Today it is about staying in touch with your customers, communicating with them regularly, reminding them of your value and setting yourself ahead of your competitors. Organisations use email marketing because it has many benefits over other marketing channels – and it works.

Email marketing grew by 24 per cent last year to £274m, as organisations reach out to consumers via their inboxes. The reason? Because it works!

Email marketing is a versatile channel that any business or organization, regardless of size, can use to send newsletters, promotions and offers, coupons, thank-you messages, event invites, e-cards, e-brochures and many other things.

It is perfect for generating repeat business, driving referrals and building loyalty. Here are just some of the benefits of email marketing – and key reasons why your organisation should be using it to generate new business:

• It’s personal: Email offers you the opportunity to personalise your message to the recipient. Send them emails addressing them by name and give them offers targeted to their preferences.
• It’s quick: It takes far less time to plan and execute an email campaign, than, for example a direct mail campaign, and you get your results back almost immediately. If you react quickly you’ll see the benefits to your business almost straight away.
• It’s cheap: In comparison with direct mail campaigns with their inherent postage costs email campaigns are very cost effective and with response rates usually higher than direct mail, email will give you a better return on your investment.
• It’s measurable: Email campaigns are fully trackable giving you complete visibility of your results. Being able to see exactly how many emails were delivered, opened and clicked on, and in real-time, means you can test different campaigns and refine them to get the best response rates.
• It helps build customer relationships: Because email communications are cheaper and easier to send, companies often use email to keep in regular contact with existing customers and this enables them to build stronger relationships with them. Email marketing is the ideal medium to update customers with time sensitive offers and product news

From an article by  Jim Webster  of Heart New Media

Read the rest of their article here…

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Commment;

Whether you decide to keep your email marketing in house, or outsource it to a company like heartnewmedia, you should have a consistant plan and stick to it. If you don’t have a large database or want to tap into a larger coverage then you can always purchase detail, although this scatter gun approach will not generate the same response.

While having your own newsletter/database would be ideal, the best alternative for time, cost and effectiveness is to tap into an existing database and newsletter system. This will not only work out very cost and time efficient you will also manage to tap into markets that were otherwise of your direct radar. If you would like to chat about this last option within the Dorset area get in touch. Outside Dorset why not look for your local TheBestOf at www.thebestof.co.uk

Many of are aware of Facebook, MySpace & LinkedIn to name a few, but there is a relative newcomer on the block who may well end up bigger than all of them, Twitter.

Put simply Twitter is a way to send short text messages to a group of people who have chosen to ‘follow’ you and hear your responses to the standard Twitter question, “What are you doing?”

This has been much publicised recently with some high profile celebrity ‘tweeters’ who have developed an ever increasing fan base of followers who hang on every breath, or should that be every Tweet, waiting for news that they had safely made it out of bed and were currently tucking into a lovely portion of eggs benedict.

But there must be more to Twitter than that or it wouldn’t be worth the $500million that Facebook offered for it last year (which was rejected by Twitter)

So apart from being an egotists latest measure of popularity, how can this service help your business?

Well from a marketers point of view the idea of taking the conversation off the web and into the pockets of anyone and everyone who has asked to hear from you is potentially priceless. Add to that the idea that everybody can reply to you, or to your entire audience turns this into an immediate two way conversation.

The challenge is to make what you say interesting enough for people to subscribe. Ask questions, short press releases, news, events or reviews. It is a great way to gain the trust and earn the respect of others. Make offers or spread the word of things that you do, you buy or you use. Make a follower laugh and you are onto a real winner. It’s the typical drip feed approach, little and often, keeping your name out there, even if your message isn’t about your business it will be from you, keeping your brand in their mind.

When you start you will effectively be talking to an empty room, but that is great practice, do it as the saying goes and they will come.

Use other forms of communication to publicise your Twitter presence, your website, newsletters, email signature, blog. Twitter can be used to automatically update other social media such as your Facebook profile or your blog so it will not take any more time out of your day, you will just be using your time differently.

Look out for a future article on synchronising your online presence and saving time, after all we all have a day job to do as well!

As twitter grows throughout the next year or two it could well become the norm, in fact a necessity to have a presence on twitter. It needn’t take up any time as I have already explained.

Here are a couple of links for further reading. I will report back on my life with Twitter in the coming months, feel free to follow me at http://twitter.com/thebestofpoole and we’ll see where life takes us!

Twitter Crazy – The Daily Telegraph – 12^th February 2009;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/4523494/How-to-Twitter-why-the-world-is-Twitter-crazy.html

An introduction to Twitter from the BBC One Show February – 11^th 2009;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theoneshow/consumer/2009/02/11/social-networking-more-informa.html

Networking is all about building connections and allegiances. These could be with your customers, potential customers, suppliers or even your competitors. The key to being a successful networker is that you are not building a contact list to ‘sell’ to

“It’s not about who you know it’s about who they know”

Your aim is to expand knowledge of your business to a wider audience and that will naturally drive custom to you.

Let me explain.

A key skill for any networker is to develop the art of listening. I don’t just mean standing in silence waiting for your turn, but to have the ability to take in what others are saying. You will learn a lot from people by listening. Listen to everyone, even those you already know well, it’s amazing what you will pick up by just listening and asking the right questions. What they do, how they do it and sometimes a very interesting one, why they do it. But it’s not just about the ‘job’, learning about the person is as important as learning about the business. You will in time get your chance to talk about what you do.

The second skill in networking is to know your stuff. Have an in depth knowledge of your business and the wider sector in which you operate in, after all how will you ever be able to talk openly and expertly if you don’t!

You will find yourself learning about many other business in sectors well away from yours but you will, over time (many events happen weekly or monthly) develop a knowledge of them as they will about you.

You will even find yourself talking about, even recommending them to other people and guess what? They will be doing exactly the same for you. You will become part of a network of local businesses, who all know, trust, rate and hopefully use each other that can recommend each other to the wider world. You have an army of salesmen, who you are not paying!

Word of Mouth Marketing at its best.

So where can you Network?

Speak to your local Chambers of Commerce, or look up Business Support and Networking on thebestof.co.uk.

Locally to us in Dorset we have Thebestof Poole, Dorset Business, BusinessXchange and Business Scene to mention a few.

“Time invested networking is never wasted time”

Future articles in this series will include organising your own networking, online networking and social networking. Be sure to check back regularly for updates,

The billboards used by the Financial Times

The picture above shows a billboard advert that the FT ran as part of a campaign during the months up to Christmas. They used empty billboards with a small message on the classic FT pink paper in one corner. The message was simple and read;

Global downturn.

What’s the first mistake

businesses make?

Followed by the link,   www.ft.com/budgets

As you will find out if you follow the link yourself it leads users to a page full of information about how businesses have survived and even thrived through a recession by following and not deviating from a structured marketing plan.

Moreover, it is a proven fact that the effects of cutting back in the lean times are felt for years afterwards.

The report continues….

“..In every recession of the past 90 years, independent studies show that the businesses who increase their advertising spend are the ones who survive the tough times and thrive afterwards.”

Quotes from some of the reports;

“The companies who increased their spend in a recession were the only ones whose profits rose substantially when the economy recovered”

McKinsey & Co. study

“The advantages of maintaining or increasing marketing effort are greater than the short-term benefits of reducing spend.”

Patrick Barwise, London Business School Professor of Management & Marketing

The sales of companies who had kept advertising during the 81-82 recession had risen 256% over those who had not.

McGraw-Hill research, analysing 600 companies from 1980-1985

To see the whole article for yourself click on the link above or here.

So the prudent amongst you will already see that while cutting any marketing expenditure in the short-term may be an easy way to preserve the pennies, it may well be an unwise move and should be avoided for as long as possible. There is still every sense in having a full review of what you are spending your marketing money on though. Now more than ever you will want every pound to earn its crust.

With advertising rates remaining steady, or even declining in some media you should find that you can get more bang for you buck, a double bonus for anyone capable of maintaining their budgets compared to their rivals. .

That’s why we will continue to advertise and promote Thebestof Poole.

What are you doing to continue to promote your business?

Cheers,

Chris

Chris Odell

Based in Poole, Dorset TheBestof Poole offers the complete marketing strategy for local businesses, including print, radio and online advertising plus valuable networking events.

We work hard to pull together different, highly successful strands of marketing activity to promote businesses and help them communicate effectively to their customers.

We work hard to build relationships with businesses; it’s not just about helping spend your advertising budget!

It’s about building connections and spreading the word. It’s about getting your message out to the people who matter to you, your clients.

It’s about plugging you into other businesses who want what you can offer or can help you grow.

It’s about providing a platform for your clients to leave feedback, testimonials and recommendations.

It’s about giving you one place to go for all your local marketing and promotional needs. A one-stop-shop if you will for all of your marketing requirements. Not only will this save you money, it will save you time, something that we are all becoming increasingly short of.

Word of mouth, combined with networking events, in conjunction with customer recommendations, online advertising and targeted local promotions that work together to show you a great value return on your marketing investment.

Treat us as your out-sourced sales and marketing team; let us work to drive business to you.

Thebestof Poole Local Marketing at its Best www.thebestof.co.uk/poole