your market is trying to tell you about what products they want and what features interest them.
• Set up and forget a welcome series that validate your expertise and educate your prospects about what you do.
• Highest ROI per dollar spent of any of the online marketing tools.
• Ultimate story telling channel
• Affordable online tools available with features that are out of this world (just take a pick).
• Amazing speed to market once you have built a valuable list.
• Isolate the characteristics of your brand that do or don’t appeal to your audience increase the amount emails are opened and read.
• Track and measure the engagement levels of new marketing initiatives almost instantaneously.
• Prevent the costly expense of un-targeted marketing.
• Prospects and customers know exactly what you deliver.
• Ease to begin dialogue with new prospects and quickly convey what you stand for.
• Quicken the sales process with clever conversation about your people, products or services.
• Email programs have become easier and easier to use.
• Know the customers that are most interested in new product announcement or event and follow up on them individually.

 

Drum roll…..According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar invested in 2009, and it may surprise you that this trend has changed very little since then.

This highest yielding ROI medium also allows you to communicate directly with your top prospects.   And the icing on the email marketing cake?  According to the ForeSee Results 2010 on the effectiveness of social media, promotional emails are the second biggest influence on retail website visits, second only to the actual pre-awareness of the brand. Well ahead of social media.  Today, savvy businesses consider email marketing to be the best channel among all online technologies.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am a big fan of social media, but in most cases, it should not be the cornerstone of your marketing. So perhaps you currently don’t have an email marketing program live or you do or it just hasn’t quite hit it’s potential yet. Or maybe you thought you could avoid it all together and just send a few tweets instead? It is certainly time to reassess.

THE PLUG – This is why I thought it is important to write the very candid book to help you  - Out Now “Effective Email Marketing Guide.“