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By Robert Burko
Forget direct email marketing for a second, and tell me if
this
has ever happened to you. You go outside and open your
mailbox.
You get the usual: bills, bank statements, maybe a phoney
million-dollar offer. But then, in the middle of it all, you
see an envelope from your favourite restaurant. “Thanks for
being a loyal customer,” it says. “Next time you come by, let
us treat you to a free dessert.”
Now I’m not exactly the coupon-clipping kind of guy, but when
I
run into an offer that’s so relevant to me, I simply can’t
resist it. Millions of you are like that too. And guess what?
Millions of you check your email more often than your actual
mailboxes.
That’s where direct email marketing comes in. Forget spam.
Spam’s just the phoney million-dollar offer, and direct email
marketing is miles away from that. Direct email marketing is
reaching the right customers, with the right offers.
Let’s go back to that coupon you received from your favourite
restaurant, and let’s think about it from the restaurant’s
point of view. If you clip that coupon and come into the
restaurant, their direct marketing efforts were successful.
However, to get that coupon into your hands, the restaurant
had
to pay for printing, buy and stuff envelopes, address them to
you and then pay for postage. And chances are the restaurant
hired someone to do the printing, maybe someone else to the
design, the envelope stuffing, etc. If you’ve ever sent flyers
or coupons in the mail, you’ll know it’s both expensive and
time-consuming.
Here’s the beauty of direct email marketing. First of all,
direct email marketing programs are packaged so you can do it
yourself. The emails are all pre-designed, and the backend is
already taken care of for you. All you have to do is sit on
your computer for about 10 minutes and click a few buttons.
There’s no postage, no stuffing, no expensive printing fees.
And as small business owners have begun to discover the power
of email, many direct email marketing programs are now built
for non-technical folk. So even if all you can do on your
computer is check your email and browse the web, you can still
be an expert in these programs right away.
What’s more is you’ll still get access to the most advanced
functionality. Let’s get back into the restaurant owner’s
shoes. We’ve just sent a Free Dessert email coupon to all the
customers who filled out our customer satisfaction survey and
gave us their email addresses. We also included a “Forward to
a
Friend” link, so our customers can email the Free Dessert
coupon
to their friends.
Now (and here comes my favorite part about direct email
marketing), we can go into the Reports and Stats section of
our
direct email marketing program and get deep into our campaign.
We can see exactly who opened our messages, and when they did
it. We can even see who forwarded their coupons to their
friends.
And we don’t have to stop there. We can group all our readers
who forwarded their coupons to a friend and offer them an
extra
incentive (We know they like to tell their friends about us,
so
why not offer them 25% Off when they bring in two or more
friends?).
Information is power, and direct email marketing is one of the
most effective ways to gather that information and put it to
good use. So next time you get that flyer for your favorite
restaurant, think about how much unnecessary money and time
that restaurant owner is spending. Think about how much
information he’s missing out on, and think about how much
better things would be if he sent that flyer through direct
email marketing.
About The Author: Robert Burko is president and CEO of
www.eliteemail.com/ service provider Elite Email
Marketing. Join the thousands of businesses around the globe
that create, send and track their email marketing campaigns
with Elite’s powerful, self-service direct email marketing
program, part of the business.eliteweb.cc network.
Visit
us for a free trial.
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