What can I say just because you can doesn’t mean you should!  I’m sure you have experienced the sudden increase in email newsletters promoting everything in the shop using a ‘one size fits all’ method. It is unwanted, untargeted and e-nnoying!  When times are tough it is important not to don’t give in to negativity instead roll up your sleeves get out there and market.  But let’s do it smart people!  Let’s use marketing principles along with technology to save people’s sanity and save your customers.   Technology has given businesses the tools to do really great stuff like personalising emails, tracking who reads what and the ability to contact thousands of people at a time for almost no cost at all.  Great for businesses but what about customers?  You may be scaring them away and with the anti-spam laws you may lose them forever.

Marketing is about looking at things through the eyes of the customer.  For marketing activities to be effective they need to put customers top of mind.  Email communication needs to follow the same principles as any other effective communication.

1. Permission from the customer

I have ended up receiving emails from businesses have asked my permission to contact me but haven’t ask me if it was ok for that contact to be every day.

2.  Relevant

I get sent the same email that everyone else is being sent even though it is address specifically to me.  It doesn’t take into account what I’m interested in.  I don’t want to fly to Byron Bay without any luggage.  So stop sending me this stuff it’s e-nnoying.

3.  Delivered in the way the customer wants

I recently spoke with an advertising representative from an online and paper business directory.  They gave me the sales spiel and I said very clearly “I am interested in receiving this information if you can mail it to me with full costings that would be great.”  I even told the sales rep that I was about a 50% chance of purchasing.  He then asked me for my email address.  I said “why do you need my email address?”.  He answered “so I can send you out some information”.  I again reiterated that I wanted to receive the information by mail.  No surprises here…. I never received the letter and I guess they never got my business!

Last Thought:

Never forget that the customer has the last say and it’s goodbye or…. unsubscribe.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under Brain Food, Marketing Tips, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, bookmark the Permalink in your Browser, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.