Do Business Well

A contact plan describes in specific detail how you will contact prospects and customers over a period of time to meet your specific goals. Each contact plan should contain the following sections:

A Written Contact Strategy

Your contact strategy spells out your goals and describes how ongoing customer communication will be used to meet those goals. When thinking about your contact strategy, be sure to consider the online service imperative. What are you going to offer your existing and prospective customers in exchange for giving you permission to contact them? When Wegmans Food Markets developed its contact strategy, it focused on extending the service and customer-oriented approach that you’ll find in its retail stores to email communication. It has developed a contact strategy that is focused more on delivering relevant content and information than on selling. Its goal is to ensure that it provides its customers with notification of special produce, recipes, health tips, and more in order to simplify their grocery shopping and food preparation tasks. Continue Reading »

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Level of Marketing Service

On one end of the service continuum are the broadcasters who simply merge the text copy you give them with a list of names and blast it out. Some may also provide such basic services as canned response reports to track click-through information. At the other end of the spectrum are the full-service marketing consulting and service bureaus. These companies run their clients’ marketing functions in much the same way as traditional marketing and advertising agencies do. Here are the services to look for when choosing a marketing service provider. Continue Reading »

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Evaluate Professional Email Marketing Services Capabilities

Does your provider or product vendor have a professional services group or does it rely on your internal IT group or outside system integration services to install its product or integrate its technology platform? The quality of professional services groups varies widely and the vendor’s own team is often not the one best suited to implement your email marketing solution. When evaluating professional services organizations, look for the following:

• An emphasis placed on professional services by the vendor (as opposed to your sudden realization that you need help implementing the vendor’s solution).
• Depth and breadth of services offered.
• Detailed domain experience that maps to the problem your are attempting to solve and products or technology you have chosen.

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Is email direct marketing an industry unto itself? Not at all. The principles of service-based marketing and communication are essential to the success of any online marketing initiative. And email is a mission-critical tool that plays an integral role in the e-marketing and communications mix for all online merchants. But as we’ve touched on earlier, email itself is just one of a large number of electronic communications channels that e-marketers will be using in the future. Furthermore, marketers ultimately won’t want to manage relationships with a large number of different service providers.

That may be why there have been so many industry consolidations. Netcentives acquired Post Communications in order to broaden its technology infrastructure and provide a wide range of relationship marketing services, from customer acquisition programs and customized email relationship marketing programs to loyalty programs and promotions. Continue Reading »

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A number of different providers can help you solve your email customer communications and marketing needs.

Email Marketing Service Providers

Over the past few years a new breed of company has grown up to meet the demand for complete solutions to companies‘ email marketing needs. Providers offer a wide variety of marketing services, technical capabilities, and focus. The services these companies (the three leading players are Post Communications, Message Media, and Digital Impact) provide range from customized email marketing programs and high-volume email delivery to one-off direct email campaign execution. Naturally, prices vary considerably. Most still charge based on the old direct marketing model of cost per email sent, while others have introduced new pricing models that are based on managing the customer database and optimizing the value of the client’s customer relationships. What they have in common is that they allow you to out- source all—or at least a large part—of your email marketing solution. Continue Reading »

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One of the most powerful ways to teach and communicate is through stories. And one of the best ways to engage your customers is to think of your communications as a narrative. Even the blandest material can be spiced up by giving it an engaging rhythm and making it familiar and involving. At the same time, even the most exciting information can be made boring by presenting it as a list of facts, without any personality or tension. Like a good storyteller, you have to consider how your story will engage your audience. Now I’m not proposing that you try to disguise your marketing and sales messages as gripping drama. Customers are too savvy for that and they’ll call your bluff. But you can still include a narrative thread to draw people in. An online health products retailer could, for example, includes a storyline in its email communication that features real people and the impact that health products have had on their lives. By following the lives of a cast of characters over an extended time period, readers become engaged in the story and follow it. The important thing to remember is that people like stories, remember them, and enjoy telling them to others. Continue Reading »

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Manufacturers, wholesalers, business-to-business service providers, and job shops can all benefit from the use of outside sales representatives. Some companies who deal with the public have the same opportunity, such as travel agents, mortgage lenders, and apartment owners.

What is an independent sales rep?

1. The term “independent representative” sounds exactly like what it is. This person works for himself. He or his company, generally referred to as a rep firm, will not be on your payroll, but will earn their money from three sources of services they may provide: Continue Reading »

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• How will you package your product/service?

Your packaging is an extension of the product itself. It is often the first impression that a prospect gets of your product. That’s why it is so important that the way you package your product/service is attractive yet functional. If it does not turn the customer on, the chances are the customer won’t buy it. The packaging of some products is so distinctive that the packaging almost becomes a reason to buy the product (think Pringles). Unique packaging can be patented.

• How will you deliver your service? Develop a separate “service plan”

If you are providing a service, you need to focus on the tangible delivery of your service to the prospect. Continue Reading »

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The best benefits are those that favorably affect either people’sfeelings or their pocketbooks. Entrepreneurs who can express the market impact of their business in those terms usually have an advantage. For example, I read a local newspaper article about two women who had started a highly successful mail-order business selling clothing for overweight children. The children were thrilled with the product because of the difficulties—and the humiliation—they encountered shopping for clothes at traditional retail outlets. As one of the women observed, “What we’re really selling is dignity for these children.”

And so this company was. Sure, their clothing was of high quality and they delivered in a timely way. But the real reason for their success was they made children feel better. That pleased both the children and their parents. Continue Reading »

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MOST ENTREPRENEURS are very proud of their products and/or services and believe that their value is what determines the company’s success. Certainly all the attention in recent years given to the quality of American products versus those of foreign companies underscores the importance of having pride in your product or service.

I don’t mean to suggest that the emphasis on product features and quality is wrong. Rather, I believe it is misguided for many companies because it throws their entrepreneurs off target in terms of the planning process and the written plan. Two issues are primary in viewing the product or service:

A. The market and what it values should determine the particulars of the product or service. The owners of a company that arranges auto repair services for corporate owners of large fleets and has $3 million in annual sales decided to develop a new software product that would remind the fleet owners about the need to do such regular maintenance as oil changes and tune- ups. The company invested $200,000 in developing and attempting to sell the product before realizing that low-level fleet managers didn’t have the authority to commit their companies to the product, which might cost $50,000 annually for a fleet of several thousand cars. Getting in to make a sales pitch to high- level financial executives proved extremely difficult. Continue Reading »

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