Steps Your Competition is Taking with Email (& Facebook) in 2010

2010 seems to be the year when most businesses here in southern Oregon are really starting to understand that their customers actually do want to hear from them.  The thing is, starting the process may actually damage your customer relationship.  Chances are you will make the mistakes that the wider industry have already stumbled over, learned from, and solved – unless you truly embrace these technologies and a strategy on how to truly leverage them here in 2010.

The first part is to avoid the temptation to become overly enamored with the emerging social media options like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.  While they are part of this strategy, and certainly the “shiny new toys” that are gathering so much press these days, they aren’t a be-all-end-all by themselves.  You connect with your customers already in a variety of ways – in person, over the phone, through the mail, and importantly through email.  The process I’m about to describe for you actually apply to all these tools and you should utilize these steps with all of them.  However, I’m going to focus today on email because (1) its probably the most widely accepted by your customers, (2) is relatively inexpensive from a cost and labor standpoint to utilize, and (3) unlike the newer tools has been around for some time and has better developed metrics to date.

So what are other small businesses working on through their email campaigns in 2010.  According to this studyfrom Get Response, there are 5 major trends in email (and by extension all the other ways you connect with your customers) emerging in 2010.  And I’ll give you one more that you should include as well.  The variables to consider in your campaigns should be:

1. Increase the personalization.  You are learning so much more about your customers these days.  Use that info to your advantage in your email (and Facebook and Direct Mail and…) campaigns.  Please don’t send the same emails to your potential customers that you do to your current customers.  For that matter, please don’t send the same emails to recent purchasers as you send to those who haven’t bought for a while.  The better you target the offer, the better your response will be.  So put some time and thought into your content.  Wondering how to do this efficiently?  There are some great tools I can point you to that will help.
2. Improve the Message Title & Subject Line.  Your customers are busy.  You only have seconds to grab their attention with your email.  Make sure that you give them the “what’s in it for them” part very early on.  Here’s the classic features and benefits conversation again.   I’ve written on this topic previously, as have many others.  The point here is that your subject line should not include a feature of what you sell (On sale – really fast computers!) but instead shouldpromote the benefit to your customers (This week only – save money & increase your productivity!)
3. Increase Customer Loyalty.  People want to be loyal to brands and companies, but so many of these companies make it so hard for people to do so.  How many of you have complained about the lack of service at various companies around the valley.  How many of you compete against just these companies, yet you continue to eek along and they find a way to continue to be in business.  Take an afternoon and brainstorm on what you can offer your customers to increase their loyal to your brand – then make sure to include these offers in your emails (and other communications to them).  Maybe its a simple as a punch card for meals in your restaurant.  Maybe its special hours where only people like them have access to you.  The point is, your competition will beat you to this concept unless you get moving on it right away.
4. Identify the Best Time to Send.  Depending on your business, this can mean several different things.  (1) Do you send a thank you on the same day as you receive an order or do you wait a week?  (2)  Do you send out a weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter?  (3)  Do you send out a special offer on your anniversary date or theirs?  (4) Do more emails get opened if I send them in the morning, afternoon, or middle of the night?  The best advice going if you don’t know the answers to these questions is to test.  Again, one of the huge benefits of using email is the ability measure in many, many ways.  If you don’t know how to leverage this info, we should talk.  I share with you what you need to know in order to maximize your return on the available info from your customers.
5. Split Your Message to Test for Best Content.  So after you reach your best guess for all of the above questions, please resist the urge to “know” you are right.  Send your best stuff to the majority of your target audience, but hold back a portion of them in order to test at least one variable.  With the proper measurement tools in place, you’ll be able to learn a lot about what motivates your customers in a very short hurry.  Case in point, one of my clients found out that his customers are more motivated by an offer that uses a $ instead of a %.  And another of my clients found the exact opposite to be true for her customers.  And now neither of them trust that this info will always and forever remain true, so they continue to test – and so should you.

Bonus Tip – Grow Your List.  All of this will work better for you if have more people to communicate with.  So make growing your list of “fans” one of your major goals for 2010.  There are three primary ways that you can do so.  (1) Bootstrap it, reminding your current customers how fond you are of word of mouth referrals.  (2) Tap into the places where large numbers of your potential customers are congregating.  In the online version of our Rogue Valley, that means the news and information websites, the largest of which by far is the Mail Tribune.  This is the best way to reach people who will be in the market for you tomorrow and typically can be marketed to with less competitive clutter than (3) Troll the areas where people are actively looking for you today.  In our Valley, when you look for these people on the web, you’ll typically find them through marketing efforts via Google, the other search engines like Yahoo and Bing, and the Social Media sites like Facebook. 

My recommendation to you on this tip is to spend some of your time, money, and resources in all three areas for the best chance at success.

We’ve covered a lot of ground here.  I know you are already busy, so you may not have the time to climb this learning curve all on your own.  That’s where I come in.  I promise that it will be worth your time for us to have a cup of coffee together.  Let’s see how we can help you add these items to your marketing mix as a way to keep you ahead of the competition.