The single most important marketing strategy you can use to maximize all of your other marketing is to communicate on a regular basis with your customers. You need to do this in order to maintain strong and positive relationships with your customers.
People are bombarded with more information today than at any time in history. The moment a customer has transacted business with you, their minds immediately go to some other concern, issue, or problem, and your product or service is gone from their conscious thinking.
Your challenge and biggest opportunity, if you’re going to retain your customers, is to keep your customers constantly connected to you. Keep them constantly thinking about how valuable you are, and how much they enjoy and benefit from your products or services.
The more contact and communication you have with a customer, the stronger and richer the relationship will become. Keeping in constant communication with your customers won’t work if you don’t do it strategically. Strategic means ongoing and purposeful communication that serves the customer.
The Information Age is all about communication and one the most effective ways to build relationships with your customers is through email. Email is easy and anyone can do it. Unlike many other marketing tools it doesn’t take any technical or artistic skills to execute a good email marketing campaign.
Email is one of the least expensive marketing tools you have at your disposal. With email you can really nurture relationships over the long haul. Consider all those prospects that slip away just because it’s not cost effective to keep engaging them. Lead management is one of the best uses for email.
Email also can be customized instantly so that you’re sending the message you want to a specific customer at the right time. In addition, email is interactive, providing you with specific feedback regarding how your prospect or customer feels about your message. It also gives the prospect or customer the ability to respond instantly to your message as well.
Before you start up an email marketing program it’s important to remember that you are doing it to establish better customer relationships. Every time you think about sending an email to a prospect or a customer, ask yourself, “Does this do anything to build a relationship, or is it just a general advertising message?”
Communicating with a customer and telling him or her how great your product or service is, doesn’t do the customer any good. Communicating with the customer and finding out how well your product or service is performing, offering him or her advice that will help him or her get longer and better use out of our product or service, is a great benefit to him or her.
Your message should always be personalized. Whether your message is a print ad, direct mail letter, or a television or radio ad, in order to be effective, it must speak to one person at a time. If you want to build a relationship with a customer, keep it personal and make sure emails come from an individual, and not the company they represent.
You don’t have to limit your emails to building relationships with just prospects and customers. Use it to develop relationships with colleagues, people in other departments, and your employees. Email people who do what you do, who sell the product or service you sell, but in markets where you don’t compete. Share with them, and find out what they’re doing and where they’re finding avenues of success.
Relevance is perhaps the most important key to building customer relationships. Always think about who you are sending an email to and what you are sending them. Is it relevant to each and every person on your list? If not, segment the list and send your message only to those prospects or customers who will view it as valuable.
The average business person receives about 50 emails per day, and has the time to maybe answer 10 of them. What happens when you send someone an email that isn’t relevant? They don’t answer your message, and just delete it. They often won’t even pay attention to your emails anymore and you’ve wasted your opportunity to establish a good relationship.
If you are sending out mass emails, only send them to people who have specifically requested to hear from you via email, and if a prospect or customer requests you to remove him or her from your distribution list you’re bound by the CAN-SPAM Act to do so immmediately.
Email is an important part of your marketing that you should use. If you aren’t using it yet, start! If you already have an email marketing system in place, pay attention to it, have clear expectations, measure your success, and if necessary make changes to your approach. Keep it personal, and keep it relevant. Your customer list will build and your profits will show it.
Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.
Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com
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