Brighter Marketing

Email Marketing Advice – Has email marketing had it’s day?
With the amount of spam that I get in my inbox on a regular basis, as a marketer I often think that email marketing isn’t what it once was. However, every so often I get a marketing email, that I take notice of, that gets me to open it.

This is usually because…

So I don’t think that email marketing has reached the end of it’s shelf life, it’s just that if you are going to send it, send it to customers or people who have subscribed to receive information from you. Don’t buy an email list and send out thousands of emails to cold prospects who don’t know you, it just doesn’t work and makes you look spammy.

Just send out relevant content and offers to your customers and prospects and make sure there is always something in it for them.

I read this blog post by Seth Godin about how Time Doesn’t Scale and it made me think.

I used to work very long hours, but in the last year or so I have worked less. Focusing on the things that matter. We are so used to being told that hard work = results, but the equation is not that simple. As a marketer I could fill my day doing lots of marketing activities, flitting from one to the next. However, what I’ve learnt is that you can actually achieve less with more if you focus on the things that matter.

If you have one single minded goal or objective that you really want to achieve and are passionate about then you only do the things that are necessary to acheive that goal.

So, stop and think about all the things you do on a daily basis, are they really necessary are they getting you to where you want to go, or are they just things that you think you should or ought to be doing. Focus on what’s important and you may find as I did, you do much less in terms of hours, but the results are much improved.

 Link to the original blog post  -Customer Focused Copy

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I was in a well known pizza restaurant chain  on Monday having lunch with a friend. At the end of the meal I asked if they had any peppermint tea, as I was sure I had had some the previous time I had been there.

The answer was “No sorry we don’t, but I’ll bring you the drinks menu”

The drinks menu arrived and there in black and white was “Fresh Mint Tea”, not exactly peppermint tea but not a 100 miles away from what I had asked for.

When the waiter returned, the conversation went like this

Me: “You do have mint tea, it’s here on the menu”

Waiter: “Oh you asked for peppermint tea”

Me: “Oh sorry, I asked for peppermint out of habit, but mint would have been fine”

Waiter: “Yes, I suppose I should have said that we had mint tea, would you like some mint tea”

Me: “Yes please that would be great”

Moral of the story, your customers may know what they want, they might not ask for it by name or as exactly described on your website or on your menus.

They key is to listen to them, and offer them an alternative, or re-phrase what they have asked for. It made me wonder how many businesses all round the world have missed on business or selling products, because they didn’t “listen” and respond appropriately. On this occasion it was only a few £ or $ that they could have missed out on, but in your business it could be worth much more to you.

I have been having a look around the web for some inspiration for some mail shot ideas.  Direct mail that stands out, that commands attention is rare, it’s just normally a sales letter and a brochure, or a postcard outlining some features of a product or service.  Here are some of the best that I found,

Stress Free
This is a direct mail for a blackberry from the main UK telecoms company, BT –  http://www.frederiksamuel.com/blog/2005/12/bt-blackberry.html. It looks expensive but you could do something similar on a much smaller scale with a stress ball inside a small box, telling your customers you will “Take the stresss out of…”

Interaction
This mailing from a Canadian sound recording firm – http://www.wearehq.com/2010/04/cardboard-record-player-2/ it is great as it gets the person who receives it to interact with it. they can actually play the record and hear a great story from the company that sent it out. This was very popular and people began calling up to get another copy of it for them and their kids to play with. Again this might look expensive, but what could you do that gets your potential clients to interact with something you send them in the post?

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 Link to the original blog post  - Client Loyalty Tips

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The one thing I have seen time and time again in marketing is people trying to get everything perfect. To get the perfect website, the prefect brand, the perfect direct mail campaign. But the one lesson I’ve learned over the years is that there is no such thing as perfect marketing.

The amount of time that is wasted on that last 20% is often far too much. I have seen small businesses agonise over a logo when what they should be doing is getting out there and spreading the word about their business. The logo should have been chosen and then the promotion begin. And having worked for some fairly large companies, the amount of navel gazing that goes on makes me wonder how they managed to undertake any marketing at all.

So when it comes to marketing I operate using the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. If the website is 80% there, then put it up and see what happens, as long as there are no glaring errors the other 20% can be sorted out later.

I think that too many people spend far too much time worrying about that 20%, which in my humble opinion doesn’t really matter that much. The key to marketing success is to take action and see what happens, some things work and sometimes they don’t, but the time spent worrying about that last 20% just isn’t required.

 Link to the original blog post  - Exceptional Customer Service

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In an increasingly digital age, there is less and less emphasis on actually sending “things” out to people. We send PDFs, images, emails, connect on Facebook, text each other and use instant messaging.  However, as a child of the 70s there was none of this, and when I started my marketing career, the internet was just starting. So to get new customers for the company I worked for, I had to rely on adverts, direct mail, seminars and exhibitions.

The thing is, I think we have forgotten how nice it is to actually receive something in the post. My sister lives in New Zealand and whilst we can talk on the phone, she has no internet, so writes to me. I love getting her letters and printed photos of her and the family; they seem so much more tactile and personal than reading an email from her and looking at a digital photo on a screen.  And when a parcel arrives, I can feel the excitement building.

Direct Mail that Gets Remembered
And you can do the same for your customers and potential customers, instead of sending that next email shot, send them something in the post. It doesn’t have to be just a paper based direct mail think differently and think of something that will get their attention, something that intrigues them, which they can touch, open with excitement and more importantly will remember.

Here are just some examples of direct mails that I have been involved with in the past, to help you get your creative juices flowing. [...]

 Link to the original blog post  - What’s Your Marketing IQ?

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