10 Reasons You Need an Email Newsletter

Last week someone sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. I “okayed” the request, and the next day, I had an email from this same person in my inbox, asking me to share all of my business needs with him. No relationship building, no trust, no foundation or even context for the conversation. It was the equivalent of being proposed to on a blind first date.

And since I was just about as creeped out as if it had been a proposal on a blind date, I responded appropriately. Deleted the email, told outlook to block future emails from this individual and un-connected on LinkedIn. The equivalent of changing my phone number and eliminating my blind date proposer from my social media networks.

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last; my question is, how many times have you moved from introduction to proposal too quickly? How many times have you lost customers by being presumptuous – failing to understand what they really needed or where they were in the buying process? Or how many customers have you lost because you didn’t know they were ready to buy, and so never even extended an offer?

Building relationships with prospects is vital if you want to move them from prospect to customer. And moving customers to the next step in the relationship is vital if you want to garner referrals and gain enduring customer loyalty.

Developing communication strategies for each stage of the customer life cycle can greatly aid your ability to keep the relationship growing and keep your business on the prospect’s mind so that when they are ready to buy, ready to move, ready to try a new product or service—when they are ready to do business with you—yours will be the business to which they turn. And communications collateral can be the means by which your customers will refer friends and family to your business by passing on an email newsletter, coupon, menu or brochure.

While some business owners express doubt as to the return on their email marketing investment, and others worry about being perceived as spammers, email marketing is alive and well. And, done correctly, email marketing can have huge benefits to the bottom line. For instance, did you know:

• Email marketing produces one of the highest returns on investment compared to any other form of direct marketing. The DMA says that email marketing ROI was $40.56 for every $1 invested in 2011; compare that to the return on banner ads at just $2 for every dollar invested and keyword ads which produce a $17 return for every dollar invested.
• According to the email stat center, Epsilon studies found that 57% of respondents have more positive impressions of the companies that send them email, 40% say that simply receiving a company’s email positively impacts the likelihood that they will make a future purchase from that company, and 50% say they are more likely to buy products from companies that send them email, whether they make those purchases online or at a brick and mortar place of business.
• And email marketing is permission based. This should ease business owner’s fear of being perceived as a junk emailer. If your customer or prospect asks you to communicate with them via email, why should you be afraid to do so? All of the power rests with them: they can choose to delete your email or save it for later if they don’t want to read it right away, and they can unsubscribe at any time if your email newsletter isn’t something that adds value for them any longer.

Sending a regular email newsletter is a great way to initiate and develop your relationships with prospects and customers. Here are 10 things that an email newsletter can do for your business:

1. Email can significantly impact your overall branding strategy. 

Your brand is the sum total of an individual’s perceptions about your business (and you!). And email communication is one of the few customer touch points where you control most of the interaction in terms of what the customer or prospect sees, and where they are directed next with each and every email communication. And you can use your email communications to drive traffic to your website or webstore, your blog or even to outside sites which can further help to influence and educate your audience to do business with you.

2. Email can enhance your customer education strategy. 

Part of getting the prospect or customer to “choose you” when they are ready to purchase what you have to offer is educating them as to the benefits they will receive as a result of doing business with you. Email communications provide the forum for sharing these types of benefits as well as your mission, vision, customer bill of rights—all of the promises you make to customers about what they can expect to be true, each and every time they do business with you.

3. You can use email to create intrigue. 

In 365 Days of Marketing, I make the point that intrigue is vital to turning prospects into customers and moving customers deeper into relationship with you. In order to gain mindshare among prospects, you must keep them interested in your business, even if they aren’t yet ready to buy. To return to the blind date analogy, it’s the equivalent of creating a desire on the part of the other person to want to know more about you—to be intrigued about what they don’t yet know or fully understand about your business, products or services, but want to find out.


It’s important to point out that creating intrigue on a first date isn’t done by proposing marriage; it’s done by omitting information – and giving your date a reason and the motivation to go out with you again and develop a relationship over time. It is during this relationship over time that intrigue leads eventually to relationship decisions, like buying, referring others and becoming a loyal customer.

4. Email can be used to gain referrals. 

When you provide useful information to prospects and customers in email newsletters and updates, you provide both the reason and the means by which they can refer friends and family to your business. For instance, something in your email newsletter might remind them that an acquaintance needs your products or services. And having an email in their inbox makes it incredibly easy for them to forward the email itself or a link to your online newsletter on to interested parties.

5. Email can help you build relationships. 

Though referenced throughout this article, remember that email is not a one and done marketing push, it’s about building relationships over time. Your email newsletter should have a combination of content that creates intrigue but also educates, communicates your values and customer promises and helps to build your brand, in addition to actually extending marketing offers to your readers.

6. Email can help you establish influence and expertise.  

One of the reasons that people choose to buy from you or feel comfortable referring a family member or friend to your business is because they trust you. They trust that you will treat them (or their referral) to a positive customer experience and they trust that you will provide them with the right solution. Trust is built over time and repeated interactions; and email can comprise those interactions. Use your email newsletter to communicate news, information and expertise to enhance your reputation and the reputation of your business and set yourself up as the expert in your field in the minds of customers and prospects.

7. Email can be used to extend offers.  

The top reason that consumers subscribe to mailings and interact with businesses on social media is to receive special offers and discounts. Your subscribers expect you to email them and they expect (and want!) to receive valuable offers from you. Use your email newsletter to tell customers and prospects about current offers, or create special offers that are redeemable only by your email readers. In addition, you can use your email newsletter to tell people about what is new in your business and remind them about offers that will be expiring in the near future.

8. Email can help you move customer to the next level in the customer life cycle. 

You can invite customers to events, ask them to refer others to your business, extend membership, VIP or other club type of offers and make any number of other calls to action meant to encourage your prospect or customer to move to a deeper level of relationship with your business. If you have openings for new clients, you can use your email newsletter as the means of telling your readers exactly “who” your business would be a perfect match for. You can provide education about your business, products or services that engage your readers not only intellectually but also emotionally and give them even more reasons to want to do business with you. You can tell them know about your commitment to the local community, local schools or local charitable causes. You can talk about the history of your company, your employees, your passions and a variety of other personal topics that will help them to connect themselves emotionally and to feel proud about identifying themselves with the brand of your business.

9. You can use email to gauge interest. 

Before launching a new product or service or making changes to customer processes, you can use email to gauge interest ahead of time. This can help you to fine tune new offerings before they launch or even avoid costly mistakes, like investing in a product for which demand is not strong or making a change to the customer process that might make your customers upset or even leave.

10. You can use email to gather feedback and customer data. 

While you may view email as a push marketing our outbound marketing tactic, it can be much more. It’s easy for people to respond to email—it takes very little time and no cost to do so. If you aren’t yet, you should be using your email newsletter not only to share information but to ask for information. Provide the means for people to respond directly via return email or links to surveys and questionnaires which can help you gauge everything from your customer’s level of satisfaction to what they like best (or dislike most) about your business, what they want that you don’t provide, what you do better than the competition (or vice versa). You can also ask readers for product or service reviews or testimonials or even for feedback that can be used to help improve the level of customer service you provide (or where you are falling short of customer’s expectations).


Email communications have a relatively low cost, especially when compared to other forms of outbound marketing. And they have been shown to produce a significantly higher return. And now you have 10 great ways to use email communications that you might not have thought about before—so what’s stopping you?

You can easily get started with an email service such as Constant Contact, and you don’t have to be a programmer or HTML expert to do so, since they provide you with easy-to-modify templates. If you sign up using the link above, you'll get to try it out for free and receive a $30 credit.  Alternatively, if you do want professional help, feel free to contact me for information about starter email marketing or overall content marketing packages and strategies.

Build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients—it’s going to be a great year!


***

Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is the ultimate resource for business owners who need actual content in order to achieve their content marketing (blogging, social media and SEO) goals! 

Available on amazon.com in print or digital format, it contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including all of the major holidays an much, much more to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!
 

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• The Most Important Question of Email Marketing: "Why?" (community.constantcontact.com)

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Early Look: Waiting On Google

The market is pushing higher in early trading, adding to its oversold bounce that started yesterday. The S&P 500 is back above its 50-day average, which comes back into play around 1374. Bulls will be looking for the index to hold above that level.

In earnings news, tech giant Google (GOOG) reports earnings after the close tonight. Consensus estimates are for EPS of $9.64 on revenues of $10.58 billion. Last quarter, GOOG missed estimates with its earnings report and the stock gapped lower the next day. Let's hope they have a better handle on their financials this time. The stock is trading at roughly 15x 2012 estimated earnings, so it's not very expensive at current levels.

In economic news, core PPI data showed a 0.3% increase month over month, slightly above expectations. Also, jobless claims came in higher than expected at 380,000. But continuing claims declined.

Overnight Asian markets were higher, led by a 1.8% bounce in China. Europe's markets are mostly lower this morning.

The euro is higher vs. the dollar, which is helping commodities. Oil prices are rallying to $103.80, and gold prices are up to $1676. Copper and silver prices are getting a pop as well.

The 10-year yield is up a touch to 2.03%; and the VIX is down -8% currently to 18.41. Yesterday's early dip in the VIX reversed itself by the close and the VIX rallied back up to 20. We'll see if it can stay down on day 2.

Trading comment: Yesterday's bounce came on somewhat lighter volume, but it was still a good rally attempt. Bulls will be watching for some follow through to come on higher volume, and also for one of the minor growth indexes (like the S&P midcap 400) to recapture its 50-day average. Most leading growth stocks haven't had too much damage on the charts and are consolidating. LNKD is close to breaking out again, and could benefit from the social media hype that is picking up as Facebook readies for their IPO next month.

KAM Advisors has long positions in GOOG and LNKD

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Trying To End The Losing Streak

The S&P 500 is coming off its longest losing streak since last November at 5 days. The market is bouncing in early trading, with the SPX trying to regain its now overhead 50-day average.

Overnight trading was weak in Asia following weak action in US markets and lingering concerns about sovereign European debt. But the action in Europe took a decidedly positive tone this morning after a successful auction of short-term bills in Italy. This helped drive yields lower across the periphery of Europe.

In corporate news, Alcoa kicked off earnings season last night with a strong report. AA topped consensus estimates handily and also raised its growth forecast for the global aerospace market.

On the flipside, Nokia lowered Q1 guidance and its stock is getting hit.

The euro is higher this morning, but commodities are mixed. Oil prices are higher near $101.70 while gold prices are slightly weaker at $1660. Copper and silver are also mixed.

The 10-year yield is seeing a little bounce to 2.03%. And the VIX is falling -7.5% this morning below the 19 level as some of yesterday's fear comes out of the market.

Trading comment: A couple of different pictures for the SPX and Nasdaq in terms of their 50-day averages. The SPX broke through its 50-day support yesterday and today is trying to recapture that key support level (watch 1373). As for the COMP, it closed right at its 50-day support yesterday and today is bouncing higher from those levels (watch 2992). Looking at many of the other growth stocks that have been leading the market, most of them are still holding up. A handful have broken below their recent uptrend lines but are still trading above their 50-day averages. That said, yesterday was another distribution day (read: high volume selloff) in the market and adds to the number of distribution days we have seen in recent weeks. As such, traders should be in defensive mode and looking to protect profits and raise cash.

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Readying For A Bounce

The market is lower in early trading, which would mark a rare 5th consecutive down day for the major indexes if we closed at current levels. The S&P 500 is approaching its 50-day average near 1372, having hit 1375 earlier. Interestingly, the Dow, S&P mid-cap, and Russell 2000 are all already below their respective 50-day averages.

The Nazz is outperforming again, being helped by Apple (AAPL) which continues to defy gravity and trade higher to new record highs. Priceline (PCLN) is similarly spectacular but doesn't receive a fraction of the mentions in the media that AAPL does.

There hasn't been much in the way of market moving news this morning. Earnings season kicks off tonight with Alcoa, which is a bit of a bore if you ask me. Later this week we hear from Google, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo which should all be interesting.

Action in Asia overnight was mixed, with only China gaining on the session after reporting an unexpected trades surplus (imports were weaker than expected). Europe is lower this morning as Italian and Spanish bond yields continue to rise.

The dollar is stronger vs. the euro, and most commodities are pulling back. Oil prices are lower below $102. Gold prices are down near $1638. Silver and copper prices are lower too.

The 10-year yield has once again fallen back below the 2.00% level as investors question the strength of our economic rebound. The VIX is up another 3% to 19.35.

Trading comment: The SPX is getting closer to its 50-day average and I am still expecting a bounce from these levels. Often times a pullback ahead of earnings season sets the market up well to rally if those earnings reports come in at or above expectations. I hope we get a good report from Google on Thursday, as that would help sentiment. The put/call ratio is fairly low this morning at 0.81. I would prefer to see more fear and a reading above 1.0 to help the market bottom. But yesterday we did see a reading above 1.0 by the close, the first such reading in a week.

KAM Advisors has long positions in AAPL, GOOG, PCLN, JPM, and WFC

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B2B Marketing Going Mobile

IDC calls Mobility one of the Four Forces transforming the information technology industry. How big a force is mobility in tech marketing? Marketers at the forefront say that incorporating mobile channels into the mix is not an "if", but a "when".

Rampant Mobility Adoption
IDC projects that smart phone shipments will be $659.8M in 2012 up 33.5% from 2011 and expects shipments of media tablets to be $87.7 million, an increase of 38.6%. At the recent B2B's Digital Edge Live conference, Mark Wilson, SVP of Corporate and Field Marketing at Sybase, an SAP company, got lots of tweets when he claimed that there are more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes (5.5B vs. 2B)! Businesses are rapidly putting smart phones and tablets into employees' hands in order to increase productivity and responsiveness.

Why Mobility Matters to Marketing: Better Buying Experiences Win
Mobile devices also enable better customer engagement and loyalty - this is the reason why mobility should matter to B2B marketers. Many companies continue to imagine that people make buying choices based solely on the value of the product or service offered. However, the buying experience itself is playing a bigger role in choice.

The internet has changed the buyer's selection behavior. Google has accustomed us to simply stating our needs and then enjoying the luxury of thousands of options. With such an abundance of choice, buyers can flit from option to option, deserting those that disappoint and engaging where they find an easy, clear, interesting, and possibly entertaining, match to their need.
To increase the chances of making a match and thus gaining engagement, B2B marketers already employ various types of buyer context including personalization, role, and vertical industry to the digital dialog. Mobility provides marketers with added potential.

• Convenience - Mobile buyers can engage anywhere and anytime. Time flexibility increases the buyer's control over the interaction and can make it more satisfying. Users can use otherwise wasted time, so they may engage more deeply. Some companies report average interaction time going from seconds to minutes.


• Relevancy - Vendors can better match a buyer's need by incorporating location-based context. Location-based context takes many forms. Offers can be linked to a nearby kiosk at an event, for example. Customer service representatives or sales people who are physically with a buyer can integrate mobilized digital content with the interpersonal dialog at the moment of need. Additional interaction time also increases the buyer's data footprint so that more preferences can be implied.

Going Mobile
Another panelist at the B2B Digital Edge Live conference, Jeff Klainberg, Director of Mobile Strategy, at American Express OPEN, recommended these three steps to mobilize your marketing:

1. Establish mobile channels at parity with other digital channels. (Bring things you now do on the web to your mobile channel)


2. Leverage open assets (such as free apps and free content) to create differentiated engagement and value delivery


3. Breakthrough: once you get some experience, start creating differentiating new experiences that you can only do on mobile devices

Ideas for Successful Mobile Marketing
Sybase's Wilson provided his company's experience in successful mobile marketing applications:

• eBooks: Books published for tablets and published on iTunes has led to 20x demand over print for Sybase content


• Display ads: "Tap-rates" from mobile display ads get a substantially higher response over PC web click-rates


• Mobisite: Some microsites optimized for mobility have achieved more than an average of five minutes per session


• Events: Mobility enriches the event experience with the ability to buy goods on the event floor, to participate in contests, and recieve alerts


• Demos: Sales enablement is one of the BEST uses of mobility. The ability to augment a sales conversation with immediate use of experts (via video), demo's, or other digital enhancement can transform the sales job
  

Today, mobility is smart phones and tablets. Expand your vision of what a "device" can be. Check out the world's most watched corporate video (created by agency Doremus) for Corning called A Day Made of Glass.

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Monday Morning Musings

The market is selling off on a delayed reaction to Friday's nonfarm payrolls report. Our markets were closed on Friday so this is the first chance traders have had to react to the news. Nonfarm payrolls grew by 120,000 in March, which was well below expectations for 200k jobs added. The unemployment rate was steady at 8.2%.

Overnight selling in Asia was also affected by concerns about slowing US economic growth. Japan and China were both lower, with China's CPI coming in above expectations at 3.6%. European markets are closed for the Easter holiday.

Bonds are rallying hard on the payrolls data, with prices up and yields plunging. We had begun to see the 10-year yield moving higher from that 2.00% level where it had been stuck for so long. But today we are back down to that key support area with the 10-yr trading near 2.03%.

Not much in the way of corporate news, but AOL (who still owns that stock?) did sell $1 billion worth of patents to Microsoft (MSFT).

Commodities are mixed, despite the dollar being lower. Oil prices are down near $104.40. Gold prices are higher to $1645, but silver and copper prices are down.

The VIX is seeing a big bounce, up 11% so far today back above its 50-day average to 18.60. Looks like we were stopped out of our VXX hedge a little early.

Trading comment: The S&P 500 is down for a fourth straight day, which is about the most consecutive down days we have seen in the index since last November. Currently at 1379, that's about a 3% decline from the recent highs. I have been expecting a mild pullback in the 3-5% range, so we are now in that zone. The 50-day average for the SPX comes into play around 1371 while a full 5% pullback takes the index down to 1350. Of course, we could easily see something more but I think in that area buyers will step in and we will get a bounce. The key to determining if we will get a bigger correction this spring/summer is the tone of the ensuing bounce and if it is able to take the indexes back to new highs or if it runs out of steam and leaves a double-top looking formation. But in the near-term, I would be looking for a bounce in the markets.

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6 Ways to Supersize your Networking ROI

A few days ago I jotted down notes for an article on how to get more value from your networking efforts and as I sat down to write this article for the 365 Days of Marketing blog, I remembered writing in 365 Days of Marketing about the fact that a lot of people misunderstand what networking is and isn’t, and so may never realize any return on their networking efforts.

If this has been your experience, you may have written off networking as a waste of time in terms of a bona fide marketing tactic. I’m hoping to give you a reason to give it a fresh look, and I’m hoping to give you some useful ways to adjust your approach to networking so that it brings some actual benefits to your business.

As it turns out, the 2nd week of April is actually National Networking Week -- so no wonder it was on my mind!  

In 365 Days of Marketing, I define networking this way:

net-work-ing, noun
meaning: the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions
specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business

Networking is more than attending meetings with other business owners or showing up at events where prospects might be in attendance.

Real networking is purposeful.

It either involves working together with peers to help improve the business climate in your community or it involves being present, visible and alluring in the same places as are your target market/s prospects or ideal types of clients.

Maybe that’s why so many business professionals give up on networking or put it on the bottom of their priority list; they’ve been doing it wrong! Now that you have a better understanding of what networking is (and isn’t), how are you going to put this tactic to work to help build business?

Here are 6 ways that you can reap a bigger return on your networking efforts:

1. Know what you want to get out of it and be prepared.

When you attend networking meetings and conferences, be prepared with an audience-targeted, short introduction – no more than 30 seconds, and no more than one main point beyond your name, company name and title. For more on networking introductions read this post on the topic called “I’m Sorry, I’ve Already Forgotten Your Name."

In addition to your 30 second power introduction, consider offering something for give away (I frequently bring a copy of one of my books for give away at networking events by way of instant business card drawing). And create a one-sheet which is targeted to that audience and which highlights some important aspect of your business. I like to include a sample blog post along with a short list of “Related Services” that my business provides.

And make sure every one-sheet or take away includes a call to action and the means for the recipient to take the next step in the relationship they have (or want to build) with you and your business. Such calls to action might include an invitation to subscribe to your blog or email newsletter, to visit your business or book an appointment, to shop your store or website, to connect with you on social media, etc.

2. Use your social media platforms to make generous mention of businesses in your networking groups.

All too often we focus all of our marketing communications – social media profiles included – on marketing our own businesses. You can improve your SEO and generate plenty of goodwill among your peers if you will use your social media platforms for what they were intended; social interaction.

Over the last month, I’ve made it a point to mention every independent business that I’ve interacted with on social media as quickly as possible. It costs me very little by way of time and brings a wonderful return in the relationships that I’m building with other business owners. And hopefully it encourages my peers to do the same on social media in mentioning my services and those of the other businesses in our networking groups (and isn’t that one of the purposes of networking groups, anyway?)

3. Encourage reciprocal links.

Most blogs include a list of recommend other blogs or other websites that the blog’s author would recommend to their readers. Just as you can mention other local businesses on social media, you can also set up links to their businesses on your blog or website as local resources which you would feel comfortable recommending as resources for your customers. And there’s no reason not to point this out to the businesses with which you choose to network and to create reciprocal links in order to boost everyone’s SEO as well as provide a helpful list of local resources for your customers.

4. Write reviews for your networked peers.

Again, you might be asking yourself, why should you spend valuable time talking up other people’s businesses? The first reason should be that you genuinely want to be an information hub to your own customers in providing valuable resources to your customers. It improves your own reputation when you make good recommendations to others, and it makes you look good to both your peer business owners and your customers when you spend time saying good things about other people, and other businesses!

Secondly, reviews, blog comments and other similar online forums can also help you improve your own SEO and visibility to prospective customers. You can leave reviews on sites such as citysearch.com, yelp.com and others. You can also leave your own “shout outs” and complimentary reviews of local businesses on their blog sites, and on their social media pages (as well as your own). You may even choose to feature raves for local businesses in anecdotal stories as posts on your own blog.

However and wherever you decide to leave reviews for other businesses, I would recommend that you adhere to what “mom” always advised. When reviewing other businesses in your community, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

5. Create an online directory.

One of the ways to build influence and become a catalyst for improving the local business economy is to turn your blog and websites into hubs. And not only hubs of information, but your website (and blog roll) is a great place to create a hub of local business listings. Include a directory of local resources on your website which features listings of the businesses within your peer networking groups.

6. Actually visit – and patronize – the businesses represented in your networking groups.

I recently attended a local networking group at the invitation of a friend who said that she was a little fed up with the networking group. When I asked why, she replied that in the year they’d been having the meetings, not one of them had even visited her business.

While participation in networking groups should bring referrals from other members, it might be that a lot of networking groups are missing the person that should be the most obvious referral: you.


If you participate in business networking groups, and especially if you are going to refer your own customers to these other businesses, take the time to visit these other businesses and patronize them when you have opportunity. After all, this is something you want from other group members, right? Time to put your time and money where your desires are!

If you think about it, local business networking groups operate as loosely affiliated cross and cooperative marketing partners in many respects. Wouldn't it behoove your networking group to approach this strategically and make this one of the biggest benefits to local business owners for participation?  Feel free to pass on my tips to your group or even use them as the basis for a more purposeful, concerted effort in order to boost the local economy for all participating businesses!

Like any other part of your overall marketing, networking should be done as strategically and efficiently as possible. You are much more likely to reap a return when you understand what networking is (and isn’t) and you have a plan for getting the most ROI on the investment of time and money you make.

***


Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is available on amazon.com in print or digital format. It contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including Mother's Day and Father's Day to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!

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