With the economy in the shape it's in, it's difficult for small businesses to know how to spend their marketing dollars. We recommend e-mail marketing as one way our clients can make the most of their marketing budget.
A recent survey of marketing execs by Datran Media found that e-mail leads all other marketing channels by a wide margin in terms of performance for their companies. Nearly 60 percent of respondents anticipated they would increase their spending on e-mail marketing in 2009.
E-mail is a great way to tell potential clients about your product and services, and it reminds your existing clientele that you exist. Best of all, it’s relatively cheap.
On a side note, this is not to discourage print advertising. Times are tough in the publishing world, so now's the time to get deals on ad space or to see if you can renegotiate your print advertising contract. Print advertising will always be important in our region’s tourist market.
Back to e-mail marketing. Here is a bit about the basics:
What is e-mail marketing?
Basically, it is the messages you receive in your e-mail that look like a web page. Sometimes they let you know about a store's latest specials. Other times they're newsletters. Usually they include the company's logo and other branding elements.
We generally recommend our clients keep the content short and to the point. People don't have much time to read e-mail, and you must be sensitive to that.
How to get started
At SmallPond Studio, we build custom templates for our clients, so they can either leave it to us to update their eblast each time they send it out or they can do it themselves with our simple editing tool.
Once the e-mail is set up with the design and content, we import the client's e-mail contact list, set up a date to distribute the e-mail, and our software sends it. It's as easy as that.
With our new e-mail marketing system, clients can even log in via the SmallPond web site and distribute their own e-mail campaigns.
Tracking
This is when the fun begins. After the e-mail has been sent out, our clients can log in and check the progress of their campaign. You can see how many people opened the message, who opened it, who clicked which links – the statistics are endless. They can even see what time of day the recipients opened the e-mail to determine when to send the next campaign.
All in all, a custom e-mail marketing template is inexpensive to set up, and it's downright cheap to send. Couple that with the ability to track its success, and you have a lean-on-the-green marketing machine.
Contact SmallPond Studio today to get started on your e-mail marketing campaign. E-mail us at info@smallpondstudio.com or call 530.587-5625.
2 comments:
Interesting content.
Just wanted to share some information that I came across in a few articles discussing about recession and how we can adopt a different marketing strategy to promote our business. It’s quite eminent that most of the advertisers and businesses are taking to online advertising medium since the Internet has now become a necessity to reach global audience. However, even today there is still a huge chunk of people who do not access Internet and to reach this segment of the society; we can rely on the print media. This in fact would be a great choice for anyone whether they are looking out for global, national or local exposure.
Since the economies are now at the bring of recession, it’s a good idea to consider print media as well in the marketing mix so that you can extend your reach further to get additional traffic to your website or business. You can try a blend of online and print advertising through a reputed ad agency that can help you professionally.
Hi magazine ads ...
Just noticed your comment. We don't get many of those on this blog! As I'm sure you have seen, we posted an entry on print marketing on here as well.
Keep the feedback coming!
RD
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