I just found this article online and thought it said a whole lot. Most business don’t think to do this, so read on you will get some good ideas.

Tom.

If you know your customer, you’ll know what they want from you and from the products they buy. You need to know who you’re talking to in your marketing materials so that you know how to connect with them, not just talk at them.

You’ll have greater success the better you know your customers. So, how do you get to know your customers? Follow these guidelines and ideas to hop in your customers’ shoes and figure out what exactly they want:

Ask them what they want. Yep, it can be that simple! Just ask – when they are in your store, by email or mail or by comment cards. Do some postcard printing and mail out postcards with short, tear-off surveys that can be sent back to you, postage prepaid.

If you have a Web site or blog (and you should have one of these by now), leave a place for comments and questions. Web sites have made it easy to get candid feedback because people can remain anonymous, which means they can be more honest.

Imagine yourself as your customer. You should know the basics of your customers’ lives – are they married? Where do they live and work? Do they have kids and/or pets?

Sometimes just asking them won’t give you good results because people like to be nice and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Try to imagine what your customer is feeling when he or she walks in your store – what attracts them? What repels them? Go through your store as if you were a customer – are things easy to find? Do whatever you can to get in the minds of your customers.

Surf the ‘net to find customer opinions. Sites like Epinions.com and blogs and forums related directly to your product or industry can give you great insight into your customers’ opinions. People can and are blunt on the Web. You can read specific complaints and even sometimes get ideas on how to fix something that’s wrong.

What are your customers’ Googling?
Google has keyword research devices that you can use to see what keywords are using to search for your products and products like yours. You can find out what people are searching your competitors’ Web sites for, and what your competitor has that you don’t on your site.

Talk to your competitors’ customers. You can do this in-person by perusing your competitions’ stores, or online on their Web sites or on forums. Find out what customers like about your competitors and see if you can do that same thing better. You may even gain insight into activities that you do as well as your competitors, but people just don’t know you do it. That’s a big flag that you aren’t marketing the right aspects of your business or that you aren’t using language that your customers understand or pay attention to.

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in postcard printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale businesses.

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Kaye Z. Marks

Most novice marketers have definite fixed ideas about direct mail that are way off base – most often in the area of what to spend and how much to do. You should determine what you are able to spend for your marketing budget, spend it, and determine the maximum number of leads that you can create. For instance, I’ve heard this statement quite often: “We aren’t that large of a company. How could we send out 2,000 postcards all at once?” because “What if they all call?” – seems like a valid concern, right?

Here is the reality behind it: Unfortunately they won’t all call. However, a good deal of them very well may and making sure that your traffic in is not more than you can handle is something to think about. Truthfully, there is no sure way to tell exactly how many people will call if you haven’t done this type of marketing before. Think of it this way. What would happen if they did all call? You may not be able to handle all of them, but you would handle as many as you possibly could, right?

In this scenario, you would have maximized your income for that time period providing you could close up all those callers! You can also explore the idea of expanding your operation to handle the number of leads that you can create.

What if you didn’t max out your promotion at the very start? You can afford to send out 4,000 pieces every two weeks but you think that you will simply get too many calls to be able to handle them all. You, instead, send out only 2,000 and the response is decent. However, you still have some down time where you are having to try to “manufacture” sales.

You saved $400 in marketing money but you had enough down time where you could have closed quite a few more sales than you did. The question now is “Which gives me more money in my pocket? Saving $400 on marketing or closing quite a few more sales and earning an extra couple of G’s potentially.” More than likely the answer is to spend as much as you possibly can on your marketing, right?

By spending all that you can afford on marketing when you start a program you maximize your income almost immediately.

Okay, Time to Track Results.

Hopefully you have more than one way that you try to recruit new customers. So how do you know which ones are working and which aren’t? Set up a system to track the results.

Let’s take for example a situation in which you decide to start a Postcard Marketing Campaign for your business. The first week you send out 3000 postcards. When they start hitting homes you get 30 calls. Did all of these leads come from the postcards? Probably not. Because the week before you got 8 calls and hadn’t sent out any postcards yet. So how can you tell who actually got a postcard?

The Answer: All you have to do is ask them. “So how did you hear about our company?” The hard part is making sure that any employee in your company who answers the phone and may talk to a new prospect remembers to ask the question every time. The fewer prospects who answer this question, the less accurate your information will be when making future marketing decisions.

Now let’s assume that you have been sending out postcards for a while and you have a good number of calls coming in. If you ask the question “So how did you hear about our company?” they may respond, “I got your postcard in the mail.” But, by now you have mailed postcards to 4 different lists, 3 times each. How do you tell which list and which mailing this customer was from?

The Answer: Put a marketing code on the postcards that will tell you which specific postcard they received and when it was mailed.

Give each list a name and work the date into your marketing code as well. And the only thing your representatives have to ask is “Would you mind reading me the marketing code above your address?” This code should give you all the info that you need to know and help you keep your Marketing Results Tracking as accurate as possible.

Try not to operate off of assumptions about “how to market” if you haven’t educated yourself. And make sure you collect all the data and make your future marketing decisions based on the facts.

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Joy Gendusa

Email marketing is a powerful yet inexpensive way to make
contact with customers and prospects.

Depending on whom you are trying to touch, there may be certain
times of day, or days of the week, when the recipient may be
more responsive to your message. In addition to specific
timing for your email marketing campaigns, the frequency
and the number of times to send can all play a big role in
helping to improve your results.

When to Email?
For a mailing to business recipients, sending midday from 11 AM
through 3 PM is generally the best time. Sending a message earlier in
the day can result in a higher risk of the message getting lost in the
rush to prepare for morning meetings. Send it too late in the day and
it may end up quickly deleted before the recipient leaves for their
commute home.

On the other hand, when mailing to consumers, 5 PM through 8
PM is the best time. People tend to check their personal email when
they get home from work or after dinner. Most consumers are too
busy getting ready for work in the morning to read their email.
Like the time of the day, different days of the week can affect
your results as well. The best days to contact businesses are weekdays
except for Monday and Friday. Monday has proven to have too many
meetings to reach decision makers, and on Friday, most people would
prefer to leave early before the rush hour than receive your email, no
matter how exciting the email and offer may be.

Consumers are more likely to spend more time on the Internet on
weekends, and hence have more time to consider your offer. One
observation is that since many people tend to check their personal
email at various points throughout the day, selecting a specific time to
hit your target group while they are online is much more difficult.
Avoid Mailing During Holidays

During the holidays, people tend to be away from their computers
and don’t check their email regularly. This means they may get your
message when they return together with a ton of other mail that has
piled up during the holidays. Chances are all but the most important
messages will be deleted in a rush without a second look.

Frequency of the Email

Sending email too often can be annoying, resulting in recipients
asking to be removed. Don’t send often enough and you may be
forgotten when the recipient is finally ready to buy. Generally, once
every 2-3 weeks is best. A few exceptions are a daily newspaper or a
time-dependant offer like a seminar invitation.

Sending three variations of the same offer to the same recipient is
a good way to improve response rates. You should never send the
exact same offer more than once. Otherwise you risk the recipient
thinking that it’s just another copy of the same email and deleting it. If
a recipient has not responded by the third attempt, they are not going
to respond at all, either because it’s the right offer/wrong time, or the
wrong offer altogether.

Following-Up

It is important to follow up at least once after an initial offer.
Many times it has been observed that a number of recipients will
clickthrough on the first mailing only after receiving a second mailing.
You cannot wait too long to send a follow-up message or they may have
forgotten about the original offer. Follow-up contact is recommended
1-2 weeks after the original offer is sent. 

Personally I feel you shout follow up your first offer with a second and third email sooner probably 2 to 3 days after the first one. Tests do show it takes 7 sales attempts before many customers buy from you.

Tom

If you  have unanswered questions about Email campains, contact me

 themarketinguniversity@googlemail.com

Aside from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. With the popularity of the electronic mail as a medium for marketing because of the low cost, many company?s have seized the opportunity and have flooded many people?s e-mail accounts with promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you avoid this annoyance because people subscribe to the list; they want to receive the newsletters and promotional materials. They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves, just don?t forget to put an unsubscribe feature everytime in your opt-in list so that you avoid any confusion. There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn?t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. Arrange it by using the many tools and technologies available for your opt-in list. Do not worry; your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales then to profit.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean. Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. There are those bounce messages that are simply undeliverable ever. The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce. Erase an email account from your list so that you have an accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail. You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

2) Always provide an unsubscribe feature in your site and an unsubscribe link in your mails. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously. If you don?t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these. Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers. Stick to the nature of your site and business.

Always remember these tips in this article so that you can have a healthy relationship with your subscribers as well as be kept within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending mails to an opt-in list.

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Anton Cheranev

If you would like to contact me to talk about how this idea could help increase profits in your current business and how I could help you please email Tom : themarketinguniversity@googlemail.com