If you take a drive down Main Street in Anytown, USA you’re going to see the proof of the economy everywhere. “Going Out Of Business Sale!” or “Closed,” and of course the “For Rent” and lease signs popping up everywhere. I’ve seen several of these over the last year in my own backyard and it’s heartbreaking.
Why did these businesses go out of business? Simply put, they didn’t know what to do when market conditions changed! They all probably knew they needed to do something, they just didn’t know what. They probably didn’t stay in touch with their customer base because if they had they could have found reasons they weren’t stopping in as frequently. Instead, most owners probably continued to do what they always had done,cut prices and use the same dry push marketing techniques that are no longer effective.
And remember – a lot of business owners and people in general are creatures of habit. This is another major reason for their marketing failures. Since they don’t interact with “outsiders” that have new ideas and techniques, they have a very narrow view of marketing and advertising. And they’re not sure how much these new marketing techniques might cost them.
But to be brutally honest, to win in this new economy you have to rethink what you’ve always done. If you’re advertising in print their has to be a way for you to monitor its effectiveness. If your current advertising efforts don’t yield tangible gains, stop doing them. Don’t rely on the salesperson’s word about the effectiveness of their marketing reach. The best way to insure that you will always have a steady stream of loyal traffic is to build you own database. If you’re not building your own database of past, present and future customers, then now is the time to start. The most effective way to build a loyal fan base of followers, even with all the talk surrounding social media and mobile is via email.
List building and database maintenance
If you’re a business owner and you don’t have a manageable list then you’re missing out on a vital sales tool for your business’ growth and survival. This is very simple to do and can be the difference between life and death for your business. An email auto-responder form installed on your website lets you automatically create a customer list and give yourself an instant on-demand source of income potential. You can do it yourself or we can do it for you. We charge $150 per month plus $100 per broadcast for special sales events. We make our services dirt-cheap for you, so that you’ll consider us for future projects. **Update this process can also be created using mobile or sms technology.
What’s the expected return on investment with our auto-responder program.
If your business runs a full-page ad in a local newspaper, it’s normally going to cost between three and four grand. If your average profit per sale is $30 or $40, you have to make at least one hundred sales just to break even!
However, if you instead create and send an email to your list, you only have to make three or four sales…and the rest is profit. That’s a big difference. You can also make a sale exclusive to your list, which drives the response up as well. Numbers don’t lie and this why this makes it a no-brainer to fit this services into your marketing budget.
We can also change your sales receipts so it directs your customers to sign up for discounts and coupons that are only available to “preferred” customers. (Your list) This way you can build a list of nothing but buyers and fans for your business, and that is a very responsive list. One properly constructed offer from you to this list will drive your ROI through the roof! The customers on this list already know you, like you, and obviously trust you because they have already spent money with you before.
Which brings me to another point to cover with you: It’s been proven over and over again that it takes almost eight times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to market to existing customers. Just about every business owner that I have pointed that out to has heard it all before. They already know that…but they just don’t take it to heart.
Just about every client I deal with spends their time going after new customers, and neglecting their current customers. How many times have you bought something from a local store and never heard from them again? Sad, but true.
The bottom line is that auto-responders make email campaigns and customer list building simple. You can honestly cut up to 70% off your advertising budget and increase your profits at the same time.
Newsletter and Email Campaigns
It’s fairly easy for us to create a newsletter template and send it to your list to build customer rapport for you. You only have to pay for the creation once and it will work for you from that point forward. An easy way to kill three birds with one stone is to incorporate your blog, social media site(Facebook & Twitter), with an auto-responder email system. So that when you create an article on your blog it gets added to your email newsletter template to be sent at specified times determined by you. Links from your article also go to your Facebook Page and Twitter account, fresh content increases interest, interest leads to sales. In other words, if you pay us $350 to set you up to create 26 bi-weekly newsletters, it’s done. That’s basically a year’s worth of content that will continue to work year after year. The key to the newsletters is to brand yourself, not the business. You want customers to get to know you personally because that brands loyalty. That’s a major way to compete against the big chain stores.
Here’s another important point I want cover with you. Now you can choose to hire a copywriter for an exorbitant fee, do it yourself OR hire us to do it for you. We completely understand that you have options, but We cost far less than a copywriter would normally charge, and we have a vested interest in your success.
A final tip: Send an email to a customer who just purchased your product and let them know that they have a coupon or other discount waiting for them via a downloadable link that they have to opt into as part of their preferred customer status. Also give them an opportunity to opt out of your emails as well.
Let me know what you think about this article.
Related articles
- How your business can produce an e-newsletter that works (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
- Building Your Business: Increase Profits with Regular Customer Contact (stepup2success.wordpress.com)
- 3 no-fail ways to collect email addresses to increase your customer database (bizcommunicator.wordpress.com)
- Laurel Business Owner | Are You Getting Enough Traffic? (locallyact.org)
