It’s so
tempting. Sales are soft. Marketers have to do more with less. You have a
substantial number of e-mail addresses of both customers and prospective
customers who may have shown interest in your product or service. Why not
increase the frequency of your email e-mail communication? Answer: Because it
could do much more harm than good.
The
power of communication has shifted to the consumer. In our marketing business,
we recommend that you query your customers and prospects on how and how often they wish to receive your communications. This process places the customers’
needs ahead of your marketing desires – and it results in more satisfied
customer interactions and sales. We have also witnessed the impact first hand while
running our own internet event based marketing company.
YourCover is a life-stage event-based company (births, birthdays,
graduations, anniversaries, etc.) so we tend to step up our marketing frequency
around dates that customers identified they have interest in remembering. We
offer special promotions around events like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day
for example, sending emails out first four then two weeks in advance of the
event. Family birthdays are also often marked by those in our database and we
send specific e-mail reminders to those who have opted in for them.
By
continually respecting the preferences of our customers and prospects we
maintain a very high percentage of our e-mail house file on a monthly basis. Like
many companies we would welcome ways to spur more immediate sales but
understand that that our long term strategy of listening to what people want,
provides YourCover with a better customer relationship and consequently a
better ROI. I’ve pulled together some of our lessons learned from e-mail
campaigns with YourCover in the hope that you can adopt and adapt them in your
marketing as well.
