Successful e-newsletters urge readers to do three things: 1) open the e-newsletter, 2) read it and 3) act upon it. This was my conclusion in a previous post about e-newsletter content. But format, in many respects, is just as important as content. Format brands your message and creates a bond with the reader. It provides a platform to communicate value and offer your products and services.
To ensure that you consistently brand your e-newsletter and communicate maximum value, ensure that your e-newsletter format accomplishes these three things:
1) Consistency: readers don’t want to play guessing games. Select a format and stick with it. You can update your format as you find what works, but don’t deviate too far from one consistent format. If you decide to change your format, let your readers now. This can be an additional marketing touch point that won’t seem intrusive.
2) Easy-to-Follow: let the reader skim content quickly. Use headlines, bullet points and bold text to highlight key points. These call outs should be simple and highly visible as they contain your key communication points. Stick to three or maybe four sections in total. Your e-newsletter can be lengthy if you continue to provide valuable content, but break it up into a few sections to make it easy-to-follow.
3) Seamless Click-thrus: your e-newsletter should provide a platform for readers to find out more. Reference websites and links within the format and content of your website, but double check to make sure that all references seamlessly link to the intended websites. This sounds obvious, but I've seen too many e-newsletters that frustrate readers with links to nonexistent sites. Ideally, you want readers to spend more time on your site, so think where people would go from one link to another and where you want to drive them.
Ultimately an e-newsletter must both inform and sell. Content should communicate value and the format should build a relationship with readers. There are several reasons why you need an e-newsletter to market your business. Among other things, they are an economical way to market your products and services and they should be a part of your marketing plan.
How to Connect Locally
Successful businesses invest in their communities. This is true of both big and small businesses. The more a business can give to a community, the more the community will give to the business.
This relationship plays most true with respect to word-of-mouth. Locals can often be the best (or worst!) form of business advertising: it’s both cheap and powerful. Today’s post, therefore, is about leveraging the most you can out of local connections. As you will see, a business can achieve excellent marketing ROI with some inexpensive yet important local initiatives.
Before jumping into how to get the most out of your local community, please note that some small business models do not rely on local contacts, connections and customers. That said, even the most virtual business models can still gain from keeping close ties with the local community. Locals can serve on focus groups, help you advertise, or even become clients in an ideal world. This makes local connections important for any business.
So whether or not your business relies on local traffic, here are three ways to get the most out of your local connections:
1) Dialogue with Your Customers: Simply listening to your customer can go a long way. Many business owners cringe when one of their customers says, “You know what you should do…” Sure, everyone has an opinion and few know exactly how to run your business, but listening is more than just hearing new ideas. Listening allows a business owner to plug into the community. Listening enables a business owner to really tap into needs. Most importantly, listening allows the customer to feel comfortable. A comfortable customer is a happy customer and a happy customer returns with friends.
2) Partner with your customers: Businesses that succeed are able to partner with their customers. Partnerships can take on many forms. A rewards program, for example, is essentially a partnership program. If you can give your best customers something in return, they are more like partners and less like customers. Another successful partnership platform is to let the customers drive more of their experience. At Southwest, customers make their own reservations, check in on their own and manage their own accounts. Southwest saves on labor but more important, the customers are more engaged since they are, in effect, employees or partners.
Another way to make partnerships successful is to simply ask for it. Take your best customers and ask them to partner with you on your marketing. Get them to provide testimonials (very powerful) which you can then use on your marketing collateral. Even better, have them post reviews online on popular sites like Yelp or Citysearch. These online recommendations pop up in search engines and are extremely effective. Or get your best advocates to create a video and post it on You Tube. However, you sould be careful with this approach: choose only the best customers that you know would represent and communicate your brand just as you would wish.
3) Give to Local Associations: Notice I did not say “join” local associations. I frequently hear from clients “I no longer am a member of the local Chamber because I didn’t get any business out of it.” My first response to this statement is always, “Well, what did you give?” They invariable say “not much.” Simply joining a Chamber of Commerce or another local business association will not bring more business to you. To leverage the local contacts, you need to GIVE to those associations. Serve on the membership committee, sign up to host an event, write an article for their publication and generally do more than just attend. Attendance is not even half the battle. For maximum effectiveness, it’s all about participation.
Connect locally, even if your business is not completely reliant on local traffic. Develop local relationships and your marketing will succeed.
This relationship plays most true with respect to word-of-mouth. Locals can often be the best (or worst!) form of business advertising: it’s both cheap and powerful. Today’s post, therefore, is about leveraging the most you can out of local connections. As you will see, a business can achieve excellent marketing ROI with some inexpensive yet important local initiatives.
Before jumping into how to get the most out of your local community, please note that some small business models do not rely on local contacts, connections and customers. That said, even the most virtual business models can still gain from keeping close ties with the local community. Locals can serve on focus groups, help you advertise, or even become clients in an ideal world. This makes local connections important for any business.
So whether or not your business relies on local traffic, here are three ways to get the most out of your local connections:
1) Dialogue with Your Customers: Simply listening to your customer can go a long way. Many business owners cringe when one of their customers says, “You know what you should do…” Sure, everyone has an opinion and few know exactly how to run your business, but listening is more than just hearing new ideas. Listening allows a business owner to plug into the community. Listening enables a business owner to really tap into needs. Most importantly, listening allows the customer to feel comfortable. A comfortable customer is a happy customer and a happy customer returns with friends.
2) Partner with your customers: Businesses that succeed are able to partner with their customers. Partnerships can take on many forms. A rewards program, for example, is essentially a partnership program. If you can give your best customers something in return, they are more like partners and less like customers. Another successful partnership platform is to let the customers drive more of their experience. At Southwest, customers make their own reservations, check in on their own and manage their own accounts. Southwest saves on labor but more important, the customers are more engaged since they are, in effect, employees or partners.
Another way to make partnerships successful is to simply ask for it. Take your best customers and ask them to partner with you on your marketing. Get them to provide testimonials (very powerful) which you can then use on your marketing collateral. Even better, have them post reviews online on popular sites like Yelp or Citysearch. These online recommendations pop up in search engines and are extremely effective. Or get your best advocates to create a video and post it on You Tube. However, you sould be careful with this approach: choose only the best customers that you know would represent and communicate your brand just as you would wish.
3) Give to Local Associations: Notice I did not say “join” local associations. I frequently hear from clients “I no longer am a member of the local Chamber because I didn’t get any business out of it.” My first response to this statement is always, “Well, what did you give?” They invariable say “not much.” Simply joining a Chamber of Commerce or another local business association will not bring more business to you. To leverage the local contacts, you need to GIVE to those associations. Serve on the membership committee, sign up to host an event, write an article for their publication and generally do more than just attend. Attendance is not even half the battle. For maximum effectiveness, it’s all about participation.
Connect locally, even if your business is not completely reliant on local traffic. Develop local relationships and your marketing will succeed.
What Goes in an E-Newsletter?
So you need an e-newsletter, but what goes in an e-newsletter? I get this question a lot from many clients. The best answer can be summed in one word: value.
An e-newsletter, much like all marketing initiatives, needs to provide value. There needs to be a reason to read the e-newsletter. If there is no value or no benefit to reading it, then all marketing efforts are wasted.
Sure, an e-newsletter needs to sell your services and promote your latest offering. This is a given. But if your e-newsletter is strictly focused on selling something, your unsubscription rate will rise. However, if you can provide valuable content that demonstrates the level of service your business can provide, the sales part will come easily!
Always think about the objective of your e-newsletter. In fact, all marketing initiatives need a specific objective. For example, the aim of a brochure could be to motivate recipients to call to set up an appointment. The intention of a radio ad could be to drive traffic to the website. The goal of a website might be to sell a particular product.
An e-newsletter is no different. Think about what you want to accomplish with an e-newsletter and direct your content in that fashion. If your objective is to drive traffic to the website, be sure you include links in your e-newsletter. If your objective is to demonstrate your credibility, provide links to resources and references that show your area of expertise. If your objective is to sell a product or service, ensure that your copy reflects the benefit of the product or service.
Ultimately it all depends on the objective of the e-newsletter. But one theme should resonate with all your content: value. Give the reader a reason to open the e-newsletter, read it and act upon it.
An e-newsletter, much like all marketing initiatives, needs to provide value. There needs to be a reason to read the e-newsletter. If there is no value or no benefit to reading it, then all marketing efforts are wasted.
Sure, an e-newsletter needs to sell your services and promote your latest offering. This is a given. But if your e-newsletter is strictly focused on selling something, your unsubscription rate will rise. However, if you can provide valuable content that demonstrates the level of service your business can provide, the sales part will come easily!
Always think about the objective of your e-newsletter. In fact, all marketing initiatives need a specific objective. For example, the aim of a brochure could be to motivate recipients to call to set up an appointment. The intention of a radio ad could be to drive traffic to the website. The goal of a website might be to sell a particular product.
An e-newsletter is no different. Think about what you want to accomplish with an e-newsletter and direct your content in that fashion. If your objective is to drive traffic to the website, be sure you include links in your e-newsletter. If your objective is to demonstrate your credibility, provide links to resources and references that show your area of expertise. If your objective is to sell a product or service, ensure that your copy reflects the benefit of the product or service.
Ultimately it all depends on the objective of the e-newsletter. But one theme should resonate with all your content: value. Give the reader a reason to open the e-newsletter, read it and act upon it.
Fill Your Sales Funnel With No Advertising
Many service professionals will remind you that “a referral is the highest compliment you can give me.” The reason this statement has become clichéd is that it heads the nail on the head. A business truly reaches success when its customers convert into advocates. Word-of-mouth is not only the least expensive form of advertising, it is also the most powerful.
In fact, the end goal to any marketing initiative should always be to get people talking about your product or service. There is no finish line to marketing; it’s a dynamic entity that continuously evolves. A marketer must test and learn to keep abreast of the changes and keep the product or service top-of-mind.
However, there is a finish line to advertising. The aim of advertising is to reach the point at which a business no longer needs to invest in advertising. At this point, customers become the marketers. No more expensive ads, campaigns or initiatives. Assuming the business can sustain the level of service that its customers promote, word-of-mouth now takes the driver’s seat and the road is wide open.
Here are five ways to ensure that word-of-mouth takes over your marketing:
1) Exceed Customer Expectations: you’ve probably heard this before. I certainly hope so. Customer service is by far the most effective and efficient marketing there is. Clients that are truly wowed will talk about it and others will want to share their experience.
2) Brand Yourself Consistently: the more people hear and see your consistent message, the more it will stick. If you’re message resonates well, and you back up your message with consistent service, word will spread.
3) Engage Your Customers: think long term for your customers, not just a quick sale. Engage them in your product or service. At a personal level, host special events for customers. Get customer input as to what type of customer appreciation they would enjoy. Imagine a customer appreciation event that the customers plan themselves! This same principle applies to non-personal interactions. Use your website or a blog to converse and share with customers on-line. Even your brochure should engage the customers. The longer a customer stays with you, the more they will buy.
4) Become an Expert: if you are the expert in a certain area, word will spread and your sales funnel will fill automatically.
5) Incent Your Customers: this is a short cut to word-of-mouth that many businesses pursue successfully. Consider referral programs or affiliate programs. This will require some investment because cash—either via refunds or direct payments—is the strongest motivator. However, there are programs or other ways to get your customers to refer business to you. Get creative, but find an easily implemented program that does not require significant maintenance. The simpler, the better.
The end goal of your advertising should be to create positive word-of-mouth. Your marketing efforts, no doubt, will continue to reinforce this. While marketing has no end, advertising certainly does. Imagine a world where word-of-mouth drives your marketing, and you sit along for the ride as customer after customer effortlessly fill into your sales funnel.
In fact, the end goal to any marketing initiative should always be to get people talking about your product or service. There is no finish line to marketing; it’s a dynamic entity that continuously evolves. A marketer must test and learn to keep abreast of the changes and keep the product or service top-of-mind.
However, there is a finish line to advertising. The aim of advertising is to reach the point at which a business no longer needs to invest in advertising. At this point, customers become the marketers. No more expensive ads, campaigns or initiatives. Assuming the business can sustain the level of service that its customers promote, word-of-mouth now takes the driver’s seat and the road is wide open.
Here are five ways to ensure that word-of-mouth takes over your marketing:
1) Exceed Customer Expectations: you’ve probably heard this before. I certainly hope so. Customer service is by far the most effective and efficient marketing there is. Clients that are truly wowed will talk about it and others will want to share their experience.
2) Brand Yourself Consistently: the more people hear and see your consistent message, the more it will stick. If you’re message resonates well, and you back up your message with consistent service, word will spread.
3) Engage Your Customers: think long term for your customers, not just a quick sale. Engage them in your product or service. At a personal level, host special events for customers. Get customer input as to what type of customer appreciation they would enjoy. Imagine a customer appreciation event that the customers plan themselves! This same principle applies to non-personal interactions. Use your website or a blog to converse and share with customers on-line. Even your brochure should engage the customers. The longer a customer stays with you, the more they will buy.
4) Become an Expert: if you are the expert in a certain area, word will spread and your sales funnel will fill automatically.
5) Incent Your Customers: this is a short cut to word-of-mouth that many businesses pursue successfully. Consider referral programs or affiliate programs. This will require some investment because cash—either via refunds or direct payments—is the strongest motivator. However, there are programs or other ways to get your customers to refer business to you. Get creative, but find an easily implemented program that does not require significant maintenance. The simpler, the better.
The end goal of your advertising should be to create positive word-of-mouth. Your marketing efforts, no doubt, will continue to reinforce this. While marketing has no end, advertising certainly does. Imagine a world where word-of-mouth drives your marketing, and you sit along for the ride as customer after customer effortlessly fill into your sales funnel.
5 Reasons You Need an E-Newsletter
There are a lot of reasons why an e-newsletter is a great marketing tool. First and foremost, your business must have an electronic presence. E-marketing is another marketing channel that absolutely and positively must be a part of your marketing plan. There are many platforms of e-marketing including websites, social networking, referral links or programs, affiliate programs, e-mails and of course e-newsletters. All of these platforms can and should be part of your plan and deserve the requisite attention to understand how and why they can be so powerful. However, today I intend to detail e-newsletters. We’ll save the other e-platforms for another time.
To understand what I mean by “e-newsletter” let’s address what is NOT an e-newsletter. An e-newsletter is not a one-time e-mail blast. It is not a sales pitch. And most importantly, it is not spam. When I refer to e-newsletter I mean something with valuable content that is distributed via a professional service, like Aweber (http://boost.aweber.com). You can certainly do an e-newsletter on your own, but a professional service provides templates, anti-spamming functionality, tracking and monitoring that you might not normally get if you do it on your own. So with this understanding of an e-newsletter, here are five reasons you need an e-newsletter:
1) COST: e-newsletters, at most, cost about $20/month. This number can vary depending on the service and depending on the number of e-mails in your database. However, most services do not limit the number of blasts that you can make. A lot of businesses will send out e-newsletters once a week (like mine). If you start doing the math, $20/month for 4 e-newsletters for hundreds of people each blast makes the cost-per-contact extremely reasonable.
2) INCREASE YOUR TOUCHPOINTS: marketing is more about repetition than anything else. E-newsletters give you another marketing touchpoint to remain top-of-mind for your database. Assuming you can provide valuable content with each blast, your database will open the e-mails and understand that you offer a great product or service. Your name and brand will remain fresh and “sticky” (as in the brand or name will “stick” with the recipients). This way, when the recipient is ready to buy, they will think of you. Similarly, recipients will also know your name and brand to refer to others.
3) EASY REFERRALS: picking up from point #2, e-newsletters make referrals very easy. How difficult is it to forward an e-newsletter to someone else? Think of it this way: let’s imagine one of your contacts comes across a friend that could use your service. They say to their friend, “let me find his or her business card, I know I have it somewhere.” Chances are, the business card is lost or hard to find or perhaps it takes a while to get the information gathered. However, with an e-newsletter, the referral is very easy. That same contact can say “let me forward you his or her e-newsletter.” Not only is the information transferred very easily, the new contact can view the value you provide. This is much more powerful than a business card exchange.
4) LEVERAGE OTHER E-MARKETING: with an e-newsletter, you can add links to your website, blog, partner websites, affiliates and anything else available on the web. Recipients that open your e-newsletter can easily link to the products or services that you recommend. This becomes vastly beneficial if you are an affiliate of another program. You can add a link to the other program that your recipients will be sure to see and most likely click through if there is value.
5) TRACKING: assuming you use a professional service for your e-newsletter like Aweber, you can track and measure your campaigns. You can see the open rate (percentage of recipients that open your email), click rate (percentage of recipients that open and click through to a link on your e-newsletter) and unsubscribe rates (percentage of people who request to unsubscribe). You can even set up tests. For example, let’s say you want to test a marketing message. Send 50% of your database your e-newsletter with one marketing message in the subject line and send the other 50% that same e-newsletter with a different marketing message in the subject line. See which e-newsletter had a greater open rate and you’ll understand which marketing message is more powerful.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for e-marketing. If you don’t have an e-newsletter yet, consider the reasons above and check out Aweber (http://boost.aweber.com) or another provider. You’ll see there is tremendous benefit to an e-newsletter for little cost.
To understand what I mean by “e-newsletter” let’s address what is NOT an e-newsletter. An e-newsletter is not a one-time e-mail blast. It is not a sales pitch. And most importantly, it is not spam. When I refer to e-newsletter I mean something with valuable content that is distributed via a professional service, like Aweber (http://boost.aweber.com). You can certainly do an e-newsletter on your own, but a professional service provides templates, anti-spamming functionality, tracking and monitoring that you might not normally get if you do it on your own. So with this understanding of an e-newsletter, here are five reasons you need an e-newsletter:
1) COST: e-newsletters, at most, cost about $20/month. This number can vary depending on the service and depending on the number of e-mails in your database. However, most services do not limit the number of blasts that you can make. A lot of businesses will send out e-newsletters once a week (like mine). If you start doing the math, $20/month for 4 e-newsletters for hundreds of people each blast makes the cost-per-contact extremely reasonable.
2) INCREASE YOUR TOUCHPOINTS: marketing is more about repetition than anything else. E-newsletters give you another marketing touchpoint to remain top-of-mind for your database. Assuming you can provide valuable content with each blast, your database will open the e-mails and understand that you offer a great product or service. Your name and brand will remain fresh and “sticky” (as in the brand or name will “stick” with the recipients). This way, when the recipient is ready to buy, they will think of you. Similarly, recipients will also know your name and brand to refer to others.
3) EASY REFERRALS: picking up from point #2, e-newsletters make referrals very easy. How difficult is it to forward an e-newsletter to someone else? Think of it this way: let’s imagine one of your contacts comes across a friend that could use your service. They say to their friend, “let me find his or her business card, I know I have it somewhere.” Chances are, the business card is lost or hard to find or perhaps it takes a while to get the information gathered. However, with an e-newsletter, the referral is very easy. That same contact can say “let me forward you his or her e-newsletter.” Not only is the information transferred very easily, the new contact can view the value you provide. This is much more powerful than a business card exchange.
4) LEVERAGE OTHER E-MARKETING: with an e-newsletter, you can add links to your website, blog, partner websites, affiliates and anything else available on the web. Recipients that open your e-newsletter can easily link to the products or services that you recommend. This becomes vastly beneficial if you are an affiliate of another program. You can add a link to the other program that your recipients will be sure to see and most likely click through if there is value.
5) TRACKING: assuming you use a professional service for your e-newsletter like Aweber, you can track and measure your campaigns. You can see the open rate (percentage of recipients that open your email), click rate (percentage of recipients that open and click through to a link on your e-newsletter) and unsubscribe rates (percentage of people who request to unsubscribe). You can even set up tests. For example, let’s say you want to test a marketing message. Send 50% of your database your e-newsletter with one marketing message in the subject line and send the other 50% that same e-newsletter with a different marketing message in the subject line. See which e-newsletter had a greater open rate and you’ll understand which marketing message is more powerful.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for e-marketing. If you don’t have an e-newsletter yet, consider the reasons above and check out Aweber (http://boost.aweber.com) or another provider. You’ll see there is tremendous benefit to an e-newsletter for little cost.
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