Email marketing is one of the forms of direct marketing, which is done via the Internet. The major advantage of email marketing is that it doesn’t consume a lot of time.

Emails are sent to potential customers to boost the business, and gain the trust of the customer by disclosing relevant information and help them to make good shopping decisions. It also enhances the relationship with a current customer, by doing repeat business with them. In simple words, the procedure of sending emails to customers is known as email marketing.

The major advantage of email marketing is that it doesn’t consume a lot of time. It is minimal in resource consuming and is also cost-efficient. Within a short period, a large audience can be targeted. Features such as Subscriptions, bounced messages, web bugs, and click throughs help enables businesses to track potential customers. Since the customers can be directly reached, feedbacks can be collected with ease. In terms of cost, it is not as expensive as newsletters. Reports have proven that this is the next best marketing technique after search marketing. It is effective in tracking the returns on investments.

Email marketing is a modernized version of mail marketing. The advantage over direct mail marketing is that it takes less time to reach a customer than mailing. Like people check their mailboxes daily, inbox is also checked by majority of the Internet users on a daily basis. Over a period of time, lots of helpful tools and web services have been developed. List host is web service that provides lots of options to the marketers like managing huge emails and email address databases. If the budget is more, list managers can be hired who can be given charge of opt-in-email newsletters and managing databases. Software is also available in the market that does this job too.

When the customer fills the form for the first time, there are check boxes to be ticked which reflects their interests. Depending on these choices, an advertiser sends information to them, this is known as opt-in-email advertising, because the customer has opted to receive emails and marketing like this isn’t illegal. The content of the email can be elaborate, but it shouldn’t be too long, as people are too busy for that. The call to action, also known as effective words, in the email should be chosen with care. It’s not necessary that the content should revolve around only one item; related product’s information can also be included. This is known as cross selling. By using email blasting or sending an email to multiple customers at a time can save a lots of time and will also increase the efficiency.

The dark side of email marketing is spamming or also known as bulking. Some companies collect email addresses of people illegally and send irrelevant mails to them, which can be very annoying. Some hackers design an email like an advertisement, but when clicked on downloads adware and viruses that can destroy a computer, which makes it even more dangerous. To make matters worse, the Direct Marketing Association of America has petitioned to make spamming legal. Some prohibitions are also placed on providers who help out business organizations to manage their email marketing by giving them already prepared email templates.

Most of the mailing websites have added the facility of separating spam from genuine email by creating separate folders for both and this is known as spam filtering. But in case of large number of spam mails, a useful mail can go into that folder and can go unnoticed and gets deleted with the rest of the spam mails. This kind of mail is known as false positives. But the chances of this happening are rare. There are many laws against spamming like United States’ Can-Spam act, Europe’s privacy and electronic communications regulations. According to these laws, the companies should get their return address authenticated, false physical addresses should not be included and a one click unsubscribe link should be place in the email. The lesser penalty involves companies sending spam to be blacklisted and on a larger scale, they can be heavily fined.      

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Marketing management involves choosing target markets that not only get new customers but also retain the existing ones.

Marketing management is a business subject, which is based on research and study of practical applications of marketing techniques and management of the marketing resources. The one who excels in this field is known as marketing manager. The job of the marketing manager is to influence the timing and level of customer demand so as to help the sales. It actually depends on the size of the business and environment in the corporate industry. If he is working in a huge production company, he will be the general manager of a particular product category assigned to him and he will be responsible for profit and loss with respect to the product. And in small business there is no marketing manager as his job is taken over by the partners of the company.

Creating and communicating best customer values can increase the number of customers. The steps taken and resources utilized to maintain existing customers and get new customers fall under marketing management. The scope is quite large because it not only consists of developing a product, but also retaining it. The term marketing management has many definitions. It actually depends on individual firms and how the marketing department functions and activities of other departments like operations finance, pricing and sales. 

Before deciding about a marketing strategy, the company must do an in-depth study about their business, and the market. This is where marketing management merges with strategic planning. Usually the marketing strategies are of three types, customer analysis, company analysis and competitor analysis. Using the customer analysis, the market is broken down into different types of customers. The marketing management realizes the characteristics and other variables of each group. They are geographical location, demographic, customer behavior pattern and need. Like a group of people can be recognized who can be less price sensitive, purchases often and are growing. Such groups can be worked on by heavy investments as they are worth the money and time. They cannot only retain such customers and make new customers in this group but they can go to the very extent of turning back customers who don’t belong to this group. Understanding the needs makes customer’s expectations to be met per their satisfaction, better than the competitors, which will lead to higher sales and obvious profit.

Company analysis highlights the cost structure and resources of the company and cost position when compared to competitors. The accounting executives use it to learn about the profit earned by a particular product. From time to time, audits are conducted to study about the strengths of various brands of the company.

Marketers using competitor analysis build detail customer profiles. It gives a clear picture about the strengths and weaknesses of the firm, when compared to a competitor. The competitor’s cost structure, resources, competitive positioning, degree of vertical integration, product differentiation, and profits are studied in detail and are compared to what company is doing in those regards.

The marketing management to do marketing analysis carries out marketing research. The most common of such researches are qualitative marketing research, quantitative marketing research, experimental techniques and observational techniques.

After all the studies and researches are conducted, its easier for the marketing manager to make strategic decisions and they then can design a marketing strategy to increase the profits and revenues of their company. The other goals can be profit over the long run, market share, and revenue growth.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Marketing on the Internet involves online advertising to reach out to potential customers. It requires creativity like designing, development and technical aspects like marketing and advertising.

Affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and interactive advertising are all different facets of Internet marketing. It also includes sales, public relations, information management and customer service. Ever since the advent of Internet, it is widely used for all kind of purposes. Among the advantages of Internet, some helps in doing business, shopping, etc, from the comfort of the house. According to research, a quarter of the Internet users shop online. It has also helped to grow electronic commerce.  Internet marketing is a part of electronic commerce. 

Direct marketing techniques like radio and television commercials, mail, and newsletters are the inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct response marketing strategies and is rapidly growing. Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and business-to-consumer, also known as B2C, are the two business models to which Internet marketing can be linked. B2C companies were the first to start when Internet marketing originated. They are companies that sell directly to the customers. B2B companies are meant to do business with each other.

Websites built for Internet marketing are slightly different than others. There are peer-to-peer modeled websites which are used to exchange products and services between each other. Other is name-your-price, where the customers have to specify their price range that they can spend and select products that fall in that price range. Priceline.com is an example of such a website. Amazon.com is a website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where customers can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions sites, where items are bid. Ebay.com is an example. 

The companies who use Internet marketing are at an advantage. They don’t need to put in huge amounts of energy and time into Internet Marketing as with other traditional methods. With the help of only few resources, national and international markets can be reached. Because of very low investment startup costs, even small businesses are turning to online marketing. Websites and blogs have been developed for this purpose. Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that the data is easily available on the Internet. Newsletters can be directly sent to customers and if it doesn’t contain the information they are looking for, they can search for information about the product online, make a decision and purchase it online itself.

One of the factors that hinder the growth of online marketing is delayed loading of the page. The web pages that take a lot of time to download test the patience of the consumer. To add to that, if the businesses design complex web pages with lots of graphics and animations, it will slow down the speed even more. Another minus point of online marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste, smell or try products in order to make a good decision. To over come this, some of the online stores have created liberal return policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is guaranteed.

Another biggest threat of online shopping is identity theft. Paying online using credit cards, e-checks are susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and used. Many hackers and websites have been caught who were involved in buying and selling of personal information. Most of the websites have taken measures and incorporated good security on their websites. One of the best methods is encryption. When the data is being transferred between two computers; there is a possibility of a hacker intercepting it. So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm and is sent through the network and upon receiving, the decryption algorithm is applied to bring back the data to its original form.

Online selling is influencing all kinds of businesses like banking, advertising, music, etc. Instead of going to a store for buying cassettes and CDs, music can be bought online. Bank transactions like depositing, withdrawing, transferring funds, and paying bills are all performed online. Billions of dollars are invested every year in online advertising alone.  

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Gifts are loved by one and all. They are a way of expressing gratitude. Marketing gifts are given to customers to thank them for their patronage. These thank you gifts cannot only be presented to existing customers, but also to potential customers when they try a new product. This would encourage them to buy other products, which will increase the company sales. This practice can be made more advantageous by making it a marketing and branding strategy, which helps in expanding business, along with earning customer goodwill. To make it marketing oriented, a lot of planning should be put it in so as to not to loose its essence.

Sending promotional gifts is a means of rewarding clients, to show appreciation for their loyalty throughout the years; this will make customers feel like they are valued. Flyers are discarded the moment they are received, and are seldom read. But when a person is gifted with something that he/she can use, there is a probability that they will not only enjoy it, but they will also keep it for sometime, might be for several years and until the time they have it, they will remember the company. One of the better methods is to print the name of the company on the gift. This doesn’t involve any strategy and can be implemented even if there is lack of imagination. Name and brand recognition can be established by having the logo of the company or information of the company printed on the gift. This also helps build brand recognition amongst potential customers.

Also give the customers the gifts that last long. The longer the gift lasts the longer the customer will remember your company. Gifts like a pen, key chain, coffee mug, calendar, refrigerator magnets, etc. which not only lasts forever but are something that is observed and used many times a day. There are certain gifts, which can fit the budget, promote marketing and at the same time serve the purpose of gift.

Calendars are one of the most opted gifts by small companies as promotional products. They aren’t expensive and are used year round. Following them are office supplies. Stationary tub, embedded pens, sticky pads and diaries containing the logo of the company are very good gift ideas too. Desktop accessories are the next best things. Things like pen stands, paperweight are hot giveaways.

For home, gifts like fridge magnets, coffee mugs and thermo-flask make ideal gifts. They, too, are noticed many times a day. The good thing about them is they can be modeled in different colors, shapes and styles and can be unique when compared to another’s promotional products. And hence, they are more like collectible items. Innovation can increase the interest of the user in this regard.

Key chains are also something which is carried everywhere and they don’t even cost too much. Usually people use the promotional ones to store spare keys. T-shirts and cap are a bit expensive, but are worth the investment. They are usually worn outside and people around can easily sight the company’s name and logo and they function like a walking billboard.

Creativity is the key to selecting the right gift to market your product. The more money that is invested, the better the gift, but the gift should be selected such that it earns maximum returns.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

It was not that long ago that most people had no internet, let alone an e-mail address. But the internet brought in a new era that is full of unlimited information.

The internet has given birth to electronic mail, more popularly known as e-mail. E-mail opened new avenues to the world of communication. In the beginning, e-mail was only used as another means of communicating with other people for personal or business related matters. Now people of every age group have an e-mail address. Over the past few years, its potential for marketing has been exploited to its maximum both in good and as well as bad. At the same time, who can disregard the services of direct mail which has been operating for nearly two centuries? It is still the preferred method of communication for many people.

E-mail is the cheapest method of communicating available as of now. The advantage with email is that you can send email to many people at the same time with the click of a mouse. Where as in the case of direct mails, one has to go through putting letters in envelopes for each and every person, make different address labels, mail it and also has to bear the cost of mailing. Time is money and e-mail marketing saves a lot of time.

While e-mail marketing might look easy, comparing the net results of the story is totally different. When you are marketing through e-mail, you need to make sure that you are e-mailing the right person otherwise the e-mail is going to end up in the junk folder. Also you need to be careful that you don’t miss the subject or the body of the e-mail otherwise the result is going to be the same. In this age of spamming, spammers use a variety of subjects, so you have to title the subject keeping in mind that it wouldn’t send your e-mail to the spam folder again. In contrast, the direct mail method gets better treatment. Studies show that direct mail is more efficient and has better success than e-mail. First, it is not as easy to block direct mail as junk e-mail and secondly the process of blocking mail itself is not automated like e-mail. The other reason why people hate e-mail marketing is due to the constant bombarding of e-mails from spammers and illegal marketers from Nigerian money scams to porn to online prescription drugs to stock quotes to what not. In addition to that, you also get promotional offers from big companies. People have developed a negative perception about e-mail marketing and they simply delete or spam the e-mail if they do not identify it as their regular e-mail. In contrast direct mail is seen with respect and people pick through their mail as a daily routine and open them with a priority.

Direct mail has a personal feel attached to it, one of the reasons why people prefer mail greetings over an electronic greeting. It takes time to personalize a direct mail where as an e-mail is instant and the fate of e-mail is also instant i.e. immediate deletion. Researchers are constantly puzzled by the mystery surrounding why people are so enthusiastic about direct mail. But no worries this only good news for the marketers that they have something in their tool kit that works. So marketers have the mailing list of potential customers handy and send some nicely composed letters to them about your company and its products.

Snail mail has the potential of going through the hands of gatekeepers and administrative assistants before actually going to their boss which can end up being thrown in the trash. The survival chances are rare unless the subject is business oriented and has some sort of important information. But e-mail wins in this regard, as it directly reaches the person to which it is intended to go, after that its fate is left to the person whether to read or send it to spam folder.

A more scientific explanation of why direct mail is more effective than e-mail is the sensory perception of people. Direct mail uses three of the four senses of a person i.e. visual, verbal, listening and touching where as e-mail does not use the senses of listening or touching. But this can be achieved by adding appealing graphics, text reading ability and streaming audio to the e-mail.

Statistics show that direct mail has not died and in fact the volume has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few decades. A typical example is the fact that we receive more magazines, journals, mails from universities, DVDs etc. than we used to receive few years ago. This leaves the marketers with a dilemma about which method to use. The answer is simple, use email to contact only those people who you know and use direct mail for the people who don’t know you.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Marketing campaigns cannot survive if they boring. They must become appealing to the customer through a variety of different measures.

Everyday there are more than three thousand marketing messages reaching out to the customers. It is really a huge competition if one expects to be recognized among the crowd. This message should talk to the customer and influence his mind. Strong, creative, confident and exciting are the key factors that a message should have, as it will be embed it into the customer’s way of thinking and he will remember it for a much longer time. The customer should feel empowered and should think of taking some action right away. For example, Nike’s catch line is Just do it, it’s a line that has such a great impact on the minds of the people that they use that line even when talking about everything else, along with Nike products. It is obvious that by adding certain features, the marketing appeal can be multiplied.

Scientists agree to the fact that using visuals to make a person learn something is the best option than any other means. As the old adage goes, “a picture speaks a thousand words”. So the best bet is to add visuals to promote marketing. Visuals can be anything like pictures, animations, or graphics. See for yourself what sort of response you get by placing a picture of a representative next to the products on the company’s website. This not only brings the customers closer but also strengthens the relationship.

Different colors depict different types of emotions. Messages can be delivered to people if colors and meaning are added to it. Red and blue colors are liked by aggressive shoppers, where as the yellow color catches the attention of the on lookers. Green reflects health, money and nourishment, so it can be used in food advertisement. Black means strength and power, that is why it has been used by Jaguar on their website background and advertisement. Wealth and royalty means purple. Colors used on business cards can also be used to attract the customers. But the colors should be carefully played with, too much can be distracting.  Professional help should be sought when selecting colors for business cards, website font, website background, logo, etc., to send the right message. On websites, fonts can be added which change colors and graphics that move.

There are lots of options available when thinking of what technology to use. The good news is that most of the options are cheap and easy to use. Audios and videos can be added to your website to attract attention. Like when one visits the Pepsi homepage, they are greeted with energetic music, which attracts teenagers instantly. To make a more realistic approach, welcome message, introduction video, interviews, or how the goods are produced, can be added to the website. Hearing a voice can be very touching and a rapport can be immediately developed with the visitor. Like Adidas’ website opens with a video which truly fits their punch line, Impossible is nothing.          

Business cards should be outstanding and at its creative best. Professionally designed graphics can be added to a brochure type of card. Information about the company, contact information, quotations, and picture can be added on four sides of it. The fonts should be the same.

Just listing the benefits isn’t enough. Customers want more, they want their needs to be met. If someone is thinking of buying exercise equipment, don’t just say that the machine has display, automatic incline, cooling device, CD player, programs, but also add that there is a program with audio instructions which encourages the person to do exercise, which is meant for people who need real motivation to get out of their couch and to start sweating out. So convey exactly why the customer should use the product, be more precise.

Uniqueness is the biggest key factor. Not only should the products and services be unique, the marketing campaign should be unique too. Not only will the effort be appreciated but also the impression will be everlasting. Once faith of the customers is gained, they will be your free walking advertisement and will spread the word to their friends and acquaintances.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Writing a perfect sales letter can be very hard to do if you don’t have the proper tools and guidance on your side. A badly written sales letter won’t perform as well as you would hope that it should.

Writing a sales letter is tough and writing a winning sales letter is even tougher. Many sales managers bang their heads trying to figure out how to get it right. Well, to answer this question, they should put themselves in other people’s shoes and ask, what “benefit “would I receive by reading this sales letter? Remember the word “benefit,” which is the crux of this discussion. Many sales people take bits and pieces of information from here and there and create a mess out of a sales letter. They literally throw everything on people and then get what they deserve, instant rejection.

One should always remember that a sales letter works only when you have a product to sell and an offer to make. A sales letter should not be an introduction of your product or company. Remember every word is important in the sales letter and do not waste a single letter, which would distract your potential customer’s attention. They are not interested in the features of you product, but an offer or benefit to them. Think from the customer’s point of view and ask yourselves why should I read this letter? Is there any benefit or offer to me which cannot be refused? Can you convince me that this is really a good offer?

After keeping these things in mind, sales managers should apply some thought in presenting their letter. The header or the headline is very crucial to any sales letter. It should directly target the customers of your product. One also needs to be tactful in the use of words. But if you’re not especially good at this type of thing, do not attempt to do it and just be simple in writing about it. The headline should not be more than one line, so try to be as specific as possible but with maximum affect. Nobody has time to read each and every letter in this fast paced era of instant satisfaction. If you are not able to convey your message to the audience in stipulated time, then you have lost those customers. The headline should start out with a benefit being offered to the customer. This ensures that the customer will at least go to the body of the letter.

Now, having made a good effort with the heading, it’s the time to work on the body of the letter. How do you maintain the level of enthusiasm that you created in the customer’s mind with the heading? Once again it is important to remember to not to focus on the features of the product you are trying to sell, but on the benefits and offers you are giving to them. Things like, how much money it is going to save them and how it would affect their lives, should be mentioned in the body of the letter. Make them realize the need for it and compare it to another competitor’s product. Remember, a person reading your sales letter will constantly have questions in their mind as to how this will benefit me, after each and every sentence. So be ready to clear those doubts and answer the questions. Being a little informal in this approach won’t do any harm.  Try to grab their attention by relating to real life things. You can add a bit of humor as long you are sure that it won’t be in the bad taste of the reader. Bring in few recently happy clients to give testimony of your products. Keep the testimonials believable and something that people can relate to.

Once you’ve given a clear explanation about the product, do not forget to prompt your audience to take action. If it is an email, prompt your reader to click on a link to act now or provide a contact number, if its direct mail. Also remind them again that if you don’t act now you will forfeit the offer, as the offer is for limited time only.

Once you are done with the letter, one of the most important parts of the sales letter is P.S. Many people simply read the beginning and end of the letter. So, try to convey something that will prompt them to go back to the letter and read it. It will be a perfect end to the sales letter.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Research on marketing is essential to understand the pattern of marketing. This is possible by searching for existing knowledge related to business marketing.

Marketing is a form of business research, business-to-business marketing research and business marketing research. Marketing research is done in many forms and all these forms are known as problem-identification research.

Research in advertising is done to determine the copy testing of advertisements. It is also used to learn of the efficiency in ads placed in any medium, the customer attention it gets, the message it delivers and how it motivates the customers to buy the product. Commercial eye tracking is done to understand the visual behavior of the customer. Ads, websites, etc., are analyzed for this. Before an advertisement is released in the market, its performance can be forecasted with the help of copy testing which takes consumer’s level of attention, motivation, brand liking, and entertainment into consideration.

When a customer buys something online he analyses it in order to make the decision, this is one of the criteria on which consumer decision research is done. Interviews and surveys can be done to understand consumer’s level of satisfaction, which is known as customer satisfaction studies. The demographic and psychology of the people of a particular geographical region can be studied with the help of segmentation research.

When analyzing is to be done about brand recognition, brand performance, brand preference and awareness, ad tracking is done. A favorite brand can be recognized with the help of brand equity research. Tests are conducted so as to determine what customer thinks about a brand or a product and it is specifically known as brand name testing. The demand of a product can be understood by demand estimation. After the demand of the product is taken care of, the quality should be checked from time to time. Appointing mystery shoppers who are usually an employee of the market research firm does this. He buys goods through a salesperson and notes down the whole experience. This procedure can be used to do research about rival companies’ products.

Before practical application of a concept, concept testing should be done which tells whether the targeted audience will like the idea or not. Test marketing is done by introducing a product in small numbers in the market and observing the sales, after which the product is launched on a large-scale. After the initial phase, when the company thinks of increasing the price of the product, price elasticity testing should be carried out which shows customer reaction to price fluctuations. Distribution channel audits are conducted to understand the attitudes of retailers and distributors towards specific products and brands.

The more tech savvy form of marketing research is Internet strategic intelligence. The likes and dislikes of the customers can be directly known with the help of chats, blogs and forums. Online panels are a group of experts who accept the marketing research done online. 

All the researches that are carried out can be classified as primary research, which gathers original research, and secondary research, which is based on a primary research and information published by other resources. Secondary research costs less as research is done on already researched data, but the result isn’t efficient.

The research designs used by marketing research are either based on questioning or are based on observations. Quantitative marketing research and qualitative marketing research are based on questioning. Quantitative marketing research is done to derive conclusions like questionnaires forms and survey. The number of respondents involved is high. Qualitative marketing research is done to understand something like in-depth interviews and projective techniques.

Marketing research based on observations is called experimental technique and ethnographic studies. Test markets and purchase laboratories are examples of experimental techniques. The quantity measured is determined by understanding the factors that are responsible for the success of a product and then one or some of the factors are changed and the result is observed.  In ethnographic studies observations are done longitudinally or done at several instances of time or cross-sectional, or done at only a particular time.

Research on marketing is similar to exit polling in politics. The market is studied from different angles, at different time, and under different circumstances.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

There are some sales personnel think using emails to sell everything is the best idea. Truth be told, it is not.

It is not a good idea to replace calls with emails when contacting with a potential client. Some people use email to sell products, to avoid the humiliation of rejection. Some major disadvantage of taking this approach is that there is a possibility of not getting an email while awaiting a sales transaction.

More than seventy five percent of the businesses today have replaced calls with emails, and in the process have lost the personal touch. The reason why businesses do this is that feel awkward when facing rejection as they are speaking directly to the customer. It hurts less to hear a ‘no’ though an email. Some people get tired of hearing the voicemails repeatedly. They think it’s a better idea to switch to emails.

When trying to sell products or services to a new client, it is not always possible to gain a customer’s trust through an email. Some ‘well to do’ firms, think that they are recognized in the market, but they forget that there are strict spam filters installed. These firms take the risk of sending introductory emails to potential customer. There are very little chances that the customer will receive the email and read it. But when calling a potential customer, there is a higher probability of the customer receiving the call and the resources invested being put to good use.

If the company still thinks that sending emails to clients is the best approach, some points should be taken care of. The introductory email should contain information about the company, brief explanations about the products and services they offer and information about the method of purchase and contact. All of the information included in the email should give the impression to the reader that the company is interested in benefiting the customer and not themselves.

The introductory email should sound like it’s trying to solve the problems and try to build a strong relationship with the prospective customer. The targeted audience should be thoroughly studied in order to understand their shortcomings and what they could expect from a particular product. The first time around, don’t mention that the company and the client is a good match for each other. Sales pitches should be abolished completely.

Don’t put the company’s name in the heading of the email. When the company’s name is included in the heading, the customer gets the impression that profit of the company is its top priority and not the interest of the customer. It’s a good marketing strategy to include the name of the product being sold, features of the product and how it can solve the problem of the reader. The subject should tell it all and should also catch the attention of the reader in the first glance.

Its best to start emailing the customer after the foundation of a strong long-term relationship is laid first. At first, the customers should be personally approached. Later, when the customer’s trust is gained, further dealings can be accomplished through emails. Emails should only act as a back up method of communicating. Make sure that the words like “we” should be avoided and replaced with the word “you”. The customer feels that he is being directly referred to.

There should be no negativity in the matter. This sets the mind of the customer in a negative mood and he will actually receive the opposite message. For example, instead of writing ‘We don’t sell low quality products’, write ‘We sell high quality products’. Don’t condition the customer. This creates a pressure on the customer and they will start to avoid any calls and emails from the company.

Emails can be used during difficult times. Suppose some soreness erupted between the parties or at least from the side of the customer, emails written with polite and gentle words can melt the toughness and can open up good terms again. The best thing is to stop using email as the only way of communicating, completely. Companies that directly reach out to clients reflect higher level of confidence and create a good impression on new customers.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Utilizing online distributions methods to promote products is known as digital marketing. This approach both can save time and is cost effective.

Digital marketing is completed through items such as cell phones, SMS, MMS, instant messaging, websites, emails, banner advertisement and digital billboards.

Digital marketing involves some of the techniques of direct marketing and Internet marketing. In digital marketing, traditional methods of promotions are executed digitally. It involves marketing in two forms, pull and push.

‘Pull’ digital marketing requires the user to pull or extract the content directly. The customer has to approach the promotional matter and see the matter for himself. Examples are websites, forums and web logs. All these require clicking on a URL in order to view the content. The content that is being displayed doesn’t have to follow any guidelines. Effort is required only to display the content on the website or forum. There is no additional cost of sending the information to the customer, but the customer has to make the extra effort of reaching to the content. The customer doesn’t have to opt-in for such kind of promotion and one message is being viewed by all and it cannot be personalized. The customers who see the content cannot be traced, although the click through rate can be considered which give details about the number of clicks the message received. This is be done by enabling the click though tracking during the campaign, which records the information.

Push digital marketing technologies requires the effort of both the marketer and the customer. The marketer has to push or send the content to the customer and the customer has to make the effort of receiving it. This is a very effective kind of marketing and the investments surely earn a big return as it creates brand recognition. SMS, MMS, emails, RSS podcasting are examples of push digital marketing. Since the content is sent to individuals, it can be personalized according to the intended recipient. Whether the message has been opened, viewed or deleted by the customer, it can be tracked and reported. Information related to the customer such as name, geographical location can be traced. But when sending this size of a message, certain criteria should be met as the SMS and emails sent are monitored. If the marketer doesn’t follow the rules and regulations properly, there is a possibility of messages getting rejected and blocked. Bigger consequences involve marketers becoming blacklisted temporarily or even permanently. The number would be blocked and they won’t be able to send any messages at all. Messages sent to the RSS feeders require a mechanism with an application to reach, when sent by an email marketing system.  

Both forms of digital marketing should be used in tandem to achieve positive results. A smart marketer sends out emails along with SMS and uses multiple channels to market his products. The type of messages being sent should also be different from one another. They should not only be text, but animations, audios and videos. There is a possibility of using pull and push message technologies in conjunction. The email sent to a potential customer can have a URL or a banner ad, which upon clicking downloads information. If there is enormous groups of people to be reached via email, email service providers can be hired who sends loads of emails to the customers on behalf of the marketer and they take measures so that the messages are not considered as spam.

Much of the marketing that is opt-in includes regulations from federal laws, such as CAN SPAM Act, have been passed to protect the customers from unscrupulous marketers who would go to any extent to promote their products or hackers or spammers who have a bad intent i.e. like harming the computer or installing adware, spyware on people’s computers.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites