It helps the world is round when coming full circle as— after centuries of market expansion by land, by sea, by satellite— business now finds itself personal again thanks to the world wide web. In today’s vast market network of individuals, smart companies know that to keep customers and grow, they must cultivate interactive relationships based on individual customer needs.
Email marketing produces custom-tailored communications directly delivered to highly receptive audiences in precision-targeted markets at far less cost than traditional old century advertising.
Building your company identity and data resource library while building personal relationships with customers conveniently, email marketing gives your business tools to quickly recognize and respond to customer needs, market trends and company particulars.
Your marketing agency or web designer can easily add email marketing to your online presence, creating a custom database for company use and simple methods of contacting customers.
Begin by adding simple features to your website such as an online mailing list or comment card to collect in your database the contact information of interested customers. Your database should be easy to use for both you and your administrators as well as employees, and should allow you to sort, track and contact individuals and groups.
You and your marketing agent will create an email format following the design and tone of your business, as well as a series of standard emails to be sent automatically from your business welcoming new customers and responding to customer activity. Regular company newsletters or special offers and announcements using the same email format are great for further developing customer relationships.
Including a single, well worded request for response in each communication can provide new helpful information on your company and customers. Start with basics like contact preferences (preferred form of personal address, desired frequency of contact, HTML or plain text). Stored in your database, you can now contact these highly interested people personally in ways convenient to them.
Once your business has acquired basic information on a person, you can begin to gather more specific data useful in tailoring service to the individual, monitoring customer service and identifying future trends. Decide what would be useful to know from customers, then work with your marketing agent to develop easy, engaging questions that generate the most response.
Take further advantage of email’s personal format by letting customers get to know you. Offer simple interesting or helpful information about your company within communications and a direct link your site, as well as an unsubscribe option. This respects the mutual interest element of the relationship, and keeps your mailing list full of people happy to hear from you.
Dedicate staff to maintaining your database so data stays current. Always offer customers the option of contacting you directly with each email communication, and collect all customer responses in a single email inbox. Monitor this inbox regularly and respond to each customer email directly, in a timely manner. This type of personal service is easy for businesses to provide and creates genuine company loyalty among customers.
A bonus feature of email marketing is the big picture it helps a business develop. Using analytics software with your database, you can identify high-value markets, customers and advertising campaigns. Customized reports, charts and graphs generated by your analytics software clearly present data on your customer demographics, business performance and status compared to competition, allowing you to adapt quickly for increasing success.
Inexpensive, easy to create and use, email marketing makes the world small again, so your business talks with a customer directly, informed of his or her specific interests and preferences. The one-on-one personal nature of email coupled with the customer control inherent in email marketing campaigns combine to cultivate the interactive relationships central to market success today.
Go build your database—start sending invitations. Interesting, interested people will come, and you will come to know each other. Word will get around— so it helps the world stays round.
