“Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam, wonderful spam!!” I bet, like me you get inundated with spam every day. I often sing that Monty Python song!
This morning I had 55 spam emails in my spam box, mostly for Viagra or penis enlargement, which makes me laugh because I am a woman, but there was one email in there that was really interesting, it wanted to tell me about email marketing. Now, the fact that his email went straight into my spam box means the person who sent it isn’t very good at email marketing – and yet he still wants some of my hard earned cash so he can upset all of my customers as well as his own! He was a “very naughty boy!”
The sad fact is that I was really interested in the subject, and what he had to say could have been really good for my business, but because he didn’t understand email marketing he was probably black listed by his ISP, had his server and domain shut down, had a terrible response level from his mailing list, and succeeded in adding to my general feeling of irritation at the level of spam I get every day!
In reality though, the reason we all get loads of spam every day is that the cost of e-marketing compared with printed matter and postage is very low in relative terms. So all manner of people can try to sell us things we don’t need, and can do so very cheaply from an offshore domain somewhere in the world, without being culpable for all the annoyance they’ve caused!!
But the digital age really has arrived. In 2010 costs of non digital marketing, i.e. print, have increased dramatically, and politically, it’s not very “green” to be annihilating rainforests to provide a paper newsletter is it? There is definitely a place for e-marketing, but, for example, whats the difference between a mailshot, a newsletter, a magasine, or an online campaign? How would you use each one and why? We only need to understand the way it works and how to use it effectively and it can be a great inexpensive marketing toolkit at your fingertips!!
If we look at what e-marketing can do for us as a business, and where we allocate our marketing spend, we can categorise it into two areas, we need new clients, but also need to communicate well with our current clients - so is there a way we can do both effectively through e-marketing, without infuriating our clients and alienating prospective clients we haven’t done business with yet? Yes we can, but only if we use the right marketing processes and a proven trusted e-marketing company to ensure we don’t annoy our clients, and have our domains black listed!!
The cost of keeping in touch with your clients with a Newsletter that goes out in the post is quite substantial, the cost of sending an e-newsletter is tiny in comparison, and if managed correctly, sends a really useful message to the right person, in the right place at the right time. You can even get new clients through e-marketing, its very effective and very cheap!!
As always, there are many pitfalls. Reputations have been shredded by sending irrelevant information just for the sake of sending “something” this month, or, even worse, if your data isn’t clean then the client’s details in the salutation on the email can be wrong – fancy getting the name wrong of someone who’s been a client for years!! Also, there are so many data protection issues and direct marketing legislation issues, that unless you have in house expertise, its often very difficult to work within the law, it could be best to outsource these low cost marketing items. This is where we come in!
If you like the idea of being able to contact your clients easily, regularly, and for limited cost, and would like to explore the smoke and mirrors world of e-marketing in all its glory, then by all means, give us a call or contact us for a free marketing review – whether digital or not, we can help you reach your clients and prospects, without them thinking you’re a “very naughty boy!!!”
Liddell Dunbar Digital Marketing offerings include:
- Website development
- Online and offline combined marketing programmes
- Search Engine Otipmisation
- Current website stats analysis and planning to improve ratings
- E Newsletters or Magazine development
- E- Shots fully managed service
- E- Shots in house online service controlled - price per email per month
- Web copywriting service - take away the pain of upgrading your site
