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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Kim Albee
June - July 2010

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E-mail campaigns

Four Steps For Creating Effective Email Campaigns

WITH ALL THE NEW technologies rising in popularity-Twitter, social media, instant messaging-is e-mail still a viable way to reach prospects and convert them to clients?

In the business-to-business world, prospects and clients still find e-mail to be one of the most valuable sources of information during the buying process, according to MarketingSherpa. Buyers said they use e-mail for information almost as often as search engines like Google. They use search 37 percent of the time and e-mail 32 percent. They also ranked direct mail (19 percent) well above social networks (12 percent).

As a small-business owner, you might hear a lot of buzz about search engine optimization and social networks-and they are important tools. But a good, solid e-mail campaign to your clients and prospects remains one of the most effective tools you have.

This article gives four steps for creating effective email campaigns.

Know your customer

The top two reasons people sign up to read more e-mails from you are: that it will help them in their jobs, and that the e-mail will offer fresh insights and ideas. The third reason identified in the MarketingSherpa study was that the e-mails represent an area they want to learn about.

Software that allows you to send e-mails and track lead activities is getting smarter all the time. Consider using marketing software that lets you segment your e-mail lists by interest, or trigger communications based upon a leads activity. This way if you send out a general e-mail and Joe clicks on a link you provide to an offer, you can send him more e-mails about that product or service, while at the same time you’re sending Mary specific e-mails about the very different topic she expressed interest in.

If you don’t have that kind of software in place yet, you can play with segmenting by sending out e-mails with multiple links that direct people to different pages of your Web site. Then by using a free tool like Google Analytics, you can see which pages are getting the most traffic. This will start you down the path of understanding lead interests, and customizing your e-mails based on what you know and learn about your prospects and customers.

The flip side of knowing your customer is to let your customer know you. Personal “from” lines get much better open rates. If you can, set up your e-mails to display a person’s name in the “from” line. Don’t use a noreply@yourcompany.com address. Make sure someone is getting the replies, responding, routing them. Make your e-mail marketing efforts a conversation between two human beings.

Create emotional content

E-mail is so full of spam that people are naturally suspicious. Take the time to create content that treats them like a person. In the excellent book “Made to Stick,” the authors cite “emotional” as one of the seven factors that makes an idea stick. They don’t mean melodramatic emotional, but attentive to the stresses, pressures and concerns that people deal with every day. In other words, they mean “human.”

Pure information doesn’t create action the way emotions do. Every e-mail you send should have a purpose or you shouldn’t send it. I see too many business owners sending out e-mails because they think they should or they have a schedule for it.

Ask yourself what sending that e-mail gets you: does it forward the reader through the buying process? Does it answer a need and build trust? When you’re mapping out a plan for the content you’re going to provide, think through their buying process and answer the questions that arise for them at different stages.

Speaking of being too emotional, one hurdle I see is business owners not understanding how to read e-mail metrics. Studies show that on average 21 percent of commercial e-mails sent are opened. If you get an open rate over 27 percent, you’re in the top quartile of all commercial senders. When you see an open rate higher than that, you’re hitting the mark.

Make valuable offers

The top weakness that the MarketingSherpa data found overall for e-mails was that they had poor offers. Content is crucial, of course, but there are times when you want to tie that content to a clear next step. If  potential buyers are interested enough to read your e-mail, let them know what comes next.

One study showed that prospective buyers said they were most likely to click on a link for additional information when they received an e-mail with: news and articles (84 percent), competitive comparisons and buyers guides (73 percent), promotional content (70 percent), educational content (65 percent), free research reports (64 percent) and online demonstrations (63 percent).

Readers of your e-mail may be further along in the buying process than you think they are, so make sure you give them options for the next steps they can take.

This is the most common roadblock I hear from small-business owners. Who has time to think through all this information and craft the e-mails and pathways that your customers and prospects are going to respond to?

The Direct Marketing Association reported in 2008 that e-mail marketing returned $57 for every $1 spent. Yes, you read that right. Find something you’re doing right now during your work week that gives you no return on investment and replace that with working on your e-mail campaigns. It will make a difference.

You work hard to generate leads.  Only a small percentage are actually ready to buy right away. Most take some time. But most businesses don’t follow up with the leads they work so hard to get. Each month that passes, if you don’t follow up with your leads, they’re getting further away from becoming a customer. E-mail is an inexpensive way to keep in touch with them and measure their interests, hot button issues and needs.

I recommend that you look for tools that make e-mail marketing easy and that you always test your results and improve. Many of your competitors are not using the tactics described here; if you regularly send thoughtful e-mails, measure the results and adjust accordingly, you’ll be far in front of the pack.

Kim Albee,
Genoo LLC:
763.383.6081
www.genoo.com