Triangle Business Journal

David Chapman

E-mail use for marketing can pay dividends

Your Web site is up. Your sales strategy is solid. Now you need to develop a powerful and measurable customer retention, sales prospecting, and brand awareness program to support the sales effort.

Before you commit to the usual marketing tools, such as direct mail, advertising, telemarketing, trade shows and public relations, your company should become adept at deploying electronic publishing programs.

Yeah, I know — you’re thinking about those annoying, unsolicited e-mails that weed their way into your inbox. Those drive us all crazy and I’m not advocating spam.

What I’m talking about is an “opt-in” or requested e-mail newsletter, where your customers actually volunteer to receive news about your business.

With an e-mail newsletter, you can deliver useful content to your customers and prospects, strengthen relationships and promote a positive, helpful image for your business. The result should be to drive repeat visits to your Web site.

Just like any marketing tool, you must set clear specific objectives, such as retention of clients or addition of new ones. You’ll also need to analyze and capitalize on the proverbial “gap” between the customers' expectations and the competition, and you’ll need to decide on the positioning you will take to the market.

When developing your e-mail newsletter program, you should incorporate the following components:

• A short introduction and comment
• One or two short blurbs on hot company news
• Several links related to your business
• Classified ads
• Unsubscribe message
• Testimonials from satisfied customers
• Special offers
• Incentives to drive Web traffic
• Identifying advertisers and partners

If you are like most companies, you don’t have in-house resources that you can dedicate to execute your electronic publishing efforts. To that end, check out some of the following Web sites.

Microsoft's ListBot
www.listbot.com
Use this service to manage your newsletter online and to easily add a "subscribe to our newsletter here" link on your web site.

Lyris Web-based List Management
www.lyris.net
If your list has 20,000 members and you send one message a week, Lyris' system would only cost $400 a month. It's a great web-based list management system. Or you can buy the software and run it yourself.

MessageMedia's MailKing
www.messagemedia.com
MessageMedia is the leading provider of e-messaging software for building customer relationships online. Their e-mail marketing and customer service solutions tie directly to your database, so you can personalize messages based upon information you've collected. Don't have a database? MessageMedia's software comes with one.

WorldMerge — Connect Your Database and E-mails
www.coloradosoft.com/worldmrg/index.htm
WorldMerge allows you to quickly and easily generate large numbers of personalized e-mail messages using your "internet-ready" database of recipients and a "template" e-mail message.

David Chapman is President of 919 Marketing, a Triangle based marketing and business development consulting firm. He can be reached at (919) 557-7890.